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future will no doubt seem very beautiful i m sure of it and yet i kept saying to myself that notwithstanding all this all i could sum up against america even it was actually better than europe and why well because of a certain either of hope or courage or youth or vigor or illusion what you will but the average american or the average european to america is a better or at least a more person than the average european at home even the frenchman he has more humor or a method which is at once efficient self comforting his soul in spite of all the chains wherewith the ruling giants are seeking to him is free as yet regardless of what is or may be he does not appear to realize that he is not free or that he is in any way oppressed there are no ruling classes to him he sings laughs matches everybody for cigars meals tobacco freely rolls to and fro his hat on one side of his head and altogether by and large is a regular hell of a he doesn t know anything about history or very little and doesn t give a damn he doesn t know anything about art but my god who with the eternal hills and all nature for a background cannot live without representative art his food isn t good though plentiful his do are made by or and altogether he is a noisy contented but oh the gay self sufficient soul of him no no tears into the teeth of destiny he whistling yankee or turkey in the straw in the of his own streets can you beat him nevertheless my sympathies kept to the and i finally got out a map to see if i could discover the name of the very small town or where this hotel was situated it proved to be instantly i recalled the story of a of twenty years before who had come from this very place or county in new york previously a district attorney or lieutenant governor he had one day been for the on the ticket his chances were splendid there was scarcely a cloud in the sky he was believed to be brilliant promising a possibility of the future an important meeting was called in new york i believe at square garden very likely to and his all the who grace such events were present the garden was filled but alas at the sound of the applause called forth by his opening burst of he paused and took off his quite as he would at an rally here in the audience gasped the leaders of the city groaned what take off your coat at a political address in square garden a candidate for of the state of new york it completely destroyed him he was never heard of more i a mere at the time long over this sudden turn of fortune as a need to between and classes it put a cool thought in my mind that i did not soon forget never remove your coat in the wrong place was a that dwelt with me for some time and here we were in the place to which this man subsequently retired to no doubt over the i o a holiday costly follies and errors we sometimes commit without the ability or the knowledge to guard against them an hour and a half later we were having breakfast at a place much like in the customary de this one was all with gold paper and hunting scenes and contained the usual heavy mission tables to say nothing of a smell of burned the night before there were negro too and another group of having a most elaborate breakfast and much talk of and cars and distant cities here it was necessary for us to decide the course of our future progress so we shortly set off in search of the local club chapter xvii chicken and and the o bath we found an official of the club a small stoop shouldered bald eye person who greeted us with a genial rub of his hands and a hearty as though we were just the persons among all others whom he was most pleased to see come right in gentlemen he called as and i appeared in the doorway what can i do for you looking for maps or a route or something tell me i inquired anxious to make my point at once are there any good roads due west of here which would take us straight into without going north to he scratched his head no i don t think there are he replied most of the good roads are north of here around where the main line of traffic is now there is a good road or a part of one and then he commenced a long rambling account of some road that was about to be built but as yet etc etc i saw my idea of a somewhat different trip going glimmering but here he went on picking up one of those maps which various hotels and towns combine to get up to attract trade what s the matter with the trail from here on that takes you up through bath and and up there you strike the main road through right into that s a fine road good hard nearly all the way and when you get to you strike one of the best hotels anywhere when you get up there you just roll your car right into the grounds walk into the and ask em to give you a holiday some of their chicken and you ll just be about ready for it when you get there and you ll thank me for telling you i fancied i could see the of the hotel keeper present in that speech however far to the	43
left on another branch of the same trail i saw my beloved new york what s the matter with the road up through here i asked putting my finger on it well i ll tell you he said there it is mostly dirt and there are no good dirt roads as you know if you ve much a man called up here this morning and wanted to know if there were any good dirt roads out of here to and i said to him my dear sir there aren t any good dirt roads anywhere there ain t any such thing i seemed to see the hotel keeper smiling and once more a chicken in one hand a plate of in the other but he didn t appeal to me at all these hotel and these americans who are so quick to everything scenery water falls everything i curses curses curses i said to myself softly why must everything be turned into business besides many portions of the roads over which we had come in new and were dirt and they were excellent i smiled serenely determined to make the best of whatever happened and however much i might want to go to new york but our friend seemed determined to send us and he went on telling us how anxious he had been to convince the man who had that there were no good dirt roads but i was happy to note that apparently he had not been successful the man probably knew something about state and dirt roads as we had found them and refused to take his direction i was pleased to think that whatever might be concluding because of his advice we still had some distance yet to travel before we would have to decide not to go to all of or a hundred miles chicken and anyhow for extending that distance our proposed route was directly toward and that cheered me a bit and now beyond for a distance of one hundred and twenty miles or more all the way into we had one of the most delightful days of any a perfectly heavenly day the weather so fine the sky so blue and not a tinge of anything save weather anywhere as we rolled along the sound of the was heard in the land great mechanical of engines and and grain and straw a great or reaching high in the air and carrying out the straw and blowing it on a single mound it was really wonderful to see america s daily bread being mile after mile and mile after mile and the herds of cattle mostly which yield the milk supply for the trains that pour nightly and daily towards that vast of cities called new york with its eight million people in this new york valley alone which seemed to stretch unbroken from to western new york from the really to the falls of the there were indeed cattle on a thousand hills there was too much traffic along the first portion of the road out of and by now i was beginning to get an idea of the magnitude of the revolution which the had effected thirty years ago these roads would have been as elsewhere if at all by and but now on this saturday morning the ways were crowded with farmers coming to town in or as speed always put it in and why this useful little machine should be at is a puzzle to me for it seemed to look nearly as well and to travel quite as fast as any of the others the farmers were using it as a family taking in of wheat or other to town and bringing home and other a holiday in a town of about ten or twelve thousand population some twenty miles west of we found a city as prosperous as most of the others apparently and as it being saturday the natives from the surrounding country were beginning to come in but i did not notice any of that rural flavor which had seemed to them in my youth on leaving every town where we had too long we made a solemn that we would not waste so much time in unimportant towns that were nearly all alike but whenever one rose into view and we dashed into a principal street lined with stores and crowded with people it was beyond human nature not to get out and look around a little there was always the excuse of picture cards for a record of our trip or meals or a drink of some kind or even s favorite or or think of it three grown men getting out to buy i here in it was that i first noticed that had a peculiarly sharp nose and eye for out ideal rural types those who have read land s main roads will understand instantly i what i mean not the crude obvious one might almost say types but those more difficult and pathetic characters who do their best not to seem to be of the country and yet who are always so obviously of it i tried my best as my arm at different times to to myself what it is about these interesting individuals the boy or woman or young man from the country dressed in those peculiarly and store y store clothes that makes them so appealing and so pathetic to me in main roads one gets a sense of it all times have changed a little since then and yet here were the same types the red boy in the new brown suit and cent hat looking at people as if all the world and its every gesture were a surprise and the women walking about streets impossible one must say from a social and intellectual point of view trying to look as if	43
they had something to do and some place to go i always suspect them of chicken and eating their meals in some wagon back of some store a cold brought along for the occasion or asking the privilege of adding a few things out of a basket to the provided say by a glass of ice cream oh the lovely roads by which they came the where their homes are the small the wide spacious fields with and and blue for company the grey snowy fields in winter these black trees for a border and the great cities which haunt the dreams of these boys and girls and finally so many of them away beyond came more delightful small towns painted post with a church so singularly plain a small spire so thin and tall that it was truly beautiful with one of these typical rural streets of homes which make you wish that you might stay for days visiting country relatives a hot country store street where speed stopped for oil and gas which hadn t a tree to bless itself with where and i sat and baked while speed his stores told me the story of why the principal street of his home town was once there had been trees there beautiful ones but with the arrival of the spirit and a desire to catch passing trade it was decided to the street somewhat and make it more commercial and therefore more attractive the idea which first into the minds of all who desired improvement was that the trees should come down why asked some lover of the trees as things of beauty well you don t see any trees in main street do you replied another triumphantly the battle was lost and won right there main street was the are we going to be like or or new or are we not i can hear some sturdy rural asking if not let the trees stand what rural would save any tree as against being like a holiday new york i d like to know that is why i suspect we baked for fifteen minutes in and then came the o bath as we forever after called it for a reason which will appear a dear lovely town with a square so delightful that on sight of it we instantly got out and in the shade for over an hour in spite of our resolution here in the east for some reason this idea of a plain green open square without any of an american civil war soldier perched high aloft on a tall shaft has remained new and now bath had one and in new england and new i have seen scores the county offices are as a rule put around it but not in it as is the rule farther west in the west everywhere west of and sometimes east of it a public square is not complete without a or at least a soldiers or sailors monument or both planted in the centre of it and these almost an exact of every other or monument for one thousand miles about the idea of doing anything original is severely frowned upon whatever else you may be in america or elsewhere apparently you must not be different hold fast to the type and do as your ancestors did i build all and monuments as and monuments should be built that is true to tradition if you don t believe this visit any between new york and but this square in bath like some others in new england and that in was especially pleasing because it had no and no monuments merely a and a great spread of benches placed under wide armed and sturdy trees under their high branches which spread as a over the walks and benches below were on wires a number of lights for the illumination of the place at night about it on the different sides were churches a public school some county offices and to the east stores all with a dreams over a river beyond chicken and peaceful rural flavor several farmer families were eating their meals from baskets as they sat in their horses and fastened behind on the benches were seated a number of old soldiers in the shade why old soldiers should be so numerous at this day and date was more than i could understand and i said so it was now years since the war began and here they were scores of them apparently all fairly hale and looking scarcely they must have been at least seventy years each to have been of any service in the great war of the rebellion near here we discovered there was an old soldiers home a state home and this being saturday afternoon the streets were full of them they looked to be a crew later on we saw many of them in the road leading out to their institution drunk in order to strike up a conversation with some of the old soldiers we asked three of them sitting on a bench about a drunken woman who was before them in a gaiety that said one a little thin shouldered type of man with a high cracked voice a expression and a laugh as artificial and mechanical as any laugh could be a sort of standard habit laugh oh that s the and duck i give it as it sounded the and duck i exclaimed yes sir the and duck and then came the high laugh that s what they call her round here the and duck i they come to call her that but that s what they call her the and duck and a drunken old she is too just an old drunken girl and then he went off into a gale of laughter his knees and opening his mouth	43
very wide that s all i ve ever her called ain t that so he he ho ho ha ha yes that s what they call er the and duck she s but just a poor old drunken fool like many another in this here o bath he he ho ho ha ha a holiday but then she ain t the only funny thing in bath neither there s a they re up over there he continued that has front and back but no sides the only in the o bath that ain t got no sides but just front and back he he ha ha ho ho we looked in the direction of this building but it was nothing more than an ordinary store building being erected between two others by the party wall process it was a bank apparently and the front was being put together out of white marble yes sir the only in the o bath that ain t got no sides but just front and back and he again into his vacant idle laughter evidently he had been given over to the task of making sport or trying to out of the merest trifles for so many years that he had lost all sense of proportion and value the least thing where there was so little to be gay over took on exaggerated lines of the comic he was full of suddenly he added with a touch of seriousness and they say that the front is goin to cost seventeen thousand dollars he hung the with breathless it was really evident in this case that seventeen thousand dollars represented an immense sum to his mind it was pathetic to see him sitting there in his faded almost ragged clothes and all these other old lonely i about i began to feel the of this farce called life what a old age seems any how there was another old soldier tall heavy with some kind of hip trouble who explained that he lived in up to the year previous and had been with grant before and in the battle in the wilderness these endless ancient tales seemed a little pale just now beside the heavy storms of battle raging in europe and i could not help thinking how utterly indifferent life is to the individual how trivial and useless and we become in age what s the good of all the clatter and pathos and fuss about war chicken and to these how does patriotism and newspaper and the fighting of other men s battles avail them now they are old here they were wrecked forgotten who cares really what becomes of them fifty years ago they were upon for the moment as the of their country and now they about such squares as this condemned by the gentry of small towns despised for indulging in the one to minds and meditating on things that are no more i wanted to leave and we soon did leave anxious to feel the soothing waves of change although in bath the sun seemed suddenly by these reflections in regard to the tread of time outside in the open fields it was as as ever a few miles out and we came to the banks of a small river which flowed for a number of miles through this region tumbling over rough or forming itself into deep grey green pools gone were the ancient soldiers in blue the miseries of a like the and duck n just here the hills seemed to and the land was very flat like a dutch landscape we came to a section of the stream where it was sheltered by groves of trees which came to its very edge and by small of willow just below a little way some girls one of them in a red jacket were fishing a little farther a few cows were standing in the water knee deep it looked so inviting that i began to urge that we all take a swim a lovely bank coming into view and an iron bridge above which was a poem among trees was inspired that looks rather inviting he said as usual speed had something to do heaven only knows what some probably but and i struck out through waving patterns of ox eye and to the and green willow groves where amid rank of weeds and pebbles and stones we presently reached the water s edge and a little of grass at the foot of a tree here on bushes and twigs we hung our clothes and a holiday out into the bright tumbling waters the current very swift though very shallow no deeper than the knees by clearing away the stones y i l on the pebbles and sand underneath you have the water race over you at speed feel as though you were being by mystic it was about all we could do lying thus to brace t so that the stream would not keep moving v ll the sky between the walls of green wood was blue the great stones about us were all slippery ah thin green moss and yet so clean and pretty and and lying on my back i see and blue and in the trees amused myself kicking my feet in the air and wing stones at the farther bank and watching he had a strong lean white body which that it had been shaped in in his youth hi white hair and straight nose made him look some h t like an ancient about in the waters w were undisturbed by any sound and i could have the rest of the day lying in this current a tt so warm listening to the birds watching the wind the leaves and contemplating the blue sky it tt t o warm that when one sat up the wind and sun u	43
been threatening to bring suit for physical as well as material injury it was this threat to sue for physical injuries which brought about a compromise in s favor for it is against the law to threaten anyone particularly by mail as in this instance and so by threatening in return was able to escape be that as it may these three maids or their when we first came up refused to give the road although they did increase their speed in an effort to keep it one of them a gay creature in a pink hat looked back and half smiled at our discomfiture i took no more interest in her than did any of the others apparently at the time for in a situation of this kind how is one to tell which is the favored one as an able the master of a good machine and the ex leader of the highway procession for a certain distance how was a man like speed to take a like this why as all good and true should by increasing his own speed and trailing them so close and making such a row that they would have to give way this he did and so for a distance of three or four miles we were in a cloud of dirt and a perfect uproar of in consequence we finally were permitted to pass not without certain unkind and even contemptuous looks flung in our direction as who should say u you think yourselves very smart don t you although in the case of the maiden in the pink hat it did not seem to me that her rage was very great she was too amused and cheerful i sat serene and calm the surrounding landscape only i could not help noting that the young ladies were quite attractive and that the one in the pink hat was interested a holiday in in our car speed or i decided since he looked so very smart in his carefully cut clothes i did not think it could be myself as for speed up and a between his teeth he looked far too handsome to condescend to with a mere country say these you know i but a little later as we were along having attained a good lead as we thought and taking our ease what should come trailing up behind us but this same car making a great clatter and because of a peculiar wide width of road and our mood passing us before we could say jack robinson again the maid in the pink hat smiled it seemed to me but at whom and again speed to the task of them i began to sit up and take notice what a chase i there was a big frail iron bridge over a rocky shallow stream somewhere which carried a sign reading bridge weak walk your horses speed limit four miles an hour i think we crossed it in one bound there was a hollow where the road turned sharply under a picturesque cliff and a house in a green field seemed to possess especial beauty because of a grove of pines at another time i would have liked to linger here a sign read danger ahead sharp curve go slow we went about it as if we were being pursued by the devil himself then came a rough place of stone somewhere where ordinarily speed would have down and announced that he would u like to have a picture of this road do you think we down this time not much we went over it as if it were as smooth as glass i was nearly out of the car still we did not catch up quite the ladies or the or all were agreed apparently to best us but we them close and they kept looking back and laughing at us the pink one was all there you are mr called speed she s decided which one she wants she doesn t seem to see any of the rest of us an speed could be horribly flattering at times no i said without a or a or a long lock over my brow never it s here smiled as caesar might have smiled which one is it you re talking about he inquired innocently which one you sharp i i don t come the innocent soul on me you know whom she s looking at the rest of us haven t a chance inwardly i was wondering whether by any chance of fancy she could have taken a interest in me while there is life you know i alas they beat us and for awhile actually disappeared because of a too rough stretch at one point and then as i had given up all hope of seeing them any more there they were just a little ahead of us in the midst of a most landscape and they were yes they were people can even in my mind was full of all the possibilities of a gay cheerful whose wouldn t be on a evening like this with a car full of girls and one bolder and prettier than the others smiling back at you the whole atmosphere was one of romance it was after four now with that rather holiday feeling that comes into the air of a saturday afternoon when every and rich man is deciding to knock off for the day and call it a day as they express it and you are wondering why there is any need to hurry over anything the sky was so blue the sun so warm if you had been there you would have to sit on the grass of one of these lovely slopes and talk things over i am sure you would alas for some distance now we had been signs indicating that a place called	43
was near and not on our route it was off to the left or south and we were headed north ward if our car turned north at the critical juncture of the dividing roads would they miss us if we did not follow them a holiday and turn back or was it not our duty to get the lead and show them which way we were going or failing that follow them into for a bit of food or something i began to puzzle how about for dinner i suggested mildly i see that these signs indicate a place of about ten thousand what s got into you exclaimed my host didn t you just eat eight oh i know but in this air but it isn t any more than four thirty it would only be five by the time we got there i thought you wanted to see the falls yet tonight and i did only you know how beautiful falls are likely to be in the morning oh of course i only but seriously do you think we d better it might turn out all right but again there are three of them and two of them are not very good looking and we re only two actually right right i sighed well if it must be i sank heavily against the cushion and then they did let us pass them not far from the fatal juncture just as we it they decided to pass us and turned off toward oh heaven heaven i oh woe woe i sighed and she s looking back how can such things be speed saw the point as quickly as anyone our better judgment would naturally have asserted itself anyhow i presume we turn to the right here don t we he called as we the of course of course i called gaily don t we yes that s the way he smiled and off we went while they were going i began to wonder then whether they would have sense enough to turn back and follow us but they didn t and it is such a lovely afternoon i said to myself i d like to see an that was a good little car they had called back speed that girl in the pink hat certainly had a fancy for here not me said i know that not me i replied she never looked at me well i know damn well she never looked at me added speed she must have liked the car we both laughed i wonder what sort of place is anyhow chapter xix the rev j the last twelve miles of the run into had seemed if anything the most perfect of all before we reached we traversed a number of miles of dirt road one of the finest dirt roads anywhere a local described it and it was excellent very much above the average after it continued for twelve miles right into and the falls and even on to and east some forty miles farther as we found out later following it we skirted a with a fine valley below it and few if any houses to evidence the farm life which the fields seemed to suggest evening were whirling everywhere of air were beginning to from the grove of woods which we occasionally passed the long rays of the sun so heavily that they came under my and found my eyes a fine vigorous type of farm boy swinging along with an axe over his shoulder and beads of perspiration on his brow informed us that we were on the right road i envied him his pink cheeks and his body and his clear blue eyes but the falls when we found them were not quite all that i expected three falls an upper a lower and a middle were all included in a park called but it did not seem to me that much had been accomplished a great house near them at the spot where a railroad crosses on a high deceived us into thinking that we had found a delightful hotel for the night but no it was an institution of some kind deep down in a valley below the falls we found a small place that looked for all the rev j i r world like one of those towns one sees so persistently displayed in the moving pictures there were two or three frame hotels of or green shades facing a large open square and a collection of small white frame houses with a host of rather primitive looking americans sitting outside the hotels in rocking or arm chairs the men in their shirt sleeves who is precise in his apparel was rather irritated i think he was not expecting anything quite so crude we inquired as to rooms and meals and found that we could have both only the evening meal should be eaten very soon if we wanted any the hour for it was from six to seven with no a la service the individual who volunteered this information was a little short stout man in trousers and shirt sleeves who stood beside the car as it lay alongside the hotel platform picking his teeth with a he was so unconscious of the fact that the process might be a little that he was amusing i got the feeling that things would not be so comfortable here as they might be and so i was glad when suggested that we seek a more perfect view of the falls which had said was to be obtained from below the falls it would take only ten or fifteen minutes so the proprietor suggested straight up the road we were on so we went on seeking it we did not return in the first place we could not find the view indicated and in the second place we encountered a	43
man who wanted to ride and who told such a queer story of being robbed of his while assisting another man to repair his machine that we began to suspect he was a little crazy or that he had some scheme in mind of us just which we could not determine but in with him and him by suggesting we were going back into the village instead of the way he thought we were going we lost so much time that it was night and we did not think we would get a decent meal if we did return so we questioned another stranger as to the route to war a holiday to the world does not cannot it seems to me add to the individual s capacity for response life has always been vastly varied how by things can we make it more so as a matter of fact life not man is supplying its own inventions and changes adding some others to what end today we have the three thousand years ago we had the chariot today we fight with guns and destructive three thousand years ago we fought with and burning pitch and oil man uses all the forces he can conceive and he seems to be able to conceive of greater and greater forces but he does not understand them and his individual share in the race s response to them is apparently no greater than ever we are capable of feeling so much and no more has any writer for instance felt more or more sweetly than those whose moods and woes are now the and when speaks can anyone say it is ancient and therefore less than we can feel today we know that this is not true i may seem to grow dim in my but i can conceive of no least suggestion of real change in the capacity of life as it was in the beginning so it appears that it is now and shall i say ever shall be i will not venture that i am not all wise and i do not know when we entered i had just such thoughts in my mind and a feeling that i would like very much to have something to eat since it was early saturday evening the streets were crowded with country many and a larger of tumble down and than i had so far seen elsewhere why the oldest poorest most and looking i had seen in i don t know when was for hire exclaimed speed when he caught sight of it and i added who would want to ride in that anyhow rev j yet since it was there it would seem as if somebody might want to do so however at the north end of the principal street and close to a small park we discovered one of the most comfortable little hotels imaginable all the rooms were done in bright cheerful colors and seemed to be properly cared for there were and an abundance of hot water and and electric lights and electric call bells rather novel features for a country hotel of this size the was as smart and brisk as most hotels of a much more expensive character we up considerably at the sight of it proceeded with his toilet in a most ambitious manner whereupon i changed to a better suit i felt quite as though i were dressing for an adventure of some kind though i did not think there was the slightest of our finding one in a town of this size nor was i eager for the prospect a half dozen years before perhaps earlier i would have been most anxious to get into conversation with some girl and play the gallant as best i could or the dark in search of adventure but tonight i was interested in no such thing even if i might have surely i must be getting along in years i said to myself to be thus indifferent to these early twenty years before if anyone had told me that i could go forth into a brisk saturday evening crowd such as was filling this one street and seeing the young girls and boys and women and men going about feel no least thrill of possible i would have said that life under such circumstances would not be worth living yet here i was and here we were and this was exactly what i was doing and life seemed fairly attractive out in the country street we did nothing but stroll about buy picture write on and address them buy some get our shoes and finally go for our dinner to a commonplace country i was interested in the zealous young man who was the proprietor and a young plump girl acting as who might a holiday have been his wife or only a hired girl her eyes looked swollen and as though she had been crying recently and he was in a non mood taking our orders in a superior contemptuous manner and making us feel as though we were of small import what mine host do you suppose i asked of oh he thinks that we think we re something i suppose and he s going to prove to us that we re not you know how country people are i watched him thereafter and i actually think s interpretation was correct as we about afterwards speed told us the story of the descent of the rev j mc on the fair city of some few years before when he was working there as a test man for one of the great companies after a reasonable period of religious excitement and in which the rev j conducted a series of meetings in a public hall hired for the occasion and urged people to reform and repent of their sins he suddenly announced that on a given day the	43
end of the world would certainly take place and that all those not or saved by that date would be damned on the night before the fatal morning on which the earth was to be consumed by fire or water or both speed suddenly awoke to the fact that he was not saved and that he could not get a train out of to where his mother lived to him at that time the world was surely coming to an end fire water smoke were already in the air as he related this story to us i got the impression that his knees knocked under him in consequence of the thought of never being able to see his dear mother any more or his sister or brothers he nearly of heart failure afterwards finding that the earth was not destroyed and that he was as safe and sound as ever he was seized by a great rage against the rev j and went to seek him out in order that he might give him a damned rev j good as he expressed it but the rev j having seen his immense prophecy come to nothing had already fled but speed i protested how comes it that you a sensible young fellow capable of being a test man for a great factory like that of the h company could be taken in by such de didn t you know that the earth was not likely to be consumed all of a sudden by fire or water didn t you ever study or or anything like that no i never he replied with the only true and perfect response to such a i never had a chance to go to school much i had to go to work when i was twelve yes i know speed i replied but you read the newspapers right along don t you they rather show that such things are not likely to happen in a general way they do yes i know he replied but i was just a kid then that i d just like to have a picture of him i would me like that but speed i said surely you didn t believe that the earth was going to be swallowed by fire that next morning after you were so frightened yes i did too he replied he was just out papers and with great big type and there on the corner it was enough to scare anybody why wouldn t i just the same i wasn t the only one there were hundreds mostly everybody in i went over to see an old lady i knew and she said she didn t know if it would happen or not she wasn t sure you poor kid i well what did you do speed when you found you couldn t get out of town inquired why didn t you walk out yes walk out replied speed i have a picture of myself walking out and forty miles a holiday away or more i wanted to be with my mother when the earth burned up and you couldn t make it by morning i commented no i couldn t he replied well then what did you do persisted well i went to see this old lady where i once and i just stayed with her we sat and waited together at this point i was troubled between a desire to laugh and to weep this poor youth i and the wild eyed j and and the hundreds who believed i can t you see speed and the old lady the young boy and the woman who didn t know and couldn t be sure and and the rev j i feel as if i would like to get hold of the rev j even at this late date and shake him up a bit i won t say kick him but s chapter xx the capital of the next morning it was and to pass the time before breakfast i examined a large packet of photographs which speed had left with me the night before of that celebrated venture which had for its object the laying out of the new highway from new york to san we had already en route heard so much of this trip that by now we were fairly familiar with it it had been organized by a very wealthy and he and his very good looking young wife had been inclined to make a friend of speed so that he saw much that would not ordinarily have fallen under his vision i was never tired of hearing of this particular female whom i would like to have met speed described her as small plump rosy and very determined an jealous little creature in other words a real woman who had inherited more money than her husband had ever made whenever anything displeased her greatly she would sit in the car and weep or even yell she refused to stay at any hotel which did not just suit her and had once in a hotel the face of her because he dared to contradict her and another time in some famous city she had thrown the bread at him both were always anxious to meet only the best people only mr would insist upon including and speed record men greatly to her displeasure i wish you might have seen these pictures selected by speed to illustrate his trip crossing a great country like america from coast to coast visiting new towns each day and going by a route hitherto not much followed a holiday one might gather much interesting information and many pictures if no more than of beautiful and striking things do you imagine there were any in this collection which speed left with me not one the views if you will believe me were all of cars and roads and great	43
valleys which might have been attractive or impressive if they had been properly the car was always in the everything he had selected dull scenes of cars in procession the same cars always in the same procession only in different order and never before any different scene as a matter of fact as i looked at these photographs i could tell exactly how speed s mind worked and it was about the way the average mind would work under such circumstances here was a great tour including say forty or fifty cars or more the cars contained important men and women or were supposed to because the owners had money the cars and their occupants were the great things about this trip and wherever the cars were there was the interest never elsewhere hence whenever the cars rolled into a town or along a great valley or near a great mountain let the town be never so interesting or the mountain or the valley the great thing to photograph was the cars in the procession it never seemed to occur to the various to do anything different cars cars cars here they were and always in a row and always the same i finally put the whole bunch aside wearily and gave them back to him letting him think that they were very very remarkable which they were setting off after breakfast we encountered not the striking mountain effects of the region about water gap and nor yet the fine valley views along the but a spent hill country the last receding and waves of all that country east of us as we climbed up and up out of a ridge which seemed to command all the country about for miles i thought of the words of that the capital of the at who said he had come through and that you climbed five hills to get in but only one to get out going east it was true in our westward course the hills we were to climb were before us you could see two or three of them the road ascending straight like a ribbon ending suddenly at the top of each one and jumping as a thin line to the next hill crest beyond the rain in which we began our day was already ceasing so that only a few miles out we could put down the top presently the sun began to break through clouds giving the whole world an tinge and then later as we east it became as brilliant as any sun lover could wish a sabbath stillness was in the air one could actually feel the early morning preparations for church as we passed various the of and the barking of dogs seemed especially loud seeing a hen cross the road and only escape being struck by the car by a hair s breath announced that he had solved the mystery of why invariably cross the road or seem to in front of any swift moving vehicle you don t mean to tell me that it s because they want to get to the other side do you i inquired thereby the possibility of the joe miller actually yes but i m not trying to put that old one over on you it s because they always have the instinct when any dangerous object approaches to run toward their home their which is often just opposite where they are eating now you watch these chickens from now on they ll be picking peacefully on the side of the road opposite the our car will come along and instead of moving a few feet farther away from their home and so escaping altogether they will wait until the car is near and then suddenly decide to run for home the longest way out of danger lots of times they ll start as this last one did and then find when they re nearly half way over that they can t a holiday make it then they start to run ahead of the car and of course nearly always they re overtaken and killed well that s an ingenious explanation anyhow i said they lose their heads and then they lose their heads he added i exclaimed reproachfully and then turning to speed added don t let that make you nervous speed be calm we must get him to east even though he will do these trying things show that you are above such difficulties speed never let a mere attempt at humor a jest cause you to lose control of the car speed never even smiled just here we stopped for gas and oil we were unexpectedly entertained by a store clerk who seemed particularly anxious to air his and his art he was an interesting young man very with keen blue eyes light hair a sharp nose and chin and decidedly intelligent and shrewd how far is it to east from here inquired oh about fifteen miles answered the youth you re not from around here eh no said without anything further not bound for s place are you we thought we d take dinner there replied i ask because usually a number of people go through here of a sunday looking for his place particularly now that he s dead he s got quite an institution over there i understand or did have they say his hotel is very good haven t you ever been there i inquired interested no but i ve heard a good deal about it it s a sort of new art place as i understand it heavy furniture and big beams and copper and brass things he had quite a trade too he got into a bad way with some people the capital of the over there on account of his his first wife and taking up with this second woman for awhile without being married to	43
her he was a pretty shrewd business man i guess even if he wore his hair long i saw him once he around here and everywhere else i suppose i think he was a little too radical for most people out this way he looked as though he had his right to a seat among the i stared at him curiously america is so brisk and well informed here was a small out of the way place with no railroad and only two or three stores but this youth was plainly well informed on all the current topics the few other youths and maids whom we saw here seemed equally brisk i was surprised to note the in suits and dresses those little of the ready made clothes which make one feel as if there were no longer any country nor any city but just smart almost impudent life everywhere it was quite looking at this fine country dotted with red and and ripe with grain in which already the were standing in various places ready for the morrow s work i could see how the mountains of the east were puffing out this was a spent mountain country all the real vigor of the hills was farther east these were too rolling too easy of ascent and descent long and trying and difficult as some of them were it seemed as if we just climbed and climbed and climbed only to de v descend descend and then climb climb climb again speed put on the chains his favorite employment in regions but presently after a few more hills which finally gave way to a level country we entered east it is curious how any fame even or vulgar is likely to put one on the qui i had never been greatly impressed with the intellect or the taste of he seemed too much the and patent strayed into the realm of art i a holiday his face as suggested the strolling of country opera house fame i could never look upon his pictures without involuntarily smiling just the same once here i was anxious to see what he had achieved many people have i known who after visiting east and the that shops had commended its sacred to my attention i have known poets who lived there and writers to whom he allotted cottages within the classic of his farm because of their merits in literature i cannot even recall their names i but here we were rolling up the tree shaded streets of a handsome and obviously prosperous town of about hundred which is now one of the of our eyes were alert for any evidence of the whereabouts of the inn finally in the extreme western end of the city we found a sign in front of a like yard containing a building which looked like a small college addition of some kind one of those small halls specially devoted to or or literature the whole place had the semi religious atmosphere which is associated by many with and intellectual and sweetness and light here on the we encountered a youth who seemed to the happy or of the sacred flame his hair was a little long his face and skin pale quite and he wore a loose shirt with a tie his sleeves being rolled up and his trousers at the waist he had an open and amiable countenance and looked as though life had fortunately but with rare revealed much to him what is this i inquired waving my hand at the nearest building oh one of the shops he replied pleasantly is it open not on sunday not to the general public no he looked as though he thought we might gain special the capital of the permission possibly if we sought it but instead we inquired the of the inn and he accompanied us thither on the running board of our machine it turned out to be a low almost affair done in green with a fine line of displaying chairs and deep benches where a number of passing visitors were already seated it was a brisk and rather conventional hotel scene within just off the large was a great music or reception hall finished as i had anticipated in the vein of taste a cross between a farm home and the the furniture was of a solid foundation but hopelessly with oil and little metal in imitation of wooden a floor as slippery as glass great to support the ceiling which was as finished as a and a six of rome paris london and new york done in a semi vein and without real distinction somehow completed the effect there were a choice array of those peculiar for which the shop is noted limp leather silk and corners and and a number of odd lamps and the like which were far from suggesting that rude which is the fine art of poverty one cannot take a leaf out of st francis of assist another out of the grand louis and a third out of and combine them into a new art the thing was a kind of through it all were various american citizens of that commercial intellectual variety which always me to the swearing stage in the the library and various halls was more of the same attempting to as lord and not succeeding of course a very and considerate person when it comes to human was at first inclined to bestow a few mild words of praise after all it did a holiday help some people you know it was an advance in its way after a time though i noticed that his interest began to flag we were to stay for dinner which was still three quarters of an hour away and had ourselves to that effect at the desk in the meantime the place was filling	43
xxi old and new we had now between six and seven hundred miles and but for a short half mile between and new we could scarcely say that we had seen any bad roads seriously ones to be sure we had sought only the best ones in most cases not always and there were those patches of state road cut up by heavy which we had to skirt but all things considered the roads so far had been wonderful from east into there was a solid smooth red brick thirty feet wide and twelve miles long over which we as though it were a alley the bricks were all and entirely new i know nothing about the of such a road and this one gave no evidence of its wearing qualities but if many such roads are to be built and they stand the wear america will have a road system as we were spinning along the and high buildings and chimneys of coming into view across a flat space of land somehow reminded me of those older hill cities of europe which one sees across a space of land from a train but which are dead dead here is life i said to myself only here nothing has happened as yet whereas there men have fought to and fro over every inch of the ground how would it be if one could say of that in a d four hundred years after the writing of this there was a great labor leader who having endured many injuries was tired of the of the money and securing a large following of the working people seized the city and administered it until he had a holiday been by some force and hanged from the highest building his followers also being put to death or suppose a great rebellion had originated in new and it had reached and in its and that here an enormous battle had been fought an or a how we should stare at the towers as we came across this plain i how great names would rise up and flash across the sky t we would hear old war songs in our ears and dream old war dreams or suppose there were a great cathedral or a great museum crowded with the almost forgotten art of the twentieth and centuries i i dream yet such are the things which somehow make a great city but lacking in historic charm as might be the city had a peculiar interest for me a very special one indeed that i am for here one twenty years before this i entered looking for work fear not i am not going to begin a romantic and sentimental account of my youth and early struggles it was still late march and very chilly there was snow on the ground but a touch of spring in the air i had come on from where i had failed to find anything to do and was destined to go on to from here for i could not make a permanent connection with any paper i was a lonely impossible newspaper type as i see myself now and so sentimental and wistful that i must have seemed a fool to practical men they never troubled to pay me a decent salary i know that but instead of looking briskly and earnestly for work as you might think a boy with only a few dollars in his pocket and no friends anywhere within hundreds of miles would do i spent my time over what seemed then great streets and over the harbor waters near at hand with their great grain and ships and coal pockets ah those small rivers with their boats and and their romantic suggestion of the sea how i over them at that time i by to nearly forty miles away and looked at that tumbling flood fc old and new which was then not chained or drained by water power i was impressed but somehow not quite so much as i thought i would be standing out on a rock near the greatest volume of water under a grey sky i got dizzy and felt as though i were being carried along whether i wanted to or not farther up stream i stared at the water as it gathered force and speed and wondered how i should feel if i were in a small and were fighting it for my life below the falls i gazed up at the splendid spray and wanted to shout so vigorously did the water fall and the rocks below when i returned to and my room i congratulated myself that if i had got nothing else so far out of at least i had gained this beyond having from to and thence to st louis and from st louis to this same city and i had never really been anywhere and life was all wonderful no songs of nor those strange wild lines of could my mood at this time i dreamed and dreamed here in this crude town about these chilly streets and now as i look back upon it knowing that never again can i feel as i then felt i seem to know that actually it was as wonderful as i had thought it was the spirit of america at that time was so remarkable it was just entering on that vast splendid most lawless and most savage period in which the great now nearly all dead were and the of the people and each other for power those crude and which now sit in our threatening its very life with their pretensions and were just in the beginning john d was still in william h h were still comparatively young and secret agents was still in an iron master and of all his brood of powerful children only had appeared william h and had only recently died a	43
holiday was president and mark was an unknown business man in the great struggles of the the coal companies the gas companies the oil companies were still in or just beginning the had arrived it is true but not the giants were fighting dreaming on every hand and in this city as in every other american city i then visited there was a singing spirit actually the average american then believed that the possession of money would certainly solve all his earthly ills you could see it in the faces of the people in their step and manner power power power was seeking power in the land of the free and the home of the brave there was almost an angry dissatisfaction with or or age or anything which did not tend directly to the of riches the american world of that day wanted you to eat sleep and dream money and power and i to whom my future was still a mystery would that it were so still was dreaming of love and power too but with no theory of them and with no understanding indeed of any way in which i could achieve the happiness and pleasures which i desired knowing this i was unhappy all day after a fifteen cent breakfast in some cheap or some cent dinner in another i would wander about staring at these streets and their crowds the high buildings the great hotels uncertain whether to go on to or to hang on here a little while longer in the hope of getting a suitable position as a ah i thought if i could just be a great newspaper man like of st louis or of new york i in my pocket was a letter from the proprietor of the st louis republic telling all and sundry what a remarkable youth he had found me to be but somehow i never felt courageous enough to present it it seemed so instead i hung over the rails of bridges and the walls of water fronts watching the or stopped before the windows of shops and stores and outside t old and new great and stared at night i would return to my gloomy room and sit and read or having eaten somewhere walk the streets i haunted the newspaper offices at the proper hours but finding nothing finally departed seemed a great but hard and cold city spinning into it this day over long and through regions of seemingly endless and cars it still seemed quite as vigorous only not so hard because my circumstances were different alas i said to myself i am no longer young no longer really poor in the sense of being uncertain and no longer so dreamy or over a future the details of which i may not know then all was uncertain gay with hope or dark with fear it might bring me anything or nothing but now now what can it bring as wonderful as what i thought it might bring what youth i said to myself is now walking about lonely wistful dreaming great dreams and wishing wishing wishing i would be that one if i could yes i would go back for the dreams sake the illusion of life i would take hold of life as it was and sigh and and dream or would i go back if i could we did not stay so long in this day but longer than we would have if we could have discovered at once that canada had placed a heavy license tax on all cars entering canada and that because of the european war i presume we would have to submit to a more thorough and tedious examination of our luggage than ordinarily naturally there was much excitement and on all sides were evidences of preparations being made to send and men to the mother country we had looked forward with the greatest pleasure to a trip into canada but the conditions were so that we hesitated to chance it we didn t go in spite of our plans to cross into canada here and come out at at the west end of lake we listened to words of wisdom and refrained the expert of the assured us that a holiday we would have a great deal of trouble there would be an extra tax explanations and examination of our luggage a very handsome cigar clerk in this same hotel what an expensive youth he was in a very high collar a suit and most told us with an air of condescension that made me feel like a mere in this world it s nothing to do now what car have you we told him ah no you need a big like the a car which neither nor i had ever heard of then you can make it in a day there s nothing to see you don t stop he us so thoroughly from the point of his youth say eighteen years and his knowledge of all the makes of machines and the roads about that i began to feel that perhaps as a boy i had not lived at all such shoes such a tie such rings and everything about him seemed to speak of girls and and and and the white light district rose up before me and all the giddy gaudy whirl of local and the like what a dow boy it is to be sure i observed to yes there you have it he replied youth and over any possible weight of knowledge what s the compared to that our lunch at one of the big i use the word was another experience in the same way speed had gone off somewhere with the car to some smaller place and and i into the large place it was as bad as the inn from the point of view of and assumed perfection but from another it	43
