THE GREAT
AMERICAN NOVEL

_BY_

WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS



_PARIS_

Three Mountains Press

1923




CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX




[Illustration]


_The Great_
American Novel




CHAPTER I

The Fog


[Illustration]

If there is progress then there is a novel. Without progress there is
nothing. Everything exists from the beginning. I existed in the
beginning. I was a slobbering infant. Today I saw nameless grasses--I
tapped the earth with my knuckle. It sounded hollow. It was dry as
rubber. Eons of drought. No rain for fifteen days. No rain. It has never
rained. It will never rain. Heat and no wind all day long better say hot
September. The year has progressed. Up one street down another. It is
still September. Down one street, up another. Still September. Yesterday
was the twenty second. Today is the twenty first. Impossible. Not if it
was last year. But then it wouldn't be yesterday. A year is not as
yesterday in his eyes. Besides last year it rained in the early part of
the month. That makes a difference. It rained on the white goldenrod.
Today being misplaced as against last year makes it seem better to have
white--Such is progress. Yet if there is to be a novel one must begin
somewhere.

Words are not permanent unless the graphite be scraped up and put in a
tube or the ink lifted. Words progress into the ground. One must begin
with words if one is to write. But what then of smell? What then of the
hair on the trees or the golden brown cherries under the black cliffs.
What of the weakness of smiles that leave dimples as much as to say:
forgive me--I am slipping, slipping, slipping into nothing at all. Now
I am not what I was when the word was forming to say what I am. I sit so
on my bicycle and look at you greyly, dimpling because it is September
and I am older than I was. I have nothing to say this minute. I shall
never have anything to do unless there is progress, unless you write a
novel. But if you take me in your arms--why the bicycle will fall and it
will not be what it is now to smile greyly and a dimple is so deep--you
might fall in and never, never remember to write a word to say good-bye
to your cherries. For it is September. Begin with September.

To progress from word to word is to suck a nipple. Imagine saying: My
dear, I am thirsty, will you let me have a little milk--This to love at
first sight. But who do you think I am, says white goldenrod? Of course
there is progress. Of course there are words. But I am thirsty, one
might add. Yes but I love you and besides I have no milk. Oh yes, that
is right. I forgot that we were speaking of words. Yet you cannot deny
that to have a novel one must have milk. Not at the beginning. Granted,
but at the end at least. Yes, yes, at the end. Progress from the mere
form to the substance. Yes, yes, in other words: milk. Milk is the
answer.

But how have milk out of white goldenrod? Why, that was what the Indians
said. The bosom of the earth sprays up a girl balancing, balancing on a
bicycle. Rapidly she passes through the first--the second eight years.
Progress, you note. But September was rainy last year and how can it
ever be dry again unless one go back to the year before that. There are
no words. It cannot be any otherwise than as this is built the bosom of
the earth shrinks back; phosphates. Yet to have a novel--Oh catch up a
dozen good smelly names and find some reason for murder, it will do. But
can you not see, can you not taste, can you not smell, can you not hear,
can you not touch--words? It is words that must progress. Words, white
goldenrod, it is words you are made out of--THAT is why you want what
you haven't got.

Progress is to get. But how can words get.--Let them get drunk. Bah.
Words are words. Fog of words. The car runs through it. The words take
up the smell of the car. Petrol. Face powder, arm pits, food-grease in
the hair, foul breath, clean musk. Words. Words cannot progress. There
cannot be a novel. Break the words. Words are indivisible crystals. One
cannot break them--Awu tsst grang splith gra pragh og bm--Yes, one can
break them. One can make words. Progress? If I make a word I make myself
into a word. Such is progress. I shall make myself into a word. One big
word. One big union. Such is progress. It is a novel. I begin small and
make myself into a big splurging word: I take life and make it into one
big blurb. I begin at my childhood. I begin at the beginning and make
one big--Bah.

What difference is it whether I make the words or take the words. It
makes no difference whatever.

There cannot be a novel. There can only be pyramids, pyramids of words,
tombs. Their warm breasts heave up and down calling for a head to
progress toward them, to fly onward, upon a word that was a pumpkin, now
a fairy chariot, and all the time the thing was rolling backward to the
time when one believed. Hans Anderson didn't believe. He had to pretend
to believe. It is a conspiracy against childhood. It runs backward.
Words are the reverse motion. Words are the flesh of yesterday. Words
roll, spin, flare up, rumble, trickle, foam--Slowly they lose momentum.
Slowly they cease to stir. At last they break up into their letters--Out
of them jumps the worm that was--His hairy feet tremble upon them.

Leaving the meeting room where the Mosquito Extermination Commission had
been holding an important fall conference they walked out on to the
portico of the County Court House Annex where for a moment they remained
in the shadow cast by the moon. A fog had arisen in which the egg-shaped
white moon was fixed--so it seemed. They walked around the side of the
old-fashioned wooden building--constructed in the style of the fine
residences of sixty years ago and coming to the car he said: Go around
that side as I will have to get in here by the wheel. The seat was wet
with dew and cold--after the exceptionally hot day. They sat on it
nevertheless. The wind-shield was opaque with the water in minute
droplets on it--through which the moon shone with its inadequate light.
That is, our eyes being used to the sun the moon's light is inadequate
for us to see by. But certain bats and owls find it even too strong,
preferring the starlight. The stars also were out.

