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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76991 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+EPISODES BEFORE THIRTY
+
+
+
+
+ EPISODES BEFORE
+ THIRTY
+
+ By
+ ALGERNON BLACKWOOD
+
+ CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD
+ London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
+ 1923
+
+
+
+
+_Printed in Great Britain_
+
+
+
+
+ To
+ ALFRED H. LOUIS
+
+
+
+
+EPISODES BEFORE THIRTY
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+A strong emotion, especially if experienced for the first time, leaves
+a vivid memory of the scene where it occurred. I see a room in a New
+York boarding-house. I can touch the wooden bed, the two gas-brackets
+beside the looking-glass, the white door of the cupboard, the iron
+“register” in the wall that let in heated air, the broken sofa. The
+view from the dirty windows towards the high roof of Tony Pastor’s
+music hall in 14th Street, with a side glimpse of the trees in Irving
+Place, show clearly. The rattle of the Broadway cable cars, the clang
+of their bells, still come to me through that stifling August air, when
+the shade thermometer stood at a hundred, with humidity somewhere about
+95 per cent. Thoughts of the sea and mountains, vainly indulged within
+those walls, are easily remembered too.
+
+The room I am writing in now seems less actual than the one in the
+East 19th Street boarding-house, kept by Mrs. Bernstein, a German
+Jewess, whose husband conducted his own orchestra in a Second Avenue
+restaurant. Though thirty years ago, it is more clearly defined for
+me than Lady X’s dining-room where I dined last night, and where the
+lady I took in said graciously, “I simply loved your _Blue Lagoon_,”
+which, naturally, I was able to praise unreservedly, while leaving her
+with the illusion as long as possible that she had made friends with
+its gifted author. And this detailed clarity is due, I am sure, to the
+fact that in that New York room I had my first experience of three new
+emotions, each of which, separately, held horror.
+
+Horror draws its lines deep; its pictures stand out in high relief.
+In my case the horrors were, perhaps minor ones, but at the age of
+twenty-one--an exceptionally inexperienced twenty-one--they seemed
+important; and the fact that they were combined entitles them to be
+considered major. They were three in number: the horror of loathsome
+vermin running over my body night after night, the horror of hunger,
+and the horror of living at close quarters with a criminal and degraded
+mind.
+
+All, as I said, came together; all were entirely new sensations. “Close
+quarters,” too, is used advisedly, for not only was the room a small
+one, the cheapest in a cheap house, but it was occupied by three of
+us--three Englishmen “on their uppers,” three big Englishmen into the
+bargain, two of us standing 6 feet 2 inches, the other 6 feet 3 inches
+in his socks. We shared that room for many weeks, taking our turn at
+sleeping two in the bed, and one on the mattress we pulled off and kept
+hidden in the cupboard during the day. Mrs. Bernstein, denying her
+blood, won our affection by charging eight dollars only, the price for
+two, morning coffee included; and Mrs. Bernstein’s face, fat, kindly,
+perspiring, dirty, is more vivid in my memory after all these years
+than that of the lady last night who so generously mistook me for De
+Vere Stacpoole. Her voice even rings clear, with its Jewish lisp, its
+guttural German, its nasal twang thrown in:
+
+“I ask my hospand. Berhaps he let you stay anozzer week.”
+
+What the husband said we never knew. He was usually too drunk to say
+anything coherent. What mattered to us was that we were not turned
+out at the moment, and that, in the long run, the good-hearted woman
+received her money.
+
+Certain objects in that room retain exceptional clarity in my mind. If
+thought-pictures could be photographed, a perfect print of the bed and
+gas-bracket could be printed from my memory. With the former especially
+I associate the vermin, the hunger, and the rather tawdry criminal. I
+could describe that bed down to the smallest detail; I could draw it
+accurately, even to the carving; were I a carpenter I could make it.
+All that I suffered in it, of physical and mental anguish, the vain
+longings and despair, the hopes and fears, the loneliness, the feverish
+dreams--the entire dread panorama still hangs in the air between its
+stained brown foot and the broken sofa, as though of yesterday. I can
+see a tall man pass the end of it, one eye on me and another on the
+door, opening a razor slowly as he went. I see the blue eyes narrowing
+in his white face, the treachery of the coward twisting his lip into
+a smirk. I can see him sleeping like a child beside me, touching me.
+Moving stealthily about the room in the darkness too, as, thinking me
+asleep, he stole on bare feet to recover the confession of forgery I
+had forced him to sign, I can still see his dim outline, and even hear
+his tread--a petty scoundrel unwittingly on his way to gaol.
+
+The bed, thus, is vividly present in my memory. By contrast with it,
+not quite so sharp, perhaps, and a pleasanter feeling associated
+with it, another New York sleeping-place rises in the mind--a bench
+in Central Park. Here, however, the humour of adventure softens the
+picture, though at the time it did not soften the transverse iron arms
+which made it impossible to stretch out in comfort. Nor is there any
+touch of horror in it. Precise and detailed recollection fades. The
+hoboes who shared it with me were companions, even comrades of a sort,
+and one did not feel them necessarily criminal or degraded. They were
+“on their uppers” much as I was, and far quicker than I was at the
+trick of suddenly sitting upright when the night policeman’s tread
+was coming our way. What thoughts they indulged in I had no means of
+knowing, but I credited them with flitting backwards to a clean room
+somewhere and a soft white bed, possibly to that ridiculous figure of
+immense authority, a nurse, just as my own flashed back to a night
+nursery in the Manor House, Crayford, Kent. That the seats I favoured
+were near the Swings lent possibly another touch to the childhood’s
+picture.
+
+The memory, anyhow, is a sweeter one than that of the bed in East 19th
+Street, if less sharply defined. The cool fresh air, the dew, the
+stars, the smell of earth and leaves, were all of them clean, and no
+price asked at dawn. Yet the two--the bed and the bench--are somehow
+linked together in my mind, the one invariably calling up the other;
+and, thanks to them probably, no bed bothers me now, lumpy or sloping
+though it be, in train, hotel, or lodging. I have slept in strange
+places since--high in the Caucasus, on the shores of the Black Sea, on
+the Egyptian desert, on the banks of the Danube, in the Black Forest
+and Hungary--but each time the effort to get comfortable brought back
+the bed and the bench, and sleep soon followed to smother both.
+
+The gas-brackets, similarly, rise vividly before my eyes, associated
+with the pain, the weariness of hunger; not of true starvation, but
+of weeks and months of under-nourishment, caused by one meal a day.
+The relation between hunger and gas-brackets may seem remote. It was
+on the latter, however, that we learned to fix the metal top which
+made the flame spread in a circle round a light tin cooking-pot. We
+boiled water for milkless tea in this way, cooked porridge, and when
+porridge was not to be had we heated water with dried apples in it. I
+remember the day we discovered that it was more economical to eat the
+strips of dried apple first, then drink the hot water that made them
+swell so comfortingly inside us. They proved more filling that way, the
+false repletion lasted longer, the sense of bulk was more satisfying,
+the gnawing ceased, and the results, if temporary, at least made it
+possible to fall asleep.
+
+There are other details of that sordid New York room which still
+retain their first disagreeable vividness, each with the ghost--a very
+sturdy ghost--of the emotion that printed it indelibly in the mind.
+These details are best mentioned, however, in their proper place and
+sequence. It should first be told how we came to be there.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+We arrived in New York towards the end of October, coming straight
+from five months in the Canadian backwoods. Before that, to mention
+myself first, there had been a year in Canada, where, even before
+the age of twenty-one, I had made a living of sorts by teaching the
+violin, French, German, and shorthand. Showing no special talent for
+any profession in particular, and having no tastes that could be
+held to indicate a definite career, I had come to Canada three years
+before for a few weeks’ trip. My father, in an official capacity, had
+passes from Liverpool to Vancouver, and we crossed in the _Etruria_, a
+Cunarder which my mother had launched. He was much fêted and banqueted,
+and the C.P.R. bigwigs, from Lord Strathcona and Sir William van Horne
+downwards, showed him all attention, placing an observation car at his
+disposal. General James, the New York postmaster, gave a dinner in
+his honour at the Union League Club, where I made my first and last
+speech--consisting of nine words of horrified thanks for coupling “a
+chip of the old block,” as the proposer called me, with the “Chief of
+the British Postal Service.”
+
+A ludicrous wound to vanity helps it to stick in the mind--my father
+wore no braces, and I copied him, but--well, in his case no belt
+was necessary, whereas I was slim. It suddenly dawned on me, as I
+spluttered my brief words, that a line of white was showing between
+my waistcoat and the top of my trousers. The close of my speech was
+hurried, my bow was cautious; I was extremely relieved to sit down
+again.
+
+In the lovely autumn weather, we saw Canada at its best, and the trip
+decided my future. My father welcomed it as a happy solution. I came,
+therefore, to Toronto at the age of twenty, with £100 a year allowance,
+and a small capital to follow when I should have found some safe
+and profitable chance of starting life. With me came--in the order
+of their importance--a fiddle, the “Bhagavad Gita,” Shelley, “Sartor
+Resartus,” Berkeley’s “Dialogues,” Patanjali’s “Yoga Aphorisms,” de
+Quincey’s “Confessions,” and--a unique ignorance of life.... I served
+my first literary apprenticeship on the _Methodist Magazine_, a monthly
+periodical published in Toronto, and before that licked stamps in the
+back office of the Temperance and General Life Assurance Company, at
+nothing a week, but with the idea of learning the business, so that
+later I might bring out some English insurance company to Canada.
+
+The first taught me that, just as I had no ambition to write, so,
+likewise, I possessed no talent; the second merely made articulate
+the dislike I felt for anything to do with Business. It was the three
+months in the insurance office that caused me to accept eagerly the job
+on the _Methodist Magazine_ at four dollars a week, and the reaction
+helped to make the work congenial if not stimulating.
+
+The allowance of ten dollars a week was difficult to live on, and I
+had been looking everywhere for employment. It was through a daughter
+of Sir Thomas Galt, a friend of my father’s on our previous trip to
+Canada, that I obtained this job--sixteen shillings a week, hours ten
+to four.
+
+Dr. Withrow, editor of the leading Methodist magazine, and of various
+Christian Endeavour periodicals for children and young people, was a
+pleasant old gentleman, who went about in a frock coat and slippers,
+had a real sense of humour and a nice wife and daughter. His editorial
+den was in his own little house, and my duties were to write an article
+every month for the magazine, which was illustrated, and also to write
+a few descriptive lines of letterpress to accompany the full-page
+illustrations for the numerous Christian Endeavour and Methodist
+periodicals for young people and children. He taught me the typewriter,
+and with my shorthand I took most of his letters at dictation, and
+certainly earned my money. My monthly articles in the magazine were on
+such subjects as Christmas in England, Life at a Moravian School, The
+Black Forest, Travel in the Alps--anything that my limited experience
+enabled me to describe at first-hand, and on the whole the old
+gentleman seemed satisfied. The description of the children’s pictures,
+however, always made him chuckle, though he never said why, and I wrote
+dozens of these a day, describing the picture of “King Canute and the
+Sea,” “Elijah in a Chariot of Fire,” “A Child Blowing Bubbles,” “The
+Wood-boring Beetle,” etc. etc.
+
+He would dictate some of his articles of travel to me, and I would take
+them down in shorthand, and he often made such grotesque mistakes in
+facts that I quietly corrected these as I wrote, and when I read out
+the sentence to him he would notice the alteration and look at me over
+his spectacles and say:
+
+“Thank you. Yes, I was wrong there. The fact is, I have so many
+articles to write that I compose two at a time in my mind, and they
+get muddled up. An editor should always be accurate, and Methodist
+readers are cranky and hard to please.” He was a Methodist parson
+himself, which did not prevent him saying exactly what he thought. He
+lunched off dates and bananas, which he kept in a bag beside his desk,
+and that same desk was in such disorder that he never could find what
+he wanted, and I was not surprised to learn that, before I came, the
+printers got the wrong papers, and that many of the children’s pictures
+got descriptions underneath that did not belong to them--for instance,
+a boy blowing a bubble was published over a few lines describing the
+habits of snakes, “as seen in our illustration,” and so forth.
+
+I got on so well with the little Methodist that he wanted to come to
+the evening French classes I was giving at fifty cents a lesson to some
+of the clerks in the insurance office, and to bring his daughter with
+him. He said a little more knowledge of French would be very good
+for him when he took his conducted tours of Canadian Methodists to
+Switzerland; but I did not rise to this, and persuaded him to wait till
+I could get a more select class to meet, perhaps, at his own house,
+where a girl could more suitably attend. For, to tell the truth, some
+of my pupils had a habit of coming slightly drunk--or, as they called
+it, “with a jag on.” He, however, would not wait, so I lost two good
+pupils!... Dr. Withrow, patient little man of kindly disposition! His
+faded black frock-coat, his spectacles high on his puckered forehead,
+his carpet slippers, his tobacco-stained white beard, his sincere
+beliefs and his striped trousers of a pattern I have always since
+labelled mentally as “Methodist trousers”--it is a gentle little memory
+tucked away among unkinder ones, and I still hear him giving me my
+first and only lesson how to write. His paraphrase of “fatal facility”
+stays with me: “Fluency means dullness, unless the mind is packed with
+thought.” It stays with me because the conversation led to my asking if
+I might write an article for the monthly on the subject of Buddhism.
+Behind it lay an ever keener desire to write something on Hegel, whose
+philosophy I felt certain was based on some personal experience of
+genuine mystical kind.
+
+“From what point of view?” he asked, his forehead puckering with
+amazement.
+
+“That of belief,” I said, my mind bursting with an eager desire to
+impart information, if not also to convert.
+
+He passed his hand across his forehead, knocking the spectacles
+off. Then, catching them with a fumbling motion which betrayed his
+perturbation, he inquired: “But, of course, Mr. Blackwood, not your
+_own_?”
+
+The voice, the eyes, the whole attitude of the body made me realize he
+was prepared to be shocked, if not already shocked.
+
+“Yes,” I replied truthfully, “my own. I’ve been a Buddhist for a long
+time.”
+
+He stared for some time at me without a word, then smiled a kindly,
+indulgent, rather sceptical smile. “It would be hardly suitable,”
+he mentioned, as I felt his whole being draw away from me as from
+something dangerous and unclean. Possibly, of course, he did not
+believe me; I am sure he prayed for me. Our relations seemed less
+cordial after that; he read most carefully every word I wrote in his
+magazine and children’s pages, but he never referred to the matter
+again.
+
+My Methodist job, none the less, was a happy one; this first regular
+wage I had yet received in life gave me the pleasant sensation that I
+was launched. My connexion with Methodism ceased, not because I was
+dismissed or had failed to give satisfaction (indeed, the editor had
+just told me my salary was to be raised!), but because all the capital
+I should ever have was sent to me about that time from England--about
+£2,000--and I went into partnership with a farmer outside Toronto and
+bought some forty head of pedigree Jersey cattle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+The Islington Jersey Dairy, Messrs. Cooper and Blackwood, started
+business with a retail office in College Street, a number of milk
+carts bearing our names in black lettering upon a yellow background,
+and the supply farm at Islington, a lovely little hamlet on the shores
+of Lake Ontario, some six miles west of the city. We sold rich Jersey
+milk, we sold eggs and butter too. I gave picnics at our pretty little
+farm for customers I knew socially. The upper floors of the building
+in College Street we furnished, letting bedrooms at a dollar a week
+to young Englishmen, clerks in offices, and others. I engaged an old,
+motherly Englishwoman, Mrs. ’Iggins, with a face like a rosy apple,
+to “do” for us--she made the beds and cooked the breakfast--while her
+pretty daughter, in cap and apron, was our dairymaid. The plan did not
+work smoothly--the dairymaid was too pretty, perhaps; Mrs. Higgins too
+voluble. Complaints came from all sides; the lodgers, wildish young
+fellows in a free and easy country, made more promises than payments.
+One wanted a stove, another a carpet in his bedroom, another complained
+about his bed. I had my first experience of drink and immorality
+going on under my very eyes.... Trouble--though mercifully of another
+kind--spread then to the customers. The milk began to go sour; it was
+too rich; it wouldn’t keep; the telephone rang all day long. Cooper,
+an experienced dairy-farmer, was at his wits’ end; every device for
+scouring the bottles, for cooling the milk before bringing it twice
+a day to the city, failed. At dinner parties my hostess would draw
+me tactfully aside. “The milk, I’m afraid, Mr. Blackwood,” she would
+murmur softly, “was sour again this morning. Will you speak about it?”
+
+I spoke about it--daily--but Alfred Cooper’s only comment was, “Say,
+have you got a bit more capital? That’s what we really want.”
+
+That sour milk became a veritable nightmare that never left me. I had
+enough of milk. Yet, later in life, I found myself “in milk” again,
+but that time it was dried milk, a profitable business to the owners,
+though it brought me nothing. I worked six years at it for a bare
+living wage. But, at any rate, it couldn’t turn sour. It was a powder.
+
+Alfred Cooper was a delightful fellow. I think some detail of how our
+partnership came to be may bear the telling. It points a moral if it
+does not adorn a tale. It may, again, prove useful to other young
+Englishmen in Canada similarly waiting with money to invest; but on the
+other hand it may not, since there can be few, I imagine, as green as
+I was then, owing to a strange upbringing, or as ignorant of even the
+simplest worldly practices. Of the evangelical training responsible for
+this criminal ignorance I will speak later.
+
+Cooper, then, was a delightful fellow, fitting my ideal of a type I
+had read about--the fearless, iron-muscled colonial white man who
+fought Indians. The way we met was quite simply calculated--by a clerk
+in the bank where my English allowance of £100 a year was paid by my
+father. The clerk and I made friends--naturally; and one day--also
+naturally--he suggested a Sunday walk to Islington, some six miles
+down the lake shore. We could get tea at a farm he knew. We did. The
+praises of the Cooper family, who owned it, had already been sung. I
+was enchanted. So, doubtless, was the clerk.
+
+The farm was a small one--perhaps eight acres; and Cooper lived on it
+in poverty with his aged mother and unmarried sister. It was charmingly
+situated, the fields running down to the water, pine copses dotting
+the meadows to the north, and the little village church standing at
+one corner near the road. Mrs. Cooper, in cap and apron, dropping
+every “h” that came her way, described to me how she and her husband
+had emigrated from England sixty years before, in the days of sailing
+ships. Her husband’s grave in the churchyard we could see from
+the window while we sat at tea--an unusually sumptuous tea for a
+farmhouse--and it was evident that she was more alive to the memories
+of half a century ago in the “old country,” than to the plans of her
+ambitious son in the new colony.
+
+The son came to tea too, but a little late, having obviously brushed
+himself up a bit for his visitor from England. He was about forty
+years of age, tall, well-built, keen-faced, with steel-blue eyes and
+a hatchet nose, and his body was just that combination of leanness,
+strength and nervous alertness which made one think of a wolf. He
+was extremely polite, not to say flattering, to me. I thought him
+delightful, his idyllic farm still more delightful; he was so eager,
+vigorous and hardy, a typical pioneer, slaving from dawn to sunset to
+win a living from the soil in order to support the family. I trusted
+him, admired him immensely. Having been duly prepared for the picture
+on our walk out, I was not disappointed. He spoke very frankly of the
+desperate work he and his sister were forced to do; also of what he
+might do, and what could be made of the farm, if only he had a little
+capital. I liked him; he liked me; the clerk liked us both.
+
+He showed me round the farm after tea, and his few Jersey cows came up
+and nosed his hand. The elderly sister, a weaker repetition of himself,
+joined us. She, too, slaved from morning till night. The old mother,
+diminutive, quiet, brave, devoted to her children yet with her heart in
+the old country she would never see again, completed a charming picture
+in my mind. I was invited to come again.
+
+Another picture, still more alluring, was set before me during the walk
+back, the picture of what a “little capital” could do with that tiny
+farm. The dairy business that could be worked up made me feel a rich
+man before the Toronto spires became visible. The desire to put capital
+into the Islington Jersey Dairy became the one hope of my life. Would
+Cooper agree? Would he accept me as a partner? The suggestion came
+from myself. The clerk, of course, had never dreamed of such a thing.
+They _might_ welcome me, the clerk thought. Very kindly, he said he
+would sound Cooper about it and let me know....
+
+The scheme seemed such a perfect solution of my problem of earning a
+living, that I was afraid up to the last moment something must happen
+to prevent it. Cooper would die, or change his mind, or one of my
+influential business friends would warn me not to do it. I was so
+jealous of interference that I sought no advice. Without so much as a
+scratch of the pen between us the enterprise started. So heartily did
+I like and trust my partner that when, later, wiser friends inquired
+about my contract with him, it infuriated me. “Contract! A contract
+with Alfred Cooper!”
+
+We did a roaring trade at first. Our Jersey milk was beyond all
+question the best in the town. It was honest, unwatered milk, and our
+cream, without any preservative added, was so prized that we soon
+had more orders than we could fill. Why our milk and cream soured so
+readily, losing us trade rapidly later, is a mystery to me to this day.
+
+Within a few weeks of our starting business, Cooper convinced me that
+a model dairy building on the farm would be a desirable improvement;
+it would save labour in various ways; it was built. The farm belonged
+to his mother, not to him; he kept the building when our collapse
+followed. Next, his sister really must have someone to help her, and
+that someone was provided at high wages. Business was good, so good
+in fact that we could not supply orders. Extra milk must therefore be
+bought from neighbouring farmers. This was done, the contracts being
+made by Cooper. I never asked to see them. The bills were paid every
+month without question on my part. More grazing fields, with enough
+artificial food to feed at least a hundred cows in addition, these
+too had to be paid for. As for the appetites of our forty animals, I
+marvelled at them long before I became suspicious. Yet when, after
+much insisting, I saw one of the farmer’s bills for extra milk, it left
+me, naturally, no wiser than before, and certainly not a whit more
+comforted, for the less our trade became, the more milk, apparently,
+those farmers sold us!
+
+Six months later the firm of Cooper and Blackwood dissolved
+partnership, Blackwood having got the experience and Cooper having
+got--something quite as useful, but more marketable. Cooper’s I.O.U.
+for five hundred dollars, now stuck in an old scrap-book somewhere,
+made me realize a little later how lucky it was that I had only a
+limited amount to lose.
+
+Yet, though it seemed the end of the world to me, my capital lost, my
+enterprise a failure, I recall the curious sense of relief with which I
+saw the last cow knocked down to some bidder from up-country. From the
+very beginning I had hated the entire business. I did not know a Jersey
+from a Shorthorn, so to speak. I knew nothing about farming, still
+less about dairy-farming. The year spent at Edinburgh University to
+learn the agricultural trade had been wasted, for, instead, I attended
+what interested me far more--the post-mortems, operations, lectures on
+pathology, and the dissecting room. My notebooks of Professor Wallace’s
+lectures, crammed as they were, with entries about soil, rotation of
+crops, and drainage, represented no genuine practical knowledge. I knew
+nothing. My father sent me out to Canada to farm. I went. I farmed.
+Cooper and Blackwood is carved upon the gravestone. But the gravestone
+cost £2,000, my share of the forced sale being about £600. My Canadian
+experience, anyhow, can be summed up in advice, which is, of course, a
+bromide now: let any emigrant young Englishman earn his own living for
+at least five years in any colony before a penny of capital is given
+him to invest.
+
+It was with this £600 I soon after went into partnership with another
+man, but this time an honest one. We bought a small hotel in the heart
+of Toronto. It also lasted about six months. When the crash came we
+lived together from May to October on a small island in a thirty-mile
+lake of the Ontario hinterland; we shared a long slice of difficult
+life together subsequently in New York; we shared the horrors of East
+19th Street together. He failed me only once, missing a train a few
+years later by a couple of minutes. It was the Emigrant Sleeper to
+Duluth on Lake Superior, _en route_ for the Rainy River Gold Fields,
+where four of us had made sudden plans to try our fortunes. I was on
+a New York paper at the time, and had secured passes over the first
+fifteen hundred miles. As the train drew out of the Central Station I
+saw my friend racing down the platform, a minute too late! From that
+day to this I have never set eyes on him again. It was an abrupt end to
+a friendship cemented by hard times, and my disappointment at losing
+his companionship was rather bitter at the time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+At the time we met, this friend of mine had been out from Oxford--New
+College, I think--a year or so, and with a Cambridge man about his
+own age, had been running a sporting goods shop in King Street. They
+sold the paraphernalia of cricket, tennis, boxing and the like, but
+with no marked success. The considerable money invested by the pair
+of them earned no interest. John Kay was impatient and dissatisfied;
+the other had leanings towards the brokering trade, as offering better
+opportunities. Both were ready to cut their losses, realize, and get
+out. They did so, remaining the best of friends. And it was one day,
+while these preliminary negotiations were being discussed in the back
+office, where they muddled away the day between rare sales, that Kay
+said to me mysteriously: “Look here, I say--I’ve got a wonderful
+scheme. Have you got any money left?”
+
+I mentioned the £600.
+
+“I call it a rotten shame,” he went on. “Of course, you’ve been
+swindled. These people look upon us as their natural prey”--and he
+proceeded to describe his “scheme”--to buy a small hotel which, owing
+to its bad name, was going cheap; to work up a respectable business and
+a valuable goodwill; then to sell out at a top price and retire with a
+comfortable fortune. Kay was twenty-three, two years my senior; to me,
+then, he seemed an experienced man of business, almost elderly. The
+scheme took my breath away. It was very tempting. The failure of the
+dairy farm had left me despondent; I felt disgraced; the end of life,
+it seemed, had come. I was ready to grasp at anything that held out
+hopes of a recovery of fortune. But an hotel! I hesitated.
+
+“I know nothing about running an hotel,” I objected.
+
+“Neither do I--yet,” was the sanguine answer, “but we can learn. It’s
+only common sense and hard work. We can hire a good manager and engage
+a first-class cook.”
+
+“How many rooms are there?”
+
+“Only thirteen. It’s the bar where we shall make the money.”
+
+“The bar----!”
+
+“There are two bars, one on the main street and another on the back.
+Billy Bingham has made the place too hot to hold him. His licence is to
+be withdrawn. He’s got to get out. We can get his licence transferred
+to us all right, if we promise to make the place respectable. We’ll
+have good food, a first-rate lunch counter for the business men, we can
+let the big rooms for club dinners and society banquets, and there’s
+a 100 per cent. profit, you know, on liquor. We’ll make the _Hub_ the
+best ‘joint’ in the town. All the fellows will come. A year will do it.
+Then we’ll sell out....”
+
+I was not listening. The word “liquor”--I had never touched alcohol in
+my life--made such a noise in my mind that I could hear nothing else.
+
+“My father,” I mentioned in a faint voice, “is a public man at home.
+He’s a great temperance reformer. He speaks and writes against drink.
+He’s brought me up that way. It would be a terrible shock to him if his
+son made money out of a bar.” The hotel scheme, indeed, seemed to me an
+impossibility. A picture of the Temperance meetings held in our country
+house flashed through my mind. I glanced down at my coat, on whose
+lapel, until recently, there had been a little strip of blue ribbon,
+signifying that I was a member of the Band of Hope which included
+several million avowed teetotallers. “Don’t you see, old chap?” I
+explained further. “It would simply break his heart, and my mother’s
+too.”
+
+“He need never know anything about it,” came the answer at once. “Why
+should he? Our names needn’t appear at all. We’ll call ourselves the
+‘Hub Wine Company, Limited.’” My head was swimming, my mind buzzing
+with conflicting voices as we walked down King Street to inspect the
+premises. I ached to re-establish my position. The prospect of a quick
+recovery of fortune was as sweet a prize as ever tempted a green youth
+like myself. My partner, too, this time would be a “gentleman,” a
+fellow my father might have invited to dine and play tennis; it was my
+appalling ignorance of life that gave to his two years’ seniority some
+imagined quality of being a man much older than myself, and one who
+knew what he was about.
+
+The character of the proposed enterprise, of course, had no effect at
+all upon the judgment. To be known as a successful hotel proprietor was
+a legitimate ambition. My father’s stern judgment of philanthropists
+who preached temperance while owning distilleries or holding brewery
+shares--I knew it word for word--was quite forgotten. Only the little
+personal point of view was present: “I’ve been an ass. I must make
+good. Here’s a chance, a certainty, of getting money. I must take it.
+It’s my Karma.”
+
+We strode down King Street together, past the corner of Yonge Street,
+below the windows of the hated Temperance and General Life Assurance
+Company where I had licked stamps, and on towards the Hub Hotel. The
+Toronto air was fresh and sweet, the lake lay blue beyond, the sunlight
+sparkled. Something exhilarating and optimistic in the atmosphere gave
+thought a happy and sanguine twist. It was a day of Indian summer, a
+faint perfume of far-distant forest fires adding a pleasant touch to
+the familiar smell of the cedar-wood sidewalks. A mood of freedom,
+liberty, great spaces, fine big enterprises in a free country where
+everything was possible, of opportunities seized and waves of fortune
+taken on their crest--I remember this mood as sharply still, and the
+scent of a wood-fire or a cedar pencil recalls it as vividly still, as
+though I had experienced it last week.
+
+I glanced at my companion. I liked him, trusted him. There was a happy
+light in his frank blue eyes. He was a good heavy-weight boxer too.
+The very man, I felt, for a bold enterprise of this sort. He talked
+the whole way. He was describing how we might increase the fortune we
+should draw out of our successful venture in a year’s time, when we
+passed Tim Sullivan, standing at the door of his, a rival, saloon, and
+exchanged a nod with him. The Irishman had a shadow on his face. “He’s
+heard about it,” whispered Kay, with a chuckle. “He’ll look glummer
+still when he sees all his customers coming across the way to us!”
+
+Turning down a narrow side street, the Hub blocked the way, a
+three-story building with a little tower, clean windows, and two big
+swinging doors. It ran through to a back street where there was another
+entrance.
+
+“Here it is,” said Kay, in the eager, happy voice of a man who has just
+inherited a family mansion and come to inspect it. “This is the Hub
+where we shall make our fortune.”
+
+It seemed to me I had entered an entirely new world. Everything was
+spotless. The rows of bottles and glasses, the cash-register and brass
+taps glittered in the sunlight that fell through coloured windows. The
+perfume of stale liquor was not as disagreeable as it sounds. In one
+sense the whole place looked as harmless as the aisle of some deserted
+church. I stood just inside those swing-doors, which had closed behind
+me, with a strange feeling of gazing at some den of vice reconstructed
+in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud’s. Empty and innocent as
+the bar might appear, however, there was a thrill of adventure, even of
+danger, about it that reached my mind, with a definite shock of dread.
+
+“Nice, airy premises, with plenty of room,” Kay’s cheery voice came to
+me from a distance. “This is the principal bar. Twenty men could line
+up easily. It’ll want four bar-tenders.... There’s another bar at the
+end. There’ll be a few fights there before we’ve done. The dining-room
+lies through that archway just between the two.”
+
+He walked away, passing along the length of the room and down three
+steps into a narrower, darker bar beyond, where the shadows hid him.
+But his voice still reached me: “It’s on the back street, this bar,” he
+called. “This is for the _hoi polloi_. We shall want a chucker out....
+Here’s the private door leading to the upstairs dining-room we’ll let
+out for banquets. We’ll have our own bedrooms and sitting-room on the
+first floor too....”
+
+His voice roared on; I heard, but did not answer; I had not moved an
+inch from my place against the swing-doors. He had not, of course, the
+faintest idea what was passing through my mind at the moment; and, had
+I told him, he would only have laughed good-naturedly and talked of the
+money we should make. The fact was, however, that the whole of my early
+up-bringing just then came at me with a concentrated driving-force
+which made the venture seem absolutely impossible.
+
+“We’ll call this one the House of Commons,” he bawled delightedly; “and
+that one--the front bar--the House of Lords. We shall take 250 dollars
+a day easily!”
+
+The shock, the contrast, the exaggerated effect of entering a saloon
+for the first time in my life, especially with the added possibility of
+shortly becoming its proprietor, were natural enough. My unworldliness,
+even at twenty-one, was abnormal. Not only had I never smoked tobacco
+nor touched alcohol of any description, but I had never yet set foot
+inside a theatre; a race-course I had never seen, nor held a billiard
+cue, nor touched a card. I did not know one card from another. Any game
+that might involve betting or gambling was anathema. In other ways,
+too, I had been sheltered to the point of ignorance. I had never even
+danced. To hold a young woman round the waist was not alone immodest
+but worse than immodest.
+
+This peculiarly sheltered up-bringing, this protected hot-house of
+boyhood and early youth to which a drinking bar was the vestibule of
+hell, and a music-hall an invention of a personal devil, are necessary
+to understand the reaction produced in me as I stood in Billy Bingham’s
+“joint.” I stood, literally, on the brink of “the downward path.” I
+heard my father’s voice, I saw my mother’s eyes.... In very definite
+form I now faced “worldly temptation” they had so often warned me
+against. Accompanying an almost audible memory of “Get thee behind
+me, Satan,” drove a crowded kaleidoscope of vivid pictures from those
+sheltered years.
+
+My parents were both people of marked character, with intense
+convictions; my mother, especially, being a woman of great
+individuality, of iron restraint, grim humour, yet with a love and
+tenderness, and a spirit of uncommon sacrifice, that never touched
+weakness. She possessed powers of mind and judgment, at the same time,
+of which my father, a public servant--financial secretary to the Post
+Office--availed himself to the full. She had great personal beauty. A
+young widow, her first husband having been the 6th Duke of Manchester,
+also of the evangelical persuasion, she met my father at Kimbolton soon
+after his return from the Crimean War, where he had undergone that
+religious change of heart known to the movement as “conversion.” From
+a man of fashion, a leader in the social life to which he was born,
+he changed with sudden completeness to a leader in the evangelical
+movement, then approaching its height. He renounced the world, the
+flesh, the devil and all their works. The case of “Beauty Blackwood,”
+to use the nickname his unusual handsomeness gained for him, was, in
+its way, notorious. He became a teetotaller and non-smoker, wrote
+devotional books, spoke in public, and held drawing-room prayer
+meetings, the Bible always in his pocket, communion with God always
+in his heart. His religion was genuine, unfaltering, consistent and
+sincere. He carried the war into his own late world of fashion. He
+never once looked back. He knew a vivid joy, a wondrous peace, his pain
+being for others only, for those who were not “saved.” The natural,
+instinctive type he was, asserted its claim. He became a genuine
+saint. Also, to the very end, he remained that other delightful thing,
+possible only to simple hearts, a boy.
+
+Both my parents, thus, believed in Jesus, with a faith of that simple,
+unshakable order that could feel no doubts. Their lives were consistent
+and, as must always be the case when fine characters are possessed of a
+perfectly sincere faith, they stood out in the world of men and women
+as something strong and beautiful. Edmund Gosse, in “Father and Son,”
+has described the mental attitude of the type; William James might,
+equally, have included my father’s case as a typical “conversion” in
+his “Varieties of Religious Experience.”
+
+The effect upon the children--there were five of us--followed
+naturally. My father, apart from incurring much public odium owing to
+his official position, found himself, and us with him, cut off from the
+amenities of the social life to which we were otherwise born. Ordinary
+people, “worldly” as he called them, left us alone. A house where no
+wine was served at dinner, where morning and evening prayers were
+_de rigueur_, a guest even being asked to “lead in prayer” perhaps,
+and where at any suitable moment you might be drawn aside and asked
+“Have _you_ given your soul to Jesus?” was not an attractive house to
+stay in. We were ostracized. The effect of such disabilities upon us
+in later life was not considered, for it was hoped each and all of
+us would consecrate ourselves to God. We were, thus, kept out of the
+“world” in every possible sense and brought up, though with lavish
+love and kindness, yet in the narrowest imaginable evangelical path
+which scents danger in knowledge of any kind not positively helpful
+to the soul. I, personally, at that time, regarded the temptations
+of the world with a remote pity, and with a certainty that I should
+never have the least difficulty in resisting them. Men who smoked and
+drank and were immoral, who gambled, went to theatres and music-halls
+and race-meetings, belonged to the submerged and unworthy portion of
+mankind. I, in this respect at least, was of the elect, quite sure that
+the weakness of their world could never stain me personally.
+
+Yet I never shared the beliefs of my parents with anything like genuine
+pleasure. I was _afraid_ they were true, not glad.
+
+Without wholeheartedly sharing my father’s faith, however, his
+religious and emotional temperament, with its imperious need of
+believing _something_, he certainly bequeathed to me.... The
+evangelical and revivalist movement, at any rate, was the dominant
+influence in my boyhood’s years. People were sharply divided into souls
+that were saved and those that were--not saved. Moody and Sankey, the
+American Revivalists, stayed in our house.
+
+I was particularly influenced in this direction by a group of young
+’Varsity men who worked with Moody, and who were manly fellows, good
+cricketers, like the Studd brothers, or Stanley Smith and Montague
+Beauchamp, men who had rowed in their University boats, and who were
+far removed from anything effeminate. Of course I thought that what
+these men did could not be otherwise than fine and worth copying,
+and I lost no time in attacking everyone I met and asking the most
+impertinent questions about their souls and fallen natures. By some
+lucky chance no one kicked me to death--probably because most of my
+evangelizing work was done at home!
+
+My old nurse I implored to yield herself up to the Saviour, and I felt
+my results were very poor in her case because I only got affectionate
+caresses and smiles, and even observations about the holes in my
+clothes, in return. The fat butler (I assured him) was going headlong
+down the kitchen stairs to everlasting fire because he showed no
+symptoms of ecstasy when he met my pleadings with “O, I’m sure ’E died
+for me all right, Master Algie. I don’t feel a bit afraid!”
+
+But all this was genuine so far as I was concerned, and it lasted a
+considerable time, to my father’s great joy, though not so much, I
+think, to my mother’s. She read far deeper into things....
+
+In a short time I came to look upon the whole phenomena of
+“conversion,” so far as my type of mind and character was concerned,
+with distrust and weariness. Only the very topmost layer of my
+personality was affected; evidently, there was no peace or happiness
+for me that way!
+
+None the less, I had one or two terrible moments; one (I was reading
+with a private tutor in Somerset for Edinburgh University) when I woke
+in the very early morning with a choking sensation in my throat, and
+thought I was going to die. It must have been merely acute indigestion,
+but I was convinced my last moment had come, and fell into a sweating
+agony of fear and weakness. I prayed as hard as ever I could, swearing
+to consecrate myself to God if He would pull me through. I even vowed
+I would become a missionary and work among the heathen, than which,
+I was always told, there was no higher type of manhood. But the pain
+and choking did not pass, and in despair I got up and swallowed half a
+bottle of pilules of aconite which my mother, an ardent homœopathist,
+always advised me to take after sneezing or cold shivers. They were
+sweet and very nice, and the pain certainly began to pass away, but
+only to leave me with a remorse that I had allowed a mere human
+medicine to accomplish naturally what God wished to accomplish by His
+grace. He had been so slow about it, however, that I felt also a kind
+of anger that He could torture me so long, and as it was the aconite
+that cured me, and not His grace, I was certainly released from my
+promise to become a missionary and work among the heathen. And for this
+small mercy I was duly thankful, though the escape had been a rather
+narrow one.
+
+A year and a half in a school of the Moravian Brotherhood in the
+Black Forest, though it showed me another aspect of the same general
+line of belief, did not wholly obliterate my fear of hell, with its
+correlated desire for salvation. The poetry of the semi-religious
+life in that remote village set among ancient haunted forests, gave
+to natural idealistic tendencies another turn. The masters, whom
+we termed Brother, were strenuous, devoted, self-sacrificing men,
+all later to go forth as Missionaries to Labrador. Humbug, comfort,
+personal ambition played no part in their lives. The _Liebesmahl_ in
+their little wooden church, for all its odd simplicity, was a genuine
+and impressive ceremony that touched something in me no church service
+at home, with Sankey’s hymns on a bad harmonium, had ever reached. At
+this Communion Service, or Love Feast, sweet, weak tea in big white
+thick cups, followed by a clothes-basket filled with rolls, were handed
+round, first to the women, who sat on one side of the building, and
+then to the men and boys on the other side. There was a collective
+reality about the little ceremony that touched its sincerity with
+beauty. Similarly was Easter morning beautiful, when we marched in the
+early twilight towards the little cemetery among the larch trees and
+stood with our hats off round an open grave, waiting in silence for the
+sunrise. The air was cool and scented, our mood devotional and solemn.
+There was a sense of wonder among us. Then, as the sun slipped up above
+the leagues of forest, the Eight Brothers, singing in parts, led the
+ninety boys in the great German hymn, “_Christus ist auferstanden_....”
+
+The surroundings, too, of the school influenced me greatly.
+Those leagues of Black Forest rolling over distant mountains,
+velvet-coloured, leaping to the sky in grey cliffs, or passing quietly
+like the sea in immense waves, always singing in the winds, haunted by
+elves and dwarfs and peopled by charming legends--those forest glades,
+deep in moss and covered in springtime with wild lily-of-the-valley;
+those tumbling streams that ran for miles unseen, then emerged to serve
+the peasants by splashing noisily over the clumsy water-wheel of a
+brown old sawmill before they again lost themselves among the mossy
+pine roots; those pools where water-pixies dwelt, and those little red
+and brown villages where we slept in our long walks--the whole setting
+of this Moravian school was so beautifully simple that it lent just the
+proper atmosphere for lives consecrated without flourish of trumpets
+to God. It all left upon me an impression of grandeur, of loftiness,
+and of real religion ... and of a Deity not specially active on Sundays
+only.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+These notes aim at describing merely certain surface episodes, and
+would leave unmentioned of set purpose those inner activities which
+pertain to the intimate struggles of a growing soul. There is a veil
+of privacy which only in rarest cases of exceptional value should be
+lifted. That honesty, moreover, which is an essential of such value,
+seems almost unattainable. Only a diary, written at the actual time and
+intended for no one’s eye, can hope to achieve the naked sincerity,
+which could make it useful to lift that veil.
+
+Yet, even with these surface episodes, something of the background
+against which they danced and vanished must be sketched; to understand
+them, something of the individual who experienced them must be known.
+This apology for so much use of the personal pronoun is made once for
+all.
+
+The failure of the evangelical Christian teaching either to attract
+deeply or to convince, has been indicated. An eager, impressionable
+mind lay empty and unstimulated. It fed upon insipid stuff, such
+as Longfellow, Mrs. Hemans, goody-goody stories, and thousands of
+religious tracts. It was the days of yellow-backs in three volumes,
+of Ouida especially, of Miss Braddon, and Wilkie Collins; but novels
+were strictly forbidden in the house. Lewis Carroll, which my father
+often read aloud, and Foxe’s “Book of Martyrs,” which made every Roman
+Catholic priest seem ominous, were our imaginative fiction. But my
+chief personal delight was Hebrew poetry, the Psalms, the Song of
+Solomon, above all the Book of Job (which I devoured alone)--these
+moved me in a different way and far more deeply.
+
+The mind, meanwhile, without being consciously aware of it, was
+searching with eager if unrewarded zeal, until one day Fate threw a
+strange book in its way--Patanjali’s “Yoga Aphorisms,” a translation
+from the Sanskrit. I was about seventeen then, just home from a year
+and a half in the Moravian Brotherhood School in the Black Forest.
+
+I shall never forget that golden September day when the slight volume,
+bound in blue, first caught my eye. It was lying beside a shiny black
+bag on the hall table, and the bag belonged, I knew, to a Mr. Scott,
+who had come to spend a week with us and to hold a series of meetings
+under my father’s auspices in the village hall. Mr. Scott was an ardent
+revivalist. He was also--this I grasped even at the time--a cadaverous
+mass of religious affectations. He was writing a brochure, I learned
+later, to warn England that Satan was bringing dangerous Eastern
+teachings to the West, and this book was a first proof of the Fiend’s
+diabolical purpose.
+
+I opened it and read a few paragraphs in the hall. I did not understand
+them, though they somehow held my mind and produced a curious sense of
+familiarity, half of wonder, half of satisfaction. A deeper feeling
+than I had yet known woke in me. I was fascinated.... My father’s voice
+calling me to tennis interrupted my reading, and I dropped the book,
+noticing that it fell behind the table. Hours later, though the bag was
+gone, the book lay where it had fallen. I stole it. I took it to bed
+with me and read it through from cover to cover. I read it twice, three
+times; bits of it I copied out; I did not understand a word of it, but
+a shutter rushed up in my mind, interest and joy were in me, a big
+troubling emotion, a conviction that I had found something I had been
+seeking hungrily for a long time, something I needed, something that,
+in an odd way, almost seemed familiar.
+
+I repeat--I did not understand a word of it, while yet the meaningless
+phrases caught me with a revolutionary power. As I read and re-read
+till my candles guttered, there rose in me a dim consciousness,
+becoming more and more a growing certainty, that what I read was not
+entirely new. So strong was this that it demanded audible expression.
+In that silent bedroom, dawn not far away, I can hear myself saying
+aloud: “But I’ve known all this before--only I’ve forgotten it.” Even
+the Sanskrit words, given phonetically in brackets, had a familiar look.
+
+Shutter after shutter rose, “lifting a veil and a darkness,” letting
+in glimpses of a radiant and exciting light. Though the mind was too
+untaught to grasp the full significance of these electric flashes,
+too unformed to be even intelligently articulate about them, there
+certainly rushed over my being a singular conviction of the unity of
+life everywhere and in everything--of its _one-ness_. That objects,
+the shifting appearance of phenomena, were but a veil concealing some
+intensely beautiful reality--the beauty shining and divine, the reality
+bitingly, terrifically actual--this poured over me with a sense of
+being not so much dis-covered as re-covered. Ignorant as I was, without
+facts or arguments or reason to support me, this I _knew_.
+
+It is possible the awakening consciousness fringed some state of
+ecstasy during that long communing with ancient things.... The house,
+at any rate, was still dark, but sunrise not long to come, when at
+length I stole down into the deserted hall and replaced the little book
+upon the table.
+
+Those Yoga aphorisms of a long-dead Hindu sage, set between a golden
+September evening and a guttering candle, marked probably the opening
+of my mind.... The entire paraphernalia of my evangelical teaching
+thenceforth began to withdraw. Though my father’s beliefs had cut
+deep enough to influence me for many years to come, their dread,
+with the terror of a personal Satan and an actual Hell, grew less
+from that moment. The reality of the dogmas was impaired. Here was
+another outlook upon life, another explanation of the world; caprice
+was eliminated and justice entered; the present was the result of the
+past, the future determined by the present; I must reap what I had
+sown, but, also, I could sow what I wished to reap. Hope was born.
+Apart from this was that curious deep sense of familiarity with these
+Eastern teachings, as with something I understood and in which I felt
+at home....
+
+Cautiously, I put indirect questions to my father, who at once--the
+clumsy questions betraying me--detected Satan’s subtle handiwork.
+He was grave and troubled. With affectionate solicitude he told me,
+finally, a story of naïve horror, intended to point the warning. A
+young man, who suffered from repeated epileptic fits, had tried every
+doctor and specialist in vain, when, as a last resort, he followed some
+friend’s counsel of despair, and consulted a medium. The medium, having
+conferred with his familiar, handed the patient a little locket which
+he was to wear day and night about his neck, but never on any account
+to open. The spell that would save him from a repetition of his fits
+lay inside, but he must resist to the death the curiosity to read it.
+To the subsequent delight and amazement of everybody, the fits abruptly
+ceased; the man was cured; until one day, after years of obedience,
+curiosity overcame him; he opened the brief inscription, and fell
+down in a fit--dead. The wording, minutely written in red ink, ran as
+follows: “Let him alone till he drop into Hell!”
+
+The warning, above all the story, acted as a stimulus instead of the
+reverse. Yet another strange door was set ajar; my eyes, big with
+wonder and questions, peered through. “Earth’s Earliest Ages,” by
+G. H. Pember, an evangelical, but an imaginative evangelical, was
+placed in my hands, accompanied by further solemn warnings. Pember, a
+writer of the prophetic school, had style, imagination, a sense of the
+marvellous, a touch of genuine drama too; he used suggestion admirably,
+his English was good, he had proportion, he knew where to stop. As
+a novelist of fantastic kind--an evangelical Wells, a “converted”
+Dunsany--he might have become a best-seller. He had, moreover, a theme
+of high imaginative possibilities, based upon a sentence in Genesis
+(vi. 2)--“The Sons of God saw the Daughters of men that they were fair
+... and took to themselves wives from among them ... and there were
+giants in the earth in those days....” These Sons of God were some
+kind of higher beings, mighty spirits, angels of a sort; but rather
+fallen angels; their progeny formed a race apart from humans; for some
+reason, now slipped from my memory, Pember was convinced that this
+unlawful procreation was being resumed in modern days. The Nephilim,
+as he called them, were aiming at control of the world, Anti-Christ, a
+gorgeous but appalling figure, naturally, at their head.
+
+It was a magnificent theme; he treated it, within the limits he set
+himself, with ingenious conviction. The danger was imminent; the human
+race, while shuddering, must be on its guard. In the night, in the
+twinkling of an eye, the catastrophe might come. Signs the Nephilim
+brought with them were spiritualism, theosophy, the development of
+secret powers latent in man, a new and awful type of consciousness,
+magic, and all the rest of the “occult” movement that was beginning to
+show its hydra head about this time.
+
+In a moment Moody went to the bottom of the class, and Pember reigned
+in his stead. By hook or by crook I obtained the books that Pember
+signalled as so dangerously subversive of the truth: “Magic Black and
+White” by Dr. Franz Hartmann; “The Perfect Way,” by Anna Kingsford and
+Edward Maitland; “Esoteric Buddhism,” by A. P. Sinnett; “Voice of the
+Silence,” by Mabel Collins; “The Bhagavad Gita,” from the Upanishads;
+and Emma Hardinge Britten’s “History of American Spiritualism.” My
+first delicious alarm lest the sky might fall any moment, and Satan
+appear with the great and terrible Nephilim princes to rule the world,
+became less threatening.... Soon afterwards, too, I happened upon my
+first novel, Laurence Oliphant’s “Massollam,” followed, a good deal
+later, by his “Scientific Religion” and his “Sympneumata.” This history
+of his amazing subservience to Thomas Luke Harris helped to peel
+another thin skin from my eyes; Oliphant seemed a hero, but Harris a
+vile humbug. By this time other books had brought grist to the mill
+as well: Amiel’s “Journal Intime”; Drummond’s “Natural Law in the
+Spiritual World”--I knew Professor Drummond later, when he came to
+stay with us, and also when he lectured to the students at Edinburgh
+on Sunday nights, coming from his Glasgow Chair for the purpose: I can
+still see his large, glowing, far-seeing eyes--Cahagnet’s “Arcanes
+de la Vie Future”; and “Animal Magnetism,” by Binet and Féré. The
+experiments of Braid, and Dr. Esdaille in India, had also come my way.
+
+Such one-sided reading, of course, fed the growing sense of wonder,
+naturally strong in any case; Shelley coloured it; and nothing offered
+itself at the time to curb, shape or qualify it. Spiritualism, apart
+from the exciting phenomena it promised with such confident volubility,
+left me rather unstirred, but theosophy, of course, I swallowed whole,
+with its Mahatmas, development of latent powers, memory of past lives,
+astral consciousness, and description of other beings both superior
+and inferior to man. It was some years before scientific reading came
+to check and guide a too exuberant imagination; but, even so I have
+always taken ideas where I found them, regardless of their propounders;
+if Tibet and its shining Mahatmas faded, the theories of Karma and
+reincarnation were older than any modern movement, and the belief in
+extension of consciousness to some _n_th degree, with its correlative
+of greater powers and new faculties, have not only remained with me,
+but have justified themselves. The “Gita,” too, remains the profoundest
+world-scripture I have ever read.
+
+An immediate, happy result of this odd reading, at any rate, I recall
+with pleasure: my father’s Christianity became splendid in my eyes. I
+realized, even then, that it satisfied his particular and individual
+vision of truth, while the fact that he lived up to his beliefs nobly
+and consistently woke a new respect and admiration in me....
+
+By far the strongest influence in my life, however, was Nature; it
+betrayed itself early, growing in intensity with every year. Bringing
+comfort, companionship, inspiration, joy, the spell of Nature has
+remained dominant, a truly magical spell. Always immense and potent,
+the years have strengthened it. The early feeling that everything was
+alive, a dim sense that some kind of consciousness struggled through
+every form, even that a sort of inarticulate communication with this
+“other life” was possible, could I but discover the way--these moods
+coloured its opening wonder. Nature, at any rate, produced effects
+in me that only something living could produce; though not till I
+read Fechner’s “Zend-Avesta,” and, later still, James’s “Pluralistic
+Universe,” and Dr. R. M. Bucke’s “Cosmic Consciousness” did a possible
+meaning come to shape my emotional disorder. Fairy tales, in the
+meanwhile bored me. Real facts were what I sought. That these existed,
+that I had once known them but had now forgotten them, was thus an
+early imaginative conviction.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This tendency showed itself even in childhood. We had left the
+Manor House, Crayford, and now lived in a delightful house at
+Shortlands, in those days semi-country. It was the time of my horrible
+private schools--I went to four or five--but the holidays afforded
+opportunities....
+
+I was a dreamy boy, frequently in tears about nothing except a vague
+horror of the practical world, full of wild fancies and imagination and
+a great believer in ghosts, communings with spirits and dealings with
+charms and amulets, which latter I invented and consecrated myself by
+the dozen. This was long before I had read a single book.
+
+I loved to climb out of the windows at night with a ladder, and creep
+among the shadows of the kitchen garden, past the rose trees and under
+the fruit-tree wall, and so on to the pond where I could launch the
+boat and practise my incantations in the very middle among the floating
+weeds that covered the surface in great yellow-green patches. Trees
+grew closely round the banks, and even on clear nights the stars could
+hardly pierce through, and all sorts of beings watched me silently from
+the shore, crowding among the tree stems, and whispering to themselves
+about what I was doing.
+
+I cannot say I ever believed actually that my spells would produce
+any results, but it pleased and thrilled me to think that they might
+do so; that the scum of weeds might slowly part to show the face of a
+water-nixie, or that the forms hovering on the banks might flit across
+to me and let me see their outline against the stars.
+
+Everything I did and felt in this way was evolved out of my inner
+consciousness, and even after I had passed into long trousers I loved
+the night, the shadows, empty rooms and haunted woods.
+
+On returning from these nightly expeditions to the pond, the sight of
+the old country-house against the sky always excited me strangely.
+Three cedars of Lebanon flanked it on the side I climbed out, towering
+aloft with their great funereal branches, and I thought of all the
+people asleep in their silent rooms, and wondered how they could be so
+dull and unenterprising, when out here they could see these sweeping
+branches and hear the wind sighing so beautifully among the needles.
+These people, it seemed to me at such moments, belonged to a different
+race. I had nothing in common with them. Night and stars and trees and
+wind and rain were the things I had to do with and wanted. They were
+alive and personal, stirring my depths within, full of messages and
+meanings, whereas my parents and sisters and brother, all indoors and
+asleep, were mere accidents, and apart from my real life and self. My
+friend the under-gardener always took the ladder away early in the
+morning.
+
+Sometimes an elder sister accompanied me on these excursions. She, too,
+loved mystery, and the peopled darkness, but she was also practical. On
+returning to her room in the early morning we always found eggs ready
+to boil, cake and cold plum-pudding perhaps, or some such satisfying
+morsels to fill the void. She was always wonderful to me in those days.
+Very handsome, dark, with glowing eyes and a keen interest in the
+undertaking, she came down the ladder and stepped along the garden
+paths more like a fairy being than a mortal, and I always enjoyed
+the event twice as much when she accompanied me. In the day-time she
+faded back into the dull elder sister and seemed a different person
+altogether. I never reconcile the two.
+
+This childish manifestation of an overpowering passion changed later,
+in form, of course, but not essentially much in spirit. Forests,
+mountains, desolate places, especially perhaps open spaces like the
+prairies or the desert, but even, too, the simple fields, the lanes,
+and little hills, offered an actual sense of companionship no human
+intercourse could possibly provide. In times of trouble, as equally
+in times of joy, it was to Nature I ever turned instinctively. In
+those moments of deepest feeling when individuals must necessarily be
+alone, yet stand at the same time in most urgent need of understanding
+companionship, it was Nature and Nature only that could comfort me.
+When the cable came, suddenly announcing my father’s death, I ran
+straight into the woods.... This call sounded above all other calls,
+music coming so far behind it as to seem an “also ran.” Even in those
+few, rare times of later life, when I fancied myself in love, this
+spell would operate--a sound of rain, a certain touch of colour in the
+sky, the scent of a wood-fire smoke, the lovely cry of some singing
+wind against the walls or window--and the human appeal would fade in
+me, or, at least, its transitory character become pitifully revealed.
+The strange sense of a oneness with Nature was an imperious and royal
+spell that over-mastered all other spells, nor can the hint of comedy
+lessen its reality. Its religious origin appears, perhaps, in the fact
+that sometimes, during its fullest manifestation, a desire stirred in
+me to leave a practical, utilitarian world I loathed and become--a monk!
+
+Another effect, in troubled later years especially, was noticeable;
+its dwarfing effect upon the events, whatever they might be, of daily
+life. So intense, so flooding, was the elation of joy Nature brought,
+that after such moments even the gravest worldly matters, as well as
+the people concerned in these, seemed trivial and insignificant.
+Nature introduced a vaster scale of perspective against which a truer
+proportion appeared. There lay in the experience some cosmic touch of
+glory that, by contrast, left all else commonplace and unimportant. The
+great gods of wind and fire and earth and water swept by on flaming
+stars, and the ordinary life of the little planet seemed very small,
+man with his tiny passions and few years of struggle and vain longings,
+almost futile. One’s own troubles, seen in this new perspective,
+disappeared, while, at the same time, the heart filled with an immense
+understanding love and charity towards all the world--which, alas, also
+soon disappeared.
+
+It is difficult to put into intelligible, convincing words the
+irresistible character of this Nature-spell that invades heart and
+brain like a drenching sea, and produces a sense of rapture, of
+ecstasy, compared to which the highest conceivable worldly joy becomes
+merely insipid.... Heat from this magical source was always more or
+less present in my mind from a very early age, though, of course, no
+attempt to analyse or explain it was then possible; but, in bitter
+years to come, the joy and comfort Nature gave became a real and only
+solace. When possession was at its full height, the ordinary world,
+and my particular little troubles with it, fell away like so much
+dust; the whole fabric of men and women, commerce and politics, even
+the destinies of nations, became a passing show of shadows, while the
+visible and tangible world showed itself as but a temporary and limited
+representation of a real world elsewhere whose threshold I had for a
+moment touched.
+
+Others, of course, have known similar experiences, but, being
+better equipped, have understood how to correlate them to ordinary
+life. Richard Jefferies explained them. Whitman tasted expansion of
+consciousness in many ways; Fechner made a grandiose system of them;
+Edward Carpenter deliberately welcomed them; Jacob Boehme, Plotinus,
+and many others have tried to fix their nature and essence in terms,
+respectively, of religion and philosophy; and William James has
+reviewed them with an insight as though he had had experienced them
+himself. Whatever their value, they remain authentic, the sense of
+oneness of life their common denominator, a conviction of consciousness
+pervading all forms everywhere their inseparable characteristic.
+
+If Kentish gardens saw the birth of this delight, the Black Forest
+offered further opportunities for its enjoyment, and a year in a
+village of the Swiss Jura Mountains to learn French--I often wandered
+all night in the big pine forests without my tutor, a bee-keeping
+pasteur, at Bôle, near Neuchâtel, discovering my absence--intensified
+it. Without it something starved in me. It was a persistent craving,
+often a wasting _nostalgia_, that cried for satisfaction as the whole
+body cries for covering when cold, and Nature provided a companionship,
+a joy, a bliss, that no human intercourse has ever approached, much
+less equalled. It remains the keenest, deepest sensation of its kind I
+have known....
+
+Here, in Toronto, opportunities multiplied, and just when they were
+needed: in times of difficulty and trouble the call of Nature became
+paramount; during the vicissitudes of dairy and hotel the wild
+hinterland behind the town, with its lakes and forests, were a haven
+often sought. Among my friends were many, of course, who enjoyed a
+day “in the country,” but one man only who understood a little the
+feelings I have tried to describe, even if he did not wholly share
+them. This was Arnold Haultain, a married man, tied to an office all
+day long, private secretary to Goldwin Smith (whose life, I think, he
+subsequently wrote), and editor of a weekly periodical called _The
+Week_. He was my senior by many years.... At three in the morning,
+sometimes, he would call for me at the dairy in College Street, and we
+would tramp out miles to enjoy the magic of sunrise in a wood north of
+the city. And such an effort was only possible to a soul to whom it was
+a necessity.... The intensity of early dreams and aspirations, what
+energy lies in them! In later life, though they may have solidified
+and become part of the character, that original fiery energy is gone.
+A dreadful doggerel I wrote at this time, Haultain used in his paper,
+and its revealing betrayal of inner tendencies is the excuse for its
+reproduction here. It appeared the same week its author bought the Hub
+Hotel and started business with Kay, as “The Hub Wine Company.”
+
+
+LINES TO A DREAMER
+
+    O change all this thinking, imagining, hoping to be;
+    Change dreaming to action and work; there’s a God in your will.
+    Self-mastery and courage and confidence make a man free,
+    And doing is stronger than dreaming for good or for ill.
+
+    Then make a beginning; don’t lie like an infant and weep.
+    Begin with the dearest and crush some delight-giving sin
+    Right out of your life, with a purpose of death before sleep;
+    A passion controlled is an index of power within.
+
+    Some hard self-denial; let no one suspect it at all.
+    With ruthless self-torture continue, nor half an inch yield,
+    Step fearless and bravely; hold on and believe--you won’t fall;
+    Companions you’ve none but the best on this grim battlefield.
+
+    Stagnation means death. If you cannot advance you retreat;
+    Steel purpose maintain; let it be the first aim of your life;
+    Beware of those mushroom resolves as impulsive as fleet,
+    And remember, the nobler the end the more deadly the strife.
+
+    For the hope that another may save you is coward and vain,
+    And the ladder, by which you must climb to yon far starry height,
+    Is of cast-iron rungs from the furnace of suffering and pain.
+    Then forward; and courage! from darkness to truth’s golden light.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+The pictures that have occupied two chapters, flashed and vanished,
+lasting a few moments only. It was Kay’s voice that interrupted them:
+
+“This is my partner, Mr. Blackwood,” he was saying, as he came from the
+dining-room door, accompanied by an undersized little man with sharp,
+beady eyes set in a face like a rat’s, with deep lines upon a skin as
+white as paper. I shook hands with Billy Bingham, proprietor of the
+Hub, the man whose disreputable character had made it a disgrace to the
+City of Churches.
+
+Of the conversation that followed, though I heard every word of it,
+only a blurred memory remained when we left the building half an hour
+later. I was in two worlds--innocent Kent and up-to-date Toronto--while
+Kay and Bingham talked. Mysterious phrases chased pregnant business
+terms in quick succession: Goodwill, stock in hand, buying liquor at
+thirty days, cash value of the licence, and heaven knows what else
+besides. Kay was marvellous, I thought. The sporting goods business had
+apparently taught him everything. Two hundred per cent. profit, rapid
+turn over, sell out at top price, were other vivid sentences I caught
+in part, while I stared and listened, feigning no doubt a comprehension
+that was not mine. The glow of immense success to come, at any rate,
+shone somehow about the nasty face of that cunning little Billy
+Bingham, as he painted our future in radiant colours. Kay was beaming.
+
+“A short period of horror,” I remember thinking, for the sanguine fires
+lit me too, “and we shall be independent men! It’s probably worth it.
+Canada’s a free country. What’s impossible at home is possible here.
+Opportunities must be seized...!”
+
+Then Bingham’s white face retreated, his beady eyes became twin points
+of glittering light, and another picture slid noiselessly before
+them. Euston Station a few short months ago, myself tightly wedged in
+a crowded third-class carriage, the train to Liverpool slowly moving
+out, and my father’s tall figure standing on the platform--this picture
+hid the Hub and Bingham and John Kay. The serious blue eyes, fixed
+on mine with love and tenderness, could not conceal the deep anxiety
+they betrayed for my future. Behind them, though actually at the Manor
+House, Crayford, fixed on a page of the Bible, or perhaps closed in
+earnest prayer, the eyes of my mother rose up too.... The train moved
+faster, the upright figure and the grave, sad face, though lit by a
+momentary smile of encouragement, were hidden slowly by the edge of the
+carriage window. I was too shy to wave my hand, and far too sensitive
+of what the carriage-full of men would think if I moved to the window
+and spoke, or worse, gave the good-bye kiss I burned to give. So the
+straight line of that implacable wooden sash slid across both face and
+figure, cutting our stare cruelly in the middle.
+
+It was the last time I saw my father; a year later he was dead; and ten
+years were to pass before I saw my mother again. Before this--to look
+ahead for a second--some enterprising Toronto friend, with evangelical
+tact, wrote to my father ... “your son is keeping a tavern,” and my
+father, calling my brother into his study where he laid all problems
+before his God with prayer, told him in a broken voice and with tears
+in his eyes: “He is lost; his soul is lost. Algie has gone to--Hell!”...
+
+My vision faded. My broad-shouldered friend and his little rat-faced
+companion stood with their elbows on the bar. I saw six small glasses
+and a big dark bottle. Three of the former were filled to the brim with
+neat rye whisky, the other three, “the chasers” as they were called,
+held soda-water.
+
+“Drink hearty,” rasped Bingham’s grating voice, as he tossed down his
+liquor at a gulp, Kay doing the same, then swallowing the soda-water.
+
+I moved to the swing-doors. I had never touched spirits, and loathed
+the mere smell of them. I cannot pretend that any principle was
+involved; it was simply that the mere idea of swallowing raw whisky
+gave me nausea. I saw Kay give me a quick look. “He’ll be offended if
+you don’t take something,” it said plainly. I was, besides, familiar
+with the customs of the country, at any rate in theory.
+
+“Have something else,” invited Bingham, “if you don’t like it straight.”
+
+I shook my head, mumbling something about it’s being too early in the
+day, and I shall never forget the look that came into that cunning
+little face. But he was not offended. He put his hand on Kay’s arm.
+“Now, see here,” he said with seriousness, “that’s dead right. That’s
+good business every time. Never drink yourselves, and you’ll make it a
+success. Your partner’s got the right idea, and I tell you straight:
+never touch a drop of liquor till after closing hours. You’ll be
+asked to drink all day long. Everybody will want to drink with the
+new management. Every customer that walks in will say ‘What’s yours?’
+before you even know his name. Now, see here, boys, listen to me--you
+_can’t_ do it! You’ll be blind to the world before eleven o’clock. _I_
+tell you, and I _know_!”
+
+“How are you to refuse?” asked Kay.
+
+“I’ll give you a tip: drink tea!”
+
+“Tea!”
+
+“Have your bottle of tea. Tell your bar-tenders. It’s the same colour
+as rye whisky. No one’ll ever know. The boss can always have his own
+private bottle. Well, yours is tea. See?” And he winked with a leer
+like some intelligent reptile.
+
+We shook hands, as he saw us into the street.
+
+“You’ll take a cheque, I suppose?” I heard Kay say just before we moved
+off.
+
+“A marked cheque, yes,” was the reply. The phrase meant that the bank
+marked the cheque as good for the amount.
+
+“It’s all fixed then,” returned Kay.
+
+“All fixed,” said Bingham, and the swing-doors closed upon his
+unpleasant face as we went out into the street.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+The influences that decided the purchase of the Hub were emotional, at
+any rate, not rational; there lay some reaction in me, as of revolt.
+“You can do things out here you could not do at home,” ran like a song
+through the heart all day long, and life seemed to hold its arms wide
+open. Fortunes were quickly made. Speculation was rife. Pork went up
+and wheat went down, and thousands were made or lost in a few hours.
+No enterprise was despised, provided it succeeded. All this had its
+effect upon an impressionable and ignorant youth whose mind now touched
+so-called real life for the first time. The example of others had its
+influence, too. The town was sprinkled with young Englishmen, but
+untrained Englishmen the country did not need, though it needed their
+money; and this money they speedily exchanged, just as I had done, for
+experience--and then tried to find work.
+
+The pathos of it all was, though, that for an average young Englishman
+to find a decent job was impossible. I was among the unsuccessful ones.
+Kay was another, but Kay and myself were now--we thought--to prove the
+exception.
+
+“We’ll show ’em!” was the way Kay’s sanguine twenty-three years phrased
+it. We both knew men of splendid education and real ability, earning
+precarious livings in positions that would have been ludicrous if
+they were not so pathetic. Men from Oxford and Cambridge, with first
+rate classical training, were slinging drinks behind bars, or running
+about the country persuading the farmers to insure their stacks and
+outhouses; others with knowledge of languages and pronounced literary
+talent were adding figures in subordinate positions in brokers’
+offices. But by far the greater number were working as common labourers
+for small farmers all over the country.
+
+“They missed their chance when it came,” Kay repeated. “We won’t miss
+ours. A chance like the Hub won’t come twice.” A year of disagreeable,
+uncongenial work and then--success! Retire! Off to the primeval woods,
+canoes, Indians, camp fires, books ... a dozen dreams flamed up.
+
+Within a month we had completed the purchase, and the Hub opened
+with flying colours and high hopes; the newspapers gave us what they
+called a “send off”; both “House of Lords” and “House of Commons”
+were packed; the cash-registers clicked and rang all day, and the
+Hub, swept and garnished, fairly sparkled with the atmosphere of
+success, congratulations, and promise of good business. Billy Bingham’s
+association with it was a thing of the past; it became the most
+respectable place of its kind in the whole town.
+
+All day long the shoal of customers flocked in and rattled their
+money across the busy counters. Each individual wanted a word with
+the proprietors. Buyers and brewery agents poured in too, asking for
+orders, and newspaper reporters took notes for descriptive articles
+which duly appeared next morning. The dining-room did a roaring trade
+and every stool at the long lunch counter had its occupant. How easy
+it all seemed! And no one the worse for liquor! Everybody was beaming,
+and, as a partner in the Hub Wine Company, I already felt that my
+failure in the dairy farm was forgotten, an unlucky incident at most; a
+boyish episode due to inexperience, but now atoned for.
+
+Lord Dufferin, a few years before, had been Governor-General of Canada,
+and a huge framed photograph of him hung above the cold meat, game
+pies and salads of the lunch counter. A connexion of my father’s, the
+newspapers had insisted upon a closer relationship, and while some
+thought he would do better as a first cousin, others preferred him as
+my uncle. As an exceedingly popular Governor-General, his place above
+the good Canadian food seemed appropriate at any rate, and the number
+of customers, both known and unknown, who congratulated me upon our
+distinguished framed patron, gave me the odd feeling that somehow the
+shock to my father was thereby lessened. The stories of what Dufferin
+and his wife had done for Tom, Dick and Harry, for their wives and
+their children or their dogs, told to me beside our House of Lords’ bar
+that opening day proved good for business. I had come to the colony
+somewhat overburdened with distinguished relations of heavy calibre
+who, to extend the simile a little, neither now nor later, ever fired
+a single shot on my behalf. The mere inertia of their names, indeed,
+weighed down my subsequent New York days with the natural suspicion
+that a young man so well born must have done something dreadful at
+home to be forced to pose to artists for a living. Why, otherwise,
+should he suffer exile in the underworld of a city across the seas?
+Lord Dufferin’s photograph augustly throned above the Hub luncheon
+counter, certainly, however, fired a shot on my behalf, making
+the cash-registers clink frequently. His effect on our bar-trade,
+innocently uncalculated, deserves this word of gratitude.
+
+There were three white-coated bar-tenders in the House of Lords, Jimmy
+Martin, their principal, in charge of it; a couple managed the House
+of Commons trade in the lower bar, down a step and through an arch;
+and here, too, were tables and chairs, rooms curtained off, and other
+facilities for back-street customers who wanted to sit and talk over
+their beer. Between the two, a door in the wall led to my own quarters
+upstairs by means of a private staircase. Sharp on eleven we closed
+our doors that first night, and proceeded, with Jimmy Martin’s aid, to
+open the cash-registers and count up our takings. There was just under
+250 dollars, or £50 in English money. Then, having said good night to
+our chief bar-tender, we spent a happy hour making calculations for the
+future. The first day, of course, could not be taken as an average,
+but prospects, we assured ourselves, were brilliant. Later we were to
+discover things that were to prove a source of endless trouble and
+vexation of spirit to us both--daily worries we both learned to dread.
+At the moment, however, it was in sanguine mood that I went to bed
+that night of our opening day. The money was locked away, ready for me
+to take to the bank next morning--our first deposit. Before that I must
+be at the market to buy provisions--six o’clock--and Kay was to be in
+attendance in the bars at nine-thirty.
+
+“It’s a go all right,” were his good-night words, as he thumped down my
+private staircase and let himself into the street with his latch-key.
+
+Lucky beggar! He hadn’t got to write home and explain to evangelical
+and teetotal parents what he was doing!
+
+Some customers, I discovered, arrived early. That a man should want
+to swallow raw spirits at 9 A.M. amazed me. Some of these were men
+we knew socially; with one of them, who arrived regularly at 9.15, I
+often dined in his cosy little bungalow beside the lake. His wife was
+charming, I played with his children. He was a lawyer. He came for
+what he called an “eye-opener.” Another of this early brigade was a
+stockbroker, who later made a fortune speculating in wheat on margin,
+lost it again, and disappeared mysteriously across the border into the
+States. His manner of taking his “eye-opener” was peculiar, puzzling me
+for a long time. I had never seen it before. It made me laugh heartily
+the first morning, for I thought he was doing it to amuse me--till his
+injured expression corrected me. Producing a long silk handkerchief, he
+flung it round his neck, one end held by the hand that also held his
+brimming glass. With the free hand he then pulled the other end very
+slowly round his collar, levering thus the shaking glass to his lips.
+Unless he used this pulley, the glass shook and rattled so violently
+against his teeth that its contents would be spilt before he could
+get it into his mouth. The horror of it suddenly dawned on me. I was
+appalled. The stuff that poisoned this nervous wreck was sold by myself
+and partner at 100 per cent. profit!
+
+“If he doesn’t get it here,” said Kay, “he’ll go to Tim Sullivan’s
+across the way, and get bad liquor. Ours at least is pure.”
+
+During the long twelve hours that the Hub was open either Kay or myself
+was always on duty, talking to customers, keeping an eye (as we hoped!)
+on the bar-tenders, showing ourselves with an air of authority in the
+House of Commons when, as usually, it became too rowdy--Kay enjoying
+the occasional “chucking out.” At lunch time and from four to half-past
+six or seven o’clock, the bars were invariably crowded. The amount of
+milkless tea we drank ought to have poisoned us both, but we never
+fell from grace in this respect, and we kept faithfully, too, to Jimmy
+Martin’s advice never to “put ’em up” for others.
+
+Days were long and arduous. Though we soon closed the dining room after
+lunch, doing no supper trade, there were public dinners once or twice a
+week for Masonic societies, football clubs and the like, and at these
+one or other of the proprietors was expected to show himself. To my
+great relief, Kay rather enjoyed this light duty. His talent for acting
+was often in demand too; he would don his Henry Irving wig and give the
+company an imitation of the great actor in “The Bells.”
+
+Kay was very successful at these “banquets,” and sometimes a Society
+would engage the room on the condition that he performed for them
+after dinner. What annoyed him was that “the silly idiots always order
+champagne!” There was no profit worth mentioning in “wine,” as it was
+called. The profit was in beer and “liquor.” The histrionic talent,
+at any rate, was an accomplishment that proved useful later in our
+difficult New York days, when Kay not only got a job on the stage
+himself, but provided me with a part as well.
+
+The shadow of that East 19th Street boarding-house was already drawing
+nearer ... and another customer of the Hub who was to share it with
+us was Louis B----, a voluble, high-strung fat little Frenchman, of
+mercurial temperament and great musical gifts. When a Hub banquet had
+seen enough of the Irving wig, and expressed a wish to hear the other
+proprietor, it was always Louis B---- who accompanied my fiddle on the
+piano. Raff’s “Cavatina” was tolerated, the “Berçeuse” from “Jocelyn”
+enjoyed, but the popular songs of the day, Louis extemporizing all
+accompaniments with his perfect touch, it was these that were good for
+“business.” The fat, good-natured little man, with his bright dark
+eyes and crisp curly black hair, demanded several absinthes before he
+would play. He was a born musician. He loved, in the order mentioned,
+music, horses, his wife, and from the last he always had to obtain
+permission to “play at the Hub.” Towards midnight he would dash to the
+telephone and say pleadingly to his wife: “They want me to play one
+more piece--only one. Do you mind? I shan’t be long!”
+
+The Hub Wine Company, camouflaging the saloon business of two foolish
+young idiots, passed through its phases towards the inevitable
+collapse. Business declined; credit grew difficult; prompt payment
+for supplies more difficult still. We closed the Dining Room, then
+the House of Commons. The Banquets ceased. Selling out at “top price”
+became a dream, loss of all my capital a fact. Those were funereal
+days. To me it was a six months’ horror. The impulsive purchase
+was paid for dearly. It was not only the declining business, the
+approaching loss of my small capital, the prospect of presently working
+for some farmer at a dollar a day and green tea--it was not these
+things I chiefly felt. It was, rather, the fact that I had taken a step
+downhill, betrayed some imagined ideal in me, shown myself willing to
+“sell my soul” for filthy lucre. The price, though not paid in lucre,
+was certainly paid in mental anguish, and the letters from home, though
+patient, generously forgiving, even understanding, increased this
+tenfold....
+
+My own nature, meanwhile, wholly apart from any other influence, sought
+what relief it could. My heart had never really been in the venture, my
+body now kept out of it as much as possible. The loathing I had felt
+for the place from the very beginning was quite apart from any question
+of success or failure. I hated the very atmosphere, the faces of the
+staff, the sound of voices as I approached the swinging doors. While
+attending strictly to business, never shortening my hours on duty by
+five minutes, and eagerly helping Kay in our efforts to get in another
+partner with money, my relief when once outside the actual building was
+immense. We had engaged a new manager, whose popularity in the town--he
+was a great cricketer--brought considerable fresh custom, but whose
+chief value in my eyes lay in the fact that I need not be present quite
+as much as before. Collins, who weighed twenty stone, was a character.
+Known for some reason as “the Duke,” he had no other title to nobility.
+He helped trade for a few brief weeks, but also helped himself at the
+same time, and his exit, not unlike that of Jimmy--who was “fired” for
+the same reason--was attended by threats of a slander suit, which also,
+like Jimmy’s, was set down in the Greek kalends.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+One effect of these long, unhappy months, anyhow, was to emphasize
+another, and that the principal side, of my nature. The daily effort
+of forcing myself to do what I hated so intensely, was succeeded by
+the equal and opposite reaction of enjoying tremendously my free hours
+of relaxation. When the swing-doors closed behind me, my mind closed
+too upon all memory of the hated Hub. It was shut out, forgotten,
+non-existent. I flew instinctively to what comforted and made me happy.
+Gorged with the reading of poetry and of idealistic, mystical books,
+an insatiable sense of wonder with a childish love of the marvellous
+added to it, my disappointing experience of practical realities
+demanded compensation as a safety-valve, if as nothing more. I found
+these in Nature, music, and in the companionship of a few people I will
+presently describe. Out of those prison-like swing-doors I invariably
+went, either with the fiddle-case in my hand, or with food in my pocket
+and a light cloak as blanket for sleeping out. Concerts and organ
+recitals were not enough; more than to listen, I wanted to play myself;
+and Louis B---- was usually as enthusiastic as I. The music was a deep
+delight to me, but the sleeping under the stars I enjoyed most.
+
+Those lonely little camp fires have left vivid pictures in the mind.
+An East-bound tram soon took one beyond the city, where the shores of
+Lake Ontario stretched their deserted sands for miles. There was always
+fresh water to be found for boiling tea, lots of driftwood lying about,
+and the sand made a comfortable bed. Many a night of that sweet Indian
+summer I saw the moon rise or set over the water, and lay watching the
+stars until the sunrise came. One spot in particular was a favourite
+with me, because, just over the high loam cliffs that lined the shore,
+there was an enormous field of tomatoes, and while Jimmy was helping
+himself to the Hub cash under Kay’s eyes in the city, I helped myself
+to half a dozen of the farmer’s ripe tomatoes. The Hub, however, of set
+purpose, formed no part of my thoughts, my reveries and dreams being of
+a very different, and far more interesting, kind....
+
+A night in the woods, though distance made it more difficult, comforted
+me even more than the Lake expeditions. I kept the woods usually for
+Saturday night, when the next day left me free as well.
+
+A pine forest beyond Rosedale was my favourite haunt, for it was (in
+those days) quite deserted and several miles from the nearest farm,
+and in the heart of it lay a secluded little lake with reedy shores
+and deep blue water. Here I lay and communed, the world of hotels,
+insurance, even of Methodists, very far away. The hum of the city
+could not reach me, though its glare was faintly visible in the sky.
+There were no signs of men; no sounds of human life; not even a dog’s
+bark--nothing but a sighing wind and lapping water and a sort of
+earth-murmur under the trees, and I used to think that God, whatever
+He was, or the great spiritual forces that I believed lay behind all
+phenomena, and perhaps were the moving life of the elements themselves,
+must be nearer to one’s consciousness in places like this than among
+the bustling of men in the towns and houses. As the material world
+faded away among the shadows, I felt dimly the real spiritual world
+behind shining through ... I meditated on the meaning of these dreams
+till the veil over outer things seemed very thin; diving down into my
+inner consciousness as deeply as I could till a stream of tremendous
+yearning for the realities that lay beyond appearances poured out of
+me into the night.... The hours passed with magical swiftness, and
+my dreaming usually ended in sleep, for I often woke in the chilly
+time just before the dawn, lying sideways on the pine needles, and
+saw the trees outlined sharply against the Eastern sky, and the lake
+water still and clear, and heard the dawn-wind just beginning to sing
+overhead. The laughter of a loon would sound, the call of an owl, the
+cry of a whip-poor-will; and then--the sun was up.
+
+Thought ran, on these lonely nights, to everything except to present
+or recent happenings. Life, already half over as, at twenty-one, it
+then seemed to me, had proved a failure; my few trivial experiences
+appeared gigantic and oppressive. I felt very old. Present conditions,
+being unhappy and promising to become more unhappy still, I left aside.
+I had “accepted” them as Karma, I must go through with them, but there
+was no need to intensify or prolong unhappiness by dwelling on them.
+I therefore dismissed them, thought wandering to other things. All
+was coloured, shaped, directed by those Eastern teachings in which I
+was then entirely absorbed ... and the chief problem in my mind at
+the time, was to master the method of accepting, facing, exhausting,
+whatever life might bring, while being, as the Bhagavad Gita described,
+“indifferent to results,” unaffected, that is, by the “fruits of
+action.” Detachment, yet without shirking, was the nearest equivalent
+phrase I could find; a state, anyhow, stronger than the Christian
+“resignation,” which woke contempt in me....
+
+Unhappiness, though it may seem trivial now, both as to cause
+and quality, was very deep in me at the time. It had wakened an
+understanding of certain things I had read--as in the stolen
+“Patanjali” years before--without then grasping what they meant. These
+things I now was beginning to reach by an inner experience of them,
+rather than by an intellectual comprehension merely.... And, as thought
+ran backwards, escaping the unpleasant Hub and Dairy, to earlier days
+in the Black Forest School, to the Jura Mountains village, to family
+holidays among the Alps or on the west coast of Scotland, it reached in
+due course the year spent at Edinburgh University just before I left
+for Canada, and so to individuals there who had strongly influenced me:
+
+I recalled Dr. H----, who used hypnotism in his practice, taught
+me various methods of using it, and often admitted me to private
+experiments in his study. He explained many a text-book for me. He had
+urged me to give up the idea of farming in Canada, and to read for
+medicine and become a doctor. “Specialize,” he said (in 1883). “By the
+time you are qualified Suggestion will be a recognized therapeutic
+agent, accepted by all, and accomplishing marvellous results. Become a
+mental specialist.”
+
+I lay under my pine trees, wondering if it were still too late ...
+but speculating, further and chiefly, about those other states of
+consciousness, since called “subliminal,” which his experiments had
+convinced me were of untold importance, both to the individual and to
+the race. Any lawful method of extending the field of consciousness,
+of increasing its scope, of developing latent faculties, with its
+corollary of greater knowledge and greater powers, excited and
+interested me more than the immediate prospect of making a million....
+
+This doctor’s family were sincere and convinced spiritualists. He let
+them be, paying no attention to them, yet pointing out to me privately
+the “secondary” state into which his wife, as the medium, could throw
+herself at will. His son had an Amati violin; we played together; I
+was invited to many séances. The power of reading a “sitter’s” mind I
+often witnessed, my own unuttered thoughts often being announced as
+the communication from some “guide” or “spirit friend.” But for the
+doctor’s private exposition, I might doubtless have been otherwise
+persuaded and shared my hostess’s convictions.
+
+Some of the “communications” came back in memory, none the less, as I
+lay beside the little lake and watched the firelight reflected with
+the stars: “There is an Indian here; he says he comes for you. He is a
+medicine man. He says you are one, too. You have great healing power.
+He keeps repeating the word ‘scratch.’” The dubious word meant “write”;
+I was to become a writer, a prophesy that woke no interest in me at
+all.... Another communication delved into the past: “You have been an
+Indian in a recent life, and you will go back to their country to
+work off certain painful Karma. You were Aztec, Inca, Egyptian, and,
+before that again, Atlantean. With the world to-day you have nothing
+in common, for none of the souls you knew have come back with you.
+Nature means more to you than human beings. Beware!” The last word
+alarmed me a good deal until the doctor’s humorous exposition killed
+any malefic suggestion. The horoscope his wife cast and read for me,
+however, he refused to be bothered with; he could not, therefore,
+comfort me by explaining away a disturbing sentence: “All your planets
+are beneficent, but were just below the horizon at the hour of your
+birth. This means that you will come very near to success in all you
+undertake, yet never quite achieve it.”
+
+These memories slipped in their series across my mind, as the embers
+of my fire faded and the night drew on. Swiftly they came and passed,
+each leaving its little trail of dust, its faint emotion, yet leading
+always to a stronger ghost whose memory still bulked largely in my
+mind--the ghost of a Hindu student. He was a fourth-year man, about
+to become a qualified doctor, and I met him first in the dissecting
+room, where occasionally I played at studying anatomy. We first became
+intimate friends over the dissection of a leg. It was he who explained
+“Patanjali” to me. He was a very gifted and unusual being. He showed
+me strange methods of breathing, of concentration, of meditation. He
+made clear a thousand half-conscious dreams and memories in me. He
+was mysterious but sincere, living his theories in practice. We went
+for great walks along the Forth, watching the Forth Bridge then being
+built; down the coast to St. Abb’s Head and Coldingham; deep into the
+recesses of the Pentlands, where, more than once, we slept in the
+open. We made curious and interesting experiments together.... Years
+later--he is still alive--I drew upon a fraction of his personality in
+two books, “John Silence” and “Julius Le Vallon.”...
+
+Much that he explained and taught me, much that he believed and
+practised, came back vividly during these nightly vigils in the woods,
+while I listened to the weird laughter of the loons like the voices of
+women far away, and watched the Northern Lights flash in their strange
+majesty from the horizon to mid-heaven. Unhappiness was making my real
+life sink deeper. No boy, I am sure, sought for what he believed would
+prove the realities with more passionate intensity than I did. It is
+curious now to look back upon those grave experiments first taught me
+by my Hindu friend, who assured me that the way to rob emotions of
+their power was to refuse to identify one’s “self” with them, this real
+“self” merely looking on as a spectator, apart, detached; and that the
+outer events of life had small importance, what mattered being solely
+one’s inner attitude to them, one’s interpretation of them....
+
+From these hours spent alone with Nature, as also from the hours
+of music with Louis B---- I returned, at any rate, refreshed and
+invigorated to my loathsome bars. Personal troubles seemed less
+important, less oppressive; they were, after all, but brief episodes
+in a single life; as Karma, they had to be faced, gone through with;
+they had something to teach, and I must learn the lesson, or else miss
+one of the objects of my being. Watching the starry heavens through
+hours of imaginative reflection brought a bigger perspective in which
+individual worries found reduced proportion. My thoughts introduced a
+yet vaster perspective still. The difficulty was to keep the point of
+view when the mood that encouraged it was gone. After a few hours in
+the House of Lords perspective was apt to dwindle again....
+
+When the winter months made sleeping out impossible, and Louis B----
+was not available, my precious hours of freedom would be spent with
+a young agnostic doctor dying of consumption; with the Professor of
+History in Toronto University--a sterling, sympathetic man, a true
+Christian of intellectual type, and a big, genuine soul who never
+thought of himself in the real help he gave me unfailingly with both
+hands; or, lastly, with an enthusiast who shared my quest for what
+we called “the Realities.” With all three I had made close friends
+during the first prosperous days of the Dairy; the Professor’s family
+had been customers for milk and eggs; the young doctor, living in my
+boarding-house, had been a pupil in my French and German class.
+
+The third was a Scotsman, fairly well educated, about thirty years
+of age, who, while fully in sympathy with my line of thinking, had
+succeeded in reducing his dreams to some sort of order so that they
+did not interfere with his ordinary, practical career and yet were the
+guiding rule of his life.
+
+He was in the cement business, and his clothes, even on Sunday, were
+always covered with a fine white dust, for he was unmarried and lived
+alone in a single room. He made a bare living at his work, but was
+thoroughly conscientious and devoted to the interests of his employer,
+and all he asked was steady work and fair remuneration for the rest
+of his life. He was a real mystic by temperament, though he belonged
+to no particular tradition. The world for him was but a show of false
+appearances that the senses gathered; the realities behind were
+spiritual. He believed that his soul had existed for ever and would
+never cease to exist, and that his ego would continue to expand and
+develop according to the life he led, and shaped by his thoughts and
+acts (but especially by his thoughts) to all eternity. This world for
+him was a schoolroom, a place of difficult discipline and learning,
+and the lessons he was learning were determined logically and justly
+by his previous living and previous mistakes. Talents or disabilities,
+equally, were the results of former action....
+
+But to the ordinary man he appeared simply as a rather dull everyday
+worker, without any worldly ambition, absolutely honest and
+trustworthy, and always occupying a subordinate position in practical
+affairs.
+
+In the “old country” he had belonged to some sort of society that kept
+alive traditions of teaching methods of spiritual development, and he
+told me much concerning their theories that immense latent powers lay
+in the depths of one’s being and could be educed by suitable living,
+and the period in the “schoolroom of this world,” as he called it,
+could be shortened and the progress of one’s real development hastened.
+It all lay, with him, in learning how to concentrate the faculties on
+this inner life, without neglecting the duties of the position one
+held to family or employer, and thus reducing the life of the body and
+the senses to the minimum that was consistent with health and ordinary
+duty. In this way he believed new forces would awaken to life, and new
+parts of one’s being be stimulated into activity, and in due course one
+would become conscious of a new spiritual region with the spiritual
+senses adapted to it. It amounted, of course, to an expansion of
+consciousness.
+
+All this, naturally, interested me very much indeed, and I spent hours
+talking with this cement maker, and many more hours reading the books
+he lent me and thinking about them. My friend helped in this extension.
+Carl du Prel’s “Philosophy of Mysticism” was a book to injure no one.
+
+He had published one or two volumes of minor poetry, and his verse,
+though poor in form, caught all through it the elusive quality of
+genuine mystical poetry, unearthly, touching the stars, and wakening in
+the reader the note of yearning for the highest things. I took him with
+me several times to my little private grove, and he would recite these
+verses to me in a way that made them sound very different from my own
+reading of them. And as he lay beside the lake and I heard his reedy
+voice mingling with the wind in the trees, and watched his watery blue
+eyes shine across the smoke of our fire, I realized that the value of
+his poems lay in the fact that they were a perfectly true expression
+of his self--of his small, mystical, unselfish and oddly elemental
+soul searching after the God that should finally absorb him up into
+something greater. I do not wish to criticize him, but only to picture
+what I saw. His attenuated body, and long thin fingers, his shabby
+clothes covered with white dust lying by my side under the stars, his
+eyes looking beyond the world, and the sound of his thin voice that
+lost half its words somewhere in the wind--the picture is complete in
+every detail in my mind to this day. His reasoning powers were slight,
+for like all true mystics he believed in the intuitive perception
+of truth; but, coming into my life just at this time, he came with
+influence and a good deal of stimulus too. From the “House of Commons”
+to his dream-laden atmosphere provided a contrast that brought relief,
+at any rate.
+
+This mystical minor poet in the cement business had several friends
+like himself, but no one of them possessed his value, because no one of
+them practised their beliefs. They talked well and were sincere up to
+a point, but not to the point of making sacrifices for their faith. It
+was always with them a future hope. One, however, must be excepted--a
+woman. She was over sixty and always dressed in black, with crêpe
+scattered all over her, and a large white face, and shining eyes, and
+great bags under them. She had been a vegetarian for years. In spite of
+her size she looked so ethereal that a puff of wind might have blown
+her across the street. All her friends and relations had “passed over,”
+and her thoughts were evidently centred in the beyond, so far as she
+herself was concerned. She had means of her own, but spent most of them
+in helping others. There was no humbug about her. She claimed to have
+what she called “continuous consciousness,” and at night, when her body
+lay down and the brain slept, she focused her Self in some spiritual
+region of her being, and never lost consciousness. She saw her body
+lying there, and knew the brain was asleep, but she meanwhile became
+active elsewhere, for she declared a spirit could never sleep, and it
+was only the body that became too weary at the end of the day to answer
+to the spirit’s requirements. In sleep the body, left empty by the
+spirit, slept, and memory, being in the brain, became inactive. But as
+soon as one had learned to realize one’s spirit, sleep involved no loss
+of consciousness and memory was continuous.
+
+Her accounts of her experiences in the night thrilled me.... While
+she talked her face grew so white that it almost shone. It was a
+beaming, good, loving face, and the woman was honest, even if deluded.
+She radiated kindness and sympathy from her person. She had a way of
+screwing up her eyes when speaking, stepping back a few paces, and then
+coming suddenly forward again as though she meant to jump across the
+room, her voice ringing, and her eyes opened so wide that I thought the
+bags underneath them must burst with a pop.
+
+The young doctor living in the boarding-house also interested me,
+reviving indeed my desire to follow his own profession myself. He
+was about twenty-six years old and very poor; the exact antithesis
+of myself, being clear-minded, practical, cynical and a thorough
+sceptic on the existence of a soul and God and immortality. He was
+well-read and had the true scientific temperament, spending hours
+with his microscope and books. The fact of his being at the opposite
+pole to myself attracted me to him, and we had long talks in his
+consulting-room on the ground floor back--where everything was prepared
+for the reception of patients, but where no patient ever came. Our
+worlds were so far apart, and it was so hard to establish a mutual
+coinage of words that our talks were somewhat futile. He was logical,
+absorbed in his dream of original research; he used words in their
+exact meaning and jumped to no conclusions rashly, and never allowed
+his judgment to be influenced by his emotions; whereas I talked, no
+doubt, like a child, building vast erections upon inadequate premises,
+indulging in my religious dreams about God and the soul, speculative
+and visionary. He argued me out of my boots every time, and towards the
+end of our talks grew impatient and almost angry with my vague mind and
+“transcendental tommy-rot,” as he called it; but at the same time he
+liked me, and was always glad to talk and discuss with me.
+
+Nothing he said, though much of it was cogent and unanswerable, ever
+influenced my opinions in the least degree, because I felt he was
+fundamentally wrong, and was trying to find by scalpel and microscope
+the things of the spirit. I felt a profound pity for him, and he felt
+a contemptuous pity for me. But one night my pity almost changed to
+love, and after this particular conversation, in the course of which he
+made me deep confidences of his early privations in order that he might
+study for his profession, and of his unquenchable desire for knowledge
+for its own sake, I felt so tenderly towards him, that I never tried to
+argue again, but only urged him to believe in a soul and in a future
+life. For he told me that he was already so far gone in consumption
+that at most he had but a year or two to live, and he knew that in the
+time at his disposal he could not accomplish the very smallest part of
+his great dream. I then understood why his eyes were so burning bright
+and why he had always glowing red spots in his cheeks, and looked so
+terribly thin and emaciated.
+
+The hours spent with him did not refresh or invigorate me as the woods
+and music did; I re-entered the swing doors of my prison--as I came to
+regard the Hub--with no new stimulus. His example impressed me, but
+his atmosphere and outlook both depressed. Only my admiration for his
+courage, strong will, and consistent attitude remained, while I drank
+“tea” with my unpleasant customers, or listened to complaints from
+the staff. Before the swing-doors closed for the last time, however,
+the thin, keen-faced doctor with the hectic flush and the bright
+burning eyes had succumbed to his terrible malady. His end made a
+great impression on me. For several months he went about like a living
+skeleton. His cough was ghastly. He had less and less money, and I
+seemed to be the only friend he turned to, or indeed possessed at all,
+for I was the only person he allowed to help him, and the little help
+I could give was barely enough to prevent the landlady turning him out
+for rent and board unpaid.
+
+To the last his will burned in him like a flame. He talked and studied,
+and dreamed his long dream of scientific achievement even when he knew
+his time was measured by weeks, and he was utterly scornful of death
+and a Deity that could devise such a poor scheme of existence, so full
+of failure, pain, and abortive effort. But I was full of admiration
+for the way he kept going full speed to the very end, starting new
+books and fresh experiments even when he knew he would not have time
+to get half-way through with them, and discussing high schemes just as
+though he expected years in which to carry them out--instead of days.
+
+Here was a man absolutely without faith, or any belief in God or
+future life, who walked straight up to a miserable death under full
+steam, with nothing to console or buoy him up, and without friends to
+sympathize, and who never for a single instant flinched or whimpered.
+There burned in his heart the fire of a really strong will. It was
+the first time I had realized at close quarters what this meant, and
+when I went to his funeral I felt full of real sorrow, and have never
+forgotten the scene at his death-bed when the keen set face relaxed
+nothing of its decision to the very last.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+At length the bitter, sparkling winter was over, the sleigh-bells
+silent, the covered skating-rinks all closed. The last remnants
+of the piled-up snow had melted, and the sweet spring winds were
+blowing freshly down the cedar-paved streets. On the lake shores the
+boat-houses were being opened; canoes, skiffs and cat-boats being
+repainted. Tents and camping kit were being overhauled. The talk
+everywhere was of picnics, expeditions, trips into the backwoods, and
+plans for summer holidays. Crystal sunlight flooded the world. The
+Canadian spring intoxicated the brain and sent the blood dancing to
+wild, happy measures.
+
+The Hub was now in the hands of a Receiver; Adams and Burns, the
+wholesale house, controlled it. Kay and I had to pay cash for
+everything--the Hub Wine Company was “bust.”
+
+Yielding to my father’s impatient surprise that after all these months
+I was still a partner, I had assigned my interest a short time before
+to Kay, and had sent home the printed announcement in the newspapers.
+It was a nominal assignment only, for I had nothing to assign. My last
+penny of capital was lost. Kay, for his part, had lost everything too.
+Vultures, in the form of bailiffs with blue writs in their claws,
+haunted our last week; by good luck rather than good management I owed
+nothing, but Kay had small outstanding accounts all over the town.
+
+It was a hectic last week. Our friends came in crowds to sympathize,
+to offer advice, to suggest new plans, and all considered a liquid
+farewell necessary. This etiquette was strict. A private word with
+the Receiver brought back our tea bottle. The Upper House did a fair
+business again, while Louis B---- bursting with new schemes, new
+enterprises, that should restore our fortunes, was for ever at the
+piano in the upstairs room. We played together while our little Rome
+was burning--Tchaikowsky, Chopin, Wagner, and the latest songs with
+choruses. Kay donned his Irving wig from time to time and roared his
+“Bells” and “Suicide.” Our last days rattled by.
+
+The pain of the failure was mitigated for me personally by the intense
+relief I felt to be free of the nightmare at last. Whatever might
+be in store, nothing could be worse than that six months’ horror.
+Besides, failure in Canada was never final. It held the seeds of
+success to follow. From its ashes new life rose with wings and singing.
+The electric air of spring encouraged brave hopes of a thousand
+possibilities, and while I felt the disaster overwhelmingly, our brains
+at the same time already hummed with every imaginable fresh scheme.
+What these schemes were it is difficult now to recall, beyond that they
+included all possibilities of enterprise that a vast young country
+could suggest to penniless adventurous youth.
+
+What memory still holds sharply, however, is the face of a young lawyer
+of our acquaintance, as he looked at me across the fiddle and said
+casually: “You can live on my island in Lake Rosseau if you like!”
+Without a moment’s hesitation we accepted the lawyer’s offer of his
+ten-acre island in the northern lakes. The idea of immediate new
+enterprise faded. Kay was easily persuaded into a plan that promised a
+few weeks’ pleasant leisure to think things over, living meanwhile for
+next to nothing. “I shall go to New York later,” he announced, “and get
+on the stage. I’ll take Shakespeare up to the island and study it.”
+He packed his Irving wig. It was the camping-out which caught me with
+irresistible attraction: the big woods, an open air life, sun, wind
+and water.... “I’ll come up and join you later,” promised the sanguine
+Louis B----. “I’ll come with some new plan we can talk over round your
+camp-fire.” He agreed to pack up our few belongings and keep them for
+us till we went later to New York. “We’ll all go to the States,” he
+urged. “Canada is a one-horse place. There are far more chances across
+the line.”
+
+We kept secret our date of leaving, only Louis knowing it. On the
+morning of May 24th, the Queen’s birthday, he came to fetch us and our
+luggage, the latter reduced to a minimum. There were no good-byes. But
+this excitable little Frenchman, who loved a touch of the picturesque,
+did not come quite as we expected. He arrived two hours before his
+time, with a wagonette and two prancing horses, his fat figure on the
+box, flicking his long whip and shouting up at our windows. His idea,
+he explained as we climbed in, was to avoid the main station, where we
+should be bound to see a dozen people we knew. He proposed, instead, to
+drive us twenty miles to a small station, where the train stopped on
+its way north. There was no time to argue. I sat beside him on the box
+with the precious fiddle, Kay got behind with our two bags, and Louis
+drove us and his spanking pair along King Street and then up Yonge
+Street. Scores recognized us, wondering what it meant, for these were
+the principal streets of the town, but Louis flourished his whip, gave
+the horses their head, and raced along the interminable Yonge Street
+till at length the houses disappeared, and the empty reaches of the
+hinterland took their place. He saw us into the train with our luggage
+and our few dollars, waving his whip in farewell as the engine started.
+We did not see him again till he arrived, thin, worried, anxious and
+gabbling, in the East 19th Street boarding-house the following autumn.
+
+My Toronto episodes were over. I had been eighteen months in the
+country and was close upon twenty-two; my capital I had lost, but I had
+gained at least a little experience in exchange. I no longer trusted
+every one at sight. The green paint had worn thin in patches, if not
+all over. The collapse of the Dairy made me feel old, the Hub disaster
+made me a Methuselah. My home life seemed more and more remote, I had
+broken with it finally, I could never return to the old country, nor
+show my face in the family circle again. Thus I felt, at least. The
+pain and unhappiness in me seemed incurably deep, and my shame was
+very real. In my heart was a secret wish to live in the backwoods for
+evermore, a broken man, feeding on lost illusions and vanished dreams.
+The lighthearted plans that Louis B---- and Kay so airily discussed I
+could not understand. My heart sank each time I recognized my father’s
+handwriting on an envelope. I felt a kind of final misery that only my
+belief in Karma mitigated.
+
+This mood of exaggerated intensity soon passed, of course, but for
+a time life was very bitter. It was hard at first to “accept” these
+fruits of former lives, this harvest of misfortune whose seeds I
+assuredly had sown myself long, long ago. The “detachment” I was trying
+to learn, with its attitude of somehow being “indifferent to the fruits
+of action,” was not acquired in a day.
+
+Yet it interests me now to look back down the vista of thirty years,
+and to realize that this first test of my line of thought--whether it
+was a pretty fancy merely, or whether a real conviction--did not find
+me wanting. It was, I found, a genuine belief; neither then, nor in the
+severer tests that followed, did it ever fail me for a single moment. I
+understood, similarly, how my father’s faith, equally sincere though in
+such different guise to mine, could give him strength and comfort, no
+matter what life might bring....
+
+As our train went northwards through the hinterland towards Gravenhurst
+and the enchanted island where we were to spend five months of a
+fairyland existence, I grasped that a chapter of my life was closed,
+and a new one opening. The mind looked back, of course. Toronto, whose
+Indian name means Place of Meeting, I saw only once or twice again.
+I never stayed there. At the end of our happy island-life, we rushed
+through it on our way to fresh adventures in New York, Kay hiding his
+face in an overcoat lest some creditor catch a glimpse of him and serve
+a blue writ before the train’s few minutes’ pause in the station ended.
+The following winter, indeed, this happened, though in a theatre and
+not in a railway carriage. The travelling company, of which he formed
+a member, was giving its Toronto week, and a creditor in the audience
+recognized him on the stage, though not this time in his Irving wig.
+The blue writ was served, the bailiff standing in the wings until the
+amount was paid.
+
+In the mood of reflection a train journey engenders, a sense of
+perspective slipped behind the eighteen months just over. Shot forth
+from my evangelical hot-house into colonial life, it now seemed to
+me rather wonderful that my utter ignorance had not landed me in yet
+worse muddles ... even in gaol.... One incident, oddly enough, stood
+out more clearly than the rest. But for my ridiculous inexperience of
+the common conditions of living, my complete want of _savoir faire_,
+my unacquaintance even with the ways of normal social behaviour, I
+might have now been in very different circumstances. A quite different
+career might easily have opened for me, a career in a railway, in the
+Canadian Pacific Railway, in fact, on one of whose trains we were then
+travelling.
+
+But for my stupid ignorance, an opening in the C.P.R. would certainly
+have been found for me, whether it led to a future or not. The
+incident, slight and trivial though it was, throws a characteristic
+light on the results of my upbringing. It happened in this way:
+
+Among my father’s acquaintance were the bigwigs of the Canadian Pacific
+Railway, who had shown him much courtesy on our earlier visit. The
+relationship this time was not of a religious kind; he was Financial
+Secretary to the Post Office; the C.P.R. carried the mails. Sir
+George Stephen and Sir Donald Stewart had not at that time received
+their peerages as My Lords Mount-Stephen and Strathcona; Sir William
+van Horne was still alive. To all of these I bore letters, though
+I delivered--by post to Montreal--only the one to Sir George, as
+President of the line. It met with the kindest possible response, and
+for several weeks I had been awaiting the return of T., an important
+official in Toronto, to whom my case had been explained, but who was
+away at the time, touring the west in his special car. The moment I
+returned, I felt reasonably sure that he would find me a place of some
+sort or other where I could at least make a start. He had, in fact,
+been asked to do so. With influence, too, in high quarters behind me,
+I had every reason to hope. The return of Mr. T. I awaited eagerly. He
+was a young man, I learned, of undoubted ability, but was at the same
+time a petty fellow, very pushing, very conceited, and a social snob
+of the most flagrant type. I was rather frightened, indeed, by what I
+heard, for a colonial social snob can be a very terrible creature, as I
+had already discovered.
+
+Mr. T.’s return chanced to coincide with a big race meeting, to be
+followed by a ball at Government House. Sir Alexander Campbell was
+Governor of Ontario at the time. It was the event of the season, and of
+course Mr. T. came back in time to attend it and be in evidence. With a
+party of friends I drove to my first race meeting (oh, how the clothes,
+the talk, the rushing horses, all looking exactly alike, bored me!)
+with an invitation to the grand stand box of the Governor General, Lord
+Aberdeen, also a friend of my father’s, and was thus introduced to the
+railway official under the best possible auspices. My heart beat high
+when I saw how he took trouble to be nice to me and begged me to call
+upon him next day at his office, saying that “something could no doubt
+be arranged for me _at once_.” I was so delighted that I felt inclined
+to cable home at once “Got work”; but I resisted this temptation and
+simply let my imagination play round the nature of the position I
+should soon be holding in a very big company, with excellent chances
+of promotion and salary. I was too young to be bothered by the man’s
+patronizing manner and did not care a straw about his condescension and
+self-importance, because I thought only of getting work and a start.
+
+The ball filled me with intense shyness and alarm, however, for I had
+never learned to dance, or been inside a ballroom, and it was merely by
+chance I found out that white gloves and a white tie (not a black one
+as I had always worn at home for dinner) were the proper things. In a
+colony, too, an Englishman, who pretends to any standing, cannot be
+too careful about social details; for everything, and more besides, is
+expected of him.
+
+The ball was even worse than I had anticipated. I was nervous and
+uncomfortable. Ignorant of the little observances that would have been
+known to any man brought up differently, I found nothing to say to the
+numerous pretty Canadian girls, unconventional and natural, who were
+introduced to me, and I had not the slightest idea that the correct and
+polite thing to do was to ask each young lady for the “pleasure of a
+dance.”
+
+What people must have thought of my manners I cannot imagine, but the
+climax was undoubtedly reached when the railway official swaggered up
+to me in the middle of the room and said he wished to introduce me to
+his sister. This was duly accomplished, but--I could think of nothing
+to say. We stood side by side, with the official beaming upon us, I
+fingering my empty programme and the girl waiting to be asked for a
+dance. But the request was not forthcoming, and after a few minutes
+of terrible awkwardness and half silence, the purple-faced official
+marched his sister off again, highly insulted, to introduce her to men
+who would appreciate their luck better than I had done.
+
+To him, of course, my manners must have seemed hopelessly rude. He
+felt angry that I had not thought his sister worth even the ordinary
+politeness of a dance; and to a Canadian, who learns dancing with his
+bottle, and dances indoors and out on every possible occasion, the
+omission must have seemed incredibly ill-mannered, and the snub an
+unforgivable one. I cannot blame him. I remained in complete ignorance
+however of my crime, and, beyond feeling nervously foolish, out of
+place, and generally not much of a success, I had no idea I had given
+cause for offence until, long afterwards, I heard stories about myself
+and my behaviour which made me realize that I had done unpardonable
+things and left undone all that was best and correct.
+
+At the time, however, I had no realization that I had offended at all;
+and in the morning I went down according to appointment to call upon
+the railway official in his fine offices and hear the joyful news of my
+appointment to a lucrative and honourable position in the Company.
+
+It seemed a little strange to me that I was kept waiting exactly an
+hour in the outer office, but I was so sure of a pleasant interview
+with a practical result that when at last the clerk summoned me to the
+official’s sanctum, I went in with a smiling face and goodwill and
+happiness in my heart.
+
+The general manager, as I will call him, though this title disguises
+his actual position, greeted me, however, without a word. He was
+talking to a man who stood beside his desk, and though he must have
+heard my name announced, he did not so much as turn his head. I stood
+looking at the framed photographs on the wall for several moments
+before the man went out, and then, when the door was closed, I advanced
+with outstretched hand and cordial manner across the room to greet my
+future employer.
+
+He glanced at me frigidly, and, without even rising from his chair,
+gave me a stiff bow and said in a voice of the utmost formality:
+
+“Well, sir, and what can I do for you?”
+
+The words fell into my brain like so many particles of ice, and froze
+my tongue. Such a reception I had never dreamed of receiving. What
+had I done wrong? How in the world had I offended? Not even a word of
+apology for keeping me waiting an hour; and not even a seat offered me.
+I stood there foolishly for a moment, completely puzzled. Surely there
+must be a mistake. The man had forgotten me, or took me for somebody
+else.
+
+“I had an appointment with you at eleven o’clock, Mr. T.,” I said
+nervously, but trying to smile pleasantly. “You remember you were kind
+enough to say yesterday you thought you might find work for me to do
+in--in the railway offices.”
+
+The man’s eyes flashed, just as though he were angry, his face turned
+red, and I could not help suddenly noticing what a bad, weak chin he
+had and how common and coarse the lines of his face were. The flush
+seemed to emphasize all its bad points.
+
+“Oh, you want work?” he said with a distinct sneer, looking me up and
+down as if I were an animal to be judged. “You want work, do you?”
+
+My nervousness began to melt away before his offensive manner, and I
+felt the blood mounting, but trying to keep my temper and to believe
+still there must be some mistake, I again reminded him of our previous
+interview at the races and in the ballroom.
+
+“Oh, to be sure, yes, now I remember,” he said casually, and turned to
+take up pencil and paper on his desk. I looked about for a chair, but
+there was none near, so I remained standing, feeling something like a
+suspected man about to be examined by a magistrate.
+
+“What can you do?” he asked abruptly.
+
+“Well,” I stammered, utterly surprised at his rudeness and manner,
+“I’ve not had much experience yet, of course, but I’m willing to begin
+at the bottom and work up. I’ll do anything for a beginning.”
+
+“That’s what everyone says. ‘Doing anything’ is no good to me. I want
+to know what you _can_ do. All my clerks here write shorthand----”
+
+“I can write shorthand accurately and fast,” I hastened to interrupt,
+evidently to his surprise, as though he had not expected to find me
+thus equipped.
+
+“But at present,” he hastened to add, “there are no vacancies on my
+staff, and I fear I can offer you nothing unless----” he hesitated a
+moment and then looked me full in the face. This time there could be no
+mistake. I saw blood in his eye and I realized he was savagely angry
+with me for some reason, and was determined to make the interview as
+unpleasant for me as possible.
+
+“----unless you care to sling baggage on a side station up the line,”
+he finished sneeringly.
+
+The blood rushed to my face, and I understood in a flash that the
+interview was a farce and his only object to humiliate me. I had so far
+swallowed my temper on the chance of getting a position, but I knew
+that a post under such a man, who evidently hated me, would be worse
+than nothing. So I gave him one look from head to foot and turned to
+leave the room. I could have struck him in the jaw with the greatest
+pleasure in the world.
+
+“Then I understand you have no vacancies,” I said quietly as soon as I
+got to the door. “I will write and thank Sir George Stephen and tell
+him about your kindness to me.”
+
+I said this because it was the only thing that occurred to me to say,
+and not with the object of making him uncomfortable. I had no intention
+of putting my words into effect, I had no idea my stray shot would hit
+the mark.
+
+Yet it did. The official, purple, and dismayed, got up hastily, and
+called me to stay a moment and he would see if something was not
+possible. Hurried sentences followed me to the passage, but I merely
+bowed and went out, knowing perfectly well that nothing could come of
+further conversation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+Gradually, thus, contact with ordinary people and experiences with
+certain facets, at least, of practical life had begun to give me what
+is called a knowledge of the world. The hot-house upbringing made
+this acquisition difficult as well as painful; there still remained a
+feeling that I was “peculiar”; ignorance of things that to other youths
+of twenty-one were commonplaces still gave me little shocks. Knowledge
+that comes at the wrong time is apt to produce exaggerated effects; and
+only those who have shared the childlike shelter afforded by a strict
+evangelical enclosure in early years can appreciate the absurd want
+of proportion which is one of these effects. Knowledge of “natural”
+human kinds, withheld at the right moment, and acquired later, has its
+dangers....
+
+Two things, moreover, about people astonished me in particular,
+I remember; they astonish me even more to-day. Being, in both
+cases, merely individual reactions, to the herd, they are easily
+understandable, and are mentioned here because, being entirely
+personal, they reveal the individual whose adventures are described.
+
+The first--it astonished me daily, hourly--was the indifference of
+almost everybody to the great questions Whence, Why, Whither. The few
+who asked these questions seemed cranks of one sort or another; the
+immense majority of people showed no interest whatever. Creatures of
+extraordinary complexity, powers, faculties, set down for a given
+period, without being consulted apparently, upon a little planet amid
+countless numbers of majestic, terrifying suns ... few showed even the
+faintest interest in the purpose, origin and goal of their existence.
+Of these few, again, by far the majority were eager to prove that
+soul and spirit were chemical reactions, results of some fortuitous
+concourse of dead atoms, to rob life, in a word, of all its wonder.
+These problems of paramount, if insoluble, interest, were taken as a
+matter of course. There was, indeed, no sense of wonder.
+
+It astonished me, doubtless, because in my own case this was the only
+kind of knowledge I desired, and desired passionately. To me it was
+the only real knowledge, the only thing worth knowing.... And I was
+ever getting little shocks on discovering gradually that not only
+was such knowledge not wanted, but that to talk of its possibility
+constituted one a dreamer, if not a bore. How anybody in possession
+of ordinary faculties could look, say, at the night sky of stars,
+and not know the wondrous flood of divine curiosity about his own
+personal relation to the universe drench his being--this never ceased
+to perplex me. Yet with almost everybody, the few exceptions being
+usually “odd,” conversation rapidly flattened out as though such things
+were of no importance, while stocks and shares, some kind of practical
+“market-value,” at any rate, quickly became again the topic of real
+value. Not only, however, did this puzzle me; it emphasized at this
+time one’s sense of being peculiar; it sketched a growing loneliness
+in more definite outline. No one wanted to make some money more than
+I did, but these other things--one reason, doubtless, why I never did
+make money--came indubitably first.
+
+The second big and daily astonishment of those awakening years, which
+also has persisted, if not actually intensified, concerned the blank
+irresponsiveness to beauty of almost everybody I had to do with.
+Exceptions, again, were either cranks or useless, unpractical people,
+failures to a man. Many liked “scenery,” either perceiving it for
+themselves, or on having it pointed out to them; but very few, as
+with myself, knew their dominant mood of the day influenced--well,
+by a gleam of light upon the lake at dawn, a faint sound of music in
+the pines, a sudden strip of blue on a day of storm, the great piled
+coloured clouds at evening--“such clouds as flit, like splendour-winged
+moths about a taper, round the red west when the sun dies in it.”
+These things had an effect of intoxication upon me, for it was the
+wonder and beauty of Nature that touched me most; something like the
+delight of ecstasy swept over me when I read of sunrise in the Indian
+Caucasus.... “The point of one white star is quivering still, deep in
+the orange light of widening morn beyond the purple mountains ...” and
+it was a genuine astonishment to me that so few, so very few, felt the
+slightest response, or even noticed, a thousand and one details in sky
+and earth that delighted me with haunting joy for hours at a stretch.
+
+With Kay, my late “partner in booze,” as I had heard him called,
+there was sufficient response in these two particulars to make him a
+sympathetic companion. If these things were not of dominant importance
+to him, they were at least important. Humour and courage being likewise
+his, he proved a delightful comrade during our five months of lonely
+island life. What his view of myself may have been is hard to say;
+luckily perhaps, Kay was not a scribbler.... He will agree, I think,
+that we were certainly very happy in our fairyland of peace and
+loveliness amid the Muskoka Lakes of Northern Ontario.
+
+Our island, one of many in Lake Rosseau, was about ten acres in extent,
+irregularly shaped, overgrown with pines, its western end running out
+to a sharp ridge we called Sunset Point, its eastern end facing the
+dawn in a high rocky bluff. It rose in the centre to perhaps a hundred
+feet, it had little secret bays, pools of deep water beneath the rocky
+bluff for high diving, sandy nooks, and a sheltered cove where a boat
+could ride at anchor in all weathers. Close to the shore, but hidden
+by the pines, was a one-roomed hut with two camp-beds, a big table,
+a wide balcony, and a tiny kitchen in a shack adjoining. A canoe and
+rowing-boat went with the island, a diminutive wharf as well. On the
+mainland, a mile and a half to the north, was an English settler named
+Woods who had cleared the forest some twenty-five years before, and
+turned the wilderness into a more or less productive farm. Milk, eggs
+and vegetables we obtained from time to time. To the south and east
+and west lay open water for several miles, dotted by similar islands
+with summer camps and bungalows on them. The three big lakes--Rosseau,
+Muskoka and Joseph--form the letter Y, our island being where the three
+strokes joined.
+
+To me it was paradise, the nearest approach to a dream come true I had
+yet known. The climate was dry, sunny and bracing, the air clear as
+crystal, the nights cool. In moonlight the islands seemed to float upon
+the water, and when there was no moon the reflection of the stars had
+an effect of phosphorescence in some southern sea. Dawns and sunsets,
+too, were a constant delight, and before we left in late September
+we had watched through half the night the strange spectacle of the
+Northern Lights in all their rather awful splendour.
+
+The day we arrived--May 24th--a Scotch mist veiled all distant views,
+the island had a lonely and deserted air, a touch of melancholy about
+its sombre pines; and when the small steamer had deposited us with our
+luggage on the slippery wharf and vanished into the mist, I remember
+Kay’s disconsolate expression as he remarked gravely: “We shan’t stay
+_here_ long!” Our first supper deepened his conviction, for, though
+there were lamps, we had forgotten to bring oil, and we devoured bread
+and porridge quickly before night set in. It was certainly a contrast
+to the brilliantly lit corner of the Hub dining-room where we had eaten
+our last dinner.... But the following morning at six o’clock, after a
+bathe in the cool blue water, while a dazzling sun shone in a cloudless
+sky, he had already changed his mind. Our immediate past seemed hardly
+credible now. Jimmy Martin, the “Duke,” the Methodist woodcuts, the
+life insurance offices, to say nothing of the sporting goods emporium,
+red-bearded bailiffs, Alfred Cooper, and a furious half-intoxicated
+Irish cook--all faded into the atmosphere of some half-forgotten, ugly
+dream.
+
+We at once set our house in order. We had saved a small sum in cash
+from the general wreck; a little went a long way; pickerel were to
+be caught for the trouble of trolling a spoon-bait round the coast,
+and we soon discovered where the black bass hid under rocky ledges of
+certain pools. In a few weeks, too, we had learned to manage a canoe
+to the point of upsetting it far from shore, shaking it half-empty
+while treading water, then climbing in again--the point where safety,
+according to the Canadians, is attained. Even in these big lakes, it
+was rare that the water was too rough for going out, once the craft was
+mastered; a “Rice Lake” or “Peterborough,” as they were called, could
+face anything; a turn of the wrist could “lift” them; they answered the
+paddle like a living thing; a chief secret of control being that the
+kneeling occupant should feel himself actually a part of his canoe.
+This trifling knowledge, gained during our idle holiday, came in useful
+years later when taking a canoe down the Danube, from its source in the
+Black Forest, to Budapest.
+
+Time certainly never hung heavy on our hands. Before July, when the
+Canadians came up to their summer camps, we had explored every bay and
+inlet of the lakes, had camped out on many an enchanted island, and had
+made longer expeditions of several days at a time into the great region
+of backwoods that began due north. These trips, westward to Georgian
+Bay with its thousand islands, on Lake Huron, or northward beyond
+French River, where the primeval backwoods begin their unbroken stretch
+to James Bay and the Arctic, were a source of keen joy. Our cooking
+was perhaps primitive, but we kept well on it. With books, a fiddle,
+expeditions, to say nothing of laundry and commissariat work, the days
+passed rapidly. Kay was very busy, too, “preparing for the stage,” as
+he called it, and Shakespeare was always in his hand or pocket. The
+eastern end of the island was reserved for these rehearsals, while
+the Sunset Point end was my especial part, and while I was practising
+the fiddle or deep in my Eastern books, Kay, at the other point of
+the island, high on his rocky bluff, could be heard sometimes booming
+“The world is out of joint. Oh cursed fate that I was born to set it
+right,” and I was convinced that he wore his Irving wig, no matter what
+lines he spouted. In the evenings, as we lay after supper at Sunset
+Point, watching the colours fade and the stars appear, it was the
+exception if he did not murmur to himself “... the stars came out, over
+that summer sea,” and then declaim in his great voice the whole of “The
+_Revenge_” which ends “I, Sir Richard Grenville, die!”--his tall figure
+silhouetted against the sunset, his voice echoing among the pines
+behind him.
+
+Considerations for the future were deliberately shelved; we lived
+in the present, as wise men should; New York, we knew, lay waiting
+for us, but we agreed to let it wait. My father’s suggestion--“your
+right course is to return to Toronto, find work, and live down your
+past”--was a counsel of perfection I disregarded. New York, the busy,
+strenuous, go-ahead United States, offered the irresistible lure of
+a promised land, and we both meant to try our fortunes there. How
+we should reach it, or what we should do when we did reach it, were
+problems whose solution was postponed.
+
+On looking back I can only marvel at the patience with which neither
+tired of the other. Perhaps it was perfect health that made squabbles
+so impossible. Nor was there any hint of monotony, strange to say. We
+had many an escape, upsetting in wild weather, losing our way in the
+trackless forests of the mainland, climbing or felling trees, but some
+Pan-like deity looked after us.... The spirit of Shelley, of course,
+haunted me day and night; “Prometheus Unbound,” pages of which I knew
+by heart, lit earth and sky, peopled the forests, turned stream and
+lake alive, and made every glade and sandy bay a floor for dancing
+silvery feet: “Oh, follow, follow, through the caverns hollow; As the
+song floats thou pursue, Where the wild bee never flew....” I still
+hear Kay’s heavy voice, a little out of tune, singing to my fiddle the
+melody I made for it. And how he used to laugh! Always at himself, but
+also at and with most other things, an infectious, jolly wholesome
+laughter, inspired by details of our care-free island life, from his
+beard and Shakespeare rehearsals to my own whiskers and uncut hair, my
+Shelley moods and my intense Yoga experiments....
+
+Much of the charm of our lonely life vanished when, with high summer,
+the people came up to their camps and houses on the other islands. The
+solitude was then disturbed by canoes, sailing-boats, steam-launches;
+singing and shouting broke the deep silences; camp-fires in a dozen
+directions blazed at night. Many of these people we had known well in
+Toronto, but no one called on us. Sometimes we would paddle to some
+distant camp-fire, lying on the water just outside the circle of light,
+and recognizing acquaintances, even former customers of Hub and Dairy
+and the Sporting Goods Emporium, but never letting ourselves be seen.
+Everybody knew we were living on the island; yet avoidance was mutual.
+We were in disgrace, it seemed, and chiefly because of the Hub--not
+because of our conduct with regard to it, but, apparently, because we
+had left the town suddenly without saying good-bye to all and sundry.
+This abrupt disappearance had argued something wrong, something we
+were ashamed of. All manner of wild tales reached us, most of them
+astonishingly remote from the truth.
+
+This capacity for invention and imaginative detail of most ingenious
+sort, using the tiniest insignificant item of truth as starting point,
+suggests that even the dullest people must have high artistic faculties
+tucked away somewhere in them. Many of these tales we traced to
+their source--usually a person the world considered devoid of fancy,
+even dull. Here, evidently, possessing genuine creative power, were
+unpublished novelists with distinct gifts of romance and fantasy who
+had missed their real vocation. The truth about us was, indeed, far
+from glorious, but these wild tales made us feel almost supermen. Many
+years later I met other instances of this power that dull, even stupid
+people could keep carefully hidden till the right opportunity for
+production offers--I was credited, to name the best, with superhuman
+powers of Black Magic, whatever that may be, and of sorcery. It was
+soon after a book of mine, “John Silence,” had appeared. A story
+reached my ears, the name of its author boldly given, to the effect
+that, for the purposes of this Black Magic, I had stolen the vases from
+the communion altar of St. Paul’s Cathedral and used their consecrated
+content in some terrible orgy called the Black Mass. Young children,
+too, were somehow involved in this ceremony of sacrilegious sorcery,
+and I was going to be arrested. The author of this novelette was well
+known to me, connected even by blood ties, a person I had always
+conceived to be without the faintest of imaginative gifts, though a
+credulous reader, evidently, of the mediæval tales concerning the
+monstrous Gilles de Rais. Absurd as it sounds, a solicitor’s letter
+was necessary finally to limit the author’s prolific output, although
+pirated editions continued to sell for a considerable time. There is a
+poet hidden, as Stevenson observed, in most of us!
+
+Meanwhile, summer began to wane; we considered plans for attacking
+New York; hope rose strongly in us both; disappointments and failures
+were forgotten. In so big a city we were certain to find work. We
+had a hundred dollars laid aside for the journey and to tide us over
+the first few days until employment came. We could not hide for ever
+in fairyland. Life called to us.... Late in September, just when the
+lakes were beginning to recover their first solitude again, we packed
+up to leave. Though the sun was still hot at midday, the mornings and
+evenings were chill, and cold winds had begun to blow. The famous fall
+colouring had set fire to the woods; the sumach blazed a gorgeous red,
+the maples were crimson and gold, half of the mainland seemed in flame.
+Sorrowfully, yet with eager anticipation in our hearts, we poured water
+on our camp-fire that had served us for five months without relighting,
+locked the door of the shanty, handed over to Woods the canoe and boat,
+and caught the little steamer on one of its last trips to Gravenhurst
+where the train would take us, _via_ Toronto, to New York.
+
+It had been a delightful experience; I had seen and known at last the
+primeval woods; I had even seen Red Indians by the dozen in their
+pathetic Reservations, and if they did not, like the spirit of the
+Medicine Man in Edinburgh, advise me to “scratch,” they certainly made
+up for the omission by constantly scratching themselves. It seems
+curious to me now that, during those months of happy leisure, the
+desire to write never once declared itself. It never occurred to me
+to write even a description of our picturesque way of living, much
+less to attempt an essay or a story. Nor did plans for finding work in
+New York--we discussed them by the score--include in their wonderful
+variety any suggestion of a pen and paper. At the age of twenty-two,
+literary ambition did not exist at all.
+
+The Muskoka interlude remained for me a sparkling, radiant memory,
+alight with the sunshine of unclouded skies, with the gleam of stars
+in a blue-black heaven, swept by forest winds, and set against a
+background of primeval forests that stretched without a break for six
+hundred miles of lonely and untrodden beauty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Kay and I arrived in New York on a crisp, sunny afternoon with sixty
+dollars in hand out of the original hundred set by for the purpose,
+and took a room in the Imperial Hotel, Broadway, which someone had
+recommended. We knew no one, had no letters of introduction. We were
+tanned the colour of Red Indians, in perfect physical condition, but
+with a very scanty wardrobe.
+
+The furious turmoil of the noisy city, boiling with irrepressible
+energies, formed an odd contrast to the peace and stillness of the
+forests. There was indifference in both cases, but whereas there it
+was tolerant and kindly, here it seemed intolerant and aggressive.
+“Get a hustle on, or get out,” was the note. Nature welcomed, while
+human nature resented, the intrusion of two new atoms. Nostalgia for
+the woods swept over me vehemently, but at the same time an eager
+anticipation to get work. We studied the papers at once for rooms,
+choosing a boarding house in East 19th Street, between Broadway and
+4th Avenue. Something in the wording caught us. An hour after our
+arrival we interviewed Mrs. Bernstein and engaged the third floor
+back, breakfast included, for eight dollars a week. It was cheap. The
+slovenly, emotional, fat Jewess, with her greasy locks, jewellery, and
+tawdry finery, had something motherly about her that appealed. She
+smiled. She did not ask for payment in advance.
+
+“What’s your work,” she inquired, gazing up at me.
+
+“Oh, I’m going on the newspapers,” I said offhand, taking the first
+idea that offered, but little dreaming it was to prove true.
+
+“I shall be on the stage,” Kay promptly added, “as soon as my
+arrangements are made.”
+
+Mrs. Bernstein smiled. She knew the power of the Press and favoured
+reporters. “My hospand,” she informed Kay sympathetically, “is an
+artist too, a moosician. He has his own orghestra.”
+
+While Kay studied the theatrical papers, I took the elevated railway
+down-town. I wanted to stand on Brooklyn Bridge again. Since first
+seeing it with my father a few years before, and again on my arrival
+eighteen months ago, _en route_ for Toronto, the place had held my
+imagination. Something sentimental lay in this third journey, for I
+wanted to go alone.
+
+Halfway across, at the highest point, I stood looking down upon the
+great waterway between the two cities of the new world, and the feeling
+of a fresh chapter in life, with its inevitable comparisons, rose in
+me.... The sun was sinking behind the hills of New Jersey, and the
+crowded bay lay a sheet of golden shimmer. Huge, double-ended ferry
+boats, plying between the wooded shores of Staten and Manhattan Islands
+and Brooklyn, rushed to and fro with great snortings and hootings;
+little tugs dashed in every direction with vast importance; sailboats,
+yachts, schooners and cat-boats dotted the water like a thousand living
+things; and threading majestically through them all steamed one or two
+impressive Atlantic liners, immense and castle-like, towering above all
+else, as they moved slowly out toward the open sea. The deep poetry
+which ever frames the most prosaic things, lending them their real
+significance, came over me with the wind from that open sea.
+
+I stood watching the fading lights beyond the bay, while behind me the
+crowded trains, at the rate of one a minute, passed thundering across
+the bridge, and thousands upon thousands of tired workers thronged to
+their Brooklyn homes after their day in the bigger city. The great
+bridge swayed and throbbed as the dense masses of pedestrians climbed
+uphill to the centre, then swarmed in a thick black river down the
+nether slope. I had never seen such numbers, or such speed of nervous
+movement, and the eager, tense faces, usually strained, white, drawn
+as well, touched an unpleasant note. New York, I felt, was not to be
+trifled with; the human element was strenuously keen; no loafing
+or dreaming here; work to the last ounce, or the city would make
+cat’s meat of one! Whereupon, by contrast, stole back again the deep
+enchantment of the silent woods, and the longing for the great, still
+places rose; I saw our little island floating beneath glittering stars;
+a loon was laughing farther out; the Northern Lights went flashing
+to mid-heaven; there was a sound of wind among the pines. The huge
+structure that reared above me seemed unreal; the river of men and
+women slipped past like silent shadows; the trains and boats became
+remote and hushed; and the ugly outer world about me merged in the
+substance of a dream and was forgotten....
+
+I turned and looked out over New York. I saw its lofty spires, its
+massed buildings, gigantic in the sky; I saw the opening of the great
+Hudson River, and the darkening water of the bay; I heard, like a
+sinister multiple voice out of the future, the strident cry of this
+wonderful and terrible capital of the New World, and the deep pulsings
+of its engines of frantic haste and untiring energy. The general
+note, I remember, was alarming rather; a touch of loneliness, of my
+own stupid incompetence to deal with its aggressive spirit, in which
+gleamed something merciless, almost cruel--this was the response it
+stirred in me. I suddenly realized I had no trade, no talents to sell,
+no weapons with which to fight. My heart sank a little. Among these
+teeming millions, with their tearing speed, their frenzied energy,
+their appalling practical knowledge, I possessed but one friend, Kay,
+and some sixty dollars between us. New York would eat me up unless I
+“got a hustle on.”
+
+Next morning, our capital much reduced, we moved into the lodging
+house. The idea of sharing a bed, in view of our size and the
+narrowness of the bed, amused us, but without enthusiasm. The sofa was
+too small to sleep on. “We’ll move,” announced Kay, “as soon as we get
+jobs.” A telegram was sent to Toronto giving our address, and a few
+days later a packing case arrived with our Toronto possessions, and
+ten dollars to pay out of our small total. We found close at hand, in
+20th Street, a cheap clean German restaurant--Krisch’s--where a meal of
+sorts could be had for 30 cents, tip 5 cents; it had a sanded floor and
+was half _bier-stube_, and one of its smiling waiters, Otto--he came
+from the Black Forest where I had been to school--proved a true friend
+later, allowing us occasional credit at his own risk; a Chinese laundry
+was looked up in Fourth Avenue; I spent one of our precious dollars in
+a small store of fiddle strings against a possible evil day--a string
+meant more to me than a steak--and we were then ready for our campaign.
+
+Not a minute was lost. Kay, in very sanguine mood, the Irving wig, I
+shrewdly suspected, in his pocket, went out to interview managers;
+while I took a train down-town to interview Harper’s, as being the
+most important publishing house I knew. This step was the result of
+many discussions with Kay, who said he was sure I could write. The Red
+Indian advice of the Edinburgh “spirit” had impressed him. “That’s
+your line,” he assured me. “Try the magazines.” I felt no similar
+assurance, no desire to write was in me; we had worked ourselves up to
+a conviction that bold, immediate action was the first essential of
+our position; to get pupils for my two languages or shorthand seemed
+impossible in a city like New York; therefore I hurried down, with
+vague intentions but a high heart, to Harper’s.
+
+There was the _Magazine_, the _Weekly_, and _Harper’s Young People_.
+One of them surely would listen to my tale. I chose the _Weekly_ for
+some unknown reason. For some equally unknown reason I was admitted to
+the editor’s sanctum, and, still more strange, Richard Harding Davis
+listened to my tale. His success as a novelist had just begun; he had
+left the _Evening Sun_, where his “Van Bibber” stories had made him
+first known; his popularity was rising fast, though I had never heard
+of him.
+
+My tale was brief, having been rehearsed in the train. It took,
+perhaps, three minutes at most to rattle it off--my parentage, my farm
+and hotel, my interest in Eastern Thought, my present destitution, and
+I remember adding, “You see, I cannot possibly go home to England
+again until I have made good somehow.”
+
+“Have you written anything?” he asked, after listening patiently with
+raised eyebrows.
+
+“Well--no, I haven’t, not yet, I’m afraid.” I explained that I wanted
+to begin, though what I really wanted was only paid employment.
+
+The author of “Van Bibber” and “A Soldier of Fortune” looked me up and
+down and then chuckled. After a moment’s silence, he got up, led me
+across the hall to another door, opened it without knocking and said to
+a man who was seated at a table smothered in papers:
+
+“This is Mr. Blackwood, an Englishman, who wants to write something for
+you. He is prepared to write anything--from Eastern philosophy to ‘How
+to run a hotel in Canada.’”