was even worse when we try to be luxurious in america how luxurious we can really be the of our and the thickness of our carpets the air of and vigor and old and new cost without very much taste it is without that individuality which so often architecture and we are so fine and yet we are not a sort of raw showing like shabby from behind curtains of velvet and cloth of gold sometimes you know i remember that we are a race and think we may never achieve anything of great import so great is my dissatisfaction with the shows and vulgar to be seen on all sides at other times the middle class american with his vivid suit yellow shoes tie and conspicuous money roll i want to compose an in praise of the final of the common soul how much better these millions i ask you with their and hats their ready made suits their and a general sense of well being and even perfection if you will than a race of slaves or by grand and counts and lords and ladies however cultivated and artistic these may appear true the latter would eat more gracefully but would they be any the more desirable for that actually i hear a thousand minded souls exclaiming yes of course and i hear a million lovers of no personally i would take a few giants in every field well and then a great and comfortable mass such as i see about me in these for instance well also then i would let them mix and mingle but oh these and how long will it be before we will have just a few good ones in our cities chapter xxii along the shore if anyone doubts that this is fast becoming one of the most interesting lands in the world let him from to along the shore of lake mile after mile over a solid brick road fifteen feet wide at the least and three hundred miles long as a matter of fact the brick road of this description appears to be seizing the imagination of the middle west and the of the and its owner is making every town and hamlet desirous of sharing the wonders of a new life truly i have never seen a finer road than this parts of which we traversed between and and between and there were great in it everywhere where the portions were in process of completion and the sign was constantly in evidence but over the finished sections of it was something like riding in paradise think of a long smooth red brick road stretching out before you mile after mile the blue waters of lake to your right with its waves ships and a flat holland like farming land to your left with occasional small white towns factory and then field upon field of hay corn wheat potatoes mile after mile and mile after mile is too flat it hasn t the rural innocence and which seems still to retain nor yet the characteristics of a world there are too many and too many lines and a somewhat unsettled and uncertain feeling in the air as if the state were whether it would be all city and or not i hate that uncertain feeling which comes with a changing con along the shore anywhere it is something like that restless into which water bursts before it one wishes that it would either boil or stop this as nearly as i can suggest it is the way the northern portion of that we saw impressed me and unlike my feeling of fifteen or twenty years ago i think i am just a little weary of and towns however well i recognize and their necessity some show a sense of harmony and joy in labor and enthusiasm for getting on and being happy but others such as and seem to have fallen into that secondary or state in which all the enthusiasm of the original workers and has passed money and power and privileges having fallen into the hands of the few there is nothing for the many save a kind of which no one and which gives a city a hard and air i felt this to be so keenly in the cases of and as of and liverpool years ago these american cities were increasing at the rate of from ten to fifty thousand a year then there was more of hope and enthusiasm about them than there is now more of happy anticipation it is true that they are still growing and that there is enthusiasm but neither the growth nor the enthusiasm is of the same quality as a nation although we are only to thirty years older in point of time we are centuries older in we have experienced so much in these past few years we have endured so much that brood of giants that rose and wrought and fell between and children of the s teeth all of them wrought in the night and bound us hand and foot they have seized nearly all our national privileges they have i the law and the courts and the national and state seats of they have laid a heavy hand upon our and all our means of communication poisoned our food and our and newspapers yet in spite of them so young and strong are a holiday we we have been going on a little but still advancing giants who spring from s teeth are our expensive luxury in the high of nature there must be some need for them else they never would have appeared but i am convinced that these western cities have no longer that younger singing mood they once had we are as a nation not every man can hope to be president as we once fancied nor a we are nearer the european standard of quiet	43
effort without so many great dreams to stir us departing from not stopping to the falls or those immense or indeed any other thing we encountered some men who knew speed and who were starting a new factory they wanted him to come and work for them so well known was he as a test man and expert driver then we came to a section of on a canal or pond so black and stale that it interested us factory sections have this in common with other purely individual and things they can be interesting beyond any intention of those who plan them this canal or pond was so or or both that it constantly of gas which gave the neighborhood an the chimneys and roofs of these rose in such an unusual way and composed so well that decided he should like to sketch them so here we sat he on the walking beam of a great lowered to near the ground behind two boats on the shore while i made myself comfortable on a pile of white gravel some of which i threw into the water i spent my time as to what sort of people occupied the small houses which faced this picturesque prospect i imagined a poet as great as being able to live and take an interest in this beauty with thieves and and of a low order for neighbors a few blocks farther on there came into view an enormous grain standing up like a huge temple in a flat plain this was composed egypt at along the shore of a bundle of or stand pipes capable of being separately filled or emptied thus the and of cars and allowing the separate of different lots of grain before it as before the great bridge at we paused by its size and design something colossal and ancient suggested by its lines then we sped out among small yellow or s cottages their yards for the most part their walls smoky lone women were hanging over gates and heavily about with pipes in their mouths and shoes and clothes too loose covering their bodies every now and then a church appeared one of those noble institutions which represent to these poor heaven gates and streets great iron bridges came into view or some small river or crowded with great ships then came the lake shore lit by a sinking and glorious afternoon sun and a long stretch of that wonderful brick road with enormous steel plants on either hand thousands of and lines of foreign looking going in and out of cottages straggling in conventional order across distant fields out over the water was an occasional white sail or a or many oh i thought take me into your free wild world when i die just outside on a spit of land between this wonderful brick road and the lake we came to the steel company its scores of tall black clouds of smoke and its immense steel pillar supported sheds showing the fires of the below the great war had evidently brought prosperity to this concern as to others thousands of men were evidently working here sunday though it was for the several gates were crowded by foreign types of women carrying baskets and and the road and the one line which ran along here for a distance were crowded with workers mostly of fine physical build i a holiday thought of all the shells and machine guns and cannon they might be making and somehow it brought the great war a little nearer personally i felt at the time that the war was likely to in favor of the because they were better prepared be that as it may my mood was not and not pro moral or pro anything i am too doubtful of life and its tendencies to over theories with nations as with individuals the strongest or most desired win and in the crisis which was then the seemed to me the strongest i merely hoped that america might keep out of it in order that she might attain sufficient strength and judgment to battle for her own in the future for battle she must never doubt it and that from city to city and state to state if she the ultimate with her romantic of faith and love and truth it will be a miracle this matter of manufacture and enormous is always a fascinating thing to me and along this lake shore at speed i could not help at it it seems to point so clearly to a in life a of powers against which the common man is always struggling but which he never quite anywhere the world is always about the brotherhood of man and the freedom and independence of the individual yet when you go through a city like or and see all its energy practically devoted to great and and their interests and when you see the common man of whom there is so much talk as to his interests and superiority living in cottages or long streets of without a of charm or beauty his labor fixed in price and his ideas in part else he would never be content with so and a world you can scarcely believe in the equality or even the brotherhood of man however much you may believe in the sympathy or good intentions of some people these regions around were most suggestive of the great division that has arisen between the common t along the shore i r a man and the man of ability and ideas here in i s america a division as old and as deep as life itself have no least complaint against the common man toiling p for anybody with ideas and superior brains who could have if it were not for the fact that the superior inevitably seeks to arrange a of his blood	43
that his children and his children s children need never to turn a hand whereas it is he only who is deserving and not his children wealth to aristocracy and your strong man comes almost inevitably to the conclusion that not only he but all that relates to him is of superior this may be and sometimes is true no doubt but not always and it is the exception which causes all the trouble the ordinary mortal should not be compelled to and for a fool i refuse to think that it is either necessary or inevitable that i or any other man should work for a few dollars a day and longing while another a who never did anything but come into the world as the heir of a strong man should take the heavy profits of my work and stuff them into his pockets it has always been so i ll admit and it seems that there is an actual tendency in nature to continue it but i would just as contend with nature on this subject if possible as any other we are not sure that nature inevitably wills it at that kings have been slain and trampled into the earth why not here and now chapter the approach to beyond the steel works there was a lake beach with thousands of people bathing and and their wares i couldn t resist buying one hot dog and after that a long line miles it seemed to me of country places facing the lake their roofs and showing through the trees then the lake proper with not much interruption of view for a while and then a and then a flat open country road until it was black and then a white road now that we were out of the hill and mountain country i was missing those splendid rises and falls of earth which had so diverted me for days but one cannot have hill country everywhere and so as we sped along we endeavored to make the best of what was to be seen these small white and grey wooden towns with their white wooden churches and sabbath citizens began to interest me what a life i said to myself and what these people entertain i one could discern their by the number of wooden and brick churches and the sense of a sabbath stillness and propriety everything at dusk tiny church bells began to ring church doors revealing lighted stood open and the people began to come forth from their homes and enter i have no deadly tion to religion the weak and troubled mind must have something on which to rest it is only when in the form of and it becomes puffed up and and that all the world must think as it thinks and do as it does and that if one does not one is a and an outcast that i resent it the of these anyhow with their the approach to and their think of that mad dog spain like a driving out eight hundred thousand innocent jews burning at the stake two thousand innocent stirring up all the ignorant animal prejudice of the masses and leaving spain the bleak and hungry land it is today think of it i a priest a a damned in being able to do anything like that and then the as a whole the burning of poor john the sale of and the driving out of beware of the enthusiastic and his and leaders let not the become too secure think of those who in the name of a mystic god would seize on all your liberties and privileges and put them in to a wild eyed of the type of peter the for instance do not asia and africa show almost daily the insane of some crack beware i look with suspicion upon all sundays and their generally let not the and the become too bold they the ignorant passions of the mob who never think and never will already america is being too freely over by liquor magazine and book and picture and and who think that mob judgment is better than individual judgment that the welfare of the ignorant mass should guide and the spiritual inspiration of the individual think of one million or one factory hands led by priests and able to dictate to a whether or not he should a philosophy or to a whether he should write a play boy of the western world or to a whether he should publish a out on them for a mass shut up the churches knock down the harry them until they know the true place of religion a weak man s shield let us have no more concerning the duty of man to respect any theory he can if he chooses that is a holiday his business but when he seeks to dictate to his neighbor what he shall think then it is a different matter as i rode through this region this evening i could not help feeling and seeing still here all the conditions which years ago i put safely behind me here were the people who still believed that god gave the ten to moses on and that made the sun to stand still in they would hound you out of their midst for lack of faith in which are silly children s tales or their leaders would about seven o clock or a little later we reached the town of still in new york state but near its extreme western boundary we came very near attending church here and i because a church door on the square stood open and the congregation were singing instead after strolling about for a time we on a in a charming white square hotel facing the park we went to the only the hotel being closed and after that while speed took on a supply of	43
and look at them well there s anyhow i commented we can t lose that fire sign yes but look what s ahead of us sighed speed as it developed that fire sign had nothing to do with proper but was stuck off on some windy beach or marsh no doubt miles from the city to the west of it a considerable distance was a faint glow in the sky a light that looked like anything save the reflection of a city but so it was and this road grew worse and worse the car so at times that i thought we might be thrown out speed was constantly stopping it and examining the nature of certain and pools farther on he would stop and climb down and walk say four or five hundred feet and then come back and on a little further finally having gone a considerable distance on this course we seemed to be we would dash into a muddy and there the wheels would just spin without making any progress the way out of this was to earth behind the wheels and then back up i began to think we were good for a night in the open and i walked back blocks and blocks to see whether by chance we hadn t gotten on the wrong road having decided that we were doing as well as could be expected under the circumstances we returned and sat in the car after much time wasted we struck a better a holiday portion of the road coming to where it turned at right angles over the of tracks which we had been all this while it was a treacherous place with neither gates nor but just a great of dark tracks with freight cars standing here and there signal lights glimmering in the distance and engines and trains up and down shall we risk it asked speed cautiously sure we ll have to replied it s dangerous but it s the only way we over it at speed and into more country beyond we reached a street a far out one but nevertheless a street without a house on it and only a few gas lamps flickering in the warm night air in a region of small wooden cottages so small as to be pathetic we suddenly encountered one of those mounted police for which is famous sitting by the of a street corner his gun in his hand and a saddle horse standing near which way into we called straight on is this where the storm was we asked where the was he replied we could see where houses had been torn down or broken into or flung by some turbulent element much superior to these little shells in which people dwelt through brightly lighted but apparently deserted streets we sped on and finally found a public square with which speed was familiar he had been here before we hurried up to an hotel which was largely darkened for the night out of the door just as we arrived were coming two girls in and so arrayed that they looked as though they must have been attending an affair of some kind an hotel attendant was showing them to a went in to arrange for three adjoining rooms if possible and as i followed i heard one attendant say to another they had both been showing the girls out can you beat it say they make theirs easy the approach to i wondered the hotel was quite dark inside in a few minutes we had adjusted our and were in our rooms i in one with a tall window looking out into a spacious court the bed was large and soft i fairly fell out of my clothes and sank into it just having sense enough to turn out the light in a minute i fancy i was sound asleep for the next thing i was conscious of was three maids outside my door blank blank blank i began am i not going to be allowed to get any sleep tonight to my astonishment i discovered the window behind the curtains was blazing with light i looked at my watch it was nine o clock and we had turned in at three thirty chapter xxiv the of a storm the next day was another of travel in a hot sun over a country that in part lacked charm in other parts was beautiful we should have reached and even the line by night if we had been as we expected but to begin with we made a late start did not get out of until noon and that for various reasons a late rising a very good breakfast and therefore a long one a a search for picture cards and what not our examination of the wreck made by the great storm and flood was extended and having been up late the night before we were in a lazy mood anyhow proved exceedingly interesting to me because of two things one of these was this that the effects of the reported storm or flood were much more startling than i had supposed the night before we had entered by some streets which apparently skirted the afflicted district but today we saw it in all its casual and it struck me as something well worth seeing blocks upon blocks of houses washed away upset piled in heaps the including machinery lumber household goods and carts through one wall front torn away i saw a mass of sewing machines in a heap it had been an agency in another there was a mass of wool in bags up all by the water but otherwise stores butcher shops a store a store and homes of all kinds had been broken into by the water or knocked down by the of water and nearly shaken to pieces were down plaster stripped from the walls bricks in great heaps	43
a sorry sight we learned that people had been killed and many others injured the of a storm another was that aside from this greek like tragedy it looked like the native town of my pet heroine though i wrote that she was born in a place i have never visited in my life that reminds me that a book once remarked that it was easy to identify the various places mentioned in that the study was so accurate i but never having seen and having another small city in mind it chanced now that answered the description exactly these long narrow small tree shaded streets in many instances at intervals by large churches or this was the world in which originally moved breathed and had her being i was fascinated when i arose in the morning to find that this hotel was one such as the might have chosen to live in and the polished of whose and a woman of mrs s limited would have been employed to polish or even the great plate glass windows lined within and without by comfortable chairs commanding as they did the principal public square or park and all the fascinating forces of so vigorous and young a town were such as would naturally be occupied by the and sports of the village the and the of political and other it was an excellent hotel none better as clean comfortable and as one would wish in this world and past its windows when i first came down looking for a morning paper were a few shop girls and workers carrying lunch boxes s world to the life i thought poor little girl but the thousand people here how did they manage to pass their lives without the manifold opportunities and which fill or can at least the minds of the citizens of paris rome london new york here were all these thousands working and dreaming perhaps but how did they fill their j i j a holiday lives i pictured them as dressing at breakfast time going to work each morning and then after a day at machines or in stores with on counter or returning at night a fair proportion of them at any rate to the very little houses we had seen coming in and after reading those impossible i of false witness romance malice evil and what not the evening newspapers retiring to their virtuous to rise again the next day i am under no illusions as to these towns and i hold no notions as to our splendid and v j yet i am intensely sympathetic with them i have had too much evidence in my time of how they do and feel i always wonder how it is that people who entertain such ideas of how people are and what they think and say in writing manage to hold such practical and even fierce relations with life itself every one of those simple american towns through which we had been passing had its red light district every one had its of and as well as churches and honorable homes who keeps the vulgar shabby gross end of things going if we are all so splendid and worthy as so many current top lofty would have us believe here in this little city of as in every other peaceful american hamlet you would find the more animal and vigorous among them turning to those same red streets and we have been speaking of while the paler more storm beaten less animal or vigorous more life take to the doors of the church necessity drives the vast majority of them along paths which they fain would not travel and the and stores in which they work eat up a vitality which otherwise might show itself in wild and unpleasant ways here as i have said in these plain uninteresting streets was more evidence of that stern destiny and of the gods which the so well understood and with such majesty noted and which al ta the of a storm ways causes me to wonder how religion to survive in any form for here several weeks before was this simple virtuous town if we are to believe the which runs through all our american papers sitting down after its dinner and a hard day s work to read the evening paper it was deserving not only of the of men but of gods and then the gods over and all things in the interest of man a comes up and a small creek or running through the heart of the town and under small bridges and even houses so small is it into a kind of foaming torrent all is going well so far the and bridges and stream beds are large enough to permit the water to be carried away only a few roofs are blown off a few churches struck by lightning one or two people killed in an ordinary electric storm way enters then the element of human error this is always the great point with all once the crimes or mistakes or of the ruling powers could be frankly and placed on the shoulders of the devil no one could explain how a devil who could commit so much error came to live and reign in the same universe with an god but even so the devil however having become a and it finally became necessary to invent some new of action and so human error came into being as a man s troubles are due to his own mistaken tendencies though there is a god who and can guide him and who does punish him for doing the things which he ought to know better than to do so be it but here in is this honest or community as you will and here is the extra severe thunder and rain	43
development here having first seen the profit and convenience of bringing ore from the mines in northern south by water to the mills of and incidentally returning in the same coal to all parts of the great lakes and elsewhere a man that won t some american kindly sing of him as one of the great wonders of the world and for a material thrill the machinery for these enormous supplies was most interesting to me suppose you were able to take an iron car weighing i a holiday say thirty or forty thousand pounds load it with coal weighing thirty or forty thousand pounds more and turn it up quite as you would a coal and empty the contents into a waiting ship then suppose you looked in the car and saw three or four pieces of coal still lying in it and said to yourself u oh well i might as well these in too and then you lifted up the car and the remaining two or three pieces out wouldn t you feel rather strong well that is what is being done at morning noon and night and often all night as all day the boats bringing these immense loads of iron ore are waiting to take back coal and so this enormous process of and goes on continually and i were standing on a high bank commanding all this and a wonderful view of lake never dreaming that the little box like things we saw in the distance being elevated and turned over were steel coal cars when he suddenly exclaimed i do believe those things over there are cars steel coal cars get out i replied that s what they are he insisted we ll have speed run the machine over that other hill and then we can be sure from this second point it was all very clear great cars being run upon a platform elevated quickly to a given position over a or coal leading down into the hold of a waiting steamer and then quickly and completely upset the last few coals being shaken out as though each grain were precious how long do you think it takes them to fill a ship like that i oh i don t know replied let s see how long it takes to empty a car we timed them one car every three minutes that means twenty cars an hour i figured or one hundred cars in five hours that ought to fill any steamer a little farther along this same shore reaching out toward the lake where eventually was a small white were those same hills of red powdered iron i have been telling you about great long hills that it must have taken ships and ships and ships of iron to build i thought of the of all those things the iron and copper mines in northern the vast coal beds in and elsewhere and how they were acquired did you ever read a true history of them i ll you haven t well there is one not so detached as it might be a little in tone in spots but for all that a true and effective work it is entitled a history of the great american fortunes by one a curious soul and ill repaid as i have reason to know for his energy it is really a most important work and can be had in three compact volumes for about six dollars it is almost too good to be true a thorough going statement of the whole process some of his make clear j the almost hopeless nature of and that is a i very important thing to discover as i have said this northern portion of is a mixture of half city and half country and this little city of was an interesting illustration of the rural american with the idea in one imposing or store the two are almost these days to which and i went for a drink of we met a striking example of the rural of idea or perhaps better of mind or prejudice in regard to certain normal human or vices in most of these small towns and in these days total from all is enforced by local in local had decided that no liquor of any kind should be sold there but since human nature is as it is and must have some small outlet for its human apparently they now get what are sometimes called which are sold under such names as which is nothing more than a or apple and a a holiday score of other all no doubt with a trace of some temporarily like or the one which i tried on this occasion was a feeble watery thing which was advertised to have all the qualities of champagne and to taste the same has this any real champagne in it i asked the conventional but rosy girl who waited on me no sir i don t think so sir i ve never tried it though what i said never tried this wonderful drink have you ever tasted champagne indeed not she replied with a concerned and air what never well then there s your chance fm going to drink a bottle of and you can taste mine i poured out the stuff and offered it to her no thank you she replied and as i still held it toward her no thank i never touch anything of that kind but you say it is a well i think it is but i m not sure and anyhow i don t think i d care for it don t you belong to some society that is opposed to of all kinds i yes sir our church is opposed to liquor in any form even i persisted she made a contemptuous mouth there you have it i said to him you	43
asked myself why not is such a slow thing that it can only detect its through long slow formal movements i knew this was not true but also i knew that there was no here of any kind merely a shallow butterfly contact these two seemed so very that i had to smile they re nice genial people are they i put in do you suppose we could introduce ourselves and be friendly a holiday oh we d introduce you that s all right put in this latest we can say you re friends of ours shades of the hall room boys i i exclaimed to myself what kind of world is this anyway what sort of people here we ride up to a door in the heart of a community and two youths in white offer to introduce us to their friends as friends of theirs is it my looks or s or the car or what a spirit of adventure began to well up in me i thought of a few days spent here and what they might be made to mean thus introduced we might soon find interesting companionship but i looked at and my enthusiasm cooled slightly for an adventure of any kind one needs an absolutely enthusiasm for the same thing and i was by no means sure that it existed here is so solemn at times such a moral and social i argued that it was best perhaps not to say all that was in my mind but i looked about me here were all those i have indicated this seems to be quite a place i said to this camp where do they all come from oh principally and most of the people right around here are from is there very good bathing here wonderful as good as anywhere i wondered what he knew about bathing anywhere but here and what else is there oh riding he fairly with the social importance of the things he was suggesting they seem to have bright colors here i went on you bet they do he continued there are a lot of swell here aren t there ed that s right replied his friend some here george i you ought to see em some days the gay life of the lake shore they re very glorious are they that s what the conversation now turned back to us where were we going what were we going for were we enjoying the trip were the roads good we told them of and rose immediately in their estimation we finally declined the invitation to be introduced into their circle instead we went into this where the reception room was also a of sorts and here we while awaiting dinner i was still examining picture when a young man quite young with a pink face and hair a i took it came up beside me and stood looking at the pictures almost over my shoulder i thought though there was plenty of room in either direction after a few moments i turned somewhat irritated by his familiarity and glanced at his shoes and suit which were not of the best by any means and at his hands which were strong and well formed but rough nice pictures of things about here he observed in a voice which seemed to have a trace of the in it yes very i replied wondering a little uncertain whether it was merely another genial american seeking anyone to talk to or desirous of aid you never can tell yes he went on a little nervously with a touch of strain in his voice it is nice to come to these places if you have the money we all like to come to them when we can now i would like to come to a place like this but i haven t any money i just walked in and i thought maybe i might get something to do here it s a nice brisk place with lots of people working now what s his game i asked myself turning toward him and then away for his manner a little of that type of religious and charitable emotion which one in side street a a holiday most type of and duty worship yes it seems to be quite brisk i replied a little coldly but i have to get something yet tonight that is sure if i am to have a place to sleep and something to eat he paused and i looked at him quite annoyed i am sure a beggar i thought beggars and ne er do wells and are always selecting me well i ll not give him anything i m tired of it i did not come in here to be annoyed and i won t be why should i always be annoyed why didn t he pick on i felt myself dreadfully i know you ll find the manager back there somewhere i presume i said aloud i m only a stranger here myself then i turned away but only to turn back as he started off something about him touched his youth his strength his the interesting way he had addressed me my rage i began to think of times when i was seeking work wait a minute i said here s the price of a meal at least and i handed him a bit of change his face which had remained rather tense and up to this time the face that one always puts on in the presence of menacing degradation softened thank you thank you he said i haven t eaten today yet really i haven t but i may get something to do here he smiled gratefully i turned away and he approached the small dark american who was running this place but i m not sure that he got anything the latter was a very	43
irritable person with no doubt many troubles of his own approached and i turned to him and when i looked again my beggar was gone i often wish that i had more means and a wherewith to serve difficult struggling youth i could not help noticing that the whole region as well as this seemed new and the gay life of the lake shore the very management of this the best in the place was in all not the same which had obtained in the previous year a thing like that is so characteristic of these mid western resort the help you could by no means call them for they were in that branch of service were girls and mostly healthy attractive ones here no doubt in order to catch a beau or to be in a summer resort atmosphere as i have previously indicated anybody according to the lay mind west of the atlantic can run a if you have been a cook on a farm for some hay workers or so much the better you are thereby entitled to cook and to be hailed as a any domestic can wait n table all you have to do is to bring in the dishes and take them out again all you need to do to or fish or fowl is to it the art of selection arrangement combination are still mysteries of the east the west is above these things the new west god bless and if you ask for black coffee in a small cup or potatoes prepared in any other way than or should you desire a fish that carried with it its own peculiar they would stare at you as peculiar or better yet with eyes but these girls outside and in what a contrast in american social they presented i during our dinner the two youths had departed and got two maids from somewhere maids of the most aspect and were now hanging about our return in order to have more words and to indicate to us the true extent of their skill as and summer gentlemen in waiting as i looked through the windows at those outside and contrasted them with those within and now waiting on us i was struck with the difference class for class between the girl who chooses to work and the girl of the same station practically who would rather do something else the girls outside were of the brand of summer in white and blue dresses of the most a holiday character and sport coats or in broad heavy one black and white another orange and blue and the usual ribbon in their hair they seemed to me to be by the idea of being and and and gay indeed all the things which the sunday newspaper summer girl should be a most amazing at best and purely a reflection or imitation of the thoughts of others copies marsh fire incidentally it struck me that in the very value of things they were destined to be nothing more than the toys and of men as they might be able to attract not very important perhaps but as vigorous and as themselves on the other hand those on the inside were so much more attractive because they lacked the cunning or silly of these others and because by the very of their being apparently they were drawn to routine legitimate or otherwise personally i am by no means a i have never been able to decide which earthly state is best all life is good all life to the individual who is enjoying himself and to the creator of all things the sting of existence is the great thing the sting not its theories but that out the and the and they will damn me forever but still i so believe those girls outside and for ail their and were dull whereas those inside some of them anyhow had a dreamy placid which needed no particular of speech or clothing to set them off one of them the one who waited on us was a veritable large placid unconsciously many of the others seemed of a life they could not master but only gaze after where are the sensible to see them i thought how is it that they escape while those others their dizzy but i soon consoled myself with the thought that they would not escape for long the strong male knows the real woman over and above ornament is the the gay life of the lake shore attraction which laughs at ornament i could see how the might fare better in love than the others but outside were the two youths and their maids waiting for us and we were intensely interested and as genial and as might be one of these girls was dark a veritable of the modern moving picture school or rather a copy of a the other was younger less but so shallow dear kind heaven how shallow some people really are and their clothes i the conversation going on between them for our benefit largely was a thing to rejoice in or weep over as you will it was a of shallow humor and the that to sex and brings smiles of understanding to the lips of the here is some girl i d have you know this from the taller of the two summer men who was feeling of her arm familiarly how do you know this from with a smile don t i do you well you ought to know i notice that you have to ask or this other from the two men has nice shoes on today that isn t all has on is it well not quite she has a pretty smile i gathered from the many things thus said and the way the girls were up and down in	43
all directions in their very pronounced that if sex were not freely indulged in here the beholding of it with the eyes and the of it in thought and appearance were great in the daily life and charm of the place there are ways and ways for the natural tendency of the world to show itself the of desire in its various aspects is an old process it was so being here chapter a summer storm and some comments on the picture shortly after leaving we ran into a storm one of those fine windy dusty tree groaning rains that come up simply and and make you feel that you are going to be blown into kingdom come and struck by lightning en route as we sped through great of trees and through little towns all bare to our view through their open doors as though they had not a thing to conceal or a to fear the wind began to rise and the trees to and whistle and by the glare of our own powerful we saw clouds of dust rolling toward us a few heavy drops of water hit my head and face and i suppose let me put all the blame i can on him in this story what else are hosts for suggested that we put up the top now i for one vote tops a nuisance they are a crime really here was a fine electric storm with the heavens torn with great poles of light and the woods and the fields and distant little cottages revealed every few seconds with startling and we had to put up the top why well there were bags and coats and a and i know not what else and these things had to be protected my own glasses began to and my chin and my hair were very wet so up went the top but worse than that the sides had to go up for now the wind was driving the rain and we were all getting soaked anyhow so up went the sides then thus protected and with all the real beauty of the night shut out we rattled along i pressing my nose to the windows and wishing that i might see it all i a summer storm cursed god and man and close i down in my corner and began to dream again when presently say one hour later or two or three it must have been two or three now that i think of it another enormous bridge such as that we had seen at into view down a curve which our lamps illuminated with amazing clearness i i called to speed as though he were a horse you re right commented without further observation on my part that is interesting isn t it though it was still we opened those storm curtains and out walking on ahead of the car to stand and look at it as we did a train came from somewhere a long brightly lighted passenger train and over it as noiselessly as if it had been on solid v ground a large arch rose before us an enormous thing v with another following in the distance and a stream think i d better sketch that indeed i do i replied if it interests you it s wonderful to me we wandered on down the curve and under it through a great arch a second bridge came into view this time of iron the one over which our road ran and beyond that a third of iron or steel also much higher than either of the others this last was a bridge and as we stood here a car approached and sped over it at the same time another train glided over the great stone arch what is this bridge centre i inquired replied can t you see we fell to discussing lights and shadows and the best angle at which to make the drawing but there was no umbrella between us useless things and so i had to lay my on s head and hold it out in front of him like an while he peered under it and and i played porch posts so we talked of the great walls a holiday of europe spain and italy old roman walls and how these new things being built here in this fashion must endure long after we were gone and leave traces of what a wonderful nation we were we americans german americans americans greek americans italian americans french americans english americans americans just think i you and i may be remembered for thousands and thousands of years as having stood here tonight and this very bridge he commented it may be written that in a d accompanied by one an artist visited the site of this bridge which was then in perfect condition and made a sketch of it preserved now in that famous volume entitled a holiday by you know how to your own wares don t you he said who made the sketch why of course but you didn t say so why didn t i because you didn t oh well we ll correct all little errors like that in the proof you ll be safe enough will i surely you will well in that case i ll finish the sketch for a moment i thought i wouldn t but now that i m sure to be preserved for posterity he went scratching on a a the lights we saw ahead of us were those of another and shipping city like and and this was the grand river we were crossing a rather modest stream it seemed to me for so large a name i learned its title from a picture later in the city one should be impressed with the development of this a summer storm	43
as to whether one was in a fit condition to live eighty years and also whether one had ever been a true farmer and speed leaped over the with ease s coat skirts flying out behind in a most bird like manner and speed s legs and arms taking most peculiar angles when it came my turn to do it i miserably actually i failed so badly that i felt very much distressed being haunted for miles by the thought of increasing age and impending death for once i was fairly and could run three miles at a steady and not feel it but now well now whenever i reached the jumping point i couldn t make it my feet refused to leave the ground i felt heavy alas i alas i and then we had to pause and look at the lake which because of the storm the night before and the stiff wind blowing this morning offered a fine tumbling spectacle as to dignity and i could see no difference between this lake shore and most of the best sea which i have seen elsewhere the waves were long and dark and rolling in from a long distance out with a and a roar which was as fierce as that of any sea the beach was of smooth grey sand with occasional piles of scattered along a holiday its length and twisted and tortured trees hanging over the banks of the above in the distance we could see the faint outlines of the city of a and over it a cloud of dark smoke the customary banner of our world i decided that here would be a delightful place to set up a writing or a all my effects from my various other dream homes and spending my latter days i should have been a carpenter and i think it would save me money houses for myself in the of were being built the many comfortable homes of those who could afford this handsome land facing the lake hundreds of cottages we passed were done in the moods of our american and some of them were quite free of the horrible to which the american country seems there were homes of real taste with gardens arranged with a sense of their value and trees and shrubs which their beauty here as i could tell by my nerves all the and social of the middle class american and the middle west were being practised or at least preached right was as plain as the nose on your face truth as definite a thing as the box hedges and roads which surrounded them virtue a chill and even frozen maid if i had had the implements i would have up a sign reading non beware south through factory regions as we drew nearer this same atmosphere continued only becoming more dense houses instead of being five hundred feet apart and set in impressive and exclusive spaces were one hundred feet apart or less they were and respectable and refined the most imposing of churches began to appear i never saw finer and schools and heavily streets presently we ran into avenue an long and wide street once s pride and the centre of all her wealthy and fashionable life a holiday they can kill my body but not what i stand for john brown blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy christ though i speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not charity i am become as sounding brass or a st paul oh poorest the grace i beg of thee is to bestow on me the grace of the highest poverty st francis i with my over the roofs of the world are things to be made right by law i will admit that some wide and sweeping differences can be can occasionally be pulled down and elevated for the time being yes yes a rough can be struck always and it is something of that of which these men were dreaming but even so in the face of all the physical spiritual intellectual to say nothing of and differences what matter will law save an idiot or undo a or a caesar will law pull down the sun and set the moon in its place my masters we can only at times where we cannot possibly act and we can act and aid where we cannot cure fi ut of a universal there is only a dream or so i feel yet it is because we can and do dream and must at times and because of our dreams and the fact that they must so often be shattered that we have art and the joy of this thing called life without contrast there is no life and without dreams there might not be any alteration in these too sharp but where would our dreams be i ask you or the need of them if all of that of which we are compelled to dream and seek in an agony of sweat and despair were present and we did not need to dream then what but let us away with let us sing over life as it is these tall poetic souls are they not beautiful and would you not have it so that they may appear in riding up this same street i was on familiar ground in for here years before in that same raw spring which took me to i stopped looking for work and found some of sorts i connected myself for a very little while a week or two with the sunday issue of the plain dealer and did a few trying to prove to the incumbent of the high office of sunday editor that i was a remarkable man he did not see	43
it or me he commented once that my work was too lofty in tone that i loved to too much i know he was right nevertheless the second city afterwards like the others from which i had just come st louis and liked me passing well but my ambition did not run to a permanent position in anyhow just the same and what was of interest to me this morning as i rode into was that here after a most wonderful east from st louis i had arrived quite as in very hungry and as i look back on it now i know that i must have been a very peculiar youth for nothing i could find or do contented me for so much as an hour i had achieved a considerable newspaper success in st louis but had dropped it as being and because of a silly dream about running a country newspaper which i shall later in a town called grand i had a chance to take over said country paper but when i looked it over and pictured to myself what the local life would be i fled in horror in i encountered a poet and an a youth destined to prove one of the most influences in my whole career with whom i enjoyed a period of intense mental yet him i left also partly because i lacked money and an interesting future there but more because i felt restless and wanted to see more of the world one of my principal trials at this time was that i was in love and had left the object of my adoration behind me and was not sure that i would ever earn enough money to go and fetch her so uncertain were my talents and my opportunities in my own eyes ff a holiday and like which came after in my experience this city seemed dirty and raw and black but america was in the furnace stage of its x i existence everything was in the making fortunes art its social and commercial life everything the most astonishing thing in it was its rich men their houses institutions of commerce and pleasure nothing else had occurred there was nothing to see but business and a few hotels one really and theatres i remember looking at a great soldiers monument it is still here in the principal square and wondering why so q large a monument i do not recall that any man of particularly distinguished himself in the civil war but the one thing that struck me as of greatest import in those days was avenue with its large houses and which are now so close to the business heart and its rich men john d and mark and henry m and tom johnson had just given millions and millions to the almost university of then a small college to say nothing of being hailed newly then as the richest man in america all of these people were living here in avenue and i looked up their houses and all the other places of interest the rich and wishing that i was famous or a member of a wealthy family and that i might meet some one of the beautiful girls i imagined i saw here and have her fall in love with me la i la there s nothing like being a passionate romantic if you want to taste this wine of which is life i was and i did chapter the flat lands of but now by no means moved me as it once had not that there was anything wrong with the change was in me no doubt a which makes things look different in middle life we at a rather attractive looking which a very lively corner where a most stately and perfect young woman claimed our almost attention hail and then we sped on to the an hotel which i recalled as being the best in my day to consult the club as to the condition of the roads west sitting before this hotel in our car under a grey sky and with the wind about rather chilly for an august morning i was reminded of other days spent in this same hotel not as a guest but as a youthful chair warmer between such hours as i was not working on the plain dealer or walking the streets of the city or sleeping in the very dull room i had engaged in a very dingy and smoky looking old house why didn t i get a better place well my uncertainty as to whether i should long remain in was very great this house was convenient to the business heart the rooms were clean and from the several windows on the second floor i could see a wide sweep of the lake with its white caps and and ships and closer at hand the imposing buildings of the city it was a great spectacle and i was somewhat of a and of spectacles than i was of people but the which was then the principal hotel of the city and centre of all the extravagant transient life of the time appealed to me as a convenient method a holiday of obtaining comfort of sorts without any expense newspaper men have a habit of making themselves at home almost anywhere their contact with the rough facts of life and their commercial to go do see under all circumstances and at all hours soon them of that nervous fear or awe which possesses less souls when you are sent in the morning to attend a wedding or a fire at noon to interview a or describe a trial and at night to report an explosion a political meeting or a murder you soon lose all that sense of intrusion which the average citizen become mere people gorgeous functions melt into commonplace affairs no better than any	43
other function that has been or will be again an hotel like this is little more than a mere lounging place to the to the comforts of which as a representative of the press he is entitled if not awe or mystery then certainly nervous anticipation to the movements and personality of nearly all at least it does in my case to this day though i have been one in my time i stand in fear of them i never know what to expect what question they are going to at me or what cold examining eyes are going to strip me to the bone eyes that represent brains so shrewd and merciless that one wonders why they do not the world long before they usually do in those days this hotel was the most luxurious in and here between hours because it was cold and i was lonely i came to sit and stare out at all the passing throng vigorous and active enough to entertain anyone it was a brisk life that presented and young the great question with me always was how did people come to be in the first place what were the laws of our being how did it come that human beings could separate themselves from and alone why did we all have much the same tastes desires why should two people on earth have two feet two eyes two hands the fact the flat lands of that had already set forward his facts as to did not clear things up for me at all i wanted to know who started the thing and why and so i loved to sit about in places like this where i could see people and think about it incidentally i wanted to think about government and the growth of cities and the value and charm of different professions and whether my own somewhat enforced profession since i had no cunning apparently for anything else was to be of any value to me i was just at the age when the enjoyment of my life and strength seemed the most important thing in the world i wanted to live to have money to be somebody to meet and enjoy the companionship of interesting and well placed people to seem to be better than i was while i by no means condemned those above or beneath nor ignored the claims of any individual or element to fair and courteous treatment still that i was i wanted to share on equal terms with the best in all the more and most exclusive doings and beings the fact that the world in part was busy about and pleasures that there were lighted for for dinner for dancing and that i was nowhere included was an aching thorn i used to stroll about where theatres were just receiving their of evening or where some function of note was being held and stare with eyes at the preparations i felt lone and a rather weak and tendency say you quite so i admit it it interests me now quite as much as it possibly could you i am now writing of myself not as i am but as i was we gained the information that the best road to fort was not the lake shore as we wished but through a town called and and so on through various towns to the line i did not favor that at all i argued that we should go by the lake anyhow but somehow we started for as we called it a holiday in leaving i urged to visit the region where originally stood the house in which i had stopped and to my surprise i found the place entirely done over cleared of all the old tracks houses and which from the formal point of view once the in their stead were several stately buildings facing the wide bosom of the lake and surrounded by great spaces of smooth grass it was very imposing so the spot i had chosen as most interesting to me had become the centre of the city this flattered me not a little but and what about them nothing just towns at we found a stream which had been diverted and made to run a engine in order that the town might have light but it was discovered afterward that there wasn t enough water power after all to supply the town and so extra light had to be bought and paid for the works were very picturesque a deep cave at the bottom of which was the engine room cut out of the solid rock apparently the water pouring down through it i thought what a delightful place it was for the town boys to play but this inland country was really too dreary all the uncomfortable experiences of my early youth began to come back as i viewed these small cottages set in endless spaces of flat land with nothing but trees wire fences and occasionally small and bare white churches to vary the landscape what a life i i kept saying to myself what a life and i still say it what a life i it would require endless friends to make such a landscape before reaching the lake again we traversed about twenty miles of a region that seemed to me must be devoted to the chicken raising business we saw so many of them in one place we encountered a huge natural or depression which could easily have been turned into a large lake the same out by a stream known as the river in another we came to the flat lands of a fine scene with all the implements for the work in full motion a scene so attractive that we stopped and a while inquiring as to the rewards of farming in this region in still another place we passed a small river pleasure	43
ground a and bathing place which was probably by the villagers it suggested all sorts of sweet simple summer then came into view with a meeting announced as coming soon and a with a and pretty and at anchor speed announced that if we were going to idle here as usual he stop at the first and get oil and effect certain and there we left him happy at his task his body under the machine while we walked on into the heart of the village it being the hope of finding a us as well as that possibility of seeing something different and interesting which the sight of every new town held out at least to me here we had lunch then and quite a good one too with a piece of cherry pie thrown in for good measure if you please and then because the was conducted by a by the name of b and because the girl who waited on us looked like an product of the kingdom i asked her if she was i never got a look in my life for a moment her dark eyes seemed to shoot sparks her whole which hitherto had been pleasant and changed to one of deadly opposition certainly not she replied with a sting in her voice and i saw clearly that i had made a most painful pas i felt called upon to explain or to who heard and saw it all he was most i suppose he commented in these small middle west towns it is to be they don t much between and chinese to suggest anything like that probably hurts her feelings dread a holiday fully if people here discover it it her in their eyes or that is what she thinks but she looks to you doesn t she i humbly not very no i looked again and it very obvious back in the kitchen was occasionally visible b and it seemed to me even then that the girl looked like him however the air was so from then on that i scarcely enjoyed my meal and to confound me as it were several came in and my purely maid talked in the normal middle west fashion even to a kind of a which we all have obviously she was american born and raised in this region but why the likeness i kept saying to myself in my worst and most suspicious manner and then i began to build up a kind of background for her with this b as her real but for reasons of policy concealed father and so on and so forth until i had quite a short story in mind but i don t suppose i ll ever come to the pleasure of writing it chapter xxx of sin at the sun suddenly burst forth once more clear and warm from a blanket of grey and the whole world looked different and much more speed arrived with the car just when we had finished luncheon and we had the pleasure of sitting outside and feeling thoroughly warm and gay while he ate commented on the probable character of the life in a community like this he was of the conviction that it never rose above a certain dead level of however charming and grateful the same might be as life and that all the ideas of all concerned ran to simple duties and in of amusing if not deadly prejudice which was entirely satisfactory so long as they did not interfere with or destroy your life he was convinced that there was this narrow solemn prejudice which made all life a sham or a kind of rural show piece in which all played a prescribed part some thinking one thing perhaps and secretly to it as much as possible while publicly another and to that publicly or as is the case with the majority actually believing in and to life as they found it here i know there were many such in the home in which i was brought up was not one to charge general and as do some but rather to with and appreciate the simple tastes and of all concerned now take those four town sitting over there on that bin in front of that store he commented of four old who had come out to sun themselves they haven t a single thing in their minds above petty a holiday little which do not seriously affect anyone but themselves they sit and comment and jest and talk about people in the town who are doing things quite as four ducks might they haven t a single thing to do not an important ambition crime of any kind is nearly beyond them just then a boy came by crying a afternoon paper he was calling all about the of frank this was a young jew who had been arrested in some months before charged with the very disturbing crime of attempted and subsequent murder the victim being a pretty working girl in a factory of which the murderer was or the trick by which the crime was supposed to have been accomplished as it was charged was that of causing the girl to stay after work and then when alone attempting to or force her in this instance a struggle seems to have ensued the girl may have fallen and crushed her head against a table or she may have been struck on the head the man arrested denied vigorously that he had anything to do with it he attempted i believe to throw the blame on a negro or if not that he did nothing to aid in clearing him of suspicion and there is the bare possibility that the negro did commit the crime though personally i doubted it when upon trial frank s conviction of murder in the first degree followed a great uproar ensued jews and other citizens in all	43