Turning into the exit of the parking space he stopped the car and began
to wipe the wind-shield with his hand. Take this rag said the other,
with one hand already in his trowser pocket. So the glass was wiped on
both sides, the top and the bottom pane and the cloth--which looked a
good deal like a handkerchief--was returned to the owner--who put it
back where it came from not seeming to mind that it was wet and dirty.
But of course the man is a mechanic in a certain sense and doesn't care.

On the highway they began to encounter the fog. It seemed in the rush of
the car to come and meet them. It came suddenly, with a rush and in a
moment nothing could be seen but the white billows of water crossed in
front by the flares of the headlights. And so it went all the way home,
sometimes clearer, sometimes so thick he had to stop, nearly--ending in
his own bed-room with his wife's head on the pillow in the perfectly
clear electric light. The light shone brightest on the corner of her
right eye, which was nearest it, also on the prominences of her face.

Her right arm was under her head. She had been reading. The magazine
Vanity Fair, which he had bought thinking of her, lay open on the
coverlet. He looked at her and she at him. He smiled and she, from long
practice, began to read him, progressing rapidly until she said: You
can't fool me.

He became very angry but understood at once that she had penetrated his
mystery, that she saw he was stealing in order to write words. She
smiled again knowingly. He became furious.




CHAPTER II


[Illustration]

I'm new, said she, I don't think you'll find my card here. You're new; how
interesting. Can you read the letters on that chart? Open your mouth.
Breathe. Do you have headaches? No. Ah, yes, you are new. I'm new, said
the oval moon at the bottom of the mist funnel, brightening and paling.
I don't think you'll find my card there. Open your mouth--Breathe--A
crater big enough to hold the land from New York to Philadelphia. New!
I'm new, said the quartz crystal on the parlor table--like glass--Mr.
Tiffany bought a cart load of them. Like water or white rock candy--I'm
new, said the mist rising from the duck pond, rising, curling, turning
under the moon--Unknown grasses asleep in the level mists, pieces of the
fog. Last night it was an ocean. Tonight trees. Already it is yesterday.
Turned into the wrong street seeking to pass the power house from which
the hum, hmmmmmmmmmmmmm--sprang. Electricity has been discovered for
ever. I'm new, says the great dynamo. I am progress. I make a word.
Listen! UMMMMMMMMMMMM--

Ummmmmmmmmm--Turned into the wrong street at three A.M. lost in the fog,
listening, searching--Waaaa! said the baby. I'm new. A boy! A what? Boy.
Shit, said the father of two other sons. Listen here. This is no place
to talk that way. What a word to use. I'm new, said the sudden word.

The fog lay in deep masses on the roads at three A.M. Into the wrong
street turned the car seeking the high pitched singing tone of the
dynamos endlessly spinning in the high banquet hall, filling the house
and the room where the bed of pain stood with progress. Ow, ow! Oh help
me somebody! said she. UMMMMMM sang the dynamo in the next street,
UMMMM. With a terrible scream she drowned out its sound. He went to the
window to see if his car was still there, pulled the curtain aside,
green--Yes it was still there under the light where it would not be so
likely to be struck by other cars coming in the fog. There it was as
still as if it were asleep. Still as could be. Not a wheel moved. No
sound came from the engine. It stood there under the purple arc-light,
partly hidden by a pole which cast a shadow toward him in the masses of
floating vapor. He could see the redtail-light still burning brightly
with the electricity that came from the battery under the floor boards.
No one had stolen the spare tire. It was very late.--Well, said he,
dropping the shade and thinking that maybe when he was busy someone
might easily come up from the meadows and take the spare tire--Well, I
suppose I had better see how things have progressed.

And so he backed out into the main street and turned up another block.
And there he saw. The great doors were open to full view of the world. A
great amphitheatre of mist lighted from the interior of the power house.
In rows sat the great black machines saying vrummmmmmmmmmmmm. Stately in
the great hall they sat and generated electricity to light the cellar
stairs with. To warm the pad on Mrs. Voorman's belly. To cook supper by
and iron Abie's pyjamas. Here was democracy. Here is progress--here is
the substance of words--UMMMMM: that is to say meat or linen or belly
ache.--Three A.M. To be exact twenty-eight minutes past three.

And all this was yesterday--Yesterday and there at her window I saw her,
the lady of my dreams her long and sallow face, held heavily near the
glass, overlooking the street where the decayed-meat wagon passes and
the ice-cream cart rumbles with its great power and the complicated
affairs of the town twitter toward the open sewer in the meadows by the
Button Factory. Orange peel, tomato peel floating in a whitish, soapy
flow--Her face without expression, the lady I am dying for, her right
shoulder as high as her ear, the line of the shoulder sloping down
acutely to the neck, her left shoulder also raised so that her head
seemed to lie loose in a kind of saddle.

Supreme in stupidity and a fog of waste, profit in what is left. Oh what
delectable morsel is left. Blessed hunchback, scum of loves weekly
praying in all churches--which by the way take up the very best sites in
the town. There she sat, her body low down below the window frame, only
her face showing, and looked at me dully, looked because I looked--and
my heart leaped up to her in passionate appeal that she should be my
queen and run with me over the foggy land--Forward--Onward and upward
forever.