+
+The door closed behind me, with no word of farewell, and I learned
+that the man facing me was the editor of _Harper’s Young People_. His
+name, if I remember rightly, was Storey, and he was an Englishman,
+who, curiously enough, almost at once mentioned my father. He had been
+an employé of the G.P.O. in London. He was unpleasant, supercilious,
+patronizing and off-hand, proud of his editorial power. He gave me,
+however, my first assignment--to write a short, descriptive article
+about a cargo of wild animals that had just arrived for the New York
+“Zoo.” I hurried off to the steamer, bought some paper, wrote the
+article in a pew of Trinity Church in Lower Broadway, and returned
+three hours later to submit it. Storey read it and said without
+enthusiasm it would do, but when I asked “Is it good?” he shook his
+head with the comment “Well--some men would have made more of it
+perhaps.” It was printed, however, and in due course I got ten dollars
+for it. I inquired if I could do something else. He took my address.
+No further results followed. Evidently, I realized, writing was not my
+line, and both Kay and the Red Indian Medicine Man were mistaken.
+
+Kay’s report of his luck, when we met again that evening was meagre;
+he had met an English Shakespearean actor, Bob Mantell, and a Toronto
+acquaintance, the “Duke.” The actor, however, had given him an
+introduction or two, and the Duke had asked us to play next day in a
+cricket match on Staten Island. It was an eleven of Actors _v._ the
+Staten Island Club, and Kay would meet useful people. In sanguine mood
+we agreed to go. It proved a momentous match for me.
+
+Before it came off, however, something else had happened that may seem
+very small beer, but that provided me with a recurrent horror for many
+months to come, a horror perhaps disproportionate to its cause. It
+filled me, at any rate, with a peculiar loathing as of some hideous
+nightmare. I had never seen the things before; their shape, their
+ungainly yet rapid movement, their uncanny power of disappearing in a
+second, their number, their dirty colour, above all their smell, now
+gave me the sensations of acute nausea. Kay’s laughter, though he too
+felt disgust and indignation, brought no comfort. We eventually got
+up and lit the gas. We caught it. I had my first view of the beast.
+We stared at each other in horror. Then Kay sniffed the air. “That
+explains it,” he said, referring to a faint odour of oil we had both
+noticed when engaging the room. “They put it in the woodwork to kill
+them,” he added. “It’s the only thing. But it never really gets rid of
+them, I’m afraid.”
+
+The anger of Mrs. Bernstein when we accused her in the morning, her
+indignant denials, her bluster about “insoults,” and that “never had
+sooch a t’ing been said of her house pefore,” were not half as comic as
+her expression when I suddenly produced the soap-dish with its damning
+evidence--17 all told.
+
+She stared, held her breath a second, then very quietly said “Ach, Ach!
+If you stay, chentelmen, I take von tollar off the price.”
+
+It was impossible not to laugh with her; there was something kind
+and motherly, something good and honest and decent about her we both
+liked; she would do her best, we believed; possibly she really would
+exterminate the other tenants. We stayed on.
+
+Of the cricket match on Staten Island, beyond the pretty ground with
+its big trees, and that we got a good lunch without paying for it,
+no memory remains. What stands out vividly is the tall figure of
+Arthur Glyn Boyde, a fast bowler and a good bat, and one of the most
+entertaining and sympathetic companions I had ever met. His clothes
+were shabby, but his graceful manners, his voice, his smile, everything
+about him, in fact, betrayed the English gentleman. He was about thirty
+years of age, of the most frank and engaging appearance, with kindly,
+honest blue eyes, in one of which he wore an eyeglass. I remember the
+little fact that he, Kay and myself were measured for a bet after the
+match, and that he, like Kay, was six feet two inches, being one inch
+shorter than myself.
+
+I took to him at once, and he to me. His real name was a distinguished
+one which he shared, it turned out, with some cousins of my own. We
+were, therefore, related. The bond was deepened. Times had gone hard
+with him, it seemed, but at the moment he was on the stage, being
+understudy to Morton Selton as Merivale in “Captain Lettarblair,” which
+E. H. Sothern’s company was then playing. In “The Disreputable Mr.
+Reagen,” by, I think, Richard Harding Davis he had also played the rôle
+of the detective. He was waiting, however, for a much better post, as
+huntsman to the Rockaway Hunt, a Long Island fashionable club, and this
+post, oddly enough, was in the gift, he told me, of Davis. It had been
+practically promised to him, he might hear any day.... The story of his
+many jobs and wanderings interested us, and his theatre work promised
+to be helpful in many ways to what was called my “room-mate.” Boyde’s
+experience of New York generally was invaluable to us both, and the
+fact that he had nowhere to sleep that night (having been turned out
+by his landlady) gave us the opportunity to invite him to our humble
+quarters. We mentioned the other tenants, but he said that made no
+difference, he would sleep on the sofa. He dined with us at Krisch’s;
+he was extremely hard up; luckily, we still had enough to invite a
+friend. His only luggage was a small bag, for he told us, with a rueful
+smile, that his clothes were all in pawn. I had an extra suit or two
+which, being of about my size, he was able to wear.
+
+I felt immensely drawn to him, and his story touched my pity as well
+as stirred my admiration. It was a happy evening we all spent in the
+little bedroom, for he was not only well-read--he knew my various
+“Eastern books” and could talk about them interestingly--but had a
+fine tenor voice into the bargain. My fiddle came out of its case, and
+if the other lodgers disliked our duets, they did not, at any rate,
+complain. Boyde sang, he further told us, in the choir of the 2nd
+Avenue Baptist Church, and was assistant organist there as well, but
+made little out of this latter job, as he was only called upon when the
+other man was unable to attend. He even taught sometimes in the Sunday
+School--“to keep in the pastor’s good books,” as he explained with a
+laugh. But the chief thing he told us that night was the heartening
+information that, when all other chances failed, there was always a
+fair living to be earned by posing to artists at 50 cents an hour, or a
+dollar and a half for a full sitting of three hours. It was easy work
+and not difficult to get. He would gladly introduce us to the various
+studios, as soon as they opened, most of the artists being still in the
+country.
+
+The search for work was a distressing business, when to the inevitable
+question “What can you do?” the only possible, but quite futile, reply
+was, “I’ll do anything.” I had collected the ten dollars from _Harper’s
+Young People_, but a letter to Storey for more work brought no reply.
+The payment for the Toronto packing-case and for a week’s rent of the
+rooms had reduced the exchequer so seriously that in a few days there
+was only the _Harper’s_ money in hand. Boyde, who stayed on at our
+urgent invitation, shared all he earned, and taught us, besides, the
+trick of using the free lunch-counters in hotels and saloons. For a
+glass of beer at five cents, a customer could eat such snacks as salted
+chip-potatoes, strips of spiced liver sausage, small squares of bread,
+and pungent almonds, all calculated to stimulate unnatural thirst. The
+hotels provided more sumptuous dishes, though the price of drink was
+higher, and the calm way Boyde would help himself deliberately to a
+plate and fork, with an ample supply of the best food he could find,
+then carry it all back to his glass of lager under the bar-tender’s
+very nose, was an ideal we could only hope to achieve by practice as
+long as his own. It was a question of nerve. Our midday meal was now
+invariably of this kind. The free lunch brigade, to which we belonged,
+was tolerantly treated by the majority of bar-tenders. A thirty cents
+dinner at Krisch’s in the evening, choosing the most bulky dishes,
+ended the long tiring day of disappointing search. Boyde also made us
+buy oatmeal, with tin pot and fixture for cooking over the gas-jet. He
+was invaluable in a dozen ways, always cheery, already on the right
+side of Mrs. Bernstein, and turning up every evening with a dollar or
+two he had earned during the day.
+
+He further taught us--the moment had come, he thought--to pawn. The
+packing-case in the basement was opened and rummaged through (a
+half-used cheque-book from Toronto days was a pathetic relic!) for
+things on which Ikey of 3rd Avenue might offer a few dollars. The
+tennis cups, won at little Canadian tournaments, seemed attractive, he
+thought, but our English overcoats would fetch most money. The weather
+was still comfortable ... we sallied forth, hoping Mrs. Bernstein would
+not see us, carrying two tennis cups and a couple of good overcoats.
+Everybody stared and grinned, it seemed, though actually of course,
+no one gave us a glance. Boyde, humming Lohengrin, was absolutely
+nonchalant. For me, the pawnbroker’s door provided sensations similar
+to those I knew when first entering the Hub just a year before.
+
+“I want ten dollars on these,” said Boyde, in a firm voice. “What’ll
+you give? I shall take ’em out next week.”
+
+The Jew behind the counter gave one glance at the tennis cups, then
+pushed them contemptuously aside; the overcoats he examined carefully,
+holding them up to the light for holes or threadbare patches, feeling
+the linings, turning the sleeves inside out.
+
+“Good English cloth,” mentioned Boyde. “Hardly used at all.”
+
+“A dollar each,” said the man, laying them down as though the deal was
+finished. He turned to make out the tickets. He had not looked at us
+once yet.
+
+Boyde picked them up and turned to go. “Two dollars,” he said flatly,
+“I can get five in 4th Avenue.”
+
+“Go ged it,” was the reply, the man’s back still turned on us.
+
+Boyde gave a cheery laugh. “Make it three dollars for the two,” he
+suggested in an off-hand manner, “with another couple for the cups.
+They’re prizes. We wouldn’t lose them for worlds.”
+
+The man looked at us for the first time; we were fairly well dressed,
+obviously English, three hulking customers of a type he was not used
+to. Perhaps he really believed we might redeem the cups one day. “Worth
+less than nozzing,” he said in his Yiddish accent. The keen, appraising
+look he gave us made me feel even less than that.
+
+“Worth a lot to us, though,” came Boyde’s quick comment.
+
+“Name?” queried the man, bending over a table with his back turned
+again.
+
+“John Doe,” came promptly, and a moment later, with the ticket, the
+Jew handed out four dirty dollar bills and fifty cents in coin. The
+interest was twelve per cent. per month, and the articles could be
+redeemed any time up to the end of a year.
+
+“Never ask more than you really need at the moment,” was Boyde’s advice
+as we came out into the street. “I could have raised him a few dollars
+probably, but, remember, you’ll have to get the coats out again before
+long.”
+
+When we got back to the room a Western Union telegram lay on the table
+for him; it was from Davis: “Please call to-morrow 3 o’clock without
+fail _re_ Rockaway,” it read. And hope ran high. That night we spent
+half of our new money at Krisch’s, giving a tip of thirty cents to
+Otto....
+
+Some ten days to a fortnight had passed, and October with its cooler
+winds had come, though life was still possible without overcoats. Our
+dress-clothes were now in Ikey’s, moth-balls beside them. The Chinese
+laundry had been paid, but not the second week’s rent, for money was
+very low and dinners of the smallest. Practice at the free lunch
+counters had improved our methods of strolling up absent-mindedly,
+perceiving the food apparently for the first time, then picking up with
+quick fingers the maximum quantity. Kay, meanwhile, had secured a part
+in a touring company which was to start out for a series of one-night
+stands in about three weeks, his salary of fifteen dollars to begin
+with the first night. He was already rehearsing. My own efforts had
+produced nothing. Boyde, too, had not yet landed his huntsman job,
+which was to include comfortable quarters as well as a good salary. I
+had been down with him when he went to see Davis, waiting in the street
+till he came out, and the interview, though reassuring, he told me,
+involved a little further delay still. He, therefore, continued his odd
+jobs, calling at the theatre every night and matinée to see if he was
+wanted, playing the organ in church occasionally, and getting a small
+fee for singing in the choir. He shared with us as we shared with him;
+he slept on the sofa in our room; he was welcome to wear my extra suits
+of clothes--until Ikey might care to see them.
+
+Then, quite suddenly, fate played a luckier card.
+
+Kay and I were at the free lunch counter of the Fifth Avenue Hotel,
+Boyde having been called away to do something at his Baptist church,
+when Bob Mantell strolled up, bringing a tall, grey-haired man with
+him. The next minute he was introducing me to Cecil Clay, with a
+remark to the effect that he must surely have known my father, and
+that I surely must know Mr. Clay’s famous book on whist. Cecil Clay,
+anyhow, was a kindly old Englishman, and evidently was aware how the
+land lay with us, for a few minutes later he had given me a card to
+Laffan, manager of the _New York Sun_. “Go and see him the day after
+to-morrow,” he said. “Meanwhile I’ll write him a line about you.”
+
+Had it been possible to go then and there I should have felt more
+confidence and less nervousness than when I called at the appointed
+hour. The interval, with its hopeful anticipation and alternate dread,
+was a bad preparation for appearing at my best. After a few questions,
+however, Mr. Laffan, a man of very powerful position in the newspaper
+world, a great art collector and connoisseur, head, too, of the Laffan
+News Bureau, said that Mr. McCloy, managing editor of the _Evening
+Sun_, would give me a trial as a reporter, and I could start next
+Monday--four days away--at fifteen dollars a week. I had mentioned that
+I knew French and German, and could write shorthand. He spoke to me in
+both languages, but, luckily, he did not think of testing the speed and
+accuracy of my self-taught Pitman.
+
+On the staff of a great New York newspaper! That it was anti-British
+and pro-Tammany did not bother me. A reporter! A starting salary of
+£3 a week that might grow! I wrote the news to my father that very
+afternoon, and that night Kay, Boyde and I had almost a festive dinner
+at Krisch’s restaurant--that is, we ended with sweets and coffee. The
+following day I spent practising my rusty shorthand, about 90 words
+a minute being my best speed consistent with legibility. Would it
+be fast enough? I might have spared myself the trouble for all the
+use shorthand was to me on the _Evening Sun_ during the two years I
+remained with it. Only once--much later, when I was with the _New
+York Times_, did it prove of value, securing for me on that occasion
+an increase of salary.... The slogan of the _Sun_, printed on each
+copy was, “If you See it in the _Sun_ it is so!” accuracy the strong
+point. The _Times_ preferred a moral tinge: “All the News that’s Fit to
+Print.” Both mottoes were faithfully observed and rigidly practised.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+If any young man learning values wants to know the quickest way to
+study the seamy side of life, to understand the darkest aspects of
+human nature, and incidentally, to risk the loss of every illusion
+he ever had, let him become a reporter on an up-to-date New York
+newspaper. Within six months he will be apt to believe that every man
+has his price; he will become acquainted with vice, crime, horror,
+terror, and every kind of human degradation; theft, murder, arson will
+seem commonplaces, forgery a very ordinary affair; men and women,
+it may even seem to him, “go straight,” not because of any inherent
+principle of goodness in them, but because that degree of temptation
+which constitutes their particular “price” has not yet offered itself.
+
+Passion of every type, abnormal, often incredible, will be his daily
+study; if he reflects a little he will probably reach the conclusion
+that either jealousy in some form, or greed for money, lie at the
+root of every crime that is ever committed. The overwhelming power of
+these two passions will startle him, at any rate, and his constant
+association with only one aspect of life, and that the worst and
+lowest, will probably produce the conviction that, given only the
+opportunity, everybody is bad. His conception of women may suffer in
+particular. The experience, contrariwise, may widen his tolerance and
+deepen his charity; also, it may leave him as it left me, with an
+ineradicable contempt for those who, born in ease, protected from the
+temptations due to poverty and misery, so carelessly condemn the weak,
+the criminal and the outcast.
+
+With bigger experience may come, in time, a better view; equally, it
+may never come. Proportion is not so easily recovered, for the mind,
+at an impressionable age, has been deeply marked. The good, the
+beautiful, the lovely, in a New York paper, is very rarely “news”; it
+is considered as fake, bunkum, humbug, a pose; it is looked at askance,
+regarded with suspicion, as assumed by someone for the purpose of a
+“deal”; it is rarely worth its space, at any rate. A reporter finds
+himself in a cynical school; he is lucky if he escape in the end with a
+single rag of illusion to his back. If he has believed, up to the age
+of twenty-one, as I did, that the large majority of people are decent,
+kindly, honest folk, he will probably lose even that last single rag.
+On the _Evening Sun_, certainly, it was not the good, the beautiful,
+the clean, that constituted the most interesting news and got scare
+headlines and extra editions. I give, of course, merely the impression
+made upon my own mind and type, coloured as these were, some thirty
+years ago, by a characteristically ignorant and innocent upbringing....
+
+The important newspapers, in those days, were all “down town,” grouped
+about Park Row, and the shabby, tumble-down building of the _Sun_
+was not imposing. The World and Times towered above it; the _Morning
+Advertiser_, the _Evening Telegram_, even the _Recorder_ were better
+housed; the _Journal_ had not yet brought W. R. Hearst’s methods from
+San Francisco. For all its humble offices, the _Sun_ was, perhaps, the
+greatest power in the city. It was openly Tammany; it had a grand,
+courageous editor, Charles A. Dana. “Charles A.” was an imposing
+figure, a man of immense ability, a “crank” perhaps in certain ways,
+but a respected chief of outstanding character and fearless policy....
+My own chief, however, was W. C. McCloy, and the offices where he
+reigned as managing editor were housed on the top floor of the rickety
+building, with the machinery making such a din and roar and clatter
+that we had to shout to make ourselves heard at all. Metal sheets
+that clanged and pinged as we walked on them covered the floors. It
+was amid this pandemonium I had my first interview with him. An iron
+spiral staircase led from the quiet workrooms of the _Morning Sun_, on
+the first floor, to the dark, low-ceilinged space, where the whirring
+printing presses were not even partitioned off from the tables of
+editorial departments or reporters. It was like a factory going at full
+speed. Hours were 8.30 A.M. to 6.30 P.M., or later if an extra--a 6th
+or 7th--edition was called for. I arrived at 8.15.
+
+In a dark corner of this machinery shop I introduced myself with
+trepidation to McCloy, mentioning Mr. Laffan’s name, and saw the blank
+look come and go, as he stared at me with “Blackwood, Blackwood?...
+Oh, yes, I remember! You’re fifteen dollars a week. A Britisher from
+Canada.... Well, you’ll have to look lively here!” He seemed so
+intensely busy and preoccupied, his mind so charged with a sort of
+electric activity, that I wondered he had time to open and shut his
+mouth. A small, thin man, with the slightest of frail bodies, nervous,
+delicately shaped hands, gimlet eyes that pierced, a big head with
+protruding forehead, a high-pitched, twanging voice that penetrated
+easily above the roar of the machinery, and a general air of such
+lightning speed and such popping, spitting energy that I felt he might
+any moment flash into flame or burst with a cracking report into a
+thousand pieces--this was the man on whom my living depended for many
+months to come. The phrase “New York hustler,” darted across my mind;
+it stood in the flesh before me; he lived on wires. Buried among this
+mechanic perfection, however, I caught, odd to relate, an incongruous
+touch--of kindness, even of tenderness. There were gentle lines in that
+electric face. He had a smile I liked.
+
+“What are you out here for? Where have you come from? What have
+you been doing? What d’you know?” he asked with the rapidity of a
+machine-gun. The shorthand rate must have been 400 words per minute.
+
+I never talked so quickly in my life as in my brief reply. I watched
+the smile come and go. While he listened, he was shouting instructions
+to reporters then streaming in, to office boys, to printers, to
+sub-editors; but his eyes never left my face, and when I had finished
+my lightning sketch, the machine-gun crackled with its deadliest aim
+again: “Only _one_ thing counts here; get the news and get it _quick_;
+method of no consequence. Get the news and get it _first_!” He darted
+off, for the first edition went to press at 10.30. As he went, however,
+he turned his head a moment. “Write a story,” he backfired at me.
+“Write your experiences--From Methodism to Running a Saloon,”--and he
+vanished amid the whirling machinery in the back of the great room.
+
+I have the pleasantest recollections of W. C. McCloy; he was just,
+fair, sympathetic, too, when time permitted; he showed me many
+little kindnesses; he was Presbyterian, his parents Scotch; he was
+also--sober. I proved a poor reporter, and my salary remained at
+fifteen dollars all the time I was with the paper, yet once he kept
+a place open for me for many weeks; he even took me back when the
+consideration was hardly deserved.
+
+That first day, however, I spent on tenterhooks, fully expecting to be
+“fired” at its end. I found a corner at the big reporters’ table, and,
+having seized some “copy” paper from the general pile, I sat down to
+write “From Methodism to Running a Saloon,” without the faintest idea
+of how to do it. A dozen reporters sat scribbling near me, but no one
+paid me the smallest attention. They came and went; at another table
+Cooper, the City Editor (anglice news-editor) issued the assignments;
+the editorial writers arrived and sat at their little desks apart; the
+roar and pandemonium were indescribable; the first edition was going
+to press, with McCloy in a dozen places at once, but chiefly watching
+the make-up over the shoulders of the type-setters in the back of the
+room.... I wrote on and on; I believed it was rather good; no one came
+to stop me, no one looked at my “copy” or told me what length was
+wanted; once or twice, McCloy, flashing by, caught my eye, but with
+a glance that suggested he didn’t know who I was, why I was there at
+all, or what I was writing.... The hours passed; the first edition
+was already out; the reporters were reading hurriedly their own work
+in print, delighted if it was on the front page; the space-men were
+measuring the columns to see how much they had earned; and the make-up
+for the second edition, out at noon, was being hastened on behind the
+buzzing machinery in the rear.
+
+By this time I must have written two columns at least, and I began to
+wonder. Perhaps I was to appear in the principal final edition at six
+o’clock! On the front page! The article, evidently, was considered
+important! The notion that I was making a fool of myself, being made
+a fool of, rather, also occurred to me. I wrote on and on ... it was
+hunger finally that stopped me. I was famished. I turned to an albino
+reporter next me, a mere boy, whose peculiarity had earned him the
+nickname “Whitey.” Was I allowed to go out for lunch? “Just tell Cooper
+you’re going,” he replied. “Come out with me,” he added, “if you’ve
+finished your story. I’m going in a moment.” I finished my “story”
+then and there, putting the circle with three dots in it which, he
+explained, meant _finis_ to the printers. “Just hand it in to Cooper,
+and we’ll get right out,” he said. I obeyed, Cooper taking my pile of
+“copy” with a grin, and merely nodding his head when I mentioned lunch.
+He was a young man with thick curly black hair, big spectacles that
+magnified his good-natured eyes, only slightly less rapid and electric
+than McCloy, but yet so unsure of himself that the reporters soon found
+him out--and treated him accordingly. I saw my precious “copy” shoved
+to one side of his desk, but I never saw it again, either in print
+or elsewhere. No mention was ever made of it. It was, doubtless, two
+columns of the dullest rubbish ever scribbled in that office.
+
+“I guess Mac only wanted to see what you could do,” explained the
+albino, as we swallowed “sinkers” (heavy dough scones) and gulped down
+coffee at Childs’ Cheap Lunch Counter round the corner. Whitey had
+invited me to lunch; he “put me wise” about a thousand things; showed
+me how to make a bit on my weekly expense-account, if I wanted to;
+how one could “sneak off” about five o’clock, if one knew the way;
+and, most useful of all, warned me as to accuracy in my facts and
+the right way to present them. A “story” whether it was the weather
+story or a murder story, should give in a brief first paragraph the
+essential facts--this satisfied the busy man who had no time to read
+more; the second paragraph should amplify these facts--for those who
+wanted to know more; afterwards--for those interested personally in the
+story--should come “any stuff you can pick up.” An item that seemed
+exclusive--a “scoop” or “beat” he called it--should come in the very
+beginning, so as to justify the headlines.
+
+“Whitey” was always a good friend to me. “Make friends with the
+reporters on other papers,” he advised, “then you won’t get badly left
+on the story you’re all ‘covering.’ Most of ’em give up all right.” He
+gave me names of sundry who never “gave up,” skunks he called them.
+
+As we hurried back to the office half an hour later, he dived into
+a drug store on the ground floor. The way most of the reporters
+frequented this drug store puzzled me for a time, till I learned
+that whisky was to be had there in a little back room. The chemist
+had no license, but by paying a monthly sum to the ward man of the
+district--part of immense revenues paid to Tammany by every form of
+law-breaking, from gambling-halls and disorderly houses to far graver
+things--he was allowed to dispense liquor. It was a pretty system,
+marvellously organized down to the lowest detail; cash to the ward
+man opened most doors; a policeman paid $300 before he even got a
+nomination on the force; vice paid gigantic tribute; but the people
+liked a Tammany Government because “they knew where they were” with it,
+though the _Sun_, my paper, was the only journal that boldly supported
+it--for which Charles A. Dana was forever being attacked. I acquired
+much inside experience of the secret workings of Tammany Hall before my
+newspaper days came to an end.... It appalled me.
+
+That afternoon, I had two assignments, and failed badly in both. The
+first was to find a company promoter who had got into trouble, and to
+ask him “all about it.” I could not find him; his house, his office,
+his club knew him not. After two hours’ frantic search, I returned
+crestfallen, expecting to be dismissed there and then. Cooper, however,
+cut short my lengthy explanations with a shrug of the shoulders, and
+sent me up to the Fort Lee woods, across the Hudson River, to find out
+“all about” a suicide whose body had just been discovered under the
+trees. “Get his name right, why he did it, and what the relatives have
+to say,” were his parting words. The Fort Lee woods were miles away, I
+saw the body--an old man with a bullet hole in his temple, I found his
+son at the police station, and asked him what his tears and grief made
+permissible, the answer being that “he had no troubles and we can’t
+think what made him do it.” Then I telephoned these few facts to the
+office. On getting back myself at half-past six when the last edition
+was already on the streets, Cooper showed me the final edition of the
+_Evening World_. It had a column on the front page with big head-lines.
+The suicide was a defaulter, and the reporter gave a complete story
+of his gambling life. Cooper offered no comment. The _Evening World_
+had got “a beat”; and I had failed badly. I sat down at the reporters’
+table and wondered what would happen, and then saw, lying before
+me, our own last edition with exactly the same story, similar big
+headlines, and all the important facts complete. An interview with the
+company promoter was also in print. I was at a loss to understand what
+had happened until Whitey, on the way into the drug-store a little
+later, explained things: the United Press, a news agency that “covered”
+everything, had sent the story. The “flimsy” men, so called because
+they wrote on thin paper that made six copies at once, were very
+valuable. “Make friends with them,” said Whitey, “and no one will ever
+get a beat on you. They’re paid a salary and don’t care. It’s only the
+space-men, as a rule, who won’t give up.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+As a new “bum reporter,” however, I had a hectic life, but rapidly made
+friends with the other men, and a mutual loathing of the work brought
+us easily together. Friday was pay-day; by Wednesday everybody was
+trying to borrow money--one dollar, usually--from everybody else, the
+debts being always faithfully repaid when the little envelopes were
+collected at the cashier’s office downstairs.
+
+My first week’s reporting passed in a whirl of feverish excitement.
+Assignments of every possible kind were hurled at me. I raced and
+flew about. The “Britisher,” the “English accent,” were a source of
+amusement to the staff, but there was no ill-nature. Cooper seemed to
+like me; he chuckled; he even gave me hints. “Well, Mr. Britisher, did
+you get it this time?” Few of my first efforts were used, the flimsy
+report being printed instead, but a divorce case in special sessions,
+and interviews with the principals in it, brought me into notice, the
+story being put in the front page of the first edition. When I came
+down on the following Monday, McCloy whipped up to me like a steel
+spring released. “You can cover the Tombs this morning,” he rattled.
+“Anything big must be in by ten at the latest. Use judgment and pick
+out the best stories. Don’t let anyone get a beat on you.” He flashed
+away, and I tore down to the Tombs Police Court.
+
+The Tombs--I can smell to-day its peculiar mixture of extremely dirty
+humanity, cheap scent, very old clothes, Chinese opium, stale liquor,
+iodoform, and a tinge of nameless disinfectant. In winter the hot-air
+which was the means of heating the court whose windows were never
+opened, and in summer the stifling, humid atmosphere, to say nothing of
+the added flavour of acid perspiration, were equally abominable. The
+building, with its copy of Egyptian architecture, vies in gloom with
+the prison in Venice, though the former takes unpleasant precedence--a
+veritable Hall of Eblis, with thick walls, impressive portals, a
+general air of hopeless and portentous doom about even its exterior.
+There was a grimness in its dark passages that made the heart sink,
+truly an awe-ful building. The interior was spick and span and clean
+as a hospital ward, but the horror of that repellent outside leaked
+through somehow. Both inside and outside, the Tombs Prison became
+as familiar to me as my room in East 19th Street; many a prisoner
+I interviewed in his cell, many a wretch I talked with through the
+bars of his last earthly cage in Murderers’ Row; I never entered the
+forbidding place without a shudder, nor stepped into the open air again
+without relief.
+
+The routine of the police court, too, became mechanical as the months
+went by. The various reporters acted in concert; we agreed which
+stories we would use, and in this way no paper got a “beat” on the
+others. The man on duty stood beside the Tammany magistrate, making
+his notes as each case came up. It was a depressing, often a painful,
+business.
+
+The cases rattled by very quickly--arson, burglary, forgery, gambling,
+opium dens, street women, all came up, but it was from assaults that we
+usually culled our morning assortment for the first edition. Negroes
+used a razor, Italians a stiletto, white men a knife, a pistol, a club
+or a sandbag. Women used hatpins mostly.
+
+It was, of course, some particular feature, either picturesque or
+horrible, that lent value to a case. Gradually my “nose for news” was
+sharpened. It was a friendly little German Jew, named Freytag, who
+taught me how to make the commonest police story readable. I had just
+“given up” the facts about a Syrian girl who had been stabbed by a
+jealous lover, and the reporters all round me were jotting down the
+details. Freytag, who worked for Hermann Ridder’s _Staatszeitung_,
+looked over my shoulder. “That’s no good,” he said. “Don’t begin
+‘Miriam so-and-so, living at such a place, was stabbed at two o’clock
+this morning by Whatshisname....’ That’s not interesting. Begin like
+this: ‘A mysterious crime with an exotic touch about it was committed
+in the early hours this morning when all worthy New Yorkers were
+enjoying their beauty sleep.... Far away, where the snows of the Taurus
+Mountains gleam to heaven, the victim, a lovely Syrian maid, once had
+her home....’” I followed his advice, though my version was severely
+blue-pencilled, but his point--selecting a picturesque angle of
+attack--was sound and useful.
+
+The police court work was over by half-past ten, and I was then
+generally sent on to report the trials in Special or General Sessions.
+These, naturally, were of every sort and kind. Divorce, alienation
+of affection and poison trials were usually the best news. My hair
+often stood on end, and some of the people were very unpleasant to
+interview. The final talk before a man went to the Chair was worst
+of all. If the case was an important one, I had to get an interview
+in the Tombs Prison cell before the day’s trial--there was no _sub
+judice_ prohibition in New York. Inevitably, I formed my own opinion as
+to a man’s innocence or guilt; the faces, gazing at me through bars,
+would often haunt me for days. Carlyle Harris, calm, indifferent, cold
+as ice, I still see, as he peered past the iron in Murderers’ Row,
+protesting his innocence with his steely blue eyes fixed on mine; he
+was a young medical student accused of poisoning his wife with morphia;
+he was electrocuted ... and Lizzie Borden ... though this was in
+Providence, Rhode Island--who took all her clothes off, lest the stains
+of blood betray her, before killing her father and mother in their
+sleep....
+
+Some of the cases made a lasting and horrible impression; some even
+terrified. The behaviour of individuals, especially of different races,
+when sentence was given also left vivid memories; negroes, appealing
+hysterically to God and using the most extraordinary, invented words,
+the longer the better; the stolid, unemotional Chinamen; the voluble
+Italian; the white man, as a rule, quiet, controlled, insisting merely
+in a brief sentence that he was innocent. In a story, years later (_Max
+Hensig, Bacteriologist and Murderer_), the facts were taken direct from
+life. It needed more than fifteen years to dim their memory. I remained
+the Tombs reporter for the best part of a loathed, distressing,
+horror-laden year.
+
+There were pleasanter intervals, of course. The French paper, _Le
+Courier des Etats Unis_, published a short story every Monday, and
+one day I translated an exceptionally clever one, and submitted it to
+McCloy. It was printed; subsequently, I was allowed an afternoon off
+weekly, provided I translated a story each time, and though no money
+was paid for these, I secured a good many free hours to myself. These
+hours I spent in the free library in Lafayette Place, devouring the
+Russians, as well as every kind of book I could find on psychology; or
+else in going out to Bronx Park, a long tram journey, where I found
+trees and lovely glades and water. Bronx Park, not yet the home of
+the New York “Zoo,” was a paradise to me, the nearest approach to the
+woods that I could find. Every Sunday, wet or fine, I went there. In a
+_cache_ I hid a teapot, and would make a tiny fire and drink milkless
+tea. I could hear the wind and see the stars and taste the smell of
+earth and leaves, the clean, sweet things....
+
+One morning in the second week of my apprenticeship, I interviewed a
+lion.
+
+“Afraid of wild animals, Mr. Britisher?” inquired Cooper, looking at me
+quizzically. I stared, wondering what he meant. It was my duty to have
+read the morning paper thoroughly, but there had been no mention of any
+wild animal. I replied that I thought I didn’t mind wild animals.
+
+“Take your gun,” said Cooper, “and get up to East 20th Street, between
+Third and Fourth Avenues. Bostock’s Circus came to town last night
+late. Their lion’s escaped. They’ve chased it into a stable. Killed
+a valuable horse. Neighbourhood’s paralysed with terror. It’s a
+man-eater. Send down bulletins about it. Now, better get a move on!”
+
+On leaving the elevated train at East 18th Street, the streets were
+black with people, they even pressed up the front steps of the houses.
+The word “lion” was in everybody’s mouth. Something about Cooper’s
+voice and eyes had made me suspect a “fake.” As I forced my way through
+towards 20th Street, there came a roar that set the air trembling even
+above the din of voices. It was certainly no fake.
+
+On reaching 20th Street, the cordon of police, with pistols ready,
+keeping the crowd in order, showed plainly where the stable was.
+Gradually I bored a way through. The stable stood back from the road,
+a courtyard in front of it. A ladder, crowded already with reporters
+climbing up, led to a hayloft just above. I met the _Evening Telegram_
+man, whom I knew, half-way up this ladder. “Got a messenger boy? No!
+Then you can share mine,” he offered good-naturedly. The only occupants
+of the yard were a dozen of these messenger boys, waiting to take the
+“copy” to the various newspaper offices. It was 8.30 A.M.
+
+I noticed to my surprise that the _Evening Telegram_ man was a star
+reporter; three rungs above him, to my still greater surprise, climbed
+Richard Harding Davis. My vanity was stirred. This was a big story, yet
+Cooper had chosen me! As I squeezed up the ladder, my hands stuffed
+with paper, the lion below gave forth an awe-inspiring roar; it was a
+dreadful sound. The great doors of wood seemed matchwood easily burst
+through. The crowd swayed back a moment, then, with a cheer, swayed
+forward again.
+
+In the loft I found some twenty reporters; each time the brute gave its
+terrible roar they scuttled into corners, behind the hay, even up into
+the rafters of the darkened loft. Pistol shots accompanied every roar,
+and the added terror lest a bullet from below might pierce the boards
+on which we stood, made us all jump about like dervishes. One man wrote
+his story, perched in the dark on the highest rafter, from which he
+never once moved. I scribbled away, and threw down my “stuff” to the
+boy below.
+
+Meanwhile the circus officials were doing their best to force the great
+beast into a cage. This cage stood ready against the outside doors in
+the yard, and at the right moment these doors would be swiftly opened.
+On being driven into the stable, the animal had found, and quickly
+killed, a trotting horse, valued at $2,000, standing in its stall. This
+detail I at first disbelieved, but when my turn came to kneel and peer
+through the trap-door for feeding the hay down into the dark stable
+below, I found it was all true. In the centre of the floor the great
+lion was plainly visible, not six feet below my own face, lying with
+two paws stretched upon the carcass of a torn, dead horse. The smell
+of flesh and blood rose to my nostrils. In a dim corner perched on a
+refrigerator, sat one of the trainers, a pistol in his hand. In another
+corner, but invisible from my peephole, crouched another circus man,
+also with his pistol, and each time the lion made an ugly move, both
+men fired off their weapons.... I wrote more “bulletins,” and dropped
+them down to a messenger boy in the yard. He hurried off, then returned
+to fetch more “copy”; I sent at least a column for the first edition. I
+felt a very proud reporter.
+
+After two hours of thrills and scares, the news spread that the Strong
+Man of the circus was on his way down, a fearless Samson of a fellow
+who lifted great weights. The news proved true. A prolonged cheer
+greeted him. He acknowledged it with a sweeping bow. He wore diamonds
+and a top hat. Swaggering up among the reporters, he announced in a
+loud voice: “Boys! I’m going to fix that lion, and I’m going to fix it
+right away!”
+
+The boastful bluff received no believing cheer in response, but to my
+amazement, the fellow proved as good as his talk. He said no further
+word, he just lifted the trap-door in the floor and began to squeeze
+himself through--straight down onto the very spot where the lion lay,
+crouching below on the dead horse. He dropped. We heard the thud. We
+also heard the appalling roar that followed, the quick pistol shots,
+the shouts, the excited cries--then silence. The reporter at the
+trap-door called out to us what was happening.... That Strong Man was a
+hero.
+
+Ten or fifteen minutes later, the big stable-doors swung open, and
+the cage, with the lion safely inside it, emerged on a high-wheeled
+truck into full view of the cheering crowd. On the top of the cage,
+sweeping his shiny top hat about, bowing, waving his free hand with
+modest dignity to the admiring thousands, the Strong Man sat enthroned,
+cross-legged, proud and smiling. The procession through the streets of
+the city was a triumphal progress that lasted most of the day. That
+night Bostock’s Circus opened to the public.
+
+I hurried back to the office, and had the joy of seeing the first
+edition hawked and cried about the streets, even before I got there.
+Big head-lines about a “Man-eating Lion,” a “Two Thousand Dollar
+Trotting Horse,” “Heroic Rescuer,” and the rest, met my eye everywhere.
+Cooper, however, made no remark or comment, sending me on at once to
+report a murder trial at special sessions, and in half an hour the
+gruesome thrills of a horrible poison case made the lion and the strong
+man fade away.
+
+“Read your morning paper?” Cooper asked, when I appeared next morning.
+I nodded. The lion story, I had noticed, filled only half a stick of
+print. “Read the advertisements?” he asked next. I saw a twinkle in his
+eye, and quickly scanned the circus advertisements about the man-eating
+lion that had killed a trotting horse, and a strong man whose courage
+had done this and that, saving numerous lives ... but I was still
+puzzled by Cooper’s twinkling eye. He offered no word of explanation;
+I learned the truth from someone else later. The toothless, aged
+lion, gorged with food and doped as well, had been pushed into the
+stable overnight, the carcass of a horse, valued at $10, had been
+dragged in after it. The newspapers had been notified, and the long
+advertisements, of course, were paid for in the ordinary way, but the
+free advertisement obtained was of a kind that mere dollars could not
+buy.
+
+Occasional interludes of this sort certainly brightened the sordid
+daily routine, but they were rare. A big fire was a thrilling
+experience, a metal badge pinned to the coat allowing the reporter to
+go as near as he liked and to run what risks he pleased. Such work
+became, with time, mechanical in a sense, it occurred so often, arson,
+too, being very frequent, especially among the Jews of the East side.
+Even in those days the story of the two Jews was a “chestnut”: “I’m
+thorry your blace of business got burnt down last Tuesday,” says Ikey.
+To which Moses replies: “Hush! It’s next Tuesday!”
+
+The rôle of the reporter in New York, of course, was an accepted one;
+publicity and advertisement were admittedly desirable; the reporter
+as a rule was welcomed; privacy was very rare; a reporter could,
+and was expected to, intrude into personal family affairs where, in
+England, he would be flung into the street.... Other interviews were
+of a pleasanter kind; I remember Henry Irving and Ellen Terry in their
+special train, Sarah Bernhardt, at the Hoffman House hotel, and many a
+distinguished foreigner I was sent to interview because I could speak
+their languages. The trip to meet the Atlantic steamer at Quarantine I
+regarded as a day off: it could be made to last for hours. I saw the
+coast, moreover, and smelt the sea....
+
+Most of my work on the _Evening Sun_, at any rate, took me among the
+criminal and outcast sections of the underworld. In those days the
+police, as a whole, were corrupt, brutal, heartless; I saw innocent
+men against whom they had a grudge, or whom they wanted out of the way
+for some reason, “railroaded to gaol” on cooked-up evidence; sickening
+and dreadful scenes I witnessed.... The valueless character of human
+evidence I learned daily in the trials I reported, so that even a man
+who was trying to tell the truth seemed unable to achieve it. Tammany
+had its slimy tentacles everywhere and graft was the essence of success
+in every branch of public life. A police captain had his town and
+country house, perhaps his yacht as well.... The story of Tammany
+has been told again and again. It is too well known for repetition.
+I watched its vile methods from the inside with a vengeance; its
+loathsome soul I saw face to face. The city, too, I soon knew inside
+out, especially its darker, unclean quarters. Chinatown, Little Africa,
+where, after dark, it was best to walk in the middle of the street,
+“Italy,” the tenement life of the overcrowded, reeking East side....
+I made friends with strange people, feeling myself even in touch with
+them, something of an outcast like themselves. My former life became
+more and more remote, it seemed unreal; the world I now lived in seemed
+the only world; these evil, depraved, tempted, unhappy devils were
+not only the majority, but the real, ordinary humanity that stocked
+the world. More and more the under-dog appealed to me. The rich, the
+luxurious, the easily-placed, the untempted and inexperienced, these
+I was beginning to find it in me to look down on, even to despise.
+_Mutatis mutandis_, I thought to myself, daily, hourly, where would
+_they_ be?... Where would _I_ myself be...?
+
+Bronx Park, Shelley, the violin, the free library, organ recitals in
+churches, my Eastern books, and meetings of the Theosophical Society,
+provided meanwhile the few beauty hours to which I turned by way
+of relief and relaxation. One and all fed my inner dreams, gave me
+intense happiness, offered a way of escape from a daily atmosphere I
+loathed like poison. Sometimes, sitting in court, reporting a trial
+of absorbing interest, my eye would catch through the dirty window
+a patch of blue between the clouds ... and instantly would sweep up
+the power of the woods, the strange joy of clean solitary places in
+the wilderness, the glamour of a secret little lake where loons were
+calling and waves splashing on deserted, lonely shores. I heard the
+pines, saw the silvery moonlight, felt the keen wind of open and
+untainted spaces, I smelt the very earth and the perfume of the
+forests.... A serious gap would follow in my report, so that I would
+have to borrow from the flimsy man, or from another reporter, what had
+happened in the interval. In this connexion there comes back to me a
+picture of a _World_ man whose work constituted him a star reporter,
+but who could write nothing unless he was really drunk. With glazed
+eyes he would catch the witness and listen to question and answer,
+while with a pencil he could scarcely direct, he scribbled in immense
+writing three or four sloping lines to each page of “copy” paper. It
+always astonished me that such work could be any good, but once I
+made a shorthand note of several of his pages, and found them printed
+verbatim in the next edition, without a single blue-pencil alteration.
+When this man sat next me, my intervals of absent-mindedness did not
+matter. His big writing enabled me to crib easily all I had missed.
+
+Other compensating influences, too, I found with my “room-mates,”
+especially with Boyde, to whom I had become devotedly attached. I was
+uncommonly lucky to have such friends, I thought. Talking with Boyde,
+playing the fiddle to his singing, sharing my troubles with his subtle,
+sympathetic, well-read mind, was an unfailing pleasure, that made me
+look forward intensely to our evenings together, and helped me to get
+through many a day of repulsive and distasteful work. Compared with
+the charm and variety of Boyde, Kay seemed stolid, even unresponsive
+sometimes.
+
+To live consciously is to register impressions; some receive many more
+of these per second than others, and thus enjoy an intenser and more
+varied life. The two-per-second mind finds the two-per-minute one slow,
+dull and stupid. Kay, anyhow, didn’t “mind” things much, circumstances
+never troubled him, whereas Boyde and I minded them acutely. I envied
+Kay’s power of sleeping calmly in that bed, careless of night-attacks
+until they actually came. The horror of New York, similarly, that was
+creeping into my blood had hardly touched him, though it certainly
+had infected Boyde. In my own make-up lay something ultra-sensitive
+that took impressions far too easily. Not only did it vibrate with
+unnecessary eagerness to every change in sky and sea, but to every
+shade of attitude and manner in my fellows as well. I seemed covered
+with sore and tender places into which New York rubbed salt and acid
+every hour of the day. It wounded, not alone because I felt unhappy,
+but of itself. It hit me where it pleased. The awful city, with its
+torrential, headlong life, held for me something of the monstrous.
+Everything about it was exaggerated. Its racing speed, its roofs amid
+the clouds with the canyon gulfs below, its gaudy avenues dripping
+gold that ran almost arm in arm with streets little better than
+sewers of human decay and misery, its frantic noise, both of voices
+and mechanism, its lavishly organized charity and boastful splendour,
+and its deep corruption in the grip of a heartless and degraded
+Tammany--it was all this that painted the horror into my imagination
+as of something monstrous, non-human, almost unearthly. It became, for
+me, a scab on the skin of the planet, brilliant with the hues of fever,
+moving all over with its teeming microbes. I felt it, indeed, but half
+civilized.
+
+This note of how I felt in these--my early years--rose up again the
+other day, as I read what O. Henry wrote to his outlaw friend from the
+Ohio Penitentiary about it. Al Jennings had just been pardoned. O.
+Henry had finished his terms some years before. They met again in a
+West 26th Street hotel, not far from my own room in Mrs. Bernstein’s
+house. They talked of their terrible prison days.
+
+“It’s good you’ve been there,” said O. Henry. “It’s the proper
+vestibule to this city of Damned Souls. The crooks there are straight
+compared with the business thieves here. If you’ve got $2 on you,
+invest it now or they’ll take it away from you before morning.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+In the East 19th Street room, meanwhile, things were going from bad to
+worse. Kay’s touring company delayed its starting, and consequently
+his salary. Boyde’s huntsman’s job, equally, was postponed for various
+reasons, while his income from posing, from churchly activities, from
+the theatre as well, was reduced to a very few dollars a week. These he
+shared faithfully, but my $15 every Friday (usually $13 net when office
+loans had been repaid) were our only certain source of revenue.
+
+After paying something on the room, the laundry in full, and buying
+oatmeal, dried apples, and condensed milk for the week to come, there
+remained barely enough for one man’s meals, much less for the food of
+three, during the ensuing seven days. Boyde’s contribution brought the
+budget to, perhaps, twenty dollars all told. Something, too, had to be
+allowed daily to car-fares for Kay, while my own expenses in getting
+about after assignments, only recoverable at the end of the week, were
+considerable. The weather was turning colder at the same time, for it
+was now past mid-October. Our overcoats had to be redeemed. Boyde’s
+wisdom in obtaining only the strictly necessary became evident. We
+redeemed the overcoats out of my second week’s pay. Boyde himself had
+no overcoat at all. As we were all about the same height and build,
+clothes were interchangeable. There was a discussion every morning,
+when I left the other two, in bed and on the sofa respectively, as to
+who should wear what.
+
+We had now pawned with Ikey various items: a Gladstone bag, two top
+hats, some underwear, and two pairs of boots. These were on separate
+tickets, by Boyde’s advice. Tennis trousers, and several summer shirts
+were together on another ticket. All that winter Kay and I wore no
+underwear but a vest. The bag and top hats were taken out and put in
+again regularly every week for many months. There was only one article
+that, selfishly, I could never pawn or sell--the fiddle.
+
+Dried apples and hot water--with expensive oatmeal we had to be very
+sparing--constituted our dinner for four nights out of the week; coffee
+and bread and butter for breakfast, coffee and “sinkers” for lunch
+completed my dietary. Occasionally Boyde or Kay, having been invited to
+a meal, brought home something in their pockets, but not often. We felt
+hunger every day, only the evening dried apples and hot water giving a
+sense of repletion that yet did not really allay the pangs of appetite,
+though it stopped the dull gnawing until sleep finally obliterated it.
+Kay and I, but never Boyde, oddly enough, had vivid and amusing dreams
+of food, and one invariable topic of conversation every night as we
+dined at Krisch’s, or gobbled apples and oatmeal, was the menu we would
+order when things improved.... But Krisch’s, after a time, we found
+too difficult and tempting, with the good smells, the sight of people
+eating at other tables, the lager beer, the perfume of cigars; and many
+a time, with the price of a dinner in our pockets, we preferred to eat
+in our room.
+
+Another topic of conversation was our plan, myself its enthusiastic
+creator, to take up land in Canada and lead the life of settlers in
+the backwoods, which by contrast to our present conditions seemed to
+promise a paradise. Occasionally Kay spouted bits of Shakespeare, or
+rehearsed a rôle in one of the plays his touring company was to give.
+But it was the talks with Boyde about Eastern ideas and philosophy
+that were my keenest pleasure, for his appreciation and sympathetic
+understanding were a delight I thought about with anticipatory
+eagerness even during the day. My attachment to him deepened into
+affection.
+
+The weeks went by; we scraped along somehow; Mrs. Bernstein was kept
+quiet--a relative term--by cajoling, promises and bluff. We bullied
+her. When Kay’s lordly talk of free seats at theatres failed to
+materialize, and Boyde’s trick of leaving about telegrams received
+from Davis and others, especially one from August Belmont, the great
+banker, inviting him to lunch at a fashionable club--when these devices
+lost their “pull,” I resorted to the power of the Press. Her husband’s
+position, his orchestra, offered vulnerable points of attack; the
+vermin-infested room, for instance, might be unpleasantly described....
+
+For weeks we had paid nothing, everything worth fifty cents was
+pawned, Boyde’s contribution had grown smaller and smaller, and the
+only addition to my salary had been a few dollars Kay had earned by
+posing to Smedley, one of Harper’s illustrators. Things looked pretty
+dark, when luck turned suddenly; Kay received word from Gilmour, the
+organizer of his company, that he was to start touring on November
+15th, and Boyde had a telegram from Davis--“Appointment confirmed,
+duties begin December 1st.” This did not increase our cash in hand,
+but it increased our hope and raised our spirits. Kay and Boyde would
+both soon repay their share of past expenses. We should all three be in
+jobs a few weeks later. Early in November Kay actually left on his tour
+of one night stands in New York State, and Boyde left the mattress on
+the floor for the bed. A week after Kay sent us half his first salary,
+$7.50, which we gave to Mrs. Bernstein forthwith. The letter containing
+it was opened by Boyde, and dealt with while I was out.
+
+It was a few days later, when I was alone one evening, that an
+Englishman who had played with us in the cricket match called to
+see me. I hardly remembered him, he had to introduce himself, the
+apologies to explain his sudden call were very voluble. He was well
+dressed and well fed, I noticed, a singer and concert accompanist; he
+annoyed me from the start by his hesitations, his endless humming and
+hawing. It was, he kept telling me, rather an intrusion; it was, he
+felt, of course, no concern of his; but “New York was a strange place,
+and--and--er--er--well, after much reflection, I really felt it my
+duty--I decided to take the risk, that is, to--er----”
+
+“To what?” I asked bluntly at last. “For heaven’s sake, tell me.”
+
+I was beginning to feel uneasy. My threats to Mrs. Bernstein, perhaps,
+had gone too far. Besides, the effect of the apples was passing and I
+longed for bed.
+
+He took a gulp. “To warn you,” he said, with a grave and ominous
+expression.
+
+It was a long-winded business before I got him to the point, and even
+then the point was not really explicit. New York, he kept repeating,
+was a dangerous place for inexperience, there were strange and
+desperate characters in it. In the end, I think, my manners exasperated
+him as much as his vagueness exasperated me, for when he told me he
+came about “someone very close to you,” and I asked point-blank, “Is it
+someone sharing this room with me?” his final word was a most decided
+“Yes”--with nothing more. This “someone,” I gathered, at any rate, was
+fooling me, was up to all sorts of tricks, was even “dangerous.”
+
+I was infuriated, though I felt a certain sinking of the heart as well.
+He was attacking either Kay or Boyde, my only friends, both of whom I
+trusted to the last cent, for both of whom I had sincere affection. If
+he knew anything definite or really important, why couldn’t he say it
+and be done with it? I put this to him.
+
+“I prefer not to be more explicit,” he replied with an air. He was
+offended. His patronizing offer of advice and sympathy, his pride, were
+wounded. “I would rather not mention names. It’s true all the same,”
+he added. And my patience then gave way. I got up and opened the door.
+He went without a word, but just as I was about to slam the door after
+him, he turned.
+
+“Remember,” he said, half angrily, half gravely, “I’ve warned you. He’s
+a real crook. He’s already been in gaol.”
+
+I banged the door behind him. I felt angry but uncomfortable, and as
+the anger subsided my uneasiness increased. The horrible feeling
+that there was truth in the warning harassed me. When Boyde came in
+an hour or so later, I pretended to be asleep. I told him nothing of
+my visitor, but through half-closed eyes I watched him as he moved
+about the room very quietly, lest he disturb my sleep. His delightful,
+kind expression, his frank blue eyes, the refinement and gentleness
+of his gestures, I noted them all for the hundredth time. His acts,
+too, I remembered; how he always shared his earnings, gave his help
+unstintingly, advice, a thousand hints, the value of his own sad and
+bitter experience. My heart ached a little. No, I reflected, it was
+certainly not Boyde who was the crook. My thoughts turned to Kay, who
+had just sent us half his salary. It was equally incredible. I wished
+I had treated my visitor differently. I wished I had kicked him out,
+instead of telling him to go. Sneak! A sneak with some evil motive into
+the bargain!
+
+Things began to move now with a strange rapidity. It was as though
+someone who had been winding up machinery suddenly released the spring.
+Item by item, preparations had been completed--then, let her go! She
+went....
+
+The weeks that followed seemed as many months. I was alone with Boyde
+in a filthy, verminous room, food and money scarce, rent owing, Kay
+away, clothes negligible, my single asset being a job. I lost that job
+owing to illness that kept me for weeks in bed--in that bed.... And as
+“she went” I had the curious feeling that someone watched her going,
+someone other than myself. It was an odd obsession. Someone looked on
+and smiled. Certain practices, gathered from my “Eastern” reading, were
+no doubt responsible for this uncanny feeling, for with it ran also a
+parallel idea: that only a portion of my being suffered while another
+portion, untouched, serene and confident, accepting all that came with
+a kind of indifferent resignation, stood entirely apart, playing,
+equally, the rôle of a spectator. This detached spectator watched “her
+going” with close attention, even with something of satisfaction.
+“Take it all,” was its attitude; “avoid nothing; it is your due; for
+it is merely reaping what you sowed long ago. Face it to the very
+dregs. Only in this way shall you pay a just debt and exhaust it.” So
+vital was this attitude in all that followed that it must be honestly
+mentioned.
+
+A stabbing in the side had been bothering me for some days, making
+walking difficult and painful. A blow received while diving from our
+island--I hit a rock--began to ache and throb. I came home in the
+evenings, weary to the bone. There were headaches, and a touch of
+fever. The pain increased. There was a swelling. I went to bed. Boyde
+took down a letter to McCloy, asking for a day off, which was granted.
+The next day I turned up at 8.30, but had to come back to bed after the
+midday coffee and sinkers. “See a doctor,” snapped McCloy, in his best
+maxim-firing manner, “and come back when you’re fixed up again.”
+
+But there wasn’t enough money for a doctor’s fee of from two to five
+dollars. I lay up for three days, hoping for improvement which did
+not come. The pain and fever grew. Mrs. Bernstein, upset and even
+disagreeable, sent me bread and soup in the evening as well as the
+morning coffee. Boyde brought a few extras late at night. He was
+chasing a new post just then--organist to a church in Patterson,
+N.J.--and rarely got home before eleven, sometimes later. He brought
+long rolls of Vienna bread, a few white Spanish grapes, a tin of
+condensed milk. He slept peaceably beside me. His manner, once or
+twice, seemed different. I smelt liquor. “Someone stood me a drink,”
+he explained, “and by God, I needed it. I’m fagged out.” He was kind
+and sympathetic, doing all he could, all that his position allowed. He
+was very much in love at the moment with the daughter of the pastor of
+the Second Avenue Baptist Church, where he sang in the choir, and he
+confided his hopes and troubles about the affair to me.... It all gave
+me a queer feeling of unreality somewhere. In my feverish state I knew
+an occasional unaccustomed shiver. The long day in bed, alone with my
+thoughts, waiting for Boyde’s return, was wearisome to endlessness,
+by no means free from new, unpleasant reflections, yet when at last
+the door opened softly, and he came back, his arms full of the little
+extras mentioned, there was disappointment in me somewhere. It was not
+quite as I expected. Accompanying the disappointment were these new,
+faint twinges of uneasiness as well. I kept the gas burning all night.
+I watched Boyde’s face, as he slept calmly beside me in that narrow
+bed, his expression of innocence and kindliness increased my feelings
+of gratitude, even of tenderness, towards him. There were deep lines,
+however, that sleep did not smooth out. “Poor devil, he’s been through
+the mill!” This habit of watching him grew.
+
+There was delay and trouble about the Rockaway Hunt post; studio
+sittings were scarce; the Baptist church organist was never unable
+to officiate; Morton Selton never missed a performance; and Boyde,
+as a result, though he still contributed what he could, earned next
+to nothing. If I was puzzled by his late hours, his explanations
+invariably cleared away my wonder. He always had a plausible excuse,
+one, too, that woke my sympathy. It was just at this time, moreover,
+that Kay wrote. The Canadian tour was such a failure that Gilmour was
+taking his troupe to the States, where they anticipated better houses.
+No salaries had been paid. They were now off to Pittsburg. Kay hoped to
+send some money before long.
+
+I spent the weary hours reading.... On the third day, my symptoms
+worse, the door opened suddenly without a knock, and I saw an old man
+with a white moustache and spectacles peering round the edge at me. I
+laid down my “Gita” and stared back at him.
+
+“Are you Mr. Blackwood?” he asked, with a marked German accent.
+
+“Yes.” I had not the faintest idea who he was.
+
+He closed the door, took off his slouch hat, crossed the room, laid his
+small black bag on the sofa, then came and stood beside my bed. He was
+extremely deliberate. I watched him anxiously. He said no word for some
+time, while we stared at one another.
+
+He was of medium height, about sixty-five years old, with white hair,
+dark eyes behind magnifying spectacles, the strong face deeply lined,
+voice and manner stern to the point of being forbidding--but when I saw
+it rarely--a most winning smile. Except for the spectacles, he was like
+a small edition of Bismarck.
+
+“I am a doctor,” he said, after a prolonged silent inspection, “and I
+live down the street. Your friend, an Englishman, asked me to call.
+Are _you_ English?” I told him I was a reporter on the _Evening Sun_,
+adding that I had no money at the moment. The suspicion his manner had
+not attempted to hide at once showed itself plainly. His manner and
+voice were brusque to offensiveness, as he said flatly: “I expect to be
+paid. I have a wife and child.” He stood there, staring at me, hard and
+cold. I repeated that I had nothing to pay him with, and I lay back in
+bed, wishing he would go, for I felt uncomfortable and ashamed, annoyed
+as well by his unsympathetic attitude. “Humph!” he grunted, still
+staring without moving. There was an awkward silence I thought would
+never end. “Humph!” he grunted again presently. “I egsamine you anyhow.
+How old are you?”
+
+“Twenty-two,” I said, “and a bit.”
+
+“Humph!” he repeated, as he examined me rather roughly. “You’re very
+thin. Too thin!”
+
+He hurt me, and I did not answer.
+
+“Not eating enough,” he added, and then gave his verdict. It was an
+abscess, I must keep my bed for a month or six weeks, an operation
+might be necessary....
+
+I asked how much I owed him. “Two dollars,” he said. He gave me his
+address, and I replied that I would bring the money to him as soon as I
+could, but that he need not call again. He stared severely at me with
+those magnified eyes.
+
+“Haven’t you got two dollars even?” he asked curtly.
+
+“I’ve told you the truth. And, anyhow, I didn’t send for you. I didn’t
+ask my friend to fetch you either.”
+
+I could think of nothing else to say. His verdict had flattened me out.
+I was angry, besides, with Boyde, for not consulting me first, though
+I knew he had done the right thing. Another period of awkward silence
+followed, during which the doctor never moved, but stood gazing down at
+me. Suddenly his eye rested on the book I had been reading. He put out
+a hand and picked it up. He glanced through the pages of the “Gita,”
+then began to read more carefully. A few minutes passed. He became
+absorbed.
+
+“_You_ read this?” he asked presently. “_Ach was!_” There was a look of
+keen astonishment in his eyes; his gaze searched me as though I were
+some strange animal. I told him enough by way of reply to explain my
+interest. He listened, without a word, then presently picked up his bag
+and hat and moved away. At the door he turned a moment. “I come again
+to-morrow,” he said gruffly, and he was gone.
+
+In this way Otto Huebner, with his poignant tragedy, came into my life.
+
+That evening, with the bread and soup, there was a plate of chicken;
+it was not repeated often, but he had spoken to Mrs. Bernstein, I
+discovered, for her attitude, too, became slightly pleasanter. I spent
+the long evening composing a letter to McCloy, which Boyde could take
+down next day.... I lay thinking of that curious gruff, rude old
+German, whose brusqueness, I felt sure, covered a big good heart. There
+was mystery about him, something unusual, something pathetic and very
+lovable. There was power in his quietness. Despite his bluntness, there
+was in his atmosphere a warm kindness, a sincerity that drew me to him.
+Also there was a darkness, a sense of tragedy somewhere that intrigued
+me because I could not explain it.
+
+It was after he was gone that I felt all this. While he was in the room
+I had been too troubled and upset by his manner to feel anything but
+annoyance. Now that he was gone his face and eyes and voice haunted
+me. His bleak honesty, I think, showed me, without my recognizing it,
+another standard.
+
+Was it this, I wonder, that made me start a little when, about two in
+the morning, I heard a stealthy tread coming upstairs, and presently
+saw Boyde enter the room--carrying his boots in his hand? Was it this,
+again, that made me feign to be asleep, and a couple of hours later
+still, when I woke with a shiver, notice, for the first time, a new
+expression in the face that lay so calmly asleep beside me?
+
+Behind the kindly innocence, I thought, there lay a darker look. It was
+like a shadow on the features. It increased my feelings of uneasiness,
+though as yet no definite thought had formulated itself in my mind.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+Next day there was a racing west wind that sent the clouds scudding
+across a bright blue sky. The doctor was to come at 3 o’clock. Boyde,
+in very optimistic mood, had gone out early, taking my letter to
+McCloy. He had a studio sitting; he was going to Patterson too; he
+would return as early as he could. The shadow of the night before
+had vanished; I no longer believed in it; I ascribed it to fever and
+nerves. He sang cheerily while he dressed in my thick brown suit, the
+only one not in pawn (everything else, now that I was in bed, had gone
+to Ikey), and his voice sounded delightful. In the afternoon he came
+back with the news that McCloy had read my letter and said “That’s
+right. Tell him to be good to himself. He can come back.” Also he had
+agreed to use translations of the French stories at five dollars each.
+Boyde brought a _Courier_ in with him. Two letters from home arrived
+too. Both my father and mother, though having no idea what was going
+on, never missed a single week. My own letters were difficult to write.
+I had come to New York against my father’s advice. I wrote home what I
+thought best.
+
+At 3 o’clock the doctor came. My heart sank as I heard his step. I
+was in considerable pain. What would he be like? Would an operation
+be necessary? Would he speak about money again? Mrs. Bernstein, oily
+and respectful, a little awed as well, announced him. Without a
+word, without a glance in my direction, he walked over in his slow,
+deliberate way, and laid hat and bag upon the sofa. Then he turned and
+looked steadily at himself in the mirror for a period I thought would
+never end. After that he turned and looked at me.
+
+He was an angel. His face was wreathed in smiles. It beamed with
+good-nature, kindness, sympathy. He at once said something that was
+gentle, soothing, like music to me. My heart suddenly expanded in a
+most uncomfortable way. I believe a lump came up in my throat. This
+was all so contrary to what I had expected. He was not only an angel,
+he was a womanly angel. I must have been in a very weak state, for it
+was all I could do to keep my tears back. The same instant his eye fell
+on my fiddle case. He looked at it, then at me, then back again at the
+fiddle.
+
+“You play?” he asked, with a twinkle in his big eyes.
+
+“I ought to pawn it,” I said, “but----”
+
+“Don’t,” he answered with decision. He added an odd sentence: “It’s
+an esgape from self.” I remember that I couldn’t say a word to this.
+His kindness melted me. The struggle to keep my eyes from betraying
+me seemed the most idiotic yet bitter I had ever known. I could have
+kissed the old man’s hand, when he examined me then at once, but with
+a gentleness, even a tenderness, that both astonished me, yet did not
+astonish me at all. I felt, too, already the support of his mind and
+character, of his whole personality, of a rugged power in him, of
+generosity, true goodness, above all, of sympathy. I think he had made
+up his mind to treat me for nothing. No reference, in any case, was
+made to money; nor did I dare even to mention it myself. An operation,
+moreover, of any big kind, was not necessary; he thought he could save
+me that; he performed a small one then and there, for he had brought
+all that was required for it. The pain seemed nothing, his kindness
+made me indifferent to it. “You are brave,” he said, with a smile that
+seemed to me really beautiful, when it was over. “That hurt, I know.”
+He promised to come daily to drain the wound and so forth; he bandaged
+me up; a month to six weeks would see me out of bed, he hoped; he
+packed up his bag, but, instead of leaving the room, he then sat down
+deliberately and began to talk.
+
+I was too surprised, too happy, to wonder why he stayed. His talk
+was food and drink to me. He picked up my few books, and sat reading
+quietly to himself when he saw I was getting tired. De Quincey’s
+“Confessions” interested him especially, and he asked if he might
+borrow it. He took also “Sartor Resartus.” I slipped into German, to
+his keen delight, and told him about the Moravian Brotherhood School
+in the Black Forest. A sketch of the recent past I gave him too. He
+listened with great attention, asking occasional questions, but always
+with real tact, and never allowing me to tire myself.
+
+Though it was obvious, even to my stupidity, that he regarded me rather
+as a “specimen” of some sort, there was heart in all he said and did.
+Otto Huebner poured balm into all my little wounds that afternoon, but
+about himself he told me hardly anything. While he drew me out, with
+skill and sympathy, he hid himself behind that impenetrable mystery I
+had already noted the previous day. I say purposely that of himself
+he told me “hardly anything,” because one detail did escape him
+inadvertently. An hour later, as he was leaving, he turned his smile
+on me from the door. “I send you something,” he said shortly. “My vife
+makes goot broth. I cannot do much. I have not got it.”
+
+One other thing I noticed about his visit, when towards the end, Boyde
+came in unexpectedly, bringing a small bunch of the yellow Spanish
+grapes. In his best, most charming manner he spoke with the doctor. The
+doctor’s face, however, darkened instantly. His features, it seemed to
+me, froze. His manner was curt. He scarcely replied. And when he left a
+little later he did not include my friend in his good-bye. It puzzled
+me. It added to my uneasiness as well.
+
+Boyde, who apparently had noticed nothing, explained that he had to go
+out again to an appointment with Davis about the Rockaway Hunt post; he
+did not return that night at all.
+
+I listened to the city clocks striking midnight, one, two, three ...
+he did not come. I listened to the howling wind as well. Imagination
+tried feebly to construct a happier state, lovelier conditions, a world
+nearer to the heart’s desire. While waiting for midnight to strike, I
+said to myself, thinking of yesterday and to-morrow, with all the one
+had meant and the other might mean to me:
+
+“Yesterday is now twenty-four hours away, but in a minute it will be
+only one minute away.”
+
+I treated the hidden to-morrow similarly. I imagined, the world being
+old and creaky, ill-fitting too, that a crack existed between the two
+days. Anyone who was thin enough might slip through! I, certainly, was
+thin enough. I slipped through.... I entered a region out of time, a
+region where everything came true. And the first thing I saw was a
+wondrous streaming vision of the wind, the wind that howled outside
+my filthy windows.... I saw the winds, changing colours as they rose
+and fell, attached to the trees, in tenuous ribands of gold and blue
+and scarlet as they swept to and fro.... I little dreamed that these
+fancies would appear fifteen years later in a book of my own, “The
+Education of Uncle Paul.” That crack, at any rate, became for me, like
+the fiddle, a means of escape from unkind reality into a state of inner
+bliss and wonder “where everything came true.”...
+
+It was after twelve o’clock next day when Boyde returned--with a
+black eye, my one thick suit stained and soiled, and a long involved
+story that utterly confused me. There had been a fight; he had
+protected a woman; a false charge had been laid against him owing to
+misunderstanding, owing also to the fact that he had no money to tip
+the policeman, and he had spent the night in a cell at Jefferson Market
+police station. In the morning the magistrate had discharged him with
+many compliments upon his “gallantry and courage.” It did not ring
+true. I knew the Tammany magistrates better than that. He contradicted
+himself too, in saying that a Mr. Beattie, a friend of his mother’s,
+who occasionally gave him a little money she sent from England, had
+bailed him out. He had been bailed out, discharged with compliments,
+had slept in a cell, and not been fined! I smelt spirits too. It all
+made me miserable.
+
+“You’ve been drunk and they locked you up,” I reproached him. “Why
+do you lie to me?” The copious explanations that followed I hardly
+listened to. I lay in bed, saying nothing, but the warning of my
+visitor came back.
+
+“I went down to the _Evening Sun_,” Boyde said presently, when my
+silence made his explanations end of their own accord. “I’ve just come
+back with this. McCloy asked after you and sent it on account of the
+French stories.” He handed me five dollars, in single bills, which we
+divided equally then and there.
+
+He had been gone hardly ten minutes when the door opened again, and
+another visitor came in, an actor out of a job, Grant, an Englishman
+of perhaps twenty-five, one of the cricket team I had met in Staten
+Island a few weeks before. He had run across Boyde, he explained,
+and had heard I was ill. As one Englishman to another “in this awful
+city” he wanted to see if he could help in any way. He did then a
+wonderful thing. We had met but once, he scarcely knew me, he might
+never see me again, but when he realized the state of affairs he said
+he thought he could get a little money for me, and before I could
+say a word he vanished from the room. His shyness, his lame manner
+of speech, something hesitating and awkward about him generally, had
+embarrassed me as much as, evidently, he was embarrassed himself;
+and I was convinced his plea of getting money was only an excuse to
+disappear quickly. I rather hoped it was; certainly I thought it
+unlikely he would come back--which, nevertheless, he did, in about a
+quarter of an hour. He came in breathlessly, a shamefaced air about
+him; flung down some dollar bills on the bed, and vanished the second
+time. Three dollars lay on the counterpane. It was only a little later,
+as reflection brought up details, that I remembered he had worn an
+overcoat when he first came in, and that on his second visit he wore
+none. He had pawned it. Another detail rose to the surface: that he
+had called, really, upon quite another errand, and that there was
+something he wanted to tell me that he had not the courage to put into
+words. Later he admitted it was true....
+
+Anticipating Otto Huebner’s visits was now a keen pleasure; the one
+event of a long weary day.
+
+During the next fortnight or so, he missed no single afternoon. His
+moods varied amazingly. One day he seemed an angel, the next a devil. I
+was completely puzzled.
+
+The talks we had on his good days were an enjoyment I can hardly
+describe. I realized how much I depended on them, as well as on the man
+who made them possible. I realized also how much I depended on my other
+friend--on Boyde. The latter’s curious and unsatisfactory behaviour,
+mysterious still to my blind ignorant eyes, made no difference to
+my feelings for him, but, if anything, tended to strengthen the
+attachment. My affection deepened. There lay now a certain pity in
+me too, an odd feeling that he was in my charge, and that, for all
+his greater knowledge and experience of life, his seniority as well,
+I could--I must--somehow help him. Upon the German doctor and Boyde,
+at any rate, Kay being far away, my mind rested with security, if of
+different degrees. To lose either of them in my lonely situation would
+have been catastrophic.
+
+The old German would settle himself on the sofa, drawn up close to the
+bed, and talk. He was saturated in his native philosophy, but Hegel was
+his king.... “Sartor Resartus” enthralled him. Of De Quincey’s struggle
+against opium he was never tired. Of Vedantic and Hindu philosophy,
+too, he was understanding and tolerant, though not enamoured. Regarding
+me still as a “specimen” evidently, he also treated me as though I were
+a boy, discerning of course at once my emptiness of mind and experience.
+
+How patiently he listened to my eager exposition of life’s mysteries,
+my chaotic theories, my fanciful speculations....
+
+“We _know_--nothing, you must remember. _Nothing_,” he would say with
+emphasis. “Nor can we know anything, _ever_. We label, classify,
+examine certain _results_--that’s all. Of causes we remain completely
+ignorant. Speculation is not proof. The fact that a theory fits all the
+facts gets us no further.”
+
+He smiled, but with close attention, while I plunged again into a
+description of my beliefs. The tobacco smoke curled up about his genial
+face. I had no fear of him in this mood. I could say all my thoughts
+without shyness. I made full confession.
+
+“Interesting, logical, possibly true,” he replied, “and most certainly
+as good an explanation as any other, better even than most, but”--he
+shrugged his shoulders--“always a theory only, and nothing else. There
+is no proof of anything. The higher states of consciousness you mention
+are nebulous, probably pathogenic. Those who experience them cannot,
+in any case, report their content intelligibly to us who have not
+experienced them--because no words exist. They are of no value to the
+race, and that condemns them. Men of action, not dreamers, are what the
+world needs.”
+
+“Men of action only carry out what has first been dreamed,” I ventured.
+
+“True,” replied the old man, “true very often. Men of action rarely
+have much vision. The poet is the highest type.... I am with you in
+this too--that the only _real_ knowledge is the knowledge of man,
+the study of consciousness. _Gnothi seauton_ is still the shortest,
+as well as the most pregnant, sermon in the world. Before we can
+get new knowledge, _different_ knowledge--yes, there I am with
+you--consciousness itself must change and become different first
+... _but_ ... the people who get that _different_ knowledge cannot
+describe it to us because there is no language.” Wise, thoughtful
+things the old man said, while I listened eagerly. “One thing is
+certain,” he declared with his usual emphasis: “If there is another
+state after the destruction of the body, it cannot be merely an
+extension, an idealization, of the one we know. _That_ is excluded.
+Without senses, without brain or nerves, without physical reactions
+of any kind--since there is no body--how shall we be aware of things
+about us? Another state can only be--_different_, yet so different
+that it is useless to talk of it. The Heaven of the spiritualists,
+the elaborate constructions of a Swedenborg, are nothing but
+coloured idealizations of the state we already know ...”--he snorted
+contemptuously--“obviously self-created. A different state of
+consciousness would show us a universe so totally different from
+anything we know that it must be--indescribable.”
+
+Of my own future, too, he liked to talk. The newspaper reporting he
+disapproved; it could lead to little; it was “_unersprechlich gemein_”;
+the New York press was a cesspool; it might serve a temporary purpose,
+but no self-respecting man should stay too long in it. He urged me
+to become a doctor, saying I should be a success, advising me to
+specialize in nerves and mental cases. Being an Englishman would help
+very much; in time I should have an enormous practice; he would assist
+me in all manner of ways, so that my course need not be longer than two
+years, or three at the most. He would coach me, rush me through in half
+the normal time. Later I could get a foreign degree, which would be an
+additional asset.... He never tired of this topic, and his enthusiasm
+was certainly sincere.
+
+Of stars, too, he loved to talk, of space, of possible other dimensions
+even. His exposition of a fourth dimension always delighted me. That
+the universe, indeed, was really four-dimensional, and that all we
+perceived of it was that sectional aspect, a portion as it were,
+that is projected into our three-dimensional world, was a theme that
+positively made him red in the face, as his big eyes focused on me,
+his concentrated mind working vehemently behind them.... Certainly, my
+knowledge of German improved considerably.
+
+Then, as Boyde came in, the light would die out of his eyes, his face
+would harden and grow dark--he had a way of making it seem frozen--and
+with a stiff bow to Boyde that only just acknowledged his presence, he
+would get up and leave the room.
+
+Meanwhile, I sold two more French stories, and Boyde bought back the
+ten dollars paid for them; three others were “not suitable,” according
+to McCloy. I told the doctor all I earned. “Later,” he said, “you pay
+me, if you want to. I take nothing--now.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+The days passed; I grew slowly better; the wound still had to be
+drained and bandaged, and the doctor kept me to my bed. Kay, writing
+from Toronto, had contrived to send us ten dollars. More French
+translations had gone to McCloy, but only one or two had been used.
+
+If the loneliness of the long days was dismal, the feverish nights were
+worse. I knew my few books by heart; Shelley and the “Gita” were indeed
+inexhaustible, but I longed for something new. To play the fiddle
+was too tiring. There was endless time for reflection ... and, thank
+heaven, through the two dirty windows I could watch the sky. Many a
+story I published fifteen years later had its germ in the apparently
+dead moments of those wearisome hours, although at the time it never
+once occurred to me to try and write, not even the desire being in me.
+
+It was the interminable nights that were most haunted. In the daylight
+there was colour in the changing clouds and sky, a touch of pink, a
+flame of sunset gold that opened the narrow crack through which I
+slipped into some strange interior state of happiness. There were
+the visits of the beloved, mysterious doctor, too. But the night was
+otherwise. The gas I left burning till Boyde woke and turned it out in
+the morning, made it impossible to see the stars. I could never settle
+down until he was comfortably asleep beside me. He kept late hours
+always. I reproached and scolded, yet in the end I always forgave. It
+was a comfort to know him within reach of my hand, while at the same
+time I dreaded his coming. My mixed feelings had reached that stage--I
+feared his coming and yet longed for it.
+
+I lay waiting, listening for his step. Far below I would hear it, down
+in the well of the sleeping house, even on the first flight of stairs.
+It mounted, mounted, stealthy, cautious, coming nearer and nearer, but
+always at the same steady pace. It never hastened. As it approached,
+rising through the stillness of the night, my heart would begin to
+beat; I dreaded the moment when our landing would be reached, still
+more the actual opening of our door. I listened, smothering my breath,
+trying to lessen the loud thumping against my ribs. The steps _might_
+not be his, after all; it might be someone else; that stealthy tread
+might pass my door without opening it and go upstairs. Then, when at
+last the handle rattled faintly, the door opened, and I saw him slowly
+enter, carrying his boots in his hand, my first instinct always was
+to--scream. Then he would smile, the eye-glass would drop from his
+eye, he would begin his explanations and excuses, and my dread soon
+evaporated in the friendliest of intimate talk.
+
+So well, at last, did I learn to recognize his approach, that I knew
+the moment he opened the front door three flights below. The sound of
+the handle with its clink of metal, the dull thud as the big thing
+closed--I was never once mistaken. In my fitful snatches of sleep these
+sounds stole in, shaping my dreams, determining both cause and climax
+of incessant nightmares which, drawing upon present things and recent
+memories, and invariably including the personality of Boyde, made those
+waiting hours a recurrent horror. I would fight in vain to keep awake.
+Only when he was safely asleep at my side did the nightmares cease.
+
+I had once seen Dixon, a Toronto photographer, walk across the Niagara
+river, just below the Falls; he used Blondin’s old tight-rope; he lay
+down on his back half way over, turned round, knelt, hovered on one
+foot, using an immense balancing pole. Thousands watched him from both
+shores on a day of baking sunshine; his background was the massive main
+waterfall, slowly rolling down and over; below him swirled and boiled
+the awful rapids. Dixon now came walking, walking in my dream again. I
+could hear his soft tread as his stockinged feet gripped the cable that
+swayed slightly as it sagged to the centre half way across. The sound,
+the figure came nearer; it came at me; it--was not Dixon after all.
+It was Boyde.... Then, as he moved with slow, creeping tread, nearer,
+ever nearer, I perceived suddenly that the rope was gone. There was no
+rope. He walked on empty air towards me--towards--_me_. I was appalled,
+speechless, paralyzed. That figure walking on space, walking towards
+me, walking remorselessly nearer was terrible.... The next second the
+door opened and Boyde stood peering at me round the edge, his boots in
+his hands.
+
+One morning, tired of learning the “Witch of Islam” by heart, I leaned
+over the bed, and something in the waste-paper basket close beside it
+caught my eye; a scrap of coloured paper--several scraps--pink. Looking
+nearer, I saw it was a torn-up cheque. Without any particular interest
+at first I stared at the unfamiliar thing, wondering vaguely how it
+came to be there. Only after this casual inspection did it occur to me
+as being rather odd. A cheque! What was it? Whose was it? How did it
+come to be there, torn up in _my_ waste-paper basket? It was a long
+time since I had seen such a thing as a cheque; and idly, with no more
+curiosity than this, I lay gazing at the scraps of coloured paper.
+
+The basket lay within easy reach; I stretched out an arm and picked it
+up; I emptied the contents on the white counterpane; I sorted out the
+coloured scraps from among the general litter. The scraps were small,
+and the puzzle amused me. It was a long business. Bit by bit the cheque
+took shape. The word “Toronto” was the first detail that caught my
+attention closer. Presently, fitting three tiny scraps together, I saw
+to my surprise a name in full--Arthur Glyn Boyde. Another little group
+made “Kay.” A third read “Seventy Five Dollars.” My interest increased
+with every moment, till at last the complete cheque lay pieced together
+before my eyes.
+
+It was drawn by Kay on my old Toronto bank for the sum mentioned, and
+it was payable to Boyde. The date was--three days before.
+
+I lay and stared at it in blank bewilderment. Fitting the scraps
+together on the counterpane was nothing compared to my difficulty in
+fitting the pieces together in my mind. I could make neither head nor
+tail of it. Kay had, indeed, been acting in Toronto on the date given,
+but--a bank account...! And why was the cheque torn up? It must have
+been delivered with a letter--yesterday. Boyde had not mentioned it.
+I felt as confused as though it were a problem in arithmetic; but a
+problem in arithmetic would not have stirred the feeling of pain and
+dread that rose in me. Something I had long feared and hated, had
+deliberately hidden from myself, had cloaked and draped so that I need
+not recognize it, now at last stared me in the face.
+
+The chief item in the puzzle, however, remained. That it was not
+Kay’s real signature, I saw plainly, it was a reasonably good copy;
+but why was the cheque torn up? It had been taken from my old book in
+the packing-case downstairs, of course; but why was it destroyed? A
+forgery! The word terrified me.
+
+It was while trying to find the meaning that my fingers played with the
+rest of the littered paper ... and presently pieced together a letter
+in the same writing as the signature; a letter, written from Toronto,
+with Islington Jersey Dairy as address, and bearing the same date as
+the cheque--a letter from Kay to Boyde. It had been also torn into
+little bits.
+
+“Dear B.,” it ran, “I am awfully sorry to hear poor Blackwood is so
+ill still, and that he has no money. I enclose my cheque for $75 to
+help him out, but, for God’s sake, see that he doesn’t waste it in
+dissipation, as he did the last I sent. I know I can trust you in
+this”.... A page and a half of news followed. A postscript came at the
+end: “Better not let him know how much I’ve sent. I’ll send another
+cheque later if you let me know it’s really needed.”
+
+With these two documents spread on the counterpane before me, I lay
+back thinking, thinking, while an icy feeling spread slowly over
+me that for a long time made clear thought impossible. The word
+“dissipation” made me smile, but all I knew in those first moments was
+an aching, dull emotion, shot through from time to time by stabs of
+keenest pain. There was horror too, there was anger, pity ... as, one
+by one, recent events dropped the masks I had so deliberately pinned on
+them. These thin disguises that too sanguine self-deception had helped
+me to lay over a hideousness that hurt and frightened me, fell one by
+one. My anger passed; horror and pity remained. I cannot explain it
+quite; an intense sorrow, an equally intense desire to help and save,
+were in me. Affection, no doubt, was deep and real....
+
+At the same time, the shock numbed something in me; the abrupt collapse
+of a friendship that meant so much to my loneliness bowled me over.
+What exactly had happened I did not know, I could not understand;
+treachery, falsity, double-dealing, lies--these were obvious, but the
+_modus operandi_ was not clear. Why was the cheque torn up and so
+carelessly flung away? There was a mist of confusion over my mind.
+I thought over my police court experience, the criminal tricks and
+practices I already knew, but these threw no helpful light. Was Kay,
+too, involved? Did the warning of a few weeks ago include him as well?
+There had been forgery, yet again--why was the cheque torn up? The
+mystery of it all increased the growing sense of dread, of fear, of
+creeping horror. My newspaper work had given me the general feeling
+that everyone had his price ... but between friends in adversity,
+Englishmen, gentlemen as well ... was it then true literally of
+_everybody_?
+
+After a time I collected the two documents and pieced them together
+again between the pages of a book, lest someone might enter and
+discover them. The doctor was not coming that day, but there might be
+other visitors. Then it suddenly dawned on me--why hadn’t this occurred
+to me before?--that the whole thing must be a joke after all. Of course
+... why not? It might even have something to do with the rôle of
+understudy in the Sothern Play. It could easily be--oh, surely!--a bit
+of stupid fun on Kay’s part. The carelessness too! Throwing the scraps
+in the basket under my very nose, where anybody could easily see them,
+where Mrs. Bernstein might find them, or the woman who came in twice a
+week to do the room. This was certainly against criminal intent.
+
+The most far-fetched explanations poured through my mind, invited by
+hope, dressed up by eager desire, then left hanging in mid-air, with
+not the faintest probability to support them. I deliberately recalled
+the kind actions, the solicitude, the sharing of receipts, a thousand
+favourable details, even to the innocent expression and the frank blue
+eyes, only to find these routed utterly by two other details; one
+negative, one vague, yet both insistent; the doctor’s silence and the
+shadow noticed recently on the sleeping face.
+
+It was eleven o’clock; Boyde had said he would return about four; I
+expected him, for the doctor, whom he avoided, was not coming. There
+were five hours of waiting to endure first.
+
+The situation which another might have tossed aside with a wry laugh at
+himself for having been a guileless fool, to me seemed portentous with
+pain and horror.
+
+I had no plan, however, when the door opened at half-past three, long
+before I expected it. There was in me no faintest idea of what I
+was going to say or do. The book lay on my knee, with the documents
+concealed between the pages. I had heard no footstep, the rattle
+of the handle was the first sound I caught. Yet the door opened
+differently--not quite as Boyde opened it. There was hesitation in
+the movement. In that hesitation of a mere second there again flashed
+across my mind a sudden happy certainty; the documents could be
+explained, it was all a joke somewhere. He had done nothing wrong, he
+would clear up the whole thing in a moment! Of course! It was my weak,
+feverish condition that had raised a bogey. A few words from him were
+now going to destroy it.
+
+Then, instead of Boyde, I saw Grant standing shyly on the threshold,
+the young actor who had pawned his overcoat. This time he wore it.
+
+The relief I felt at seeing him betrayed me to myself.
+
+I welcomed him so heartily that his shyness disappeared. He had dropped
+in by chance, he told me. I gave him an account of my discovery, and he
+bent over me to see the cheque and letter, asking if the writing was
+really Kay’s. He looked very grave.
+
+“It’s not unlike it, but it isn’t his,” I replied. “What do you make of
+it? Why are they torn up?” I was burning to hear what he thought.
+
+He did not answer for a moment. He asked instead a number of questions
+about Boyde, listening closely to my account of him, which mentioned
+the good with the bad. He went down to examine the packing-case and
+returned with the report that my cheque-book was not there. I asked
+him again what he made of it all, waiting with nervous anxiety for his
+verdict, but again he put me off. He wanted to know when I last heard
+from Kay. Eight days ago, I told him, from Toronto. He asked numerous
+questions. He seemed as puzzled as I was.
+
+“What do you think it means?” I begged. “What’s he been doing?”
+
+“Are you _quite_ positive it’s not Kay’s writing,” he urged, “even, for
+instance, if he was--” he hesitated--“a bit tight at the time?”
+
+I clung to the faint hope. “Well, of course--I really couldn’t say.
+I’ve never seen his writing when he was tight. I suppose----”
+
+“Because if it isn’t,” interrupted Grant decisively, “it means that
+Boyde has been getting money from him and using it for himself.”
+
+I realized then that he was trying to make things less grave than they
+really were, trying to make it easier for me in the best way he could.
+The torn-up cheque proved his suggestion foolish.
+
+“Do you think he’s an absolute scoundrel?” I asked point blank, unable
+to bear the suspense any longer. “Really a criminal--is he?”
+
+“I wanted to tell you the other day,” he said quickly. “Only you were
+too ill. I thought it would upset you.”
+
+“Criminal? Tell me at once. He may be in any minute. I must know.”
+
+“His reputation is bad,” was the reply, “as bad as it could be. I’ve
+heard things about him. He’s already been in gaol. He’s supposed to be
+a bit dangerous.”
+
+I was listening for the sound of a step on the stairs. I lowered my
+voice a little. It was clear to me that Grant did not want to tell me
+all he knew.
+
+“So--what do you make, then, of this?” I asked in a half whisper,
+pointing to the documents.
+
+He looked at me hard a moment, then gave his reply, also in an
+undertone:
+
+“Practising--I think.”
+
+I did not understand him. The uncertainty of his meaning, the queer
+suggestion in the word he used, gave my imagination a horrid twist. I
+asked again, my heart banging against my ribs:
+
+“Practising--what?”
+
+“He didn’t think it a successful--copy--so he tore it up,” Grant
+explained.
+
+“You mean--forgery?”
+
+“I think so. That is--I’m afraid so.”
+
+I think the universe changed for me in that moment; something I had
+been standing on for years collapsed; I was left hanging in space
+without a platform, without a rudder. An odd helplessness came over me.
+Grant, of course, had only confirmed my own suspicions, had merely put
+into words what, actually, I had known for a long time; but it was just
+this hearing the verdict spoken by another that hurt so abominably.
+Grant had quietly torn off me the last veil of self-deception. I could
+no longer pretend to myself. It seems absurdly out of proportion now on
+looking back; at the time the shock was appalling.
+
+We talked together, we tried to devise some plan of action, we reached
+no settled conclusion. The minutes passed. I never ceased listening for
+the familiar footstep on the stairs. Of one thing only was I perfectly
+sure: whatever happened, I intended to take charge of it all myself.
+I would deal with Boyde in my own way. The principle lay clear and
+decided in me; I meant to frighten Boyde as severely as I possibly
+could, then to give him another chance. Anticipation made the minutes
+crawl. Grant talked a good deal.
+
+“He spotted you and Kay from the start,” I heard Grant saying. “He saw
+your ignorance of the town, your inexperience, your generosity. He felt
+sure of free lodging anyhow, perhaps a good deal more----”
+
+A faint thud sounded from downstairs.
+
+“There he is,” I said instantly. “That’s the front door banging. He’s
+coming. Keep quiet.”
+
+I told Grant to get into the cupboard and hide. He was only just
+concealed in the deep cupboard and the door drawn to, when the other
+door opened quietly and Boyde came in.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+Boyde was in cheerful, smiling mood. He put some grapes on the bed,
+asked how I felt, and told me about his trip to Patterson and his
+failure to get the organist job. “It’s bitterly cold,” he said. “I
+_was_ glad of your overcoat. You _have_ been a brick,” he added, “but
+I’ll make it all up to you when my luck turns.” He crossed over to the
+sofa and sat down, stretching himself, obviously tired out.
+
+“Never mind, old chap; we shall get along somehow. Probably Kay will
+send us something more before long. He’s always faithful. Let’s see,” I
+went on casually, “when was it we heard from him last?”
+
+“A week ago,” said Boyde quite naturally. “Toronto, wasn’t it? Or
+Buffalo--no, no, Toronto.”
+
+We laughed together. “So it was,” I agreed carelessly. Then I pretended
+to hesitate. “But that was nearly a fortnight ago,” I suddenly
+corrected my memory; “surely we’ve heard since that. Only the other
+day--or did I dream it?”
+
+Boyde stared at me lazily through the cigarette smoke. “No, I think
+not,” he said quietly. “There was only the one letter.” He showed no
+sign of disturbance.
+
+I lay still, pretending to think back a bit, then heaved myself slowly
+up in bed.
+
+“But, Boyde, I remember the letter,” I exclaimed with conviction,
+staring into his face, “I’m certain I do--another letter. Why, of
+course! I remember your showing it to me. There was a cheque in it--a
+cheque for seventy-five dollars!”
+
+His easy laugh, his voice and manner, the perfect naturalness of his
+reply made me feel sure that I was in the wrong. He knew absolutely
+nothing of the cheque and letter. He was innocent. It was not _his_
+doing, at any rate.
+
+“You must have been dreaming,” he said, looking me full in the face
+with his big, honest blue eyes. “It’s too good to be true.” He gave
+a wry little chuckle that only a clear conscience could have made
+possible.
+
+I lay back in bed and laughed with him, partly from weakness, partly
+to hide my shaking, which I was terrified he would notice. I changed
+the subject a moment later, as he said nothing more; then, still acting
+on impulse and with no preconceived plan or idea of my next move, I
+sat bolt upright in bed and fixed him with my eyes. I assumed a very
+convinced and serious tone. I felt serious and convinced. The mood of
+horror had rushed suddenly up in me:
+
+“Boyde, I remember it all now.” I spoke with great emphasis. “It was
+not a dream at all. You came to this bedside and showed me the letter.
+You held it out for me to read. It was dated from my old Toronto Dairy
+three days ago. _You showed me the cheque too._ It was for seventy-five
+dollars, signed by Kay, and made out to your order. I remember every
+single detail of it suddenly. And--_so do you_.”
+
+He gazed at me as a little child might gaze. He made no movement. His
+eyes neither dropped nor flinched. He merely gazed--with a puzzled,
+innocent, guileless stare. A pained expression then stole across his
+face.
+
+“Blackwood, what on earth do you mean? It’s not likely I should forget
+it if seventy-five dollars came, is it?” he went on quickly in his
+most sympathetic voice, an aggrieved note in it that stirred all my
+affection instantly. “The most he has sent so far is ten dollars. I
+should have given you the money at once. And _you know it_, Blackwood.”
+He got up and walked quietly to and fro.
+
+It was the way he uttered those last four words that sent ice down my
+spine and brought the mood of horror back. Why this was so, I cannot
+explain. Perhaps the phrase rang false; perhaps its over-emphasis
+failed. I only know that my hesitation vanished. That prepared plan so
+strangely matured, yet hidden so deeply that it emerged only step by
+step as it was needed, pushed up another move into my upper mind.
+
+I got slowly out of bed. Perspiration broke out all over me. I felt
+very weak. The wound stretched. Straight before me, a long way off it
+seemed, was the sofa. Boyde stood watching my every move. He stood like
+a statue.
+
+Before I had taken a couple of slow, small steps, crawling round the
+edge of the bed, he did two quick things that in a flash brought final
+conviction to me, so that I knew beyond any doubt the hideous thing
+was true: he moved suddenly across the room, passing in front of me,
+though not near enough to touch; three rapid strides and he was against
+the window--with his back to the light. It was dusk. He wished to
+conceal his face from me. His left arm hung at his side, the hand on a
+level with the dressing-table, and I saw his fingers feeling along its
+surface, though his eyes never left my own. I saw them find, then grip,
+the white-handled razor, and pull it slowly towards him. These were
+the two things that betrayed him, but chiefly, I think, the first of
+them--concealing his face.
+
+At the same instant there was a faint sound on my left. I had
+completely forgotten the existence of my visitor; I now remembered him,
+for that sound came from inside the cupboard, and Grant, evidently,
+was ready to leap out. But I did not want Grant. I intended the whole
+matter to be between Boyde and myself. A flash of understanding had
+given me complete assurance. Boyde, I now knew, was a coward, a
+sneak, a cheat, a liar, and worse besides. In spite of my physical
+weakness I had the upper hand. I was about to give him the fright of
+his life, though still with no clear idea exactly how this was to
+be accomplished. All I knew was that I meant to terrify him, then
+forgive--and save him from himself.
+
+“Not yet!” I called out, yet so quickly, and with so little apparent
+meaning, that Boyde, I think, hardly heard me, and certainly did not
+understand. Grant, however, understood. He told me later it was just in
+time to prevent his coming out.
+
+With one hand supporting me on the edge of the dressing-table, I was
+now close to Boyde, bent double in front of him, staring up into his
+eyes.
+
+“Give me that razor,” I said, and he obeyed, as I felt sure he would.
+That is, his fingers moved away from it, and I quickly pushed it out of
+his reach. With my other hand I seized his arm. I raised my face to his
+as much as my wound allowed.
+
+“Boyde,” I said, “I know _everything_!”
+
+If I expected a collapse, as I think was the case, I was disappointed.
+Nothing happened. He did not move. Not a muscle, not even an eyelash
+flickered. He stared down into my upturned face without a word, waiting
+for what was coming; control of the features, of mouth and eyes in
+particular, was absolute. And it was this silence, this calm assurance,
+giving me no help, even making it more difficult for me, that, I think,
+combined to set me going. I was fairly wound up; I saw red. The words
+poured out, hot, bitter, scathing.
+
+The moment I ended, he smiled, as he said very quietly:
+
+“I don’t know _what_ you’re talking about. You are fearfully excited
+and you will regret your words. I do wish you would get back into bed.
+All this is awfully bad for you in your weak condition.”
+
+I was flabbergasted. All the wind had been taken from my sails. A touch
+would have sent me to the floor, but he did not touch me. He merely
+gazed into my face with an air of calm patience that had pity in it, a
+hint even of contempt.
+
+There was a little silence after he had spoken. For a moment I had no
+notion what to do or say. Then, quite suddenly, up flashed my plan. I
+was less excited now, my voice was well under control.
+
+“Boyde,” I said, “now, at last, I’ve caught you in a worse thing still.
+You have forged a letter and a signature. You have forged a cheque as
+well. And you will have to go to prison for it. There is a headquarters
+detective outside waiting for me to call him in. You are going to be
+arrested.”
+
+There was a moment of taut suspense I can never forget. He stared down
+at me, obviously at first incredulous. A slight twitch ran across his
+face, nothing more; beyond a trifling extra bend of the head, he made
+no movement. He was judging me, weighing my words, wondering if they
+were true. The next second I saw that he believed me.
+
+What happened then to his face I had never seen before, though I
+was often to see it afterwards in other faces during my criminal
+experience. The skin slowly blanched to the hue of flour; the cheeks
+sagged; the mouth opened; the look in his eyes was dreadful. The whole
+face disintegrated, as it were. He had the air of a hunted animal at
+bay. At the same time there was a convulsive movement of his entire
+body that frightened me. I did not know what he was going to do. It
+was really made up of several movements, one starting after another.
+First, his knees gave way and he nearly collapsed. Then, evidently, he
+considered the possibility of knocking me down and dashing out of the
+room. His eyes ran swiftly over everything at once, it seemed, noticing
+the razor certainly, but finding me awkwardly between him and the end
+of the table where it lay. He half turned in the direction of the
+window behind him, thinking doubtless of escape by the leads outside.
+He gave finally a sort of lurch towards me, but this I did not actually
+see, for I had turned away and was crawling painfully over to the door.
+It was Grant who supplied this detail of description later. His idea,
+probably, was to knock me down and make a bolt for it. But, whatever it
+was he really intended to do, in the end he did nothing, for at this
+second Grant emerged suddenly from his cupboard.
+
+I was already leaning with my back against the door and caught the
+look of terror and blank amazement that came into Boyde’s face, as he
+saw another man whom he certainly took at first for the detective.
+He stood stock still like a petrified figure. A moment later he
+recognized him as the Englishman he had met at the cricket match. He
+subsided backwards, half on to the window-sill and half against the
+dressing-table. The drama of the scene suddenly occurred to me for
+the first time, as I watched Grant walk over and put the razor in his
+pocket, and then sit down quietly on the sofa. He spoke no single word.
+He merely sat and watched.
+
+With my back against the door I then went on talking quickly. Yet
+behind my anger and disgust, I felt the old pity surge up; already I
+was sorry for him; I would presently forgive him. But, first, there was
+something else to be done. The plan lay quite clear in my mind.
+
+Closely watched by Grant and myself, Boyde had meanwhile moved out into
+the room, still without speaking a single word, and flung himself on
+the bed where he began to cry like a child. He sobbed convulsively,
+though whether the tears were of sorrow or of fear, I could not tell.
+We watched him for some time in silence. It was some minutes later that
+he sat up, still shaking with sobs, and tried to speak. In an utterly
+broken voice he begged for mercy, not for himself--he swore he didn’t
+“care a damn” about his “worthless self”--but for his mother’s sake.
+It would break her heart, if she heard about it; it would kill her. He
+implored me for another chance. His flow of words never ceased. If I
+would let him off this time, he begged, he would do anything I wished,
+anything, anything in the world. He would leave New York, he would go
+home and enlist ... but forgery meant years in gaol. “I am only thirty,
+and the sentence would mean the end of my life....”
+
+Perhaps instinct warned me he was lying, perhaps he over-acted, I
+cannot say; but the entire scene, the sobs, the impassioned language,
+the anguish in the broken voice, the ruin of the face I had once
+thought innocent, all left me without emotion. I was exhausted too. I
+had witnessed similar scenes between detectives and their prisoners,
+the former not only unmoved, but bored and even angry. I understood now
+how they felt. But there was the balance of my plan to be carried out;
+my original principle had never wavered; I believed the terror he had
+felt would make him run straight in future; the moment had now come, I
+thought, to tell him he was forgiven. So I left the door--he screamed,
+thinking I was going to open it--and crawled slowly over to him.
+Putting my hand on his shoulder, and using the gentlest, kindest voice
+I could find, I told him he should have another chance, but only one.
+All excitement had died out of me, I felt real pity, the old affection
+rose, I urged and begged him to “run straight” from this moment....
+
+“But--there is a condition,” I finished my sermon.
+
+“Anything, Blackwood. I’ll do anything you say.” The tears were still
+hanging on his cheeks.
+
+“You will sit down and write what I dictate.”
+
+We found a sheet of foolscap, and he sat down at the little desk,
+while I stood over him and dictated the words of a full confession. In
+writing it, Boyde’s hand was as steady as that of a clerk making an
+unimportant entry in an office book. He came to the end and looked up
+at me enquiringly.
+
+“Now write a duplicate,” I said, “in your other handwriting, the one
+you meant to be a copy of Kay’s.”
+
+He did this too; to an inexperienced eye the difference was
+extraordinary. I asked Grant to witness it with me, and when this was
+finished I waved the document in the other’s face. “I shall keep this,”
+I told him gravely, “and if ever you go wrong again, it will mean
+twenty years in prison.” I do not think he knew what I knew at that
+moment; _viz._ that a confession signed “under duress” was not evidence
+in a court of law. He said very simply, gazing into my eyes: “You’ve
+saved my life, Blackwood. I shall never forget this day. My temptations
+have been awful, but from this moment I mean to run straight, perfectly
+straight.” Words of gratitude followed in a flood. He shook my hand,
+begging to be allowed to help me back into bed.
+
+“I must first tell the detective I’ve withdrawn the charge,” I said.
+“I must send him away. He doesn’t know your name.” Boyde thanked me
+volubly again, as I crawled to the door, closed it again, and stood in
+the cold passage a minute or two. “The man’s gone,” I said, when I came
+back.
+
+“When--when am I to leave this room?” he asked quietly. I told him he
+could stay. The matter was forgiven and forgotten. He began to cry
+again....
+
+For some time after Grant had gone, we were alone. Boyde talked a
+little, repeating his gratitude. I asked him one question only: had
+he been in gaol before? “I would rather not answer that, if you don’t
+mind,” he said. I did not press him, for he had answered it. “I shall
+never, never go wrong again,” he kept repeating. And all the time he
+talked--I learned this later--there lay in his coat pocket, that was my
+coat pocket, the sum of ten dollars which belonged to me. He had sold
+two of my translations to McCloy, telling me McCloy had refused them.
+
+I have a vague recollection of that evening and of our talk, for
+complete exhaustion had come over me from the moment I got back into
+bed. It was not unconsciousness, but probably half unconsciousness. I
+was only dimly aware of what was going on. I remember Boyde going out
+to eat something at Krisch’s, then coming back. I woke in darkness with
+a sudden start. The gas was out, and I wondered why. There was a noise
+close beside me--something swishing. My mind cleared in a flash.
+
+“Put it back, Boyde,” I called out. “Put it back at once.”
+
+A thin summer coat hung on the door, too thin and shabby to wear, too
+ragged to pawn. I had placed the confession in the inside pocket, and
+it was this coat I now heard swishing faintly against the wood.
+
+No answer came, but I plainly heard the soft tread of bare feet along
+the carpet. I got up and lit the gas. Boyde lay apparently sleeping
+soundly on the floor. I noticed how well-nourished his body looked.
+_He_, at any rate, had not been starving. Then I moved to the door,
+found the confession, took it out, and crawled back into bed. From that
+moment the paper never left me; it was with me when later the doctor
+allowed me out, and at night it lay under my pillow while I slept. I
+kept the torn scraps of the cheque and letter with it, and I hid the
+razor. Boyde never shaved himself in that room again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+The episode, though far from being finished, had a shattering effect
+upon me. If a friend, so close to me by ties of affection and
+gratitude, could act like this, how would others, less intimately
+related, behave? My trust in people was killed. A sense of deep
+loneliness was added to the other miseries of that bed.
+
+Only my books comforted and helped ... they did not fail ... their
+teachings stood stiff and firm like a steel rod that never bent or
+shifted, much less broke. Since these notes tell merely the superficial
+episodes of my early years, further mention of what the books meant to
+me is unnecessary; enough--more than enough, probably--has already been
+told to show the background which explains motive and conduct. The main
+stream of my life, at any rate, ran deeper and ever deeper, its centre
+of gravity far below anything that could possibly come to me in the
+ordinary world or outward happenings. Big dreams were in me at white
+heat, burning, burning ... and all external events were coloured by
+them.
+
+There followed now a more peaceful though short period, during which
+Boyde behaved well, with kindness and signs of true penitence. Grant
+warned me this was acting, and that I had been a fool to forgive and
+let him stay on, but I would not listen, and followed my own principle.
+I did not trust him, but never let him know it, showing him full
+confidence, with all the former intimacy and affection. I felt sure
+this was the right and only way. His attitude to me had something of a
+dog’s devotion in it. I fully believed he was “running straight” again.
+I watched him closely, while hiding suspicion carefully away.
+
+November drew to a close; Kay sent no more money; the debt to Mrs.
+Bernstein grew; income became smaller and smaller. I wrote to McCloy,
+who replied with a brief word that I could come back when I was well
+again.
+
+Before leaving my bed, however, at the end of the month, another
+incident occurred that shocked me far more than the first.
+
+One afternoon about a week after the confession, there came a knock
+at the door, and to my complete surprise, in walked a banker, who had
+often stayed in our house in England. I was startled and annoyed, for
+I feared he would write home and tell the truth that my letters so
+carefully concealed. It was a couple of years since I had seen him. How
+had he found me out? His first sentence told me: “But this is dreadful.
+I knew nothing about your being ill. I didn’t know you were in New York
+even. An Englishman named Boyde came to my office yesterday and told
+me.” He looked me over with anxiety. “But your bones are showing! Have
+you been very bad? Why on earth didn’t you let me know, my dear fellow?”
+
+I had spoken of this acquaintance in Boyde’s presence, and he had
+evidently made a note of name and address. I explained quickly that
+I had not been seriously ill, that I was nearly well and had a good
+doctor, and that I was on the staff of the _Evening Sun_ and doing
+well. I told him briefly about my Canadian career as well. The banker
+was a very decent fellow. His visit was brief, but he was very kind,
+well-meaning and sympathetic--only--I did not want him! He promised,
+anyhow, he would not write to my father--was glad, I think, to be
+relieved of the necessity--and before going he absolutely insisted
+on leaving some money with me. I refused and refused again. But my
+own exhaustion and his persistence resulted in his leaving all he had
+on him at the moment--$32. Months later I discovered that Boyde had
+obtained other sums from him on the plea that I needed a specialist,
+and there may have been yet further amounts of similar kind for all I
+knew.
+
+On coming in, Boyde took his scolding with a smile; he had “acted for
+the best....” We discussed how the money should be spent, agreeing
+upon $10 to Mrs. Bernstein, $10 to the doctor next day, $3 to redeem
+Kay’s overcoat, which we would send to him, and the balance in hand,
+after laying in a store of dried apples, oatmeal and condensed milk, as
+our supplies were now exhausted. Next morning, when he left at eight
+o’clock for a studio appointment and choir rehearsal, I gave him the
+money for the landlady and a dollar he asked for himself. The balance
+he put back in the drawer of the little desk beside my bed.
+
+It was a happier morning than I had known for long; the feeling that
+I had something to give to the doctor made the hours pass quickly,
+and when he arrived at three, in his very best mood, he was obviously
+pleased on hearing that I could easily spare $10. The relief was
+written on his beaming face. He thanked me warmly. “I do really need
+it,” he said with emphasis, “or I couldn’t take it from you.” We passed
+a delightful hour or two; I was strong enough to play the fiddle to
+him; we talked ... the happiest afternoon I had yet known in that room
+came to an end; he prepared to go. Pointing to the drawer, I asked him
+to take the money out. He did so. At least he opened the drawer. He
+opened all four drawers. The money was not there.
+
+The most painful part of it, I think, was the look on his face as he
+presently went out. He did not believe me. I had found it impossible
+to mention Boyde. I had been speechless. I had no explanation to give.
+By the expression on the old German’s face as he left the room I could
+see he thought I was lying to him. His disappointment in me was greater
+than his disappointment over the money. It was a bitter moment--even
+more bitter than the further treachery of my companion....
+
+I was alone with my thoughts and feelings. I was alone for four
+days--and four nights. Boyde, that is, did not return till four
+days had passed, while the doctor stayed away three days. Whether
+either of them had said anything to Mrs. Bernstein on their way out,
+Boyde promising payment perhaps, the doctor letting fall something
+derogatory, I did not know. Mrs. Bernstein, anyhow, was very
+unpleasant during those four awful days. Boyde had not even given her
+the $10. She paid me dreadful visits, she threatened to sell my things
+(what? I wondered), to turn me out; she sent up hardly any food....
+
+Waiting for Boyde’s step, listening all day, all night ... I needed my
+books, my dreams, my inner crack, as I had never needed them before
+during those horrible four days. They seemed an eternity. The long
+nights, of course, were by far the worse; the dreams, the expectancy,
+for ever anticipating the familiar tread of stockinged feet on the
+stairs, wondering what in the world had happened, how things would
+end.... Had he been arrested, perhaps for something terrible? They were
+haunted nights that made me dread the first sign of coming dusk. It
+seemed like weeks, an incalculable time altogether had passed since I
+had seen him.... Then the spider took the place of the other vermin.
+I have always particularly disliked spiders, and this one was the
+father of them all; though it was the horror of him, not the physical
+presence, that haunted my nights so persistently. He was, I am sure,
+the Spider Idea. He originated in a room in Toronto, where a friend
+foolishly let his prototype, a tarantula, escape, and where it hid all
+night. It was my room. He came from Florida with a case of bananas. He
+was very big, if sluggish, his swollen body and hairy black legs the
+nastiest I had ever seen. I spent the night with this monster on the
+loose, and the first thing in the morning I saw him, low down on the
+wall, quite close to me. He had crept for warmth to a pipe near the hot
+air register.
+
+This spider now came at me, stirred into life by the chance activity
+of some memory cell. He came crawling across the leads, dragging his
+bulging body slowly, then feeling over the smooth glass with his legs
+that were like black brushes a chimney sweep might use. Up the stairs
+he came too, but sideways there, being too large to move in his usual
+way; first three legs on one side, then three legs on the other,
+heaving himself along, the mass of his body between them sloping like
+a boat at sea. The fat body was derived, I’m sure, from the shock
+of noticing Boyde’s well-fed appearance.... There were other things
+besides the spider, the mind, doubtless, being a little overwrought.
+
+One of these “other things” was real--a yellow-haired woman who aired
+what the papers called her “shapely legs” in silk tights for a living.
+Pauline M---- was her name, and she was leading lady in the “Night Owls
+Company,” then playing at Tony Pastor’s Music Hall in 14th Street,
+or, perhaps, it was at Koster and Biel’s Hall further up town. I have
+forgotten. In any case, Boyde had mentioned the Company to me in some
+connexion or other. He knew her.
+
+Her visit to me has always seemed vague and hazy; shrouded in mist
+of some kind, the mist of my suffering mind, I imagine. There lies a
+feverish touch of fantasy all over it. It was on the evening of the
+second day since Boyde had disappeared, though I could have sworn that
+at least a week’s loneliness had intervened. It _was_ the second day,
+I know, because the doctor came on the fourth. During the afternoon
+an unintelligible telegram had come, sent from a Broadway office:
+“_Don’t be anxious--have surprising news for you--no drinking--home
+this afternoon.----B._” There was not much comfort in it, though at
+least I knew then he had not been arrested, but an hour or so later a
+second telegram had arrived, sent from an office above 42nd Street:
+“_Married Pauline this afternoon.----B._” It all mystified, confused
+and troubled me extremely, and the strain on nerves and emotions had
+been so prolonged that, I think, I was half stupefied with it all, half
+stupid certainly.
+
+At any rate, the visit always seemed a sort of unreal visit, veiled
+as it were, and shadowy. Two thoughts were in my mind when the knock
+sounded on the door: food and Boyde. I was always listening intently
+for his tread, but I was also listening for Mrs. Bernstein’s footstep
+with a possible tray. It was after six o’clock; since coffee and bread
+at 8.30 in the morning I had eaten nothing, for our own supplies
+were finished. Instead of Boyde or the tray, however, in walked the
+woman with yellow hair and statuesque figure. She wore furs, she was
+over-dressed and painted, she reeked of scent. To me it was a kind of
+nightmare vision.
+
+Details of her long visit I remember but very few. She at once
+announced herself--“I am Pauline M----” and asked excitedly, “Are
+you Blackwood?” She was in a “state.” Her great figure filled the
+little room. She poured out a torrent of words in a cockney voice.
+Her face was flaming red beneath the paint. Occasionally she swept
+about. The name of Boyde recurred frequently. She was attacking me,
+I gathered. Boyde had said this and that about me. I understood less
+than nothing. I remember asking her to sit down, and that she refused,
+and that presently I asked something else: “Has he married you?” and
+that she suddenly caught sight of the telegrams lying on my bed--I had
+pointed--then picked them up and read them. She came closer to me while
+she did this, so that I caught the stink of spirits.
+
+It was all very muddled and confused to me, and I made no attempt to
+talk. I heard her begging me to “give him back” to her, that she loved
+him, that I had “poisoned his mind” against her--threats and beseeching
+oddly mingled. But the telegrams seemed to sober her a little, for I
+remember her becoming abruptly more quiet, almost maudlin, and pouring
+out an endless story about Boyde who was, apparently, “full of money
+... full of liquor” ... and full of anger against me because _he_ had
+been “supporting” me and I had shown “base ingratitude.”... I was too
+bewildered to feel much. It numbed me. I couldn’t make sense of it.
+I couldn’t realize how Boyde had deliberately left me alone so long.
+Something monstrous and inhuman touched it all.
+
+She went away eventually in a calmer state, though leaving me in
+a condition that was far from calm. She went, begging me to “send
+him back” to her when he came home, but half realizing, I gathered,
+that the boot was on the other leg, so far as Boyde and myself were
+concerned. She was still angry with me in a vague unjust sort of way,
+not knowing whom to believe probably, nor exactly what had happened.
+She flounced out of the room in a whirl of excitement and cockney
+sentences, and I never saw her again. My tray arrived within a few
+minutes of her welcome departure.... I spent an appalling night. Boyde,
+the yellow-haired woman, Mrs. Bernstein, the old German, the spider,
+steps on the stairs a hundred times that came to nothing.... I wished
+once or twice that I were dead.... The door did not open....
+
+It never rains but it pours. Two days later the doctor came in the
+afternoon, in the blackest mood I had yet encountered. I rather
+expected his visit, and though dreading it, I also longed for it,
+longed to see someone--a human being. He came sharp at three, attended
+to me, and left again. The visit lasted perhaps ten or fifteen minutes,
+and during the whole time he spoke no single word, not even greeting
+me when he entered, or saying good-bye when he went out. His face was
+black, aged, terrible in the suffering it wore. I had meant to tell
+him at last about Boyde, unable any longer to keep it to myself. I
+simply _must_ tell someone. But not a syllable could I get out. When
+the old German had gone, however, I felt sure it was his own mysterious
+suffering, and not any feeling against myself, that caused his strange
+behaviour. I knew, too, that he would come again, and thus I got some
+comfort from his silent, rapid visit. This was on the fourth day since
+Boyde deserted; it was the day on which he came back.
+
+He came back; his money had given out; he had nowhere to sleep.
+
+It was night, somewhere about ten o’clock. I was falling into an uneasy
+doze, the kind of doze that introduced the spider, when the door opened
+softly. There was no knock. I had heard no footstep. The door just
+opened and he came in.
+
+Every nerve in me became alert. Truth to tell, there was no emotion
+in me of any sort or kind. I was numb, exhausted to the bone. I lay
+still and stared at him. He looked sleek and even prosperous. He looked
+gorged with food. His face was a little swollen. The big blue eyes were
+clear. He let the eyeglass fall, gazing at me, while a smile broke over
+his face. I was so glad to see him, so relieved to have him back, that,
+though no emotion beyond that of suspense ended was in me, I felt, as
+once before with the doctor, a lump rise in my throat. His bloated
+expression distressed me vaguely. At first he said nothing, but walked
+across the room on tiptoe, as though pretending I was asleep and he
+feared to wake me.
+
+My tongue loosened suddenly. The very words I have not forgotten. A
+matter that had not lain in my mind for days came uppermost:
+
+“Did you send off the overcoat to Kay?”
+
+He nodded, but without looking at me. It was a lie, I knew. My eyes
+followed him round, as he began to undress. For several minutes I said
+nothing. Then other words came to me:
+
+“I’ve been alone four days and nights.”
+
+Silence.
+
+“Without food--or anybody.”
+
+Silence, but he turned his back to me.
+
+“Without money.”
+
+Silence. He stood quite motionless.
+
+“I might have died. I might have gone crazy.”
+
+Silence.
+
+“It’s been awful--the loneliness and wondering----”
+
+He half turned, but instantly turned back again. No sound escaped him.
+
+“I’ve been thinking about you--and wondering day and night. Are you
+really married? Pauline’s been here--this afternoon.”
+
+His silence was broken by a sort of gulp, and he bent over. My mistake
+about the date of the woman’s visit was intentional--I thought it might
+open his lips; I did not correct it. He half turned to look at me, but
+again instantly hid his face as before. Then he abruptly sat down on
+the sofa, leaning against the back, his head in his hands. I raised
+myself in bed, never taking my eyes off him.
+
+“I got your telegrams. Have you nothing to say? No explanation? Have
+you brought any food, any money? You have had money--all this time.”
+
+Silence, broken only by another gulp.
+
+“I saw you take the money out of the drawer. I said nothing because I
+thought you were going to get me things. I _trusted_ you.”
+
+He turned all at once and faced me, though keeping his eyes always
+steadily on the floor. The tears were streaming down his face like rain.
+
+“Are you tired?” I asked. “You’d better lie down and go to sleep. You
+can talk to-morrow.”
+
+It was this that finished him. He had reached the breaking point.
+
+There is no heroism in me; it was simply that I needed him, rotten as
+he was, heartless, cruel, vile as well; I funked another spell of that
+awful loneliness; I knew him now for a coward and a beast, but I could
+not face another night alone. That complete loneliness had been too
+horrible. A wild animal was better than that. Boyde was of the hyena
+type, but a hyena was better than a spider. It was neither generosity
+nor nobility that made me listen to his ridiculous and lying story of
+an “awful and terrible temptation,” of a “fearful experience with a
+woman” who had drugged him.... The tale spun itself far into the night,
+the razor and the confession were under my pillow, I fell asleep, dead
+with exhaustion, while he was still explaining something about a “woman
+named Pauline M----” who had “deceived me in a most extraordinary
+way....”
+
+The following day, in the morning--Dr. Huebner came unexpectedly. Boyde
+had gone out before I woke. This time he was a radiant Dr. Jekyll, and
+I told him the whole story. His only comment, looking severely at me
+through the big spectacles, was: “I expected it. He is a confidence
+man. I knew it the first time I saw him. You have kicked the devil out,
+of course?”
+
+A violent disagreement that was almost a quarrel followed.
+
+“I simply do not understand you,” he said at last, in complete disgust.
+It was only the wondrous, beaming happy mood he was in that prevented
+his being really angry. He threw his hands up and snorted. “You are
+either a fool or a saint, and--I’m sure you’re not a saint.” He was
+very much upset.
+
+I did not yield. There was something in me that persuaded me to forgive
+Boyde and to give him yet another chance. I told Boyde this in very
+plain language. I claim no credit--I have never felt the smallest
+credit--for what I did. It was simply that somehow it seemed impossible
+_not_ to forgive him--anything. But the time was near, though the
+feeling of forgiveness still held true in me, when my forgiveness took
+another form. Thirty years ago these little incidents occurred. It
+seems like thirty days.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+It is a mercy one cannot see the future. In that New York misery,
+present and to follow, had I known that some fifteen years later I
+should be my own master, living more or less “like a gentleman,”
+earning my livelihood, though a very bare one, by writing, I could
+never have faced what I did face. Any value that may have lain in the
+experiences would certainly have been missed, at any rate. If one
+knew that the future promised better things, there is no patience in
+human beings that could hold and wait for it; if, on the other hand,
+it promised worse, I have met no courage that could bear the present.
+Those who preach “live in the present only” have common sense on their
+side.
+
+With the memory of the past, similarly, such folk show wisdom.
+Reincarnation is an interesting theory to many; yet to recall past
+lives could have but one effect--to render one ineffective now. To
+recall the failures of a mere forty years is bad enough; to look back
+over a hundred lives would be disastrous: one could only sit down and
+cry.
+
+December had come with its cold and bitter winds, and the doctor, ever
+faithful, had let me up. I went for my first little walk, leaning
+on Boyde’s arm. Round Gramercy Park we crawled slowly, and that
+first taste of fresh air, the sound of wind in the leafless trees,
+a faint hint of the sea that reaches even the city streets, gave me
+an unforgettable happiness and yearning. The plan to settle in the
+backwoods again obsessed me. A little later I had almost persuaded
+the doctor, and Kay in my letters, to take up a claim north of the
+Muskoka Lakes where we had spent such a happy summer. Boyde was to come
+too--“as a sort of excitement, I suppose!” was the doctor’s bitter
+comment.
+
+I grew gradually stronger. Reporting was still impossible, but,
+introduced by Boyde, I earned something by posing in the studios. A
+“sitting” was three hours. Some artists paid by the hour, but Charles
+Dana Gibson, then drawing his weekly cartoons in _Life_, always paid
+for a full sitting, though he might use his model for an hour only.
+He was a rapid worker, and a good fellow; he never forgot to ask
+if one was tired of any particular attitude; my first pose to him
+was for a broken-down actor leaning against a hoarding covered with
+advertisements, the joke being something about a bill-board and a
+board-bill. I was thrilled when it appeared in _Life_. There was always
+a great rush among the models for Gibson’s studio. The only other poses
+I remember are swinging a golf club and sitting for a bishop’s arms and
+hands. I wore big sleeves. These, however, were not in Gibson’s studio.
+
+My memory of this work is dim; it was not unpleasant; only its
+uncertainty against it, though a good week might bring in as much as
+fifteen dollars. Smedley, who illustrated for _Harper’s Magazine_, was
+the painter we all disliked most; Cox, son of Bishop Cox, Cleveland
+Cox being his full name, I think, was a favourite: he was a gentleman.
+There was Zogbaum too, another illustrator, and there was Lynwood
+Palmer, the horse-painter, and leading artist on _The Rider and
+Driver_, a first-class weekly of that day. “Artist Palmer,” as the
+papers called him later, was a character. His kindness to me stands
+out. He had very great talent--for getting the likeness of a horse.
+We called him “The Horse.” He made a success at his work, painted
+the “King’s Horses and Men” in subsequent years, and settled down
+eventually--he was an Englishman--I believe, at Heston, Hounslow. His
+New York studio was in Fifth Avenue. Many a time he gave me food there.
+
+“Artist Palmer” was self-taught. I forget the whole story, but he
+had known his hard times. Looking at my dirty boots the first time I
+called, he said: “When I drove a cab here, my boots were better cleaned
+than any man’s on the rank.” I was not partial to Dr. Smiles’ “Self
+Help.” A “shine” moreover, cost 5 cents, and 5 cents meant a glass of
+beer and a meal at a free lunch counter--our invariable lunch at that
+time.
+
+Artist Palmer knew Boyde as a bad lot, and told me that Boyde was lying
+about me behind my back everywhere, saying that he was supporting me,
+paying for my illness, and while borrowing money in my name, explaining
+that I spent all he gave me in dissipation! His method was to present a
+forged cheque to some good-natured friend after banking hours, obtain
+the money, and spend it on himself. A tale of woe, with crocodile
+tears, saved him from subsequent arrest. No one ever prosecuted him.
+
+All this I kept to myself, though I watched Boyde more and more
+closely. I knew his studio appointments and made him hand over what
+he earned. I did also an idiotic thing: I went down and warned the
+pastor’s daughter about him. Palmer’s words and my own feeling
+persuaded me to this fatal action. She was a beautiful girl. I received
+from her the same kind of treatment that I had shown to the man who
+first warned me. Boyde, of course, soon knew about it. We had a scene.
+I saw for the first time anger in his face, black hatred too. He never
+forgave me my stupid indiscretion.... The way he explained my action to
+the girl herself was characteristic of him, but I only learned later
+how he managed it. In a voluntary confession he wrote a few weeks
+afterwards, a confession he judged might convince me he was genuinely
+repentant, and at the same time save him from a grave impending fate,
+he described it--honestly: “I told her,” he said, “she was to pay no
+attention to your warnings, because you wanted me to marry one of your
+sisters.”
+
+The way I lost Boyde temporarily comes a little later in his story,
+but may be told here because it marked the close of a definite little
+chapter in his career with me.
+
+It was the first week in December. I came home--from the doctor’s
+house--at two in the morning. The gas was burning, but the room was not
+too well lit by the single burner. Boyde lay asleep on the floor as
+usual. I moved softly so as not to wake him. I glanced down. What I saw
+startled me; more, it gave me a horrid turn. The figure on the mattress
+was another man. It was not Boyde. Then, as I cautiously looked closer,
+I discovered my mistake. It _was_ Boyde after all, but without his
+moustache.
+
+I stared for some minutes in amazement, for the face was completely
+altered. The drooping, rather heavy moustache had always hidden his
+lips and mouth. I now saw that mouth. And it was a cruel, brutal mouth,
+hard, sensual, with ugly thickish lips, contradicting the kindly
+blue eyes completely. A sentence of detective-sergeant Heidelberg, a
+headquarters man, came back to me, himself a brutal, heartless type, if
+ever there was one, but with years of criminal experience behind him:
+“Watch the mouth and hands and feet,” he told me once in court. “They
+can fake the eyes dead easy, but they can’t fake the mouth hell give
+’em. They forgit their hands and feet. Watch their mouth and hands and
+feet--the way these fidgit. That give ’em away every time.”
+
+Why had Boyde done this thing? He was a handsome man, the light
+graceful moustache was a distinct asset in his appearance. Why had he
+shaved suddenly? I stared at the new horrid face for a long time. He
+lay sleeping like a child.
+
+I turned to examine the room, as changes might be there too. All seemed
+as usual, I saw no difference anywhere. Then my eyes fell on the
+cupboard with its half-opened door. Boyde’s coat, that was my own coat,
+the only thick one we had between us, hung down from the hook. And, for
+the first time, the sight of that coat stirred a dim, painful memory
+of the place where I had first worn it. Naturally it was old, but it
+was also English. The house in Kent rose up--the lime trees on the
+lawn, the tennis courts, my father’s study, his face, my mother’s face,
+their voices even, the very smell and atmosphere and feelings of happy
+days that now seemed for ever lost. The whole machinery of association
+worked suddenly at full pressure. It was like a blow. I realized
+vividly the awful gap between those days and these, between myself as I
+had been and as I was. A whiff of perfume, a smell, produces this kind
+of evocation in most cases; with me, just then, it was my old English
+coat.
+
+I remember the strong emotion in me, and that, while still held and
+gripped by it, my eye caught sight of an envelope sticking out of
+the inside breast pocket. The coat hung by chance in a way that made
+it visible. It might easily fall out altogether. I moved over and
+stretched out a hand to put it safely back and then saw that the
+writing on the envelope was my own. It was a letter. I took it out. The
+address was the house in Kent, whose atmosphere still hung about my
+thoughts. The name was my mother’s name. There were other letters, all
+my own; one to my father; two to my brother, the one being in the world
+I really loved, the only one of the family to whom I had given vague
+hints of the real state of affairs.
+
+Some of the letters were two weeks, three weeks old. In each case the
+five-cent stamp had been torn off. Five cents meant a glass of lager
+and a meal at a free lunch counter.
+
+There was no reflection. Holding the letters in my hand, I moved
+across to the mattress. There was an anger in me that made me afraid,
+afraid of myself. I wanted to kill, I thought I was going to kill, I
+understood easily how a man _can_ kill. In my mind was a vivid picture
+of my brother’s face--it was he, not my parents, who moved with me.
+But I was not excited; ice was in me, not fire. Something else, too,
+at that moment was in my veins, a drug ... a strong dose, too! Five
+minutes before my entire being had been in a state of utter bliss, of
+radiant kindness, of tolerance, of charity to everybody in the world.
+I would have given away my last cent, I would have forgiven anybody
+anything. All this was swept away in an instant. I felt a cold, white
+anger that wanted to kill.
+
+Boyde had not heard my footstep; he lay sound asleep. I tore the
+blanket off. He lay half naked before me, sleek, well-nourished,
+over-fed, loathsome, horrible beyond anything I had known. He turned
+with a jump and sat up. I held the letters against his face, but he was
+still dazed with sleep and only stared stupidly, first at the letters,
+then into my face.
+
+I kicked him; I had my boots on.
+
+“Get up!” I said. And, as he got up, rather heavily, trying to protect
+himself, I kicked him again and again, till at last he stood upright,
+but at some distance from me, over towards the window. He understood
+by this time; he saw the letters in my hand. The terror in his face
+sickened me even in my anger. I saw the evil almost visibly leap out.
+The unfamiliarity, now that the moustache was gone, the cruelty of the
+naked lips and mouth, the shrinking of the coward in him, these made an
+unforgettable picture. He did not utter a syllable.
+
+My own utterance, what words I used, I cannot remember. I did not
+remember them even ten minutes afterwards, certainly not the next day,
+when I told the doctor what had happened. Two sentences only remain
+accurate: “Come close to me. I’m going to kill you,” and the other:
+“Get ready! I’m going to beat you like an animal!”
+
+He stood before me, wearing his short day-shirt without a collar, his
+hair untidy, his face white, his half-naked body shaking. He dropped
+to his knees, he got up again and tried to hide, he cringed and whined
+like a terrified dog, his blue eyes were ghastly. In myself were
+feelings I had never dreamed I possessed, but whose evidence Boyde
+must, plainly, have read in my expression. What he could not read, nor
+ever knew of course, was the fight, the fight of terror, I was having
+with myself. I felt that once I touched him I should not stop till I
+had gone too far.
+
+I did not touch him once. Instead, I told him to put on his clothes,
+his own clothes, and go. He had no clothes of his own. He did not
+go.... I eventually let him wait till morning, when he could find
+enough rags of sorts to wear in the street.... He explained that he had
+shaved his moustache because the Rockaway Hunt demanded it.
+
+He had said hardly a word during the entire scene. Half an hour after
+it was over he was sleeping soundly again. I, too, thanks to the drug,
+slept deeply. I woke in the morning to find the mattress on the floor
+unoccupied. Boyde had gone. With him had gone, too, my one thick suit
+and, in addition, every possible article of pawnable or other value
+that had been in the room or in the packing-case downstairs. Only the
+razor and the confession had he left behind because they were beneath
+my pillow.
+
+The next time we met was in even more painful and dramatic
+circumstances. I decided it was time to act.
+
+I went down that same morning to police headquarters in Mulberry
+Street, and swore out a warrant for his arrest on two charges; forgery
+and petit larceny. A theft of more than $25 was grand larceny, a
+conviction, of course, carrying heavier punishment. I reduced his
+theft of my $32, therefore, by seven dollars, so that, if caught and
+convicted, his sentence might be as short as possible.
+
+But for the fact that I was a reporter on a Tammany newspaper,
+nothing would have happened. As it was, no bribe being available, the
+police refused to take any steps in the matter. The confession, they
+knew, was worthless; it was a small case; no praise in the press, no
+advertisement, lay in it. “Find out where he is,” Detective Lawler
+said, “and let us know. Just telephone and I’ll come up and take him.
+But _you_ do the huntin’. See? _I_ don’t.”
+
+This was Detective Lawler, who, under another name came into a story
+years later--“Max Hensig,” in “The Listener.”
+
+The determination to put Boyde where he could no longer harm himself or
+others held as firm in me as, formerly, the determination to forgive
+had held. The hunt, however, comes a little later in the story. There
+was first the explanation of the doctor’s secret. The doctor was my
+companion in the dreadful hunt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+It was, perhaps, the undigested horror of those days, as also their
+unsatisfied yearnings after beauty, that tried to find expression
+fifteen years later in writing. Once they were over I hid them away,
+those dreadful weeks, trying to forget them. But nothing is ever
+forgotten, nor is anything finally suppressed in the sense that it
+is done with. Expression, sooner or later, in one form or another,
+inevitably crops up.
+
+“Writing,” declared the old doctor, after a talk about De Quincey, “is
+functional.” He had many pet theories or hobbies on which he loved to
+expatiate. “Writing is as much a function of the system as breathing
+or excretion. What the body takes in and cannot use, it discards.
+What the mind takes in and cannot use, it, similarly, excretes. A
+sensitive, impressionable mind receives an incessant bombardment, often
+an intense, terrific bombardment of impressions. Two-thirds of such
+impressions are never digested, much less used. The artist-temperament
+whose sensitiveness accumulates a vast store, uses them; the real
+artist, of course, shapes them at the same time. The ordinary man, the
+_Dutzend Mensch_, made in bundles by the dozen, gets few impressions,
+and needs, naturally, no outlet.... Writing is purely functional....”
+It was one of his numerous pet theories.
+
+I went to his house now every night; he gave me his professional care,
+he gave me sympathy, he gave me food. Pathetic, wonderful old German!
+His tenderness was a woman’s, his temper a demon’s. I felt a giant in
+him somewhere. At close daily quarters his alternate moods perplexed me
+utterly. He had an Irish wife, a kind, motherly, but quite uneducated
+woman of about forty-five, and a little girl of eight or nine, whose
+white face looked as old as her mother’s, and whose diminutive figure
+seemed to me unusual somewhere. Was it not stunted? Her intelligence,
+her odd ways, her brilliant eyes captivated me. She called me “Uncle
+Diedel.” She talked, like her mother, broken German. Supper, an
+extremely simple meal, but a feast to me, was always in the basement
+kitchen.
+
+The tiny wooden house, owning something akin to squatter’s rights
+which prevented its demolition, stood in the next block to my own,
+hemmed in by “brownstone fronts,” but with a miniature garden. New
+York, that burns anthracite coal, has no blacks and smuts; the trees
+and shrubs were really green; the earth smelt sweet. The little house,
+standing back from the road, was a paradise to me. Its one ground-floor
+apartment was divided by folding doors into consulting- and
+waiting-rooms. But no patients came, or came so rarely that it was an
+event when the door-bell rang. The doctor had the greatest difficulty
+in keeping himself and family alive. At supper I used to eat as little
+as possible. He seemed a competent physician. I wondered greatly. As
+well as real human kindness, there was courage in that little building;
+there was also a great tragedy I sensed long before I discovered its
+solution. The strange innocence and ignorance of my up-bringing still
+clung to me.
+
+The establishment, the poverty, the alternating moods, as I said,
+puzzled me; I was aware of a whole life hidden away from my
+observation. They were so poor that dinner was the meal of a workman,
+they could not even keep a servant. There were worrying debts as well.
+Often the doctor was so bearish and irritable that I dared not say a
+word, his wife got curses and abuse, he would almost kick the child,
+finding fault with such sneers and rudeness that I vowed to myself I
+would never eat his food again. Then, after a momentary absence in his
+workshop upstairs, where he kept a lathe and made beautiful chessmen,
+he would come slowly stumbling down again, and the door would open to a
+wholly different being. Bent, as always, but well poised and vigorous,
+with bright smiling eyes, benevolent yet rugged face, every gesture
+full of gentle kindness, he would pat his old wife on the shoulder and
+take the child upon his knee, and beg me to play the fiddle to him or
+to draw my chair up for an intimate talk. He would light his great
+meerschaum pipe and beam upon the world through the blue smoke like
+some old jolly idol. The change seemed miraculous.
+
+His talk seemed, at the time, wonderful to me. He would discourse
+on Kant, Novalis, Heine, on music, science, astronomy--“when your
+troubles seem at their worst,” he would say, “look up at the stars
+for half an hour, _with imagination_, and you’ll see your troubles
+in a new perspective”--on religion, literature and life, on anything
+and everything, while downstairs his kindly old wife prepared the
+Frankfurters and sauerkraut and coffee.