parts of the country protested and contributed money for a new trial the case was appealed to the supreme court but without result local or state sentiment was too strong it was charged by the friends of the condemned man that the trial had been unfair and that southern opposition to all manner of sex was so and peculiar having a curious relationship to the of the that no fair trial could be expected in that section personally i had felt that the man should have been tried elsewhere because of this very characteristic which i had noticed myself of sin it had been charged that a southern mob the jury in the very court room in which the case had been conducted that the act of had never really been proved that the death had really been accidental as described that the very suspicious circumstance of the body being found in the cellar was due to fear on the part of the murderer whoever he was of being found out and that the girl had not been slain at all nevertheless when the governor whose term was about to the sentence from death to life imprisonment he had to leave the state under armed protection and a few weeks later the criminal if he was one was set upon by a fellow in the at and his throat cut it was assumed that the was employed by the element to frank at the trial a little later while he was still in the hospital practically dying from this wound frank was taken out by a party taken to the small home town of the girl and there it was this latest development which was being about by the small at personally as i say i had the feeling that frank had been dealt with this seemed another exhibition of that blood lust of the south which produces and burning at the stake even to this day and which i invariably relate to the enforced of very natural desires in another direction are usually so of women and so loud in their that they are not i have no opposition to as such in many respects they are an interesting and charming people courteous hospitable a little inclined to over emphasis of gallantry and chivalry and their alleged moral purity but otherwise interesting but this sort of thing always strikes me as a definite of the real native sense of the people have they brains judgment why then indulge in the and of children and savages i raged at the south for its and and ignorance stung by the crime no doubt a holiday agreed with me he told me of being in a quick lunch room in new york one day when a young entered and found a negro in the place eating now as knows this is a commonplace i often have sat next to a negro and eaten in peace and comfort but according to the first impulse of this was to make a scene and stir up as much prejudice as possible beginning as usual with what the hell is a damned negro doing in here anyhow he looked about for sympathy said but no one paid the slightest attention to him then he began pushing his chair about and but still no one him finally his voice to a he went quietly and secured his his coffee and his pie like any other american but what a blow it must have been to him to find himself by a sea of indifference i i said not a soul to share his views it is that sort of thing that makes the south a jest to me continued i can t stand it his face was quite sour much more so than i had seen it on any other occasion on this tour oh well i said those things themselves in the long run frank is dead but who knows may be killed by this act the whole north and west is grieved by this they will take it out of the south in contempt and money must pay for itself like a stone flung in the water if no more than by rings of water the south cannot go on forever doing this sort of thing after we had raged sufficiently we rode on for by now speed had finished his lunch here following that lake road i have mentioned we were in an ideal realm for a time again free of all the dreary monotony of the land farther south the sun shone the wind blew and we forgot all about frank and along the shore looking at the tumbling waves once we climbed down a steep bank and stood on the shore on how of sin fine it all was another time we got off to pick a few apples ready to our hand there were many and we passed a fair sized town called in a blaze of afternoon light but for once not stopping because it lay a little to the right of our road to in another hour we were entering the latter place a clean smooth paved city of brick and frame cottages with women reading or sewing on and and a sense of american and belief in all the virtues hovering over it all i never knew until i reached there and beheld it with my own eyes that has near it one of the finest fresh water in the world and i seen and and from those at nice and to those that lie between and new it is called point and is not much more than twenty minutes from the pier at the foot of avenue in the heart of the city if you go by boat they have not been enough as yet to provide a for once you get there by a very trip of twelve miles you can ride for	43
seven miles along a road which exactly the white sand of the beach and allows you to enjoy the cool lake winds and even the spray of the waves when the wind is high it is backed by marsh land some of which has been drained and is now offered as an ideal and exclusive residence park but the trip was worth the long twelve miles splendidly worth it once we had made up our minds to return there for coming we had passed it without knowing it what induced us to go was a number of picture cards we saw in the principal department store here showing point beach in a storm point beach crowded with thousands of point beach pier three or four at once and so forth all very gay and and all seeming to indicate a world of proportions a holiday as a matter of fact it was nothing like or any other beach except for its physical beauty as a sea beach for how could a watering place on a lake in have any of the features of a ocean resort in spite of the fact that it boasted two very large hotels a literally enormous and bathing and various forms of amusement it was without the privilege of selling a drop of and its to the number of thousands were anything but smart just plain middle west family people what u we do with the middle west and the south are they gradually and unconsciously sinking into the suppose our largest soap our largest works and our largest are out there what of it it doesn t help much to large fortunes making routine things that merely increase the multitude who then sit back and do dull routine things life was intended for the i take it it was intended to sting and hurt so that songs and dreams might come forth when it becomes v mere and it is nothing a world when a great crisis comes as come it surely will at some time or other if people have just eaten and played and not dreamed vastly and beautifully they are as blown by the wind or burned in the oven they do not even make a good spectacle they are just pushed aside destroyed forgotten but this resort was so splendid in its natural aspects i could not help its material use by these middle with what would have been the case if it were say in the south of france or on the shores of holland or anyone who has visited or or nice or need scarcely be told there is a certain not even suggested by the best of our american contrasted even with these latter this island place was lower in the scale i presume the christian middle west would say it was higher we out there positively thrilled by a evening in which a blood red sun aided by of sin wind whipped clouds combined to give the day s close a almost aspect the long beach was so beautiful that it exclamations of surprise and delight think of being able to tear along for seven miles and more the open water to your right a weird grass grown marsh world dotted with tall gaunt trees to your left this splendid cloud world above with red and pink and a perfect road to ride on we tore but when we reached the extreme point of land known as point and devoted as i have said to the more definite entertainment of the stranger things were very different the exterior of all that i saw was a quite charming but imagine an immense devoted v j l to tables for people who bring their own lunch or dinner and merely want to buy coffee or milk or no beer sold here if you please a perfectly legitimate and atmosphere say you quite so only and then the large hotels we looked at them the prices of the best one ranged from two to four dollars a day the other from one to two shades of atlantic city and long beach and remember that these were well built well equipped hotels the beach were attractive but the crowd was of a simple inexperienced character i am not did i not praise beach i did and before i left here i was fond of this place and would not have changed it in any least detail i would not have even these mid different in spite of anything i may have said they seem to know that sunday school meetings are important and that one must succeed in business in some very small way but even so they are a hopeful crew and as such deserving of all praise and i walked about talking about them and them with the east our conclusion was that the east is more in vice and and show and luxury perhaps and that these people were sweet and amusing and all right here we found a girl tending a cigar counter in the principal a very not too attractive creature but not homely either and a holiday decidedly i could not help her with the maidens who wait on you at and stands generally in new york and who fix you with an icy stare and at inquire please she was quite set up in a pleasantly human way by the fact that she was in charge of a cigar stand in so a world and communicated her thoughts to us with the greatest pleasure and do you have many people here every day i asked thinking that because i had seen three excursion lying at anchor at the foot of the principal street in it might merely be by holiday crowds occasionally indeed yes she replied briskly the two big hotels here are always full and	43
on the days we have four or five hundred in bathing haven t you been here in the day time yet well just ought to be here when it s very hot and the sun is bright crowds course i haven t been to atlantic city or any of them swell eastern places but people that have tell me that this is one of the finest anywhere style you just see and the crowds i the bathing are packed and the board walk there are thousands of people here i suppose then this fills up completely i said looking round and seeing a few empty tables here and there it had evidently been the day before and even early this morning for it was pleasantly cool tonight and this seemed to have kept away some people well you just see it on a real hot night if you don t think we have crowds here full why people stand around and wait it s wonderful indeed and is there much money spent here well i suppose as much as anywhere i don t know about them big in the east but there s enough money spent here goodness people come and take whole of rooms at these big hotels you see some mighty rich people here of sin and i availed ourselves of the system of this place to serve ourselves and be in the life we walked along the beach looking at the lights come out on the hotel and in the and under the trees we walked under these same trees and watched the lovers and noted the old urge of youth and blood on every hand there was dancing in one place and at a long pier reaching out into the bay on the side a large steamer was hundreds more finally at ten o clock we returned listening to the splash of the waves on the shore and observing the curious cloud which hung overhead with stars in them once i saw a russian s head with the fur cap pulled low over the ears that cap worn by the and again i saw an old pursuing a of cloud that looked like a hare and then two riding side by side in the sky again i saw a whale and a and finally a great hand its fingers a hand that seemed to be reaching up helplessly and as if for aid the night was so fine that i would have riding onward toward fort but when we reached again and saw its pleasant streets and a hotel we concluded that we would stay by the ills we knew rather than to fly toward others that we knew not of chapter when hope high it is france i think who says somewhere that robbery is to be the result of robbery respected even so listen to this story we came into this hotel at eleven p m or who is good at or thinks he is up to the desk and asked for two rooms with bath and an arrangement whereby our could be entertained for less the custom there was a of some kind in town in certain lines i believe and all but one room in this hotel according to the clerk was taken however it was a large room very he said with three beds and a good bath would we take that if so we could have it without breakfast of course for three dollars done said putting all three names on the it was a good room large and clean with bath of good size we arose fairly early and on the usual hotel breakfast i made the painful mistake of being betrayed by the legend pan fish and from taking ham and eggs after our breakfast we came downstairs prepared to pay and depart when in a polite voice oh very the day clerk a different one from him of the night announced to who was at the window seven fifty please how do you make that out inquired taken three people in one room at three dollars a day each two dollars each for the night six dollars breakfast fifty cents each extra one fifty total when hope high but i thought you said this room was three for the night for three oh no three dollars each per day two dollars each for the night we always let it that way oh i see said curiously you know what the night clerk said to me do you i know the regular rate we charge for this room for the of a moment hesitated then laid down a ten dollar bill why do you do that i protested it isn t fair i wouldn t let s see the manager oh well he half whispered in weariness what can you do about it they have you at their mercy in the meantime the clerk had slipped the bill in the drawer and handed back two fifty in change but i exclaimed this is an outrage this man doesn t know anything about it or if he does he s why doesn t he get the manager here if he s on the level this gentle clerk merely smiled at me he had a comfortable even cynical grin on his face which enraged me all the more you know what you are i asked him you re a damned third rate and i you know you re lying when you say that room rents for three per person when three occupy it that s nine dollars a day for a room in an hotel that gets two or three dollars at the outside he smiled and then turned to wait on other people i raged and swore i called him a few more names but it never disturbed him the least i demanded to see the	43
manager but he remained shocked went off to get a cigar and then helped speed carry out the bags being scarce meanwhile i hung around hoping that glaring and offering to fight would produce some result not at all do you think i got back our three dollars or that i ever saw the manager never the car was ready was wait a holiday ing he looked at me as much as to say well you do love to fight don t you finally i submitted to the inevitable and considerably into the car while uttered various soothing comments about the of attempting to cope with en route what was a dollar or two more or less but as we rode out of i saw myself i beating the hotel clerk to death tearing the hotel down and throwing it into the lake killing the manager and all the clerks and help marching a triumphant army against the city at some future time and it to the last stone i would show them by george i would fix them i aren t the clouds fine this morning observed looking up at the sky as we rolled out of the city see that fine patch of woods over there now that we re getting near the line the scenery is beginning to improve a little don t you think we were in a more fertile land i thought more prosperous the houses looked a little better more rural and yes i think so i grumbled and that s the lake off there isn t the wind fresh and fine it was in a little while he was telling me of some who inhabited a community just north of his home town and how one of them said to another once in a fit of anger thee knows i can thee the best day thee ever lived the idea of two fighting cheered me i felt much better but now tell me don t you think i ought to destroy anyhow as a warning a after we left i began to feel at home again for somehow this territory was more like than any we had seen smooth and placid and when hope high fertile it was a land we through a place called hung madly with hundreds of little blue and white announcing that a was to be held here within a few days one of those simple country life which do so much apparently to this mid western world and then we came to a place called which had once had the honor of being the home and death place if not of the hon b once president of the united states by accident the man who stole the office from samuel j who was elected a queer honor but is as good as honor any day for one a place in the memory of posterity and after that we drove through places called and and you know the size only in these towns by now i was seeing exact of men i had known in my earliest days thus at where we asked our way to and green the man who leaned against our car was an exact of a man i had known in over thirty years before who used to drive a delivery wagon and the gentleman he was driving a local merchant of some import i took it was exactly like old b who used to run one of the four or five successful stores in he had a short pointed and yet full beard with blue eyes and a straight thin mouth but not an expression about them i began to think of the days when i used to wait for old mr to serve me later we came to a river called yellow and placid and flowing between winding banks that separated fields of hay from fields of grain and then we began to draw near to a territory with which i had been exceedingly familiar twenty years before so much so that it remains as fresh as though it had been yesterday you must know because i propose to tell you that in the fair city of st louis at the age of i was fairly prosperous as a working newspaper man s prosperity goes and in a position to get or make or even keep a holiday a place not only for myself but for various others such friends for instance as i chose to aid i do not record this i was a ha rum youth who was fairly well liked by his elders but with no least faculty apparently of taking care of his own interests from one of those fine days blew a young newspaper man whom i had known and liked up there he was not a very good newspaper man and good natured but a veritable of mine he wanted me to get him a place and i did then he wanted counsel as to whether he should get married and i aided and him in that then he lost his job through his inability to imagine something properly one night and i had to get him another one then he began to dream of running a country paper with me as a fellow to rural honors and and if you will believe me so was i and so restless and uncertain as to my proper future that i listened to him with willing ears yes i had some vague impossible idea of being first state of some rural region and then perchance state and then or governor if you please and all at once owing to my amazing facility and and my clear understanding of the rights privileges duties and of private citizens and of public officers and because of my deep and abiding interest in the	43
having lingered three days to secure suitable roads the distance was miles we drove over that was the time i saw the gas wells it was a better place than grand but the price of the paper when we reached there was much more than we could pay i think we figured between us that we could put down two hundred dollars and the owners wanted five hundred with the balance on and a total selling price of eight thousand so that dream went glimmering in the meanwhile i about studying country life admiring the river at grand h s home faced it from a beautiful rise then one fine spring day the sun rose on fields from which the snow had suddenly melted and i felt that i must be off i went as i have said to first here i encountered the youth to whom i have frequently referred and with whom i was destined to lead a curious career but now that i am upon the subject perhaps i might as well include the story of my journey into where was a principal paper called the blade with which i wished to connect myself if possible the place only had a hundred thousand at the time and i did not think it worth the remaining years of my life but i thought it might be good for a little while say six months al a holiday though i was considered i am merely quoting others an exceptional newspaper man i did not know what i wanted to be already the newspaper profession was me it seemed a hopeless more or less degrading form of work and yet i could think of nothing else to do apparently i had no other talent i shall never forget the first morning i went into the train followed the bank of a canal and ran between that canal and the river the snow which had troubled us so much a day or two before had gone off and it was as bright and encouraging as one might wish i was particularly elated by the natural aspects of this region for the river beginning at fort and flowing makes a peculiarly attractive diversion it is a beautiful stream with gently sloping banks on either hand and in places and even slight falls at grand and farther along it out into something essentially romantic to look upon and itself when i reached it was so clean and new and industrious without all the of factory and life which the charm of some cities it seemed to me as i looked at it this spring morning as if life must be better here than in older or at least greater cities like st louis and where so much of the oppressive struggle for existence had already manifested itself and yet i knew i liked those cities better be that as it may it was a happy prospect which i contemplated and i sought out the office of the blade with the air of one who is certain of his powers and not likely to be by mere outward circumstances i have always felt of life that it is more than anything else people strive so to do things to arrange life according to some scheme of their own but little if anything comes of it in most cases children are taught by their parents that they must be this that or the other to get along economical industrious sober truthful and the like and what comes of it unless they are peculiarly and able to use when hope high life in a direct and way unless they have qualities or charms which draw life to them or compel life to come they are used and then discarded a profound in manners morals and every other virtue and will not make up for lack of looks in a girl honesty industry and even other solemn virtues will not raise a lad to a seat of dignity life is above these petty rules however essential they may be to the strong in ruling the weak or to a state or nation in the task of keeping itself in order we succeed or fail not by the virtues or their absence but by something more or less than these things all good things are gifts beauty strength grace swiftness and of mind the urge or to do taking thought will not bring them to anyone effort never save by grace or luck or something else the illusion of the self made is one of the greatest of all here in i came upon one of the happiest illustrations of this in the office of the blade in the city room sat a young man as city editor who was destined to take a definite and part in my life he was small very much smaller than myself plump rosy with a complexion of milk and cream soft light brown hair a clear observing blue eye without effort you could detect the and in the of city editor of a western town paper one must have the air if not the substance of commercial understanding and ability control and all that and so in this instance my young city editor seemed to breathe a determination to be very and you re a st louis newspaper man eh he said me casually and in a glance never worked in a town of this size though well the conditions are very different we pay much more attention to small make a good deal out of nothing he smiled but there isn t a thing that i can see anyhow nothing much beyond a three or four day job which you wouldn t a holiday want i m sure as a matter of fact there s a street car strike on you may have noticed it and	43
i could use a man who would have nerve enough to ride round on the cars which the company is attempting to run and report how things are but i ll tell you frankly it s dangerous you may be shot or hit with a brick yes i said smiling and thinking of my need of experience and cash just how many days work would you me if any well four i could you that many he looked at me in a mock serious and yet way i could see that he was attracted to me fate only knows why something about me as he told me later affected him vigorously he could not he admitted get me out of his mind he was slightly ashamed of offering me so wretched a task and yet urged by the necessity of making a showing in the face of crisis he too was comparatively new to his task i will not go into this story further than to say that it resulted in an enduring and yet stormy and friendship if he had been a girl he would have mar me of course it would have been inevitable even though he was already married as he was that other marriage would have been broken up we were intellectual as it were our dreams were practically identical approaching them though we were at different angles he was more the in thought though the in the in thought and in action he kept looking at me and that same morning when having ridden about over all the short lines and made up a dramatic story and when in addition for a romance column which the paper ran i had written one or two brief descriptions of farm life about he came over to tell me that he was impressed my descriptions were beautiful he said we went out to lunch and stayed nearly three hours he took me out to dinner though he was newly married and his delightful young wife was awaiting him in when hope high their home a few miles out of the city duty compelled him to stay in town had met we talked and talked and talked he had worked in so had i he had known various newspaper there so had i he had dreams of becoming a poet and i of becoming a before the second day had gone a book of and some poems he had completed and was had been shown me under the action of our joint i was impressed i became of him the victim of a delightful illusion one of the most perfect i have ever entertained because he was so fond of me so strikingly he wanted me to stay on there was no immediate place and he could not make one for me at once but would i not wait until an opening might come or better yet would i not wander on toward and working at what i chose and then if a place opened come back he would telegraph me as he subsequently did at meanwhile we in that wonderful possession intellectual affection a passionate intellectual in youth i thought he was beautiful great perfect he thought well i have heard him tell in after years what he thought even now at times he me with hungry eyes alas alas for the dreams and the which never stay i chapter the frontier of to me therefore this region was holy the blessed of the west in approaching green i was saying to myself how strange it will be to see h again should he chance to be there what an interesting talk i will have with him i and after green how interesting to pass through grand even though there was not a soul whom i would wish to greet again was too far north to bother about when we entered green however by a smooth road under a blazing sun it was really not interesting at all indeed it was most the houses were small and low and everything was still and after one sees town after town for eight hundred or a thousand miles all more or less alike one town must be different and possessed of some merit not previously encountered to attract attention i persuaded to stop at the office of the principal newspaper in order that i might make inquiry as to the present whereabouts of h he had written me about four years before to say that he was connected with a paper here he wanted me to teach him how to write short stories it was a dull room or store facing the principal street like a bank in it were a young looking boy very and brisk and curious as to his glance and a middle aged man bald red faced constructed like a pigeon and about as active do you happen to recall a man by the name of h who used to work here in green i inquired of the elder not willing to believe that he had controlled the frontier of a paper though i had understood from that he had b h he replied looking me over yes that s the man he did work here on the other paper for a while he replied with what seemed to me a faint look of contempt though it may not have been he hasn t been here for four or five years at the least he s up in now i believe battle creek or or some such place as that they might tell you over at the other office he waved his hand toward some outside institution the other paper you didn t happen to know him personally i presume no i saw him a few times he was their general utility man i believe i went out uncertain whether to bother	43
call our youth here as at the railroad station of an older day was hidden away in a side street where possibly six trains a day may have stopped at we had the village which took passengers to the one hotel here they had a ford by i none o your cheap for us any more and in the plain red brick business street was this and yet charming collection of people i have indicated farmers and farmers wives in the equivalent of and linen behold now your town bustling into the bank or at two p m of this fine afternoon a veritable village beau very conscious of his charms he is between and and very likely owns the book or the clothing store and is proud of his son s appearance in my day son would have had a smart with red or yellow wheels in which he would have arrived picking up a very pretty girl by the way now he has an even if it is only a and he feels himself to be the most perfect of youths and here come three girls arm in arm village so pretty in their bright do you think new york can teach them anything or paris not so fast look at our skirts scarcely below the knees with pointed and and our bright grey kid slippers and the delicate about our necks and the soft gaiety of our sport hats new york teach us anything we teach new the frontier of york rather we are down for mail or or an ice cream and to see and be seen perhaps beau will drive us home in his car or we may refuse and just laugh at him and if you please here is one of the town s young scarlet women no companionship for her she is dressed like the others only more so but to the difference she is as to cheeks and lips those eager seeking eyes no woman will openly look at her nor any girl but the men these farmers and lawyers and town which one of them will seek her out first tonight do you suppose the lawyer the doctor or the how good it all tasted after new york and what a spell it cast i can scarcely make you understand i fear is a world all unto itself and this extreme western portion of is a part of it not by official but rather by natural arrangement the air felt different the sky and trees and streets here were sweeter they really were the intervening years away and once more i saw myself quite clearly in this region with the ideas and moods of my youth still dominant i was a kid again and these streets and stores were as familiar to me as though i had lived in them all my life and i were looking in at the window of the one combined music and piano store to see what they sold all the popular songs were there i didn t raise my boy to be a soldier it s a long long way to he s a devil in his own home town and others such as and though we should never meet again as i looked at these things so of small town love affairs and of calling and my mind went back to all the similar matters i had known not my own i never had any and the condition of the attractive girl and the average young men in a town like this how careful is their how earnestly is the sunday school and the and the and how persistently so many of them go their a holiday own way they do not know what it is all about all this talk about religion and morality and duty in their blood is a certain something which to the light of the sun and the blue of the sky did you ever read the ballad of the by john see if this doesn t suggest what i m talking about the adventurous sun took heaven by storm clouds scattered of rain the sounding cities rich and warm and glittered in the plain sometimes it was a wandering wind sometimes the fragrance of the pine sometimes the thought how others that turned her sweet blood into wine sometimes she heard a complaining sweetly far away she said a young man a maid and of love till break of day for still night s and still the day came like a flood it was the greatness of the world that made her long to use her blood somehow this region suggested this poem but oh these the object of so much attention and once they break away from these and and enter the great world outside then what do they fulfil any or all of the here dreamed for them i often think of them in the going forth to the towns and the cities their eyes lit with the of new life per cent of them as you and i know end in the most fashion not desperately or just and nothing at all death disease the small smaller ideas claim the majority of them they grow up thinking that to be a clerk or a or a shoe dealer is a great thing well maybe it is i don t know was a watch but the frontier of in youth all are so promising they look so fine and in a small town like this they about so dreaming and planning seeing young boys walking through the streets of napoleon and greeting each other and looking at the girls or with a security brought back all the boys of my youth all those who had been so promising and of such high hopes in my day where are they	43
i hate greedy commercial people things were drifting in a slow romantic way actually i said to and he will bear witness to it that now we were in the exact atmosphere which was most grateful to me i looked on all the simple little streets the one and a half story houses with sloping roofs the rows of good trees and and wished and wished and wished f one only could go back supposing one could like a and then represent one s life to what would we not make and what i some across the border of incidents i would make so much more perfect than they were others would not be in the at all in defiance we all indulged in shoe shines drinks as we were we overtook two farmers evidently brothers on a load of hay it was to beautiful the charm of the land so great that we were all in the best of spirits to the south of us was a little town looking like one of those villages in holland which you see over a wide stretch of flat land a distant church spire or being the most conspicuous object anywhere here it was a slate church and a red factory chimney that stood up and broke the sky line it was with a red sun just sinking below the horizon the trees taking on a smoky harmony in the distance of were in the air and we were on one of those wonderful brick roads i have previously mentioned running from defiance to as smooth and picturesque to view as an old dutch tile oven once we stopped the car to listen to the evening sounds the calls of farmers after pigs the of cows the of guinea and the last faint of birds and chickens that evening hush with a tinge of cool in the air and the fragrant of the soil and trees was upon us it needed only some voice singing somewhere i thought or the sound of a bell to make it complete and even those were added as we were so these two farmers came along seated on a load of hay making a truly picture in the light we made sure to greet them what town is that one there inquired the driver replied grinning his brother was sitting far back on the hay this is the road to all right isn t it i put in yes this is the road he returned how large a place is anyhow i oh seven or eight hundred a holiday and how big is oh two or three thousand but s a better place than put in the brother who sat behind a stalk of hay and smiling how s that inquired the fellow s manner was oh they re not as hard on over in as they are in he his straw y kin have a better time there he smiled again most oh this said speed quickly forming his fingers into a cup and it before his lips that s it said the man there ain t no license in alas i exclaimed and we re bound for well tain t too late said the man in front there s right over there i m afraid i m afraid i sighed and yet the thought came to me what a fine thing it would be to turn aside here and loaf in in one of its country say until midnight seeing what might happen the dutch of were somehow in my mind but just the same we didn t those things must be taken on the jump an opportunity to be a success must provoke a spontaneous burst of enthusiasm this suggestion of theirs if it appealed to the others provoked no acquiescence we smiled at them and then rode on only to comment later on what an adventure it might have proved how revealing as we entered the lamps were being trimmed in a cottage or two and i got a sense once more of the that life is day after day year after year century after century after poets may come and poets may go a gray a a burns in every generation but this thing which they seek to interpret remains forever a a a a all american born might well interpret this i i across the border of from generation to generation it would never tire passing up this simple village street with its small cottages on every hand i could not help thinking of what a or an would make it the shadows at this hour were somewhat like those in the night watch a of people in the two blocks which the heart of things was in character positively it was a comfort now to know that was with me and that subsequently he would register this or something like it either in pen and ink or it was so delightful to me in all its rural and that i wanted to sing about it or sit down in some corner somewhere and on paper as it was after exchanging a few words with a farmer who wanted to hear the story of our tour we went to look for some picture of and then to get something to eat it would seem at times as if life needed not so much action as atmosphere certainly not action of any vigorous character to make it pleasing as i could see there was no action in this town worthy of the name indeed the people seemed to me to be of a turn of a very simple and character and for the most part as to the men of an uncouth and aspect many of them were of the stuff of which railroad hands are made only here with the farm lands and the of country life to fall	43
back on they were not so the country lunch room which we encountered amused us all from one point of view and another it was so your male of rural life with all the wits and of the community and for miles around here raw and noisy were eating playing cards pool and indulging in rural wit and we heard all the standard of country life i gained the impression that the place had once been a before the no license had descended upon it and that many of its former were making the best of the new conditions a holiday and here it was that for the first time in my life i tasted pie did you ever eat pie well i the piece i had here in of apple for which i inquired a quarter section with a larger of on top filled a long felt want and a void it made up for the fact that i had to content myself with a ham and two eggs it was thick all of an inch and a half and very i asked the clerk i cannot call him a waiter if he knew how to make it but he did not and i have been seeking ever since for a as good as that from which this pie was made next door to this was the hotel mark the name and farther up the street mr and mrs c j in the one and book and store where the only picture we could find were of the and the residence of n c whoever he might be several very young girls for a were calling up some other girl at home i is this you well don t you know who this is can t you tell oh listen i listen to my voice now can t you tell i thought you could it s of course wait a minute wants to speak to you well this last after had spoken to much the same effect as after about in what seemed an almost saturday night throng so and brisk was it we made our way to fort it was a brisk cool ride the moon was on high very clear and a light wind blowing which made comfortable just outside we encountered another which shut us off from our fine road and enraged us so that we decided to the sign warning us to keep out under penalty of the law and to go on anyhow there seemed a good road ahead in spite of the sign and so we deliberately separated the boards on posts which barred the way and sped on but the way of the remember scarcely across the border of a mile had gone before the road broke into fragments partially made by a filling of crushed stone but after that it swiftly into mud and and we began to think we had made a dreadful mistake supposing we were here and found what would become of my trip to and detained might get very much out of sorts and not care to go on oh dear oh dear i we along over rocks and in the most uncomfortable fashion the car rocked like a boat on a at island finally we came to a dead stop and looked into our condition fore and aft things were becoming serious perspiration began to flow and regrets for our sinful tendencies to when in the distance the fence at the other end appeared immediately we cheered up i what was a small adventure like this a jolly lark that was all who wouldn t risk a car being stuck in order to achieve a like this and the officers of the law one had to take a sporting chance always why certainly i nevertheless i secretly thanked god or whatever gods there be and and speed looked intensely relieved we along another eight hundred feet tore down the wire screen at the other end and rushed on a little fearfully i think since there was a farm house near at hand with a lot of road making machinery in the yard perhaps it was the home of the road i hope he doesn t ever read this book and come and arrest us or if he does i hope he only and speed on reflection a month or so in jail would not hurt them any i think and then after an hour or so the city of fort appeared in the distance it does not lie on high ground or in a hollow but the presence of some twenty or thirty of those light towers which i mentioned as having been at in and which were still in evidence here gave it that appearance it seemed at first as though this town must be on a rise and we looking up at it from a valley as we a holiday drew nearer as though it were in a valley and we looking down from a height we soon came to one of those private streets so common in the cities of the west in these days a street with a great gate at either end open and and set with a of lights which arrangement houses of a certain grade of give that necessary the newly rich require apparently it was quite impressive and then we came to a place where quite in the heart of the city two rivers the st mary and the st joseph joined to make the and here most i thought a small park had been made it was indeed pleasing and then we into the main street of the city in this instance a so blazing with lights that i was much impressed one would scarcely see more light on the great white way in new york chapter a middle western crowd though a city of thousand or fort made	43
scarcely any impression upon me now that i was back in and a few miles from my native heath as it were i expected or perhaps i only half imagined that i might gain impressions and sensations with my but i didn t this was the city or town as it was then to which my parents had originally after their marriage in and where my father worked in a mill as perhaps before subsequently becoming its manager it had always been a place of interest if not happy memory to my mother who seemed to feel that she had been very happy here when our family such as it was greatly by the departure of most of the children came north to fort so much nearer than and a city of forty thousand was the for the sporting youth of our town to go to fort i what a week end treat for most of our youth who had sufficient means to travel so far it was a city of great adventure the fare was quite one dollar and cents for the round trip and only the and sports as we knew them attempted it i never had money enough to go as much as i wanted to nor yet the friends who were eager for my companionship but what tales did i not hear of theatres and other of pleasure visited and what veiled hints were not cast forth of secret pleasures indulged in if not more vigorous life was such a of delight to me then nameless and pleasures danced constantly before my e r r m x a w c n v abroad i y at die sane see at ar f ar l out day r t ami am that i i at as i d about it was rear t was a very copy of larger ia all t at x attempted hi to be ike or n york or to b built sad done ia these places die most obvious i after d rag n a ho f i house aad sleeping in a very e roots which a r d tie of endless street car however i awoke next morning with a sick stomach and a interest in a material thing and i had neither eaten nor drunk much of anything the night before truly truly we had sought out the principal resort and sat in it as a resource against greater nothing more and now being without appetite i wandered forth to the nearest store to have put up the best remedy i know for a sick stomach and whatever that may be it was in this store that the one interesting thing in fort occurred at least to me there were as it was still early a negro sweeping the place and one clerk a lean with and pointed hair who was concealed in some rear room he came forward a middle western crowd after a time took my and told me i would have to wait ten minutes later another man in a creature who looked like the before picture of a country newspaper patent medicine advertisement he was so gaunt and blue and sunken as to face that he rather frightened me as if a corpse should walk into your room and begin to look around his clothes were old and brown and looked as though they had been worn heaven knows what length of time the clerk came out and he asked for something the name of which i did not catch presently the clerk came back with his and mine and going to him and putting down a bottle and a box of said of the former holding it up now this is for your blood you understand do you you take this three times a day every day until it is gone the sick man nodded like an and these he now held up the are for your you take two o these every night this is for my blood and these are for my said the man slowly the were wrapped up very neatly in grey paper and tied with a pink string the corpse extracted out of a worn leather book cents in small pieces and put them down then he slowly out what him do you suppose i asked of the beau like clerk oh he can t live long will that medicine do him any good do you think not a bit he can t live he ll all worn out but he goes to some doctor around here and gets a and we have to fill it if we didn t else would he smiled on me most what a shame to take his money i thought he looks as though food or decent clothes would be better for him but what might one say i recalled how when i was young and how eagerly i clung to the thought of life and would i not now if i were in his place here was i with a of my own in my c a holiday hand which i scarcely touched afterwards but how near to his grave that man really was and how futile and silly that advice about his blood sounded without any special interest in fort to delay us and without any desire to see or do anything in particular we made finally that memorable start for toward which i had been looking ever since i stepped into the car in new york now in an hour or two or three at the best i would be seeing our old home or one of them at least and gazing at the things which of all things identified with my youth appealed to me most here i had had my first taste of the public school as opposed to the catholic or school and a delightful	43
change it was was so beautiful or seemed to me so at the time a love of a place with a river or small stream and several lakes and all the atmosphere of a prosperous and yet and home loving resort my mother and father and sisters and brothers were so interesting to me in those days as in the poem of s the sounding cities rich and warm and glittered in the plain i was thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen the sun and the air and some which i do not understand were making my blood into wine would i now be dreadfully disappointed our way lay through a country more or less familiar as to its character though i had never actually been through it except on a train all about were small towns and lakes which i had heard of but never visited now it was my privilege to see them if i chose and i felt very much elated over it all i was interested amused curiosity stirred but it was not until we reached city only twenty miles from that my imagination was keenly aroused city small as it was say fifteen or eighteen hundred at that time and not much larger now was another spot to which our small town life seek if a middle western crowd ing were wont to run on a saturday night for what purpose i scarcely know since i never had sufficient means to accompany them at that time in that vigorously imaginative period i up all sorts of delights as being the end and aim of these since the youths who them were so keen in regard to all matters of sex they seemed to be able to think of nothing else and talked girls girls girls from morning to night or made sly to these which thereby became all the more exciting to me at that time was peculiarly favored with a of attractive girls who kept all our youths on the qui as to love and their favor with an imagination that probably far my years i built up a fancy as to city which far exceeded its import of course to me it was a kind of of the with two in the skies and what of palms and of strings and drums i know not these youths who were quite smart and possessed of considerable pocket money much more than i ever had or could get would not have me as a companion i was a and between soul at that time not entirely from certain phases of association and companionship with youths somewhat older than myself and yet never included in these more private and intimate adventures to which they were constantly referring they kept me on hooks as did the charms of so many girls about us without my ever being satisfied besides from this very town had come a girl to our high school whom i used to contemplate with eyes she was so rounded and pink and gay but that was all it ever came to just that i contemplated her from afar i never had the courage to go near her in the presence of most girls especially the attractive ones i was dumb frozen by a nameless fear so this place now we reached it had interest to this extent that i wanted to see what it was like although really knew square surrounding stores and then a few streets with simple homes and a holiday churches exactly it was like all the others only somewhat poorer not so good as napoleon or even but there was something that was much better than anything we had encountered yet an old s day no less which had filled the streets with people and and the public square with tents for resting rooms had spread table out on the public lawn for eating while a merry go round whirled in the middle of one street and various tents and stands on several sides of the square were crowded with and of sorts i believe they have these small of tents a in the middle west of course there were hot as are known and i never saw a more rural crowd nor one that seemed to get more satisfaction out of its modest pleasures but the very old farmers and their wives the old and and their children and their and their great life takes on at once comic and yet poetic and pathetic phases the moment you view a crowd of this kind in the detached way that we were doing it here were men and women so old and worn and bent and by the processes of life that they looked like the yellow leaves of the autumn compared with the fresh young people who were to be seen spinning about on the merry go round or walking the streets in and they were infinitely worn such coats and trousers actually cut and at home and such hats and whiskers and and shoes i called s attention to two wearing hats and carrying and then to group after group of men and women so astonishing that they seemed figures out of some or world figures so distorted as to seem only fit fancies for a dream we sat down by one so weird that he seemed the creation of a genius bent on age i tried to strike up a conversation but he would not he did not seem to hear i began to a middle western crowd whisper to concerning the difference between a figure like this and those aspirations which we held in our youth concerning getting on life seems to mock itself with these walking on ambition of what good are the fruits of earthly triumph anyhow nearly all of the older ones to add to their wore bits of gold cloth which stated clearly that they were old	43
they stalked or or stood about talking in a mechanical manner they and i had to smile and yet if the least breath of the blood mood of sixteen were to return one would cry and then came the younger generations i i wish those who are so sure that is a great success and never to be upset by the cunning and self of and men would make a face to face study of these people i am in favor of the dream of on whatever basis it can be worked out it is an ideal but how i should like to ask is a such as this and poorer specimens yet as we all know to hold its own against the keen at the top certainly ever since i have been in the world i have seen nothing but americans who were so sure that the people were fit to rule and did rule and that nothing but the interests of all the people were ever really sought by our and leaders in various fields the people are all right and to be trusted they are capable of understanding their public and private affairs in such a manner as to bring the greatest happiness to the greatest number but are they i was taught this in the adjacent schools of quite as i was taught that the christian ideal was right and true and that it really prevailed in life and that those who did not agree with it were thieves and actually i went into life from this very region believing largely in all this only to find by degrees that this theory had no relationship to the facts life was persistently to me that self interest and only self interest a holiday ruled that strength weakness that large ideas and ruled small ones and so on and so forth ad it was interesting and even astonishing to find that we were not only being mentally by a theory that had no relationship to life whatsoever but that large brains were even then the of the republic big minds were ruling little ones big thoughts little ones the will to power was in all individuals above the grade of and even there all of us were one set of ideas and acting according to a set of instincts entirely opposed to our so called ideas i for one was always charging individuals with failing to live up to the christian idea and its derived moral code whereas no detail of the latter affected my own conduct in the least looking at this crowd of people here in the streets of city i was more affected by their and pathos life s and pathos for the mass than by anything else so far what could these people do even by together to control the giants at the top here they were entertained like babies by the most pathetic toys a a little conversation a little face contemplation of other f as badly placed as themselves the merry go round was spinning and grinding out a tune i saw young girls sitting of wooden horses lions and the like their dresses because of the short skirt drawn to the knee or nearly so imagine the storm which would have ensued in my day had any girl dared to display more than an ankle i custom i custom about it were small boys and big boys and big girls for the most part too poor to indulge in its circular madness very often who were themselves with contemplating the ecstasy of others i said you were raised out in this region about the time i was how would such a spectacle as that have been received in our day i was referring to a middle western crowd the exhibition of legs and i was very pleased with it as such not with it at all oh shocking he replied smiling it just wouldn t have occurred and how do you explain its possibility now these people are just as religious aren t they nearly so but fashion fashion the mass love of imitation if the mass want to do it and can find an excuse or permission in the eyes of others or even if they don t want to do it but their do they will suffer it i haven t the slightest doubt but that there is many a girl sitting on a wooden horse in there who would rather not have her skirt pulled up to her knees but since others do it she does it she wants to be in the swim and she d rather be unhappy or a little ashamed than not be in the swim nothing hurts like being out of style you know especially out in the country these days not even the of a conscience i said i ll tell you you were raised on a farm and know farmer boys at sight pick me out a farmer s boy here and now who hasn t money enough to ride in this thing and i ll give him a we ll see how he takes it smiled and looked around carefully the thing interested him so much that he finally the merry go round and lighted on one youth whose short and shoes and cheap but clean little dotted shirt and small fifteen or cent hat and pink cheeks as well as his open mouth and attention indicated that here was a wonder with which he was thoroughly i waited to see if he would step aboard at the next stop of the car or the next but no he was merely an at the next start of the car or platform i watched his eager eyes follow those who got on it was pathetic and when the merry go round started again he gazed aloft at the whirling thing in an ecstasy	43