So saying the day had progressed toward the afternoon and under the
poplars the dried leaves had begun to collect. It had been unbearably
hot. September is a hot month. The leaves had fallen one by one. No
wind. One by one pushed off by the buds which swollen by the heat had
thought that winter was over. Off with you. You stand in the way of
progress, say the young leaves. Sitting on his chair he seemed like any
other man but to get to the bed he suddenly descended to the floor. On
his long arms--he Apollo, and using the stumps of his legs, apelike on
all fours and talking quietly he swung himself up over the edge of the
bed and lay down.

Over the field--for the fog had left the grasses in the early morning
when the sun came up with majestic progression, haughtily leaving the
dropping city under him--over the field--for it was late in the
afternoon and the sunlight shone in with his poor broken legs, crippled
as he was--the sun shone in from the west. The car had turned in to the
wrong street and he had gone into the store where the paralysed
Scotchman whom he had never seen before put him on the way--climbing
into his bed sent his rays almost level over a patch of red grass hot
and blinding. Over the field the heat rose and in it even from a
distance due to the blur of light on their wings a great swarm of gnats
could be seen turning, twisting in the air, rising falling--over the
grass, fringed with the progressing sun.

But with great sweeps and sudden turns a dozen dragon flies seeming
twice as large as they really were, from the sun blurring their
transparent wings, darted back and forth over the field catching and
eating the gnats. Swiftly the gnats progressed into the dragon flies,
swiftly coalescing--and from time to time a droplet of stuff fell from
the vent of a feeding dragon fly,--and the little sound of this stuff
striking the earth could not be heard with its true poetic force. Lost.
Lost in a complicated world. Except in the eyes of God. But a word, a
word rang true. Shit, said the father. With this name I thee christen:
he added under his breath.

And yet--one must begin somewhere.

Deeply religious, he walked into the back yard and watching lest the
children see him and want what they shouldn't have he approached the
grape vines. Selecting a bunch of Delawares he picked it with some
difficulty spilling a few of the fruit. Then he walked to the other side
and found some blue ones. These too he ate. Then some white which he ate
also one by one swallowing the pulp and the seeds and spitting out the
skins. He continued to eat but no word came to satisfy.

Somehow a word must be found. He felt rather a weight in his belly from
eating so many grapes. He, himself that must die someday, he the deeply
religious friend of great men and women in incipience, he couldn't find
a word. Only words and words. He ate another bunch of the grapes. More
words. And never THE word.

A novel must progress toward a word. Any word that--Any word. There is
an idea.

His brother was ill. He must go home. The sun will soon be on the
Pacific coast. To bed, to bed--take off the clothes beginning on the
outside and working in. How would it be to take off the underwear first,
then the shirt--

Progress is dam foolishness.--It is a game. Either I have or--a thieves'
game. Hold me close, closer, close as you can. I can't hold you any
closer. I have been stealing. I should never touch anything. I should
never think of anything but you. I love another. It is a word. I have
left you alone to run wild with a girl. I would be tame. Lies flicker in
the sun. Visions beset noonday. Through the back window of the
shoe-shine parlor a mass of golden glow flashes in the heat. Come into
my heart while I am running--jumping from airplane to plane in mid-air.
I cannot stop: the word I am seeking is in your mouth--I cannot stop.
Hold me against--

You are wrong, wrong Alva N. Turner. It is deeper than you imagine. I
perceive that it may be permissible for a poet to write about a poetic
sweet-heart but never about a wife--should have said possible. It is not
possible. All men do the same. Dante be damned. Knew nothing at all.
Lied to himself all his life. Profited by his luck and never said
thanks. God pulled the lady up by the roots. Never even said thank you.
Quite wrong. Look what he produced. Page after page. Helped the world to
bread. Have another slice of bread Mr. Helseth. No thank you--Not hungry
tonight? Something on his mind.

The word. Who.

Liberate the words. You tie them. Poetic sweet-heart. Ugh. Poetic
sweet-heart. My dear Miss Word let me hold your W. I love you. Of all
the girls in school you alone are the one--

Dramatise myself make it sing together as if the world were a bird who
married to the same mate five years understood in the end transmigration
of souls.

Nonsense. I am a writer and will never be anything else. In which case
it is impossible to find the word. But to have a novel one must progress
with the words. The words must become real, they must take the place of
wife and sweet-heart. They must be church--Wife. It must be your wife.
It must be a thing of adamant with the texture of wind. Wife.

Am I a word? Words, words, words--

And approaching the end of the novel in his mind as he sat there with
his wife sleeping alone in the next room he could feel that something
unusual had happened. Something had grown up in his life dearer
than--It, as the end. The words from long practice had come to be
leaves, trees, the corners of his house--such was the end. He had
progressed leaving the others far behind him. Alone in that air with the
words of his brain he had breathed again the pure mountain air of
joy--there night after night in his poor room. And now he must leave
her. She the--He had written the last word and getting up he understood
the fog as it billowed before the lights.

That which had been impossible for him at first had become possible.
Everything had been removed that other men had tied to the words to
secure them to themselves. Clean, clean he had taken each word and made
it new for himself so that at last it was new, free from the world for
himself--never to touch it--dreams of his babyhood--poetic sweet-heart.
No. He went in to his wife with exalted mind, his breath coming in
pleasant surges. I come to tell you that the book is finished.