+
+Neither mother nor child, I noticed, paid much attention to his
+attacks. The little girl, who called her father “Otto,” sat up with
+us night after night till two in the morning, and hated going to bed.
+She listened spellbound to the stream of talk. I still see the dingy,
+lamp-lit room in the heart of the roaring city, the white-haired old
+doctor, pipe in mouth, the operating chair in the middle of the floor,
+the little pale-faced child with her odd expression of maturity as she
+looked from him to me, then led me by the hand to our late meal in the
+gloomy basement. I often waited achingly for that meal, having eaten
+nothing since breakfast. Would he never stop talking...?
+
+We talked of Boyde--his face. The doctor’s reading of Boyde’s face was
+that it was a bad, deceitful, clever face, evil, brutal and cruel. I
+mentioned the man’s various acts of kindness. “Bait,” he exclaimed,
+with a scornful snort, “mere bait! He wanted a free lodging. He had
+plenty of money all along, but the free bed gave him more--to spend on
+himself while you starved.”
+
+He talked on about faces.... Handsome ones he either disliked or
+distrusted, handsome features like Boyde’s were too often a cloak that
+helped to hide and deceive. Behind such faces, as a rule, lay either
+badness or vacuity; good looks were the most misleading thing in the
+world. Expression rarely accompanied good looks, good features. He was
+off on a pet hobby, he waxed eloquent. Beautiful women--he spoke of
+good features chiefly--were almost invariably wicked, or else empty. Of
+“Society Beauties” he was particularly contemptuous. “Regular features,
+fine eyes, perfect skin, but no expression--no soul within. The
+deer-like eyes, the calm, proud loveliness people rave about is mere
+vacancy. Pfui!”
+
+His habit of staring into the mirror came back to me, and I ventured a
+question. He hesitated a moment, then got up and led me to the glass,
+where, without a word, he began to gaze at his own reflection, making
+the familiar grimaces, smiling, screwing up his eyes, stretching his
+lips, raising his eyebrows, pulling his moustache about until, at last,
+I burst into laughter I could control no longer.
+
+He turned in astonishment. He examined my own face closely for some
+time. “You are too young still,” he said. “You have no lines. In my
+face, you see, lies all my past, layer below layer, skin behind skin,
+my face of middle age, of early manhood, of youth, of childhood. It
+carries me right back.”
+
+He began showing me again, pointing to his reflection as he did so.
+“That’s middle age ... that’s youth.... Ach! and there’s the boy’s
+face, look!”
+
+I did not dare to look, for explosions of laughter were in my throat,
+and I should have hurt his feelings dreadfully. I understood what he
+meant, however.
+
+“With the face of each period,” he explained, “rise the memories,
+feelings and emotions of that particular period, its point of view, its
+fears, ambitions--_hopes_. I live again momentarily in it. I am a young
+man again, a boy, a child. I am, at any rate, no longer myself--_as
+I now am_.” The way he spoke these four words was very grave and
+sad. “Now,” he went on with a sigh, “you understand the charm of the
+mirror. It means escape from self. This is the ultimate teaching of
+all religion--to escape from Self.” He chuckled. “The mirror is my
+Religion.”
+
+During this odd little scene I felt closer to his secret than ever
+before. There was something fine and lovely in him, something big,
+but it lay in ruins. Had my attitude been a little different, had I
+not laughed for instance, I think he would have taken me into his
+confidence there and then. But the opportunity was lost this time.
+He asked, instead, for music, old, simple German songs being what he
+liked most. He would lean back in his big chair, puff his great pipe,
+close his eyes, and hum the melodies softly to himself while I played.
+It was easy to vamp a sort of accompaniment with double stopping.
+He dreamed of old days, I suppose; it was a variant of the mirror
+game. Tschaikowsky, Meyer-Helmund, Massenet he also liked, but it was
+Schubert, Schumann, even Mendelssohn he always hummed to. Of “_Ich
+grolle-nicht, auch wenn das Herz mir bricht_,” he never tired. The
+little child would dart up from the basement at the first sound of the
+fiddle, show her old, white face at the door, then creep in, sit in a
+corner, and never take her eyes from “the orchestra.” When it stopped
+playing, she was off again in a second.
+
+One item, while speaking of the music, stands out--chanting to the
+fiddle a certain passage from De Quincey. The “Confessions” fascinated
+him; the description of the privations in London, the scenes with
+Anne when she first brought him out of her scanty money the reviving
+glass of port, her abrupt disappearance finally and his pathetic
+faithful search, the lonely hours in the empty house in Greek Street,
+but particularly his prolonged fight against the drug. It was the
+Invocation to Opium, a passage of haunting beauty, however, he loved
+so much that he chanted it over and over to himself. The first time he
+did this I invented a soft running accompaniment on the lower strings,
+using double stopping. The mute was on. My voice added the bass. It
+was a curious composition of which he never tired; it moved him very
+deeply; I have even seen tears trickling down his cheeks when it was
+over. He always left his chair for this performance, walking slowly to
+and fro while he chanted the rhythmical, sonorous sentences:
+
+  “O just, subtle and mighty opium! that, to the hearts of rich and
+  poor alike, for the wounds that will never heal, and for the pangs
+  of grief that tempt the spirit to rebel, bringest an assuaging
+  balm;--eloquent opium! that with thy potent rhetoric stealest away
+  the purposes of wrath.... Thou buildest upon the bosom of darkness,
+  out of the fantastic imagery of the brain, cities and temples,
+  beyond the art of Phidias and Praxiteles, beyond the splendours
+  of Babylon and Hekatompylos; ... and hast the keys of Paradise, O
+  just, subtle and mighty opium...!”
+
+“_Ach! wie prachtvoll!_” he would cry a moment later, “_wie
+wunderschoen!_” and then would recite a translation he had made into
+his own tongue, and a very fine one too. Quite delighted, he would
+repeat the passage over and over again, pausing to compare the two
+versions, fixing me with his big eyes in order to increase his own
+pleasure in the music by witnessing the evidence of my own.
+
+Truly he was a Jekyll and Hyde.
+
+It was only during the Jekyll mood this kind of scene took place; in
+the Jekyll happy humour, too, that I had told him about my strange
+up-bringing. “Now I understand better,” he said, “why you are still so
+young and know so little of life, and why you are so foolishly good to
+Boyde”--which annoyed me, because I considered myself now quite old and
+a thorough man of the world as well.
+
+It was in this mood, too, that we discussed my own theories and beliefs
+... a life in the woods as well. Kay, himself and his family, Boyde
+and I were to settle in the backwoods ... perhaps I was as eloquent
+as I was earnest; he listened attentively; sometimes he seemed almost
+ready to consent; he understood, at any rate, the deep spell that
+Nature had for me. But he only smiled when I said I was a failure and
+an outcast. My life had hardly begun yet! No man was a failure who had
+an object and worked for it, even though he never got within miles of
+accomplishment. “A life for a man is a life _among_ men,” he would say
+with emphasis. “The woods are all right as an interlude, but not as a
+career.” He was very sympathetic, but he shook his head violently. “In
+action lies a man’s safety in life,” he growled at me. “The world needs
+men of action, not dreamers,” he repeated and repeated, “and Buddhism
+has never yet produced a man of action. Do _something_, even if it
+prove the wrong thing. Dreaming, without action, is the quickest way
+of self-corruption I know.” And he would then urge me again to become
+a doctor, after which he would proceed to dream himself for an hour or
+two ... showing that all his life he had been far more of a dreamer
+than a man of action....
+
+It was chance that suddenly led me into the doctor’s secret. He became
+for me, from that moment, the most pathetic and tragic of human beings.
+My own troubles seemed insignificant.
+
+One afternoon early in December, gloomy, very cold, a studio
+appointment failed, and I decided to go to the wooden house. It was
+that or the public library, but I wanted a talk, I wanted also to get
+really warm. I had no overcoat; the doctor’s room was always like an
+oven. The vermin I had grown accustomed to and hardly noticed them. An
+idea of food, too, was in my mind, for the free lunch glass of beer and
+salt chip-potatoes was all I had eaten since breakfast. Seven o’clock,
+however, was my usual hour of visit, I had never been in the afternoon
+before. A memorable visit; we were alone; he told me his secret very
+quietly.
+
+I found him in his most awful mood, rude, his nerves unbearably on
+edge. He said he had not expected me, but when I tried to go, he became
+angry and begged me to stay, saying that I helped him more than I could
+ever know. Had I brought the fiddle? I said I would run up the street
+and get it. “No,” he implored, “don’t go now. You can go later--before
+supper. _Please_ do not leave me--_please_!” He then said he would tell
+me something no one else knew, no one except his wife. I wondered
+what was coming, and felt strangely touched and moved at his treating
+me with such confidence. His manner was so pathetic, and he seemed
+suddenly to have become weak and helpless, and somehow or other it was
+in my power to do him a service. I was thrilled and full of expectation.
+
+But, before he began to tell me, he went up to a little cabinet with a
+glass door and took out a small bottle full of a white powder, bearing
+the word, the magical word “Majendie”--a word I can never forget as
+long as I live--and took some of the powder and made a solution and
+then sucked some of it up with a needle and turned to me. His face was
+swollen and looked terrible, for the eyes glowed so hotly, and the skin
+was so red and white in patches. Then he began to open his waistcoat
+and shirt till his chest was bare. “Look,” he said, for I half moved
+aside, and when I looked I saw he was covered with hundreds of small
+red sores.
+
+Evidently my face betrayed shrinking and horror, for the old man
+laughed and said “Oh, I’m not a leper. They’re only blisters,” and then
+finding a little clear space on his skin, put the needle of his syringe
+through the flesh and injected the fluid into his body. He next quickly
+put his finger over the spot and rubbed to and fro for about a minute,
+staring steadily at me while he did so.
+
+“That’s morphine,” he said in a dead voice, “and the rubbing is
+necessary to prevent a blister forming.”
+
+I knew nothing about morphine except the name, and I was disappointed
+rather than thrilled, but the next minute he gave me all the thrill I
+wanted, and more besides:
+
+“I’ve been fighting it for two years,” he said quietly in German, still
+rubbing the spot and staring hard at me, “and I am slowly getting the
+better of it. If I don’t succeed, it means I die.” A cold grim smile
+that made me shudder stole over his swollen face. “_Death_,” he added.
+
+I felt his despair, the despair of doubt, as he said this, and in his
+eyes blazed suddenly all the suppressed depths of suffering and emotion
+that he usually kept hidden. Such a flood of sympathy for the old man
+rose in me that I did not know what to say. Of drugs and their power I
+knew nothing. I stood and stared in silence, but his voice and manner
+made me realize one thing: that here was an awful battle, a struggle
+between human courage, will and endurance, on the one hand, and some
+tremendous power on the other--a struggle to the death. The word
+“morphine” seemed to me some sort of demon.
+
+He sat down in his armchair, lit his pipe, pulled up the operating
+chair for me to lie on beside him, and then told me very quietly why he
+took it. Already his face looked different, as the morphine circulated
+through the blood, and he smiled and wore a genial happy air of
+benevolence that made him at once a different man.
+
+“I shall have peace now for several hours,” he said, “but I don’t take
+morphine for pleasure. I take it because it is the only way to keep
+myself alive and to keep my wife and child from starving. If I can
+gradually wean myself from it I shall live for years. If not, and I
+cannot make the dose less and less, it will kill me very soon. I am
+old, you see.”
+
+He told me very simply, but very graphically, speaking in German
+as he loved to do, that three years ago he had enjoyed a good and
+lucrative practice. But he had embarked upon some experiments in his
+leg--I never understood exactly what and did not dare to ask--and to
+observe these properly he was obliged to use the knife without taking
+any anæsthetic. His wife stood beside him and staunched the blood,
+but the pain and shock proved more than he was equal to, being an old
+man, and a collapse followed. All his patients left him, for he could
+not attend to them, and in order to be in a fit condition to see even
+chance callers he had to inject morphine. Thus the habit began, and
+before he knew where he was the thing had him by the throat. He was a
+man of great natural strength of will and he began to stop it, but the
+fight was far harder than he had imagined, and his nerves seemed to
+have gone to pieces. Unless he had the support of a dose, he was so
+brutal, irritable and rude that no one could stay in his presence, and
+no patient would come near him. He never got his practice back again,
+and whenever a stray patient called now he had to take an injection, or
+he would be sure to behave in such a way that the man or woman would
+never return. He used atropine to mix with his morphine, and thus tried
+gradually to cure himself, and lately had succeeded in reducing the
+quantity very considerably, but it was an awful fight, and he admitted
+the end was uncertain. He said I helped him to bear the strain. My
+presence, he said, the music too, gave him some sort of comfort and
+strength, and he was always glad to see me. When I was there he could
+hold out longer than when he was alone, and one reason he was telling
+me all this intimate history--telling it to a comparative stranger--was
+because he wished me to try and help him more.
+
+I stammered some words in broken German about being eager and willing
+to help, and he smiled and said he thanked me and “we would make the
+fight together.”
+
+“The charm is very powerful,” he went on, “especially to a nature like
+mine, for when I take this stuff the world becomes full of wonder
+and mystery again, just as it was for me sixty years ago when I was
+a boy with burning hopes and high dreams. But far more than that, I
+_believe in people_ again. That makes more difference in your life than
+anything else, for to lose faith in men makes life unbearable. Bitter
+experiences have shaken my trust and belief in my fellow creatures. But
+with this stuff in me I find it again and feel at peace with the world.”
+
+“That is why you sometimes approve and at other times disapprove of my
+attitude towards Boyde?”
+
+“Yes,” he said, with a most benign and delightful expression in his
+eyes. “Give him every chance. There’s lots of good in him. He feels, no
+doubt, that everyone who knows about him distrusts him. Weak men will
+always try more or less to live up to what is expected of them, for
+they are easily hypnotised. If they feel every one expects only evil
+from them their chief incentive is lost.”
+
+“Then I ought never to let him think I’ve lost belief in him?”
+
+“Never. Frighten him, kick him, urge him along with violence, anything
+to make him move of himself towards being decent; but never suggest he
+_cannot_ be, and _is not_, decent and straight.”
+
+How we talked that night--and how I suffered from hunger, for when
+morphine was in him the old doctor ate little, and this time he was
+full of ideas and ideals, and had so sympathetic a listener, that he
+forgot I might want food, and it was not till after one in the morning
+that he began to flag and thought of coffee. We went down into the
+kitchen, and there we found the patient wife dozing on the wooden
+chair, and the child reading a book--“Undine”--on the deal table, with
+her eyes so bright I thought they were going to shoot out flame. She
+looked up and stared at us for a long time before she got herself back
+from that enchanted region of woods and pools and moonlight.... Strange
+supper parties they were, in that quiet, basement-kitchen between one
+and two of the winter mornings of December, 1892....
+
+Otto Huebner, having broken the ice, told me much of his own life then.
+Owing to family disputes he left the manufacturing town in Northern
+Germany where he was born and brought up, and came to New York as a
+young man. He never saw his parents again, and took out naturalization
+papers at once. For years he was employed by Steinway’s piano factory,
+as a common workman at first, then as a skilled man. He was unmarried,
+he saved money, he began to study at night; the passion for medicine
+was so strong in him that he made up his mind to become a doctor. He
+attended lectures when he could. It was a life of slavery, of incessant
+toil both day and night. He was over forty when he began studying for
+the examinations, and it took him seven years to attain his end. His
+health had suffered during this strenuous time. He had married well
+after fifty....
+
+Dear, lovable, much-to-be-pitied old man, my heart went out to him; I
+was determined to do everything I could to help. I owed him much for
+counsel, sympathy and kindness, to say nothing of medical attendance
+and food besides, at a time, too, when I believed myself a complete
+failure and thought my life was ruined. England, my family, all that I
+had been accustomed to seemed utterly remote; I had cut myself off; I
+had tumbled into quite another world, and the only friend I had, the
+only being I trusted, even loved as well, was the old German morphine
+victim.
+
+Meanwhile, it had been very wonderful to me to see an irritable, savage
+old man change in a few minutes into a kindly, genial, tender-hearted
+being, and I began to feel an absorbing curiosity about this fine
+white powder labelled “Majendie.” I invariably now rubbed in the dose,
+finding with increasing difficulty a clear space of skin in the poor
+worn old body. I watched the change steal over him. It seemed to me
+pure magic. It began more and more to fascinate me.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+A few days after the doctor’s secret had been laid bare I received a
+brief, curt letter from McCloy to say he could not keep my place open
+for ever; how soon was I coming back? Six weeks had passed already. The
+doctor convinced me I was not yet in a condition to face ten hours’
+hard reporting a day. I answered McCloy as best I could, thanking him,
+and telling the facts. Dr. Huebner also wrote him a line.
+
+I was distressed and anxious, none the less, and that evening I was
+certainly not at my best. I gave the old man but little help. His
+method of using me was simple: if I could manage to interest him,
+by talk, by music, by books, by anything at all, it enabled him to
+postpone the hour of injection. Each time we tried to make this
+interval longer; each time, he told me, he took a smaller quantity.
+
+On this particular evening, hungry and depressed as I was, I failed
+to be “interesting,” and no forced attempt could make me so. My own
+condition, in any case, was pretty low; my friend’s dejection and
+excessive irritability proved the last straw. We disagreed, we hurt
+each other’s feelings a little, I relapsed into silence finally, the
+gloom was dreadful. My own troubles just then were uppermost in my
+mind. If I lost my job, I kept thinking, what on earth would happen to
+me?...
+
+The old man presently, and long before his time, got up in silence
+and went to the glass cabinet where now the Majendie bottle stood. He
+no longer kept it in his workshop out of sight. His face was black as
+thunder. Conscience pricked me; I roused myself, saying something by
+way of trying to prevent, whereupon he turned and said savagely: “Do
+you want to see me die? Or lose my reason?”
+
+As already mentioned, I was totally ignorant of drugs and their effect.
+His words, which I took literally, frightened me. I watched him mix the
+solution, fill his syringe slowly with shaking hands, then unfasten his
+clothes. I found the place and rubbed the skin as usual, while he sat
+back in his big chair, in sullen silence. He drew the needle out; his
+face was awful; he sighed and groaned; I really thought he was going to
+collapse before my eyes, perhaps to die. I rubbed and rubbed ... while
+the magical change stole slowly over him. His face cleared, his smile
+came back, he looked younger, his very voice became mellow instead of
+harsh and rough, his eyes lit up with happiness.
+
+The contrast was astonishing, the effect so rapid. And, for the first
+time, a longing rose in me: if only _I_ could have some of this
+bewitching panacea! My troubles would all melt away. I should feel
+happy. Hunger also would disappear. Was it so terrible and dangerous
+after all?
+
+The thought went through me like a burning flame.
+
+It was a thought, merely. I had no intention of asking, not even of
+suggesting, such a thing. I would not have dared to; the old man, I
+knew, besides, would never, never consent; his obstinacy was beyond any
+power of mine to modify. None the less, the thought and desire were
+distinctly in me at that moment. It even crossed my mind that he was
+selfish, inconsiderate, unkind, not to realize that a little, oh, just
+a tiny dose, would help me and make me happy too.
+
+The change in him was now complete, he settled back in his deep chair.
+I heard him asking for the fiddle. I remember the effort it cost me to
+say something about being ready to try, and how I concealed my sulky
+face as I crossed the room to open my case. I felt disappointed, rather
+sore, a trifle angry too; he could so easily open the gates of heaven
+for me. I fumbled with the case, delaying on purpose, for no music lay
+in me, and I did not want to play, I felt miserable all over. My back
+was turned to him. And then I heard my name softly spoken close behind
+me.
+
+I turned with a start, it was the doctor’s voice, its peculiar softness
+struck me. He was coming slowly across the room, a curious smile on his
+face, peering at me over the top of his spectacles, the shoulders bent
+forward a little, his gait slouching, his slippers dragging along the
+carpet, his white hair tumbling about his forehead, moving slowly at
+me--and in his raised right hand was a needle poised to strike.
+
+I knew what it meant: he was going to give me morphia without even
+being asked. A queer revulsion of feeling came over me. He was saying
+something, but I did not hear the words properly, nor understand
+them, at any rate; his voice, too, was so low and soft. My brain was
+in a whirl. Something in the old man’s appearance frightened me. The
+idea of the drug now also frightened me. Then, suddenly, a complete
+recklessness rushed over me.
+
+“Take off your coat,” I heard him say. “And now roll
+your sleeve up. _So! Nun, jetzt_”--he gazed hard into my
+eyes--“_aber--nur--ausnahmsweise!_” With slow earnest emphasis he
+repeated the words: “As an exception--only!”
+
+I watched him choose the place on my arm, I watched the needle go in
+with its little prick, I watched him slowly press the small piston
+that injected the poison into my blood. He, for his part, never
+once moved his eyes from mine till the operation was ended, and
+my coat was on again. He wore that curious smile the whole time.
+“You needed it to-night,” he said, “just a little, a very weak
+dose--_aber--nur--ausnahmsweise_!” He walked over and put the little
+Majendie phial back upon the shelf. Then he filled his pipe and drew up
+the operating chair for me to lie on. His eye was constantly on me. The
+music was forgotten. He wanted to talk.
+
+Whether he had done this thing really to give me a little happiness, or
+whether his idea was to make me “interesting” for his own sake, I do
+not know. The fact is that within three minutes of the needle’s prick I
+was in a state of absolute bliss.
+
+A little warm sensation, accompanied by the faintest possible
+suggestion of nausea which was probably my own imagination, passed up
+the spine into the head. Something cleared in my brain, then burst. A
+sense of thawing followed, the melting away of all the things that had
+been making me unhappy. I began to glow all over. Hope, happiness and a
+gorgeous confidence flowed in; benevolence, enthusiasm, charity flooded
+me to the brim. I wanted to forgive Boyde _everything_ to the end of
+time, sacrifice my entire life to cure my old German friend; everything
+base, unworthy, sordid in me, it seemed, had dropped away....
+
+The experience is too well-known to bear another description; it
+varies, of course, with individuals; varies, too, according to the
+state of health or sickness, according to whether it is needed or not
+really needed; and while some feel what I felt, others merely sleep,
+or, on the contrary, cannot sleep at all. The strength of the dose,
+naturally, is also an important item. Individual reactions, anyhow, are
+very different, and with Kay, to whom later the doctor gave it too,
+three doses produced no effect whatever, while the fourth brought on
+the cumulative result of all four at once, so that we had to walk him
+up and down, pouring strong black coffee down his unwilling throat,
+urging him violently not to sleep--the only thing he wanted to do--or
+he would, old Huebner assured him--never wake again.... In my case, at
+any rate, wasted physically as I was, empty of food, under-nourished
+for many weeks, below par being a mild description of my body, the
+result seemed a radiance that touched ecstasy. It was, of course, an
+intensification of consciousness.
+
+Such intensification, I well knew, could be produced by better if more
+difficult ways, ways that caused no reaction, ways that constructed
+instead of destroyed ... and the first pleasure I derived from my
+experience, the interest that first stirred flashingly and at once
+through my cleared mind, was the absolute conviction that the teaching
+and theories in my books were true....
+
+The doctor sat, smiling at me from his chair.
+
+“I would not do this for many,” he said in German, “but for you it
+has no danger. _You_ could stop anything. You have real will.” After
+a pause he added: “Now we are happy; we are both happy. Let us dream
+without thinking. Let us _realize_ our happiness!...”
+
+The hours passed while we talked, and my hunger was forgotten. I only
+wanted one thing to complete my happiness--I wanted Kay, I wanted
+Boyde, and I wanted one figure from across the sea, my brother. Had
+these three come to join the circle in that dingy consulting-room, my
+heaven, it seemed to me, would have been made perfect....
+
+The passing of time was not marked. I played the fiddle, and we chanted
+the old man’s favourite passage: “O just, subtle and mighty opium!” ...
+its full meaning, with the appeal it held, now all explained to me at
+last. As I laid the instrument down, I saw the white face of the little
+girl just inside the half-opened door. She caught my eye, ran up to me,
+and climbed upon my knee.
+
+“Oh, Uncle Diedel,” she cried, “how big your eyes are! I do believe
+Otto has given you some of his Majendie medicine. Are you going to die,
+too, unless you have it?”
+
+Nothing, it seemed, was hidden from the clear vision that lay in me
+then; the appalling truth flashed into me on the instant. The little,
+stunted figure, the old expression in the pallid child-face, the
+whiteness of the skin, the brilliant eyes, all were due to the same one
+thing. Did the doctor, her own father, give _her_ the needle too?
+
+It was on this occasion, this night of my first experience with
+morphine, that I found my letters with the stamps torn off. I reached
+home, as described, about two in the morning, still in a state of
+bliss, although the effect of the drug was waning a little then.
+But there was happiness, affection, forgiveness and charity in my
+heart, I thought. This describes my feelings of the moment certainly.
+How they were swept away has been already told. So much for the
+pseudo-exaltation of the drug! And, while on this subject, the part
+played by the drug in this particular little scrap of history may as
+well be told briefly at once and done with.
+
+The suggestion that I could “stop anything,” combined with my own
+desire, was potent. There was another way in which the insidious
+poisoning also worked: I became so “interesting,” and entertained the
+old doctor so successfully, that he found himself able to do without
+his own dose. The stern injunction “_nur ausnahmsweise_” was forgotten.
+Without the stuff in my blood I was gloomy, stupid, dull; with it,
+I became alive and helped him. But the headache and depression, the
+nausea, the black ultimate dejection of the “day after” could be
+removed by one thing only. Nothing else had the slightest effect, and
+only another dose could banish these after-effects--a stronger dose.
+While the old man was soon able to reduce not only the quantity he
+took, but the number of injections as well, my own dose, to produce the
+desired effect, had to be doubled.
+
+Every night for four weeks that needle pricked me. In my next
+incarnation--if it takes place--I shall still see the German doctor
+slouching across the room at me with the loaded syringe in his poised
+hand, and the strange look in his eyes. It seems an ineradicable
+memory.... By the end of the four weeks, I was working again on the
+newspaper; my visits to the wooden house I cut down to two a week, then
+one a week. It was a poignant business. He needed me. Desire for the
+“balm that assuaged,” desire to help the friend who was slowly dying,
+desire to save myself from obvious destruction, these tugged and tore
+me different ways. For the full story I should have to write another
+book.... Three things saved me, I think--in the order of their value:
+my books and beliefs; Nature--my Sundays in Bronx Park or the woods of
+the Palisades in New Jersey; and, lastly, the power of the doctor’s own
+suggestion, “_you_ could stop anything!”...
+
+When May came, with her wonder and her magic, I was free again, so free
+that I could play the fiddle and talk to the old man by the hour, and
+feel even no desire for the drug. Nor has the desire ever returned to
+me from that day to this. An experiment with haschisch, a good deal
+later, an account of which I wrote for my paper at the time, had no
+“desire” in it. Foolish and dangerous though the experiment was, of
+course, the _cannabis indica_ was not taken for indulgence, nor to
+bring a false temporary happiness into a life I loathed. I did it to
+earn a little extra money; Kay did it with me; three times in all we
+took it. Some of the effects I tried to describe years later in the
+first story of a book, “John Silence.”
+
+My decision, with the steps I had taken, to arrest Boyde, I told to the
+doctor on the afternoon following the discovery of his treachery with
+my letters. He approved. This time even his Jekyll personality approved.
+
+“You’ll never catch him though,” he growled. “He’s too clever for you.
+He’ll hear about the warrant and be out of the State in a day, if not
+out of the country. In Canada they can’t touch him. Besides, the police
+won’t stir a finger. Oh, you’ll never catch him.”
+
+I felt otherwise, however, I meant to catch him, while at the same time
+I did not want to. The horrible man-hunt began that very night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+The search for Boyde was a prolonged nightmare: used several times
+already, this phrase alone describes it. It lasted over a fortnight.
+Every night, from nine o’clock till two, or even later in the morning,
+it continued. The old doctor almost invariably came with me. It was
+mid-winter and bitter cold, I still had no overcoat, a thin summer
+vest being my only underwear. The disreputable haunts we searched were
+heated to at least 70° F., whereas the street air was commonly not far
+from zero, with biting winds or icy moisture that cut like a knife.
+It must have been the drug that saved me from pneumonia, for I was
+in and out of a dozen haunts each night.... I was a prey to contrary
+and alternating emotions--the desire to let the fellow go free, the
+conviction that it was my duty to save him from himself, to save others
+from him as well. The distress, unhappiness and doubt I experienced
+made that prolonged man-hunt indeed a nightmare.
+
+Plans were laid with care and knowledge. Boyde, we argued, had money,
+or he would have returned to East 19th Street. Had he enough to bribe
+the police, or to go to Canada? We decided that his contempt for me
+would outweigh any fear he felt that I might take action. The “Night
+Owls” were now away on tour; he would hardly go after Pauline M----.
+We concluded he was “doing the town,” as it was called, and was not
+very far from East 19th Street. With his outstanding figure and
+appearance, it ought not to be difficult to find some trace of him in
+the disreputable places. The “Tenderloin”--a region about Broadway and
+30th Street, so packed with illegal “joints” that their tribute to the
+police was the richest and juiciest of the whole city--was sure to be
+his hunting ground. To the Tenderloin haunts, accordingly, we went
+that first night of the chase.
+
+As a reporter I knew the various places well already, and felt quite
+equal to making my search alone, but the doctor, though in no condition
+to traipse about the icy street after dark, insisted on accompanying
+me. Nothing I said could prevent him coming. Truth to tell, I was not
+sorry to have him with me--in some of the saloons; besides which I had
+no money, and something--lager beer cost only five cents a glass--had
+to be ordered in each place. We hurried from one saloon to another,
+looking in at various gambling hells, opium joints, dancing places and
+music-halls of the poorer kind where men and women met on easy terms,
+and we stayed at each one just long enough to make inquiries, and
+to benefit by the warmth and comfort, without being pestered by the
+habitual frequenters.
+
+I had in my possession a small photograph of Boyde; it was on tin,
+showing the head and shoulders; it had been taken one day earlier in
+our acquaintance when we went together to a Dime Museum in 14th Street.
+It now proved very useful. It showed his full face, big eyes, drooping
+moustaches and eyeglass. The absence of the moustache altered him a
+great deal, but the eyeglass and the six feet two inches in height
+counterbalanced this.
+
+At every “joint” I produced this photograph, asking the attendants,
+bar-tenders, and any women I judged to be frequenters of the place,
+whether they had seen the original recently, or anyone like him. Some
+laughed and said they had, others said the opposite, but the majority
+refused to say anything, showed insolently their suspicion of me and
+my purpose, and, more than once, made it advisable for us to get out
+before we were put out. At such places customers are chary about
+information of each other. Among the women, however, were some who knew
+clearly who it was we “wanted,” though saying nothing useful, and soon
+the doctor decided it was a mistake to show the photograph too much,
+for Boyde would be warned by these women, while many, fearful that
+they themselves were “wanted,” would merely lie in self protection,
+and set us upon false trails. Any woman who had not paid her weekly
+blackmail money to the ward man was in danger, and few, to judge by
+their appearance, were not involved in robbery, knock-out drops, or
+the ubiquitous “badger-game.” Yet these, I knew, were the places Boyde
+would feel at home in. My being a newspaper man proved of value to us
+more than once, at any rate. My thoughts, as we sat in a curtained
+corner of some “hell,” whose overheated atmosphere of smoke, scent,
+alcohol and dope was thick enough to cut with a knife, watching,
+waiting, listening, must be imagined. I watched every arrival. The
+tension on nerves already overstrained was almost unbearable. A habit
+of the doctor’s intensified this strain. He did not, I think, remember
+Boyde very well, and was constantly imagining that he saw him. The
+street door would open; he would nudge me and whisper “_Sehen Sie, da
+kommt der Kerl nun endlich...!_” He pointed, my heart leapt into my
+mouth; nothing could induce me to arrest him, it seemed, and my relief
+on seeing it was a stranger was always genuine--at the moment.
+
+One night--or early morning, rather--the doctor, who had been silent
+for a long time, turned to me with a grey, exhausted face. The morphine
+was beginning to fail him, and he must inject another dose. This
+happened several times.... Behind a curtain, or in a place aside where
+we were not even alone, he opened his clothes, found a clear space of
+skin, and applied the needle, while I rubbed the spot with my finger
+for about a minute to prevent a blister forming. No one, except perhaps
+a very drunken man or woman occasionally, paid the smallest attention
+to the operation; to them it was evidently a familiar and commonplace
+occurrence.... “You must not stay up any longer,” he would say another
+time, after a sudden examination of my face. “You look dreadful. Come,
+we will go home.”
+
+I was only too glad to be marched off. We paced the icy streets arm
+in arm, numerous people still about on various errands, tramcars and
+elevated trains still roaring, saloons and joints blazing with light,
+wide open till dawn, while the old man, rejuvenated and stimulated by
+the drug, discoursed eloquently the whole way, I dragging by his side,
+silent, depressed, weary with pains that seemed more poignant then than
+hunger or mere physical fatigue.
+
+The next night it would be the same, and the one after that, and the
+next one after that too--the search continued. It wore me down. I saw
+the eyeglass staring furtively at me from behind every corner, even in
+the day-time. His footstep sounded behind me often. At night I locked
+my door, for fear he might steal back into the room.... Once or twice I
+reported to headquarters that I was on the trail, but the detective had
+lost interest in the case; a conviction was doubtful, anyhow; he was
+not “going to sit around catching flies”; only the fact that I was a
+reporter on the _Sun_ made him pause. “Telephone when you get him,” he
+said, “and I’ll come up and do the rest.” Much fresh information about
+Boyde had also come my way; he had even stolen the vases from a Church
+communion table--though he denied this in his confession later--and
+pawned them. In every direction, and this he did not deny, he had
+borrowed money in my name, giving me the worst possible character while
+doing so. Probably indeed, I never lived down _all_ he said about me....
+
+It was a bitter, and apparently, an endless search. From the West Side
+joints, we visited the East Side haunts of vice and dissipation. I now
+knew Boyde too well to think he would “fly high”; his tastes were of
+the lowest. The ache it all gave me I can never describe....
+
+We went from place to place as hour after hour passed. We found
+his trail, and each time we found it my heart failed me. A woman,
+gorgeously painted, showing her silk stockings above the knee, her
+atmosphere reeking of bad scent and drink, came sidling up, murmuring
+this and that.... The Doctor’s eye was on me, though he said no word,
+made no single gesture.... The tin-type photograph was produced....
+“Yep, I seen dat fellar,” grinned the woman in her “tough” bowery
+talk they all affected in the Tenderloin. “A high flier ... raining
+in London, too”--a gibe at the “English” habit of turning up one’s
+trousers--with a stream of local slang, oaths, filthy hints and
+repeated demands to “put ’em up,” meaning drinks. Then a whispered
+growl from the old German “_Nichts! ... sie luegt ... los mit ihr!_”
+A further stream of lurid insults ... and she was gone, while another
+sidled up a little later. They all knew German, these women. Was not
+New York the third biggest German city, qua population, in the Empire?
+Few, as a matter of fact, were American. Barring the mulattos and
+quadroon girls, to say nothing of the negresses, the majority were
+French, Hungarian, Spanish, Italian, Dutch or some polyglot mixture not
+even the British Museum could define....
+
+Never did the old German’s kindness prove itself as in these hideous
+night-watches. Apart from all questions of trouble and expense, he was
+obliged to take extra doses of morphine to meet the charge upon his
+system, at a time, too, when he was struggling to reduce the quantity.
+Compared to what he did, even the fact that he gave the poison to
+others, possibly to his own child among them, seemed negligible.
+Not only did he accompany me during the chase, spending hours in
+low, suffocating dens of beastliness, walking the wind-swept streets
+in mid-winter, suffering insults and acute discomfort, but also he
+bestowed practical care and kindness on me during the day, providing
+me with food (I was in no state even to pose in the studios at the
+time), and even suggesting that I should fit up a bed in his workshop
+where he kept the lathe and made the chessmen. All this, too, from an
+old man, himself in deep misery, and on the losing side of a fight far
+more terrible than I ever knew or imagined, a fight, _he_ then realized
+already, was to end before very long in failure, which meant death. The
+strange, broken old being, twisted and distorted though his nervous
+system was by a drug, showed--to me, at any rate--that rare thing
+which experience of life proves greater than intellect, than success,
+than power, or brilliance may achieve--a heart. If reincarnation, with
+its karmic law, be true, either he owed me a heavy debt from some
+forgotten past, or I owe to him a debt some future life will enable,
+and enforce me, to repay.
+
+It was at the end of the first ten days that, quite by chance, we
+stumbled upon the trail of Boyde. He had been seen in a “swell dive”
+on the West Side--with a woman. He was spending money like water.
+How had he come by it? Whom had he swindled now? We were in the East
+Side, following a false clue, when this information was given to
+us--under conditions impossible to describe--and we hurried across
+to the neighbourhood indicated. An hour later we were only a short
+thirty minutes behind his glittering path. He was visiting expensive
+joints. Champagne flowed. The woman wore furs. He wore a light coloured
+box-cloth overcoat. Both were “high fliers.” And he was drinking hard.
+
+The information, I confess, had the effect of stiffening me. It was
+impossible not to wonder, as we sat in the cross-town tram of East 23rd
+Street, whether in his gay career he gave a single thought to the room
+in East 19th Street, where he shared my bed, wore my suit, ate my food,
+such as it was, and where he had left me ill, alone and starving. The
+old doctor was grim and silent, but a repressed fury, I could see, bit
+into him. Was there, perhaps, vengeance, in the old, crumpled man? “No
+weakness, remember,” he growled from time to time. “I hold him, while
+you telephone to Mulberry Street. _Pflicht, pflicht!_ It is your duty
+to--to everybody...!”
+
+The trail led us to Mouquin’s, where he had undoubtedly been shortly
+before, then on to a place in 34th Street ... and there we lost it
+hopelessly. It was not a false alarm, but the trail ran up a tree and
+vanished. He had gone home with the woman, but who she was or where she
+lived, not even the ward man--whom I knew by chance, and, equally by
+chance, met at the door--could tell us. I telephoned to headquarters
+to warn Detective Lawler to be in readiness. Lawler was out on a “big
+story” elsewhere, but another man would come up with the warrant the
+moment I sent word. I had, however, no occasion to telephone again that
+night, nor even the next night, though we must evidently have been
+within an ace of catching him. It was like searching for a needle in a
+haystack, or for a rabbit in a warren. The neighbourhood, this joint in
+particular, was alive with similar characters; all the women wore furs;
+all the men were tall, many of them had “glass-eyes,” the majority
+seemed English with “their trousers turned up.” We sat for hours in one
+den after another, but we caught no further indication of the trail. It
+had vanished into thin air. And after these two exciting and exhausting
+nights, the old doctor collapsed; he could do no more; he told me he
+felt unequal to the strain and could not accompany me even one more
+time. The old man was done.
+
+The day after the search stopped temporarily, Kay arrived in the city,
+to my great delight. It was a keen relief to have him back. The tour
+had been a failure, and the company had become stranded in Port Hope,
+Ontario. Salaries were never paid; he had received hotel board, railway
+ticket, laundry, but rarely any cash. What luggage he possessed was in
+the Port Hope hotel, held in lieu of payment. It remained there.
+
+We talked things over, and the news about Boyde, heard now for the
+first time in detail, shocked him. There was no doubt or hesitation in
+Kay’s mind. “Of course you must arrest him; we’ll go out to-night and
+look.” We did so, but with no result. Kay had the remains of a borrowed
+$10, we dined at Krisch’s; he had cigarettes, too.... We passed a
+happy evening, coming home early from the chase. Like myself, he had
+no overcoat, but the money did not reach to getting it from Ikey where
+Boyde had pawned it. We sat indoors, and talked.... Only a short three
+months before we had sat talking round a camp-fire on our island. It
+seemed incredible. We discussed my plan for settling in the woods, to
+which he was very favourably inclined. Meanwhile, he explained, his
+Company was preparing another tour with better plays and better cast.
+They hoped to start out after Christmas, now only a week away. The word
+“Christmas” made us laugh. I still had the Christmas menu of our Hub
+dinner, and we pinned it upon the wall. It might suggest something to
+the long-suffering Mrs. Bernstein, Kay thought.
+
+But instead we ate our oatmeal and dried apples....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+It was on the Tuesday before Christmas that I caught Boyde; the day
+also before the White Star steamers sailed. The cold was Arctic, a
+biting east wind swept the streets. There was no sun. If ever there was
+a Black Tuesday for me it was that 18th of December, 1892.
+
+Towards evening, the doctor, I knew, would expect me as usual; there
+was nothing to prevent my going; and yet each time the thought cropped
+up automatically in my mind I was aware of a vague, indeterminate
+feeling that somehow or other I should not go. This dim feeling also
+was automatic. There was nothing I knew of to induce, much less to
+support it. I did not mention it to Kay. I could not understand whence
+it came nor what caused it, but it did not leave me, it kept tugging
+at my nerves. “You’re not going to the doctor’s to-night,” it said,
+“you’re going elsewhere.”
+
+After dark this odd feeling became more and more insistent, and
+then all at once it connected itself with Boyde. Quite suddenly
+this happened. I had not been thinking of Boyde at the moment; now,
+abruptly, up cropped his name and personality. I was to go out and
+catch him.
+
+My mind resisted this idea. Several things, besides, were against it.
+In the first place, we had voluntarily given up the hunt and I was
+resigned to his escape; secondly and thirdly, I dreaded being out
+in the bitter cold, and I badly needed the “assuaging balm” of old
+Huebner’s needle. If the first two were negative inhibitions, the third
+was decidedly positive. All three had to be conquered if I was to obey
+the strange prompting which whispered, and kept on whispering: “Go out
+and look. You’ll find him.”
+
+There was, in addition, the usual minor conflict to which I had grown
+quite accustomed, the conflict between my desire to be relieved of
+an unpleasant “duty,” yet the conviction that it was a duty I had no
+right to shirk. In spite of my resistance, at any rate, the prompting
+strengthened; as night fell I grew more and more restless and uneasy;
+until at last the touch of inevitability that lay behind it all
+declared itself--and the breaking point was reached.
+
+I could resist no longer; it was impossible to contain myself. I sprang
+out of my chair and told Kay I was going out to catch Boyde.
+
+“Don’t go,” he said. “Waste of time. He’s skipped long ago--been
+warned.” He muttered something more about the intense cold. “You’ll
+kill yourself.”
+
+But the impulsion I felt was irresistible. It was as though some inner
+power drove and guided me. As a matter of fact, I went straight to the
+exact spot where, among the teeming millions of the great city, Boyde
+was. Fifteen minutes earlier or later, I should have missed him. Also,
+but for a chance hesitation later--lasting sixty seconds at most--he
+would have seen me and escaped. The calculation, whether due to
+intelligence or to coincidence, was amazingly precise. I left our room
+at nine o’clock; at a quarter to ten I stood face to face with Boyde.
+
+The wind was driving a fine dry dust of snow before it, and all who
+could remained indoors. The streets were deserted; despite the nearness
+of Christmas, signs of bustle and the usual holiday crowd were absent.
+I walked very quickly to keep warm, an odd subconscious excitement in
+me. I seemed to know exactly where I was going, though, had anybody
+asked me, I could not have told them. Up 4th Avenue to 23rd Street,
+then west across Broadway, I passed 6th and 7th Avenues, with only one
+pause of a moment. At the corner of 7th Avenue I hesitated, uncertain
+whether to turn north, or to continue west towards 8th Avenue. A
+policeman was standing outside a saloon side-door, a man I had known
+in the Tombs police court; an Irishman, of course. I recognized him,
+He was friendly to me because I had used his name in a story; he
+remembered me now. I produced the tin-type photograph. He inspected it
+under the nearest electric light.
+
+“Yep,” he said, “I seen that feller only a few minutes back--half an
+hour maybe--only he’s lifted his mustache.”
+
+“Shaved his moustache--yes?”
+
+“That’s what I said,” as he handed back the tin-type. “Got a story?” he
+inquired the same instant. “Anything big doing?”
+
+“Which way did he go?”
+
+“Up-town,” said the policeman, jerking his thumb in the direction
+north. “Up 8th Avenoo. And he was travellin’ with a partner, a big
+feller, same size as yerself, I guess.” He moved off to show he had
+no more to say. Any story that might result would be out of his beat.
+There was nothing in it for him. His interest vanished. I hurried on to
+the corner of 8th Avenue, the edge of a bad neighbourhood leading down
+through the negro quarter towards the haunts of the river-front, and
+there I paused again for a second or two.
+
+I was still in 23rd Street, but I now turned up the Avenue. It was
+practically deserted, the street cars empty, few people on the
+pavements. The side-streets crossed it at right angles, poorly lit,
+running right and left into a world of shadows, but at almost every
+corner stood a brilliant saloon whose windows and glass doors poured
+out great shafts of light. Sometimes there were four saloons, one at
+each corner, and the blaze was dazzling. I passed 24th, 25th, 26th and
+27th streets. There were little flurries of dry snow; I saw no one,
+nothing but empty silent sidewalks swept by the icy wind.
+
+At 28th Street there were four saloons, one at each corner, and the
+blaze of light had a warm, enticing look. Through the blurred windows
+of the one nearest to me, the heads of the packed crowd inside as they
+lined up to the bar were just visible, and while I stood a moment,
+shivering in the icy wind, the comforting idea of a hot whisky came
+to me. For the wind cut like glass and neither my excitement nor the
+exercise had warmed me. I hesitated, standing against a huge electric
+light pole, in whose black shadow I was quite invisible. A hot whisky,
+I reflected, in this neighbourhood would cost 20 or 25 cents; I had
+30 cents in my pocket; I needed the stimulant; I was very weak; I
+felt cold to the bone. But 25 cents was a lot of money, I might want
+a car-fare home besides ... and I was still hesitating when two tall
+figures emerged suddenly out of the dark side-street into the flood of
+light, swung sharp round the corner, and passed through the glass doors
+into the saloon. The figures were two men, and the first of them was
+Boyde.
+
+For a second my heart seemed to stop, then began immediately racing and
+beating violently. In that brilliant light I saw every detail sharply,
+Boyde and his companion, both mercilessly visible. The man I wanted
+wore a big horsy overcoat of light-coloured box-cloth with large white
+buttons, the velvet collar turned up about his ears. The other man I
+did not know; he was taller than Boyde and wore no overcoat; he was the
+“partner travellin’ with him” mentioned by the policeman. His gait was
+unsteady, he reeled a little.
+
+The clamour of noisy voices blared out a moment into the street before
+the doors swung to again, and I stood quite still for an appreciable
+time, blotted out of sight in my black shadow. Had I not hesitated a
+moment to reflect about that hot whisky I should have passed, my figure
+full in the blaze, just in front of the two men, who would have waited
+in the dark side-street till I was safely out of sight.
+
+The state of my nerves, I suppose, was pretty bad, and the lack of my
+customary evening dose accentuated it. I know, anyhow, that at first I
+realized one thing only--that I could never have the heart to arrest
+the fellow. This quickly passed, however; the racing of my blood passed
+too; determination grew fixed; I decided to act at once. But should I
+go in, or should I wait till they came out again? If I went in there
+would probably be a fight; Boyde’s hulking companion would certainly
+take his side; the lightest blow in my weak state and I should be down
+and out. On the other hand, there was a side door, there were several
+side doors, and the couple might easily slip out, for I could not watch
+all the doors at once.
+
+I decided to go in. And the moment the decision was taken, complete
+calmness came over me, so that I felt myself merely an instrument
+of fate. It was horrible, but it had to be. Boyde was to get the
+punishment he deserved. I could not fail.
+
+The way the little scene was stage-managed seemed curious to me when it
+was all over, for as I moved out into the light, a couple of policemen
+came across the broad avenue behind and looked inquisitively at what
+must have seemed my queer behaviour. I immediately crossed to meet
+them, while never taking my eye off the swing-doors. A man who had just
+gone into that saloon, I told them, was to be arrested.
+
+“That so?” they asked with a grin, thinking me drunk, of course. “And
+what’s he done to get all that?”
+
+I told them I was a reporter on the _Sun_, that I was the complainant
+in the case, and that Detective Lawler of the 9th District had the
+warrant at headquarters. They could telephone to him if they liked.
+They listened, but they would not do anything. I could telephone to
+Lawler myself; _they_ weren’t going to act without a warrant. They
+finally agreed to wait outside and “see fair play,” if I would go in
+and fetch “the guy” out into the street. “We’ll stop any trouble,” they
+said, “and take him to the station if _you_ make a complaint.” I agreed
+to this and walked in through the swing-doors.
+
+The saloon was crowded, the heat wonderful, the bars thronged with men
+in all stages of intoxication; bar-tenders in white jackets flew to and
+fro; business was booming, and at the least sign of a row, everybody,
+more or less, would have joined in. This general impression, however,
+was only in the background of my mind. What filled it was the fact that
+Boyde was looking at me, staring straight into my eyes, but in the
+mirror. The instant the doors swung to I had caught his reflection
+in the long glass behind the bar. Across this bar, a little space on
+either side of him, he was leaning on both elbows, his face resting in
+one hand. The eye-glass--it was asking for trouble to wear it in such
+a place--had been discarded. He was alone. His back, of course, was
+towards me.
+
+For a few seconds we stared at one another in this way, and then, as I
+walked down the long room, pushing between the noisy crowd, he slowly
+turned. I reached him. A faint smile appeared on his face. He evidently
+did not know quite what to do, but a hand began to move towards me. He
+thought, it seemed, I was going to shake hands, whereas I thought he
+was probably going to hit me. Instead my hand went to his shoulder.
+
+“Boyde,” I said, keeping my voice low, “I want you. You’re going to
+be--arrested.”
+
+The smile died out, and an awful look rushed into his eyes. His face
+turned the colour of chalk. At first I felt sure he was going to land
+me a blow in the face, but the abrupt movement of his body was merely
+that he tried to steady himself against the bar, for I saw his hand
+grip the rail and cling to it. The same second his features began to
+work.
+
+“I’ve got to arrest you,” I repeated. “It’s Karma. You had better come
+quietly.”
+
+“Karma----” he repeated in a dazed way and stared. He was bewildered,
+incredulous still.
+
+The same second, however, he grasped that it was serious, my face and
+voice and manner doubtless warned him. This, at last, was real; he
+suddenly knew it. The expression of appeal poured up instantly into
+his eyes, those big, innocent, blue eyes where I had so often seen it
+before. Only now there was no moustache, and the brutal cunning mouth
+was bare. He began to speak at once, keeping his voice low, for several
+people were already interested in us. He used his softest and most
+pleading tone. With that, too, I was thoroughly familiar.
+
+“Blackwood--for God’s sake let me go. I’m off to England to-morrow on a
+White Star boat. I’m working my passage over. For the love of God--for
+my mother’s sake----!”
+
+I cut him short. The falseness, the cowardice, the treachery all
+working in his face at once, sickened me. At the same time an aching
+pity rose. I felt miserable.
+
+“You must come out with me. At once.”
+
+He turned quickly and looked about him, his eyes taking in everything.
+Some men beside us had heard our talk and were ready to interfere.
+“What’s your trouble?” one of them asked thickly. I realized we must
+get away at once, out into the street, though the scene had barely
+lasted two minutes yet.
+
+“There’s a policeman waiting outside,” I went on. “You’d better come
+quietly. A row won’t help you.” But I said it louder than I thought,
+for several heads turned towards the swing-doors. The effect on Boyde,
+however, was hardly what I expected, and seemed strange. He wilted
+suddenly. I believe all thought of resistance or escape went out of him
+when he heard the word “police.” His jaw dropped, there was suddenly
+no expression in his eyes at all. A complete blankness came into his
+features. It was horrible. He’s got no soul, I thought. He merely
+stared at me.
+
+“Whose is that overcoat?” I asked, feeling sure it was not his own. I
+already had him by the arm.
+
+“Roper’s,” he said quietly, his voice gone quite dead. “Here he is.”
+His face was still like a ghost’s. It was blank as stone.
+
+I had quite forgotten the companion, but at that same moment I saw
+Roper hovering up beside me. His attitude was threatening, he was
+three-parts drunk; a glance showed me he was an Englishman, and
+obviously, by birth, a gentleman.
+
+“Roper, if you want your coat, you’d better take it. Boyde is under
+arrest.”
+
+“Arrest be damned!” Roper cried in a loud voice that everybody heard.
+There was already a crowd about us, but this increased it. Roper was
+looking me over. He glared with anger. “You’re that cad Blackwood,
+I suppose, are you? I’ve heard about you. I know your whole damned
+rotten story and the way you’ve treated Boyde. But Boyde’s a friend of
+mine. No one can do anything to him while _I’m_ here...!”
+
+He roared and shouted in that crowded bar-room, while the whole place
+looked on and listened, ready to interfere at the first sign of “a
+fuss.” A blow, a little push even, would have laid me out, and in
+the general scuffle or free fight that was bound to follow, Boyde
+could have got clear away--but neither he nor Roper thought of this
+apparently. Roper went on pouring out his drunken abuse, lurching
+forward but never actually touching me, while Boyde stood perfectly
+still and listened in silence. He made no attempt to shake off my hand
+even. I suddenly then leaned over and spoke into his ear:
+
+“If you come quietly at once it’s only petit larceny--stealing the
+money. Otherwise it’s forgery.”
+
+It acted like magic. An expression darted back into his face. He
+turned, told Roper to shut up, said something to the crowd about its
+being only a little misunderstanding, and walked without another word
+towards the doors. I walked beside him, the men made a way; a few
+seconds later we were in the street. Roper, who had waited to finish
+his drink, and was puzzled besides by the quick manœuvre, lurched at
+some distance after us. The two policemen, who had watched the scene
+through the windows, stood waiting. Boyde swayed against me when he saw
+them. I marched him up to the nearest one. “I make a charge of larceny
+against this man, and the warrant is at Mulberry Street with Detective
+Lawler. I am the complainant.” They told him he was under arrest, and
+we began our horrible little procession to the station in West 21st
+Street.
+
+Boyde was between the two policemen, I was next to the outside one, on
+the kerb, Roper came reeling in the rear, shouting abuse and threats
+into my face. The next time I saw Roper was in the court of General
+Sessions, weeks later, when Boyde was brought up for trial. By that
+time he had learned the truth; he came up and apologized. Boyde, he
+told me, had swindled him even more completely than he had swindled me.
+
+The search in the station made me sick at heart; every pocket was
+turned out; there was 80 dollars in cash; the sergeant used filthy
+language. Boyde was taken down to a cell, and I, as a newspaper
+reporter, was allowed to go down with him. I stayed for two hours,
+talking through the bars.
+
+It was two in the morning when the sergeant turned me out after a
+dreadful conversation, and when I reached home, to find Kay sitting up
+anxiously still, I was too exhausted, from cold, excitement and hunger,
+to tell him more than a bare outline of it all. I had to appear at
+eight o’clock next morning and make my formal charge against Boyde,
+in the Tombs Police Court--the Tombs, of all places!--and with that
+thought in my mind I fell asleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+Boyde came up with the first batch of prisoners. The portentous shadow
+of the Tombs prison, with its forbidding architecture, hung over the
+whole scene.
+
+My first sight of him was sitting among the rows of prisoners, waiting
+to be called. He looked ill and broken, he made a pleading sign to me.
+As a reporter I had the right to interview anybody and everybody, and
+I made my way along the serried wooden benches. Lawler sat next him,
+looking very pleased to have secured his prisoner, and a good story
+into the bargain, without any trouble to himself; but when I tried to
+shake hands with Boyde, I found to my horror that he was handcuffed.
+
+“Say, boss, be sure and git me name spelled right, and tell the
+reporters that _I_ effected the arrest,” was the first thing that
+Lawler said, using the phrase the detectives always used.
+
+By promising the man all he wanted and more besides, I managed to
+get us all three into a corner where we could talk without everybody
+else hearing; also I got the handcuffs taken off, for they were quite
+unnecessary inside the building. The first thing Boyde said was to
+beg for a drink; he had taken a lot the night before, his throat was
+parched, his nerves were bad. At the moment this was quite impossible,
+but I got one for him in the reporters’ room after his case had been
+called. The second thing he said was to beg me to “keep it out of the
+papers,” though this, of course, lay quite beyond my powers. Apart
+from this he said very little except to repeat and repeat that he was
+repentant, and to beg me to withdraw the charge, though this was now
+impossible, the matter being out of my hands. Also, he wondered what
+the sentence would be--he meant to plead guilty--and implored me to
+leave out the forgery. He was very badly frightened.
+
+That early morning hour in the stinking atmosphere of the over-heated
+police court was too ghastly ever to be forgotten, but there were
+particular moments when pain and pity, to say nothing of other
+strangely mixed emotions, stabbed me with peculiar ferocity. When the
+reporters flocked round him like vultures after prey was one of these;
+another was when Boyde stood in front of the Tammany magistrate, Ryan
+by name, and pleaded guilty. A mistake, though not actually wrong, had
+crept into the charge sheet. In my excitement of the night before the
+amount stolen had been entered as $32, and though this was the truth,
+I had meant to make it only $25. I was unintentionally to blame for
+this--it was now Grand Larceny instead of Petit Larceny. A magistrate
+could only deal with the lesser offence, and Boyde therefore was held
+for trial in General Sessions, instead of being sentenced then and
+there. The look he gave me as Ryan spoke the words was like a knife. He
+believed I had done this purposely. A third unforgettable moment was
+when he was being roughly pushed downstairs on his way to a cell in the
+Tombs: he looked back forlornly over his shoulder at me.
+
+In the reporters’ room it was decided to print the “Boyde story.”
+I knew all the men; Acton Davies was there for the _Evening Sun_,
+specially sent down by McCloy. The reporters dragged and tore at me.
+I realized what “interviewed” victims felt when they wished to hide
+everything away inside themselves. Yet the facts had to be told; it was
+best I should give them accurately, if as briefly, as leniently, as
+possible. The sight of all those vultures (of whom, incidentally, I was
+one) scribbling down busily the details of my intimate life with Boyde,
+to be hawked later in the streets as news, was likewise a picture not
+easily forgotten.
+
+Before the ordeal was over, Lawler returned from the cell. He insisted,
+with a wink at me, that he had made the arrest; the credit of the chase
+he also claimed; he had, too, additional facts about Boyde’s past
+criminal career of which I was quite ignorant, supplied by records at
+headquarters. Lawler intended to get all the advertisement for himself
+he could. I let his lying pass. On the whole it seemed best to let him
+be responsible for the arrest; it made the story more commonplace, and,
+luckily, so far, I had not described this scene.
+
+An hour later I was talking with Boyde between the bars of his cell
+in the Tombs prison, while, two hours later, every evening paper in
+New York had a column or a column and a half about us printed on its
+front page. There were scare headlines of atrocious sort. There were
+posters, too, showing our names in big letters. News that day happened
+to be scarce, and the Boyde story was “good stuff” apparently. The talk
+with him in the cell was one of many; he was there six weeks before the
+trial came on.
+
+The papers finished him; the case was too notorious for him ever to
+swindle again unless he changed his name. They scarified him, they left
+out no detail, they hunted up a thousand new ones, he had “cut a wide
+swath” (_sic_) all over New York State, as one of them printed. I had
+not mentioned Pauline M---- or the pastor’s daughter, yet both were
+included. To see my own name in print for the first time, the names of
+my parents, and of half the peerage as well, was bad enough; to find
+myself classed with bad company generally, with crooks and rogues, with
+shady actresses, with criminals, was decidedly unpleasant. Paragraphs
+my brother wrote to me appeared in London papers too. Copies of the
+New York ones were sent to my father. “Too foxy for Algernon” was a
+headline he read out to my brother in his library. Boyde had even
+written to him, signing himself “your cousin,” to ask for money for
+“your poor son,” but had received no reply. There is no need now to
+mention names, but any distinguished connexion either of us possessed
+appeared in the headlines or the article itself. “Nephew of an earl
+held in $1,000 bail,” “Cousin of Lord X,” “Scion of British Aristocracy
+a Sneak-thief,” were some of the descriptions. “Son of a duchess
+in the Soup,” was another. The _Staatszeitung_ had a phrase which
+threw a momentary light on an aspect of lower life in the city, when
+Freytag, the German reporter who had taught me how to write a court
+story, described me as “Sohn einer _sogennanten_ Herzogin.” He only
+laughed when I spoke to him about it. “How should _I_ know,” he said
+sceptically....
+
+Boyde came up in due course before Recorder Smythe in general sessions,
+the most severe and most dreaded of all the judges. He still wore
+my thick suit, he wore also a pair of Harding Davis’s boots, and, I
+believe, something else of Sothern’s. His sentence was two years in
+the Penitentiary on Blackwell Island. A group of other people he had
+swindled, including “Artist Palmer,” were in court; so was an assistant
+of Ikey’s, with _all_ our pawned articles. Every single thing, whether
+stolen goods or not, was returned to me. The doctor and Kay were also
+there. Some of his letters are a human document:
+
+                                               _Tombs_,
+                                                   December, 1892.
+
+  Oh, Blackwood, what black treachery I returned you for your many
+  kindnesses, base lying for all your straightforward dealing with
+  me! You freely forgave me what ninety-nine men out of every hundred
+  would, if not imprisoned me for, certainly never have forgiven me.
+  I returned evil for good, and you still bore with me. You said--I
+  shall never forget it, for it was when you found the stamp torn
+  off your letter--and even at that moment I had money in my pocket
+  belonging to you, just as I had when you shared your last 50 cent.
+  piece that night at Krisches, for I _must_ say this, though I could
+  tear myself to pieces when I think of it--You said, ‘B. how you
+  must _hate_ me!’
+
+  No, Blackwood, it seems a paradox, but I could not hate you if I
+  tried to. I don’t say this because I am in prison, or with any
+  desire to flatter. I am sincere in everything I say and it comes
+  from my heart. You have every reason to think from my former
+  actions that I am not sincere above reward, but I am.
+
+  Oh, the old, but nevertheless true remark, TOO LATE! It comes
+  home to me with striking and horrible vividness. Too Late! I
+  have forfeited the respect of every good and honest man, have
+  disgraced my English name and my family. But, let me go. Five
+  years of service will be the best thing for me. I can enlist under
+  another name and may perhaps get a commission in time. Give me the
+  chance of redeeming myself, please. If ever any man was sincerely
+  repentant for the past I am that man.
+                                                         ARTHUR B.
+
+  Please excuse mistakes and alterations. I am so fearfully shaky.
+
+
+                                           _The Tombs City Prison,
+                                             Centre Street, N. Y._
+
+  Please read through before destroying it.
+
+  I have begged another sheet of paper and stamp in order to make one
+  final appeal.
+
+  Will you not come down again on receipt of this? Please do, for
+  God’s sake. No visitors are allowed on New Year’s Day, or on
+  Sunday. New Year’s Day! What a new year’s day for me! Let me
+  begin it afresh. I have a favour to ask you which I must ask you
+  verbally; I cannot put it on paper. It is getting dark; so once
+  more I ask you, I implore you, to have mercy on me for my mother’s
+  sake. For her sake spare
+                                                         ARTHUR B.
+
+  Visiting hours 10-2. I am speaking the truth and nothing but the
+  truth when I say that I am sincerely sorry for all that I have done
+  and implore your pardon. This is not an insincere expression, but
+  one from my heart. Come down again, please, even to speak to me,
+  for you don’t know the mental agony I am suffering.
+                                                             A. B.
+
+
+                                              _Tombs City Prison_,
+                                                   New Year’s Day.
+
+  It was more than kind of you to come all the way down here and then
+  after all not be able to see me; not much loss to you, it is true,
+  but a bitter disappointment to me. Palmer came down and talked
+  _very_ kindly to me and instilled a little hope in me. But this is
+  a wretched New Year’s Day.
+
+  I was talking to an old convict this morning, a man who in his life
+  has been about sixteen years in jail, and he said that if he had
+  only been let off in the first instance with a few days in here, he
+  would have been a different man to-day, but after serving one term
+  he became reckless and has now become a notorious thief. As I said
+  to you, think of me after 20 years’ penal servitude.
+
+  Blackwood, won’t you and Palmer stay your hands once more? I will
+  leave the country, and if ever I should return you could always
+  have me arrested. I will never trouble you again. Let me make a
+  fresh start once more.
+
+  Should you decide not to press the charge you can go to the
+  District Attorney’s Office and inform them of the fact.
+
+  I once more _implore_ you and Palmer to have pity on me, and please
+  come and see me! May I wish you and Palmer a bright and happy New
+  Year, brighter and happier than the past one.
+                                                         ARTHUR B.
+
+  Many thanks for the paper and envelopes. Bless you!
+
+
+                                                      _The Tombs._
+
+  Very many thanks for your visit yesterday. It is the only pleasure
+  I have. I believe what you say is true--that I am reaping the
+  result of evil done in the past and that the only real way to atone
+  is to meet it squarely and accept my punishment without grumbling.
+  If Karma is true, it is just, and I shall get what I deserve, and
+  not an iota more.
+
+  I cannot tell you how grateful I am to you for being so lenient to
+  me and even writing to the District Attorney on my behalf. I am
+  truly grateful, Blackwood. Please do not think I am not sorry for
+  what I have done, or that I am not really penitent, for I am indeed.
+
+  It was bitterly cold last night and I was awfully glad to have my
+  overcoat, and blessed you for sending it. I know you got it out of
+  pawn for me, and that is another kindness.
+
+  Again, for the last time probably, I thank you for your many acts
+  of kindness. I bitterly regret and earnestly repent for the manner
+  I treated you, returning evil for good, and I shall think much of
+  you when serving my time under a blazing sun or in my cramped and
+  chilly cell.
+                                                         ARTHUR B.
+
+
+                                                   _Tombs Prison._
+
+  I have just been to the Court House and pleaded guilty. My sentence
+  is remanded till Friday week. If I could only get that lawyer I
+  might get the sentence reduced a little. But Judge Smythe is a very
+  hard man. My small hopes were dashed away on hearing that you had
+  been subpœnaed to go before the Grand Jury this morning.
+
+  Now all hope is gone; only blank, blank despair; no hope, all is
+  dark. I wish I could die--much rather that than suffer this awful
+  remorse. Do you know I sometimes think I am going mad? When I come
+  out I shall be too old for the army, and what else can a felon,
+  a criminal, a convict do? Is crime the only refuge? Shall I sink
+  lower and lower? Will what small sense of decency and honour I have
+  left be utterly destroyed and made callous by propinquity with
+  other criminals?
+
+  What a frightful nightmare to conjure up! Nightmare? No, it is only
+  too true; it is stern, inexorable reality. Thank you for sending
+  the clothes. I had no change before. Bless you!
+
+                                                             A. B.
+
+
+                                              _Tombs City Prison._
+
+  What follows I wish to write voluntarily. It is a Confession and
+  relieves me--
+
+  I certainly wish to convey to you the fact of my sincere and deep
+  sorrow for the shameful manner I treated you and abused your
+  confidence and kindness. I fear that one of my letters cannot
+  have reached you, as I am sure I wrote at length on this subject.
+  You mistake and misjudge me when you think it is only fear that
+  prompts me to write as I do. My eyes are opened to the enormity of
+  my past crimes, opened by thinking and seeing things in the proper
+  light. I have been alone with my thought for days now, and God
+  knows how many more days will pass over my head before I again face
+  the world. It will relieve me to give you a full confession of my
+  treachery, for I believe there is no real repentance without real
+  confession.
+
+  To begin with the editor. I never had a chance of the position at
+  Rockaway, although the editor once said casually that he would
+  try and find me some similar position. I lied to you all through
+  in that, for I wished you to think I had prospects of paying work
+  in view. When you used to come down with me to Franklin Street
+  (Harper’s) I waited about upstairs and looked at books, etc., and
+  then came down and concocted some lies about what I had said and
+  done. I once borrowed $15 from him (Richard Harding Davis, Editor
+  “Harper’s Weekly”) and said they were for you. My dealings with
+  Sothern were that he from time to time lent me money, some $50 in
+  all, and gave me a position at ten dollars a week. I told him when
+  borrowing that the money was for your doctor, and when borrowing
+  more I said you had wasted it in drink. I asked him to cash several
+  of the cheques I forged, but he would never do this. I was paid
+  up in full by the manager and also for the extra performances
+  of the “Disreputable Mr. Reagen.” I little thought when I was
+  playing Merivale’s part that I should act it true to life. With
+  Mr. Beattie I lied all through. He never had any money of mine or
+  knew my mother or ever heard from her. He never bailed me out, and
+  I never used to see him as I said I did. You and Palmer thought
+  that I spent some time in jail this summer, but I would rather not
+  say anything in writing about that. My dealings with Palmer were
+  that I borrowed money from him and said it was for you. I also
+  went to your banker acquaintance and borrowed twenty-five dollars
+  for a specialist, saying it was at your request. I did pawn the
+  overcoat you gave me to post to Kay, and that time you forgave me
+  for stealing your money I had in my pocket the proceeds of three
+  stories of yours I had given the _Sun_, and they had paid for. But,
+  even in the face of your forgiveness, I wanted this money so much
+  for my indulgences that I could not face the privation of handing
+  it over to you. I lied in the face of your kindness and generosity,
+  and when you even needed food I was going about drinking and
+  womanizing and spending freely. When my funds were exhausted I came
+  back to you, for I knew you would always forgive me. It is awful.
+  No wonder you want to see me go to prison. I am as wicked a man as
+  ever lived, I believe. I wonder what caused me to tell such lies.
+  Am I a natural born liar? It seems like it. You wrong me in one
+  thing--in thinking my sorrow is sham and prompted by fear and the
+  hope of getting off. I cannot find words to express my contrition.
+  Believe me, I would do anything in my power, and will do, when
+  my term is up, to make reparation. I submit to the inevitable. I
+  can imagine something now of what you must have suffered when I
+  left you alone without food or money those four days and nights.
+  I think, however, the worst thing I did was telling the pastor’s
+  daughter that you tried to prevent our meeting because you wished
+  me to marry one of your sisters, though I do not know, of course,
+  whether you have any even. That, and the taking the stamps off
+  your letters so that I could get beer, seem to weigh most heavily
+  with me now in my darkness and loneliness. I do not know what my
+  sentence will be--heavy, I suspect, unless I can get someone to
+  plead for me, and I have not a single solitary friend to do that.
+  I am utterly alone. I have been in this cell now twenty-one days,
+  and have a week more before sentence is given. It seems like six
+  months. No one can realize what prison is like till they have tried
+  it.
+
+  Believe me, I am deeply and truly sorry. I speak from my heart.
+  Think of me as kindly as you can when I am in the Penitentiary. I
+  hope I shall see you once more.
+                                                         ARTHUR B.
+
+I saw Boyde twice in my life afterwards; I heard, indirectly, from him
+once: the prison chaplain wrote to ask for “his things” which, Boyde
+told him, I “insisted upon keeping.” He never had any “things” at all
+while I knew him; the letter was indignant and offensive. Boyde had
+evidently “told a tale” to the chaplain.
+
+The first time I saw him was some eighteen months after he had been
+sent up, good behaviour evidently having shortened his term. I was
+walking up Irving Place and saw him suddenly about fifty yards in front
+of me. It was my own thick suit I recognized first, then its wearer. I
+instinctively called out his name. He turned, looked at me, hurried on,
+and went round the corner into 21st Street. Once round the corner, he
+must have run like a hare, for when I entered the street too, he had
+disappeared.
+
+The second, and last, time I saw him was in London ten years later--at
+a bookstall in Charing Cross station. He saw me, however, first, or
+before I could come close enough to speak, and he melted away into the
+crowd with swift and accomplished ease. I was near enough, though,
+to note that he had grown his heavy moustache again, still wore his
+eyeglass, and was smartly, even prosperously, dressed. He looked very
+little older. From Lynwood Palmer, whom I met soon afterwards in
+Piccadilly, I heard that my old employer, the Horse, had seen him at
+Tattersalls not long before, and that he, Boyde, had come and begged
+Palmer not to give him away as he was “after some Jews only”! Artist
+Palmer took no action.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+McCloy took me back on the _Evening Sun_, according to his promise,
+about mid-January, and about the same time Mrs. Bernstein sold her
+house and moved to another lower down the street, almost opposite to
+the doctor’s. There were no insects, all our things were out of pawn,
+we had overcoats again, but we had to find a new Ikey, for the old
+Ikey, of course, would have nothing more to do with our trousers,
+gladstone bag, top hat and tennis cups.
+
+The East 19th Street chapter was closed when Boyde went to Blackwell
+Island; another in the same street had begun: Mrs. Bernstein begged
+us to move with her: we owed her big arrears of rent; also, for some
+odd reason, she really liked us. In her odd way she even tried to
+mother me, as though her interest, somewhere perhaps her pity too,
+were touched. “You haf had drouble in England, I subbose?” she hinted
+sympathetically. She had read the newspapers carefully, and could not
+understand why I should be exiled in poverty in this way unless I had
+done something shady at home. It followed that I had been sent out
+to America for my country’s good. She shared, that is, the view most
+people took of my position in New York.
+
+Only three months had passed since we arrived, but it seemed years. I
+had never lived anywhere else. The sheltered English life, the Canadian
+adventures, above all the months upon our happy island, lay far away
+down the wrong end of a telescope, small, distant patches, brightly
+coloured, lit by a radiant sun, remote, incredible. It was not myself
+but another person I watched moving across these miniature maps of
+memory. Those happy days, states, places, those careless, sanguine
+moods, those former points of view so bright with hope, seemed gone for
+ever. I now lived in a world where I belonged. I should never climb
+out again.
+
+The intensity of emotion at the time is difficult to realize now, and
+quite impossible to recapture. I only know that my feelings burned
+like fire, all the fiercer, of course, for being inarticulate. The
+exaggeration was natural enough; everything was out of proportion in
+me: Boyde had destroyed my faith in people. I believed in no one. The
+doctor had said that to lose belief in others made life insupportable.
+I found that statement true. There was a deep bitterness in my heart
+that for a time was more than I could manage, and this distrust and
+bitterness led me into an act of cruelty that shames me to this day.
+
+Into the roar and thunder of that frenzied newspaper office stole a
+hesitating figure one afternoon, a shy youth with rosy cheeks and
+curly hair, dressed in shabby but well-cut clothes, and obviously an
+Englishman. He wore gloves and carried a “cane”; these marked him
+as a “Britisher” at once. He was asking for someone; fingers were
+pointed at me; he was faintly familiar; I had seen the face before--but
+where? He came over and introduced himself as Calder, son of a Midland
+coach-builder; we had met at some place or other--outside a studio
+door, I think--and he knew Kay. I forget what he was doing in New
+York---idling, I think, or travelling. He had outlived his cash, at any
+rate. He was in difficulties. I distrusted him instantly. He was, of
+course, another Boyde. I gave him the curtest possible greeting. He, in
+turn, found the greatest possible difficulty in telling me his story.
+
+I was sitting at the reporters’ table in shirt-sleeves (owing to the
+suffocating temperature of the over-heated office), scribbling at
+top speed the details of some lurid “story,” while Calder told me
+his tale. He wanted to whisper, but the noise forced him to shout,
+and this disconcerted him. No one listened, however; he had merely
+brought a “story” in. He had--but it was his own story. I have quite
+forgotten what it was, or what had happened to him; only the main point
+I remember: he had nowhere to sleep. Of his story I did not believe
+a single word, though I did believe that he had no bed. “Can I bunk
+with you to-night?” he came finally to the point. I told him he most
+certainly could not. He refused to believe me. I assured him I meant
+it. I was his last hope, he said, with a nervous grin. I told him to
+try a doss-house. He grinned and giggled and flushed--then thanked me!
+It would only be for a night or two, he urged. “You can’t possibly
+let me walk the streets all night!” I replied that one Boyde had been
+enough for me. I had learnt my lesson, he could walk the streets for
+the rest of his life for all I cared. He giggled, still refusing to
+believe I meant it. His father was sending money. He would repay me.
+He went on pleading. I again repeated that I could not take him in. He
+left, still thanking me and blushing.
+
+Visions of another Boyde were in my mind. At the time, moreover, our
+poverty was worse than it ever had been. Boyde, I found, had sold six
+of my French stories to McCloy at $5 each, and had pocketed the money.
+My salary was now being docked five dollars each week till this $30
+was paid off. We had, therefore, only ten dollars a week between the
+two of us. Everything was in pawn again, and times were extra hard. To
+have Calder living on us was out of the question, for once he got in we
+should never get him out. I was tired of criminal parasites.
+
+It was my head that argued thus; in my heart I knew perfectly well that
+Calder was guileless, innocent as milk, an honest, feckless, stupid
+fellow who was in genuine difficulty for the moment, but who would
+never sponge on us, and certainly do nothing mean. Conscience pricked
+me--for half an hour perhaps; in the stress and excitement of the day
+I then forgot him. That evening Acton Davis, the dramatic critic, gave
+me a theatre seat, on condition that I wrote the notice for him. It was
+after eleven when I reached home. Curled up in my bed, sound asleep,
+his clothes neatly folded on the chair, lay Calder.
+
+It was February and freezing cold. Kay was away for the week, trying
+a new play at Mount Vernon, where he slept. There was no reason why I
+should not have let Calder spend at least one warm night in the room.
+But, apart from the shock of annoyance at finding him asleep in my
+own bed, and apart from a moment’s anger at his cool impudence, the
+startling parallel with Boyde was vividly unpleasant. It was Boyde No.
+2 I saw sleeping in my bed. If I let him stay one night I should never
+get rid of him at all. $10 a week among three! Calder must take up his
+bed and walk.
+
+I woke him and told him to dress and leave the room. I watched him
+dress, heard him plead, heard him describe the freezing weather,
+describe his walking the streets all night without a cent in his
+pockets. He blushed and giggled all the time. It was some minutes
+before he believed I was in earnest, before he crawled out of bed; it
+was much longer before he was dressed and ready to go.... I saw him
+down the stairs and through the front door and out into the bitter
+street. I gave him a dollar, which represented two days’ meals for
+me, and would pay a bed in a doss-house for him. When he was gone I
+spent a wretched night, ashamed of myself through and through. It
+really was Boyde who turned him out, but the excuse had no comfort in
+it. The little incident remains unkindly vivid; I still see it; it
+happens over again; the foolish, good-natured face, the blushes and
+shyness, the implicit belief in my own kindness, the red cheeks and
+curly hair--going through the front door into the bitter streets. It
+all stands out. Shame and remorse go up and down in me while I write it
+now, a belated confession.... I never saw Calder again.
+
+Another thing that still shames me is our treatment of old greasy
+Mother Bernstein. Though a little thing, this likewise keeps vividly
+alive. A “little” thing! The big things, invariably with extenuating
+circumstances that furnish modifying excuses and comforting
+explanations, are less stinging in the memory. It is the little things
+that pierce and burn and prick for years to come. In my treatment of
+Mrs. Bernstein, at any rate, lay an alleviating touch of comedy. In
+the end, too, the debt was paid. Twelve months later--it seemed a
+period of years--Kay got suddenly from a brother £100--an enormous sum;
+while I had twice received from my brother, God bless him! post-office
+orders for £10. This was a long time ahead yet, but Mrs. Bernstein
+eventually received her due with our sincerest thanks. She had moved to
+another house in Lafayette Place by then. We paid up and left her, Kay
+going to one boarding-house, I to another.
+
+The payment in full, at any rate, relieved my conscience, for the way
+we bullied that poor old Jewess was inexcusable. The excuse I found
+seemed adequate at the time, however--we must frighten her or be turned
+out. Each time she pressed for payment, out came my heavy artillery;
+imaginary insects, threats of newspaper articles, bluster, bluff and
+bullying of every description, often reducing her to tears, and a final
+indignant volley to the effect that “If you don’t trust us, we had
+better go; in fact, if this occurs again, we _shall_ go!” More than
+once we pretended to pack up; more than once I announced that we had
+found other rooms; “Next Monday I shall pay you the few dollars we owe,
+and leave your house, and you will read an account of your conduct in
+the _Evening Sun_, Mrs. Bernstein.” She invariably came to heel. “I ask
+my hospand” had no sequel. By frightening and bullying her, I stayed
+on and on and on, owing months’ and months’ rent and breakfast; our
+ascendancy over her was complete. It was, none the less, a shameful
+business, for at the time it seemed doubtful if we should ever be in a
+position to pay the kind old woman anything at all....
+
+The fifteen months I now spent reporting for the _Evening Sun_ at
+fifteen dollars a week lie in the mind like a smudged blur of dreary
+wretchedness, a few incidents only standing out.... The desire for
+the drug was conquered, the old doctor was dead, Kay had obtained
+a position with a firm in Exchange Place, where he made a small,
+uncertain income in a business that was an absolute mystery to me, the
+buying and selling of exchange between banks. Louis B---- had meanwhile
+arrived, without a cent to his name. It was a long and bitter period,
+three of us in a small room again, but at least an honest three.
+Louis’s French temperament ran to absinthe--when he could get it. He
+used the mattress on the floor, while Kay and I shared the bed between
+us. Our clothes were useless to the short, rotund little Frenchman;
+as the weeks passed he looked more and more like a pantomime figure
+in the streets, and when he went to give his rare French and Spanish
+lessons he never dared to take off his overcoat (which he had managed
+to keep) even in the hottest room, nor during the most torrid of summer
+days. Often he dared not unbutton the collar he turned up about his
+neck, affirming with much affected coughing that he had a “dreadful
+throat.” He was, by nature and habit, an inveterate cigarette smoker;
+a cigarette, indeed, meant more to him than a meal, and I can still
+see him crawling about the floor of the room on all fours in the early
+morning, “hunting snipe,” as he called it--in other words, looking for
+fag-ends. He was either extremely sanguine or extremely depressed; in
+the former mood he planned the most alluring and marvellous schemes, in
+the latter he talked of suicide. His wife, whom he dearly loved, had a
+baby soon after his arrival. He suffered a good deal....
+
+He was a great addition to our party, if at the same time a great
+drain on our purse. His keen, materialistic French mind was very
+eager, logical, well-informed, and critical in a destructive sense, an
+iconoclast if ever there was one. All forms of belief were idols it
+was his great delight to destroy; faith was superstition; cosmogonies
+were inventions of men whose natural feebleness forced them to seek
+something bigger and more wonderful than themselves; creeds, from
+primitive animism to Buddhism and Christianity, were, similarly,
+man-made, with a dose of pretentious ethics thrown in; while soul,
+spirit, survival after death, were creations of human vanity and
+egoism, and had not a single atom of evidence to support them from the
+beginning of the world to date. Naturally, he disbelieved everything
+that I believed, and, naturally, too, our arguments left us both
+precisely where we started. But they helped the evenings, often hungry
+evenings, to pass without monotony; and when, as sometimes though but
+rarely happened, Louis had come by a drop of absinthe, monotony was
+entirely forgotten. He would sit crossed-legged on his mattress, his
+brown eyes sparkling in the round little face, his thick curly black
+hair looking like stiff wire, his podgy hands gesticulating, his
+language voluble in French and English mixed, his infectious laughter
+ringing and bubbling out from time to time--and the evening would pass
+like magic. He was charged with poetry and music too. On absinthe
+evenings, indeed, it was difficult to get any sleep at all ... and
+the first thing in the morning he would be hunting for “snipe” on all
+fours, cursing life and fate, in a black depression which made him
+think of suicide, and looking like a yellow Chinese God of Luck that
+had come to life.
+
+Hunger was agony to him, but, oddly enough, he never grew less rotund.
+He particularly enjoyed singing what he called _la messe noire_ with
+astonishing variations in his high falsetto. This “mass” was performed
+by all three of us to a plaster-cast faun an artist had given me in
+Toronto. It had come in the packing-case with our other things, this
+Donatello, and we set it on the mantelpiece, filled a saucer with
+melted candle stolen from a boarder’s room, lit the piece of string
+which served for wick, and turned the gas out. In the darkened room
+the faunish face leered and moved, as the flickering light from below
+set the shadows shifting about its features; the fiddle, Louis’s thin
+falsetto, Kay’s bass, badly out of tune, and my own voice thrown in as
+well, produced a volume of sound the other boarders strongly objected
+to--at one o’clock in the morning. Yet the only time Mrs. Bernstein
+came to complain, she got no farther than the door: Louis had a blanket
+over his head and shoulders, Kay was in his night-shirt, which was a
+day-shirt really, the old Irving wig lying crooked on his head, and I
+was but half dressed, fiddling for all I was worth. The darkened room,
+the three figures passing to and fro and chanting, the strange weird
+face of the faun, it by the flickering flame from below, startled her
+so that she stood stock-still on the threshold without a word. The
+next second she was gone.... What eventually happened to Louis I never
+knew. Months later he moved to a room up-town. We lost track of one
+another, and I have no idea how fate behaved to him in after-life. He
+was thirty-five when he sang the _messe noire_, hunted snipe, and gave
+occasional lessons in French and Spanish.
+
+These trivial little memories remain vivid for some reason. To my
+precious Sundays in Bronx Park, or farther afield when the days grew
+longer, he came too, and Kay came with him. We shared the teapot and
+tin mug I still kept hidden behind a boulder, we shared the fire I
+always made--neither of my companions shared my mood of happiness....
+I was glad when they both refused to get up and start at eight,
+preferring to spend the morning in bed. For months and months I never
+missed a single Sunday, wet or fine, for these outings were life to me,
+and I made a rough lean-to that kept the rain off in bad weather....
+The car-fare was only 30 cents, both ways; bread and a lump of cheese
+provided two meals; there were few Sundays when I did not get at least
+seven or eight hours of intense happiness among the trees and wild
+stretches of what was to me a veritable Eden of delight.... Nothing
+experienced in later life, tender or grandiose, neither the splendour
+of the Alps, the majesty of the Caucasus, the mystery of the desert,
+the magic of spring in Italy or the grim wonder of the real backwoods
+which I tasted later too--none of these produced the strange and subtle
+ecstasy of happiness I found on those Sundays in the wastes of scrubby
+Bronx Park, a few miles from “Noo York City.” ... It was, of course,
+but the raw material, so to speak, of beauty, which indeed is true
+always of “scenery” as a whole, but it was possible to find detail
+which, grouped together, made unforgettable pictures by the score.
+Though deprived of technique, I could _see_ the pictures I need never
+think of painting. The selection of significant detail in scenery is
+the secret of enjoyment, for such selection can be almost endless....
+
+The hours passed too quickly always, but they provided the energy to
+face what, to me, was the unadulterated misery of the week to follow.
+A book was in my pocket and Shelley was in my memory. From the tram
+to the trees was half a mile, perhaps, but with the first sight of
+these, with the first scent of leaves and earth, the first touch of the
+wind of open spaces on my tongue, my joy rose like a great sea-wave,
+and the city life, with all its hideousness, was utterly forgotten.
+What occupied my mind during those seven or eight hours it would be
+tedious to describe.... I was, besides, hopelessly inarticulate in
+those early days; conclusions I arrived at were reached by feeling, not
+by thinking; one, in particular, about which I felt so positive that
+I _knew_ it was true, I could no more have expressed in words than I
+could have flown or made a million. This particular conclusion that the
+Sundays in Bronx Park gave me has, naturally, been expressed by others
+far better than I could ever express it, but the first time I came
+across the passage, perhaps a dozen years later in London, my thought
+instantly flashed back to the teapot, the tin mug, and the boulder in
+Bronx Park when the same conviction had burned into my own untaught
+mind:
+
+  “One conclusion was forced upon my mind ... and my impression of
+  its truth has ever since remained unshaken. It is that our normal
+  waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but
+  _one special type_ of consciousness, whilst all about us, parted
+  from it by the filmiest of screens, there are potential forms of
+  consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without
+  suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus and at
+  a touch they are there in all their completeness; definite types of
+  mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application
+  and adaptation. No account of the universe in its totality can
+  be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite
+  disregarded. At any rate, they forbid a premature closing of our
+  accounts with reality. The whole drift of my education goes to
+  persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is _only
+  one_ out of many worlds of consciousness that exist, and that these
+  other worlds must contain experiences which have a meaning for our
+  life also.... [The insight in these other states] has a keynote
+  invariably of reconciliation. It is as if the opposites of the
+  world, whose contradictions and conflict make all our difficulties
+  and troubles, were melting into unity.”[1]
+
+  [1] “Varieties of Religious Experience.” William James.
+
+The immortal may mingle with certain moods, perhaps, especially when
+violent contrast underlies the transition, and when deep yearnings,
+suppressed equally with violence, find their sudden radiant outlet.
+Since those Bronx Park days, when Nature caught me with such profound,
+uplifting magic, yet when thought was dumb and inarticulate, I am for
+ever coming across neat expressions by better minds than mine of what I
+then felt, and even believed I _knew_, in some unimagined way. Nature
+drew me, perhaps, away from life, while at the same time there glowed
+in my heart strange unrealizable desires to help life, to assist at her
+Utopian development, to work myself to the bone for the improvement
+of humanity. The contradiction, silly and high-flown though it now
+sounds, was then true. Inextinguishable fires to this end blazed in
+me, both mind and heart were literally on fire. My failure with Boyde,
+my meanness with Calder, to mention no graver lapses, both bit deep,
+but the intense longing to lose my Self in some Utopian cause was as
+strong as the other longing to be lost in the heart of some unstained
+and splendid wilderness of natural beauty. And the conflict puzzled me.
+Being inarticulate, I could not even find relief in words, though, as
+mentioned, I have often since discovered my feelings of those distant
+days expressed neatly enough by others. Only a few days ago I came
+across an instance:
+
+“If Nature catches the soul young it is lost to humanity,” groans
+Leroy, in a truly significant book of 1922.[2]
+
+[2] “The Interpreters,” by A. E. The characters “interpret” the
+“relation of the politics of Time to the politics of Eternity.”
+
+“No, no,” replies the poet. “The earth spirit does not draw us aside
+from life. How could that which is father and mother of us all lead us
+to err from the law of our being?”
+
+And, again, as I sat puzzling about the amazing horror of what was
+called the Civilization of the New World, and doubtless making the
+commonplace mistake of thinking that New York City was America:--
+
+  “Every great civilization, I think, has a Deity behind it, or
+  a divine shepherd who guided it on some plan in the cosmic
+  imagination. ‘Behold,’ said an ancient Oracle, ‘how the Heavens
+  glitter with intellectual sections.’... These are archetypal images
+  we follow dimly in our evolution.”
+
+  “How do you conceive of these powers as affecting civilization?”
+
+  “I believe they are incarnate in the race; more in the group than
+  in the individual; and they tend to bring about an orchestration of
+  the genius of the race, to make manifest in time their portion of
+  eternal beauty....”[3]
+
+  [3] _Ibid._
+
+My conception of the universe, at any rate, in these early days
+was imaginative entirely; the critical function, which comes with
+greater knowledge, with reason, with fuller experience, lay wholly
+dormant. I communed with both gods and devils. New York stoked the
+furnace--provided the contrasts. Experience, very slowly, furnished the
+files and sand-paper which lay bare what may be real beneath by rubbing
+away the pretty gilt. Certain convictions of those far days, however,
+stood the test, whatever that test may be worth, and have justified
+themselves to me with later years as assuredly _not_ gilt. That unity
+of life is true, and that our normal human consciousness is but one
+type, and a somewhat insignificant type at that, hold unalterably
+real for me to-day. My other conviction, born in Bronx Park in 1892
+by the teapot, tin mug, and familiar boulder which concealed these
+indispensable utensils during the week, is that the Mystical Experience
+known to many throughout the ages with invariable similarity is _not_ a
+pathogenic experience, but is due to a desirable, genuine and valuable
+expansion of consciousness which furnishes knowledge normally ahead
+of the race; but, since language can only describe the experience of
+the race, that it is incommunicable because no words exist, and that
+only those who have experienced it can comprehend it. The best equipped
+modern “intellectual” (above all the “intellectual” perhaps), the most
+advanced scientist, as, on the other hand, the drayman, the coster, the
+city clerk, must remain not only dumb before its revelation, stupid,
+hopelessly at sea, angry probably, but contemptuous and certainly
+mystified: they must also appear, if they be honest, entirely and
+unalterably _sceptical_. Such scepticism is their penalty; it is,
+equally, their judge and their confession.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+Among the “incidents” that stand out from the dim, miserable smudge of
+fifteen months, is one that centres about a strange figure, and a most
+lovable fellow, named Angus Hamilton. Various odd fish drifted on to
+the paper as reporters, and drifted off again; they form part of an
+unimportant kaleidoscope. But Angus Hamilton, with his generosity, his
+startling habits, his undoubted ability, his sad and sudden end, stands
+out.
+
+My position had improved since the publication of the Boyde story,
+chiefly, of course, because of the way the peerage had been dragged
+into its details and its headlines. I received no advance in salary,
+but I received an advance in respect. Even McCloy was different: “Why
+waste your time with us?” he spat at me like a machine-gun with a rapid
+smile. “Go home. Collect a lot of umbrellas and turned-up trousers and
+letters of introduction. Then come out to ‘visit the States,’ marry
+an heiress, and go home and live in comfort!” He was very lenient to
+my numerous mistakes. Other papers “got a beat” on me, I “fell down”
+times without number, I failed to get an interview with all and sundry
+because I could not find “the nerve” to intrude at certain moments into
+the lives and griefs of others. But McCloy winked the other eye, even
+if he never raised my pay. Other men were sacked out of hand. I stayed
+on. “You’ve got a pull with Mac!” said “Whitey.” New men took the
+places of the lost. Among these I noticed an Englishman. Cooper noticed
+him too. “Better share an umbrella and go arm in arm,” he said in his
+good-natured way. “He’s a fellow-Britisher.”
+
+Why he came to New York I never understood. He was a stepson of
+Pinero, the playwright, and he received occasional moneys from Daniel
+Frohman, by way of allowance, I supposed, though I never knew exactly.
+Clever though he was, he was a worse reporter than myself--because he
+didn’t care two straws whether he got the news or did not get it. He
+had a “pull” of some sort, with Laffan probably, we thought. He came
+to our boarding-house in East 19th Street. He had a bad stammer. His
+methods of reporting were peculiar to himself. Often enough, when sent
+out on a distasteful assignment, he simply went home. He had literary
+talent and wrote well when he liked. When Frohman handed out his money,
+he spent it in giving a big dinner to various friends, though he never
+included Kay, Louis, or myself among his distinguished guests. We had
+no dress-suits, for one thing.
+
+Hamilton was perhaps twenty-one at the time, a trifle younger than
+myself, at any rate. He came downstairs sometimes to spend the evening
+in our room. In spite of his stammer and a certain shyness, he was
+always very welcome. He liked, above all, to listen to weird stories I
+used to tell, strange, wild, improbable tales akin to ghost-stories.
+When the Black Mass failed to attract, when Louis was uninspired by
+absinthe, or when no argument was afoot, such as whether poet or
+scientist were the highest type of human being, I discovered this taste
+for spinning yarns, usually of a ghostly character, and found, to my
+surprise, that my listeners were enthralled. At a moment’s notice, no
+theme or idea being in my head, I found that I could invent a tale,
+with beginning, middle and climax. Something in me, doubtless, sought a
+natural outlet. The stories, at any rate, poured forth endlessly. “May
+I write that one?” Hamilton would ask. “It’s a corker!” And he would
+bring his written version to read to us a few evenings later. “It ought
+to sell,” he said, though I never heard that it did sell actually.
+Certainly, it never occurred to me that I might write and sell it
+myself. And Angus Hamilton is mentioned here because it was owing to a
+chance act of his that I eventually took to writing and so found my
+liberty.
+
+This happened some twelve years later, when I was living in a room in
+Halsey Street, Chelsea, sweating my life out in the dried milk business
+and earning barely enough at the job to make both ends meet. A hansom
+stopped suddenly near me in Piccadilly Circus, its occupant shouted my
+name, then sprang out--Angus Hamilton.
+
+He came round to my room for a talk over old days; he had done well
+for himself as Reuter’s correspondent in the Manchurian War, had
+published a book on Korea, and was just off to China, again as Reuter’s
+agent. He reminded me of the stories I used to tell in the New York
+boarding-house. I had written some of these, a couple of dozen perhaps,
+and they lay in a cupboard. Could he see them? Might he take them away
+and read them?
+
+It had been my habit and delight to spend my evenings composing yarns
+on my typewriter, finding more pleasure in this than in any dinner
+engagement, theatre or concert. Why this suddenly began I cannot say,
+but I guess at a venture that the accumulated horror of the years in
+New York was seeking expression. Wandering in Richmond Park at night
+was the only rival entertainment that could tempt me from the joy
+of typing out some tale or other in solitude. “Jimbo” I had already
+written twice, several of the “John Silence” tales as well, and
+numerous other queer ghostly stories of one sort or another. From among
+these last Hamilton took a dozen or so away with him, but forgot to
+send them back as he had promised. He had gone to China, I supposed,
+and the matter had slipped his mind. It didn’t matter much--I went on
+writing others; the stories were no good to anybody, the important
+thing being the relief and keen pleasure I found in their expression.
+But some weeks later a letter came from a publisher: “I have read your
+book.... My reader tells me ...” this and that “about your stories....
+I shall be glad to publish them for you ...,” and then a few words
+about a title and a request that I would call for an interview.
+
+It was some little time before I realized what the publisher was
+talking about. Hamilton, without asking permission, had sent my
+stories to him. Eveleigh Nash was the publisher, and his reader at
+that time was Maude Ffoulkes, who later wrote Lady Cardigan’s Memoirs,
+numerous other biographies, also “My Own Past,” and to whom I owe
+an immense debt for unfailing guidance, help and encouragement from
+that day to this. I never forget my shrinking fear at the idea of
+appearing in print, my desire to use another name, my feeling that it
+was all a mistake somewhere, the idea that I should have a book of
+my own published being too absurd to accept as true. My relief when,
+eventually, the papers gave it briefest possible mention, a few words
+of not unkindly praise or blame, I remember too, and my astonishment,
+some weeks later, to find a column in the _Spectator_, followed not
+long afterwards by an interesting article in the Literary Page of the
+_Morning Post_ on the genus “ghost story,” based on my book--by Hilaire
+Belloc, as he told me years later. All of which prompted me to try
+another book ... and after the third, “John Silence,” had appeared, to
+renounce a problematical fortune in dried milk, and with typewriter
+and kit-bag, to take my precious new liberty out to the Jura Mountains
+where, at frs. 4.50 a day, I lived in reasonable comfort and wrote more
+books. I was then thirty-six.
+
+Whether I should be grateful to my fellow-reporter on the _Evening Sun_
+is another matter. Liberty is priced above money, at any rate. I have
+written some twenty books, but the cash received for these, though it
+has paid for rent, for food, for clothing, separately, has never been
+enough to pay for all three together, even on the most modest scale of
+living, and my returns, both from America and England, remain still
+microscopic. Angus Hamilton I never saw again. A year or so later,
+while on a lecture tour in New York, things apparently went wrong with
+him. Life drove against him in some way. He put a sudden end to himself.
+
+It seems strange to me now that so few incidents, and those such
+trivial ones, stand out from the long months of newspaper work in New
+York. Harrowing and dreadful stories, appalling in their evidence
+of human degradation, or poignant beyond words in their revelation
+of misery, temptation, failure, were my daily experience week after
+week, month after month. I might now have bulky scrap-books packed
+with thrilling plots of every kind, all taken from life. My affair
+with Boyde, moreover, had taught me how much of curious psychological
+interest lay behind the most ordinary arrest for a commonplace crime.
+Yet, of all these thousands of cases, I remember hardly a single one,
+while of uninteresting assignments Cooper gave me several still live
+vividly in my memory. Social reporting, in particular, both amused and
+distressed me, for which reasons probably it has not faded. Sitting in
+the lobby at Sherry’s or Delmonico’s when a ball or society function
+was in progress and taking the names of the guests as they entered,
+taking the snubs and rudeness of these gay, careless folk as well, was
+not calculated to add much to my self-respect. The lavish evidence
+of money, the excess, often the atrocious taste, even stirred red
+socialism in me, although this lasted only till I was out in the street
+again. Various connexions, distant or otherwise, of my family often,
+too, visited New York, while more than one had married an American
+girl of prominent name. It was odd to see Lord Ava, Dufferin’s eldest
+son, walk up the steps, and odder still to jot down his name upon the
+list of “those present.” There was an American woman, too, who bore
+my mother’s name.... To see any of these people was the last thing on
+earth I wished, much less to speak to them or be recognized; they were
+in another world to mine; none the less, I had odd sensations when I
+saw them.... A ball of deaf-mutes, too, remains very clear, only the
+shuffling sound of boots, and of the big drum whose heavy vibrations
+through their feet enabled them to keep time, breaking the strange hush
+of the dancing throng, for ever gesticulating with busy fingers.
+
+A much-coveted annual assignment once came my way, through the
+kindness of McCloy, I think--the visit to the winter quarters of Barnum
+and Bailey’s Circus. Every newspaper was invited; the animals were
+inspected; an article was written; and the circus opened its yearly
+tour with immense advertisements. In the evening there was a--banquet!
+I came home in the early hours with my pockets stuffed for Kay and
+Louis--cigars, fruit, rolls, and all imaginable edibles that might bear
+the transport. But the occasion is clear for another reason--elephants
+and rats. The keeper told us that the elephants were terrified of rats
+because they feared the little beasts would run up their trunks. We
+doubted his story. He offered to prove it. In the huge barn where some
+twenty-five monsters stood, chained by the feet against the walls,
+he emptied a sackful of live rats. The stampede, the trumpeting of
+those frightened elephants is not easily forgotten. In the centre of
+the great barn stood masses of hay cut into huge square blocks, and
+the sight of us climbing for safety to the top of these slippery,
+precariously balanced piles of hay is not easily forgotten either.
+
+The raid at dawn upon a quasi lunatic asylum, kept by an unqualified
+man, should have left sharper impressions than is the case, for it was
+certainly dramatic and sinister enough. Word came to the office that a
+quack “doctor” was keeping a private Home for Lunatics at Amityville,
+L.I., and that sane people, whom interested parties wished out of the
+way, were incarcerated among the inmates. The Health Department were
+going to raid it at dawn. It was to be a “scoop” for the _Evening Sun_,
+and the assignment was given to me.
+
+I started while it was still dark, crossing the deserted ferry long
+before the sun was up, but when I reached the lonely house, surrounded
+by fields and a few scattered trees, I found that every newspaper in
+the city was represented. Even the flimsy men were there, all cursing
+their fate in the chilly air of early morning. No lights showed in
+the building. The eastern sky began to flush. With the first glimmer
+of dawn I saw the sheriff’s men at their various posts, hiding behind
+trees and hedges, some crouching under the garden shrubberies, some
+concealed even on the veranda of the house. After a long and weary
+wait, the house began to stir; shutters were taken down; a window, then
+a door, were thrown open; figures became visible moving inside from
+room to room; and presently someone came out on to the veranda. He was
+instantly seized and taken away. After several men and women had been
+arrested in this way, a general raid of the whole house took place. A
+dozen of the sheriff’s men rushed in. The nurses, male and female, the
+“doctor”-proprietor, his assistants, and every single inmate, sane or
+crazy, were all caught and brought out under arrest, before they had
+tasted breakfast.
+
+It was broad daylight by this time. The whole party, of at least
+thirty, were assembled in a barn where a magistrate, brought down
+specially for the purpose, held an impromptu court. If some of the
+inmates were insane at the time and had been so before incarceration,
+others certainly had been deliberately made insane by the harsh and
+cruel treatment to which they had purposely been subjected. There
+were painful episodes, while the testimony was hurriedly listened to
+in that improvised court of inquiry. Yet it has all, all vanished
+from my memory. I forget even what the sequel was, or what sentence
+the infamous proprietor received later on from a properly-constituted
+court. Many a sane man or woman had been rendered crazy by the
+treatment, I remember, and the quack had taken heavy payments from
+interested relatives for this purpose. But all details have vanished
+from my mind. What chiefly remains is the wonder of that breaking dawn,
+the light stealing over the sky, the sweet smell of the country and the
+tang of the salt sea. These, with the singing of the early birds, and
+the great yearnings they stirred in me, left deep impressions.
+
+One reason, I am sure, why such painful and dramatic incidents have
+left so little trace, is that I had a way of shielding myself from the
+unpleasantness of them, so that their horror or nastiness, as the case
+might be, never really got into me deeply. By a method of “detachment,”
+as mentioned earlier, I protected my sensitive inner self from being
+too much wounded. I would depute just sufficient intelligence and
+observation to attend to the immediate work in hand, while the rest of
+me, the major portion, lay inactive, uninvolved, certainly inoperative.
+Painful and vivid impressions were, none the less, received, of course,
+only I refused to admit or recognize them. They emerged, years later,
+in stories perhaps, these suppressed hieroglyphics, but at the actual
+time I could so protect myself that I did not consciously record them.
+And hence, I think, my faint recollection now of a thousand horrible
+experiences during these New York reporting days.
+
+This “detachment,” in the ignorant way I used it, was, perhaps, nothing
+less than shirking of the unpleasant. At twenty-three I had not yet
+discovered that better method which consists in facing the unpleasant
+without reservation or evasion, while raising the energy thus released
+into a higher channel, “transmuting” it, as the jargon of 1922
+describes it. “Detachment,” however, even in its earliest stages, and
+provided it does not remain merely where it starts, is an acquisition
+not without value; it can lead, at any rate, to interesting and curious
+experiments. It deputes the surface-consciousness, or sufficient of
+it, to deal with some disagreeable little matter in hand, while the
+subconscious or major portion of the self--for those who are aware of
+possessing it--may travel and go free. It is, I think, Bligh Bond, in
+his “Gate of Remembrance,” who mentions that the automatic writer whose
+revelations are there given, read a book aloud while his hand with the
+pencil wrote. Many a literary man, whose inspiration depends upon the
+stirrings of this mysterious subconscious region, knows that to read a
+dull book, or talk to a dull person, engages just enough of his surface
+consciousness to set the other portion free. Reading verse--though not
+poetry, of course--has this effect; for some, a cinema performance,
+with the soothing dimness, the music, the ever-shifting yet not too
+arresting pictures, works the magic; for others, light music; for
+others, again, looking out of a train window. There are as many ways
+as individuals. To listen to Mrs. de Montmorency Smith telling her
+tedious dream, while you hear just enough to comment intelligently upon
+her endless details, even using some of these details to feed your own
+more valuable dream, is an admirable method--I am told; and my own
+childish habit of squeezing “through the crack between yesterday and
+to-morrow” in that horrible bed of East 19th Street, merely happened to
+be my own little personal adaptation of the principle....
+
+Incidents that had held a touch of comedy remain more clearly in the
+memory than those that held ugliness and horror only. A member of
+the Reichstag Central Party, for instance, Rector Ahlwardt by name,
+came out to conduct a campaign against the Jews. He was violently
+anti-semitic. I was sent to meet his steamer at Quarantine because I
+could speak German, and my instructions were to warn him that America
+was a free country, that the Jews were honourable and respected
+citizens, and that abuse would not be tolerated for a moment. These
+instructions I carried out, while we drank white wine in the steamer’s
+smoking-room. Freytag, I noticed with amusement, himself a Jew, was
+there for the _Staatszeitung_.
+
+Ahlwardt, however, was impervious to advice or warnings. At his first
+big meeting in the Cooper Union Hall, arriving late, I noticed at once
+two things: the seats were packed with Jews, while almost as many
+policemen stood about waiting; and the reporters’ tables underneath
+the platform showed several open umbrellas. Both, I knew, were ominous
+signs. Ahlwardt himself, fat, beaming, in full evening dress, was
+already haranguing the huge audience. At first he was suave and gentle,
+even mealy-mouthed, but before long his prejudices mastered him and
+his language changed. Up rose a member of the audience and advised him
+angrily to go back to Germany. The police ejected the interrupter.
+Others took his place. Then suddenly the fusillade began--and up went
+the reporters’ umbrellas! A flying egg caught the speaker full on
+his white shirt-front, another yellowed his dazzling white waistcoat,
+a third smashed over his fat face. Pandemonium reigned, during which
+the German melted out of the landscape and disappeared from his first
+and last anti-semite meeting in Noo York City. He attempted a little
+propaganda from the safe distance of Hoboken, N.J., but the Press
+campaign against him was so violent and covered him with such ridicule,
+that he very soon took steamer back to his Berlin. Every little detail
+of this incident, were it worth the telling, I could give accurately.
+There was no reason to be “detached,” unless the protection of the
+_World_ man’s umbrella comes under that description.
+
+It was somewhere about this time, too, that another trivial incident
+occurred, refusing to be forgotten. It, again, increased the respect
+shown to me by the staff of the paper--Americans being truly
+democratic!--though it did not increase my salary. A belted earl left
+his card on me. Coming in breathless from some assignment, I saw
+McCloy staring at me. “Is this for _you_?” he asked sarcastically,
+handing me a visiting-card. A brother-in-law, “His Excellency” into
+the bargain, “Governor of an Australian Province” to which he was then
+on his way, had climbed those narrow spiral stairs and asked for me.
+The letters after his name alone were enough to produce a commotion
+in that democratic atmosphere.... He was staying at the Brevoort
+House, and he certainly behaved “like a man,” thought Kay and I, as
+we enjoyed more than one good dinner at his expense in the hotel.
+Proud of me he had certainly no cause to be, but if he felt ashamed,
+equally, he gave no sign of it. He even spoke on my behalf to Paul
+Dana, the editor-proprietor’s son, who assured him that I was “a bright
+fellow”--a description the staff managed to get hold of somehow and
+applied to me ever afterwards. His brief visit, both because of its
+kindness and its general good effect, stand out, at any rate, in the
+“bright fellow’s” memory. Like Dufferin in the Hub, he fired a shot for
+me.
+
+The months dragged by in their dreary, hated length, while numerous
+chances of getting more congenial work were tried in vain. Torrid
+summer heat, with its all-dissolving humidity, replaced the bitter
+winter. The deep, baked streets that never cooled, the stifling nights,
+the heat-waves when the temperature stood between 90 and 100 in the
+shade, and we toiled about the blazing pavements in shirt-sleeves
+carrying a palm-leaf fan, and when the moisture in the air made the
+very “copy-paper” stick to the hand that wrote upon it--those four
+months of New York summer were a misery. We had only our winter clothes
+to wear; a white collar was dirty pulp before nine in the morning;
+the dazzling electric-light sign flashed nightly in the air above
+23rd Street with its tempting legend “Manhattan Beach Swept by Ocean
+Breezes,” while the ice-carts in the streets were the nearest approach
+to comfort we could find. Many a time I followed one at close quarters
+to taste a whiff of cooler air. Life became unendurable, yet day
+followed day, night followed night, week followed week, till one’s last
+breath of energy seemed exhausted by the steaming furnace of the city
+air.
+
+The respectable quarters of the town were, of course, deserted, but the
+East Side, and the poorer parts, became a gigantic ant-heap, thousands
+of families sleeping on the balconies of the packed tenement houses,
+as though a whole underground-world had risen suddenly to the surface.
+Children died by the hundred; there were heat strokes by the score. It
+was too hot to eat. Reporting in such weather was a trying business....
+A reporter was entitled to a fortnight’s holiday in the year, and
+though none was due to me, McCloy let me go about the middle of
+October. I procured a railway pass and went off to Haliburton, Ontario,
+to spend my precious twelve days with a settler in the backwoods. He
+was a Scotsman I had met during our island days, and Haliburton was
+not far from our own delightful lake.... On my way back the cable came
+telling of my father’s death while being brought home from Ems. I was
+spending the night with an old friend of his, in Hamilton, Ont., where
+he had a church. Originally in the navy, the evangelical movement had
+“converted” him, and he had taken to it with such zeal that a church
+and parish became a necessity of life. He was sincere and sympathetic,
+and the bad news could have come to me in no better place.
+
+The next day I returned to New York and resumed my life of reporting on
+the paper.... The elections had been fought, and Tammany was beaten,
+a wave of Republicanism sweeping both State and City. A Committee of
+Investigation, under Senator Lexow, was appointed to examine into
+the methods of Tammany Hall, and for weeks I sat in court while the
+testimony was taken, and the most amazing stories of crime, corruption,
+wickedness and horror I ever heard were told by one “protected” witness
+after another. It brought to light a veritable Reign of Terror. John
+Goff was prosecuting counsel; he became Recorder, in place of Judge
+Smythe, as his reward. Boss Croker, head of Tammany, was conveniently
+in England and could not be subpœnaed. Other leaders, similarly, were
+well out of reach. Tammany, it was proved up to the hilt, had extorted
+an annual income of fifteen million dollars in illegal contributions
+from vice. The court was a daily theatre in which incredible melodrama
+and tragedy were played. With this thrilling exception, the work I had
+to do remained the same as before ... a second Christmas came round
+... another spring began to melt the gloomy skies. Conditions, it is
+true, were a little easier, for Louis had left us and Kay was earning
+ten or fifteen dollars a week in Exchange Place, but by March or April,
+the eighteen months of underfeeding and trying work had brought me,
+personally, to the breaking point....
+
+It was late in April I read that gold had been found in the Rainy
+River district which lay in the far north-western corner of Ontario,
+the river of that name being the frontier between Minnesota State and
+Canada. The paragraph stating the fact was in a Sunday paper I read on
+my way to Bronx Park, and the instant I saw it my mind was made up. It
+was spring, the primitive instinct to strike camp and move on was in
+the blood, a nostalgia for the woods was in it too, and the prospect of
+another torrid, moist summer in the city at $15 a week was more than
+I could face. That scrap of news, at any rate, decided me. And, truth
+to tell, it was not so much the lure of gold that called me, as the
+lure of the wilderness. I longed to see the big trees again, to smell
+the old naked earth, to hear water falling and feel the great winds
+blow.... It was an irresistible call.
+
+My one terror, as when I decided to buy the dairy two years before, was
+that someone would tell me there was no gold, that it was not worth
+going, or would prevent me in some other way. I deliberately hid from
+myself all unfavourable information, while I collected all possible
+items that might justify my intention. That same night I showed the
+paragraph to Kay. “I’ll go,” he said at once, “but let’s get a third,
+a fourth too, if we can.” He mentioned Paxton, an engineer, aged 35,
+who had just lost all his worldly possessions in speculation. Paxton
+said he would come with us. The fourth was R.M., son of the clergyman
+in Hamilton. R.M., whose father was brother to a belted earl, was an
+insurance agent, and making a good living at his job. He was my own
+age, also my own height. He was, besides, a heavy-weight amateur boxer
+of considerable prowess, and his favourite time for holding bouts in
+the ring was Sunday evenings, to which fact a rival clergyman had
+recently taken occasion to refer slightingly in his own pulpit. R.M.,
+resenting the slur both upon himself and his father, had waited outside
+the church door one Sunday after the evening service, and when the
+clergyman emerged had asked for an apology--a public one in the pulpit.
+On being met with an indignant refusal, R.M. invited the other to “put
+’em up.” The thrashing that followed produced a great scandal in the
+little town, and R.M. found the place too hot to hold him. He therefore
+jumped at the idea of the goldfields.
+
+The arrangements were made, of course, by letter, and took some little
+time; but on a given morning in early May R.M. was to join our train as
+it passed through Hamilton. I had been able to procure passes for the
+lot of us as far as Duluth, some fifteen hundred miles distant, on Lake
+Superior, and from there we should have to travel another hundred and
+fifty miles by canoe down the Vermilion River to Rainy Lake City, for
+the foundations of which the forest, I read, had already been partially
+cleared. Several further articles had appeared in the papers; it was
+a gorgeous country, men were flocking in, and the Bank of Montreal
+had established a branch in a temporary shack. Moreover, as mentioned
+before, it was spring.
+
+That a man of Paxton’s age and experience should have made this long
+expedition without first satisfying himself that it was likely to be
+worth while, has always puzzled me. He was an easy-going, good-natured
+man, whose full figure proclaimed that he liked the good things of
+life. But he was in grave difficulties, graver perhaps than I ever
+knew, and I think he was not sorry to contemplate a trip across the
+border. His attitude, at any rate, was that he “didn’t care a rap so
+long as I get out of here.” That Kay and myself and R.M. should take
+the adventure was natural enough, for none of us had anything to lose,
+and, whatever happened, we should “get along somehow,” and even out of
+the frying-pan into the fire was better than the summer furnace of the
+city. R.M. wrote that he had a hundred dollars, Paxton produced fifty,
+I supplied the railway passes and added my last salary, together with
+some eight dollars that Ikey No. 2 was persuaded to hand over.
+
+“Send some stuff along,” fired McCloy, opening his eyes a little wider
+than usual when I told him. “Any hot stuff you get I’ll use.”
+
+It has already been told how Kay missed the train by a few minutes, and
+how Whitey, waving his parting present of a bottle of Bourbon whisky,
+was the final picture Paxton and I had of New York City as the evening
+train pulled out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+Some people, examining the alternate ups and downs of life, have
+thought to detect a rhythm in it: like every other expression of
+energy, from heat to history, from sound to civilization, it moves,
+they think, with a definite wave-length. The down and up, the hollow
+of the wave and its crest, follow one another in rhythmical sequence.
+It is an imaginary notion doubtless, though it applied to my life
+aptly enough at this time apparently: the Toronto misery, the Island
+happiness; the New York hell, the Backwoods heaven.
+
+I think, when I wrote home the literal truth: “I can’t stand this
+reporting life any longer. I’m off to the goldfields, and McCloy has
+asked me to write articles for the paper,” there lay a vague idea in
+me that these goldfields would prove somehow to be comic goldfields,
+and that the expedition would be somewhere farcical. I was so eager,
+so determined to go, that I camouflaged from myself every unfavourable
+aspect of the trip. Green, being still my predominant colour, was
+used freely in this camouflage. It was only afterwards I realized
+how delightfully I fooled myself. Yet it was true, at the same time,
+that a deep inner necessity drove irresistibly. The city life was
+killing something in me, something in the soul: get out or go under,
+was my feeling. How easy it would have been to go under was a daily
+thought. Far better men than myself proved it all round me every week.
+It seemed, indeed, the natural, obvious thing to do for an educated,
+refined Englishman without character who found himself adrift from
+home influences in this amazing city--to sink into the general scum
+of failures and outcasts, to yield to one of the many anæsthetics New
+York so lavishly provided, to find temporary relief, a brief wild-eyed
+happiness, oblivion, then, not long afterwards, death.
+
+The draw of the woods, the call of the open air, moreover, always
+potent, had become insistent. Spring added its aching nostalgia that
+burned like a fever in my veins.
+
+Thus various influences, some positive, some negative, combined to make
+me feel that anything was better than the drudgery of my wretched New
+York life, and the goldfields merely offered a plausible excuse. If I
+made blinkers with my own hands, I made them effectively at least. Deep
+out of sight in the personality there hides, perhaps, some overseer
+who, watching wisely the turns of fate, makes such blinkers, ensuring
+their perfect fit as well....
+
+There was a nice feeling, of course, that if one went to a goldfield,
+one picked up gold. Shaking sand in a shining pan beside a rushing
+river was a picture in the mind. There were wild men, friends and
+enemies; there were Indians too; but also there were sunsets, tempests,
+dawns and stars. It would be liberty and happiness. I should see the
+moon rise in clear, sweet air above the rim of primæval woods. I should
+cook bacon over an open fire of wood. There would be no grinning
+Chinaman to pay for laundry....
+
+The men with whom I was going were not entirely satisfactory. I knew
+them slightly, for one thing; for another, the chief drawback, they
+were going in a very different mood from mine. Their one object was
+to make their fortunes. It was real gold, and not the glamour of
+the wilderness, that called them; and in the Emigrant Sleeper, as
+we journeyed towards Duluth, they sketched their plans with intense
+enthusiasm: Paxton, the engineer, explained puzzlingly, with the aid
+of matches, a trolley he would construct for bringing the ore from pit
+to crusher, while R.M., with reckless immorality, enlarged upon the
+profits he would derive from running a “joint” of desperate sort--“for
+no one need know that my father’s a clergyman, and my uncle in the
+House of Lords.”
+
+Both men were shadows; they were not real; there was no companionship
+in them for me, at any rate. That they were fellow-travellers for the
+moment on a trip I did not care about making alone, was sufficient. I
+would just as soon have gone with McCloy or a Tombs policeman.
+
+What constitutes one person out of a hundred “real,” the other
+ninety-nine shadows, is hard to define, but an instinct in me has ever
+picked out that “real” one. With him or her I know instantly my life is
+going to be unavoidably linked: through love or hate, through happiness
+or trouble, perhaps through none of these, but with the conviction that
+a service has to be rendered or accepted, a debt, as it were, to be
+paid or received, a link at any rate that cannot be broken or evaded.
+Such real people are to be counted on the fingers of one hand: R.M.
+and Paxton were certainly not among them. Nor, for that matter, was my
+friend Kay, who, I am reasonably positive, missed the train on purpose;
+while, curiously enough, Boyde, that trivial criminal, _was_ among
+them. Had Kay, for instance, done what that cheap ruffian did, I should
+never have taken the trouble to arrest or punish him....
+
+The comic opera touch began with Whitey racing down the platform waving
+a bottle of rye whisky; it continued next morning when we picked up
+R.M. at eight o’clock. Our train stopped at Hamilton, Ont., for five
+minutes. We craned our heads out of the window and saw a party of
+young fellows with flushed faces and singing voices, and on their
+shoulders in the early sunshine the inert figure of a huge man without
+a hat. They recognized me and heaved him into our compartment, where
+he slept soundly for two hours until we had left Toronto far behind.
+“Ouch! Ouch!” said Paxton--it was about all “engineer Paxton” ever did
+say--“Is that R.M.?” They had never met before. We took the money out
+of his pocket for safety’s sake, and it proved to be more than his
+promised contribution. His friends had indeed given him a send-off, and
+the all-night poker had proved lucrative.
+
+It was a long, long journey to Duluth, with heartening glimpses from
+the window, of river, lake and forest, all touched with “spring’s
+delightful weather.” Shelley filled my head and heart. I saw dawn in
+a vale of the Indian Caucasus, I saw Panthea, Asia, fleeting dryads
+and troops of happy fauns. Out of New York City into this primæval
+wilderness produced intoxication. No more cities of dreadful night for
+me! The repressed, unrealized yearnings of many painful months burst
+forth in a kind of rapture. Riches can never taste the treasures of
+relief and change provided by the law of contrast. To be free to go
+everywhere is tantamount to going nowhere, to be able to do everything
+is to do nothing. Without school, holidays could have no meaning. The
+intensity of escape, with all the gorgeous emotions it involves, is
+hardly possible to the big bank-balances.
+
+I thought of the overheated _Sun_ offices, and saw cool, silent woods;
+of thronged canyon-streets between cliffs of buildings, and saw lonely
+gorges where the deer stole down to drink in quiet pools; of Mrs.
+Bernstein’s room, and saw green glades of beauty, a ceiling of blue
+sky, walls of hemlock, spruce and cedar. The May sunlight made the
+whole world sing, as the train rushed through the wilderness of the
+Ontario Highlands. It woke a kind of lyrical delight in me. “The day
+seemed one sent from beyond the skies, that shed to earth, above the
+sun, a light of Paradise.” Paxton, with his puzzling matches, found me
+absent-minded and irresponsive to his “ouch! ouch!” and R.M., suffering
+from a bad “hang-over” headache, thought me unsympathetic toward his
+disreputable joint.
+
+More clearly than the matches, or the profit and loss figures of the
+joint, I remember the three bullets lying on the palm of the engineer’s
+fat open hand. His solemn gravity depressed R.M. It infected me a
+little too. Why in the world should he be so serious? “If we fail,
+boys,” said the engineer laconically, as he looked down with grim
+significance at the three bullets, “I for one--shall not return.” He
+put a bullet in his pocket, he handed one to R.M., the third he passed
+to me. “Is it a deal?” he asked, speaking as one who had come to the
+end of his tether, which, indeed, perhaps really was the case. We
+pocketed our bullets anyhow, and told him gravely: “Yes, it’s a deal.”
+We shook hands on it.
+
+It was all in the proper spirit of gold-seeking adventure, begad! and
+the comic-opera touch, so far as I was concerned, had not yet quite
+fully appeared. I had cut loose from everything. I felt as though I
+were jumping off the rim of the planet into unknown space. It was
+a delightful, reckless, half naughty, half childish, feeling. “To
+hell with civilization!” was its note. At the back of the mind lay
+a series of highly-coloured pictures: Men made fortunes in a night,
+human life was cheap, six-shooters lay beside tin mugs at camp-fire
+breakfasts, and bags of “dust” were tossed across faro-tables from one
+desperado in a broad-brimmed hat to another who was either an Oxford
+don _incognito_, or an unfrocked clergyman, or a younger son concealing
+tragic beauty in an over-cultured heart, with perhaps an unclaimed
+title on his strawberry-marked skin. R.M., too, was forever talking
+about staking claims: “We’ll get grub-staked by some fellow.... If
+we only pan a few ounces per day it’ll mean success ...” to all of
+which Paxton emitted his “Ouch! Ouch!” as a strong man who said little
+because he preferred action to words.
+
+I, meanwhile, had no accurate information to supply, though I was the
+promoter of the expedition. I paraded the newspaper accounts. They were
+of little use. Nothing, in fact, was of any use. We were in different
+worlds. _They_ were in an Emigrant Sleeper skirting the shores of Lake
+Superior. _I_ was on the look-out for the Witch of Atlas, wandering
+through the pine forest of the Cascine near Pisa, dreaming in the
+Indian Caucasus, or watching Serchio’s stream. Even “Ouch! Ouch!” could
+not keep me in Ontario for long.
+
+It all lies down the wrong end of that ever-lengthening telescope now,
+our trip to the Rainy River Gold Fields. Happy, careless, foolish days
+of sunlight, liberty, wood-smoke and virgin wilderness. Useless days,
+of course, yet sweetly perfumed as in a dream of fairyland. I revelled
+in them. New York was still close enough to lend them some incredible
+glamour by contrast. That no gold came our way was nothing, that the
+days came to an end was bitter. Fading into mist, behind veils of blue
+smoke, yet lit by sheets of burning sunshine, lies the faint outline
+still. Each year drops another gauze curtain over an entrancing and
+ridiculous adventure that for my companions was disappointingly empty,
+but to me was filled to the brim with wonder and delight. A few sharp
+pictures, rather disconnected, defy both veils and curtains, set
+against a dim background of wild forest, a blue winding river with
+strange red shores, swift rapids, and cosy camp-fires at dawn, at
+sunset, beneath the stars, beneath the moon. The stillness of those
+grand woods is unforgettable; the voice of the river was unceasing,
+yet broke no silence; the smells of balsam, resinous pitch-pine, cedar
+smoke rise like incense above the memory of it all.
+
+Duluth was all agog with excitement, and in every shop-window hung
+blue-prints of the El Dorado we were bound for. Two big-bladed
+hunting-knives, a second-hand Marlin rifle for $8, a Smith and Wesson
+revolver, were our weapons. I already had a six-shooter, given to me
+by the Tombs Court police. It had killed a negro, and I had reported
+the murder trial resulting. Three blankets had to be bought, a canoe,
+and provisions for the week’s trip down the Vermilion River--tea,
+bacon, flour, biscuits, salt and sugar. R.M. had a small “A” tent with
+him large enough to hold three; an old, high-prowed bark canoe was
+purchased from an Indian for $6; but our money did not run to Hudson
+Bay blankets, and the cheap, thin coverings we bought proved poor
+protection in those frosty nights of early May.
+
+We picked up a guide too, a half-breed named Gallup. He was going
+to Rainy Lake City in any case, and agreed to show us the portages
+and rapids for two dollars a day each way. He justified his name. He
+galloped. He had a slim-nosed Maine cedar-wood canoe that oiled along
+into the daily head-wind with easy swiftness, whereas R.M. and myself
+in our high-prowed craft found progress slow and steering a heavy toil.
+The wind caught our big bows like a sail. Gallup, moreover, sizing us
+up as English greenhorns, expected good food and lots of whisky, and,
+getting neither, vented his spleen on us as best he could. His natural
+evil temper grew steadily worse. There were several ways in which he
+could have revenge. He used them all. By “losing his way” down branch
+streams he made the journey last eight days instead of five, yet he
+went so fast in his neat-nosed craft that it was all R.M. and I could
+do to keep him in sight at all. The sunlight flashing on his paddle two
+or three miles ahead, the canoe itself a mere dark speck in the dazzle
+of water, was all we usually had to guide us. Paxton, weary, much
+thinner than he had been, useless as a paddler, lay in the bottom of
+the canoe, leaving all the work to Gallup. And Gallup did it, even with
+this dead freight against him. To our injunction to make the fellow
+go slower, his “Ouch! Ouch!” was quite ineffective. I was careful to
+keep the provisions in my own canoe, so that we could not lose him
+altogether, and he was faithful in one thing, that he waited for us at
+the rapids and portages.
+
+What did it matter? The head wind held steadily day after day, blowing
+from the north-west through a cloudless sky. Everything sparkled,
+the air was champagne; such a winding river of blue I had never seen
+before. Every tree wore little fingers of bright fresh green. There was
+exhilaration and wonder at every turn. Burned by the hot sun and wet by
+the flying spray, our hands swelled till the knuckles disappeared, then
+cracked between the joints till they bled.
+
+I steered. R.M. sat in the bows. Paddling hour after hour against
+the wind became a mechanical business the muscles attended to
+automatically. The mind was free to roam. The loneliness was magical,
+for it was a peopled loneliness. A start at dawn, half an hour for
+lunch, and camp at sunset was the day’s routine. Usually we were too
+exhausted to cook the dwindling bacon, make the fire, put up the tent.
+What did it matter? Nothing mattered. Each mile was a mile of delight
+farther from New York. The trip might last months for all I cared.
+
+We cursed Gallup behind his back and to his face. He never even
+answered. His sulky silence broke only round the evening fire, when
+he would tell us appalling tales of murder, violence and sudden death
+about the goldfields whither we were bound. It was another form of
+revenge. The desperadoes, cutthroats, and wild hairy men generally who
+awaited us, _us_ especially since we were English, hardly belonged to
+our happy planet. Yet he knew them at first hand, knew them even by
+name. They would all be on the look-out for us. Against several, for
+he had his friendly impulses, he warned us in particular. Were we good
+shots and quick on the trigger? The man who pulled first, he reminded
+us, had the drop on the other fellow. There was a “stiff” named Morris
+who was peculiarly deadly, Morris, a Canadian, who had killed his man
+in a saloon brawl across the river and had skipped over the border into
+Minnesota. Morris would be interested in “guys” like us. He described
+him in detail. We looked forward to Morris.
+
+They were cheery camp-fire stories Gallup told us nightly. We crawled
+into our chilly tent, wondering a little, each in his own thin blanket,
+what these hairy men were going to do to “guys like us.” We did not
+wonder long. Sleep came like a clap. At dawn, the wind just rising,
+and the chipmunks dropping fir-cones on to our tent with miniature
+reports, the hairy men were all forgotten. It was impossible to hold
+an ugly thought of any kind. The river sang at our feet, the sky was
+pearl and rose, the air was sharply perfumed with smells of forest and
+wood-smoke, and glimpses of sunrise shone everywhere between the trees;
+trees that stretched without a break five hundred miles to the shores
+of James Bay in the arctic seas.
+
+We gulped our tea and bacon, packed tent and blankets, split open the
+cracks in our swollen hands, and launched the canoes upon a crystal
+river that swirled along in eddies and sheets of colour. Sometimes
+it narrowed to a couple of hundred yards between rugged cliffs where
+the water raced towards a rapid, sometimes it broadened into wide,
+lake-like spaces; there were reaches of placid calm; there were
+stretches white with tumbling foam. The sun blazed down; we turned
+a sharp bend and surprised a deer; a porcupine waddled up against a
+pine-stem; a fish leaped in a golden pool; birds flashed and vanished;
+there was a silence, a stillness beyond all telling. Nuggets, gold
+dust, hairy men, six-shooters--nothing mattered!
+
+It was, indeed, this loneliness, this entire absence of all other human
+signs, that gradually betrayed the truth. Where was the stream of
+frenzied gold-seekers? Where was the rush the papers mentioned? Beyond
+a few stray Indians on the fourth day, we saw no living being. Gallup’s
+tales of terror began to lose their sting. Of real information he
+vouchsafed no single item. But who wanted real information? Rainy Lake
+City might be the legendary city of gold that lies beyond the mirages
+of the Lybian desert, for all I cared. The City of New York was out of
+sight. That was the important thing.
+
+The series of wild, lonely camps lie blurred in the composite outline
+of a single camp; eight dawns combine into one; I remember clear
+night-skies ablaze with brilliant stars; I remember the moon rising
+behind the black wall of forest across the water. All night the river
+sang and whispered. Police courts and Mrs. Bernstein’s room hid far
+away in the dim reaches of some former life. Behind these, again, lay a
+shadowy, forgotten Kent. There were haunting faces, veiled by distance,
+for a strange remoteness curtained the past with unreality. The wonder
+of the present dominated. These woods, this river, ruled the world, and
+somewhere in the heart of that old forest the legendary Wendigo, whose
+history I wrote later in a book, had its awful lair.
+
+Owing to Gallup’s trick of lengthening the journey, our food gave out,
+but with fish, venison and partridge it was impossible to starve. The
+last-named, a grouse actually, perches in the branches, waiting to be
+shot; a bullet must take its head off or it is useless for the pot but
+whizzing bullets do not disturb it, and several birds, sitting close
+together, can be picked off _seriatim_. Some dried sturgeon we found,
+too, on an island--an Indian sturgeon fishery--where great odorous
+strips were hanging in the sun. The braves were away, and the squaw
+left in charge was persuaded to sell us slabs of this excellent meat.
+In a deep, clear pool some half-dozen living monsters, hooked by the
+nose, turned slowly round and round, waiting the moment of their death.
+The island was interesting for another reason--it was an Indian canoe
+factory. Here the Redskins built their craft of birchbark, and a dozen
+canoes in various stages of completion lay in the broiling sun.... To
+me it was all visible romance, adventure, wonder in the heart of an
+unspoilt spring, with Hiawatha round the next big bend. Paxton and R.M.
+took another view....
+
+On the eighth night--our last, had we known it--there was an
+“incident.” Gallup had been unusually silent and extra offensive all
+day, had “galloped” at top speed, had refused to answer a single
+question, and the idea came to us all three simultaneously that he was
+not losing his way with the mere object of more money, but was taking
+us out of our route with a more sinister purpose. We depended on the
+fellow entirely; words or violence were equally useless; we were quite
+helpless. He was convinced we carried money, for no three Englishmen
+of our type would make such a trip without it. What was easier, we
+whispered to one another, than to murder us and bury our bodies in the
+trackless, lonely forest? We watched him....
+
+That night, exhausted to the bone, we camped on a point of wooded shore
+against the sunset. Across the broad reach of water, three miles away
+perhaps, was an Indian encampment. Pointed wigwams and the smoke of
+many fires were visible; voices were audible in the distance. The wind
+had died down as usual with the sun. A deep hush lay over the scene.
+And, hardly had we landed, almost too weary to drag ourselves up the
+bank, when Gallup stepped back into his Maine canoe and pushed off
+downstream without a word. He stood upright; he did not sit or kneel.
+His figure was outlined one minute against the red sky, the next his
+silhouette merged into the dark forest beyond. He disappeared.
+
+He had gone, we agreed, for one of two reasons: to get food, or to
+return in the dark and pick us off, much as we picked off the grouse
+from the branches. We inclined towards the latter theory--and kept eyes
+and ears wide open. We made a diminutive fire in a hollow, lest we be
+too visible in the surrounding darkness. We listened, watched, and
+waited. It was already dusk. The night fell quickly. River and forest
+became an impenetrable sheet of blackness, our tiny fire, almost too
+small to cook on, the only speck of light. The stars came out, peeping
+through the branches. There was no wind. We shivered in the cold,
+listening for every slightest sound ... and the hours passed.
+
+“He’ll wait till we’re asleep,” said R.M., keeping his eyes open with
+the greatest difficulty. Paxton fingered his revolver and mumbled
+“Ouch! Ouch!”
+
+Only the cold prevented us falling asleep, as, weapons in hand, we took
+turns to watch and listen. Had we the right to fire the instant we saw
+a figure? Should we wait till the scoundrel made a sign? We discussed
+endlessly in whispers. Though no wind stirred the branches, the noises
+in that “silent” forest never ceased, because no forest ever is, or can
+be, really silent. The effort of listening produced them by the dozen.
+On every side twigs snapped and dry wood crackled. Soft, stealthy
+footsteps were everywhere on the pine-needles. Canoes landed higher up
+and lower down; paddles dripped out in the river as someone approached;
+sometimes two or three dim figures crouched low on the shore, sometimes
+only one. Finally, for safety’s sake, we let the fire go out altogether.
+
+Armed to the teeth, we were still shivering in the cold darkness well
+on into the night, and at some distance from the dying embers, when
+suddenly--we nearly screamed--there was a sound of a voice. It was a
+man’s voice; he was angry; he was cursing. A flame shot up beneath the
+trees. We saw Gallup on his knees blowing up the hemlock coals. He had
+landed, pulled his canoe on to the bank, and come up to within a few
+yards of where we stood without our hearing the faintest sound. He said
+no word. He cooked himself no food. He just made a huge fire, spread
+his blanket beside the comforting blaze, curled up, and fell asleep. We
+soon followed his example. Probably he had enjoyed a square meal with
+the Indians, then sauntered home to bed.... Next day we reached Rainy
+Lake City, paid him off, and saw him push off upstream in his Maine
+canoe without having uttered a single word. He just counted the dollar
+bills and vanished.