ten of us living we would at last none of it the majority by some trick of which produces unheard of in the strangest manner though he and to a much less extent my mother were minded were caught fast by the material aspect of things they were one and all mastered by the pagan life stream which flows fresh and clean under all our and all our views and otherwise it will have none of the petty traps and wherewith the mistaken processes of the so called minds of some would seek to it life will not be in boxes it will not be wrapped and tied up with strings and set aside on a shelf to await a particular religious or moral use as yet we do not understand life we do not know what it is what the laws are that govern it at best we see ourselves along to this dream and that lust and unable to compel ourselves to the fires and and desires of our bodies and minds some of these in some of us strangely enough and purely accidentally of that i am convinced to the current needs or of a given society and if we should j be so fortunate as to find ourselves in that society we are i by reason of these children of fortune poets of the race on the other hand others of us who do not and cannot who are left over phases of ancient streams perhaps or of new forces coming into play are looked upon as and to be or and brought into the normal of things those of us endowed with these things in mind and blood are truly terrible to the mass failures yet life is no better than its worst elements no worse than its best its are changing illusions of perfection that will be something very different tomorrow again i say we do not know what life is not nearly enough to set forth a fixed code of any kind religious or otherwise but we do know that it sings and that it has each according to his blood and its a holiday life is rich gorgeous an s dream of y something but it is never the thin thing that thin blood and a weak ill nourished poorly respond c if ing brain would make it and that is where the majority r r of our morals rules and come from s t y from thin out blood and poor nervous non commanding weak brains r life is greater than anything we know it is stronger it is it is more horrible it is more beautiful we need not stop and think we have found a solution we have not even found a beginning we do not know and my patriotic father wanted us all to believe in the catholic church and the of the pope and confession and communion great pan of the and you of the save me these are all insane but i was talking of the effect of the approach of upon me and i want to get back to my mother for she was the of all my experiences here such a woman truly when i think of my mother i feel that i had best keep silent i certainly had one of the most perfect mothers ever a man had in fact really means my mother to me for here i first came to partially understand her to view her as a woman and to know how remarkable she was an open wondering dreamy mind none of the customary conscious principles with which so many conventional souls are afflicted a happy hopeful animal mother with a desire to live and not much ability wherewith to make real her dreams a pagan mother taken over into the catholic church at marriage because she loved a catholic and would follow her love anywhere a great poet mother because she loved and and half believed in them and once saw the virgin mary standing in our garden this was at blue robes at last crown and all and was sure it was she she loved the trees and the flowers and the clouds and the sound of the wind and was wont to cry over tales of poverty almost as readily as over poverty itself and to laugh over the de of all too souls a great hearted mother loving tender charitable who loved the ne er do well a little better than those staid of society who keep all laws her own children frequently complained of her errors and what mortal ever failed so to do and forgot their own beams to be annoyed by her but at that they loved her each and every one and could not stay away from her very long at a time so and alive she was i always say i know how great some souls can be because i know how splendid that of my mother was hail you wherever you are i in drawing near to i felt some of this as of a thousand other things which had been at that time and now were no more a a a we came in past the new section of a region of summer homes boat houses and scattered about a lake which in my day was entirely surrounded by woods green and still and thence along a street which i found out later was an extension of the very street on which we had originally lived only now very much lengthened to provide a road out to lined on either side by the most modern of cottages these new style summer things hung with and couch which one sees at all the modern american watering places it was too new and smart to suit me exactly and carried with it no suggestion of anything that i had been familiar with	43
a little farther on though it into something that i did know there were houses that looked as though they might have endured all of forty years and been the same ones i had known as the houses of some of my youthful companions i tried to find the home of brown for instance who was killed a few years later in a wreck in a holiday the west and of who used to hold my youthful fancy at a distance i could not find them there was a church also at one corner which i was almost sure i knew and then suddenly as we an other corner i recognized two one was that j of the principal lumber dealer of our town a man who with his son and daughter and a few other families constituted the and next to it the home of the former owner of the principal dry goods store very fine houses both of them and suggesting by their architecture and the arrangement of their grounds all that at one time i thought was perfect the rung of taste and respectability i in my day these were very close to the business heart but so was everything in then in the first and better one rather that of the of the two men for they were both very much alike in their physical details was of all things an show room an interesting establishment of its kind made possible no doubt by the presence of the prosperous summer resort we had just passed on the porch of this house and its once exclusive walk were exhibition and of the latest in the other house more precious to me still because of various memories was the present home of the local knights of an organization i surely need not describe in front of it hung a long perpendicular glass sign or box which could be lighted from within by the was merely k of p in years and years i cannot recall anything giving me a i was so surprised although i was fully prepared not to be not that i cared really whether these houses had changed or not i didn t but in one of them the present home of the k of p had lived in my time the family and this family was to me partly by its wealth this by the of youth and our personal poverty and partly by the presence of the youngest daughter who was a girl of about my own age possibly younger and at last who to me was so beautiful that i used to dream about her all the time as a matter of fact from my to my sixteenth year from the first time i saw her until a long time after i had seen her no more she was the one girl whose perfection i was sure of perhaps she would not be called beautiful by many no doubt if i could see her today she would not appeal to me at all but then chapter in and right here i began to on the mystery of association and contact the and of by which a sky or a scene becomes a delicious presence in the human brain or the human blood carried around for years in that mystic condition described as a memory and later transferred perhaps or not by conversation paint music or the written word to the brains of others there to be carried around again and possibly extended in ever and yet fading circles in accordance with that curious so called law is it a law of the of energy that sounds so fine that law of and yet it makes such short work of that other fine about the immortality of the soul how many impressions have you transferred in this way how much of you has gone from you in this way and died a thin and pathetic end i say if all go on being and as they go was an town for a youth of my temperament and age to have been brought to just at that time it was so young vigorous and hopeful i recall with never ending delight the intense sense of beauty its surrounding landscape gave me its three lakes the river which drained two of them the fine woods and roads and bathing places which lay in various directions people were always coming to to shoot ducks in the about or to fish or summer on the lakes its streets were with many trees they were still here in various places as we rode about today and not so much larger as i could see than when i was here years before the new in my day in standing in an open square and built of white was as imposing as ever and as we came upon it now turning a corner it seemed a really handsome building one of the few in towns of this size which i had seen which i could honestly say i liked the principal streets centre and south were better built if anything than in my time and actually wider than i had recalled them as being they were with a spirit not different to that which i had felt while living here only on the corner of centre and streets the principal street corner opposite this where once had stood a and next to that a small with an counter and next to that a and pool room the three in themselves the principal meeting or place for the idle young of all ages the clever workers school boys clerks and what not of the entire town and i presume county all this was entirely done away with and in its place was a stiff indifferent exclusive looking bank building of three stories in height which gave no least suggestion of an opportunity for such life	43
as we had known to exist here where do the boys meet now i asked myself and what boys i should like to see why this was the very and of all youthful joy and life in my day there is a kind of of generations which together the youths of one season those of a season or two elder and a season or two younger at this corner and in these places to say nothing of the village post office peter s shoe and shine parlor and moon s and s stores we of ages from fourteen to seventeen and eighteen never beyond nineteen or twenty knew only those who fell within these periods to be of years not much less nor more than these was the non of happy companionship to have a little money to be in the high or common school upper to have a little gaiety wit and intelligence to be able to think and a holiday talk of girls in a clever secretly nervous manner were almost as seriously essential a fellow by the name of we always called him ran this which was the most popular meeting place of all here beginning with the earliest days after our arrival i recognized a sympathetic atmosphere though i was somewhat too young to share in it my mother my father was still working in placed us in what was known as the west ward school it an old but very comfortable house we had the school yard and our yard touched here we dwelt for one year and part of another then moved directly across the street south into an old brick house known as the mansion one of the first as i understood it actually the first brick house to be built in the county years and years before here in these two houses we spent all the time that i was in from the frame or old grant house i each day to my studies of the seventh grade in the school next door from the house i accompanied my sister each day to the high school in the heart of the town not far from this court house where i completed my work in the eighth grade and first year high i have in spite of the fact that i have been myself all these years but a very poor conception of the type of youth i was and yet i love him dearly for one thing i know that he was a for another somewhat cowardly but still adventurous and willing on most occasions to take a reasonable chance for a third he was definitely enthusiastic about girls or beauty in the female form and what was more about beauty in all forms natural and otherwise what clouds meant to him what morning and evening skies what the murmur of the wind the beauty of small sails on our lakes birds a wing the color and and of things walking playing dreaming studying i had finally come to feel myself an part of the group of youths if not girls who about this in and this corner or as wc called him a and the son of the proprietor was a fairly sympathetic and interesting friend frank the brother of and two years older george reed since elevated to a circuit somewhere in the west or will who died a few years later of contracted by accidentally running a rusty nail into his foot harry subsequently a engineer who died in and was buried there and john and george sharp sons of the local flour mill owner and of my mother miller and various others were all of this group there were still others of an older group who belonged to the best families and somehow seemed to exchange here and in addition members of a younger group than ourselves who were to succeed us as class class at college my joy in this small world and these small groups of youths and what the future held in store for us was very great as i figured it out the whole duty of men was to grow get strong eat drink sleep get married have children and found a family and so the to and the earth even at this late date i was dull to such things as fame lives of artistic achievement the and of wealth and all such things although i knew from hearing talk that one must and did get rich eventually if one amounted to anything at all a perfect worldly wise but not truer really than any other but what a change was here not so much materially as have you ever picked up an empty shell at the end of the summer that pale transparent thing which once held a live and flying thing did it not bring with it a sense of and lapse the passing of all good things here was this attractive small town as brisk and gay as any other no doubt but to me now how empty here in these streets in the two houses in which we had lived in this corner and its i a holiday adjacent in the west ward and central high schools in the local catholic church where mass was said only once a month and in the post office swimming holes and on the lakes which surrounded us like gems had been spent the three happiest years of my boyhood y only the year before we came here i had been taken out of a catholic school at the public school was to me like a paradise after the stern of this other school education began to mean something to me i wanted to read and to know there was a lovely simplicity about the whole public school world which had nothing binding or driving about it the children were urged pleaded with not driven force	43
foliage of a later spring had married a lawyer from some other town so my gossip believed but later talking to another old resident and one who remembered me i was told that she had run away and turned up married to leave again and live in another place as for another beauty of my day it was said that she had been seen in hotels in and fort with some man not her husband the book man with whom i first talked volunteered this information but she s working now right here in he volunteered a little later if you know her you might go to see her i m sure she d be glad to see you she hasn t any relative around now you don t say i exclaimed astonished is she as good looking as ever no he replied with a faint of expression she s not beautiful any more she must be over forty but she s a very nice woman i see her around here occasionally she goes regularly to my church after here so long with this man having gone to seek something else i returned to the car and requested that we proceed out centre street to the second house in which we had lived the mansion that having been the most important and the more picturesque of the two on it i was again surprised and indeed given a sharp which the old house endured for hours and subsequently gave me a i headache it was not gone oh no not the formal walls but everything else was formerly in my day there had been a large grove of pines here with in one of which flourished five chestnut trees yielding us all the we could use in another a group of orchard trees apples the house itself stood on a slope which led down to a pond of considerable size on which of a moonlight night when our parents would not permit us to go farther we were wont to on the other side of this pond to the of it was a saw and furniture mill and about it on at least two sides were scattered upon of oak and other varieties of logs stored here their use in the mill jumping logs was a favorite sport of all us school boys from all parts of the town getting poles and leaping from pile to pile like flying it was a regular saturday morning and week day evening performance until our mother s or sister s or brother s warning voices could be heard calling us hence from my bedroom window on the second floor i could contemplate this pond and field hear the pleasant of the saw and of the mill and see the face of the town clock in the court house tower lighted at night and hear the voice of its bell the hours regularly day and night this house found and has retained a place in my affections which has never been disturbed by any other and i have lived in many it was so simple two stories on the north side three on the south where the hill declined sharply and containing rooms and two cellar rooms most convenient to our kitchen and it was as i have said a very old house even when we took it age had it considerably we had to replace certain window and panes and fix the chimney and patch the roof in several places where it the stairs being almost entirely surrounded by pines which sighed and whispered a holiday j s ally it was supposed to be damp but it was not in grey or rainy weather the aspect of the whole place was solemn historic in snowy or stormy weather it took on a kind of significance when the wind was high these thick tall trees and danced in a wild ecstasy when the snow was heavy they bent low with their majestic of white underneath them was a floor of soft brown pine needles as soft and brown as a rug we could gather basket upon basket of with which to start our morning fires in spring and summer these trees were full of birds the of particularly for these seemed to the place early in march and were inclined to fight others for possession nevertheless and other of the less feathers built their nests here i could always tell when spring was certainly at hand by the noise made by a tree full of newly arrived on some chill march morning though snow might still be about they were about on the bits of lawn we were able to maintain between groups of pines or on the branches of trees out their odd speech but now as we rolled out my familiar street i noted that the was no longer the furniture factory had been converted into an supply works the pond at the foot of our house was filled up not a trace of it remaining and all saw logs of course long since cleaned away worse and worse the pine grove had disappeared completely in the front or west part of our premises now stood two new houses of a commonplace character with considerable lawn space about them but not a tree and there had been so many fine ones the ground about the house proper was stripped bare save for one lone apple tree which stood near our north side door it was still vigorous and the ground under it was with bright red yellow which were being allowed to decay from the front door which once looked out upon a long and brick walk which ran between double v the old house rows of pine trees to our very distant gate all gone now a sign which read filed a path ran from this door southward over the very pond on which we	43
used to i near at hand was the old grant house in which we had lived before we moved into this one and it was still there only it had been moved over closer to the school and another house crowded in beside it on what was once our somewhat spacious lawn the old school lawn which once led down to the street that passed its gate was gone and instead this street came up to the school door meeting i the one which had formerly passed our house and ended at a giving on to the school lawn the school yard trees were gone and facing the new street made of the old school lawn were houses only our old house remained standing as it was on the right hand side i can only repeat that i was although i was saying to myself that i felt no least inter est in the visible scene i had lived here true but what of it there was this of it that somewhere down in myself far below my surface emotions and my reasoning faculties something was it was not i exactly it was like something else that had once been me and was still in me somewhere another person or soul that was but was now or shut away like a ghost in a sealed room i felt it the while i about examining this and that detail first i went up to the old house and walked about it trying to replace each detail as it was and as i did so restoring to my mind scene after scene and mood after mood of my younger days what becomes of old scenes and old moods in substance here had been the pump and here it was still thank heaven unchanged here under a wide armed fir which once stood here ed al and i had once taken turns stirring a huge iron pot full of apple butter which was boiling over pine twigs and and also gathered to keep it going here also to the right of the front door as you a holiday faced west was my favorite lounging place a strung between two trees where of a summer day or when the weather was favorable at any time i used to lie and read looking up between times through the branches of the trees to the sky overhead and wondering over and rejoicing in the beauty of life we were poor in the main and worse yet because of certain early errors of some of the children how many have i committed since and the foolish of my parents my father in particular we considered ourselves we hadn t done so well as some people we weren t rich some of us hadn t been good but in books and nature even at this age i managed to find solace for all our fancied or nearly all and though i grieved to think that we had so little of what seemed to give others so much pleasure and the right to and stare i also fancied that life must and probably did hold something better for me than was indicated here after i had made the rounds once sitting in the in his car and the house i knocked at the front door and received no answer finally i went inside and knocked at the first inside door which originally gave into our parlor the place looked really very like an isolated avenue new york no one answered but finally from what was formerly my sister s room on the second floor a and somewhat woman of plainly origin put her head over the of the handsome old carved staircase and called well i beg your pardon i said but once a number of years ago our family used to live in this house and i have come back to look it over can you tell me who it now well no one family has it now she replied pleasantly on hearing of my mission there are four families in it two on this floor up here one on that floor indicating and one in the the people on the first floor rent that front room to a the old house a i exclaimed to myself well there doesn t appear to be anyone at home here i said to her do you mind if i look at your rooms the room at the end of the hall there was once my sleeping room oh not at all certainly certainly come right up i mounted the stairs now than ever and entered a room which in our day seemed comparatively well furnished it was memorable to me because of a serious siege of illness which my sister had undergone there and because of several nights in which i had tried to sit up and keep watch once from this room at two in the morning i had issued forth to find our family physician an old grey bearded man who once i had knocked him up came down to his door lamp in hand a long white protecting his figure his whiskers spreading like a of wheat and demanded to know what i meant by disturbing him but doctor i said she s very sick she has a high fever she asked me to beg you to come right away a high fever wasn t i just there at four here i am an old man my sleep and i never get a decent night s rest it s always the way as though i didn t know suppose she has a little fever it won t hurt her but will you come doctor i pleaded knowing full well that he would although he had begun to close the door yes i ll come of course i ll come though i know it isn t a bit necessary you run on back i ll be there i	43
hurried away through the dark a little fearful of the silent streets and presently he came and at the of some people i always think of old dr as being one of the kindest old doctors that ever was but now this room instead of being a happy a holiday tion of bed room and study was a kitchen dining room and living room combined there were prints and pots and hung on the walls and no carpet and a big iron cook stove and a plain deal table and various chairs and boxes all very humble and old but the place was clean i was glad to see and the warm august sun was streaming through the west windows a cheering sight i missed the pine boughs outside and was just thinking u how different and asking myself what is time anyhow when there came up the stairs a of small but vigorous build he had on grey trousers and a blue shirt and carried a bucket and a the gentleman once lived in this house he s come back to see it explained his wife courteously well i suppose it s changed eh he replied oh very much i sighed i used to sleep in this end bedroom as a boy well you ll find another boy sleeping there if you look he said opening the door and as he did so i saw a small curly haired boy of four or five on his pillow his face turned away from the golden sun which poured into the room the beauty of it touched me deeply it brought back the lapse of time with a crash how nature its generations of new childhood against the of this old old world i thought our little day in the sun is so short our of the things of earth so brief and we fight over land and buildings and position to my host and hostess i said beautiful and then that thing in the sealed room began to cry and i hurried down the stairs chapter day dreams but i could not bear to tear myself away so swiftly i went round to the side door on the north side where often of a morning before going to school or of an afternoon after school or of a saturday or sunday i was wont to sit and rock and look out at the grass and trees as i see it now i must have been a very peculiar youth a for i loved to sit and dream all the while just outside this door was the one best patch of lawn we possessed very smooth and green in late october and early november days it was most wonderful to me to sit and look at the leaves falling from the trees and think on the spectacles of spring summer autumn and winter and wonder at the beauty and fragrance and hope of life everything was before me then that is the great riches and advantage of youth experience was still to come love travel knowledge friends the spectacle and stress of life as age on one says to one s self well i will never do that any more or that or that i did it once but now it would not be interesting the joy of its being a new thing is gone once and for all and so now as i looked at this door the thought of all this came upon me most forcibly i could actually see myself sitting there in an old rocking chair with my books on my knees waiting to hear the last school bell ring which would give me just fifteen minutes in which to get to school it was all so perfect knowledge was such a solution were they not always telling me so if one studied one could find out about life i thought somebody must know somebody did know weren t there books here on every hand and schools and teachers to teach us s a holiday and there was my mother slipping about in her old grey dress working for us for me and wishing so wistfully that life might do better for us all what a wonderful woman she was and how i really adored her only i think she never quite understood me or what i represented she was so truly earnest in her efforts for us all so eager for more life for each and every one i can see her now with her large round grey eyes her placid face her hopeful wistful tender expression dear dear soul sweet of dreams in my heart is an altar it is of and and set with precious stones before it hangs a light the lamp of memory and to that which holds your poet s soul i offer daily and and and as i write you must know as i write you must understand your shrine is ever fragrant here inside this door when i knocked i found a two room apartment not much better than that of my friends upstairs although the young married woman a mere girl who opened the door spoke english plainly she seemed of marked an american of the european peasant but with most of the old world worn off i had never been familiar with this type in my day there was a baby here and a of things colored and on the walls clap trap sold furniture and the like i made my very best bow which is never a very graceful one and explained why i was here the young woman was sympathetic wouldn t i come right in so this is the room i said standing in the first one my mother used to use this as a living room and this i walked into the next one looking south over the vanished pond to the tower as a sewing room	43
there was always such a fine morning light here yes there is she replied as i stood here a host of memories crowded upon me i might as well have been surrounded by spirits of day dreams an older day suggesting former things there sat my father by that window reading in the morning when he was not working the lives of the saints in the evening the daily news or die issued in or die issued in a hardy industrious man he was so religious that he was ridiculous to me even at that time he carried no weight with me though he had the power and authority to make me and nearly all the others obey i was doubtful as to just how far his temper and would carry him as for my mother she usually sat in a rocking chair close to this very north door which looked out on the grass to read her favorite were s magazine and s lady book or some of the but then not brilliant magazines s or s for my part i preferred truth or life or or judge which had been introduced into our family by my brother paul when we were living in at this time i had found scott and a score of others and had been reading reading reading swiftly and with enjoyment and u ben at least were a part of my mental from the public library i drew pope shakespeare and a dozen other english and american poets and brought them here i was so keenly interested in love at this time so with the of the ideal in the shape of physical beauty that any least passage in pope shakespeare held me as in a i loved the beauty of girls a face in its delicacy with pink cheeks light or dark eyes long lashes how i at the import of it me it set my brain and my blood i was living in some realm which had little if anything in common with the life about me and yet it had any picture or paragraph anywhere which referred to or hinted at love lifted me up into the i was like that in s poem to whom the o a holiday thought of how others was so moving i never tired of out and secretly reading and every thought and sentence that had a suggestive poetic turn in relation to love i can see some now preparing to rise and make a few remarks my comment is that i despise the frozen which would make a sin of sex imagine the torture the pains the miseries which have ensued since self has been raised to a virtue and a duty think of it healthy animals all of us or we ought to and it is a crime to think of love and sex chapter the kiss of fair standing in this room looking at the place where our open fire used to be but which was now closed up and a cooking stove and at the window where i often sat of a morning studying history physical geography geography and waiting for breakfast or if it were afternoon and after school for dinner i asked myself if i could would i restore it all and my answer was yes i have seen a great many things in my time done a lot of dull ones suffered intense and but all taken into account and notwithstanding i would gladly be born again and do it all over so much have i loved the life i have been permitted to live here at this time i was suffering from a boyish which made me afraid of every girl i was following this girl and that nearly every beautiful one of my own age with hungry eyes too timid to speak and yet as much as i longed and suffered on that account i now said to myself i would gladly have it all back i asked myself would i have mother and father and my sisters and brothers and all our old relatives and friends back as i knew them here and my answer was if it would not be an injustice to them and if i could be as i was then and stand in the same relationship yes life was intensely beautiful to me here for all its of money and clothes and friends it was nearly perfect i was all but too happy drunk with the spirit of all young and new things if i were to have even more pain than i had i think i would undertake it all gladly again the woman who permitted me to linger in these two a holiday rooms a few minutes informed me that the man who occupied the rooms just overhead those back of the day was the same whose sign filed from the front door it s mr and his boy he isn t in yet i think he usually comes in though about this time if you want to wait i m sure he ll be glad to let you see his rooms she spoke as if she knew mr and i had the feeling from her very assuring words that he must be a pleasant and character as i went out and around to the front door again to have one more look i saw an old man approaching across the pond carrying a small saw and i felt sure at sight of him that it was mr he was tail stoop shouldered a pleasant and even type whose cheeks and sunken eyes combined with a simple unaffected and somewhat tired manner seemed to suggest one to whom life had done much but whose courage gentleness and patience were not by any means as yet exhausted as he came up i observed this isn t mr is it yes sir he	43
smiled what can i do for you you live in the rear rooms upstairs i believe my family used to live here years ago i wonder if you would mind my looking in for a moment i merely want to see for old time s sake his face warmed come right up neighbor he volunteered i ll be only too glad to let you see you ll have to excuse the looks of the place my son and i live here alone bachelor style i ve been out in the country today with him hunting he s only fifteen years old we ascended the stairs and he unlocked the door to my old rooms and let me in the rooms where ed and i and or whichever other brother or sister happened to be here at the time were separately provided for it was a of three rooms one large and two small opening out on the north east and south windows to the garden below in summer and even in win the kiss of fair ter these rooms were always ideal warmed as they were by an open fire but in summer they were especially cool and refreshing there being an above which broke the heat delightful chambers in which to read or sleep we never had much furniture a blessing i take it because of the sense of space which results but what we had was comfortable enough and ample for all our needs in my day there was a bed and a dressing stand and mirror in each of these rooms and then chairs and in the larger room of the three quite double the size of the other two a square reading table of cheap oak by which i used to sit and work at times getting my lessons in the main it was a delight to sit here of a hot summer day looking out on the surrounding world and the trees and reading here i read shakespeare and a part of s history of england and s history of english literature and a part of s history of france i was not an reader just a slow idle rambling one but these rooms and these books and the thought of happy days to come made it all a wonder world to me we had enough to live on the problem of our lives was not as yet me i longed for a little money but not much and life life life all its brilliant was before me still to come it s not very tidy in here said my host as he opened the door take a chair neighbor we live as though we were out ever since my wife died and my oldest boy went into the navy i stopped trying to keep house much me and harry that s my youngest boy take pot luck here we do our own housekeeping i ve just suffered a great blow in the death of my oldest boy over at the when he left the navy he went into the army and they made him a captain and then when this war broke out his company was sent to the and he went along and has just been killed over there it s very sad i said looking about at the and furniture in one room i could see a a holiday gotten up and bed in this room was an iron cook stove pots and a litter of guns fishing poles and the like yes went on my host heavily and with a keen narrative sense which was very pleasing to listen to he was an extra fine boy really he here at the high school before he went into the and stood high in all his classes everybody liked him a nice young fellow if i do say it he arose crossed to an old yellow and took out a picture of a young fellow of about or in the uniform of an captain of the way he came to get into the army he went on looking fondly at the picture was he was over there with one of our ships and they took a liking to him and offered him more pay he was always a great fellow for and he used to send me pictures of himself as amateur champion of this or that ship they got his regiment over there on that and just it down i hear you know he said suddenly his voice beginning to tremble and break i just can t believe it i had a letter from him only three weeks ago saying how fine he was feeling and how interesting it all was and now he s dead a hot tear fell on a wrinkled hand yes i know i replied moved at last i had been so interested in my own connection with this place and the memories that were upon me that i had been overlooking his i now felt very sorry for him you know he persisted surveying me with aged and wrinkled eyes he wasn t just an ordinary boy i have letters here and now he around for something else from lord and the king and queen of england and the colonel of his regiment his voice broke completely but after a time he went on they all said what a fine fellow he was and what a loss his death is it s pretty hard when you re so fond of anybody the kiss of fair he stopped and i had difficulty in a tendency to cry a little myself when one gets so old and a boy is so precious he rubbed his nose with the back of his hand while i read the formal of colonel d s o of field earl k g secretary of state for war and of their	43
feeling which i had here today passed over this last it concerned only the particular days in which i was here the days of a new birth and freedom from restraint the weight of the lapse of time never before i think certainly not since my mother s death was i so impressed by the lapse of time the of things i was here years before and all that i saw then had body and substance a glaring material state here was some of the same material the same sunlight a few of the same people perhaps but time had away nearly all our characteristics that boy was his spiritual substance inside of me still unchanged merely by experience like the heart of a palm i could not even answer that to myself the soul within me could not say and at least of my allotted three score years and ten had gone down the street from this school about five doors was another house which was very familiar i went up the narrow brick walk and knocked a tall lean sallow creature of no particular figure but with piercing black eyes and long thin hands came to the door her hair once jet black was with grey she must have been of or forty when i knew her as a boy that made her or seventy now yet i could see no particular change so vigorous and energetic was she well ed she exclaimed or is it well of all things come right in here i m glad to see you land o goodness i and will be pleased to death i she called into an adjoining room come in here if here isn t or is it ed it s i quickly you know it s been so long since i ve seen you two i can scarcely tell you apart but i remember both as well as if it were yesterday and it s been let me see how long has it been nearly thirty years now hasn t it well of all things a holiday i do declare i and you re getting stout too and you ve grown to be over six feet at least well i do declare to think of your walking in on me like this just you sit right down here and make yourself comfortable well of all things by now i must have been smiling like a cat or one time carpenter and and still such for all i know strolled in it was late in the afternoon and he was lounging about in a white cotton shirt and grey trousers his down about his a pipe in his mouth and an evening paper in his hand well he called where do you come from i told him think of that now exclaimed mrs and a car and you came all the way through from new york well lots of them do that now bigger s went through from here to in a ford not long ago she i was fascinated by her vigor in age here she went on says he thinks we ought to get a machine one of these days but i don t know whether i could learn to run it and i m certain he couldn t her keen eyes devoured me and she smiled and so you re a writer well what do you write novels well some people condescend to call them that i answered i d hesitate to tell you what some others call them it s funny i never heard of any of em what s the names of some of em i enlightened her well now that s strange i never heard of a one of them i must get two or three and see how you write that s good of you i chuckled in the best of spirits you remember don t you he was the son of the justice of the peace here well he s on one of the papers now writing in some old haunts and old dreams way there s a woman over here in i knew the name of the coming now has made a big reputation for herself with her books they have whole of em here in the stores i see i read one of em they tell me she s worth four or five hundred thousand dollars by now you ve heard of her haven t you i she gave me her name yes i replied very humbly i have well i don t suppose you make that much anyhow do you she no i replied i m very sorry i don t i could see by the stress she laid on the four or five hundred thousand dollars and the of books in the local store that my type of would never appeal to her be that as it may we found other things equally interesting to both to talk about the town had changed she began to tell when and in what manner and why the old pond had been filled in why the leading banker whose wide house had been a subject of wonder and envy to me had moved it off the old property and built an even more home children and grand children had come to live with him i could see the old house in its new position on the other side of the pond a poor affair compared to what i thought it was why do our memories lie so could anyone or anything be a greater liar than the average memory when i came out of there after a time and returned to the car was still patiently making good use of his time whereas speed was sitting with his feet on a part of his engine cleaning a chain they were partly surrounded now by old mr he of my former room	43
who was the story of his son s death by a short dusty rather haired man who announced that he was the owner of the property which had formerly sheltered me and who by virtue of having cut down all the trees and built the two abominable houses in front seemed to think that ti a holiday he was entitled to my friendship and admiration a non which irritated me greatly by a small boy from somewhere in the vicinity who stood with his legs very far apart his hands in his pockets and merely stared and listened while mr related the moving details of his son s death and the of the campaign at the the owner of the houses in front kept trying to bits of his personal history as carpenter land and the like it was most entertaining i was just saying to your friend here said the latter who had never met me until this moment that if you re in town long enough you must come and take dinner with me we re just plain people but we can give you plenty to eat anyone who lived here as long ago as you did i felt no least desire to dine with him largely because he had cut down all the fine trees and built such houses he on in an impossible fashion i could see he was greatly impressed by our possession of this car and to have come all the way from new york i i wanted to him for having destroyed the trees the wretch i but i felt that we ought to be getting on here it was after five and i still had various things to see the old central high school where so long ago i finished my eighth grade common and my first year german and the lakes centre and where with many others i had been accustomed to row swim fish and camp the old swimming hole out in the three miles out i thought at least our old catholic church where i regularly went to confession and communion the woods where i had once found a dead lying face down self finished at the foot of a great oak and so on and so forth endless places indeed besides there were various people i wanted to see people who like the mrs could tell me much perhaps old haunts and old dreams alas for intentions and opportunities i suppose i might have spent days and but now that i was here and actually seeing things i did not feel inclined to do it what was there really to see i asked myself aside from the mere exterior or surface of things in one more hour i could examine or in perspective all of these things the lakes the school the swimming hole the church they were all near at hand unless i wanted to linger here for weeks did i really want to stay longer than this dusk was eager to get on when first he invited me he had planned no such extended tour as this and these were not his sacred scenes it was all very well but nevertheless we did as speed was wont to express it first to centre lake where many a moonlight when the ice was as thick as a beam and as smooth as glass ed and i along with a half hundred town boys and girls had to our hearts content or through the ice my how wonderful it was i to see them cutting ice on the lake with horses and fishing through holes only large enough to permit the of a small sized fish when one bit to my astonishment the waters of the lake had or diminished fully a fifth of its original and all the houses and which formerly stood close to its edge were now fully two hundred feet inland in addition all the and superiority which once invested this section were now gone the region of the summer at having this houses i was sure i would be able to recall should they chance to be here those of she of the fir tree kiss were not at all i knew they were here unchanged but i could not find them we went out past an old bridge to the of the town scarcely a half mile out and found to my astonishment that the stream it once the if you please and that once drained centre and a holiday lakes was now no more there was only a new stone here not the old iron and plank wagon bridge of my day and no water underneath it at all only a overgrown with marsh grass i the whole river a clear sandy stream was now gone due to the of the lake i suppose the swimming hole that i fancied must be all of two or three miles out was not more than one and it had disappeared of course with the rest there was not even a sign of the that led across the fields to it all was changed the wild rice fields that once stood about here for what seemed miles to me and in the july august and september in particular with thousands upon thousands of and were now well i could not see more than the outlines of the region i had known and i could not save in the way any of the boyish moods that held me at the time in my heart was a clear stream and a sandy bottom and a troop of half forgotten boys and birds and blue skies and men fishing by this bridge where was now this ed and i among them occasionally and here was nothing at all a changed world oh it s all gone i cried to	43
and he had no absolutely compelling work to do he would hunt in winter or or or go fishing or go down to the saloon to fiddle and sing or to a dance he was always driving off to some dance where he earned a few cents as a it was his great excuse and then coming home at two or three in the morning slightly and genial to relate his experiences to anyone who would listen he was not afraid of his wife or children exactly and yet he was not the master of them either and it used to me to have him called a and an old fool not by her so much as by them my own father was so strict so industrious so moral that i could scarcely believe my ears i used to love to walk west from on a fine summer s day when my mother would permit me and visit them walk the whole twelve miles once she me to for a cow which this family owned and for which we paid dollars ed and i drove the cow up from silver lake another time we bought three or four pigs and drove them ed and i the whole twelve miles on a hot july day great heavens what a time we had to get them to come along straight they ran into and woods wherever there was a fence down and we had to chase them until they fell exhausted too far gone to run us farther once they invaded a tangled low growing swamp to in the and we had to get down on our hands and knees our actually to see where they had gone we were not wearing shoes and stockings but we took off our trousers hung them over our arms bill and his brood and went in after them if we didn t beat those pigs when we got near enough say i we chased them for nearly a mile to and punish them and then we them along the rest of the way to get even i remember one hot july afternoon when i was visiting here how my aunt read my fortune in the grounds of a coffee cup it was after a one o clock dinner uncle bill and one or two of the other children had come and gone i was alone with her and we sat in the shade of an east porch comfortable in the afternoon i can see the wall of trees over the way even yet the bees about an adjacent trumpet vine the grass hot and dry but oh i so now let s see what it says about you in your cup and she took it and turned it round and round down three times then she looked into it and after a while began oh i see cities cities cities and great crowds and bridges and chimneys you are going to travel a long way all over the world perhaps and there are girls in your cup i i see their faces i thrilled at that you won t stay here long you ll be going soon out into the world do you want to travel she asked yes indeed i do i replied well you will it s all here her face was so grave she looked like one of the three so old so wrinkled so distant i thought nothing of her at the time but only of myself how beautiful would be that outside world and i would be going to it soon i walking up and down in it i oh wonderful wonderful wonderful when we were toward it had been my idea that we would visit silver lake and if i could find nothing more i could at least look at that body of water and the fields that surrounded it and the streets with which i had been fairly familiar the lake had seemed such a glorious thing to me in those days it was so and silent a high growth of trees sur a holiday rounded it like a wall its waters reflected in turn blue grey green black it was so still within its wall of trees that our voices echoed a fish leaping out of the water could be heard and the echo of the splash often i sat here gazing at the blue sky and the trees and waiting for a small red and green cork on my line to bob but my aunt and my uncle were long since dead i knew the children had gone where there was probably no least trace of them anywhere here and i was in no mood to hunt them down still in coming west i had the desire to come here to look to stand in some one of these old places and recover if i might a boyhood mood now as we were leaving however i was too physically tired and too to be very much interested my old home town had done for me completely the shadows of older days for one thing i had a headache which i was carefully concealing and a fine young into the bargain i was dreadfully depressed and gloomy but it was a fine warm night with a splendid half moon in the sky and delicious wood and field about such i is there anything more moving than the the of the good earth in summer as we silver lake as i thought we ran down into a valley where a small made its way and under the trees we encountered a woman coming from a shed which was close to the stream five children were with her the oldest boy packing the youngest an infant of two or three years it reminded me of all the country families i had known in	43
my time a typical mid western and american procession the mother a not woman of forty was clothed in a grey print with a to match and without shoes the children were all and ragged but as brown and healthy and fresh looking as young animals should be it so t central a farm and bill and his brood chanced that speed had to do something here look after the light or supply the with a draught and so we paused and the children gathered around us intensely curious ain t it a big one exclaimed the eldest look at the silver he was on the lamp i ll bet it ain t no bigger than that that went through here yesterday observed the second eldest what s a i inquired helplessly oh it s a car replied the eldest one of the boys one would want to look at beautiful really all the more so because of his torn shirt and trousers and his bare feet and head yes but what kind of car what make oh i can t think we see em around here now and then great big and now the next to the youngest a boy of five or six had come alongside where i was sitting and was looking up at me a fat little in so small you could have made them out of a good sized handkerchief there you are i said to him won t you come up and sit with me here such a nice big boy as you are he shook his head and backed away a little he said after a pause why not i a little for i wanted him to come and sit with me i can t he replied me solemnly i m oh no i said not afraid of me surely don t you know that no one would think of a little boy like you not a person in all the world won t you come now and sit with me it s so nice up here i held out my arms i m he repeated oh no i insisted you mustn t say that not of me you couldn t be can t you see how much i like a holiday you see here and i reached into my pocket i have and and i don t know what all won t you come now please do go on called a brother of go on this brother came around then and tried to persuade him all the while he was staring at me doubtfully his eyes getting very round but finally he ventured a step forward and i picked him up and him in my arms there now i said now you see you re not afraid of me are you up here in the nice big car and now here s your other brother come to sit beside us this because the next oldest had in and here s a and here s a and who s he sitting up in my lap i ain t f ami indeed not i returned big boys like you are not afraid of anything and now here s a fine big i went on because he had ignored the previous offer and here s a card isn t that nice he replied you mean you don t like it don t want it he repeated and why not my mother won t let me your mother won t let you take any money is that right i asked of the eldest boy rather taken by the morals of this group they were so orderly and sweet that s right he replied she won t let us well now i wouldn t have you do anything to mother not for worlds but i m sorry just the same observing her in the distance she was bending over several full milk even as i looked she picked them up and came toward us well anyhow you can take a card can t you i bill and his brood continued and i gave each several pictures of scenes they won t hurt will they answered the little one taking them as the mother us i suffered a keen of the mood that used to grip me when my mother would go out of an evening like this to milk or walk about the garden or look after the roses at and ed and and i would follow her she was so dear and gentle under the trees or about our lawn we would follow her and here under these trees in the light of this clear moon the smell of cattle and wild flowers about my mother came back and took me by the hand i held her skirt and rubbed against her legs self she was all in all to us in those years the whole world my one refuge and strength how is the power that makes mothers and mothers love soon we were off again under the shade of overhanging trees or out in the open between level fields and after racing about fourteen miles or we discovered that we were not near silver lake any more at all had passed it by seven miles or so we were really within six miles of north a place where a half uncle of mine had once lived a greedy well meaning and his wife he had a very large farm here one of the best and was noted for the amount of hay and corn he raised and the fine cattle he kept my brother shortly after the family s fortune had come to its worst far back in had been sent up here by mother to work and board she was very at the time at her wits	43
ends and her brood was large so here he had come had been reasonably well received by this stern pair and had finally become so much of a favorite that they wanted to adopt him incidentally he became very vigorous physically a perfect little giant with swelling and and a desire to exhibit his strength by lifting everybody and everything a trait which my sister soon out of him when we had finally settled in a holiday in for a year or two he rejoined us and would not return to his foster parents they begged him but the family atmosphere at and poverty stricken as it was proved too much for him he preferred after a time to follow us to and eventually to like all the rest of us he was with the charm of my mother no one of us could resist her she was too wonderful and now as we this city i was thinking of all this and where al might be now i had not heard from him in years and how my half uncle had really lived i had never seen him and what my mother would think if she could follow this with her eyes but also my head was feeling as though it might break open and my eyes ached and burned dreadfully i wanted to go back to and stay there for a while not the new as i had just seen it but the old i wanted to see my mother and ed and as we were then not now and i couldn t we rolled into this other town which i had never seen before and having found the one hotel carried in our v bags and engaged our rooms outside and other insects were there was a fine clean with hot and cold water at hand but i was too flat for that i wished so much that i was younger and not so sick just now i could think of nothing but to and sleep i wanted to forget as quickly as possible and while and speed forth to find something to eat i slipped between the sheets and tried to rest in about an hour or less i slept a deep sleep and the next morning on opening my eyes i heard a wood dove outside my window and some and two neighbor women in good old style over a back fence and then i felt more at ease a little wistful but happy chapter in the belt the centre of is a region of calm and simplicity to a large extent as i have often felt by the stormy emotions and which so often affect other parts of america and the world it is a region of smooth and fertile soil small but comfortable homes large grey or red the american type of the american the american car a happy land of churches sunday schools public schools and a general faith in god and humanity as laid down by the or the or the church and by the ten which is at once and yet disturbing this day as we through the winter home of s and s combined shows b where the world very nearly came to an end for speed and where james once worked in a s shop i understood he had no love for my work and so on through an old settlement and to where lives and really to for is little more than a of the former i was more and more struck with the facts as i have them here certain parts of the world are always in turmoil across the of or the dry sands of egypt blow winds cold or hot which make of the people restless wandering tribes to peaceful holland and the of germany the plains of france and italy and indeed all the region of the ancient world come storms of ambition or hate which make of those old burying grounds not only of individual souls but of races here in america we have already a holiday had proof that certain sections of our land are destined apparently to lives the atlantic and pacific various parts of the south and the west and the where conditions appear to the mood from or or san one may expect a giant labor war or social of any kind from boston or or new new religious movements may come and have new york and can and have contributed vast political this is even true of its next door neighbor but lies in between all this simple not indifferent but a happy land of farms and simple which can scarcely be said to have worked any harm to any man its largest cities have grown in an and al most way its largest to american life so far have been a mildly love literature of sorts and an uncertain political vote anyone could look at these towns all that we saw and be sure that the natives were of an orderly saving genial and religious turn i never saw small towns anywhere nor more imposing churches and public buildings nor fewer nor streets nor better roads a happy land truly where the local papers give large and serious attention to the most of social doings and the farmers take good care that all their land is under cultivation and well looked after as we were passing through for instance or was it we came upon a very neat and pleasing church and churchyard the front lawn of which an old man of a very energetic and respectable appearance quite your first citizen type was with a why should a man of that character be doing that work this do you suppose i inquired of to get to heaven of course can t you see heaven in	43