I have added a new chapter to the art of writing. I feel sincerely that
all they say of me is true, that I am truly a great man and a great
poet.

What did you say, dear, I have been asleep?




CHAPTER III


[Illustration]

It is Joyce with a difference. The difference being greater opacity,
less erudition, reduced power of perception--Si la sol fa mi re do.
Aside from that simple, rather stupid derivation, forced to a ridiculous
extreme. No excuse for this sort of thing. Amounts to a total occlusion
of intelligence. Substitution of something else. What? Well, nonsense.
Since you drive me to it.

Take the improvisations: What the French reader would say is: _Oui, ça;
j'ai déjà vu ça; ça c'est de Rimbaud._ Finis.

Representative American verse will be that which will appear new to the
French . . . . prose the same.

Infertile Joyce laments the failure of his sterile pen. Siegfried Wagner
runs to his Mama crying: Mutti, Mutti, listen, I have just composed a
beautiful Cantata on a theme I discovered in one of father's operas.

In other words it comes after Joyce, therefore it is no good, of no use
but a secondary local usefulness like the Madison Square Garden tower
copied from Seville--It is of no absolute good. It is not NEW. It is not
an invention.

Invention, I want to buy you some clothes. Now what would you really
like to have? Let us pretend we have no intelligence whatever, that we
have read ALL there is to read and that Rimbaud has taught us nothing,
that Joyce has passed in a cloud, that, in short, we find nothing to do
but begin with Macaulay or King James, that all writing is forbidden us
save that which we recognise to be inadequate. NOW show your
originality, _mon ami_. NOW let me see what you can do with your vaunted
pen.

Nothing could be easier.

My invention this time, my dear, is that literature is a pure matter of
words. The moon making a false star of the weather vane on the steeple
makes also a word. You do not know the fine hairs on a hickory leaf? Try
one in the woods some time. You will grasp at once what I mean.

But Joyce. He is misjudged, misunderstood. His vaunted invention is a
fragile fog. His method escapes him. He has not the slightest notion
what he is about. He is a priest, a roysterer of the spirit. He is an
epicurean of romance. His true genius flickers and fails: there's the
peak, there in the trees--For God's sake can't you see it! Not that tree
but the mass of rocks, that reddish mass of rocks, granite, with the sun
on it between that oak and the maple.--That is not an oak. Hell take it
what's the use of arguing with a botanist.

But I will not have my toothpicks made of anything but maple. Mr. Joyce
will you see to it that my toothpicks are not made of anything but
maple? Irish maple. Damn it, it's for Ireland. Pick your teeth, God
knows you need to. The trouble with writing of the old style is that the
teeth don't fit. They were made for Irishmen--as a class.

Tell me now, of what in your opinion does Mr. Joyce's art consist, since
you have gone so far as to criticise the teeth he makes?--Why, my dear,
his art consists of words.

What then is his failure, O God.--His failure is when he mistakes his
art to be something else.

What then does he mistake his art to be, Rosinante?--He mistakes it to
be several things in more or less certain rotation from botany--Oh well
it's a kind of botany you know--from botany to--to--litany. Do you know
his poetry?

But you must not mistake his real, if hidden, service. He has in some
measure liberated words, freed them for their proper uses. He has to a
great measure destroyed what is known as "literature." For me as an
American it is his only important service.

It would be a pity if the French failed to discover him for a decade or
so. Now wouldn't it? Think how literature would suffer. Yes think--think
how LITERATURE would suffer.

At that the car jumped forward like a live thing. Up the steep board
incline into the garage it leaped--as well as a thing on four wheels
could leap--But with great dexterity he threw out the clutch with a
slight pressure of his left foot, just as the fore end of the car was
about to careen against a mass of old window screens at the garage end.
Then pressing with his right foot and grasping the hand-brake he brought
the machine to a halt--just in time--though it was no trick to him, he
having done it so often for the past ten years.

It seemed glad to be at home in its own little house, the trusty
mechanism. The lights continued to flare intimately against the wooden
wall as much as to say: Here I am back again. The engine sighed and
stopped at the twist of the key governing the electric switch. Out went
the lights with another twist of the wrist. The owner groped his way to
the little door at the back and emerged into the moonlight, into the
fog, leaving his idle car behind him to its own thoughts. There it must
remain all night, requiring no food, no water to drink, nothing while
he, being a man, must live. His wife was at the window holding the shade
aside.


And what is good poetry made of
And what is good poetry made of
Of rats and snails and puppy-dog's tails
And that is what good poetry is made of

And what is bad poetry made of
And what is bad poetry made of
Of sugar and spice and everything nice
That is what bad poetry is made of


_A Rebours_: Huysman puts it. My dear let us free ourselves from this
enslavement. We do not know how thoroughly we are bound. It must be a
new definition, it must cut us off from the rest. It is in a different
line. Good morning Boss said the old colored man working on the railroad
and started to sing: Jesus, Jesus I love you. It was Sunday, he was
working on the railroad on Sunday and had to put up some barrier. It is
an end to art temporarily. That upstart Luther. My God don't talk to me
of Luther, never changed his bed clothes for a year. Well, my dear, IT'S
COMING just the same. To hell with art. To hell with literature. The old
renaissance priests guarded art in their cloisters for three hundred
years or more. Sunk their teeth in it. The ONE solid thing. Don't blame
me if it went down with them. DOWN, you understand. Fist through the
middle of the rose window. You are horror struck. One word: Bing! One
accurate word and a shower of colored glass following it. Is it MY
fault? Ask the French if that is literature.