+
+Rainy Lake City was a few acres roughly cleared from the primæval
+forest, yet with avenues cut through the dense trees to indicate
+streets where tramcars were to run at some future date. River, lake
+and forest combined to make an enchanting scene. There were perhaps
+a hundred men there. There was gold, but there was no gold-dust, no
+shining pans to sift the precious sand; in a word, no placer-mining. It
+was all quartz; machinery to crush the quartz had to be dragged in over
+the ice in the winter. Capital was essential, large lumps of capital.
+A word of inquiry in New York could have told me this. I felt rather
+guilty, but very happy. Paxton and R.M. were philosophical. No word of
+blame escaped their lips. They had the right to curse me, whereas both
+played the part of Balaam. Even at the time I thought this odd. Neither
+of them seemed to care a straw. “We’ll stake a claim,” said R.M. at
+intervals. Perhaps both were so pleased to have arrived safely that
+they neither grumbled nor abused me. The truth was that, like myself,
+though for rather different reasons, both of them were relieved to be
+“away from home.” The engineer, I discovered later, was glad that
+1,500 miles lay between him and New York City.
+
+We pitched our tent by the shore and proceeded to investigate. Living
+cost little. It was sunny weather, it was spring. One company was
+already sinking a shaft and working a small crusher; there were shacks
+and shanties everywhere; the “city” was as peaceful as the inside of
+St. Paul’s Cathedral; we saw no hairy men, but we saw mosquitoes. With
+the first warm nights these pests emerged for the season in their
+millions; they were very large and very hungry; they hung in the air
+like clouds of smoke; they welcomed us; as R.M. said, they had probably
+written the newspaper accounts that advertised the place. We had no
+netting. They stung the bears blind; they would have stung a baby to
+death, had there been any babies, except ourselves, to sting. The only
+gold we saw was a lump, valued at $5,000, lying beside a revolver on
+the counter of the Bank of Montreal’s shack. The clerk allowed us to
+hold it for a second each. It was the only gold we touched.... We
+investigated, as mentioned; we wandered about; we fished and shot,
+we rubbed Indian stuff over our faces to keep the mosquitoes off; we
+enjoyed happy, careless, easy days, bathing in ice-cold water, basking
+in hot sunshine, resting, loafing, and spinning yarns with all and
+sundry round our camp-fires. After New York it was a paradise, and but
+for the mosquitoes, we could have dressed in fig leaves.
+
+Except for the question of having enough money to get out again before
+the iron winter set in towards October, we might have spent the whole
+summer there. We decided to leave while it was still possible. To
+paddle a hundred and fifty miles against the stream was not attractive.
+We would do the trip on foot. Selling tent and canoe to the clerk in
+the bank, we set out across the Twenty-Six Mile Portage one day towards
+the end of June. A party of five men, also bound for Duluth, joined us,
+and one of them was--Morris.
+
+Those happy, unproductive goldfields! That untenanted Rainy Lake City
+where no tramcars ever ran, nor faro-tables flourished! Morris, the
+hairy desperado! In the dismal New York days that followed they seemed
+to belong to some legendary Golden Age. Romance and adventure, both
+touched with comedy, went hand in hand, beauty and liberty heightening
+some imagined radiance. Wasted time, of course, but for that very
+reason valuable beyond computation. Stored memories are stored energy
+that may prove the raw material of hope in days that follow after. Even
+Morris, the “stiff,” and cut-throat, played his little part in the
+proper spirit. There was a price on his head in Canada. We watched him
+closely; we watched his partners too. The Twenty-Six Mile Portage cut
+off an immense bend of the Vermilion River, running through the depths
+of trackless, gloomy forest the whole way. Nothing was easier than to
+“mix us up with the scenery” as a phrase of those parts expressed it.
+Especially must we be on our guard at night. One of us must always
+only pretend to sleep. Our former mistake about Gallup need not make
+us careless. A natural instinct to dramatize the expedition might have
+succeeded better if Morris, the villain, had not sometimes missed his
+cue and failed to realize the importance of his rôle.
+
+The scenery, at any rate, was right. The weather broke the very day
+we started, and the region justified its translated Indian name. A
+drenching rain fell sousing on the world. With our heavy packs we made
+slow progress, crawling in single file beneath the endless dripping
+trees, soaked to the skin in the first ten minutes. There was no trail,
+but Morris had a compass. Darkness fell early on the first night when
+we had covered barely six miles. Morris found a deserted lumbermen’s
+shanty. One man chopped down a pitch-pine and cut out its dry heart of
+resinous wood which caught fire instantly; another soaked a shred of
+cedar-wood in a tin mug filled with melted bacon fat; a third cooked
+dinner for the whole party; and by eight o’clock we all lay grouped
+about the fire, dodging the streams of water that splashed through the
+gaping remnants of the pine-log roof.
+
+Outside in that windless forest the drip of the rain was like the
+sound of waterfalls, but it was a magnificent, a haunted, a legendary
+forest none the less. Our shanty was faintly lit by the flickering
+cedar-candle. Queer shadows danced, eyes glittered, the faces here and
+there seemed distorted oddly in the shifting flame and darkness that
+alternately rose and fell. One by one, dog-tired, we fell asleep. It
+was R.M.’s turn to watch. Before supper was ended even, he lay soundly
+slumbering, his head, with touselled hair and ragged beard, thrown back
+against the wall, his mouth, containing unswallowed food--so weary was
+he--half-open. I exchanged a significant glance with Paxton over his
+collapsed body, meaning that we must watch instead.
+
+Our steaming clothes dried slowly as the night wore on. The dripping
+trickle of the trees became louder and louder. Paxton, very thin now,
+looked like a scarecrow in his ragged shirt and coat. His customary
+exclamation was rarely heard. He fell asleep in turn. The rest of the
+party had been snoring for an hour or more. It was up to me to watch.
+
+I watched. The next thing I knew was a sudden stealthy movement, and
+a low voice that woke me out of a slumber made of lead. The fire was
+low, the candle hardly flickered. Across the gloom I saw the movement
+that had waked me--Morris, the hairy man, was stirring. I watched him.
+He sat up. He leaned cautiously over--towards R.M. His hand stretched
+out slowly. Splendid fellow! I felt furious with R.M. for falling
+asleep, for keeping his mouth open in that idiotic way. Stupid idiot
+and faithless comrade! Morris, I saw, was doing something to his
+bulky, motionless figure, just about to slit him open perhaps. Well,
+let him slit! It was the head he touched. He was doing something to
+the sleeper’s head--pushing it--pushing it sideways so that a stream
+of water through the roof might just miss falling on his shoulder and
+thus splashing the hairy man’s own face with spray. I watched closely,
+faithful to my job. I saw Morris the Stiff take a bit of spare clothing
+out of his pack and hang it over R.M.’s neck and shoulder. “I got no
+use for it,” he was saying. “Yer friend might jest as well hev it.”
+He knew, therefore, quite well that I was watching. But R.M. knew
+nothing, less than nothing. He neither stirred nor woke. A more kindly,
+tender-hearted fellow than Morris the Stiff, no traveller in wild
+places could possibly desire.
+
+It was perhaps a couple of hours later when I woke again, disturbed
+this time not by noise, but by the sudden absence of it. One winter’s
+night the inhabitants of Niagara, similarly, woke up because, ice
+having formed, the thunder of the falls had ceased. I listened a
+moment, then went out. The rain had ceased, the clouds were gone, in a
+clear sky the three-quarter moon shone brightly. The rain-washed air
+seemed perfumed beyond belief. Nor did the old moon merely “look round
+her when the heavens were bare,” she sprawled fantastically at full
+length, as it were, in her magnificent blue-black bed of naked space. I
+went out to a clear spot among the trees. Far away rose a soft murmur.
+The air hummed and shook with the roar of distant rapids, so calm and
+still the night was. No bird, no animal cried. The earth herself, it
+seemed, stopped turning in that wonderful stillness. Those few minutes
+painted a picture that memory must always keep....
+
+Three months later the first week in October found us in New York
+again. The bullets were forgotten and, of course, unmentioned, and five
+months of glorious wasted time lay safely behind us.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+If it is impossible to recapture the boyish moods of those early days,
+it is also difficult not to import into these notes the point of view
+and feelings that belong to later life. Surely, but gradually, the
+scale of time changes with the years, and with it the range and quality
+of the emotions: to-day, a year seems a very brief period; the few
+months spent in the woods after our Gold Fields fiasco seemed both an
+eternity, yet far too brief. A faint flavour of childhood’s immense
+scale, when twelve months was an immeasurable stretch of time, still
+clung to them, perhaps.
+
+But the magnet of New York drew us. Any idea of returning to England
+until I had made good was far from me. We arrived in the detested
+city late in October, with livings to earn, and with less money than
+when we had first come two years before. We took separate rooms this
+time, for I had learned my lesson about sharing beds and clothes and
+scanty earnings. It was to be each man for himself. Paxton disappeared
+immediately; only occasionally did I hear his “Ouch, Ouch!” again; M.
+found a bed in Harlem and started to teach boxing; I took quarters in
+East 21st Street, on the top floor of a cheap but cleanish house, and
+arranged for breakfast and dinner in a neighbouring boarding-house at
+$2.50 a week.
+
+Two Germans lived in the adjoining attic. Through the thin wooden
+partition I heard their talk, their breathing, their slightest
+movement. They rarely came to bed before midnight; they talked the
+whole night through. Informing them in a loud voice that I understood
+their language made no difference; they neither stopped nor answered.
+Yet, oddly enough, I never once saw them; never met them on the stairs,
+nor in the hall, nor at the front door. They remained invisible, if not
+inaudible. But I formed vivid pictures of them, and knew from their
+conversation that they were not better than they need be. An old man
+and a young one, I gathered. An unpleasant house altogether, the low
+rent more easily explained than I at first guessed. Long afterwards
+I had my revenge upon those unsavoury Germans--by writing an awful
+story about them, “A Case of Eavesdropping,” though by the time it was
+published they were probably either dead or in gaol. A sinister couple,
+these invisible Teutons!
+
+My one main object was to avoid the _Evening Sun_: any work was better,
+I felt, than a return to that hated sensational reporting. A place was
+always open to me under McCloy, but my detestation of the police court,
+and of the criminal atmosphere generally, was so strong that I would
+rather have taken a street-cleaning job under Tammany than go back to
+it. I therefore began by trying free-lance work, gathering news items
+and selling them for a dollar or two apiece to various papers, writing
+snippets of description, inventing incidents, and earning perhaps ten
+dollars a week on the average. It was hard going, but pawning and
+free lunches in the saloons made it possible to live. I knew all the
+tricks by now; I used them. The blanket off my bed occasionally spent
+a week-end with a new “Ikey,” though getting it out of the house and
+back again was no easy matter, while the smell of the moth-balls I
+always expected must betray me. It was a poor blanket, too, worth only
+50 cents from Ikey’s point of view, and certainly not worth the foolish
+risk involved. For, literally--though this never once occurred to me
+at the time--it was stealing, and the fact that I told Ikey where it
+came from, hoping to extract thereby an extra half-dollar from him,
+could not have exonerated me if the landlady had met me on the stairs.
+Personally, I think the quantity of food I devoured at the free lunch
+counters in exchange for a five-cent glass of lager was a more flagrant
+case of theft. Only it was a recognized theft. The temporary absence of
+the blanket, anyhow, since I made my own bed, was never discovered, and
+my heart remained innocent of conscious burglary.
+
+A dozen years before, aged 12, I had once been accused of stealing by
+the headmaster of the private school I adorned in Sevenoaks. I was
+innocent, but the evidence was both ludicrous and damning, so damning,
+indeed, that, strangely, I _felt_ guilty and accepted the punishment.
+A terrifying experience, it haunted me for years, and the sight of a
+policeman, or the words “criminal judge,” sent shivers down my spine
+long afterwards. When a little older, I came to suspect that it was
+worked up against me by the master to curry favour with an influential
+parent; but at the actual time I had visions even of prison--for
+something I had not done. All about a poem, too!
+
+At evening “prep” a “bit of poetry,” as we called it, had to be learnt
+by heart; my own poetry book was lost; I borrowed young Gildea’s.
+The last thing in the world I wanted to own was that poetry book of
+young Gildea, the last thing I wanted to do was to learn that poem by
+heart. I spent the hour, therefore, inscribing my name with elaborate
+flourishes on the title page. Twice I wrote it, with capitals, of which
+I was very proud; I thought it ornate and beautiful; and when the hour
+was over I tossed the book into my locker and forgot all about it.
+Next morning I was summoned into the headmaster’s presence. He wore
+red whiskers about an otherwise clean-shaven face: a face of natural
+sternness, with a big nose, a mouth of iron, and steely blue eyes. He
+was a clergyman of evangelical persuasion.
+
+I had no idea why I had been summoned, but his glance made me at once
+feel uneasy.
+
+“Blackwood minor,” he said in a solemn and portentous voice, “did you
+do--_this_?” He held out Gildea’s poetry book towards me with the cover
+open. His finger pointed to my name in pencil, flourishes and all.
+
+I was completely puzzled as to what was coming, but I admitted the
+signature of course.
+
+“Is the book yours?” he asked. I said it was not. “Gildea has reported
+the loss of his own copy,” the voice of doom went on. “It has been
+found--_in your locker_--and with _your name written_ in it.” The
+voice made me think of “and God spake” in the Bible.
+
+He looked at me in such a way that I felt sure I was going to be
+flogged. What had I done? And why? I couldn’t quite remember. No
+explanation came to me. The simple truth was too silly to mention. I
+had nothing to say except to admit everything. The man, with his awful
+manner and appalling aspect, terrified me. I stood speechless and
+paralysed, wondering what was coming next. The red whiskers made me
+think of Satan.
+
+I little dreamed, however, that the headmaster would say what he then
+did say. He spoke with a terribly slow, deliberate emphasis.
+
+“This is as grave a case of stealing,” fell the awful words of
+judgment, “as ever came before a _Criminal Judge_. I have sent for your
+father.”
+
+I was petrified. It was enough to frighten any boy into his boots.
+
+My father in due course arrived; Gildea’s parents, both of them,
+arrived likewise; there were consultations, mysterious comings and
+goings; it was a day of gloom and terror; for some reason I made no
+attempt to defend myself; it all flabbergasted, frightened, puzzled me
+beyond understanding. I was made to confess to Gildea and to apologize
+to the parents. To my own father I said nothing. He looked troubled,
+yet somehow not as grave as he ought to have looked. Perhaps he had
+his doubts.... What that fiendish headmaster, whose name I will not
+mention, had said behind my back, I did not know, for my father never
+referred to the matter afterwards, and both I and my brother were
+removed from the school at the end of the term. But I was severely
+punished--sent to Coventry for three days--for doing something I had
+both done and had not done, and the phrase “Criminal Judge” was burnt
+into my memory with letters of fire. My revenge was rather an oblique
+one--a fight with that headmaster’s son, though about quite another
+matter. With each blow I landed--and I landed several--I saw red
+whiskers on a boy about my own age!
+
+This digression concerning a poetry book occurs to me only now, while
+telling of my wickedness about the blanket. The lesson that master
+wished to teach me had no effect, for the simple reason that I had
+_not_ stolen. The fear, however, doubtless remained; the injustice
+scored deep, bitter wounds. I trace back to it a curious persistent
+dread, not entirely obliterated even now: the dread of being accused
+of a crime I have not committed; yet where the evidence of guilt
+seems overwhelming. Patanjali’s “Aphorisms” describe a method of
+living through in imagination all possible experiences. A series of
+laborious incarnations would be necessary to exhaust these experiences
+in the ordinary way. They can be lived out in the mind instead. In
+imagination, anyhow, thanks to that little school injustice, I have
+often tried to _realize_ the feelings of a man serving a term of
+imprisonment for a crime he has not committed. Patanjali’s interesting
+method is, at any rate, a means of opening the mind to a sympathetic
+understanding of many an experience one could not otherwise know. Only
+imagination must be sustained and very detailed, and the projection of
+the personality is not easy.
+
+An interlude of play-acting now enlivened my period of free-lance
+journalism. Kay was in my life again, and the opportunity came through
+him. He had spent the summer between odd jobs on the stage, and odd
+jobs at buying and selling exchange in Wall Street. He made both ends
+meet, at any rate, and had a cheap room in the purlieus of Hoboken
+across the river. A part in a third-rate touring company had just been
+offered to him, and he said he could get me a part as well. One-night
+stands in the smaller towns of New York State with a couple of plays,
+of which “Jim, the Penman,” was one, formed the programme, and my utter
+ignorance of acting, he assured me, need not stand in the way. My
+salary would be $15 a week, with travelling expenses paid. Gilmour, the
+leading man, and organizer of the company, was anxious to find someone
+like myself.
+
+I jumped at it. Gilmour looked me up and down and said I’d do. I had
+only one line to say. I was a prison warder on sentry duty, pacing to
+and fro between the walls at night, when Gilmour, the hero, escaping
+from his cell, knocks me down after a brief struggle, and disappears
+into the night. A moment later the alarm is given; other warders
+arrive, find me wounded on the ground and ask which way the prisoner
+has gone. “That way,” I shout, pointing the direction before losing
+consciousness; whereupon the curtain falls.
+
+It was not an exacting part. Gilmour said I should make a “bully
+warder.” My own shabby clothes, with a brown billycock hat, would
+do as they were. I was to carry a large wooden pistol. We rehearsed
+the scene, swaying to and fro, breathing hard, grunting with effort,
+cursing each other fiercely, until the prisoner, wrenching the pistol
+from me, struck me on the head and floored me. Such was my rôle.
+
+I played it at Yonkers and Mount Vernon, three nights in each place,
+if memory serves me correctly, but “went through it” is the true
+description of my performance. For the theatre, either as a writer or
+actor, I possess no trace of talent, a fact rediscovered recently when
+playing an insignificant part in Drinkwater’s “Oliver Cromwell” on tour
+with Henry Ainley. My dismissal at the end of the first week, however,
+was not due to this lack of skill--it was due to a pail of beer and the
+leading lady. For the leading lady, handsome daughter, I remember, of
+a Washington General, was the inspiration of the touring company, and
+it was for her _beaux yeux_ that the enterprise was undertaken. Gilmour
+was what is known as “crazy” about her, his jealousy a standing joke
+among us, so that when those _beaux yeux_ were turned upon my lanky,
+half-starved self, there were warnings that trouble might begin. But
+I was looking for salary and food rather than for trouble. In the
+dressing-room we underlings all shared together, though “dressing”
+was of negligible kind, I was quite safe. Chance meetings, however,
+were unavoidable, of course, and Bettina’s instinct for adventure was
+distinctly careless. It was here the pail of beer came in--into our
+crowded dressing-room. Who brought it, I have forgotten; the miscreant
+who stood treat to the band of hungry and thirsty Thespians is lost
+to memory. I only know that, empty of food as I was, my share of that
+gallon pail distinctly cheered me. The _beaux yeux_ had been boldly
+rolling; another pair of eyes, not so lovely, had been rolling too. To
+be ungallantly honest about it, my own feelings were not engaged in
+any way, except on this particular night, when they were considerably
+roused--against that stupid, jealous Gilmour. The way he glared in my
+direction stirred my bile; the few glasses of beer made me reckless.
+When the escaping prisoner fought with me for the possession of the
+great wooden pistol, I refused to be “thrown.”
+
+The scanty audience that night witnessed a good performance of my
+brief, particular scene. Gilmour cursed and swore beneath his breath,
+but he was a smaller man than I was. He could do nothing with me. What
+was a shocking performance in one sense, was a realistic and sincere
+performance in another. Had my share of the pail been slightly bigger
+than it was, I should undoubtedly have “thrown” the prisoner and spoilt
+the curtain. As it was, however, Gilmour managed in the end to wrench
+the pistol from me, and in doing so, his fury genuine, he landed me
+a blow on the forehead with its heavy butt that stunned me. I fell.
+He fled. Roars of applause I heard dimly. My brown billycock hat, I
+remember, fell on its springy brim, bounced into the air, then hopped
+away against the footlights. And all my interest went with my precious
+hat. To the warders who at once rushed on with cries of “He’s escaped!
+Which way did he go?” I used the right words, taking my cue correctly.
+Only I pointed in the wrong direction. I pointed towards my old hat
+against the footlights. It lay outside the curtain.
+
+It is odd to think that somewhere in the under-mind of the individual
+who lay half-stunned on the stage of a Yonkers theatre, pointing
+wildly at a dilapidated, but precious, old brown billycock, slept a
+score of books, waiting patiently for expression a few years later.
+It is difficult, indeed, as I write these notes, to realize that
+the individual who describes the incidents is the individual who
+experienced them. The body itself has changed every single physical
+particle at least four times in succession. Nor is the mind the same.
+With the exception of one or two main interests, easily handed on by
+the outgoing atoms to the incoming atoms in the brain, “I” possess
+little that the “I” of those distant New York days possessed. Even the
+continuity of memory is bequeathable by atoms leaving the brain to the
+new ones just arriving. Where, then, is the self who experienced years
+ago what the self holding this pen now sets down?
+
+The “I,” during the next few years, at any rate, went rolling; rolling
+from one experience to another, if not cheerily, at least resignedly.
+Whatever happened--and what happened was mostly unpleasant--there was
+never absent the conviction that it was deserved, and must be lived
+out in a spirit of acceptance, until finally exhausted. Any other
+attitude toward unwelcome events meant evasion, and a disagreeable
+experience shirked merely postponed it to another time, either in this
+life or another. There was, meanwhile, a _real_ self that remained
+aloof, untouched, neither happy nor unhappy, a spectator, but a royal
+spectator. Into this eternal Self was gathered the fruit and essence
+of each and every experience the lower “I” passed through; the secret
+of living was to identify oneself with this exalted and untroubled
+royalty....
+
+The rolling-stone went rolling, therefore, somewhat in this spirit,
+which helped and comforted, which made most things possible, bearable
+at any rate, because it was the outcome of that strange inner
+conviction established in my blood, a conviction, as mentioned, neither
+argument nor evidence could alter.
+
+Letters from home, home memories as well, pertained now to some
+distant, unrecoverable region that was dead and gone. My mother’s
+letters--one every week without a single omission--expressed a larger
+spirit. Her faithful letters, secure in a sincere belief, were very
+precious, I remember. Sometimes, though never successfully, they
+tempted me almost to giving my full confidence and telling more than
+my camouflaged reports revealed. From the rest of my family, with the
+exception of a really loved brother, I knew myself entirely divorced, a
+divorce that later years proved final and somehow inevitable.
+
+To my father, who was always something of a stranger to me, I could
+never tell my heart; my mother, on the other hand, always had my
+confidence, coupled with an austere respect. Few words passed between
+us, yet she always knew, I felt, my thoughts. And this full confidence
+dated, oddly enough, from an incident in early childhood, when I was
+saying the Lord’s Prayer at her knee. There was a phrase that puzzled
+me even when I was in knickerbockers: “Lead us not into temptation....”
+I stopped, looked up into her face, and asked: “But _would_ He lead me
+into temptation unless I asked Him not to?” Her eyes opened, she gazed
+down into mine with a thoughtful, if perplexed expression, for a moment
+she was evidently at a loss how to answer. She hesitated, then decided
+to trust me with the truth: “I have never quite understood those
+words myself,” she said. “I think, though, it is best to leave their
+explanation to Him, and to say the words exactly as He taught them.”
+
+“Old souls” and “young souls” was a classification that ruled my mind
+in this New York period: my mother was of the former, my father of the
+latter. In the Old lay innate the fruits, the results, the memories of
+many many previous lives, and this ripeness of long experience showed
+itself in certain ways--in taste, in judgment, in their standard of
+values, in that mysterious quality called tact; above all, perhaps,
+in the type and quality of goods they desired from life. Worldly
+ambitions, so-called, were generally negligible in them. What we
+label to-day as the subconscious was invariably fully charged; also,
+without too much difficulty, accessible. It made them interesting,
+stimulating and not easily exhausted. Wide sympathies, spread charity,
+understanding were their hall-marks, and a certain wisdom, as apart
+from intellect, their invariable gift; with, moreover, a tendency to
+wit, if not that rare quality wit itself, and humour, the power of
+seeing, and therefore laughing at, oneself. The cheaper experiences of
+birth, success, possessions they had learned long ago; it was the more
+difficult, but higher, values they had come back to master, and among
+the humbler ranks of life they found the necessary conditions. Christ,
+I reflected, was the son of a carpenter.
+
+The Young Souls, on the other hand, were invariably hot-foot after
+the things of this world. Show, Riches and Power stuck like red
+labels on their foreheads. The Napoleons of the earth were among
+the youngest of all; the intellectuals, those who relied on reason
+alone, often the prosperous, usually the well-born, were of the same
+category. Rarely was “understanding” in them, and brilliant cleverness
+could never rank with that wisdom which knows that _tout comprendre,
+c’est tout pardonner_. To me the Young Souls were the commonplace
+and uninteresting ones. They were shallow, sketchy, soon exhausted,
+the _Dutzend-menschen_; whereas, the others were intuitive, mature
+in outlook, aware of deeper values and eager for the things of the
+spirit....
+
+Thinking over my distinguished relations, I found none fit to black
+the boots of that kindly waiter in Krisch’s cheap eating-house, Otto,
+the Black Forest German, who trusted us for food and often forwent
+his trumpery tip with a cheery smile. And there were many others,
+whose memory remains bright and wonderful from those dismal New York
+years.... A volume of “Distinguished People I have Met,” for instance,
+would include the Italian bootblack at the corner of 4th Avenue and
+20th Street, who had the sun in his face, in his bright black eyes and
+brown skin, and who trusted me sometimes for a month, although five
+cents meant as much to him as it did to me. The bigwigs I interviewed
+for newspapers are forgotten, but the faces of Otto and the Italian
+shine in memory still. I even remember the sentence the latter taught
+me. It invariably formed our daily greeting: _E molto tempo che siete
+stato amalato?_ Often since have I spouted it in Italy, as bewildered
+by the voluble replies I could not understand, as the peasants were by
+my familiar enquiry after their health. Mrs. Bernstein, I think, would
+be entitled to a place, and Grant, who pawned his overcoat to buy me
+food, most certainly to full mention.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+Worthy of more detailed description, however, is the figure of an old,
+old man I met about this time, a dignified, venerable and mysterious
+being, man of the world, lawyer, musician, scholar, poet, but above
+all, exile. Incidentally, he was madman too. What unkindly tricks fate
+had played with his fine brain, I never learned with accuracy. It was
+but the ruin of a great mind I knew. Pain and suffering of no unusual
+order, as I soon discovered, had, at any rate, left his heart as wise
+and sweet and gentle as any I have ever known. His voice, his eyes, his
+smile, his very gestures, even, had in them all the misery and all the
+goodness of the world. Our chance meeting deepened into a friendship,
+the intimacy of which between Padre and Figlio--names he himself
+assigned respectively--yet never permitted a full account of his own
+mysterious past. The little I gathered of his personal history before
+he died some dozen years later in England, came to me from patchwork
+sources, but none of it from his own lips. What term the alienists
+might use to describe the mental disorder of Alfred H. Louis I do not
+know.
+
+The first time I saw him he cut a sorry figure; an old fellow in far
+worse plight and even worse down at heel than I was myself. It was in
+an olive-oil warehouse, at No. 1, Water Street, on the river front.
+McKay, the owner, whom I had met through some newspaper story or other,
+had converted me to the wisdom of an occasional glass of olive oil. It
+was healthful and delicious, but to me its chief value was as food. On
+this day of broiling heat I had wandered in for a glass of oil, and,
+while waiting a moment for the owner to appear, I noticed an old tramp
+seated on a packing-case, gazing at me in penetrating fashion. He was a
+Jew, he was very small, his feet were tiny, his hands, I took in, were
+beautiful. I thought of Moses, of Abraham, some Biblical prophet come
+to life, of some storied being like the Wandering Jew.
+
+His atmosphere, that is, at once sent a message of something unusual
+to my imagination. But it was when McKay came in and, to my surprise,
+calmly introduced us as fellow Englishmen, that my mind was really
+startled--not because the old tramp was English, but because when
+he rose to shake my hand, it seemed to me that some great figure of
+history rose to address, not me, but the nations of the world. He
+reached barely to my shoulder, his face upturned to mine, yet the
+feeling came that it was I who looked up into his eyes. The dignity and
+power the frail outline conveyed were astonishing. He was a Presence.
+And his voice the same instant--though in some commonplace about having
+known Lord Dufferin--increased the air of greatness, almost I had said
+of majesty, that he wore so naturally. It was not merely cultured,
+deep and musical, it vibrated with a peculiar resonance that conveyed
+authority beyond anything I have known in any other human voice.
+
+We talked ... _he_ talked, rather ... hunger, thirst, the afflicting
+moist heat of the day were all forgotten, New York City was forgotten
+too. His words carried me beyond this world, his language in that
+astonishing voice wore wings that brought escape. His long frock-coat,
+green with age and dirt; his broken boots and frayed trousers; his
+shapeless top hat, brushed the wrong way till it looked like a beehive
+coated with rough plush; his grimy collar without a tie; the spots upon
+his grease-stained waistcoat--all vanished completely. It was, above
+all, I think, the poetry in his voice and words that brought the balm
+and healing into my whole being. The way his hands moved too. We talked
+for several hours, for it was McKay’s nasal interruption, saying he
+must close the warehouse, that brought me back to--Water Street.
+
+Recklessly, though with a diffidence as though I were with royalty, I
+invited him to dine, but in the cheap Childs’ Eating House where we
+“fed,” I soon perceived that I had no reason to feel embarrassed. A cup
+of coffee and “sinkers” sufficed him, he took my shyness away, he won
+my easy and full confidence; and afterwards--for he refused to let me
+go--as we sat, that stifling night, on a bench in Battery Park, tramps
+and Wearie Willies our neighbours, but the salt air from the sea in our
+nostrils, he used a phrase that, giving me the calibre of his thought,
+was too significant ever to be forgotten. I had spoken of my hatred of
+the city and of my present circumstances in it. He peered into my face
+a moment beneath his dreadful hat, then, raising a beautiful hand by
+way of emphasis, his deep voice came to me like some music of the sea
+itself:
+
+“No man worth his spiritual salt,” he said with impressive gentleness,
+“is ever entangled in locality.” He smiled, and the tenderness of the
+voice was in the eyes as well....
+
+The little park emptied gradually, the heated paving-stones lost
+something of their furnace breath, the stars were visible overhead
+beyond the great arc lights, the parched leaves rustled faintly, and
+I spoke to him of poetry. He had lived with Longfellow, he had known
+Browning. The poetry of the world was in his soul--Greek, Latin,
+German, French, above all, Hebrew. I drank in his words, unaware of the
+passing hours. To me it was like finding a well in the desert when I
+was dying of thirst. Even the awful city he transfigured. Suddenly his
+lean fingers touched my arm, his voice deepened and grew soft, he took
+his hat off. “I will say my Night-Song to you now,” he said. “I can
+only say it to very, very few. For years I have said it to--no one. But
+_you_ shall hear it.”
+
+If there was something in his voice and manner that thrilled me to
+the core, the poem he then repeated on that bench in Battery Park at
+midnight gave me indescribable sensations of beauty and delight. I
+realized I listened to a personal confession that was a revelation of
+the mysterious old heart beneath the green frock-coat. It seemed to me
+that Night herself spoke through him:
+
+    Known only, only to God and the night, and the stars and me!
+              Prophetic, jubilant Song,
+    Smiting the rock-bound hours till the waters of life flow free;
+              And a Soul, on pinion strong,
+    Flieth afar, and hovers over the infinite sea
+              Of love and of melody:
+              _While the blind fates weave their nets
+              And the world in sleep forgets_.
+
+    Known only, only to me and the night, and the stars and God!
+              Song, from a burning breast,
+    Of a land of perfected delights which the foot of man ne’er trod,
+              Like a foaming wine expressed
+    From passionate fruits that glowed ’mid the boughs of the Eden lost,
+              Ere sin was born and frost;--
+              _Song wild with desires and regrets,
+              While the world in sleep forgets_.
+
+    Known only, only to me and God, and the night and the stars!
+              The beacon fire of song,
+    Flaming for guidance and hope while the storm-winds wage their wars;
+              Balm for the ancient wrong,
+    Dropping from healing wings on the wounds of the heart and brain,
+              Quenching their ancient pain:
+              Love-star that rises and sets,
+              _While the world in sleep forgets_.
+
+    Known only, only to God and me, and the stars and the night!
+              Dove that returns to my ark,
+    Murmuring of grief-floods falling, of light beyond all light:
+              Voice that cleaveth the dark,
+    Singing of earth growing heaven, of distant lands that bless,
+              Though they may not caress,
+              And, blessing, pay Love’s old debts,
+              _While the world in sleep forgets_.
+
+Long before he ended the tears were coursing slowly down his withered
+cheeks, and when the last word died away a long silence came between
+us, for I could find no words to express the emotion in me. He took my
+hand and held it a moment tightly, then presently got up, put on his
+old hat again, with the remark that it was time for bed, and followed
+me slowly to a Broadway cable car. His small, frail figure seemed to
+have dwindled to a child’s shadow as he moved beside me; he had a way
+of hunching his thin shoulders that still further dwarfed his height;
+I felt myself a giant physically, but in my mind _his_ stature reached
+the stars. We exchanged addresses. He lived in 8th Street, a miserable
+attic, I learned later, though I never actually entered it. Of his
+mental disorder no inkling had then reached me. I watched him melt
+into the shadows of the side street with the feeling that I watched
+some legendary figure, some ancient prophet, some mysterious priest.
+He smiled at me; there was love and blessing in the brilliant eyes.
+Then he was gone.... For me, at this time, to meet and talk with such
+a man held something of the fabulous. He had set fire to a hundred new
+thoughts and left them flaming in me.
+
+It was in this way began a friendship that has always seemed to me
+marvellous, and that lasted till his death in England some fifteen
+years later. Sweet, patient, resigned and lovable to the end, he died
+incurably insane, the charity in him never tainted, the tenderness
+unstained, the passionate love of his kind, of beauty, of all that is
+lovely and of good report, unspoilt. The grimmest pain had not soured
+the natural sweetness in him, his gentle spirit knew no bitterness,
+his megalomania, complicated, I believe, with other varieties of
+disorder, was harmless and inoffensive. As Padre he still lives in my
+memory; as The Old Man of Visions (“The Listener”), he still haunts my
+imagination. “You have taken my name away,” he chided me with a smile,
+when I published this picture of him. “I am now uncertain who I am.
+That is well. I am Anybody I choose to be. I will be Everybody.” He had
+rooms in Great Russell Street at the time. Though baptised by Charles
+Kingsley into the English Church, he later became a Roman Catholic,
+but, when the end came, he reverted to the blood and faith born in him.
+He was buried, by his own wish, in a Hebrew cemetery. The epitaph he
+so often told me with an ironic smile he had chosen for his own was
+not, however, used. Talk, he always declared, vain, excessive talk, lay
+at the bottom of every misunderstanding in the world. If people would
+talk less, there would be less trouble in life. “Sorry I spoke,” was to
+be cut upon one of his tombstones; “Sorry they spoke” upon the other.
+
+A poem he wrote--published, like the Night Song, in _Harper’s
+Magazine_--describing death, I have kept all these years. The strange
+intensity of expression he put into the passage which begins: “The sand
+of my Being is fused and runs ...” lives in my mind to this day. The
+title of the poem was “The Final Word”:
+
+    Hence then at last! For the strife is past
+      Of the Birth and Death, of the Self and Soul;
+    The memory breaks, the breath forsakes,
+      The waves of the æther o’er me roll.
+    The pulses cease, and the Hours release
+      Their wearied school of the nerves and brain;
+    I fall on the Deep of the Mystic Sleep,
+      Where the Word that is Life can be heard again.
+    And the fires descend, and my fragments blend,
+      And the sand of my Being is fused and runs
+    To the mould of a glass for the rays to pass
+      Of the Sun of the centre that rules all suns.
+    But, or ever I rest, I take from my breast
+      My blood-drained heart for the tablet white
+    Of a gospel page to the far-off Age--
+      O Hand eternal!--Come forth--and write!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+The personality of Alfred H. Louis is identified with New York for
+me; he accompanied my remaining years there, guide, philosopher and
+friend. He took in hand that indiscriminate heterogeneous reading
+which the Free Library made possible. He proved an unfailing and
+inspiring counsellor. How, why or whence he came to be in America at
+all I never knew. One thing that stirred him into vehemence, when the
+past was mentioned, was the name of Gladstone. With flashing eyes and
+voice of thunder he condemned the Grand Old Man, both as to character
+and policy, in unmeasured terms. Gladstone, apparently, had done him
+a personal injury as well. “We cannot let that man come among us,”
+was Gladstone’s dictum, when Louis’s name was being considered as
+a candidate for Parliament by the Party. “He is too earnest.” This
+fragment was all he ever told me, but there lay evidently much behind
+it. “_Too earnest!_” he repeated with contemptuous indignation.
+
+Of his days at Cambridge he was more communicative, though,
+unfortunately, I kept no notes. The eloquence and earnestness of his
+speeches at the Union, when Sir William Harcourt was president, made,
+according to his own account, a great stir. Of Dr. (Bishop) Lightfoot,
+of Benson, afterwards Archbishop, he had intimate memories, coloured
+by warm praise. His book on “England’s Foreign Policy” (Bentley, 1869)
+apparently angered Gladstone extremely, and Louis’s political career
+was killed.
+
+He was called to the bar. Of success, of important cases, he told
+me nothing. His early brilliance suffered, I gathered, a strange
+eclipse, and from things he hinted at, I surmised--I cannot state it
+definitely--that a period in some kind of _maison de santé_ followed
+about this time. That he had been, then or later, in an asylum for the
+insane, I heard vouched for repeatedly in London years later. For an
+interval before the breakdown came, he was editor, or part-editor, of
+the _Spectator_, and in some similar connexion, as owner or editor,
+he served the _Fortnightly_ too. George Eliot he knew well, giving me
+vivid descriptions of her famous Sundays, and of his talks with George
+Henry Lewes and Herbert Spencer. He claimed to be the original of
+Daniel Deronda. He was a pupil of Sterndale Bennett’s on the piano. Of
+his friendship with Cardinal Manning he had also much to tell.
+
+It was in the domain of politics that I first began to notice the
+exaggeration and incoherence of his mind, and it was “in politics,”
+evidently, that the deep wounds which would not heal had been
+received. In music, poetry, literature, above all in law, his
+intelligence had remained clear and sound, his judgments consummate,
+his knowledge encyclopædic. Large tracts of memory in him were,
+apparently, obliterated, whole stretches of life submerged, but his
+legal attainments had remained untouched. A business friend of mine
+“briefed” him to lecture on International, Company and Patent Law; and
+the substance of those “Lectures” stood the test, years later, of the
+highest English and French Courts.
+
+The lonely old man’s kingdom was his mind, and he dwelt in it aloof,
+secure, contented, unassailable. Into the big empty stretches a half
+education had left in my own, he poured his riches with unstinted
+satisfaction, even with delight. Worldly advice he never proffered;
+the world had left him aside, he, in his turn, left the world aside.
+To practical questions he merely shook his Moses-head: “That,” he
+would say, “you must decide for yourself. Considered in relation to
+the Eternities, it is of little moment in any case.” To any question,
+however, of a philosophical kind, to any enquiry for explanation about
+what perplexed or interested me in the realm of thought, he would reply
+with what I can only call a lecture, but a lecture so lucid, so packed
+with knowledge and learning, with classical comment and quotation,
+often with passages of moving eloquence, and invariably in language
+so considered that no single word could have been altered, and the
+“essay” might have been published as it stood--lectures, in a word,
+that enthralled and held me spellbound for hours at a time. For his
+knowledge was not knowledge merely, it was knowledge transmuted by
+emotion into that spiritual wisdom called Understanding.
+
+The respect he inspired me with was such that rarely did I venture
+upon a personal question, though I longed to know more about himself
+and his mysterious story. His face sometimes betrayed intense mental
+suffering. On one occasion, feeling braver, owing to a happy mood that
+seemed established naturally between us, I attempted rather an intimate
+question of some kind about his past. He turned and stared with an
+expression that startled me. It was so keen, so searching. For several
+minutes he made no reply. His eyes narrowed. I felt ashamed. I had
+wounded him. The truth was, it seems, I had touched his heart.
+
+“Listen,” he said presently. In a voice full of tears and deep emotion,
+a very quiet, a very beautiful voice, he replied to my question.
+The expression of his eyes turned inwards, there rose in memory the
+ghostly figure of someone he had loved, perhaps loved still. The whole
+aspect of the old exiled poet became charged with an intolerable
+sadness, as he spoke the lines, not to myself, but to this vanished
+figure--“Shadowed by yearning memory’s raven wing”:
+
+
+HEREAFTER
+
+    Thou know’st not, sweet, what must remain unknown
+    Through all that my poor words can say or sing,
+    The measure of the love to thee I bring.
+    One day thou wilt, when, by a graven stone
+    That bears a name, thou standest, white, alone,
+    Shadowed by yearning memory’s raven wing,
+    Rained on by blossoms of some wind-torn spring
+    Wherefrom thirst-quenching fruit shall ne’er be grown.
+    Then--power shall rest upon the vanished hand
+    Once too much trembling to thy touch for power;
+    Then--shall my soul at last thy soul command
+    As it might not in Time’s brief fitful hour;
+    And what Life’s fires might neither melt nor burn
+    Shall yield with tears to ashes and the urn.
+
+I had my answer. Never again did I venture on a personal question.
+
+All our talks came round to poetry in the end. It was his deepest love
+as well. Sound lawyer he may have been, but inspired poet, to me at
+least, he certainly was. His own poems he severely deprecated, calling
+them, with the exception of the “Night Song,” “poor things, though from
+my heart.” His room, it seems, was littered with them in manuscript,
+which he rarely tried, and never wished, to sell. Some time later Mr.
+Alden, Editor of _Harper’s Magazine_, questioned me for information
+“about a wonderful old gentleman who comes into the office like an
+emperor, and offers me a poem as though he were parting painfully with
+a treasure he hardly dared let out of his keeping, and certainly does
+not wish to sell for cash.” To all, thus, he was a mystery. If he was
+uncared for, he was at the same time indifferent to human care. Great
+intellect, great mind, great heart, he seemed to me, a wraith perhaps,
+but an august, a giant wraith, draped by mysterious shadows, dwelling
+in a miserable slum, cut off from his kind amid the dim pomp and
+pageantry of majestic memories.
+
+It was thus, at any rate, with the pardonable exaggeration of ignorant
+twenty-five, I saw and knew the Old Man of Visions. It was his deep
+heart of poetry, rather than his fine intellect I worshipped. The
+under-mind in him, the subconscious region, I think, was whole and
+healed; it was the upper-mind, the surface consciousness, that alone
+was damaged. If this mind was wrecked, this brain partly in ruins, the
+soul in him peered forth above the broken towers, remaining splendidly
+aware. Not even the imperfect instrument through which it worked could
+prevent this fine expression: behind the disproportion of various
+delusions, behind the outer tumbled ruins, there dwelt unaffected in
+him that greater thing than any intellect--Understanding.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+
+It was with a singular young man, who claimed proudly to be the
+illegitimate son of a certain duke, that I found myself presently in
+the eau de Cologne business. A long difficult winter had passed; all my
+friends had disappeared; there had been periods of dried apples again,
+of posing in studios, of various odd jobs, and of half-starving, with
+black weeks in plenty. I had moved into yet cheaper quarters, where I
+occupied a room that had been formerly a butler’s pantry, and was so
+small that when the folding-bed was down the entire space from wall to
+wall was occupied. The wash-hand stand was a sink in a recess let into
+the wall and supplied with a tap.
+
+When Mr. Louis visited me, as he did frequently, we lowered the bed and
+used it as a divan. The door could not open then. I made tea in the
+sink. We talked....
+
+If Louis’s atmosphere suggested choirs and places where they sing,
+that of Brodie, as I may call him here, was associated with bars and
+places where they drink. Not that he drank himself, for he was most
+abstemious, but that in certain superior saloons, all of them far above
+my means, he was usually to be found. A simple, yet complex, generous
+as well as mean creature, with all the canniness of the Scot, with his
+uncanniness as well, his education had been neglected, he read with
+difficulty, and only wrote well enough to sign his name laboriously
+to a cheque. He, too, like Louis, had his mystery; there was no one,
+indeed, in my circle of those days whose antecedents would bear too
+close a scrutiny.
+
+I was first introduced to him by a burly Swede, with hands like
+beef-steaks, and the shoulders of a heavy-weight fighter, who was
+later arrested and sent to gaol for picking pockets. His notoriety
+as a sneak-thief none of us had guessed, and how those bulky hands
+could have accomplished anything neat and clever was a puzzle. In
+the Scotsman’s pleasant quarters, somewhat outlandishly furnished by
+himself on a top floor, the Swede had made himself at home too long.
+Brodie, the prey of many who, invited for a day or two, stayed on for
+weeks, was glad to see his back. His weak good-nature, refusing to turn
+his guests out, was the cause of endless troubles with men who sponged
+upon his kindness and his purse. This and his eau de Cologne business,
+“me beezness” as he called it, were his sole topics of conversation. He
+had money to spend--was it an allowance? We never knew--and was always
+well dressed; many a square meal he stood me; there was something in
+his soft West of Scotland voice that drew me to this odd fish in the
+“perfumery line.” It reminded me of happier days. And I have described
+his habits at some length, because it was owing to a small service I
+rendered him, and rendered myself at the same time, that I became a
+partner in “me beezness” of manufacturing and selling eau de Cologne
+made from the Johann Maria Farina recipe.
+
+Brodie’s social aspirations were very marked; to hear him talk one
+would have thought him heir to a dukedom; he had, too, a curious
+faculty for getting his name associated with people above him in the
+social world. How he managed it was a problem I never solved. His
+instinct for smelling out and using such folk was a gift from heaven.
+To see his name in the paper gave him supreme happiness. Real “Society”
+of course, Ward Macallister’s Four Hundred, lay beyond the reach of
+what was actually a peasant type, but there were less select fields he
+worked assiduously with great success. There was matter for a play,
+a novel, a character study, at any rate, in Brodie, who himself, I
+learned much later, had come out to New York as valet to Clyde Fitch,
+the playwright, and whose recipe for the “genuine Johann Maria Farina,”
+his successful “beezness,” was stolen property. My father’s son knew
+certainly queer bedfellows in that underworld in New York City.
+
+Meeting him in one of his usual haunts one night, he complained
+bitterly of a young man he had invited for a week, but who had stayed
+a month, and stayed on still. The name, which need not be mentioned,
+was a well-known one. It was a bad case of imposition, by a man, too,
+who had ample means of his own. I offered to turn him out, much to
+Brodie’s alarm. That is, he both desired the result and feared it. Next
+morning I arrived in the oddly-furnished rooms and found Brodie cooking
+breakfast for the undesirable young man who had imposed on his host too
+long, and who still lay in bed. It was a comic scene, no doubt, for
+Brodie, though frightened, bore out my accusations while he fried the
+eggs, and the other blustered noisily until he found out that bluster
+was of no avail; and then, threatening an action for assault, got
+suddenly out of bed and dressed himself. Half-an-hour later he was, bag
+and baggage, in the street, while I went down and sold the “story” to
+the _New York Journal_, who printed it next morning with big headlines,
+but also with a drawing showing the eviction scene. No action for
+assault followed, however; I received twenty dollars for my “story”;
+and Brodie, full of gratitude--his name was mentioned in flattering
+terms--offered to take me into partnership in “me beezness.” I demurred
+at first. “You might help me with the correspondence,” he suggested
+cautiously. I was to be his educated partner and his pen.
+
+All that spring and summer I received ten dollars a week which,
+in addition to free-lance newspaper work, enabled me to live in
+comparative luxury. In a dark little back-office on Broadway and 8th
+Street, the eau de Cologne was made. It might have been the secret
+headquarters of an anarchist fraternity, or the laboratory of some
+mediæval alchemist, such was the atmosphere of secrecy, of caution and
+of mystery. It never occurred to me that anything was wrong. Our only
+assistant was a young Polish girl named Paola, a beautiful, dark-haired
+Jewess. The precious recipe I was never allowed to see. Great flagons
+in wicker coverings stood in rows upon long shelves; the mixing of
+the ingredients was a delicate operation lasting an hour; the room
+smelt rich and sweet of spices that made me think of Araby and the
+East. It was a curious and picturesque scene--the rather darkened
+room, the perfume-laden air, the hush no traffic could disturb, the
+great, mysterious flagons, which might almost have concealed forty
+thieves, the canny Scot of doubtful origin, the beautiful Jewess,
+the air of caution and suspicion that reigned over all. The filling
+of the bottles in two sizes, affixing the labels, flavouring the
+soap--we made eau-de-Cologne soap too--answering the letters, writing
+flowery advertisements, and so forth, occupied the entire day. Brodie,
+a born salesman, would take a cab and visit the big stores with
+samples--Macy’s, Siegel and Cooper, and others whose names I have
+forgotten. He never came back without an order. The business flourished.
+
+I made no secret of being in the perfumery trade. I had moved into a
+larger room at my boarding-house. I had bought boots, some new linen,
+and most of my things were out of pawn. Then, presently, here and
+there, I began to notice things I did not like. Rumours reached me.
+Hints were dropped, sometimes more than hints, that made me wonder
+and look over my shoulder a little. No member of my immediate circle
+at this time was of too sweet origin nor of too stainless habits, yet
+from these came the rumours and the hints. I had better “keep my eyes
+peeled,” and the rest...! One man in particular who warned me was an
+elderly, shrewd German, friend of Brodie’s, and himself a mystery. His
+occupation was unknown, however, even to Brodie; he hid it carefully
+away; he led a double life, protecting himself with the utmost skill
+and caution behind a screen of detail none of us ever pierced. “Von”
+Schmidt, as he styled himself, was educated; also he had a heart;
+for once, when I was in a state of collapse from hunger, he brought
+oysters for me at great trouble to himself, having to go out on a
+rainy night and bring them some distance along the street; from which
+moment, though the unpleasant mystery about him intrigued and cautioned
+me, I became his friend. We talked German together. His one desire,
+he confided to me, was to marry a rich woman, and once he clumsily
+proposed to arrange a rich marriage for myself if I would give him
+a--commission on results!
+
+His personality is worth this brief description, perhaps, since it
+sheds light, incidentally, upon the world I lived in. Always most
+carefully dressed, he occupied a single room in a well-appointed house
+in East 22nd Street, talking airily of a bedroom on the floor above,
+of a bathroom I was sure he never used, and complaining apologetically
+of “this awful house I’m in for the moment.” His pose was that of an
+aristocrat, proud and resigned among untoward circumstances, and it was
+through no mistake of his own that this humbug did not impose on me.
+I just knew it was all bunkum. His actual business, I felt sure, was
+unsavoury, though Brodie, having once discovered artificial flowers
+in his coat pocket, thought he was a floor-walker in some big store.
+Various suspicious details confirmed me later in the belief that his
+real occupation was blackmailing.
+
+In his single room, at any rate, where a piece of furniture against
+the wall covered with framed photographs of German notabilities was
+in reality a folding-bed--I never once, since the oysters, betrayed
+that I knew this--he lived “like a gentleman.” Every night, from nine
+o’clock onwards, he was “at home”; a box of cigars, various liqueurs,
+he offered without fail, and “with an air” if you please, although
+the former never held more than three or four cigars, the bottles
+never more than enough to fill two glasses, because “my servant,
+confound him, has forgotten again to fill them.” He had no servant,
+of course, and the minimum of replenishing was done by himself every
+evening before nine o’clock. “Then you are a Baron really?” I said
+once, referring to the “von” before his name. He looked at me with the
+disdainful smile a prince in difficulties might have worn: “In this
+city of snobs and scoundrels,” he said lightly, “I have dropped my
+title. The ‘von’ alone I find more dignified.” He left the house, I
+found, every morning sharp at eight, and this was in favour of Brodie’s
+theory that he had some regular job. He was an experienced, much-lived
+old bird, a touch of something sinister about him always, about most
+of his friends as well. Some very disagreeable types I surprised more
+than once in his well-furnished room. He “knew the ropes,” knew men
+and women too, his counsel was always sound in worldly matters. A lack
+of humour was his chief failing, it seemed to me, while his snobbery
+was another weakness that probably led many of his schemes to failure.
+Every summer, for instance, he would go for two weeks to Newport, where
+the rank and fashion went. “When I was at Newport,” or “I am going to
+Newport next week,” were phrases his tongue loved to mouth and taste
+like fine wine. But his brief days there were spent actually in a cheap
+boarding-house, although the letters he wrote to all and sundry, to
+myself included, bore one word only as address: “Newport,” made from a
+die, at the head of his coloured paper.
+
+It was von Schmidt, then, who warned me about Brodie and his
+eau-de-Cologne business: “He is a fool, a peasant. There will be
+trouble there. Do not identify yourself with him or his business. It
+is not worth while....” And his manner conveyed that he could tell
+something more definite if he liked, which I verily believe was the
+case. Brodie, I was convinced later, paid him tribute.
+
+I began to feel uncomfortable. One day I asked Brodie, point blank,
+what his recipe was and how he came by it? “That’s me own beezness,”
+he replied. “There’s nothing to be nairvous about.” I consulted “old
+Louis.” “If you feel the faintest doubt,” was his answer, “you should
+leave at once.” I decided to get out. Brodie asked me to wait the
+current month. I agreed.
+
+Before the end of the month, however, when I left the eau-de-Cologne
+business, a most unpleasant and alarming incident occurred. The
+terrible thing, long dreaded in a vague kind of way, had overtaken me
+at last. I was to be convicted of a crime I had not committed. I might
+even be sent to gaol....
+
+Brodie’s outlandish furnishing of his rooms has been mentioned
+purposely; they were filled with an assortment of showy trash that
+could not have deceived a charwoman; fifty dollars would have covered
+everything. He was proud of his curtains, rugs and faked draperies,
+however; showed them off with the air of a connoisseur; hinted at their
+great value. He had insured them, it always pleased him to mention.
+The _New York Journal_, describing the eviction scene, had referred
+to his fine apartment “furnished with exotic taste and regardless of
+cost,” adding this touch of colour which was certainly not my own.
+Brodie, thus encouraged in print, promptly took out another fire policy
+in a second company. And one day, while toying with his flagons, he
+mentioned casually that he was having “me place done up a bit,” new
+paint, new paper were to be put on, and--might he bring his clothes to
+my room until this was finished, as his own cupboard space was limited?
+
+He brought the suits himself, carrying them one by one concealed
+inside a folded overcoat upon his arm. He did this always after dusk.
+No suspicion stirred in me. My own cupboards were, of course, empty.
+Brodie’s fine wardrobe now filled them. It all seemed natural enough;
+certainly it roused no doubt or query in me; neither did the party to
+which I was invited a few days later, which included a “distinguished”
+member, of course, a famous dress-designer from Europe, with whose
+publicity campaign in the Press, Brodie had contrived to get his name
+associated.
+
+We were a party of five men, and we met at our host’s rooms before
+going out to dine, the rooms that had just been done up; and attention,
+I recall, was drawn particularly to the beauty, rarity and value of
+his variegated trash. The electric light was shaded, a big coal fire
+burned in the grate, at a cursory glance the apartment might possibly
+have produced a favourable impression of expense and richness. But our
+host did not allow us to linger; there was a hurried cocktail, and we
+were gone. I remember that I was last but one in the procession down
+the stairs from this top floor; Brodie, who had held the door open for
+us to pass, came last. Also I remembered later, that as we reached the
+next flight, he said he had forgotten something, and dashed upstairs
+again to fetch it. A moment later he rejoined us in the street, and
+we all went on to dinner. “It was a kind of house-warming party,” he
+explained.
+
+The evening passed pleasantly. We went on to Koster and Biel’s music
+hall, and after that, to supper in some Tenderloin joint or other. And
+it was here I first noticed a change in our host. Something about him
+was different. His behaviour was not what was normal to him. His face
+was pale, his manner nervous and excited; though there was no drink in
+him to account for it, he was overwrought, unusually voluble, unable to
+keep still for a single moment. I had never seen him like this before,
+and the strangeness of his behaviour arrested me. Once or twice, _à
+propos_ of nothing, he referred to the money he had spent on his
+apartment; and more than once in asides to me, he spoke of the value of
+his rugs and curtains, engaging my endorsement, as it were. The other
+men, who knew him less intimately, probably noticed nothing, or, if
+they did, attributed it to the excitement of alcohol.... But it made me
+more and more uneasy. I didn’t like it; I watched him attentively. I
+came to the strange conclusion, long before the evening was over, that
+he was frightened. And when he met suggestions that it was time for bed
+with obstinate refusals, anxious and nervous at the same time, I knew
+that he was more than frightened, he was terrified.
+
+Once when I asked him whether he felt unwell, there was startled terror
+in his cunning eyes as he whispered: “I dreamed of rats last night.
+Something bad will be coming.” His face was white as chalk. To dream
+of rats, with him, always meant an enemy in the offing; a dozen times
+he had given me instances of this strange superstition; to dream of an
+acquaintance in connexion with these unpleasant rodents meant that
+this particular acquaintance was false, an enemy, someone who meant him
+harm. I, therefore, understood the allusion in his mind, but this time,
+for some reason, I did not believe it. He was lying. The terror of a
+guilty conscience was in those startled eyes and in that sheet-white
+skin. I felt still more uneasy. I was glad I had put my resignation
+from the “beezness” in writing. There was trouble coming in connexion
+with that recipe, and Brodie already knew it.
+
+It was after two in the morning when we reached home. My rooms were a
+couple of streets before his own, but he begged me to see him to his
+door. His nervous state had grown, meanwhile, worse and worse; his legs
+failed him several times, seeming to sink under his weight; he took my
+arm; more than once he reeled. There was something about it all, about
+himself particularly, that made my skin crawl. The awful feeling that
+I, too, was to be involved increased in me.
+
+As we turned out of Fourth Avenue into his street, a loud noise met
+us: a prolonged, hoarse sound, a clank of machinery in it somewhere,
+another sound as well that pulsed and throbbed. A dense crowd blocked
+the way. There was smoke. A fire engine was pumping water into a
+burning building--the one that Brodie lived in. These details I noticed
+in the first few seconds, but even before I had registered them Brodie
+uttered a queer cry and half-collapsed against me. He was speechless
+with terror, and at first something of his terror he communicated
+to me, too. My heart sank into my boots. The “rats” I understood
+instantly, had nothing to do with his eau de Cologne recipe. This was a
+far more serious matter.
+
+Fires were no new thing to me, and this evidently was only a small one,
+but, none the less, people might have been burned to death. Telling
+my companion to wait for me, and to keep his mouth shut whatever
+happened, I produced some paper and pushed my way through the crowd to
+the police cordon, saying I was from the _Evening Sun_. Though I had
+no fire-badge, the bluff worked. I ran up the steps of the familiar
+house. “Which floor is it? How did it start? Is it insured? Is anybody
+burned?” I asked a fireman. The answer came and I jotted it down; it
+was the top floor, how it started was unknown, nobody was hurt--it was
+heavily insured.
+
+It had been burning for four hours, the worst was over, the fire was
+out; only steam and smoke now filled the staircase and corridors. The
+street was covered with a litter of ruined furniture. The occupants of
+the lower floors stood about in various attire; I caught unpleasant
+remarks as I dashed upstairs to Brodie’s floor. Hoses, I found, were
+still at work; the room we had left six hours before was gutted; a
+gaping hole permitted a view of the room on the floor below, and this
+hole began immediately in front of the grate. A black woolly mat
+with long hair, I remembered, had lain on the floor just there. The
+unpleasant remarks, as I ran up, had reference to insurance; phrases
+such as “over-insured,” “too well insured” were audible. They were the
+usual phrases uttered at the scene of a New York fire, where arson was
+as common as picking pockets; I had heard them a hundred times; they
+had furnished clues for my newspaper stories. On this occasion they
+held a new significance.
+
+Brodie shared my folding-bed that night, but he did not sleep. He cried
+a good deal. He said very little. He referred neither to the loss of
+his stuff, nor to the fact of its being covered by insurance, nor to
+how and why the fire started. He was frightened to the bone.
+
+Next day, when we visited the burned apartment to secure what fire
+and water had spared, Brodie was abused and scarified by the inmates
+as he went upstairs.... Weeks of keen anxiety followed, of worse than
+anxiety. The insurance companies refused to pay the claims, which
+Brodie, after much hesitation, had sent in. They decided to fight them.
+The lawyer--a _scheister_, meaning a low, unprincipled type of attorney
+who would take any case for the money it might contain--bled my friend
+effectively by preying on his obvious fear. He was summoned to give
+witness before a hearing in the offices of the company, and I shall
+never forget his face when he met me that night with the significant
+words: “They know everything about me, everything about you too. They
+even know that I took all my clothes to your room before it happened.
+They are going to summon you to give evidence too.”
+
+I consulted with “old Louis,” telling him the full story, but making
+no accusations. “Few people are worthy to live with,” was his comment,
+“fewer still to share one’s confidence. You must tell the truth as you
+know it. You have nothing to fear.” I was searchingly examined by the
+company’s lawyer and my evidence made, I saw, a good impression. No
+awkward leading questions were put. Brodie had been kind to me; I knew
+nothing definite against him; in his ignorance, which I described, he
+might well have thought his possessions were of value. It had nothing
+to do with me, at any rate, and there was a perfectly good explanation
+for his clothes being in my cupboard. None the less, it was a trying
+ordeal. Worse, however, was to follow. The fire marshal, recently
+appointed, a proverbial new broom, was out to put down the far too
+frequent arson in the city. Fire Marshal Mitchell--I see his face
+before me still--intended to prosecute.
+
+This was a bombshell. My imaginative temperament then became, indeed,
+my curse. Waiting for the summons was like waiting for the verdict
+of a hostile jury. I waited many days, hope alternating with fear. I
+felt sure I was being watched the whole time. Brodie and I never met
+once. I changed my room about this time, though for reasons entirely
+disconnected with this unpleasant business (I had obtained a violin
+pupil in another house), and I wrote to the fire marshal informing him
+of my new address, in case, as I understood was probable, he might want
+my evidence.
+
+But what really alarmed me most was my inside knowledge of New York
+justice. I had seen too many innocent men sent up; I had heard faked
+evidence in too many police cases; I knew that, without a “pull,” I
+stood but little chance of escaping a conviction as an accessory
+to what they would call a wanton case of arson. I was not even on
+the staff of a newspaper at the time. I had no influence of any sort
+behind me. Nor were my means of support too “visible,” a Britisher,
+a highly-connected Britisher into the bargain, it was just what the
+new-broom fire marshal was looking for. It would make a big case for
+the Press. The agony of mind I endured was ghastly, and the slow delay
+of long waiting intensified it.... One evening, on coming home about
+dusk, I saw a strange man in the little hall-way of my house. He asked
+me my name. I told him. He handed me a blue paper and went out. It was
+the long-expected subpœna from the fire marshal. I was summoned to
+attend at eight o’clock two mornings later in his office.
+
+My emotions that night and the next day were new experiences to me; I
+heard the judge sentence me, saw myself in prison for a term of years
+with hard labour. I began to _feel_ guilty. I knew I should say the
+wrong thing to the fire marshal. I should convict myself. The truth
+was the truth, but everything pointed against me; I knew Brodie as a
+friend, I was his business associate, was frequently in his rooms, had
+accepted kindnesses from him, I needed money badly, I had hidden his
+good clothes in my cupboards a few days before the fire. I had been
+with him on that particular night, I had left the room with him--last
+of the party. I should be looked upon as guilty, it was for me to
+clear myself. Prejudice against me, too, as an Englishman would be
+strong. The Boyde episode would be revived, and twisted to show that I
+consorted with law-breakers. I should stammer and hesitate and appear
+to be hiding the truth, to be lying, and I should most certainly look
+guilty. The thing I dreaded had come upon me. I thought of my home and
+family.
+
+It all made me realize with a fresh sharpness the kind of world poverty
+had dragged me down to, with the contrast between what I had been
+born to and what I now lived in.... I needed every scrap of strength
+and comfort my books could give me. That I was exaggerating like
+a schoolboy never occurred to me. I suffered the tortures of the
+damned, of the already condemned, at any rate. That I was innocent of
+wrong-doing was, for some reason, no consolation: I had got myself into
+an awful mess and should have to pay the price.
+
+The wildest ideas filled my brain; I would call and enlist the
+influence of McCloy, of various officials, of headquarters detectives,
+of D. L. Moody the Revivalist, who was then preaching in New York
+and who had been a guest in my father’s house, of the Exchange Place
+banker, even of von Schmidt, though fear of blackmail stopped me here.
+But reflection told me how useless such a proceeding would be. The
+Republicans, besides, were in power at the time, and Tammany had no
+“pull.” I even thought of Roosevelt, whom, as President of the Police
+Board, I had often interviewed. The fire marshal would rejoice in the
+case, of course, for, as with the Boyde story, the newspapers would
+print it at great length. There lay much _kudos_ for him in it. I
+had no sleep that night, as I had no friend or counsellor either. I
+thought of spending it in Bronx Park with the trees, but it occurred to
+me that, if I were being watched, the act might be interpreted as an
+attempt to escape--for what would a New York fire marshal make of my
+love of nature?
+
+The following day, as the dreaded examination grew closer, was a day of
+acute misery--until the late afternoon, when I met by chance the man
+who saved me. I shall always believe, at least, that “saved” is the
+right word to use.
+
+A coincidence, as singular as the coincidence of catching Boyde, was
+involved. Fate, anyhow, brought me across the path of Mullins, the one
+man who could help, just at the time and place, too, where that help
+could be most effectively given. The word coincidence, therefore, seems
+justified.
+
+Mullins, the Irishman, was an editorial writer on the _Evening Sun_
+when I was a reporter there; he disliked the paper as heartily as I
+did, and his ambition was to join the staff of the _New York Times_,
+where Muldoon, another Irishman, a boon companion, was City Editor.
+He had proved a real friend to me in my days of gross inexperience.
+“If ever I get on the _Times_,” he used to say, “I’ll try and get a
+place for you, too. It’s a fine, clean paper, and they treat a man
+decently.” He had realized his ambition just about the time I went into
+the eau-de-Cologne business, but had said there was no vacancy for me.
+There might be one later. He would let me know. For months, however, we
+had not met, and the matter had really left my mind. And it was now,
+when I was casting about in a state of semi-panic for someone who might
+help me, that I suddenly thought of Mullins. As a last hope, rather, I
+thought of him, for it seemed a very off-chance indeed.
+
+For various reasons I did not act upon the idea, but Mullins was in
+my mind, so much, so persistently, so often, that I kept seeing him
+in passers-by. I mistook several strangers for Mullins, until close
+enough to see my mistake. Then, suddenly, in Union Square, towards
+evening, I did see him. I was sitting on a bench. He walked past me. He
+was on his way to an assignment. I told him the whole story, making no
+accusations, but omitting no vital detail. He listened attentively, his
+face very grave. He shared my own misgivings. “It’s just the kind of
+case Mitchell’s looking for,” he said. “He wants to make a splash with
+it. But I think I can fix it for you. Guess what my assignment is at
+this moment?”
+
+And then he told me. His job that evening was a special interview with
+Mitchell, a descriptive story of the newly-appointed fire marshal, his
+personality and character, his plans for suppressing arson, and it was
+to be a front-page article. Mullins could make him or mar him; he had a
+free hand in the matter; the _Times_ was a Republican organ. It would
+mean a great deal to Mitchell. “He comes from my part of Ireland,” said
+Mullins with a grin and a wink. And then he added that he had spoken
+to Muldoon about me only the day before, and that Muldoon had promised
+me a place on the paper the moment it was possible--in a few weeks
+probably. “I shall just mention to Mitchell that you’re going on the
+_Times_,” was his significant parting word to me, as he hurried off to
+keep his appointment.
+
+My examination next morning was robbed of much of its terror. The
+fire marshal was evidently not quite sure of himself, for, if manner,
+voice and questions were severe, I detected an attitude that suggested
+wavering. A shorthand writer behind me took down every word I uttered,
+and the searching examination about the clothes, my social and business
+relations with Brodie, my knowledge, if any, concerning the value of
+his rugs and curtains, especially concerning the night of the fire
+and the details of how we left the room, gave me moments of acute
+discomfort. Although Mitchell rarely once looked straight at me, I
+knew he was observing my every word and gesture, the slightest change
+in facial expression, too. He confined himself entirely to questions,
+allowing no hint of his own opinion to escape him, and yet, to my very
+strung-up attention, he betrayed the uncertainty already mentioned.
+I, of course, confined myself entirely to answers, brief, but without
+hesitation.
+
+My instinct, right or wrong, was to protect Brodie, a man who had
+shown me real kindness. I remembered the meals, for one thing. In any
+case, it was not for me to express opinions, much less to bring an
+accusation. And, towards the end of a gruelling half-hour, I began to
+feel a shade more comfortable. When, with a slightly different manner,
+the fire marshal began to ask personal questions about my own career,
+I felt the day was almost won. I gave a quick outline of my recent
+history, though I never once mentioned the name of Mullins; let fall
+the detail, too, that I was an Irishman, and, a little later, seizing
+an opening with an audacity that surprised myself even while I said the
+words, I congratulated Mr. Mitchell upon his campaign to crush out the
+far too frequent arson in the city. “As a newspaper man,” I gave this
+blessing, and the shot, I instantly saw, went home. If I could be of
+any use to him on the _Times_, if any suspicious case came my way, I
+added that I should always be glad to serve him. For the first time the
+fire marshal smiled. I shot in a swift last stroke for Brodie, though
+an indirect one. “But you don’t want any _mis_fires,” I ventured,
+inwardly delighted that the play on the word amused him. “A big case
+that failed of a conviction would be damaging.”
+
+We shook hands as I left soon after, though the final comfort he denied
+me. For when I mentioned that my present address would always find me
+“if you need me again,” he merely bowed and thanked me. He did _not_
+say, as I hoped he would, “your presence will not be required any more.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+
+Six weeks later, when the torrid summer heat was waning and September
+breezes had begun to cool the streets, the nights, at any rate, I found
+myself a reporter on the staff of the _New York Times_. My salary of
+$35 a week seemed incredible. It was like coming into a fortune, and
+its first effect was to make a miser of me. I had learned the value of
+the single cent; I found myself fearful of spending even that cent. I
+understood why people who pass suddenly from want to affluence become
+stingy, complaining always of being hard-up. I determined to save. I
+opened an account in a Savings Bank against another rainy day. This
+trait, acquired in my unhappy New York period, remains in me still, I
+notice. Never have I known from that time to this what it means to be
+comfortably off, free from financial anxiety for more than a month or
+two ahead, yet each time an extra bit of money comes in, I am aware
+of the instinct to be extremely, unnecessarily careful of each penny.
+The less I have, the more reckless I feel about spending it, and _vice
+versa_.
+
+Those six weeks, however, before Muldoon sent for me, proved the most
+painful and unhappy of all my New York days. There was something
+desperate about them; I reached bottom. It was the darkest period
+before the dawn, though I had no certainty that the dawn was breaking.
+My income from the eau de Cologne business was ended, my free-lance
+work struck a bad streak, the artists were still out of town, the
+studios consequently empty; my violin pupil had gone to Boston. It
+was during this August that I slept in Central Park, and passed the
+night--for there was not much sleep about it--beneath the Bronx Park
+trees as well, though I had to walk all the long weary way to get
+there. It was, also, _par excellence_, the height of the dried-apple
+season. With the exception of Old Louis, occasionally Mullins too, I
+had no companionship. Brodie, who by the way received no money from the
+insurance companies, but equally, escaped a worse disaster, I never
+saw again. The post on the _Times_, meanwhile, seemed far away, highly
+problematical too. My comforts were Bronx Park, occasionally open-air
+music, Louis, and my own dreams, speculations and, chief of all, the
+Bhagavad Gita.... Hours I spent in the free libraries. Never, before or
+since, did I read so many books in so short a time. This free reading,
+of course, never stopped for a moment all the years I lived in New
+York, but during these six weeks it reached a maximum.
+
+From the ’vantage ground of easier days I have often looked back and
+wondered why I made no real effort to better myself, to get out of the
+hated city, to go west, for a railway pass was always more or less
+within my power, and other fellows, similarly in difficulties, were
+always changing occupations and localities. It was due, I think, to
+a kind of resignation, though rather a fierce resignation, a kind of
+obstinate spirit of acceptance in me. “Take it all, whatever comes,”
+said this spirit. “Dodge, shirk, avoid nothing. You have deserved
+it. Exhaust it then. Suck the orange dry.” And, as if life were not
+severe and difficult enough, as it was, I would even practise certain
+austerities I invented on my own account. Already I felt myself
+immeasurably old; life seemed nearly ended; external events, anyhow,
+did not _really_ matter....
+
+A rolling-stone sees life, of course, but collects little, if any,
+fruit; though I made no determined efforts to escape my conditions at
+this time, a new adventure ever had attractions for me. Having once
+tasted the essence of a particular experience, I found myself weary
+of it and longing for a new one. This vagabondage in the blood has
+strengthened with the years. A fixed job means prison, a new one sends
+my spirits up. Routine is hell. To take a room, a flat, a job by the
+year, means insupportable detestation of any of them soon afterwards.
+It is a view of life that hardly goes to make good citizenship, but,
+on the other hand, it tends to keep the heart young, to prevent too
+early hardening of the mental arteries, while it certainly militates
+against the dread disease of boredom. _Une vie mouvementée_ has its
+vagabond values. To a certain side of my nature Old Louis’s wiser
+epitaph (“Sorry _I_ spoke; sorry _they_ spoke”) made less appeal than
+some anonymous verses I came across in _Scribner’s Magazine_ with the
+title “A Vagrant’s Epitaph”--verses I knew by heart after a first
+reading:
+
+    Change was his mistress; Chance his counsellor.
+      Love could not hold him; Duty forged no chain.
+    The wide seas and the mountains called him,
+      And grey dawns saw his camp-fires in the rain.
+
+    Sweet hands might tremble!--aye, but he must go.
+      Revel might hold him for a little space;
+    But, turning past the laughter and the lamps,
+      His eyes must ever catch the luring Face.
+
+    Dear eyes might question! Yea, and melt again;
+      Rare lips a-quiver, silently implore;
+    But he must ever turn his furtive head,
+      And hear that other summons at the door.
+
+    Change was his mistress; Chance his counsellor.
+      The dark firs knew his whistle up the trail.
+    Why tarries he to-day?... And yesternight
+      Adventure lit her stars without avail.
+
+The plague of possessions, at any rate, has never troubled me, either
+actually or in desire, while the instinct to reduce life to its
+simplest terms has strengthened. The homeless feeling of living in my
+trunks is happiness, the idea of domesticity appals, and the comforts
+of rich friends wake no echo in me, assuredly no envy. A home, as a
+settled place one owns and expects to live in for years, perhaps for
+ever, is abhorrent to every instinct in me, and when acquaintances
+show off with pride their cottage, their flat, their furniture, their
+“collections,” even their “not a bad little garden, is it?” my heart
+confesses to a vague depression which makes it difficult to sympathise
+and give them my blessing. Life, at its longest, is absurdly brief
+before health and energy begin to slip downhill; it is mapped with
+a cunning network of ruts and grooves from which, once in, it is
+difficult to escape; only the lucky ones are never caught, although the
+“caught” are lucky perhaps in another way--they do not realize it. Yet
+even to-day, when times are bad and the horizon not too clear for some
+time ahead, the old dread of starvation rises in me; I never see apple
+rings in a grocer’s window without getting their taste and feeling them
+rise and swell within me like some troublesome emotion....
+
+To my year and a-half on the _New York Times_ I look back with nothing
+but pleasure; the slogan, “All the news that’s fit to print,” was
+practised; and the men I worked with were a good company of decent
+fellows. Muldoon, a fighting Irishman with a grim fierce manner and
+a warm heart, had a sense of humour and a gift for encouraging his
+reporters that made them love him. C. W. Miller was editor in chief,
+and Carey, manager. Who owned the paper I have forgotten, but it was
+not Colonel Jones who was present at the Union League Club dinner to
+my father, when I made my maiden speech some nine years before. Hours
+of work were from noon until the night assignment was turned in, which
+meant any time from ten o’clock onwards; though, as emergency man, in
+case of something happening late, I often had to stay in the office
+till after one in the morning. Proper food, a new suit, comradeship
+with a better class of men, came, perhaps, just in time for me. I
+remember the pleasure of writing home about my new post. I had a
+dress-suit again. I saved $15 a week.
+
+Reporting for a New York newspaper can never be uneventful, but the
+painful incidents of life make deeper impressions than the pleasant
+ones. To meet the former means usually to call upon one’s reserves,
+and memory hence retains sharper pictures of them corresponding to the
+greater effort. On the _Times_ I was happy.
+
+Two incidents stand out still in the mind, one creditably pleasing to
+vanity; the other, exactly the reverse. The latter, though it annoyed
+Muldoon keenly at the moment, fortunately for me appealed to his sense
+of humour too. He had given me an evening off--that is, all I had to do
+was to write a brief report of a Students’ Concert in which his little
+niece was performing.
+
+“Without straining veracity,” he mentioned with a grin, “ye might
+perhaps say something kind and pretty about her!” He winked, whispering
+her name in my ear. “Have ye got it?” he asked fiercely. I nodded. Was
+I thinking of something else at the moment? Was my mind in the woods
+that lovely evening in spring?
+
+At the concert I picked out the name I remembered and wrote later a
+sturdy eulogistic notice of an atrocious performer, saying the very
+prettiest and nicest things I could think of, then went home to a
+coveted early bed. But Muldoon’s grim smile next day, as I reported at
+his desk for an assignment, gave me warning that something was wrong.
+He did not keep me in suspense. I had selected for my praise, not
+only the crudest performer of the concert--that I already knew--but
+one whom all the other pupils disliked intensely, and whose name they
+particularly hoped would be omitted altogether. The niece I had not
+even mentioned.
+
+The other incident that stands out after all these years was more
+creditable. Dr. Lyman Abbott, Editor of the _Outlook_, which once Henry
+Ward Beecher edited as the _Church Union_, was preaching in Beecher’s
+Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, a series of sermons on “The Theology of
+an Evolutionist,” and Muldoon had persuaded the editor-in-chief that
+a full report on the front page every Monday would be a credit to
+the paper. His proposal was agreed to, apparently without too much
+enthusiasm. The Irishman was determined to justify it. “I want ye to
+take it on,” said Muldoon to me. “Ye can write shorthand. Make it 150.”
+A column was 100. To have a column and a-half on the front page, if I
+could do it well, would be a feather in my cap. But my shorthand was
+poor, I was out of practice too, bad notes are impossible to read for
+transcription, and mistakes would mean angry letters of correction from
+Dr. Abbott, probably.
+
+Monday was my day off. I went to Plymouth Church with a new notebook
+and three soft lead pencils, duly sharpened at both ends. In the brief
+interval before Sunday I practised hard. The church was packed to the
+roof, as I sneaked up the aisle--an unfamiliar place, I felt it!--to a
+little table placed immediately beneath the pulpit. I came in after the
+service, but just in time for the sermon. There were no other reporters
+present. It thrilled me to see Dr. Abbott, who, as a young man of
+twenty-three, had heard Lincoln speak on slavery.
+
+The “Theology of an Evolutionist” was an arduous assignment that
+strained every faculty I possessed, but indifferent shorthand lay at
+the root of the strain. Dr. Abbott’s delivery was sure and steady, more
+rapid than it sounded. He never hesitated for a word, he never coughed,
+or cleared his throat, or even sneezed. There were none of those slight
+pauses which help a poor shorthand-writer to pick up valuable seconds.
+The stream of words poured on relentlessly, and the rate, I should
+judge, was 250 a minute. Verbatim reporting was impossible to me. I
+had to condense as I went along, and to condense without losing sense
+and coherence was not easy. My pencil was always eight or ten words
+behind the words I actually listened to, and the Pitman outlines for
+the words I wrote down had to be recalled, while, at the same time,
+memory had to retain those being actually uttered at the moment. Being
+out of practice I often hesitated over an outline, losing fractions
+of a second each time I did so. These outlines come automatically, of
+course, to a good writer. Then there was the sense, the proportion,
+the relative values of argument and evidence to be considered--matters
+that could not be adjusted in the office afterwards, when there was
+barely time, in any case, to transcribe my notes before going to Press.
+The interest I felt in the subject, moreover, delayed my mind time
+and time again. Occasionally a pencil-point would break as well, and
+turning it round in my hand meant important delay in a process where
+each fraction of a second counts. In the office afterwards, each page
+transcribed was whipped away by a printer’s devil before it could be
+reconsidered and re-read. I invariably went to bed after these evenings
+in church with a splitting headache; but the 150 appeared duly on the
+front page every Monday morning, though whether good or bad I had no
+inkling. My impression, due to Muldoon’s silence, was that my reports
+were hardly a success.
+
+When the last of the long series came my opening report was confused
+and inaccurate owing to an announcement from the pulpit which
+embarrassed me absurdly. Dr. Abbott mentioned briefly that numerous
+requests to print the sermons had reached him, but that he did not
+propose to do so. He referred those interested, instead, to the reports
+in the _Times_ which, he took pleasure in saying, were excellent,
+accurate and as satisfactory as anything he could do himself. Being the
+only reporter present, I felt conspicuous at my little table under the
+pulpit in the immense building. But I remember the pleasure too. It
+was an announcement I could use, was bound to use, indeed, in my own
+report next day. Muldoon would be pleased. On the Tuesday morning, when
+I appeared at his desk, he looked at me with such a fierce expression
+that I thought I was about to be dismissed. “Have ye been to your
+locker?” was all he said. In the locker, however, I found a letter from
+Dr. Abbott to the editor-in-chief, thanking him for the reports of the
+sermons, reports, he wrote, “whose brevity, accuracy, and intelligence
+furnish a synopsis I could not have improved upon myself.” He added,
+too, another important sentence: “by your reporter whom I do not know.”
+It was not favouritism therefore. A brief chit to be handed to the
+cashier was in my locker too. My salary was raised to $40 a week. The
+headaches had proved worth while.
+
+The year and a-half with the _Times_ was a happy period, though long
+before it ended I had begun to feel my customary weariness of the job,
+and a yearning for something new. The newspaper experience, which
+began with the _Evening Sun_, was exhausted for me. The pleasant
+and unpleasant sides of it I knew by heart. Though I took no action,
+my mind began to cast about for other fields. I had saved a little
+cash. My thoughts turned westwards, California, the Pacific Coast, the
+bright sunshine and blue waters of the southern seas even. I was past
+twenty-seven. To be a New York reporter all my life did not appeal. Nor
+was it yet time to go back to England. No trace of literary faculty,
+nor any desire to write, much less a consciousness that I could write
+perhaps, had declared themselves. My summer holidays of two weeks I
+spent again in the backwoods, with a view to some woodland life which
+was to include, this time, Old Louis, too. Obstacles everywhere made me
+feel, however, that it was not to be, for though they were obstacles I
+could have overcome, I took them as an indication that fate had other
+views for my future. When a thing was meant to be, it invariably came
+of itself, I found. My temperament, at any rate, noted and obeyed these
+hints. Old Louis, too, who was to collect his poems in our woodland
+home, to write new ones as well, met all practical suggestions with,
+“Let us consider, Figlio, a little longer first.” He was to write also
+a political history of the United States and “I must collect more
+data before I am ready to go.” The dread of being fixed and settled,
+a captive in a place I could not leave at a moment’s notice, did not
+operate where Nature was concerned. The idea of living in the forests
+had no fear of prison in it.
+
+Events, moreover, which brought big changes into my life had always
+come, I noticed, from outside, rather than as a result of definite
+action on my own part. A chance meeting in a hotel-bar set me
+reporting, a chance meeting with Mullins landed me on the _Times_,
+a chance meeting with Angus Hamilton in Piccadilly Circus led to my
+writing books, a chance meeting with William E. Dodge now suddenly
+heaved me up another rung of life into the position of private
+secretary to a millionaire banker.
+
+To me it has always seemed that some outside power, but an intelligent
+power, pulled a string each time, and up I popped into an entirely new
+set of circumstances. This power pushed a button, and off I shot in
+a direction at right angles to the one I had been moving in before.
+This intelligent supervision I attributed in those days to Karma. In
+the mind, though perhaps with less decision there, it operated too. A
+book, a casual sentence of some friend, an effect of scenery, of music,
+and an express-lift mounts rapidly from the cellar of my being to an
+upper story, giving a new extended view over a far, a new horizon. Much
+that puzzles in the obscurity of the basement outlook becomes clear
+and simple. The individual who announces the sudden change is unaware
+probably how vital a rôle he plays in another’s life. He is but an
+instrument, after all.
+
+When, by chance, I found Mr. Dodge next me in a Broadway cable car, my
+first instinct was to slip out on to the outside platform before he had
+seen me, with, simultaneously, a hope that if he had seen me, he would
+not recognize me. He was a friend of my father’s. We had dined at his
+house on our first visit to New York, and once or twice since then our
+paths had crossed for a moment or two. He was a man of great influence,
+and of tireless philanthropy, a fine, just, high-minded personality. He
+stared hard at me. Before I could move, he had spoken to me by name.
+“How was I getting along?” he inquired kindly, and did I “like New
+York?” What was I “doing at the moment?”
+
+I seized the opportunity and told him of my longing to get out of
+newspaper work. He listened attentively; he examined me, I was
+aware, more than attentively. In the end he asked me to come and
+see him for a personal chat--not in his office, but in his house.
+He named a day and hour. An invitation to his office I should have
+disregarded. It was the kindness of “my house” that won me. But the
+interview was disappointing, rather embarrassing as well to me. He
+asked many personal questions about my life and habits, it was all
+very business-like and chilling. In the end he mentioned vaguely that
+James Speyer, of Speyer Bros., was thinking, he believed, of engaging
+a secretary, and that possibly--he could not say for certain--he might,
+when he next saw him, suggest my name for the post. “Of course,”
+he added, still more cautiously, “you will understand I must make
+inquiries about you at the _Times_.” He promised to let me know if
+anything further came of it. For many weeks I heard no word. Then I
+wrote. The reply asked me to call at his office. He was kindness and
+sympathy personified. “The _Times_ gives you an excellent character,”
+he informed me, “and say they will be very sorry to lose you. I am
+sorry there has been this delay.” He handed me a personal letter to
+James Speyer. He invited me to dinner in his house the following
+evening. Before brushing up my dress-suit for the occasion--my first
+dinner in a decent house for many years--I had seen Mr. Speyer and
+had been engaged at a salary of $2,000 a year for a morning job, from
+8 till 2 o’clock daily, with a general supervision during the day of
+his town and country houses, horses, servants, charities, and numerous
+other interests.
+
+The dinner in Mr. Dodge’s Fifth Avenue palace was a veritable banquet
+to me. Immediately opposite, across the avenue, was the other palace
+occupied by James Speyer. It was all rather bewildering, a new world
+with a vengeance. Years among the outcast of the city had not precisely
+polished my manners, nor could I feel at my ease thus suddenly among
+decent folk again. I remember being absurdly tongue-tied, shy and
+awkward, until M. de Chaillu, who was present, began to talk about
+books, stars, natural history, and other splendid things, and took me
+with him into some unimaginable seventh heaven. I had moments of terror
+too, but the strongest emotion I remember is the deep gratitude I felt
+towards Mr. Dodge. A further tiny detail clings as well, when I was
+invited for a week-end to the Dodge country house on the Hudson, and
+was bathing with the son. He was, like myself, six feet three inches,
+well built, but well covered too, his age perhaps close on forty. As
+we stood on the spring-board waiting for our second dive, he looked
+at me. “You certainly haven’t got a tummy,” he remarked with admiring
+envy. “I wish I were as thin!” And the casual words made a queer
+impression on me. I realized abruptly how little of certain real values
+such people knew ... how little these protected people ever _could_
+know. I still see his admiring, good-humoured, kindly expression, as he
+said the empty words....
+
+James Speyer, brother of Edgar, who later became a baronet and member
+of the Privy Council, was what we called in New York a “white man.”
+I hardly think I proved an ideal private secretary. His patience and
+kindness began at the first trial interview I had with him, when
+my shorthand--he dictated a newspaper financial paragraph full of
+unfamiliar terms--was not at its best, “not _very_ grand,” were the
+actual words he used. As for bookkeeping, I told him frankly that
+“figures were my idea of hell,” whereupon, after a moment’s puzzled
+stare, he laughed and said that keeping accounts need not be among my
+principal duties. A clerk from the office could come up and balance
+the books every month. The phrase about hell, the grave expression
+of my face, he told me long afterwards, touched his sense of humour.
+The huge book in which I kept his personal accounts proved, none the
+less, a daily nightmare, with its nine columns for different kinds of
+expenditure--Charities, Housekeeping, Presents, Loans, Personal, and
+the rest. It locked with a key. I spent hours over it. No total ever
+came out twice alike. Yet Mr. Hopf, the bright-eyed, diminutive German
+from the office, ran his tiny fingers up and down those columns like
+some twinkling insect, chatting with me while he added, and making the
+totals right in a few minutes. Max Hopf, with his slight, twisty body,
+looked like an agile figure of 3 himself. In his spare time, I felt
+sure, he played with figures. He was a juggler in my eyes.
+
+The first week in my new job was a nervous one, though Mr. Speyer’s
+tact and kindly feeling soon put me at my ease. My desk at first was
+in a corner of an unused board room in the bank, where I sat like
+a king answering countless letters on a typewriter. The shorthand
+was discarded; I composed the replies from verbal hints and general
+indications. Clerks treated me with respect; language was decent;
+surroundings were sumptuous; it was some time before I “found” myself.
+The second morning a caller was shown in, somebody to see Mr. Speyer.
+He took a chair beside my desk, stared fixedly at me, opened his mouth
+and called me by my Christian name--it was the Exchange Place banker
+who used to stay in my father’s house and who had last seen me in bed
+at East 19th Street. He congratulated me. I found out, incidentally,
+then, how much my swindling friend of those days had “touched” him for
+on my behalf ... and repaid it.
+
+James Speyer proved a good friend during the two years or so I spent
+with him; he treated me as friend, too, rather than as secretary. My
+office was transferred to his palatial residence in Madison Avenue, a
+new house he had just built for himself, and it was part of my job to
+run this house for him, his country house at Irvington on the Hudson
+as well. These establishments, for a millionaire bachelor, were on
+a simple scale, though the amount of money necessary for one man’s
+comforts staggered me at first. A married French couple were his chief
+servants, the woman as cook, the man as butler; they had been with him
+for a long time; they eyed the new secretary with disfavour; they were
+feathering their nests very comfortably, I soon discovered. My hotel
+experience in Toronto stood me in good stead here. But Mr. Speyer was
+a generous, live-and-let-live type of man who did not want a spirit
+of haggling over trifles in his home. I gradually adjusted matters by
+introducing a reasonable scale. The French couple and I became good
+friends. I enjoyed the work, which included every imaginable duty under
+the sun, had ample time for exercise and reading, and my employer’s
+zest in the University Settlement Movement I found particularly
+interesting.
+
+James Speyer was more than a rich philanthropist: he had a heart.
+The column for Charities and Presents in the book Mr. Hopf juggled
+with once a month was a big one, while that for Personal Expenditure
+was relatively small. When I dined alone with him in the luxurious
+panelled room I realized that life had indeed changed for me. His
+house, too, was filled with beautiful things. He had rare taste. His
+brother Edgar, whose English career had not yet begun, stayed with him
+on his periodical visits from Frankfurt. There was music then, big
+dinner-parties too, to which I was sometimes invited. Social amenities
+were not always quite easy, for the position of a Jew in New York
+Society was delicate, but I never once knew James Speyer’s taste or
+judgment at fault. His intelligence showed itself not only in finance;
+he was intelligent all over; imaginatively thoughtful for all connected
+with him, and his philanthropy sprang from a genuine desire to help the
+unfortunate.
+
+For Jews I have always had a quick feeling of sympathy, of admiration.
+I adore their intelligence, subtlety, keen love of beauty, their
+understanding, their wisdom. In the best of them lies some intuitive
+grip of ancient values, some artistic discernment, that fascinates
+me. I found myself comparing Alfred Louis with James Speyer; their
+reaction, respectively, upon myself showed clearly again the standard
+of what, to me, was important: the one, alone among his unchangeable,
+imperishable “Eternities,” unaware of comfort as of fame, unrecognized,
+unadvertised, lonely and derelict, yet equally as proud of his heritage
+as the other who, in a noisier market sought the less permanent
+splendours of success and worldly honour. One filled his modern palace
+with olden beauty fashioned by many men, the other had stocked his mind
+with a loveliness that money could not buy. One financed a gigantic
+railway enterprise, the other wrote the “Night Song.” All the one said
+blessed and ornamented the mind, all the other said advised it. One
+parted with a poem as though he sold a pound of his own living flesh,
+the other was pleased, yet a trifle nervous, when Muldoon--thinking
+to help me in my job--wrote a panegyric of easy philanthropies in
+the _Brooklyn Eagle_, to which his fierce activities had now been
+transferred from the _Times_. Both taught me much. From one, singing
+amid his dirt in an attic, I learned about a world that, hiding behind
+ephemeral appearances, lies deathlessly serene and unalterably lovely;
+from the other, about a world which far from deathless and certainly
+less serene, flaunts its rewards upon a more obviously remunerative
+scale. Of both poet and financier, at any rate, I kept vivid, grateful,
+pleasant memories.
+
+Between the unsavoury world I had lived in so long and the new one I
+had now entered, the Old Man of Visions, himself at home in all and
+every kind of world, always seemed a bridge. His personality spread
+imaginatively, as it were, over all grades and through all strata of
+humanity. In my slow upward climb he seemed to hand me on, and in
+return for his unfailing guidance it was possible to make his own
+conditions a trifle more comfortable: possible, but not easy, because
+there was no help he needed and did not positively scorn. He watched
+my welfare with unfailing interest, but nothing would induce him to
+buy a new hat, a new frock-coat, an umbrella or a pair of gloves. “Our
+memories, at any given moment,” says Bergson, “form a solid whole,
+a pyramid, so to speak, whose point is inserted precisely into our
+present action.” On that “point” old Louis still drives through my mind
+and wields an influence to-day....
+
+The happier period with James Speyer was, of course, an episode,
+like my other experiences. It was wonderful to draw a good salary
+regularly for pleasant work; to have long holidays in the Adirondacks,
+or moose-shooting in the woods north of the Canadian Pacific Railway;
+wonderful, too, when my employer went to Europe for three months, to
+know myself in charge of such big interests, with a power of attorney
+to sign all cheques. But the usual restlessness was soon on me again,
+desire for a change stirred in my blood. The Spanish-American War, I
+remember, made me think of joining Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, a scheme
+both Speyer and Louis strongly disapproved, and that an attack of
+typhoid fever rendered impossible in any case.
+
+It was during convalescence that it occurred to me I was nearing
+thirty, and that if I meant to live in America all my life, it was time
+to become naturalized. And this thought caused me to reflect on the
+question of going home. My sister, with her children, passed through
+New York about this time, returning from South Australia, where her
+husband was Governor, and it was at dinner in my employer’s house,
+where he had invited them, that the longing to return to England
+suddenly declared itself. To find myself among relatives who called
+me by the unfamiliar childhood name, woke English memories, English
+values, and brought back the English atmosphere once more. My mother
+was still alive.... I remember that dinner well. My sister brought a
+tame little Mexican monkey with her. A man, also, called to ask Mr.
+Speyer for help, and when I went to interview him in the hall, his long
+story included a reference to something Mr. Dodge, he declared, had
+done for him. “Mr. Dodge gave me this,” he said, and promptly scooped
+one eye out of its socket and showed it to me lying in the palm of his
+hand. The glass eye, the monkey, remain associated in my mind still
+with the rather poignant memories of forgotten English days my sister’s
+visit stirred to life, and with my own emotions as I reflected upon the
+idea of going home at last. A chance meeting, again, worked its spell.
+
+I had felt that half a universe separated me from the world in which
+my relatives lived, but after they had gone I began to realize various
+things I had not appreciated before. New York, I saw, could furnish
+no true abiding city for my soul which, though vagabond, yet sought
+something more than its appalling efficiency could ever give. What
+did I miss? I could name it now, but I hardly named it then perhaps.
+I was always hungry there, but with a hunger not of the body merely.
+The hunger, however, was real, often it was devastating. With such a
+lop-sided development as mine had been, my immaturity, no doubt, was
+still glaring. The sense of failure, I know, at any rate, was very
+strong. My relatives had been travelling, and they reflected a colour
+of other lands that called to me. Thought and longing now turned to an
+older world. There were ancient wonders, soft with age, mature with a
+beauty and tenderness only timelessness can give, that caught me on the
+raw with a power no Yosemites, Niagaras, or Grand Canyons could hope to
+imitate. Size has its magic, but size bludgeons the imagination, rather
+than feeds it. My heart turned suddenly across the sea. I loved the big
+woods, but behind, beyond the woods, great Egypt lay ablaze....
+
+I talked things over with the Old Man of Visions; he advised me to go
+home. “See your mother before she dies,” he urged. “I cannot come with
+you, but I may follow you.” He added: “I shall miss you,” then dropped
+into poetry, as he always did when he was moved....
+
+It was these talks with Old Louis about England, the atmosphere of
+England as well, that my sister somehow left behind her, my own
+yearnings now suddenly reawakened too, that decided me. My detestation
+of the city both cleared and deepened. I began to understand more
+vividly, more objectively, the reasons for my feeling alien in it. I
+missed tradition, background, depth. There was a glittering smartness
+everywhere. The great ideal was to be sharper, smarter than your
+neighbour, above all things sharp and smart and furiously rapid,
+above all things--win the game. To be in a furious rush was to be
+intelligent, to do things slowly was to be derided. The noise and
+speed suggested rapids; the deep, quiet pools were in the older lands.
+Display, advertisement, absence of all privacy I had long been aware
+of, naturally; I now realized how little I desired this speed and
+glittering brilliance, this frantic rush to be at all costs sharper,
+quicker, smarter than one’s neighbour, to win the game at any price. I
+realized why my years in the city had brought no friendships, and why
+they had been starved as well as lonely....
+
+Some months passed before I booked a passage, however. I was sorry
+to leave James Speyer. Then one day he spoke to me about--marriage.
+For a year or more I had noticed his friendship with Mrs. Lowry,
+a Christian, well-known figure in the social world; and, being the
+confidant of both parties, I had done all I could to encourage a
+marriage that promised happiness and success. In due course, Bishop
+Potter, of New York, officiated. The ceremony was performed in the
+drawing-room, and just before it began, James Speyer came up to me,
+took the beautiful links out of his cuffs, and handed them to me. “I
+should like you to have these,” he said, “as a little memento.” I have
+them still.
+
+A few months later, just before I was thirty, I found myself in a
+second-class cabin in a Cunarder, with my savings in my pocket. Old
+Louis, who followed me a year or two later, came down to see me off.
+I was glad when the Statue of Liberty lay finally below the sea’s
+horizon, but I shall never forget the thrill of strange emotion I
+experienced when I first saw the blue rim of Ireland rise above the
+horizon a few days later. A shutter dropped behind me. I entered a
+totally new world. Life continued to be _mouvementée_, indeed, one
+adventure succeeding another, and ever with the feeling that a chance
+letter, a chance meeting might open any morning a new chapter of quite
+a novel kind; but my American episodes were finished.
+
+Of mystical, psychic, or so-called “occult” experiences, I have
+purposely said nothing, since these notes have sought to recapture
+surface adventures only.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+  “A Case of Eavesdropping,” 252
+
+  Abbott, Dr. Lyman, sermons on the theology of an Evolutionist, 292
+        _et seq._
+    tribute to _N.Y. Times_ report of his sermons, 294
+
+  Aberdeen, Lord, Governor-General of Canada, 66
+
+  Advertising extraordinary, 105
+
+  Ahlwardt, Rector, anti-semitism of, 229
+    his meeting at Cooper Union Hall, 229 _et seq._
+
+  Alden, Mr., and A. H. Louis, 271
+
+  Amityville, a quasi lunatic asylum at, 226
+
+  Anti-semitic campaign in New York, 229 _et seq._
+
+  Apples, dried, and hot water, as hunger-appeaser, 111
+
+  Arson, frequency of, among Jews, 106
+
+
+  Barnum and Bailey’s Circus, a banquet at, 226
+
+  Beattie, Mr., Boyde and, 206
+
+  Beauchamp, Montague, 23
+
+  Belloc, Hilaire, an article by, based on author’s book, 224
+
+  Bennett, Sterndale, A. H. Louis a pupil of, 269
+
+  Benson, Archbishop, A. H. Louis’s memories of, 268
+
+  Bernhardt, Sarah, interview with, 106
+
+  Bernstein, Mrs., a long-outstanding account with, settled, 213
+    and her third floor back, 80
+    reduces rent--and why, 85
+    removes to another house, 209
+
+  “Bhagavad Gita,” the, world-scripture of, 32
+
+  Bingham, Billy, former proprietor of the Hub, 17, 39 _et seq._
+
+  Black Forest, schooldays in the, 24
+
+  Blackwood, Algernon, a childish recollection of his mother, 259
+    a poem in _The Week_ by, 38
+    an earl’s visit to _Sun_ office, 230
+    an interlude of play-acting, 255 _et seq._
+    and Boyde: a scene, 161 _et seq._
+    and the Hub hotel, 14, 16 _et seq._, 39 _et seq._
+    as reporter in the Tombs, 99 _et seq._
+    as story-teller, 222
+    as violinist, 5, 46, 75, 83, 87, 107, 168, 180
+    assigns his interest in the Hub, 61
+    attends a ball at Government House, 66
+    becomes a partner in an eau de Cologne business, 273, 274
+    beginning of friendship with Alfred H. Louis, 266
+    credited with powers of Black Magic, 77
+    “cribs” from an intoxicated reporter, 108
+    death of his father, 35, 231
+    “detachment” method of, 51, 227, 228
+    disagreement with Dr. Huebner, 156
+    discovers Boyde’s forgery, 132
+    dissolves partnership with Cooper, 14
+    Edinburgh University course of, 14, 51
+    eighteen months on staff of _New York Times_, 288 _et seq._
+    essays magazine writing, 84
+    evangelical upbringing of, 20, 23, 27, 71
+    examined on a charge of arson, 286
+    first experience of morphine, 178
+    five months on Lake Rosseau, 73 _et seq._
+    free-lance journalism, 252, 274
+    friendship with a dying doctor, 58 _et seq._
+    his mother’s letters, 258
+    improvises accompaniment to “Invocation to Opium,” 168
+    interviews a lion, 102
+    interviews in Tombs prison cell before trial, 101
+    learns French, 37
+    literary apprenticeship of, 6
+    loses faith in mankind, and a regretted act, 210 _et seq._
+    maiden speech of, 5, 291
+    off to the goldfields, 235 _et seq._
+    on staff of _Evening Sun_, 91
+    parents of, 17, 18, 21 _et seq._
+    partner in dairy concern, 10 _et seq._
+    pawnbroking experiences, 88, 110, 120, 252
+    plays in Drinkwater’s “Oliver Cromwell,” 256
+    poses in studios, 44, 158
+    reads Patanjali’s “Yoga Aphorisms,” 28 _et seq._
+    receives a visit from Pauline, 152
+    reports a raid on a quasi lunatic asylum, 226
+    reports Dr. Lyman Abbott’s sermons, 292 _et seq._
+    resumes duties on _Evening Sun_, 209
+    returns from Muskoka lakes, 78
+    returns to England, 304
+    secretary to James Speyer, 297 _et seq._
+    tackles Boyde _re_ a forged cheque, 138 _et seq._
+    talks with Boyde in his cell at Tombs prison, 202
+    teaches French, 5, 7
+    translates French stories, 102, 124, 128, 129
+    unhappy days in New York, 288
+    visited by a banker: further disclosures concerning Boyde, 148
+    visits of an eccentric German doctor, 116, 120, 125
+    visits winter quarters of Barnum and Bailey’s circus, 226
+    warned against Boyde, 112, 135, 136, 147
+    warns a pastor’s daughter against Boyde, 139
+    “Whitey’s” useful hints to, 96, 97, 98
+    why an opening in C.P.R. did not eventuate, 66 _et seq._
+    works by, 53, 78, 102, 123, 163, 182, 223, 224, 252
+
+  Blackwood, Sir Arthur (father), a disregarded counsel of perfection
+        of, 76
+    and the Hub venture, 40
+    death of, 35, 231
+    farewell to author, 40
+    fêted in New York, 5
+    marriage of, 21
+    religious and temperance views of, 17, 18, 21 _et seq._, 30
+
+  Bond, Bligh, his “Gate of Remembrance,” 228
+
+  Bookkeeping, author’s frank opinion of, 298
+
+  Borden, Lizzie, interview with, 100
+
+  Bostock’s Circus, a lion escapes from: reporting the episode, 102 _et
+        seq._
+
+  Boyde, Arthur Glyn, an echo of, 299
+    arrest of, 198
+    author’s attachment to, 108, 111
+    committed for trial to General Sessions, 201
+    communicates with Sir A. Blackwood, 202
+    confessions of, 139, 144, 206
+    disguises himself, 160
+    duplicity of, 132, 138 _et seq._, 149, 160, 206, 207, 211
+    his varied experience of New York, 86 _et seq._
+    hunt for, 182 _et seq._
+    last sight of, 207
+    letters to author from Tombs prison, 203 _et seq._
+    meeting with, 86
+    sentenced, 203
+    telegraphs news of his marriage, 151
+    uneasy suspicions regarding, 119, 122, 124, 129, 131, 134
+    warrant for arrest of, 163
+
+  Brodie, as salesman, 275
+    heavy insurances of--and a fire, 278 _et seq._
+    how he obtained recipe for eau de Cologne, 273
+    introduction to, 272
+    social aspirations of, 273
+
+  Bronx Park, Sundays in, 216 _et seq._
+
+  Brooklyn Bridge, reflections on, 81
+
+  Buddhism, a German doctor’s opinion of, 170
+    author’s interest in, 8, 51, 54
+    Dr. Withrow and, 8
+
+
+  Calder, introduces himself, 210
+    uninvited, sleeps in author’s bed, 211
+
+  Campbell, Sir Alexander, Governor of Ontario, 66
+
+  Canada, social customs unwittingly broken by author in, 66
+
+  Canadian Pacific Railway, how an opening in, was lost, 65 _et seq._
+
+  Canoeing on Canadian lakes, 74
+
+  Carey, Mr., manager of _New York Times_, 291
+
+  Clay, Cecil, introduction to, 90
+
+  Clothes, interchangeable, 110
+
+  Conversion, reflections on, 23 _et seq._
+
+  Cooper, Alfred, partner in Islington Jersey Dairy, 10 _et seq._
+
+  Cooper, Mr., news-editor of _Evening Sun_, 95
+
+  Cox, Cleveland, posing for, 158
+
+  Crayford, home life at, 33, 40
+
+  Croker, Boss, head of Tammany, 232
+
+
+  Dana, Charles A., editor of _Evening Sun_, 93
+
+  Davies, Acton, 211
+    and the Boyde story, 201
+
+  Davis, Richard Harding, a play by, 86
+    an interview with, 83
+    Boyde and, 206
+
+  Davis, R. H., witnesses capture of an escaped lion, 103
+
+  de Chaillu, M., 297
+
+  De Quincey’s “Confessions,” Dr. Huebner and, 125, 168
+
+  Dixon, his tight-rope walk across the Niagara, 130
+
+  Dodge, William E., a chance meeting with, 295 _et seq._
+
+  Drug stores and their attraction, 97
+
+  Drummond, Professor, Sunday lectures at Edinburgh of, 32
+
+  Dufferin, Lord, a photograph of, in Hub hotel, 43
+
+  Duluth, and the gold rush, 240
+
+
+  “Earth’s Earliest Ages,” Pember’s, 30
+
+  Easter Day in the Black Forest, 25
+
+  Eau de Cologne business, author and, 272 _et seq._
+
+  Edinburgh University, author at, 14, 51
+
+  “Education of Uncle Paul, The,” 123
+
+  Elephants, their fear of rats, 226
+
+  Eliot, George, and her Sunday receptions, 269
+
+  _Etruria_, launching of, 5
+
+  _Evening Sun_, slogan of, 91
+
+  _Evening World_, the, a scoop in, 98
+
+  Evolutionist theology, sermons on, 292 _et seq._
+
+
+  Ffoulkes, Maude, author’s indebtedness to, 224
+
+  “Final Word, The” (poem), 267
+
+  Free-lunch counters, 87, 90
+
+  Freytag, German reporter, 202, 229
+    his advice to author, 100
+
+  Frohman, Daniel, and Angus Hamilton, 222
+
+
+  Gallup, a half-breed guide, 240
+    camp-fire stories of, 242
+
+  Galt, Sir Thomas, 6
+
+  Germans, talkative, 251
+
+  Gibson, Charles Dana, author poses for, 158
+
+  Gilmour, jealousy of--and a realistic performance, 256-7
+
+  Gilmour, organizes a theatrical touring company, 112, 116
+
+  Gladstone, Right Hon. W. E., A. H. Louis and, 268
+
+  Goff, John, replaces Judge Smythe as Recorder, 232
+
+  Gold, a quest in search of, 235 _et seq._
+
+  Gosse, Edmund, “Father and Son” of, 22
+
+  Grant, and author, 114
+    hears and witnesses Boyde’s confession, 140 _et seq._
+    warns author against Boyde, 135, 136, 147
+
+
+  Hamilton, a clergyman publicly thrashed in, 233
+
+  Hamilton, Angus, 221, 222
+    and author’s stories, 223, 224
+    suicide of, 224
+
+  Harcourt, Sir William, president of Cambridge Union, 268
+
+  _Harper’s Magazine_, publication of A. H. Louis’s poems in, 267
+
+  Harris, Carlyle, electrocuted, 101
+
+  Haschisch, an experiment with, 182
+
+  Haultain, Arnold, private secretary to Goldwin Smith, 37
+
+  Henry, O., his conception of New York, 109
+
+  “Hereafter,” poem by A. H. Louis, 270
+
+  Hopf, Max, 298, 300
+
+  Hub hotel, advice to new proprietors of, 41
+    early customers at, 45
+    in hands of a receiver, 61
+    its former proprietor, 17, 39 _et seq._
+    opening of, 43
+    purchase of, 41, 42
+
+  Huebner, Dr. Otto, a disappointment for, 149
+    administers morphine to author, 178, 181
+    and Boyde, 122, 127, 155, 166
+    called in by Boyde, 116 _et seq._
+    confesses himself a morphine taker, 171
+    death of, 213
+    friendship with, 164 _et seq._
+    his wife and daughter, 164, 165
+    joins in search for Boyde, 183 _et seq._
+    life-story of, 174
+    urges author to become a doctor, 127
+    varying moods of, 125, 153, 155, 165, 170, 173, 185
+
+  Hypnotism, experiments in, 51, 52
+
+
+  Irving, Henry, interview with, 106
+
+  Irvington, Mr. Speyer’s country house at, 299
+
+  Islington Jersey Dairy, partnership in, 10
+
+
+  James, General, a dinner to Sir A. Blackwood, 5, 291
+
+  James, William, “Varieties of Religious Experience” by, 22, 217-18
+
+  Jews, a campaign against, 229
+    author’s admiration of, 300
+
+  “Jimbo,” author’s, 223
+
+  “John Silence,” 53, 78, 223
+    effects of haschisch described in, 182
+    publication of, 224
+
+  Jones, Colonel, 291
+
+  Joseph Lake, Northern Ontario, 74
+
+  “Julius Le Vallon,” 53
+
+
+  Kay, John, and the “Hub” venture, 16 _et seq._, 39 _et seq._, 46
+    effect of morphine on, 179
+    his immunity to “night-attacks,” 109
+    histrionic bent of, 46, 75, 90, 111, 112, 255
+    in search of Boyde, 189
+    poses to Smedley, 112
+    served with a blue writ, 64
+
+  Kingsley, Charles, baptizes A. H. Louis, 266
+
+
+  Laffan, Mr., of _New York Sun_, 91
+
+  Lake Rosseau, departure for, 63
+    five months on, 74 _et seq._
+
+  Lawler, Detective, 163, 186, 189, 200, 201
+
+  Lewes, George Henry, A. H. Louis’s talks with, 269
+
+  Lexow, Senator, and a Tammany investigation, 232
+
+  Liebesmahl, the, of Moravian Brotherhood, 25
+
+  Lightfoot, Bishop, A. H. Louis and, 268.
+
+  Lion, an escaped, a “strong man” and, 104
+
+  “Listener, The,” author’s, 163, 266
+
+  Louis, Alfred H., advice _re_ eau de Cologne business, 277
+    and politics, 268, 269
+    arrives, and a description of, 213
+    as editor, 269
+    breakdown of, 269
+    buried in a Hebrew cemetery, 266
+    Cambridge days of, 268
+    claims to be original of Daniel Deronda, 209
+    condemns Gladstone, 268
+    “Hereafter” of, 270
+    his farewell to author, 304
+    legal attainments of, 269
+    meeting with, 262
+    “Night Song” of, 264, 265, 271
+    self-chosen epitaph of, 267, 290
+    “The Final Word” of, 267
+    unfailing guidance of, 301
+
+  Lowry, Mrs., marries James Speyer, 304
+
+  Lunatic asylum (a quasi), raid on, 226 _et seq._
+
+
+  Manchester, Duchess of, marries Sir A. Blackwood, 21
+
+  Manning, Cardinal, A. H. Louis and, 269
+
+  Mantell, Bob (Shakespearean actor), 85
+    introduces author to Cecil Clay, 90
+
+  “Max Hensig, Bacteriologist and Murderer,” author’s story of, 102,
+        163
+
+  McCloy, Mr. (managing editor of _Evening Sun_), 91
+    and author, 221
+    interview with, 92
+    recollections of, 94, 95
+
+  McKay, owner of olive-oil warehouse, 262, 263
+
+  _Messe noire_, a, and its performers, 215
+
+  _Methodist Magazine_, author on staff of, 6 _et seq._
+
+  Miller, C. W., editor in chief of _New York Times_, 291
+
+  Mitchell, Fire-Marshal, examines author, 286
+    prosecutes Brodie, 282
+
+  Moody and Sankey visit England, 23
+
+  _Morning Post_, an article on the genus “ghost story” in: its writer,
+        224
+
+  Morphine, and its effects, 172 _et seq._, 178, 179
+
+  Morris (a reputed “stiff” and cut-throat), 248
+    an instance of his kindness, 249
+
+  Mosquitoes of Rainy Lake City, 247
+
+  Muldoon, Mr., and author’s report of a students’ concert, 292
+    City editor of _New York Times_, 285, 291
+    joins staff of _Brooklyn Eagle_, 300
+
+  Mullins, editorial writer on _Evening Sun_, 284
+
+  Muskoka Lakes of Northern Ontario, 73, 74
+
+  Mystical minor poet, a, 55 _et seq._
+
+
+  Nash, Eveleigh, publishes stories by author, 224
+
+  Nature, spell of, and its influence on author, 32, 35, 49 _et seq._,
+        169, 218, 233, 236, 238, 240
+
+  New York, a lively anti-semitic meeting at, 229
+    horrors of, 108, 109
+    miseries of summer heat in, 231
+
+  _New York Times_, author on staff of, 288
+    slogan of, 91, 291
+
+  Newspaper reporting, reminiscences of, 225 _et seq._
+
+  “Night Song,” poem by A. H. Louis, 264, 265, 271
+
+  Novelists, instances of their creative power, 77
+
+
+  Olive-oil, its value as food, 262
+
+  Opium, the Invocation to, 168, 169, 180
+
+  Otto, waiter in Krisch’s, 260
+
+
+  Palmer, Lynwood, and Boyde, 159, 206, 208
+    attends trial of Boyde, 203
+    kindness to author, 158
+
+  Patanjali, “Aphorisms” of, 28 _et seq._, 255
+
+  Pawnbroking, experiences of, 88 _et seq._, 110, 120, 252
+
+  Paxton, 233, 236 _et seq._, 246, 249
+
+  Pember, G. H., evangelical writer of prophetic school, 30, 31
+
+  Police, New York, the Tammany system and, 107, 183
+
+  Potter, Bishop, officiates at wedding of James Speyer, 304
+
+  Prison as “a proper vestibule to a city of Damned Souls,” 109
+
+
+  Rainy Lake City, arrival at, 246
+    desolateness of, 248
+
+  Rainy River district, gold discovered in, 232
+
+  Reporter, a drunken, 108
+
+  Reporting for New York papers, experiences acquired from, 92
+
+  Revivalist movement, author and, 23
+
+  Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, 301
+
+  Roper, and Boyde, 197, 198, 199
+
+  Ryan, a Tammany magistrate, 201
+
+
+  Schmidt, “Von,” personality of, 276
+    warns author against Brodie, 275, 277 _et seq._
+
+  Scott, Mr., revivalist, 28
+
+  _Scribner’s Magazine_, “A Vagrant’s Epitaph” in, 290
+
+  Selton, Morton, and his understudy, 86
+
+  Sevenoaks, a reminiscence of schooldays at, 253
+
+  Shakespearean rehearsals on Lake Rosseau, 75, 77
+
+  Smedley, Mr., posing for, 112, 158
+
+  Smith, Goldwin, and his private secretary, 37
+
+  Smith, Stanley, 23
+
+  Smythe, Judge, replaced by John Goff as Recorder, 232
+    sentences Boyde, 203
+
+  “Snipe” hunting, definition of, 214, 215
+
+  Social reporting, experiences of, 225
+
+  Sothern advances money to Boyde, 206
+
+  Spanish-American War, the, 301
+
+  _Spectator_ reviews author’s published stories, 224
+
+  Spencer, Herbert, A. H. Louis’s talks with, 269
+
+  Speyer, James, a letter of introduction to, 297
+    a present to author, 304
+    and the University Settlement movement, 299
+    as friend and employer, 299
+    as philanthropist, 298, 299
+    author becomes secretary to, 297 _et seq._
+    marriage of, 304
+    tact and kindly feeling of, 298
+
+  Speyer, Sir Edgar, 298, 300
+
+  Spiritualism, a doctor’s exposition of, 52, 53
+
+  Spiritualist, a cement-maker as, 55
+
+  Staten Island, a cricket match on, 85, 86
+
+  Stephen, Sir George, 65
+
+  Stevenson, R. L., a dictum of, 78
+
+  Stewart, Sir Donald, 65
+
+  Storey, Mr., editor of _Harper’s Young People_, accepts an article by
+        author, 84
+
+  Strathcona, Lord, 5
+
+  Studd brothers (cricketers), 23
+
+  Sullivan, Tim, and his rival saloon, 19
+
+
+  Tammany Hall, a Committee of Investigation into methods of, 232
+
+  Tammany system, the, 97, 107
+    the “Tenderloin” region and, 183
+
+  Temperance and General Life Assurance Company, author’s post in, 6, 18
+
+  Terry, Ellen, interview with, 106
+
+  Theosophical Society meetings, attendance at, 107
+
+  Theosophy, author’s early interest in, 32
+
+  “The Interpreters,” by A. E., 218, 219
+
+  “The Listener,” 163, 266
+
+  Tombs Police Court and Prison, the, 99
+    trial of Boyde at, 200
+
+  Toronto, author as hotel proprietor in, 39
+
+
+  Understanding, a spiritual wisdom, 270, 271
+
+  Union League Club dinner, author’s maiden speech at, 5, 291
+
+  University Settlement movement, the, James Speyer and, 299
+
+
+  “Vagrant’s Epitaph, A,” 290
+
+  van Horne, Sir William, 5, 65
+
+  Vermin-infested bedroom, an uncomfortable night in a, 85
+
+
+  Wallace, Professor, of Edinburgh University, 14
+
+  Whitey, a parting present of a bottle of rye whisky, 234, 237
+    hints to author, 96-98
+
+  Withrow, Dr., editor of _Methodist_ Magazine, 6 _et seq._
+
+
+  Yonkers theatre, a realistic scene in a, 257
+
+
+  Zogbaum, illustrator, 158
+
+
+
+
+                               PRINTED BY
+              CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, LA BELLE SAUVAGE
+                             LONDON, E.C.4.
+                               F. 20.1023
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber’s Notes
+
+  • Italics represented by _underscores_.
+
+  • Small caps converted to ALL CAPS.
+
+  • Footnotes renumbered consecutively and moved to below the paragraph
+    in which they were referenced.
+
+  • Obvious typographic errors silently corrected.
+
+  • Variation in hyphenation kept as in the original.
+
+  • P. 196: changed “an awful looked” to “an awful look” to make the
+    sentence grammatical.
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76991 ***
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+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76991 ***</div>
+<div class='x-ebookmaker-drop'>
+<figure class="figcenter illowp47" id="cover" style="max-width: 102.0em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/cover.jpg" alt="Book Cover">
+</figure>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="section front">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_i">[i]</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<h1>
+EPISODES BEFORE THIRTY
+</h1>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="section front">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_ii"></a><a id="Page_iii"></a>[iii]</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center mt2 ltsp2 fs250">EPISODES BEFORE</p>
+<p class='center ltsp2 fs250'>THIRTY</p>
+
+<p class="center mt4">By</p>
+<p class='center fs150 mtq xwdsp'>ALGERNON BLACKWOOD</p>
+
+<p class="center mt8 fs120 xwdsp">CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD</p>
+<p class='center xwdsp'>London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne</p>
+<p class='center'>1923</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_iv">[iv]</span></p>
+
+<p class='center fs70 mt8 mb8'><i>Printed in Great Britain</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_v">[v]</span></p>
+
+<p class='center mt8 blackletter'>To</p>
+<p class='center mth mb8'>ALFRED H. LOUIS</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class='toc'>
+<p class='no-indent'>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XX">CHAPTER XX</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">CHAPTER XXI</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">CHAPTER XXII</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">CHAPTER XXIII</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">CHAPTER XXIV</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">CHAPTER XXV</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">CHAPTER XXVI</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">CHAPTER XXVII</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII">CHAPTER XXVIII</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX">CHAPTER XXIX</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXX">CHAPTER XXX</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXI">CHAPTER XXXI</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXII">CHAPTER XXXII</a><br>
+<a href="#INDEX">INDEX</a><br>
+<a href="#Transcribers_Notes">Transcriber’s Notes</a>
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_vi"></a><a id="Page_1"></a>[1]</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p class='center fs200 mt4 mb2'>
+    EPISODES BEFORE THIRTY
+</p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_I">
+    CHAPTER I
+  </h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'><span class='allcaps'>A strong</span> emotion, especially if experienced for the
+first time, leaves a vivid memory of the scene
+where it occurred. I see a room in a New York
+boarding-house. I can touch the wooden bed, the two
+gas-brackets beside the looking-glass, the white door of
+the cupboard, the iron “register” in the wall that let
+in heated air, the broken sofa. The view from the dirty
+windows towards the high roof of Tony Pastor’s music
+hall in 14th Street, with a side glimpse of the trees in
+Irving Place, show clearly. The rattle of the Broadway
+cable cars, the clang of their bells, still come to me through
+that stifling August air, when the shade thermometer
+stood at a hundred, with humidity somewhere about 95
+per cent. Thoughts of the sea and mountains, vainly
+indulged within those walls, are easily remembered too.</p>
+
+<p>The room I am writing in now seems less actual than
+the one in the East 19th Street boarding-house, kept by
+Mrs. Bernstein, a German Jewess, whose husband conducted
+his own orchestra in a Second Avenue restaurant.
+Though thirty years ago, it is more clearly defined for
+me than Lady X’s dining-room where I dined last night,
+and where the lady I took in said graciously, “I simply
+loved your <i>Blue Lagoon</i>,” which, naturally, I was able
+to praise unreservedly, while leaving her with the illusion
+as long as possible that she had made friends with
+its gifted author. And this detailed clarity is due, I am
+sure, to the fact that in that New York room I had my
+first experience of three new emotions, each of which,
+separately, held horror.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[2]</span></p>
+
+<p>Horror draws its lines deep; its pictures stand out
+in high relief. In my case the horrors were, perhaps
+minor ones, but at the age of twenty-one—an exceptionally
+inexperienced twenty-one—they seemed important;
+and the fact that they were combined entitles them to
+be considered major. They were three in number: the
+horror of loathsome vermin running over my body night
+after night, the horror of hunger, and the horror of living
+at close quarters with a criminal and degraded mind.</p>
+
+<p>All, as I said, came together; all were entirely new
+sensations. “Close quarters,” too, is used advisedly, for
+not only was the room a small one, the cheapest in a cheap
+house, but it was occupied by three of us—three Englishmen
+“on their uppers,” three big Englishmen into the
+bargain, two of us standing 6 feet 2 inches, the other
+6 feet 3 inches in his socks. We shared that room for many
+weeks, taking our turn at sleeping two in the bed, and
+one on the mattress we pulled off and kept hidden in the
+cupboard during the day. Mrs. Bernstein, denying her
+blood, won our affection by charging eight dollars only,
+the price for two, morning coffee included; and Mrs.
+Bernstein’s face, fat, kindly, perspiring, dirty, is more
+vivid in my memory after all these years than that of
+the lady last night who so generously mistook me for
+De Vere Stacpoole. Her voice even rings clear, with its
+Jewish lisp, its guttural German, its nasal twang
+thrown in:</p>
+
+<p>“I ask my hospand. Berhaps he let you stay anozzer
+week.”</p>
+
+<p>What the husband said we never knew. He was
+usually too drunk to say anything coherent. What
+mattered to us was that we were not turned out at the
+moment, and that, in the long run, the good-hearted
+woman received her money.</p>
+
+<p>Certain objects in that room retain exceptional clarity
+in my mind. If thought-pictures could be photographed,
+a perfect print of the bed and gas-bracket could be printed
+from my memory. With the former especially I associate
+the vermin, the hunger, and the rather tawdry criminal.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[3]</span>
+I could describe that bed down to the smallest detail;
+I could draw it accurately, even to the carving; were I
+a carpenter I could make it. All that I suffered in it,
+of physical and mental anguish, the vain longings and
+despair, the hopes and fears, the loneliness, the feverish
+dreams—the entire dread panorama still hangs in the air
+between its stained brown foot and the broken sofa, as
+though of yesterday. I can see a tall man pass the end
+of it, one eye on me and another on the door, opening
+a razor slowly as he went. I see the blue eyes narrowing
+in his white face, the treachery of the coward twisting
+his lip into a smirk. I can see him sleeping like a child
+beside me, touching me. Moving stealthily about the
+room in the darkness too, as, thinking me asleep, he stole on
+bare feet to recover the confession of forgery I had forced
+him to sign, I can still see his dim outline, and even hear
+his tread—a petty scoundrel unwittingly on his way to gaol.</p>
+
+<p>The bed, thus, is vividly present in my memory. By
+contrast with it, not quite so sharp, perhaps, and a
+pleasanter feeling associated with it, another New York
+sleeping-place rises in the mind—a bench in Central Park.
+Here, however, the humour of adventure softens the picture,
+though at the time it did not soften the transverse
+iron arms which made it impossible to stretch out in
+comfort. Nor is there any touch of horror in it. Precise
+and detailed recollection fades. The hoboes who shared
+it with me were companions, even comrades of a sort,
+and one did not feel them necessarily criminal or degraded.
+They were “on their uppers” much as I was, and far
+quicker than I was at the trick of suddenly sitting
+upright when the night policeman’s tread was coming our
+way. What thoughts they indulged in I had no means
+of knowing, but I credited them with flitting backwards
+to a clean room somewhere and a soft white bed, possibly
+to that ridiculous figure of immense authority, a nurse,
+just as my own flashed back to a night nursery in the
+Manor House, Crayford, Kent. That the seats I favoured
+were near the Swings lent possibly another touch to the
+childhood’s picture.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[4]</span></p>
+
+<p>The memory, anyhow, is a sweeter one than that of
+the bed in East 19th Street, if less sharply defined. The
+cool fresh air, the dew, the stars, the smell of earth and
+leaves, were all of them clean, and no price asked at
+dawn. Yet the two—the bed and the bench—are somehow
+linked together in my mind, the one invariably
+calling up the other; and, thanks to them probably,
+no bed bothers me now, lumpy or sloping though it be,
+in train, hotel, or lodging. I have slept in strange places
+since—high in the Caucasus, on the shores of the Black
+Sea, on the Egyptian desert, on the banks of the Danube,
+in the Black Forest and Hungary—but each time
+the effort to get comfortable brought back the bed
+and the bench, and sleep soon followed to smother
+both.</p>
+
+<p>The gas-brackets, similarly, rise vividly before my
+eyes, associated with the pain, the weariness of hunger;
+not of true starvation, but of weeks and months of under-nourishment,
+caused by one meal a day. The relation
+between hunger and gas-brackets may seem remote. It
+was on the latter, however, that we learned to fix the
+metal top which made the flame spread in a circle round
+a light tin cooking-pot. We boiled water for milkless tea
+in this way, cooked porridge, and when porridge was not
+to be had we heated water with dried apples in it. I
+remember the day we discovered that it was more economical
+to eat the strips of dried apple first, then drink
+the hot water that made them swell so comfortingly
+inside us. They proved more filling that way, the false
+repletion lasted longer, the sense of bulk was more satisfying,
+the gnawing ceased, and the results, if temporary,
+at least made it possible to fall asleep.</p>
+
+<p>There are other details of that sordid New York room
+which still retain their first disagreeable vividness, each
+with the ghost—a very sturdy ghost—of the emotion
+that printed it indelibly in the mind. These details are
+best mentioned, however, in their proper place and
+sequence. It should first be told how we came to be
+there.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[5]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_II">
+    CHAPTER II
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'><span class='allcaps'>We</span> arrived in New York towards the end of October,
+coming straight from five months in the Canadian
+backwoods. Before that, to mention myself first,
+there had been a year in Canada, where, even before the
+age of twenty-one, I had made a living of sorts by teaching
+the violin, French, German, and shorthand. Showing no
+special talent for any profession in particular, and having
+no tastes that could be held to indicate a definite career,
+I had come to Canada three years before for a few weeks’
+trip. My father, in an official capacity, had passes from
+Liverpool to Vancouver, and we crossed in the <i>Etruria</i>,
+a Cunarder which my mother had launched. He was
+much fêted and banqueted, and the C.P.R. bigwigs, from
+Lord Strathcona and Sir William van Horne downwards,
+showed him all attention, placing an observation car at
+his disposal. General James, the New York postmaster,
+gave a dinner in his honour at the Union League Club,
+where I made my first and last speech—consisting of
+nine words of horrified thanks for coupling “a chip of
+the old block,” as the proposer called me, with the “Chief
+of the British Postal Service.”</p>
+
+<p>A ludicrous wound to vanity helps it to stick in the
+mind—my father wore no braces, and I copied him, but—well,
+in his case no belt was necessary, whereas I was
+slim. It suddenly dawned on me, as I spluttered my
+brief words, that a line of white was showing between
+my waistcoat and the top of my trousers. The close of
+my speech was hurried, my bow was cautious; I was
+extremely relieved to sit down again.</p>
+
+<p>In the lovely autumn weather, we saw Canada at its
+best, and the trip decided my future. My father welcomed
+it as a happy solution. I came, therefore, to
+Toronto at the age of twenty, with £100 a year allowance,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[6]</span>
+and a small capital to follow when I should have found
+some safe and profitable chance of starting life. With
+me came—in the order of their importance—a fiddle, the
+“Bhagavad Gita,” Shelley, “Sartor Resartus,” Berkeley’s
+“Dialogues,” Patanjali’s “Yoga Aphorisms,” de
+Quincey’s “Confessions,” and—a unique ignorance of
+life.... I served my first literary apprenticeship on
+the <i>Methodist Magazine</i>, a monthly periodical published
+in Toronto, and before that licked stamps in the back
+office of the Temperance and General Life Assurance
+Company, at nothing a week, but with the idea of learning
+the business, so that later I might bring out some English
+insurance company to Canada.</p>
+
+<p>The first taught me that, just as I had no ambition
+to write, so, likewise, I possessed no talent; the second
+merely made articulate the dislike I felt for anything to
+do with Business. It was the three months in the insurance
+office that caused me to accept eagerly the job on
+the <i>Methodist Magazine</i> at four dollars a week, and the
+reaction helped to make the work congenial if not
+stimulating.</p>
+
+<p>The allowance of ten dollars a week was difficult to
+live on, and I had been looking everywhere for employment.
+It was through a daughter of Sir Thomas Galt,
+a friend of my father’s on our previous trip to Canada,
+that I obtained this job—sixteen shillings a week, hours
+ten to four.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Withrow, editor of the leading Methodist magazine,
+and of various Christian Endeavour periodicals for
+children and young people, was a pleasant old gentleman,
+who went about in a frock coat and slippers, had
+a real sense of humour and a nice wife and daughter.
+His editorial den was in his own little house, and my
+duties were to write an article every month for the magazine,
+which was illustrated, and also to write a few
+descriptive lines of letterpress to accompany the full-page
+illustrations for the numerous Christian Endeavour and
+Methodist periodicals for young people and children. He
+taught me the typewriter, and with my shorthand I took
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[7]</span>
+most of his letters at dictation, and certainly earned my
+money. My monthly articles in the magazine were on
+such subjects as Christmas in England, Life at a Moravian
+School, The Black Forest, Travel in the Alps—anything
+that my limited experience enabled me to
+describe at first-hand, and on the whole the old gentleman
+seemed satisfied. The description of the children’s
+pictures, however, always made him chuckle, though he
+never said why, and I wrote dozens of these a day, describing
+the picture of “King Canute and the Sea,” “Elijah
+in a Chariot of Fire,” “A Child Blowing Bubbles,” “The
+Wood-boring Beetle,” etc. etc.</p>
+
+<p>He would dictate some of his articles of travel to me,
+and I would take them down in shorthand, and he often
+made such grotesque mistakes in facts that I quietly
+corrected these as I wrote, and when I read out the sentence
+to him he would notice the alteration and look at
+me over his spectacles and say:</p>
+
+<p>“Thank you. Yes, I was wrong there. The fact is,
+I have so many articles to write that I compose two at
+a time in my mind, and they get muddled up. An editor
+should always be accurate, and Methodist readers are
+cranky and hard to please.” He was a Methodist parson
+himself, which did not prevent him saying exactly what
+he thought. He lunched off dates and bananas, which
+he kept in a bag beside his desk, and that same desk
+was in such disorder that he never could find what he
+wanted, and I was not surprised to learn that, before I
+came, the printers got the wrong papers, and that many
+of the children’s pictures got descriptions underneath that
+did not belong to them—for instance, a boy blowing
+a bubble was published over a few lines describing the
+habits of snakes, “as seen in our illustration,” and so
+forth.</p>
+
+<p>I got on so well with the little Methodist that he
+wanted to come to the evening French classes I was
+giving at fifty cents a lesson to some of the clerks in the
+insurance office, and to bring his daughter with him.
+He said a little more knowledge of French would be very
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[8]</span>
+good for him when he took his conducted tours of Canadian
+Methodists to Switzerland; but I did not rise to this, and
+persuaded him to wait till I could get a more select class
+to meet, perhaps, at his own house, where a girl could
+more suitably attend. For, to tell the truth, some of
+my pupils had a habit of coming slightly drunk—or, as
+they called it, “with a jag on.” He, however, would not
+wait, so I lost two good pupils!... Dr. Withrow, patient
+little man of kindly disposition! His faded black frock-coat,
+his spectacles high on his puckered forehead, his
+carpet slippers, his tobacco-stained white beard, his sincere
+beliefs and his striped trousers of a pattern I have
+always since labelled mentally as “Methodist trousers”—it
+is a gentle little memory tucked away among unkinder
+ones, and I still hear him giving me my first and only
+lesson how to write. His paraphrase of “fatal facility”
+stays with me: “Fluency means dullness, unless the
+mind is packed with thought.” It stays with me because
+the conversation led to my asking if I might write an
+article for the monthly on the subject of Buddhism. Behind
+it lay an ever keener desire to write something on
+Hegel, whose philosophy I felt certain was based on some
+personal experience of genuine mystical kind.</p>
+
+<p>“From what point of view?” he asked, his forehead
+puckering with amazement.</p>
+
+<p>“That of belief,” I said, my mind bursting with an
+eager desire to impart information, if not also to convert.</p>
+
+<p>He passed his hand across his forehead, knocking the
+spectacles off. Then, catching them with a fumbling
+motion which betrayed his perturbation, he inquired:
+“But, of course, Mr. Blackwood, not your <i>own</i>?”</p>
+
+<p>The voice, the eyes, the whole attitude of the body
+made me realize he was prepared to be shocked, if not
+already shocked.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” I replied truthfully, “my own. I’ve been a
+Buddhist for a long time.”</p>
+
+<p>He stared for some time at me without a word, then
+smiled a kindly, indulgent, rather sceptical smile. “It
+would be hardly suitable,” he mentioned, as I felt his
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[9]</span>
+whole being draw away from me as from something dangerous
+and unclean. Possibly, of course, he did not believe
+me; I am sure he prayed for me. Our relations seemed
+less cordial after that; he read most carefully every word
+I wrote in his magazine and children’s pages, but he never
+referred to the matter again.</p>
+
+<p>My Methodist job, none the less, was a happy one;
+this first regular wage I had yet received in life gave me
+the pleasant sensation that I was launched. My connexion
+with Methodism ceased, not because I was dismissed
+or had failed to give satisfaction (indeed, the
+editor had just told me my salary was to be raised!),
+but because all the capital I should ever have was sent
+to me about that time from England—about £2,000—and
+I went into partnership with a farmer outside Toronto
+and bought some forty head of pedigree Jersey cattle.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[10]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_III">
+    CHAPTER III
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'><span class='allcaps'>The</span> Islington Jersey Dairy, Messrs. Cooper and
+Blackwood, started business with a retail office in
+College Street, a number of milk carts bearing our
+names in black lettering upon a yellow background, and
+the supply farm at Islington, a lovely little hamlet on
+the shores of Lake Ontario, some six miles west of the
+city. We sold rich Jersey milk, we sold eggs and butter
+too. I gave picnics at our pretty little farm for customers
+I knew socially. The upper floors of the building
+in College Street we furnished, letting bedrooms at a
+dollar a week to young Englishmen, clerks in offices, and
+others. I engaged an old, motherly Englishwoman, Mrs.