the belt is a literal material thing to him it s like this church building and its grass the closer he can identify himself with that here the nearer he will come to walking into his heaven there i ve noticed at home that the more prosperous and well to do farmers are usually the leaders in the church they apply the same rules of getting on in religion that they do to their business it is all a phase of the instinct of a man to provide for himself and his family i tell you these people expect to find more or less a of what they have here with all the ills and taken out and all the of their fancy such as it is added i felt as i thought of that old man that this was true he reminded me of my father to whom to do the most work about a catholic church was an honor such as carrying in wood building a fire and the like you were nearer god and the angels for doing it actually you were just outside the gates and if one could only die in a church the gates would open and there you would be inside truly this day of riding south after my afternoon in was one of the most pleasant of any that had come to me now that i had recovered from my mood of the night before a and disturbance which quite did for me i was in a very cheerful frame of mind long before either or speed had risen this morning they had spent the evening looking around the town i was up had a cold bath and had written various letters and visited the post office and studied the town in general it was a morning partly grey with a faint tint of pink in the east when i first looked out and such an array of house on five telegraph or wires over the way as i had not seen in a long time birds are odd creatures their without speech always me these ranged as they were on the different wires looked exactly like the notes of a complicated and difficult so much so that i said to a passing citizen who seemed to show an interest now a holiday if you had a piano or an organ just how would you play that he looked up at the wires which a wave of my hand indicated then at me he was a man of over forty who looked as though he might be a or they do look like notes don t they he agreed we both smiled and then he added now you make me wonder and so we parted towns of this size particularly in the middle west and i can scarcely say why have an intense literary and artistic interest for me whether it is because of a certain comic which some of their characters or an seriousness entirely out of proportion to the seeming import of events here or whether one senses a flow of secret and desires or perhaps by or or weaknesses or a lightness and simplicity of character due to the soil and the air i do not know but it is so in this region i am always stirred or appealed to by something which i cannot quite explain the air seems lighter the soil more grateful a sense of something delicately and gracefully romantic is abroad like children they are these people so often concerned with little things which do not matter at all neighborhood opinions neighborhood desires neighborhood failures and which a little more mind could solve or so readily whenever i see a town of this size in i think of our family and its relation to one or many like it my mother and sisters and brothers suffered so much from conventional local notions they made such a pathetic struggle to rid themselves of minor local and did they succeed not quite who does small life one like a sea we swim in it whether we will or no in high halls somewhere are tremendous of gods and but they will not admit us and will not suffer the feeble judgments of humble man and in the belt so here we sit and slave and are weary insects with an appointed task north like all the small towns appealed to me on the very grounds i have as i went up the street this early morning with my letters i encountered an old man evidently a citizen of importance present or past being led down by his daughter i took her to be the latter was a thin person who looked endless devotion a pathetic yearning solicitude for this man he was blind and yet quite an impressive figure large as to stomach a broad well face somewhat like that of the late henry ward long snow white hair a silk hat a swinging coat of a shirt ornamented with a black string tie and an ivory headed cane under his arm were papers and books his eyes were fixed on nothing straight ahead to me he looked like a lawyer or judge or or a local big wig of some kind yet stricken in this most pathetic of all ways the girl who was with him was so intent on his welfare she was his eyes his ears his voice really it was wonderful the resignation and self of her expression it was quite moving who is that man i asked of a clerk putting out a barrel of potatoes that oh that s judge or he was judge he s a lawyer now for the a railroad that runs through here he used to be judge of the circuit court i watched	43
fire which threatened to burn the car they detected it in time by smelling burning rubber incidentally it had started to rain and they had to go back to the local for i bet it rains tomorrow speed had observed as he heard s story why i asked there s a ring around the moon that always means rain does it i he did not answer direct but concluded i bet it will be by tomorrow noon just as we were leaving town and before we reached a bridge which the river at this place i detected the of burning rubber and called s attention to it at the same time speed smelt it too and stopped the car we got out and made a search sure enough a rubber covering protecting and separating some wires which joined in a box was on fire and the smoke was making a fine we put it out but as we did so observed that s funny what i inquired why this he replied at this place last year in a rain this very spot nearly we got out because we burning rubber and put out a fire in this same box the mystery of coincidence that is odd i said and then i began to think of my own experiences in this line and the fact that so often things have repeated themselves in my life in little and in big in such a curious way once as i told now the only other time in fact that i took an important trip in this way a certain englishman whom i had not seen in years burst in upon me with a proposition that i go to england and europe with him offering to see that the money for the trip was raised and without my turning a hand in the matter and quite in the same way only a week before himself had burst in upon me with a similar proposition which i had accepted another time at the opening of a critical period of my life i was compelled to undergo an operation in the process of which under certain characters appeared to me acting in a particular way and saying various things to me which impressed me greatly at the time and later at another critical period when strangely enough i was much against my wishes another operation these same characters appeared to me and said much the same things in the same way one of the commonest of my experiences as i now told had been a thing like this i would be walking along thinking of nothing in particular when some person male or female about whom i cared nothing would appear stop me and chat about nothing in particular let us say he or she carried a book or a green or a yellow stick and congratulated me upon or complained to me concerning something i had or had not done as for my part at that particular moment i might be trying to solve some problem in relation to fiction or a problem it would be or beautifully clear or a year or two later under almost exactly the same circumstances when i would be trying to solve a similar problem in rain or snow or clear weather as the case might be i would meet the same person dressed almost as before carrying a book or a cane or green and we would a holiday talk about nothing in particular and i would say to myself after he or she were gone perhaps why last year at just about this place when i was thinking of just some such problem as this i met this same person looking about like this i am not attempting to concerning this i am merely stating a fact this system of applies not only to situations of this kind but to many others the appearance of a certain person in my life has always been by a number of who came forward passed sometimes touching my elbow and frequently looking at me in a solemn manner as though some force of which they were the tool were saying to me see here is the sign for a period of over fifteen years in my life at the approach of every marked change usually before i have passed from an old set of surroundings to a new i have met a certain kindly little jew always the same jew who has greeted me most warmly held my hand affectionately for a few moments and wished me well i have never known him any more intimately than that our friendship began at a at a time when i was quite ill thereafter my life changed and i was much better since then as i say always at the critical moment he has never failed i have met him in new york the south in trains on it is always the same only the other day after an absence of three years i saw him again i am not i am stating facts i have a feeling at times as i say that life is nothing but a repetition of very old circumstances and that we are practically immortal only not very conscious of it going south from north we had another in the right rear tire and in connection with this there was a discussion which may relate itself to what i have just been saying or it may not the reader may recall that between and in we had had two in the mystery of coincidence this same right rear wheel or tire and in connection with the last of these two just east of had told me that ever since he had had the car in fact all the trouble had been in the same right rear wheel and that being a good mystic he had finally to realize	43
for himself that there was nothing the matter with the perfect idea of this car as it existed before it was built or in other words its unity and hence that there couldn t be anything wrong with this right rear wheel you see after that once this had been clearly realized by him there had been no more trouble of any kind in connection with this particular quarter or wheel until this particular trip began now see here speed i heard him say on this particular occasion here s a fact i want you to get we ll have to get that right hand tire off our minds this car is an of a perfect idea an idea that existed clear and sound before this car was ever built there is nothing wrong with that idea or that tire it can t be injured it is in existence outside this car and they are building other cars according to it right now this car is as perfect as that idea it s a whole a it s nothing can happen to it it can t be injured do you get me now you re going to think that and we re not going to have any trouble we re going to enjoy this trip speed looked at and i felt as though something had definitely been put over as we say just what i am not quite able to explain myself anyhow we had no more tire trouble of any kind until just as we were or about half way between the two towns then came the significant whistle and we climbed down there you have it exclaimed you shouldn t have knocked on wood speed what was that i inquired interested well you remember where we had the last don t you yes i said east of a holiday we haven t had any trouble since have we not a bit last night after you had gone to bed speed and i went to a as we were eating i said we ve had some great tire luck haven t we perhaps i shouldn t have thought of it as luck anyhow he said c yes but we re not home yet and he knocked on wood i said you shouldn t knock on wood that s a confession of lack of understanding it s a in the perfect idea of the car we re likely to have a in the morning and here it is he looked at me and smiled what is this i said a real trip or an illusion he smiled again it s a real trip but it wants to be as perfect as the idea of it i felt my conception of a solid earth begin to spin a little but i said nothing more anyhow the wheel was fixed as well as the idea of it and we didn t have any more tire trouble this side of where speed left us going south from north we came to a place about as handsome as if not more so with various charming new buildings it was on the river the river about which my brother paul once composed the song entitled on the banks of the far away i wrote the first verse and chorus and here we found a picture on sale which celebrated this fact on the banks of the far away it said under a highly colored scene of some trees hanging over the stream as my brother paul was very proud of his of this song i was glad from here since it was and we were in a hurry to reach before dark we west to about twenty miles the cover up and the storm curtains on for we were in a driving rain i could not help noting how flat was in this region how the mystery of coincidence numerous were the and ash groves how good the roads and how the whole distant scene unlike there was no sense here of a struggle between manufacture and trade and a more or less j simple country life the farmers had it all or nearly so the rural homes were most of them substantial if not interesting to look upon and the small towns charming there were no great factory chimneys cutting the sky in every direction as farther east but instead and and red or grey and cows or horses or sheep in the fields at i asked a little girl who worked in the five and ten cent store if she liked living in like it this old town i should say not why not i replied well you ought to live here for a while and you d soon find out it s all right to go through in a machine i suppose well where would you rather be if not here i questioned oh what s the use wishing lots of places she replied and as if desiring to end the vain discussion it never does me any good to wish she walked off to wait upon another customer and i departed south of were several county seats and towns of small size which we might have visited had we chosen to take the time but aside from passing through in order to see an enormous works with which speed had formerly been connected and from whence earlier in his life he had attempted to flee at the approach of the end of all things we avoided all these towns it was too hard and there would have been no pleasure in stopping at which appeared presently out of a grey mist and across a middle distance of wet green grass and small far scattered trees we had a most interesting experience we met the man who made the first in america and saw his factory the a holiday company of which he was president and principal	43
and which was at the time we were there nearly three thousand men and turning out over two thousand cars a year nearly a car apiece for every man and woman in the place i saw no children employed the history of this man as to me beforehand by and speed was most interesting years before he had been a using a light in this very vicinity later he had interested himself in of the gas and steam variety and had entered upon the manufacture of them still later when the problem of direct was solved in france and the began to appear abroad he in with a man named decided to attempt to a car here which would avoid all the french alone really without any aid from so to speak solved the problem at least in part it was claimed later and no doubt it was true that he along with many other attempting to perfect an american car which would avoid french had merely not improved upon the french idea of direct at any rate he was along with others but the american eventually beat the french and remained in possession of their designs of all of these was the first american to put an american in the field we were shown over his factory before meeting him however and a fascinating spectacle it proved we arrived in a driving rain with the clouds so thick and low that you would have thought it dusk all the lights in the great concern were glowing as though it were night a friendly of smoke and hot mould sand and and and ground metal the air for blocks around inside were great rooms three to four hundred feet long all of a hundred feet wide and over top and sides for light in which were the mystery of coincidence of men great companies of them in and their faces and hands and hair stained brown or black with oil and smoke their eyes alight with that keen interest which the intelligent workman always has in his work i never saw so many and parts of in all my life it was interesting to look at whole rooms piled high with carriage frames or or tops or bodies i never imagined that there were so many processes through which all parts of a machine have to be put to perfect them or that literally thousands of men do some one little thing to every machine turned out we stood and gazed at men who were the sides of bodies with their dipping them in oil and so rubbing down certain rough places or at others hovering over attached in rows to and being driven at an enormous rate of speed for days at a time without ever stopping to test their and speed capacity it was interesting to see these test men listening carefully for any sound or flash however slight which might indicate an error we pay very little comparatively for what we buy considering the amount of time spent by thousands in supplying our wants and there were other chambers where small steel or brass or copper parts were being turned out by the thousand men hovering over giant machines so intricate in their motions that i was quite lost and could only develop a headache thinking about them afterward actually life loses itself at every turn for the individual in just such a you gaze but you never see more than a very little of what is going on about you if we could see not only all the processes that are at work simultaneously everywhere supplying us with what we use here but in addition only a that nearest us of the and of the universe what a stricken state would we be in actually unless we were protected by lack of capacity for comprehension i should a holiday think one might go mad the thunder the speed the light the flashes of all the process how they would and perhaps for try as we will without a tremendous of the reasoning faculty we can never comprehend vast amazing processes cover or us at every turn and we never know like the blind we walk our hands out before us feeling our way like we turn about the flame of human mystery and never learn until we are burned and not then not even a little after the factory we came into the presence of the man who had built up all this enterprise he was quite with a round like body and a big round head which looked as though it might contain a very solid mass of useful brains he had the air of one who has met thousands a cordial experienced man of wealth i his body and his mind to be in no very healthy condition however and he looked quite sickly and he had a habit i observed contracted no doubt through years of meditation and of folding both arms over his stout chest and then lifting one or the other and supporting his head with it as though it might fall over too far if he did not he had grey blue eyes the eyes of the and and like all strong men a certain and ease very i should think to anyone compelled or desiring to converse with him the story he told us of how he came to build the first in america was most interesting had seemed to be greatly interested to discover whether as an this man had borrowed the all important idea of from either or two who in the early stages of the had solved this problem for themselves in slightly different ways or whether he had worked out for himself an entirely independent scheme of and control went after him on this but he could get nothing very the mystery of coincidence satisfactory the man and courteous explained	43
in a way that he had made use of two and then toward the end of the interview when remarked you know of course that the idea of was worked out some time before the year built his first car he replied you have to give those fellows credit for a great deal a very indefinite answer as you see but to me the man was fascinating as a man and i was pleased to hear him explain anything he would i was already interested in gas and steam engines and of this type he said and i just couldn t keep out of it in other words you put an old idea into a new form i suggested just that tell me who bought your first car i inquired a doctor up in he smiled he has it yet of course you thought you could make money out of it well i built my first car with the idea of having one for myself really i have a turn for i borrowed enough money to begin at once took in a partner and then what well the machine was a success we just grew in a few months we were behind on our orders and always have been since he appeared too tired and weary to be at the head of any business at this time yet he went on telling us a little of his trade struggles and what he thought of the future of the in connection with farming and the like then he suddenly changed to another subject but fm not nearly so interested in as i was he observed at the same time into his pocket and producing what looked like a silver knife my son and i he waved an hand a holiday toward an adjoining room built of red brick and which seemed to be flickering as to its walls with the flame reflections of small furnace fires have invented a thing which we call which is five hundred times harder than steel and cuts steel just as you would cut wood with an ordinary knife well how did you invent that i asked we had need of something of that kind here and my son and i invented it you just decided what to do did you but why did you call it i persisted after star because the metal turned out to be so bright it has some steel in it too he shifted his arms sank his head into the palm of his left hand and gazed at me solemnly all the processes are he added with a kind of unconscious caution which amused me i felt as though he imagined we were looking too curiously into the where the processes were still going on and might desire to steal his ideas there ought to be a real fortune in that i said yes he replied with a kind of lust for money showing in his face although he was already comfortably rich and daily growing richer as well as we re already behind on our orders everybody wants to see it we can use a lot ourselves if we can just make it fast enough there was a time in my life when i would have envied a man of this type or his son the mere possession of money seemed such an important thing to me later on it became the sign manual of certain of thought which at first irritated and then bored me now i can scarcely endure the presence of a mind that sees something in money as money the mere possession of it if the mind does not race on to or more important things than money can buy it has no import to the world no more at least than is involved in the of a we must have and and and but if we were never to have more than these or anything different or new i chapter the folks at the run to s home was not long say forty miles and we made it in a and were silent most of the way it was so dark and damp and gloomy that no one seemed to want to talk and yet i took a melancholy comfort in considering how absolutely cheerless the day was i could not help reflecting as we sped along how at its worst life persistently charm so that if one were compelled to live always in so gloomy a world one would shortly become to it or the race would and think nothing of it once speed called my attention to a group of cattle with their heads to wind and rain and asked do you know why they stand that way no i replied well all animals turn their fighting end to any trouble if those were horses now their would be to the rain i see i said they fight with their heels like some soldiers said in another place we saw another great stretch of woods silvery in the rain and commented on the characteristic presence of these groves everywhere in there was one near his home he said and there had been one in every town i had ever lived in in this state at dusk we reached only six miles from his home where the lived this was one of those typical community towns with cottages of grey white wood and rather stately trees in orderly rows because of a difficulty here with one of a holiday the lamps which would not light we had to stop a while until it grew quite dark a lost chicken ran crying out of a neighboring and we it back towards its supposed home wondering whether the rain and wind or some night would not kill it it was very much excited running and constantly a fine j call to any	43
fox or chickens are so stupid presently we came into in the night and rain but there being few lights i could not make out anything the car turned into a yard somewhere and stopped at a side door or porch we got out and a little woman grey and small cheerful and affectionate as became a mother came out and greeted us kissing what kept you so long she asked in a familiar fashion we thought you were going to get here by noon so did we replied i you though yes i know your father s gone to bed he stayed up as long as he could come right in here please she said to me leading the way while stopped to search the car i followed damp and heavy wondering if the house would be as cheerful as i hoped it was it was the usual american small town home built with the number of rooms supposed to be appropriate for a given number of people or according to your station in life a middle class family of some means i believe is supposed to have a house containing ten or twelve rooms whether they need them or not a as i could see ran about two sides and there was a lawn with trees within the were substantial after their kind good middle west furniture s at the back as i discovered later was appointed there were some of his early drawings on the wall which love had framed and preserved they reminded me of my family s interest in me a tall slim dark girl but with glistening black eyes came in and greeted me she was a sister the folks at i understood a by trade taking her here as she came she called to another girl who would not come why i could not at first comprehend this was a niece to whom more than once on the way out had referred as being endowed and as possessing what or refer to as an old soul she was so intelligent he could not explain her natural wisdom save on the ground of her having lived before some people just insist on being shy said the sister they are so she showed me to my room and then went off to help get us something to eat alone i examined my surroundings my things opened a double handful of mail and then came down and sat with the mother and sister at supper it being late bacon and eggs were our portion and some cake a typical late provision for anyone in america i wish i might accurately in all its simplicity and the atmosphere i found here this house was so still and the town mrs s mother seemed so essentially the middle west even mother with convictions and yet a genial of much making the best of a difficult world was written all over the place there was a little boy here adopted from somewhere because his parents were dead who seemed fond of as indeed seemed of him i had had stories of this boy all the way out and how through him was gaining or perhaps i had better say a knowledge of the and governing rules of boy land it was amusing to see them together now the boy with sharp bird like eyes devouring every detail of his older friend s appearance and character amused meditative trying to make the most and best of all the opportunities of life we sat in the front room or parlor and listened to the rendering pieces by and james and and and fields and o a holiday the usual of the sublime and the ridiculous found in so many musical had told me that of late only in the last two or three years his father had begun to imagine that there might or must be in music something which would explain the world s to him curious interest in it i hitherto on his farm where there had been none he had at it the next morning i arose early as i eight o clock and going out on the front porch encountered an old man who looked very much like the last portraits of the late general and who seemed very much what he was or had been a soldier and then a farmer now he was all and bent his face was with a short grey beard the eyes were rather small and brown and looked he got up with difficulty a cane assisting him and offered me a withered hand i felt sympathy for all age well got here did he inquired shortly there was a about his voice which i liked he seemed very self sufficient genial and shrewd for all his years we expected last night i couldn t wait up though i did stay up till eight that s pretty late for me usually go to bed at seven have a nice trip we sat down and i told him his eyes went over me like a swift feeling hand well you re just the man i want to talk to he said with a kind of crude eagerness you from new york state yes tells me that governor has got in bad refusing to pardon that fellow he says he thinks it will hurt him what do you think no i replied i think not i believe it will help him if he doesn t injure himself in any other way that s what i think he exclaimed with a kind of the folks at defiant chuckle i never did think he knew what he was talking about on our way west as i have indicated had been telling me much of his father s and his own they were types as i judged not much calculated either to understand or	43
in you may cry the power which rules me is a devil but you are not a devil nor does it necessarily follow that the thing that makes you is one you really could not help that particular if you would so over us may be this which is as helpless in regard to us as we are in regard to our it is a product of something else still larger above it there is no use trying to find out what that is let the call it god if he will or the sufferer a devil do you bring all your fortitude and courage to bear and do all that you can to keep yourself busy serenely employed there is no other answer get all you can that will make you or others happy think as seriously as you may count the folks at all the costs and all the dangers or don t count them just as you will but live as fully and as you can if in spite of cross currents of mood and passion you can make any other or others happy do so it will be hard at best but strive to be employed it is the only against the evil of too much thought ti li v vi t r v t h t x r v f a t i i t v chapter an village while we were sitting on the s father and myself speed came by on his way down town and mr having gathered a sense of approval perhaps for the document from my attitude drew it out and showed it to him exclaimed speed after reading it i must get some of those soon after came out and seeing the document and reading it seemed troubled over the fact that his father should be interested in such a thing i think he felt that it threw an unsatisfactory light on his or that i not understanding might think so but after i made it clear that it was more or less of a bit of humor to me he became more cheerful a little while thereafter we went and i to inspect the village and to see some of those peculiar natives of whom he had been talking i think he must have a much better eye for rural and types and their than i have for i failed to gather any of those gay which somehow he had made me feel were there little things in rural life which probably attract and hold his attention entirely escape me as for instance the gaunt and old gentleman looking over his glasses into the troublesome works of his very small ford my own powers of observation in that direction and my delight in them are limited to a considerable extent by my sense of drama is a thing dramatic or at least so if not it is apt to lose interest for me as for he was never weary of pointing out little things and i enjoyed almost more of what was to be seen here and elsewhere o an village because of his powers of indication than from my own observation thus on the way west he had been telling me of one man who was almost always more or less sick or thought he was because through one of the of he discovered that one got more attention if not sympathy being sick than well and when we came to the door here he was before it complaining of a pain in his chest i it seemed to me in looking at him that by a process of thinking if that were really true he had made himself ill he looked very poorly as be expressed it and as though he might readily sink into a destructive illness yet assured me that there bad really been nothing the matter with him to begin with but that jealousy of sympathy bestowed upon a the one who was to run our car for us south from here bad caused him to resort to this method of getting some for himself i also there was another young man who had been described to me as a village wag one of three or four who were certain to amuse me but when he now came forward to greet me and i was told that this was the person i was not very much interested he was of the type that has learned to consider himself humorous necessarily so with a reputation for humor to sustain i must be witty says such a one to himself and so the eye is always cocked the tongue or body set for a comic remark or movement the stranger feels obliged by the very atmosphere which goes with such a person to smile as who should say something funny is soon to be said i did not hear anything very humorous said however incidentally i also met the crippled boy who was to be our south from this point he was a youth in whose career seemed greatly interested largely i think because other people of the village were inclined to be indifferent to or make sport of him the boy was very bright and of a decidedly determined and nature although both legs i v a holiday below the but not below the ankles were practically useless due to a bout and fall he managed with the aid of a pair of to get about with considerable ease and speed there was no least trace of weakness or complaint or need of sympathy in his manner indeed he seemed more self and than most of the other people i met here how so crippled he would manage	43
to run the car puzzled me s father had already expressed himself to me as opposed to the idea i can t understand what he sees in that fellow he said to me early this morning he s a reckless little devil and i don t think he really knows anything about machinery frank will stick to him though if it were my machine i wouldn t have him near it now that i looked at though i felt that he had so much courage and hope and such an look in his eyes that i quite envied him he was assistant mail clerk or something at the post office and when i came up and had been introduced through the window he promptly handed me out several letters when i told what his father had said he merely smiled the old man is always talking like that he said s all right he s better than speed it takes a certain slow moving type of intellect to enjoy or endure life in a small country town to be a doctor in a place like this or a lawyer or a merchant i or a clerk in the main in spite of many preliminary descriptions did not interest me as much as i thought it would or might it was interesting as one says with the wave of a hand or a shrug of the shoulders of more im port to me was the household and the peculiar girl who would not come out to greet me at first and s father and mother and sister this day passed rather reading proofs which had been sent me and listening to passing expresses which tore through here northward and southward to and from only fifteen miles away never even hesitating as n an village the negro said and listening to the on which i put all the records i could find three by james little the man and my grandfather captured my fancy so strongly that i spent several hours just listening to them over and over they were so delightful then i would vary my diet with and during the afternoon and i went for a walk in a woods a and oak grove the occupying one section and the oaks another truly grey and described this day it was but in addition the clouds hung so low and thick and dark that they were almost in their sense of and it was warm and damp quite like a bath i had arrayed myself in great length rubber boots borrowed from s father and my and a worthless old cap so that i was independent of the long dripping wet grass and the frequent pools of water i know what i ll do i exclaimed suddenly i ll go in swimming it s just the day fine i when we reached the stream in the depth of the woods i was even more enchanted with the idea the leafy depth of the hollow was so dark and wet the water so and yellow a veritable made so by the heavy rains everywhere about would not come in with me instead he stood on the shore and told me local tales of and deaths and and joys to many my problem was how to without getting my clothes wet and my feet so muddy when i came out that i could not put on my boots by thought i solved it i took off my spread it down on the shore as a floor then took off my boots and stood on it dry and clean under one corner of it i tucked all my clothes to protect them from the rain then naked i plunged into the boiling flood it nearly swept me away so terrific was the of the waters i caught a branch hanging low and with my feet a holiday against a few rocks below lay flat and let the water rush over me it was wonderful to lie in this warm yellow water a bright gold color really and feel it go foaming over my breast and arms and legs it at me so quite like a man that i had to fight it to keep up my arms ached after a time but i hung on loving the feel of it sticks and leaves went racing past i would kick up a stone and instantly it would be swept onward toward some better lodging place farther down i figured an angle finally by which i could make shore letting go and and so i did coming up and scratched but happy then i dipped my feet in the water stood on my drying myself with my handkerchief and finally dressed and refreshed strode up shore then we went off flower gathering and made a big of iron weed he told me how for years he had been coming to this place how he loved the great oaks and the silvery huddled in a friendly company to the north and how he had always wanted to paint them and some day would the people have for cutting their names on trunks came up for here were so many covered with lover s hearts their names inside and so many all but by that i could not help thinking how lives flow by quite like the water in the stream below then we went back to a fine chicken dinner and a pie made especially for me and the and the rushing trains the of which i was never tired hearing they sounded so sad another black rainy night and then the next morning the sun came up on one of the most perfect days imaginable it was and glistening and fragrant and a wonder world what with the new wet trees and grass as cool and delightful as any day could be it was like	43
paradise there was a warm south wind i went out on the lawn and played ball with missing three of all throws and nearly breaking my thumb i sat on the porch and looked over the an village ing paper watching the of many natives go spinning by and feeling my share in that thrill and which comes over the world on a warm sunday morning in summer it was so lovely you could just feel that everybody everywhere was preparing to have a good time and that nothing mattered much all the best sunday suits all the new straw hats all the dainty all the everything were being brought forth and put on disappeared for an hour and came back looking so and span and altogether sunday and like and beach that i felt quite out of it i had a linen suit and white shoes and a sport hat but somehow i felt that they were a little for here and my next best wasn t as good as his curses he even had on perfect glistening glorious patent leather shoes and a new blue suit it was while i was sitting here inwardly groaning over my fate that a young girl came swinging up one of the most engaging i had seen anywhere on this trip a dancing figure with bright blue eyes chestnut hair and an smile i had observed her approaching some seventy feet away and beside her speed and i was wondering whether she was merely a town girl of his acquaintance or by any chance that half sister of whom i had heard and speed speaking on the way west saying that she was very and was hoping to come to new york to study music before i had time to do more than compliment her in my mind she was here before me having tripped across the grass in a fascinating way and was holding out a hand and laughing into my eyes we ve been hearing about your coming for several days now speed wrote us nearly a week ago that you might come it flattered me to be so much thought of i ve been hearing nice things of you too i said studying her pretty nose and chin and the curls about her forehead in any pro which i may a holiday ever compose i will confess frankly and heartily to a weakness for beauty in the opposite sex she seemed inclined to talk but was a little from her general appearance i gathered that she was not only of a gay disposition but a free soul as yet not depressed by the local morality of the day the chains of outward appearances and inward fears i had the feeling that she was beginning to be slightly sex conscious without having solved any of its as just a humming bird newly on the wing she hung about answering and asking questions of no import presently speed had to leave and she went along with a brisk swinging step as she the corner of the lawn she turned just for a second and smiled of this situation and these two girls who curiously and almost in spite of myself were uppermost in my mind the second one most particularly i should like to say that of all things in life which seem to me to be dull and false it is the tendency of weak souls tc in letters and in life to over this natural l ck action and reaction between the sexes to which we are all subject and to make a pretence that our thoughts are something which they are not sweet lovely noble pure it has become a duty among and females quite too much so i think to conceal from each other and from themselves even the fact that physical beauty in the opposite sex them physically and mentally naturally leading to thoughts of union what has come over life that it has become so in its moods why should we make such a row over the natural instincts of man i will admit that in part nature herself is the cause of this the instinct to restrain being possibly as great as the instinct to and that she demands that you make a pretence and live a lie only it seems to me it would be a little better for the mental health of the race if it were more definitely aware of this certainly it ought not be n a vl an village with religious illusion it may not be possible because of the varying of people for anyone to express what he feels or thinks at any precise moment its reception is too uncertain but surely it t is in print which is not in its to the catholic to say what one knows to be so all normal men women and particularly beautiful women all married men and priests are supposed by the mere of matrimony or holy orders thereafter to feel no interest in any but one or in the the priest none of the other sex or if they do to rigidly suppress such desires but men are men and the women many married and unmarried ones don t want them to be otherwise life is a dizzy glittering game of and fishing and and and pursuing despite all the religious and moral details by which we surround it nature itself has an intense love of the chase it loves traps and and even murder and death yes very much murder and death it loves nothing so much as to build up a wall of and then slip round or crash through it it has erected a of laws which no one can understand and no one can strictly to without disaster and to which few do strictly justice truth mercy right are all and	43
not to be come at by any series of or measures we pocket our unfair losses or gains and smile at our luck curiously in and commercial affairs men understand this and accept it as a not altogether bad game it has the element in it which they recognize as sport when it comes to sex the feeling becomes somewhat more serious a man who will smile at the loss of a hundred a thousand or even a million dollars will pull a grim countenance over the loss of a wife or a daughter death is the price in the judgment of some in others it is despair why and yet nature plans these traps and it is the all mother who schemes the a holiday and the fox the wolf the lion a raging destroying bull which on all the females of a herd is the product of nature not of man man did not make the bull or the nor did they make themselves is nature to be controlled made over by man according to some theory which man a product of nature has discovered gentlemen here is food for a dozen schools of philosophy personally i do not see that any theory or any code or any religion that has yet been devised anything all that one can say is that they satisfy certain like those and in and which aid the student without anything in themselves they make the living of life a little easier for some they are not a solution they do not make over which are not adapted to their purposes they do not assist the weak or restrain the strong they merely like a certain of in fishing hold some and let others get away the very big and the very little what sort of scheme is that anyhow which thus and why is poor dull man such a universal victim of it chapter a sentimental as we had planned it we were to stay in c arm el only three days from friday until monday and then race south to french back to and after a day or night at for preparation i might depart as i had planned or i could stay here suggested that i make his home my place my room was mine for weeks if i cared to use it actually up to now i had been anxious to get on and have the whole trip done with but here in i developed a desire to stay and rest awhile the country about was so very simple and but i concluded that i must not had prepared a trip for sunday afternoon which interested me very much it was to be to the home of a celebrated now dead whose name incidentally had been in the papers for years first as the president of the american association a very noble organization of i take it and as the most opponent of organized labor that the country up to his day had produced i hold no brief for organized labor any more than i do for organized being firmly convinced that both are entitled to and fight and that to the should belong the spoils but at the present writing i would certainly with organized labor as being in the main the and wish it all the luck in the world personally i believe in with a healthy swinging of the of life and time to and fro between the rich a h holiday and the poor a which should cast down the rich of today and them again tomorrow or others like them giving the the pleasure of being the quite regularly and vice i think that is what makes life interesting if it is interesting but as to this in spite of the entirely friendly things had to say of him i had heard many other stories relating to him his his rule of his labor the way he finally broke down on a trip somewhere and forgot all the details of it a blank space in his mind covering a period of two years told me of his home which was much more pleasant to hear about a place down by a river near according to a good part of the estate was covered with a grove of wonderful trees mostly as you came to the place there was a keeper s lodge by the gate which made you feel as if you were entering the historic domain of some old nobleman the house was along a beautiful winding drive bordered with a hedge of all sorts of flowers usually in bloom all through the summer the house was very much hidden among the trees a large red brick structure with many windows and tall chimneys the lower story constructed of large field such as are found here at the front and at the left of the main entrance this projected to make an immense porch with wide massive arches and posts of the same great the first time i ever saw it explained i stepped out of the car and went up to ring the bell it was a warm day and mrs was sitting alone at the left end of this great porch quietly observing a colored man servant who was playing a on the vines and the main inside wall of the porch apparently to partly cool the atmosphere she is a little sweet quiet woman and as she rose to greet me something in the great house and the and in the of the forest air about us and perhaps in the gentle humility of the woman herself came to me and impressed a sentimental me with the utter of building houses at all and of any man building a house beyond the ability of a woman to touch lovingly with her hands and to care for and make a home of	43
some time later when i entered the house she was sitting alone in the great hall in the sort of dusk that pervaded it i somehow felt that the house opposed her that it was her enemy i don t know i may be wrong it was only an impression i have s description as near as i can of course i was interested to go it promised a fine afternoon only when the hour struck and we were off in our best feathers two blew up and we were lucky to get to a we back to and i returned to my rocking chair on the front porch watching cars from apparently all over the state go by and wondering what had become of the two girls i had met they had disappeared for the day apparently and what could i do to amuse myself i listened to stories of local of character a man who had died and left a most remarkable collection of stuffed birds and animals quite a museum which he had while running a or something of that sort and so on and so forth local morality came in for its usual the lies which people live the things which they seem and are not personally i like this of nature i would not have all things open and for anything i like pretence when it is not calculated to injure for the very crimes or which you yourself are committing such rats should always be pulled from their holes and exposed to the light sitting on the felt called upon to do some work in his a very attractive building at the rear of the lawn i grew lonely and even it is a peculiarity of my nature that i suffer these out of a clear sky and at a moment s notice i can be having the best time in the world apparently i am often amused thinking about it and then a holiday of a sudden the entertainment ceasing the situation changing i find myself heavily charged with gloom i am getting old i i had these same at nineteen and twenty life is slipping on and away relatives and friends are dying nothing fame is a damned mockery affection is or self destroying soon i am in the last stages of despair and looking around for some means purely to end it all it is really too amusing afterwards while i was so meditating the first young girl came back with that smile of hers and two of about eighteen or nineteen and another girl intended largely as a foil she was most and dressed in something which description and played with the two youths who were persistently seeking her favor and the other maiden i watched her until i became irritated by her self and the art with which she was managing the situation a thing which included me as to disturb too i got up and moved round to the other side of the house that night after dinner and i went to on the and all the sights went to a great hotel where entirely surrounded by and gilt and hung we had beer in a with as drinking vessels it being against the law to serve beer on sunday for the same reason it cost seventy cents two humble of beer for of course there was the service and the dear waiter with his palm by ten thirty the next morning the car and cleaned was at the door our new at the wheel ready for the run south i carried my bags down put them into the car and sat in it to wait was off somewhere in the heart of the village arranging something suddenly i heard a voice it had the tone i expected actually i had anticipated it in a way looking up and the best of a sentimental across a space of lawn two houses away i saw the second girl of this meeting place standing out under an apple tree with a little boy beside her an infant the speed family had adopted she was most gay in her dress and mood something and like aren t you coming over to say she called i jumped up ashamed of my lack of gallantry and yet myself on the ground that i was too timid to intrude before and strolled over she received me with a disturbed cordiality which was charming it s right mean of you she said i was coming i protested only i expected to put it over until thursday on my way back that sounds rather bad doesn t it but really i wanted to come only i was a little bit afraid afraid yes don t you think i can be yes but not of us i should think i thought maybe you were going away for good without saying now how could you i protested knowing full well to the contrary how nice we look today such a pretty dress and the clean white shoes and the ribbon she was as gay and as a bit out of a oh no i just put these on because i had to wear them about the house this morning she smiled in a simple agreeable way only i fancied that she might have dressed on purpose well anyhow i said and we began to talk of school and her life and what she wanted to do just as i was becoming really interested appeared carrying a alas here he is and now i ll have to be going soon yes she said quite simply and with a little feeling you ll be coming back though but only for a day i m afraid but you won t go away the next time without saying will you a holiday isn t that	43
not tell and after a very few years had been taken out again and never after that saw it any more and that during that time many strange and curious things happened things so strange and curious that though you lived many years afterward and wandered here and there and to and fro upon the earth still the things that happened in that the colors of it and the sounds and the voices and the a holiday trees were ever present like a distant or a background of very far off hills but still present and supposing let us say that in this strange land there was once a house or two or three or four or five houses what difference in one of them later said it stood at twelfth and in a city called but if you went there now you could not find it there was a cellar damp and dark the mother of the little boy to whose skirts he used to cling when anything troubled or frightened him once told him that in the cellar of this house lived a cat man and that if he went near it let alone down into it the cat man might appear and seize him and carry him off the small boy firmly believed in the cat man he listened at times and thought he heard him below stairs stirring about among the boxes and barrels there in his mind s eye he saw him large and dark and a s dream of a demon finally after meditating over it awhile he got his brother ed and conferred with him about it they decided that prince the family dog might help to chase the cat man out and so rid them of this evil prince the dog was no coward a friendly gay and yet ferocious animal he was yellow and a he plainly believed in the cat man too upon request anyhow for the cellar stairs door being opened and the presence of the indicated he and and made such an uproar that the mother of the children came out and made them go into the yard and then they heard her laughing over the reality of the cat man and exclaiming yes indeed you d just better be careful and not go down there he ll catch prince too but then there was a certain tree in this same yard or garden where once of a spring evening at dusk there was a strange sound being made a and which in later years the boy was made quite well aware was a but just at that time at that age in that strange land with the soft shadows pouring about the world it seemed as though it must be the cat man come at last out of the cellar land gotten into the tree the child was all alone his mother was in the house sitting on the back porch meditating over the childish interests of the day this sound began and then the next minute he was clasping his mother s knees burying his face in her skirts and weeping the cat man the cat man i oh what a horror i there in that tree and the child saw his eyes and then the mother said no there isn t any it is all a foolish fancy there there but to the child for a long time he was real enough just the same and then there was old mr an old man with one arm who used to come by the house where the small boy lived he was a somewhere at a railroad crossing a solid weary brown faced white haired man who in winter wore a heavy great coat in summer a loose brown jacket the pockets of which or one pocket at least always and every day nearly contained something which if the little boy would only hurry out each morning or evening and climb on the fence and reach for he might have mr mr i can hear him crying yet and somehow i seem to see a kindly gleam in the old blue eyes and a smile on the brown face and a big rough hand going over a very little head yes there we have it that s the nice boy and then would call from the house or the gate a father or mother perhaps and now what do we say oh thank you mr thank you and then the old would go onward with his bucket on his arm and the boy would his or his or his apple and forget how kind and strange old mr really was and how pathetic then one day some time later after a considerable a h holiday absence or silence on the part of mr the small boy was taken to see him where he was lying very still in a very humble little cottage in a black box with on his eyes and the little boy wanted to take the too don t you suppose mr must have smiled wherever he was if he could and then one last picture though i might recall a hundred from a thousand it is a hot day and a house with closed shutters and drawn blinds and in the of a cool still room a woman sitting in a loose and at her feet the child playing with the loose worn slippers on her feet the boy is very interested in his mother he loves her and for that reason to his small mind her feet and her worn slippers are very dear to him see poor s shoes aren t you sorry for her think how she has to wear such poor torn shoes and how hard she has to work yes poor shoes poor when you grow up are you going to get work and buy poor mother a good pair like	43