Do you mean to say that art--O ha, ha. Do you mean to say that
art--O ha, ha. Well spit it out. Do you mean to say that art is
SERIOUS?--Yes. Do you mean to say that art does any WORK?--Yes.
Do you mean--? Revolution. Russia. Kropotkin. Farm, Factory and
Field.--CRRRRRRASH.--Down comes the world. There you are gentlemen,
I am an artist.

What then would you say of the usual interpretation of the word
"literature"?--Permanence. A great army with its tail in antiquity.
Cliche of the soul: beauty.

But can you have literature without beauty? It all depends on what you
mean by beauty.

There is beauty in the bellow of the BLAST, etc. from all previous
significance.--To me beauty is purity. To me it is discovery, a race on
the ground.

And for this you are willing to smash--

Yes, everything.--To go down into hell.--Well let's look.




CHAPTER IV


[Illustration]

That's all very fine about _le mot juste_ but first the word must be
free.--But is there not some other way? It must come about gradually.
Why go down into hell when--Because words are not men, they have no
adjustments that need to be made. They are words. They can not be
anything but free or bound. Go about it any way you chose.

The word is the thing. If it is smeared with colors from right and left
what can it amount to?

I'd hate to have to live up there, she said with a frown. It was the
soul that spoke. In her words could be read the whole of democracy, the
entire life of the planet. It fell by chance on his ear but he was
ready, he was alert.

And the little dusty car: There drawn up at the gutter was a great truck
painted green and red. Close to it passed the little runabout while
conscious desire surged in its breast. Yes there he was the great
powerful mechanism, all in his new paint against the gutter while she
rolled by and saw--The Polish woman in the clinic, yellow hair slicked
back. Neck, arms, breast, waist, hips, etc. This is THE thing--The small
mechanism went swiftly by the great truck with fluttering heart in the
hope, the secret hope that perhaps, somehow he would notice--HE, the
great truck in his massiveness and paint, that somehow he would come to
her. Oh I wouldn't like to live up there!

FOG HOLDS UP LINERS say the head lines. It is a blackness, a choking
smother of dirty water in suspension.--You should have been here this
morning. You could look out and see nothing but a sea of cloud below us.
Right at our feet the fog began and stretched off as far as the eye
could perceive.

Up out of the trees with a whirr started the sparrows. With a loud
clatter the grouse got up at his feet. The ground was full of mushrooms.
Everything, no matter what it is must be re-valuated.

The red grass will soon open into feathers.

Peter Broom, yes sah, my grandfather sah, the greatest man in Prince
George County. He had three hundred children.

So many things, so many things: heat.

What then are you trying to say in THIS chapter? And what of your quest
of THE word? What of A.N.T. ant?

Why someone has offended Wells. He has retorted with NEO-ACADEMICIAN:
And: No new form of the novel required. Lack of substance always takes
the form of novelty mongering. Empire must be saved! Saved for the
proletariat.

On the side of the great machine it read: Standard Motor Gasoline, in
capital letters. A great green tank was built upon the red chassis, FULL
of gas. The little car looked and her heart leaped with shy wonder.

Save the words. Save the words from themselves. They are like children.
Young Men's Hebrew Association. Save them while they're still young.
Words must not be allowed to say, to do--Geld them. They are not REALLY
words they are geldings. Save the words. Yes, I repeat SAVE THE WORDS.
When Voronoff would have had words to transplant, interstitial words--he
said save the words.

And what has anything Wells says to do with serious writing. FIRST let
the words be free. The words are men, therefore they are not men. They
cannot, must not, will not be mustered of the people, by the people, for
the people. They are words. They will have their way.

Puh, puh, puh, puh! said the little car going up hill. But the great
green and red truck said nothing but continued to discharge its gasoline
into a tank buried in the ground near the gutter.

And the fog had coalesced into rain. Rain to soak the firewood the boys
had left beside their old fire, like good scouts, for those to come
after and the great car continued to discharge.




CHAPTER V


[Illustration]

What then is a novel? _Un Novello_, pretty, pretty Baby. It is a thing
of fixed form. It is pure English. Yes, she is of Massachusetts stock.
Her great grandfather was thrown out of the Quaker church for joining
the Continental army. Hates the English. Her life is a novel--almost too
sensational.

The story of Miss Li--so well told.

_Qu'avez-vous vu_? Or they that write much and see little. Not much use
to us.

Speak of old Sun Bow pacing his mesa instead of Felipe Segundo in the
barren halls of El Escorial--or asleep in his hard bed at one corner of
the griddle.

My mother would have a little nigger boy come with a brush and sit at
her feet and brush her legs by the hour.

Expressionism is to express skilfully the seething reactions of the
contemporary European consciousness. Cornucopia. In at the small end
and--blui! Kandinsky.