+’Iggins, with a face like a rosy apple, to “do” for us—she
+made the beds and cooked the breakfast—while her
+pretty daughter, in cap and apron, was our dairymaid.
+The plan did not work smoothly—the dairymaid was too
+pretty, perhaps; Mrs. Higgins too voluble. Complaints
+came from all sides; the lodgers, wildish young fellows
+in a free and easy country, made more promises than
+payments. One wanted a stove, another a carpet in his
+bedroom, another complained about his bed. I had my
+first experience of drink and immorality going on under
+my very eyes.... Trouble—though mercifully of another
+kind—spread then to the customers. The milk began to
+go sour; it was too rich; it wouldn’t keep; the telephone
+rang all day long. Cooper, an experienced dairy-farmer,
+was at his wits’ end; every device for scouring the
+bottles, for cooling the milk before bringing it twice a
+day to the city, failed. At dinner parties my hostess
+would draw me tactfully aside. “The milk, I’m afraid,
+Mr. Blackwood,” she would murmur softly, “was sour
+again this morning. Will you speak about it?”</p>
+
+<p>I spoke about it—daily—but Alfred Cooper’s only comment
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[11]</span>
+was, “Say, have you got a bit more capital?
+That’s what we really want.”</p>
+
+<p>That sour milk became a veritable nightmare that
+never left me. I had enough of milk. Yet, later in life,
+I found myself “in milk” again, but that time it was
+dried milk, a profitable business to the owners, though
+it brought me nothing. I worked six years at it for a
+bare living wage. But, at any rate, it couldn’t turn sour.
+It was a powder.</p>
+
+<p>Alfred Cooper was a delightful fellow. I think some
+detail of how our partnership came to be may bear the
+telling. It points a moral if it does not adorn a tale.
+It may, again, prove useful to other young Englishmen
+in Canada similarly waiting with money to invest; but
+on the other hand it may not, since there can be few,
+I imagine, as green as I was then, owing to a strange
+upbringing, or as ignorant of even the simplest worldly
+practices. Of the evangelical training responsible for
+this criminal ignorance I will speak later.</p>
+
+<p>Cooper, then, was a delightful fellow, fitting my ideal
+of a type I had read about—the fearless, iron-muscled
+colonial white man who fought Indians. The way we met
+was quite simply calculated—by a clerk in the bank
+where my English allowance of £100 a year was paid by
+my father. The clerk and I made friends—naturally;
+and one day—also naturally—he suggested a Sunday walk
+to Islington, some six miles down the lake shore. We
+could get tea at a farm he knew. We did. The praises
+of the Cooper family, who owned it, had already been
+sung. I was enchanted. So, doubtless, was the clerk.</p>
+
+<p>The farm was a small one—perhaps eight acres; and
+Cooper lived on it in poverty with his aged mother and
+unmarried sister. It was charmingly situated, the fields
+running down to the water, pine copses dotting the
+meadows to the north, and the little village church standing
+at one corner near the road. Mrs. Cooper, in cap and
+apron, dropping every “h” that came her way, described
+to me how she and her husband had emigrated from
+England sixty years before, in the days of sailing ships.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[12]</span>
+Her husband’s grave in the churchyard we could see from
+the window while we sat at tea—an unusually sumptuous
+tea for a farmhouse—and it was evident that she was
+more alive to the memories of half a century ago in the
+“old country,” than to the plans of her ambitious son
+in the new colony.</p>
+
+<p>The son came to tea too, but a little late, having
+obviously brushed himself up a bit for his visitor from
+England. He was about forty years of age, tall, well-built,
+keen-faced, with steel-blue eyes and a hatchet nose,
+and his body was just that combination of leanness,
+strength and nervous alertness which made one think
+of a wolf. He was extremely polite, not to say flattering,
+to me. I thought him delightful, his idyllic farm still
+more delightful; he was so eager, vigorous and hardy,
+a typical pioneer, slaving from dawn to sunset to win a
+living from the soil in order to support the family. I
+trusted him, admired him immensely. Having been
+duly prepared for the picture on our walk out, I was not
+disappointed. He spoke very frankly of the desperate
+work he and his sister were forced to do; also of what he
+might do, and what could be made of the farm, if only he
+had a little capital. I liked him; he liked me; the
+clerk liked us both.</p>
+
+<p>He showed me round the farm after tea, and his few
+Jersey cows came up and nosed his hand. The elderly
+sister, a weaker repetition of himself, joined us. She,
+too, slaved from morning till night. The old mother,
+diminutive, quiet, brave, devoted to her children yet
+with her heart in the old country she would never see
+again, completed a charming picture in my mind. I was
+invited to come again.</p>
+
+<p>Another picture, still more alluring, was set before
+me during the walk back, the picture of what a “little
+capital” could do with that tiny farm. The dairy
+business that could be worked up made me feel a rich
+man before the Toronto spires became visible. The
+desire to put capital into the Islington Jersey Dairy
+became the one hope of my life. Would Cooper agree?
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[13]</span>
+Would he accept me as a partner? The suggestion came
+from myself. The clerk, of course, had never dreamed
+of such a thing. They <i>might</i> welcome me, the clerk
+thought. Very kindly, he said he would sound Cooper
+about it and let me know....</p>
+
+<p>The scheme seemed such a perfect solution of my
+problem of earning a living, that I was afraid up to the
+last moment something must happen to prevent it.
+Cooper would die, or change his mind, or one of my
+influential business friends would warn me not to do it.
+I was so jealous of interference that I sought no advice.
+Without so much as a scratch of the pen between us the
+enterprise started. So heartily did I like and trust my
+partner that when, later, wiser friends inquired about
+my contract with him, it infuriated me. “Contract!
+A contract with Alfred Cooper!”</p>
+
+<p>We did a roaring trade at first. Our Jersey milk
+was beyond all question the best in the town. It was
+honest, unwatered milk, and our cream, without any
+preservative added, was so prized that we soon had
+more orders than we could fill. Why our milk and cream
+soured so readily, losing us trade rapidly later, is a mystery
+to me to this day.</p>
+
+<p>Within a few weeks of our starting business, Cooper
+convinced me that a model dairy building on the farm
+would be a desirable improvement; it would save labour
+in various ways; it was built. The farm belonged to
+his mother, not to him; he kept the building when our
+collapse followed. Next, his sister really must have
+someone to help her, and that someone was provided at
+high wages. Business was good, so good in fact that we
+could not supply orders. Extra milk must therefore be
+bought from neighbouring farmers. This was done, the
+contracts being made by Cooper. I never asked to see
+them. The bills were paid every month without question
+on my part. More grazing fields, with enough artificial
+food to feed at least a hundred cows in addition, these
+too had to be paid for. As for the appetites of our forty
+animals, I marvelled at them long before I became suspicious.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[14]</span>
+Yet when, after much insisting, I saw one of
+the farmer’s bills for extra milk, it left me, naturally, no
+wiser than before, and certainly not a whit more comforted,
+for the less our trade became, the more milk,
+apparently, those farmers sold us!</p>
+
+<p>Six months later the firm of Cooper and Blackwood
+dissolved partnership, Blackwood having got the experience
+and Cooper having got—something quite as
+useful, but more marketable. Cooper’s I.O.U. for five
+hundred dollars, now stuck in an old scrap-book somewhere,
+made me realize a little later how lucky it was
+that I had only a limited amount to lose.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, though it seemed the end of the world to me,
+my capital lost, my enterprise a failure, I recall the curious
+sense of relief with which I saw the last cow knocked
+down to some bidder from up-country. From the very
+beginning I had hated the entire business. I did not
+know a Jersey from a Shorthorn, so to speak. I knew
+nothing about farming, still less about dairy-farming.
+The year spent at Edinburgh University to learn the
+agricultural trade had been wasted, for, instead, I
+attended what interested me far more—the post-mortems,
+operations, lectures on pathology, and the dissecting
+room. My notebooks of Professor Wallace’s lectures,
+crammed as they were, with entries about soil, rotation
+of crops, and drainage, represented no genuine practical
+knowledge. I knew nothing. My father sent me out to
+Canada to farm. I went. I farmed. Cooper and Blackwood
+is carved upon the gravestone. But the gravestone
+cost £2,000, my share of the forced sale being about £600.
+My Canadian experience, anyhow, can be summed up in
+advice, which is, of course, a bromide now: let any
+emigrant young Englishman earn his own living for at
+least five years in any colony before a penny of capital
+is given him to invest.</p>
+
+<p>It was with this £600 I soon after went into partnership
+with another man, but this time an honest one. We
+bought a small hotel in the heart of Toronto. It also
+lasted about six months. When the crash came we lived
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[15]</span>
+together from May to October on a small island in a
+thirty-mile lake of the Ontario hinterland; we shared
+a long slice of difficult life together subsequently in New
+York; we shared the horrors of East 19th Street together.
+He failed me only once, missing a train a few years later
+by a couple of minutes. It was the Emigrant Sleeper to
+Duluth on Lake Superior, <i>en route</i> for the Rainy River
+Gold Fields, where four of us had made sudden plans to
+try our fortunes. I was on a New York paper at the
+time, and had secured passes over the first fifteen hundred
+miles. As the train drew out of the Central Station I
+saw my friend racing down the platform, a minute too
+late! From that day to this I have never set eyes on
+him again. It was an abrupt end to a friendship cemented
+by hard times, and my disappointment at losing his companionship
+was rather bitter at the time.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[16]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IV">
+    CHAPTER IV
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap xkern'><span class='allcaps'>At</span> the time we met, this friend of mine had been out
+from Oxford—New College, I think—a year or so,
+and with a Cambridge man about his own age, had
+been running a sporting goods shop in King Street. They
+sold the paraphernalia of cricket, tennis, boxing and the
+like, but with no marked success. The considerable
+money invested by the pair of them earned no interest.
+John Kay was impatient and dissatisfied; the other
+had leanings towards the brokering trade, as offering
+better opportunities. Both were ready to cut their
+losses, realize, and get out. They did so, remaining
+the best of friends. And it was one day, while these
+preliminary negotiations were being discussed in the
+back office, where they muddled away the day between
+rare sales, that Kay said to me mysteriously: “Look
+here, I say—I’ve got a wonderful scheme. Have you
+got any money left?”</p>
+
+<p>I mentioned the £600.</p>
+
+<p>“I call it a rotten shame,” he went on. “Of course,
+you’ve been swindled. These people look upon us as
+their natural prey”—and he proceeded to describe his
+“scheme”—to buy a small hotel which, owing to its
+bad name, was going cheap; to work up a respectable
+business and a valuable goodwill; then to sell out at
+a top price and retire with a comfortable fortune. Kay was
+twenty-three, two years my senior; to me, then, he seemed
+an experienced man of business, almost elderly. The
+scheme took my breath away. It was very tempting.
+The failure of the dairy farm had left me despondent;
+I felt disgraced; the end of life, it seemed,
+had come. I was ready to grasp at anything that held
+out hopes of a recovery of fortune. But an hotel! I
+hesitated.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[17]</span></p>
+
+<p>“I know nothing about running an hotel,” I objected.</p>
+
+<p>“Neither do I—yet,” was the sanguine answer,
+“but we can learn. It’s only common sense and hard
+work. We can hire a good manager and engage a first-class
+cook.”</p>
+
+<p>“How many rooms are there?”</p>
+
+<p>“Only thirteen. It’s the bar where we shall make
+the money.”</p>
+
+<p>“The bar——!”</p>
+
+<p>“There are two bars, one on the main street and
+another on the back. Billy Bingham has made the place
+too hot to hold him. His licence is to be withdrawn.
+He’s got to get out. We can get his licence transferred
+to us all right, if we promise to make the place respectable.
+We’ll have good food, a first-rate lunch counter
+for the business men, we can let the big rooms for club
+dinners and society banquets, and there’s a 100 per
+cent. profit, you know, on liquor. We’ll make the <i>Hub</i>
+the best ‘joint’ in the town. All the fellows will come.
+A year will do it. Then we’ll sell out....”</p>
+
+<p>I was not listening. The word “liquor”—I had
+never touched alcohol in my life—made such a noise
+in my mind that I could hear nothing else.</p>
+
+<p>“My father,” I mentioned in a faint voice, “is a
+public man at home. He’s a great temperance reformer.
+He speaks and writes against drink. He’s brought me
+up that way. It would be a terrible shock to him if his
+son made money out of a bar.” The hotel scheme,
+indeed, seemed to me an impossibility. A picture of the
+Temperance meetings held in our country house flashed
+through my mind. I glanced down at my coat, on
+whose lapel, until recently, there had been a little strip
+of blue ribbon, signifying that I was a member of the
+Band of Hope which included several million avowed
+teetotallers. “Don’t you see, old chap?” I explained
+further. “It would simply break his heart, and my
+mother’s too.”</p>
+
+<p>“He need never know anything about it,” came the
+answer at once. “Why should he? Our names needn’t
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[18]</span>
+appear at all. We’ll call ourselves the ‘Hub Wine Company,
+Limited.’” My head was swimming, my mind
+buzzing with conflicting voices as we walked down King
+Street to inspect the premises. I ached to re-establish
+my position. The prospect of a quick recovery of fortune
+was as sweet a prize as ever tempted a green youth like
+myself. My partner, too, this time would be a “gentleman,”
+a fellow my father might have invited to dine
+and play tennis; it was my appalling ignorance of life
+that gave to his two years’ seniority some imagined
+quality of being a man much older than myself, and one
+who knew what he was about.</p>
+
+<p>The character of the proposed enterprise, of course,
+had no effect at all upon the judgment. To be known
+as a successful hotel proprietor was a legitimate ambition.
+My father’s stern judgment of philanthropists who preached
+temperance while owning distilleries or holding brewery
+shares—I knew it word for word—was quite forgotten.
+Only the little personal point of view was present: “I’ve
+been an ass. I must make good. Here’s a chance, a
+certainty, of getting money. I must take it. It’s my
+Karma.”</p>
+
+<p>We strode down King Street together, past the corner
+of Yonge Street, below the windows of the hated Temperance
+and General Life Assurance Company where I had
+licked stamps, and on towards the Hub Hotel. The
+Toronto air was fresh and sweet, the lake lay blue beyond,
+the sunlight sparkled. Something exhilarating and
+optimistic in the atmosphere gave thought a happy and
+sanguine twist. It was a day of Indian summer, a faint
+perfume of far-distant forest fires adding a pleasant
+touch to the familiar smell of the cedar-wood sidewalks.
+A mood of freedom, liberty, great spaces, fine big enterprises
+in a free country where everything was possible,
+of opportunities seized and waves of fortune taken on
+their crest—I remember this mood as sharply still,
+and the scent of a wood-fire or a cedar pencil recalls
+it as vividly still, as though I had experienced it last
+week.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[19]</span></p>
+
+<p>I glanced at my companion. I liked him,
+trusted him. There was a happy light in his frank
+blue eyes. He was a good heavy-weight boxer too.
+The very man, I felt, for a bold enterprise of this
+sort. He talked the whole way. He was describing
+how we might increase the fortune we should draw out
+of our successful venture in a year’s time, when we passed
+Tim Sullivan, standing at the door of his, a rival, saloon,
+and exchanged a nod with him. The Irishman had a
+shadow on his face. “He’s heard about it,” whispered
+Kay, with a chuckle. “He’ll look glummer still
+when he sees all his customers coming across the way
+to us!”</p>
+
+<p>Turning down a narrow side street, the Hub blocked
+the way, a three-story building with a little tower, clean
+windows, and two big swinging doors. It ran through
+to a back street where there was another entrance.</p>
+
+<p>“Here it is,” said Kay, in the eager, happy voice of
+a man who has just inherited a family mansion and come
+to inspect it. “This is the Hub where we shall make
+our fortune.”</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to me I had entered an entirely new world.
+Everything was spotless. The rows of bottles and glasses,
+the cash-register and brass taps glittered in the sunlight
+that fell through coloured windows. The perfume of stale
+liquor was not as disagreeable as it sounds. In one sense
+the whole place looked as harmless as the aisle of some
+deserted church. I stood just inside those swing-doors,
+which had closed behind me, with a strange feeling of
+gazing at some den of vice reconstructed in the Chamber
+of Horrors at Madame Tussaud’s. Empty and innocent
+as the bar might appear, however, there was a thrill of
+adventure, even of danger, about it that reached my
+mind, with a definite shock of dread.</p>
+
+<p>“Nice, airy premises, with plenty of room,” Kay’s
+cheery voice came to me from a distance. “This is the
+principal bar. Twenty men could line up easily. It’ll
+want four bar-tenders.... There’s another bar at
+the end. There’ll be a few fights there before we’ve
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[20]</span>
+done. The dining-room lies through that archway just
+between the two.”</p>
+
+<p>He walked away, passing along the length of the
+room and down three steps into a narrower, darker bar
+beyond, where the shadows hid him. But his voice still
+reached me: “It’s on the back street, this bar,” he called.
+“This is for the <i>hoi polloi</i>. We shall want a chucker
+out.... Here’s the private door leading to the
+upstairs dining-room we’ll let out for banquets. We’ll
+have our own bedrooms and sitting-room on the first
+floor too....”</p>
+
+<p>His voice roared on; I heard, but did not answer;
+I had not moved an inch from my place against the
+swing-doors. He had not, of course, the faintest idea
+what was passing through my mind at the moment; and,
+had I told him, he would only have laughed good-naturedly
+and talked of the money we should make. The fact was,
+however, that the whole of my early up-bringing just then
+came at me with a concentrated driving-force which made
+the venture seem absolutely impossible.</p>
+
+<p>“We’ll call this one the House of Commons,” he
+bawled delightedly; “and that one—the front bar—the
+House of Lords. We shall take 250 dollars a day
+easily!”</p>
+
+<p>The shock, the contrast, the exaggerated effect of
+entering a saloon for the first time in my life, especially
+with the added possibility of shortly becoming its proprietor,
+were natural enough. My unworldliness, even
+at twenty-one, was abnormal. Not only had I never
+smoked tobacco nor touched alcohol of any description,
+but I had never yet set foot inside a theatre; a race-course
+I had never seen, nor held a billiard cue, nor
+touched a card. I did not know one card from another.
+Any game that might involve betting or gambling was
+anathema. In other ways, too, I had been sheltered to
+the point of ignorance. I had never even danced. To
+hold a young woman round the waist was not alone
+immodest but worse than immodest.</p>
+
+<p>This peculiarly sheltered up-bringing, this protected
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[21]</span>
+hot-house of boyhood and early youth to which a drinking
+bar was the vestibule of hell, and a music-hall an invention
+of a personal devil, are necessary to understand the reaction
+produced in me as I stood in Billy Bingham’s
+“joint.” I stood, literally, on the brink of “the downward
+path.” I heard my father’s voice, I saw my mother’s
+eyes.... In very definite form I now faced “worldly
+temptation” they had so often warned me against.
+Accompanying an almost audible memory of “Get thee
+behind me, Satan,” drove a crowded kaleidoscope of vivid
+pictures from those sheltered years.</p>
+
+<p>My parents were both people of marked character,
+with intense convictions; my mother, especially, being
+a woman of great individuality, of iron restraint, grim
+humour, yet with a love and tenderness, and a spirit of
+uncommon sacrifice, that never touched weakness. She
+possessed powers of mind and judgment, at the same
+time, of which my father, a public servant—financial
+secretary to the Post Office—availed himself to the full.
+She had great personal beauty. A young widow, her
+first husband having been the 6th Duke of Manchester,
+also of the evangelical persuasion, she met my father at
+Kimbolton soon after his return from the Crimean War,
+where he had undergone that religious change of heart
+known to the movement as “conversion.” From a man
+of fashion, a leader in the social life to which he was born,
+he changed with sudden completeness to a leader in the
+evangelical movement, then approaching its height. He
+renounced the world, the flesh, the devil and all their
+works. The case of “Beauty Blackwood,” to use the
+nickname his unusual handsomeness gained for him, was,
+in its way, notorious. He became a teetotaller and non-smoker,
+wrote devotional books, spoke in public, and held
+drawing-room prayer meetings, the Bible always in his
+pocket, communion with God always in his heart. His
+religion was genuine, unfaltering, consistent and sincere.
+He carried the war into his own late world of fashion. He
+never once looked back. He knew a vivid joy, a wondrous
+peace, his pain being for others only, for those who were
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[22]</span>
+not “saved.” The natural, instinctive type he was,
+asserted its claim. He became a genuine saint. Also,
+to the very end, he remained that other delightful thing,
+possible only to simple hearts, a boy.</p>
+
+<p>Both my parents, thus, believed in Jesus, with a faith
+of that simple, unshakable order that could feel no doubts.
+Their lives were consistent and, as must always be the
+case when fine characters are possessed of a perfectly
+sincere faith, they stood out in the world of men and
+women as something strong and beautiful. Edmund
+Gosse, in “Father and Son,” has described the mental
+attitude of the type; William James might, equally,
+have included my father’s case as a typical “conversion”
+in his “Varieties of Religious Experience.”</p>
+
+<p>The effect upon the children—there were five of us—followed
+naturally. My father, apart from incurring
+much public odium owing to his official position, found
+himself, and us with him, cut off from the amenities of
+the social life to which we were otherwise born. Ordinary
+people, “worldly” as he called them, left us alone. A
+house where no wine was served at dinner, where morning
+and evening prayers were <i>de rigueur</i>, a guest even being
+asked to “lead in prayer” perhaps, and where at any
+suitable moment you might be drawn aside and asked
+“Have <i>you</i> given your soul to Jesus?” was not an
+attractive house to stay in. We were ostracized. The
+effect of such disabilities upon us in later life was not
+considered, for it was hoped each and all of us would
+consecrate ourselves to God. We were, thus, kept out
+of the “world” in every possible sense and brought up,
+though with lavish love and kindness, yet in the narrowest
+imaginable evangelical path which scents danger in knowledge
+of any kind not positively helpful to the soul. I,
+personally, at that time, regarded the temptations of the
+world with a remote pity, and with a certainty that I
+should never have the least difficulty in resisting them.
+Men who smoked and drank and were immoral, who
+gambled, went to theatres and music-halls and race-meetings,
+belonged to the submerged and unworthy
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[23]</span>
+portion of mankind. I, in this respect at least, was of the
+elect, quite sure that the weakness of their world could
+never stain me personally.</p>
+
+<p>Yet I never shared the beliefs of my parents with
+anything like genuine pleasure. I was <i>afraid</i> they were
+true, not glad.</p>
+
+<p>Without wholeheartedly sharing my father’s faith,
+however, his religious and emotional temperament, with
+its imperious need of believing <i>something</i>, he certainly
+bequeathed to me.... The evangelical and revivalist
+movement, at any rate, was the dominant influence in
+my boyhood’s years. People were sharply divided into
+souls that were saved and those that were—not saved.
+Moody and Sankey, the American Revivalists, stayed in
+our house.</p>
+
+<p>I was particularly influenced in this direction by a
+group of young ’Varsity men who worked with Moody,
+and who were manly fellows, good cricketers, like the
+Studd brothers, or Stanley Smith and Montague Beauchamp,
+men who had rowed in their University boats,
+and who were far removed from anything effeminate. Of
+course I thought that what these men did could not be
+otherwise than fine and worth copying, and I lost no time
+in attacking everyone I met and asking the most impertinent
+questions about their souls and fallen natures.
+By some lucky chance no one kicked me to death—probably
+because most of my evangelizing work was done
+at home!</p>
+
+<p>My old nurse I implored to yield herself up to the
+Saviour, and I felt my results were very poor in her case
+because I only got affectionate caresses and smiles, and
+even observations about the holes in my clothes, in return.
+The fat butler (I assured him) was going headlong down
+the kitchen stairs to everlasting fire because he showed
+no symptoms of ecstasy when he met my pleadings with
+“O, I’m sure ’E died for me all right, Master Algie. I
+don’t feel a bit afraid!”</p>
+
+<p>But all this was genuine so far as I was concerned, and
+it lasted a considerable time, to my father’s great joy,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[24]</span>
+though not so much, I think, to my mother’s. She read
+far deeper into things....</p>
+
+<p>In a short time I came to look upon the whole
+phenomena of “conversion,” so far as my type of mind
+and character was concerned, with distrust and weariness.
+Only the very topmost layer of my personality
+was affected; evidently, there was no peace or happiness
+for me that way!</p>
+
+<p>None the less, I had one or two terrible moments;
+one (I was reading with a private tutor in Somerset for
+Edinburgh University) when I woke in the very early
+morning with a choking sensation in my throat, and
+thought I was going to die. It must have been merely
+acute indigestion, but I was convinced my last moment
+had come, and fell into a sweating agony of fear and
+weakness. I prayed as hard as ever I could, swearing
+to consecrate myself to God if He would pull me through.
+I even vowed I would become a missionary and work
+among the heathen, than which, I was always told, there
+was no higher type of manhood. But the pain and
+choking did not pass, and in despair I got up and swallowed
+half a bottle of pilules of aconite which my mother, an
+ardent homœopathist, always advised me to take after
+sneezing or cold shivers. They were sweet and very
+nice, and the pain certainly began to pass away, but only
+to leave me with a remorse that I had allowed a mere
+human medicine to accomplish naturally what God
+wished to accomplish by His grace. He had been so
+slow about it, however, that I felt also a kind of anger
+that He could torture me so long, and as it was the aconite
+that cured me, and not His grace, I was certainly released
+from my promise to become a missionary and work
+among the heathen. And for this small mercy I was
+duly thankful, though the escape had been a rather
+narrow one.</p>
+
+<p>A year and a half in a school of the Moravian Brotherhood
+in the Black Forest, though it showed me another
+aspect of the same general line of belief, did not wholly
+obliterate my fear of hell, with its correlated desire for
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[25]</span>
+salvation. The poetry of the semi-religious life in that
+remote village set among ancient haunted forests, gave
+to natural idealistic tendencies another turn. The masters,
+whom we termed Brother, were strenuous, devoted,
+self-sacrificing men, all later to go forth as Missionaries
+to Labrador. Humbug, comfort, personal ambition
+played no part in their lives. The <i>Liebesmahl</i> in their
+little wooden church, for all its odd simplicity, was a
+genuine and impressive ceremony that touched something
+in me no church service at home, with Sankey’s hymns
+on a bad harmonium, had ever reached. At this Communion
+Service, or Love Feast, sweet, weak tea in big
+white thick cups, followed by a clothes-basket filled
+with rolls, were handed round, first to the women, who
+sat on one side of the building, and then to the men and
+boys on the other side. There was a collective reality
+about the little ceremony that touched its sincerity
+with beauty. Similarly was Easter morning beautiful,
+when we marched in the early twilight towards the little
+cemetery among the larch trees and stood with our hats
+off round an open grave, waiting in silence for the sunrise.
+The air was cool and scented, our mood devotional and
+solemn. There was a sense of wonder among us. Then,
+as the sun slipped up above the leagues of forest,
+the Eight Brothers, singing in parts, led the ninety
+boys in the great German hymn, “<i>Christus ist auferstanden</i>....”</p>
+
+<p>The surroundings, too, of the school influenced me
+greatly. Those leagues of Black Forest rolling over distant
+mountains, velvet-coloured, leaping to the sky in
+grey cliffs, or passing quietly like the sea in immense
+waves, always singing in the winds, haunted by elves
+and dwarfs and peopled by charming legends—those
+forest glades, deep in moss and covered in springtime
+with wild lily-of-the-valley; those tumbling streams
+that ran for miles unseen, then emerged to serve the
+peasants by splashing noisily over the clumsy water-wheel
+of a brown old sawmill before they again lost themselves
+among the mossy pine roots; those pools where water-pixies
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[26]</span>
+dwelt, and those little red and brown villages
+where we slept in our long walks—the whole setting of
+this Moravian school was so beautifully simple that it
+lent just the proper atmosphere for lives consecrated
+without flourish of trumpets to God. It all left upon
+me an impression of grandeur, of loftiness, and of real
+religion ... and of a Deity not specially active on
+Sundays only.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[27]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_V">
+    CHAPTER V
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'><span class='allcaps'>These</span> notes aim at describing merely certain
+surface episodes, and would leave unmentioned
+of set purpose those inner activities which pertain
+to the intimate struggles of a growing soul. There is
+a veil of privacy which only in rarest cases of exceptional
+value should be lifted. That honesty, moreover, which is
+an essential of such value, seems almost unattainable.
+Only a diary, written at the actual time and intended
+for no one’s eye, can hope to achieve the naked sincerity,
+which could make it useful to lift that veil.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, even with these surface episodes, something of
+the background against which they danced and vanished
+must be sketched; to understand them, something of the
+individual who experienced them must be known. This
+apology for so much use of the personal pronoun is made
+once for all.</p>
+
+<p>The failure of the evangelical Christian teaching
+either to attract deeply or to convince, has been indicated.
+An eager, impressionable mind lay empty and unstimulated.
+It fed upon insipid stuff, such as Longfellow, Mrs. Hemans,
+goody-goody stories, and thousands of religious tracts.
+It was the days of yellow-backs in three volumes, of Ouida
+especially, of Miss Braddon, and Wilkie Collins; but novels
+were strictly forbidden in the house. Lewis Carroll,
+which my father often read aloud, and Foxe’s “Book of
+Martyrs,” which made every Roman Catholic priest
+seem ominous, were our imaginative fiction. But my
+chief personal delight was Hebrew poetry, the Psalms,
+the Song of Solomon, above all the Book of Job (which
+I devoured alone)—these moved me in a different way
+and far more deeply.</p>
+
+<p>The mind, meanwhile, without being consciously
+aware of it, was searching with eager if unrewarded zeal,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[28]</span>
+until one day Fate threw a strange book in its way—Patanjali’s
+“Yoga Aphorisms,” a translation from the
+Sanskrit. I was about seventeen then, just home from a
+year and a half in the Moravian Brotherhood School in
+the Black Forest.</p>
+
+<p>I shall never forget that golden September day when
+the slight volume, bound in blue, first caught my eye.
+It was lying beside a shiny black bag on the hall table,
+and the bag belonged, I knew, to a Mr. Scott, who had come
+to spend a week with us and to hold a series of meetings
+under my father’s auspices in the village hall. Mr.
+Scott was an ardent revivalist. He was also—this I
+grasped even at the time—a cadaverous mass of religious
+affectations. He was writing a brochure, I learned later,
+to warn England that Satan was bringing dangerous
+Eastern teachings to the West, and this book was a first
+proof of the Fiend’s diabolical purpose.</p>
+
+<p>I opened it and read a few paragraphs in the hall. I
+did not understand them, though they somehow held my
+mind and produced a curious sense of familiarity, half of
+wonder, half of satisfaction. A deeper feeling than I
+had yet known woke in me. I was fascinated.... My
+father’s voice calling me to tennis interrupted my reading,
+and I dropped the book, noticing that it fell behind the
+table. Hours later, though the bag was gone, the book
+lay where it had fallen. I stole it. I took it to bed
+with me and read it through from cover to cover. I read
+it twice, three times; bits of it I copied out; I did not
+understand a word of it, but a shutter rushed up in my
+mind, interest and joy were in me, a big troubling emotion,
+a conviction that I had found something I had been
+seeking hungrily for a long time, something I needed,
+something that, in an odd way, almost seemed familiar.</p>
+
+<p>I repeat—I did not understand a word of it, while yet
+the meaningless phrases caught me with a revolutionary
+power. As I read and re-read till my candles guttered,
+there rose in me a dim consciousness, becoming more and
+more a growing certainty, that what I read was not entirely
+new. So strong was this that it demanded audible
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[29]</span>
+expression. In that silent bedroom, dawn not far away,
+I can hear myself saying aloud: “But I’ve known all
+this before—only I’ve forgotten it.” Even the Sanskrit
+words, given phonetically in brackets, had a familiar
+look.</p>
+
+<p>Shutter after shutter rose, “lifting a veil and a darkness,”
+letting in glimpses of a radiant and exciting light.
+Though the mind was too untaught to grasp the full
+significance of these electric flashes, too unformed to be
+even intelligently articulate about them, there certainly
+rushed over my being a singular conviction of the unity
+of life everywhere and in everything—of its <i>one-ness</i>.
+That objects, the shifting appearance of phenomena,
+were but a veil concealing some intensely beautiful
+reality—the beauty shining and divine, the reality bitingly,
+terrifically actual—this poured over me with a sense of
+being not so much dis-covered as re-covered. Ignorant
+as I was, without facts or arguments or reason to support
+me, this I <i>knew</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It is possible the awakening consciousness fringed
+some state of ecstasy during that long communing with
+ancient things.... The house, at any rate, was still
+dark, but sunrise not long to come, when at length I
+stole down into the deserted hall and replaced the little
+book upon the table.</p>
+
+<p>Those Yoga aphorisms of a long-dead Hindu sage,
+set between a golden September evening and a guttering
+candle, marked probably the opening of my mind....
+The entire paraphernalia of my evangelical teaching
+thenceforth began to withdraw. Though my father’s
+beliefs had cut deep enough to influence me for many
+years to come, their dread, with the terror of a personal
+Satan and an actual Hell, grew less from that moment.
+The reality of the dogmas was impaired. Here was another
+outlook upon life, another explanation of the world;
+caprice was eliminated and justice entered; the present
+was the result of the past, the future determined by the
+present; I must reap what I had sown, but, also, I could
+sow what I wished to reap. Hope was born. Apart from
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[30]</span>
+this was that curious deep sense of familiarity with these
+Eastern teachings, as with something I understood and
+in which I felt at home....</p>
+
+<p>Cautiously, I put indirect questions to my father,
+who at once—the clumsy questions betraying me—detected
+Satan’s subtle handiwork. He was grave and
+troubled. With affectionate solicitude he told me, finally,
+a story of naïve horror, intended to point the warning.
+A young man, who suffered from repeated epileptic fits,
+had tried every doctor and specialist in vain, when, as a
+last resort, he followed some friend’s counsel of despair,
+and consulted a medium. The medium, having conferred
+with his familiar, handed the patient a little locket which
+he was to wear day and night about his neck, but never
+on any account to open. The spell that would save him
+from a repetition of his fits lay inside, but he must resist
+to the death the curiosity to read it. To the subsequent
+delight and amazement of everybody, the fits abruptly
+ceased; the man was cured; until one day, after years
+of obedience, curiosity overcame him; he opened the brief
+inscription, and fell down in a fit—dead. The wording,
+minutely written in red ink, ran as follows: “Let him
+alone till he drop into Hell!”</p>
+
+<p>The warning, above all the story, acted as a stimulus
+instead of the reverse. Yet another strange door was set
+ajar; my eyes, big with wonder and questions, peered
+through. “Earth’s Earliest Ages,” by G. H. Pember,
+an evangelical, but an imaginative evangelical, was placed
+in my hands, accompanied by further solemn warnings.
+Pember, a writer of the prophetic school, had style,
+imagination, a sense of the marvellous, a touch of genuine
+drama too; he used suggestion admirably, his English
+was good, he had proportion, he knew where to stop.
+As a novelist of fantastic kind—an evangelical Wells,
+a “converted” Dunsany—he might have become a best-seller.
+He had, moreover, a theme of high imaginative
+possibilities, based upon a sentence in Genesis (vi. 2)—“The
+Sons of God saw the Daughters of men that they
+were fair ... and took to themselves wives from among
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[31]</span>
+them ... and there were giants in the earth in those
+days....” These Sons of God were some kind of higher
+beings, mighty spirits, angels of a sort; but rather fallen
+angels; their progeny formed a race apart from humans;
+for some reason, now slipped from my memory, Pember was
+convinced that this unlawful procreation was being resumed
+in modern days. The Nephilim, as he called them,
+were aiming at control of the world, Anti-Christ, a gorgeous
+but appalling figure, naturally, at their head.</p>
+
+<p>It was a magnificent theme; he treated it, within the
+limits he set himself, with ingenious conviction. The
+danger was imminent; the human race, while shuddering,
+must be on its guard. In the night, in the twinkling of
+an eye, the catastrophe might come. Signs the Nephilim
+brought with them were spiritualism, theosophy, the development
+of secret powers latent in man, a new and awful
+type of consciousness, magic, and all the rest of the
+“occult” movement that was beginning to show its hydra
+head about this time.</p>
+
+<p>In a moment Moody went to the bottom of the class,
+and Pember reigned in his stead. By hook or by crook I
+obtained the books that Pember signalled as so dangerously
+subversive of the truth: “Magic Black and White”
+by Dr. Franz Hartmann; “The Perfect Way,” by Anna
+Kingsford and Edward Maitland; “Esoteric Buddhism,”
+by A. P. Sinnett; “Voice of the Silence,” by Mabel Collins;
+“The Bhagavad Gita,” from the Upanishads; and Emma
+Hardinge Britten’s “History of American Spiritualism.”
+My first delicious alarm lest the sky might fall any moment,
+and Satan appear with the great and terrible Nephilim
+princes to rule the world, became less threatening....
+Soon afterwards, too, I happened upon my first novel,
+Laurence Oliphant’s “Massollam,” followed, a good deal
+later, by his “Scientific Religion” and his “Sympneumata.”
+This history of his amazing subservience to
+Thomas Luke Harris helped to peel another thin skin
+from my eyes; Oliphant seemed a hero, but Harris a vile
+humbug. By this time other books had brought grist to the
+mill as well: Amiel’s “Journal Intime”; Drummond’s
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[32]</span>
+“Natural Law in the Spiritual World”—I knew Professor
+Drummond later, when he came to stay with us,
+and also when he lectured to the students at Edinburgh
+on Sunday nights, coming from his Glasgow Chair for the
+purpose: I can still see his large, glowing, far-seeing eyes—Cahagnet’s
+“Arcanes de la Vie Future”; and “Animal
+Magnetism,” by Binet and Féré. The experiments of
+Braid, and Dr. Esdaille in India, had also come my way.</p>
+
+<p>Such one-sided reading, of course, fed the growing
+sense of wonder, naturally strong in any case; Shelley
+coloured it; and nothing offered itself at the time to curb,
+shape or qualify it. Spiritualism, apart from the exciting
+phenomena it promised with such confident volubility,
+left me rather unstirred, but theosophy, of course, I
+swallowed whole, with its Mahatmas, development of
+latent powers, memory of past lives, astral consciousness,
+and description of other beings both superior and inferior
+to man. It was some years before scientific reading came
+to check and guide a too exuberant imagination; but,
+even so I have always taken ideas where I found them,
+regardless of their propounders; if Tibet and its shining
+Mahatmas faded, the theories of Karma and reincarnation
+were older than any modern movement, and the belief in
+extension of consciousness to some <i>n</i>th degree, with its
+correlative of greater powers and new faculties, have not
+only remained with me, but have justified themselves.
+The “Gita,” too, remains the profoundest world-scripture
+I have ever read.</p>
+
+<p>An immediate, happy result of this odd reading, at
+any rate, I recall with pleasure: my father’s Christianity
+became splendid in my eyes. I realized, even then,
+that it satisfied his particular and individual vision of
+truth, while the fact that he lived up to his beliefs nobly
+and consistently woke a new respect and admiration in
+me....</p>
+
+<p>By far the strongest influence in my life, however,
+was Nature; it betrayed itself early, growing in intensity
+with every year. Bringing comfort, companionship, inspiration,
+joy, the spell of Nature has remained dominant,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[33]</span>
+a truly magical spell. Always immense and potent,
+the years have strengthened it. The early feeling that
+everything was alive, a dim sense that some kind of consciousness
+struggled through every form, even that a
+sort of inarticulate communication with this “other
+life” was possible, could I but discover the way—these
+moods coloured its opening wonder. Nature, at any rate,
+produced effects in me that only something living could
+produce; though not till I read Fechner’s “Zend-Avesta,”
+and, later still, James’s “Pluralistic Universe,” and
+Dr. R. M. Bucke’s “Cosmic Consciousness” did a possible
+meaning come to shape my emotional disorder. Fairy
+tales, in the meanwhile bored me. Real facts were what
+I sought. That these existed, that I had once known them
+but had now forgotten them, was thus an early imaginative
+conviction.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>This tendency showed itself even in childhood. We
+had left the Manor House, Crayford, and now lived in
+a delightful house at Shortlands, in those days semi-country.
+It was the time of my horrible private schools—I
+went to four or five—but the holidays afforded opportunities....</p>
+
+<p>I was a dreamy boy, frequently in tears about nothing
+except a vague horror of the practical world, full of wild
+fancies and imagination and a great believer in ghosts,
+communings with spirits and dealings with charms and
+amulets, which latter I invented and consecrated myself
+by the dozen. This was long before I had read a single
+book.</p>
+
+<p>I loved to climb out of the windows at night with a
+ladder, and creep among the shadows of the kitchen garden,
+past the rose trees and under the fruit-tree wall, and so
+on to the pond where I could launch the boat and practise
+my incantations in the very middle among the floating
+weeds that covered the surface in great yellow-green
+patches. Trees grew closely round the banks, and even
+on clear nights the stars could hardly pierce through,
+and all sorts of beings watched me silently from the shore,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[34]</span>
+crowding among the tree stems, and whispering to themselves
+about what I was doing.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot say I ever believed actually that my spells
+would produce any results, but it pleased and thrilled me
+to think that they might do so; that the scum of weeds
+might slowly part to show the face of a water-nixie, or
+that the forms hovering on the banks might flit across to
+me and let me see their outline against the stars.</p>
+
+<p>Everything I did and felt in this way was evolved out
+of my inner consciousness, and even after I had passed
+into long trousers I loved the night, the shadows, empty
+rooms and haunted woods.</p>
+
+<p>On returning from these nightly expeditions to
+the pond, the sight of the old country-house against
+the sky always excited me strangely. Three cedars
+of Lebanon flanked it on the side I climbed out,
+towering aloft with their great funereal branches, and
+I thought of all the people asleep in their silent rooms,
+and wondered how they could be so dull and unenterprising,
+when out here they could see these sweeping
+branches and hear the wind sighing so beautifully among
+the needles. These people, it seemed to me at such
+moments, belonged to a different race. I had nothing
+in common with them. Night and stars and trees and wind
+and rain were the things I had to do with and wanted.
+They were alive and personal, stirring my depths within,
+full of messages and meanings, whereas my parents and
+sisters and brother, all indoors and asleep, were mere
+accidents, and apart from my real life and self. My friend
+the under-gardener always took the ladder away early in
+the morning.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes an elder sister accompanied me on these
+excursions. She, too, loved mystery, and the peopled
+darkness, but she was also practical. On returning to her
+room in the early morning we always found eggs ready to
+boil, cake and cold plum-pudding perhaps, or some such
+satisfying morsels to fill the void. She was always wonderful
+to me in those days. Very handsome, dark, with
+glowing eyes and a keen interest in the undertaking, she
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[35]</span>
+came down the ladder and stepped along the garden paths
+more like a fairy being than a mortal, and I always
+enjoyed the event twice as much when she accompanied
+me. In the day-time she faded back into the dull elder
+sister and seemed a different person altogether. I never
+reconcile the two.</p>
+
+<p>This childish manifestation of an overpowering passion
+changed later, in form, of course, but not essentially much
+in spirit. Forests, mountains, desolate places, especially
+perhaps open spaces like the prairies or the desert, but even,
+too, the simple fields, the lanes, and little hills, offered an
+actual sense of companionship no human intercourse
+could possibly provide. In times of trouble, as equally
+in times of joy, it was to Nature I ever turned instinctively.
+In those moments of deepest feeling when individuals
+must necessarily be alone, yet stand at the same time in
+most urgent need of understanding companionship, it was
+Nature and Nature only that could comfort me. When
+the cable came, suddenly announcing my father’s death,
+I ran straight into the woods.... This call sounded above
+all other calls, music coming so far behind it as to seem
+an “also ran.” Even in those few, rare times of later life,
+when I fancied myself in love, this spell would operate—a
+sound of rain, a certain touch of colour in the sky, the
+scent of a wood-fire smoke, the lovely cry of some singing
+wind against the walls or window—and the human appeal
+would fade in me, or, at least, its transitory character
+become pitifully revealed. The strange sense of a oneness
+with Nature was an imperious and royal spell that over-mastered
+all other spells, nor can the hint of comedy
+lessen its reality. Its religious origin appears, perhaps,
+in the fact that sometimes, during its fullest manifestation,
+a desire stirred in me to leave a practical, utilitarian
+world I loathed and become—a monk!</p>
+
+<p>Another effect, in troubled later years especially, was
+noticeable; its dwarfing effect upon the events, whatever
+they might be, of daily life. So intense, so flooding, was
+the elation of joy Nature brought, that after such moments
+even the gravest worldly matters, as well as the people
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[36]</span>
+concerned in these, seemed trivial and insignificant.
+Nature introduced a vaster scale of perspective against
+which a truer proportion appeared. There lay in the
+experience some cosmic touch of glory that, by contrast,
+left all else commonplace and unimportant. The great
+gods of wind and fire and earth and water swept by on
+flaming stars, and the ordinary life of the little planet
+seemed very small, man with his tiny passions and few
+years of struggle and vain longings, almost futile. One’s
+own troubles, seen in this new perspective, disappeared,
+while, at the same time, the heart filled with an immense
+understanding love and charity towards all the world—which,
+alas, also soon disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult to put into intelligible, convincing words
+the irresistible character of this Nature-spell that invades
+heart and brain like a drenching sea, and produces a
+sense of rapture, of ecstasy, compared to which the highest
+conceivable worldly joy becomes merely insipid....
+Heat from this magical source was always more or less
+present in my mind from a very early age, though, of
+course, no attempt to analyse or explain it was then possible;
+but, in bitter years to come, the joy and comfort Nature
+gave became a real and only solace. When possession
+was at its full height, the ordinary world, and my particular
+little troubles with it, fell away like so much dust;
+the whole fabric of men and women, commerce and politics,
+even the destinies of nations, became a passing show
+of shadows, while the visible and tangible world showed
+itself as but a temporary and limited representation of a
+real world elsewhere whose threshold I had for a moment
+touched.</p>
+
+<p>Others, of course, have known similar experiences,
+but, being better equipped, have understood how to
+correlate them to ordinary life. Richard Jefferies explained
+them. Whitman tasted expansion of consciousness
+in many ways; Fechner made a grandiose system of them;
+Edward Carpenter deliberately welcomed them; Jacob
+Boehme, Plotinus, and many others have tried to fix their
+nature and essence in terms, respectively, of religion and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[37]</span>
+philosophy; and William James has reviewed them with
+an insight as though he had had experienced them himself.
+Whatever their value, they remain authentic, the sense
+of oneness of life their common denominator, a conviction
+of consciousness pervading all forms everywhere
+their inseparable characteristic.</p>
+
+<p>If Kentish gardens saw the birth of this delight, the
+Black Forest offered further opportunities for its enjoyment,
+and a year in a village of the Swiss Jura Mountains
+to learn French—I often wandered all night in the big
+pine forests without my tutor, a bee-keeping pasteur,
+at Bôle, near Neuchâtel, discovering my absence—intensified
+it. Without it something starved in me. It was
+a persistent craving, often a wasting <i>nostalgia</i>, that cried
+for satisfaction as the whole body cries for covering when
+cold, and Nature provided a companionship, a joy, a
+bliss, that no human intercourse has ever approached,
+much less equalled. It remains the keenest, deepest
+sensation of its kind I have known....</p>
+
+<p>Here, in Toronto, opportunities multiplied, and just
+when they were needed: in times of difficulty and trouble
+the call of Nature became paramount; during the vicissitudes
+of dairy and hotel the wild hinterland behind the
+town, with its lakes and forests, were a haven often sought.
+Among my friends were many, of course, who enjoyed a
+day “in the country,” but one man only who understood
+a little the feelings I have tried to describe, even if he did
+not wholly share them. This was Arnold Haultain, a
+married man, tied to an office all day long, private secretary
+to Goldwin Smith (whose life, I think, he subsequently
+wrote), and editor of a weekly periodical called <i>The Week</i>.
+He was my senior by many years.... At three in the
+morning, sometimes, he would call for me at the dairy in
+College Street, and we would tramp out miles to enjoy
+the magic of sunrise in a wood north of the city. And
+such an effort was only possible to a soul to whom it was
+a necessity.... The intensity of early dreams and aspirations,
+what energy lies in them! In later life, though they
+may have solidified and become part of the character,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[38]</span>
+that original fiery energy is gone. A dreadful doggerel
+I wrote at this time, Haultain used in his paper, and its
+revealing betrayal of inner tendencies is the excuse for
+its reproduction here. It appeared the same week its
+author bought the Hub Hotel and started business with
+Kay, as “The Hub Wine Company.”</p>
+
+
+<p class='center mt1h'>LINES TO A DREAMER</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">O change all this thinking, imagining, hoping to be;</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Change dreaming to action and work; there’s a God in your will.</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Self-mastery and courage and confidence make a man free,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">And doing is stronger than dreaming for good or for ill.</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">Then make a beginning; don’t lie like an infant and weep.</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Begin with the dearest and crush some delight-giving sin</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Right out of your life, with a purpose of death before sleep;</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">A passion controlled is an index of power within.</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">Some hard self-denial; let no one suspect it at all.</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">With ruthless self-torture continue, nor half an inch yield,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Step fearless and bravely; hold on and believe—you won’t fall;</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Companions you’ve none but the best on this grim battlefield.</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">Stagnation means death. If you cannot advance you retreat;</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Steel purpose maintain; let it be the first aim of your life;</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Beware of those mushroom resolves as impulsive as fleet,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">And remember, the nobler the end the more deadly the strife.</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">For the hope that another may save you is coward and vain,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">And the ladder, by which you must climb to yon far starry height,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Is of cast-iron rungs from the furnace of suffering and pain.</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Then forward; and courage! from darkness to truth’s golden light.</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[39]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VI">
+    CHAPTER VI
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'><span class='allcaps'>The</span> pictures that have occupied two chapters,
+flashed and vanished, lasting a few moments only.
+It was Kay’s voice that interrupted them:</p>
+
+<p>“This is my partner, Mr. Blackwood,” he was saying,
+as he came from the dining-room door, accompanied by an
+undersized little man with sharp, beady eyes set in a face
+like a rat’s, with deep lines upon a skin as white as paper.
+I shook hands with Billy Bingham, proprietor of the Hub,
+the man whose disreputable character had made it a disgrace
+to the City of Churches.</p>
+
+<p>Of the conversation that followed, though I heard
+every word of it, only a blurred memory remained when
+we left the building half an hour later. I was in two
+worlds—innocent Kent and up-to-date Toronto—while
+Kay and Bingham talked. Mysterious phrases chased
+pregnant business terms in quick succession: Goodwill,
+stock in hand, buying liquor at thirty days, cash value
+of the licence, and heaven knows what else besides. Kay
+was marvellous, I thought. The sporting goods business
+had apparently taught him everything. Two hundred
+per cent. profit, rapid turn over, sell out at top price, were
+other vivid sentences I caught in part, while I stared and
+listened, feigning no doubt a comprehension that was not
+mine. The glow of immense success to come, at any rate,
+shone somehow about the nasty face of that cunning little
+Billy Bingham, as he painted our future in radiant colours.
+Kay was beaming.</p>
+
+<p>“A short period of horror,” I remember thinking, for
+the sanguine fires lit me too, “and we shall be independent
+men! It’s probably worth it. Canada’s a free country.
+What’s impossible at home is possible here. Opportunities
+must be seized...!”</p>
+
+<p>Then Bingham’s white face retreated, his beady eyes
+became twin points of glittering light, and another picture
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[40]</span>
+slid noiselessly before them. Euston Station a few short
+months ago, myself tightly wedged in a crowded third-class
+carriage, the train to Liverpool slowly moving out,
+and my father’s tall figure standing on the platform—this
+picture hid the Hub and Bingham and John Kay.
+The serious blue eyes, fixed on mine with love and tenderness,
+could not conceal the deep anxiety they betrayed for
+my future. Behind them, though actually at the Manor
+House, Crayford, fixed on a page of the Bible, or perhaps
+closed in earnest prayer, the eyes of my mother rose up
+too.... The train moved faster, the upright figure and
+the grave, sad face, though lit by a momentary smile of
+encouragement, were hidden slowly by the edge of the
+carriage window. I was too shy to wave my hand, and
+far too sensitive of what the carriage-full of men would
+think if I moved to the window and spoke, or worse, gave
+the good-bye kiss I burned to give. So the straight line
+of that implacable wooden sash slid across both face and
+figure, cutting our stare cruelly in the middle.</p>
+
+<p>It was the last time I saw my father; a year later he
+was dead; and ten years were to pass before I saw my
+mother again. Before this—to look ahead for a second—some
+enterprising Toronto friend, with evangelical tact,
+wrote to my father ... “your son is keeping a tavern,”
+and my father, calling my brother into his study where
+he laid all problems before his God with prayer, told him
+in a broken voice and with tears in his eyes: “He is lost;
+his soul is lost. Algie has gone to—Hell!”...</p>
+
+<p>My vision faded. My broad-shouldered friend and
+his little rat-faced companion stood with their elbows on
+the bar. I saw six small glasses and a big dark bottle.
+Three of the former were filled to the brim with neat rye
+whisky, the other three, “the chasers” as they were called,
+held soda-water.</p>
+
+<p>“Drink hearty,” rasped Bingham’s grating voice, as
+he tossed down his liquor at a gulp, Kay doing the same,
+then swallowing the soda-water.</p>
+
+<p>I moved to the swing-doors. I had never touched
+spirits, and loathed the mere smell of them. I cannot
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[41]</span>
+pretend that any principle was involved; it was simply
+that the mere idea of swallowing raw whisky gave me
+nausea. I saw Kay give me a quick look. “He’ll be
+offended if you don’t take something,” it said plainly. I
+was, besides, familiar with the customs of the country,
+at any rate in theory.</p>
+
+<p>“Have something else,” invited Bingham, “if you
+don’t like it straight.”</p>
+
+<p>I shook my head, mumbling something about it’s being
+too early in the day, and I shall never forget the look that
+came into that cunning little face. But he was not offended.
+He put his hand on Kay’s arm. “Now, see here,” he
+said with seriousness, “that’s dead right. That’s good
+business every time. Never drink yourselves, and you’ll
+make it a success. Your partner’s got the right idea, and
+I tell you straight: never touch a drop of liquor till after
+closing hours. You’ll be asked to drink all day long.
+Everybody will want to drink with the new management.
+Every customer that walks in will say ‘What’s yours?’
+before you even know his name. Now, see here, boys,
+listen to me—you <i>can’t</i> do it! You’ll be blind to the world
+before eleven o’clock. <i>I</i> tell you, and I <i>know</i>!”</p>
+
+<p>“How are you to refuse?” asked Kay.</p>
+
+<p>“I’ll give you a tip: drink tea!”</p>
+
+<p>“Tea!”</p>
+
+<p>“Have your bottle of tea. Tell your bar-tenders.
+It’s the same colour as rye whisky. No one’ll ever know.
+The boss can always have his own private bottle. Well,
+yours is tea. See?” And he winked with a leer like some
+intelligent reptile.</p>
+
+<p>We shook hands, as he saw us into the street.</p>
+
+<p>“You’ll take a cheque, I suppose?” I heard Kay say
+just before we moved off.</p>
+
+<p>“A marked cheque, yes,” was the reply. The phrase
+meant that the bank marked the cheque as good for the
+amount.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s all fixed then,” returned Kay.</p>
+
+<p>“All fixed,” said Bingham, and the swing-doors closed
+upon his unpleasant face as we went out into the street.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[42]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VII">
+    CHAPTER VII
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'><span class='allcaps'>The</span> influences that decided the purchase of the Hub
+were emotional, at any rate, not rational; there
+lay some reaction in me, as of revolt. “You can
+do things out here you could not do at home,” ran like
+a song through the heart all day long, and life seemed to
+hold its arms wide open. Fortunes were quickly made.
+Speculation was rife. Pork went up and wheat went
+down, and thousands were made or lost in a few hours.
+No enterprise was despised, provided it succeeded. All
+this had its effect upon an impressionable and ignorant
+youth whose mind now touched so-called real life for the
+first time. The example of others had its influence,
+too. The town was sprinkled with young Englishmen,
+but untrained Englishmen the country did not need,
+though it needed their money; and this money they speedily
+exchanged, just as I had done, for experience—and then
+tried to find work.</p>
+
+<p>The pathos of it all was, though, that for an average
+young Englishman to find a decent job was impossible.
+I was among the unsuccessful ones. Kay was another,
+but Kay and myself were now—we thought—to prove
+the exception.</p>
+
+<p>“We’ll show ’em!” was the way Kay’s sanguine
+twenty-three years phrased it. We both knew men of
+splendid education and real ability, earning precarious
+livings in positions that would have been ludicrous if they
+were not so pathetic. Men from Oxford and Cambridge,
+with first rate classical training, were slinging drinks behind
+bars, or running about the country persuading the farmers
+to insure their stacks and outhouses; others with knowledge
+of languages and pronounced literary talent were adding
+figures in subordinate positions in brokers’ offices. But
+by far the greater number were working as common
+labourers for small farmers all over the country.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[43]</span></p>
+
+<p>“They missed their chance when it came,” Kay repeated.
+“We won’t miss ours. A chance like the Hub
+won’t come twice.” A year of disagreeable, uncongenial
+work and then—success! Retire! Off to the primeval
+woods, canoes, Indians, camp fires, books ... a dozen
+dreams flamed up.</p>
+
+<p>Within a month we had completed the purchase, and
+the Hub opened with flying colours and high hopes;
+the newspapers gave us what they called a “send off”;
+both “House of Lords” and “House of Commons”
+were packed; the cash-registers clicked and rang all day,
+and the Hub, swept and garnished, fairly sparkled with
+the atmosphere of success, congratulations, and promise
+of good business. Billy Bingham’s association with it
+was a thing of the past; it became the most respectable
+place of its kind in the whole town.</p>
+
+<p>All day long the shoal of customers flocked in and
+rattled their money across the busy counters. Each
+individual wanted a word with the proprietors. Buyers
+and brewery agents poured in too, asking for orders, and
+newspaper reporters took notes for descriptive articles
+which duly appeared next morning. The dining-room
+did a roaring trade and every stool at the long lunch counter
+had its occupant. How easy it all seemed! And no one
+the worse for liquor! Everybody was beaming, and,
+as a partner in the Hub Wine Company, I already felt
+that my failure in the dairy farm was forgotten, an unlucky
+incident at most; a boyish episode due to inexperience,
+but now atoned for.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Dufferin, a few years before, had been Governor-General
+of Canada, and a huge framed photograph of him
+hung above the cold meat, game pies and salads of the
+lunch counter. A connexion of my father’s, the newspapers
+had insisted upon a closer relationship, and while
+some thought he would do better as a first cousin, others
+preferred him as my uncle. As an exceedingly popular
+Governor-General, his place above the good Canadian food
+seemed appropriate at any rate, and the number of customers,
+both known and unknown, who congratulated me
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[44]</span>
+upon our distinguished framed patron, gave me the odd
+feeling that somehow the shock to my father was thereby
+lessened. The stories of what Dufferin and his wife had
+done for Tom, Dick and Harry, for their wives and their
+children or their dogs, told to me beside our House of
+Lords’ bar that opening day proved good for business.
+I had come to the colony somewhat overburdened with
+distinguished relations of heavy calibre who, to extend
+the simile a little, neither now nor later, ever fired a single
+shot on my behalf. The mere inertia of their names,
+indeed, weighed down my subsequent New York days
+with the natural suspicion that a young man so well born
+must have done something dreadful at home to be forced
+to pose to artists for a living. Why, otherwise, should he
+suffer exile in the underworld of a city across the seas?
+Lord Dufferin’s photograph augustly throned above the
+Hub luncheon counter, certainly, however, fired a shot
+on my behalf, making the cash-registers clink frequently.
+His effect on our bar-trade, innocently uncalculated,
+deserves this word of gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>There were three white-coated bar-tenders in the House
+of Lords, Jimmy Martin, their principal, in charge of it;
+a couple managed the House of Commons trade in the
+lower bar, down a step and through an arch; and here,
+too, were tables and chairs, rooms curtained off, and other
+facilities for back-street customers who wanted to sit and
+talk over their beer. Between the two, a door in the wall
+led to my own quarters upstairs by means of a private
+staircase. Sharp on eleven we closed our doors that first
+night, and proceeded, with Jimmy Martin’s aid, to open
+the cash-registers and count up our takings. There was
+just under 250 dollars, or £50 in English money. Then,
+having said good night to our chief bar-tender, we spent
+a happy hour making calculations for the future. The
+first day, of course, could not be taken as an average,
+but prospects, we assured ourselves, were brilliant.
+Later we were to discover things that were to prove a
+source of endless trouble and vexation of spirit to us both—daily
+worries we both learned to dread. At the moment,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[45]</span>
+however, it was in sanguine mood that I went to bed that
+night of our opening day. The money was locked away,
+ready for me to take to the bank next morning—our first
+deposit. Before that I must be at the market to buy
+provisions—six o’clock—and Kay was to be in attendance
+in the bars at nine-thirty.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s a go all right,” were his good-night words, as he
+thumped down my private staircase and let himself into
+the street with his latch-key.</p>
+
+<p>Lucky beggar! He hadn’t got to write home and explain
+to evangelical and teetotal parents what he was doing!</p>
+
+<p>Some customers, I discovered, arrived early. That
+a man should want to swallow raw spirits at 9 <span class="allsmcap">A.M.</span> amazed
+me. Some of these were men we knew socially; with one
+of them, who arrived regularly at 9.15, I often dined in his
+cosy little bungalow beside the lake. His wife was charming,
+I played with his children. He was a lawyer. He
+came for what he called an “eye-opener.” Another of
+this early brigade was a stockbroker, who later made a
+fortune speculating in wheat on margin, lost it again, and
+disappeared mysteriously across the border into the States.
+His manner of taking his “eye-opener” was peculiar,
+puzzling me for a long time. I had never seen it before.
+It made me laugh heartily the first morning, for I thought
+he was doing it to amuse me—till his injured expression
+corrected me. Producing a long silk handkerchief, he
+flung it round his neck, one end held by the hand that also
+held his brimming glass. With the free hand he then
+pulled the other end very slowly round his collar, levering
+thus the shaking glass to his lips. Unless he used
+this pulley, the glass shook and rattled so violently against
+his teeth that its contents would be spilt before he could
+get it into his mouth. The horror of it suddenly dawned
+on me. I was appalled. The stuff that poisoned this
+nervous wreck was sold by myself and partner at 100
+per cent. profit!</p>
+
+<p>“If he doesn’t get it here,” said Kay, “he’ll go to
+Tim Sullivan’s across the way, and get bad liquor. Ours
+at least is pure.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[46]</span></p>
+
+<p>During the long twelve hours that the Hub was open
+either Kay or myself was always on duty, talking to customers,
+keeping an eye (as we hoped!) on the bar-tenders,
+showing ourselves with an air of authority in the House of
+Commons when, as usually, it became too rowdy—Kay
+enjoying the occasional “chucking out.” At lunch time
+and from four to half-past six or seven o’clock, the bars
+were invariably crowded. The amount of milkless tea
+we drank ought to have poisoned us both, but we never
+fell from grace in this respect, and we kept faithfully,
+too, to Jimmy Martin’s advice never to “put ’em up”
+for others.</p>
+
+<p>Days were long and arduous. Though we soon closed
+the dining room after lunch, doing no supper trade, there
+were public dinners once or twice a week for Masonic
+societies, football clubs and the like, and at these one or
+other of the proprietors was expected to show himself.
+To my great relief, Kay rather enjoyed this light duty.
+His talent for acting was often in demand too; he would
+don his Henry Irving wig and give the company an imitation
+of the great actor in “The Bells.”</p>
+
+<p>Kay was very successful at these “banquets,”
+and sometimes a Society would engage the room on the
+condition that he performed for them after dinner. What
+annoyed him was that “the silly idiots always order
+champagne!” There was no profit worth mentioning
+in “wine,” as it was called. The profit was in beer and
+“liquor.” The histrionic talent, at any rate, was an
+accomplishment that proved useful later in our difficult
+New York days, when Kay not only got a job on the stage
+himself, but provided me with a part as well.</p>
+
+<p>The shadow of that East 19th Street boarding-house
+was already drawing nearer ... and another customer
+of the Hub who was to share it with us was Louis B——,
+a voluble, high-strung fat little Frenchman, of mercurial
+temperament and great musical gifts. When a Hub
+banquet had seen enough of the Irving wig, and expressed
+a wish to hear the other proprietor, it was always Louis
+B—— who accompanied my fiddle on the piano. Raff’s
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[47]</span>
+“Cavatina” was tolerated, the “Berçeuse” from
+“Jocelyn” enjoyed, but the popular songs of the day,
+Louis extemporizing all accompaniments with his perfect
+touch, it was these that were good for “business.” The
+fat, good-natured little man, with his bright dark eyes
+and crisp curly black hair, demanded several absinthes
+before he would play. He was a born musician. He loved,
+in the order mentioned, music, horses, his wife, and from
+the last he always had to obtain permission to “play at
+the Hub.” Towards midnight he would dash to the telephone
+and say pleadingly to his wife: “They want me
+to play one more piece—only one. Do you mind? I
+shan’t be long!”</p>
+
+<p>The Hub Wine Company, camouflaging the saloon
+business of two foolish young idiots, passed through its
+phases towards the inevitable collapse. Business declined;
+credit grew difficult; prompt payment for supplies more
+difficult still. We closed the Dining Room, then the
+House of Commons. The Banquets ceased. Selling out
+at “top price” became a dream, loss of all my capital
+a fact. Those were funereal days. To me it was a
+six months’ horror. The impulsive purchase was paid for
+dearly. It was not only the declining business, the approaching
+loss of my small capital, the prospect of presently
+working for some farmer at a dollar a day and green tea—it
+was not these things I chiefly felt. It was, rather,
+the fact that I had taken a step downhill, betrayed some
+imagined ideal in me, shown myself willing to “sell my
+soul” for filthy lucre. The price, though not paid in
+lucre, was certainly paid in mental anguish, and the letters
+from home, though patient, generously forgiving, even
+understanding, increased this tenfold....</p>
+
+<p>My own nature, meanwhile, wholly apart from any
+other influence, sought what relief it could. My heart
+had never really been in the venture, my body now kept
+out of it as much as possible. The loathing I had felt
+for the place from the very beginning was quite apart from
+any question of success or failure. I hated the very atmosphere,
+the faces of the staff, the sound of voices as I
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[48]</span>
+approached the swinging doors. While attending strictly
+to business, never shortening my hours on duty by five
+minutes, and eagerly helping Kay in our efforts to get in
+another partner with money, my relief when once outside
+the actual building was immense. We had engaged a
+new manager, whose popularity in the town—he was a
+great cricketer—brought considerable fresh custom, but
+whose chief value in my eyes lay in the fact that I need
+not be present quite as much as before. Collins, who
+weighed twenty stone, was a character. Known for some
+reason as “the Duke,” he had no other title to nobility.
+He helped trade for a few brief weeks, but also helped
+himself at the same time, and his exit, not unlike that of
+Jimmy—who was “fired” for the same reason—was
+attended by threats of a slander suit, which also, like
+Jimmy’s, was set down in the Greek kalends.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[49]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VIII">
+    CHAPTER VIII
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap kern'><span class='allcaps'>One</span> effect of these long, unhappy months, anyhow,
+was to emphasize another, and that the principal
+side, of my nature. The daily effort of forcing
+myself to do what I hated so intensely, was succeeded by
+the equal and opposite reaction of enjoying tremendously
+my free hours of relaxation. When the swing-doors
+closed behind me, my mind closed too upon all memory
+of the hated Hub. It was shut out, forgotten, non-existent.
+I flew instinctively to what comforted and
+made me happy. Gorged with the reading of poetry and
+of idealistic, mystical books, an insatiable sense of wonder
+with a childish love of the marvellous added to it, my
+disappointing experience of practical realities demanded
+compensation as a safety-valve, if as nothing more. I
+found these in Nature, music, and in the companionship
+of a few people I will presently describe. Out of those
+prison-like swing-doors I invariably went, either with the
+fiddle-case in my hand, or with food in my pocket and a
+light cloak as blanket for sleeping out. Concerts and
+organ recitals were not enough; more than to listen, I
+wanted to play myself; and Louis B—— was usually as
+enthusiastic as I. The music was a deep delight to me,
+but the sleeping under the stars I enjoyed most.</p>
+
+<p>Those lonely little camp fires have left vivid pictures
+in the mind. An East-bound tram soon took one beyond
+the city, where the shores of Lake Ontario stretched
+their deserted sands for miles. There was always fresh
+water to be found for boiling tea, lots of driftwood lying
+about, and the sand made a comfortable bed. Many a
+night of that sweet Indian summer I saw the moon rise
+or set over the water, and lay watching the stars until the
+sunrise came. One spot in particular was a favourite
+with me, because, just over the high loam cliffs that lined
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[50]</span>
+the shore, there was an enormous field of tomatoes, and
+while Jimmy was helping himself to the Hub cash under
+Kay’s eyes in the city, I helped myself to half a dozen
+of the farmer’s ripe tomatoes. The Hub, however, of set
+purpose, formed no part of my thoughts, my reveries
+and dreams being of a very different, and far more interesting,
+kind....</p>
+
+<p>A night in the woods, though distance made it more
+difficult, comforted me even more than the Lake expeditions.
+I kept the woods usually for Saturday night,
+when the next day left me free as well.</p>
+
+<p>A pine forest beyond Rosedale was my favourite
+haunt, for it was (in those days) quite deserted and several
+miles from the nearest farm, and in the heart of it lay a
+secluded little lake with reedy shores and deep blue
+water. Here I lay and communed, the world of hotels,
+insurance, even of Methodists, very far away. The hum
+of the city could not reach me, though its glare was faintly
+visible in the sky. There were no signs of men; no sounds
+of human life; not even a dog’s bark—nothing but a sighing
+wind and lapping water and a sort of earth-murmur
+under the trees, and I used to think that God, whatever He
+was, or the great spiritual forces that I believed lay behind
+all phenomena, and perhaps were the moving life of the
+elements themselves, must be nearer to one’s consciousness
+in places like this than among the bustling of men
+in the towns and houses. As the material world faded
+away among the shadows, I felt dimly the real spiritual
+world behind shining through ... I meditated on the
+meaning of these dreams till the veil over outer things
+seemed very thin; diving down into my inner consciousness
+as deeply as I could till a stream of tremendous
+yearning for the realities that lay beyond appearances
+poured out of me into the night.... The hours passed
+with magical swiftness, and my dreaming usually ended
+in sleep, for I often woke in the chilly time just before
+the dawn, lying sideways on the pine needles, and saw
+the trees outlined sharply against the Eastern sky, and
+the lake water still and clear, and heard the dawn-wind
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[51]</span>
+just beginning to sing overhead. The laughter of a loon
+would sound, the call of an owl, the cry of a whip-poor-will;
+and then—the sun was up.</p>
+
+<p>Thought ran, on these lonely nights, to everything
+except to present or recent happenings. Life, already
+half over as, at twenty-one, it then seemed to me, had
+proved a failure; my few trivial experiences appeared
+gigantic and oppressive. I felt very old. Present conditions,
+being unhappy and promising to become more
+unhappy still, I left aside. I had “accepted” them as
+Karma, I must go through with them, but there was no
+need to intensify or prolong unhappiness by dwelling on
+them. I therefore dismissed them, thought wandering
+to other things. All was coloured, shaped, directed by
+those Eastern teachings in which I was then entirely
+absorbed ... and the chief problem in my mind at the
+time, was to master the method of accepting, facing,
+exhausting, whatever life might bring, while being, as the
+Bhagavad Gita described, “indifferent to results,” unaffected,
+that is, by the “fruits of action.” Detachment,
+yet without shirking, was the nearest equivalent phrase
+I could find; a state, anyhow, stronger than the Christian
+“resignation,” which woke contempt in me....</p>
+
+<p>Unhappiness, though it may seem trivial now, both as to
+cause and quality, was very deep in me at the time. It
+had wakened an understanding of certain things I had
+read—as in the stolen “Patanjali” years before—without
+then grasping what they meant. These things I now was
+beginning to reach by an inner experience of them, rather
+than by an intellectual comprehension merely.... And,
+as thought ran backwards, escaping the unpleasant
+Hub and Dairy, to earlier days in the Black Forest School,
+to the Jura Mountains village, to family holidays among the
+Alps or on the west coast of Scotland, it reached in due
+course the year spent at Edinburgh University just before
+I left for Canada, and so to individuals there who had
+strongly influenced me:</p>
+
+<p>I recalled Dr. H——, who used hypnotism in his practice,
+taught me various methods of using it, and often
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[52]</span>
+admitted me to private experiments in his study. He
+explained many a text-book for me. He had urged
+me to give up the idea of farming in Canada, and to read
+for medicine and become a doctor. “Specialize,” he
+said (in 1883). “By the time you are qualified Suggestion
+will be a recognized therapeutic agent, accepted by all,
+and accomplishing marvellous results. Become a mental
+specialist.”</p>
+
+<p>I lay under my pine trees, wondering if it were still too
+late ... but speculating, further and chiefly, about those
+other states of consciousness, since called “subliminal,”
+which his experiments had convinced me were of untold
+importance, both to the individual and to the race.
+Any lawful method of extending the field of consciousness,
+of increasing its scope, of developing latent faculties, with
+its corollary of greater knowledge and greater powers,
+excited and interested me more than the immediate
+prospect of making a million....</p>
+
+<p>This doctor’s family were sincere and convinced spiritualists.
+He let them be, paying no attention to them,
+yet pointing out to me privately the “secondary” state
+into which his wife, as the medium, could throw herself
+at will. His son had an Amati violin; we played together;
+I was invited to many séances. The power of reading
+a “sitter’s” mind I often witnessed, my own unuttered
+thoughts often being announced as the communication
+from some “guide” or “spirit friend.” But for the
+doctor’s private exposition, I might doubtless have been
+otherwise persuaded and shared my hostess’s convictions.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the “communications” came back in memory,
+none the less, as I lay beside the little lake and watched
+the firelight reflected with the stars: “There is an Indian
+here; he says he comes for you. He is a medicine man.
+He says you are one, too. You have great healing power.
+He keeps repeating the word ‘scratch.’” The dubious
+word meant “write”; I was to become a writer, a prophesy
+that woke no interest in me at all.... Another
+communication delved into the past: “You have been an
+Indian in a recent life, and you will go back to their country
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[53]</span>
+to work off certain painful Karma. You were Aztec,
+Inca, Egyptian, and, before that again, Atlantean. With
+the world to-day you have nothing in common, for none
+of the souls you knew have come back with you. Nature
+means more to you than human beings. Beware!”
+The last word alarmed me a good deal until the doctor’s
+humorous exposition killed any malefic suggestion. The
+horoscope his wife cast and read for me, however, he
+refused to be bothered with; he could not, therefore,
+comfort me by explaining away a disturbing sentence:
+“All your planets are beneficent, but were just below the
+horizon at the hour of your birth. This means that you
+will come very near to success in all you undertake, yet
+never quite achieve it.”</p>
+
+<p>These memories slipped in their series across my mind,
+as the embers of my fire faded and the night drew on.
+Swiftly they came and passed, each leaving its little trail
+of dust, its faint emotion, yet leading always to a stronger
+ghost whose memory still bulked largely in my mind—the
+ghost of a Hindu student. He was a fourth-year
+man, about to become a qualified doctor, and I met him
+first in the dissecting room, where occasionally I played
+at studying anatomy. We first became intimate friends
+over the dissection of a leg. It was he who explained
+“Patanjali” to me. He was a very gifted and unusual
+being. He showed me strange methods of breathing, of
+concentration, of meditation. He made clear a thousand
+half-conscious dreams and memories in me. He was
+mysterious but sincere, living his theories in practice.
+We went for great walks along the Forth, watching the
+Forth Bridge then being built; down the coast to St.
+Abb’s Head and Coldingham; deep into the recesses of
+the Pentlands, where, more than once, we slept in the
+open. We made curious and interesting experiments
+together.... Years later—he is still alive—I drew upon
+a fraction of his personality in two books, “John Silence”
+and “Julius Le Vallon.”...</p>
+
+<p>Much that he explained and taught me, much that he
+believed and practised, came back vividly during these
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[54]</span>
+nightly vigils in the woods, while I listened to the weird
+laughter of the loons like the voices of women far away,
+and watched the Northern Lights flash in their strange
+majesty from the horizon to mid-heaven. Unhappiness
+was making my real life sink deeper. No boy, I am sure,
+sought for what he believed would prove the realities
+with more passionate intensity than I did. It is curious
+now to look back upon those grave experiments first taught
+me by my Hindu friend, who assured me that the way to rob
+emotions of their power was to refuse to identify one’s
+“self” with them, this real “self” merely looking on as
+a spectator, apart, detached; and that the outer events
+of life had small importance, what mattered being solely
+one’s inner attitude to them, one’s interpretation of
+them....</p>
+
+<p>From these hours spent alone with Nature, as also
+from the hours of music with Louis B—— I returned, at
+any rate, refreshed and invigorated to my loathsome bars.
+Personal troubles seemed less important, less oppressive;
+they were, after all, but brief episodes in a single life;
+as Karma, they had to be faced, gone through with;
+they had something to teach, and I must learn the lesson,
+or else miss one of the objects of my being. Watching
+the starry heavens through hours of imaginative reflection
+brought a bigger perspective in which individual
+worries found reduced proportion. My thoughts introduced
+a yet vaster perspective still. The difficulty was
+to keep the point of view when the mood that encouraged
+it was gone. After a few hours in the House of Lords
+perspective was apt to dwindle again....</p>
+
+<p>When the winter months made sleeping out impossible,
+and Louis B—— was not available, my precious hours
+of freedom would be spent with a young agnostic doctor
+dying of consumption; with the Professor of History in
+Toronto University—a sterling, sympathetic man, a true
+Christian of intellectual type, and a big, genuine soul who
+never thought of himself in the real help he gave me unfailingly
+with both hands; or, lastly, with an enthusiast
+who shared my quest for what we called “the Realities.”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[55]</span>
+With all three I had made close friends during the first
+prosperous days of the Dairy; the Professor’s family had
+been customers for milk and eggs; the young doctor,
+living in my boarding-house, had been a pupil in my
+French and German class.</p>
+
+<p>The third was a Scotsman, fairly well educated,
+about thirty years of age, who, while fully in sympathy
+with my line of thinking, had succeeded in reducing his
+dreams to some sort of order so that they did not interfere
+with his ordinary, practical career and yet were the
+guiding rule of his life.</p>
+
+<p>He was in the cement business, and his clothes, even
+on Sunday, were always covered with a fine white dust,
+for he was unmarried and lived alone in a single room.
+He made a bare living at his work, but was thoroughly
+conscientious and devoted to the interests of his employer,
+and all he asked was steady work and fair remuneration
+for the rest of his life. He was a real mystic by temperament,
+though he belonged to no particular tradition.
+The world for him was but a show of false appearances
+that the senses gathered; the realities behind were spiritual.
+He believed that his soul had existed for ever and would
+never cease to exist, and that his ego would continue to
+expand and develop according to the life he led, and shaped
+by his thoughts and acts (but especially by his thoughts)
+to all eternity. This world for him was a schoolroom, a
+place of difficult discipline and learning, and the lessons
+he was learning were determined logically and justly by
+his previous living and previous mistakes. Talents or
+disabilities, equally, were the results of former action....</p>
+
+<p>But to the ordinary man he appeared simply as a rather
+dull everyday worker, without any worldly ambition,
+absolutely honest and trustworthy, and always occupying
+a subordinate position in practical affairs.</p>
+
+<p>In the “old country” he had belonged to some sort
+of society that kept alive traditions of teaching methods
+of spiritual development, and he told me much concerning
+their theories that immense latent powers lay in the depths
+of one’s being and could be educed by suitable living,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[56]</span>
+and the period in the “schoolroom of this world,” as he
+called it, could be shortened and the progress of one’s
+real development hastened. It all lay, with him, in learning
+how to concentrate the faculties on this inner life,
+without neglecting the duties of the position one held to
+family or employer, and thus reducing the life of the body
+and the senses to the minimum that was consistent with
+health and ordinary duty. In this way he believed new
+forces would awaken to life, and new parts of one’s being
+be stimulated into activity, and in due course one would
+become conscious of a new spiritual region with the
+spiritual senses adapted to it. It amounted, of course,
+to an expansion of consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>All this, naturally, interested me very much indeed,
+and I spent hours talking with this cement maker, and
+many more hours reading the books he lent me and thinking
+about them. My friend helped in this extension.
+Carl du Prel’s “Philosophy of Mysticism” was a book to
+injure no one.</p>
+
+<p>He had published one or two volumes of minor poetry,
+and his verse, though poor in form, caught all through it
+the elusive quality of genuine mystical poetry, unearthly,
+touching the stars, and wakening in the reader the note
+of yearning for the highest things. I took him with me
+several times to my little private grove, and he would
+recite these verses to me in a way that made them sound
+very different from my own reading of them. And as he
+lay beside the lake and I heard his reedy voice mingling
+with the wind in the trees, and watched his watery blue
+eyes shine across the smoke of our fire, I realized that
+the value of his poems lay in the fact that they were a
+perfectly true expression of his self—of his small, mystical,
+unselfish and oddly elemental soul searching after the God
+that should finally absorb him up into something greater.
+I do not wish to criticize him, but only to picture what
+I saw. His attenuated body, and long thin fingers, his
+shabby clothes covered with white dust lying by my side
+under the stars, his eyes looking beyond the world, and
+the sound of his thin voice that lost half its words somewhere
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[57]</span>
+in the wind—the picture is complete in every detail
+in my mind to this day. His reasoning powers were slight,
+for like all true mystics he believed in the intuitive perception
+of truth; but, coming into my life just at this time,
+he came with influence and a good deal of stimulus too.
+From the “House of Commons” to his dream-laden
+atmosphere provided a contrast that brought relief, at
+any rate.</p>
+
+<p>This mystical minor poet in the cement business had
+several friends like himself, but no one of them possessed
+his value, because no one of them practised their beliefs.
+They talked well and were sincere up to a point, but not
+to the point of making sacrifices for their faith. It was
+always with them a future hope. One, however, must be
+excepted—a woman. She was over sixty and always
+dressed in black, with crêpe scattered all over her, and a
+large white face, and shining eyes, and great bags under
+them. She had been a vegetarian for years. In spite
+of her size she looked so ethereal that a puff of wind
+might have blown her across the street. All her friends
+and relations had “passed over,” and her thoughts were
+evidently centred in the beyond, so far as she herself
+was concerned. She had means of her own, but spent
+most of them in helping others. There was no humbug
+about her. She claimed to have what she called “continuous
+consciousness,” and at night, when her body
+lay down and the brain slept, she focused her Self in
+some spiritual region of her being, and never lost consciousness.
+She saw her body lying there, and knew the brain
+was asleep, but she meanwhile became active elsewhere,
+for she declared a spirit could never sleep, and it was only
+the body that became too weary at the end of the day to
+answer to the spirit’s requirements. In sleep the body,
+left empty by the spirit, slept, and memory, being in the
+brain, became inactive. But as soon as one had learned
+to realize one’s spirit, sleep involved no loss of consciousness
+and memory was continuous.</p>
+
+<p>Her accounts of her experiences in the night thrilled
+me.... While she talked her face grew so white that it
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[58]</span>
+almost shone. It was a beaming, good, loving face, and
+the woman was honest, even if deluded. She radiated
+kindness and sympathy from her person. She had a way
+of screwing up her eyes when speaking, stepping back a few
+paces, and then coming suddenly forward again as though she
+meant to jump across the room, her voice ringing, and her
+eyes opened so wide that I thought the bags underneath
+them must burst with a pop.</p>
+
+<p>The young doctor living in the boarding-house also
+interested me, reviving indeed my desire to follow his own
+profession myself. He was about twenty-six years old
+and very poor; the exact antithesis of myself, being clear-minded,
+practical, cynical and a thorough sceptic on the
+existence of a soul and God and immortality. He was
+well-read and had the true scientific temperament,
+spending hours with his microscope and books. The fact
+of his being at the opposite pole to myself attracted me
+to him, and we had long talks in his consulting-room on
+the ground floor back—where everything was prepared
+for the reception of patients, but where no patient ever
+came. Our worlds were so far apart, and it was so hard
+to establish a mutual coinage of words that our talks were
+somewhat futile. He was logical, absorbed in his dream
+of original research; he used words in their exact
+meaning and jumped to no conclusions rashly, and never
+allowed his judgment to be influenced by his emotions;
+whereas I talked, no doubt, like a child, building vast
+erections upon inadequate premises, indulging in my
+religious dreams about God and the soul, speculative and
+visionary. He argued me out of my boots every time,
+and towards the end of our talks grew impatient and
+almost angry with my vague mind and “transcendental
+tommy-rot,” as he called it; but at the same time he
+liked me, and was always glad to talk and discuss
+with me.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing he said, though much of it was cogent and unanswerable,
+ever influenced my opinions in the least degree,
+because I felt he was fundamentally wrong, and was trying
+to find by scalpel and microscope the things of the spirit.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[59]</span>
+I felt a profound pity for him, and he felt a contemptuous
+pity for me. But one night my pity almost changed to
+love, and after this particular conversation, in the course
+of which he made me deep confidences of his early privations
+in order that he might study for his profession, and
+of his unquenchable desire for knowledge for its own sake,
+I felt so tenderly towards him, that I never tried to argue
+again, but only urged him to believe in a soul and in a
+future life. For he told me that he was already so far
+gone in consumption that at most he had but a year or
+two to live, and he knew that in the time at his disposal
+he could not accomplish the very smallest part of his
+great dream. I then understood why his eyes were so
+burning bright and why he had always glowing red spots
+in his cheeks, and looked so terribly thin and emaciated.</p>
+
+<p>The hours spent with him did not refresh or invigorate
+me as the woods and music did; I re-entered the swing
+doors of my prison—as I came to regard the Hub—with
+no new stimulus. His example impressed me, but his
+atmosphere and outlook both depressed. Only my admiration
+for his courage, strong will, and consistent attitude
+remained, while I drank “tea” with my unpleasant
+customers, or listened to complaints from the staff.
+Before the swing-doors closed for the last time, however,
+the thin, keen-faced doctor with the hectic flush and the
+bright burning eyes had succumbed to his terrible malady.
+His end made a great impression on me. For several
+months he went about like a living skeleton. His cough
+was ghastly. He had less and less money, and I seemed to
+be the only friend he turned to, or indeed possessed at all,
+for I was the only person he allowed to help him, and the
+little help I could give was barely enough to prevent the
+landlady turning him out for rent and board unpaid.</p>
+
+<p>To the last his will burned in him like a flame. He
+talked and studied, and dreamed his long dream of scientific
+achievement even when he knew his time was measured
+by weeks, and he was utterly scornful of death and a Deity
+that could devise such a poor scheme of existence, so full
+of failure, pain, and abortive effort. But I was full of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[60]</span>
+admiration for the way he kept going full speed to the very
+end, starting new books and fresh experiments even when
+he knew he would not have time to get half-way through
+with them, and discussing high schemes just as though he
+expected years in which to carry them out—instead of
+days.</p>
+
+<p>Here was a man absolutely without faith, or any belief
+in God or future life, who walked straight up to a miserable
+death under full steam, with nothing to console or buoy
+him up, and without friends to sympathize, and who never
+for a single instant flinched or whimpered. There burned
+in his heart the fire of a really strong will. It was the
+first time I had realized at close quarters what this meant,
+and when I went to his funeral I felt full of real sorrow,
+and have never forgotten the scene at his death-bed
+when the keen set face relaxed nothing of its decision to
+the very last.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[61]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IX">
+    CHAPTER IX
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap xkern'><span class='allcaps'>At</span> length the bitter, sparkling winter was over, the
+sleigh-bells silent, the covered skating-rinks all
+closed. The last remnants of the piled-up snow
+had melted, and the sweet spring winds were blowing
+freshly down the cedar-paved streets. On the lake shores
+the boat-houses were being opened; canoes, skiffs and cat-boats
+being repainted. Tents and camping kit were
+being overhauled. The talk everywhere was of picnics,
+expeditions, trips into the backwoods, and plans for
+summer holidays. Crystal sunlight flooded the world.
+The Canadian spring intoxicated the brain and sent the
+blood dancing to wild, happy measures.</p>
+
+<p>The Hub was now in the hands of a Receiver; Adams
+and Burns, the wholesale house, controlled it. Kay and
+I had to pay cash for everything—the Hub Wine Company
+was “bust.”</p>
+
+<p>Yielding to my father’s impatient surprise that after
+all these months I was still a partner, I had assigned my
+interest a short time before to Kay, and had sent home
+the printed announcement in the newspapers. It was a
+nominal assignment only, for I had nothing to assign.
+My last penny of capital was lost. Kay, for his part, had
+lost everything too. Vultures, in the form of bailiffs
+with blue writs in their claws, haunted our last week;
+by good luck rather than good management I owed
+nothing, but Kay had small outstanding accounts all
+over the town.</p>
+
+<p>It was a hectic last week. Our friends came in crowds
+to sympathize, to offer advice, to suggest new plans, and
+all considered a liquid farewell necessary. This etiquette
+was strict. A private word with the Receiver brought
+back our tea bottle. The Upper House did a fair business
+again, while Louis B—— bursting with new schemes,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[62]</span>
+new enterprises, that should restore our fortunes, was for
+ever at the piano in the upstairs room. We played together
+while our little Rome was burning—Tchaikowsky,
+Chopin, Wagner, and the latest songs with choruses.
+Kay donned his Irving wig from time to time and roared
+his “Bells” and “Suicide.” Our last days rattled by.</p>
+
+<p>The pain of the failure was mitigated for me personally
+by the intense relief I felt to be free of the nightmare
+at last. Whatever might be in store, nothing could be
+worse than that six months’ horror. Besides, failure in
+Canada was never final. It held the seeds of success to
+follow. From its ashes new life rose with wings and
+singing. The electric air of spring encouraged brave hopes
+of a thousand possibilities, and while I felt the disaster
+overwhelmingly, our brains at the same time already
+hummed with every imaginable fresh scheme. What
+these schemes were it is difficult now to recall, beyond
+that they included all possibilities of enterprise that a
+vast young country could suggest to penniless adventurous
+youth.</p>
+
+<p>What memory still holds sharply, however, is the face
+of a young lawyer of our acquaintance, as he looked at
+me across the fiddle and said casually: “You can live
+on my island in Lake Rosseau if you like!” Without a
+moment’s hesitation we accepted the lawyer’s offer of
+his ten-acre island in the northern lakes. The idea of
+immediate new enterprise faded. Kay was easily persuaded
+into a plan that promised a few weeks’ pleasant
+leisure to think things over, living meanwhile for next to
+nothing. “I shall go to New York later,” he announced,
+“and get on the stage. I’ll take Shakespeare up to the
+island and study it.” He packed his Irving wig. It
+was the camping-out which caught me with irresistible
+attraction: the big woods, an open air life, sun, wind and
+water.... “I’ll come up and join you later,” promised
+the sanguine Louis B——. “I’ll come with some new
+plan we can talk over round your camp-fire.” He agreed
+to pack up our few belongings and keep them for us till
+we went later to New York. “We’ll all go to the States,”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[63]</span>
+he urged. “Canada is a one-horse place. There are far
+more chances across the line.”</p>
+
+<p>We kept secret our date of leaving, only Louis knowing
+it. On the morning of May 24th, the Queen’s birthday,
+he came to fetch us and our luggage, the latter reduced to
+a minimum. There were no good-byes. But this excitable
+little Frenchman, who loved a touch of the picturesque,
+did not come quite as we expected. He arrived two hours
+before his time, with a wagonette and two prancing horses,
+his fat figure on the box, flicking his long whip and shouting
+up at our windows. His idea, he explained as we climbed
+in, was to avoid the main station, where we should be bound
+to see a dozen people we knew. He proposed, instead, to
+drive us twenty miles to a small station, where the train
+stopped on its way north. There was no time to argue.
+I sat beside him on the box with the precious fiddle, Kay
+got behind with our two bags, and Louis drove us and his
+spanking pair along King Street and then up Yonge Street.
+Scores recognized us, wondering what it meant, for these
+were the principal streets of the town, but Louis flourished
+his whip, gave the horses their head, and raced along the
+interminable Yonge Street till at length the houses disappeared,
+and the empty reaches of the hinterland took
+their place. He saw us into the train with our luggage
+and our few dollars, waving his whip in farewell as the
+engine started. We did not see him again till he arrived,
+thin, worried, anxious and gabbling, in the East 19th
+Street boarding-house the following autumn.</p>
+
+<p>My Toronto episodes were over. I had been eighteen
+months in the country and was close upon twenty-two;
+my capital I had lost, but I had gained at least a little
+experience in exchange. I no longer trusted every one
+at sight. The green paint had worn thin in patches, if
+not all over. The collapse of the Dairy made me feel old,
+the Hub disaster made me a Methuselah. My home life
+seemed more and more remote, I had broken with it finally,
+I could never return to the old country, nor show my face
+in the family circle again. Thus I felt, at least. The
+pain and unhappiness in me seemed incurably deep, and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[64]</span>
+my shame was very real. In my heart was a secret wish
+to live in the backwoods for evermore, a broken man,
+feeding on lost illusions and vanished dreams. The lighthearted
+plans that Louis B—— and Kay so airily discussed
+I could not understand. My heart sank each time I
+recognized my father’s handwriting on an envelope. I
+felt a kind of final misery that only my belief in Karma
+mitigated.</p>
+
+<p>This mood of exaggerated intensity soon passed, of
+course, but for a time life was very bitter. It was hard at
+first to “accept” these fruits of former lives, this harvest
+of misfortune whose seeds I assuredly had sown myself
+long, long ago. The “detachment” I was trying to learn,
+with its attitude of somehow being “indifferent to the
+fruits of action,” was not acquired in a day.</p>
+
+<p>Yet it interests me now to look back down the vista
+of thirty years, and to realize that this first test of my line
+of thought—whether it was a pretty fancy merely, or
+whether a real conviction—did not find me wanting. It
+was, I found, a genuine belief; neither then, nor in the
+severer tests that followed, did it ever fail me for a single
+moment. I understood, similarly, how my father’s faith,
+equally sincere though in such different guise to mine,
+could give him strength and comfort, no matter what
+life might bring....</p>
+
+<p>As our train went northwards through the hinterland
+towards Gravenhurst and the enchanted island where we
+were to spend five months of a fairyland existence, I
+grasped that a chapter of my life was closed, and a new one
+opening. The mind looked back, of course. Toronto,
+whose Indian name means Place of Meeting, I saw only
+once or twice again. I never stayed there. At the end
+of our happy island-life, we rushed through it on our way
+to fresh adventures in New York, Kay hiding his face in
+an overcoat lest some creditor catch a glimpse of him
+and serve a blue writ before the train’s few minutes’ pause
+in the station ended. The following winter, indeed, this
+happened, though in a theatre and not in a railway
+carriage. The travelling company, of which he formed
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[65]</span>
+a member, was giving its Toronto week, and a creditor in
+the audience recognized him on the stage, though not this
+time in his Irving wig. The blue writ was served, the
+bailiff standing in the wings until the amount was paid.</p>
+
+<p>In the mood of reflection a train journey engenders,
+a sense of perspective slipped behind the eighteen months
+just over. Shot forth from my evangelical hot-house into
+colonial life, it now seemed to me rather wonderful that
+my utter ignorance had not landed me in yet worse
+muddles ... even in gaol.... One incident, oddly
+enough, stood out more clearly than the rest. But for
+my ridiculous inexperience of the common conditions of
+living, my complete want of <i>savoir faire</i>, my unacquaintance
+even with the ways of normal social behaviour, I
+might have now been in very different circumstances. A
+quite different career might easily have opened for me,
+a career in a railway, in the Canadian Pacific Railway, in
+fact, on one of whose trains we were then travelling.</p>
+
+<p>But for my stupid ignorance, an opening in the C.P.R.
+would certainly have been found for me, whether it led
+to a future or not. The incident, slight and trivial
+though it was, throws a characteristic light on the results
+of my upbringing. It happened in this way:</p>
+
+<p>Among my father’s acquaintance were the bigwigs
+of the Canadian Pacific Railway, who had shown him
+much courtesy on our earlier visit. The relationship this
+time was not of a religious kind; he was Financial Secretary
+to the Post Office; the C.P.R. carried the mails.
+Sir George Stephen and Sir Donald Stewart had not at that
+time received their peerages as My Lords Mount-Stephen
+and Strathcona; Sir William van Horne was still alive.
+To all of these I bore letters, though I delivered—by post
+to Montreal—only the one to Sir George, as President of
+the line. It met with the kindest possible response, and
+for several weeks I had been awaiting the return of T.,
+an important official in Toronto, to whom my case had
+been explained, but who was away at the time, touring
+the west in his special car. The moment I returned, I
+felt reasonably sure that he would find me a place of some
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[66]</span>
+sort or other where I could at least make a start. He had,
+in fact, been asked to do so. With influence, too, in high
+quarters behind me, I had every reason to hope. The
+return of Mr. T. I awaited eagerly. He was a young
+man, I learned, of undoubted ability, but was at the same
+time a petty fellow, very pushing, very conceited, and a
+social snob of the most flagrant type. I was rather
+frightened, indeed, by what I heard, for a colonial social
+snob can be a very terrible creature, as I had already
+discovered.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. T.’s return chanced to coincide with a big race meeting,
+to be followed by a ball at Government House. Sir
+Alexander Campbell was Governor of Ontario at the time.
+It was the event of the season, and of course Mr. T. came
+back in time to attend it and be in evidence. With a
+party of friends I drove to my first race meeting (oh, how
+the clothes, the talk, the rushing horses, all looking exactly
+alike, bored me!) with an invitation to the grand stand
+box of the Governor General, Lord Aberdeen, also a friend
+of my father’s, and was thus introduced to the railway
+official under the best possible auspices. My heart beat
+high when I saw how he took trouble to be nice to me and
+begged me to call upon him next day at his office, saying
+that “something could no doubt be arranged for me
+<i>at once</i>.” I was so delighted that I felt inclined to cable
+home at once “Got work”; but I resisted this temptation
+and simply let my imagination play round the nature
+of the position I should soon be holding in a very big
+company, with excellent chances of promotion and salary.
+I was too young to be bothered by the man’s patronizing
+manner and did not care a straw about his condescension
+and self-importance, because I thought only of getting
+work and a start.</p>
+
+<p>The ball filled me with intense shyness and alarm,
+however, for I had never learned to dance, or been inside
+a ballroom, and it was merely by chance I found out that
+white gloves and a white tie (not a black one as I had always
+worn at home for dinner) were the proper things. In a
+colony, too, an Englishman, who pretends to any
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[67]</span>
+standing, cannot be too careful about social details; for
+everything, and more besides, is expected of him.</p>
+
+<p>The ball was even worse than I had anticipated. I
+was nervous and uncomfortable. Ignorant of the little
+observances that would have been known to any man
+brought up differently, I found nothing to say to the
+numerous pretty Canadian girls, unconventional and
+natural, who were introduced to me, and I had not the
+slightest idea that the correct and polite thing to do was
+to ask each young lady for the “pleasure of a dance.”</p>
+
+<p>What people must have thought of my manners I
+cannot imagine, but the climax was undoubtedly reached
+when the railway official swaggered up to me in the middle
+of the room and said he wished to introduce me to his
+sister. This was duly accomplished, but—I could think
+of nothing to say. We stood side by side, with the official
+beaming upon us, I fingering my empty programme and
+the girl waiting to be asked for a dance. But the request
+was not forthcoming, and after a few minutes of terrible
+awkwardness and half silence, the purple-faced official
+marched his sister off again, highly insulted, to introduce
+her to men who would appreciate their luck better than
+I had done.</p>
+
+<p>To him, of course, my manners must have seemed hopelessly
+rude. He felt angry that I had not thought his
+sister worth even the ordinary politeness of a dance;
+and to a Canadian, who learns dancing with his bottle,
+and dances indoors and out on every possible occasion,
+the omission must have seemed incredibly ill-mannered,
+and the snub an unforgivable one. I cannot blame him.
+I remained in complete ignorance however of my crime,
+and, beyond feeling nervously foolish, out of place, and
+generally not much of a success, I had no idea I had given
+cause for offence until, long afterwards, I heard stories
+about myself and my behaviour which made me realize
+that I had done unpardonable things and left undone
+all that was best and correct.</p>
+
+<p>At the time, however, I had no realization that I had
+offended at all; and in the morning I went down according
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[68]</span>
+to appointment to call upon the railway official in
+his fine offices and hear the joyful news of my appointment
+to a lucrative and honourable position in the
+Company.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed a little strange to me that I was kept waiting
+exactly an hour in the outer office, but I was so sure of a
+pleasant interview with a practical result that when at
+last the clerk summoned me to the official’s sanctum, I
+went in with a smiling face and goodwill and happiness in
+my heart.</p>
+
+<p>The general manager, as I will call him, though this
+title disguises his actual position, greeted me, however,
+without a word. He was talking to a man who stood
+beside his desk, and though he must have heard my name
+announced, he did not so much as turn his head. I stood
+looking at the framed photographs on the wall for several
+moments before the man went out, and then, when the
+door was closed, I advanced with outstretched hand
+and cordial manner across the room to greet my future
+employer.</p>
+
+<p>He glanced at me frigidly, and, without even rising
+from his chair, gave me a stiff bow and said in a voice of
+the utmost formality:</p>
+
+<p>“Well, sir, and what can I do for you?”</p>
+
+<p>The words fell into my brain like so many particles of
+ice, and froze my tongue. Such a reception I had never
+dreamed of receiving. What had I done wrong? How in
+the world had I offended? Not even a word of apology
+for keeping me waiting an hour; and not even a seat
+offered me. I stood there foolishly for a moment, completely
+puzzled. Surely there must be a mistake. The
+man had forgotten me, or took me for somebody else.</p>
+
+<p>“I had an appointment with you at eleven o’clock,
+Mr. T.,” I said nervously, but trying to smile pleasantly.
+“You remember you were kind enough to say yesterday
+you thought you might find work for me to do in—in the
+railway offices.”</p>
+
+<p>The man’s eyes flashed, just as though he were angry,
+his face turned red, and I could not help suddenly noticing
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[69]</span>
+what a bad, weak chin he had and how common and coarse
+the lines of his face were. The flush seemed to emphasize
+all its bad points.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, you want work?” he said with a distinct sneer,
+looking me up and down as if I were an animal to be judged.
+“You want work, do you?”</p>
+
+<p>My nervousness began to melt away before his offensive
+manner, and I felt the blood mounting, but trying to
+keep my temper and to believe still there must be some
+mistake, I again reminded him of our previous interview
+at the races and in the ballroom.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, to be sure, yes, now I remember,” he said
+casually, and turned to take up pencil and paper on his
+desk. I looked about for a chair, but there was none near,
+so I remained standing, feeling something like a suspected
+man about to be examined by a magistrate.</p>
+
+<p>“What can you do?” he asked abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>“Well,” I stammered, utterly surprised at his rudeness
+and manner, “I’ve not had much experience yet, of course,
+but I’m willing to begin at the bottom and work up.
+I’ll do anything for a beginning.”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s what everyone says. ‘Doing anything’ is
+no good to me. I want to know what you <i>can</i> do. All
+my clerks here write shorthand——”</p>
+
+<p>“I can write shorthand accurately and fast,” I hastened
+to interrupt, evidently to his surprise, as though he
+had not expected to find me thus equipped.</p>
+
+<p>“But at present,” he hastened to add, “there are no
+vacancies on my staff, and I fear I can offer you nothing
+unless——” he hesitated a moment and then looked me
+full in the face. This time there could be no mistake.
+I saw blood in his eye and I realized he was savagely
+angry with me for some reason, and was determined to
+make the interview as unpleasant for me as possible.</p>
+
+<p>“——unless you care to sling baggage on a side station
+up the line,” he finished sneeringly.</p>
+
+<p>The blood rushed to my face, and I understood in a
+flash that the interview was a farce and his only object
+to humiliate me. I had so far swallowed my temper on
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[70]</span>
+the chance of getting a position, but I knew that a post
+under such a man, who evidently hated me, would be worse
+than nothing. So I gave him one look from head to foot
+and turned to leave the room. I could have struck him
+in the jaw with the greatest pleasure in the world.</p>
+
+<p>“Then I understand you have no vacancies,” I said
+quietly as soon as I got to the door. “I will write and
+thank Sir George Stephen and tell him about your kindness
+to me.”</p>
+
+<p>I said this because it was the only thing that occurred
+to me to say, and not with the object of making him uncomfortable.
+I had no intention of putting my words into
+effect, I had no idea my stray shot would hit the mark.</p>
+
+<p>Yet it did. The official, purple, and dismayed, got
+up hastily, and called me to stay a moment and he would
+see if something was not possible. Hurried sentences
+followed me to the passage, but I merely bowed and went
+out, knowing perfectly well that nothing could come of
+further conversation.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[71]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_X">
+    CHAPTER X
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap kern'><span class='allcaps'>Gradually</span>, thus, contact with ordinary people
+and experiences with certain facets, at least, of
+practical life had begun to give me what is called
+a knowledge of the world. The hot-house upbringing
+made this acquisition difficult as well as painful; there still
+remained a feeling that I was “peculiar”; ignorance of
+things that to other youths of twenty-one were commonplaces
+still gave me little shocks. Knowledge that comes
+at the wrong time is apt to produce exaggerated effects;
+and only those who have shared the childlike shelter
+afforded by a strict evangelical enclosure in early years
+can appreciate the absurd want of proportion which is one
+of these effects. Knowledge of “natural” human kinds,
+withheld at the right moment, and acquired later, has its
+dangers....</p>
+
+<p>Two things, moreover, about people astonished me in
+particular, I remember; they astonish me even more to-day.
+Being, in both cases, merely individual reactions,
+to the herd, they are easily understandable, and are mentioned
+here because, being entirely personal, they reveal
+the individual whose adventures are described.</p>
+
+<p>The first—it astonished me daily, hourly—was the
+indifference of almost everybody to the great questions
+Whence, Why, Whither. The few who asked these
+questions seemed cranks of one sort or another; the
+immense majority of people showed no interest whatever.
+Creatures of extraordinary complexity, powers, faculties,
+set down for a given period, without being consulted
+apparently, upon a little planet amid countless numbers of
+majestic, terrifying suns ... few showed even the
+faintest interest in the purpose, origin and goal of their
+existence. Of these few, again, by far the majority were
+eager to prove that soul and spirit were chemical reactions,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[72]</span>
+results of some fortuitous concourse of dead atoms, to rob
+life, in a word, of all its wonder. These problems of paramount,
+if insoluble, interest, were taken as a matter of
+course. There was, indeed, no sense of wonder.</p>
+
+<p>It astonished me, doubtless, because in my own case
+this was the only kind of knowledge I desired, and desired
+passionately. To me it was the only real knowledge, the
+only thing worth knowing.... And I was ever getting
+little shocks on discovering gradually that not only was
+such knowledge not wanted, but that to talk of its possibility
+constituted one a dreamer, if not a bore. How anybody
+in possession of ordinary faculties could look, say,
+at the night sky of stars, and not know the wondrous
+flood of divine curiosity about his own personal relation
+to the universe drench his being—this never ceased to
+perplex me. Yet with almost everybody, the few exceptions
+being usually “odd,” conversation rapidly flattened
+out as though such things were of no importance, while
+stocks and shares, some kind of practical “market-value,”
+at any rate, quickly became again the topic of real value.
+Not only, however, did this puzzle me; it emphasized
+at this time one’s sense of being peculiar; it sketched a
+growing loneliness in more definite outline. No one wanted
+to make some money more than I did, but these other things—one
+reason, doubtless, why I never did make money—came
+indubitably first.</p>
+
+<p>The second big and daily astonishment of those
+awakening years, which also has persisted, if not actually
+intensified, concerned the blank irresponsiveness to beauty
+of almost everybody I had to do with. Exceptions, again,
+were either cranks or useless, unpractical people, failures
+to a man. Many liked “scenery,” either perceiving it
+for themselves, or on having it pointed out to them;
+but very few, as with myself, knew their dominant mood of
+the day influenced—well, by a gleam of light upon the lake
+at dawn, a faint sound of music in the pines, a sudden strip
+of blue on a day of storm, the great piled coloured clouds
+at evening—“such clouds as flit, like splendour-winged
+moths about a taper, round the red west when the sun dies
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[73]</span>
+in it.” These things had an effect of intoxication upon me,
+for it was the wonder and beauty of Nature that touched
+me most; something like the delight of ecstasy swept over
+me when I read of sunrise in the Indian Caucasus....
+“The point of one white star is quivering still, deep in
+the orange light of widening morn beyond the purple
+mountains ...” and it was a genuine astonishment to
+me that so few, so very few, felt the slightest response,
+or even noticed, a thousand and one details in sky and
+earth that delighted me with haunting joy for hours at a
+stretch.</p>
+
+<p>With Kay, my late “partner in booze,” as I had
+heard him called, there was sufficient response in these
+two particulars to make him a sympathetic companion.
+If these things were not of dominant importance to him,
+they were at least important. Humour and courage
+being likewise his, he proved a delightful comrade during
+our five months of lonely island life. What his view of
+myself may have been is hard to say; luckily perhaps,
+Kay was not a scribbler.... He will agree, I think,
+that we were certainly very happy in our fairyland of
+peace and loveliness amid the Muskoka Lakes of Northern
+Ontario.</p>
+
+<p>Our island, one of many in Lake Rosseau, was about
+ten acres in extent, irregularly shaped, overgrown with
+pines, its western end running out to a sharp ridge we called
+Sunset Point, its eastern end facing the dawn in a high
+rocky bluff. It rose in the centre to perhaps a hundred
+feet, it had little secret bays, pools of deep water beneath
+the rocky bluff for high diving, sandy nooks, and a sheltered
+cove where a boat could ride at anchor in all weathers.
+Close to the shore, but hidden by the pines, was a one-roomed
+hut with two camp-beds, a big table, a wide balcony,
+and a tiny kitchen in a shack adjoining. A canoe
+and rowing-boat went with the island, a diminutive wharf
+as well. On the mainland, a mile and a half to the north,
+was an English settler named Woods who had cleared the
+forest some twenty-five years before, and turned the wilderness
+into a more or less productive farm. Milk, eggs
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[74]</span>
+and vegetables we obtained from time to time. To the
+south and east and west lay open water for several miles,
+dotted by similar islands with summer camps and bungalows
+on them. The three big lakes—Rosseau, Muskoka
+and Joseph—form the letter Y, our island being where
+the three strokes joined.</p>
+
+<p>To me it was paradise, the nearest approach to a dream
+come true I had yet known. The climate was dry, sunny
+and bracing, the air clear as crystal, the nights cool. In
+moonlight the islands seemed to float upon the water,
+and when there was no moon the reflection of the stars
+had an effect of phosphorescence in some southern sea.
+Dawns and sunsets, too, were a constant delight, and before
+we left in late September we had watched through half
+the night the strange spectacle of the Northern Lights in
+all their rather awful splendour.</p>
+
+<p>The day we arrived—May 24th—a Scotch mist veiled
+all distant views, the island had a lonely and deserted air,
+a touch of melancholy about its sombre pines; and when
+the small steamer had deposited us with our luggage on
+the slippery wharf and vanished into the mist, I remember
+Kay’s disconsolate expression as he remarked gravely:
+“We shan’t stay <i>here</i> long!” Our first supper deepened
+his conviction, for, though there were lamps, we had forgotten
+to bring oil, and we devoured bread and porridge
+quickly before night set in. It was certainly a contrast
+to the brilliantly lit corner of the Hub dining-room where
+we had eaten our last dinner.... But the following
+morning at six o’clock, after a bathe in the cool blue water,
+while a dazzling sun shone in a cloudless sky, he had already
+changed his mind. Our immediate past seemed hardly
+credible now. Jimmy Martin, the “Duke,” the
+Methodist woodcuts, the life insurance offices, to say
+nothing of the sporting goods emporium, red-bearded
+bailiffs, Alfred Cooper, and a furious half-intoxicated Irish
+cook—all faded into the atmosphere of some half-forgotten,
+ugly dream.</p>
+
+<p>We at once set our house in order. We had saved a
+small sum in cash from the general wreck; a little went a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[75]</span>
+long way; pickerel were to be caught for the trouble of
+trolling a spoon-bait round the coast, and we soon discovered
+where the black bass hid under rocky ledges of
+certain pools. In a few weeks, too, we had learned to
+manage a canoe to the point of upsetting it far from shore,
+shaking it half-empty while treading water, then climbing
+in again—the point where safety, according to the Canadians,
+is attained. Even in these big lakes, it was rare
+that the water was too rough for going out, once the craft
+was mastered; a “Rice Lake” or “Peterborough,” as
+they were called, could face anything; a turn of the wrist
+could “lift” them; they answered the paddle like a
+living thing; a chief secret of control being that the
+kneeling occupant should feel himself actually a part of
+his canoe. This trifling knowledge, gained during our
+idle holiday, came in useful years later when taking a
+canoe down the Danube, from its source in the Black
+Forest, to Budapest.</p>
+
+<p>Time certainly never hung heavy on our hands.
+Before July, when the Canadians came up to their summer
+camps, we had explored every bay and inlet of the lakes,
+had camped out on many an enchanted island, and had
+made longer expeditions of several days at a time into the
+great region of backwoods that began due north. These
+trips, westward to Georgian Bay with its thousand
+islands, on Lake Huron, or northward beyond French
+River, where the primeval backwoods begin their unbroken
+stretch to James Bay and the Arctic, were a source
+of keen joy. Our cooking was perhaps primitive, but we
+kept well on it. With books, a fiddle, expeditions, to
+say nothing of laundry and commissariat work, the days
+passed rapidly. Kay was very busy, too, “preparing
+for the stage,” as he called it, and Shakespeare was always
+in his hand or pocket. The eastern end of the island was
+reserved for these rehearsals, while the Sunset Point end
+was my especial part, and while I was practising the fiddle
+or deep in my Eastern books, Kay, at the other point of the
+island, high on his rocky bluff, could be heard sometimes
+booming “The world is out of joint. Oh cursed fate that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[76]</span>
+I was born to set it right,” and I was convinced that he
+wore his Irving wig, no matter what lines he spouted. In
+the evenings, as we lay after supper at Sunset Point,
+watching the colours fade and the stars appear, it was the
+exception if he did not murmur to himself “... the
+stars came out, over that summer sea,” and then declaim
+in his great voice the whole of “The <i>Revenge</i>”
+which ends “I, Sir Richard Grenville, die!”—his tall
+figure silhouetted against the sunset, his voice echoing
+among the pines behind him.</p>
+
+<p>Considerations for the future were deliberately shelved;
+we lived in the present, as wise men should; New York,
+we knew, lay waiting for us, but we agreed to let it wait.
+My father’s suggestion—“your right course is to return
+to Toronto, find work, and live down your past”—was
+a counsel of perfection I disregarded. New York, the
+busy, strenuous, go-ahead United States, offered the irresistible
+lure of a promised land, and we both meant to try
+our fortunes there. How we should reach it, or what we
+should do when we did reach it, were problems whose
+solution was postponed.</p>
+
+<p>On looking back I can only marvel at the patience
+with which neither tired of the other. Perhaps it was
+perfect health that made squabbles so impossible. Nor
+was there any hint of monotony, strange to say. We had
+many an escape, upsetting in wild weather, losing our way
+in the trackless forests of the mainland, climbing or felling
+trees, but some Pan-like deity looked after us.... The
+spirit of Shelley, of course, haunted me day and night;
+“Prometheus Unbound,” pages of which I knew by heart,
+lit earth and sky, peopled the forests, turned stream and
+lake alive, and made every glade and sandy bay a floor
+for dancing silvery feet: “Oh, follow, follow, through
+the caverns hollow; As the song floats thou pursue,
+Where the wild bee never flew....” I still hear Kay’s
+heavy voice, a little out of tune, singing to my fiddle the
+melody I made for it. And how he used to laugh!
+Always at himself, but also at and with most other things,
+an infectious, jolly wholesome laughter, inspired by details
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[77]</span>
+of our care-free island life, from his beard and Shakespeare
+rehearsals to my own whiskers and uncut hair, my
+Shelley moods and my intense Yoga experiments....</p>
+
+<p>Much of the charm of our lonely life vanished when,
+with high summer, the people came up to their camps
+and houses on the other islands. The solitude was then
+disturbed by canoes, sailing-boats, steam-launches; singing
+and shouting broke the deep silences; camp-fires in a
+dozen directions blazed at night. Many of these people
+we had known well in Toronto, but no one called on us.
+Sometimes we would paddle to some distant camp-fire,
+lying on the water just outside the circle of light, and
+recognizing acquaintances, even former customers of Hub
+and Dairy and the Sporting Goods Emporium, but never
+letting ourselves be seen. Everybody knew we were
+living on the island; yet avoidance was mutual. We were
+in disgrace, it seemed, and chiefly because of the Hub—not
+because of our conduct with regard to it, but, apparently,
+because we had left the town suddenly without
+saying good-bye to all and sundry. This abrupt disappearance
+had argued something wrong, something we
+were ashamed of. All manner of wild tales reached us,
+most of them astonishingly remote from the truth.</p>
+
+<p>This capacity for invention and imaginative detail of
+most ingenious sort, using the tiniest insignificant item of
+truth as starting point, suggests that even the dullest
+people must have high artistic faculties tucked away somewhere
+in them. Many of these tales we traced to their
+source—usually a person the world considered devoid of
+fancy, even dull. Here, evidently, possessing genuine
+creative power, were unpublished novelists with distinct
+gifts of romance and fantasy who had missed their real
+vocation. The truth about us was, indeed, far from glorious,
+but these wild tales made us feel almost supermen.
+Many years later I met other instances of this power that
+dull, even stupid people could keep carefully hidden till
+the right opportunity for production offers—I was credited,
+to name the best, with superhuman powers of Black Magic,
+whatever that may be, and of sorcery. It was soon after
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[78]</span>
+a book of mine, “John Silence,” had appeared. A story
+reached my ears, the name of its author boldly given, to
+the effect that, for the purposes of this Black Magic, I
+had stolen the vases from the communion altar of St.
+Paul’s Cathedral and used their consecrated content in
+some terrible orgy called the Black Mass. Young children,
+too, were somehow involved in this ceremony of sacrilegious
+sorcery, and I was going to be arrested. The author
+of this novelette was well known to me, connected even
+by blood ties, a person I had always conceived to be without
+the faintest of imaginative gifts, though a credulous
+reader, evidently, of the mediæval tales concerning the
+monstrous Gilles de Rais. Absurd as it sounds, a solicitor’s
+letter was necessary finally to limit the author’s
+prolific output, although pirated editions continued to sell
+for a considerable time. There is a poet hidden, as Stevenson
+observed, in most of us!</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, summer began to wane; we considered
+plans for attacking New York; hope rose strongly in us
+both; disappointments and failures were forgotten. In
+so big a city we were certain to find work. We had a hundred
+dollars laid aside for the journey and to tide us over
+the first few days until employment came. We could not
+hide for ever in fairyland. Life called to us.... Late
+in September, just when the lakes were beginning to recover
+their first solitude again, we packed up to leave.
+Though the sun was still hot at midday, the mornings and
+evenings were chill, and cold winds had begun to blow.
+The famous fall colouring had set fire to the woods;
+the sumach blazed a gorgeous red, the maples were crimson
+and gold, half of the mainland seemed in flame.
+Sorrowfully, yet with eager anticipation in our hearts, we
+poured water on our camp-fire that had served us for five
+months without relighting, locked the door of the shanty,
+handed over to Woods the canoe and boat, and caught
+the little steamer on one of its last trips to Gravenhurst
+where the train would take us, <i>via</i> Toronto, to New York.</p>
+
+<p>It had been a delightful experience; I had seen and
+known at last the primeval woods; I had even seen Red
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[79]</span>
+Indians by the dozen in their pathetic Reservations, and
+if they did not, like the spirit of the Medicine Man in
+Edinburgh, advise me to “scratch,” they certainly made
+up for the omission by constantly scratching themselves.
+It seems curious to me now that, during those months of
+happy leisure, the desire to write never once declared itself.
+It never occurred to me to write even a description
+of our picturesque way of living, much less to attempt
+an essay or a story. Nor did plans for finding work in
+New York—we discussed them by the score—include in
+their wonderful variety any suggestion of a pen and paper.
+At the age of twenty-two, literary ambition did not exist
+at all.</p>
+
+<p>The Muskoka interlude remained for me a sparkling,
+radiant memory, alight with the sunshine of unclouded
+skies, with the gleam of stars in a blue-black heaven,
+swept by forest winds, and set against a background of
+primeval forests that stretched without a break for six
+hundred miles of lonely and untrodden beauty.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[80]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XI">
+    CHAPTER XI
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap kern'><span class='allcaps'>Kay</span> and I arrived in New York on a crisp, sunny
+afternoon with sixty dollars in hand out of the
+original hundred set by for the purpose, and took
+a room in the Imperial Hotel, Broadway, which someone
+had recommended. We knew no one, had no letters of
+introduction. We were tanned the colour of Red Indians,
+in perfect physical condition, but with a very scanty wardrobe.</p>
+
+<p>The furious turmoil of the noisy city, boiling with
+irrepressible energies, formed an odd contrast to the peace
+and stillness of the forests. There was indifference in
+both cases, but whereas there it was tolerant and kindly,
+here it seemed intolerant and aggressive. “Get a hustle
+on, or get out,” was the note. Nature welcomed, while
+human nature resented, the intrusion of two new atoms.
+Nostalgia for the woods swept over me vehemently, but
+at the same time an eager anticipation to get work.
+We studied the papers at once for rooms, choosing a boarding
+house in East 19th Street, between Broadway and
+4th Avenue. Something in the wording caught us. An
+hour after our arrival we interviewed Mrs. Bernstein and
+engaged the third floor back, breakfast included, for eight
+dollars a week. It was cheap. The slovenly, emotional,
+fat Jewess, with her greasy locks, jewellery, and tawdry
+finery, had something motherly about her that appealed.
+She smiled. She did not ask for payment in advance.</p>
+
+<p>“What’s your work,” she inquired, gazing up at me.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, I’m going on the newspapers,” I said offhand,
+taking the first idea that offered, but little dreaming it
+was to prove true.</p>
+
+<p>“I shall be on the stage,” Kay promptly added, “as
+soon as my arrangements are made.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bernstein smiled. She knew the power of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[81]</span>
+Press and favoured reporters. “My hospand,” she informed
+Kay sympathetically, “is an artist too, a moosician.
+He has his own orghestra.”</p>
+
+<p>While Kay studied the theatrical papers, I took the
+elevated railway down-town. I wanted to stand on
+Brooklyn Bridge again. Since first seeing it with my
+father a few years before, and again on my arrival
+eighteen months ago, <i>en route</i> for Toronto, the place had
+held my imagination. Something sentimental lay in this
+third journey, for I wanted to go alone.</p>
+
+<p>Halfway across, at the highest point, I stood looking
+down upon the great waterway between the two cities of
+the new world, and the feeling of a fresh chapter in life,
+with its inevitable comparisons, rose in me.... The
+sun was sinking behind the hills of New Jersey, and the
+crowded bay lay a sheet of golden shimmer. Huge, double-ended
+ferry boats, plying between the wooded shores of
+Staten and Manhattan Islands and Brooklyn, rushed to
+and fro with great snortings and hootings; little tugs
+dashed in every direction with vast importance; sailboats,
+yachts, schooners and cat-boats dotted the water
+like a thousand living things; and threading majestically
+through them all steamed one or two impressive Atlantic
+liners, immense and castle-like, towering above all else,
+as they moved slowly out toward the open sea. The deep
+poetry which ever frames the most prosaic things, lending
+them their real significance, came over me with the wind
+from that open sea.</p>
+
+<p>I stood watching the fading lights beyond the bay, while
+behind me the crowded trains, at the rate of one a minute,
+passed thundering across the bridge, and thousands upon
+thousands of tired workers thronged to their Brooklyn homes
+after their day in the bigger city. The great bridge swayed
+and throbbed as the dense masses of pedestrians climbed
+uphill to the centre, then swarmed in a thick black river
+down the nether slope. I had never seen such numbers,
+or such speed of nervous movement, and the eager, tense
+faces, usually strained, white, drawn as well, touched an
+unpleasant note. New York, I felt, was not to be trifled
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[82]</span>
+with; the human element was strenuously keen; no loafing
+or dreaming here; work to the last ounce, or the city
+would make cat’s meat of one! Whereupon, by contrast,
+stole back again the deep enchantment of the silent woods,
+and the longing for the great, still places rose; I saw our
+little island floating beneath glittering stars; a loon was
+laughing farther out; the Northern Lights went flashing
+to mid-heaven; there was a sound of wind among the
+pines. The huge structure that reared above me seemed
+unreal; the river of men and women slipped past like
+silent shadows; the trains and boats became remote
+and hushed; and the ugly outer world about me merged
+in the substance of a dream and was forgotten....</p>
+
+<p>I turned and looked out over New York. I saw its
+lofty spires, its massed buildings, gigantic in the sky; I
+saw the opening of the great Hudson River, and the darkening
+water of the bay; I heard, like a sinister multiple
+voice out of the future, the strident cry of this wonderful
+and terrible capital of the New World, and the deep
+pulsings of its engines of frantic haste and untiring energy.
+The general note, I remember, was alarming rather; a
+touch of loneliness, of my own stupid incompetence to
+deal with its aggressive spirit, in which gleamed something
+merciless, almost cruel—this was the response it stirred
+in me. I suddenly realized I had no trade, no talents to
+sell, no weapons with which to fight. My heart sank a
+little. Among these teeming millions, with their tearing
+speed, their frenzied energy, their appalling practical
+knowledge, I possessed but one friend, Kay, and some
+sixty dollars between us. New York would eat me up
+unless I “got a hustle on.”</p>
+
+<p>Next morning, our capital much reduced, we moved
+into the lodging house. The idea of sharing a bed, in
+view of our size and the narrowness of the bed, amused us,
+but without enthusiasm. The sofa was too small to sleep
+on. “We’ll move,” announced Kay, “as soon as we get
+jobs.” A telegram was sent to Toronto giving our address,
+and a few days later a packing case arrived with our
+Toronto possessions, and ten dollars to pay out of our
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[83]</span>
+small total. We found close at hand, in 20th Street,
+a cheap clean German restaurant—Krisch’s—where a meal
+of sorts could be had for 30 cents, tip 5 cents; it had a
+sanded floor and was half <i>bier-stube</i>, and one of its
+smiling waiters, Otto—he came from the Black Forest
+where I had been to school—proved a true friend later,
+allowing us occasional credit at his own risk; a Chinese
+laundry was looked up in Fourth Avenue; I spent one of
+our precious dollars in a small store of fiddle strings against
+a possible evil day—a string meant more to me than a
+steak—and we were then ready for our campaign.</p>
+
+<p>Not a minute was lost. Kay, in very sanguine mood,
+the Irving wig, I shrewdly suspected, in his pocket, went
+out to interview managers; while I took a train down-town
+to interview Harper’s, as being the most important publishing
+house I knew. This step was the result of many
+discussions with Kay, who said he was sure I could write.
+The Red Indian advice of the Edinburgh “spirit” had
+impressed him. “That’s your line,” he assured me.
+“Try the magazines.” I felt no similar assurance, no
+desire to write was in me; we had worked ourselves up to
+a conviction that bold, immediate action was the first
+essential of our position; to get pupils for my two languages
+or shorthand seemed impossible in a city like New York;
+therefore I hurried down, with vague intentions but a
+high heart, to Harper’s.</p>
+
+<p>There was the <i>Magazine</i>, the <i>Weekly</i>, and <i>Harper’s
+Young People</i>. One of them surely would listen to my
+tale. I chose the <i>Weekly</i> for some unknown reason.
+For some equally unknown reason I was admitted to the
+editor’s sanctum, and, still more strange, Richard Harding
+Davis listened to my tale. His success as a novelist had
+just begun; he had left the <i>Evening Sun</i>, where his “Van
+Bibber” stories had made him first known; his popularity
+was rising fast, though I had never heard of him.</p>
+
+<p>My tale was brief, having been rehearsed in the train.
+It took, perhaps, three minutes at most to rattle it off—my
+parentage, my farm and hotel, my interest in Eastern
+Thought, my present destitution, and I remember adding,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[84]</span>
+“You see, I cannot possibly go home to England again
+until I have made good somehow.”</p>
+
+<p>“Have you written anything?” he asked, after listening
+patiently with raised eyebrows.</p>
+
+<p>“Well—no, I haven’t, not yet, I’m afraid.” I explained
+that I wanted to begin, though what I really wanted was
+only paid employment.</p>
+
+<p>The author of “Van Bibber” and “A Soldier of Fortune”
+looked me up and down and then chuckled.
+After a moment’s silence, he got up, led me across the
+hall to another door, opened it without knocking and
+said to a man who was seated at a table smothered in
+papers:</p>
+
+<p>“This is Mr. Blackwood, an Englishman, who wants
+to write something for you. He is prepared to write anything—from
+Eastern philosophy to ‘How to run a hotel in
+Canada.’”</p>
+
+<p>The door closed behind me, with no word of farewell,
+and I learned that the man facing me was the editor of
+<i>Harper’s Young People</i>. His name, if I remember rightly,
+was Storey, and he was an Englishman, who, curiously
+enough, almost at once mentioned my father. He had
+been an employé of the G.P.O. in London. He was
+unpleasant, supercilious, patronizing and off-hand, proud
+of his editorial power. He gave me, however, my first
+assignment—to write a short, descriptive article about
+a cargo of wild animals that had just arrived for the New
+York “Zoo.” I hurried off to the steamer, bought some
+paper, wrote the article in a pew of Trinity Church in
+Lower Broadway, and returned three hours later to submit
+it. Storey read it and said without enthusiasm it would
+do, but when I asked “Is it good?” he shook his head
+with the comment “Well—some men would have made
+more of it perhaps.” It was printed, however, and in due
+course I got ten dollars for it. I inquired if I could do
+something else. He took my address. No further results
+followed. Evidently, I realized, writing was not my line,
+and both Kay and the Red Indian Medicine Man were
+mistaken.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[85]</span></p>
+
+<p>Kay’s report of his luck, when we met again that evening
+was meagre; he had met an English Shakespearean
+actor, Bob Mantell, and a Toronto acquaintance, the
+“Duke.” The actor, however, had given him an introduction
+or two, and the Duke had asked us to play next
+day in a cricket match on Staten Island. It was an
+eleven of Actors <i>v.</i> the Staten Island Club, and Kay would
+meet useful people. In sanguine mood we agreed to go.
+It proved a momentous match for me.</p>
+
+<p>Before it came off, however, something else had happened
+that may seem very small beer, but that provided me with
+a recurrent horror for many months to come, a horror
+perhaps disproportionate to its cause. It filled me, at
+any rate, with a peculiar loathing as of some hideous nightmare.
+I had never seen the things before; their shape,
+their ungainly yet rapid movement, their uncanny power
+of disappearing in a second, their number, their dirty
+colour, above all their smell, now gave me the sensations
+of acute nausea. Kay’s laughter, though he too felt
+disgust and indignation, brought no comfort. We eventually
+got up and lit the gas. We caught it. I had my
+first view of the beast. We stared at each other in horror.
+Then Kay sniffed the air. “That explains it,” he said,
+referring to a faint odour of oil we had both noticed when
+engaging the room. “They put it in the woodwork to
+kill them,” he added. “It’s the only thing. But it
+never really gets rid of them, I’m afraid.”</p>
+
+<p>The anger of Mrs. Bernstein when we accused her in
+the morning, her indignant denials, her bluster about
+“insoults,” and that “never had sooch a t’ing been said
+of her house pefore,” were not half as comic as her expression
+when I suddenly produced the soap-dish with its
+damning evidence—17 all told.</p>
+
+<p>She stared, held her breath a second, then very quietly
+said “Ach, Ach! If you stay, chentelmen, I take von
+tollar off the price.”</p>
+
+<p>It was impossible not to laugh with her; there was
+something kind and motherly, something good and honest
+and decent about her we both liked; she would do her best,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[86]</span>
+we believed; possibly she really would exterminate the
+other tenants. We stayed on.</p>
+
+<p>Of the cricket match on Staten Island, beyond the
+pretty ground with its big trees, and that we got a good
+lunch without paying for it, no memory remains. What
+stands out vividly is the tall figure of Arthur Glyn Boyde,
+a fast bowler and a good bat, and one of the most entertaining
+and sympathetic companions I had ever met.
+His clothes were shabby, but his graceful manners, his voice,
+his smile, everything about him, in fact, betrayed the
+English gentleman. He was about thirty years of age,
+of the most frank and engaging appearance, with kindly,
+honest blue eyes, in one of which he wore an eyeglass.
+I remember the little fact that he, Kay and myself were
+measured for a bet after the match, and that he, like Kay,
+was six feet two inches, being one inch shorter than myself.</p>
+
+<p>I took to him at once, and he to me. His real name
+was a distinguished one which he shared, it turned out,
+with some cousins of my own. We were, therefore, related.
+The bond was deepened. Times had gone hard with him,
+it seemed, but at the moment he was on the stage, being
+understudy to Morton Selton as Merivale in “Captain
+Lettarblair,” which E. H. Sothern’s company was then
+playing. In “The Disreputable Mr. Reagen,” by, I
+think, Richard Harding Davis he had also played the
+rôle of the detective. He was waiting, however, for a
+much better post, as huntsman to the Rockaway Hunt,
+a Long Island fashionable club, and this post, oddly enough,
+was in the gift, he told me, of Davis. It had been practically
+promised to him, he might hear any day....
+The story of his many jobs and wanderings interested us,
+and his theatre work promised to be helpful in many ways
+to what was called my “room-mate.” Boyde’s experience
+of New York generally was invaluable to us both,
+and the fact that he had nowhere to sleep that night
+(having been turned out by his landlady) gave us the opportunity
+to invite him to our humble quarters. We mentioned
+the other tenants, but he said that made no difference,
+he would sleep on the sofa. He dined with us at
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[87]</span>
+Krisch’s; he was extremely hard up; luckily, we still had
+enough to invite a friend. His only luggage was a small
+bag, for he told us, with a rueful smile, that his clothes
+were all in pawn. I had an extra suit or two which, being
+of about my size, he was able to wear.</p>
+
+<p>I felt immensely drawn to him, and his story touched
+my pity as well as stirred my admiration. It was a happy
+evening we all spent in the little bedroom, for he was not
+only well-read—he knew my various “Eastern books”
+and could talk about them interestingly—but had a
+fine tenor voice into the bargain. My fiddle came out of
+its case, and if the other lodgers disliked our duets, they
+did not, at any rate, complain. Boyde sang, he further
+told us, in the choir of the 2nd Avenue Baptist Church,
+and was assistant organist there as well, but made little out
+of this latter job, as he was only called upon when the
+other man was unable to attend. He even taught sometimes
+in the Sunday School—“to keep in the pastor’s
+good books,” as he explained with a laugh. But the chief
+thing he told us that night was the heartening information
+that, when all other chances failed, there was always a
+fair living to be earned by posing to artists at 50 cents an
+hour, or a dollar and a half for a full sitting of three hours.
+It was easy work and not difficult to get. He would gladly
+introduce us to the various studios, as soon as they opened,
+most of the artists being still in the country.</p>
+
+<p>The search for work was a distressing business, when
+to the inevitable question “What can you do?” the only
+possible, but quite futile, reply was, “I’ll do anything.”
+I had collected the ten dollars from <i>Harper’s Young People</i>,
+but a letter to Storey for more work brought no reply.
+The payment for the Toronto packing-case and for a
+week’s rent of the rooms had reduced the exchequer so
+seriously that in a few days there was only the <i>Harper’s</i>
+money in hand. Boyde, who stayed on at our urgent
+invitation, shared all he earned, and taught us, besides,
+the trick of using the free lunch-counters in hotels and
+saloons. For a glass of beer at five cents, a customer
+could eat such snacks as salted chip-potatoes, strips of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[88]</span>
+spiced liver sausage, small squares of bread, and pungent
+almonds, all calculated to stimulate unnatural thirst.