two years trying to maintain ourselves as best we could thence to where my brother paul having established himself rather comfortably we remained two more thence to where we remained three years and where i received my only intelligent thence out into the world for the three youngest of us at least to become as chance might have it such failures or as may be the others too after one type of career and another did well enough paul for one managed to get a national reputation as a song writer and to live in comfort and even luxury all of the girls after varying years and degrees of success or failure married and settled down to the average troubles of the married one of these the third from the eldest was killed by a train in in her year in one brother the youngest two years younger than myself became an actor the brother next older than myself became an the fourth eldest and one of the most interesting of all as it seemed to me a railroad man by profession finally died of is a word in a south street in about so it goes but all of them in their way were fairly intelligent people no worse and no better than the average a holiday i can see the average conventional soul if one such should ever chance to get so deep into this book and over this frank confession my answer is that if he knows as much about life as i do or has the courage to say what he really knows or believes he would neither be or if any individual in this dusty world has anything to be ashamed of it is certainly not the accidents and with which we are all more or less confronted these last may be pathetic but they have the merit nearly always of great and even beautiful drama whereas the and which make for the creation and of the and the are really the things to be ashamed of i can only think of christ s of and and his reference to the and the beam in not elsewhere we moved so often for want of means to pay our rent or to obtain cheaper places that it is almost painful to think of it in though at the time i was too young to know anything much about it there was so much sickness in the family and at this time a certain amount of ill feeling between my mother and father several of the girls ran away and in seeming only in so far as the of my father were concerned went to the bad they did not go to the bad actually as time subsequently proved though i might with many as to what is bad and what good one of the boys paul got into jail quite innocently it seems and was turned out by my father only to be received back again and subsequently to become his almost sole source of support in his later years there was gloom no work often no bread or scarcely any in the house strange were resorted to my mother and my father for that matter worked and both but she in particular i am sure because of her ambitious romantic temperament suffered the of the damned alas she never lived to see our better days my father did but i here i was entering it now for the first time since i had left it between seven and eight years of age exactly years before chapter the spirit of aside from these memories in connection with it was not so different from fort or even the lake it had the usual main street avenue lighted with many lamps the city hall principal hotel and theatres but i will say this for it it seemed more vital than most of these other places more like or i asked about this and he said that he felt it had exceptional vitality something different i can t tell you what it is he said i have heard boys up in and who have been down here say it was a hot town i can understand now something of what they mean it has a young hopeful seeking atmosphere i like it that was just how it seemed to me after he had expressed it a seeking atmosphere although it claimed a population of only thousand or it had the and go of a much larger place that something which i have always noticed about american cities and missed abroad more or less unless it was in rome paris and was here a crude sweet illusion about the importance of all things material what lesser god under the high arch of life itself this spell what is it man is seeking that he is so hungry so these little girls and boys these men and women with their white faces and their seeking hands oh the pathos of it all before going to an hotel for dinner we drove across the river on a long partially covered bridge to what i thought was the side but which was the spirit of only a extension of county coming back the night view of the city was so fine tall chimneys and along the upper and lower shores with a glow of gold in the that insisted he must make a memory note something to help him do a better thing later so we paused on the bridge while he the lovely scene by arc light then we came back to the house or the terrible hot house as my brother paul used to call it where for sentimental reasons i preferred to stop though there was a and better hotel the farther up the street for here once upon a time my brother rome at that	43
time a seeking boy like any of those we now saw pouring up and down this well lighted street up and down up and down day after day like those poor we see about the lamp was in the habit of coming and as my father described it in his best suit of clothes and his best shoes a in his mouth standing in or near the doorway of the hotel to give the impression that he had just dined there i idle good for i i can hear my father exclaiming even now yet he was not a by any means just a hungry thirsty curious boy all too eager for the little life his limited experience or skill would buy he was the one who finally took to drink and disappeared into the of death or is it life and here once in her worst days my mother came to look for work and got it in later years paul came here to be a banquet by friends in the city because of his song about this river a tribute to the state as one admirer expressed it not that i cared at all really i didn t it wouldn t have made any vast difference if we had gone to the other hotel only it would have tool we arranged our in our adjoining rooms and then went out for a stroll examining the central court and the low halls and the as we passed i thought of my mother and rome outside on the corner and paul at his a holiday mental banquet and then well then i felt very sad like as we would say in up the street from our hotel was the the principal hotel of this city our largest as the average american would say just like every other hotel in america which at this day and date to be our largest and to provide the native with that something which he thinks is at once curse that word i and grand or gorgeous thus there must be i a group of hall boys and all and buttons whose chief if not sole duty is to exact from the unwilling and yet visitor an hotel clerk or three or five who will make him feel that he is a mere or intruder and that it is only by the generosity of a watchful and yet kindly management which does not really approve of him that he is permitted to enter at all maids and who are present solely to make him understand what he has missed by marrying and how little his wife knows about dress or taste or life a lounging room parlor and shop done entirely in imitation a in imitation of one of the principal chambers of the palace of a or men s made to look exactly like a western s dream of a hall a head waiter who can be friends only with or their equivalent the local richest men a service which can charge as much if not more than any other city s this last is absolutely indispensable as showing the importance of the city but nevertheless we went here after about the city for some time to enjoy a later supper or rather to see if there were any people here who were worth observing at this favorite american midnight there were in their way those that we saw here in the suggested at once the aspirations and the of a city of this size and its commercial and social for here between eleven and one came many that might be the spirit of called our largest or our most successful men of a solid the of the cloth of their suits the blaze of their skins and eyes i the hardy animal of their and the elder and younger i wives and daughters of those men who have only recently begun to make money in easy sums and so to enjoy life they reminded me of those i had seen in the at water gap what what wagon works what may not have been grinding day and night for their benefit here they were most most a gaudy and yet reserved company but as i looked at some of them i could not help thinking of some of the places i had seen abroad more especially the in paris and the at where freed from the eyes of or or in summer or winter the eager american abroad is free to dance and and make up in part for some of the of his or her situation here yes you may see them there the sons and daughters of these factory and paint a feverish hunger in their faces making up for what or or would never permit them to do blood will tell and the brooding earth forces weaving these things must have tremendous moods and which require expression thus but what interested me more and this was sad too were the tribes and of the the the semi articulate all hungry and helpless who never get to come to a place like this at all who for a taste of this show and and never attain to the least taste of it somehow the streets of this city suggested them to me i know the will not agree with me as to this but what of it haven t you seen them of a morning very early morning and late evening in their shabby skirts their their of hats their worn shoes to and from one wretched task and another through the great streets and the a holiday did places and are you content always to dismiss them as just dull or weak or incapable of understanding those finer things which you think you understand so well are there not some possibly who	43
are different oh you who dismiss them all so lightly not so fast pray i do not lean too heavily upon the significance of your present state tonight tomorrow may begin the fierce that will sweep away the last of what was strength or pride or beauty or power or understanding even now the winds of disaster may be under your door a good body is something a brain is more taste beauty these are great gifts not achievements and that which gave so generously can as certainly take away again when you see them so hopelessly so painfully their eyes by the flashing wonders of life let it be not all contempt or all pride with which you view them hold to your strength if you will or your but this night in your heart on your knees make these are tremendous forces among which we walk with their powers and their results we may have neither part nor lot what slave do you and stare and make light of your fellow this night may you be with them not in paradise but in eternal not even so much as a memory of anything elsewhere nothing even so even so chapter after years for good bad or indifferent whether it had been painful or pleasant the youth time that i had spent in had gone and would never come back again my mother as i remembered her then and when is a mother more of a mother than in one s was by now merely a collection of incidents and pains and lingering in a few minds i and my father earnest serious minded german striving to do the best he knew was gone also all of thirteen years those brothers and sisters whose were then so keen whose blood moods were so high were now tamed and sober scattered over all the eastern portion of america and here was i walking about not knowing a single soul here really intent upon finding one man perhaps who had known my father and had been kind to him for the rest looking up the houses in which we had lived the first school which i had ever attended the first church and thinking over all the ills we had endured rather than the pleasures we had enjoyed for of the latter i could scarcely recall any was all with which i had to employ myself in the first place the night before coming in because it was nearly dark and because neither nor i cared to spend any more time in this southern extension than we could help i wanted to find and look at as many of the old places as was possible in the summer twilight for more than look at them once i could scarcely or at least would not care to do it was not a difficult matter at the time we lived there the city was much smaller scarcely more than one third its present size and the places which then seemed remote from the a holiday were now a five minute walk if so much i could see in coming in that to get to ninth and chestnut where i was born i would have to go almost into the business section or nearly so again the house at twelfth and where the first few years of my life were spent say from one to five was first on our route in and it was best to have turn in there for the street were all very plain and it was easy to find our way it was very evident that was another city and a prosperous one for smoke filled the air and there was a somewhat display of chimneys and buildings in one direction and another the sound of engine bells and factory at six o clock seemed to indicate a cheerful prosperity not always present in larger and seemingly more successful as i have said noted a temper or of youth and hope about the town for he spoke of it i like this place it is interesting he said i had no idea was so fine as this as for me my mind was to old scenes and old miseries with a child s sensations once in this town in company with ed and al i picked coal off the tracks because we had no coal at home somewhere here ed and i going for a sack of lost the fifty cents with which to buy it and it was our last fifty cents in a small house in street as i have elsewhere indicated the three youngest of us were sick while my father was out of work and my mother was compelled to take in washing in some other house here seventh and chestnut i believe there was a swing in a where i used to swing all alone by the hour enjoying my own moods even at that time from a small brick house in street the last i ever knew of i carried my father s dinner to him in a at a mill of which he was or manager or something he was never exactly a day for anyone i remember a and a fuller and a and a spinning and his explaining their functions to me somewhere in this town after years was the remainder of st joseph s school or its site at least where at five years of age i was taken to learn my a b c s and where a in a great white bonnet and a black habit with a rattling string of great beads pointed at a with a stick and asked us what certain stood for i recall even now very faintly it is true having trouble remembering what the sounds of certain letters were i remember the church attached to this school and a bell in a	43
tower that used to get turned over and wouldn t ring until some one of us boys climbed up and turned it back a great treat i remember on a small muddy pool on boards and getting my feet very wet and almost falling in and a serious sore throat afterwards i remember a band the first i ever heard s band as my father afterwards explained was its official title marching up the street the men wearing red with white shoulder and tall black russian they frightened me and i cried i remember once being on the river with my brother rome in a small boat the yellow water seemed more of a wonder and terror to me then than it does now and of his rocking the boat and of my screaming and of his wanting to whip me a bit of tenderness quite natural don t you think i remember at twelfth and a great summer when i was very young and my mother me and telling me to run out naked in the great drops making everywhere an adventure which seemed very splendid and quite to my taste i remember my brothers paul and rome as men really when they were only boys and of my elder sisters girls of thirteen fifteen seventeen seeming like great strong women life was a strange then it has remained so ever since here i was now and it was evening as we turned into street at twelfth i recognized one of the houses by pictures in the family and by faint memories a holiday and we stopped to give time to sketch it it was a smoky somewhat neighborhood with a number of children playing about and long rows of one story s cottages receding in every direction once it had a large yard with a garden at the back apple and cherry trees along the fence a small barn or cow shed and rows of and bushes several sides now all that was gone of course the house had been moved over to the very corner small houses all smoky had been crowded in on either hand so tightly that there were scarcely between them i asked a little girl who came running over as the car stopped and began who lives over there she replied what does he do he works they keep what are you making a picture of that house yes what for well i used to live there and i ve come back all the way from new york to see it oh and with that she climbed up on the running board to look on but her off you mustn t shake the car he said she got down but only to confer with six or seven other children who had gathered by now and all of whom had to be enlightened they ran back for a moment or two to inform inquisitive parents but soon returned increased in number they stood in a group and surveyed the house as though they had never seen it before obviously it had taken on a little in their eyes they climbed up on the running boards and shook the car until was compelled to order them down again though it was plain that he was not anxious so to do were in the air overhead those fine winged there were about an from west of the i after years numbers of them horrible clouds in fact which caused me to wonder how people endured living in the neighborhood people walked by on their way home from work or going out somewhere young men in the most and conspicuous and on and front steps were their fathers in shirt sleeves and women in dresses reading the evening paper i studied each detail of the house getting out and looking at it from one side and another but i could get no least touch of the earlier atmosphere and i did not want to go in it held no interest for me i could not remember how it looked on the inside anyhow after leaving this house i decided to look up ninth and chestnut where i was born but not knowing the exact corner no one in our family having been able to tell me i gave it up only to notice that at that moment i was passing the corner i looked there were small houses on every hand which one was ours or had been or was it there at all any more useless speculation i did not even trouble to stop the car but from here i directed the car to eighth and chestnut a corner at which in an old red brick house still standing my mother as had informed me had once keeping borders i was so young at the time i could scarcely remember say six or seven all i could recall of it was that here once was a little girl in blue velvet with yellow hair the daughter of some woman of comparative it is a guess means who was stopping with us and who because of her blue velvet dress and her airs seemed most amazing to me a creature out of the skies i remember standing at the head of the stairs and looking into her room or her mother s and seeing a loaded with silver bits and at the excellence of such a life just that and nothing more out of a whole period of months now i could only recall that the house was of brick that it had a lawn and trees a with a brick floor and a sense of and departed merit finding it at this late date was not likely but we ran the car around there and a holiday stopped and looked there was a brick house there old but improved was it	43
the same who can tell or what matter really the difference was to me we think of life as a definite enduring thing some of us but what a thin shadow or it must be really when the past and your youth and all connected with it goes glimmering thus like smoke i always think of that passage in job xiv man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble he forth like a flower and is cut down he also as a shadow and not when i think of that and how ideas and notions and and go glimmering i often ask myself what is it all about anyhow and v what are we here for and why should anyone worry i whether they are low or high or moral or what difference does it really make and to whom who actually cares in the long run whether you are good bad or indifferent there is much talk and much to and fro and much concealment of our past ills and and much of our present luxuries and well beings but my good friends the wise know better you cannot talk to a man or woman of capacity or insight or experience of any of these sharp distinctions to them they do not exist we are all low or high according to our energy to get and keep fame money information skill no more as for the virtuous and those lacking in virtue the honest and those who are kind heaven we haven t the first of necessary wherewith to begin even to a theory of difference we do not know and i had almost said we cannot know though i am not one to be of anything not even of the impossibility of perfection then we moved the car to seventh and chestnut streets where had stood another house near a lumber yard in this house was the swing in the where i used to swing the sunlight pouring through a low cellar window such days as i chose to play there outside was a great yard or garden with trees and close at hand after years a large lumber yard it seemed immense to me at the time filled with woods and offering a great opportunity for climbing playing hide and seek running and jumping from pile to pile and avoiding the who wanted to catch us and give us a good beating for coming into it at all and beyond that was a train yard full of engines and cars and old broken down and a repair shop when i was most adventurous i used to wander even beyond the lumber yard there was a spur track going out into this greater world staring at all i saw and no doubt my young life more than once at one time i fell off a car on which i had climbed and bruised my hand quite seriously at another time i climbed up into a worn out and discarded engine and examined all the machinery with the utmost curiosity it all seemed so amazing to me yard men how astonishing they all seemed the whole compact called life but this house was now a mere or something that may never have existed at all so unreal are our realities it had gone glimmering there was no house here anything like that which i had in mind there was a railroad yard quite a large one probably greatly enlarged since my day there was a lumber yard adjoining it very prosperous looking and enclosed by a high board fence well painted and a long old low white house with green shutters we stopped the car here and i meditated on my mother and sisters and on some laughing school teachers who took meals with us here at this time then we moved on i was glad to go i was getting depressed the last place we tried for was that much mentioned in street between and chestnut as some one of my relatives had said but i could not find it when we reached the immediate vicinity we found a hundred such houses i had almost said a thousand and it was a poor sorrowful street the off a holiday of the most deficient or oppressed or defeated i wanted to hurry on and did so but and in passing i picked out one which stood next to an alley an old small black faded house and said to myself that must be ours but was it because of uncertainty my heart could not go out to it it went out only to that other house back in the clouds of memory where my mother and my sisters and brothers were all assembled and this street yes my heart went out to it oh very much i felt as though i would be willing to trade places with and take up the burden of the least efficient and most depressed of all of those assembled here in memory of in memory of chapter l a egyptian land the next morning after our customary picture cards we were about to achieve an early start when i suddenly remembered that i had not tried to find the one man i really wanted to see a man for whom my father had worked in years gone by the son of a mill owner who after his father s death with a brother had inherited this mill and employed my father to run it although he was very much younger than my father at that time there had always been a bond of sympathy and understanding between them but even in my father s lifetime the industry in this region had fallen on hard lines the east and some on machinery held by crowding these to the wall	43
so that this boy and his brother who had been such good friends to my father had been compelled to abandon their properties entirely and adam had gone into the electric lighting business and had helped i understand to the local electric light plant here and for a while anyhow was its first and after that i heard nothing more i had never seen him but as is always the case with connected with a family a successful and so a personality i had heard a great deal about him indeed in our worst days here the family had represented to me the height of all that was important and and to such an extent that even now and after all these years i hesitated whether to inflict myself on him even for so a purpose as inquiring the exact site of the old mill or whether he recalled where my father first lived on a holiday ing to from and which was the house where i was born nevertheless i looked him up in the city and could find only one adam b hay grain and feed south fourth street a region and a business which did not seem likely to contain so important a person nevertheless because i was anxious to see the old mill which my father had managed under his i knew it stood somewhere down near the river s edge i ventured to go to this address to find perchance if he could tell me where the true adam b was to be found and on the way because it was only a few blocks at most in any direction i decided to look up the old st joseph s church and school which i had attended as a child my first school to see if possibly i could recognize anything in connection with that a picture which i had found showed a quite imposing church on the site my father had given but no school imagine my surprise on reaching it to be able to recognize in a rear building to which a new front had in years gone by been added the exact small square red brick building in which i had first been in my a b c s owing to a high brick wall and the presence of an building it was barely visible any longer from the street but stripped of these later i could see exactly how it looked and remember it as i gazed the yard the pond the old church the surrounding neighborhood all came back to me i saw it quite clearly as at i now suffered a slight in my a kind of set in the very earth seemed slipping out from under my feet i looked through the small windows into one of the old rooms and then because it was exactly the same i wanted to get away i went round by the church side and seeing a funeral train in front walked through the door into this building before the altar rail surrounded by tall candles lay a coffin and i said to myself yes it is death and change have taken much so far they will soon take all a egyptian land then i climbed bade into the car it was only a few blocks to the hay grain and feed of this adam and when i saw it a low one story brick building in a very condition i felt more convinced than ever that this man could have nothing to do with my father s employer i went through the dusty hay strewn door and at a small tall dusty and worn desk saw an old man in a grey coat making some in a cheap paper backed there was a scale behind him the shadowy walls in the rear and to the sides were lined with containing of and of hay and other feed just as i entered a boy from the vicinity followed me pushing a small and laid a yellow slip on the desk he says to make it four half of can you tell me where i will find a mr adam b who used to own the mills here i inquired i m the man adam b just excuse me a minute will you while i wait on this boy i stared at him in rude astonishment for he seemed so worn so physically concluded his face was and sunken his eyes deep tired his hands wrinkled you re mr are you well i m the son of paul who used to work for you you don t remember me of course i was too young this isn t by any chance is it he commented his eyes brightening slightly with recognition yes that s me i said your brother paul he said when he was out here a few years ago was telling me about you you write i believe yes well of course i ve never known of you except indirectly but how long are you going to be in town only this morning i replied i m just passing through this isn t my car i m in it with a friend i m visiting all the old places just for the fun of i a holiday it i was just coming to you to ask if you could tell me where the old mill stood whether it f s still standing right at the foot of the street here he commented very cheerfully at the same time bustling about and getting out the half of and other things it s just as it was in your father s day only it is a wagon company now all the mills in this section died out long ago your father foresaw that he told me they would i went into the electric lighting business afterward but they crowded me out of it and all	43
that then i got into this business it isn t much but it s a living one he said to the boy who put the money on the desk and went out yes indeed i knew your father he was a fine man he worked for us off and on for pretty near fifteen year after his own mill went up this was no country for manufacture though we couldn t with the east why i read here not long ago that two hundred mills in and had closed up in twenty years two hundred well that s all over so you re you couldn t stay and have lunch with me could you thank you i couldn t possibly i replied i m only a guest in this car and i can t detain them too long i did want to see you though and so i came that s right that s right he said it s good of you times have changed with me some but then i ve lived a long time i ve a son in new york he s with he mentioned a large and successful company you ought to call on him some time he d be glad to see you i m sure he on about one thing and another and followed me to the door you couldn t tell me by any chance where the first house my father ever occupied in stands i said idly yes i can it s right around here in second street one block south next to a store you can t miss it it s a two story brick now but they added a story a a egyptian land long time ago it was a one story house in his time but then it had a big yard and lots of trees i remember it well i used to go there occasionally to see him right down there at the foot of the street he called after me i climbed into the car and down we went to the old mill to stare at that now with new sounds and looking fairly brisk and prosperous then back to the old brick house looking so old and so commonplace that i could well imagine it a fine refuge after a storm but i had never even heard of this before and was not expecting to find it then we forth ward and i was heartily glad to be gone the territory into which we were now passing was that described in the first chapter of this of all places that i ever lived in my youth the most pleasing to me and full of the most and poetic of memories infancy and its complete non understanding had just gone for me when we arrived here the inquisitive boy of twelve to sixteen had not yet arrived this was the region of the wonder period of youth when trees clouds the sky the of the days the sun the rains the grass all filled me with delight an overpowering sense of beauty charm mystery how eager i was to know at times and yet at other times not how i loved to sit and gaze just drinking it all in the feel and glory of it and then i had gone on to other ideas and other places and this had never come back not once in any least way and now i was to see it all again or the region of it as we found on consulting our map lay only miles south or our road lay through a perfectly flat region so flat and that it should have been uninteresting and yet it was not i have observed this of regions as of people that however much alike they may appear to be in character there is nevertheless a vast difference in their charm or lack of it this section in which i had been partially reared had i a holiday charm not the charm of personal as others will testify but real charm the soil was rich a sandy the trees were and healthy peaceful trees not beaten by angry winds and rains the fields were with grass or grain warm bottom lands these composed of soil carried down by ancient rivers now in the last hundred years or so given names as we came out of i turned and looked back at it a prosperous vigorous town east of it in a healthy fruitful region in that hill country around and there had been coal mines soft coal mines providing work and fuel here on our route to were other mines at seven miles out a town by the way which i recalled as being somehow an of the priest who read mass at at and other places still farther south you could see the black dirty across flat green fields in which stood round healthy trees as we went south one of those warm sudden rains sprang up or came down one of those quick heavy rains which i recognized as characteristic of the region of my infancy we saw it coming in the distance a of smoke clouds over some groves in the west then a green fog seemed to settle between us and the trees and i knew it was here it comes i called had we better get the top up who was now the master of motion and a different temperament to speed paid no heed he was very or meditative at times but equally gay at others and much more self sufficient and if anything i had been most interested by the quiet way in which he had gone about getting himself and fed at night and at other times and gave no least care to he managed them and suggested ways and means to us occasionally whenever anything	43
about were wild wild trees a host of things which we could gather free if either ed or i had had the least turn of ingenuity we might have or shot enough wild animals to have kept us in meat possibly even in funds so numerous were various forms of small game in summer we could have picked unlimited quantities of and helped mother preserve them against dark days we did some but in the main all we did was to fish a little as the thought of pleasure moved us but oh this pleasing realm i once here i could not see it as it really was at the moment nor can i now write of it or it is all too involved with things which have no in land or sea or sky the light of early morning the feet of youth dreams dreams dreams yes here once i told myself now we carried coal in winter ed and al and i but what matter was not youth then ours to comfort us my father was gloomy depressed in no position or mood to put right his disordered affairs but even so oh i of what wonders and dreams are not your poorest and most commonplace aspects as we crossed the tracks by the railroad station only two long blocks from our house in the old days i began to recognize familiar at the first corner beyond the station where i always turned north had been four young trees and here now were four quite large ones a holiday i was convinced they were the same looking up the street north i recognized the open common still and as we the house the identical hay press if you please newly covered with tin and perhaps otherwise repaired but standing close to the tracks where formerly the hay was loaded cars by the sounds issuing from it it must have been busy indeed at the spot where we now were at the moment should have been house a low one story yellow affair but now only a patch of weeds and a broken well top indicated that a house had once stood there looking quickly for u our house i distinguished it one of a row of seemingly new and much poorer ones but this older house was still the best of them all beyond where mrs s house should have been and the great elm and the like was nothing but a railroad track y f and joining another which ran where once the hollow had been there was no hollow any more no tree no nothing only a right railroad track or y my field of it was an weed patch small a thing that had never been large at all or had shrunk to insignificant proportions my tree the column of the brooding hawk it was gone there was no fine patch alongside our house where once we had raised corn potatoes peas beans almost our total summer and winter fare three other small shabby houses and their grounds occupied the field we had cultivated i realized now in looking at this what an earnest industrious woman my mother must have been a band of children were playing out in front children with bare legs bare arms in most cases half bare bodies and so dirty i when they saw our car they gathered in a group and surveyed us one of the of them had a sore eyed elevated to his loving breast it was a poor white neighborhood my brother s got of the bones one little girl said to me nodding at a looking i i another old home youth who stood to one side rather pleased than not that his should attract so much attention oh no i said surely not he doesn t look as though he had anything but a good appetite does he certainly not replied the latter cheerfully the youth gazed at me solemnly oh yes he has continued his sister the doctor said so but don t you know that doctors don t know everything put in doctors just imagine things the same as other people why look at him he s nice and healthy no he ain t either replied this protector if he don t get better he ll to go to the our doctor says so my mother ain t got the money or he d go now dear dear i exclaimed looking at the youth but there he looks so well you feel all right don t you i asked of the victim who was staring at me with big eyes yes sir you re never sick in bed no sir well now here s a and don t you get sick you ll be well so long as you think so let s see it commanded the sister drawing near and trying to take the hand with the coin no well let s see how it looks no well then keep it you ll have to give it to anyhow i began to wonder whether of the bones was not something developed for trade purposes or whether it was really true the house was in exactly the same position and physically unchanged save that in our day the paint was new and white whereas now it was and dirty the a holiday yard or garden as the english would call it had all been cut away or nearly so leaving only a dusty strip of faded grass to the right as one looked in in our time there was a neat white fence and gate in front it was gone now inside once were roses in profusion planted by mother and a few small fruit trees a a cherry an apple tree now there were none the fence on which i used to sit of a morning the adored	43
over every a holiday thing leaves the for and the distance a sort of mystery this it has always seemed to me is bound to produce in certain types of mind a kind of in such light hanging high above you or flying over the woods are no longer merely the things that they are but become the of a spiritual if i may use the word or that is the forests here also or such as used to be here must have had their influence temples and all works of art are designed to impress men s minds leading them into varying conditions of consciousness the forests of sugar and and and oak and about here originally it has been said were the most wonderful on the face of the earth no one had ever with the action of such things as these on people s minds to determine specific results but i fancy they have them in fact i sometimes think there is something about soil and light a or power like the electric field of a which produces strange new interesting things how else can you explain the fact that ben was written out here at under a tree or why the first course after england was built here at or why la with a company of should come down the st joseph and the into this region i believe thoroughly in the presence of a great resource of relative truth constituted of the facts of all human things that this resource is available to anyone whoever or wherever he may be who can in his mind achieve a clear understanding of his own freedom from the necessities of mere physical communication this may seem to be getting a little thin but it is not beside the actual point if you trouble to think of it that s rather flattering to dear old i repeated but still i m not sure that i m absolutely convinced you make out a fairly plausible case look at the tin plate trust he continued one of the first and most successful it originated in c hail and expanded until it controlled the rock island railway diamond match and other look at the first american it came from here and james and george and and other things like that yes and other things like that i quoted you re right i did not manage to break in on his dream however take this man for instance and his car here is a case where the soil or the light or the general texture of the country a sense of freedom right here in in a single mind and to a great result but instead of his going away or its taking that direction developed his own sense of freedom right here by building his car here he rose above his local without leaving through his accomplishment he has made possible a fine freedom for some of the rest of us after all individual freedom is not simply the inclination and the liberty to get up and go elsewhere nor is it as people seem to think something only to be embodied in forms of government i consider it something quite detached from any kind of government whatever a thing which exists in the human mind and indeed is mind was at his very best i thought this is getting very i commented very very just the same he continued the is a part of this same sense of freedom the desire for freedom made manifest not the freedom of the group but the freedom of the individual that s about what it to in the ultimate here we have been across country not limited in our ability to respond as we chose to the call of the road and of the in general and we have been bound by no rule save our own not by the of any organization that same freedom was in mind in the first instance and right here stationary in and it was by the conditions here a holiday yes i agreed well to me is in having done and in still doing just that sort of thing it stands unique in having produced a great many celebrated men and women in all of work not only those who have departed from the state but those who have remained and gained a for their achievements far outside its i boundaries it was i m confident this soil t call that came to you it came to me it must have come the same to many others or to all i should say who have accomplished things those who have grasped at or struggled for if you wish to speak of it that way universal standards and scope you felt it and picked up and went away some years ago now on your return you do not feel the old impulse any more everything seems miserably changed and the beauty to a large extent faded but it is not i also do not find things the same any more yet i am convinced the old call is still here and when i return i have a feeling that out here on the farms driving the cows in the morning and at evening in the small towns and hanging around the old along the are boys just like we used to be to whom the most vital thing in life is this call and the longing to be free not to be free necessarily or at all of these local experiences but to achieve a working contact with universal things that sounds very well at least i commented there s something in it i tell you he insisted and what s more though i m not inclined to make so very much of that was originally french territory and la and his companions coming down here may have brought a of the original	43
french spirit which has resulted in all these things we have been discussing you surely don t believe that i questioned well i don t know certainly is different inquisitive the characteristics which have most distinguished the french and by the way he added returning to and his car for a hail moment a short time before developed his though not long enough i m sure or to such an extent that he could have known much of its progress the same problem was being studied and worked out in france by he looked at me as though he thought this was significant then continued but i m really not inclined to think that all this stuff is true or that there is a deep laid spiritual connection between france and i don t it s all amusing speculation but i do believe there is something in the soil and light idea he leaned back and we ceased talking j chapter fishing in the and a county fair it was just outside of a mile or two or three that we encountered the the first stream in which as a boy i ever the strangeness of that experience comes back to me even now the wonder the beauty of a shallow stream in places its banks by tall trees its immediate ornamented by weeds and bushes blooming violently the stillness of the woods the novelty of a long pole and a white line and a red and green cork a hook worms the of the unseen creature below the yellow surface of the stream even now i hear a distant gun shot hunters after birds i see a fly blue and of wing fluttering and above my cork why should they love cork so much my brother ed has a i great kind heaven his cork is gone once i twice pull him out ed for god s sake pull him out i look at that oh a black and white silvery fish or a dark wet slippery cat as lovely and as oh it s on the grass now here and there my nerves are all a my hair on end with delight i can scarcely wait until i get a bite hours perhaps for my brother ed was always a than i or a better one and then late in the afternoon after hours of this wonder world we home along the warm dusty yellow country road the evening sun is red in die west our feet buried in the dust not a wagon not sound save that of wood the spiritual on a long limp with a fishing in the fork at the end is strung our fish so small and stiff now so large glistening brilliant when we caught them on every hand are field the distant low of cows and the of pigs i hear the voice of a farmer u ma kin these you bet brown legged dusty tired we tramp back to the kitchen door there she is plump smiling a gentle loving understanding of boys and their hungry restless ways written all over her face yes they re fine we ll have them for supper wash and clean them and then wash your hands and feet and come in on the grass we sit a pan between us cleaning those penny catches the day has been so wonderful that we think the fish must be perfect and they are to us and then the after supper on the porch the dusk descending the the the carried about the house to drive out the tales of indians and battle chiefs long dead the stars slumber i can feel my mother s hand as i lean against her knee and sleep by just such long hot yellow roads as ed and i traversed as boys and i came eventually to but only after a region so flat and yet so rich that it was a delight to look upon i had never really seen it before or its small sweet simple towns the fields were so rich and warm and moist that they were given over almost entirely to the growing of water and great far flung stretches of fields large deep green painted came creaking by four five and six in a row to the nearest where were cars there were packing sheds to be seen here and there where were being and it was lovely at one point we stopped a man and bought two and sat down by the roadside to eat other machines passed and a holiday the occupants looked at us as though we had stolen them here we are i said to three honest men eating our hard earned and these people believe we stole them yes but think of our other crimes he replied and anyhow who wouldn t three men eating by a roadside the adjoining fields of which are dotted with the man who had passed in the had at us in such a way and yet i have and to witness we paid ten cents each for two of the best we ever tasted at and at again we came upon coal mines that vein of soft coal which seems to this whole region in were to be seen walking along the roads as at their faces their little lamps standing up from their caps their big tin hanging on or tucked under their arms we stopped at one town and examined the exterior of a mine because it was so near the road every few seconds out of its depths three hundred and fifty feet the man told me up a deep dripping shaft would come a small platform carrying several small cars of coal which would be a and pushed in to take their places i asked the man who ran the engine in	43
the shed how many tons of coal they would take out in a day oh about four hundred he said any men ever killed here yes occasionally recently well there was an explosion two years ago many men killed eight were there any before that two about three years before he wiped his forehead with a hand wouldn t like to go down would you he asked after a time quite unconscious of our earlier conversation i think fishing in the no thanks i replied i had a feeling conveyed by that dark dripping shaft three hundred and fifty feet not me but i said to myself as i looked at all the healthy smiling we met farther on if i were a prince of a president and these were my subjects how proud i would be of a land that contained such how earnest for their well being i had so little courage to do what they were doing but in spite of these mines which were deep and as we learned in many districts stretching for miles in different directions the soil manifested that same and the land grew flatter and flatter all the towns in here were apparently dependent upon them there were no rises of ground interesting groves of trees crowded to the roadside at times providing a shade and excessively lands appeared packed with bushes and but no iron weed as in the east the roads were sped over by handsome much finer in many instances than ours and i took it that they were representative of the real farmer wealth here a wealth we as a family had never been permitted to taste in about two hours we entered a front tire having blown up just outside on the banks of the at its edge we came upon a so gaily with tents and flags that we our car and went in to see the sights the county fair it seemed to me that this farmers show supported my belief in their prosperity for to me at least it turned out to be the most interesting county fair i had ever seen the animals displayed prize and horses and sheep of different chickens and domestic animals of various kinds were intensely interesting to look at and so displayed i never saw so many fat sheep and nor more astonishing great sleek rolling animals that at us with their little eyes and and great white pleasant tents were devoted to farm machinery and and a holiday by these alone one could tell that here was a prosperous and buying population else the had never troubled to send so much and such expensive machinery all that the farmer could use machines for planting cutting binding i think i counted a score of separate machines of this kind to others intended for use around the home cook well cream washing machines a whole host of these to the latest inventions in and driven farm were here the display of was lavish really all the important makes were represented and in addition there was a with races going on and a large number of amusements the wild men from the several moving picture shows a and the like and i around at our leisure on so fine and so hot an afternoon it was amusing to idle under these great trees and study the country throng a hungry boy was treated to the version of hot dog and coffee by him a treat he was very backward about accepting hundreds judging by the cars outside possessed various church of the region had established to aid one or other of their religious causes at a table in the of the holy roman catholic church of i ate a dish of chicken a piece of cherry pie and drank several glasses of milk thereby i think that no enmity existed between myself and the catholic church at least not on the subject of food at this besides the several and old ladies who were in attendance i noticed a tall girl of very graceful and lines who was helping to wait on people she had red hair long delicate fingers a but apparently waist and shaped grey eyes no of the church prevented her from wearing hip tight skirts or one that came lower than fishing in the perhaps four or five inches below the knee she had on rings and pins and quite unconsciously i think took graceful and attitudes there was a kind of high scorn if not rebellion in her mood for one a religious cause i wondered how long and the sacred of the church would retain her chapter the at is it an illusion of romance merely or is it true that in spite of the fact that the french speaking have been out of old the very region of it for over a hundred and fifty years and that nearly all we know of the town of twenty thousand has come into existence in the last fifty years there still exists in it over it the atmosphere of old france do we see always what we would like to see or is there something in this matter of the planting of a seed however small which eventually results in a tree of the parent stock i was scarcely prepared to believe that there was anything of old france about this town it seemed quite too much to ask and yet rolling leisurely through these streets it seemed to me that there was a great deal of it the houses quite a number of them had that american french aspect which we have all come to associate with their the palaces and arts of the high louis france the of the dreams of the france the mother really of the classic of	43
have to cross the white river on a we sped on the road became sandy and soft now and then it broke into muddy stretches where we had to go slow from straggling we gathered characteristic and sometimes amusing directions go up here about four miles to ed place it s the big white store on the corner can t miss it then turn to yer left about three miles till come to the school on the high ground there a rise of about eight feet it was then turn to yer right and go down through the marsh to the iron bridge and that ll bring yer right into the road we gathered this as we were leaving st thomas a lonely catholic with a church and sisters school of some kind on and on riding is delightful in such a country in lovely cottages as we tore past i heard a holiday voices singing in some way you could see lighted lamps on the family tables a man or woman or both sitting by reading on in now and then were possibly indifferent to the the moon cleared to a silvery perfection and lighted all the fields and trees there were owl voices and in ed place a crowd of country were themselves oh you should have heard the laughter it was a man outside directed us further we came to the school the iron bridge in the marsh and then by a wrong road away from but we found it finally it was a railroad town on the long steps of a very imposing country store lighted by oil lamps a great crowd of country all men were gathered to see the train come in an event soon to happen i gathered they swam in a or haze a full hundred of them their ivory faces picked out in spots by the uncertain light we asked of one the road to and he told us to go back over the bridge and south or to our left as we crossed the bridge the t here it may be as ye can t get across t night the river s high u that would be a nice note wouldn t it commented well looks interesting to me observed what s the matter with i d like to sketch that crowd anyhow we went on down to the to see en route we encountered a perfectly horrible stretch of road great that almost the car and in the midst of it an oil well or the industry of driving one there was a great towering well frame in the air a a an engine and various set about and men working it was so attractive that although up to this moment we had been worrying about the car we got out and went over the at a i the at ing it standing in inches and inches of mud watching the blaze of for and listening to the monotonous plunging of the we sat about here for half an hour in the effect of the in the moonlight and against the dark wood it was fascinating a little later we came to the and the alleged it was only a road that led straight into the river a condition which caused to remark that they must expect us to drive under at the shore was a bell on a post with a rope attached no sign indicated its import but since far on the other side we could see lights we pulled it vigorously it loud and long between us and the lights rolled a wide flood smooth and yet swiftly moving apparently small bits of things could be seen going by in the pale light the moon on the water had the of an shell there was a faint haze or fog which prevented a clear reflection but our bell brought no response we stood here between bushes and trees admiring the misty river but we wanted to get on too on the other side was a town you could hear laughing voices occasionally and scraps of piano playing or a voice singing but the immediate shore line was dark i seized the rope again and and like a house said still no response maybe they don t run at night suggested he said the water might be too high commented it looks simple enough once more i pulled the bell then after another drift of moments there was a faint sound as of chains or oars and after a few moments more a low something began to outline itself in the mist it was a flat boat and it was coming to an overhead wire and by the water it was coming quite fast i thought soon it was off shore and one of the two men aboard an old man and a young one was doing something with the rear chain pulling the boat farther nearer the wire a holiday that end pole out of the way called the older of the two men the one nearer us and then the long flat dish scraped the shore and they were pushing it far inland with poles to make it fast what s the matter couldn t you hear the bell i inquired yes i heard the bell all right replied the older man this here boat ain t supposed to run flights anyhow in this here flood y can t tell what ll happen logs and down we ve lost three in her already as it is i nervously as to that while he grumbled and hook er up tight he called to his assistant she might slip out yet but up at i added they said you ran all night they said i they said they know about this here i m this i guess to out here nights tar he was meaning tired as	43
i am an take this thing back an forth i m sick on it i t got to do it i know observed but we re very anxious to get across tonight we have to be in by morning anyhow well i don t know about that all i know is everybody s in a all fired hurry to across well that s all right now doctor i soothed we ll fix this up on the other side you just take us over like a good sort the of a tip seemed to soothe him a little be how you run that car he commented to one ran his car on an up ended this thing an off he went we never did get the machine out she was carried on down stream the car very then we off in the moonlight and i could see plainly that there was a flood we were slow getting out to where the main current was but once there its speed shocked me the at a vast sullen volume of water was pouring on and away into the the the the gulf i was thinking how wonderful water is out of the unknown into the unknown like ourselves it comes and goes and here like petty actors in a passing play we were crossing under the moon the water as much a passing actor as any of us better pay out more at the stern there called the old man to his she s her pretty hard a the water was fairly boiling along the side at any minute now he continued a bundle of drift or logs or weeds is like to come along and foul us and then if that there wire gave way where d we be i felt a little uncomfortable at the thought i confess s good machine his inability to swim the swiftness of this stream fortunately at this rate the was soon passed and we began to near the other shore the current drove us up into a deep cut shallow where they the close to shore and fastened it then had to make a swift run with the machine for just beyond the end of the boat was a steep incline up which we all had to don t let er slip back on yer he if yer do she s like to go back in the water and sent her we paid the bill fifty cents of that being on as a penalty for him out tar as he was and fifteen cents extra for disturbing observations about lost and the like then we up and through an interesting looking place called population hundred and so on toward which we hoped surely to reach by midnight chapter a brother but we didn t reach for all our declaration and pretence of our need a delightful run along a delightful road with trees and now that we were out of the valley between the two rivers cut between high banks of tree shaded earth brought us to a town so bright and clean looking that we were persuaded almost against our wishes to pass the night here some towns have just so much personality they speak to you of pleasant homes and pleasant people a genial atmosphere here as elsewhere indeed in all but the poorest of these small towns the of it was by the court house a very building and four brightly lighted business sides the walks about the square were every fifty feet or less by a five lamp standard the stores were large and clean and bright a store we visited contained such an interesting array of that i bought a dozen pictures of great grain four or five of which we had seen on entering the town scenes along the banks of the a small lake or watering place called long pond and scenes along tree sheltered roads i liked the spirit of these small towns quite common everywhere today which seeks out the charms of the local life and them in colored prints and i said so walk into any or book store of any up to date small town today and you will find in a nearly every scene of importance and really learn the character and charms of the vicinity thus at but for the picture which the fact we would never have seen the giant which a brother emptied steel cars like again except for the picture displayed i would never have the astonishing charms of or even my native the picture cards told all in a group of what there was to see we discovered a most interesting and attractive quick lunch here quite snowy and clean with a bright open at the back and here since we now were hungry again we decided to eat saw in the window and i announced that i had bought a picture card of a packing scene in a town called which according to my ever ready map was back on the road we had just come through they ought to be good around here he commented rather i thought nice fresh right out of the field we entered i did not know really how seriously fresh ripe cold in hot weather until we got inside we ll have eh he observed eagerly ah right i ll divide one with you oh no he returned with the faintest rise in his i d like a whole one delighted i replied on with the dance let etc he went to the counter and persuaded the waiter maid to set forth for him two of the very largest they were like small which he brought over these look like fine he observed they re splendid said the girl this is a country a who was eating over at another table exclaimed i can for that and i began they were delicious	43