But it's a fine thing. It is THE thing for the moment--in Europe. The
same sort of thing, reversed, in America has a water attachment to be
released with a button. That IS art. Everyone agrees that IS art.
Just as one uses a handkerchief.

It is the apotheosis of relief. Dadaism in one of its prettiest modes:
_rien, rien, rien_.--But wait a bit. Maybe Dadaism is not so weak as one
might imagine.--One takes it for granted almost without a thought that
expressionism is the release of SOMETHING. Now then Aemilius, what is
European consciousness composed of?--Tell me in one word.--_Rien, rien,
rien_! It is at least very complicated. Oh very.

You damned jackass. What do you know about Europe? Yes, what in Christ's
name do you know? Your mouth is a sewer, a cloaca.

Complicated consciousness quite aside from a possible revaluation. It
has no value for ME. It is all very interesting and God knows we have
enough to learn. The swarming European consciousness. But there it is
much simpler--No good to us.

Swarming European consciousness: Kreisler and Ysaye were the only ones
with any value. They had a few pennies over and above expenses. They
swarm here now for something to eat. But the funniest are the ones from
Russia; each excoriates the playing of the other and calls the other a
Sheeny. Wow!

Really you are too naive. They are merely reacting to the American
atmosphere--It is their work that counts. And besides a virtuoso is not
really creative in any serious sense. Would a great artist, say
Kandinsky--? In any case it all seems to preoccupy you so, and in a book
about America, really--

Take their work. I resent it all. I hate every symphony, every opera as
much as a nigger should hate _Il Trovatore_. Not perhaps hate it in a
purely aesthetic sense but from under. It is an impertinence. Where in
God's name is our Alexander to cut, cut, cut, through this knot.

Europe is nothing to us. Simply nothing. Their music is death to us. We
are starving--not dying--not dying mind you--but lean-bellied for words.
God I would like to see some man, some one of the singers step out in
the midst of some one of Aida's songs and scream like a puma.

But you poor fellow, you use such inept figures. Aida has been dead
artistically in Munich for fifty years.

Wagner then--Strauss. It is no difference to me. Tear it all apart.
Start with one note. One word. Chant it over and over forty different
ways.

But it would be stupid--

It would, if it were what I mean--it would be accurate. It would
articulate with something. It would signify relief. Release I mean. It
would be the beginning.

Do not imagine I do not see the necessity of learning from Europe--or
China but we will learn what we will, and never what they would teach
us. America is a mass of pulp, a jelly, a sensitive plate ready to take
whatever print you want to put on it--We have no art, no manners, no
intellect--we have nothing. We water at the eyes at our own stupidity.
We have only mass movement like a sea. But we are not a sea--

Europe we must--We have no words. Every word we get must be broken off
from the European mass. Every word we get placed over again by some
delicate hand. Piece by piece we must loosen what we want. What we will
have. Will they let it go? Hugh.

I touch the words and they baffle me. I turn them over in my mind and
look at them but they mean little that is clean. They are plastered with
muck out of the cities.--

We must imitate the motivation and shun the result.

We are very few to your many--

But what is all this but waste energy.

No it is not. It is as near as I can come for the present to the word.
What good to talk to me of Santayana and your later critics. I brush
them aside. They do not apply. They do not reach me any more than a
baby's hand reaches the moon. I am far under them. I am less, far less
if you will. I am a beginner. I am an American. A United Stateser. Yes
its ugly, there is no word to say it better. I do not believe in
ugliness. I do not want to call myself a United Stateser but what
in--but what else am I? Ugliness is a horror to me but it is less
abhorrent than to be like you even in the most remote, the most minute
particular. For the moment I hate you, I hate your orchestras, your
libraries, your sciences, your yearly salons, your finely tuned
intelligences of all sorts. My intelligence is as finely tuned
as yours but it lives in hell, it is doomed to eternal--perhaps
eternal--shiftings after what? Oh to hell with Masters and the rest of
them. To hell with everything I have myself ever written.

Here's a man wants me to revise, to put in order. My God what I am doing
means just the opposite from that. There is no revision, there can be no
revision--

Down came the rain with a crash. For five days it had been pending. With
a loud splash it seemed to strike the earth as if it were body meeting
body. The poplar leaves swirled and swirled. The gutters were wedged
with water.

Oh fool you are thicker than rain drops.

Give me to Moussorgsky. I am tired. Take me to the opera tonight and let
me see Nijinsky dance his _Til Eulenspiegel_ for I am tired to death
with looking for sense among American poets. Igor will retrieve my
courage. I could sit and listen in his lap for ever. Were not the
American Indians Mongols? Oh they must have been. Why could they not
have been Chinese? Why could not the early Emperors have discovered
America? Tell me, wet streets, what we are coming to, we in this
country? Are we doomed? Must we be another Europe or another Japan with
our coats copied from China, another bastard country in a world of
bastards? Is this our doom or will we ever amount to anything?

Drown me in pictures like Marsden, make me a radical artist in the
conventional sense. Give me the intelligence of a Wells. God, Hueffer is
so far beyond him that what Wells says really sounds sensible.

Must it be a civilization of fatigued spirits? Then give me Hueffer. My
God it is too disgusting.

Great men of America! O very great men of America please lend me a penny
so I wont have to go to the opera.

Why not capitalise Barnum--?