+The hotels provided more sumptuous dishes, though the
+price of drink was higher, and the calm way Boyde would
+help himself deliberately to a plate and fork, with an ample
+supply of the best food he could find, then carry it all back
+to his glass of lager under the bar-tender’s very nose,
+was an ideal we could only hope to achieve by practice
+as long as his own. It was a question of nerve. Our
+midday meal was now invariably of this kind. The
+free lunch brigade, to which we belonged, was tolerantly
+treated by the majority of bar-tenders. A thirty cents
+dinner at Krisch’s in the evening, choosing the most bulky
+dishes, ended the long tiring day of disappointing search.
+Boyde also made us buy oatmeal, with tin pot and fixture
+for cooking over the gas-jet. He was invaluable in a dozen
+ways, always cheery, already on the right side of Mrs.
+Bernstein, and turning up every evening with a dollar
+or two he had earned during the day.</p>
+
+<p>He further taught us—the moment had come, he
+thought—to pawn. The packing-case in the basement
+was opened and rummaged through (a half-used cheque-book
+from Toronto days was a pathetic relic!) for things on
+which Ikey of 3rd Avenue might offer a few dollars. The
+tennis cups, won at little Canadian tournaments, seemed
+attractive, he thought, but our English overcoats would
+fetch most money. The weather was still comfortable ...
+we sallied forth, hoping Mrs. Bernstein would not see us,
+carrying two tennis cups and a couple of good overcoats.
+Everybody stared and grinned, it seemed, though actually
+of course, no one gave us a glance. Boyde, humming
+Lohengrin, was absolutely nonchalant. For me, the
+pawnbroker’s door provided sensations similar to those I
+knew when first entering the Hub just a year before.</p>
+
+<p>“I want ten dollars on these,” said Boyde, in a firm
+voice. “What’ll you give? I shall take ’em out next
+week.”</p>
+
+<p>The Jew behind the counter gave one glance at the
+tennis cups, then pushed them contemptuously aside;
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[89]</span>
+the overcoats he examined carefully, holding them up to
+the light for holes or threadbare patches, feeling the linings,
+turning the sleeves inside out.</p>
+
+<p>“Good English cloth,” mentioned Boyde. “Hardly
+used at all.”</p>
+
+<p>“A dollar each,” said the man, laying them down as
+though the deal was finished. He turned to make out the
+tickets. He had not looked at us once yet.</p>
+
+<p>Boyde picked them up and turned to go. “Two
+dollars,” he said flatly, “I can get five in 4th Avenue.”</p>
+
+<p>“Go ged it,” was the reply, the man’s back still turned
+on us.</p>
+
+<p>Boyde gave a cheery laugh. “Make it three dollars
+for the two,” he suggested in an off-hand manner, “with
+another couple for the cups. They’re prizes. We wouldn’t
+lose them for worlds.”</p>
+
+<p>The man looked at us for the first time; we were fairly
+well dressed, obviously English, three hulking customers
+of a type he was not used to. Perhaps he really believed
+we might redeem the cups one day. “Worth less than
+nozzing,” he said in his Yiddish accent. The keen,
+appraising look he gave us made me feel even less than
+that.</p>
+
+<p>“Worth a lot to us, though,” came Boyde’s quick
+comment.</p>
+
+<p>“Name?” queried the man, bending over a table
+with his back turned again.</p>
+
+<p>“John Doe,” came promptly, and a moment later,
+with the ticket, the Jew handed out four dirty dollar bills
+and fifty cents in coin. The interest was twelve per cent.
+per month, and the articles could be redeemed any time
+up to the end of a year.</p>
+
+<p>“Never ask more than you really need at the moment,”
+was Boyde’s advice as we came out into the street. “I
+could have raised him a few dollars probably, but, remember,
+you’ll have to get the coats out again before long.”</p>
+
+<p>When we got back to the room a Western Union
+telegram lay on the table for him; it was from Davis:
+“Please call to-morrow 3 o’clock without fail <i>re</i> Rockaway,”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[90]</span>
+it read. And hope ran high. That night we spent
+half of our new money at Krisch’s, giving a tip of thirty
+cents to Otto....</p>
+
+<p>Some ten days to a fortnight had passed, and October
+with its cooler winds had come, though life was still possible
+without overcoats. Our dress-clothes were now in Ikey’s,
+moth-balls beside them. The Chinese laundry had been
+paid, but not the second week’s rent, for money was very
+low and dinners of the smallest. Practice at the free
+lunch counters had improved our methods of strolling up
+absent-mindedly, perceiving the food apparently for the
+first time, then picking up with quick fingers the maximum
+quantity. Kay, meanwhile, had secured a part in a
+touring company which was to start out for a series of
+one-night stands in about three weeks, his salary of fifteen
+dollars to begin with the first night. He was already rehearsing.
+My own efforts had produced nothing. Boyde,
+too, had not yet landed his huntsman job, which was to
+include comfortable quarters as well as a good salary.
+I had been down with him when he went to see Davis,
+waiting in the street till he came out, and the interview,
+though reassuring, he told me, involved a little further
+delay still. He, therefore, continued his odd jobs, calling
+at the theatre every night and matinée to see if he was
+wanted, playing the organ in church occasionally, and
+getting a small fee for singing in the choir. He shared with
+us as we shared with him; he slept on the sofa in our room;
+he was welcome to wear my extra suits of clothes—until
+Ikey might care to see them.</p>
+
+<p>Then, quite suddenly, fate played a luckier card.</p>
+
+<p>Kay and I were at the free lunch counter of the Fifth
+Avenue Hotel, Boyde having been called away to do
+something at his Baptist church, when Bob Mantell
+strolled up, bringing a tall, grey-haired man with him.
+The next minute he was introducing me to Cecil Clay,
+with a remark to the effect that he must surely have known
+my father, and that I surely must know Mr. Clay’s famous
+book on whist. Cecil Clay, anyhow, was a kindly old
+Englishman, and evidently was aware how the land lay
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[91]</span>
+with us, for a few minutes later he had given me a card
+to Laffan, manager of the <i>New York Sun</i>. “Go and see
+him the day after to-morrow,” he said. “Meanwhile I’ll
+write him a line about you.”</p>
+
+<p>Had it been possible to go then and there I should have
+felt more confidence and less nervousness than when
+I called at the appointed hour. The interval, with its
+hopeful anticipation and alternate dread, was a bad
+preparation for appearing at my best. After a few
+questions, however, Mr. Laffan, a man of very powerful
+position in the newspaper world, a great art collector
+and connoisseur, head, too, of the Laffan News Bureau,
+said that Mr. McCloy, managing editor of the <i>Evening
+Sun</i>, would give me a trial as a reporter, and I could start
+next Monday—four days away—at fifteen dollars a week.
+I had mentioned that I knew French and German, and
+could write shorthand. He spoke to me in both languages,
+but, luckily, he did not think of testing the speed and
+accuracy of my self-taught Pitman.</p>
+
+<p>On the staff of a great New York newspaper! That
+it was anti-British and pro-Tammany did not bother me.
+A reporter! A starting salary of £3 a week that might
+grow! I wrote the news to my father that very afternoon,
+and that night Kay, Boyde and I had almost a
+festive dinner at Krisch’s restaurant—that is, we ended with
+sweets and coffee. The following day I spent practising
+my rusty shorthand, about 90 words a minute being my
+best speed consistent with legibility. Would it be fast
+enough? I might have spared myself the trouble for all
+the use shorthand was to me on the <i>Evening Sun</i> during the
+two years I remained with it. Only once—much later,
+when I was with the <i>New York Times</i>, did it prove of
+value, securing for me on that occasion an increase of
+salary.... The slogan of the <i>Sun</i>, printed on each copy
+was, “If you See it in the <i>Sun</i> it is so!” accuracy the strong
+point. The <i>Times</i> preferred a moral tinge: “All the
+News that’s Fit to Print.” Both mottoes were faithfully
+observed and rigidly practised.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[92]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XII">
+    CHAPTER XII
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap kern'><span class='allcaps'>If</span> any young man learning values wants to know the
+quickest way to study the seamy side of life, to understand
+the darkest aspects of human nature, and
+incidentally, to risk the loss of every illusion he ever had,
+let him become a reporter on an up-to-date New York
+newspaper. Within six months he will be apt to believe
+that every man has his price; he will become acquainted
+with vice, crime, horror, terror, and every kind of human
+degradation; theft, murder, arson will seem commonplaces,
+forgery a very ordinary affair; men and women,
+it may even seem to him, “go straight,” not because of
+any inherent principle of goodness in them, but because
+that degree of temptation which constitutes their particular
+“price” has not yet offered itself.</p>
+
+<p>Passion of every type, abnormal, often incredible,
+will be his daily study; if he reflects a little he will probably
+reach the conclusion that either jealousy in some
+form, or greed for money, lie at the root of every crime
+that is ever committed. The overwhelming power of
+these two passions will startle him, at any rate, and his
+constant association with only one aspect of life, and that
+the worst and lowest, will probably produce the conviction
+that, given only the opportunity, everybody is bad. His
+conception of women may suffer in particular. The experience,
+contrariwise, may widen his tolerance and
+deepen his charity; also, it may leave him as it left me,
+with an ineradicable contempt for those who, born in
+ease, protected from the temptations due to poverty and
+misery, so carelessly condemn the weak, the criminal and
+the outcast.</p>
+
+<p>With bigger experience may come, in time, a better
+view; equally, it may never come. Proportion is not so
+easily recovered, for the mind, at an impressionable age,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[93]</span>
+has been deeply marked. The good, the beautiful, the
+lovely, in a New York paper, is very rarely “news”;
+it is considered as fake, bunkum, humbug, a pose; it is
+looked at askance, regarded with suspicion, as assumed
+by someone for the purpose of a “deal”; it is rarely
+worth its space, at any rate. A reporter finds himself in
+a cynical school; he is lucky if he escape in the end with
+a single rag of illusion to his back. If he has believed,
+up to the age of twenty-one, as I did, that the large
+majority of people are decent, kindly, honest folk, he will
+probably lose even that last single rag. On the <i>Evening
+Sun</i>, certainly, it was not the good, the beautiful, the
+clean, that constituted the most interesting news and got
+scare headlines and extra editions. I give, of course,
+merely the impression made upon my own mind and type,
+coloured as these were, some thirty years ago, by a characteristically
+ignorant and innocent upbringing....</p>
+
+<p>The important newspapers, in those days, were all
+“down town,” grouped about Park Row, and the shabby,
+tumble-down building of the <i>Sun</i> was not imposing.
+The World and Times towered above it; the <i>Morning
+Advertiser</i>, the <i>Evening Telegram</i>, even the <i>Recorder</i> were
+better housed; the <i>Journal</i> had not yet brought W. R.
+Hearst’s methods from San Francisco. For all its humble
+offices, the <i>Sun</i> was, perhaps, the greatest power in the
+city. It was openly Tammany; it had a grand, courageous
+editor, Charles A. Dana. “Charles A.” was an
+imposing figure, a man of immense ability, a “crank”
+perhaps in certain ways, but a respected chief of outstanding
+character and fearless policy.... My own
+chief, however, was W. C. McCloy, and the offices where
+he reigned as managing editor were housed on the top
+floor of the rickety building, with the machinery making
+such a din and roar and clatter that we had to shout to
+make ourselves heard at all. Metal sheets that clanged
+and pinged as we walked on them covered the floors. It
+was amid this pandemonium I had my first interview with
+him. An iron spiral staircase led from the quiet workrooms
+of the <i>Morning Sun</i>, on the first floor, to the dark,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[94]</span>
+low-ceilinged space, where the whirring printing presses
+were not even partitioned off from the tables of editorial
+departments or reporters. It was like a factory going at
+full speed. Hours were 8.30 <span class="allsmcap">A.M.</span> to 6.30 <span class="allsmcap">P.M.</span>, or later
+if an extra—a 6th or 7th—edition was called for. I
+arrived at 8.15.</p>
+
+<p>In a dark corner of this machinery shop I introduced
+myself with trepidation to McCloy, mentioning Mr.
+Laffan’s name, and saw the blank look come and go, as
+he stared at me with “Blackwood, Blackwood?...
+Oh, yes, I remember! You’re fifteen dollars a week. A
+Britisher from Canada.... Well, you’ll have to look
+lively here!” He seemed so intensely busy and preoccupied,
+his mind so charged with a sort of electric
+activity, that I wondered he had time to open and shut
+his mouth. A small, thin man, with the slightest of
+frail bodies, nervous, delicately shaped hands, gimlet
+eyes that pierced, a big head with protruding forehead, a
+high-pitched, twanging voice that penetrated easily above
+the roar of the machinery, and a general air of such lightning
+speed and such popping, spitting energy that I felt
+he might any moment flash into flame or burst with a
+cracking report into a thousand pieces—this was the man
+on whom my living depended for many months to come.
+The phrase “New York hustler,” darted across my mind;
+it stood in the flesh before me; he lived on wires. Buried
+among this mechanic perfection, however, I caught, odd
+to relate, an incongruous touch—of kindness, even of
+tenderness. There were gentle lines in that electric face.
+He had a smile I liked.</p>
+
+<p>“What are you out here for? Where have you come
+from? What have you been doing? What d’you
+know?” he asked with the rapidity of a machine-gun.
+The shorthand rate must have been 400 words per minute.</p>
+
+<p>I never talked so quickly in my life as in my brief
+reply. I watched the smile come and go. While he
+listened, he was shouting instructions to reporters then
+streaming in, to office boys, to printers, to sub-editors;
+but his eyes never left my face, and when I had finished
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[95]</span>
+my lightning sketch, the machine-gun crackled with its
+deadliest aim again: “Only <i>one</i> thing counts here; get
+the news and get it <i>quick</i>; method of no consequence.
+Get the news and get it <i>first</i>!” He darted off, for the
+first edition went to press at 10.30. As he went, however,
+he turned his head a moment. “Write a story,” he backfired
+at me. “Write your experiences—From Methodism
+to Running a Saloon,”—and he vanished amid the whirling
+machinery in the back of the great room.</p>
+
+<p>I have the pleasantest recollections of W. C. McCloy;
+he was just, fair, sympathetic, too, when time permitted;
+he showed me many little kindnesses; he was Presbyterian,
+his parents Scotch; he was also—sober. I proved
+a poor reporter, and my salary remained at fifteen dollars
+all the time I was with the paper, yet once he kept a place
+open for me for many weeks; he even took me back when
+the consideration was hardly deserved.</p>
+
+<p>That first day, however, I spent on tenterhooks, fully
+expecting to be “fired” at its end. I found a corner at
+the big reporters’ table, and, having seized some “copy”
+paper from the general pile, I sat down to write “From
+Methodism to Running a Saloon,” without the faintest
+idea of how to do it. A dozen reporters sat scribbling
+near me, but no one paid me the smallest attention.
+They came and went; at another table Cooper, the City
+Editor (anglice news-editor) issued the assignments; the
+editorial writers arrived and sat at their little desks
+apart; the roar and pandemonium were indescribable;
+the first edition was going to press, with McCloy in a
+dozen places at once, but chiefly watching the make-up
+over the shoulders of the type-setters in the back of the
+room.... I wrote on and on; I believed it was rather
+good; no one came to stop me, no one looked at my
+“copy” or told me what length was wanted; once or
+twice, McCloy, flashing by, caught my eye, but with a
+glance that suggested he didn’t know who I was, why I
+was there at all, or what I was writing.... The hours
+passed; the first edition was already out; the reporters
+were reading hurriedly their own work in print, delighted
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[96]</span>
+if it was on the front page; the space-men were measuring
+the columns to see how much they had earned; and the
+make-up for the second edition, out at noon, was being
+hastened on behind the buzzing machinery in the rear.</p>
+
+<p>By this time I must have written two columns at
+least, and I began to wonder. Perhaps I was to appear
+in the principal final edition at six o’clock! On the front
+page! The article, evidently, was considered important!
+The notion that I was making a fool of myself, being
+made a fool of, rather, also occurred to me. I wrote on
+and on ... it was hunger finally that stopped me. I
+was famished. I turned to an albino reporter next me,
+a mere boy, whose peculiarity had earned him the nickname
+“Whitey.” Was I allowed to go out for lunch?
+“Just tell Cooper you’re going,” he replied. “Come out
+with me,” he added, “if you’ve finished your story. I’m
+going in a moment.” I finished my “story” then and
+there, putting the circle with three dots in it which, he
+explained, meant <i>finis</i> to the printers. “Just hand it
+in to Cooper, and we’ll get right out,” he said. I obeyed,
+Cooper taking my pile of “copy” with a grin, and merely
+nodding his head when I mentioned lunch. He was a
+young man with thick curly black hair, big spectacles
+that magnified his good-natured eyes, only slightly less
+rapid and electric than McCloy, but yet so unsure of himself
+that the reporters soon found him out—and treated
+him accordingly. I saw my precious “copy” shoved
+to one side of his desk, but I never saw it again, either in
+print or elsewhere. No mention was ever made of it.
+It was, doubtless, two columns of the dullest rubbish
+ever scribbled in that office.</p>
+
+<p>“I guess Mac only wanted to see what you could do,”
+explained the albino, as we swallowed “sinkers” (heavy
+dough scones) and gulped down coffee at Childs’ Cheap
+Lunch Counter round the corner. Whitey had invited
+me to lunch; he “put me wise” about a thousand
+things; showed me how to make a bit on my weekly
+expense-account, if I wanted to; how one could “sneak
+off” about five o’clock, if one knew the way; and, most
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[97]</span>
+useful of all, warned me as to accuracy in my facts and
+the right way to present them. A “story” whether it
+was the weather story or a murder story, should give in
+a brief first paragraph the essential facts—this satisfied
+the busy man who had no time to read more; the second
+paragraph should amplify these facts—for those who
+wanted to know more; afterwards—for those interested
+personally in the story—should come “any stuff you can
+pick up.” An item that seemed exclusive—a “scoop”
+or “beat” he called it—should come in the very beginning,
+so as to justify the headlines.</p>
+
+<p>“Whitey” was always a good friend to me. “Make
+friends with the reporters on other papers,” he advised,
+“then you won’t get badly left on the story you’re all
+‘covering.’ Most of ’em give up all right.” He gave
+me names of sundry who never “gave up,” skunks he
+called them.</p>
+
+<p>As we hurried back to the office half an hour later, he
+dived into a drug store on the ground floor. The way
+most of the reporters frequented this drug store puzzled
+me for a time, till I learned that whisky was to be had
+there in a little back room. The chemist had no license,
+but by paying a monthly sum to the ward man of the
+district—part of immense revenues paid to Tammany by
+every form of law-breaking, from gambling-halls and disorderly
+houses to far graver things—he was allowed to
+dispense liquor. It was a pretty system, marvellously
+organized down to the lowest detail; cash to the ward
+man opened most doors; a policeman paid $300 before
+he even got a nomination on the force; vice paid gigantic
+tribute; but the people liked a Tammany Government
+because “they knew where they were” with it, though
+the <i>Sun</i>, my paper, was the only journal that boldly
+supported it—for which Charles A. Dana was forever being
+attacked. I acquired much inside experience of the secret
+workings of Tammany Hall before my newspaper days
+came to an end.... It appalled me.</p>
+
+<p>That afternoon, I had two assignments, and failed
+badly in both. The first was to find a company promoter
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[98]</span>
+who had got into trouble, and to ask him “all about it.”
+I could not find him; his house, his office, his club knew
+him not. After two hours’ frantic search, I returned
+crestfallen, expecting to be dismissed there and then.
+Cooper, however, cut short my lengthy explanations with
+a shrug of the shoulders, and sent me up to the Fort Lee
+woods, across the Hudson River, to find out “all about”
+a suicide whose body had just been discovered under the
+trees. “Get his name right, why he did it, and what the
+relatives have to say,” were his parting words. The Fort
+Lee woods were miles away, I saw the body—an old man
+with a bullet hole in his temple, I found his son at the
+police station, and asked him what his tears and grief
+made permissible, the answer being that “he had no
+troubles and we can’t think what made him do it.” Then
+I telephoned these few facts to the office. On getting back
+myself at half-past six when the last edition was already
+on the streets, Cooper showed me the final edition of the
+<i>Evening World</i>. It had a column on the front page with
+big head-lines. The suicide was a defaulter, and the reporter
+gave a complete story of his gambling life. Cooper
+offered no comment. The <i>Evening World</i> had got “a
+beat”; and I had failed badly. I sat down at the reporters’
+table and wondered what would happen, and then
+saw, lying before me, our own last edition with exactly
+the same story, similar big headlines, and all the important
+facts complete. An interview with the company promoter
+was also in print. I was at a loss to understand what had
+happened until Whitey, on the way into the drug-store
+a little later, explained things: the United Press, a news
+agency that “covered” everything, had sent the story.
+The “flimsy” men, so called because they wrote on thin
+paper that made six copies at once, were very valuable.
+“Make friends with them,” said Whitey, “and no one
+will ever get a beat on you. They’re paid a salary and
+don’t care. It’s only the space-men, as a rule, who won’t
+give up.”</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[99]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIII">
+    CHAPTER XIII
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap xkern'><span class='allcaps'>As</span> a new “bum reporter,” however, I had a hectic
+life, but rapidly made friends with the other
+men, and a mutual loathing of the work brought
+us easily together. Friday was pay-day; by Wednesday
+everybody was trying to borrow money—one dollar,
+usually—from everybody else, the debts being always faithfully
+repaid when the little envelopes were collected at the
+cashier’s office downstairs.</p>
+
+<p>My first week’s reporting passed in a whirl of feverish
+excitement. Assignments of every possible kind were
+hurled at me. I raced and flew about. The “Britisher,”
+the “English accent,” were a source of amusement to the
+staff, but there was no ill-nature. Cooper seemed to like
+me; he chuckled; he even gave me hints. “Well, Mr.
+Britisher, did you get it this time?” Few of my first
+efforts were used, the flimsy report being printed instead,
+but a divorce case in special sessions, and interviews
+with the principals in it, brought me into notice, the story
+being put in the front page of the first edition. When I
+came down on the following Monday, McCloy whipped up
+to me like a steel spring released. “You can cover the
+Tombs this morning,” he rattled. “Anything big must
+be in by ten at the latest. Use judgment and pick out
+the best stories. Don’t let anyone get a beat on you.”
+He flashed away, and I tore down to the Tombs Police
+Court.</p>
+
+<p>The Tombs—I can smell to-day its peculiar mixture
+of extremely dirty humanity, cheap scent, very old clothes,
+Chinese opium, stale liquor, iodoform, and a tinge of nameless
+disinfectant. In winter the hot-air which was the means
+of heating the court whose windows were never opened,
+and in summer the stifling, humid atmosphere, to say
+nothing of the added flavour of acid perspiration, were
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[100]</span>
+equally abominable. The building, with its copy of
+Egyptian architecture, vies in gloom with the prison in
+Venice, though the former takes unpleasant precedence—a
+veritable Hall of Eblis, with thick walls, impressive
+portals, a general air of hopeless and portentous doom
+about even its exterior. There was a grimness in its dark
+passages that made the heart sink, truly an awe-ful
+building. The interior was spick and span and clean as a
+hospital ward, but the horror of that repellent outside
+leaked through somehow. Both inside and outside,
+the Tombs Prison became as familiar to me as my room
+in East 19th Street; many a prisoner I interviewed in his
+cell, many a wretch I talked with through the bars of his
+last earthly cage in Murderers’ Row; I never entered the
+forbidding place without a shudder, nor stepped into the
+open air again without relief.</p>
+
+<p>The routine of the police court, too, became mechanical
+as the months went by. The various reporters acted in
+concert; we agreed which stories we would use, and in this
+way no paper got a “beat” on the others. The man on
+duty stood beside the Tammany magistrate, making his
+notes as each case came up. It was a depressing, often a
+painful, business.</p>
+
+<p>The cases rattled by very quickly—arson, burglary,
+forgery, gambling, opium dens, street women, all came up,
+but it was from assaults that we usually culled our morning
+assortment for the first edition. Negroes used a razor,
+Italians a stiletto, white men a knife, a pistol, a club or a
+sandbag. Women used hatpins mostly.</p>
+
+<p>It was, of course, some particular feature, either
+picturesque or horrible, that lent value to a case. Gradually
+my “nose for news” was sharpened. It was a friendly
+little German Jew, named Freytag, who taught me how to
+make the commonest police story readable. I had just
+“given up” the facts about a Syrian girl who had been
+stabbed by a jealous lover, and the reporters all round me
+were jotting down the details. Freytag, who worked for
+Hermann Ridder’s <i>Staatszeitung</i>, looked over my shoulder.
+“That’s no good,” he said. “Don’t begin ‘Miriam so-and-so,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[101]</span>
+living at such a place, was stabbed at two o’clock
+this morning by Whatshisname....’ That’s not interesting.
+Begin like this: ‘A mysterious crime with an
+exotic touch about it was committed in the early hours
+this morning when all worthy New Yorkers were enjoying
+their beauty sleep.... Far away, where the snows of
+the Taurus Mountains gleam to heaven, the victim, a
+lovely Syrian maid, once had her home....’” I followed
+his advice, though my version was severely blue-pencilled,
+but his point—selecting a picturesque angle of
+attack—was sound and useful.</p>
+
+<p>The police court work was over by half-past ten, and
+I was then generally sent on to report the trials in Special
+or General Sessions. These, naturally, were of every sort
+and kind. Divorce, alienation of affection and poison
+trials were usually the best news. My hair often stood on
+end, and some of the people were very unpleasant to interview.
+The final talk before a man went to the Chair
+was worst of all. If the case was an important one, I had
+to get an interview in the Tombs Prison cell before the day’s
+trial—there was no <i>sub judice</i> prohibition in New York.
+Inevitably, I formed my own opinion as to a man’s innocence
+or guilt; the faces, gazing at me through bars, would
+often haunt me for days. Carlyle Harris, calm, indifferent,
+cold as ice, I still see, as he peered past the iron in Murderers’
+Row, protesting his innocence with his steely blue
+eyes fixed on mine; he was a young medical student
+accused of poisoning his wife with morphia; he was electrocuted
+... and Lizzie Borden ... though this was in
+Providence, Rhode Island—who took all her clothes off,
+lest the stains of blood betray her, before killing her father
+and mother in their sleep....</p>
+
+<p>Some of the cases made a lasting and horrible impression;
+some even terrified. The behaviour of individuals,
+especially of different races, when sentence was given
+also left vivid memories; negroes, appealing hysterically
+to God and using the most extraordinary, invented words,
+the longer the better; the stolid, unemotional Chinamen;
+the voluble Italian; the white man, as a rule, quiet,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[102]</span>
+controlled, insisting merely in a brief sentence that he
+was innocent. In a story, years later (<i>Max Hensig,
+Bacteriologist and Murderer</i>), the facts were taken direct
+from life. It needed more than fifteen years to dim
+their memory. I remained the Tombs reporter for
+the best part of a loathed, distressing, horror-laden
+year.</p>
+
+<p>There were pleasanter intervals, of course. The French
+paper, <i>Le Courier des Etats Unis</i>, published a short story
+every Monday, and one day I translated an exceptionally
+clever one, and submitted it to McCloy. It was printed;
+subsequently, I was allowed an afternoon off weekly,
+provided I translated a story each time, and though no
+money was paid for these, I secured a good many free
+hours to myself. These hours I spent in the free library
+in Lafayette Place, devouring the Russians, as well as
+every kind of book I could find on psychology; or else in
+going out to Bronx Park, a long tram journey, where I
+found trees and lovely glades and water. Bronx Park,
+not yet the home of the New York “Zoo,” was a paradise
+to me, the nearest approach to the woods that I could
+find. Every Sunday, wet or fine, I went there. In a
+<i>cache</i> I hid a teapot, and would make a tiny fire and drink
+milkless tea. I could hear the wind and see the stars
+and taste the smell of earth and leaves, the clean, sweet
+things....</p>
+
+<p>One morning in the second week of my apprenticeship,
+I interviewed a lion.</p>
+
+<p>“Afraid of wild animals, Mr. Britisher?” inquired
+Cooper, looking at me quizzically. I stared, wondering
+what he meant. It was my duty to have read the morning
+paper thoroughly, but there had been no mention of any
+wild animal. I replied that I thought I didn’t mind wild
+animals.</p>
+
+<p>“Take your gun,” said Cooper, “and get up to East
+20th Street, between Third and Fourth Avenues. Bostock’s
+Circus came to town last night late. Their lion’s escaped.
+They’ve chased it into a stable. Killed a valuable horse.
+Neighbourhood’s paralysed with terror. It’s a man-eater.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[103]</span>
+Send down bulletins about it. Now, better get
+a move on!”</p>
+
+<p>On leaving the elevated train at East 18th Street,
+the streets were black with people, they even pressed
+up the front steps of the houses. The word “lion” was
+in everybody’s mouth. Something about Cooper’s voice
+and eyes had made me suspect a “fake.” As I forced my
+way through towards 20th Street, there came a roar that
+set the air trembling even above the din of voices. It
+was certainly no fake.</p>
+
+<p>On reaching 20th Street, the cordon of police, with
+pistols ready, keeping the crowd in order, showed plainly
+where the stable was. Gradually I bored a way through.
+The stable stood back from the road, a courtyard in front
+of it. A ladder, crowded already with reporters climbing
+up, led to a hayloft just above. I met the <i>Evening Telegram</i>
+man, whom I knew, half-way up this ladder. “Got
+a messenger boy? No! Then you can share mine,” he
+offered good-naturedly. The only occupants of the yard
+were a dozen of these messenger boys, waiting to take
+the “copy” to the various newspaper offices. It was
+8.30 <span class="allsmcap">A.M.</span></p>
+
+<p>I noticed to my surprise that the <i>Evening Telegram</i>
+man was a star reporter; three rungs above him, to my
+still greater surprise, climbed Richard Harding Davis.
+My vanity was stirred. This was a big story, yet Cooper
+had chosen me! As I squeezed up the ladder, my hands
+stuffed with paper, the lion below gave forth an awe-inspiring
+roar; it was a dreadful sound. The great doors of wood
+seemed matchwood easily burst through. The crowd
+swayed back a moment, then, with a cheer, swayed
+forward again.</p>
+
+<p>In the loft I found some twenty reporters; each time
+the brute gave its terrible roar they scuttled into corners,
+behind the hay, even up into the rafters of the darkened
+loft. Pistol shots accompanied every roar, and the added
+terror lest a bullet from below might pierce the boards
+on which we stood, made us all jump about like dervishes.
+One man wrote his story, perched in the dark on the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[104]</span>
+highest rafter, from which he never once moved. I
+scribbled away, and threw down my “stuff” to the boy
+below.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the circus officials were doing their best to
+force the great beast into a cage. This cage stood ready
+against the outside doors in the yard, and at the right
+moment these doors would be swiftly opened. On being
+driven into the stable, the animal had found, and quickly
+killed, a trotting horse, valued at $2,000, standing in its
+stall. This detail I at first disbelieved, but when my turn
+came to kneel and peer through the trap-door for feeding
+the hay down into the dark stable below, I found it was
+all true. In the centre of the floor the great lion was plainly
+visible, not six feet below my own face, lying with two paws
+stretched upon the carcass of a torn, dead horse. The
+smell of flesh and blood rose to my nostrils. In a dim
+corner perched on a refrigerator, sat one of the trainers,
+a pistol in his hand. In another corner, but invisible
+from my peephole, crouched another circus man, also with
+his pistol, and each time the lion made an ugly move,
+both men fired off their weapons.... I wrote more
+“bulletins,” and dropped them down to a messenger boy
+in the yard. He hurried off, then returned to fetch more
+“copy”; I sent at least a column for the first edition.
+I felt a very proud reporter.</p>
+
+<p>After two hours of thrills and scares, the news spread
+that the Strong Man of the circus was on his way down,
+a fearless Samson of a fellow who lifted great weights.
+The news proved true. A prolonged cheer greeted him.
+He acknowledged it with a sweeping bow. He wore
+diamonds and a top hat. Swaggering up among the
+reporters, he announced in a loud voice: “Boys! I’m
+going to fix that lion, and I’m going to fix it right
+away!”</p>
+
+<p>The boastful bluff received no believing cheer in response,
+but to my amazement, the fellow proved as good as
+his talk. He said no further word, he just lifted the trap-door
+in the floor and began to squeeze himself through—straight
+down onto the very spot where the lion lay,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[105]</span>
+crouching below on the dead horse. He dropped. We
+heard the thud. We also heard the appalling roar that
+followed, the quick pistol shots, the shouts, the excited
+cries—then silence. The reporter at the trap-door called
+out to us what was happening.... That Strong Man
+was a hero.</p>
+
+<p>Ten or fifteen minutes later, the big stable-doors
+swung open, and the cage, with the lion safely inside it,
+emerged on a high-wheeled truck into full view of the
+cheering crowd. On the top of the cage, sweeping his
+shiny top hat about, bowing, waving his free hand with
+modest dignity to the admiring thousands, the Strong
+Man sat enthroned, cross-legged, proud and smiling.
+The procession through the streets of the city was a triumphal
+progress that lasted most of the day. That
+night Bostock’s Circus opened to the public.</p>
+
+<p>I hurried back to the office, and had the joy of
+seeing the first edition hawked and cried about the
+streets, even before I got there. Big head-lines about a
+“Man-eating Lion,” a “Two Thousand Dollar Trotting
+Horse,” “Heroic Rescuer,” and the rest, met my eye
+everywhere. Cooper, however, made no remark or comment,
+sending me on at once to report a murder trial
+at special sessions, and in half an hour the gruesome
+thrills of a horrible poison case made the lion and the
+strong man fade away.</p>
+
+<p>“Read your morning paper?” Cooper asked, when I
+appeared next morning. I nodded. The lion story, I
+had noticed, filled only half a stick of print. “Read
+the advertisements?” he asked next. I saw a twinkle in
+his eye, and quickly scanned the circus advertisements
+about the man-eating lion that had killed a trotting horse,
+and a strong man whose courage had done this and that,
+saving numerous lives ... but I was still puzzled by
+Cooper’s twinkling eye. He offered no word of explanation;
+I learned the truth from someone else later. The
+toothless, aged lion, gorged with food and doped as well,
+had been pushed into the stable overnight, the carcass
+of a horse, valued at $10, had been dragged in after it.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[106]</span>
+The newspapers had been notified, and the long advertisements,
+of course, were paid for in the ordinary way, but
+the free advertisement obtained was of a kind that mere
+dollars could not buy.</p>
+
+<p>Occasional interludes of this sort certainly brightened
+the sordid daily routine, but they were rare. A big fire
+was a thrilling experience, a metal badge pinned to the
+coat allowing the reporter to go as near as he liked and
+to run what risks he pleased. Such work became, with
+time, mechanical in a sense, it occurred so often, arson,
+too, being very frequent, especially among the Jews of
+the East side. Even in those days the story of the two
+Jews was a “chestnut”: “I’m thorry your blace of
+business got burnt down last Tuesday,” says Ikey. To
+which Moses replies: “Hush! It’s next Tuesday!”</p>
+
+<p>The rôle of the reporter in New York, of course, was an
+accepted one; publicity and advertisement were admittedly
+desirable; the reporter as a rule was welcomed; privacy
+was very rare; a reporter could, and was expected to,
+intrude into personal family affairs where, in England,
+he would be flung into the street.... Other interviews
+were of a pleasanter kind; I remember Henry Irving
+and Ellen Terry in their special train, Sarah Bernhardt,
+at the Hoffman House hotel, and many a distinguished
+foreigner I was sent to interview because I could speak
+their languages. The trip to meet the Atlantic steamer
+at Quarantine I regarded as a day off: it could be made
+to last for hours. I saw the coast, moreover, and smelt
+the sea....</p>
+
+<p>Most of my work on the <i>Evening Sun</i>, at any rate,
+took me among the criminal and outcast sections of the
+underworld. In those days the police, as a whole, were
+corrupt, brutal, heartless; I saw innocent men against
+whom they had a grudge, or whom they wanted out of
+the way for some reason, “railroaded to gaol” on cooked-up
+evidence; sickening and dreadful scenes I witnessed....
+The valueless character of human evidence I learned
+daily in the trials I reported, so that even a man who was
+trying to tell the truth seemed unable to achieve it.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[107]</span>
+Tammany had its slimy tentacles everywhere and graft
+was the essence of success in every branch of public
+life. A police captain had his town and country house,
+perhaps his yacht as well.... The story of Tammany
+has been told again and again. It is too well known for
+repetition. I watched its vile methods from the inside
+with a vengeance; its loathsome soul I saw face to face.
+The city, too, I soon knew inside out, especially its darker,
+unclean quarters. Chinatown, Little Africa, where, after
+dark, it was best to walk in the middle of the street,
+“Italy,” the tenement life of the overcrowded, reeking
+East side.... I made friends with strange people,
+feeling myself even in touch with them, something of an
+outcast like themselves. My former life became more and
+more remote, it seemed unreal; the world I now lived in
+seemed the only world; these evil, depraved, tempted,
+unhappy devils were not only the majority, but the real,
+ordinary humanity that stocked the world. More and
+more the under-dog appealed to me. The rich, the luxurious,
+the easily-placed, the untempted and inexperienced,
+these I was beginning to find it in me to look down on,
+even to despise. <i>Mutatis mutandis</i>, I thought to myself,
+daily, hourly, where would <i>they</i> be?... Where would <i>I</i>
+myself be...?</p>
+
+<p>Bronx Park, Shelley, the violin, the free library,
+organ recitals in churches, my Eastern books, and meetings
+of the Theosophical Society, provided meanwhile the few
+beauty hours to which I turned by way of relief and relaxation.
+One and all fed my inner dreams, gave me intense
+happiness, offered a way of escape from a daily atmosphere
+I loathed like poison. Sometimes, sitting in court,
+reporting a trial of absorbing interest, my eye would catch
+through the dirty window a patch of blue between the
+clouds ... and instantly would sweep up the power of the
+woods, the strange joy of clean solitary places in the wilderness,
+the glamour of a secret little lake where loons
+were calling and waves splashing on deserted, lonely shores.
+I heard the pines, saw the silvery moonlight, felt the keen
+wind of open and untainted spaces, I smelt the very earth
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[108]</span>
+and the perfume of the forests.... A serious gap would
+follow in my report, so that I would have to borrow from
+the flimsy man, or from another reporter, what had happened
+in the interval. In this connexion there comes back
+to me a picture of a <i>World</i> man whose work constituted him
+a star reporter, but who could write nothing unless he was
+really drunk. With glazed eyes he would catch the witness
+and listen to question and answer, while with a pencil he
+could scarcely direct, he scribbled in immense writing
+three or four sloping lines to each page of “copy” paper.
+It always astonished me that such work could be any
+good, but once I made a shorthand note of several of his
+pages, and found them printed verbatim in the next
+edition, without a single blue-pencil alteration. When
+this man sat next me, my intervals of absent-mindedness
+did not matter. His big writing enabled me to crib easily
+all I had missed.</p>
+
+<p>Other compensating influences, too, I found with my
+“room-mates,” especially with Boyde, to whom I had
+become devotedly attached. I was uncommonly lucky
+to have such friends, I thought. Talking with Boyde,
+playing the fiddle to his singing, sharing my troubles with
+his subtle, sympathetic, well-read mind, was an unfailing
+pleasure, that made me look forward intensely to our
+evenings together, and helped me to get through many
+a day of repulsive and distasteful work. Compared with
+the charm and variety of Boyde, Kay seemed stolid, even
+unresponsive sometimes.</p>
+
+<p>To live consciously is to register impressions; some
+receive many more of these per second than others, and
+thus enjoy an intenser and more varied life. The two-per-second
+mind finds the two-per-minute one slow, dull
+and stupid. Kay, anyhow, didn’t “mind” things much,
+circumstances never troubled him, whereas Boyde and I
+minded them acutely. I envied Kay’s power of sleeping
+calmly in that bed, careless of night-attacks until they
+actually came. The horror of New York, similarly, that
+was creeping into my blood had hardly touched him,
+though it certainly had infected Boyde. In my own make-up
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[109]</span>
+lay something ultra-sensitive that took impressions
+far too easily. Not only did it vibrate with unnecessary
+eagerness to every change in sky and sea, but to every shade
+of attitude and manner in my fellows as well. I seemed
+covered with sore and tender places into which New York
+rubbed salt and acid every hour of the day. It wounded,
+not alone because I felt unhappy, but of itself. It hit me
+where it pleased. The awful city, with its torrential,
+headlong life, held for me something of the monstrous.
+Everything about it was exaggerated. Its racing speed,
+its roofs amid the clouds with the canyon gulfs below, its
+gaudy avenues dripping gold that ran almost arm in arm
+with streets little better than sewers of human decay and
+misery, its frantic noise, both of voices and mechanism,
+its lavishly organized charity and boastful splendour,
+and its deep corruption in the grip of a heartless and
+degraded Tammany—it was all this that painted the horror
+into my imagination as of something monstrous, non-human,
+almost unearthly. It became, for me, a scab on the
+skin of the planet, brilliant with the hues of fever, moving
+all over with its teeming microbes. I felt it, indeed, but
+half civilized.</p>
+
+<p>This note of how I felt in these—my early years—rose
+up again the other day, as I read what O. Henry wrote
+to his outlaw friend from the Ohio Penitentiary about it.
+Al Jennings had just been pardoned. O. Henry had finished
+his terms some years before. They met again in a
+West 26th Street hotel, not far from my own room in Mrs.
+Bernstein’s house. They talked of their terrible prison
+days.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s good you’ve been there,” said O. Henry. “It’s
+the proper vestibule to this city of Damned Souls. The
+crooks there are straight compared with the business thieves
+here. If you’ve got $2 on you, invest it now or they’ll
+take it away from you before morning.”</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[110]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIV">
+    CHAPTER XIV
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap kern'><span class='allcaps'>In</span> the East 19th Street room, meanwhile, things were
+going from bad to worse. Kay’s touring company
+delayed its starting, and consequently his salary.
+Boyde’s huntsman’s job, equally, was postponed for
+various reasons, while his income from posing, from
+churchly activities, from the theatre as well, was reduced
+to a very few dollars a week. These he shared faithfully,
+but my $15 every Friday (usually $13 net when office
+loans had been repaid) were our only certain source of
+revenue.</p>
+
+<p>After paying something on the room, the laundry in
+full, and buying oatmeal, dried apples, and condensed
+milk for the week to come, there remained barely enough
+for one man’s meals, much less for the food of three,
+during the ensuing seven days. Boyde’s contribution
+brought the budget to, perhaps, twenty dollars all told.
+Something, too, had to be allowed daily to car-fares
+for Kay, while my own expenses in getting about after
+assignments, only recoverable at the end of the week,
+were considerable. The weather was turning colder at
+the same time, for it was now past mid-October. Our
+overcoats had to be redeemed. Boyde’s wisdom in
+obtaining only the strictly necessary became evident.
+We redeemed the overcoats out of my second week’s pay.
+Boyde himself had no overcoat at all. As we were all
+about the same height and build, clothes were interchangeable.
+There was a discussion every morning, when I left
+the other two, in bed and on the sofa respectively, as to
+who should wear what.</p>
+
+<p>We had now pawned with Ikey various items: a
+Gladstone bag, two top hats, some underwear, and two
+pairs of boots. These were on separate tickets, by Boyde’s
+advice. Tennis trousers, and several summer shirts were
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[111]</span>
+together on another ticket. All that winter Kay and I
+wore no underwear but a vest. The bag and top hats
+were taken out and put in again regularly every week
+for many months. There was only one article that,
+selfishly, I could never pawn or sell—the fiddle.</p>
+
+<p>Dried apples and hot water—with expensive oatmeal
+we had to be very sparing—constituted our dinner for
+four nights out of the week; coffee and bread and butter
+for breakfast, coffee and “sinkers” for lunch completed
+my dietary. Occasionally Boyde or Kay, having been
+invited to a meal, brought home something in their
+pockets, but not often. We felt hunger every day, only
+the evening dried apples and hot water giving a sense of
+repletion that yet did not really allay the pangs of appetite,
+though it stopped the dull gnawing until sleep finally
+obliterated it. Kay and I, but never Boyde, oddly enough,
+had vivid and amusing dreams of food, and one invariable
+topic of conversation every night as we dined at
+Krisch’s, or gobbled apples and oatmeal, was the menu
+we would order when things improved.... But Krisch’s,
+after a time, we found too difficult and tempting, with the
+good smells, the sight of people eating at other tables, the
+lager beer, the perfume of cigars; and many a time,
+with the price of a dinner in our pockets, we preferred
+to eat in our room.</p>
+
+<p>Another topic of conversation was our plan, myself
+its enthusiastic creator, to take up land in Canada and
+lead the life of settlers in the backwoods, which by contrast
+to our present conditions seemed to promise a
+paradise. Occasionally Kay spouted bits of Shakespeare,
+or rehearsed a rôle in one of the plays his touring company
+was to give. But it was the talks with Boyde about
+Eastern ideas and philosophy that were my keenest
+pleasure, for his appreciation and sympathetic understanding
+were a delight I thought about with anticipatory
+eagerness even during the day. My attachment to him
+deepened into affection.</p>
+
+<p>The weeks went by; we scraped along somehow;
+Mrs. Bernstein was kept quiet—a relative term—by
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[112]</span>
+cajoling, promises and bluff. We bullied her. When
+Kay’s lordly talk of free seats at theatres failed to materialize,
+and Boyde’s trick of leaving about telegrams
+received from Davis and others, especially one from
+August Belmont, the great banker, inviting him to lunch
+at a fashionable club—when these devices lost their
+“pull,” I resorted to the power of the Press. Her husband’s
+position, his orchestra, offered vulnerable points
+of attack; the vermin-infested room, for instance, might
+be unpleasantly described....</p>
+
+<p>For weeks we had paid nothing, everything worth
+fifty cents was pawned, Boyde’s contribution had grown
+smaller and smaller, and the only addition to my salary
+had been a few dollars Kay had earned by posing
+to Smedley, one of Harper’s illustrators. Things looked
+pretty dark, when luck turned suddenly; Kay received
+word from Gilmour, the organizer of his company, that
+he was to start touring on November 15th, and Boyde
+had a telegram from Davis—“Appointment confirmed,
+duties begin December 1st.” This did not increase our
+cash in hand, but it increased our hope and raised our
+spirits. Kay and Boyde would both soon repay their
+share of past expenses. We should all three be in jobs
+a few weeks later. Early in November Kay actually left
+on his tour of one night stands in New York State, and
+Boyde left the mattress on the floor for the bed. A week
+after Kay sent us half his first salary, $7.50, which we
+gave to Mrs. Bernstein forthwith. The letter containing
+it was opened by Boyde, and dealt with while I was out.</p>
+
+<p>It was a few days later, when I was alone one evening,
+that an Englishman who had played with us in the cricket
+match called to see me. I hardly remembered him, he
+had to introduce himself, the apologies to explain his
+sudden call were very voluble. He was well dressed and
+well fed, I noticed, a singer and concert accompanist; he
+annoyed me from the start by his hesitations, his endless
+humming and hawing. It was, he kept telling me, rather
+an intrusion; it was, he felt, of course, no concern of
+his; but “New York was a strange place, and—and—er—er—well,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[113]</span>
+after much reflection, I really felt it my
+duty—I decided to take the risk, that is, to—er——”</p>
+
+<p>“To what?” I asked bluntly at last. “For heaven’s
+sake, tell me.”</p>
+
+<p>I was beginning to feel uneasy. My threats to Mrs.
+Bernstein, perhaps, had gone too far. Besides, the effect
+of the apples was passing and I longed for bed.</p>
+
+<p>He took a gulp. “To warn you,” he said, with a
+grave and ominous expression.</p>
+
+<p>It was a long-winded business before I got him to
+the point, and even then the point was not really explicit.
+New York, he kept repeating, was a dangerous place for
+inexperience, there were strange and desperate characters
+in it. In the end, I think, my manners exasperated him
+as much as his vagueness exasperated me, for when he
+told me he came about “someone very close to you,”
+and I asked point-blank, “Is it someone sharing this room
+with me?” his final word was a most decided “Yes”—with
+nothing more. This “someone,” I gathered, at
+any rate, was fooling me, was up to all sorts of tricks,
+was even “dangerous.”</p>
+
+<p>I was infuriated, though I felt a certain sinking of the
+heart as well. He was attacking either Kay or Boyde,
+my only friends, both of whom I trusted to the last cent,
+for both of whom I had sincere affection. If he knew
+anything definite or really important, why couldn’t he
+say it and be done with it? I put this to him.</p>
+
+<p>“I prefer not to be more explicit,” he replied with an
+air. He was offended. His patronizing offer of advice
+and sympathy, his pride, were wounded. “I would
+rather not mention names. It’s true all the same,” he
+added. And my patience then gave way. I got up and
+opened the door. He went without a word, but just as
+I was about to slam the door after him, he turned.</p>
+
+<p>“Remember,” he said, half angrily, half gravely,
+“I’ve warned you. He’s a real crook. He’s already
+been in gaol.”</p>
+
+<p>I banged the door behind him. I felt angry but uncomfortable,
+and as the anger subsided my uneasiness
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[114]</span>
+increased. The horrible feeling that there was truth in
+the warning harassed me. When Boyde came in an
+hour or so later, I pretended to be asleep. I told him
+nothing of my visitor, but through half-closed eyes I
+watched him as he moved about the room very quietly,
+lest he disturb my sleep. His delightful, kind expression,
+his frank blue eyes, the refinement and gentleness of
+his gestures, I noted them all for the hundredth time.
+His acts, too, I remembered; how he always shared his
+earnings, gave his help unstintingly, advice, a thousand
+hints, the value of his own sad and bitter experience.
+My heart ached a little. No, I reflected, it was certainly
+not Boyde who was the crook. My thoughts turned to
+Kay, who had just sent us half his salary. It was equally
+incredible. I wished I had treated my visitor differently.
+I wished I had kicked him out, instead of telling him to
+go. Sneak! A sneak with some evil motive into the
+bargain!</p>
+
+<p>Things began to move now with a strange rapidity. It
+was as though someone who had been winding up machinery
+suddenly released the spring. Item by item,
+preparations had been completed—then, let her go!
+She went....</p>
+
+<p>The weeks that followed seemed as many months. I
+was alone with Boyde in a filthy, verminous room, food
+and money scarce, rent owing, Kay away, clothes negligible,
+my single asset being a job. I lost that job owing to illness
+that kept me for weeks in bed—in that bed.... And as
+“she went” I had the curious feeling that someone
+watched her going, someone other than myself. It was
+an odd obsession. Someone looked on and smiled. Certain
+practices, gathered from my “Eastern” reading,
+were no doubt responsible for this uncanny feeling, for
+with it ran also a parallel idea: that only a portion of
+my being suffered while another portion, untouched, serene
+and confident, accepting all that came with a kind of
+indifferent resignation, stood entirely apart, playing,
+equally, the rôle of a spectator. This detached spectator
+watched “her going” with close attention, even
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[115]</span>
+with something of satisfaction. “Take it all,” was its
+attitude; “avoid nothing; it is your due; for it is
+merely reaping what you sowed long ago. Face it to the
+very dregs. Only in this way shall you pay a just debt
+and exhaust it.” So vital was this attitude in all that
+followed that it must be honestly mentioned.</p>
+
+<p>A stabbing in the side had been bothering me for some
+days, making walking difficult and painful. A blow
+received while diving from our island—I hit a rock—began
+to ache and throb. I came home in the evenings,
+weary to the bone. There were headaches, and a touch
+of fever. The pain increased. There was a swelling.
+I went to bed. Boyde took down a letter to McCloy,
+asking for a day off, which was granted. The next day
+I turned up at 8.30, but had to come back to bed after
+the midday coffee and sinkers. “See a doctor,” snapped
+McCloy, in his best maxim-firing manner, “and come
+back when you’re fixed up again.”</p>
+
+<p>But there wasn’t enough money for a doctor’s fee of
+from two to five dollars. I lay up for three days, hoping
+for improvement which did not come. The pain and
+fever grew. Mrs. Bernstein, upset and even disagreeable,
+sent me bread and soup in the evening as well as the
+morning coffee. Boyde brought a few extras late at night.
+He was chasing a new post just then—organist to a church
+in Patterson, N.J.—and rarely got home before eleven,
+sometimes later. He brought long rolls of Vienna bread,
+a few white Spanish grapes, a tin of condensed milk. He
+slept peaceably beside me. His manner, once or twice,
+seemed different. I smelt liquor. “Someone stood me
+a drink,” he explained, “and by God, I needed it. I’m
+fagged out.” He was kind and sympathetic, doing all
+he could, all that his position allowed. He was very
+much in love at the moment with the daughter of the
+pastor of the Second Avenue Baptist Church, where
+he sang in the choir, and he confided his hopes and
+troubles about the affair to me.... It all gave me
+a queer feeling of unreality somewhere. In my feverish
+state I knew an occasional unaccustomed shiver. The
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[116]</span>
+long day in bed, alone with my thoughts, waiting for
+Boyde’s return, was wearisome to endlessness, by no
+means free from new, unpleasant reflections, yet when
+at last the door opened softly, and he came back, his
+arms full of the little extras mentioned, there was disappointment
+in me somewhere. It was not quite as I
+expected. Accompanying the disappointment were these
+new, faint twinges of uneasiness as well. I kept the gas
+burning all night. I watched Boyde’s face, as he slept
+calmly beside me in that narrow bed, his expression of
+innocence and kindliness increased my feelings of gratitude,
+even of tenderness, towards him. There were deep lines,
+however, that sleep did not smooth out. “Poor devil,
+he’s been through the mill!” This habit of watching
+him grew.</p>
+
+<p>There was delay and trouble about the Rockaway
+Hunt post; studio sittings were scarce; the Baptist
+church organist was never unable to officiate; Morton
+Selton never missed a performance; and Boyde, as a
+result, though he still contributed what he could, earned
+next to nothing. If I was puzzled by his late hours, his
+explanations invariably cleared away my wonder. He
+always had a plausible excuse, one, too, that woke my
+sympathy. It was just at this time, moreover, that Kay
+wrote. The Canadian tour was such a failure that Gilmour
+was taking his troupe to the States, where they anticipated
+better houses. No salaries had been paid. They were
+now off to Pittsburg. Kay hoped to send some money
+before long.</p>
+
+<p>I spent the weary hours reading.... On the third
+day, my symptoms worse, the door opened suddenly
+without a knock, and I saw an old man with a white
+moustache and spectacles peering round the edge at me.
+I laid down my “Gita” and stared back at him.</p>
+
+<p>“Are you Mr. Blackwood?” he asked, with a marked
+German accent.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes.” I had not the faintest idea who he was.</p>
+
+<p>He closed the door, took off his slouch hat, crossed
+the room, laid his small black bag on the sofa, then came
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[117]</span>
+and stood beside my bed. He was extremely deliberate.
+I watched him anxiously. He said no word for some
+time, while we stared at one another.</p>
+
+<p>He was of medium height, about sixty-five years old,
+with white hair, dark eyes behind magnifying spectacles,
+the strong face deeply lined, voice and manner stern to
+the point of being forbidding—but when I saw it rarely—a
+most winning smile. Except for the spectacles, he
+was like a small edition of Bismarck.</p>
+
+<p>“I am a doctor,” he said, after a prolonged silent
+inspection, “and I live down the street. Your friend, an
+Englishman, asked me to call. Are <i>you</i> English?” I
+told him I was a reporter on the <i>Evening Sun</i>, adding that
+I had no money at the moment. The suspicion his manner
+had not attempted to hide at once showed itself plainly.
+His manner and voice were brusque to offensiveness, as
+he said flatly: “I expect to be paid. I have a wife and
+child.” He stood there, staring at me, hard and cold.
+I repeated that I had nothing to pay him with, and I
+lay back in bed, wishing he would go, for I felt uncomfortable
+and ashamed, annoyed as well by his unsympathetic
+attitude. “Humph!” he grunted, still staring
+without moving. There was an awkward silence I thought
+would never end. “Humph!” he grunted again presently.
+“I egsamine you anyhow. How old are you?”</p>
+
+<p>“Twenty-two,” I said, “and a bit.”</p>
+
+<p>“Humph!” he repeated, as he examined me rather
+roughly. “You’re very thin. Too thin!”</p>
+
+<p>He hurt me, and I did not answer.</p>
+
+<p>“Not eating enough,” he added, and then gave his
+verdict. It was an abscess, I must keep my bed for a
+month or six weeks, an operation might be necessary....</p>
+
+<p>I asked how much I owed him. “Two dollars,” he
+said. He gave me his address, and I replied that I would
+bring the money to him as soon as I could, but that he
+need not call again. He stared severely at me with
+those magnified eyes.</p>
+
+<p>“Haven’t you got two dollars even?” he asked curtly.</p>
+
+<p>“I’ve told you the truth. And, anyhow, I didn’t
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[118]</span>
+send for you. I didn’t ask my friend to fetch you
+either.”</p>
+
+<p>I could think of nothing else to say. His verdict had
+flattened me out. I was angry, besides, with Boyde, for
+not consulting me first, though I knew he had done the
+right thing. Another period of awkward silence followed,
+during which the doctor never moved, but stood gazing
+down at me. Suddenly his eye rested on the book I had
+been reading. He put out a hand and picked it up. He
+glanced through the pages of the “Gita,” then began to
+read more carefully. A few minutes passed. He became
+absorbed.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>You</i> read this?” he asked presently. “<i>Ach was!</i>”
+There was a look of keen astonishment in his eyes; his
+gaze searched me as though I were some strange animal.
+I told him enough by way of reply to explain my interest.
+He listened, without a word, then presently picked up his
+bag and hat and moved away. At the door he turned a
+moment. “I come again to-morrow,” he said gruffly,
+and he was gone.</p>
+
+<p>In this way Otto Huebner, with his poignant tragedy,
+came into my life.</p>
+
+<p>That evening, with the bread and soup, there was a
+plate of chicken; it was not repeated often, but he had
+spoken to Mrs. Bernstein, I discovered, for her attitude,
+too, became slightly pleasanter. I spent the long evening
+composing a letter to McCloy, which Boyde could take
+down next day.... I lay thinking of that curious
+gruff, rude old German, whose brusqueness, I felt sure,
+covered a big good heart. There was mystery about him,
+something unusual, something pathetic and very lovable.
+There was power in his quietness. Despite his bluntness,
+there was in his atmosphere a warm kindness, a sincerity
+that drew me to him. Also there was a darkness, a sense
+of tragedy somewhere that intrigued me because I could
+not explain it.</p>
+
+<p>It was after he was gone that I felt all this. While
+he was in the room I had been too troubled and upset by
+his manner to feel anything but annoyance. Now that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[119]</span>
+he was gone his face and eyes and voice haunted me.
+His bleak honesty, I think, showed me, without my
+recognizing it, another standard.</p>
+
+<p>Was it this, I wonder, that made me start a little
+when, about two in the morning, I heard a stealthy
+tread coming upstairs, and presently saw Boyde enter
+the room—carrying his boots in his hand? Was it this,
+again, that made me feign to be asleep, and a couple of
+hours later still, when I woke with a shiver, notice, for
+the first time, a new expression in the face that lay so
+calmly asleep beside me?</p>
+
+<p>Behind the kindly innocence, I thought, there lay a
+darker look. It was like a shadow on the features. It
+increased my feelings of uneasiness, though as yet no
+definite thought had formulated itself in my mind.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[120]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XV">
+    CHAPTER XV
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap kern'><span class='allcaps'>Next</span> day there was a racing west wind that sent the
+clouds scudding across a bright blue sky. The
+doctor was to come at 3 o’clock. Boyde, in very
+optimistic mood, had gone out early, taking my letter to
+McCloy. He had a studio sitting; he was going to
+Patterson too; he would return as early as he could.
+The shadow of the night before had vanished; I no
+longer believed in it; I ascribed it to fever and nerves.
+He sang cheerily while he dressed in my thick brown
+suit, the only one not in pawn (everything else, now that
+I was in bed, had gone to Ikey), and his voice sounded
+delightful. In the afternoon he came back with the
+news that McCloy had read my letter and said “That’s
+right. Tell him to be good to himself. He can come
+back.” Also he had agreed to use translations of the
+French stories at five dollars each. Boyde brought a
+<i>Courier</i> in with him. Two letters from home arrived too.
+Both my father and mother, though having no idea what
+was going on, never missed a single week. My own
+letters were difficult to write. I had come to New York
+against my father’s advice. I wrote home what I thought
+best.</p>
+
+<p>At 3 o’clock the doctor came. My heart sank as I
+heard his step. I was in considerable pain. What would
+he be like? Would an operation be necessary? Would
+he speak about money again? Mrs. Bernstein, oily and
+respectful, a little awed as well, announced him. Without
+a word, without a glance in my direction, he walked
+over in his slow, deliberate way, and laid hat and bag
+upon the sofa. Then he turned and looked steadily at
+himself in the mirror for a period I thought would never
+end. After that he turned and looked at me.</p>
+
+<p>He was an angel. His face was wreathed in smiles.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[121]</span>
+It beamed with good-nature, kindness, sympathy. He
+at once said something that was gentle, soothing, like
+music to me. My heart suddenly expanded in a most
+uncomfortable way. I believe a lump came up in my
+throat. This was all so contrary to what I had expected.
+He was not only an angel, he was a womanly angel. I
+must have been in a very weak state, for it was all I could
+do to keep my tears back. The same instant his eye fell
+on my fiddle case. He looked at it, then at me, then
+back again at the fiddle.</p>
+
+<p>“You play?” he asked, with a twinkle in his big
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>“I ought to pawn it,” I said, “but——”</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t,” he answered with decision. He added an
+odd sentence: “It’s an esgape from self.” I remember
+that I couldn’t say a word to this. His kindness melted
+me. The struggle to keep my eyes from betraying me
+seemed the most idiotic yet bitter I had ever known.
+I could have kissed the old man’s hand, when he examined
+me then at once, but with a gentleness, even a
+tenderness, that both astonished me, yet did not astonish
+me at all. I felt, too, already the support of his mind
+and character, of his whole personality, of a rugged power
+in him, of generosity, true goodness, above all, of sympathy.
+I think he had made up his mind to treat me for nothing.
+No reference, in any case, was made to money; nor did
+I dare even to mention it myself. An operation, moreover,
+of any big kind, was not necessary; he thought he
+could save me that; he performed a small one then and
+there, for he had brought all that was required for it.
+The pain seemed nothing, his kindness made me indifferent
+to it. “You are brave,” he said, with a smile that seemed
+to me really beautiful, when it was over. “That hurt,
+I know.” He promised to come daily to drain the wound
+and so forth; he bandaged me up; a month to six weeks
+would see me out of bed, he hoped; he packed up his bag,
+but, instead of leaving the room, he then sat down deliberately
+and began to talk.</p>
+
+<p>I was too surprised, too happy, to wonder why he
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[122]</span>
+stayed. His talk was food and drink to me. He picked
+up my few books, and sat reading quietly to himself when
+he saw I was getting tired. De Quincey’s “Confessions”
+interested him especially, and he asked if he might borrow
+it. He took also “Sartor Resartus.” I slipped into
+German, to his keen delight, and told him about the
+Moravian Brotherhood School in the Black Forest. A
+sketch of the recent past I gave him too. He listened
+with great attention, asking occasional questions, but
+always with real tact, and never allowing me to tire
+myself.</p>
+
+<p>Though it was obvious, even to my stupidity, that he
+regarded me rather as a “specimen” of some sort, there
+was heart in all he said and did. Otto Huebner poured
+balm into all my little wounds that afternoon, but about
+himself he told me hardly anything. While he drew me
+out, with skill and sympathy, he hid himself behind that
+impenetrable mystery I had already noted the previous
+day. I say purposely that of himself he told me “hardly
+anything,” because one detail did escape him inadvertently.
+An hour later, as he was leaving, he turned his smile on
+me from the door. “I send you something,” he said
+shortly. “My vife makes goot broth. I cannot do
+much. I have not got it.”</p>
+
+<p>One other thing I noticed about his visit, when towards
+the end, Boyde came in unexpectedly, bringing a small
+bunch of the yellow Spanish grapes. In his best, most
+charming manner he spoke with the doctor. The doctor’s
+face, however, darkened instantly. His features, it
+seemed to me, froze. His manner was curt. He scarcely
+replied. And when he left a little later he did not include
+my friend in his good-bye. It puzzled me. It added to
+my uneasiness as well.</p>
+
+<p>Boyde, who apparently had noticed nothing, explained
+that he had to go out again to an appointment with
+Davis about the Rockaway Hunt post; he did not return
+that night at all.</p>
+
+<p>I listened to the city clocks striking midnight, one,
+two, three ... he did not come. I listened to the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[123]</span>
+howling wind as well. Imagination tried feebly to construct
+a happier state, lovelier conditions, a world nearer
+to the heart’s desire. While waiting for midnight to
+strike, I said to myself, thinking of yesterday and to-morrow,
+with all the one had meant and the other might
+mean to me:</p>
+
+<p>“Yesterday is now twenty-four hours away, but in a
+minute it will be only one minute away.”</p>
+
+<p>I treated the hidden to-morrow similarly. I imagined,
+the world being old and creaky, ill-fitting too, that a
+crack existed between the two days. Anyone who was
+thin enough might slip through! I, certainly, was thin
+enough. I slipped through.... I entered a region out of
+time, a region where everything came true. And the first
+thing I saw was a wondrous streaming vision of the wind,
+the wind that howled outside my filthy windows....
+I saw the winds, changing colours as they rose and fell,
+attached to the trees, in tenuous ribands of gold and blue
+and scarlet as they swept to and fro.... I little
+dreamed that these fancies would appear fifteen years
+later in a book of my own, “The Education of Uncle
+Paul.” That crack, at any rate, became for me, like the
+fiddle, a means of escape from unkind reality into a state
+of inner bliss and wonder “where everything came
+true.”...</p>
+
+<p>It was after twelve o’clock next day when Boyde
+returned—with a black eye, my one thick suit stained
+and soiled, and a long involved story that utterly confused
+me. There had been a fight; he had protected a woman;
+a false charge had been laid against him owing to misunderstanding,
+owing also to the fact that he had no
+money to tip the policeman, and he had spent the night
+in a cell at Jefferson Market police station. In the morning
+the magistrate had discharged him with many compliments
+upon his “gallantry and courage.” It did not
+ring true. I knew the Tammany magistrates better than
+that. He contradicted himself too, in saying that a Mr.
+Beattie, a friend of his mother’s, who occasionally gave
+him a little money she sent from England, had bailed him
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[124]</span>
+out. He had been bailed out, discharged with compliments,
+had slept in a cell, and not been fined! I smelt
+spirits too. It all made me miserable.</p>
+
+<p>“You’ve been drunk and they locked you up,” I
+reproached him. “Why do you lie to me?” The
+copious explanations that followed I hardly listened to.
+I lay in bed, saying nothing, but the warning of my
+visitor came back.</p>
+
+<p>“I went down to the <i>Evening Sun</i>,” Boyde said
+presently, when my silence made his explanations end
+of their own accord. “I’ve just come back with this.
+McCloy asked after you and sent it on account of the
+French stories.” He handed me five dollars, in single
+bills, which we divided equally then and there.</p>
+
+<p>He had been gone hardly ten minutes when the door
+opened again, and another visitor came in, an actor out
+of a job, Grant, an Englishman of perhaps twenty-five,
+one of the cricket team I had met in Staten Island a few
+weeks before. He had run across Boyde, he explained, and
+had heard I was ill. As one Englishman to another “in
+this awful city” he wanted to see if he could help in any
+way. He did then a wonderful thing. We had met but
+once, he scarcely knew me, he might never see me again,
+but when he realized the state of affairs he said he thought
+he could get a little money for me, and before I could say
+a word he vanished from the room. His shyness, his lame
+manner of speech, something hesitating and awkward about
+him generally, had embarrassed me as much as, evidently,
+he was embarrassed himself; and I was convinced his
+plea of getting money was only an excuse to disappear
+quickly. I rather hoped it was; certainly I thought it
+unlikely he would come back—which, nevertheless, he did,
+in about a quarter of an hour. He came in breathlessly,
+a shamefaced air about him; flung down some dollar bills
+on the bed, and vanished the second time. Three dollars
+lay on the counterpane. It was only a little later, as
+reflection brought up details, that I remembered he had
+worn an overcoat when he first came in, and that on his
+second visit he wore none. He had pawned it. Another
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[125]</span>
+detail rose to the surface: that he had called, really, upon
+quite another errand, and that there was something he
+wanted to tell me that he had not the courage to put into
+words. Later he admitted it was true....</p>
+
+<p>Anticipating Otto Huebner’s visits was now a keen
+pleasure; the one event of a long weary day.</p>
+
+<p>During the next fortnight or so, he missed no single
+afternoon. His moods varied amazingly. One day he
+seemed an angel, the next a devil. I was completely
+puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>The talks we had on his good days were an enjoyment
+I can hardly describe. I realized how much I depended
+on them, as well as on the man who made them possible.
+I realized also how much I depended on my other friend—on
+Boyde. The latter’s curious and unsatisfactory
+behaviour, mysterious still to my blind ignorant eyes,
+made no difference to my feelings for him, but, if anything,
+tended to strengthen the attachment. My affection
+deepened. There lay now a certain pity in me too, an
+odd feeling that he was in my charge, and that, for all
+his greater knowledge and experience of life, his seniority
+as well, I could—I must—somehow help him. Upon the
+German doctor and Boyde, at any rate, Kay being far
+away, my mind rested with security, if of different degrees.
+To lose either of them in my lonely situation would have
+been catastrophic.</p>
+
+<p>The old German would settle himself on the sofa,
+drawn up close to the bed, and talk. He was saturated
+in his native philosophy, but Hegel was his king....
+“Sartor Resartus” enthralled him. Of De Quincey’s
+struggle against opium he was never tired. Of Vedantic
+and Hindu philosophy, too, he was understanding and
+tolerant, though not enamoured. Regarding me still as
+a “specimen” evidently, he also treated me as though
+I were a boy, discerning of course at once my emptiness
+of mind and experience.</p>
+
+<p>How patiently he listened to my eager exposition of
+life’s mysteries, my chaotic theories, my fanciful speculations....</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[126]</span></p>
+
+<p>“We <i>know</i>—nothing, you must remember. <i>Nothing</i>,”
+he would say with emphasis. “Nor can we know anything,
+<i>ever</i>. We label, classify, examine certain <i>results</i>—that’s
+all. Of causes we remain completely ignorant.
+Speculation is not proof. The fact that a theory fits all
+the facts gets us no further.”</p>
+
+<p>He smiled, but with close attention, while I plunged
+again into a description of my beliefs. The tobacco smoke
+curled up about his genial face. I had no fear of him in
+this mood. I could say all my thoughts without shyness.
+I made full confession.</p>
+
+<p>“Interesting, logical, possibly true,” he replied, “and
+most certainly as good an explanation as any other, better
+even than most, but”—he shrugged his shoulders—“always
+a theory only, and nothing else. There is no
+proof of anything. The higher states of consciousness you
+mention are nebulous, probably pathogenic. Those who
+experience them cannot, in any case, report their content
+intelligibly to us who have not experienced them—because
+no words exist. They are of no value to the race, and
+that condemns them. Men of action, not dreamers, are
+what the world needs.”</p>
+
+<p>“Men of action only carry out what has first been
+dreamed,” I ventured.</p>
+
+<p>“True,” replied the old man, “true very often. Men
+of action rarely have much vision. The poet is the highest
+type.... I am with you in this too—that the only <i>real</i>
+knowledge is the knowledge of man, the study of consciousness.
+<i>Gnothi seauton</i> is still the shortest, as well as the
+most pregnant, sermon in the world. Before we can get
+new knowledge, <i>different</i> knowledge—yes, there I am
+with you—consciousness itself must change and become
+different first ... <i>but</i> ... the people who get
+that <i>different</i> knowledge cannot describe it to us because
+there is no language.” Wise, thoughtful things the old
+man said, while I listened eagerly. “One thing is certain,”
+he declared with his usual emphasis: “If there is another
+state after the destruction of the body, it cannot be merely
+an extension, an idealization, of the one we know. <i>That</i>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[127]</span>
+is excluded. Without senses, without brain or nerves,
+without physical reactions of any kind—since there is
+no body—how shall we be aware of things about us?
+Another state can only be—<i>different</i>, yet so different that
+it is useless to talk of it. The Heaven of the spiritualists,
+the elaborate constructions of a Swedenborg, are nothing
+but coloured idealizations of the state we already know
+...”—he snorted contemptuously—“obviously self-created.
+A different state of consciousness would show
+us a universe so totally different from anything we know
+that it must be—indescribable.”</p>
+
+<p>Of my own future, too, he liked to talk. The newspaper
+reporting he disapproved; it could lead to little;
+it was “<i>unersprechlich gemein</i>”; the New York press was
+a cesspool; it might serve a temporary purpose, but no
+self-respecting man should stay too long in it. He urged
+me to become a doctor, saying I should be a success,
+advising me to specialize in nerves and mental cases.
+Being an Englishman would help very much; in time I
+should have an enormous practice; he would assist me
+in all manner of ways, so that my course need not be
+longer than two years, or three at the most. He would
+coach me, rush me through in half the normal time.
+Later I could get a foreign degree, which would be an
+additional asset.... He never tired of this topic, and
+his enthusiasm was certainly sincere.</p>
+
+<p>Of stars, too, he loved to talk, of space, of possible
+other dimensions even. His exposition of a fourth
+dimension always delighted me. That the universe,
+indeed, was really four-dimensional, and that all we perceived
+of it was that sectional aspect, a portion as it were,
+that is projected into our three-dimensional world, was
+a theme that positively made him red in the face, as his
+big eyes focused on me, his concentrated mind working
+vehemently behind them.... Certainly, my knowledge
+of German improved considerably.</p>
+
+<p>Then, as Boyde came in, the light would die out of his
+eyes, his face would harden and grow dark—he had a way of
+making it seem frozen—and with a stiff bow to Boyde that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[128]</span>
+only just acknowledged his presence, he would get up and
+leave the room.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, I sold two more French stories, and Boyde
+bought back the ten dollars paid for them; three others
+were “not suitable,” according to McCloy. I told the
+doctor all I earned. “Later,” he said, “you pay me,
+if you want to. I take nothing—now.”</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[129]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVI">
+    CHAPTER XVI
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'><span class='allcaps'>The</span> days passed; I grew slowly better; the wound
+still had to be drained and bandaged, and the
+doctor kept me to my bed. Kay, writing from
+Toronto, had contrived to send us ten dollars. More
+French translations had gone to McCloy, but only one
+or two had been used.</p>
+
+<p>If the loneliness of the long days was dismal, the
+feverish nights were worse. I knew my few books by
+heart; Shelley and the “Gita” were indeed inexhaustible,
+but I longed for something new. To play the fiddle was
+too tiring. There was endless time for reflection ...
+and, thank heaven, through the two dirty windows I
+could watch the sky. Many a story I published fifteen
+years later had its germ in the apparently dead moments
+of those wearisome hours, although at the time it never
+once occurred to me to try and write, not even the desire
+being in me.</p>
+
+<p>It was the interminable nights that were most haunted.
+In the daylight there was colour in the changing clouds
+and sky, a touch of pink, a flame of sunset gold that
+opened the narrow crack through which I slipped into
+some strange interior state of happiness. There were the
+visits of the beloved, mysterious doctor, too. But the
+night was otherwise. The gas I left burning till Boyde
+woke and turned it out in the morning, made it impossible
+to see the stars. I could never settle down until he was
+comfortably asleep beside me. He kept late hours
+always. I reproached and scolded, yet in the end I always
+forgave. It was a comfort to know him within reach
+of my hand, while at the same time I dreaded his coming.
+My mixed feelings had reached that stage—I feared his
+coming and yet longed for it.</p>
+
+<p>I lay waiting, listening for his step. Far below I
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[130]</span>
+would hear it, down in the well of the sleeping house,
+even on the first flight of stairs. It mounted, mounted,
+stealthy, cautious, coming nearer and nearer, but always
+at the same steady pace. It never hastened. As it
+approached, rising through the stillness of the night, my
+heart would begin to beat; I dreaded the moment when
+our landing would be reached, still more the actual opening
+of our door. I listened, smothering my breath, trying to
+lessen the loud thumping against my ribs. The steps
+<i>might</i> not be his, after all; it might be someone else; that
+stealthy tread might pass my door without opening it
+and go upstairs. Then, when at last the handle rattled
+faintly, the door opened, and I saw him slowly enter,
+carrying his boots in his hand, my first instinct always
+was to—scream. Then he would smile, the eye-glass
+would drop from his eye, he would begin his explanations
+and excuses, and my dread soon evaporated in the friendliest
+of intimate talk.</p>
+
+<p>So well, at last, did I learn to recognize his approach,
+that I knew the moment he opened the front door three
+flights below. The sound of the handle with its clink of
+metal, the dull thud as the big thing closed—I was never
+once mistaken. In my fitful snatches of sleep these
+sounds stole in, shaping my dreams, determining both
+cause and climax of incessant nightmares which, drawing
+upon present things and recent memories, and invariably
+including the personality of Boyde, made those waiting
+hours a recurrent horror. I would fight in vain to keep
+awake. Only when he was safely asleep at my side did
+the nightmares cease.</p>
+
+<p>I had once seen Dixon, a Toronto photographer, walk
+across the Niagara river, just below the Falls; he used
+Blondin’s old tight-rope; he lay down on his back half
+way over, turned round, knelt, hovered on one foot,
+using an immense balancing pole. Thousands watched
+him from both shores on a day of baking sunshine; his
+background was the massive main waterfall, slowly
+rolling down and over; below him swirled and boiled the
+awful rapids. Dixon now came walking, walking in my
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[131]</span>
+dream again. I could hear his soft tread as his stockinged
+feet gripped the cable that swayed slightly as it sagged
+to the centre half way across. The sound, the figure
+came nearer; it came at me; it—was not Dixon after
+all. It was Boyde.... Then, as he moved with slow,
+creeping tread, nearer, ever nearer, I perceived suddenly
+that the rope was gone. There was no rope. He walked
+on empty air towards me—towards—<i>me</i>. I was appalled,
+speechless, paralyzed. That figure walking on space,
+walking towards me, walking remorselessly nearer was
+terrible.... The next second the door opened and
+Boyde stood peering at me round the edge, his boots in
+his hands.</p>
+
+<p>One morning, tired of learning the “Witch of Islam”
+by heart, I leaned over the bed, and something in the
+waste-paper basket close beside it caught my eye; a
+scrap of coloured paper—several scraps—pink. Looking
+nearer, I saw it was a torn-up cheque. Without any
+particular interest at first I stared at the unfamiliar thing,
+wondering vaguely how it came to be there. Only after
+this casual inspection did it occur to me as being rather
+odd. A cheque! What was it? Whose was it? How
+did it come to be there, torn up in <i>my</i> waste-paper basket?
+It was a long time since I had seen such a thing as a
+cheque; and idly, with no more curiosity than this, I
+lay gazing at the scraps of coloured paper.</p>
+
+<p>The basket lay within easy reach; I stretched out an
+arm and picked it up; I emptied the contents on the white
+counterpane; I sorted out the coloured scraps from
+among the general litter. The scraps were small, and the
+puzzle amused me. It was a long business. Bit by bit
+the cheque took shape. The word “Toronto” was the
+first detail that caught my attention closer. Presently,
+fitting three tiny scraps together, I saw to my surprise
+a name in full—Arthur Glyn Boyde. Another little group
+made “Kay.” A third read “Seventy Five Dollars.”
+My interest increased with every moment, till at last the
+complete cheque lay pieced together before my eyes.</p>
+
+<p>It was drawn by Kay on my old Toronto bank for the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[132]</span>
+sum mentioned, and it was payable to Boyde. The date
+was—three days before.</p>
+
+<p>I lay and stared at it in blank bewilderment. Fitting
+the scraps together on the counterpane was nothing compared
+to my difficulty in fitting the pieces together in my
+mind. I could make neither head nor tail of it. Kay
+had, indeed, been acting in Toronto on the date given,
+but—a bank account...! And why was the cheque
+torn up? It must have been delivered with a letter—yesterday.
+Boyde had not mentioned it. I felt as confused
+as though it were a problem in arithmetic; but a
+problem in arithmetic would not have stirred the feeling
+of pain and dread that rose in me. Something I had
+long feared and hated, had deliberately hidden from
+myself, had cloaked and draped so that I need not recognize
+it, now at last stared me in the face.</p>
+
+<p>The chief item in the puzzle, however, remained.
+That it was not Kay’s real signature, I saw plainly, it was
+a reasonably good copy; but why was the cheque torn
+up? It had been taken from my old book in the packing-case
+downstairs, of course; but why was it destroyed?
+A forgery! The word terrified me.</p>
+
+<p>It was while trying to find the meaning that my
+fingers played with the rest of the littered paper ...
+and presently pieced together a letter in the same writing
+as the signature; a letter, written from Toronto, with
+Islington Jersey Dairy as address, and bearing the same
+date as the cheque—a letter from Kay to Boyde. It had
+been also torn into little bits.</p>
+
+<p>“Dear B.,” it ran, “I am awfully sorry to hear poor
+Blackwood is so ill still, and that he has no money. I
+enclose my cheque for $75 to help him out, but, for God’s
+sake, see that he doesn’t waste it in dissipation, as he did
+the last I sent. I know I can trust you in this”....
+A page and a half of news followed. A postscript came
+at the end: “Better not let him know how much I’ve
+sent. I’ll send another cheque later if you let me know
+it’s really needed.”</p>
+
+<p>With these two documents spread on the counterpane
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[133]</span>
+before me, I lay back thinking, thinking, while an icy
+feeling spread slowly over me that for a long time made
+clear thought impossible. The word “dissipation” made
+me smile, but all I knew in those first moments was an
+aching, dull emotion, shot through from time to time by
+stabs of keenest pain. There was horror too, there was
+anger, pity ... as, one by one, recent events dropped
+the masks I had so deliberately pinned on them. These
+thin disguises that too sanguine self-deception had helped
+me to lay over a hideousness that hurt and frightened
+me, fell one by one. My anger passed; horror and pity
+remained. I cannot explain it quite; an intense sorrow,
+an equally intense desire to help and save, were in me.
+Affection, no doubt, was deep and real....</p>
+
+<p>At the same time, the shock numbed something in
+me; the abrupt collapse of a friendship that meant so
+much to my loneliness bowled me over. What exactly
+had happened I did not know, I could not understand;
+treachery, falsity, double-dealing, lies—these were obvious,
+but the <i>modus operandi</i> was not clear. Why was the
+cheque torn up and so carelessly flung away? There
+was a mist of confusion over my mind. I thought over
+my police court experience, the criminal tricks and practices
+I already knew, but these threw no helpful light.
+Was Kay, too, involved? Did the warning of a few
+weeks ago include him as well? There had been forgery,
+yet again—why was the cheque torn up? The mystery
+of it all increased the growing sense of dread, of fear, of
+creeping horror. My newspaper work had given me the
+general feeling that everyone had his price ... but
+between friends in adversity, Englishmen, gentlemen as
+well ... was it then true literally of <i>everybody</i>?</p>
+
+<p>After a time I collected the two documents and pieced
+them together again between the pages of a book, lest
+someone might enter and discover them. The doctor
+was not coming that day, but there might be other visitors.
+Then it suddenly dawned on me—why hadn’t this occurred
+to me before?—that the whole thing must be a joke after
+all. Of course ... why not? It might even have
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[134]</span>
+something to do with the rôle of understudy in the Sothern
+Play. It could easily be—oh, surely!—a bit of stupid
+fun on Kay’s part. The carelessness too! Throwing the
+scraps in the basket under my very nose, where anybody
+could easily see them, where Mrs. Bernstein might find
+them, or the woman who came in twice a week to do the
+room. This was certainly against criminal intent.</p>
+
+<p>The most far-fetched explanations poured through my
+mind, invited by hope, dressed up by eager desire, then
+left hanging in mid-air, with not the faintest probability
+to support them. I deliberately recalled the kind actions,
+the solicitude, the sharing of receipts, a thousand favourable
+details, even to the innocent expression and the frank
+blue eyes, only to find these routed utterly by two other
+details; one negative, one vague, yet both insistent;
+the doctor’s silence and the shadow noticed recently on the
+sleeping face.</p>
+
+<p>It was eleven o’clock; Boyde had said he would
+return about four; I expected him, for the doctor, whom
+he avoided, was not coming. There were five hours of
+waiting to endure first.</p>
+
+<p>The situation which another might have tossed aside
+with a wry laugh at himself for having been a guileless
+fool, to me seemed portentous with pain and horror.</p>
+
+<p>I had no plan, however, when the door opened at
+half-past three, long before I expected it. There was in
+me no faintest idea of what I was going to say or do.
+The book lay on my knee, with the documents concealed
+between the pages. I had heard no footstep, the rattle
+of the handle was the first sound I caught. Yet the door
+opened differently—not quite as Boyde opened it. There
+was hesitation in the movement. In that hesitation of
+a mere second there again flashed across my mind a sudden
+happy certainty; the documents could be explained, it
+was all a joke somewhere. He had done nothing wrong,
+he would clear up the whole thing in a moment! Of
+course! It was my weak, feverish condition that had raised
+a bogey. A few words from him were now going to
+destroy it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[135]</span></p>
+
+<p>Then, instead of Boyde, I saw Grant standing shyly
+on the threshold, the young actor who had pawned his
+overcoat. This time he wore it.</p>
+
+<p>The relief I felt at seeing him betrayed me to myself.</p>
+
+<p>I welcomed him so heartily that his shyness disappeared.
+He had dropped in by chance, he told me.
+I gave him an account of my discovery, and he bent over
+me to see the cheque and letter, asking if the writing was
+really Kay’s. He looked very grave.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s not unlike it, but it isn’t his,” I replied. “What
+do you make of it? Why are they torn up?” I was
+burning to hear what he thought.</p>
+
+<p>He did not answer for a moment. He asked instead
+a number of questions about Boyde, listening closely to
+my account of him, which mentioned the good with the
+bad. He went down to examine the packing-case and
+returned with the report that my cheque-book was not
+there. I asked him again what he made of it all, waiting
+with nervous anxiety for his verdict, but again he put
+me off. He wanted to know when I last heard from
+Kay. Eight days ago, I told him, from Toronto. He
+asked numerous questions. He seemed as puzzled as I
+was.</p>
+
+<p>“What do you think it means?” I begged. “What’s
+he been doing?”</p>
+
+<p>“Are you <i>quite</i> positive it’s not Kay’s writing,” he
+urged, “even, for instance, if he was—” he hesitated—“a
+bit tight at the time?”</p>
+
+<p>I clung to the faint hope. “Well, of course—I really
+couldn’t say. I’ve never seen his writing when he was
+tight. I suppose——”</p>
+
+<p>“Because if it isn’t,” interrupted Grant decisively, “it
+means that Boyde has been getting money from him and
+using it for himself.”</p>
+
+<p>I realized then that he was trying to make things
+less grave than they really were, trying to make it easier
+for me in the best way he could. The torn-up cheque
+proved his suggestion foolish.</p>
+
+<p>“Do you think he’s an absolute scoundrel?” I
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[136]</span>
+asked point blank, unable to bear the suspense any longer.
+“Really a criminal—is he?”</p>
+
+<p>“I wanted to tell you the other day,” he said quickly.
+“Only you were too ill. I thought it would upset you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Criminal? Tell me at once. He may be in any
+minute. I must know.”</p>
+
+<p>“His reputation is bad,” was the reply, “as bad as
+it could be. I’ve heard things about him. He’s already
+been in gaol. He’s supposed to be a bit dangerous.”</p>
+
+<p>I was listening for the sound of a step on the stairs.
+I lowered my voice a little. It was clear to me that
+Grant did not want to tell me all he knew.</p>
+
+<p>“So—what do you make, then, of this?” I asked
+in a half whisper, pointing to the documents.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at me hard a moment, then gave his reply,
+also in an undertone:</p>
+
+<p>“Practising—I think.”</p>
+
+<p>I did not understand him. The uncertainty of his
+meaning, the queer suggestion in the word he used, gave
+my imagination a horrid twist. I asked again, my heart
+banging against my ribs:</p>
+
+<p>“Practising—what?”</p>
+
+<p>“He didn’t think it a successful—copy—so he tore it
+up,” Grant explained.</p>
+
+<p>“You mean—forgery?”</p>
+
+<p>“I think so. That is—I’m afraid so.”</p>
+
+<p>I think the universe changed for me in that moment;
+something I had been standing on for years collapsed; I
+was left hanging in space without a platform, without a
+rudder. An odd helplessness came over me. Grant, of
+course, had only confirmed my own suspicions, had merely
+put into words what, actually, I had known for a long
+time; but it was just this hearing the verdict spoken by
+another that hurt so abominably. Grant had quietly
+torn off me the last veil of self-deception. I could no
+longer pretend to myself. It seems absurdly out of proportion
+now on looking back; at the time the shock was
+appalling.</p>
+
+<p>We talked together, we tried to devise some plan of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[137]</span>
+action, we reached no settled conclusion. The minutes
+passed. I never ceased listening for the familiar footstep
+on the stairs. Of one thing only was I perfectly sure:
+whatever happened, I intended to take charge of it all
+myself. I would deal with Boyde in my own way. The
+principle lay clear and decided in me; I meant to frighten
+Boyde as severely as I possibly could, then to give him
+another chance. Anticipation made the minutes crawl.
+Grant talked a good deal.</p>
+
+<p>“He spotted you and Kay from the start,” I heard
+Grant saying. “He saw your ignorance of the town,
+your inexperience, your generosity. He felt sure of free
+lodging anyhow, perhaps a good deal more——”</p>
+
+<p>A faint thud sounded from downstairs.</p>
+
+<p>“There he is,” I said instantly. “That’s the front
+door banging. He’s coming. Keep quiet.”</p>
+
+<p>I told Grant to get into the cupboard and hide. He
+was only just concealed in the deep cupboard and the
+door drawn to, when the other door opened quietly and
+Boyde came in.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[138]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVII">
+    CHAPTER XVII
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap kern'><span class='allcaps'>Boyde</span> was in cheerful, smiling mood. He put
+some grapes on the bed, asked how I felt, and
+told me about his trip to Patterson and his failure
+to get the organist job. “It’s bitterly cold,” he said.
+“I <i>was</i> glad of your overcoat. You <i>have</i> been a brick,”
+he added, “but I’ll make it all up to you when my luck
+turns.” He crossed over to the sofa and sat down,
+stretching himself, obviously tired out.</p>
+
+<p>“Never mind, old chap; we shall get along somehow.
+Probably Kay will send us something more before long.
+He’s always faithful. Let’s see,” I went on casually,
+“when was it we heard from him last?”</p>
+
+<p>“A week ago,” said Boyde quite naturally. “Toronto,
+wasn’t it? Or Buffalo—no, no, Toronto.”</p>
+
+<p>We laughed together. “So it was,” I agreed carelessly.
+Then I pretended to hesitate. “But that was nearly
+a fortnight ago,” I suddenly corrected my memory;
+“surely we’ve heard since that. Only the other day—or
+did I dream it?”</p>
+
+<p>Boyde stared at me lazily through the cigarette smoke.
+“No, I think not,” he said quietly. “There was only the
+one letter.” He showed no sign of disturbance.</p>
+
+<p>I lay still, pretending to think back a bit, then heaved
+myself slowly up in bed.</p>
+
+<p>“But, Boyde, I remember the letter,” I exclaimed
+with conviction, staring into his face, “I’m certain I do—another
+letter. Why, of course! I remember your
+showing it to me. There was a cheque in it—a cheque
+for seventy-five dollars!”</p>
+
+<p>His easy laugh, his voice and manner, the perfect
+naturalness of his reply made me feel sure that I was in
+the wrong. He knew absolutely nothing of the cheque
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[139]</span>
+and letter. He was innocent. It was not <i>his</i> doing, at
+any rate.</p>
+
+<p>“You must have been dreaming,” he said, looking me
+full in the face with his big, honest blue eyes. “It’s too
+good to be true.” He gave a wry little chuckle that only
+a clear conscience could have made possible.</p>
+
+<p>I lay back in bed and laughed with him, partly from
+weakness, partly to hide my shaking, which I was terrified
+he would notice. I changed the subject a moment later,
+as he said nothing more; then, still acting on impulse and
+with no preconceived plan or idea of my next move, I sat
+bolt upright in bed and fixed him with my eyes. I assumed
+a very convinced and serious tone. I felt serious
+and convinced. The mood of horror had rushed suddenly
+up in me:</p>
+
+<p>“Boyde, I remember it all now.” I spoke with great
+emphasis. “It was not a dream at all. You came to this
+bedside and showed me the letter. You held it out for me
+to read. It was dated from my old Toronto Dairy three
+days ago. <i>You showed me the cheque too.</i> It was for
+seventy-five dollars, signed by Kay, and made out to your
+order. I remember every single detail of it suddenly.
+And—<i>so do you</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>He gazed at me as a little child might gaze. He made
+no movement. His eyes neither dropped nor flinched.
+He merely gazed—with a puzzled, innocent, guileless
+stare. A pained expression then stole across his face.</p>
+
+<p>“Blackwood, what on earth do you mean? It’s
+not likely I should forget it if seventy-five dollars came, is
+it?” he went on quickly in his most sympathetic voice,
+an aggrieved note in it that stirred all my affection instantly.
+“The most he has sent so far is ten dollars.
+I should have given you the money at once. And <i>you
+know it</i>, Blackwood.” He got up and walked quietly to
+and fro.</p>
+
+<p>It was the way he uttered those last four words that
+sent ice down my spine and brought the mood of horror
+back. Why this was so, I cannot explain. Perhaps the
+phrase rang false; perhaps its over-emphasis failed. I
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[140]</span>
+only know that my hesitation vanished. That prepared
+plan so strangely matured, yet hidden so deeply that it
+emerged only step by step as it was needed, pushed up
+another move into my upper mind.</p>
+
+<p>I got slowly out of bed. Perspiration broke out all
+over me. I felt very weak. The wound stretched.
+Straight before me, a long way off it seemed, was the sofa.
+Boyde stood watching my every move. He stood like a
+statue.</p>
+
+<p>Before I had taken a couple of slow, small steps,
+crawling round the edge of the bed, he did two quick things
+that in a flash brought final conviction to me, so that I
+knew beyond any doubt the hideous thing was true:
+he moved suddenly across the room, passing in front of
+me, though not near enough to touch; three rapid strides
+and he was against the window—with his back to the light.
+It was dusk. He wished to conceal his face from me.
+His left arm hung at his side, the hand on a level with the
+dressing-table, and I saw his fingers feeling along its surface,
+though his eyes never left my own. I saw them find,
+then grip, the white-handled razor, and pull it slowly
+towards him. These were the two things that betrayed
+him, but chiefly, I think, the first of them—concealing
+his face.</p>
+
+<p>At the same instant there was a faint sound on my left.
+I had completely forgotten the existence of my visitor;
+I now remembered him, for that sound came from inside
+the cupboard, and Grant, evidently, was ready to leap out.
+But I did not want Grant. I intended the whole matter
+to be between Boyde and myself. A flash of understanding
+had given me complete assurance. Boyde, I now knew,
+was a coward, a sneak, a cheat, a liar, and worse besides.
+In spite of my physical weakness I had the upper hand.
+I was about to give him the fright of his life, though
+still with no clear idea exactly how this was to be accomplished.
+All I knew was that I meant to terrify him,
+then forgive—and save him from himself.</p>
+
+<p>“Not yet!” I called out, yet so quickly, and with so
+little apparent meaning, that Boyde, I think, hardly heard
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[141]</span>
+me, and certainly did not understand. Grant, however,
+understood. He told me later it was just in time to prevent
+his coming out.</p>
+
+<p>With one hand supporting me on the edge of the dressing-table,
+I was now close to Boyde, bent double in front of
+him, staring up into his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>“Give me that razor,” I said, and he obeyed, as I felt
+sure he would. That is, his fingers moved away from it,
+and I quickly pushed it out of his reach. With my other
+hand I seized his arm. I raised my face to his as much as
+my wound allowed.</p>
+
+<p>“Boyde,” I said, “I know <i>everything</i>!”</p>
+
+<p>If I expected a collapse, as I think was the case, I was
+disappointed. Nothing happened. He did not move.
+Not a muscle, not even an eyelash flickered. He stared
+down into my upturned face without a word, waiting for
+what was coming; control of the features, of mouth and
+eyes in particular, was absolute. And it was this silence,
+this calm assurance, giving me no help, even making it
+more difficult for me, that, I think, combined to set me
+going. I was fairly wound up; I saw red. The words
+poured out, hot, bitter, scathing.</p>
+
+<p>The moment I ended, he smiled, as he said very
+quietly:</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t know <i>what</i> you’re talking about. You are
+fearfully excited and you will regret your words. I do
+wish you would get back into bed. All this is awfully bad
+for you in your weak condition.”</p>
+
+<p>I was flabbergasted. All the wind had been taken
+from my sails. A touch would have sent me to the floor,
+but he did not touch me. He merely gazed into my face
+with an air of calm patience that had pity in it, a hint
+even of contempt.</p>
+
+<p>There was a little silence after he had spoken. For
+a moment I had no notion what to do or say. Then,
+quite suddenly, up flashed my plan. I was less excited
+now, my voice was well under control.</p>
+
+<p>“Boyde,” I said, “now, at last, I’ve caught you in a
+worse thing still. You have forged a letter and a signature.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[142]</span>
+You have forged a cheque as well. And you will
+have to go to prison for it. There is a headquarters
+detective outside waiting for me to call him in. You are
+going to be arrested.”</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment of taut suspense I can never forget.
+He stared down at me, obviously at first incredulous.
+A slight twitch ran across his face, nothing more; beyond
+a trifling extra bend of the head, he made no movement.
+He was judging me, weighing my words, wondering if
+they were true. The next second I saw that he believed
+me.</p>
+
+<p>What happened then to his face I had never seen before,
+though I was often to see it afterwards in other faces
+during my criminal experience. The skin slowly blanched
+to the hue of flour; the cheeks sagged; the mouth opened;
+the look in his eyes was dreadful. The whole face disintegrated,
+as it were. He had the air of a hunted animal
+at bay. At the same time there was a convulsive movement
+of his entire body that frightened me. I did not
+know what he was going to do. It was really made up of
+several movements, one starting after another. First,
+his knees gave way and he nearly collapsed. Then, evidently,
+he considered the possibility of knocking me down
+and dashing out of the room. His eyes ran swiftly over
+everything at once, it seemed, noticing the razor certainly,
+but finding me awkwardly between him and the end of
+the table where it lay. He half turned in the direction
+of the window behind him, thinking doubtless of escape
+by the leads outside. He gave finally a sort of lurch
+towards me, but this I did not actually see, for I had turned
+away and was crawling painfully over to the door. It
+was Grant who supplied this detail of description later.
+His idea, probably, was to knock me down and make a
+bolt for it. But, whatever it was he really intended to
+do, in the end he did nothing, for at this second Grant
+emerged suddenly from his cupboard.</p>
+
+<p>I was already leaning with my back against the door
+and caught the look of terror and blank amazement that
+came into Boyde’s face, as he saw another man whom he
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[143]</span>
+certainly took at first for the detective. He stood stock
+still like a petrified figure. A moment later he recognized
+him as the Englishman he had met at the cricket match.
+He subsided backwards, half on to the window-sill and
+half against the dressing-table. The drama of the scene
+suddenly occurred to me for the first time, as I watched
+Grant walk over and put the razor in his pocket, and then
+sit down quietly on the sofa. He spoke no single word.
+He merely sat and watched.</p>
+
+<p>With my back against the door I then went on talking
+quickly. Yet behind my anger and disgust, I felt
+the old pity surge up; already I was sorry for him; I
+would presently forgive him. But, first, there was
+something else to be done. The plan lay quite clear in
+my mind.</p>
+
+<p>Closely watched by Grant and myself, Boyde had
+meanwhile moved out into the room, still without speaking
+a single word, and flung himself on the bed where he began
+to cry like a child. He sobbed convulsively, though
+whether the tears were of sorrow or of fear, I could not
+tell. We watched him for some time in silence. It was
+some minutes later that he sat up, still shaking with sobs,
+and tried to speak. In an utterly broken voice he begged
+for mercy, not for himself—he swore he didn’t “care a
+damn” about his “worthless self”—but for his mother’s
+sake. It would break her heart, if she heard about it;
+it would kill her. He implored me for another chance.
+His flow of words never ceased. If I would let him off
+this time, he begged, he would do anything I wished,
+anything, anything in the world. He would leave New
+York, he would go home and enlist ... but forgery
+meant years in gaol. “I am only thirty, and the sentence
+would mean the end of my life....”</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps instinct warned me he was lying, perhaps he
+over-acted, I cannot say; but the entire scene, the sobs,
+the impassioned language, the anguish in the broken voice,
+the ruin of the face I had once thought innocent, all left
+me without emotion. I was exhausted too. I had
+witnessed similar scenes between detectives and their
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[144]</span>
+prisoners, the former not only unmoved, but bored and
+even angry. I understood now how they felt. But there
+was the balance of my plan to be carried out; my original
+principle had never wavered; I believed the terror he had
+felt would make him run straight in future; the moment
+had now come, I thought, to tell him he was forgiven.
+So I left the door—he screamed, thinking I was going to
+open it—and crawled slowly over to him. Putting my
+hand on his shoulder, and using the gentlest, kindest voice
+I could find, I told him he should have another chance,
+but only one. All excitement had died out of me, I felt
+real pity, the old affection rose, I urged and begged him
+to “run straight” from this moment....</p>
+
+<p>“But—there is a condition,” I finished my sermon.</p>
+
+<p>“Anything, Blackwood. I’ll do anything you say.”
+The tears were still hanging on his cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>“You will sit down and write what I dictate.”</p>
+
+<p>We found a sheet of foolscap, and he sat down at the
+little desk, while I stood over him and dictated the words
+of a full confession. In writing it, Boyde’s hand was as
+steady as that of a clerk making an unimportant entry
+in an office book. He came to the end and looked up at
+me enquiringly.</p>
+
+<p>“Now write a duplicate,” I said, “in your other handwriting,
+the one you meant to be a copy of Kay’s.”</p>
+
+<p>He did this too; to an inexperienced eye the difference
+was extraordinary. I asked Grant to witness it with me,
+and when this was finished I waved the document in
+the other’s face. “I shall keep this,” I told him gravely,
+“and if ever you go wrong again, it will mean twenty
+years in prison.” I do not think he knew what I knew at
+that moment; <i>viz.</i> that a confession signed “under duress”
+was not evidence in a court of law. He said very simply,
+gazing into my eyes: “You’ve saved my life, Blackwood.
+I shall never forget this day. My temptations have been
+awful, but from this moment I mean to run straight,
+perfectly straight.” Words of gratitude followed in a
+flood. He shook my hand, begging to be allowed to help
+me back into bed.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[145]</span></p>
+
+<p>“I must first tell the detective I’ve withdrawn the
+charge,” I said. “I must send him away. He doesn’t
+know your name.” Boyde thanked me volubly again,
+as I crawled to the door, closed it again, and stood in the
+cold passage a minute or two. “The man’s gone,” I said,
+when I came back.</p>
+
+<p>“When—when am I to leave this room?” he asked
+quietly. I told him he could stay. The matter was
+forgiven and forgotten. He began to cry again....</p>
+
+<p>For some time after Grant had gone, we were alone.
+Boyde talked a little, repeating his gratitude. I asked
+him one question only: had he been in gaol before? “I
+would rather not answer that, if you don’t mind,” he
+said. I did not press him, for he had answered it. “I
+shall never, never go wrong again,” he kept repeating.
+And all the time he talked—I learned this later—there lay
+in his coat pocket, that was my coat pocket, the sum of
+ten dollars which belonged to me. He had sold two of
+my translations to McCloy, telling me McCloy had refused
+them.</p>
+
+<p>I have a vague recollection of that evening and of our
+talk, for complete exhaustion had come over me from the
+moment I got back into bed. It was not unconsciousness,
+but probably half unconsciousness. I was only dimly
+aware of what was going on. I remember Boyde going
+out to eat something at Krisch’s, then coming back. I
+woke in darkness with a sudden start. The gas was
+out, and I wondered why. There was a noise close
+beside me—something swishing. My mind cleared in a
+flash.</p>
+
+<p>“Put it back, Boyde,” I called out. “Put it back at
+once.”</p>
+
+<p>A thin summer coat hung on the door, too thin and
+shabby to wear, too ragged to pawn. I had placed the
+confession in the inside pocket, and it was this coat I
+now heard swishing faintly against the wood.</p>
+
+<p>No answer came, but I plainly heard the soft tread of
+bare feet along the carpet. I got up and lit the gas.
+Boyde lay apparently sleeping soundly on the floor.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[146]</span>
+I noticed how well-nourished his body looked. <i>He</i>, at
+any rate, had not been starving. Then I moved to the
+door, found the confession, took it out, and crawled back
+into bed. From that moment the paper never left me; it
+was with me when later the doctor allowed me out, and at
+night it lay under my pillow while I slept. I kept the
+torn scraps of the cheque and letter with it, and I hid
+the razor. Boyde never shaved himself in that room
+again.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[147]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVIII">
+    CHAPTER XVIII
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'><span class='allcaps'>The</span> episode, though far from being finished, had a
+shattering effect upon me. If a friend, so close
+to me by ties of affection and gratitude, could act
+like this, how would others, less intimately related, behave?
+My trust in people was killed. A sense of deep
+loneliness was added to the other miseries of that bed.</p>
+
+<p>Only my books comforted and helped ... they did
+not fail ... their teachings stood stiff and firm like a
+steel rod that never bent or shifted, much less broke.
+Since these notes tell merely the superficial episodes of
+my early years, further mention of what the books meant
+to me is unnecessary; enough—more than enough, probably—has
+already been told to show the background
+which explains motive and conduct. The main stream
+of my life, at any rate, ran deeper and ever deeper, its
+centre of gravity far below anything that could possibly
+come to me in the ordinary world or outward happenings.
+Big dreams were in me at white heat, burning, burning
+... and all external events were coloured by them.</p>
+
+<p>There followed now a more peaceful though short
+period, during which Boyde behaved well, with kindness
+and signs of true penitence. Grant warned me this was
+acting, and that I had been a fool to forgive and let him
+stay on, but I would not listen, and followed my own principle.
+I did not trust him, but never let him know it,
+showing him full confidence, with all the former intimacy
+and affection. I felt sure this was the right and only
+way. His attitude to me had something of a dog’s devotion
+in it. I fully believed he was “running straight”
+again. I watched him closely, while hiding suspicion
+carefully away.</p>
+
+<p>November drew to a close; Kay sent no more money;
+the debt to Mrs. Bernstein grew; income became smaller
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[148]</span>
+and smaller. I wrote to McCloy, who replied with a brief
+word that I could come back when I was well again.</p>
+
+<p>Before leaving my bed, however, at the end of the
+month, another incident occurred that shocked me far
+more than the first.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon about a week after the confession,
+there came a knock at the door, and to my complete surprise,
+in walked a banker, who had often stayed in our
+house in England. I was startled and annoyed, for I
+feared he would write home and tell the truth that my
+letters so carefully concealed. It was a couple of years
+since I had seen him. How had he found me out?
+His first sentence told me: “But this is dreadful.
+I knew nothing about your being ill. I didn’t know you
+were in New York even. An Englishman named Boyde
+came to my office yesterday and told me.” He looked
+me over with anxiety. “But your bones are showing!
+Have you been very bad? Why on earth didn’t you let
+me know, my dear fellow?”</p>
+
+<p>I had spoken of this acquaintance in Boyde’s presence,
+and he had evidently made a note of name and address.
+I explained quickly that I had not been seriously ill, that
+I was nearly well and had a good doctor, and that I was
+on the staff of the <i>Evening Sun</i> and doing well. I told him
+briefly about my Canadian career as well. The banker
+was a very decent fellow. His visit was brief, but he was
+very kind, well-meaning and sympathetic—only—I did
+not want him! He promised, anyhow, he would not write
+to my father—was glad, I think, to be relieved of the
+necessity—and before going he absolutely insisted on
+leaving some money with me. I refused and refused again.
+But my own exhaustion and his persistence resulted in
+his leaving all he had on him at the moment—$32. Months
+later I discovered that Boyde had obtained other sums
+from him on the plea that I needed a specialist, and there
+may have been yet further amounts of similar kind for
+all I knew.</p>
+
+<p>On coming in, Boyde took his scolding with a smile;
+he had “acted for the best....” We discussed how the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[149]</span>
+money should be spent, agreeing upon $10 to Mrs. Bernstein,
+$10 to the doctor next day, $3 to redeem Kay’s
+overcoat, which we would send to him, and the balance in
+hand, after laying in a store of dried apples, oatmeal and
+condensed milk, as our supplies were now exhausted.
+Next morning, when he left at eight o’clock for a studio
+appointment and choir rehearsal, I gave him the money
+for the landlady and a dollar he asked for himself. The
+balance he put back in the drawer of the little desk beside
+my bed.</p>
+
+<p>It was a happier morning than I had known for long;
+the feeling that I had something to give to the doctor
+made the hours pass quickly, and when he arrived at
+three, in his very best mood, he was obviously pleased
+on hearing that I could easily spare $10. The relief
+was written on his beaming face. He thanked me
+warmly. “I do really need it,” he said with emphasis,
+“or I couldn’t take it from you.” We passed a delightful
+hour or two; I was strong enough to play the fiddle to
+him; we talked ... the happiest afternoon I had yet
+known in that room came to an end; he prepared to go.
+Pointing to the drawer, I asked him to take the money
+out. He did so. At least he opened the drawer. He
+opened all four drawers. The money was not there.</p>
+
+<p>The most painful part of it, I think, was the look on his
+face as he presently went out. He did not believe me.
+I had found it impossible to mention Boyde. I had been
+speechless. I had no explanation to give. By the expression
+on the old German’s face as he left the room I
+could see he thought I was lying to him. His disappointment
+in me was greater than his disappointment over the
+money. It was a bitter moment—even more bitter than
+the further treachery of my companion....</p>
+
+<p>I was alone with my thoughts and feelings. I was alone
+for four days—and four nights. Boyde, that is, did not
+return till four days had passed, while the doctor stayed
+away three days. Whether either of them had said anything
+to Mrs. Bernstein on their way out, Boyde promising
+payment perhaps, the doctor letting fall something
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[150]</span>
+derogatory, I did not know. Mrs. Bernstein, anyhow,
+was very unpleasant during those four awful days. Boyde
+had not even given her the $10. She paid me dreadful
+visits, she threatened to sell my things (what? I wondered),
+to turn me out; she sent up hardly any food....</p>
+
+<p>Waiting for Boyde’s step, listening all day, all night
+... I needed my books, my dreams, my inner crack,
+as I had never needed them before during those horrible
+four days. They seemed an eternity. The long nights, of
+course, were by far the worse; the dreams, the expectancy,
+for ever anticipating the familiar tread of stockinged feet
+on the stairs, wondering what in the world had happened,
+how things would end.... Had he been arrested, perhaps
+for something terrible? They were haunted nights
+that made me dread the first sign of coming dusk. It
+seemed like weeks, an incalculable time altogether had
+passed since I had seen him.... Then the spider took
+the place of the other vermin. I have always particularly
+disliked spiders, and this one was the father of them all;
+though it was the horror of him, not the physical presence,
+that haunted my nights so persistently. He was, I am
+sure, the Spider Idea. He originated in a room in Toronto,
+where a friend foolishly let his prototype, a tarantula,
+escape, and where it hid all night. It was my room.
+He came from Florida with a case of bananas. He was
+very big, if sluggish, his swollen body and hairy black
+legs the nastiest I had ever seen. I spent the night with
+this monster on the loose, and the first thing in the morning
+I saw him, low down on the wall, quite close to me.
+He had crept for warmth to a pipe near the hot air register.</p>
+
+<p>This spider now came at me, stirred into life by the
+chance activity of some memory cell. He came crawling
+across the leads, dragging his bulging body slowly, then
+feeling over the smooth glass with his legs that were like
+black brushes a chimney sweep might use. Up the stairs
+he came too, but sideways there, being too large to move
+in his usual way; first three legs on one side, then three
+legs on the other, heaving himself along, the mass of his
+body between them sloping like a boat at sea. The fat
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[151]</span>
+body was derived, I’m sure, from the shock of noticing
+Boyde’s well-fed appearance.... There were other things
+besides the spider, the mind, doubtless, being a little overwrought.</p>
+
+<p>One of these “other things” was real—a yellow-haired
+woman who aired what the papers called her
+“shapely legs” in silk tights for a living. Pauline M——
+was her name, and she was leading lady in the “Night
+Owls Company,” then playing at Tony Pastor’s Music
+Hall in 14th Street, or, perhaps, it was at Koster and
+Biel’s Hall further up town. I have forgotten. In any
+case, Boyde had mentioned the Company to me in
+some connexion or other. He knew her.</p>
+
+<p>Her visit to me has always seemed vague and hazy;
+shrouded in mist of some kind, the mist of my suffering
+mind, I imagine. There lies a feverish touch of fantasy
+all over it. It was on the evening of the second day since
+Boyde had disappeared, though I could have sworn that
+at least a week’s loneliness had intervened. It <i>was</i> the
+second day, I know, because the doctor came on the fourth.
+During the afternoon an unintelligible telegram had come,
+sent from a Broadway office: “<i>Don’t be anxious—have
+surprising news for you—no drinking—home this afternoon.——B.</i>”
+There was not much comfort in it, though
+at least I knew then he had not been arrested, but an hour
+or so later a second telegram had arrived, sent from an
+office above 42nd Street: “<i>Married Pauline this afternoon.——B.</i>”
+It all mystified, confused and troubled me
+extremely, and the strain on nerves and emotions had been
+so prolonged that, I think, I was half stupefied with it all,
+half stupid certainly.</p>
+
+<p>At any rate, the visit always seemed a sort of unreal
+visit, veiled as it were, and shadowy. Two thoughts were
+in my mind when the knock sounded on the door: food
+and Boyde. I was always listening intently for his tread,
+but I was also listening for Mrs. Bernstein’s footstep with
+a possible tray. It was after six o’clock; since coffee
+and bread at 8.30 in the morning I had eaten nothing,
+for our own supplies were finished. Instead of Boyde or
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[152]</span>
+the tray, however, in walked the woman with yellow
+hair and statuesque figure. She wore furs, she was over-dressed
+and painted, she reeked of scent. To me it was a
+kind of nightmare vision.</p>
+
+<p>Details of her long visit I remember but very few.
+She at once announced herself—“I am Pauline M——”
+and asked excitedly, “Are you Blackwood?” She
+was in a “state.” Her great figure filled the little
+room. She poured out a torrent of words in a cockney
+voice. Her face was flaming red beneath the paint.
+Occasionally she swept about. The name of Boyde
+recurred frequently. She was attacking me, I gathered.
+Boyde had said this and that about me. I understood
+less than nothing. I remember asking her to sit down,
+and that she refused, and that presently I asked something
+else: “Has he married you?” and that she suddenly
+caught sight of the telegrams lying on my bed—I had
+pointed—then picked them up and read them. She came
+closer to me while she did this, so that I caught the stink
+of spirits.</p>
+
+<p>It was all very muddled and confused to me, and I made
+no attempt to talk. I heard her begging me to “give
+him back” to her, that she loved him, that I had “poisoned
+his mind” against her—threats and beseeching
+oddly mingled. But the telegrams seemed to sober her
+a little, for I remember her becoming abruptly more
+quiet, almost maudlin, and pouring out an endless story
+about Boyde who was, apparently, “full of money ...
+full of liquor” ... and full of anger against me because
+<i>he</i> had been “supporting” me and I had shown “base
+ingratitude.”... I was too bewildered to feel much.
+It numbed me. I couldn’t make sense of it. I couldn’t
+realize how Boyde had deliberately left me alone so long.
+Something monstrous and inhuman touched it all.</p>
+
+<p>She went away eventually in a calmer state, though
+leaving me in a condition that was far from calm. She
+went, begging me to “send him back” to her when he
+came home, but half realizing, I gathered, that the boot
+was on the other leg, so far as Boyde and myself were
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[153]</span>
+concerned. She was still angry with me in a vague unjust
+sort of way, not knowing whom to believe probably,
+nor exactly what had happened. She flounced out of the
+room in a whirl of excitement and cockney sentences, and
+I never saw her again. My tray arrived within a few
+minutes of her welcome departure.... I spent an appalling
+night. Boyde, the yellow-haired woman, Mrs. Bernstein,
+the old German, the spider, steps on the stairs a hundred
+times that came to nothing.... I wished once or twice
+that I were dead.... The door did not open....</p>
+
+<p>It never rains but it pours. Two days later the doctor
+came in the afternoon, in the blackest mood I had yet
+encountered. I rather expected his visit, and though
+dreading it, I also longed for it, longed to see someone—a
+human being. He came sharp at three, attended
+to me, and left again. The visit lasted perhaps ten
+or fifteen minutes, and during the whole time he spoke
+no single word, not even greeting me when he entered,
+or saying good-bye when he went out. His face was
+black, aged, terrible in the suffering it wore. I had
+meant to tell him at last about Boyde, unable any
+longer to keep it to myself. I simply <i>must</i> tell someone.
+But not a syllable could I get out. When the old
+German had gone, however, I felt sure it was his own
+mysterious suffering, and not any feeling against myself,
+that caused his strange behaviour. I knew, too, that he
+would come again, and thus I got some comfort from
+his silent, rapid visit. This was on the fourth day
+since Boyde deserted; it was the day on which he came
+back.</p>
+
+<p>He came back; his money had given out; he had nowhere
+to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>It was night, somewhere about ten o’clock. I was falling
+into an uneasy doze, the kind of doze that introduced
+the spider, when the door opened softly. There was no
+knock. I had heard no footstep. The door just opened
+and he came in.</p>
+
+<p>Every nerve in me became alert. Truth to tell, there
+was no emotion in me of any sort or kind. I was numb,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[154]</span>
+exhausted to the bone. I lay still and stared at him. He
+looked sleek and even prosperous. He looked gorged with
+food. His face was a little swollen. The big blue eyes
+were clear. He let the eyeglass fall, gazing at me, while a
+smile broke over his face. I was so glad to see him, so
+relieved to have him back, that, though no emotion beyond
+that of suspense ended was in me, I felt, as once before
+with the doctor, a lump rise in my throat. His bloated
+expression distressed me vaguely. At first he said nothing,
+but walked across the room on tiptoe, as though pretending
+I was asleep and he feared to wake me.</p>
+
+<p>My tongue loosened suddenly. The very words I
+have not forgotten. A matter that had not lain in my
+mind for days came uppermost:</p>
+
+<p>“Did you send off the overcoat to Kay?”</p>
+
+<p>He nodded, but without looking at me. It was a lie,
+I knew. My eyes followed him round, as he began to
+undress. For several minutes I said nothing. Then
+other words came to me:</p>
+
+<p>“I’ve been alone four days and nights.”</p>
+
+<p>Silence.</p>
+
+<p>“Without food—or anybody.”</p>
+
+<p>Silence, but he turned his back to me.</p>
+
+<p>“Without money.”</p>
+
+<p>Silence. He stood quite motionless.</p>
+
+<p>“I might have died. I might have gone crazy.”</p>
+
+<p>Silence.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s been awful—the loneliness and wondering——”</p>
+
+<p>He half turned, but instantly turned back again. No
+sound escaped him.</p>
+
+<p>“I’ve been thinking about you—and wondering day
+and night. Are you really married? Pauline’s been
+here—this afternoon.”</p>
+
+<p>His silence was broken by a sort of gulp, and he bent
+over. My mistake about the date of the woman’s visit
+was intentional—I thought it might open his lips; I did
+not correct it. He half turned to look at me, but again
+instantly hid his face as before. Then he abruptly sat
+down on the sofa, leaning against the back, his head in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[155]</span>
+his hands. I raised myself in bed, never taking my eyes
+off him.</p>
+
+<p>“I got your telegrams. Have you nothing to say?
+No explanation? Have you brought any food, any money?
+You have had money—all this time.”</p>
+
+<p>Silence, broken only by another gulp.</p>
+
+<p>“I saw you take the money out of the drawer. I said
+nothing because I thought you were going to get me things.
+I <i>trusted</i> you.”</p>
+
+<p>He turned all at once and faced me, though keeping
+his eyes always steadily on the floor. The tears were
+streaming down his face like rain.</p>
+
+<p>“Are you tired?” I asked. “You’d better lie down
+and go to sleep. You can talk to-morrow.”</p>
+
+<p>It was this that finished him. He had reached the
+breaking point.</p>
+
+<p>There is no heroism in me; it was simply that I needed
+him, rotten as he was, heartless, cruel, vile as well; I
+funked another spell of that awful loneliness; I knew him
+now for a coward and a beast, but I could not face another
+night alone. That complete loneliness had been too
+horrible. A wild animal was better than that. Boyde
+was of the hyena type, but a hyena was better than a
+spider. It was neither generosity nor nobility that made
+me listen to his ridiculous and lying story of an “awful
+and terrible temptation,” of a “fearful experience with
+a woman” who had drugged him.... The tale spun itself
+far into the night, the razor and the confession were under
+my pillow, I fell asleep, dead with exhaustion, while he was
+still explaining something about a “woman named
+Pauline M——” who had “deceived me in a most extraordinary
+way....”</p>
+
+<p>The following day, in the morning—Dr. Huebner
+came unexpectedly. Boyde had gone out before I woke.
+This time he was a radiant Dr. Jekyll, and I told him the
+whole story. His only comment, looking severely at me
+through the big spectacles, was: “I expected it. He is a
+confidence man. I knew it the first time I saw him.
+You have kicked the devil out, of course?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[156]</span></p>
+
+<p>A violent disagreement that was almost a quarrel
+followed.</p>
+
+<p>“I simply do not understand you,” he said at last,
+in complete disgust. It was only the wondrous, beaming
+happy mood he was in that prevented his being really angry.
+He threw his hands up and snorted. “You are either
+a fool or a saint, and—I’m sure you’re not a saint.” He
+was very much upset.</p>
+
+<p>I did not yield. There was something in me that
+persuaded me to forgive Boyde and to give him yet another
+chance. I told Boyde this in very plain language. I
+claim no credit—I have never felt the smallest credit—for
+what I did. It was simply that somehow it seemed
+impossible <i>not</i> to forgive him—anything. But the time
+was near, though the feeling of forgiveness still held true
+in me, when my forgiveness took another form. Thirty
+years ago these little incidents occurred. It seems like
+thirty days.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[157]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIX">
+    CHAPTER XIX
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap kern'><span class='allcaps'>It</span> is a mercy one cannot see the future. In that
+New York misery, present and to follow, had I
+known that some fifteen years later I should be my
+own master, living more or less “like a gentleman,”
+earning my livelihood, though a very bare one, by writing,
+I could never have faced what I did face. Any value that
+may have lain in the experiences would certainly have
+been missed, at any rate. If one knew that the future
+promised better things, there is no patience in human
+beings that could hold and wait for it; if, on the other
+hand, it promised worse, I have met no courage that could
+bear the present. Those who preach “live in the present
+only” have common sense on their side.</p>
+
+<p>With the memory of the past, similarly, such folk
+show wisdom. Reincarnation is an interesting theory
+to many; yet to recall past lives could have but one effect—to
+render one ineffective now. To recall the failures of
+a mere forty years is bad enough; to look back over a
+hundred lives would be disastrous: one could only sit
+down and cry.</p>
+
+<p>December had come with its cold and bitter winds,
+and the doctor, ever faithful, had let me up. I went for
+my first little walk, leaning on Boyde’s arm. Round
+Gramercy Park we crawled slowly, and that first taste
+of fresh air, the sound of wind in the leafless trees, a faint
+hint of the sea that reaches even the city streets, gave me
+an unforgettable happiness and yearning. The plan to
+settle in the backwoods again obsessed me. A little later
+I had almost persuaded the doctor, and Kay in my letters,
+to take up a claim north of the Muskoka Lakes where we
+had spent such a happy summer. Boyde was to come too—“as
+a sort of excitement, I suppose!” was the doctor’s
+bitter comment.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[158]</span></p>
+
+<p>I grew gradually stronger. Reporting was still impossible,
+but, introduced by Boyde, I earned something
+by posing in the studios. A “sitting” was three hours.
+Some artists paid by the hour, but Charles Dana Gibson,
+then drawing his weekly cartoons in <i>Life</i>, always paid
+for a full sitting, though he might use his model for
+an hour only. He was a rapid worker, and a good
+fellow; he never forgot to ask if one was tired of any
+particular attitude; my first pose to him was for a broken-down
+actor leaning against a hoarding covered with advertisements,
+the joke being something about a bill-board
+and a board-bill. I was thrilled when it appeared in
+<i>Life</i>. There was always a great rush among the models
+for Gibson’s studio. The only other poses I remember
+are swinging a golf club and sitting for a bishop’s arms
+and hands. I wore big sleeves. These, however, were
+not in Gibson’s studio.</p>
+
+<p>My memory of this work is dim; it was not unpleasant;
+only its uncertainty against it, though a good week might
+bring in as much as fifteen dollars. Smedley, who illustrated
+for <i>Harper’s Magazine</i>, was the painter we all disliked
+most; Cox, son of Bishop Cox, Cleveland Cox being
+his full name, I think, was a favourite: he was a gentleman.
+There was Zogbaum too, another illustrator, and
+there was Lynwood Palmer, the horse-painter, and leading
+artist on <i>The Rider and Driver</i>, a first-class weekly of that
+day. “Artist Palmer,” as the papers called him later,
+was a character. His kindness to me stands out. He had
+very great talent—for getting the likeness of a horse.
+We called him “The Horse.” He made a success at his
+work, painted the “King’s Horses and Men” in subsequent
+years, and settled down eventually—he was an Englishman—I
+believe, at Heston, Hounslow. His New York
+studio was in Fifth Avenue. Many a time he gave me
+food there.</p>
+
+<p>“Artist Palmer” was self-taught. I forget the whole
+story, but he had known his hard times. Looking at my
+dirty boots the first time I called, he said: “When I
+drove a cab here, my boots were better cleaned than any
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[159]</span>
+man’s on the rank.” I was not partial to Dr. Smiles’
+“Self Help.” A “shine” moreover, cost 5 cents, and
+5 cents meant a glass of beer and a meal at a free lunch
+counter—our invariable lunch at that time.</p>
+
+<p>Artist Palmer knew Boyde as a bad lot, and told me
+that Boyde was lying about me behind my back everywhere,
+saying that he was supporting me, paying for my
+illness, and while borrowing money in my name, explaining
+that I spent all he gave me in dissipation! His method
+was to present a forged cheque to some good-natured
+friend after banking hours, obtain the money, and spend
+it on himself. A tale of woe, with crocodile tears, saved
+him from subsequent arrest. No one ever prosecuted him.</p>
+
+<p>All this I kept to myself, though I watched Boyde
+more and more closely. I knew his studio appointments
+and made him hand over what he earned. I did also an
+idiotic thing: I went down and warned the pastor’s
+daughter about him. Palmer’s words and my own feeling
+persuaded me to this fatal action. She was a beautiful
+girl. I received from her the same kind of treatment that
+I had shown to the man who first warned me. Boyde,
+of course, soon knew about it. We had a scene. I saw
+for the first time anger in his face, black hatred too. He
+never forgave me my stupid indiscretion.... The way
+he explained my action to the girl herself was characteristic
+of him, but I only learned later how he managed it.
+In a voluntary confession he wrote a few weeks afterwards,
+a confession he judged might convince me he
+was genuinely repentant, and at the same time save
+him from a grave impending fate, he described it—honestly:
+“I told her,” he said, “she was to pay no attention to
+your warnings, because you wanted me to marry one of
+your sisters.”</p>
+
+<p>The way I lost Boyde temporarily comes a little later
+in his story, but may be told here because it marked the
+close of a definite little chapter in his career with me.</p>
+
+<p>It was the first week in December. I came home—from
+the doctor’s house—at two in the morning. The
+gas was burning, but the room was not too well lit by the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[160]</span>
+single burner. Boyde lay asleep on the floor as usual.
+I moved softly so as not to wake him. I glanced down.
+What I saw startled me; more, it gave me a horrid turn.
+The figure on the mattress was another man. It was not
+Boyde. Then, as I cautiously looked closer, I discovered
+my mistake. It <i>was</i> Boyde after all, but without his
+moustache.</p>
+
+<p>I stared for some minutes in amazement, for the face
+was completely altered. The drooping, rather heavy
+moustache had always hidden his lips and mouth. I now
+saw that mouth. And it was a cruel, brutal mouth, hard,
+sensual, with ugly thickish lips, contradicting the kindly
+blue eyes completely. A sentence of detective-sergeant
+Heidelberg, a headquarters man, came back to me, himself
+a brutal, heartless type, if ever there was one, but with
+years of criminal experience behind him: “Watch the
+mouth and hands and feet,” he told me once in court.
+“They can fake the eyes dead easy, but they can’t fake
+the mouth hell give ’em. They forgit their hands and
+feet. Watch their mouth and hands and feet—the way
+these fidgit. That give ’em away every time.”</p>
+
+<p>Why had Boyde done this thing? He was a handsome
+man, the light graceful moustache was a distinct asset
+in his appearance. Why had he shaved suddenly? I
+stared at the new horrid face for a long time. He lay
+sleeping like a child.</p>
+
+<p>I turned to examine the room, as changes might be
+there too. All seemed as usual, I saw no difference anywhere.
+Then my eyes fell on the cupboard with its half-opened
+door. Boyde’s coat, that was my own coat, the
+only thick one we had between us, hung down from the
+hook. And, for the first time, the sight of that coat stirred
+a dim, painful memory of the place where I had first worn
+it. Naturally it was old, but it was also English. The
+house in Kent rose up—the lime trees on the lawn, the
+tennis courts, my father’s study, his face, my mother’s
+face, their voices even, the very smell and atmosphere
+and feelings of happy days that now seemed for ever lost.
+The whole machinery of association worked suddenly at
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[161]</span>
+full pressure. It was like a blow. I realized vividly the
+awful gap between those days and these, between myself
+as I had been and as I was. A whiff of perfume, a smell,
+produces this kind of evocation in most cases; with me,
+just then, it was my old English coat.</p>
+
+<p>I remember the strong emotion in me, and that, while
+still held and gripped by it, my eye caught sight of an
+envelope sticking out of the inside breast pocket. The coat
+hung by chance in a way that made it visible. It might
+easily fall out altogether. I moved over and stretched
+out a hand to put it safely back and then saw that the
+writing on the envelope was my own. It was a letter.
+I took it out. The address was the house in Kent, whose
+atmosphere still hung about my thoughts. The name was
+my mother’s name. There were other letters, all my own;
+one to my father; two to my brother, the one being in the
+world I really loved, the only one of the family to whom
+I had given vague hints of the real state of affairs.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the letters were two weeks, three weeks old.
+In each case the five-cent stamp had been torn off. Five
+cents meant a glass of lager and a meal at a free lunch
+counter.</p>
+
+<p>There was no reflection. Holding the letters in my
+hand, I moved across to the mattress. There was an
+anger in me that made me afraid, afraid of myself. I
+wanted to kill, I thought I was going to kill, I understood
+easily how a man <i>can</i> kill. In my mind was a vivid
+picture of my brother’s face—it was he, not my parents,
+who moved with me. But I was not excited; ice was in
+me, not fire. Something else, too, at that moment was
+in my veins, a drug ... a strong dose, too! Five minutes
+before my entire being had been in a state of utter bliss,
+of radiant kindness, of tolerance, of charity to everybody in
+the world. I would have given away my last cent, I
+would have forgiven anybody anything. All this was swept
+away in an instant. I felt a cold, white anger that wanted
+to kill.</p>
+
+<p>Boyde had not heard my footstep; he lay sound
+asleep. I tore the blanket off. He lay half naked before
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[162]</span>
+me, sleek, well-nourished, over-fed, loathsome, horrible
+beyond anything I had known. He turned with a jump
+and sat up. I held the letters against his face, but he
+was still dazed with sleep and only stared stupidly, first
+at the letters, then into my face.</p>
+
+<p>I kicked him; I had my boots on.</p>
+
+<p>“Get up!” I said. And, as he got up, rather heavily,
+trying to protect himself, I kicked him again and again, till
+at last he stood upright, but at some distance from me, over
+towards the window. He understood by this time; he
+saw the letters in my hand. The terror in his face sickened
+me even in my anger. I saw the evil almost visibly leap
+out. The unfamiliarity, now that the moustache was gone,
+the cruelty of the naked lips and mouth, the shrinking of
+the coward in him, these made an unforgettable picture.
+He did not utter a syllable.</p>
+
+<p>My own utterance, what words I used, I cannot remember.
+I did not remember them even ten minutes
+afterwards, certainly not the next day, when I told the
+doctor what had happened. Two sentences only remain
+accurate: “Come close to me. I’m going to kill you,”
+and the other: “Get ready! I’m going to beat you like
+an animal!”</p>
+
+<p>He stood before me, wearing his short day-shirt
+without a collar, his hair untidy, his face white, his half-naked
+body shaking. He dropped to his knees, he got
+up again and tried to hide, he cringed and whined like a
+terrified dog, his blue eyes were ghastly. In myself were
+feelings I had never dreamed I possessed, but whose
+evidence Boyde must, plainly, have read in my expression.
+What he could not read, nor ever knew of course, was the
+fight, the fight of terror, I was having with myself. I
+felt that once I touched him I should not stop till I had
+gone too far.</p>
+
+<p>I did not touch him once. Instead, I told him to put
+on his clothes, his own clothes, and go. He had no clothes
+of his own. He did not go.... I eventually let him
+wait till morning, when he could find enough rags of sorts
+to wear in the street.... He explained that he had
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[163]</span>
+shaved his moustache because the Rockaway Hunt demanded
+it.</p>
+
+<p>He had said hardly a word during the entire scene.
+Half an hour after it was over he was sleeping soundly
+again. I, too, thanks to the drug, slept deeply. I woke
+in the morning to find the mattress on the floor unoccupied.
+Boyde had gone. With him had gone, too, my one thick
+suit and, in addition, every possible article of pawnable
+or other value that had been in the room or in the
+packing-case downstairs. Only the razor and the confession
+had he left behind because they were beneath
+my pillow.</p>
+
+<p>The next time we met was in even more painful and
+dramatic circumstances. I decided it was time to act.</p>
+
+<p>I went down that same morning to police headquarters
+in Mulberry Street, and swore out a warrant for his arrest
+on two charges; forgery and petit larceny. A theft of
+more than $25 was grand larceny, a conviction, of course,
+carrying heavier punishment. I reduced his theft of
+my $32, therefore, by seven dollars, so that, if caught
+and convicted, his sentence might be as short as possible.</p>
+
+<p>But for the fact that I was a reporter on a Tammany
+newspaper, nothing would have happened. As it was, no
+bribe being available, the police refused to take any steps
+in the matter. The confession, they knew, was worthless;
+it was a small case; no praise in the press, no advertisement,
+lay in it. “Find out where he is,” Detective Lawler said,
+“and let us know. Just telephone and I’ll come up and
+take him. But <i>you</i> do the huntin’. See? <i>I</i> don’t.”</p>
+
+<p>This was Detective Lawler, who, under another name
+came into a story years later—“Max Hensig,” in “The
+Listener.”</p>
+
+<p>The determination to put Boyde where he could no
+longer harm himself or others held as firm in me as,
+formerly, the determination to forgive had held. The hunt,
+however, comes a little later in the story. There was first
+the explanation of the doctor’s secret. The doctor was
+my companion in the dreadful hunt.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[164]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XX">
+    CHAPTER XX
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap kern'><span class='allcaps'>It</span> was, perhaps, the undigested horror of those days,
+as also their unsatisfied yearnings after beauty, that
+tried to find expression fifteen years later in writing.
+Once they were over I hid them away, those
+dreadful weeks, trying to forget them. But nothing is
+ever forgotten, nor is anything finally suppressed in the
+sense that it is done with. Expression, sooner or later,
+in one form or another, inevitably crops up.</p>
+
+<p>“Writing,” declared the old doctor, after a talk about
+De Quincey, “is functional.” He had many pet theories
+or hobbies on which he loved to expatiate. “Writing is
+as much a function of the system as breathing or excretion.
+What the body takes in and cannot use, it
+discards. What the mind takes in and cannot use, it,
+similarly, excretes. A sensitive, impressionable mind
+receives an incessant bombardment, often an intense,
+terrific bombardment of impressions. Two-thirds of such
+impressions are never digested, much less used. The
+artist-temperament whose sensitiveness accumulates a
+vast store, uses them; the real artist, of course, shapes
+them at the same time. The ordinary man, the <i>Dutzend
+Mensch</i>, made in bundles by the dozen, gets few impressions,
+and needs, naturally, no outlet.... Writing
+is purely functional....” It was one of his numerous
+pet theories.</p>
+
+<p>I went to his house now every night; he gave me his
+professional care, he gave me sympathy, he gave me food.