fragrant a product of a rich soil we ate in silence and when his was consumed he observed me i believe i could stand another one i exclaimed reproachfully a holiday yes i could he insisted they re great don t you think so as good as ever i have eaten better even that settles it i m going to have one more he brought it over and ate it alone while i sat and talked to him and once more when he was finished he fixed me with his eye well now how do you feel i inquired fine you know you ll think it s funny but i could eat another a half anyhow i exclaimed this is too much two whole and now a third i do you think it s too much there was a sort of childish about the inquiry which moved me to laughter and firmness this quite unconsciously at times a certain shyness i certainly do here it is after eleven we are supposed to be up early and off and here you sit eating by the this is shameful besides you can get more tomorrow we are in the land of the oh all right he consented quite i did not realize at the time that i was actually stopping him and before he had enough it was a joke on my part the next day was wednesday a bright sunny day and pleasantly cool the sun streaming under my black shades at six and earlier awoke me and i arose and surveyed the small town as much of it as i could see from my window and through trees it was as clean and and pleasing as it had seemed the night before by now hearing me stirring was up too and we awakened who was still asleep if we were to get to and on to and again in this one day it would have to be a long and speedy run but even now i began to doubt whether we should make it was too interesting to me as one of my home towns it was all of fifty miles away a brother as we would ride and after that would come a run of one hundred and miles as the crow flies or counting the and turns we would make say one hundred and miles a scant calculation there were as my map showed at least seven to cross on returning in our path lay french and west the advertised of america north of that would be the home of the world s supply of and beyond it the seat of the state university where i had spent one dreamy year after that a run of at least miles straight let alone winding before we could enter it can t be done i argued as we dressed you said three days but it will be four at the earliest if not five i want to see a little of and well if we have decent roads we can come pretty near doing it he insisted certainly we can get home by tomorrow night i ought to i have a lot of things to do in town friday well you re the doctor i agreed so long as i see what i want to see we downstairs agreeing to breakfast in it was six thirty those favored souls who enjoy rising early in the morning and looking after their flowers were abroad admiring cutting watering it was a cheering spectacle i respect all people who love flowers it seems to me one of the preliminary steps in a love and understanding of beauty came nearer at a surprising rate i began to brush up my local geography and list in my mind the things i must see the houses in which we had lived the church and school which i was made to attend the river at the foot of main street where once in january playing with some boys i fell into the river knocked off a floating and came desperately near being swept away by the ice then i must see s works and the chair factory of messrs and a holiday where my brother al worked for a time and where of a saturday i often went to help him and the company must be found too at whose low windows i was wont to stand and watch the men form cups plates etc out of grey wet clay this seemed to me the most wonderful process of all those witnessed by me in my youth it was so gracefully and delicately accomplished there was only one other thing that compared in interest and that was the and melting of iron in great in an enormous iron on the same street with the catholic school which i used to pass every day and where the pouring of the glistening metal into and the pouring of that into intricate of sand whereby were shaped iron fences tops had always been of the interest to me the essential interest of to me however was that at that particular time in my youth and just at the time when seemingly things had reached a crisis for my mother whose moods were invariably my own had appeared like a splendid new chapter in our lives and resolved all of our difficulties for the time being into nothing how was this done well as i have indicated somewhere i believe our oldest brother the oldest living member of the family of children had come to my mother s rescue in the nick of time by now he was a successful though up to this time wandering man an end man no less but more recently still he had secured a position with a permanent or stock company in the opera house where he was honored with the	43
position of and end man as the mood prompted him and where nightly he was supposed to execute a humorous incidentally he was singing his own songs also incidentally he was conducting a humorous column in a local paper the the fences and of the city to his comparative a brother for a large red and yellow single sheet print of his face was displayed in many windows his life so far had proved a charming version of the prodigal son as a boy of seventeen for errors which need not be here he was driven out of the home as a man of or boy he had now returned the winter previous to our moving adorned with a fur coat a high silk hat a gold headed cane my mother cried on his shoulder and he on hers he really loved her so tenderly so that this in itself constituted a fine romance at once he promised to solve all her difficulties she must come out of this he was going to now there is a bit of private history which should be included here but which i do not wish to relate at present the result was that thereafter a weekly letter containing a few dollars three or four arrived every monday how often have i gone to the to get it then there was some talk of a small house he was going to rent and of the fact that we were soon to move then one summer day we did go and i recall so well how arriving in at about nine o clock at night my mother and we three youngest we were met at the station by the same smiling happy brother and taken to the house at east street where on seeing her new home and its rather comfortable my mother stood in the doorway and cried and he with her i cannot say more than that it all seems too wonderful too beautiful even now chapter but i cannot possibly hope to convey the delicious sting life had in it for me at this time as a spectacle a dream something in which to and be as only youth and love know life not alone but life itself was beautiful the sky the trees the sun the visible scene people hurrying to and fro or in the shade the sound of church bells of a wide stretch of common getting up in the morning going to bed at night the stars the winds hunger thirst the joy of playing or of idly musing in i was just beginning to come out of the dream period which held for me between the years of seven and eleven the significance of necessity and effort were for the first time beginning to suggest themselves still i was not awake only vaguely disturbed at times like a sea faintly touched by winds the and storms were to come fast enough i was really not old enough to understand all or even any of the troublesome conditions affecting our family like my brother and sister i was too young hopeful sometimes in my dreams a faint suggestion of my mood at the time comes back and then i know how i have changed the very of me i do not respond now as i did then or at any rate i think not as we the city we could see the ground itself in the distance and soon we were riding along a ridge or elevated alive with traffic and dotted with houses is a southern city in spite of the fact that it is and has all the characteristic marks of a southern city a hot drowsy almost summer an early spring a mild winter a long agreeable autumn snow falls but rarely and does not endure long abound whole sections of them and work on the the railroad and at scores of tasks given over to in the north you see them about carrying washing windows driving and waiting on table it is as though the extreme south had reached up and just touched this projecting section of again it is a german city strangely enough a city to which thousands of the best type of german have despite the fact that and were originally french and then english except for small sections through here the german seems to we saw many german farmers the type coming up from and here in german names it was as true of my days as a boy here as it is now even more so i believe there are a number of purely german catholic or churches controlled by priests or ministers again it is a distinctly river type of town with that floating population of river you can always tell them drifting about i saw a dozen in the little while i was there river or bustling about dark sallow small rugged i have seen them at st louis at in where the boats come up from the sea and down from i can always tell them once inside the city i was interested to note that most cities like people retain their characteristics permanently thus in my day was already noted as a furniture city plainly it was so still in half a dozen blocks we passed as many large furniture companies all their windows open and the and of their wheels and and pouring forth a happy melody again it was already at that time establishing a reputation for the manufacture of cheap pot a holiday and here to our left was a crowded in among other things not large but still a if there was one we might expect others at the edge of the town making its way through a notable was pigeon creek a stream in which ed al and i had often bathed and and to the shore of which we	43
had been led on divers occasions by a stout german catholic priest or three or four of them giving an annual or the fact that the land rises at this section was probably what attracted the first here and gives to this creek and the heart of the city a picturesque and somewhat character not far from the of the city in a region which i once considered very remote we passed the church of st an institution which because i was taken to its by my father i had retained in memory as something imposing it was not at all a rather commonplace church in red brick and white stone such as any carpenter and of might design and execute a little farther on facing my much beloved vine street where stood holy catholic church and school and along which morning and evening i used to walk i discovered the county court house filling a space of ground which had once been our public school it was very large very and very like every other court house in america friends why is it that american can design nothing different or is it that our splendidly free and people will not permit them i sometimes feel that there could not exist a more dull nation than we are in so far as intelligence is supposed to manifest itself in the matter of taste we give no evidence of having any positively none our are of the flock herd or school variety we run with the pack some in art literature politics architecture cries up m and up goes every blessed thumb from the atlantic to the pacific then some other ass calls down and down go all not a few but all let a cry that shakespeare is and his plays are at once barred from all the schools of a dozen states let a declare that the young must not be and out go all the works of on the ground that they will injure the young save the sixteen year old girl if you must make and absolute of every citizen from ocean to ocean i i despair really i call for water and wash my hands a land with such tendencies can scarcely be saved unless it be by disaster we need to be tried by fire or born again we do not grasp the first principles of intellectual progress but our breakfast i our breakfast i before getting it i had to take to view the river from water street i do believe they have changed the name to drive since new york has one for i could not rest until he had seen one of the most striking american river scenes of which i know anything i know how the the ocean at new york the the at st louis the the at the new and big in the picturesque mountains of west virginia and the the to make the in but this sweep of the coming up from the south and turning immediately south again in a mighty elbow which at the low hill on which the city stands is tremendous you know this is a mighty river bearing the muddy waters of half a continent by merely looking at it it speaks for itself standing on this street of this purely commercial city whose sloping sinks to the water s edge you see it coming miles and miles away this vast body of water and turning you see it disappearing around a over whose few weak and yellow trees the water frequently passes in high water whole towns and valleys fall before it houses and go by on its flood rf holiday wi t ride those picturesque relics of an a t order of and here on this bright august were several at our feet they were m i to floating chained to the shore on downward slope of stones were lying nd the evidence of a river traffic that no railroad management can utterly kill a river mm c i hearing almost all the slow freight of a half a f is left to the minor of or live and were struck with if h pleased me greatly for it is pleasant to bring r k a great view they exclaimed over its scope t i we went looking for a although the i c c was st out season we un d one v were being offered for the humble i cents we our x v j i j as we sat down that he did not care for and then ordered a three eggs a i a bowl of and toes off with a light plate of i v exclaimed you really aren t as v u might be this morning you must look v j v heard lost in a sea of he i aa honest driver worthy of his hire it was that the question of once tf thk t me to p a me which as u as p ent i u l as in the desert ft observed with as we sat fm n s t ave jo j congratulated him with the air of a the time v n ce ar s e c w he observed now a d on arm replied that worthy we ain t got no m s j ain t none to be had in de the at what s that i demanded looking up and getting nervous for we were in the very best the city afforded no what are you talking about we saw fields of them miles of them between here and and da s right da s where grows you see um all right but don t bring urn down here dis ain t no go and east to new and	43
da s what it is you mean to say you can t get me a single feebly a distinct note of reproach in his voice he even glanced my way sorry if to be had we d have um dis is de place we t um da s it turned upon me coldly that s what comes of not eating all that i wanted to when i wanted to hang it all i said i am stricken to the earth i crawl before you here is dust and here are ashes i with my arms if i had thought for one moment and all those fine up there i agree i said he buried his face in the bill of fare and paid no attention to me only s declining state of health restored him eventually and we left quite cheerful only a block or two from our was the st george hotel my brother s resort unchanged and as old fashioned as ever white with green out in front an airy look about it how once upon a time he loved to himself here with all the smart of the town i can see him yet clothed to perfection happy in his youth health and new found honors such as they were then came holy church and school at third and vine an absolutely unchanged institution it had shrunk and lost quality as had everything else nearly with which i had been connected the school fence the principal s red o a holiday brick house at the back how i used to dread it the church next door with the rear passage by which when we were extra good we went to receive colored picture cards of the saints or or mary and when we were bad to be warned by the priest the latter adventure was terrible it had never befallen me but other boys had experienced it i cannot possibly convey to you i fear how very definitely this particular school and church impressed me at the time although i had started in several schools this was really my first by this time my mother was beginning to doubt the of catholic schools in general how they would have condemned her for that but as yet she was not quite positive enough in her own mind to insist on a change when i found it was another catholic school i was to attend i was very i was by the the of priests and one professor very young and as he seemed to me very terrible a veritable who ruled the principal school room here really he was a most amazing person in his way he had blazing eyes heavy black eyebrows black hair a full black beard and he walked with a stride which as it seemed to was sufficient to shake the earth he controlled the principal or highest grade and i now eleven years of age and with a tendency to read a little of everything was deemed fit to be put there why i never can tell oh those two terrible years the best i can say for them or the worst is this that outside the school and at home was heaven inside was hell this young professor had the german idea of stern vigorous control in which he was supported by the parish he whipped boys vigorously and possibly for the type of youth under him this was just the thing they were unquestionably a touch thick lot and they made my life a nightmare into the bargain it seems to me now as i look i on it that i learned nothing at all not even school rooms were always being over by and various and sisters superior whose sole concern seemed to be that we should learn our and be at twelve years of age whether we knew anything or not think of it i am not lying or about the catholic church and its methods i am telling you what i felt saw endured during these two years as it seems to me i never learned anything about anything there was a bible history there which entertained me so much that i read in it constantly to the neglect of nearly everything else and some of the boys brought diamond dick or its that day equivalent and these we read under the seats i among others though i liked my bible history and my geography such as it was better on several occasions i had my hands severely marked by a ruler by the professor great red put across both my palms because i whispered or laughed or did not pay attention and once he pulled my ear so hard that i cried he had a habit shall i call it of striking boys across the cheek so hard and so fiercely that their faces blazed for an hour or of seizing them laying them over a bench and beating them with a short whip once i saw a boy whom he intended so to whip turn on him strike him across the face and run and jump out the window to the ground say seven feet below to me at that time with my on life it was dreadful my heart used to beat so i thought i would faint and i lived in constant dread lest i be seized and handled in the same way whenever we met him or the catholic priest or any other connected with the school or church we were supposed compelled is the right word to take off our hats and if it was a priest we had to say in german praised be christ to which he would reply amen when school was over at four p m i would creep away haunted by the thought that on the morrow i would have to return next to the school was the church and this also	43
had been more or less of a torture to me though not quite so much so here the reverend i a holiday am not his name was supreme and here i made my first confession no real sins at all really to my mother was the worst and received my first communion it was not a very striking church but then with its gilt the candles the stained glass windows the statues and stations of the cross it seemed quite wonderful only i was always afraid of it all it seemed alien to the soul of me entering it this day i found it just the same not quite as large as i had fancied but still of good size as such churches go i recalled now with a kind of half pleasure half pain all the important functions that went on in this church the of christmas the whole fable set forth life size and surrounded by candles palm sunday good or black friday when everything in the church was draped in black the forty days of lent and the masses high or low sung on every great saint s day or when or the latter to us or other came to visit us my father was always much wrought up about these things when he was at home and the church always seemed to blaze with candles and crowds of in red and white or visiting priests in white and gold i always felt as though heaven must be an amazing and difficult place to reach if so much fuss over the mere trying for it here was necessary then in addition there were the church a long line of amazing events the chief importance of which was as it seemed to me the getting of money for the church certainly the know how to keep their busy and even worried my recollection of school and church life here is one confused of masses lessons in the fierce beating of pupils instructions preparatory to my first confession and communion the meeting of huge dull or church societies with endless and the men a poor type of and then marching off somewhere to and the like out of the school or church yard inside and these were partly what i was coming to see today were the where i once told my sins to the reverend and the altar rail and the altar where once i had been received in holy communion and was confirmed by the bishop sitting on a high throne and arrayed in golden of the church i can see him now a pale severe german with a fine nose and hard blue eyes i can feel his cool fingers my forehead think of the influence of such and all gorgeous on the average mind is it any wonder that so many permanently to theories and so arrayed the wonder to me is that any child should ever be able to throw off the oppressive weight the binding chains thus on him today because it was so near september they were cleaning the and preparing them for a new of victims think of the dull of century after century age after age how many and have been led along from the dark into the dark again they do not fell them with an axe as at the nor open their veins with a knife as the swine but they fell and them just the same i am not against alone as much may be said of the it is possible that for the latter it may be said that the chains are not so difficult to break i don t know but here they come endless and at the gates ignorance vice cruelty seize them and this or that band about their brains or their feet then or they are turned loose to think to grow if possible as well ask of a to or of an ox to charge the to discover is gone says the see this is the manner of it if r v a fc v a holiday you dare to think otherwise you are damned your soul will in hell and here is the nature of that hell poor life i i wonder that ever an came to pass or a rome arose to have so glorious a fall chapter the of stopping to look at the old school door i went in i recalled how once upon a time when we were first starting to school here we tried to induce ed to enter he being the youngest and very shy as to education but he refused to go and ran back home the next day my sister and i and took him but at the gate he once more and refused to enter it was a dreadful situation for already we others had found the discipline here to be very stern perhaps it was ed s of what was about to be done to his soul that terrified him at any rate when pressed to come he cried and even screamed making such an uproar that that same professor soul that he was came rushing out him and carried him within for a time he was not to be dealt with even there but finding eventually that no one him he sat down and from that day to the time he left two years later learned nothing at all not even his for which same i am truly grateful but the of the church caught him its gold and colors and as to hell and now he is as good a catholic as any and as fearful of terrific fires once inside in the same room in which i used to sit and fear for my life and learned nothing i encountered a black sister her beads dangling at her waist the same kind that used to	43
and me in my youth because she looked at me curiously i bowed and then explained once i went to school here over thirty years ago i could see she assumed i was still a good catholic i went on i sat in this seat here it was the third row from the wall about six seats back a holiday a mr was my teacher here then and a father the yes she said simply i have heard of mr but he has not been here for years he left many years ago father died fifteen years ago yes so i heard i replied and father do you know of him no i never heard of him but if you will go to the in the house back of the church he can tell you he would be pleased to see who had been here so long ago i smiled i was only but how old i really was after all then came in with his do you mind if we take a picture of it i asked not at all she replied it would be nice how would you like to sit at the desk there i have sat in rooms where a sister was my teacher oh i think i d better not she replied i m not sure if it s i just then another an older came in and she put the matter to her in soft whispers she was dying to do it i could see that well the rules i heard the other say aloud there was more whispering and then she mounted the platform and turned her head so that her bonnet concealed her face snapped her would you like a copy of it if it turns out well i inquired oh it would please me very much and your name sister mary vine street i took one last look and went out outside was the yard in which we had always played as an eleven and twelve year old boy this had seemed a dreadful place to me one of and arguments i was not a nor tough enough physically to share in the rough sports that went on here leap snap the whip and bag i did but i was always getting the of the worst of it and in addition for some unaccountable reason i was always finding myself involved in fights suddenly out of a clear sky without my having said a word to anybody i would be the object of some little american s or german american s rage or opposition a fist would be shaken in my face i would be told to wait till after school after school a crowd would gather i would be led as it were like a lamb to the slaughter the crowd would divide into sides i would be urged to take off my coat and go for him but i was never much on the go somehow i did not know how to fight even when at times i thought i ought to or might win a chance blow once won me a victory and great applause i knocked my opponent flat and all the fight out of him apparently but quite by accident i hadn t intended to at all at other times i received which left me wondering what i had done and why life was so fierce it made me shy of other boys i kept out of trouble by keeping away from them wandering about by myself and rejoicing in the beauty of life as a whole its splendid reality inside the church was nothing to disturb me or cause me to alter my point of view it was just the same there was the reverend s front left and here were all the statues stations windows just as i had left them i looked up at the organ where i had air for the organ and sundays it was apparently as i had left it kind heaven i exclaimed to myself standing in here what a farce life is anyhow here is this same church from the errors and terrors of which i managed by such hard straits of thought to escape and here is a city and a school pouring more and more victims into its jaws and year after year year after year supposing one does escape think of all the others and if this were the middle ages i would not even dare write this they would burn me at the stake as it is if any attention is paid to me at all i will be as a liar a a person with a brain as one of my dear a holiday catholic of course condescended to remark yet at my elbow as i write stands the and van s history of the and a life of to say nothing of scores of volumes the folly of religious completely and yet and yet the poor victims of such as this would be among the first to destroy me and these things the very first a little way down vine street from the school was the old now enlarged and doing a good business in old metal melting and we turned into main where it joined vine and there a block away was iron works unchanged years had not made a of difference the walls were as red and dusty the noise as great i went along the windows looking in and so interesting were the processes that joined me in exactly the same positions at the same windows were seemingly the same men at the exact machines and grinding shares it was astonishing i felt young for the moment at these windows with my books under my arm i had always lingered as long as i dared only i recalled now that my eyes then came just	43
above the window whereas now the touched my middle chest it was almost too good to be true and there up main street quite plainly was the railroad station we entered the night we came from and whence we departed two years later for and only it had been it was a a affair a union station no less then we had slipped in my mother and her helpless brood and were met by paul and put on a little one horse street car which had no conductor at the rear but only a small step and in which after in a case where a light was we rode a few blocks to street i recalled the night the stars the of summer engine bells the city s lights it seemed so wonderful this city after so great it had forty or fifty thousand people then thousand today on the train the of as we came in it seemed as if we were coming into i said to a passing southern water type a small little man can you tell us where street is why sweetheart right they it is right they at the the eyes poured forth a volume of gentle sunny humor i smiled back it was like being handed a of roses we turned into street and rode such a little way two blocks say the house was easy to identify even though the number had now been made it was now crowded in between a long row of brick frame houses of better construction and the neighborhood had changed entirely in physical appearance though not in atmosphere formerly save for our house all was open common here you could see from our house to the station at which we had arrived from our house to the interesting which i still hoped to find east or toward the country you could see north to the woods and an catholic orphan asylum now all that was changed it was all filled with houses streets that in my time had not even been now ran east and west and north and south our large yard and barn were gone the house had no lawn at all or just a tiny scrap in front the fine at the back where all the neighborhood boys gathered to play ball top was built over with houses i remembered how i used to run kicking my bare toes in in the summer once a bee stung me and i sat down and cried then getting no aid i made a of mud and and held that on instructions from big ed one of our neighborhood gang i recalled how ed and i played one old cat here with harry the s son up the street and how we both hated to have to run up the street to main street to the s or for anything here i could stand and see the of holy clear across the a holiday at third and pine and hear the and night it was beautiful to me i have paused to listen and to feel across the common a saturday i have wandered to the to look in at windows at so many interesting things that were being made we stop asked as we the don t i don t want to go in some little children were playing on our small front v t i next came the themselves over in the tv t where they should have been but now t enormous proportions the buildings extended for as hundreds if not thousands of men and women b v been at work here you could see them at all ti windows turning cups plates ti thousands in a day the size and the swing of tt was like a song we got out and wandered about h down the low red walls looking at windows and seeing the thousands upon thousands of bits of u being shaped into the forms which they retain for a while only to be returned to their native v is so may we be shaped and cast back broken to v w some day for something else t methods have changed said one man talking v ns v through a window twenty years ago a lot of the k was still done by hand but now we do it all by ma c we have forms like this and he held up one v u see we put just so much clay in and press this down that makes the exact thickness it can t be more or i make a hundred and twenty plates an hour mc made twenty while we looked on man at the next window was putting handles vm cups this there was nothing of interest to see so we the map and decided that our best plan was to s first to in county the next county t then to and in the of county and then still through and into orange county and so reach french and west neither of us had ever been there it was of some slight interest to me as being famous a great cure and the resort of my brother paul who was fond of places of this kind indeed he was a kind of modern with and women and having a gay time of it wherever he was a vigorous animal soul with a world of sentiment and a capacity for living which was the admiration and the marvel of all so we were off in so far as this part of the trip was concerned i can say the attraction was off there was still my one year university town but beside and and and how it was really of much more interest to me the that i visited between and but this trip did not include that besides i had been to	43
and french we passed nothing but and some few not very good cars and now the landscape changed rapidly i had always heard that brown county east of the seat of our state university was the and most picturesque in the state containing a hill the highest in of over five hundred feet as a student i had walked there with a party but if my memory served me correctly it did not compare in with the region through which we were now making our way heights and depths are matters anyway and the impression of something or which one can get from a region of comparatively low depends on the arrangement of its miniature and here in orange county i had an impression of great hills and deep and steep which quite equalled anything we had seen it suggested the vicinity of in and as we sped along there were sudden drops down which we ground at speed which quite took my breath away it was a true and beautiful mountain country lonely for the most part and such roads we and and along now and again we were at the a holiday very bottom of a with lovely misty hills rising sheer above us again we were on some seeming mountain side the valleys falling sharply away from the road and showing some rocky at the bottom more than once we shot the machine through a tumbling sparkling stream at the bottom of one i saw a light and we being very uncertain of our way i climbed out at the gate and went up under some vines and bushes to knock at the door inside since it was open i beheld a quite interior furniture a wall of shelves loaded with books a table strewn with magazines and papers and the room lighted by a silk shaded lamp when i knocked a short legal looking youth of most precise manners and attire and a large pair of horn glasses on his nose arose from a small secretary and came over french i inquired about eighteen miles he replied you are on the right road i felt quite reduced i had expected to find a picturesque between and and holding back against to which seemed indifferent i sat and dreamed over those hills what a possession for a state like i thought a small quaint wonderful region within its very as time went on and population increased i thought this would afford pleasure and to thousands perhaps hundreds of thousands who knows who could not afford to go farther plainly it had already evinced its charm to the world for were we not on the very outskirts of two of the most remarkable spring in america if not in the world who had not heard of french west and yet when i went to school at the state university these places had not been heard of let alone i recall a long student from this very county who was studying law at our college who told me of french french and that u a lot of people around there thought the waters were good for i expected somehow as we rode along to see some evidence in the way of improved mountain conditions better houses more of them possibly now that we were in the vicinity of such a prosperous resort but not a sign was there ten o clock came and then eleven we were told that we were within nine miles seven miles four miles two miles still no houses to speak of and only the poorest type of cabin at one mile there was still no sign then suddenly at the bend of a road came summer cottages of the customary resort type a street of them bright lamps appeared a great wall of cream colored brick with lights arose at the bottom of the into which we were descending i was sure this was the principal hotel then as we approached gardens and grounds most extensive and formal in character appeared and in their depths to the left through a faint haze appeared a much larger and much more imposing structure this was the hotel the other was an for servants all the gaudy luxury of a or resort was here in evidence a railroad spur adjoining a private hotel station contained three or four private cars here while their owners rested a darkened train was evidently awaiting some particular hour to depart at the foot of a long iron and glass protecting a yellow marble staircase of exceedingly design a stood waiting to open doors as we sped up he greeted us various black on our bags like we were escorted through a marble such as once dreamed of as rare and to an altar like desk where a high priest of american profit to permit us to register we were assigned rooms separate quarters for our at six dollars the day and subsequently ushered down two miles of hall on the fifth or sixth floor to our very plain very white but furnished a holiday rooms where we were permitted to pay the various slaves who had attended us george i said to the soul who carried my bag how many rooms has this hotel eight hundred ah believe and how many miles is it from here to the we don t serve no meals nine o clock but ah expects if you wanted a sent up to yo room de would see you done got it no george i m afraid of these i think i ll go out instead isn t there a around here somewhere as you all d like to no is one it keeps open most all night it s right outside de grounds here i think you might get a has a pie that s it george i replied that s me a plain humble pie counter and now	43
good night to you george good night and he went out grinning i may seem to be but i say it in all seriousness these enormous american watering place hotels with their armies of servants heavy serious faced guests solemn state miles of halls and the like more or less frighten me they are so enormous their guests are so stiff captain of industry like and they are so often not always accompanied by such heavily or and females whose very presence seems to a kind of opposition to or contempt for simple things which puts me on hooks i don t seem quite to belong i may have the necessary money to pay for all and sundry services such as great provide for a period anyhow but even so i still feel small i look about me and suspect every man i see of being at least a i feel as though i were entirely surrounded by judges merchant princes eminent doctors lawyers french priests and and that if i dare say a word some one might cry that man i who is he anyhow put him out and so as i say i slip along and never make any more noise or fuss or show than i have to if a head waiter doesn t put me in exactly the place i would like to be or the room clerk doesn t give me just the room i would like i always say ah well i m just a writer and perhaps i d better not say anything they might put me out and doctors and lawyers ought to have all the tables or window seats and so it s really uncomfortable to be so humble just nothing at all but notwithstanding this rather tragic state my room was a good one and the windows once opened to the moonlight commanded a fine view of the grounds with the walks spring and artificial and flower beds all picked out clearly by the pale ethereal light the over the way was all that george said it was and more very bad the whole town seemed to be of this one great hotel and an enormous for servants and and then a few and the town cottages the springs in the grounds were four or five in number all handsomely with in each case these latter were with colored and you went down steps into them carrying your own glass and drinking all of the peculiar you could endure resident or methods for a price the very wealthy visitors or often bring their own who resent no doubt all local medical advice the victims or lovers of leisure idle about these far flung grounds enjoying the walks the smooth grass the views the links and the courts the hours for meals are the principal hours and dinner from seven to nine is an event a dress affair the grand parade to the seems to begin at six or six fifty at that time you can sit in the long hall lead o a holiday ing to that very essential chamber and see the personages go by for this occasion at breakfast the next morning and luncheon which here is a kind of an affair of state and i did well enough we were given tables with a pleasant view walked over the grounds drank at all the springs bought picture and after and getting thoroughly refreshed decided to be on our way west as it proved was on our route out of town not more than three quarters of a mile off j and to this we repaired also merely to see if anything it was more assuming in its appearance than french the principal hotel an enormous one of cream brick and white stone with a low flat red oval dome or in spirit was almost of the size and the general appearance of the in paris as in the case of the hotel at french the grounds were very extensive and to within an inch of their life and smart indicated the springs a great wide circular admitted to the entrance of the principal hotel and with stone there was a stream here which ran through the principal grounds and there were other hotels by no means humble in their appearance satisfied at having at least seen these twin i was content to make short work of the rest of the journey at what a rural sounding name the county seat of this poor and rather county we found a so small and that we could not resist the desire to pause and observe it it was so a cross between a greek temple and a country school the greek temple was surmounted by a small somewhat german looking about it on all sides ran the old time rail for an note which indicated the of the to it were fastened a collection of and with three or four small i got out and walked through it only to see the county or in french his office away on a fiddle the music was not exactly but jolly outside stood a rather gaunt and looking farmer in the poorest of and worn at the elbows tell me i said i see on the map here a place called lost river is there a river here and does it disappear that s just what it does he replied most courteously but ain t to see the water just out as it goes along you can t see but just dry stones i don t know exactly where it does come up again out here way i think there are a lot of around here we went on but on discovering a splendid stretch of road and on it we forgot all about lost river throughout this and the next county north the roads seemed to attain a of perfection possibly	43
all i remember one brisk youth telling me that in addition to law which he was studying he was taking up politics and the like as i wondered of what possible use those things could be to him and how much superior his mind must be to mine since he could grasp them and i no doubt could not again the professors there were such a wondrous company to me quite they were such an company your heavy owl like who see in books and the up of human knowledge in books the sum and substance of life s significance as i look back on them now i marvel at my awe of them then and at that time i was not very much either rather suffice it to say that the one thing that i really wanted to see in connection with this college was a ground floor parlor i had occupied in an old rusty vine covered house which stood in the of a pleasing village lawn and had for a neighbor a small one story frame where dwelt a of a girl who made it her business to bait me the first i was there this room i had occupied with a law student by the name of william or bill rush and almost guiding spirit of the whole college team and afterwards county of and state from an adjacent county he was a stamping vigorous black haired pagan who cursed and drank a little and played cards and with the girls he could be so mild and so engaging that when i first saw him i liked him french immensely and what was much more curious he seemed to take a fancy to me we made an agreement as to and occupying the same room it did not seem in the least odd to me at that time that he should occupy the same bed with me i had always been sleeping with one or the other of my brothers it was more odd that although he at once surrounded himself with the de la of the college world who made of our humble chamber a conference and card room i got along well enough with them all to endure it and even made friends out of some of them they were charming so robust and boisterous and and yet genial through his personality or my own i can never quite make out which i was drawn into a veritable of college life i had no least idea what i wanted to study but because i had been deficient in certain things in high school i took up those first year latin english literature history and old english how ever got along i do not know i think i failed in most things because i never mastered grammar or however i staggered on worrying considerably and feeling that my life and indeed my character was a failure between i found time and the mood for with and enjoying all sorts of odd youth of the most and who seemed to find in me something which they liked a law student an minister s son a boy who was soon to be heir to a large fortune and so on and so on i was actually popular with some after a fashion and if i had known how to make use of my abilities in this line had i really friendship and connections i might have built up some enduring which would have stood me in good stead and later as it was my year ended i left college dropping all but half a dozen youths from my list of even occasional and finally losing track of all of them finding in different scenes and interests all that i seemed to require in the way of mental and social diversion chapter a college town as we sped into it did not seem much changed from the last time i had laid eyes upon it years before only now having seen the more picturesque country to the south of it i did not think the region in which it lay seemed as broken and as it did the year i first came to it then i had seen only the more or less level regions of northern and southern and the territory about and so had seemed quite remarkable physically now it seemed more or less tame and in addition it had grown so in size and as to have most of that rural and charm which had been its most delightful characteristic to me in then it was so poor and so very simple the court house square had been a of moss back simplicity and poverty more attractive even speaking than that court house i just mentioned as being the charm of here also the rail had extended all around the square i saw more tumble down and broken down men old brown almost moss covered coats and thin bony horses in the of than i ever saw anywhere before or since in addition to this in spite of the of the college many of the six hundred students had considerable money for was a prosperous state and these youths and girls were very well provided for secret or greek letter societies and college social circles of different degrees of import there were college and college and college at that time the university chanced to have a faculty which because of force and a college town brains was considerable attention david afterwards president of was president here william afterwards president of was professor of l green a man who made considerable stir in and in later years was associate in the chair of a man who figured in american and political discussion in after life and added considerable to the fame of was occupying the chair of and political economy edward l a man who	43
has carried culture with a large c into all the women s clubs and intellectual movements of one kind and another from ocean to ocean was occupying an assistant in literature there was von called to the chair of history at the university of and so on a quite interesting and of minds the student body of which i was such an unsatisfactory seemed quite well aware of the character and import of the men above them there was constant and great talk concerning the relative merits of each and every one as miss my and had predicted i learned more concerning the seeming import of education the branches of knowledge and the avenues and open to men and women j in the intellectual world than i had ever dreamed existed and just from hearing the students argue or one course or one professor or another here i met my first true young men who vigorously and at every point with the social scheme and as they found it here i found the and seeking only to out the details of a profession and subsequently make a living here i found the the college widow and the youth with purely tendencies who found in college life a means of gratifying an intense and almost desire for dancing dressing living in a world of social airs and dreams a holiday there were oddly enough hard and even among the class who were bent upon preaching u the kingdom of god is at hand to all the j world they seemed a little late to me even at that day and date though i was still not quite sure myself had almost made heaven and hell a reality to me and here were attractive and intellectual women the first i had ever seen really who in those and social to student class and social life as represented by and could rise and discuss subjects which were still more or less to me they gave me my first of the third sex indeed it was all so interesting so new so fascinating that i was set and remained so until the college year was over i regained my health which i had thought all but lost i and in addition began to realize that perhaps there were certain things i might investigate over a period of years with profit to myself i began to see that however certain forms of intellectual training and certain professions might be to me they offered distinct and worthy means of employment to others though i had been aroused at first now i began to be troubled and unhappy i felt distinctly that i had wasted a year or worse yet had not been sufficiently well equipped mentally to make the most of it i began to be troubled over my future and while i was not willing to accept my s kind offer and return the following year i realized now that without some training it would do me no good still i was not willing to admit to myself that i was hopeless there must be some avenue of approach to the intellectual life for me too i said to myself only how find it i finally left unhappy scarcely knowing which way to turn but resolved to be something above a mere in a commercial machine this proved really one of the most years of my life during my stay here what novel sensations did i not experience it was all so different from the commercial a college town life from which i had been in there i had been rising at five thirty eating an almost impossible breakfast often the condition of my stomach would not permit me to eat at all taking a slow long distance horse car to the business heart working from seven to six with an hour for lunch in a crowded and then taking the car home again to eat and because i was always very tired to go to bed almost at once only saturday in summer the saturday half holiday idea was then becoming known in america and sunday in winter offered sufficient time for me to and see a little of the world to make life somewhat for me a situation which i greatly resented it was most in college all that was changed from the smoky noisy city i was transported once more to the really peaceful country where all was green and sweet and where owing to the peculiarly climate of this region flowers until late december the college my presence in class only from nine until twelve thirty or so after that i was free to study or do as i chose outside my window in this lovely old house where i had a room were flowers and vines and a heavy with blue grapes and a stretch of grass that was like to my soul the college while it contained but a few humble and buildings was so strewn with great trees and through one corner of it where i entered by a with a crystal clear brook that i was many a morning on my way to class or at noon on my way out i have thrown myself down by the side of this stream stretched out my arms and rested thinking of the difference between my state here and in there i was so unhappy in the thing that i was doing the irish who was over my floor despised me very rightly so perhaps and was at no pains to conceal a c it threatening always to see that i was discharged at the end of the year our home life was now not so v a holiday ml no time to enjoy it work was too c no pots and to pile in no end j as f and to out of j and	43
store away only to get them out on there i felt myself a here i was a free intellectual it or go as i chose i could even attend nut as i chose study was something i must y if or there was no one present to urge a various youths as i have said at once gathered v c lawyers doctors j t in walked by my side or sat v c the boarding table or dropped in between v of an afternoon or walked with me in the cr played cards on saturday or sun c an evening at church or at a v s philosophy or read or even a call upon t i was not very well equipped materially but t a e absolutely and aside from fc ra c greek letter and social it did not tt j k much difference i was never actually tapped xv cm in one of these latter and yet i was told j t fc that two different had been s over the question of my another c experience of mine but i went out a great deal i ck s dreamed much rested and if at the t the year i was mentally and unhappy c was very much improved there can be no of that and my outlook and were h was during this winter that i experienced several early and because i was young and very somewhat memorable love affairs which w r sharp the impression they made at the time came t as b n g to a retiring and nervous dis k i could never keep my countenance or find my the presence of the fair if a girl was pretty a college town and in the least or self conscious i was at once stricken as if with the or left rigid and played over by and fever adjoining this house in the cottage previously mentioned was a young tow headed who no sooner saw that i was in this house as a guest than she my discomfiture and it was my custom because there was a space between two windows outside of which were flowers to study in the east side of my room looking out on the lawn in the cottage adjoining were several windows through which on divers occasions during the first and second week i saw a girl looking at me at first closing the shutters when she saw me looking but later finding me no doubt and inclined to keep my eyes on my books leaving them open and even singing or laughing in a ringing disturbing way on several occasions when our eyes met she half smiled or seemed to but i was too terrified by the thought of a possible encounter on the strength of this to be able to continue my gaze or to do what would seem the logical thing to most to speak or nod or smile nevertheless in spite of my inability to meet her in the spirit in which they were made she was apparently not discouraged she continued to half smile to give me the shaking that some day soon i might have to talk to her whether i would or not and then where would i find words one afternoon as i was brooding over my latin attempting to the mysteries of and i saw her come out of her back door and run across the lawn to the kitchen of the old widow lady who kept this house i was not at all disturbed by this only interested and keenly so even jealous of the pleasure the old lady was to have in the girl s company she was exceedingly pretty and by now there were other male students in the house though not on my floor i thought of her graceful body and bright hair and pink cheeks when suddenly there was a knock at my door and opening it i encountered the feeble old lady who kept the place a holiday very nervous and herself but smiling in a sly way the young lady next door wants to know if you won t help her with her latin there s something she can t quite understand she said weakly actually my blood ran cold my hair and rose then i felt shooting pains in my arms and knees why certainly i managed to articulate not knowing anything about latin grammar but being enough to imagine that any information was required on this occasion i followed into the old fashioned with its table covered with a red cotton cloth and there was the girl and mock shy looking down after one appealing glance at me and wanting to know if i wouldn t please show her how to this sentence we sat down in adjoining chairs it was well for my knees were rapidly giving way i was enough to look at her book instead of her but at that her head came so close that her hair brushed my cheek my tongue by i then was swollen to nine times its normal proportions nevertheless i managed to say something god only knows what my hands were shaking like leaves she could not have failed to notice possibly she took pity on me for she looked at me laughed off her alleged need inquired if i was taking latin and wanted to know if i wasn t from fort she knew a boy who had been here the year before who looked like me and he was from fort with all these i could do nothing i couldn t talk i couldn t think of a single blessed thing to say it never occurred to me to her or to tell her how pretty she looked or frankly to confess that i knew nothing of latin but that i liked her and to jest with her about	43
her windows the lighted lamp inside communicating a pale to them i was miserably painfully unhappy and sad but i never spoke the very last day of my stay but one in the evening i went again just to see what better tribute could i pay to beauty in youth i chapter day and a memory entering this afternoon the memories of all my old and pains were exceedingly dim we say to ourselves at many particular times i will never forget this or the pain of this will endure forever but alas even our most pains and sufferings escape us we are compelled to admit that the memory of that which so is very dim marsh fires all of us we are made to glow by the heat and radiance of certain days but we fade and we vanish nevertheless entering now it had some charm only as i thought the whole thing over the memory of my various sex failures still i was not really happy here i told myself i was in too transient and inadequate a mood and perhaps that was true at any rate i wanted to see this one principal room i have previously mentioned and the college and the court house and feel the general atmosphere of the place as a whole the town was greatly changed but not enough to make it utterly different one could still see the old town in the new for although the old picturesque attractive court house had been by a much larger and more imposing building of red brick and white stone a not uninteresting design still a number of the buildings which had formerly surrounded it were here the former small and by no means post office with its dingy paper and knife marked writing shelf on one side had been replaced by a handsome government building suitable for a town of thirty or forty thousand a new city hall a thing of in my day was being erected in a street just south of the square new bank buildings dry day and a memory goods stores store were all in evidence in my time there had been but two both small and one almost impossible now there were four or five quite respectable ones and one of considerable pretensions in addition down the main street could be seen the college or university a striking group of buildings entirely different from those i had known a picture referring to one of the buildings spoke of five thousand population for the city and a four thousand attendance for the university feeling that too much had disappeared to make our stop of any particular import still i was eager to see what had become of the old house and whether the little cottage next door and the home of over the way were still in existence under my guidance we turned at the exact corner and stopped the car at the i was by no means uncertain for on the corner from my old room was a student s house too obviously the same to be mistaken but where was the one in which i had lived apparently it was gone there was an old house on the corner looking somewhat like it and the second from it on the same side was evidently the small house in which miss t had lived and over the way yes save for another house crowded in beside it that was the same too only in the case of this house on the corner all at once it came to me i could see what had been done i said to a boy who was playing with two other boys right in front of us how long has this second house been here this one next to the corner i i don t know ive only been here since day day i suddenly and entirely diverted by this curious comment what in the world is day day he stared as though a holiday he had not quite heard aw you know what day is i give you my solemn word i replied very seriously i don t i never heard of it before believe it or not i never did i don t live anywhere around here you know hey he called to another boy who was up in a tree in front of the house and who up to this moment had been keeping another youth from coming near by striking at him with a stick here s a says he never heard of day aw i it s the truth i persisted i m perfectly serious you think i m you but i m not i never heard of it where live then he asked new york i replied city yes come out here in that car yes and they ain t got a day in new york i never heard of one before well we have one here well when does it come then i asked hoping to get at it in that way in summer time he replied smiling now about august no it don t commented the boy in the tree it comes in the spring i know because we were still in school yet last year and they let us out that day well what month was it in then i went on april may june may i think said the boy in the tree i know we were still in school anyhow well what do they do on day i inquired of the boy on the ground what do you do well he said kicking the bricks with his toes they now send up and shoot off and have u day and a memory a parade and goes up in a flying machine at least he did last year yes what for though i inquired because it s day he insisted but don t you	43