_Bravo, bravo mon vieux_! A noble apostrophe to your country but don't
you realize that it is not a matter of country but the time--The time.

For God's sake Charlie bring a lemon pie.

So they lay in the little brook and let the cold water run up their bare
bellies.




CHAPTER VI


[Illustration]

In spite of the moon in mid sky and the plaster of dully shining leaves
on the macadam and all the other signs of the approach of fine weather
there rang in his head: Such a cuddle muddle: Is that modern German
poetry? I never saw such a lot of things mixed together under one title.
These are modern times, Pa, airships and automobiles; you cover space--

And that's all right--

O America! Turn your head a little to the left please. So. Now are you
ready? Watch my hand. Now: _Lohengrin_ in ITALIAN, SUNG AT
MANHATTAN--San Carlo Company Revives Wagner Opera, with Anna Fitziu as
Elsa.

Sweet kisses that come in the night--O argyrol!

Rain, rain, for three days and three nights.

In the night a cesura. Suddenly the fire bell begins to ring. I wake
with a start and hear the small boy calling from the next room. Eight
thousand people wake and count the strokes of the black bells. It is not
our signal. Someone has been set afire. The engines pass with a crash
and roar of the exhausts. Their siren whistles shriek with a fortissimo
rise and fall. In a thousand beds men of forty, women of thirty eight,
girls in their teens, boys tired from football practice and little boys
and girls down to babyhood wake and think the same thoughts. They listen
and count the number of strokes, and sink back saying to themselves:
Fire! Presently all but the few who are immediately affected are again
asleep. The fire has burnt itself out. Slowly the sun has been crossing
Europe and will soon appear fresh from the sea with his benison. The tie
of that black thought in the night will be broken. The opportunity will
be lost forever. Each will rise and dress and go out into the rain on
whatever errand the day has chosen for him.

Rain all day long. The sun does not appear. The heat is suffocating. The
rattle of the torrent fills the ears. Water is everywhere.

In the night a wind wakens. It comes from the south-west about midnight
and takes the trees by their heavy leaves twisting them until they
crack. With a roar the wind batters at the houses, shaking them as if it
were a heavy hand. And again for the second night running eight thousand
men and women and boys and girls wake and listen or get up to close
windows and to look out at the trees leaning with snapping branches,
tossing and seething with a sound of escaping steam. It has grown cold.
Pull up the covers. It has grown cold. Sixteen thousand hands have drawn
the covers closer about the bodies. The wind is cold.

The sun has come back. The air is washed clean. Leaves lie plastered
upon the streets, against the tree trunks, upon the very house sides.
The bird bath is filled to overflowing. A lame man is hurrying for the
train.

They had talked for hours. The new project was beginning to take form.
It was the evening of the second day. There stood the train puffing out
great volumes of dense smoke which no sooner arose than it was caught in
the wind and sent flying out ahead of the train. I wish to God I were on
that train wherever it might be going. Oh well, remarked the younger man
and said good-bye, which is what it is to be a man.

He was too old, remarked the voice in the room next to the one in which
the woman was lying, he never should have gone out in that rain. Too
cold! At times it seems possible, even now. She took the hair between
her thumb and index finger of the right hand and using her left hand
swiftly stroked the little hair strands back toward the head to make it
stand out. Ratting it, I told her. It ruins the hair. Oh well I haven't
much left, it might as well be broken.

She wore blue stockings under a very quiet dress but the world has not
beheld a more maddening spectacle. Devoted to the art of writing, he
read with his mind watching her and his mind in the sky seeking, seeking
some earth to stand on when the boys were tearing up the soggy turf
with their cleats. What to do? There it is. The wind hesitated whether
or not to impregnate her. So many things were to be considered. In the
years since his passage over Ponce de Leon's soldiers on the beach--the
wind footloose, gnawing the leaves had witnessed flying footballs that
it had blown out of bounds. He had not a word to stand on, yet he stood,
not knowing why. Fear clutched his heart. Visions of uprooted trees
passed over his heart as he shook her heavy skirt about her knees. But
she, oblivious to it all, walked with downcast eyes--looking at her feet
or smiling pleasantly at one here and there in the crowd that was
shouting and pressing to see the players.

In the night all nature was asleep as she lay with her young cheek
pressed against her pillow and slept. The boys tossed and turned from
the stiffness in their joints and from the bruises received in the game.
But she lay quiet and asleep, the breath coming slowly in regular flow
from her hollow nostrils moving them slightly back and forth.

Under the covers her young form could be made out, the left shoulder,
the hips and the legs and feet, the left knee slightly bent and fallen
to the mattress before the other. Not a sound in the room for a million
years. Still she lay there asleep.--The wind has turned into hail.

Spring flowers are blossoming in the wind. There is the tulip, the
jonquil and the violet--for it is September and no man shall know his
defeat. So there are spring flowers that grew up through the ice that
will be present later. It is of ice that they have made the flowers.

Yet sometimes it seems that it would still be possible. And this is
romance: to believe that which is unbelievable. This is faith: to desire
that which is never to be obtained, to ride like a swallow on the
wind--apparently for the pleasure of flight.

The swallow's bill is constructed in such a way that in flying with his
mouth open tiny insects that enter are ensnared in hairlike gills so
that he is fed.