+Pathetic, wonderful old German! His tenderness was
+a woman’s, his temper a demon’s. I felt a giant in him
+somewhere. At close daily quarters his alternate moods
+perplexed me utterly. He had an Irish wife, a kind,
+motherly, but quite uneducated woman of about forty-five,
+and a little girl of eight or nine, whose white face
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[165]</span>
+looked as old as her mother’s, and whose diminutive figure
+seemed to me unusual somewhere. Was it not stunted?
+Her intelligence, her odd ways, her brilliant eyes captivated
+me. She called me “Uncle Diedel.” She talked,
+like her mother, broken German. Supper, an extremely
+simple meal, but a feast to me, was always in the basement
+kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>The tiny wooden house, owning something akin to
+squatter’s rights which prevented its demolition, stood
+in the next block to my own, hemmed in by “brownstone
+fronts,” but with a miniature garden. New York,
+that burns anthracite coal, has no blacks and smuts; the
+trees and shrubs were really green; the earth smelt
+sweet. The little house, standing back from the road,
+was a paradise to me. Its one ground-floor apartment
+was divided by folding doors into consulting- and waiting-rooms.
+But no patients came, or came so rarely that it
+was an event when the door-bell rang. The doctor had
+the greatest difficulty in keeping himself and family alive.
+At supper I used to eat as little as possible. He seemed
+a competent physician. I wondered greatly. As well
+as real human kindness, there was courage in that little
+building; there was also a great tragedy I sensed long
+before I discovered its solution. The strange innocence
+and ignorance of my up-bringing still clung to me.</p>
+
+<p>The establishment, the poverty, the alternating moods,
+as I said, puzzled me; I was aware of a whole life hidden
+away from my observation. They were so poor that dinner
+was the meal of a workman, they could not even keep a
+servant. There were worrying debts as well. Often the
+doctor was so bearish and irritable that I dared not say a
+word, his wife got curses and abuse, he would almost kick
+the child, finding fault with such sneers and rudeness that
+I vowed to myself I would never eat his food again. Then,
+after a momentary absence in his workshop upstairs,
+where he kept a lathe and made beautiful chessmen, he
+would come slowly stumbling down again, and the door
+would open to a wholly different being. Bent, as always,
+but well poised and vigorous, with bright smiling eyes,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[166]</span>
+benevolent yet rugged face, every gesture full of gentle
+kindness, he would pat his old wife on the shoulder and
+take the child upon his knee, and beg me to play the fiddle
+to him or to draw my chair up for an intimate talk. He
+would light his great meerschaum pipe and beam upon
+the world through the blue smoke like some old jolly idol.
+The change seemed miraculous.</p>
+
+<p>His talk seemed, at the time, wonderful to me. He
+would discourse on Kant, Novalis, Heine, on music, science,
+astronomy—“when your troubles seem at their worst,”
+he would say, “look up at the stars for half an hour, <i>with
+imagination</i>, and you’ll see your troubles in a new perspective”—on
+religion, literature and life, on anything
+and everything, while downstairs his kindly old wife
+prepared the Frankfurters and sauerkraut and coffee.</p>
+
+<p>Neither mother nor child, I noticed, paid much attention
+to his attacks. The little girl, who called her father
+“Otto,” sat up with us night after night till two in the
+morning, and hated going to bed. She listened spellbound
+to the stream of talk. I still see the dingy, lamp-lit room
+in the heart of the roaring city, the white-haired old doctor,
+pipe in mouth, the operating chair in the middle of the
+floor, the little pale-faced child with her odd expression
+of maturity as she looked from him to me, then
+led me by the hand to our late meal in the gloomy
+basement. I often waited achingly for that meal, having
+eaten nothing since breakfast. Would he never stop
+talking...?</p>
+
+<p>We talked of Boyde—his face. The doctor’s reading
+of Boyde’s face was that it was a bad, deceitful, clever
+face, evil, brutal and cruel. I mentioned the man’s
+various acts of kindness. “Bait,” he exclaimed, with a
+scornful snort, “mere bait! He wanted a free lodging.
+He had plenty of money all along, but the free bed gave
+him more—to spend on himself while you starved.”</p>
+
+<p>He talked on about faces.... Handsome ones he
+either disliked or distrusted, handsome features like
+Boyde’s were too often a cloak that helped to hide and
+deceive. Behind such faces, as a rule, lay either badness
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[167]</span>
+or vacuity; good looks were the most misleading thing
+in the world. Expression rarely accompanied good looks,
+good features. He was off on a pet hobby, he waxed
+eloquent. Beautiful women—he spoke of good features
+chiefly—were almost invariably wicked, or else empty.
+Of “Society Beauties” he was particularly contemptuous.
+“Regular features, fine eyes, perfect skin, but no expression—no
+soul within. The deer-like eyes, the calm,
+proud loveliness people rave about is mere vacancy.
+Pfui!”</p>
+
+<p>His habit of staring into the mirror came back to me,
+and I ventured a question. He hesitated a moment,
+then got up and led me to the glass, where, without a
+word, he began to gaze at his own reflection, making the
+familiar grimaces, smiling, screwing up his eyes, stretching
+his lips, raising his eyebrows, pulling his moustache about
+until, at last, I burst into laughter I could control no
+longer.</p>
+
+<p>He turned in astonishment. He examined my own
+face closely for some time. “You are too young still,”
+he said. “You have no lines. In my face, you see, lies
+all my past, layer below layer, skin behind skin, my face
+of middle age, of early manhood, of youth, of childhood.
+It carries me right back.”</p>
+
+<p>He began showing me again, pointing to his reflection
+as he did so. “That’s middle age ... that’s youth.... Ach!
+and there’s the boy’s face, look!”</p>
+
+<p>I did not dare to look, for explosions of laughter were
+in my throat, and I should have hurt his feelings dreadfully.
+I understood what he meant, however.</p>
+
+<p>“With the face of each period,” he explained, “rise
+the memories, feelings and emotions of that particular
+period, its point of view, its fears, ambitions—<i>hopes</i>. I
+live again momentarily in it. I am a young man again,
+a boy, a child. I am, at any rate, no longer myself—<i>as
+I now am</i>.” The way he spoke these four words was very
+grave and sad. “Now,” he went on with a sigh, “you
+understand the charm of the mirror. It means escape
+from self. This is the ultimate teaching of all religion—to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[168]</span>
+escape from Self.” He chuckled. “The mirror is
+my Religion.”</p>
+
+<p>During this odd little scene I felt closer to his secret
+than ever before. There was something fine and lovely
+in him, something big, but it lay in ruins. Had my
+attitude been a little different, had I not laughed for instance,
+I think he would have taken me into his confidence
+there and then. But the opportunity was lost this time.
+He asked, instead, for music, old, simple German songs
+being what he liked most. He would lean back in his big
+chair, puff his great pipe, close his eyes, and hum the
+melodies softly to himself while I played. It was easy
+to vamp a sort of accompaniment with double stopping.
+He dreamed of old days, I suppose; it was a variant of
+the mirror game. Tschaikowsky, Meyer-Helmund, Massenet
+he also liked, but it was Schubert, Schumann, even
+Mendelssohn he always hummed to. Of “<i>Ich grolle-nicht,
+auch wenn das Herz mir bricht</i>,” he never tired. The
+little child would dart up from the basement at the first
+sound of the fiddle, show her old, white face at the door,
+then creep in, sit in a corner, and never take her eyes
+from “the orchestra.” When it stopped playing, she
+was off again in a second.</p>
+
+<p>One item, while speaking of the music, stands out—chanting
+to the fiddle a certain passage from De Quincey.
+The “Confessions” fascinated him; the description of
+the privations in London, the scenes with Anne when she
+first brought him out of her scanty money the reviving
+glass of port, her abrupt disappearance finally and his
+pathetic faithful search, the lonely hours in the empty
+house in Greek Street, but particularly his prolonged
+fight against the drug. It was the Invocation to Opium,
+a passage of haunting beauty, however, he loved so much
+that he chanted it over and over to himself. The first
+time he did this I invented a soft running accompaniment
+on the lower strings, using double stopping. The mute
+was on. My voice added the bass. It was a curious composition
+of which he never tired; it moved him very
+deeply; I have even seen tears trickling down his cheeks
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[169]</span>
+when it was over. He always left his chair for this performance,
+walking slowly to and fro while he chanted
+the rhythmical, sonorous sentences:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“O just, subtle and mighty opium! that, to the hearts of
+rich and poor alike, for the wounds that will never heal, and for
+the pangs of grief that tempt the spirit to rebel, bringest an
+assuaging balm;—eloquent opium! that with thy potent
+rhetoric stealest away the purposes of wrath.... Thou buildest
+upon the bosom of darkness, out of the fantastic imagery of
+the brain, cities and temples, beyond the art of Phidias and
+Praxiteles, beyond the splendours of Babylon and Hekatompylos;
+... and hast the keys of Paradise, O just, subtle and mighty
+opium...!”</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>“<i>Ach! wie prachtvoll!</i>” he would cry a moment
+later, “<i>wie wunderschoen!</i>” and then would recite a
+translation he had made into his own tongue, and a very
+fine one too. Quite delighted, he would repeat the passage
+over and over again, pausing to compare the two versions,
+fixing me with his big eyes in order to increase his own
+pleasure in the music by witnessing the evidence of my
+own.</p>
+
+<p>Truly he was a Jekyll and Hyde.</p>
+
+<p>It was only during the Jekyll mood this kind of scene
+took place; in the Jekyll happy humour, too, that I
+had told him about my strange up-bringing. “Now I
+understand better,” he said, “why you are still so young
+and know so little of life, and why you are so foolishly
+good to Boyde”—which annoyed me, because I considered
+myself now quite old and a thorough man of the world
+as well.</p>
+
+<p>It was in this mood, too, that we discussed my own
+theories and beliefs ... a life in the woods as well.
+Kay, himself and his family, Boyde and I were to settle
+in the backwoods ... perhaps I was as eloquent as I
+was earnest; he listened attentively; sometimes he
+seemed almost ready to consent; he understood, at any
+rate, the deep spell that Nature had for me. But he only
+smiled when I said I was a failure and an outcast. My
+life had hardly begun yet! No man was a failure who
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[170]</span>
+had an object and worked for it, even though he never
+got within miles of accomplishment. “A life for a man
+is a life <i>among</i> men,” he would say with emphasis. “The
+woods are all right as an interlude, but not as a career.”
+He was very sympathetic, but he shook his head violently.
+“In action lies a man’s safety in life,” he growled at me.
+“The world needs men of action, not dreamers,” he repeated
+and repeated, “and Buddhism has never yet produced
+a man of action. Do <i>something</i>, even if it prove
+the wrong thing. Dreaming, without action, is the
+quickest way of self-corruption I know.” And he would
+then urge me again to become a doctor, after which he
+would proceed to dream himself for an hour or two ...
+showing that all his life he had been far more of a dreamer
+than a man of action....</p>
+
+<p>It was chance that suddenly led me into the doctor’s
+secret. He became for me, from that moment, the most
+pathetic and tragic of human beings. My own troubles
+seemed insignificant.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon early in December, gloomy, very cold,
+a studio appointment failed, and I decided to go to the
+wooden house. It was that or the public library, but I
+wanted a talk, I wanted also to get really warm. I had
+no overcoat; the doctor’s room was always like an oven.
+The vermin I had grown accustomed to and hardly noticed
+them. An idea of food, too, was in my mind, for the free
+lunch glass of beer and salt chip-potatoes was all I had eaten
+since breakfast. Seven o’clock, however, was my usual
+hour of visit, I had never been in the afternoon before.
+A memorable visit; we were alone; he told me his secret
+very quietly.</p>
+
+<p>I found him in his most awful mood, rude, his nerves
+unbearably on edge. He said he had not expected me,
+but when I tried to go, he became angry and begged me
+to stay, saying that I helped him more than I could ever
+know. Had I brought the fiddle? I said I would run
+up the street and get it. “No,” he implored, “don’t go
+now. You can go later—before supper. <i>Please</i> do not
+leave me—<i>please</i>!” He then said he would tell me
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[171]</span>
+something no one else knew, no one except his wife. I
+wondered what was coming, and felt strangely touched
+and moved at his treating me with such confidence. His
+manner was so pathetic, and he seemed suddenly to have
+become weak and helpless, and somehow or other it was
+in my power to do him a service. I was thrilled and full
+of expectation.</p>
+
+<p>But, before he began to tell me, he went up to a little
+cabinet with a glass door and took out a small bottle full
+of a white powder, bearing the word, the magical word
+“Majendie”—a word I can never forget as long as I live—and
+took some of the powder and made a solution and
+then sucked some of it up with a needle and turned to me.
+His face was swollen and looked terrible, for the eyes
+glowed so hotly, and the skin was so red and white in
+patches. Then he began to open his waistcoat and shirt
+till his chest was bare. “Look,” he said, for I half
+moved aside, and when I looked I saw he was covered
+with hundreds of small red sores.</p>
+
+<p>Evidently my face betrayed shrinking and horror, for
+the old man laughed and said “Oh, I’m not a leper.
+They’re only blisters,” and then finding a little clear
+space on his skin, put the needle of his syringe through
+the flesh and injected the fluid into his body. He next
+quickly put his finger over the spot and rubbed to and
+fro for about a minute, staring steadily at me while he
+did so.</p>
+
+<p>“That’s morphine,” he said in a dead voice, “and
+the rubbing is necessary to prevent a blister forming.”</p>
+
+<p>I knew nothing about morphine except the name, and
+I was disappointed rather than thrilled, but the next
+minute he gave me all the thrill I wanted, and more
+besides:</p>
+
+<p>“I’ve been fighting it for two years,” he said quietly
+in German, still rubbing the spot and staring hard at me,
+“and I am slowly getting the better of it. If I don’t
+succeed, it means I die.” A cold grim smile that made
+me shudder stole over his swollen face. “<i>Death</i>,” he
+added.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[172]</span></p>
+
+<p>I felt his despair, the despair of doubt, as he said this,
+and in his eyes blazed suddenly all the suppressed depths
+of suffering and emotion that he usually kept hidden.
+Such a flood of sympathy for the old man rose in me that
+I did not know what to say. Of drugs and their power
+I knew nothing. I stood and stared in silence, but his
+voice and manner made me realize one thing: that here
+was an awful battle, a struggle between human courage,
+will and endurance, on the one hand, and some tremendous
+power on the other—a struggle to the death. The word
+“morphine” seemed to me some sort of demon.</p>
+
+<p>He sat down in his armchair, lit his pipe, pulled up
+the operating chair for me to lie on beside him, and then
+told me very quietly why he took it. Already his face
+looked different, as the morphine circulated through the
+blood, and he smiled and wore a genial happy air of benevolence
+that made him at once a different man.</p>
+
+<p>“I shall have peace now for several hours,” he said,
+“but I don’t take morphine for pleasure. I take it
+because it is the only way to keep myself alive and to
+keep my wife and child from starving. If I can gradually
+wean myself from it I shall live for years. If not, and
+I cannot make the dose less and less, it will kill me very
+soon. I am old, you see.”</p>
+
+<p>He told me very simply, but very graphically, speaking
+in German as he loved to do, that three years ago he
+had enjoyed a good and lucrative practice. But he had
+embarked upon some experiments in his leg—I never
+understood exactly what and did not dare to ask—and
+to observe these properly he was obliged to use the knife
+without taking any anæsthetic. His wife stood beside
+him and staunched the blood, but the pain and shock
+proved more than he was equal to, being an old man, and
+a collapse followed. All his patients left him, for he could
+not attend to them, and in order to be in a fit condition
+to see even chance callers he had to inject morphine. Thus
+the habit began, and before he knew where he was the
+thing had him by the throat. He was a man of great
+natural strength of will and he began to stop it, but the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[173]</span>
+fight was far harder than he had imagined, and his nerves
+seemed to have gone to pieces. Unless he had the support
+of a dose, he was so brutal, irritable and rude that no one
+could stay in his presence, and no patient would come
+near him. He never got his practice back again, and
+whenever a stray patient called now he had to take an
+injection, or he would be sure to behave in such a way
+that the man or woman would never return. He used
+atropine to mix with his morphine, and thus tried gradually
+to cure himself, and lately had succeeded in reducing the
+quantity very considerably, but it was an awful fight,
+and he admitted the end was uncertain. He said I
+helped him to bear the strain. My presence, he said, the
+music too, gave him some sort of comfort and strength,
+and he was always glad to see me. When I was there he
+could hold out longer than when he was alone, and one
+reason he was telling me all this intimate history—telling
+it to a comparative stranger—was because he wished me
+to try and help him more.</p>
+
+<p>I stammered some words in broken German about
+being eager and willing to help, and he smiled and
+said he thanked me and “we would make the fight
+together.”</p>
+
+<p>“The charm is very powerful,” he went on, “especially
+to a nature like mine, for when I take this stuff the
+world becomes full of wonder and mystery again, just as it
+was for me sixty years ago when I was a boy with burning
+hopes and high dreams. But far more than that, I <i>believe
+in people</i> again. That makes more difference in your life
+than anything else, for to lose faith in men makes life unbearable.
+Bitter experiences have shaken my trust and
+belief in my fellow creatures. But with this stuff in me
+I find it again and feel at peace with the world.”</p>
+
+<p>“That is why you sometimes approve and at other
+times disapprove of my attitude towards Boyde?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” he said, with a most benign and delightful
+expression in his eyes. “Give him every chance. There’s
+lots of good in him. He feels, no doubt, that everyone
+who knows about him distrusts him. Weak men will
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[174]</span>
+always try more or less to live up to what is expected of
+them, for they are easily hypnotised. If they feel every
+one expects only evil from them their chief incentive is
+lost.”</p>
+
+<p>“Then I ought never to let him think I’ve lost belief
+in him?”</p>
+
+<p>“Never. Frighten him, kick him, urge him along
+with violence, anything to make him move of himself
+towards being decent; but never suggest he <i>cannot</i> be,
+and <i>is not</i>, decent and straight.”</p>
+
+<p>How we talked that night—and how I suffered from
+hunger, for when morphine was in him the old doctor ate
+little, and this time he was full of ideas and ideals, and
+had so sympathetic a listener, that he forgot I might want
+food, and it was not till after one in the morning that he
+began to flag and thought of coffee. We went down into
+the kitchen, and there we found the patient wife dozing on
+the wooden chair, and the child reading a book—“Undine”—on
+the deal table, with her eyes so bright I thought
+they were going to shoot out flame. She looked up and
+stared at us for a long time before she got herself back
+from that enchanted region of woods and pools and moonlight....
+Strange supper parties they were, in that
+quiet, basement-kitchen between one and two of the
+winter mornings of December, 1892....</p>
+
+<p>Otto Huebner, having broken the ice, told me much
+of his own life then. Owing to family disputes he left
+the manufacturing town in Northern Germany where he
+was born and brought up, and came to New York as a young
+man. He never saw his parents again, and took out
+naturalization papers at once. For years he was employed
+by Steinway’s piano factory, as a common workman
+at first, then as a skilled man. He was unmarried,
+he saved money, he began to study at night; the passion
+for medicine was so strong in him that he made up his
+mind to become a doctor. He attended lectures when he
+could. It was a life of slavery, of incessant toil both day
+and night. He was over forty when he began studying
+for the examinations, and it took him seven years to attain
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[175]</span>
+his end. His health had suffered during this strenuous
+time. He had married well after fifty....</p>
+
+<p>Dear, lovable, much-to-be-pitied old man, my heart went
+out to him; I was determined to do everything I could to
+help. I owed him much for counsel, sympathy and kindness,
+to say nothing of medical attendance and food
+besides, at a time, too, when I believed myself a complete
+failure and thought my life was ruined. England, my
+family, all that I had been accustomed to seemed utterly
+remote; I had cut myself off; I had tumbled into quite
+another world, and the only friend I had, the only being
+I trusted, even loved as well, was the old German morphine
+victim.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, it had been very wonderful to me to see
+an irritable, savage old man change in a few minutes
+into a kindly, genial, tender-hearted being, and I began
+to feel an absorbing curiosity about this fine white powder
+labelled “Majendie.” I invariably now rubbed in the
+dose, finding with increasing difficulty a clear space of
+skin in the poor worn old body. I watched the change
+steal over him. It seemed to me pure magic. It began
+more and more to fascinate me.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[176]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXI">
+    CHAPTER XXI
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'><span class='allcaps'>A few</span> days after the doctor’s secret had been laid
+bare I received a brief, curt letter from McCloy
+to say he could not keep my place open for ever;
+how soon was I coming back? Six weeks had passed
+already. The doctor convinced me I was not yet in a
+condition to face ten hours’ hard reporting a day. I
+answered McCloy as best I could, thanking him, and telling
+the facts. Dr. Huebner also wrote him a line.</p>
+
+<p>I was distressed and anxious, none the less, and that
+evening I was certainly not at my best. I gave the old
+man but little help. His method of using me was simple:
+if I could manage to interest him, by talk, by music, by
+books, by anything at all, it enabled him to postpone the
+hour of injection. Each time we tried to make this interval
+longer; each time, he told me, he took a smaller
+quantity.</p>
+
+<p>On this particular evening, hungry and depressed as
+I was, I failed to be “interesting,” and no forced attempt
+could make me so. My own condition, in any case, was
+pretty low; my friend’s dejection and excessive irritability
+proved the last straw. We disagreed, we hurt each other’s
+feelings a little, I relapsed into silence finally, the gloom
+was dreadful. My own troubles just then were uppermost
+in my mind. If I lost my job, I kept thinking,
+what on earth would happen to me?...</p>
+
+<p>The old man presently, and long before his time, got
+up in silence and went to the glass cabinet where now the
+Majendie bottle stood. He no longer kept it in his workshop
+out of sight. His face was black as thunder. Conscience
+pricked me; I roused myself, saying something by
+way of trying to prevent, whereupon he turned and said
+savagely: “Do you want to see me die? Or lose my
+reason?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[177]</span></p>
+
+<p>As already mentioned, I was totally ignorant of drugs
+and their effect. His words, which I took literally, frightened
+me. I watched him mix the solution, fill his syringe
+slowly with shaking hands, then unfasten his clothes.
+I found the place and rubbed the skin as usual, while he
+sat back in his big chair, in sullen silence. He drew the
+needle out; his face was awful; he sighed and groaned;
+I really thought he was going to collapse before my eyes,
+perhaps to die. I rubbed and rubbed ... while the
+magical change stole slowly over him. His face cleared,
+his smile came back, he looked younger, his very voice
+became mellow instead of harsh and rough, his eyes lit up
+with happiness.</p>
+
+<p>The contrast was astonishing, the effect so rapid.
+And, for the first time, a longing rose in me: if only <i>I</i>
+could have some of this bewitching panacea! My troubles
+would all melt away. I should feel happy. Hunger
+also would disappear. Was it so terrible and dangerous
+after all?</p>
+
+<p>The thought went through me like a burning flame.</p>
+
+<p>It was a thought, merely. I had no intention of asking,
+not even of suggesting, such a thing. I would not
+have dared to; the old man, I knew, besides, would never,
+never consent; his obstinacy was beyond any power of
+mine to modify. None the less, the thought and desire
+were distinctly in me at that moment. It even crossed
+my mind that he was selfish, inconsiderate, unkind, not
+to realize that a little, oh, just a tiny dose, would help me
+and make me happy too.</p>
+
+<p>The change in him was now complete, he settled back
+in his deep chair. I heard him asking for the fiddle. I
+remember the effort it cost me to say something about
+being ready to try, and how I concealed my sulky face
+as I crossed the room to open my case. I felt disappointed,
+rather sore, a trifle angry too; he could so easily open the
+gates of heaven for me. I fumbled with the case, delaying
+on purpose, for no music lay in me, and I did not want to
+play, I felt miserable all over. My back was turned to him.
+And then I heard my name softly spoken close behind me.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[178]</span></p>
+
+<p>I turned with a start, it was the doctor’s voice, its
+peculiar softness struck me. He was coming slowly
+across the room, a curious smile on his face, peering at me
+over the top of his spectacles, the shoulders bent forward
+a little, his gait slouching, his slippers dragging along the
+carpet, his white hair tumbling about his forehead, moving
+slowly at me—and in his raised right hand was a needle
+poised to strike.</p>
+
+<p>I knew what it meant: he was going to give me
+morphia without even being asked. A queer revulsion of
+feeling came over me. He was saying something, but I
+did not hear the words properly, nor understand them,
+at any rate; his voice, too, was so low and soft. My
+brain was in a whirl. Something in the old man’s appearance
+frightened me. The idea of the drug now also
+frightened me. Then, suddenly, a complete recklessness
+rushed over me.</p>
+
+<p>“Take off your coat,” I heard him say. “And now
+roll your sleeve up. <i>So! Nun, jetzt</i>”—he gazed hard into
+my eyes—“<i>aber—nur—ausnahmsweise!</i>” With slow
+earnest emphasis he repeated the words: “As an exception—only!”</p>
+
+<p>I watched him choose the place on my arm, I
+watched the needle go in with its little prick, I watched
+him slowly press the small piston that injected the poison
+into my blood. He, for his part, never once moved his
+eyes from mine till the operation was ended, and my coat
+was on again. He wore that curious smile the whole time.
+“You needed it to-night,” he said, “just a little, a very
+weak dose—<i>aber—nur—ausnahmsweise</i>!” He walked
+over and put the little Majendie phial back upon the shelf.
+Then he filled his pipe and drew up the operating chair
+for me to lie on. His eye was constantly on me. The
+music was forgotten. He wanted to talk.</p>
+
+<p>Whether he had done this thing really to give me a
+little happiness, or whether his idea was to make me
+“interesting” for his own sake, I do not know. The
+fact is that within three minutes of the needle’s prick I
+was in a state of absolute bliss.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[179]</span></p>
+
+<p>A little warm sensation, accompanied by the faintest
+possible suggestion of nausea which was probably my own
+imagination, passed up the spine into the head. Something
+cleared in my brain, then burst. A sense of thawing
+followed, the melting away of all the things that had been
+making me unhappy. I began to glow all over. Hope,
+happiness and a gorgeous confidence flowed in; benevolence,
+enthusiasm, charity flooded me to the brim. I
+wanted to forgive Boyde <i>everything</i> to the end of time,
+sacrifice my entire life to cure my old German friend;
+everything base, unworthy, sordid in me, it seemed,
+had dropped away....</p>
+
+<p>The experience is too well-known to bear another
+description; it varies, of course, with individuals; varies,
+too, according to the state of health or sickness, according
+to whether it is needed or not really needed; and while
+some feel what I felt, others merely sleep, or, on the contrary,
+cannot sleep at all. The strength of the dose,
+naturally, is also an important item. Individual reactions,
+anyhow, are very different, and with Kay, to whom
+later the doctor gave it too, three doses produced no effect
+whatever, while the fourth brought on the cumulative
+result of all four at once, so that we had to walk him up
+and down, pouring strong black coffee down his unwilling
+throat, urging him violently not to sleep—the only thing
+he wanted to do—or he would, old Huebner assured him—never
+wake again.... In my case, at any rate, wasted
+physically as I was, empty of food, under-nourished for
+many weeks, below par being a mild description of my
+body, the result seemed a radiance that touched ecstasy.
+It was, of course, an intensification of consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>Such intensification, I well knew, could be produced
+by better if more difficult ways, ways that caused no
+reaction, ways that constructed instead of destroyed ...
+and the first pleasure I derived from my experience, the
+interest that first stirred flashingly and at once through
+my cleared mind, was the absolute conviction that the
+teaching and theories in my books were true....</p>
+
+<p>The doctor sat, smiling at me from his chair.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[180]</span></p>
+
+<p>“I would not do this for many,” he said in German,
+“but for you it has no danger. <i>You</i> could stop anything.
+You have real will.” After a pause he added: “Now we
+are happy; we are both happy. Let us dream without
+thinking. Let us <i>realize</i> our happiness!...”</p>
+
+<p>The hours passed while we talked, and my hunger was
+forgotten. I only wanted one thing to complete my
+happiness—I wanted Kay, I wanted Boyde, and I wanted
+one figure from across the sea, my brother. Had these
+three come to join the circle in that dingy consulting-room,
+my heaven, it seemed to me, would have been made
+perfect....</p>
+
+<p>The passing of time was not marked. I played the
+fiddle, and we chanted the old man’s favourite passage:
+“O just, subtle and mighty opium!” ... its full meaning,
+with the appeal it held, now all explained to me
+at last. As I laid the instrument down, I saw the white
+face of the little girl just inside the half-opened door.
+She caught my eye, ran up to me, and climbed upon
+my knee.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, Uncle Diedel,” she cried, “how big your eyes
+are! I do believe Otto has given you some of his Majendie
+medicine. Are you going to die, too, unless you have it?”</p>
+
+<p>Nothing, it seemed, was hidden from the clear vision
+that lay in me then; the appalling truth flashed into me on
+the instant. The little, stunted figure, the old expression
+in the pallid child-face, the whiteness of the skin, the brilliant
+eyes, all were due to the same one thing. Did the
+doctor, her own father, give <i>her</i> the needle too?</p>
+
+<p>It was on this occasion, this night of my first experience
+with morphine, that I found my letters with the stamps
+torn off. I reached home, as described, about two in the
+morning, still in a state of bliss, although the effect of the
+drug was waning a little then. But there was happiness,
+affection, forgiveness and charity in my heart, I thought.
+This describes my feelings of the moment certainly.
+How they were swept away has been already told. So
+much for the pseudo-exaltation of the drug! And, while
+on this subject, the part played by the drug in this particular
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[181]</span>
+little scrap of history may as well be told briefly
+at once and done with.</p>
+
+<p>The suggestion that I could “stop anything,” combined
+with my own desire, was potent. There was another way
+in which the insidious poisoning also worked: I became
+so “interesting,” and entertained the old doctor so successfully,
+that he found himself able to do without his own
+dose. The stern injunction “<i>nur ausnahmsweise</i>” was
+forgotten. Without the stuff in my blood I was gloomy,
+stupid, dull; with it, I became alive and helped him.
+But the headache and depression, the nausea, the black
+ultimate dejection of the “day after” could be removed
+by one thing only. Nothing else had the slightest effect,
+and only another dose could banish these after-effects—a
+stronger dose. While the old man was soon able to reduce
+not only the quantity he took, but the number of
+injections as well, my own dose, to produce the desired
+effect, had to be doubled.</p>
+
+<p>Every night for four weeks that needle pricked me.
+In my next incarnation—if it takes place—I shall still see
+the German doctor slouching across the room at me with
+the loaded syringe in his poised hand, and the strange look
+in his eyes. It seems an ineradicable memory.... By
+the end of the four weeks, I was working again on the
+newspaper; my visits to the wooden house I cut down to
+two a week, then one a week. It was a poignant business.
+He needed me. Desire for the “balm that assuaged,”
+desire to help the friend who was slowly dying, desire to
+save myself from obvious destruction, these tugged and
+tore me different ways. For the full story I should have
+to write another book.... Three things saved me, I
+think—in the order of their value: my books and beliefs;
+Nature—my Sundays in Bronx Park or the woods of the
+Palisades in New Jersey; and, lastly, the power of the
+doctor’s own suggestion, “<i>you</i> could stop anything!”...</p>
+
+<p>When May came, with her wonder and her magic,
+I was free again, so free that I could play the fiddle and
+talk to the old man by the hour, and feel even no desire
+for the drug. Nor has the desire ever returned to me from
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[182]</span>
+that day to this. An experiment with haschisch, a good
+deal later, an account of which I wrote for my paper at
+the time, had no “desire” in it. Foolish and dangerous
+though the experiment was, of course, the <i>cannabis
+indica</i> was not taken for indulgence, nor to bring a false
+temporary happiness into a life I loathed. I did it to earn
+a little extra money; Kay did it with me; three times in
+all we took it. Some of the effects I tried to describe
+years later in the first story of a book, “John Silence.”</p>
+
+<p>My decision, with the steps I had taken, to arrest
+Boyde, I told to the doctor on the afternoon following the
+discovery of his treachery with my letters. He approved.
+This time even his Jekyll personality approved.</p>
+
+<p>“You’ll never catch him though,” he growled. “He’s
+too clever for you. He’ll hear about the warrant and be
+out of the State in a day, if not out of the country. In
+Canada they can’t touch him. Besides, the police won’t
+stir a finger. Oh, you’ll never catch him.”</p>
+
+<p>I felt otherwise, however, I meant to catch him,
+while at the same time I did not want to. The horrible
+man-hunt began that very night.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[183]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXII">
+    CHAPTER XXII
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'><span class='allcaps'>The</span> search for Boyde was a prolonged nightmare:
+used several times already, this phrase alone describes
+it. It lasted over a fortnight. Every
+night, from nine o’clock till two, or even later in the morning,
+it continued. The old doctor almost invariably
+came with me. It was mid-winter and bitter cold, I
+still had no overcoat, a thin summer vest being my only
+underwear. The disreputable haunts we searched were
+heated to at least 70° F., whereas the street air was commonly
+not far from zero, with biting winds or icy moisture
+that cut like a knife. It must have been the drug
+that saved me from pneumonia, for I was in and out of
+a dozen haunts each night.... I was a prey to contrary
+and alternating emotions—the desire to let the fellow go
+free, the conviction that it was my duty to save him from
+himself, to save others from him as well. The distress,
+unhappiness and doubt I experienced made that prolonged
+man-hunt indeed a nightmare.</p>
+
+<p>Plans were laid with care and knowledge. Boyde,
+we argued, had money, or he would have returned to East
+19th Street. Had he enough to bribe the police, or to go
+to Canada? We decided that his contempt for me would
+outweigh any fear he felt that I might take action. The
+“Night Owls” were now away on tour; he would hardly
+go after Pauline M——. We concluded he was “doing
+the town,” as it was called, and was not very far from East
+19th Street. With his outstanding figure and appearance,
+it ought not to be difficult to find some trace of him
+in the disreputable places. The “Tenderloin”—a region
+about Broadway and 30th Street, so packed with illegal
+“joints” that their tribute to the police was the richest
+and juiciest of the whole city—was sure to be his hunting
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[184]</span>
+ground. To the Tenderloin haunts, accordingly, we
+went that first night of the chase.</p>
+
+<p>As a reporter I knew the various places well already,
+and felt quite equal to making my search alone, but the
+doctor, though in no condition to traipse about the icy street
+after dark, insisted on accompanying me. Nothing I said
+could prevent him coming. Truth to tell, I was not sorry
+to have him with me—in some of the saloons; besides which
+I had no money, and something—lager beer cost only
+five cents a glass—had to be ordered in each place. We
+hurried from one saloon to another, looking in at various
+gambling hells, opium joints, dancing places and music-halls
+of the poorer kind where men and women met on
+easy terms, and we stayed at each one just long enough
+to make inquiries, and to benefit by the warmth and
+comfort, without being pestered by the habitual frequenters.</p>
+
+<p>I had in my possession a small photograph of Boyde;
+it was on tin, showing the head and shoulders; it had been
+taken one day earlier in our acquaintance when we went
+together to a Dime Museum in 14th Street. It now proved
+very useful. It showed his full face, big eyes, drooping
+moustaches and eyeglass. The absence of the moustache
+altered him a great deal, but the eyeglass and the six feet
+two inches in height counterbalanced this.</p>
+
+<p>At every “joint” I produced this photograph, asking
+the attendants, bar-tenders, and any women I judged to
+be frequenters of the place, whether they had seen the
+original recently, or anyone like him. Some laughed and
+said they had, others said the opposite, but the majority
+refused to say anything, showed insolently their suspicion
+of me and my purpose, and, more than once, made it
+advisable for us to get out before we were put out. At
+such places customers are chary about information of each
+other. Among the women, however, were some who
+knew clearly who it was we “wanted,” though saying
+nothing useful, and soon the doctor decided it was a mistake
+to show the photograph too much, for Boyde would
+be warned by these women, while many, fearful that they
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[185]</span>
+themselves were “wanted,” would merely lie in self
+protection, and set us upon false trails. Any woman who
+had not paid her weekly blackmail money to the ward man
+was in danger, and few, to judge by their appearance,
+were not involved in robbery, knock-out drops, or the
+ubiquitous “badger-game.” Yet these, I knew, were
+the places Boyde would feel at home in. My being a
+newspaper man proved of value to us more than once,
+at any rate. My thoughts, as we sat in a curtained
+corner of some “hell,” whose overheated atmosphere of
+smoke, scent, alcohol and dope was thick enough to cut
+with a knife, watching, waiting, listening, must be
+imagined. I watched every arrival. The tension
+on nerves already overstrained was almost unbearable.
+A habit of the doctor’s intensified this strain. He
+did not, I think, remember Boyde very well, and
+was constantly imagining that he saw him. The
+street door would open; he would nudge me and whisper
+“<i>Sehen Sie, da kommt der Kerl nun endlich...!</i>”
+He pointed, my heart leapt into my mouth; nothing
+could induce me to arrest him, it seemed, and my relief
+on seeing it was a stranger was always genuine—at the
+moment.</p>
+
+<p>One night—or early morning, rather—the doctor,
+who had been silent for a long time, turned to me with a
+grey, exhausted face. The morphine was beginning to
+fail him, and he must inject another dose. This happened
+several times.... Behind a curtain, or in a place aside
+where we were not even alone, he opened his clothes,
+found a clear space of skin, and applied the needle, while
+I rubbed the spot with my finger for about a minute to
+prevent a blister forming. No one, except perhaps a
+very drunken man or woman occasionally, paid the
+smallest attention to the operation; to them it was evidently
+a familiar and commonplace occurrence....
+“You must not stay up any longer,” he would say another
+time, after a sudden examination of my face. “You
+look dreadful. Come, we will go home.”</p>
+
+<p>I was only too glad to be marched off. We paced the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[186]</span>
+icy streets arm in arm, numerous people still about on
+various errands, tramcars and elevated trains still roaring,
+saloons and joints blazing with light, wide open till dawn,
+while the old man, rejuvenated and stimulated by the drug,
+discoursed eloquently the whole way, I dragging by his
+side, silent, depressed, weary with pains that seemed
+more poignant then than hunger or mere physical
+fatigue.</p>
+
+<p>The next night it would be the same, and the one after
+that, and the next one after that too—the search continued.
+It wore me down. I saw the eyeglass staring
+furtively at me from behind every corner, even in the day-time.
+His footstep sounded behind me often. At night
+I locked my door, for fear he might steal back into the
+room.... Once or twice I reported to headquarters that
+I was on the trail, but the detective had lost interest in
+the case; a conviction was doubtful, anyhow; he was not
+“going to sit around catching flies”; only the fact that I
+was a reporter on the <i>Sun</i> made him pause. “Telephone
+when you get him,” he said, “and I’ll come up and do the
+rest.” Much fresh information about Boyde had also
+come my way; he had even stolen the vases from a Church
+communion table—though he denied this in his confession
+later—and pawned them. In every direction, and this
+he did not deny, he had borrowed money in my name,
+giving me the worst possible character while doing so.
+Probably indeed, I never lived down <i>all</i> he said about
+me....</p>
+
+<p>It was a bitter, and apparently, an endless search.
+From the West Side joints, we visited the East Side haunts
+of vice and dissipation. I now knew Boyde too well to
+think he would “fly high”; his tastes were of the lowest.
+The ache it all gave me I can never describe....</p>
+
+<p>We went from place to place as hour after hour passed.
+We found his trail, and each time we found it my heart
+failed me. A woman, gorgeously painted, showing her
+silk stockings above the knee, her atmosphere reeking of
+bad scent and drink, came sidling up, murmuring this
+and that.... The Doctor’s eye was on me, though he said
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[187]</span>
+no word, made no single gesture.... The tin-type
+photograph was produced.... “Yep, I seen dat fellar,”
+grinned the woman in her “tough” bowery talk they
+all affected in the Tenderloin. “A high flier ... raining
+in London, too”—a gibe at the “English” habit
+of turning up one’s trousers—with a stream of local
+slang, oaths, filthy hints and repeated demands to “put
+’em up,” meaning drinks. Then a whispered growl from
+the old German “<i>Nichts! ... sie luegt ... los mit
+ihr!</i>” A further stream of lurid insults ... and she was
+gone, while another sidled up a little later. They all knew
+German, these women. Was not New York the third
+biggest German city, qua population, in the Empire?
+Few, as a matter of fact, were American. Barring the
+mulattos and quadroon girls, to say nothing of the negresses,
+the majority were French, Hungarian, Spanish, Italian,
+Dutch or some polyglot mixture not even the British
+Museum could define....</p>
+
+<p>Never did the old German’s kindness prove itself as
+in these hideous night-watches. Apart from all questions
+of trouble and expense, he was obliged to take extra doses
+of morphine to meet the charge upon his system, at a time,
+too, when he was struggling to reduce the quantity.
+Compared to what he did, even the fact that he gave the
+poison to others, possibly to his own child among them,
+seemed negligible. Not only did he accompany me during
+the chase, spending hours in low, suffocating dens of beastliness,
+walking the wind-swept streets in mid-winter,
+suffering insults and acute discomfort, but also he bestowed
+practical care and kindness on me during the day, providing
+me with food (I was in no state even to pose in the
+studios at the time), and even suggesting that I should fit
+up a bed in his workshop where he kept the lathe and made
+the chessmen. All this, too, from an old man, himself in
+deep misery, and on the losing side of a fight far more
+terrible than I ever knew or imagined, a fight, <i>he</i> then
+realized already, was to end before very long in failure,
+which meant death. The strange, broken old being,
+twisted and distorted though his nervous system was by
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[188]</span>
+a drug, showed—to me, at any rate—that rare thing
+which experience of life proves greater than intellect, than
+success, than power, or brilliance may achieve—a heart.
+If reincarnation, with its karmic law, be true, either he
+owed me a heavy debt from some forgotten past, or I
+owe to him a debt some future life will enable, and enforce
+me, to repay.</p>
+
+<p>It was at the end of the first ten days that, quite by
+chance, we stumbled upon the trail of Boyde. He had
+been seen in a “swell dive” on the West Side—with a
+woman. He was spending money like water. How had
+he come by it? Whom had he swindled now? We were
+in the East Side, following a false clue, when this information
+was given to us—under conditions impossible to describe—and
+we hurried across to the neighbourhood
+indicated. An hour later we were only a short thirty
+minutes behind his glittering path. He was visiting
+expensive joints. Champagne flowed. The woman wore
+furs. He wore a light coloured box-cloth overcoat. Both
+were “high fliers.” And he was drinking hard.</p>
+
+<p>The information, I confess, had the effect of stiffening
+me. It was impossible not to wonder, as we sat in the
+cross-town tram of East 23rd Street, whether in his gay
+career he gave a single thought to the room in East 19th
+Street, where he shared my bed, wore my suit, ate my food,
+such as it was, and where he had left me ill, alone and
+starving. The old doctor was grim and silent, but a repressed
+fury, I could see, bit into him. Was there, perhaps,
+vengeance, in the old, crumpled man? “No weakness,
+remember,” he growled from time to time. “I hold
+him, while you telephone to Mulberry Street. <i>Pflicht,
+pflicht!</i> It is your duty to—to everybody...!”</p>
+
+<p>The trail led us to Mouquin’s, where he had undoubtedly
+been shortly before, then on to a place in 34th Street ...
+and there we lost it hopelessly. It was not a false alarm,
+but the trail ran up a tree and vanished. He had gone
+home with the woman, but who she was or where she lived,
+not even the ward man—whom I knew by chance, and,
+equally by chance, met at the door—could tell us. I
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[189]</span>
+telephoned to headquarters to warn Detective Lawler to
+be in readiness. Lawler was out on a “big story” elsewhere,
+but another man would come up with the warrant
+the moment I sent word. I had, however, no occasion to
+telephone again that night, nor even the next night,
+though we must evidently have been within an ace of
+catching him. It was like searching for a needle in a
+haystack, or for a rabbit in a warren. The neighbourhood,
+this joint in particular, was alive with similar characters;
+all the women wore furs; all the men were tall, many of
+them had “glass-eyes,” the majority seemed English with
+“their trousers turned up.” We sat for hours in one den
+after another, but we caught no further indication of the
+trail. It had vanished into thin air. And after these two
+exciting and exhausting nights, the old doctor collapsed;
+he could do no more; he told me he felt unequal to the
+strain and could not accompany me even one more time.
+The old man was done.</p>
+
+<p>The day after the search stopped temporarily, Kay
+arrived in the city, to my great delight. It was a keen relief
+to have him back. The tour had been a failure, and the
+company had become stranded in Port Hope, Ontario.
+Salaries were never paid; he had received hotel board,
+railway ticket, laundry, but rarely any cash. What
+luggage he possessed was in the Port Hope hotel, held in
+lieu of payment. It remained there.</p>
+
+<p>We talked things over, and the news about Boyde,
+heard now for the first time in detail, shocked him. There
+was no doubt or hesitation in Kay’s mind. “Of course
+you must arrest him; we’ll go out to-night and look.”
+We did so, but with no result. Kay had the remains of
+a borrowed $10, we dined at Krisch’s; he had cigarettes,
+too.... We passed a happy evening, coming home
+early from the chase. Like myself, he had no overcoat, but
+the money did not reach to getting it from Ikey where
+Boyde had pawned it. We sat indoors, and talked....
+Only a short three months before we had sat talking round
+a camp-fire on our island. It seemed incredible. We
+discussed my plan for settling in the woods, to which he
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[190]</span>
+was very favourably inclined. Meanwhile, he explained,
+his Company was preparing another tour with better plays
+and better cast. They hoped to start out after Christmas,
+now only a week away. The word “Christmas” made us
+laugh. I still had the Christmas menu of our Hub
+dinner, and we pinned it upon the wall. It might suggest
+something to the long-suffering Mrs. Bernstein,
+Kay thought.</p>
+
+<p>But instead we ate our oatmeal and dried apples....</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[191]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXIII">
+    CHAPTER XXIII
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap kern'><span class='allcaps'>It</span> was on the Tuesday before Christmas that I caught
+Boyde; the day also before the White Star steamers
+sailed. The cold was Arctic, a biting east wind
+swept the streets. There was no sun. If ever there
+was a Black Tuesday for me it was that 18th of December,
+1892.</p>
+
+<p>Towards evening, the doctor, I knew, would expect
+me as usual; there was nothing to prevent my going;
+and yet each time the thought cropped up automatically
+in my mind I was aware of a vague, indeterminate feeling
+that somehow or other I should not go. This dim feeling
+also was automatic. There was nothing I knew of to
+induce, much less to support it. I did not mention it to
+Kay. I could not understand whence it came nor what
+caused it, but it did not leave me, it kept tugging at my
+nerves. “You’re not going to the doctor’s to-night,”
+it said, “you’re going elsewhere.”</p>
+
+<p>After dark this odd feeling became more and more
+insistent, and then all at once it connected itself with
+Boyde. Quite suddenly this happened. I had not been
+thinking of Boyde at the moment; now, abruptly, up
+cropped his name and personality. I was to go out and
+catch him.</p>
+
+<p>My mind resisted this idea. Several things, besides,
+were against it. In the first place, we had voluntarily
+given up the hunt and I was resigned to his escape;
+secondly and thirdly, I dreaded being out in the bitter
+cold, and I badly needed the “assuaging balm” of old
+Huebner’s needle. If the first two were negative inhibitions,
+the third was decidedly positive. All three had to
+be conquered if I was to obey the strange prompting
+which whispered, and kept on whispering: “Go out and
+look. You’ll find him.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[192]</span></p>
+
+<p>There was, in addition, the usual minor conflict to
+which I had grown quite accustomed, the conflict between
+my desire to be relieved of an unpleasant “duty,” yet the
+conviction that it was a duty I had no right to shirk. In
+spite of my resistance, at any rate, the prompting strengthened;
+as night fell I grew more and more restless and uneasy;
+until at last the touch of inevitability that lay
+behind it all declared itself—and the breaking point was
+reached.</p>
+
+<p>I could resist no longer; it was impossible to contain
+myself. I sprang out of my chair and told Kay I was going
+out to catch Boyde.</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t go,” he said. “Waste of time. He’s skipped
+long ago—been warned.” He muttered something more
+about the intense cold. “You’ll kill yourself.”</p>
+
+<p>But the impulsion I felt was irresistible. It was as
+though some inner power drove and guided me. As a
+matter of fact, I went straight to the exact spot where,
+among the teeming millions of the great city, Boyde was.
+Fifteen minutes earlier or later, I should have missed him.
+Also, but for a chance hesitation later—lasting sixty seconds
+at most—he would have seen me and escaped. The calculation,
+whether due to intelligence or to coincidence,
+was amazingly precise. I left our room at nine o’clock;
+at a quarter to ten I stood face to face with Boyde.</p>
+
+<p>The wind was driving a fine dry dust of snow before it,
+and all who could remained indoors. The streets were
+deserted; despite the nearness of Christmas, signs of bustle
+and the usual holiday crowd were absent. I walked very
+quickly to keep warm, an odd subconscious excitement in
+me. I seemed to know exactly where I was going, though,
+had anybody asked me, I could not have told them. Up
+4th Avenue to 23rd Street, then west across Broadway, I
+passed 6th and 7th Avenues, with only one pause of a
+moment. At the corner of 7th Avenue I hesitated,
+uncertain whether to turn north, or to continue west towards
+8th Avenue. A policeman was standing outside
+a saloon side-door, a man I had known in the Tombs
+police court; an Irishman, of course. I recognized him,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[193]</span>
+He was friendly to me because I had used his name in a
+story; he remembered me now. I produced the tin-type
+photograph. He inspected it under the nearest electric
+light.</p>
+
+<p>“Yep,” he said, “I seen that feller only a few minutes
+back—half an hour maybe—only he’s lifted his mustache.”</p>
+
+<p>“Shaved his moustache—yes?”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s what I said,” as he handed back the tin-type.
+“Got a story?” he inquired the same instant. “Anything
+big doing?”</p>
+
+<p>“Which way did he go?”</p>
+
+<p>“Up-town,” said the policeman, jerking his thumb in
+the direction north. “Up 8th Avenoo. And he was
+travellin’ with a partner, a big feller, same size as yerself,
+I guess.” He moved off to show he had no more to say.
+Any story that might result would be out of his beat.
+There was nothing in it for him. His interest vanished.
+I hurried on to the corner of 8th Avenue, the edge of a
+bad neighbourhood leading down through the negro
+quarter towards the haunts of the river-front, and there
+I paused again for a second or two.</p>
+
+<p>I was still in 23rd Street, but I now turned up the
+Avenue. It was practically deserted, the street cars empty,
+few people on the pavements. The side-streets crossed it
+at right angles, poorly lit, running right and left into a
+world of shadows, but at almost every corner stood a
+brilliant saloon whose windows and glass doors poured
+out great shafts of light. Sometimes there were four
+saloons, one at each corner, and the blaze was dazzling.
+I passed 24th, 25th, 26th and 27th streets. There were
+little flurries of dry snow; I saw no one, nothing but empty
+silent sidewalks swept by the icy wind.</p>
+
+<p>At 28th Street there were four saloons, one at each
+corner, and the blaze of light had a warm, enticing look.
+Through the blurred windows of the one nearest to me,
+the heads of the packed crowd inside as they lined up to
+the bar were just visible, and while I stood a moment,
+shivering in the icy wind, the comforting idea of a hot
+whisky came to me. For the wind cut like glass and neither
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[194]</span>
+my excitement nor the exercise had warmed me. I
+hesitated, standing against a huge electric light pole, in
+whose black shadow I was quite invisible. A hot whisky,
+I reflected, in this neighbourhood would cost 20 or 25 cents;
+I had 30 cents in my pocket; I needed the stimulant;
+I was very weak; I felt cold to the bone. But 25 cents
+was a lot of money, I might want a car-fare home besides
+... and I was still hesitating when two tall figures
+emerged suddenly out of the dark side-street into the flood
+of light, swung sharp round the corner, and passed through
+the glass doors into the saloon. The figures were two men,
+and the first of them was Boyde.</p>
+
+<p>For a second my heart seemed to stop, then began
+immediately racing and beating violently. In that brilliant
+light I saw every detail sharply, Boyde and his companion,
+both mercilessly visible. The man I wanted wore
+a big horsy overcoat of light-coloured box-cloth with large
+white buttons, the velvet collar turned up about his ears.
+The other man I did not know; he was taller than Boyde
+and wore no overcoat; he was the “partner travellin’
+with him” mentioned by the policeman. His gait was
+unsteady, he reeled a little.</p>
+
+<p>The clamour of noisy voices blared out a moment into
+the street before the doors swung to again, and I stood quite
+still for an appreciable time, blotted out of sight in my
+black shadow. Had I not hesitated a moment to reflect
+about that hot whisky I should have passed, my figure
+full in the blaze, just in front of the two men, who would
+have waited in the dark side-street till I was safely out of
+sight.</p>
+
+<p>The state of my nerves, I suppose, was pretty bad,
+and the lack of my customary evening dose accentuated
+it. I know, anyhow, that at first I realized one thing only—that
+I could never have the heart to arrest the fellow.
+This quickly passed, however; the racing of my blood
+passed too; determination grew fixed; I decided to act at
+once. But should I go in, or should I wait till they came
+out again? If I went in there would probably be a fight;
+Boyde’s hulking companion would certainly take his side;
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[195]</span>
+the lightest blow in my weak state and I should be
+down and out. On the other hand, there was a side
+door, there were several side doors, and the couple
+might easily slip out, for I could not watch all the doors
+at once.</p>
+
+<p>I decided to go in. And the moment the decision was
+taken, complete calmness came over me, so that I felt
+myself merely an instrument of fate. It was horrible,
+but it had to be. Boyde was to get the punishment he
+deserved. I could not fail.</p>
+
+<p>The way the little scene was stage-managed seemed
+curious to me when it was all over, for as I moved out into
+the light, a couple of policemen came across the broad
+avenue behind and looked inquisitively at what must have
+seemed my queer behaviour. I immediately crossed to
+meet them, while never taking my eye off the swing-doors.
+A man who had just gone into that saloon, I told them,
+was to be arrested.</p>
+
+<p>“That so?” they asked with a grin, thinking me drunk,
+of course. “And what’s he done to get all that?”</p>
+
+<p>I told them I was a reporter on the <i>Sun</i>, that I was the
+complainant in the case, and that Detective Lawler of the
+9th District had the warrant at headquarters. They
+could telephone to him if they liked. They listened, but
+they would not do anything. I could telephone to Lawler
+myself; <i>they</i> weren’t going to act without a warrant.
+They finally agreed to wait outside and “see fair play,”
+if I would go in and fetch “the guy” out into the street.
+“We’ll stop any trouble,” they said, “and take him to
+the station if <i>you</i> make a complaint.” I agreed to this
+and walked in through the swing-doors.</p>
+
+<p>The saloon was crowded, the heat wonderful, the bars
+thronged with men in all stages of intoxication; bar-tenders
+in white jackets flew to and fro; business was
+booming, and at the least sign of a row, everybody, more
+or less, would have joined in. This general impression,
+however, was only in the background of my mind. What
+filled it was the fact that Boyde was looking at me, staring
+straight into my eyes, but in the mirror. The instant the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[196]</span>
+doors swung to I had caught his reflection in the long glass
+behind the bar. Across this bar, a little space on either
+side of him, he was leaning on both elbows, his face resting
+in one hand. The eye-glass—it was asking for trouble to
+wear it in such a place—had been discarded. He was
+alone. His back, of course, was towards me.</p>
+
+<p>For a few seconds we stared at one another in this way,
+and then, as I walked down the long room, pushing between
+the noisy crowd, he slowly turned. I reached him. A
+faint smile appeared on his face. He evidently did not
+know quite what to do, but a hand began to move towards
+me. He thought, it seemed, I was going to shake hands,
+whereas I thought he was probably going to hit me.
+Instead my hand went to his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>“Boyde,” I said, keeping my voice low, “I want you.
+You’re going to be—arrested.”</p>
+
+<p>The smile died out, and an awful <span id='cor_196'>look<del>ed</del></span> rushed into his
+eyes. His face turned the colour of chalk. At first I
+felt sure he was going to land me a blow in the face, but
+the abrupt movement of his body was merely that he tried
+to steady himself against the bar, for I saw his hand grip
+the rail and cling to it. The same second his features
+began to work.</p>
+
+<p>“I’ve got to arrest you,” I repeated. “It’s Karma.
+You had better come quietly.”</p>
+
+<p>“Karma——” he repeated in a dazed way and stared.
+He was bewildered, incredulous still.</p>
+
+<p>The same second, however, he grasped that it was
+serious, my face and voice and manner doubtless warned
+him. This, at last, was real; he suddenly knew it. The
+expression of appeal poured up instantly into his eyes,
+those big, innocent, blue eyes where I had so often seen it
+before. Only now there was no moustache, and the
+brutal cunning mouth was bare. He began to speak at
+once, keeping his voice low, for several people were already
+interested in us. He used his softest and most pleading
+tone. With that, too, I was thoroughly familiar.</p>
+
+<p>“Blackwood—for God’s sake let me go. I’m off to
+England to-morrow on a White Star boat. I’m working
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[197]</span>
+my passage over. For the love of God—for my mother’s
+sake——!”</p>
+
+<p>I cut him short. The falseness, the cowardice, the
+treachery all working in his face at once, sickened me.
+At the same time an aching pity rose. I felt miserable.</p>
+
+<p>“You must come out with me. At once.”</p>
+
+<p>He turned quickly and looked about him, his eyes
+taking in everything. Some men beside us had heard our
+talk and were ready to interfere. “What’s your trouble?”
+one of them asked thickly. I realized we must get away
+at once, out into the street, though the scene had barely
+lasted two minutes yet.</p>
+
+<p>“There’s a policeman waiting outside,” I went on.
+“You’d better come quietly. A row won’t help you.”
+But I said it louder than I thought, for several heads turned
+towards the swing-doors. The effect on Boyde, however,
+was hardly what I expected, and seemed strange. He
+wilted suddenly. I believe all thought of resistance or
+escape went out of him when he heard the word “police.”
+His jaw dropped, there was suddenly no expression in
+his eyes at all. A complete blankness came into his features.
+It was horrible. He’s got no soul, I thought.
+He merely stared at me.</p>
+
+<p>“Whose is that overcoat?” I asked, feeling sure it
+was not his own. I already had him by the arm.</p>
+
+<p>“Roper’s,” he said quietly, his voice gone quite dead.
+“Here he is.” His face was still like a ghost’s. It was
+blank as stone.</p>
+
+<p>I had quite forgotten the companion, but at that same
+moment I saw Roper hovering up beside me. His attitude
+was threatening, he was three-parts drunk; a glance
+showed me he was an Englishman, and obviously, by birth,
+a gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>“Roper, if you want your coat, you’d better take it.
+Boyde is under arrest.”</p>
+
+<p>“Arrest be damned!” Roper cried in a loud voice
+that everybody heard. There was already a crowd about
+us, but this increased it. Roper was looking me over.
+He glared with anger. “You’re that cad Blackwood, I
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[198]</span>
+suppose, are you? I’ve heard about you. I know your
+whole damned rotten story and the way you’ve treated
+Boyde. But Boyde’s a friend of mine. No one can do
+anything to him while <i>I’m</i> here...!”</p>
+
+<p>He roared and shouted in that crowded bar-room,
+while the whole place looked on and listened, ready to
+interfere at the first sign of “a fuss.” A blow, a little push
+even, would have laid me out, and in the general scuffle
+or free fight that was bound to follow, Boyde could have
+got clear away—but neither he nor Roper thought of this
+apparently. Roper went on pouring out his drunken abuse,
+lurching forward but never actually touching me, while
+Boyde stood perfectly still and listened in silence. He
+made no attempt to shake off my hand even. I suddenly
+then leaned over and spoke into his ear:</p>
+
+<p>“If you come quietly at once it’s only petit larceny—stealing
+the money. Otherwise it’s forgery.”</p>
+
+<p>It acted like magic. An expression darted back into
+his face. He turned, told Roper to shut up, said something
+to the crowd about its being only a little misunderstanding,
+and walked without another word towards the doors.
+I walked beside him, the men made a way; a few seconds
+later we were in the street. Roper, who had waited to
+finish his drink, and was puzzled besides by the quick
+manœuvre, lurched at some distance after us. The two
+policemen, who had watched the scene through the windows,
+stood waiting. Boyde swayed against me when he
+saw them. I marched him up to the nearest one. “I
+make a charge of larceny against this man, and the warrant
+is at Mulberry Street with Detective Lawler. I am the
+complainant.” They told him he was under arrest, and
+we began our horrible little procession to the station in
+West 21st Street.</p>
+
+<p>Boyde was between the two policemen, I was next to
+the outside one, on the kerb, Roper came reeling in the
+rear, shouting abuse and threats into my face. The next
+time I saw Roper was in the court of General Sessions,
+weeks later, when Boyde was brought up for trial. By
+that time he had learned the truth; he came up and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[199]</span>
+apologized. Boyde, he told me, had swindled him even
+more completely than he had swindled me.</p>
+
+<p>The search in the station made me sick at heart;
+every pocket was turned out; there was 80 dollars in cash;
+the sergeant used filthy language. Boyde was taken
+down to a cell, and I, as a newspaper reporter, was allowed
+to go down with him. I stayed for two hours, talking
+through the bars.</p>
+
+<p>It was two in the morning when the sergeant turned
+me out after a dreadful conversation, and when I reached
+home, to find Kay sitting up anxiously still, I was too exhausted,
+from cold, excitement and hunger, to tell him more
+than a bare outline of it all. I had to appear at eight
+o’clock next morning and make my formal charge against
+Boyde, in the Tombs Police Court—the Tombs, of all
+places!—and with that thought in my mind I fell asleep.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">[200]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXIV">
+    CHAPTER XXIV
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap kern'><span class='allcaps'>Boyde</span> came up with the first batch of prisoners.
+The portentous shadow of the Tombs prison,
+with its forbidding architecture, hung over the
+whole scene.</p>
+
+<p>My first sight of him was sitting among the rows of
+prisoners, waiting to be called. He looked ill and broken,
+he made a pleading sign to me. As a reporter I had the
+right to interview anybody and everybody, and I made
+my way along the serried wooden benches. Lawler sat
+next him, looking very pleased to have secured his prisoner,
+and a good story into the bargain, without any trouble
+to himself; but when I tried to shake hands with Boyde,
+I found to my horror that he was handcuffed.</p>
+
+<p>“Say, boss, be sure and git me name spelled right, and
+tell the reporters that <i>I</i> effected the arrest,” was the first
+thing that Lawler said, using the phrase the detectives
+always used.</p>
+
+<p>By promising the man all he wanted and more besides,
+I managed to get us all three into a corner where we could
+talk without everybody else hearing; also I got the handcuffs
+taken off, for they were quite unnecessary inside the
+building. The first thing Boyde said was to beg for
+a drink; he had taken a lot the night before, his throat
+was parched, his nerves were bad. At the moment this
+was quite impossible, but I got one for him in the reporters’
+room after his case had been called. The second
+thing he said was to beg me to “keep it out of the papers,”
+though this, of course, lay quite beyond my powers.
+Apart from this he said very little except to repeat and
+repeat that he was repentant, and to beg me to withdraw
+the charge, though this was now impossible, the matter
+being out of my hands. Also, he wondered what the sentence
+would be—he meant to plead guilty—and implored me
+to leave out the forgery. He was very badly frightened.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[201]</span></p>
+
+<p>That early morning hour in the stinking atmosphere
+of the over-heated police court was too ghastly ever to be
+forgotten, but there were particular moments when pain
+and pity, to say nothing of other strangely mixed emotions,
+stabbed me with peculiar ferocity. When the reporters
+flocked round him like vultures after prey was one of these;
+another was when Boyde stood in front of the Tammany
+magistrate, Ryan by name, and pleaded guilty. A mistake,
+though not actually wrong, had crept into the charge
+sheet. In my excitement of the night before the amount
+stolen had been entered as $32, and though this was the
+truth, I had meant to make it only $25. I was unintentionally
+to blame for this—it was now Grand Larceny
+instead of Petit Larceny. A magistrate could only deal
+with the lesser offence, and Boyde therefore was held for
+trial in General Sessions, instead of being sentenced then
+and there. The look he gave me as Ryan spoke the words
+was like a knife. He believed I had done this purposely.
+A third unforgettable moment was when he was being
+roughly pushed downstairs on his way to a cell in the
+Tombs: he looked back forlornly over his shoulder at me.</p>
+
+<p>In the reporters’ room it was decided to print the
+“Boyde story.” I knew all the men; Acton Davies was
+there for the <i>Evening Sun</i>, specially sent down by McCloy.
+The reporters dragged and tore at me. I realized what
+“interviewed” victims felt when they wished to hide
+everything away inside themselves. Yet the facts had
+to be told; it was best I should give them accurately, if as
+briefly, as leniently, as possible. The sight of all those
+vultures (of whom, incidentally, I was one) scribbling
+down busily the details of my intimate life with Boyde,
+to be hawked later in the streets as news, was likewise a
+picture not easily forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>Before the ordeal was over, Lawler returned from the
+cell. He insisted, with a wink at me, that he had made
+the arrest; the credit of the chase he also claimed; he had,
+too, additional facts about Boyde’s past criminal career
+of which I was quite ignorant, supplied by records at
+headquarters. Lawler intended to get all the advertisement
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">[202]</span>
+for himself he could. I let his lying pass. On the
+whole it seemed best to let him be responsible for the arrest;
+it made the story more commonplace, and, luckily, so far,
+I had not described this scene.</p>
+
+<p>An hour later I was talking with Boyde between the
+bars of his cell in the Tombs prison, while, two hours later,
+every evening paper in New York had a column or a column
+and a half about us printed on its front page. There were
+scare headlines of atrocious sort. There were posters,
+too, showing our names in big letters. News that day
+happened to be scarce, and the Boyde story was “good
+stuff” apparently. The talk with him in the cell was one
+of many; he was there six weeks before the trial came on.</p>
+
+<p>The papers finished him; the case was too notorious
+for him ever to swindle again unless he changed his name.
+They scarified him, they left out no detail, they hunted
+up a thousand new ones, he had “cut a wide swath”
+(<i>sic</i>) all over New York State, as one of them printed.
+I had not mentioned Pauline M—— or the pastor’s
+daughter, yet both were included. To see my own name
+in print for the first time, the names of my parents, and
+of half the peerage as well, was bad enough; to find myself
+classed with bad company generally, with crooks and
+rogues, with shady actresses, with criminals, was decidedly
+unpleasant. Paragraphs my brother wrote to me appeared
+in London papers too. Copies of the New York
+ones were sent to my father. “Too foxy for Algernon”
+was a headline he read out to my brother in his library.
+Boyde had even written to him, signing himself “your
+cousin,” to ask for money for “your poor son,” but had
+received no reply. There is no need now to mention names,
+but any distinguished connexion either of us possessed
+appeared in the headlines or the article itself. “Nephew
+of an earl held in $1,000 bail,” “Cousin of Lord X,”
+“Scion of British Aristocracy a Sneak-thief,” were some
+of the descriptions. “Son of a duchess in the Soup,”
+was another. The <i>Staatszeitung</i> had a phrase which threw
+a momentary light on an aspect of lower life in the city,
+when Freytag, the German reporter who had taught me
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[203]</span>
+how to write a court story, described me as “Sohn einer <i>sogennanten</i>
+Herzogin.” He only laughed when I spoke to him
+about it. “How should <i>I</i> know,” he said sceptically....</p>
+
+<p>Boyde came up in due course before Recorder Smythe
+in general sessions, the most severe and most dreaded of
+all the judges. He still wore my thick suit, he wore
+also a pair of Harding Davis’s boots, and, I believe, something
+else of Sothern’s. His sentence was two years in
+the Penitentiary on Blackwell Island. A group of other
+people he had swindled, including “Artist Palmer,” were
+in court; so was an assistant of Ikey’s, with <i>all</i> our pawned
+articles. Every single thing, whether stolen goods or
+not, was returned to me. The doctor and Kay were also
+there. Some of his letters are a human document:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class='right pr7'><i>Tombs</i>,</p>
+<p class='right pr1'>December, 1892.</p>
+
+<p class='mtq'>Oh, Blackwood, what black treachery I returned you for
+your many kindnesses, base lying for all your straightforward
+dealing with me! You freely forgave me what ninety-nine men
+out of every hundred would, if not imprisoned me for, certainly
+never have forgiven me. I returned evil for good, and you still
+bore with me. You said—I shall never forget it, for it was when
+you found the stamp torn off your letter—and even at that
+moment I had money in my pocket belonging to you, just as I
+had when you shared your last 50 cent. piece that night at
+Krisches, for I <i>must</i> say this, though I could tear myself to pieces
+when I think of it—You said, ‘B. how you must <i>hate</i> me!’</p>
+
+<p>No, Blackwood, it seems a paradox, but I could not hate you
+if I tried to. I don’t say this because I am in prison, or with any
+desire to flatter. I am sincere in everything I say and it comes
+from my heart. You have every reason to think from my former
+actions that I am not sincere above reward, but I am.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, the old, but nevertheless true remark, TOO LATE!
+It comes home to me with striking and horrible vividness.
+Too Late! I have forfeited the respect of every good and honest
+man, have disgraced my English name and my family. But,
+let me go. Five years of service will be the best thing for me.
+I can enlist under another name and may perhaps get a commission
+in time. Give me the chance of redeeming myself, please.
+If ever any man was sincerely repentant for the past I am that
+man.</p>
+
+<p class='right pr1'><span class="smcap">Arthur B.</span></p>
+
+<p>Please excuse mistakes and alterations. I am so fearfully
+shaky.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[204]</span></p>
+
+
+<p class='mt1h right pr1'><i>The Tombs City Prison,</i><br>
+  <i>Centre Street, N. Y.</i></p>
+
+<p class='mtq'>Please read through before destroying it.</p>
+
+<p>I have begged another sheet of paper and stamp in order to
+make one final appeal.</p>
+
+<p>Will you not come down again on receipt of this? Please
+do, for God’s sake. No visitors are allowed on New Year’s Day,
+or on Sunday. New Year’s Day! What a new year’s day for
+me! Let me begin it afresh. I have a favour to ask you
+which I must ask you verbally; I cannot put it on paper. It
+is getting dark; so once more I ask you, I implore you, to
+have mercy on me for my mother’s sake. For her sake spare</p>
+
+<p class='right pr1'>
+  <span class="smcap">Arthur B.</span>
+</p>
+
+<p>Visiting hours 10-2. I am speaking the truth and nothing
+but the truth when I say that I am sincerely sorry for all that I
+have done and implore your pardon. This is not an insincere
+expression, but one from my heart. Come down again, please,
+even to speak to me, for you don’t know the mental agony I
+am suffering.</p>
+
+<p class='right pr1'>
+  A. B.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class='mt1h right pr2'><i>Tombs City Prison</i>,</p>
+<p class='right pr1'>New Year’s Day.</p>
+
+<p class='mtq'>It was more than kind of you to come all the way down here
+and then after all not be able to see me; not much loss to you,
+it is true, but a bitter disappointment to me. Palmer came down
+and talked <i>very</i> kindly to me and instilled a little hope in me.
+But this is a wretched New Year’s Day.</p>
+
+<p>I was talking to an old convict this morning, a man who in
+his life has been about sixteen years in jail, and he said that if
+he had only been let off in the first instance with a few days in
+here, he would have been a different man to-day, but after serving
+one term he became reckless and has now become a notorious
+thief. As I said to you, think of me after 20 years’ penal servitude.</p>
+
+<p>Blackwood, won’t you and Palmer stay your hands once more?
+I will leave the country, and if ever I should return you could
+always have me arrested. I will never trouble you again.
+Let me make a fresh start once more.</p>
+
+<p>Should you decide not to press the charge you can go to the
+District Attorney’s Office and inform them of the fact.</p>
+
+<p>I once more <i>implore</i> you and Palmer to have pity on me,
+and please come and see me! May I wish you and Palmer a
+bright and happy New Year, brighter and happier than the past
+one.</p>
+
+<p class='right pr1'>
+  <span class="smcap">Arthur B.</span>
+</p>
+
+<p>Many thanks for the paper and envelopes. Bless you!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[205]</span></p>
+
+
+<p class='mt1h right pr1'>
+  <i>The Tombs.</i>
+</p>
+
+<p class='mtq'>Very many thanks for your visit yesterday. It is the only
+pleasure I have. I believe what you say is true—that I am
+reaping the result of evil done in the past and that the only
+real way to atone is to meet it squarely and accept my punishment
+without grumbling. If Karma is true, it is just, and I
+shall get what I deserve, and not an iota more.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot tell you how grateful I am to you for being so lenient
+to me and even writing to the District Attorney on my behalf.
+I am truly grateful, Blackwood. Please do not think I am not
+sorry for what I have done, or that I am not really penitent,
+for I am indeed.</p>
+
+<p>It was bitterly cold last night and I was awfully glad to have
+my overcoat, and blessed you for sending it. I know you got
+it out of pawn for me, and that is another kindness.</p>
+
+<p>Again, for the last time probably, I thank you for your
+many acts of kindness. I bitterly regret and earnestly repent
+for the manner I treated you, returning evil for good, and I shall
+think much of you when serving my time under a blazing sun
+or in my cramped and chilly cell.</p>
+
+<p class='right pr1'>
+  <span class="smcap">Arthur B.</span>
+</p>
+
+<p class='mt1h right pr1'>
+  <i>Tombs Prison.</i>
+</p>
+
+<p class='mtq'>I have just been to the Court House and pleaded guilty.
+My sentence is remanded till Friday week. If I could only get
+that lawyer I might get the sentence reduced a little. But Judge
+Smythe is a very hard man. My small hopes were dashed
+away on hearing that you had been subpœnaed to go before the
+Grand Jury this morning.</p>
+
+<p>Now all hope is gone; only blank, blank despair; no hope,
+all is dark. I wish I could die—much rather that than suffer
+this awful remorse. Do you know I sometimes think I am going
+mad? When I come out I shall be too old for the army, and
+what else can a felon, a criminal, a convict do? Is crime the
+only refuge? Shall I sink lower and lower? Will what small
+sense of decency and honour I have left be utterly destroyed
+and made callous by propinquity with other criminals?</p>
+
+<p>What a frightful nightmare to conjure up! Nightmare?
+No, it is only too true; it is stern, inexorable reality. Thank
+you for sending the clothes. I had no change before. Bless
+you!</p>
+
+<p class='right pr1'>
+  A. B.
+</p>
+
+<p class='mt1h right pr1'>
+  <i>Tombs City Prison.</i>
+</p>
+
+<p class='mtq'>What follows I wish to write voluntarily. It is a Confession
+and relieves me—</p>
+
+<p>I certainly wish to convey to you the fact of my sincere and
+deep sorrow for the shameful manner I treated you and abused
+your confidence and kindness. I fear that one of my letters
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[206]</span>
+cannot have reached you, as I am sure I wrote at length on this
+subject. You mistake and misjudge me when you think it is
+only fear that prompts me to write as I do. My eyes are opened
+to the enormity of my past crimes, opened by thinking and seeing
+things in the proper light. I have been alone with my thought
+for days now, and God knows how many more days will pass over
+my head before I again face the world. It will relieve me to
+give you a full confession of my treachery, for I believe there is
+no real repentance without real confession.</p>
+
+<p>To begin with the editor. I never had a chance of the position
+at Rockaway, although the editor once said casually that he would
+try and find me some similar position. I lied to you all through
+in that, for I wished you to think I had prospects of paying work in
+view. When you used to come down with me to Franklin Street
+(Harper’s) I waited about upstairs and looked at books, etc.,
+and then came down and concocted some lies about what I
+had said and done. I once borrowed $15 from him (Richard
+Harding Davis, Editor “Harper’s Weekly”) and said they were
+for you. My dealings with Sothern were that he from time to
+time lent me money, some $50 in all, and gave me a position at ten
+dollars a week. I told him when borrowing that the money
+was for your doctor, and when borrowing more I said you had
+wasted it in drink. I asked him to cash several of the cheques
+I forged, but he would never do this. I was paid up in full by
+the manager and also for the extra performances of the “Disreputable
+Mr. Reagen.” I little thought when I was playing
+Merivale’s part that I should act it true to life. With Mr.
+Beattie I lied all through. He never had any money of mine
+or knew my mother or ever heard from her. He never bailed
+me out, and I never used to see him as I said I did. You and
+Palmer thought that I spent some time in jail this summer,
+but I would rather not say anything in writing about that.
+My dealings with Palmer were that I borrowed money from him
+and said it was for you. I also went to your banker acquaintance
+and borrowed twenty-five dollars for a specialist, saying it
+was at your request. I did pawn the overcoat you gave me to
+post to Kay, and that time you forgave me for stealing your
+money I had in my pocket the proceeds of three stories of yours
+I had given the <i>Sun</i>, and they had paid for. But, even in the
+face of your forgiveness, I wanted this money so much for my
+indulgences that I could not face the privation of handing it
+over to you. I lied in the face of your kindness and generosity,
+and when you even needed food I was going about drinking and
+womanizing and spending freely. When my funds were exhausted
+I came back to you, for I knew you would always forgive
+me. It is awful. No wonder you want to see me go to prison.
+I am as wicked a man as ever lived, I believe. I wonder what
+caused me to tell such lies. Am I a natural born liar? It
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">[207]</span>
+seems like it. You wrong me in one thing—in thinking my
+sorrow is sham and prompted by fear and the hope of getting
+off. I cannot find words to express my contrition. Believe me,
+I would do anything in my power, and will do, when my term
+is up, to make reparation. I submit to the inevitable. I can
+imagine something now of what you must have suffered when I
+left you alone without food or money those four days and nights.
+I think, however, the worst thing I did was telling the pastor’s
+daughter that you tried to prevent our meeting because you
+wished me to marry one of your sisters, though I do not know,
+of course, whether you have any even. That, and the taking
+the stamps off your letters so that I could get beer, seem to weigh
+most heavily with me now in my darkness and loneliness. I
+do not know what my sentence will be—heavy, I suspect, unless
+I can get someone to plead for me, and I have not a single solitary
+friend to do that. I am utterly alone. I have been in this
+cell now twenty-one days, and have a week more before sentence
+is given. It seems like six months. No one can realize what
+prison is like till they have tried it.</p>
+
+<p>Believe me, I am deeply and truly sorry. I speak from my
+heart. Think of me as kindly as you can when I am in the
+Penitentiary. I hope I shall see you once more.</p>
+
+<p class='right pr1'>
+  <span class="smcap">Arthur B.</span>
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>I saw Boyde twice in my life afterwards; I heard,
+indirectly, from him once: the prison chaplain wrote to
+ask for “his things” which, Boyde told him, I “insisted
+upon keeping.” He never had any “things” at all while I
+knew him; the letter was indignant and offensive. Boyde
+had evidently “told a tale” to the chaplain.</p>
+
+<p>The first time I saw him was some eighteen months
+after he had been sent up, good behaviour evidently
+having shortened his term. I was walking up Irving Place
+and saw him suddenly about fifty yards in front of me.
+It was my own thick suit I recognized first, then its wearer.
+I instinctively called out his name. He turned, looked at
+me, hurried on, and went round the corner into 21st Street.
+Once round the corner, he must have run like a hare,
+for when I entered the street too, he had disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>The second, and last, time I saw him was in London
+ten years later—at a bookstall in Charing Cross station.
+He saw me, however, first, or before I could come close
+enough to speak, and he melted away into the crowd with
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">[208]</span>
+swift and accomplished ease. I was near enough, though,
+to note that he had grown his heavy moustache again,
+still wore his eyeglass, and was smartly, even prosperously,
+dressed. He looked very little older. From Lynwood
+Palmer, whom I met soon afterwards in Piccadilly, I
+heard that my old employer, the Horse, had seen him at
+Tattersalls not long before, and that he, Boyde, had come
+and begged Palmer not to give him away as he was “after
+some Jews only”! Artist Palmer took no action.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">[209]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXV">
+    CHAPTER XXV
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap kern'><span class='smcap'>Mc</span><span class='allcaps'>Cloy</span> took me back on the <i>Evening Sun</i>, according
+to his promise, about mid-January, and about
+the same time Mrs. Bernstein sold her house and
+moved to another lower down the street, almost opposite
+to the doctor’s. There were no insects, all our things
+were out of pawn, we had overcoats again, but we had to
+find a new Ikey, for the old Ikey, of course, would have
+nothing more to do with our trousers, gladstone bag, top
+hat and tennis cups.</p>
+
+<p>The East 19th Street chapter was closed when Boyde
+went to Blackwell Island; another in the same street had
+begun: Mrs. Bernstein begged us to move with her: we
+owed her big arrears of rent; also, for some odd reason,
+she really liked us. In her odd way she even tried to
+mother me, as though her interest, somewhere perhaps her
+pity too, were touched. “You haf had drouble in England,
+I subbose?” she hinted sympathetically. She had
+read the newspapers carefully, and could not understand
+why I should be exiled in poverty in this way unless I
+had done something shady at home. It followed that I
+had been sent out to America for my country’s good.
+She shared, that is, the view most people took of my
+position in New York.</p>
+
+<p>Only three months had passed since we arrived, but
+it seemed years. I had never lived anywhere else. The
+sheltered English life, the Canadian adventures, above all
+the months upon our happy island, lay far away down the
+wrong end of a telescope, small, distant patches, brightly
+coloured, lit by a radiant sun, remote, incredible. It was
+not myself but another person I watched moving across
+these miniature maps of memory. Those happy days,
+states, places, those careless, sanguine moods, those former
+points of view so bright with hope, seemed gone for ever.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">[210]</span>
+I now lived in a world where I belonged. I should never
+climb out again.</p>
+
+<p>The intensity of emotion at the time is difficult to
+realize now, and quite impossible to recapture. I only
+know that my feelings burned like fire, all the fiercer, of
+course, for being inarticulate. The exaggeration was
+natural enough; everything was out of proportion in me:
+Boyde had destroyed my faith in people. I believed in no
+one. The doctor had said that to lose belief in others made
+life insupportable. I found that statement true. There
+was a deep bitterness in my heart that for a time was more
+than I could manage, and this distrust and bitterness
+led me into an act of cruelty that shames me to this day.</p>
+
+<p>Into the roar and thunder of that frenzied newspaper
+office stole a hesitating figure one afternoon, a shy youth
+with rosy cheeks and curly hair, dressed in shabby but
+well-cut clothes, and obviously an Englishman. He wore
+gloves and carried a “cane”; these marked him as a
+“Britisher” at once. He was asking for someone;
+fingers were pointed at me; he was faintly familiar; I had
+seen the face before—but where? He came over and
+introduced himself as Calder, son of a Midland coach-builder;
+we had met at some place or other—outside a
+studio door, I think—and he knew Kay. I forget what he
+was doing in New York—-idling, I think, or travelling.
+He had outlived his cash, at any rate. He was in difficulties.
+I distrusted him instantly. He was, of course,
+another Boyde. I gave him the curtest possible greeting.
+He, in turn, found the greatest possible difficulty in telling
+me his story.</p>
+
+<p>I was sitting at the reporters’ table in shirt-sleeves
+(owing to the suffocating temperature of the over-heated
+office), scribbling at top speed the details of some lurid
+“story,” while Calder told me his tale. He wanted to
+whisper, but the noise forced him to shout, and this disconcerted
+him. No one listened, however; he had merely
+brought a “story” in. He had—but it was his own story.
+I have quite forgotten what it was, or what had happened
+to him; only the main point I remember: he had nowhere
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[211]</span>
+to sleep. Of his story I did not believe a single word,
+though I did believe that he had no bed. “Can I bunk
+with you to-night?” he came finally to the point. I
+told him he most certainly could not. He refused to believe
+me. I assured him I meant it. I was his last hope, he
+said, with a nervous grin. I told him to try a doss-house.
+He grinned and giggled and flushed—then thanked me!
+It would only be for a night or two, he urged. “You
+can’t possibly let me walk the streets all night!” I
+replied that one Boyde had been enough for me. I had
+learnt my lesson, he could walk the streets for the rest of
+his life for all I cared. He giggled, still refusing to believe
+I meant it. His father was sending money. He would
+repay me. He went on pleading. I again repeated that
+I could not take him in. He left, still thanking me and
+blushing.</p>
+
+<p>Visions of another Boyde were in my mind. At the
+time, moreover, our poverty was worse than it ever had
+been. Boyde, I found, had sold six of my French stories
+to McCloy at $5 each, and had pocketed the money.
+My salary was now being docked five dollars each week
+till this $30 was paid off. We had, therefore, only ten
+dollars a week between the two of us. Everything was
+in pawn again, and times were extra hard. To have Calder
+living on us was out of the question, for once he got
+in we should never get him out. I was tired of criminal
+parasites.</p>
+
+<p>It was my head that argued thus; in my heart I knew
+perfectly well that Calder was guileless, innocent as milk,
+an honest, feckless, stupid fellow who was in genuine
+difficulty for the moment, but who would never sponge on
+us, and certainly do nothing mean. Conscience pricked
+me—for half an hour perhaps; in the stress and excitement
+of the day I then forgot him. That evening Acton Davis,
+the dramatic critic, gave me a theatre seat, on condition
+that I wrote the notice for him. It was after eleven
+when I reached home. Curled up in my bed, sound
+asleep, his clothes neatly folded on the chair, lay Calder.</p>
+
+<p>It was February and freezing cold. Kay was away for
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">[212]</span>
+the week, trying a new play at Mount Vernon, where he
+slept. There was no reason why I should not have let Calder
+spend at least one warm night in the room. But, apart
+from the shock of annoyance at finding him asleep in my
+own bed, and apart from a moment’s anger at his cool
+impudence, the startling parallel with Boyde was vividly
+unpleasant. It was Boyde No. 2 I saw sleeping in my bed.
+If I let him stay one night I should never get rid of him at
+all. $10 a week among three! Calder must take up his
+bed and walk.</p>
+
+<p>I woke him and told him to dress and leave the room.
+I watched him dress, heard him plead, heard him describe
+the freezing weather, describe his walking the streets all
+night without a cent in his pockets. He blushed and giggled
+all the time. It was some minutes before he believed
+I was in earnest, before he crawled out of bed; it was much
+longer before he was dressed and ready to go.... I saw
+him down the stairs and through the front door and out
+into the bitter street. I gave him a dollar, which represented
+two days’ meals for me, and would pay a bed in a
+doss-house for him. When he was gone I spent a wretched
+night, ashamed of myself through and through. It really
+was Boyde who turned him out, but the excuse had no
+comfort in it. The little incident remains unkindly vivid;
+I still see it; it happens over again; the foolish, good-natured
+face, the blushes and shyness, the implicit belief
+in my own kindness, the red cheeks and curly hair—going
+through the front door into the bitter streets. It
+all stands out. Shame and remorse go up and down in me
+while I write it now, a belated confession.... I never
+saw Calder again.</p>
+
+<p>Another thing that still shames me is our treatment of
+old greasy Mother Bernstein. Though a little thing,
+this likewise keeps vividly alive. A “little” thing!
+The big things, invariably with extenuating circumstances
+that furnish modifying excuses and comforting explanations,
+are less stinging in the memory. It is the little
+things that pierce and burn and prick for years to come.
+In my treatment of Mrs. Bernstein, at any rate, lay an
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[213]</span>
+alleviating touch of comedy. In the end, too, the debt
+was paid. Twelve months later—it seemed a period of
+years—Kay got suddenly from a brother £100—an enormous
+sum; while I had twice received from my brother,
+God bless him! post-office orders for £10. This was a long
+time ahead yet, but Mrs. Bernstein eventually received her
+due with our sincerest thanks. She had moved to another
+house in Lafayette Place by then. We paid up and left
+her, Kay going to one boarding-house, I to another.</p>
+
+<p>The payment in full, at any rate, relieved my conscience,
+for the way we bullied that poor old Jewess was inexcusable.
+The excuse I found seemed adequate at the time,
+however—we must frighten her or be turned out. Each
+time she pressed for payment, out came my heavy artillery;
+imaginary insects, threats of newspaper articles, bluster,
+bluff and bullying of every description, often reducing her
+to tears, and a final indignant volley to the effect that
+“If you don’t trust us, we had better go; in fact, if this
+occurs again, we <i>shall</i> go!” More than once we pretended
+to pack up; more than once I announced that we had found
+other rooms; “Next Monday I shall pay you the few dollars
+we owe, and leave your house, and you will read an account
+of your conduct in the <i>Evening Sun</i>, Mrs. Bernstein.”
+She invariably came to heel. “I ask my hospand” had
+no sequel. By frightening and bullying her, I stayed on and
+on and on, owing months’ and months’ rent and breakfast;
+our ascendancy over her was complete. It was, none the
+less, a shameful business, for at the time it seemed doubtful
+if we should ever be in a position to pay the kind old woman
+anything at all....</p>
+
+<p>The fifteen months I now spent reporting for the
+<i>Evening Sun</i> at fifteen dollars a week lie in the mind like
+a smudged blur of dreary wretchedness, a few incidents
+only standing out.... The desire for the drug was conquered,
+the old doctor was dead, Kay had obtained a
+position with a firm in Exchange Place, where he
+made a small, uncertain income in a business that was an
+absolute mystery to me, the buying and selling of exchange
+between banks. Louis B—— had meanwhile
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">[214]</span>
+arrived, without a cent to his name. It was a long and
+bitter period, three of us in a small room again, but at
+least an honest three. Louis’s French temperament ran
+to absinthe—when he could get it. He used the mattress
+on the floor, while Kay and I shared the bed between us.
+Our clothes were useless to the short, rotund little Frenchman;
+as the weeks passed he looked more and more like
+a pantomime figure in the streets, and when he went to
+give his rare French and Spanish lessons he never dared
+to take off his overcoat (which he had managed to keep)
+even in the hottest room, nor during the most torrid of
+summer days. Often he dared not unbutton the collar
+he turned up about his neck, affirming with much affected
+coughing that he had a “dreadful throat.” He was, by
+nature and habit, an inveterate cigarette smoker; a cigarette,
+indeed, meant more to him than a meal, and I can
+still see him crawling about the floor of the room on all
+fours in the early morning, “hunting snipe,” as he called it—in
+other words, looking for fag-ends. He was either extremely
+sanguine or extremely depressed; in the former
+mood he planned the most alluring and marvellous schemes,
+in the latter he talked of suicide. His wife, whom he dearly
+loved, had a baby soon after his arrival. He suffered a
+good deal....</p>
+
+<p>He was a great addition to our party, if at the same
+time a great drain on our purse. His keen, materialistic
+French mind was very eager, logical, well-informed, and
+critical in a destructive sense, an iconoclast if ever there
+was one. All forms of belief were idols it was his great
+delight to destroy; faith was superstition; cosmogonies
+were inventions of men whose natural feebleness forced
+them to seek something bigger and more wonderful than
+themselves; creeds, from primitive animism to Buddhism
+and Christianity, were, similarly, man-made, with a dose
+of pretentious ethics thrown in; while soul, spirit, survival
+after death, were creations of human vanity and egoism,
+and had not a single atom of evidence to support them
+from the beginning of the world to date. Naturally, he
+disbelieved everything that I believed, and, naturally,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[215]</span>
+too, our arguments left us both precisely where we started.
+But they helped the evenings, often hungry evenings,
+to pass without monotony; and when, as sometimes
+though but rarely happened, Louis had come by a drop of
+absinthe, monotony was entirely forgotten. He would
+sit crossed-legged on his mattress, his brown eyes sparkling
+in the round little face, his thick curly black hair
+looking like stiff wire, his podgy hands gesticulating, his
+language voluble in French and English mixed, his infectious
+laughter ringing and bubbling out from time to
+time—and the evening would pass like magic. He was
+charged with poetry and music too. On absinthe evenings,
+indeed, it was difficult to get any sleep at all ...
+and the first thing in the morning he would be hunting
+for “snipe” on all fours, cursing life and fate, in a
+black depression which made him think of suicide, and
+looking like a yellow Chinese God of Luck that had
+come to life.</p>
+
+<p>Hunger was agony to him, but, oddly enough, he never
+grew less rotund. He particularly enjoyed singing what
+he called <i>la messe noire</i> with astonishing variations in his
+high falsetto. This “mass” was performed by all three
+of us to a plaster-cast faun an artist had given me in
+Toronto. It had come in the packing-case with our other
+things, this Donatello, and we set it on the mantelpiece,
+filled a saucer with melted candle stolen from a boarder’s
+room, lit the piece of string which served for wick, and
+turned the gas out. In the darkened room the faunish
+face leered and moved, as the flickering light from below
+set the shadows shifting about its features; the fiddle,
+Louis’s thin falsetto, Kay’s bass, badly out of tune, and
+my own voice thrown in as well, produced a volume of
+sound the other boarders strongly objected to—at one
+o’clock in the morning. Yet the only time Mrs. Bernstein
+came to complain, she got no farther than the door:
+Louis had a blanket over his head and shoulders, Kay was
+in his night-shirt, which was a day-shirt really, the old
+Irving wig lying crooked on his head, and I was but half
+dressed, fiddling for all I was worth. The darkened room,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">[216]</span>
+the three figures passing to and fro and chanting, the
+strange weird face of the faun, it by the flickering flame
+from below, startled her so that she stood stock-still on
+the threshold without a word. The next second she was
+gone.... What eventually happened to Louis I never
+knew. Months later he moved to a room up-town. We
+lost track of one another, and I have no idea how fate
+behaved to him in after-life. He was thirty-five when he
+sang the <i>messe noire</i>, hunted snipe, and gave occasional
+lessons in French and Spanish.</p>
+
+<p>These trivial little memories remain vivid for some
+reason. To my precious Sundays in Bronx Park, or farther
+afield when the days grew longer, he came too, and
+Kay came with him. We shared the teapot and tin mug
+I still kept hidden behind a boulder, we shared the fire
+I always made—neither of my companions shared my mood
+of happiness.... I was glad when they both refused to
+get up and start at eight, preferring to spend the morning
+in bed. For months and months I never missed a single
+Sunday, wet or fine, for these outings were life to me,
+and I made a rough lean-to that kept the rain off in bad
+weather.... The car-fare was only 30 cents, both ways;
+bread and a lump of cheese provided two meals; there were
+few Sundays when I did not get at least seven or eight
+hours of intense happiness among the trees and wild
+stretches of what was to me a veritable Eden of delight....
+Nothing experienced in later life, tender or grandiose,
+neither the splendour of the Alps, the majesty of the Caucasus,
+the mystery of the desert, the magic of spring in
+Italy or the grim wonder of the real backwoods which I
+tasted later too—none of these produced the strange and
+subtle ecstasy of happiness I found on those Sundays in
+the wastes of scrubby Bronx Park, a few miles from “Noo
+York City.” ... It was, of course, but the raw material,
+so to speak, of beauty, which indeed is true always of
+“scenery” as a whole, but it was possible to find detail
+which, grouped together, made unforgettable pictures
+by the score. Though deprived of technique, I could <i>see</i>
+the pictures I need never think of painting. The selection
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">[217]</span>
+of significant detail in scenery is the secret of enjoyment,
+for such selection can be almost endless....</p>
+
+<p>The hours passed too quickly always, but they provided
+the energy to face what, to me, was the unadulterated misery
+of the week to follow. A book was in my pocket and
+Shelley was in my memory. From the tram to the trees
+was half a mile, perhaps, but with the first sight of these,
+with the first scent of leaves and earth, the first touch of
+the wind of open spaces on my tongue, my joy rose like
+a great sea-wave, and the city life, with all its hideousness,
+was utterly forgotten. What occupied my mind during
+those seven or eight hours it would be tedious to describe....
+I was, besides, hopelessly inarticulate in those early
+days; conclusions I arrived at were reached by feeling,
+not by thinking; one, in particular, about which I felt so
+positive that I <i>knew</i> it was true, I could no more have
+expressed in words than I could have flown or made a
+million. This particular conclusion that the Sundays in
+Bronx Park gave me has, naturally, been expressed by
+others far better than I could ever express it, but the first
+time I came across the passage, perhaps a dozen years
+later in London, my thought instantly flashed back to the
+teapot, the tin mug, and the boulder in Bronx Park when
+the same conviction had burned into my own untaught
+mind:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“One conclusion was forced upon my mind ... and my
+impression of its truth has ever since remained unshaken. It
+is that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness
+as we call it, is but <i>one special type</i> of consciousness, whilst all
+about us, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there are
+potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may
+go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply
+the requisite stimulus and at a touch they are there in all their
+completeness; definite types of mentality which probably somewhere
+have their field of application and adaptation. No
+account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves
+these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. At any
+rate, they forbid a premature closing of our accounts with reality.
+The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the
+world of our present consciousness is <i>only one</i> out of many worlds
+of consciousness that exist, and that these other worlds must
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">[218]</span>
+contain experiences which have a meaning for our life also....
+[The insight in these other states] has a keynote invariably of
+reconciliation. It is as if the opposites of the world, whose
+contradictions and conflict make all our difficulties and troubles,
+were melting into unity.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_1_1" href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
+
+<div class='footnotes'>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_1_1" href="#FNanchor_1_1" class="label">[1]</a> “Varieties of Religious Experience.” William James.</p></div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>The immortal may mingle with certain moods, perhaps,
+especially when violent contrast underlies the transition,
+and when deep yearnings, suppressed equally with violence,
+find their sudden radiant outlet. Since those
+Bronx Park days, when Nature caught me with such profound,
+uplifting magic, yet when thought was dumb and
+inarticulate, I am for ever coming across neat expressions
+by better minds than mine of what I then felt, and even
+believed I <i>knew</i>, in some unimagined way. Nature drew
+me, perhaps, away from life, while at the same time there
+glowed in my heart strange unrealizable desires to help
+life, to assist at her Utopian development, to work myself
+to the bone for the improvement of humanity. The contradiction,
+silly and high-flown though it now sounds,
+was then true. Inextinguishable fires to this end blazed
+in me, both mind and heart were literally on fire. My
+failure with Boyde, my meanness with Calder, to mention
+no graver lapses, both bit deep, but the intense longing
+to lose my Self in some Utopian cause was as strong as
+the other longing to be lost in the heart of some unstained
+and splendid wilderness of natural beauty. And the conflict
+puzzled me. Being inarticulate, I could not even find
+relief in words, though, as mentioned, I have often since
+discovered my feelings of those distant days expressed
+neatly enough by others. Only a few days ago I came across
+an instance:</p>
+
+<p>“If Nature catches the soul young it is lost to
+humanity,” groans Leroy, in a truly significant book of
+1922.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_2_2" href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>
+
+<div class='footnotes'>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_2_2" href="#FNanchor_2_2" class="label">[2]</a> “The Interpreters,” by A. E. The characters “interpret” the
+“relation of the politics of Time to the politics of Eternity.”</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>“No, no,” replies the poet. “The earth spirit does
+not draw us aside from life. How could that which is
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">[219]</span>
+father and mother of us all lead us to err from the law of
+our being?”</p>
+
+<p>And, again, as I sat puzzling about the amazing horror
+of what was called the Civilization of the New World,
+and doubtless making the commonplace mistake of
+thinking that New York City was America:—</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“Every great civilization, I think, has a Deity behind it,
+or a divine shepherd who guided it on some plan in the cosmic
+imagination. ‘Behold,’ said an ancient Oracle, ‘how the
+Heavens glitter with intellectual sections.’... These are archetypal
+images we follow dimly in our evolution.”</p>
+
+<p>“How do you conceive of these powers as affecting civilization?”</p>
+
+<p>“I believe they are incarnate in the race; more in the group
+than in the individual; and they tend to bring about an orchestration
+of the genius of the race, to make manifest in time their
+portion of eternal beauty....”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_3_3" href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>
+
+<div class='footnotes'>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_3_3" href="#FNanchor_3_3" class="label">[3]</a> <i>Ibid.</i></p></div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>My conception of the universe, at any rate, in these
+early days was imaginative entirely; the critical function,
+which comes with greater knowledge, with reason, with
+fuller experience, lay wholly dormant. I communed
+with both gods and devils. New York stoked the furnace—provided
+the contrasts. Experience, very slowly, furnished
+the files and sand-paper which lay bare what may
+be real beneath by rubbing away the pretty gilt. Certain
+convictions of those far days, however, stood the test,
+whatever that test may be worth, and have justified
+themselves to me with later years as assuredly <i>not</i> gilt.
+That unity of life is true, and that our normal human
+consciousness is but one type, and a somewhat insignificant
+type at that, hold unalterably real for me to-day. My
+other conviction, born in Bronx Park in 1892 by the teapot,
+tin mug, and familiar boulder which concealed these indispensable
+utensils during the week, is that the Mystical
+Experience known to many throughout the ages with invariable
+similarity is <i>not</i> a pathogenic experience, but is
+due to a desirable, genuine and valuable expansion of
+consciousness which furnishes knowledge normally ahead
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">[220]</span>
+of the race; but, since language can only describe the
+experience of the race, that it is incommunicable because
+no words exist, and that only those who have experienced
+it can comprehend it. The best equipped modern “intellectual”
+(above all the “intellectual” perhaps), the
+most advanced scientist, as, on the other hand, the drayman,
+the coster, the city clerk, must remain not only
+dumb before its revelation, stupid, hopelessly at sea,
+angry probably, but contemptuous and certainly mystified:
+they must also appear, if they be honest, entirely
+and unalterably <i>sceptical</i>. Such scepticism is their penalty;
+it is, equally, their judge and their confession.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">[221]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXVI">
+    CHAPTER XXVI
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap xkern'><span class='allcaps'>Among</span> the “incidents” that stand out from the dim,
+miserable smudge of fifteen months, is one that
+centres about a strange figure, and a most lovable
+fellow, named Angus Hamilton. Various odd fish drifted
+on to the paper as reporters, and drifted off again; they
+form part of an unimportant kaleidoscope. But Angus
+Hamilton, with his generosity, his startling habits,
+his undoubted ability, his sad and sudden end, stands
+out.</p>
+
+<p>My position had improved since the publication of the
+Boyde story, chiefly, of course, because of the way the
+peerage had been dragged into its details and its
+headlines. I received no advance in salary, but I
+received an advance in respect. Even McCloy was
+different: “Why waste your time with us?” he spat
+at me like a machine-gun with a rapid smile. “Go
+home. Collect a lot of umbrellas and turned-up trousers
+and letters of introduction. Then come out to ‘visit
+the States,’ marry an heiress, and go home and live in
+comfort!” He was very lenient to my numerous mistakes.
+Other papers “got a beat” on me, I “fell down”
+times without number, I failed to get an interview with
+all and sundry because I could not find “the nerve” to
+intrude at certain moments into the lives and griefs of
+others. But McCloy winked the other eye, even if he
+never raised my pay. Other men were sacked out of
+hand. I stayed on. “You’ve got a pull with Mac!”
+said “Whitey.” New men took the places of the lost.
+Among these I noticed an Englishman. Cooper noticed
+him too. “Better share an umbrella and go arm in arm,”
+he said in his good-natured way. “He’s a fellow-Britisher.”</p>
+
+<p>Why he came to New York I never understood. He
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">[222]</span>
+was a stepson of Pinero, the playwright, and he received
+occasional moneys from Daniel Frohman, by way of
+allowance, I supposed, though I never knew exactly.
+Clever though he was, he was a worse reporter than myself—because
+he didn’t care two straws whether he got the
+news or did not get it. He had a “pull” of some sort,
+with Laffan probably, we thought. He came to our
+boarding-house in East 19th Street. He had a bad
+stammer. His methods of reporting were peculiar to
+himself. Often enough, when sent out on a distasteful
+assignment, he simply went home. He had literary talent
+and wrote well when he liked. When Frohman handed
+out his money, he spent it in giving a big dinner to various
+friends, though he never included Kay, Louis, or myself
+among his distinguished guests. We had no dress-suits,
+for one thing.</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton was perhaps twenty-one at the time, a trifle
+younger than myself, at any rate. He came downstairs
+sometimes to spend the evening in our room. In spite
+of his stammer and a certain shyness, he was always very
+welcome. He liked, above all, to listen to weird stories
+I used to tell, strange, wild, improbable tales akin to
+ghost-stories. When the Black Mass failed to attract,
+when Louis was uninspired by absinthe, or when no
+argument was afoot, such as whether poet or scientist
+were the highest type of human being, I discovered this
+taste for spinning yarns, usually of a ghostly character,
+and found, to my surprise, that my listeners were enthralled.
+At a moment’s notice, no theme or idea being
+in my head, I found that I could invent a tale, with
+beginning, middle and climax. Something in me, doubtless,
+sought a natural outlet. The stories, at any rate,
+poured forth endlessly. “May I write that one?”
+Hamilton would ask. “It’s a corker!” And he would
+bring his written version to read to us a few evenings
+later. “It ought to sell,” he said, though I never heard
+that it did sell actually. Certainly, it never occurred
+to me that I might write and sell it myself. And Angus
+Hamilton is mentioned here because it was owing to a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">[223]</span>
+chance act of his that I eventually took to writing and
+so found my liberty.</p>
+
+<p>This happened some twelve years later, when I was
+living in a room in Halsey Street, Chelsea, sweating my
+life out in the dried milk business and earning barely
+enough at the job to make both ends meet. A hansom
+stopped suddenly near me in Piccadilly Circus, its occupant
+shouted my name, then sprang out—Angus Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>He came round to my room for a talk over old days;
+he had done well for himself as Reuter’s correspondent
+in the Manchurian War, had published a book on Korea,
+and was just off to China, again as Reuter’s agent. He
+reminded me of the stories I used to tell in the New York
+boarding-house. I had written some of these, a couple
+of dozen perhaps, and they lay in a cupboard. Could he
+see them? Might he take them away and read them?</p>
+
+<p>It had been my habit and delight to spend my evenings
+composing yarns on my typewriter, finding more pleasure
+in this than in any dinner engagement, theatre or concert.
+Why this suddenly began I cannot say, but I guess at a
+venture that the accumulated horror of the years in
+New York was seeking expression. Wandering in Richmond
+Park at night was the only rival entertainment that
+could tempt me from the joy of typing out some tale or
+other in solitude. “Jimbo” I had already written twice,
+several of the “John Silence” tales as well, and numerous
+other queer ghostly stories of one sort or another. From
+among these last Hamilton took a dozen or so away with
+him, but forgot to send them back as he had promised.
+He had gone to China, I supposed, and the matter had
+slipped his mind. It didn’t matter much—I went on
+writing others; the stories were no good to anybody, the
+important thing being the relief and keen pleasure I found
+in their expression. But some weeks later a letter came
+from a publisher: “I have read your book.... My
+reader tells me ...” this and that “about your
+stories.... I shall be glad to publish them for you
+...,” and then a few words about a title and a request
+that I would call for an interview.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">[224]</span></p>
+
+<p>It was some little time before I realized what the
+publisher was talking about. Hamilton, without asking
+permission, had sent my stories to him. Eveleigh Nash
+was the publisher, and his reader at that time was Maude
+Ffoulkes, who later wrote Lady Cardigan’s Memoirs,
+numerous other biographies, also “My Own Past,” and
+to whom I owe an immense debt for unfailing guidance,
+help and encouragement from that day to this. I never
+forget my shrinking fear at the idea of appearing in print,
+my desire to use another name, my feeling that it was all
+a mistake somewhere, the idea that I should have a book
+of my own published being too absurd to accept as true.
+My relief when, eventually, the papers gave it briefest
+possible mention, a few words of not unkindly praise or
+blame, I remember too, and my astonishment, some
+weeks later, to find a column in the <i>Spectator</i>, followed
+not long afterwards by an interesting article in the Literary
+Page of the <i>Morning Post</i> on the genus “ghost story,”
+based on my book—by Hilaire Belloc, as he told me
+years later. All of which prompted me to try another
+book ... and after the third, “John Silence,” had
+appeared, to renounce a problematical fortune in dried
+milk, and with typewriter and kit-bag, to take my
+precious new liberty out to the Jura Mountains where,
+at frs. 4.50 a day, I lived in reasonable comfort and wrote
+more books. I was then thirty-six.</p>
+
+<p>Whether I should be grateful to my fellow-reporter
+on the <i>Evening Sun</i> is another matter. Liberty is priced
+above money, at any rate. I have written some twenty
+books, but the cash received for these, though it has
+paid for rent, for food, for clothing, separately, has never
+been enough to pay for all three together, even on the
+most modest scale of living, and my returns, both from
+America and England, remain still microscopic. Angus
+Hamilton I never saw again. A year or so later, while
+on a lecture tour in New York, things apparently went
+wrong with him. Life drove against him in some way.
+He put a sudden end to himself.</p>
+
+<p>It seems strange to me now that so few incidents,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">[225]</span>
+and those such trivial ones, stand out from the long months
+of newspaper work in New York. Harrowing and dreadful
+stories, appalling in their evidence of human degradation,
+or poignant beyond words in their revelation of misery,
+temptation, failure, were my daily experience week after
+week, month after month. I might now have bulky
+scrap-books packed with thrilling plots of every kind,
+all taken from life. My affair with Boyde, moreover,
+had taught me how much of curious psychological interest
+lay behind the most ordinary arrest for a commonplace
+crime. Yet, of all these thousands of cases, I remember
+hardly a single one, while of uninteresting assignments
+Cooper gave me several still live vividly in my memory.
+Social reporting, in particular, both amused and distressed
+me, for which reasons probably it has not faded. Sitting
+in the lobby at Sherry’s or Delmonico’s when a ball or
+society function was in progress and taking the names of
+the guests as they entered, taking the snubs and rudeness
+of these gay, careless folk as well, was not calculated to
+add much to my self-respect. The lavish evidence of
+money, the excess, often the atrocious taste, even stirred
+red socialism in me, although this lasted only till I was
+out in the street again. Various connexions, distant
+or otherwise, of my family often, too, visited New York,
+while more than one had married an American girl of
+prominent name. It was odd to see Lord Ava, Dufferin’s
+eldest son, walk up the steps, and odder still to jot
+down his name upon the list of “those present.” There
+was an American woman, too, who bore my mother’s
+name.... To see any of these people was the last thing
+on earth I wished, much less to speak to them or be
+recognized; they were in another world to mine; none
+the less, I had odd sensations when I saw them....
+A ball of deaf-mutes, too, remains very clear, only the
+shuffling sound of boots, and of the big drum whose heavy
+vibrations through their feet enabled them to keep time,
+breaking the strange hush of the dancing throng, for ever
+gesticulating with busy fingers.</p>
+
+<p>A much-coveted annual assignment once came my
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">[226]</span>
+way, through the kindness of McCloy, I think—the visit
+to the winter quarters of Barnum and Bailey’s Circus.
+Every newspaper was invited; the animals were inspected;
+an article was written; and the circus opened its yearly
+tour with immense advertisements. In the evening there
+was a—banquet! I came home in the early hours with
+my pockets stuffed for Kay and Louis—cigars, fruit,
+rolls, and all imaginable edibles that might bear the
+transport. But the occasion is clear for another reason—elephants
+and rats. The keeper told us that the elephants
+were terrified of rats because they feared the little beasts
+would run up their trunks. We doubted his story. He
+offered to prove it. In the huge barn where some twenty-five
+monsters stood, chained by the feet against the walls,
+he emptied a sackful of live rats. The stampede, the
+trumpeting of those frightened elephants is not easily
+forgotten. In the centre of the great barn stood masses
+of hay cut into huge square blocks, and the sight of us
+climbing for safety to the top of these slippery, precariously
+balanced piles of hay is not easily forgotten either.</p>
+
+<p>The raid at dawn upon a quasi lunatic asylum, kept
+by an unqualified man, should have left sharper impressions
+than is the case, for it was certainly dramatic and sinister
+enough. Word came to the office that a quack “doctor”
+was keeping a private Home for Lunatics at Amityville,
+L.I., and that sane people, whom interested parties
+wished out of the way, were incarcerated among the
+inmates. The Health Department were going to raid it
+at dawn. It was to be a “scoop” for the <i>Evening Sun</i>,
+and the assignment was given to me.</p>
+
+<p>I started while it was still dark, crossing the deserted
+ferry long before the sun was up, but when I reached
+the lonely house, surrounded by fields and a few scattered
+trees, I found that every newspaper in the city was represented.
+Even the flimsy men were there, all cursing
+their fate in the chilly air of early morning. No lights
+showed in the building. The eastern sky began to flush.
+With the first glimmer of dawn I saw the sheriff’s men
+at their various posts, hiding behind trees and hedges,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_227">[227]</span>
+some crouching under the garden shrubberies, some
+concealed even on the veranda of the house. After a
+long and weary wait, the house began to stir; shutters
+were taken down; a window, then a door, were thrown
+open; figures became visible moving inside from room to
+room; and presently someone came out on to the veranda.
+He was instantly seized and taken away. After several
+men and women had been arrested in this way, a general
+raid of the whole house took place. A dozen of the
+sheriff’s men rushed in. The nurses, male and female,
+the “doctor”-proprietor, his assistants, and every single
+inmate, sane or crazy, were all caught and brought out
+under arrest, before they had tasted breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>It was broad daylight by this time. The whole party,
+of at least thirty, were assembled in a barn where a magistrate,
+brought down specially for the purpose, held an
+impromptu court. If some of the inmates were insane
+at the time and had been so before incarceration, others
+certainly had been deliberately made insane by the harsh
+and cruel treatment to which they had purposely been
+subjected. There were painful episodes, while the testimony
+was hurriedly listened to in that improvised court
+of inquiry. Yet it has all, all vanished from my memory.
+I forget even what the sequel was, or what sentence the
+infamous proprietor received later on from a properly-constituted
+court. Many a sane man or woman had been
+rendered crazy by the treatment, I remember, and the
+quack had taken heavy payments from interested relatives
+for this purpose. But all details have vanished from my
+mind. What chiefly remains is the wonder of that
+breaking dawn, the light stealing over the sky, the sweet
+smell of the country and the tang of the salt sea. These,
+with the singing of the early birds, and the great yearnings
+they stirred in me, left deep impressions.</p>
+
+<p>One reason, I am sure, why such painful and dramatic
+incidents have left so little trace, is that I had a way of
+shielding myself from the unpleasantness of them, so
+that their horror or nastiness, as the case might be, never
+really got into me deeply. By a method of “detachment,”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">[228]</span>
+as mentioned earlier, I protected my sensitive inner
+self from being too much wounded. I would depute
+just sufficient intelligence and observation to attend to
+the immediate work in hand, while the rest of me, the
+major portion, lay inactive, uninvolved, certainly inoperative.
+Painful and vivid impressions were, none the
+less, received, of course, only I refused to admit or recognize
+them. They emerged, years later, in stories perhaps,
+these suppressed hieroglyphics, but at the actual time I
+could so protect myself that I did not consciously record
+them. And hence, I think, my faint recollection now
+of a thousand horrible experiences during these New
+York reporting days.</p>
+
+<p>This “detachment,” in the ignorant way I used it,
+was, perhaps, nothing less than shirking of the unpleasant.
+At twenty-three I had not yet discovered
+that better method which consists in facing the unpleasant
+without reservation or evasion, while raising the energy
+thus released into a higher channel, “transmuting” it,
+as the jargon of 1922 describes it. “Detachment,” however,
+even in its earliest stages, and provided it does not
+remain merely where it starts, is an acquisition not without
+value; it can lead, at any rate, to interesting and curious
+experiments. It deputes the surface-consciousness, or
+sufficient of it, to deal with some disagreeable little matter
+in hand, while the subconscious or major portion of the
+self—for those who are aware of possessing it—may travel
+and go free. It is, I think, Bligh Bond, in his “Gate of
+Remembrance,” who mentions that the automatic writer
+whose revelations are there given, read a book aloud
+while his hand with the pencil wrote. Many a literary
+man, whose inspiration depends upon the stirrings of this
+mysterious subconscious region, knows that to read a
+dull book, or talk to a dull person, engages just enough
+of his surface consciousness to set the other portion free.
+Reading verse—though not poetry, of course—has this
+effect; for some, a cinema performance, with the soothing
+dimness, the music, the ever-shifting yet not too arresting
+pictures, works the magic; for others, light music; for
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_229">[229]</span>
+others, again, looking out of a train window. There are
+as many ways as individuals. To listen to Mrs. de
+Montmorency Smith telling her tedious dream, while you
+hear just enough to comment intelligently upon her endless
+details, even using some of these details to feed your own
+more valuable dream, is an admirable method—I am
+told; and my own childish habit of squeezing “through
+the crack between yesterday and to-morrow” in that
+horrible bed of East 19th Street, merely happened to be
+my own little personal adaptation of the principle....</p>
+
+<p>Incidents that had held a touch of comedy remain
+more clearly in the memory than those that held ugliness
+and horror only. A member of the Reichstag Central
+Party, for instance, Rector Ahlwardt by name, came
+out to conduct a campaign against the Jews. He was
+violently anti-semitic. I was sent to meet his steamer
+at Quarantine because I could speak German, and my
+instructions were to warn him that America was a free
+country, that the Jews were honourable and respected
+citizens, and that abuse would not be tolerated for a
+moment. These instructions I carried out, while we drank
+white wine in the steamer’s smoking-room. Freytag, I
+noticed with amusement, himself a Jew, was there for
+the <i>Staatszeitung</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Ahlwardt, however, was impervious to advice or warnings.
+At his first big meeting in the Cooper Union Hall,
+arriving late, I noticed at once two things: the seats were
+packed with Jews, while almost as many policemen stood
+about waiting; and the reporters’ tables underneath the
+platform showed several open umbrellas. Both, I knew,
+were ominous signs. Ahlwardt himself, fat, beaming,
+in full evening dress, was already haranguing the huge
+audience. At first he was suave and gentle, even mealy-mouthed,
+but before long his prejudices mastered him and
+his language changed. Up rose a member of the audience
+and advised him angrily to go back to Germany. The
+police ejected the interrupter. Others took his place.
+Then suddenly the fusillade began—and up went the
+reporters’ umbrellas! A flying egg caught the speaker
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">[230]</span>
+full on his white shirt-front, another yellowed his dazzling
+white waistcoat, a third smashed over his fat face. Pandemonium
+reigned, during which the German melted out
+of the landscape and disappeared from his first and last
+anti-semite meeting in Noo York City. He attempted a
+little propaganda from the safe distance of Hoboken, N.J.,
+but the Press campaign against him was so violent and
+covered him with such ridicule, that he very soon took
+steamer back to his Berlin. Every little detail of this
+incident, were it worth the telling, I could give accurately.
+There was no reason to be “detached,” unless the protection
+of the <i>World</i> man’s umbrella comes under that
+description.</p>
+
+<p>It was somewhere about this time, too, that another
+trivial incident occurred, refusing to be forgotten. It,
+again, increased the respect shown to me by the staff
+of the paper—Americans being truly democratic!—though
+it did not increase my salary. A belted earl left
+his card on me. Coming in breathless from some assignment,
+I saw McCloy staring at me. “Is this for <i>you</i>?”
+he asked sarcastically, handing me a visiting-card. A
+brother-in-law, “His Excellency” into the bargain,
+“Governor of an Australian Province” to which he was
+then on his way, had climbed those narrow spiral stairs
+and asked for me. The letters after his name alone were
+enough to produce a commotion in that democratic
+atmosphere.... He was staying at the Brevoort
+House, and he certainly behaved “like a man,” thought
+Kay and I, as we enjoyed more than one good dinner
+at his expense in the hotel. Proud of me he had certainly
+no cause to be, but if he felt ashamed, equally, he gave
+no sign of it. He even spoke on my behalf to Paul Dana,
+the editor-proprietor’s son, who assured him that I was
+“a bright fellow”—a description the staff managed to
+get hold of somehow and applied to me ever afterwards.
+His brief visit, both because of its kindness and its general
+good effect, stand out, at any rate, in the “bright fellow’s”
+memory. Like Dufferin in the Hub, he fired a shot for
+me.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">[231]</span></p>
+
+<p>The months dragged by in their dreary, hated length,
+while numerous chances of getting more congenial work
+were tried in vain. Torrid summer heat, with its all-dissolving
+humidity, replaced the bitter winter. The deep,
+baked streets that never cooled, the stifling nights, the
+heat-waves when the temperature stood between 90 and
+100 in the shade, and we toiled about the blazing pavements
+in shirt-sleeves carrying a palm-leaf fan, and when
+the moisture in the air made the very “copy-paper”
+stick to the hand that wrote upon it—those four months
+of New York summer were a misery. We had only our
+winter clothes to wear; a white collar was dirty pulp before
+nine in the morning; the dazzling electric-light sign
+flashed nightly in the air above 23rd Street with its
+tempting legend “Manhattan Beach Swept by Ocean
+Breezes,” while the ice-carts in the streets were the nearest
+approach to comfort we could find. Many a time I
+followed one at close quarters to taste a whiff of cooler
+air. Life became unendurable, yet day followed day, night
+followed night, week followed week, till one’s last breath
+of energy seemed exhausted by the steaming furnace
+of the city air.</p>
+
+<p>The respectable quarters of the town were, of course,
+deserted, but the East Side, and the poorer parts, became
+a gigantic ant-heap, thousands of families sleeping on the
+balconies of the packed tenement houses, as though a
+whole underground-world had risen suddenly to the
+surface. Children died by the hundred; there were heat
+strokes by the score. It was too hot to eat. Reporting
+in such weather was a trying business.... A reporter
+was entitled to a fortnight’s holiday in the year, and
+though none was due to me, McCloy let me go about the
+middle of October. I procured a railway pass and went
+off to Haliburton, Ontario, to spend my precious twelve
+days with a settler in the backwoods. He was a Scotsman
+I had met during our island days, and Haliburton was
+not far from our own delightful lake.... On my way
+back the cable came telling of my father’s death while
+being brought home from Ems. I was spending the night
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_232">[232]</span>
+with an old friend of his, in Hamilton, Ont., where he
+had a church. Originally in the navy, the evangelical
+movement had “converted” him, and he had taken to it
+with such zeal that a church and parish became a necessity
+of life. He was sincere and sympathetic, and the bad
+news could have come to me in no better place.</p>
+
+<p>The next day I returned to New York and resumed my
+life of reporting on the paper.... The elections had been
+fought, and Tammany was beaten, a wave of Republicanism
+sweeping both State and City. A Committee of
+Investigation, under Senator Lexow, was appointed
+to examine into the methods of Tammany Hall, and for
+weeks I sat in court while the testimony was taken, and
+the most amazing stories of crime, corruption, wickedness
+and horror I ever heard were told by one “protected”
+witness after another. It brought to light a veritable
+Reign of Terror. John Goff was prosecuting counsel; he
+became Recorder, in place of Judge Smythe, as his reward.
+Boss Croker, head of Tammany, was conveniently in
+England and could not be subpœnaed. Other leaders,
+similarly, were well out of reach. Tammany, it was
+proved up to the hilt, had extorted an annual income of
+fifteen million dollars in illegal contributions from vice.
+The court was a daily theatre in which incredible melodrama
+and tragedy were played. With this thrilling
+exception, the work I had to do remained the same as
+before ... a second Christmas came round ... another
+spring began to melt the gloomy skies. Conditions, it is
+true, were a little easier, for Louis had left us and Kay was
+earning ten or fifteen dollars a week in Exchange Place,
+but by March or April, the eighteen months of underfeeding
+and trying work had brought me, personally, to the
+breaking point....</p>
+
+<p>It was late in April I read that gold had been found
+in the Rainy River district which lay in the far north-western
+corner of Ontario, the river of that name being
+the frontier between Minnesota State and Canada. The
+paragraph stating the fact was in a Sunday paper I read
+on my way to Bronx Park, and the instant I saw it my
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">[233]</span>
+mind was made up. It was spring, the primitive instinct
+to strike camp and move on was in the blood, a nostalgia
+for the woods was in it too, and the prospect of another
+torrid, moist summer in the city at $15 a week was more
+than I could face. That scrap of news, at any rate, decided
+me. And, truth to tell, it was not so much the lure
+of gold that called me, as the lure of the wilderness. I
+longed to see the big trees again, to smell the old naked
+earth, to hear water falling and feel the great winds
+blow.... It was an irresistible call.</p>
+
+<p>My one terror, as when I decided to buy the dairy
+two years before, was that someone would tell me there
+was no gold, that it was not worth going, or would prevent
+me in some other way. I deliberately hid from myself
+all unfavourable information, while I collected all possible
+items that might justify my intention. That same night
+I showed the paragraph to Kay. “I’ll go,” he said at
+once, “but let’s get a third, a fourth too, if we can.” He
+mentioned Paxton, an engineer, aged 35, who had just
+lost all his worldly possessions in speculation. Paxton
+said he would come with us. The fourth was R.M.,
+son of the clergyman in Hamilton. R.M., whose father
+was brother to a belted earl, was an insurance agent,
+and making a good living at his job. He was my own
+age, also my own height. He was, besides, a heavy-weight
+amateur boxer of considerable prowess, and his favourite
+time for holding bouts in the ring was Sunday evenings,
+to which fact a rival clergyman had recently taken occasion
+to refer slightingly in his own pulpit. R.M., resenting
+the slur both upon himself and his father, had waited
+outside the church door one Sunday after the evening
+service, and when the clergyman emerged had asked for
+an apology—a public one in the pulpit. On being met
+with an indignant refusal, R.M. invited the other to
+“put ’em up.” The thrashing that followed produced
+a great scandal in the little town, and R.M. found the
+place too hot to hold him. He therefore jumped at the
+idea of the goldfields.</p>
+
+<p>The arrangements were made, of course, by letter,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">[234]</span>
+and took some little time; but on a given morning in
+early May R.M. was to join our train as it passed through
+Hamilton. I had been able to procure passes for the lot
+of us as far as Duluth, some fifteen hundred miles distant,
+on Lake Superior, and from there we should have to travel
+another hundred and fifty miles by canoe down the Vermilion
+River to Rainy Lake City, for the foundations of
+which the forest, I read, had already been partially
+cleared. Several further articles had appeared in the
+papers; it was a gorgeous country, men were flocking
+in, and the Bank of Montreal had established a branch
+in a temporary shack. Moreover, as mentioned before,
+it was spring.</p>
+
+<p>That a man of Paxton’s age and experience should
+have made this long expedition without first satisfying
+himself that it was likely to be worth while, has always
+puzzled me. He was an easy-going, good-natured man,
+whose full figure proclaimed that he liked the good things
+of life. But he was in grave difficulties, graver perhaps
+than I ever knew, and I think he was not sorry to contemplate
+a trip across the border. His attitude, at any rate,
+was that he “didn’t care a rap so long as I get out of
+here.” That Kay and myself and R.M. should take the
+adventure was natural enough, for none of us had anything
+to lose, and, whatever happened, we should “get along
+somehow,” and even out of the frying-pan into the fire
+was better than the summer furnace of the city. R.M.
+wrote that he had a hundred dollars, Paxton produced
+fifty, I supplied the railway passes and added my last
+salary, together with some eight dollars that Ikey No. 2
+was persuaded to hand over.</p>
+
+<p>“Send some stuff along,” fired McCloy, opening his
+eyes a little wider than usual when I told him. “Any
+hot stuff you get I’ll use.”</p>
+
+<p>It has already been told how Kay missed the train by
+a few minutes, and how Whitey, waving his parting
+present of a bottle of Bourbon whisky, was the final
+picture Paxton and I had of New York City as the evening
+train pulled out.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">[235]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXVII">
+    CHAPTER XXVII
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap kern'><span class='allcaps'>Some</span> people, examining the alternate ups and
+downs of life, have thought to detect a rhythm
+in it: like every other expression of energy, from
+heat to history, from sound to civilization, it moves, they
+think, with a definite wave-length. The down and up,
+the hollow of the wave and its crest, follow one another
+in rhythmical sequence. It is an imaginary notion
+doubtless, though it applied to my life aptly enough at
+this time apparently: the Toronto misery, the Island
+happiness; the New York hell, the Backwoods heaven.</p>
+
+<p>I think, when I wrote home the literal truth: “I
+can’t stand this reporting life any longer. I’m off to the
+goldfields, and McCloy has asked me to write articles for
+the paper,” there lay a vague idea in me that these goldfields
+would prove somehow to be comic goldfields, and that
+the expedition would be somewhere farcical. I was so
+eager, so determined to go, that I camouflaged from myself
+every unfavourable aspect of the trip. Green, being still
+my predominant colour, was used freely in this camouflage.
+It was only afterwards I realized how delightfully I fooled
+myself. Yet it was true, at the same time, that a deep
+inner necessity drove irresistibly. The city life was
+killing something in me, something in the soul: get out
+or go under, was my feeling. How easy it would have
+been to go under was a daily thought. Far better men
+than myself proved it all round me every week. It
+seemed, indeed, the natural, obvious thing to do for an
+educated, refined Englishman without character who
+found himself adrift from home influences in this amazing
+city—to sink into the general scum of failures and outcasts,
+to yield to one of the many anæsthetics New York
+so lavishly provided, to find temporary relief, a brief wild-eyed
+happiness, oblivion, then, not long afterwards, death.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_236">[236]</span></p>
+
+<p>The draw of the woods, the call of the open air, moreover,
+always potent, had become insistent. Spring
+added its aching nostalgia that burned like a fever in my
+veins.</p>
+
+<p>Thus various influences, some positive, some negative,
+combined to make me feel that anything was better than
+the drudgery of my wretched New York life, and the
+goldfields merely offered a plausible excuse. If I made
+blinkers with my own hands, I made them effectively
+at least. Deep out of sight in the personality there hides,
+perhaps, some overseer who, watching wisely the turns of
+fate, makes such blinkers, ensuring their perfect fit as
+well....</p>
+
+<p>There was a nice feeling, of course, that if one went
+to a goldfield, one picked up gold. Shaking sand in a
+shining pan beside a rushing river was a picture in the
+mind. There were wild men, friends and enemies; there
+were Indians too; but also there were sunsets, tempests,
+dawns and stars. It would be liberty and happiness.
+I should see the moon rise in clear, sweet air above the
+rim of primæval woods. I should cook bacon over an
+open fire of wood. There would be no grinning Chinaman
+to pay for laundry....</p>
+
+<p>The men with whom I was going were not entirely
+satisfactory. I knew them slightly, for one thing; for
+another, the chief drawback, they were going in a very
+different mood from mine. Their one object was to make
+their fortunes. It was real gold, and not the glamour
+of the wilderness, that called them; and in the Emigrant
+Sleeper, as we journeyed towards Duluth, they sketched
+their plans with intense enthusiasm: Paxton, the engineer,
+explained puzzlingly, with the aid of matches, a trolley
+he would construct for bringing the ore from pit to crusher,
+while R.M., with reckless immorality, enlarged upon the
+profits he would derive from running a “joint” of desperate
+sort—“for no one need know that my father’s a
+clergyman, and my uncle in the House of Lords.”</p>
+
+<p>Both men were shadows; they were not real; there was
+no companionship in them for me, at any rate. That
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_237">[237]</span>
+they were fellow-travellers for the moment on a trip
+I did not care about making alone, was sufficient. I
+would just as soon have gone with McCloy or a Tombs
+policeman.</p>
+
+<p>What constitutes one person out of a hundred “real,”
+the other ninety-nine shadows, is hard to define, but an
+instinct in me has ever picked out that “real” one. With
+him or her I know instantly my life is going to be unavoidably
+linked: through love or hate, through happiness or
+trouble, perhaps through none of these, but with the
+conviction that a service has to be rendered or accepted,
+a debt, as it were, to be paid or received, a link at any
+rate that cannot be broken or evaded. Such real people
+are to be counted on the fingers of one hand: R.M. and
+Paxton were certainly not among them. Nor, for that
+matter, was my friend Kay, who, I am reasonably positive,
+missed the train on purpose; while, curiously enough,
+Boyde, that trivial criminal, <i>was</i> among them. Had
+Kay, for instance, done what that cheap ruffian did, I
+should never have taken the trouble to arrest or punish
+him....</p>
+
+<p>The comic opera touch began with Whitey racing
+down the platform waving a bottle of rye whisky; it
+continued next morning when we picked up R.M. at
+eight o’clock. Our train stopped at Hamilton, Ont.,
+for five minutes. We craned our heads out of the window
+and saw a party of young fellows with flushed faces and
+singing voices, and on their shoulders in the early sunshine
+the inert figure of a huge man without a hat. They
+recognized me and heaved him into our compartment,
+where he slept soundly for two hours until we had left
+Toronto far behind. “Ouch! Ouch!” said Paxton—it
+was about all “engineer Paxton” ever did say—“Is that
+R.M.?” They had never met before. We took the
+money out of his pocket for safety’s sake, and it proved to
+be more than his promised contribution. His friends
+had indeed given him a send-off, and the all-night poker
+had proved lucrative.</p>
+
+<p>It was a long, long journey to Duluth, with heartening
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_238">[238]</span>
+glimpses from the window, of river, lake and forest, all
+touched with “spring’s delightful weather.” Shelley
+filled my head and heart. I saw dawn in a vale of the
+Indian Caucasus, I saw Panthea, Asia, fleeting dryads
+and troops of happy fauns. Out of New York City into
+this primæval wilderness produced intoxication. No more
+cities of dreadful night for me! The repressed, unrealized
+yearnings of many painful months burst forth in a kind
+of rapture. Riches can never taste the treasures of relief
+and change provided by the law of contrast. To be free
+to go everywhere is tantamount to going nowhere, to be
+able to do everything is to do nothing. Without school,
+holidays could have no meaning. The intensity of escape,
+with all the gorgeous emotions it involves, is hardly possible
+to the big bank-balances.</p>
+
+<p>I thought of the overheated <i>Sun</i> offices, and saw
+cool, silent woods; of thronged canyon-streets between
+cliffs of buildings, and saw lonely gorges where the deer
+stole down to drink in quiet pools; of Mrs. Bernstein’s
+room, and saw green glades of beauty, a ceiling of blue
+sky, walls of hemlock, spruce and cedar. The May sunlight
+made the whole world sing, as the train rushed through
+the wilderness of the Ontario Highlands. It woke a kind
+of lyrical delight in me. “The day seemed one sent from
+beyond the skies, that shed to earth, above the sun, a
+light of Paradise.” Paxton, with his puzzling matches,
+found me absent-minded and irresponsive to his “ouch!
+ouch!” and R.M., suffering from a bad “hang-over”
+headache, thought me unsympathetic toward his disreputable
+joint.</p>
+
+<p>More clearly than the matches, or the profit and loss
+figures of the joint, I remember the three bullets lying on
+the palm of the engineer’s fat open hand. His solemn
+gravity depressed R.M. It infected me a little too. Why
+in the world should he be so serious? “If we fail, boys,”
+said the engineer laconically, as he looked down with
+grim significance at the three bullets, “I for one—shall
+not return.” He put a bullet in his pocket, he handed
+one to R.M., the third he passed to me. “Is it a deal?”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_239">[239]</span>
+he asked, speaking as one who had come to the end of his
+tether, which, indeed, perhaps really was the case. We
+pocketed our bullets anyhow, and told him gravely:
+“Yes, it’s a deal.” We shook hands on it.</p>
+
+<p>It was all in the proper spirit of gold-seeking adventure,
+begad! and the comic-opera touch, so far as I was concerned,
+had not yet quite fully appeared. I had cut loose
+from everything. I felt as though I were jumping off the
+rim of the planet into unknown space. It was a delightful,
+reckless, half naughty, half childish, feeling. “To hell with
+civilization!” was its note. At the back of the mind lay a
+series of highly-coloured pictures: Men made fortunes
+in a night, human life was cheap, six-shooters lay beside
+tin mugs at camp-fire breakfasts, and bags of “dust”
+were tossed across faro-tables from one desperado in a
+broad-brimmed hat to another who was either an Oxford
+don <i>incognito</i>, or an unfrocked clergyman, or a younger
+son concealing tragic beauty in an over-cultured heart,
+with perhaps an unclaimed title on his strawberry-marked
+skin. R.M., too, was forever talking about staking
+claims: “We’ll get grub-staked by some fellow.... If
+we only pan a few ounces per day it’ll mean success ...”
+to all of which Paxton emitted his “Ouch! Ouch!” as
+a strong man who said little because he preferred action
+to words.</p>
+
+<p>I, meanwhile, had no accurate information to supply,
+though I was the promoter of the expedition. I paraded
+the newspaper accounts. They were of little use.
+Nothing, in fact, was of any use. We were in different
+worlds. <i>They</i> were in an Emigrant Sleeper skirting the
+shores of Lake Superior. <i>I</i> was on the look-out for the
+Witch of Atlas, wandering through the pine forest of the
+Cascine near Pisa, dreaming in the Indian Caucasus, or
+watching Serchio’s stream. Even “Ouch! Ouch!” could
+not keep me in Ontario for long.</p>
+
+<p>It all lies down the wrong end of that ever-lengthening
+telescope now, our trip to the Rainy River Gold Fields.