admired him only in this instance loyalty to her friend and indifference on his part made any expression of it a little difficult i was a poor substitute a lay figure of which she was perfectly willing to make use on the way on the train we sat in the same seat and i took her hand a little later i gallantly compelled myself to slip my arm around her waist though it was almost with fear and trembling i could not think of any witty interesting things to say and i was deadly conscious of the fact so i struggled along myself all the way with thoughts of my arrived at we walked about to see the sights there had been a great a few days before and the tremendous damage was still very much in evidence then we went to the principal hotel for dinner my friend with an which to me passed over into the realm of the for the four of us taking two rooms i never even saw the form of then we went up and my girl companion having by now concluded that i was a stick went into the room whither w and his sweetheart had retired w came to my room for me and we went down to dinner he even urged more boldness on my part after dinner which passed heavily enough for me for i was conscious of failure we had five hours before our train should be due to return that time was spent in part by myself and this girl in the general because w and his mate had mysteriously disappeared then after an hour or more they sought us out and suggested a drive since we had brought bags we had to return to the hotel to get them and pay the bill there was still three quarters of an hour after her toilet in the room belonging to my friend my girl came downstairs to the parlor and a half hour later just in time to make the train w and his appeared the day was done the day and a memory opportunity gone as in the previous cases i heaped of upon my head i told myself over and over that never again would i venture to make to any woman that it would be useless i am doomed to failure i said no girl will ever look at me i am a fool a homely pathetic inadequate back in i parted from them in a black despair concealing my under a of but when i was alone i could have cried i never saw that maiden any more afterwards w took me to see his girl again he had no feeling of disappointment in me apparently or rather he was careful to conceal it he seemed to like me quite as much as ever but he proposed no more of that kind and there were c c hall who lived in a small hall bedroom over me and used to insist for policy s sake i fancy that he thought better in a small room and that too much heat was not very healthy and short bill expert on the and a after knowledge in connection with politics and arthur solemn into the of the law and a long company i can see them now all life before them the old including men and women merely so much baggage to be cleared away their their loves their hopes all that was important in life and life then felt so fresh and good so inviting after this came the university wholly changed but far more attractive than it had been in my day a really beautiful school i could find only a few things hall the brook a portion of some building which had formerly been our library it had been so added to that it was scarcely i ran back in memory to all those whom i had known here the young men the women the professors where were they all suddenly i felt dreadfully lonely as though i had been on a desert island not a soul did i know any more of all those who had been here scarcely one a holiday could i definitely place what is life that it can thus itself i asked myself if a whole realm of interests and emotions can thus definitely pass what is anything chapter the end of the journey we sped north in the gathering dusk and i was glad to go it was as though i had been to see something that i had better not have seen a house that is a garden that is broken down and and run to weeds and wild vines naked and open to the moon a place of which people say in whispers that it is haunted yes this whole region was haunted for me i took small interest in the once pleasing and even dramatic where in my college year i had so often and which then seemed so beautiful now i was lonely if i were to add one chamber to s profound collection in the it would be one in which alone and lonely sits one who the emotions and the of a world that is no more for a little way the country had some of the aspects of the regions south of french but we were soon out of that at a place called and once more in that flat valley lying between the white and rivers at though it was almost dark we could see an immense grassy plain or marsh which the overflowing river had made for itself in times past a region which might easily be protected by and made into a paradise of wheat or corn america however is still a young and extravagant country not nearly done its wild let alone making use of its	43
all their time people who never had any existence these impossible society are most of our successful short story writers too lazy to find out something about life itself the occasional flashes of wonder and strangeness in life it is apparent they are either they are too lazy or they are afraid of life tremble before it but is not afraid he does not tremble often i have thought of him as the man who has lived in america in our times perhaps i he is a man of my own craft and always has been a heroic figure in my own eyes he is honest never in any line he has ever written will you find to the trick to get himself out of a hard situation the beauty and the terror of life b like a wall before him but he faces the wall he does not cheap little ties in the darkness and to me there is something honorable and fine in the fact that in him there is no lack of courage in facing his materials that he needs resort to tricks of style to cover t er is a middle large of frame rather shy in manner and in his person singularly free from the common small of the artist class i often wonder if he knows how much he is loved and respected for what he has done by hundreds of unknown writers everywhere fellows just trying to get ground under their feet if there is a modern j movement in american prose writing a movement toward greater courage and fidelity to life in writing then is the and the hero of the movement of that i think there can be no introduction vii tion i think it is true now that no american prose writer need hesitate before the task of putting his hands upon his materials as a choking force is dead or dying we are rapidly j approaching the old french standard wherein the only for the artist is in bad art and i think that the man has done more than any living american to bring this about all honor to him the whole air of america is sweeter to breathe because he had lived and worked here he has laid a foundation upon which any sort of structure may be built it will stand the strain his work has been honestly and finely done the man has laid so many old his way through such a wall of stupid prejudices and fears that today any man coming into the craft of writing comes with a new inheritance freedom in the middle western country in which grew to manhood there could have been no of the artist s obligations how his own feet found the path they have followed so i do not know one gets so little from his own writings from those little flashes by which every artist himself in his work that helps toward an understanding of his fine courage grey smoky hurried towns st louis and the other places wherein he lived a life of hard work for small pay in dreary places twain had at least the rough and tumble of western life the romance of the old river days and as the eastern men who came before the and one is compelled to include the they grew out of a european culture were the children of a viii introduction european culture a fact that no doubt them while it has been of so little help to the americans who are seeking masters to aid them in finding a life and a basis for a culture of their own our earlier new england writers knew europe and europe knew them and accepted them as distant cousins anyway but in in s day there when his own life was forming if any of his fellow countrymen of that day and place ever crossed the sea i dare say they went to the holy land and came back with a bottle of water the only knowledge they had of the work and the aims of european artists was got f reading that most vulgar of all our mark twain s books the abroad the idea of an artist with all of the strange of dreams and hopes in his brain being also a workman owing something to his craft and to the materials of his craft would have been as strange to the or the st louis of twenty five years ago as a sitting and smoking a pipe on the court house steps and it was out of such a grey from the artist s point of view at least that the man came and he came alone making his own path what a figure he has made of himself always at the wall of stupidity before him throwing aside always the cheap triumph to be got by always giving himself fully and honestly to the life about him trying to understand it never lying to himself or to others one thinks of such a life and is appalled there is that story we have all heard of the young when he had written his first book poor folks he gave the manuscript to a writer friend introduction ix who took it home and read it and in the middle of the night drove to the home of a filled with excitement the two men sat up together and read the manuscript aloud and then although it was four in the morning drove through the wintry streets to the young writer s lodgings there was joy excitement happy fellow even tears of joy a new and great writer had come into russian life what glad recognition it was like a wedding or a birth men were happy together and you may imagine how the young felt that happened in russia and in america wrote his sister and it was published and later	43
buried out of sight in the cellar of a house for some ten fears i believe and might have been there yet but for the fighting impulses of our critics our and some woman a relative perhaps of some member of the firm had decided the book was and today one reads with wonder seeking in vain for the and only made glad by its sympathetic understanding of life whose book free and other stories is now included in the famous modern library series has lived out most of his life as a comparatively poor man he might have grown rich had he but joined the ranks of the clever or had he devoted his energies to turning out romantic what amusing and clever men we have had in his time what funny fellows what masters of all the tricks of writing where are they what have they given us aud what has given us a fine growing and glow ing tradition has he not a new sense of the x introduction v of our own lives a new interest i n the fe about us in offices streets and house s s nature is the true artist s nature so little understood among us he is no in his work as in the man himself there is something bold with all the health of true boldness and at the same time something very finely humble he stands before life looking at it trying to understand it that he may catch its significance and its drama he is not always crying look at me see what i am doing he is the workman full of self respect and most strange and wonderful of all for an american writer full of respect for his materials for the lives of those who come close to him for that world of people who have come into life under his pen as for my trying to make in any detailed way an estimate of the value of the man s work that is beyond me the man has done is doing his job he has fought his way through darkness into the light and in making a pathway for himself he has made a pathway for us all because he had lived and worked so honestly and finely america is a better place for all workmen as for his work there it sturdy strong true and fine and most of all free from all the many cheap tricks of our craft and as for the man himself there he also stands one knows will never stoop to second rate work cannot being ever so stoop he is however not given to himself he stays in the background and lets the work speak for the man it is the kind of fine honest work that is coming to mean more and more every year to a growing army of sincere american contents page free j f y of the shining slave makers the lost the second choice a story of stories u old and his will you walk into my parlor the of the j when the old century was new i i free and other stories the large and rather comfortable apartment of in central park west was very silent it was scarcely dawn yet and at the edge of the park over the way looking out from the front windows which this abode and gave it its charm a stately line of was still in a gray morning mist from his bedroom at one end of the hall where also a glimpse of the park was to be had came mr at this early hour to sit by one of these broader windows and contemplate these trees and a small lake beyond he was very fond of in its forms quite poetic m fact tie was a tall and spare ot about sixty not though slightly stoop shouldered with heavy overhanging eyebrows and hair and a short cut gray and beard which gave him a severe and yet agreeable presence for the present he was clad in a light blue dressing gown with silver which enveloped him completely he had thin pale long hands wrinkled at the back and slightly knotted at the joints which the artist in mood at least and his eyes had a weary and restless look in them for only yesterday doctor storm the family physician who was in attendance on his wife ill now for these three weeks past with a combination of heart lo free and had taken him aside and said very softly and affectionately as though he were trying to spare his feelings to morrow mr if your wife is no better i will call in my friend doctor whom you know for a consultation he is more of an expert in these matters of i the heart the heart mr had time to note than i am together we will make a thorough examination and then i hope we will be better able to say what the possibilities of her recovery really are it s been a very trying case a very one i might say still she has a great deal of vitality and is doing as well as could be expected all things considered at the same time though i t wish to alarm you there is no occasion for great alarm still i feel it my duty to warn you that her condition is very serious indeed not that i wish you to feel that she is certain to die i don t think she is not at all just the contrary she may get well and probably will and live all of twenty years more mentally mr sighed a sigh she has fine powers so far as i can judge but she has a bad heart and this trouble has not helped it any just now when her heart have	43
the least strain it has the most she is just at that point where as i may say things are in the balance a day or two or three or four at the most ought to show which way things will go but as i have said before i do not wish to alarm you we are not nearly at the end of our we haven t tried blood yet and there are several arrows to that bow besides at any free moment she may respond more vigorously to than she has heretofore especially in connection with her in that case the situation would be greatly relieved at once however as i say i feel it my duty to speak to you in this way in order that you may be mentally prepared for any event because in such an odd combination as this the worst may happen at any time we never can tell as an old friend of yours and mrs s and knowing how much you two mean to each other mr merely stared at him i feel it my duty to prepare you in this way we all of us have to face these things only last year i lost my dear my youngest child as you know just the same as i say i have the feeling that mrs is not really likely to die soon and that we doctor and myself will still be able to pull her through i really do doctor storm looked at mr as though he were very sorry for him an old man long accustomed to his wife s ways and likely to be made very unhappy by her end whereas mr though staring in an almost way was really thinking what a farce it all was what a dull mixture of error and illusion on the part of all here he was sixty years of age weary of all this of life really a man who had never been really happy in all the time that lie had been married and yet here was his wife who from conventional reasons believed that he was or should be and who on account of this was serenely v happy herself or nearly so and this doctor who imagined that he was old and weak and therefore in need j of this loving woman s care and sympathy and under free standing unconsciously he raised a hand also his children who thought him dependent on her and happy with her his servants and her and his friends thinking the same thing and yet he really was not it was all a he was unhappy always he had been unhappy ii seemed ever since he had been married for over years now never in all that time for even so much as a single day had he ever anything but long long in a pale constrained way for what he scarcely dared think not to be married any more to be free to be as he was before ever he saw mrs and yet being conventional in mood and training and utterly by time and conditions over which he seemed not to have much nature custom public opinion and the like coming into play as forces he had drifted had not taken any action no he had merely d g if time accident or something interfere and jt never had now weary or rapidly becoming so he condemned himself for his why hadn t he done something about it years before why hadn t be broken it up before it was too late and s ed his own s j lo for life color but no why complain so all the time the doctor had talked this day before he had wanted to smile a dry cynical smile for in reality he did not want mrs to live or at least at the moment he thought so he was too miserably tired of it all and so now after nearly twenty four hours of the same unhappy thought sitting by free this window looking at a not distant building which faintly in the haze tie ran his fingers through his hair he gazed and sighed how often in these weary months and even years past ever since he and hi v had been living here and before had he come to these or similar windows while she was still asleep t o sit and dream some years how they had not even together so indifferent had the whole state she did not seem to consider that significant either life had become more or less of a practical problem to her one of position place and yet how often his life in had he wished that his life had been as sweet as his dreams that his had come true after a time on this early morning for it was still gray with the faintest touch of pink in the east he shook his head solemnly and sadly then rose and along the hall to his wife s bedroom at the door of which he paused to look where she lay seriously ill and beside her in an fast asleep a trained nurse who was keeping the night ordered by the doctor but who no doubt was now very weary his wife was sleeping also very pale very thin now and very weak he felt sorry for her at times in spite of his own weariness now for instance why need he have made so great a mistake so long ago perhaps it was his own fault for not having been wiser in his youth then he went quietly on to his own room to lie down and think always these days now that she was so very ill and the problem of her living was so very acute the creeping dawn thus roused	43
him to think it seemed as free though he could not really sleep soundly any more so stirred and was he he was not so much tired or physically worn as m bored or disappointed life liad treated him so badly he kept thinking to self over and over he had never had the woman he really wanted though he had been married so long had been faithful respectable and loved by her in her way in her way he half quoted to himself as he lay there presently he would get up dress and go down to his office as usual if his wife were not worse but he asked himself would she be would that slim and yet so of hers quite as old as his own or nearly so break under the strain of this really severe illness t hat set him free again s and nicely without blame or comment n h tm he could then go where he chose once more do as he j j pleased think of that without let or for she was ill at last so very ill the first and really great illness she had endured since their marriage for weeks now she had been lying so hovering as it were between life and death one day better the next day worse and yet not dying and with no certainty that she would and yet not getting better either doctor insisted that it was a k in her heart which had manifested itself which was causing all the real trouble he was apparently greatly troubled as to how to control it during all this period mr had been as usual most sympathetic his manner toward her was always soft kindly apparently tender he had never really her anything nothing certainly that he could afford he was always glad to see her and free the children happy though they too largely on account of her he thought had proved a disappointment to him l he had always with her somewhat unhappy youth narrow and and yet he had never been happy himself either never in all the time that he had been married if she had endured much he kept telling himself when he was most unhappy so had he only it was harder perhaps for women to endure things than men he was always willing to admit that only also she had had his love or thought she had an actual spiritual peace which he had ne er had she knew she had a faithful husband he felt that he had never really had a wife at all not one that he could love as he y knew a wife should be loved his as to that v going to his office later this same day it was in one v those tall buildings that face square he i had looked first in passing at the trees that line en park west and then at the bright wall of facing it and meditated sadly heavily here the were crowded with and children at play and in between them of course a i the occasional citizen or going about his er the day was so fine so youthful as spring days will seem at times as he looked especially at the children and the young men bustling office ward mostly in new spring suits he sighed and wished that i e young once more think how brisk and hopeful they were everything was before them they could still pick and choose no age or established conditions to stay them were any of them he asked himself for the time it seemed to him as wearily connected as he had been at their age did i i free they each have a charming young wife to love one of whom they were passionately fond such a one as he had never had or did they not wondering he reached his office on one of the of one of those highest buildings commanding wide view of the city and surveyed it wearily here were visible the two great rivers of the city its towers and and far flung walls from these sometimes even yet he seemed to gain a patience to live to hope how in his youth all this had inspired him or that t y that was tlie n even now he as always ly re so so than in his j i here tie out j over this great scene and dream or he could lose the memory in his work that his love life had been a failure the great city the buildings he could plan or the efficient help that always surrounded his help not hers aided to take his mind off himself and that deep seated inner ache or loss the care of mr s apartment during his wife s illness and his present absence throughout the day upon a middle aged woman of great seriousness mrs by name whom mrs had employed years before and under her a maid of all work who waited on table opened the door and the like and also at present two trained nurses one for night and one for day service who were in charge of mrs the nurses were both bright healthy blue eyed girls who attracted mr and suggested all the youth he had never had without really disturbing his it would seem as though that could never be any more in addition of course there was the loving interest free of his son and his daughter whom his wife had named so in spite of him both of had long since married and had children of their own and were living in different parts of the great city in this crisis both of them came daily to learn how things were and occasionally to stay for the	43
entire or evening or both had wanted to come and take charge of the apartment entirely during her mother s illness only mrs who was still able to direct and fond of doing so would not hear of it she was not so ill but that she could still speak and in this way could inquire and direct besides mrs el was as good as mrs ha in all things that related to mr s physical comfort or so she thought if the truth will come out as it will in so many pathetic cases it was never his physical so much as his spiritual or comfort that mr as said before he had never loved mrs or certainly not since that now long distant period back in where both had been born and where they had lived and met at the ages she of fifteen he of seventeen it had been strange as it might seem now a love match at first sight with them she had seemed so sweet a girl of his own age or a little younger the daughter of a local later when he had been forced by poverty to go out into the world to make his own way he had written her much and imagined her to be all that she had seemed at fifteen and more a dream among fair women but fortune slow in coming to his aid and in his dreams had brought it about that for several years more he had been compelled to stay i free away nearly all of the time unable to marry her during which period to himself really his own point of view how it had happened he could never bin so it was the t city i larger experiences while she was still enduring the ones other faces dreams of larger things had mil combined to destroy it or her only he had not quite it then he was always so slow in the full import of the immediate thing he thought that was the time as he had afterward told himself how often that he should have discovered his mistake and stopped later it always seemed to become more and more impossible then in spite of some to her and some distress to himself no doubt all would be well for him now but no he had been too inexperienced too ignorant too bound by all the and of his simple western world he thought an engagement however unsatisfactory it might come to seem afterward was an engagement and binding an honorable man would not break one or so his country argued yes at that time he might have written her he might have told her then but he had been too sensitive and kindly to speak of it afterward it was too late he feared to wound her to undo her to undo life but now now look at his he had gone back on several occasions before marriage and might have seen and done and been free if he had had but courage and wisdom but no duty order the of the region in which he had been reared and of america what it expected and what she expected and was entitled to had done for him completely he had not spoken instead he had gone on and free married her without speaking of the change in without letting her know how worse than ashes it had all become god what a fool he had been how often since he had told himself over and over well having made a mistake it was his duty perhaps at least according to current to stick by it and make the best of it a bargain was a bargain in marriage if no where else but still that had never prevented him from being unhappy he could not prevent that himself during all these long years therefore owing to these same what people would think and he had been compelled to live her to cherish her to pretend to be happy with her another perfect union as he sometimes said to himself in reality he had been unhappy horribly so even her face wearied him at times and her presence her only this other morning doctor storm by his manner indicating that he thought him lonely in danger of being left all alone and desperately sad and neglected in case she died had irritated him greatly who would take care of him his eyes had seemed to and yet he himself wanted nothing so much as to be alone for a time at least in this life to think for himself to do for himself to forget this long dreary period in which he had pretended to be something that he was not was he never to be rid of the dull round of it he asked himself now never before he himself died and yet shortly afterward he would reproach himself for these very thoughts as being wrong hard unkind thoughts that would certainly condemn him in the eyes of the general public that i which free i made and one s general standing before the world during all this time he had never even let her know no not once of the tremendous and sacrifice he had made like the boy he had concealed the fox at his he had not complained he had been indeed the model husband as such things go in conventional walks if you doubted it look at his position or that of his children or his wife her mental and physical comfort even in her illness her that he was all he should be never once apparently during all these years had she doubted his love or felt him to be unhappy or if not that exactly if not fully accepting his love as	43
something that was still at a fever heat the thing it once was still believing that he found pleasure and happiness in being with her a part of the home which together they had built up these children they had reared comfort in knowing that it would endure to the end to the end during all these years she had gone on his and her lives as much as that was possible in his case and those of their children to suit herself and thinking all the time that she was doing what he wanted or at least what was best for him and them how she adored what did she not think she knew in regard to how things ought to be mainly what her old home surroundings had taught her the american idea of this that and the other her theories in regard to friends education of the children and so on had in the main prevailed even when he did not quite agree with her her desires for certain types of pleasure and amusement of companionship free and so oh were conventional types always and had also prevailed there had been little quarrels of course always had been what happy home is free of them but still he had always given in or nearly always and had acted as though he were satisfied in so doing but why therefore should he complain now or she ever imagine or ever have imagined that he was unhappy she did not had not like all their relatives and friends of the region from which they sprang and here and she had been most careful to that whom she pleased and all others she still believed most firmly more so than ever that she knew what was best for him what he really thought and wanted it made him smile most wearily at times for in her eyes in regard to him at least not always so with others he had found marriage was a never to be dissolved one life one love once a man had accepted the yoke or even asked a girl to marry him it was his duty to abide by it to break an engagement to be to a wife even unkind to her what a crime in her eyes such people ought to be out of the world they were really not fit to live dogs brutes and yet look at himself what of him what of one who had made a mistake in regard to all this where was his compensation to come from his peace and happiness here on earth or only in some heaven that odd heaven that she still believed in what a farce and all her friends and his would think he would be so miserable now if she died or at least ought to be so far had con free and belief ia custom carried the world think of it but even that was not the worst no that was not the worst either it had been the gradual coming along through the years that he had married an essentially small narrow woman who could never really grasp his point of view or rather the significance of his dreams or emotions and yet with whom nevertheless because of this original promise or mistake he was to live grant her every quality of goodness energy industry intent as he did freely still there was this and it could never be adjusted never essentially as he had long since discovered she was narrow whereas he was an artist by nature brooding and dreaming strange dreams and thinking of far off things which did not or could not understand or did not with save in a general and very remote way the of his craft the wonders and of forms and angles had she ever realized how significant these were to him let alone to herself no i never she had not the least true appreciation of y them never had had architecture art what they really mean to her desire as she might to appreciate them and he could not now go elsewhere to discover that sympathy no he had never really wanted to since the public and she would object and he thinking it half evil himself still how was it he often asked himself that nature could thus allow one or equipped with emotions and such as his not of an utterly conventional order to seek out and pursue one like who was not fitted to understand him or l free f to care what his personal moods might be was love truly blind as the old saw insisted o r did nature really an and cleverly to torture the i mi at the pearl bearing with a grain of sand with i something y in order that it p y he tho s t many i g and beautiful buildings he had planned the world so at had been care he on them being shut ut and beauty elsewhere cruel nature that cared foi dreams of man the individual man or woman at the time he had married he was too young to know exactly what it was he wanted tc do or how it was he was going to feel in the years to come and yet there was no one to guide him to stop him the custom of the time was all in favor of this dread disaster nature herself seemed to desire it mere children being the be all and the end all of everything everywhere think of that as a theory later when it became so clear to him what he had done and in spite of all the conventional thoughts and conditions that seemed to bind him to this fixed condition he had grown restless and weary but	43
to any one scarcely to it was not wise not fit thoughts like this would tend to social in his circle or rather hers for had she not made the circle and here was the rub with mr at least that h no t v y h tl and private mental complaint s he w ere not ev en now guilty of a t moral crime in s o th not true that men an women should be faithful in ii ei her tliey were happy or not was there not some law governing this matter of union one life one love which made the thoughts and the pains and the subsequent sufferings and hardships of the individual whatever they might be seem unimportant the churches said so public opinion and the law seemed to accept this there were so many problems so much order to be so much pain caused many problems where children were concerned if people did not stick was it not best more blessed morally and in every other way important for him to stand by a bad bargain rather than to cause so much disorder and pain even though he lost his own soul he had thought so or at least he had acted as though he thought so and yet how often had he wondered over this v take now some other phases first that mrs had according to the current code measured up to the of a wife good and true and that at first after marriage there had been just enough of physical and social charm about her to keep his state from becoming intolerable still there free was this old ache and then things which came with the birth of the several children first el well named after a cousin of hers not his who had died only two years after he was bom and then and then how he had always disliked that name largely because he had hoped to call her a favorite name of his or after his mother curiously the arrival of these children and the death of poor little at two had somehow in spite of his bound him to this matrimonial state and filled him with a sense of duty and pleasure even almost apart from her he was sorry to say in these young lives though if there had not been as he sometimes told himself he surely would have away from her he could not have stood it they were so odd in their infancy those little ones so troublesome and yet so amusing little for instance whose nose used to with delight when he would pretend to bite his neck and whose of pleasure was so sweet and heart filling that it positively thrilled and him in spite of his thoughts concerning and always in those days they were rigidly put down as and even evil a certain streak in him perhaps which was against law and order and social well being he came to have a deep and abiding feeling for the latter in some almost unconscious way seemed to have arrived as a to his misery a for his growing wound sent by whom by what how bad seized upon his imagination and so his had come indeed to make him feel understanding and sympathy there in that little child to free supply or seem to at least what he lacked in the way of love and affection from one whom he could truly love was never so happy apparently as when in his arms not s or lying against his neck and when he went for a walk or elsewhere there was always ready arms up to cling to his neck he seemed strangely enough fond of his father rather than his mother and never happy without him on his part came to be wildly fond of him that queer little lump of a face suggesting a little of himself and of his own mother not so much of or so he thought though he would not have objected to that not at all he was not so small as that toward the end of the second year when was just beginning to be able to utter a word or two he had taught him that silly old rhyme which ran there were three and when it came to and they shall have no he would stop and say to what now and the latter would meaning of course pie ah those happy days with little those walks with him over his shoulder or on his arm those hours in which of an evening he would rock him to sleep in his arms always was there and happy in the thought of his love for little and her her more than anything else perhaps but it was an illusion that latter part he did not care for her even then as she thought he did all his fondness was for only she took it as evidence of his growing or enduring affection for her another evidence of the peculiar working of her mind women were like that he supposed some women and then came that dreadful fever due to some m free which the doctors could not or perhaps and little had finally ceased to be as flesh and was eventually carried forth to the disagreeable near how he had groaned indulged in sad thoughts concerning the fu of all things human when this had happened it seemed for the time being as if all color and beauty had really gone out of his life for good man bom of woman is of few days and full of troubles the preacher whom mrs had insisted upon having into the house at the time of the funeral had read he also as a shadow and not	43
yes so little had fled as a shadow and in his own deep sorrow at the time he had come to feel the first and only sad deep sympathy for that he had ever felt since marriage and that because she had suffered so much had lain in his arms after the funeral and cried so bitterly it was terrible her sorrow terrible mother for her first bom why was it he had thought at the time that he had never been able to think or make her all she ought to be to him at this time had seemed better softer kinder wiser sweeter than she had ever seemed more worthy more interesting than ever he had thought her before she had so during the child s illness stayed awake night after night watched over him with such loving care done everything in short that a loving human heart do to rescue her young from the depths and yet even then he had not really been able to love her no sad and unkind as it might seem he had not he had just free f pitied her and thought her better what cursed stars disordered the minds and moods of people so why was it that these virtues of people their good qualities did not make you love them did not really bind them to you as against the things you could not like why he had resolved to do better in his thoughts but somehow in spite of himself he had never been able so to do nevertheless at that time he seemed to realize more keenly than ever her order industry a sense of beauty within limits a certain ambition to do something and be somebody only only he could not with her could not see that she had anything but a hopelessly common place and always unimportant point of view there was never any to her never any true distinction of mind or soul she seemed always in spite of anything he might s ay or do hopelessly to identify doing and being with and current opinion neighborhood public opinion almost and local social position whereas he knew that distinguished doing might as well be connected with poverty and shame and disgrace as with these other things wealth and station for instance a thing which she could never quite understand apparently though he often tried to tell her much against her mood always look at the cases of the great artists some of the greatest right here in the city or in history were of peculiar almost disagreeable history but no mrs could not understand anything like that anything connected with history indeed she hardly believed in history its dark sad pages and would never read it or at least did not care to and free as for art and artists she would never have believed that wisdom and art understanding and true distinction might take their rise out of things necessarily low and evil never take now the case of young was an like himself whom he had met more than thirty years before here in new york when he had first arrived a young man struggling to become an of significance only he was very poor and rather and looking had found him several years before his marriage to in the dark offices of and had been drawn to him definitely but because he smoked all the time and was shabby as to his clothes and had no money why mrs after he had married her and though he had known nearly four years would have none of him to her he was low and a failure one who would never succeed once she had seen him in some cheap that she chanced to be passing in company with a maid and that was the end i wish you wouldn t bring him here any more dear she had insisted and to have peace he had complied only now look had since become a great but now of course owing to mrs he was definitely he was the man who had since designed the club and hall with its delicate f as well as the tower of the wells building sending its sweet lines so high like a poetic thought or dream but was now a dreamy like himself very exclusive as had long since come to know and indifferent as to what people thought or said free but perhaps it was not just to certain of the finer shades and of life but an at times backed only by her limited understanding which caused her to seek and wish to be here there and the other place wherever in her mind the truly successful which meant nearly always the materially successful of a second or third rate character were which irritated him most of all how often had he tried to point out the difference between and t ji the former rarely con with great but no so often she seemed to imagine such queer people to be truly successful when they were really not usually people with just money or a very little more and in the matter of and and marrying their two children and who had come after el well what peculiar pains and feelings had not been involved in all this for him in infancy both of these had seemed sweet enough and so close to him though never quite so wonderful as but as they grew it seemed somehow as though had come between him and them first it was the way he had raised them the very stiff and formal manner in which they were supposed to move and be copied from the few new rich whom she had chanced to meet through him and admired in spite of his that was the irony of architecture as a profession	43
it was always bringing such queer people close to one and for the sake of one s profession sometimes particularly in the case of the young one had to be nice to them later it was the kind of school they should attend free he had half imagined at first that it would be the public school because they both had begun as simple people but no since they were it had to be a private school for each and not one of his selection either or hers really but one to which the and the two families of means with whom had become intimate sent their children and therefore thought excellent the wealthy but to him gross and people who had made a great deal of money in the manufacture of patent out west and had then come to new york to and had been attracted to not him particularly he imagined because had built a town house for them and also because he was gaining a fine reputation they were dreadful really so so truly dull and yet somehow they seemed to suit s sense of fitness and worth at the time because as she said they were good and kind like her western home folks only they were not really she just imagined so they were worthy enough people in their way with no taste young had been sent to the expensive school for boys near where they were taught manners and airs and little else as always thought though insisted that they were given a religious training as well and so had to go there for a time anyhow it was the best school and because senseless vain little thing was sent to school near white plains had to go there think of it it was all so silly so pushing how well he remembered the long delicate n preceded free this the logic and employed the importance of it to the tears and mrs could always cry so easily or seem to be on the verge of it when she wanted anything and somehow in spite of the fact that he knew her tears were unimportant or timed and for a purpose he could never stand out against them and she knew it always he felt moved or weakened in spite of himself he had no weapon wherewith to fight them though he resented them as a part of the argument positively mrs could be as sly and as as himself at times and yet believe all the while that she was tender loving self sacrificing generous moral and a dozen other things all of which led to the final achievement of her own aims perhaps this was admirable from one point of view but it irritated him always but if one were unable to see herself their actual disturbing what were you to do and again he had by then been married so long that it was almost impossible to think of throwing her over or so it seemed at the time they had reached the place then where they had achieved position together though in reality it was all his and not such position as he was entitled to at that and he was thinking this in all kindness could never attract the ideal sort and anyhow the mere breath of a scandal between them separation or which he never really contemplated would have led to endless and social and commercial injury or so he thought ad her strong friends and his in a way those who had originally been his would have deserted him v s free their wives their own social fears would have compelled them to him he would have been a scandal marked a brute for to so kind and faithful and loving a wife and perhaps he would have been at that he could never quite tell it was all so mixed and tangled take again the marriage of his son into the de family george de being nothing more than a retired real estate and who had money but nothing more and de the daughter being a gross coarse girl physically attractive no doubt and reasonably secure or so she had seemed but what nothing literally nothing and his son had seemed to have at least some spiritual at first had taken up with mrs george de a miserable narrow creature so thought largely for s sake he presumed anyhow everything had been done to encourage in his suit and in her and now look at them de had since failed and left his daughter practically nothing had been interested in anything but s career had followed what she considered the smart among the new rich a new rich than ever had fancied or could to day she was without a thought for anything besides and country clubs and and what else and long since had begun to realize it himself he was an engineer now in the employ of one of the great construction companies a sue man but even who had engineer j the match and thought it wonderful was now down free on her she had begun to see through her some years ago when had begun to her only before it was always the de here and the de there good gracious what more could any one want than the de de for instance then came the concealed between and and now mrs insisted that had held and was holding back she was not the right woman for him almost against all her prejudices she was willing that he should leave her only if had anything like that in connection with himself and yet mrs had been determined because of what she considered the position of the de at that time that should marry now had to slave at tasks in order to	43
have enough to allow to run in so called fast society of a second or third rate and even at that she was not faithful to him or so believed there were so many strange evidences and yet felt that he did not care to interfere now how could he was tired of and that was all there was to it she was looking elsewhere he was sure take but one more case that of what a name in spite of all s determination to make her so successful and thereby reflect me credit on her had she really succeeded in so doing to be sure s marriage was somewhat more successful than s had proved to be but was she any better placed in other ways john j ck as she always called him with his light ways and lighter mind was he really any one j t m l free anything more than a his parents stood by him no doubt but that was all and so much the worse for him according to mrs at the time he too was an ideal boy admirable just the man for because the and m e had money had made a kind of fortune in in the business and had settled in new york about the time that was fifteen to spend it had met grace at school and now see she was not and had some pleasant highly affected social ways she had money and a comfortable apartment in park avenue but what had it all come to john had never done anything really nothing his parents money and indulgence and his early training a social state had ruined him if he had ever had a mind that amounted to anything he was idle pleasure loving mentally indolent like de those two should have met and married only they could never have endured each other but how mrs had the in her eager and yet way giving and and parties and yet he had never been able to exchange ten significant words with either of them or the younger either think of it and somehow in the process for all his early affection and tenderness and his still kindly feeling for her had been away from him and had proved a limited and conventional girl somewhat like her mother and more inclined to listen to her than to him though he had not minded that really it had been the same with es ey before her perhaps how free ever a child was entitled to its likes and regardless but why had he stood for it all he now kept asking himself why what grand results if any had been achieved were their children so wonderful their lives would he not have been better off without her his children better even by a different woman hers by a different man wouldn t it have been better if he had destroyed it all broken away there would have been pain of course terrible consequences but even so he would have been free to go to do to life on another basis had avoided marriage entirely wise man but no no always that long list of reasons and terrors he was always to himself he had allowed himself to be pulled round by the nose god only knows why and that was all there was to it weakness if you will perhaps fear of fear of what people would think and say always now he found himself brooding over the dire results to him of all this respect on his part for moral order tlie duty of keeping society on an even of not bringing disgrace to his children and himself and her and yet his own life by so doing to be respectable had been so important that it had resulted in spiritual failure for him but now all that was over with him and mrs was ill near to death and he was expected to wish her to get well and be happy with her for a k ng time yet be happy in spite of anything he might wish or think he ought to do he couldn t he couldn t even wish her to get well it was too much to ask there was actually a i free haunting satisfaction in the thought that she might die now it wouldn t be much but it would be something few years of freedom that was something he was not utterly old yet and he might have a few years of peace and comfort to himself still and and that dream that dream though it might never come true now it couldn t really still still he wanted to be free to go his own way once more to do as he pleased to walk to think to brood over what he had not had to brood over what he had not had only only whenever he looked into her pale sick face and felt her damp limp hands he could not quite wish that either not quite not even now it seemed too hard too only only so he wavered no in spite of her long past struggle over foolish things and in spite of himself and all he had endured or thought he had he was still willing that she should live only he couldn t wish it exactly yes let her live if she could what matter to him now whether she lived or died whenever he looked at her he could not help thinking how helpless she would be without him what a failure at her age and so on and all along as he repeated to himself she had been thinking and feeling that she was doing the very best for him and her and the children that she was really the	43
ideal wife for him making every dollar go as far as it would every enjoyment yield the last drop for them all every move seeming to have been made to their general advantage yes that was true there was a pathos about it wasn t there but as for the actual results the next morning the second after his with free doctor storm found him sitting once more his front window in the early dawn and so much of all this and much more was coming back to him as before for the or the ten time as it seemed to him in all the years that had gone he was concluding again that his life was a failure if only he were free for a little while just to be alone and think perhaps to discover what life might bring him yet only on this occasion his thoughts were colored by a new turn in the situation yesterday afternoon because mrs s condition had grown worse the consultation between and storm was held and to day sometime was to be tried that last grim stand taken by in distress over a case blood taken from a strong ex out of a position in this case and the best to be hoped for but not assured in this instance his thoughts were as before wavering now supposing she really died in spite of this what would he think of himself then he went back after a time and looked in on her where she was still sleeping now she was not so strong as before or so she seemed her pulse was not so good the nurse said and now as before his mood changed in her favor but only for a little while for later waking she seemed to look and feel better later he came up to the dining room where the nurse was taking her breakfast and himself beside her as was his custom these days asked how do you think she is to day he and the night nurse had thus had their together for days this nurse miss was such a smooth pink graceful creature with light hair free and blue eyes the kind of eyes and color that of late and in earlier years had suggested to him the love time or youth that he had missed the latter looked grave as though she really feared the worst but was concealing it no worse i think and possibly a little better she replied him he could see that she too felt that he was old and in danger of being neglected her pulse is a little stronger nearly normal now and she is resting easily doctor storm and doctor are coming though at ten then they ll decide what s to be done i think if she s worse that they are going to try the man has been engaged doctor storm said that when she woke to day she was to be given strong beef tea mrs is making it now the fact that she is not much worse though is a good sign in itself i think ha merely stared at her from under his heavy gray eyebrows he was so tired and gloomy not only because he had not slept much of late himself but because of this to and fro between his varying moods was he never to be able to decide for himself what he really wished was he never to be done with this interminable moral or spiritual problem why could he not make up his mind on the side of moral order sympathy and be at peace miss on about other heart cases how so many people lived years and years after they were supposed to die of heart and he meditated as to the and strangeness of it all the of his own life the of his own moods why was he so how queer how almost evil sinister he had become at times how free weak at others last night as he had looked at lying in bed and this morning before he had seen her he had thought if she only would die if he were only really free once more even at this late date but then when he had seen her again this morning and now when miss spoke of he felt sorry again what good would it do him now why should he want to kill her could such evil ideas go either in this world or the next supposing his children could guess supposing she did die now and he wished it so fervently only this morning how would he feel after all had not been so bad she had tried hadn t she only she had not been able to make a success of things as he saw it nd he had not been able to love her that was all he reproached himself once more now with the hardness and the cruelty of his thoughts the opinion of the two was that mrs was not much better and that this first form of blood must be resorted to straight a pump which should restore her greatly provided her heart did not it out too freely before doing so however both men once more spoke to who in an excess of insisted that no expense must be spared i f her life was in danger sa ve it by any mean it was precious to to him and to her children so he spoke thus he f th t he was every f which be expected of him aside from her recovery now in spite of himself he could not do was w e ry conventional round of duties and free obligations but if she recovered as her to think she might if were tried i she gained even it would mean that he would have o take her away for	43

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