+Happy, careless, foolish days of sunlight, liberty, wood-smoke
+and virgin wilderness. Useless days, of course,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_240">[240]</span>
+yet sweetly perfumed as in a dream of fairyland. I
+revelled in them. New York was still close enough to
+lend them some incredible glamour by contrast. That
+no gold came our way was nothing, that the days came
+to an end was bitter. Fading into mist, behind veils
+of blue smoke, yet lit by sheets of burning sunshine, lies
+the faint outline still. Each year drops another gauze
+curtain over an entrancing and ridiculous adventure that
+for my companions was disappointingly empty, but to
+me was filled to the brim with wonder and delight. A few
+sharp pictures, rather disconnected, defy both veils and
+curtains, set against a dim background of wild forest, a
+blue winding river with strange red shores, swift rapids,
+and cosy camp-fires at dawn, at sunset, beneath the
+stars, beneath the moon. The stillness of those grand
+woods is unforgettable; the voice of the river was unceasing,
+yet broke no silence; the smells of balsam, resinous
+pitch-pine, cedar smoke rise like incense above the memory
+of it all.</p>
+
+<p>Duluth was all agog with excitement, and in every
+shop-window hung blue-prints of the El Dorado we were
+bound for. Two big-bladed hunting-knives, a second-hand
+Marlin rifle for $8, a Smith and Wesson revolver, were
+our weapons. I already had a six-shooter, given to me
+by the Tombs Court police. It had killed a negro, and
+I had reported the murder trial resulting. Three blankets
+had to be bought, a canoe, and provisions for the week’s
+trip down the Vermilion River—tea, bacon, flour, biscuits,
+salt and sugar. R.M. had a small “A” tent with him
+large enough to hold three; an old, high-prowed bark
+canoe was purchased from an Indian for $6; but our
+money did not run to Hudson Bay blankets, and the
+cheap, thin coverings we bought proved poor protection
+in those frosty nights of early May.</p>
+
+<p>We picked up a guide too, a half-breed named Gallup.
+He was going to Rainy Lake City in any case, and agreed
+to show us the portages and rapids for two dollars a day
+each way. He justified his name. He galloped. He had
+a slim-nosed Maine cedar-wood canoe that oiled along
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_241">[241]</span>
+into the daily head-wind with easy swiftness, whereas
+R.M. and myself in our high-prowed craft found progress
+slow and steering a heavy toil. The wind caught our
+big bows like a sail. Gallup, moreover, sizing us up as
+English greenhorns, expected good food and lots of whisky,
+and, getting neither, vented his spleen on us as best he
+could. His natural evil temper grew steadily worse.
+There were several ways in which he could have revenge.
+He used them all. By “losing his way” down branch
+streams he made the journey last eight days instead of
+five, yet he went so fast in his neat-nosed craft that it
+was all R.M. and I could do to keep him in sight at all.
+The sunlight flashing on his paddle two or three miles
+ahead, the canoe itself a mere dark speck in the dazzle
+of water, was all we usually had to guide us. Paxton,
+weary, much thinner than he had been, useless as a
+paddler, lay in the bottom of the canoe, leaving all the
+work to Gallup. And Gallup did it, even with this dead
+freight against him. To our injunction to make the
+fellow go slower, his “Ouch! Ouch!” was quite ineffective.
+I was careful to keep the provisions in my own canoe, so
+that we could not lose him altogether, and he was faithful
+in one thing, that he waited for us at the rapids and
+portages.</p>
+
+<p>What did it matter? The head wind held steadily
+day after day, blowing from the north-west through a
+cloudless sky. Everything sparkled, the air was champagne;
+such a winding river of blue I had never seen
+before. Every tree wore little fingers of bright fresh
+green. There was exhilaration and wonder at every turn.
+Burned by the hot sun and wet by the flying spray, our
+hands swelled till the knuckles disappeared, then cracked
+between the joints till they bled.</p>
+
+<p>I steered. R.M. sat in the bows. Paddling hour
+after hour against the wind became a mechanical business
+the muscles attended to automatically. The mind was free
+to roam. The loneliness was magical, for it was a peopled
+loneliness. A start at dawn, half an hour for lunch, and
+camp at sunset was the day’s routine. Usually we were
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_242">[242]</span>
+too exhausted to cook the dwindling bacon, make the
+fire, put up the tent. What did it matter? Nothing
+mattered. Each mile was a mile of delight farther from
+New York. The trip might last months for all I cared.</p>
+
+<p>We cursed Gallup behind his back and to his face.
+He never even answered. His sulky silence broke only
+round the evening fire, when he would tell us appalling
+tales of murder, violence and sudden death about the
+goldfields whither we were bound. It was another form
+of revenge. The desperadoes, cutthroats, and wild hairy
+men generally who awaited us, <i>us</i> especially since we were
+English, hardly belonged to our happy planet. Yet he
+knew them at first hand, knew them even by name. They
+would all be on the look-out for us. Against several, for
+he had his friendly impulses, he warned us in particular.
+Were we good shots and quick on the trigger? The man
+who pulled first, he reminded us, had the drop on the
+other fellow. There was a “stiff” named Morris who was
+peculiarly deadly, Morris, a Canadian, who had killed his
+man in a saloon brawl across the river and had skipped
+over the border into Minnesota. Morris would be interested
+in “guys” like us. He described him in detail.
+We looked forward to Morris.</p>
+
+<p>They were cheery camp-fire stories Gallup told us
+nightly. We crawled into our chilly tent, wondering a
+little, each in his own thin blanket, what these hairy men
+were going to do to “guys like us.” We did not wonder
+long. Sleep came like a clap. At dawn, the wind just
+rising, and the chipmunks dropping fir-cones on to our
+tent with miniature reports, the hairy men were all
+forgotten. It was impossible to hold an ugly thought
+of any kind. The river sang at our feet, the sky was
+pearl and rose, the air was sharply perfumed with smells
+of forest and wood-smoke, and glimpses of sunrise shone
+everywhere between the trees; trees that stretched without
+a break five hundred miles to the shores of James Bay
+in the arctic seas.</p>
+
+<p>We gulped our tea and bacon, packed tent and blankets,
+split open the cracks in our swollen hands, and launched
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">[243]</span>
+the canoes upon a crystal river that swirled along in
+eddies and sheets of colour. Sometimes it narrowed
+to a couple of hundred yards between rugged cliffs where
+the water raced towards a rapid, sometimes it broadened
+into wide, lake-like spaces; there were reaches of placid
+calm; there were stretches white with tumbling foam.
+The sun blazed down; we turned a sharp bend and surprised
+a deer; a porcupine waddled up against a pine-stem;
+a fish leaped in a golden pool; birds flashed and
+vanished; there was a silence, a stillness beyond all telling.
+Nuggets, gold dust, hairy men, six-shooters—nothing
+mattered!</p>
+
+<p>It was, indeed, this loneliness, this entire absence of
+all other human signs, that gradually betrayed the truth.
+Where was the stream of frenzied gold-seekers? Where
+was the rush the papers mentioned? Beyond a few
+stray Indians on the fourth day, we saw no living being.
+Gallup’s tales of terror began to lose their sting. Of real
+information he vouchsafed no single item. But who
+wanted real information? Rainy Lake City might be
+the legendary city of gold that lies beyond the mirages of
+the Lybian desert, for all I cared. The City of New York
+was out of sight. That was the important thing.</p>
+
+<p>The series of wild, lonely camps lie blurred in the
+composite outline of a single camp; eight dawns combine
+into one; I remember clear night-skies ablaze with brilliant
+stars; I remember the moon rising behind the black wall of
+forest across the water. All night the river sang and
+whispered. Police courts and Mrs. Bernstein’s room hid
+far away in the dim reaches of some former life. Behind
+these, again, lay a shadowy, forgotten Kent. There were
+haunting faces, veiled by distance, for a strange remoteness
+curtained the past with unreality. The wonder of the
+present dominated. These woods, this river, ruled the
+world, and somewhere in the heart of that old forest the
+legendary Wendigo, whose history I wrote later in a book,
+had its awful lair.</p>
+
+<p>Owing to Gallup’s trick of lengthening the journey,
+our food gave out, but with fish, venison and partridge
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_244">[244]</span>
+it was impossible to starve. The last-named, a grouse
+actually, perches in the branches, waiting to be shot; a
+bullet must take its head off or it is useless for the pot
+but whizzing bullets do not disturb it, and several birds,
+sitting close together, can be picked off <i>seriatim</i>. Some
+dried sturgeon we found, too, on an island—an Indian
+sturgeon fishery—where great odorous strips were hanging
+in the sun. The braves were away, and the squaw left in
+charge was persuaded to sell us slabs of this excellent
+meat. In a deep, clear pool some half-dozen living
+monsters, hooked by the nose, turned slowly round and
+round, waiting the moment of their death. The island
+was interesting for another reason—it was an Indian canoe
+factory. Here the Redskins built their craft of birchbark,
+and a dozen canoes in various stages of completion
+lay in the broiling sun.... To me it was all visible
+romance, adventure, wonder in the heart of an unspoilt
+spring, with Hiawatha round the next big bend. Paxton
+and R.M. took another view....</p>
+
+<p>On the eighth night—our last, had we known it—there
+was an “incident.” Gallup had been unusually silent
+and extra offensive all day, had “galloped” at top speed,
+had refused to answer a single question, and the idea
+came to us all three simultaneously that he was not
+losing his way with the mere object of more money, but
+was taking us out of our route with a more sinister purpose.
+We depended on the fellow entirely; words or violence
+were equally useless; we were quite helpless. He was
+convinced we carried money, for no three Englishmen of
+our type would make such a trip without it. What was
+easier, we whispered to one another, than to murder us
+and bury our bodies in the trackless, lonely forest? We
+watched him....</p>
+
+<p>That night, exhausted to the bone, we camped on a
+point of wooded shore against the sunset. Across the
+broad reach of water, three miles away perhaps, was an
+Indian encampment. Pointed wigwams and the smoke
+of many fires were visible; voices were audible in the
+distance. The wind had died down as usual with the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_245">[245]</span>
+sun. A deep hush lay over the scene. And, hardly
+had we landed, almost too weary to drag ourselves up
+the bank, when Gallup stepped back into his Maine canoe
+and pushed off downstream without a word. He stood
+upright; he did not sit or kneel. His figure was outlined
+one minute against the red sky, the next his
+silhouette merged into the dark forest beyond. He disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>He had gone, we agreed, for one of two reasons: to get
+food, or to return in the dark and pick us off, much as we
+picked off the grouse from the branches. We inclined
+towards the latter theory—and kept eyes and ears wide
+open. We made a diminutive fire in a hollow, lest we be
+too visible in the surrounding darkness. We listened,
+watched, and waited. It was already dusk. The night
+fell quickly. River and forest became an impenetrable
+sheet of blackness, our tiny fire, almost too small to cook
+on, the only speck of light. The stars came out, peeping
+through the branches. There was no wind. We shivered
+in the cold, listening for every slightest sound ... and
+the hours passed.</p>
+
+<p>“He’ll wait till we’re asleep,” said R.M., keeping his
+eyes open with the greatest difficulty. Paxton fingered
+his revolver and mumbled “Ouch! Ouch!”</p>
+
+<p>Only the cold prevented us falling asleep, as, weapons
+in hand, we took turns to watch and listen. Had we the
+right to fire the instant we saw a figure? Should we wait
+till the scoundrel made a sign? We discussed endlessly
+in whispers. Though no wind stirred the branches, the
+noises in that “silent” forest never ceased, because no
+forest ever is, or can be, really silent. The effort of
+listening produced them by the dozen. On every side
+twigs snapped and dry wood crackled. Soft, stealthy
+footsteps were everywhere on the pine-needles. Canoes
+landed higher up and lower down; paddles dripped out
+in the river as someone approached; sometimes two or
+three dim figures crouched low on the shore, sometimes
+only one. Finally, for safety’s sake, we let the fire go
+out altogether.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_246">[246]</span></p>
+
+<p>Armed to the teeth, we were still shivering in the cold
+darkness well on into the night, and at some distance
+from the dying embers, when suddenly—we nearly
+screamed—there was a sound of a voice. It was a man’s
+voice; he was angry; he was cursing. A flame shot up
+beneath the trees. We saw Gallup on his knees blowing
+up the hemlock coals. He had landed, pulled his canoe
+on to the bank, and come up to within a few yards of
+where we stood without our hearing the faintest sound.
+He said no word. He cooked himself no food. He just
+made a huge fire, spread his blanket beside the comforting
+blaze, curled up, and fell asleep. We soon followed his
+example. Probably he had enjoyed a square meal with
+the Indians, then sauntered home to bed.... Next day
+we reached Rainy Lake City, paid him off, and saw him
+push off upstream in his Maine canoe without having
+uttered a single word. He just counted the dollar bills
+and vanished.</p>
+
+<p>Rainy Lake City was a few acres roughly cleared from
+the primæval forest, yet with avenues cut through the
+dense trees to indicate streets where tramcars were to run
+at some future date. River, lake and forest combined to
+make an enchanting scene. There were perhaps a hundred
+men there. There was gold, but there was no gold-dust,
+no shining pans to sift the precious sand; in a word, no
+placer-mining. It was all quartz; machinery to crush the
+quartz had to be dragged in over the ice in the winter.
+Capital was essential, large lumps of capital. A word
+of inquiry in New York could have told me this. I felt
+rather guilty, but very happy. Paxton and R.M. were
+philosophical. No word of blame escaped their lips.
+They had the right to curse me, whereas both played
+the part of Balaam. Even at the time I thought this
+odd. Neither of them seemed to care a straw. “We’ll
+stake a claim,” said R.M. at intervals. Perhaps both
+were so pleased to have arrived safely that they neither
+grumbled nor abused me. The truth was that, like
+myself, though for rather different reasons, both of them
+were relieved to be “away from home.” The engineer,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_247">[247]</span>
+I discovered later, was glad that 1,500 miles lay between
+him and New York City.</p>
+
+<p>We pitched our tent by the shore and proceeded to
+investigate. Living cost little. It was sunny weather,
+it was spring. One company was already sinking a shaft
+and working a small crusher; there were shacks and
+shanties everywhere; the “city” was as peaceful as the
+inside of St. Paul’s Cathedral; we saw no hairy men,
+but we saw mosquitoes. With the first warm nights
+these pests emerged for the season in their millions; they
+were very large and very hungry; they hung in the air
+like clouds of smoke; they welcomed us; as R.M. said,
+they had probably written the newspaper accounts
+that advertised the place. We had no netting. They
+stung the bears blind; they would have stung a baby
+to death, had there been any babies, except ourselves, to
+sting. The only gold we saw was a lump, valued at
+$5,000, lying beside a revolver on the counter of the
+Bank of Montreal’s shack. The clerk allowed us to
+hold it for a second each. It was the only gold we
+touched.... We investigated, as mentioned; we wandered
+about; we fished and shot, we rubbed Indian stuff
+over our faces to keep the mosquitoes off; we enjoyed
+happy, careless, easy days, bathing in ice-cold water,
+basking in hot sunshine, resting, loafing, and spinning
+yarns with all and sundry round our camp-fires. After
+New York it was a paradise, and but for the mosquitoes,
+we could have dressed in fig leaves.</p>
+
+<p>Except for the question of having enough money to
+get out again before the iron winter set in towards October,
+we might have spent the whole summer there. We decided
+to leave while it was still possible. To paddle a hundred
+and fifty miles against the stream was not attractive. We
+would do the trip on foot. Selling tent and canoe to the
+clerk in the bank, we set out across the Twenty-Six Mile
+Portage one day towards the end of June. A party of
+five men, also bound for Duluth, joined us, and one of
+them was—Morris.</p>
+
+<p>Those happy, unproductive goldfields! That untenanted
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_248">[248]</span>
+Rainy Lake City where no tramcars ever ran,
+nor faro-tables flourished! Morris, the hairy desperado!
+In the dismal New York days that followed they seemed
+to belong to some legendary Golden Age. Romance and
+adventure, both touched with comedy, went hand in hand,
+beauty and liberty heightening some imagined radiance.
+Wasted time, of course, but for that very reason valuable
+beyond computation. Stored memories are stored energy
+that may prove the raw material of hope in days that
+follow after. Even Morris, the “stiff,” and cut-throat,
+played his little part in the proper spirit. There was a
+price on his head in Canada. We watched him closely;
+we watched his partners too. The Twenty-Six Mile
+Portage cut off an immense bend of the Vermilion River,
+running through the depths of trackless, gloomy forest
+the whole way. Nothing was easier than to “mix us
+up with the scenery” as a phrase of those parts expressed
+it. Especially must we be on our guard at night. One
+of us must always only pretend to sleep. Our former
+mistake about Gallup need not make us careless. A
+natural instinct to dramatize the expedition might have
+succeeded better if Morris, the villain, had not sometimes
+missed his cue and failed to realize the importance of his rôle.</p>
+
+<p>The scenery, at any rate, was right. The weather
+broke the very day we started, and the region justified
+its translated Indian name. A drenching rain fell sousing
+on the world. With our heavy packs we made slow
+progress, crawling in single file beneath the endless dripping
+trees, soaked to the skin in the first ten minutes. There
+was no trail, but Morris had a compass. Darkness fell
+early on the first night when we had covered barely six
+miles. Morris found a deserted lumbermen’s shanty.
+One man chopped down a pitch-pine and cut out its dry
+heart of resinous wood which caught fire instantly;
+another soaked a shred of cedar-wood in a tin mug filled
+with melted bacon fat; a third cooked dinner for the whole
+party; and by eight o’clock we all lay grouped about the
+fire, dodging the streams of water that splashed through
+the gaping remnants of the pine-log roof.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_249">[249]</span></p>
+
+<p>Outside in that windless forest the drip of the rain
+was like the sound of waterfalls, but it was a magnificent,
+a haunted, a legendary forest none the less. Our shanty
+was faintly lit by the flickering cedar-candle. Queer
+shadows danced, eyes glittered, the faces here and there
+seemed distorted oddly in the shifting flame and darkness
+that alternately rose and fell. One by one, dog-tired,
+we fell asleep. It was R.M.’s turn to watch. Before
+supper was ended even, he lay soundly slumbering, his
+head, with touselled hair and ragged beard, thrown back
+against the wall, his mouth, containing unswallowed
+food—so weary was he—half-open. I exchanged a
+significant glance with Paxton over his collapsed body,
+meaning that we must watch instead.</p>
+
+<p>Our steaming clothes dried slowly as the night wore on.
+The dripping trickle of the trees became louder and louder.
+Paxton, very thin now, looked like a scarecrow in his
+ragged shirt and coat. His customary exclamation was
+rarely heard. He fell asleep in turn. The rest of the
+party had been snoring for an hour or more. It was
+up to me to watch.</p>
+
+<p>I watched. The next thing I knew was a sudden
+stealthy movement, and a low voice that woke me out of
+a slumber made of lead. The fire was low, the candle
+hardly flickered. Across the gloom I saw the movement
+that had waked me—Morris, the hairy man, was stirring.
+I watched him. He sat up. He leaned cautiously over—towards
+R.M. His hand stretched out slowly. Splendid
+fellow! I felt furious with R.M. for falling asleep, for
+keeping his mouth open in that idiotic way. Stupid
+idiot and faithless comrade! Morris, I saw, was doing
+something to his bulky, motionless figure, just about to
+slit him open perhaps. Well, let him slit! It was the
+head he touched. He was doing something to the sleeper’s
+head—pushing it—pushing it sideways so that a stream of
+water through the roof might just miss falling on his
+shoulder and thus splashing the hairy man’s own face
+with spray. I watched closely, faithful to my job. I
+saw Morris the Stiff take a bit of spare clothing out of his
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_250">[250]</span>
+pack and hang it over R.M.’s neck and shoulder. “I
+got no use for it,” he was saying. “Yer friend might
+jest as well hev it.” He knew, therefore, quite well
+that I was watching. But R.M. knew nothing, less than
+nothing. He neither stirred nor woke. A more kindly,
+tender-hearted fellow than Morris the Stiff, no traveller
+in wild places could possibly desire.</p>
+
+<p>It was perhaps a couple of hours later when I woke
+again, disturbed this time not by noise, but by the sudden
+absence of it. One winter’s night the inhabitants of
+Niagara, similarly, woke up because, ice having formed,
+the thunder of the falls had ceased. I listened a moment,
+then went out. The rain had ceased, the clouds were
+gone, in a clear sky the three-quarter moon shone brightly.
+The rain-washed air seemed perfumed beyond belief.
+Nor did the old moon merely “look round her when the
+heavens were bare,” she sprawled fantastically at full
+length, as it were, in her magnificent blue-black bed of
+naked space. I went out to a clear spot among the trees.
+Far away rose a soft murmur. The air hummed and shook
+with the roar of distant rapids, so calm and still the night
+was. No bird, no animal cried. The earth herself, it
+seemed, stopped turning in that wonderful stillness. Those
+few minutes painted a picture that memory must always
+keep....</p>
+
+<p>Three months later the first week in October found us
+in New York again. The bullets were forgotten and, of
+course, unmentioned, and five months of glorious wasted
+time lay safely behind us.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_251">[251]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII">
+    CHAPTER XXVIII
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap kern'><span class='allcaps'>If</span> it is impossible to recapture the boyish moods of
+those early days, it is also difficult not to import
+into these notes the point of view and feelings that
+belong to later life. Surely, but gradually, the scale of
+time changes with the years, and with it the range and
+quality of the emotions: to-day, a year seems a very brief
+period; the few months spent in the woods after our
+Gold Fields fiasco seemed both an eternity, yet far too
+brief. A faint flavour of childhood’s immense scale, when
+twelve months was an immeasurable stretch of time, still
+clung to them, perhaps.</p>
+
+<p>But the magnet of New York drew us. Any idea of
+returning to England until I had made good was far from
+me. We arrived in the detested city late in October,
+with livings to earn, and with less money than when we
+had first come two years before. We took separate rooms
+this time, for I had learned my lesson about sharing beds
+and clothes and scanty earnings. It was to be each man
+for himself. Paxton disappeared immediately; only
+occasionally did I hear his “Ouch, Ouch!” again; M. found
+a bed in Harlem and started to teach boxing; I took
+quarters in East 21st Street, on the top floor of a cheap
+but cleanish house, and arranged for breakfast and dinner
+in a neighbouring boarding-house at $2.50 a week.</p>
+
+<p>Two Germans lived in the adjoining attic. Through
+the thin wooden partition I heard their talk, their breathing,
+their slightest movement. They rarely came to bed
+before midnight; they talked the whole night through.
+Informing them in a loud voice that I understood their
+language made no difference; they neither stopped nor
+answered. Yet, oddly enough, I never once saw them;
+never met them on the stairs, nor in the hall, nor at the
+front door. They remained invisible, if not inaudible.
+But I formed vivid pictures of them, and knew from their
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_252">[252]</span>
+conversation that they were not better than they need
+be. An old man and a young one, I gathered. An unpleasant
+house altogether, the low rent more easily
+explained than I at first guessed. Long afterwards I had
+my revenge upon those unsavoury Germans—by writing
+an awful story about them, “A Case of Eavesdropping,”
+though by the time it was published they were probably
+either dead or in gaol. A sinister couple, these invisible
+Teutons!</p>
+
+<p>My one main object was to avoid the <i>Evening Sun</i>:
+any work was better, I felt, than a return to that hated
+sensational reporting. A place was always open to me
+under McCloy, but my detestation of the police court,
+and of the criminal atmosphere generally, was so strong
+that I would rather have taken a street-cleaning job
+under Tammany than go back to it. I therefore began
+by trying free-lance work, gathering news items and selling
+them for a dollar or two apiece to various papers, writing
+snippets of description, inventing incidents, and earning
+perhaps ten dollars a week on the average. It was hard
+going, but pawning and free lunches in the saloons made
+it possible to live. I knew all the tricks by now; I used
+them. The blanket off my bed occasionally spent a week-end
+with a new “Ikey,” though getting it out of the house
+and back again was no easy matter, while the smell of the
+moth-balls I always expected must betray me. It was a
+poor blanket, too, worth only 50 cents from Ikey’s point of
+view, and certainly not worth the foolish risk involved.
+For, literally—though this never once occurred to me
+at the time—it was stealing, and the fact that I told Ikey
+where it came from, hoping to extract thereby an extra
+half-dollar from him, could not have exonerated me if
+the landlady had met me on the stairs. Personally, I
+think the quantity of food I devoured at the free lunch
+counters in exchange for a five-cent glass of lager was a
+more flagrant case of theft. Only it was a recognized
+theft. The temporary absence of the blanket, anyhow,
+since I made my own bed, was never discovered, and my
+heart remained innocent of conscious burglary.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_253">[253]</span></p>
+
+<p>A dozen years before, aged 12, I had once been accused
+of stealing by the headmaster of the private school I
+adorned in Sevenoaks. I was innocent, but the evidence
+was both ludicrous and damning, so damning, indeed,
+that, strangely, I <i>felt</i> guilty and accepted the punishment.
+A terrifying experience, it haunted me for years, and the
+sight of a policeman, or the words “criminal judge,” sent
+shivers down my spine long afterwards. When a little
+older, I came to suspect that it was worked up against
+me by the master to curry favour with an influential
+parent; but at the actual time I had visions even of
+prison—for something I had not done. All about a
+poem, too!</p>
+
+<p>At evening “prep” a “bit of poetry,” as we called
+it, had to be learnt by heart; my own poetry book was
+lost; I borrowed young Gildea’s. The last thing in the
+world I wanted to own was that poetry book of young
+Gildea, the last thing I wanted to do was to learn that
+poem by heart. I spent the hour, therefore, inscribing
+my name with elaborate flourishes on the title page. Twice
+I wrote it, with capitals, of which I was very proud; I
+thought it ornate and beautiful; and when the hour was
+over I tossed the book into my locker and forgot all about
+it. Next morning I was summoned into the headmaster’s
+presence. He wore red whiskers about an otherwise clean-shaven
+face: a face of natural sternness, with a big nose,
+a mouth of iron, and steely blue eyes. He was a clergyman
+of evangelical persuasion.</p>
+
+<p>I had no idea why I had been summoned, but his
+glance made me at once feel uneasy.</p>
+
+<p>“Blackwood minor,” he said in a solemn and portentous
+voice, “did you do—<i>this</i>?” He held out Gildea’s poetry
+book towards me with the cover open. His finger pointed
+to my name in pencil, flourishes and all.</p>
+
+<p>I was completely puzzled as to what was coming, but
+I admitted the signature of course.</p>
+
+<p>“Is the book yours?” he asked. I said it was not.
+“Gildea has reported the loss of his own copy,” the voice
+of doom went on. “It has been found—<i>in your locker</i>—and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_254">[254]</span>
+with <i>your name written</i> in it.” The voice made me
+think of “and God spake” in the Bible.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at me in such a way that I felt sure I was
+going to be flogged. What had I done? And why? I
+couldn’t quite remember. No explanation came to me.
+The simple truth was too silly to mention. I had nothing
+to say except to admit everything. The man, with his
+awful manner and appalling aspect, terrified me. I stood
+speechless and paralysed, wondering what was coming
+next. The red whiskers made me think of Satan.</p>
+
+<p>I little dreamed, however, that the headmaster would
+say what he then did say. He spoke with a terribly slow,
+deliberate emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>“This is as grave a case of stealing,” fell the awful
+words of judgment, “as ever came before a <i>Criminal
+Judge</i>. I have sent for your father.”</p>
+
+<p>I was petrified. It was enough to frighten any boy
+into his boots.</p>
+
+<p>My father in due course arrived; Gildea’s parents,
+both of them, arrived likewise; there were consultations,
+mysterious comings and goings; it was a day of gloom and
+terror; for some reason I made no attempt to defend
+myself; it all flabbergasted, frightened, puzzled me beyond
+understanding. I was made to confess to Gildea and to
+apologize to the parents. To my own father I said
+nothing. He looked troubled, yet somehow not as grave
+as he ought to have looked. Perhaps he had his doubts....
+What that fiendish headmaster, whose name I will
+not mention, had said behind my back, I did not know,
+for my father never referred to the matter afterwards,
+and both I and my brother were removed from the school
+at the end of the term. But I was severely punished—sent
+to Coventry for three days—for doing something
+I had both done and had not done, and the phrase “Criminal
+Judge” was burnt into my memory with letters of
+fire. My revenge was rather an oblique one—a fight
+with that headmaster’s son, though about quite another
+matter. With each blow I landed—and I landed several—I
+saw red whiskers on a boy about my own age!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_255">[255]</span></p>
+
+<p>This digression concerning a poetry book occurs to
+me only now, while telling of my wickedness about the
+blanket. The lesson that master wished to teach me
+had no effect, for the simple reason that I had <i>not</i> stolen.
+The fear, however, doubtless remained; the injustice
+scored deep, bitter wounds. I trace back to it a curious
+persistent dread, not entirely obliterated even now: the
+dread of being accused of a crime I have not committed;
+yet where the evidence of guilt seems overwhelming.
+Patanjali’s “Aphorisms” describe a method of living
+through in imagination all possible experiences. A series
+of laborious incarnations would be necessary to exhaust
+these experiences in the ordinary way. They can be lived
+out in the mind instead. In imagination, anyhow,
+thanks to that little school injustice, I have often tried to
+<i>realize</i> the feelings of a man serving a term of imprisonment
+for a crime he has not committed. Patanjali’s interesting
+method is, at any rate, a means of opening the mind to
+a sympathetic understanding of many an experience one
+could not otherwise know. Only imagination must be
+sustained and very detailed, and the projection of the
+personality is not easy.</p>
+
+<p>An interlude of play-acting now enlivened my period
+of free-lance journalism. Kay was in my life again, and
+the opportunity came through him. He had spent the
+summer between odd jobs on the stage, and odd jobs at
+buying and selling exchange in Wall Street. He made
+both ends meet, at any rate, and had a cheap room in the
+purlieus of Hoboken across the river. A part in a third-rate
+touring company had just been offered to him, and
+he said he could get me a part as well. One-night stands
+in the smaller towns of New York State with a couple of
+plays, of which “Jim, the Penman,” was one, formed the
+programme, and my utter ignorance of acting, he assured
+me, need not stand in the way. My salary would be
+$15 a week, with travelling expenses paid. Gilmour, the
+leading man, and organizer of the company, was anxious
+to find someone like myself.</p>
+
+<p>I jumped at it. Gilmour looked me up and down
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_256">[256]</span>
+and said I’d do. I had only one line to say. I was a
+prison warder on sentry duty, pacing to and fro between
+the walls at night, when Gilmour, the hero, escaping from
+his cell, knocks me down after a brief struggle, and disappears
+into the night. A moment later the alarm is given;
+other warders arrive, find me wounded on the ground
+and ask which way the prisoner has gone. “That way,”
+I shout, pointing the direction before losing consciousness;
+whereupon the curtain falls.</p>
+
+<p>It was not an exacting part. Gilmour said I should
+make a “bully warder.” My own shabby clothes, with
+a brown billycock hat, would do as they were. I was to
+carry a large wooden pistol. We rehearsed the scene,
+swaying to and fro, breathing hard, grunting with effort,
+cursing each other fiercely, until the prisoner, wrenching
+the pistol from me, struck me on the head and floored me.
+Such was my rôle.</p>
+
+<p>I played it at Yonkers and Mount Vernon, three nights
+in each place, if memory serves me correctly, but “went
+through it” is the true description of my performance.
+For the theatre, either as a writer or actor, I possess no
+trace of talent, a fact rediscovered recently when playing
+an insignificant part in Drinkwater’s “Oliver Cromwell”
+on tour with Henry Ainley. My dismissal at the end of
+the first week, however, was not due to this lack of skill—it
+was due to a pail of beer and the leading lady. For the
+leading lady, handsome daughter, I remember, of a Washington
+General, was the inspiration of the touring company,
+and it was for her <i>beaux yeux</i> that the enterprise was
+undertaken. Gilmour was what is known as “crazy”
+about her, his jealousy a standing joke among us, so that
+when those <i>beaux yeux</i> were turned upon my lanky, half-starved
+self, there were warnings that trouble might begin.
+But I was looking for salary and food rather than for
+trouble. In the dressing-room we underlings all shared
+together, though “dressing” was of negligible kind,
+I was quite safe. Chance meetings, however, were unavoidable,
+of course, and Bettina’s instinct for adventure
+was distinctly careless. It was here the pail of beer came
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_257">[257]</span>
+in—into our crowded dressing-room. Who brought it,
+I have forgotten; the miscreant who stood treat to the
+band of hungry and thirsty Thespians is lost to memory.
+I only know that, empty of food as I was, my share of
+that gallon pail distinctly cheered me. The <i>beaux yeux</i>
+had been boldly rolling; another pair of eyes, not so lovely,
+had been rolling too. To be ungallantly honest about it,
+my own feelings were not engaged in any way, except on
+this particular night, when they were considerably roused—against
+that stupid, jealous Gilmour. The way he
+glared in my direction stirred my bile; the few glasses of
+beer made me reckless. When the escaping prisoner
+fought with me for the possession of the great wooden
+pistol, I refused to be “thrown.”</p>
+
+<p>The scanty audience that night witnessed a good performance
+of my brief, particular scene. Gilmour cursed
+and swore beneath his breath, but he was a smaller man
+than I was. He could do nothing with me. What was
+a shocking performance in one sense, was a realistic and
+sincere performance in another. Had my share of the
+pail been slightly bigger than it was, I should undoubtedly
+have “thrown” the prisoner and spoilt the curtain. As
+it was, however, Gilmour managed in the end to wrench
+the pistol from me, and in doing so, his fury genuine,
+he landed me a blow on the forehead with its heavy butt
+that stunned me. I fell. He fled. Roars of applause I
+heard dimly. My brown billycock hat, I remember, fell
+on its springy brim, bounced into the air, then hopped
+away against the footlights. And all my interest went
+with my precious hat. To the warders who at once
+rushed on with cries of “He’s escaped! Which way
+did he go?” I used the right words, taking my cue correctly.
+Only I pointed in the wrong direction. I pointed
+towards my old hat against the footlights. It lay outside
+the curtain.</p>
+
+<p>It is odd to think that somewhere in the under-mind
+of the individual who lay half-stunned on the stage of a
+Yonkers theatre, pointing wildly at a dilapidated, but
+precious, old brown billycock, slept a score of books, waiting
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_258">[258]</span>
+patiently for expression a few years later. It is difficult,
+indeed, as I write these notes, to realize that the individual
+who describes the incidents is the individual who experienced
+them. The body itself has changed every single
+physical particle at least four times in succession. Nor
+is the mind the same. With the exception of one or two
+main interests, easily handed on by the outgoing atoms
+to the incoming atoms in the brain, “I” possess little that
+the “I” of those distant New York days possessed. Even
+the continuity of memory is bequeathable by atoms leaving
+the brain to the new ones just arriving. Where, then, is
+the self who experienced years ago what the self holding
+this pen now sets down?</p>
+
+<p>The “I,” during the next few years, at any rate, went
+rolling; rolling from one experience to another, if not
+cheerily, at least resignedly. Whatever happened—and
+what happened was mostly unpleasant—there was never
+absent the conviction that it was deserved, and must be
+lived out in a spirit of acceptance, until finally exhausted.
+Any other attitude toward unwelcome events meant evasion,
+and a disagreeable experience shirked merely postponed
+it to another time, either in this life or another.
+There was, meanwhile, a <i>real</i> self that remained aloof, untouched,
+neither happy nor unhappy, a spectator, but a
+royal spectator. Into this eternal Self was gathered
+the fruit and essence of each and every experience
+the lower “I” passed through; the secret of living
+was to identify oneself with this exalted and untroubled
+royalty....</p>
+
+<p>The rolling-stone went rolling, therefore, somewhat in
+this spirit, which helped and comforted, which made most
+things possible, bearable at any rate, because it was the
+outcome of that strange inner conviction established in
+my blood, a conviction, as mentioned, neither argument
+nor evidence could alter.</p>
+
+<p>Letters from home, home memories as well, pertained
+now to some distant, unrecoverable region that was dead
+and gone. My mother’s letters—one every week without
+a single omission—expressed a larger spirit. Her faithful
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_259">[259]</span>
+letters, secure in a sincere belief, were very precious, I
+remember. Sometimes, though never successfully, they
+tempted me almost to giving my full confidence and
+telling more than my camouflaged reports revealed.
+From the rest of my family, with the exception of a
+really loved brother, I knew myself entirely divorced,
+a divorce that later years proved final and somehow
+inevitable.</p>
+
+<p>To my father, who was always something of a stranger
+to me, I could never tell my heart; my mother, on the
+other hand, always had my confidence, coupled with
+an austere respect. Few words passed between us, yet
+she always knew, I felt, my thoughts. And this full
+confidence dated, oddly enough, from an incident in early
+childhood, when I was saying the Lord’s Prayer at her
+knee. There was a phrase that puzzled me even when
+I was in knickerbockers: “Lead us not into temptation....”
+I stopped, looked up into her face, and
+asked: “But <i>would</i> He lead me into temptation unless I
+asked Him not to?” Her eyes opened, she gazed down
+into mine with a thoughtful, if perplexed expression, for
+a moment she was evidently at a loss how to answer. She
+hesitated, then decided to trust me with the truth: “I
+have never quite understood those words myself,” she
+said. “I think, though, it is best to leave their explanation
+to Him, and to say the words exactly as He taught
+them.”</p>
+
+<p>“Old souls” and “young souls” was a classification
+that ruled my mind in this New York period: my mother
+was of the former, my father of the latter. In the Old
+lay innate the fruits, the results, the memories of many
+many previous lives, and this ripeness of long experience
+showed itself in certain ways—in taste, in judgment, in
+their standard of values, in that mysterious quality called
+tact; above all, perhaps, in the type and quality of goods
+they desired from life. Worldly ambitions, so-called, were
+generally negligible in them. What we label to-day as the
+subconscious was invariably fully charged; also, without
+too much difficulty, accessible. It made them interesting,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_260">[260]</span>
+stimulating and not easily exhausted. Wide sympathies,
+spread charity, understanding were their hall-marks, and
+a certain wisdom, as apart from intellect, their invariable
+gift; with, moreover, a tendency to wit, if not that rare
+quality wit itself, and humour, the power of seeing, and
+therefore laughing at, oneself. The cheaper experiences
+of birth, success, possessions they had learned long ago;
+it was the more difficult, but higher, values they had come
+back to master, and among the humbler ranks of life they
+found the necessary conditions. Christ, I reflected, was
+the son of a carpenter.</p>
+
+<p>The Young Souls, on the other hand, were invariably
+hot-foot after the things of this world. Show, Riches and
+Power stuck like red labels on their foreheads. The
+Napoleons of the earth were among the youngest of all;
+the intellectuals, those who relied on reason alone, often
+the prosperous, usually the well-born, were of the same
+category. Rarely was “understanding” in them, and
+brilliant cleverness could never rank with that wisdom
+which knows that <i>tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner</i>.
+To me the Young Souls were the commonplace and
+uninteresting ones. They were shallow, sketchy, soon
+exhausted, the <i>Dutzend-menschen</i>; whereas, the others
+were intuitive, mature in outlook, aware of deeper values
+and eager for the things of the spirit....</p>
+
+<p>Thinking over my distinguished relations, I found none
+fit to black the boots of that kindly waiter in Krisch’s
+cheap eating-house, Otto, the Black Forest German, who
+trusted us for food and often forwent his trumpery tip
+with a cheery smile. And there were many others, whose
+memory remains bright and wonderful from those dismal
+New York years.... A volume of “Distinguished People
+I have Met,” for instance, would include the Italian
+bootblack at the corner of 4th Avenue and 20th Street,
+who had the sun in his face, in his bright black eyes and
+brown skin, and who trusted me sometimes for a month,
+although five cents meant as much to him as it did to me.
+The bigwigs I interviewed for newspapers are forgotten,
+but the faces of Otto and the Italian shine in memory still.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_261">[261]</span>
+I even remember the sentence the latter taught me.
+It invariably formed our daily greeting: <i>E molto tempo
+che siete stato amalato?</i> Often since have I spouted it
+in Italy, as bewildered by the voluble replies I could not
+understand, as the peasants were by my familiar enquiry
+after their health. Mrs. Bernstein, I think, would be
+entitled to a place, and Grant, who pawned his overcoat
+to buy me food, most certainly to full mention.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_262">[262]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXIX">
+    CHAPTER XXIX
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'><span class='allcaps'>Worthy</span> of more detailed description, however,
+is the figure of an old, old man I met about this
+time, a dignified, venerable and mysterious being,
+man of the world, lawyer, musician, scholar, poet, but
+above all, exile. Incidentally, he was madman too.
+What unkindly tricks fate had played with his fine brain,
+I never learned with accuracy. It was but the ruin of
+a great mind I knew. Pain and suffering of no unusual
+order, as I soon discovered, had, at any rate, left his
+heart as wise and sweet and gentle as any I have ever
+known. His voice, his eyes, his smile, his very gestures,
+even, had in them all the misery and all the goodness of
+the world. Our chance meeting deepened into a friendship,
+the intimacy of which between Padre and Figlio—names
+he himself assigned respectively—yet never permitted
+a full account of his own mysterious past. The
+little I gathered of his personal history before he died
+some dozen years later in England, came to me from
+patchwork sources, but none of it from his own lips. What
+term the alienists might use to describe the mental disorder
+of Alfred H. Louis I do not know.</p>
+
+<p>The first time I saw him he cut a sorry figure; an old
+fellow in far worse plight and even worse down at heel
+than I was myself. It was in an olive-oil warehouse, at
+No. 1, Water Street, on the river front. McKay, the
+owner, whom I had met through some newspaper story
+or other, had converted me to the wisdom of an occasional
+glass of olive oil. It was healthful and delicious, but to
+me its chief value was as food. On this day of broiling
+heat I had wandered in for a glass of oil, and, while waiting
+a moment for the owner to appear, I noticed an old tramp
+seated on a packing-case, gazing at me in penetrating
+fashion. He was a Jew, he was very small, his feet were
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_263">[263]</span>
+tiny, his hands, I took in, were beautiful. I thought of
+Moses, of Abraham, some Biblical prophet come to life,
+of some storied being like the Wandering Jew.</p>
+
+<p>His atmosphere, that is, at once sent a message of
+something unusual to my imagination. But it was when
+McKay came in and, to my surprise, calmly introduced
+us as fellow Englishmen, that my mind was really startled—not
+because the old tramp was English, but because when
+he rose to shake my hand, it seemed to me that some great
+figure of history rose to address, not me, but the nations
+of the world. He reached barely to my shoulder, his face
+upturned to mine, yet the feeling came that it was I who
+looked up into his eyes. The dignity and power the frail
+outline conveyed were astonishing. He was a Presence.
+And his voice the same instant—though in some commonplace
+about having known Lord Dufferin—increased the air
+of greatness, almost I had said of majesty, that he wore so
+naturally. It was not merely cultured, deep and musical,
+it vibrated with a peculiar resonance that conveyed
+authority beyond anything I have known in any other
+human voice.</p>
+
+<p>We talked ... <i>he</i> talked, rather ... hunger, thirst,
+the afflicting moist heat of the day were all forgotten, New
+York City was forgotten too. His words carried me beyond
+this world, his language in that astonishing voice wore
+wings that brought escape. His long frock-coat, green
+with age and dirt; his broken boots and frayed trousers;
+his shapeless top hat, brushed the wrong way till it looked
+like a beehive coated with rough plush; his grimy collar
+without a tie; the spots upon his grease-stained waistcoat—all
+vanished completely. It was, above all, I
+think, the poetry in his voice and words that brought
+the balm and healing into my whole being. The way
+his hands moved too. We talked for several hours,
+for it was McKay’s nasal interruption, saying he must
+close the warehouse, that brought me back to—Water
+Street.</p>
+
+<p>Recklessly, though with a diffidence as though I were
+with royalty, I invited him to dine, but in the cheap
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_264">[264]</span>
+Childs’ Eating House where we “fed,” I soon perceived
+that I had no reason to feel embarrassed. A cup of coffee
+and “sinkers” sufficed him, he took my shyness away,
+he won my easy and full confidence; and afterwards—for
+he refused to let me go—as we sat, that stifling night,
+on a bench in Battery Park, tramps and Wearie Willies
+our neighbours, but the salt air from the sea in our nostrils,
+he used a phrase that, giving me the calibre of his thought,
+was too significant ever to be forgotten. I had spoken of
+my hatred of the city and of my present circumstances in
+it. He peered into my face a moment beneath his dreadful
+hat, then, raising a beautiful hand by way of emphasis,
+his deep voice came to me like some music of the sea
+itself:</p>
+
+<p>“No man worth his spiritual salt,” he said with impressive
+gentleness, “is ever entangled in locality.” He
+smiled, and the tenderness of the voice was in the eyes
+as well....</p>
+
+<p>The little park emptied gradually, the heated paving-stones
+lost something of their furnace breath, the stars
+were visible overhead beyond the great arc lights, the
+parched leaves rustled faintly, and I spoke to him of poetry.
+He had lived with Longfellow, he had known Browning.
+The poetry of the world was in his soul—Greek, Latin,
+German, French, above all, Hebrew. I drank in his
+words, unaware of the passing hours. To me it was like
+finding a well in the desert when I was dying of thirst.
+Even the awful city he transfigured. Suddenly his lean
+fingers touched my arm, his voice deepened and grew
+soft, he took his hat off. “I will say my Night-Song to
+you now,” he said. “I can only say it to very, very
+few. For years I have said it to—no one. But <i>you</i> shall
+hear it.”</p>
+
+<p>If there was something in his voice and manner that
+thrilled me to the core, the poem he then repeated on
+that bench in Battery Park at midnight gave me indescribable
+sensations of beauty and delight. I realized
+I listened to a personal confession that was a revelation
+of the mysterious old heart beneath the green
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_265">[265]</span>
+frock-coat. It seemed to me that Night herself spoke
+through him:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">Known only, only to God and the night, and the stars and me!</div>
+      <div class="verse indent10">Prophetic, jubilant Song,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Smiting the rock-bound hours till the waters of life flow free;</div>
+      <div class="verse indent10">And a Soul, on pinion strong,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Flieth afar, and hovers over the infinite sea</div>
+      <div class="verse indent10">Of love and of melody:</div>
+      <div class="verse indent10"><i>While the blind fates weave their nets</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent10"><i>And the world in sleep forgets</i>.</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">Known only, only to me and the night, and the stars and God!</div>
+      <div class="verse indent10">Song, from a burning breast,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Of a land of perfected delights which the foot of man ne’er trod,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent10">Like a foaming wine expressed</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">From passionate fruits that glowed ’mid the boughs of the Eden lost,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent10">Ere sin was born and frost;—</div>
+      <div class="verse indent10"><i>Song wild with desires and regrets,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent10"><i>While the world in sleep forgets</i>.</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">Known only, only to me and God, and the night and the stars!</div>
+      <div class="verse indent10">The beacon fire of song,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Flaming for guidance and hope while the storm-winds wage their wars;</div>
+      <div class="verse indent10">Balm for the ancient wrong,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Dropping from healing wings on the wounds of the heart and brain,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent10">Quenching their ancient pain:</div>
+      <div class="verse indent10">Love-star that rises and sets,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent10"><i>While the world in sleep forgets</i>.</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">Known only, only to God and me, and the stars and the night!</div>
+      <div class="verse indent10">Dove that returns to my ark,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Murmuring of grief-floods falling, of light beyond all light:</div>
+      <div class="verse indent10">Voice that cleaveth the dark,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Singing of earth growing heaven, of distant lands that bless,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent10">Though they may not caress,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent10">And, blessing, pay Love’s old debts,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent10"><i>While the world in sleep forgets</i>.</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Long before he ended the tears were coursing slowly
+down his withered cheeks, and when the last word died
+away a long silence came between us, for I could find no
+words to express the emotion in me. He took my hand
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_266">[266]</span>
+and held it a moment tightly, then presently got up, put
+on his old hat again, with the remark that it was time for
+bed, and followed me slowly to a Broadway cable car.
+His small, frail figure seemed to have dwindled to a child’s
+shadow as he moved beside me; he had a way of hunching
+his thin shoulders that still further dwarfed his height;
+I felt myself a giant physically, but in my mind <i>his</i> stature
+reached the stars. We exchanged addresses. He lived
+in 8th Street, a miserable attic, I learned later, though I
+never actually entered it. Of his mental disorder no
+inkling had then reached me. I watched him melt into
+the shadows of the side street with the feeling that I
+watched some legendary figure, some ancient prophet,
+some mysterious priest. He smiled at me; there was love
+and blessing in the brilliant eyes. Then he was gone....
+For me, at this time, to meet and talk with such a man
+held something of the fabulous. He had set fire to a
+hundred new thoughts and left them flaming in me.</p>
+
+<p>It was in this way began a friendship that has always
+seemed to me marvellous, and that lasted till his death in
+England some fifteen years later. Sweet, patient, resigned
+and lovable to the end, he died incurably insane, the
+charity in him never tainted, the tenderness unstained,
+the passionate love of his kind, of beauty, of all that is
+lovely and of good report, unspoilt. The grimmest pain
+had not soured the natural sweetness in him, his gentle
+spirit knew no bitterness, his megalomania, complicated,
+I believe, with other varieties of disorder, was harmless
+and inoffensive. As Padre he still lives in my memory;
+as The Old Man of Visions (“The Listener”), he still
+haunts my imagination. “You have taken my name
+away,” he chided me with a smile, when I published this
+picture of him. “I am now uncertain who I am. That is
+well. I am Anybody I choose to be. I will be Everybody.”
+He had rooms in Great Russell Street at the time.
+Though baptised by Charles Kingsley into the English
+Church, he later became a Roman Catholic, but, when the end
+came, he reverted to the blood and faith born in him. He
+was buried, by his own wish, in a Hebrew cemetery. The
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_267">[267]</span>
+epitaph he so often told me with an ironic smile he had
+chosen for his own was not, however, used. Talk, he
+always declared, vain, excessive talk, lay at the bottom
+of every misunderstanding in the world. If people
+would talk less, there would be less trouble in life. “Sorry
+I spoke,” was to be cut upon one of his tombstones; “Sorry
+they spoke” upon the other.</p>
+
+<p>A poem he wrote—published, like the Night Song, in
+<i>Harper’s Magazine</i>—describing death, I have kept all
+these years. The strange intensity of expression he put
+into the passage which begins: “The sand of my Being is
+fused and runs ...” lives in my mind to this day. The
+title of the poem was “The Final Word”:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">Hence then at last! For the strife is past</div>
+      <div class="verse indent2">Of the Birth and Death, of the Self and Soul;</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">The memory breaks, the breath forsakes,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent2">The waves of the æther o’er me roll.</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">The pulses cease, and the Hours release</div>
+      <div class="verse indent2">Their wearied school of the nerves and brain;</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">I fall on the Deep of the Mystic Sleep,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent2">Where the Word that is Life can be heard again.</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">And the fires descend, and my fragments blend,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent2">And the sand of my Being is fused and runs</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">To the mould of a glass for the rays to pass</div>
+      <div class="verse indent2">Of the Sun of the centre that rules all suns.</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">But, or ever I rest, I take from my breast</div>
+      <div class="verse indent2">My blood-drained heart for the tablet white</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Of a gospel page to the far-off Age—</div>
+      <div class="verse indent2">O Hand eternal!—Come forth—and write!</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_268">[268]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXX">
+    CHAPTER XXX
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'><span class='allcaps'>The</span> personality of Alfred H. Louis is identified with
+New York for me; he accompanied my remaining
+years there, guide, philosopher and friend. He
+took in hand that indiscriminate heterogeneous reading
+which the Free Library made possible. He proved an
+unfailing and inspiring counsellor. How, why or whence
+he came to be in America at all I never knew. One thing
+that stirred him into vehemence, when the past was
+mentioned, was the name of Gladstone. With flashing
+eyes and voice of thunder he condemned the Grand Old
+Man, both as to character and policy, in unmeasured
+terms. Gladstone, apparently, had done him a personal
+injury as well. “We cannot let that man come among
+us,” was Gladstone’s dictum, when Louis’s name was being
+considered as a candidate for Parliament by the Party.
+“He is too earnest.” This fragment was all he ever told
+me, but there lay evidently much behind it. “<i>Too
+earnest!</i>” he repeated with contemptuous indignation.</p>
+
+<p>Of his days at Cambridge he was more communicative,
+though, unfortunately, I kept no notes. The eloquence
+and earnestness of his speeches at the Union, when Sir
+William Harcourt was president, made, according to his
+own account, a great stir. Of Dr. (Bishop) Lightfoot, of
+Benson, afterwards Archbishop, he had intimate memories,
+coloured by warm praise. His book on “England’s
+Foreign Policy” (Bentley, 1869) apparently angered Gladstone
+extremely, and Louis’s political career was killed.</p>
+
+<p>He was called to the bar. Of success, of important
+cases, he told me nothing. His early brilliance suffered,
+I gathered, a strange eclipse, and from things he hinted
+at, I surmised—I cannot state it definitely—that a period
+in some kind of <i>maison de santé</i> followed about this time.
+That he had been, then or later, in an asylum for the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_269">[269]</span>
+insane, I heard vouched for repeatedly in London years
+later. For an interval before the breakdown came, he
+was editor, or part-editor, of the <i>Spectator</i>, and in some
+similar connexion, as owner or editor, he served the
+<i>Fortnightly</i> too. George Eliot he knew well, giving me
+vivid descriptions of her famous Sundays, and of his
+talks with George Henry Lewes and Herbert Spencer. He
+claimed to be the original of Daniel Deronda. He was a
+pupil of Sterndale Bennett’s on the piano. Of his friendship
+with Cardinal Manning he had also much to tell.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the domain of politics that I first began to
+notice the exaggeration and incoherence of his mind, and
+it was “in politics,” evidently, that the deep wounds
+which would not heal had been received. In music,
+poetry, literature, above all in law, his intelligence had
+remained clear and sound, his judgments consummate,
+his knowledge encyclopædic. Large tracts of memory
+in him were, apparently, obliterated, whole stretches of
+life submerged, but his legal attainments had remained
+untouched. A business friend of mine “briefed” him to
+lecture on International, Company and Patent Law; and
+the substance of those “Lectures” stood the test, years
+later, of the highest English and French Courts.</p>
+
+<p>The lonely old man’s kingdom was his mind, and he
+dwelt in it aloof, secure, contented, unassailable. Into
+the big empty stretches a half education had left in my
+own, he poured his riches with unstinted satisfaction, even
+with delight. Worldly advice he never proffered; the
+world had left him aside, he, in his turn, left the world
+aside. To practical questions he merely shook his Moses-head:
+“That,” he would say, “you must decide for
+yourself. Considered in relation to the Eternities, it is
+of little moment in any case.” To any question, however,
+of a philosophical kind, to any enquiry for explanation
+about what perplexed or interested me in the realm of
+thought, he would reply with what I can only call a lecture,
+but a lecture so lucid, so packed with knowledge and
+learning, with classical comment and quotation, often with
+passages of moving eloquence, and invariably in language
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_270">[270]</span>
+so considered that no single word could have been altered,
+and the “essay” might have been published as it stood—lectures,
+in a word, that enthralled and held me spellbound
+for hours at a time. For his knowledge was not knowledge
+merely, it was knowledge transmuted by emotion into that
+spiritual wisdom called Understanding.</p>
+
+<p>The respect he inspired me with was such that rarely did
+I venture upon a personal question, though I longed to
+know more about himself and his mysterious story. His
+face sometimes betrayed intense mental suffering. On one
+occasion, feeling braver, owing to a happy mood that
+seemed established naturally between us, I attempted
+rather an intimate question of some kind about his past.
+He turned and stared with an expression that startled
+me. It was so keen, so searching. For several minutes
+he made no reply. His eyes narrowed. I felt ashamed.
+I had wounded him. The truth was, it seems, I had
+touched his heart.</p>
+
+<p>“Listen,” he said presently. In a voice full of tears and
+deep emotion, a very quiet, a very beautiful voice, he
+replied to my question. The expression of his eyes turned
+inwards, there rose in memory the ghostly figure of someone
+he had loved, perhaps loved still. The whole aspect of the
+old exiled poet became charged with an intolerable sadness,
+as he spoke the lines, not to myself, but to this vanished
+figure—“Shadowed by yearning memory’s raven wing”:</p>
+
+
+<p class='center mt1'>HEREAFTER</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">Thou know’st not, sweet, what must remain unknown</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Through all that my poor words can say or sing,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">The measure of the love to thee I bring.</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">One day thou wilt, when, by a graven stone</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">That bears a name, thou standest, white, alone,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Shadowed by yearning memory’s raven wing,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Rained on by blossoms of some wind-torn spring</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Wherefrom thirst-quenching fruit shall ne’er be grown.</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Then—power shall rest upon the vanished hand</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Once too much trembling to thy touch for power;</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Then—shall my soul at last thy soul command</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">As it might not in Time’s brief fitful hour;</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">And what Life’s fires might neither melt nor burn</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Shall yield with tears to ashes and the urn.</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_271">[271]</span></p>
+
+<p class='no-indent'>I had my answer. Never again did I venture on a personal
+question.</p>
+
+<p>All our talks came round to poetry in the end. It was
+his deepest love as well. Sound lawyer he may have been,
+but inspired poet, to me at least, he certainly was. His
+own poems he severely deprecated, calling them, with the
+exception of the “Night Song,” “poor things, though
+from my heart.” His room, it seems, was littered with
+them in manuscript, which he rarely tried, and never
+wished, to sell. Some time later Mr. Alden, Editor of
+<i>Harper’s Magazine</i>, questioned me for information “about
+a wonderful old gentleman who comes into the office like
+an emperor, and offers me a poem as though he were
+parting painfully with a treasure he hardly dared let out
+of his keeping, and certainly does not wish to sell for
+cash.” To all, thus, he was a mystery. If he was uncared
+for, he was at the same time indifferent to human care.
+Great intellect, great mind, great heart, he seemed to me,
+a wraith perhaps, but an august, a giant wraith, draped
+by mysterious shadows, dwelling in a miserable slum,
+cut off from his kind amid the dim pomp and pageantry
+of majestic memories.</p>
+
+<p>It was thus, at any rate, with the pardonable exaggeration
+of ignorant twenty-five, I saw and knew the Old Man
+of Visions. It was his deep heart of poetry, rather than
+his fine intellect I worshipped. The under-mind in him,
+the subconscious region, I think, was whole and healed;
+it was the upper-mind, the surface consciousness, that
+alone was damaged. If this mind was wrecked, this brain
+partly in ruins, the soul in him peered forth above the
+broken towers, remaining splendidly aware. Not even
+the imperfect instrument through which it worked could
+prevent this fine expression: behind the disproportion of
+various delusions, behind the outer tumbled ruins, there
+dwelt unaffected in him that greater thing than any intellect—Understanding.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_272">[272]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXXI">
+    CHAPTER XXXI
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap kern'><span class='allcaps'>It</span> was with a singular young man, who claimed proudly
+to be the illegitimate son of a certain duke, that I
+found myself presently in the eau de Cologne business.
+A long difficult winter had passed; all my friends had
+disappeared; there had been periods of dried apples again,
+of posing in studios, of various odd jobs, and of half-starving,
+with black weeks in plenty. I had moved into
+yet cheaper quarters, where I occupied a room that had
+been formerly a butler’s pantry, and was so small that
+when the folding-bed was down the entire space from wall
+to wall was occupied. The wash-hand stand was a sink
+in a recess let into the wall and supplied with a tap.</p>
+
+<p>When Mr. Louis visited me, as he did frequently, we
+lowered the bed and used it as a divan. The door could
+not open then. I made tea in the sink. We talked....</p>
+
+<p>If Louis’s atmosphere suggested choirs and places
+where they sing, that of Brodie, as I may call him here,
+was associated with bars and places where they drink.
+Not that he drank himself, for he was most abstemious,
+but that in certain superior saloons, all of them far above
+my means, he was usually to be found. A simple, yet
+complex, generous as well as mean creature, with all
+the canniness of the Scot, with his uncanniness as well,
+his education had been neglected, he read with difficulty,
+and only wrote well enough to sign his name laboriously
+to a cheque. He, too, like Louis, had his mystery; there
+was no one, indeed, in my circle of those days whose
+antecedents would bear too close a scrutiny.</p>
+
+<p>I was first introduced to him by a burly Swede, with
+hands like beef-steaks, and the shoulders of a heavy-weight
+fighter, who was later arrested and sent to gaol for picking
+pockets. His notoriety as a sneak-thief none of us had
+guessed, and how those bulky hands could have accomplished
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_273">[273]</span>
+anything neat and clever was a puzzle. In the
+Scotsman’s pleasant quarters, somewhat outlandishly
+furnished by himself on a top floor, the Swede had made
+himself at home too long. Brodie, the prey of many
+who, invited for a day or two, stayed on for weeks, was
+glad to see his back. His weak good-nature, refusing
+to turn his guests out, was the cause of endless troubles
+with men who sponged upon his kindness and his purse.
+This and his eau de Cologne business, “me beezness” as
+he called it, were his sole topics of conversation. He had
+money to spend—was it an allowance? We never
+knew—and was always well dressed; many a square meal
+he stood me; there was something in his soft West of
+Scotland voice that drew me to this odd fish in the “perfumery
+line.” It reminded me of happier days. And
+I have described his habits at some length, because it was
+owing to a small service I rendered him, and rendered
+myself at the same time, that I became a partner in “me
+beezness” of manufacturing and selling eau de Cologne
+made from the Johann Maria Farina recipe.</p>
+
+<p>Brodie’s social aspirations were very marked; to
+hear him talk one would have thought him heir to a
+dukedom; he had, too, a curious faculty for getting his
+name associated with people above him in the social world.
+How he managed it was a problem I never solved. His
+instinct for smelling out and using such folk was a gift
+from heaven. To see his name in the paper gave him
+supreme happiness. Real “Society” of course, Ward
+Macallister’s Four Hundred, lay beyond the reach of what
+was actually a peasant type, but there were less select
+fields he worked assiduously with great success. There
+was matter for a play, a novel, a character study, at any
+rate, in Brodie, who himself, I learned much later,
+had come out to New York as valet to Clyde Fitch, the
+playwright, and whose recipe for the “genuine Johann
+Maria Farina,” his successful “beezness,” was stolen
+property. My father’s son knew certainly queer bedfellows
+in that underworld in New York City.</p>
+
+<p>Meeting him in one of his usual haunts one night, he
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_274">[274]</span>
+complained bitterly of a young man he had invited for a
+week, but who had stayed a month, and stayed on still.
+The name, which need not be mentioned, was a well-known
+one. It was a bad case of imposition, by a man,
+too, who had ample means of his own. I offered to turn
+him out, much to Brodie’s alarm. That is, he both
+desired the result and feared it. Next morning I arrived
+in the oddly-furnished rooms and found Brodie cooking
+breakfast for the undesirable young man who had imposed
+on his host too long, and who still lay in bed. It was a
+comic scene, no doubt, for Brodie, though frightened,
+bore out my accusations while he fried the eggs, and the
+other blustered noisily until he found out that bluster
+was of no avail; and then, threatening an action for
+assault, got suddenly out of bed and dressed himself.
+Half-an-hour later he was, bag and baggage, in the street,
+while I went down and sold the “story” to the <i>New
+York Journal</i>, who printed it next morning with big
+headlines, but also with a drawing showing the eviction
+scene. No action for assault followed, however; I received
+twenty dollars for my “story”; and Brodie, full of
+gratitude—his name was mentioned in flattering terms—offered
+to take me into partnership in “me beezness.”
+I demurred at first. “You might help me with the
+correspondence,” he suggested cautiously. I was to be
+his educated partner and his pen.</p>
+
+<p>All that spring and summer I received ten dollars a
+week which, in addition to free-lance newspaper work,
+enabled me to live in comparative luxury. In a dark
+little back-office on Broadway and 8th Street, the eau
+de Cologne was made. It might have been the secret
+headquarters of an anarchist fraternity, or the laboratory
+of some mediæval alchemist, such was the atmosphere
+of secrecy, of caution and of mystery. It never occurred
+to me that anything was wrong. Our only assistant was
+a young Polish girl named Paola, a beautiful, dark-haired
+Jewess. The precious recipe I was never allowed to see.
+Great flagons in wicker coverings stood in rows upon long
+shelves; the mixing of the ingredients was a delicate
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_275">[275]</span>
+operation lasting an hour; the room smelt rich and sweet
+of spices that made me think of Araby and the East. It
+was a curious and picturesque scene—the rather darkened
+room, the perfume-laden air, the hush no traffic could
+disturb, the great, mysterious flagons, which might
+almost have concealed forty thieves, the canny Scot of
+doubtful origin, the beautiful Jewess, the air of caution
+and suspicion that reigned over all. The filling of the
+bottles in two sizes, affixing the labels, flavouring the soap—we
+made eau-de-Cologne soap too—answering the letters,
+writing flowery advertisements, and so forth, occupied
+the entire day. Brodie, a born salesman, would take
+a cab and visit the big stores with samples—Macy’s,
+Siegel and Cooper, and others whose names I have forgotten.
+He never came back without an order. The
+business flourished.</p>
+
+<p>I made no secret of being in the perfumery trade. I
+had moved into a larger room at my boarding-house.
+I had bought boots, some new linen, and most of my
+things were out of pawn. Then, presently, here and
+there, I began to notice things I did not like. Rumours
+reached me. Hints were dropped, sometimes more than
+hints, that made me wonder and look over my shoulder
+a little. No member of my immediate circle at this time
+was of too sweet origin nor of too stainless habits, yet
+from these came the rumours and the hints. I had better
+“keep my eyes peeled,” and the rest...! One man in
+particular who warned me was an elderly, shrewd German,
+friend of Brodie’s, and himself a mystery. His
+occupation was unknown, however, even to Brodie;
+he hid it carefully away; he led a double life, protecting
+himself with the utmost skill and caution behind a screen
+of detail none of us ever pierced. “Von” Schmidt,
+as he styled himself, was educated; also he had a heart;
+for once, when I was in a state of collapse from hunger,
+he brought oysters for me at great trouble to himself,
+having to go out on a rainy night and bring them some
+distance along the street; from which moment, though the
+unpleasant mystery about him intrigued and cautioned me,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_276">[276]</span>
+I became his friend. We talked German together. His
+one desire, he confided to me, was to marry a rich woman,
+and once he clumsily proposed to arrange a rich marriage
+for myself if I would give him a—commission on
+results!</p>
+
+<p>His personality is worth this brief description, perhaps,
+since it sheds light, incidentally, upon the world I lived in.
+Always most carefully dressed, he occupied a single room in
+a well-appointed house in East 22nd Street, talking airily of
+a bedroom on the floor above, of a bathroom I was sure
+he never used, and complaining apologetically of “this
+awful house I’m in for the moment.” His pose was that
+of an aristocrat, proud and resigned among untoward
+circumstances, and it was through no mistake of his own
+that this humbug did not impose on me. I just knew
+it was all bunkum. His actual business, I felt sure,
+was unsavoury, though Brodie, having once discovered
+artificial flowers in his coat pocket, thought he was a
+floor-walker in some big store. Various suspicious details
+confirmed me later in the belief that his real occupation
+was blackmailing.</p>
+
+<p>In his single room, at any rate, where a piece of furniture
+against the wall covered with framed photographs of
+German notabilities was in reality a folding-bed—I never
+once, since the oysters, betrayed that I knew this—he
+lived “like a gentleman.” Every night, from nine
+o’clock onwards, he was “at home”; a box of cigars,
+various liqueurs, he offered without fail, and “with an
+air” if you please, although the former never held more
+than three or four cigars, the bottles never more than
+enough to fill two glasses, because “my servant, confound
+him, has forgotten again to fill them.” He had no servant,
+of course, and the minimum of replenishing was done by
+himself every evening before nine o’clock. “Then you
+are a Baron really?” I said once, referring to the “von”
+before his name. He looked at me with the disdainful
+smile a prince in difficulties might have worn: “In
+this city of snobs and scoundrels,” he said lightly, “I have
+dropped my title. The ‘von’ alone I find more dignified.”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_277">[277]</span>
+He left the house, I found, every morning sharp at eight,
+and this was in favour of Brodie’s theory that he had
+some regular job. He was an experienced, much-lived
+old bird, a touch of something sinister about him always,
+about most of his friends as well. Some very disagreeable
+types I surprised more than once in his well-furnished
+room. He “knew the ropes,” knew men and women too,
+his counsel was always sound in worldly matters. A
+lack of humour was his chief failing, it seemed to me, while
+his snobbery was another weakness that probably led many
+of his schemes to failure. Every summer, for instance, he
+would go for two weeks to Newport, where the rank and
+fashion went. “When I was at Newport,” or “I am
+going to Newport next week,” were phrases his tongue
+loved to mouth and taste like fine wine. But his brief
+days there were spent actually in a cheap boarding-house,
+although the letters he wrote to all and sundry, to myself
+included, bore one word only as address: “Newport,”
+made from a die, at the head of his coloured paper.</p>
+
+<p>It was von Schmidt, then, who warned me about
+Brodie and his eau-de-Cologne business: “He is a
+fool, a peasant. There will be trouble there. Do not
+identify yourself with him or his business. It is not
+worth while....” And his manner conveyed that he
+could tell something more definite if he liked, which I
+verily believe was the case. Brodie, I was convinced
+later, paid him tribute.</p>
+
+<p>I began to feel uncomfortable. One day I asked
+Brodie, point blank, what his recipe was and how
+he came by it? “That’s me own beezness,” he replied.
+“There’s nothing to be nairvous about.” I consulted
+“old Louis.” “If you feel the faintest doubt,” was his
+answer, “you should leave at once.” I decided to get
+out. Brodie asked me to wait the current month.
+I agreed.</p>
+
+<p>Before the end of the month, however, when I left the
+eau-de-Cologne business, a most unpleasant and alarming
+incident occurred. The terrible thing, long dreaded in a
+vague kind of way, had overtaken me at last. I was to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_278">[278]</span>
+be convicted of a crime I had not committed. I might
+even be sent to gaol....</p>
+
+<p>Brodie’s outlandish furnishing of his rooms has been
+mentioned purposely; they were filled with an assortment
+of showy trash that could not have deceived a
+charwoman; fifty dollars would have covered everything.
+He was proud of his curtains, rugs and faked draperies,
+however; showed them off with the air of a connoisseur;
+hinted at their great value. He had insured them, it
+always pleased him to mention. The <i>New York Journal</i>,
+describing the eviction scene, had referred to his fine
+apartment “furnished with exotic taste and regardless
+of cost,” adding this touch of colour which was certainly
+not my own. Brodie, thus encouraged in print,
+promptly took out another fire policy in a second company.
+And one day, while toying with his flagons, he mentioned
+casually that he was having “me place done up a bit,”
+new paint, new paper were to be put on, and—might he
+bring his clothes to my room until this was finished, as
+his own cupboard space was limited?</p>
+
+<p>He brought the suits himself, carrying them one by
+one concealed inside a folded overcoat upon his arm.
+He did this always after dusk. No suspicion stirred
+in me. My own cupboards were, of course, empty.
+Brodie’s fine wardrobe now filled them. It all seemed
+natural enough; certainly it roused no doubt or query in
+me; neither did the party to which I was invited a few
+days later, which included a “distinguished” member,
+of course, a famous dress-designer from Europe, with
+whose publicity campaign in the Press, Brodie had
+contrived to get his name associated.</p>
+
+<p>We were a party of five men, and we met at our host’s
+rooms before going out to dine, the rooms that had just
+been done up; and attention, I recall, was drawn particularly
+to the beauty, rarity and value of his variegated
+trash. The electric light was shaded, a big coal fire
+burned in the grate, at a cursory glance the apartment
+might possibly have produced a favourable impression of
+expense and richness. But our host did not allow us to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_279">[279]</span>
+linger; there was a hurried cocktail, and we were gone. I
+remember that I was last but one in the procession down
+the stairs from this top floor; Brodie, who had held
+the door open for us to pass, came last. Also I remembered
+later, that as we reached the next flight, he said he had
+forgotten something, and dashed upstairs again to fetch
+it. A moment later he rejoined us in the street, and we
+all went on to dinner. “It was a kind of house-warming
+party,” he explained.</p>
+
+<p>The evening passed pleasantly. We went on to Koster
+and Biel’s music hall, and after that, to supper in some
+Tenderloin joint or other. And it was here I first noticed
+a change in our host. Something about him was different.
+His behaviour was not what was normal to him. His face
+was pale, his manner nervous and excited; though there
+was no drink in him to account for it, he was overwrought,
+unusually voluble, unable to keep still for a single moment.
+I had never seen him like this before, and the strangeness
+of his behaviour arrested me. Once or twice, <i>à propos</i> of
+nothing, he referred to the money he had spent on his apartment;
+and more than once in asides to me, he spoke of
+the value of his rugs and curtains, engaging my endorsement,
+as it were. The other men, who knew him less
+intimately, probably noticed nothing, or, if they did,
+attributed it to the excitement of alcohol.... But it
+made me more and more uneasy. I didn’t like it; I
+watched him attentively. I came to the strange conclusion,
+long before the evening was over, that he was
+frightened. And when he met suggestions that it was
+time for bed with obstinate refusals, anxious and nervous
+at the same time, I knew that he was more than frightened,
+he was terrified.</p>
+
+<p>Once when I asked him whether he felt unwell, there was
+startled terror in his cunning eyes as he whispered: “I
+dreamed of rats last night. Something bad will be coming.”
+His face was white as chalk. To dream of rats,
+with him, always meant an enemy in the offing; a dozen
+times he had given me instances of this strange superstition;
+to dream of an acquaintance in connexion with these
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_280">[280]</span>
+unpleasant rodents meant that this particular acquaintance
+was false, an enemy, someone who meant him harm. I,
+therefore, understood the allusion in his mind, but this
+time, for some reason, I did not believe it. He was
+lying. The terror of a guilty conscience was in those
+startled eyes and in that sheet-white skin. I felt still more
+uneasy. I was glad I had put my resignation from the
+“beezness” in writing. There was trouble coming in
+connexion with that recipe, and Brodie already knew it.</p>
+
+<p>It was after two in the morning when we reached home.
+My rooms were a couple of streets before his own, but he
+begged me to see him to his door. His nervous state had
+grown, meanwhile, worse and worse; his legs failed him
+several times, seeming to sink under his weight; he took
+my arm; more than once he reeled. There was something
+about it all, about himself particularly, that made my
+skin crawl. The awful feeling that I, too, was to be
+involved increased in me.</p>
+
+<p>As we turned out of Fourth Avenue into his street,
+a loud noise met us: a prolonged, hoarse sound, a clank
+of machinery in it somewhere, another sound as well that
+pulsed and throbbed. A dense crowd blocked the way.
+There was smoke. A fire engine was pumping water into a
+burning building—the one that Brodie lived in. These
+details I noticed in the first few seconds, but even before
+I had registered them Brodie uttered a queer cry and
+half-collapsed against me. He was speechless with
+terror, and at first something of his terror he communicated
+to me, too. My heart sank into my boots. The “rats”
+I understood instantly, had nothing to do with his eau de
+Cologne recipe. This was a far more serious matter.</p>
+
+<p>Fires were no new thing to me, and this evidently
+was only a small one, but, none the less, people might
+have been burned to death. Telling my companion to
+wait for me, and to keep his mouth shut whatever happened,
+I produced some paper and pushed my way through
+the crowd to the police cordon, saying I was from the
+<i>Evening Sun</i>. Though I had no fire-badge, the bluff
+worked. I ran up the steps of the familiar house. “Which
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_281">[281]</span>
+floor is it? How did it start? Is it insured? Is anybody
+burned?” I asked a fireman. The answer came
+and I jotted it down; it was the top floor, how it started
+was unknown, nobody was hurt—it was heavily insured.</p>
+
+<p>It had been burning for four hours, the worst was
+over, the fire was out; only steam and smoke now filled
+the staircase and corridors. The street was covered with
+a litter of ruined furniture. The occupants of the lower
+floors stood about in various attire; I caught unpleasant
+remarks as I dashed upstairs to Brodie’s floor.
+Hoses, I found, were still at work; the room we had
+left six hours before was gutted; a gaping hole permitted
+a view of the room on the floor below, and this hole
+began immediately in front of the grate. A black woolly
+mat with long hair, I remembered, had lain on the floor
+just there. The unpleasant remarks, as I ran up, had
+reference to insurance; phrases such as “over-insured,”
+“too well insured” were audible. They were the usual
+phrases uttered at the scene of a New York fire, where
+arson was as common as picking pockets; I had heard
+them a hundred times; they had furnished clues for my
+newspaper stories. On this occasion they held a new
+significance.</p>
+
+<p>Brodie shared my folding-bed that night, but he did
+not sleep. He cried a good deal. He said very little.
+He referred neither to the loss of his stuff, nor to the fact
+of its being covered by insurance, nor to how and why
+the fire started. He was frightened to the bone.</p>
+
+<p>Next day, when we visited the burned apartment
+to secure what fire and water had spared, Brodie was
+abused and scarified by the inmates as he went upstairs....
+Weeks of keen anxiety followed, of worse than
+anxiety. The insurance companies refused to pay the
+claims, which Brodie, after much hesitation, had sent
+in. They decided to fight them. The lawyer—a <i>scheister</i>,
+meaning a low, unprincipled type of attorney who would
+take any case for the money it might contain—bled my
+friend effectively by preying on his obvious fear. He was
+summoned to give witness before a hearing in the offices
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_282">[282]</span>
+of the company, and I shall never forget his face when he
+met me that night with the significant words: “They
+know everything about me, everything about you too.
+They even know that I took all my clothes to your room
+before it happened. They are going to summon you to
+give evidence too.”</p>
+
+<p>I consulted with “old Louis,” telling him the full story,
+but making no accusations. “Few people are worthy
+to live with,” was his comment, “fewer still to share one’s
+confidence. You must tell the truth as you know it. You
+have nothing to fear.” I was searchingly examined by
+the company’s lawyer and my evidence made, I saw, a
+good impression. No awkward leading questions were
+put. Brodie had been kind to me; I knew nothing
+definite against him; in his ignorance, which I described,
+he might well have thought his possessions were of value.
+It had nothing to do with me, at any rate, and there was
+a perfectly good explanation for his clothes being in my
+cupboard. None the less, it was a trying ordeal. Worse,
+however, was to follow. The fire marshal, recently
+appointed, a proverbial new broom, was out to put down
+the far too frequent arson in the city. Fire Marshal
+Mitchell—I see his face before me still—intended to
+prosecute.</p>
+
+<p>This was a bombshell. My imaginative temperament
+then became, indeed, my curse. Waiting for the summons
+was like waiting for the verdict of a hostile jury. I
+waited many days, hope alternating with fear. I felt
+sure I was being watched the whole time. Brodie
+and I never met once. I changed my room about this
+time, though for reasons entirely disconnected with this
+unpleasant business (I had obtained a violin pupil in
+another house), and I wrote to the fire marshal informing
+him of my new address, in case, as I understood was
+probable, he might want my evidence.</p>
+
+<p>But what really alarmed me most was my inside
+knowledge of New York justice. I had seen too many
+innocent men sent up; I had heard faked evidence in too
+many police cases; I knew that, without a “pull,” I stood
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_283">[283]</span>
+but little chance of escaping a conviction as an accessory
+to what they would call a wanton case of arson. I was
+not even on the staff of a newspaper at the time. I had
+no influence of any sort behind me. Nor were my means
+of support too “visible,” a Britisher, a highly-connected
+Britisher into the bargain, it was just what the new-broom
+fire marshal was looking for. It would make a big case
+for the Press. The agony of mind I endured was ghastly,
+and the slow delay of long waiting intensified it.... One
+evening, on coming home about dusk, I saw a strange man
+in the little hall-way of my house. He asked me my
+name. I told him. He handed me a blue paper and went
+out. It was the long-expected subpœna from the fire
+marshal. I was summoned to attend at eight o’clock two
+mornings later in his office.</p>
+
+<p>My emotions that night and the next day were new
+experiences to me; I heard the judge sentence me, saw
+myself in prison for a term of years with hard labour. I
+began to <i>feel</i> guilty. I knew I should say the wrong
+thing to the fire marshal. I should convict myself. The
+truth was the truth, but everything pointed against me;
+I knew Brodie as a friend, I was his business associate,
+was frequently in his rooms, had accepted kindnesses
+from him, I needed money badly, I had hidden his good
+clothes in my cupboards a few days before the fire. I had
+been with him on that particular night, I had left the room
+with him—last of the party. I should be looked upon as
+guilty, it was for me to clear myself. Prejudice against
+me, too, as an Englishman would be strong. The Boyde
+episode would be revived, and twisted to show that I
+consorted with law-breakers. I should stammer and
+hesitate and appear to be hiding the truth, to be lying,
+and I should most certainly look guilty. The thing I
+dreaded had come upon me. I thought of my home and
+family.</p>
+
+<p>It all made me realize with a fresh sharpness the kind
+of world poverty had dragged me down to, with the
+contrast between what I had been born to and what I now
+lived in.... I needed every scrap of strength and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_284">[284]</span>
+comfort my books could give me. That I was exaggerating
+like a schoolboy never occurred to me. I suffered the
+tortures of the damned, of the already condemned, at
+any rate. That I was innocent of wrong-doing was, for
+some reason, no consolation: I had got myself into an
+awful mess and should have to pay the price.</p>
+
+<p>The wildest ideas filled my brain; I would call and
+enlist the influence of McCloy, of various officials, of headquarters
+detectives, of D. L. Moody the Revivalist, who
+was then preaching in New York and who had been a
+guest in my father’s house, of the Exchange Place banker,
+even of von Schmidt, though fear of blackmail stopped me
+here. But reflection told me how useless such a proceeding
+would be. The Republicans, besides, were in power at
+the time, and Tammany had no “pull.” I even thought
+of Roosevelt, whom, as President of the Police Board,
+I had often interviewed. The fire marshal would rejoice
+in the case, of course, for, as with the Boyde story, the
+newspapers would print it at great length. There lay
+much <i>kudos</i> for him in it. I had no sleep that night, as I
+had no friend or counsellor either. I thought of spending
+it in Bronx Park with the trees, but it occurred to me that,
+if I were being watched, the act might be interpreted as
+an attempt to escape—for what would a New York fire
+marshal make of my love of nature?</p>
+
+<p>The following day, as the dreaded examination grew
+closer, was a day of acute misery—until the late afternoon,
+when I met by chance the man who saved me. I shall
+always believe, at least, that “saved” is the right word
+to use.</p>
+
+<p>A coincidence, as singular as the coincidence of catching
+Boyde, was involved. Fate, anyhow, brought me across
+the path of Mullins, the one man who could help, just at
+the time and place, too, where that help could be most
+effectively given. The word coincidence, therefore, seems
+justified.</p>
+
+<p>Mullins, the Irishman, was an editorial writer on the
+<i>Evening Sun</i> when I was a reporter there; he disliked
+the paper as heartily as I did, and his ambition was to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_285">[285]</span>
+join the staff of the <i>New York Times</i>, where Muldoon,
+another Irishman, a boon companion, was City Editor.
+He had proved a real friend to me in my days of gross
+inexperience. “If ever I get on the <i>Times</i>,” he used to
+say, “I’ll try and get a place for you, too. It’s a fine,
+clean paper, and they treat a man decently.” He had
+realized his ambition just about the time I went into the
+eau-de-Cologne business, but had said there was no vacancy
+for me. There might be one later. He would let me
+know. For months, however, we had not met, and the
+matter had really left my mind. And it was now, when
+I was casting about in a state of semi-panic for someone
+who might help me, that I suddenly thought of Mullins.
+As a last hope, rather, I thought of him, for it seemed
+a very off-chance indeed.</p>
+
+<p>For various reasons I did not act upon the idea, but
+Mullins was in my mind, so much, so persistently, so often,
+that I kept seeing him in passers-by. I mistook several
+strangers for Mullins, until close enough to see my mistake.
+Then, suddenly, in Union Square, towards evening, I did
+see him. I was sitting on a bench. He walked past me.
+He was on his way to an assignment. I told him the
+whole story, making no accusations, but omitting no
+vital detail. He listened attentively, his face very grave.
+He shared my own misgivings. “It’s just the kind of
+case Mitchell’s looking for,” he said. “He wants to make
+a splash with it. But I think I can fix it for you. Guess
+what my assignment is at this moment?”</p>
+
+<p>And then he told me. His job that evening was a
+special interview with Mitchell, a descriptive story of the
+newly-appointed fire marshal, his personality and character,
+his plans for suppressing arson, and it was to be a front-page
+article. Mullins could make him or mar him; he had
+a free hand in the matter; the <i>Times</i> was a Republican
+organ. It would mean a great deal to Mitchell. “He
+comes from my part of Ireland,” said Mullins with a grin
+and a wink. And then he added that he had spoken to
+Muldoon about me only the day before, and that Muldoon
+had promised me a place on the paper the moment it was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_286">[286]</span>
+possible—in a few weeks probably. “I shall just mention
+to Mitchell that you’re going on the <i>Times</i>,” was his
+significant parting word to me, as he hurried off to keep his
+appointment.</p>
+
+<p>My examination next morning was robbed of much
+of its terror. The fire marshal was evidently not quite
+sure of himself, for, if manner, voice and questions were
+severe, I detected an attitude that suggested wavering. A
+shorthand writer behind me took down every word I
+uttered, and the searching examination about the clothes,
+my social and business relations with Brodie, my knowledge,
+if any, concerning the value of his rugs and curtains,
+especially concerning the night of the fire and the
+details of how we left the room, gave me moments of acute
+discomfort. Although Mitchell rarely once looked straight
+at me, I knew he was observing my every word and
+gesture, the slightest change in facial expression, too.
+He confined himself entirely to questions, allowing no
+hint of his own opinion to escape him, and yet, to my
+very strung-up attention, he betrayed the uncertainty
+already mentioned. I, of course, confined myself entirely
+to answers, brief, but without hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>My instinct, right or wrong, was to protect Brodie, a
+man who had shown me real kindness. I remembered the
+meals, for one thing. In any case, it was not for me to
+express opinions, much less to bring an accusation. And,
+towards the end of a gruelling half-hour, I began to feel a
+shade more comfortable. When, with a slightly different
+manner, the fire marshal began to ask personal questions
+about my own career, I felt the day was almost won. I
+gave a quick outline of my recent history, though I never
+once mentioned the name of Mullins; let fall the detail,
+too, that I was an Irishman, and, a little later, seizing an
+opening with an audacity that surprised myself even while
+I said the words, I congratulated Mr. Mitchell upon his
+campaign to crush out the far too frequent arson in the
+city. “As a newspaper man,” I gave this blessing, and
+the shot, I instantly saw, went home. If I could be of
+any use to him on the <i>Times</i>, if any suspicious case came
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_287">[287]</span>
+my way, I added that I should always be glad to serve
+him. For the first time the fire marshal smiled. I shot
+in a swift last stroke for Brodie, though an indirect
+one. “But you don’t want any <i>mis</i>fires,” I ventured,
+inwardly delighted that the play on the word amused him.
+“A big case that failed of a conviction would be damaging.”</p>
+
+<p>We shook hands as I left soon after, though the final
+comfort he denied me. For when I mentioned that my
+present address would always find me “if you need me
+again,” he merely bowed and thanked me. He did <i>not</i>
+say, as I hoped he would, “your presence will not be
+required any more.”</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_288">[288]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXXII">
+    CHAPTER XXXII
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap kern'><span class='allcaps'>Six</span> weeks later, when the torrid summer heat was
+waning and September breezes had begun to cool
+the streets, the nights, at any rate, I found myself
+a reporter on the staff of the <i>New York Times</i>. My salary
+of $35 a week seemed incredible. It was like coming into
+a fortune, and its first effect was to make a miser of me.
+I had learned the value of the single cent; I found myself
+fearful of spending even that cent. I understood why
+people who pass suddenly from want to affluence become
+stingy, complaining always of being hard-up. I determined
+to save. I opened an account in a Savings Bank against
+another rainy day. This trait, acquired in my unhappy
+New York period, remains in me still, I notice. Never
+have I known from that time to this what it means to be
+comfortably off, free from financial anxiety for more than
+a month or two ahead, yet each time an extra bit of
+money comes in, I am aware of the instinct to be extremely,
+unnecessarily careful of each penny. The less I have, the
+more reckless I feel about spending it, and <i>vice versa</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Those six weeks, however, before Muldoon sent for
+me, proved the most painful and unhappy of all my New
+York days. There was something desperate about them;
+I reached bottom. It was the darkest period before the
+dawn, though I had no certainty that the dawn was
+breaking. My income from the eau de Cologne business
+was ended, my free-lance work struck a bad streak, the
+artists were still out of town, the studios consequently
+empty; my violin pupil had gone to Boston. It was during
+this August that I slept in Central Park, and passed the
+night—for there was not much sleep about it—beneath
+the Bronx Park trees as well, though I had to walk all
+the long weary way to get there. It was, also, <i>par
+excellence</i>, the height of the dried-apple season. With the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_289">[289]</span>
+exception of Old Louis, occasionally Mullins too, I had
+no companionship. Brodie, who by the way received no
+money from the insurance companies, but equally,
+escaped a worse disaster, I never saw again. The post
+on the <i>Times</i>, meanwhile, seemed far away, highly
+problematical too. My comforts were Bronx Park, occasionally
+open-air music, Louis, and my own dreams,
+speculations and, chief of all, the Bhagavad Gita....
+Hours I spent in the free libraries. Never, before or
+since, did I read so many books in so short a time. This
+free reading, of course, never stopped for a moment all
+the years I lived in New York, but during these six weeks
+it reached a maximum.</p>
+
+<p>From the ’vantage ground of easier days I have often
+looked back and wondered why I made no real effort to
+better myself, to get out of the hated city, to go west,
+for a railway pass was always more or less within my
+power, and other fellows, similarly in difficulties, were
+always changing occupations and localities. It was due,
+I think, to a kind of resignation, though rather a fierce
+resignation, a kind of obstinate spirit of acceptance in
+me. “Take it all, whatever comes,” said this spirit.
+“Dodge, shirk, avoid nothing. You have deserved it.
+Exhaust it then. Suck the orange dry.” And, as if life
+were not severe and difficult enough, as it was, I would
+even practise certain austerities I invented on my own
+account. Already I felt myself immeasurably old; life
+seemed nearly ended; external events, anyhow, did not
+<i>really</i> matter....</p>
+
+<p>A rolling-stone sees life, of course, but collects little,
+if any, fruit; though I made no determined efforts to escape
+my conditions at this time, a new adventure ever had
+attractions for me. Having once tasted the essence of a
+particular experience, I found myself weary of it and
+longing for a new one. This vagabondage in the blood
+has strengthened with the years. A fixed job means
+prison, a new one sends my spirits up. Routine is hell.
+To take a room, a flat, a job by the year, means insupportable
+detestation of any of them soon afterwards. It
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_290">[290]</span>
+is a view of life that hardly goes to make good citizenship,
+but, on the other hand, it tends to keep the heart young,
+to prevent too early hardening of the mental arteries, while
+it certainly militates against the dread disease of boredom.
+<i>Une vie mouvementée</i> has its vagabond values. To a
+certain side of my nature Old Louis’s wiser epitaph (“Sorry
+<i>I</i> spoke; sorry <i>they</i> spoke”) made less appeal than some
+anonymous verses I came across in <i>Scribner’s Magazine</i>
+with the title “A Vagrant’s Epitaph”—verses I knew
+by heart after a first reading:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">Change was his mistress; Chance his counsellor.</div>
+      <div class="verse indent2">Love could not hold him; Duty forged no chain.</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">The wide seas and the mountains called him,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent2">And grey dawns saw his camp-fires in the rain.</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">Sweet hands might tremble!—aye, but he must go.</div>
+      <div class="verse indent2">Revel might hold him for a little space;</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">But, turning past the laughter and the lamps,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent2">His eyes must ever catch the luring Face.</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">Dear eyes might question! Yea, and melt again;</div>
+      <div class="verse indent2">Rare lips a-quiver, silently implore;</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">But he must ever turn his furtive head,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent2">And hear that other summons at the door.</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">Change was his mistress; Chance his counsellor.</div>
+      <div class="verse indent2">The dark firs knew his whistle up the trail.</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Why tarries he to-day?... And yesternight</div>
+      <div class="verse indent2">Adventure lit her stars without avail.</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The plague of possessions, at any rate, has never
+troubled me, either actually or in desire, while the instinct
+to reduce life to its simplest terms has strengthened. The
+homeless feeling of living in my trunks is happiness, the
+idea of domesticity appals, and the comforts of rich
+friends wake no echo in me, assuredly no envy. A home,
+as a settled place one owns and expects to live in for
+years, perhaps for ever, is abhorrent to every instinct in
+me, and when acquaintances show off with pride their
+cottage, their flat, their furniture, their “collections,”
+even their “not a bad little garden, is it?” my heart
+confesses to a vague depression which makes it difficult
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_291">[291]</span>
+to sympathise and give them my blessing. Life, at its
+longest, is absurdly brief before health and energy begin
+to slip downhill; it is mapped with a cunning network
+of ruts and grooves from which, once in, it is difficult to
+escape; only the lucky ones are never caught, although
+the “caught” are lucky perhaps in another way—they
+do not realize it. Yet even to-day, when times are bad
+and the horizon not too clear for some time ahead, the old
+dread of starvation rises in me; I never see apple rings in
+a grocer’s window without getting their taste and feeling
+them rise and swell within me like some troublesome
+emotion....</p>
+
+<p>To my year and a-half on the <i>New York Times</i> I look
+back with nothing but pleasure; the slogan, “All the news
+that’s fit to print,” was practised; and the men I worked
+with were a good company of decent fellows. Muldoon,
+a fighting Irishman with a grim fierce manner and a warm
+heart, had a sense of humour and a gift for encouraging his
+reporters that made them love him. C. W. Miller was
+editor in chief, and Carey, manager. Who owned the
+paper I have forgotten, but it was not Colonel Jones who
+was present at the Union League Club dinner to my
+father, when I made my maiden speech some nine years
+before. Hours of work were from noon until the night
+assignment was turned in, which meant any time from
+ten o’clock onwards; though, as emergency man, in case
+of something happening late, I often had to stay in the
+office till after one in the morning. Proper food, a new
+suit, comradeship with a better class of men, came, perhaps,
+just in time for me. I remember the pleasure of writing
+home about my new post. I had a dress-suit again. I
+saved $15 a week.</p>
+
+<p>Reporting for a New York newspaper can never be
+uneventful, but the painful incidents of life make deeper
+impressions than the pleasant ones. To meet the former
+means usually to call upon one’s reserves, and memory
+hence retains sharper pictures of them corresponding to
+the greater effort. On the <i>Times</i> I was happy.</p>
+
+<p>Two incidents stand out still in the mind, one creditably
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_292">[292]</span>
+pleasing to vanity; the other, exactly the reverse. The
+latter, though it annoyed Muldoon keenly at the moment,
+fortunately for me appealed to his sense of humour too.
+He had given me an evening off—that is, all I had to do
+was to write a brief report of a Students’ Concert in which
+his little niece was performing.</p>
+
+<p>“Without straining veracity,” he mentioned with a
+grin, “ye might perhaps say something kind and pretty
+about her!” He winked, whispering her name in my
+ear. “Have ye got it?” he asked fiercely. I nodded.
+Was I thinking of something else at the moment? Was
+my mind in the woods that lovely evening in spring?</p>
+
+<p>At the concert I picked out the name I remembered
+and wrote later a sturdy eulogistic notice of an atrocious
+performer, saying the very prettiest and nicest things I
+could think of, then went home to a coveted early bed.
+But Muldoon’s grim smile next day, as I reported at his
+desk for an assignment, gave me warning that something
+was wrong. He did not keep me in suspense. I had
+selected for my praise, not only the crudest performer of
+the concert—that I already knew—but one whom all the
+other pupils disliked intensely, and whose name they
+particularly hoped would be omitted altogether. The
+niece I had not even mentioned.</p>
+
+<p>The other incident that stands out after all these years
+was more creditable. Dr. Lyman Abbott, Editor of the
+<i>Outlook</i>, which once Henry Ward Beecher edited as the
+<i>Church Union</i>, was preaching in Beecher’s Plymouth
+Church, Brooklyn, a series of sermons on “The Theology
+of an Evolutionist,” and Muldoon had persuaded the
+editor-in-chief that a full report on the front page every
+Monday would be a credit to the paper. His proposal was
+agreed to, apparently without too much enthusiasm. The
+Irishman was determined to justify it. “I want ye to
+take it on,” said Muldoon to me. “Ye can write shorthand.
+Make it 150.” A column was 100. To have a
+column and a-half on the front page, if I could do it well,
+would be a feather in my cap. But my shorthand was
+poor, I was out of practice too, bad notes are impossible to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_293">[293]</span>
+read for transcription, and mistakes would mean angry
+letters of correction from Dr. Abbott, probably.</p>
+
+<p>Monday was my day off. I went to Plymouth Church
+with a new notebook and three soft lead pencils, duly
+sharpened at both ends. In the brief interval before
+Sunday I practised hard. The church was packed to the
+roof, as I sneaked up the aisle—an unfamiliar place, I
+felt it!—to a little table placed immediately beneath the
+pulpit. I came in after the service, but just in time for
+the sermon. There were no other reporters present. It
+thrilled me to see Dr. Abbott, who, as a young man of
+twenty-three, had heard Lincoln speak on slavery.</p>
+
+<p>The “Theology of an Evolutionist” was an arduous
+assignment that strained every faculty I possessed, but
+indifferent shorthand lay at the root of the strain. Dr.
+Abbott’s delivery was sure and steady, more rapid than it
+sounded. He never hesitated for a word, he never coughed,
+or cleared his throat, or even sneezed. There were none
+of those slight pauses which help a poor shorthand-writer
+to pick up valuable seconds. The stream of words poured
+on relentlessly, and the rate, I should judge, was 250 a
+minute. Verbatim reporting was impossible to me. I
+had to condense as I went along, and to condense without
+losing sense and coherence was not easy. My pencil was
+always eight or ten words behind the words I actually
+listened to, and the Pitman outlines for the words I wrote
+down had to be recalled, while, at the same time, memory
+had to retain those being actually uttered at the moment.
+Being out of practice I often hesitated over an outline,
+losing fractions of a second each time I did so. These
+outlines come automatically, of course, to a good writer.
+Then there was the sense, the proportion, the relative
+values of argument and evidence to be considered—matters
+that could not be adjusted in the office afterwards, when
+there was barely time, in any case, to transcribe my notes
+before going to Press. The interest I felt in the subject,
+moreover, delayed my mind time and time again. Occasionally
+a pencil-point would break as well, and turning it
+round in my hand meant important delay in a process
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_294">[294]</span>
+where each fraction of a second counts. In the office
+afterwards, each page transcribed was whipped away by
+a printer’s devil before it could be reconsidered and re-read.
+I invariably went to bed after these evenings in church
+with a splitting headache; but the 150 appeared duly on
+the front page every Monday morning, though whether
+good or bad I had no inkling. My impression, due to
+Muldoon’s silence, was that my reports were hardly a
+success.</p>
+
+<p>When the last of the long series came my opening
+report was confused and inaccurate owing to an announcement
+from the pulpit which embarrassed me absurdly.
+Dr. Abbott mentioned briefly that numerous requests to
+print the sermons had reached him, but that he did not
+propose to do so. He referred those interested, instead,
+to the reports in the <i>Times</i> which, he took pleasure in
+saying, were excellent, accurate and as satisfactory as
+anything he could do himself. Being the only reporter
+present, I felt conspicuous at my little table under the
+pulpit in the immense building. But I remember the
+pleasure too. It was an announcement I could use, was
+bound to use, indeed, in my own report next day. Muldoon
+would be pleased. On the Tuesday morning, when I
+appeared at his desk, he looked at me with such a fierce
+expression that I thought I was about to be dismissed.
+“Have ye been to your locker?” was all he said. In the
+locker, however, I found a letter from Dr. Abbott to the
+editor-in-chief, thanking him for the reports of the sermons,
+reports, he wrote, “whose brevity, accuracy, and intelligence
+furnish a synopsis I could not have improved upon
+myself.” He added, too, another important sentence:
+“by your reporter whom I do not know.” It was not
+favouritism therefore. A brief chit to be handed to the
+cashier was in my locker too. My salary was raised to
+$40 a week. The headaches had proved worth while.</p>
+
+<p>The year and a-half with the <i>Times</i> was a happy period,
+though long before it ended I had begun to feel my customary
+weariness of the job, and a yearning for something
+new. The newspaper experience, which began with the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_295">[295]</span><i>Evening Sun</i>, was exhausted for me. The pleasant and
+unpleasant sides of it I knew by heart. Though I took
+no action, my mind began to cast about for other fields.
+I had saved a little cash. My thoughts turned westwards,
+California, the Pacific Coast, the bright sunshine and blue
+waters of the southern seas even. I was past twenty-seven.
+To be a New York reporter all my life did not appeal. Nor
+was it yet time to go back to England. No trace of literary
+faculty, nor any desire to write, much less a consciousness
+that I could write perhaps, had declared themselves. My
+summer holidays of two weeks I spent again in the backwoods,
+with a view to some woodland life which was to
+include, this time, Old Louis, too. Obstacles everywhere
+made me feel, however, that it was not to be, for though
+they were obstacles I could have overcome, I took them
+as an indication that fate had other views for my future.
+When a thing was meant to be, it invariably came of
+itself, I found. My temperament, at any rate, noted and
+obeyed these hints. Old Louis, too, who was to collect
+his poems in our woodland home, to write new ones as
+well, met all practical suggestions with, “Let us consider,
+Figlio, a little longer first.” He was to write also a
+political history of the United States and “I must collect
+more data before I am ready to go.” The dread of being
+fixed and settled, a captive in a place I could not leave
+at a moment’s notice, did not operate where Nature was
+concerned. The idea of living in the forests had no fear
+of prison in it.</p>
+
+<p>Events, moreover, which brought big changes into
+my life had always come, I noticed, from outside, rather
+than as a result of definite action on my own part. A
+chance meeting in a hotel-bar set me reporting, a chance
+meeting with Mullins landed me on the <i>Times</i>, a chance
+meeting with Angus Hamilton in Piccadilly Circus led to
+my writing books, a chance meeting with William E.
+Dodge now suddenly heaved me up another rung of life
+into the position of private secretary to a millionaire
+banker.</p>
+
+<p>To me it has always seemed that some outside power,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_296">[296]</span>
+but an intelligent power, pulled a string each time, and
+up I popped into an entirely new set of circumstances.
+This power pushed a button, and off I shot in a direction
+at right angles to the one I had been moving in before.
+This intelligent supervision I attributed in those days to
+Karma. In the mind, though perhaps with less decision
+there, it operated too. A book, a casual sentence of some
+friend, an effect of scenery, of music, and an express-lift
+mounts rapidly from the cellar of my being to an upper
+story, giving a new extended view over a far, a new
+horizon. Much that puzzles in the obscurity of the basement
+outlook becomes clear and simple. The individual
+who announces the sudden change is unaware probably
+how vital a rôle he plays in another’s life. He is but an
+instrument, after all.</p>
+
+<p>When, by chance, I found Mr. Dodge next me in a
+Broadway cable car, my first instinct was to slip out on
+to the outside platform before he had seen me, with, simultaneously,
+a hope that if he had seen me, he would not
+recognize me. He was a friend of my father’s. We had
+dined at his house on our first visit to New York, and
+once or twice since then our paths had crossed for a moment
+or two. He was a man of great influence, and of tireless
+philanthropy, a fine, just, high-minded personality. He
+stared hard at me. Before I could move, he had spoken
+to me by name. “How was I getting along?” he inquired
+kindly, and did I “like New York?” What was
+I “doing at the moment?”</p>
+
+<p>I seized the opportunity and told him of my longing
+to get out of newspaper work. He listened attentively;
+he examined me, I was aware, more than attentively. In
+the end he asked me to come and see him for a personal
+chat—not in his office, but in his house. He named a
+day and hour. An invitation to his office I should have
+disregarded. It was the kindness of “my house” that
+won me. But the interview was disappointing, rather
+embarrassing as well to me. He asked many personal
+questions about my life and habits, it was all very business-like
+and chilling. In the end he mentioned vaguely that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_297">[297]</span>
+James Speyer, of Speyer Bros., was thinking, he believed,
+of engaging a secretary, and that possibly—he could not
+say for certain—he might, when he next saw him, suggest
+my name for the post. “Of course,” he added, still more
+cautiously, “you will understand I must make inquiries
+about you at the <i>Times</i>.” He promised to let me know if
+anything further came of it. For many weeks I heard no
+word. Then I wrote. The reply asked me to call at his
+office. He was kindness and sympathy personified. “The
+<i>Times</i> gives you an excellent character,” he informed me,
+“and say they will be very sorry to lose you. I am sorry
+there has been this delay.” He handed me a personal
+letter to James Speyer. He invited me to dinner in his
+house the following evening. Before brushing up my
+dress-suit for the occasion—my first dinner in a decent
+house for many years—I had seen Mr. Speyer and had been
+engaged at a salary of $2,000 a year for a morning job,
+from 8 till 2 o’clock daily, with a general supervision during
+the day of his town and country houses, horses, servants,
+charities, and numerous other interests.</p>
+
+<p>The dinner in Mr. Dodge’s Fifth Avenue palace was a
+veritable banquet to me. Immediately opposite, across
+the avenue, was the other palace occupied by James
+Speyer. It was all rather bewildering, a new world with
+a vengeance. Years among the outcast of the city had
+not precisely polished my manners, nor could I feel at
+my ease thus suddenly among decent folk again. I
+remember being absurdly tongue-tied, shy and awkward,
+until M. de Chaillu, who was present, began to talk about
+books, stars, natural history, and other splendid things,
+and took me with him into some unimaginable seventh
+heaven. I had moments of terror too, but the strongest
+emotion I remember is the deep gratitude I felt towards
+Mr. Dodge. A further tiny detail clings as well, when I
+was invited for a week-end to the Dodge country house
+on the Hudson, and was bathing with the son. He was,
+like myself, six feet three inches, well built, but well
+covered too, his age perhaps close on forty. As we stood
+on the spring-board waiting for our second dive, he looked
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_298">[298]</span>
+at me. “You certainly haven’t got a tummy,” he
+remarked with admiring envy. “I wish I were as thin!”
+And the casual words made a queer impression on me.
+I realized abruptly how little of certain real values
+such people knew ... how little these protected people
+ever <i>could</i> know. I still see his admiring, good-humoured,
+kindly expression, as he said the empty words....</p>
+
+<p>James Speyer, brother of Edgar, who later became
+a baronet and member of the Privy Council, was
+what we called in New York a “white man.” I hardly
+think I proved an ideal private secretary. His patience
+and kindness began at the first trial interview I had with
+him, when my shorthand—he dictated a newspaper
+financial paragraph full of unfamiliar terms—was not at
+its best, “not <i>very</i> grand,” were the actual words he used.
+As for bookkeeping, I told him frankly that “figures were
+my idea of hell,” whereupon, after a moment’s puzzled
+stare, he laughed and said that keeping accounts need
+not be among my principal duties. A clerk from the
+office could come up and balance the books every month.
+The phrase about hell, the grave expression of my face,
+he told me long afterwards, touched his sense of humour.
+The huge book in which I kept his personal accounts
+proved, none the less, a daily nightmare, with its nine
+columns for different kinds of expenditure—Charities,
+Housekeeping, Presents, Loans, Personal, and the rest.
+It locked with a key. I spent hours over it. No total
+ever came out twice alike. Yet Mr. Hopf, the bright-eyed,
+diminutive German from the office, ran his tiny fingers up
+and down those columns like some twinkling insect,
+chatting with me while he added, and making the totals
+right in a few minutes. Max Hopf, with his slight, twisty
+body, looked like an agile figure of 3 himself. In his
+spare time, I felt sure, he played with figures. He was a
+juggler in my eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The first week in my new job was a nervous one, though
+Mr. Speyer’s tact and kindly feeling soon put me at my
+ease. My desk at first was in a corner of an unused
+board room in the bank, where I sat like a king answering
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_299">[299]</span>
+countless letters on a typewriter. The shorthand was
+discarded; I composed the replies from verbal hints and
+general indications. Clerks treated me with respect;
+language was decent; surroundings were sumptuous; it
+was some time before I “found” myself. The second
+morning a caller was shown in, somebody to see Mr. Speyer.
+He took a chair beside my desk, stared fixedly at me,
+opened his mouth and called me by my Christian name—it
+was the Exchange Place banker who used to stay in
+my father’s house and who had last seen me in bed at
+East 19th Street. He congratulated me. I found out,
+incidentally, then, how much my swindling friend of
+those days had “touched” him for on my behalf ...
+and repaid it.</p>
+
+<p>James Speyer proved a good friend during the two years
+or so I spent with him; he treated me as friend, too, rather
+than as secretary. My office was transferred to his
+palatial residence in Madison Avenue, a new house he had
+just built for himself, and it was part of my job to run this
+house for him, his country house at Irvington on the
+Hudson as well. These establishments, for a millionaire
+bachelor, were on a simple scale, though the amount of
+money necessary for one man’s comforts staggered me at
+first. A married French couple were his chief servants,
+the woman as cook, the man as butler; they had been with
+him for a long time; they eyed the new secretary with
+disfavour; they were feathering their nests very comfortably,
+I soon discovered. My hotel experience in
+Toronto stood me in good stead here. But Mr. Speyer
+was a generous, live-and-let-live type of man who did not
+want a spirit of haggling over trifles in his home. I
+gradually adjusted matters by introducing a reasonable
+scale. The French couple and I became good friends. I
+enjoyed the work, which included every imaginable duty
+under the sun, had ample time for exercise and reading,
+and my employer’s zest in the University Settlement
+Movement I found particularly interesting.</p>
+
+<p>James Speyer was more than a rich philanthropist:
+he had a heart. The column for Charities and Presents in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_300">[300]</span>
+the book Mr. Hopf juggled with once a month was a big
+one, while that for Personal Expenditure was relatively
+small. When I dined alone with him in the luxurious
+panelled room I realized that life had indeed changed for
+me. His house, too, was filled with beautiful things. He
+had rare taste. His brother Edgar, whose English career
+had not yet begun, stayed with him on his periodical visits
+from Frankfurt. There was music then, big dinner-parties
+too, to which I was sometimes invited. Social
+amenities were not always quite easy, for the position of a
+Jew in New York Society was delicate, but I never once
+knew James Speyer’s taste or judgment at fault. His
+intelligence showed itself not only in finance; he was
+intelligent all over; imaginatively thoughtful for all
+connected with him, and his philanthropy sprang from a
+genuine desire to help the unfortunate.</p>
+
+<p>For Jews I have always had a quick feeling of sympathy,
+of admiration. I adore their intelligence, subtlety,
+keen love of beauty, their understanding, their wisdom.
+In the best of them lies some intuitive grip of ancient
+values, some artistic discernment, that fascinates me. I
+found myself comparing Alfred Louis with James Speyer;
+their reaction, respectively, upon myself showed clearly
+again the standard of what, to me, was important: the
+one, alone among his unchangeable, imperishable “Eternities,”
+unaware of comfort as of fame, unrecognized, unadvertised,
+lonely and derelict, yet equally as proud of
+his heritage as the other who, in a noisier market sought
+the less permanent splendours of success and worldly honour.
+One filled his modern palace with olden beauty fashioned by
+many men, the other had stocked his mind with a loveliness
+that money could not buy. One financed a gigantic
+railway enterprise, the other wrote the “Night Song.”
+All the one said blessed and ornamented the mind, all the
+other said advised it. One parted with a poem as though he
+sold a pound of his own living flesh, the other was pleased,
+yet a trifle nervous, when Muldoon—thinking to help me
+in my job—wrote a panegyric of easy philanthropies in the
+<i>Brooklyn Eagle</i>, to which his fierce activities had now been
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_301">[301]</span>
+transferred from the <i>Times</i>. Both taught me much.
+From one, singing amid his dirt in an attic, I learned about
+a world that, hiding behind ephemeral appearances, lies
+deathlessly serene and unalterably lovely; from the other,
+about a world which far from deathless and certainly less
+serene, flaunts its rewards upon a more obviously remunerative
+scale. Of both poet and financier, at any rate, I
+kept vivid, grateful, pleasant memories.</p>
+
+<p>Between the unsavoury world I had lived in so long and
+the new one I had now entered, the Old Man of Visions,
+himself at home in all and every kind of world, always
+seemed a bridge. His personality spread imaginatively,
+as it were, over all grades and through all strata of humanity.
+In my slow upward climb he seemed to hand me on,
+and in return for his unfailing guidance it was possible
+to make his own conditions a trifle more comfortable:
+possible, but not easy, because there was no help he needed
+and did not positively scorn. He watched my welfare
+with unfailing interest, but nothing would induce him to
+buy a new hat, a new frock-coat, an umbrella or a pair
+of gloves. “Our memories, at any given moment,”
+says Bergson, “form a solid whole, a pyramid, so to speak,
+whose point is inserted precisely into our present action.”
+On that “point” old Louis still drives through my mind
+and wields an influence to-day....</p>
+
+<p>The happier period with James Speyer was, of course,
+an episode, like my other experiences. It was wonderful
+to draw a good salary regularly for pleasant work; to have
+long holidays in the Adirondacks, or moose-shooting in the
+woods north of the Canadian Pacific Railway; wonderful,
+too, when my employer went to Europe for three months,
+to know myself in charge of such big interests, with a
+power of attorney to sign all cheques. But the usual
+restlessness was soon on me again, desire for a change
+stirred in my blood. The Spanish-American War, I
+remember, made me think of joining Roosevelt’s Rough
+Riders, a scheme both Speyer and Louis strongly disapproved,
+and that an attack of typhoid fever rendered
+impossible in any case.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_302">[302]</span></p>
+
+<p>It was during convalescence that it occurred to me
+I was nearing thirty, and that if I meant to live in America
+all my life, it was time to become naturalized. And this
+thought caused me to reflect on the question of going
+home. My sister, with her children, passed through New
+York about this time, returning from South Australia,
+where her husband was Governor, and it was at dinner in
+my employer’s house, where he had invited them, that the
+longing to return to England suddenly declared itself.
+To find myself among relatives who called me by the
+unfamiliar childhood name, woke English memories,
+English values, and brought back the English atmosphere
+once more. My mother was still alive.... I remember
+that dinner well. My sister brought a tame little Mexican
+monkey with her. A man, also, called to ask Mr. Speyer
+for help, and when I went to interview him in the hall,
+his long story included a reference to something Mr.
+Dodge, he declared, had done for him. “Mr. Dodge
+gave me this,” he said, and promptly scooped one eye out
+of its socket and showed it to me lying in the palm of his
+hand. The glass eye, the monkey, remain associated in
+my mind still with the rather poignant memories of
+forgotten English days my sister’s visit stirred to life, and
+with my own emotions as I reflected upon the idea of going
+home at last. A chance meeting, again, worked its
+spell.</p>
+
+<p>I had felt that half a universe separated me from the
+world in which my relatives lived, but after they had gone
+I began to realize various things I had not appreciated
+before. New York, I saw, could furnish no true abiding
+city for my soul which, though vagabond, yet sought
+something more than its appalling efficiency could ever
+give. What did I miss? I could name it now, but I
+hardly named it then perhaps. I was always hungry
+there, but with a hunger not of the body merely. The
+hunger, however, was real, often it was devastating. With
+such a lop-sided development as mine had been, my
+immaturity, no doubt, was still glaring. The sense of
+failure, I know, at any rate, was very strong. My relatives
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_303">[303]</span>
+had been travelling, and they reflected a colour of other
+lands that called to me. Thought and longing now turned
+to an older world. There were ancient wonders, soft with
+age, mature with a beauty and tenderness only timelessness
+can give, that caught me on the raw with a power no
+Yosemites, Niagaras, or Grand Canyons could hope to
+imitate. Size has its magic, but size bludgeons the
+imagination, rather than feeds it. My heart turned suddenly
+across the sea. I loved the big woods, but behind, beyond
+the woods, great Egypt lay ablaze....</p>
+
+<p>I talked things over with the Old Man of Visions; he
+advised me to go home. “See your mother before she
+dies,” he urged. “I cannot come with you, but I may
+follow you.” He added: “I shall miss you,” then dropped
+into poetry, as he always did when he was moved....</p>
+
+<p>It was these talks with Old Louis about England, the
+atmosphere of England as well, that my sister somehow
+left behind her, my own yearnings now suddenly reawakened
+too, that decided me. My detestation of the
+city both cleared and deepened. I began to understand
+more vividly, more objectively, the reasons for my feeling
+alien in it. I missed tradition, background, depth. There
+was a glittering smartness everywhere. The great ideal
+was to be sharper, smarter than your neighbour, above all
+things sharp and smart and furiously rapid, above all
+things—win the game. To be in a furious rush was to be
+intelligent, to do things slowly was to be derided. The
+noise and speed suggested rapids; the deep, quiet pools
+were in the older lands. Display, advertisement, absence
+of all privacy I had long been aware of, naturally; I now
+realized how little I desired this speed and glittering
+brilliance, this frantic rush to be at all costs sharper,
+quicker, smarter than one’s neighbour, to win the game
+at any price. I realized why my years in the city had
+brought no friendships, and why they had been starved
+as well as lonely....</p>
+
+<p>Some months passed before I booked a passage,
+however. I was sorry to leave James Speyer. Then one
+day he spoke to me about—marriage. For a year or more
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_304">[304]</span>
+I had noticed his friendship with Mrs. Lowry, a Christian,
+well-known figure in the social world; and, being the
+confidant of both parties, I had done all I could to encourage
+a marriage that promised happiness and success.
+In due course, Bishop Potter, of New York, officiated.
+The ceremony was performed in the drawing-room, and
+just before it began, James Speyer came up to me, took the
+beautiful links out of his cuffs, and handed them to me.
+“I should like you to have these,” he said, “as a little
+memento.” I have them still.</p>
+
+<p>A few months later, just before I was thirty, I found
+myself in a second-class cabin in a Cunarder, with my
+savings in my pocket. Old Louis, who followed me a
+year or two later, came down to see me off. I was glad
+when the Statue of Liberty lay finally below the sea’s
+horizon, but I shall never forget the thrill of strange
+emotion I experienced when I first saw the blue rim of
+Ireland rise above the horizon a few days later. A
+shutter dropped behind me. I entered a totally new
+world. Life continued to be <i>mouvementée</i>, indeed, one
+adventure succeeding another, and ever with the feeling
+that a chance letter, a chance meeting might open any
+morning a new chapter of quite a novel kind; but my
+American episodes were finished.</p>
+
+<p>Of mystical, psychic, or so-called “occult” experiences,
+I have purposely said nothing, since these notes
+have sought to recapture surface adventures only.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_305">[305]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="INDEX">
+    INDEX
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<ul class="index">
+  <li class="ifrst">“A Case of Eavesdropping,” <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Abbott, Dr. Lyman, sermons on the theology of an Evolutionist, <a href="#Page_292">292</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li class="isub1">tribute to <i>N.Y. Times</i> report of his sermons, <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Aberdeen, Lord, Governor-General of Canada, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Advertising extraordinary, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Ahlwardt, Rector, anti-semitism of, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">his meeting at Cooper Union Hall, <a href="#Page_229">229</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Alden, Mr., and A. H. Louis, <a href="#Page_271">271</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Amityville, a quasi lunatic asylum at, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Anti-semitic campaign in New York, <a href="#Page_229">229</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Apples, dried, and hot water, as hunger-appeaser, <a href="#Page_111">111</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Arson, frequency of, among Jews, <a href="#Page_106">106</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Barnum and Bailey’s Circus, a banquet at, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Beattie, Mr., Boyde and, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Beauchamp, Montague, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Belloc, Hilaire, an article by, based on author’s book, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bennett, Sterndale, A. H. Louis a pupil of, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Benson, Archbishop, A. H. Louis’s memories of, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bernhardt, Sarah, interview with, <a href="#Page_106">106</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bernstein, Mrs., a long-outstanding account with, settled, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">and her third floor back, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">reduces rent—and why, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">removes to another house, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">“Bhagavad Gita,” the, world-scripture of, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bingham, Billy, former proprietor of the Hub, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Black Forest, schooldays in the, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Blackwood, Algernon, a childish recollection of his mother, <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">a poem in <i>The Week</i> by, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">an earl’s visit to <i>Sun</i> office, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">an interlude of play-acting, <a href="#Page_255">255</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li class="isub1">and Boyde: a scene, <a href="#Page_161">161</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li class="isub1">and the Hub hotel, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a> <i>et seq.</i>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li class="isub1">as reporter in the Tombs, <a href="#Page_99">99</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li class="isub1">as story-teller, <a href="#Page_222">222</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">as violinist, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">assigns his interest in the Hub, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">attends a ball at Government House, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">becomes a partner in an eau de Cologne business, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">beginning of friendship with Alfred H. Louis, <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">credited with powers of Black Magic, <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">“cribs” from an intoxicated reporter, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">death of his father, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">“detachment” method of, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">disagreement with Dr. Huebner, <a href="#Page_156">156</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">discovers Boyde’s forgery, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">dissolves partnership with Cooper, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Edinburgh University course of, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">eighteen months on staff of <i>New York Times</i>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li class="isub1">essays magazine writing, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">evangelical upbringing of, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">examined on a charge of arson, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">first experience of morphine, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_306">[306]</span>
+five months on Lake Rosseau, <a href="#Page_73">73</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li class="isub1">free-lance journalism, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">friendship with a dying doctor, <a href="#Page_58">58</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li class="isub1">his mother’s letters, <a href="#Page_258">258</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">improvises accompaniment to “Invocation to Opium,” <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">interviews a lion, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">interviews in Tombs prison cell before trial, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">learns French, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">literary apprenticeship of, <a href="#Page_6">6</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">loses faith in mankind, and a regretted act, <a href="#Page_210">210</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li class="isub1">maiden speech of, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">off to the goldfields, <a href="#Page_235">235</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li class="isub1">on staff of <i>Evening Sun</i>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">parents of, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li class="isub1">partner in dairy concern, <a href="#Page_10">10</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li class="isub1">pawnbroking experiences, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">plays in Drinkwater’s “Oliver Cromwell,” <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">poses in studios, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">reads Patanjali’s “Yoga Aphorisms,” <a href="#Page_28">28</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li class="isub1">receives a visit from Pauline, <a href="#Page_152">152</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">reports a raid on a quasi lunatic asylum, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">reports Dr. Lyman Abbott’s sermons, <a href="#Page_292">292</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li class="isub1">resumes duties on <i>Evening Sun</i>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">returns from Muskoka lakes, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">returns to England, <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">secretary to James Speyer, <a href="#Page_297">297</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li class="isub1">tackles Boyde <i>re</i> a forged cheque, <a href="#Page_138">138</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li class="isub1">talks with Boyde in his cell at Tombs prison, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">teaches French, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">translates French stories, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">unhappy days in New York, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">visited by a banker: further disclosures concerning Boyde, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">visits of an eccentric German doctor, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">visits winter quarters of Barnum and Bailey’s circus, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">warned against Boyde, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">warns a pastor’s daughter against Boyde, <a href="#Page_139">139</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">“Whitey’s” useful hints to, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">why an opening in C.P.R. did not eventuate, <a href="#Page_66">66</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li class="isub1">works by, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Blackwood, Sir Arthur (father), a disregarded counsel of perfection of, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">and the Hub venture, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">death of, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">farewell to author, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">fêted in New York, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">marriage of, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">religious and temperance views of, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a> <i>et seq.</i>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bond, Bligh, his “Gate of Remembrance,” <a href="#Page_228">228</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bookkeeping, author’s frank opinion of, <a href="#Page_298">298</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Borden, Lizzie, interview with, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bostock’s Circus, a lion escapes from: reporting the episode, <a href="#Page_102">102</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Boyde, Arthur Glyn, an echo of, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">arrest of, <a href="#Page_198">198</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">author’s attachment to, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">committed for trial to General Sessions, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">communicates with Sir A. Blackwood, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">confessions of, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">disguises himself, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">duplicity of, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a> <i>et seq.</i>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">his varied experience of New York, <a href="#Page_86">86</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li class="isub1">hunt for, <a href="#Page_182">182</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li class="isub1">last sight of, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">letters to author from Tombs prison, <a href="#Page_203">203</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li class="isub1">meeting with, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">sentenced, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">telegraphs news of his marriage, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_307">[307]</span>
+uneasy suspicions regarding, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">warrant for arrest of, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Brodie, as salesman, <a href="#Page_275">275</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">heavy insurances of—and a fire, <a href="#Page_278">278</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li class="isub1">how he obtained recipe for eau de Cologne, <a href="#Page_273">273</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">introduction to, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">social aspirations of, <a href="#Page_273">273</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bronx Park, Sundays in, <a href="#Page_216">216</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Brooklyn Bridge, reflections on, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Buddhism, a German doctor’s opinion of, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">author’s interest in, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Dr. Withrow and, <a href="#Page_8">8</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Calder, introduces himself, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">uninvited, sleeps in author’s bed, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Campbell, Sir Alexander, Governor of Ontario, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Canada, social customs unwittingly broken by author in, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Canadian Pacific Railway, how an opening in, was lost, <a href="#Page_65">65</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Canoeing on Canadian lakes, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Carey, Mr., manager of <i>New York Times</i>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Clay, Cecil, introduction to, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Clothes, interchangeable, <a href="#Page_110">110</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Conversion, reflections on, <a href="#Page_23">23</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Cooper, Alfred, partner in Islington Jersey Dairy, <a href="#Page_10">10</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Cooper, Mr., news-editor of <i>Evening Sun</i>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Cox, Cleveland, posing for, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Crayford, home life at, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Croker, Boss, head of Tammany, <a href="#Page_232">232</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Dana, Charles A., editor of <i>Evening Sun</i>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Davies, Acton, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">and the Boyde story, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Davis, Richard Harding, a play by, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">an interview with, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Boyde and, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Davis, R. H., witnesses capture of an escaped lion, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">de Chaillu, M., <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">De Quincey’s “Confessions,” Dr. Huebner and, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Dixon, his tight-rope walk across the Niagara, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Dodge, William E., a chance meeting with, <a href="#Page_295">295</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Drug stores and their attraction, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Drummond, Professor, Sunday lectures at Edinburgh of, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Dufferin, Lord, a photograph of, in Hub hotel, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Duluth, and the gold rush, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">“Earth’s Earliest Ages,” Pember’s, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Easter Day in the Black Forest, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Eau de Cologne business, author and, <a href="#Page_272">272</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Edinburgh University, author at, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">“Education of Uncle Paul, The,” <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Elephants, their fear of rats, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Eliot, George, and her Sunday receptions, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><i>Etruria</i>, launching of, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><i>Evening Sun</i>, slogan of, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><i>Evening World</i>, the, a scoop in, <a href="#Page_98">98</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Evolutionist theology, sermons on, <a href="#Page_292">292</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Ffoulkes, Maude, author’s indebtedness to, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">“Final Word, The” (poem), <a href="#Page_267">267</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Free-lunch counters, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Freytag, German reporter, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">his advice to author, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Frohman, Daniel, and Angus Hamilton, <a href="#Page_222">222</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Gallup, a half-breed guide, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">camp-fire stories of, <a href="#Page_242">242</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Galt, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_6">6</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Germans, talkative, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Gibson, Charles Dana, author poses for, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Gilmour, jealousy of—and a realistic performance, <a href="#Page_256">256-7</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_308">[308]</span>
+Gilmour, organizes a theatrical touring company, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Gladstone, Right Hon. W. E., A. H. Louis and, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Goff, John, replaces Judge Smythe as Recorder, <a href="#Page_232">232</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Gold, a quest in search of, <a href="#Page_235">235</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Gosse, Edmund, “Father and Son” of, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Grant, and author, <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">hears and witnesses Boyde’s confession, <a href="#Page_140">140</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li class="isub1">warns author against Boyde, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Hamilton, a clergyman publicly thrashed in, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hamilton, Angus, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">and author’s stories, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">suicide of, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Harcourt, Sir William, president of Cambridge Union, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><i>Harper’s Magazine</i>, publication of A. H. Louis’s poems in, <a href="#Page_267">267</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Harris, Carlyle, electrocuted, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Haschisch, an experiment with, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Haultain, Arnold, private secretary to Goldwin Smith, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Henry, O., his conception of New York, <a href="#Page_109">109</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">“Hereafter,” poem by A. H. Louis, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hopf, Max, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hub hotel, advice to new proprietors of, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">early customers at, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">in hands of a receiver, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">its former proprietor, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li class="isub1">opening of, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">purchase of, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Huebner, Dr. Otto, a disappointment for, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">administers morphine to author, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">and Boyde, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">called in by Boyde, <a href="#Page_116">116</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li class="isub1">confesses himself a morphine taker, <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">death of, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">friendship with, <a href="#Page_164">164</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li class="isub1">his wife and daughter, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">joins in search for Boyde, <a href="#Page_183">183</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li class="isub1">life-story of, <a href="#Page_174">174</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">urges author to become a doctor, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">varying moods of, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hypnotism, experiments in, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Irving, Henry, interview with, <a href="#Page_106">106</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Irvington, Mr. Speyer’s country house at, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Islington Jersey Dairy, partnership in, <a href="#Page_10">10</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">James, General, a dinner to Sir A. Blackwood, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">James, William, “Varieties of Religious Experience” by, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217-18</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Jews, a campaign against, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">author’s admiration of, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">“Jimbo,” author’s, <a href="#Page_223">223</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">“John Silence,” <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">effects of haschisch described in, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">publication of, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Jones, Colonel, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Joseph Lake, Northern Ontario, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">“Julius Le Vallon,” <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Kay, John, and the “Hub” venture, <a href="#Page_16">16</a> <i>et seq.</i>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a> <i>et seq.</i>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">effect of morphine on, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">his immunity to “night-attacks,” <a href="#Page_109">109</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">histrionic bent of, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">in search of Boyde, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">poses to Smedley, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">served with a blue writ, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Kingsley, Charles, baptizes A. H. Louis, <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Laffan, Mr., of <i>New York Sun</i>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Lake Rosseau, departure for, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">five months on, <a href="#Page_74">74</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_309">[309]</span>
+Lawler, Detective, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Lewes, George Henry, A. H. Louis’s talks with, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Lexow, Senator, and a Tammany investigation, <a href="#Page_232">232</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Liebesmahl, the, of Moravian Brotherhood, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Lightfoot, Bishop, A. H. Louis and, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>.</li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Lion, an escaped, a “strong man” and, <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">“Listener, The,” author’s, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Louis, Alfred H., advice <i>re</i> eau de Cologne business, <a href="#Page_277">277</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">and politics, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">arrives, and a description of, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">as editor, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">breakdown of, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">buried in a Hebrew cemetery, <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Cambridge days of, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">claims to be original of Daniel Deronda, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">condemns Gladstone, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">“Hereafter” of, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">his farewell to author, <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">legal attainments of, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">meeting with, <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">“Night Song” of, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">self-chosen epitaph of, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">“The Final Word” of, <a href="#Page_267">267</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">unfailing guidance of, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Lowry, Mrs., marries James Speyer, <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Lunatic asylum (a quasi), raid on, <a href="#Page_226">226</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Manchester, Duchess of, marries Sir A. Blackwood, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Manning, Cardinal, A. H. Louis and, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Mantell, Bob (Shakespearean actor), <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">introduces author to Cecil Clay, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">“Max Hensig, Bacteriologist and Murderer,” author’s story of, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">McCloy, Mr. (managing editor of <i>Evening Sun</i>), <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">and author, <a href="#Page_221">221</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">interview with, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">recollections of, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">McKay, owner of olive-oil warehouse, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><i>Messe noire</i>, a, and its performers, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><i>Methodist Magazine</i>, author on staff of, <a href="#Page_6">6</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Miller, C. W., editor in chief of <i>New York Times</i>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Mitchell, Fire-Marshal, examines author, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">prosecutes Brodie, <a href="#Page_282">282</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Moody and Sankey visit England, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><i>Morning Post</i>, an article on the genus “ghost story” in: its writer, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Morphine, and its effects, <a href="#Page_172">172</a> <i>et seq.</i>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Morris (a reputed “stiff” and cut-throat), <a href="#Page_248">248</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">an instance of his kindness, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Mosquitoes of Rainy Lake City, <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Muldoon, Mr., and author’s report of a students’ concert, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">City editor of <i>New York Times</i>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">joins staff of <i>Brooklyn Eagle</i>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Mullins, editorial writer on <i>Evening Sun</i>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Muskoka Lakes of Northern Ontario, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Mystical minor poet, a, <a href="#Page_55">55</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Nash, Eveleigh, publishes stories by author, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Nature, spell of, and its influence on author, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a> <i>et seq.</i>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">New York, a lively anti-semitic meeting at, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">horrors of, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">miseries of summer heat in, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><i>New York Times</i>, author on staff of, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">slogan of, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Newspaper reporting, reminiscences of, <a href="#Page_225">225</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">“Night Song,” poem by A. H. Louis, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Novelists, instances of their creative power, <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_310">[310]</span>
+Olive-oil, its value as food, <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Opium, the Invocation to, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Otto, waiter in Krisch’s, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Palmer, Lynwood, and Boyde, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">attends trial of Boyde, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">kindness to author, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Patanjali, “Aphorisms” of, <a href="#Page_28">28</a> <i>et seq.</i>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Pawnbroking, experiences of, <a href="#Page_88">88</a> <i>et seq.</i>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Paxton, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a> <i>et seq.</i>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Pember, G. H., evangelical writer of prophetic school, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Police, New York, the Tammany system and, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Potter, Bishop, officiates at wedding of James Speyer, <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Prison as “a proper vestibule to a city of Damned Souls,” <a href="#Page_109">109</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Rainy Lake City, arrival at, <a href="#Page_246">246</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">desolateness of, <a href="#Page_248">248</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Rainy River district, gold discovered in, <a href="#Page_232">232</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Reporter, a drunken, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Reporting for New York papers, experiences acquired from, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Revivalist movement, author and, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Roper, and Boyde, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Ryan, a Tammany magistrate, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Schmidt, “Von,” personality of, <a href="#Page_276">276</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">warns author against Brodie, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Scott, Mr., revivalist, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><i>Scribner’s Magazine</i>, “A Vagrant’s Epitaph” in, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Selton, Morton, and his understudy, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Sevenoaks, a reminiscence of schooldays at, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Shakespearean rehearsals on Lake Rosseau, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Smedley, Mr., posing for, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Smith, Goldwin, and his private secretary, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Smith, Stanley, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Smythe, Judge, replaced by John Goff as Recorder, <a href="#Page_232">232</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">sentences Boyde, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">“Snipe” hunting, definition of, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Social reporting, experiences of, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Sothern advances money to Boyde, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Spanish-American War, the, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><i>Spectator</i> reviews author’s published stories, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Spencer, Herbert, A. H. Louis’s talks with, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Speyer, James, a letter of introduction to, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">a present to author, <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">and the University Settlement movement, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">as friend and employer, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">as philanthropist, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">author becomes secretary to, <a href="#Page_297">297</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li class="isub1">marriage of, <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">tact and kindly feeling of, <a href="#Page_298">298</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Speyer, Sir Edgar, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Spiritualism, a doctor’s exposition of, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Spiritualist, a cement-maker as, <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Staten Island, a cricket match on, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Stephen, Sir George, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Stevenson, R. L., a dictum of, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Stewart, Sir Donald, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Storey, Mr., editor of <i>Harper’s Young People</i>, accepts an article by author, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Strathcona, Lord, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Studd brothers (cricketers), <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Sullivan, Tim, and his rival saloon, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Tammany Hall, a Committee of Investigation into methods of, <a href="#Page_232">232</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Tammany system, the, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">the “Tenderloin” region and, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_311">[311]</span>
+Temperance and General Life Assurance Company, author’s post in, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Terry, Ellen, interview with, <a href="#Page_106">106</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Theosophical Society meetings, attendance at, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Theosophy, author’s early interest in, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">“The Interpreters,” by A. E., <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">“The Listener,” <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Tombs Police Court and Prison, the, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">trial of Boyde at, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Toronto, author as hotel proprietor in, <a href="#Page_39">39</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Understanding, a spiritual wisdom, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Union League Club dinner, author’s maiden speech at, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">University Settlement movement, the, James Speyer and, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">“Vagrant’s Epitaph, A,” <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">van Horne, Sir William, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Vermin-infested bedroom, an uncomfortable night in a, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Wallace, Professor, of Edinburgh University, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Whitey, a parting present of a bottle of rye whisky, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">hints to author, <a href="#Page_96">96-98</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Withrow, Dr., editor of <i>Methodist</i> Magazine, <a href="#Page_6">6</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Yonkers theatre, a realistic scene in a, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Zogbaum, illustrator, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_312">[312]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="center mt4 mb4">
+<span class="smcap">Printed by</span><br>
+<span class="smcap">Cassell &amp; Company, Limited, La Belle Sauvage</span><br>
+<span class="smcap">London, E.C.4.</span><br>
+F. 20.1023
+</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<div class='transnote mt4'>
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="Transcribers_Notes">
+    Transcriber’s Notes
+  </h2>
+
+<ul>
+  <li>Footnotes renumbered consecutively and moved to below the paragraph
+in which they were referenced.</li>
+
+  <li>Obvious typographic errors silently corrected.</li>
+
+  <li>Variation in hyphenation kept as in the original.</li>
+
+  <li>P. <a href='#cor_196'>196</a>: changed “an awful looked” to
+  “an awful look” to make the sentence grammatical.</li>
+
+<li>Table of Contents added by the transcriber for reader convenience.</li>
+</ul>
+</div></div>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76991 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
+
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+This book, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this book outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
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+++ b/README.md
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for book #76991
+(https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76991)