Here are a pretty pair of legs in blue stockings, feed. Yet without the
thought of a possible achievement that would make it possible to command
the achievement of certain--The boys kick the ball and pay no attention.
The boys kick the ball up into the wind and the wind hurriedly writes a
love note upon it: Meet me tonight. Say you are going to the Library and
I will have my car at the corner of Fern Street. I have something to
tell you. There is one word you must hear: YOU.

There is one word you must hear. It will come out at my lips and enter
in at your ears. It might be written with letters on white paper but it
is a word that I want you to have out of the lips into your ear. And she
answers: I will be there. So he does not keep his appointment. Off he
goes in search of a word.

But she goes home and weeps her eyes out. Her pillow is wet with her
tears--

What do you think! He has left his wife, and a child in the high school
has been ill a week, weeping her eyes out and murmuring his name. Is it
not terrible?

It is the wind! The wind is in the poplars twiddling the fading leaves
between his fingers idly and thinking, thinking of the words he will
make, new words to be written on white paper but never to be spoken by
the lips to pass into her ear.

Quietly he goes home to his wife and taking her by the shoulder wakes
her: Here I am.




CHAPTER VII


[Illustration]

Nuevo Mundo! shouted the sailors. The sea was rippling like the bottom
of a woven grassrope chair. A new world! Taking out their finest satins
and putting on new armor the commanders of the little party ordered
boats to be made ready and the royal standards of Aragon and Castile to
be taken into men meanwhile feeling the balmy air and seeing green and a
shore for the first time in two months were greedily talking of fresh
fruit--after their monotonous and meager diet of meat--of milk, of a
chance to walk free in the air, to escape their commanders, and of
women. Yes perhaps there would be women, beautiful savages of manifold
charms. But most of all they were filled with the wild joy of release
from torment of the mind. For not one among them but expected to be
eaten by a god or a monster long since or to have been boiled alive by
a hypertropical sea. Excitedly they went down the ladders and took their
places at the words of the boatswain spoken in the Castilian tongue.

Of Columbus' small talk on that occasion nothing remains but it could
not have been of Eric the Discoverer. Nor of the parties of Asiatics and
Islanders--Pacific Islanders who had in other ages peopled the
continents from the east. No matter: _Nuevo Mundo_! had shouted the
sailors and _Nuevo Mundo_ it was sure enough as they found out as soon
as they had set foot on it and Columbus had kneeled and said prayers and
the priest had spoken his rigmarole in the name of Christ and the land
was finally declared taken over for Ferdinand and Isabella the far
distant king and queen.

Yes it was indeed a new world. They the product of an age-long
civilization beginning in India, it is said, and growing through
conquest and struggle of all imaginable sorts through periods of success
and decline, through ages of walkings to and fro in the fields and woods
and the streets of cities that were without walls and had walls and
burst their walk and became ruins again; through the changes of speech:
Sanscrit, Greek, Latin growing crooked in the mouths of peasants who
would rise and impose their speech on their masters, and on divisions,
in the state and savage colonial influences, words accurate to the
country, Italian, French and Spanish itself not to speak of Portuguese.
Words! Yes this party of sailors, men of the sea, brothers of a most
ancient guild, ambassadors of all the ages that had gone before them,
had indeed found a new world, a world, that is, that knew nothing about
them, on which the foot of a white man had never made a mark such as
theirs were then making on the white sand under the palms. _Nuevo
Mundo_!

The children released from school lay in the gutter and covered
themselves with the fallen poplar leaves.--A new world! All summer the
leaves had been thick on the branches but now after the heat and the
rain and the wind the branches were beginning to be bare. More sky
appeared to their eyes than ever before. With what relief the children
had pranced in the wind! Now they lay half covered in the leaves and
enjoying the warmth looked out on the new world.

And he was passing and saw them. And wondered if it were too late to be
Eric. What a new world they had made of it with their Cortezes, their
Pizarros yes and their Lord Howes, their Washingtons even. The
Declaration of Independence. I wonder, he said, whether it could be
possible that the influence of the climate--I wonder if the seed, the
sperm of that, existed in Columbus. Was it authentic? Is there a word
to be found there? Could it be that in those men who had crossed, in the
Norse as; well as the Mongols, something, spontaneous could not have
been implanted out of the air? Or was the declaration to be put to the
credit of that German George? Was it only the result of local
conditions?

"A new declaration of independence, signed by Columbus, found in Porto
Rico."

Indians in any case, pale yellow and with lank black hair came to the
edge of the bushes and stared: The Yaquis territory lay north of the
river Fuertes. To the south was Carrancista territory. The valley was,
fertile, the Indians wanted it.

During the week of November 13th, 17th, 1916--word reached Los Mochis
that Gen. Banderas and the Villistas from Chihuahua had been defeated by
the Carrancistas near Fuertes and were in retreat. During this week two
Indians were captured by Los Mochis police and hung on willow trees
below the Jaula.

On Saturday November 13th, Col. Escobar and his Carrancistas of the
Fifth regiment of Sinaloa were withdrawn from Los Mochis and Aguila and
concentrated in San Blas. Banderas and his Villistas meanwhile had come
down the Fuertes, effected a junction with Bacomo and his Mayo Indians,
and Monday night crossed the river above Los Tastos, tore out the
telephone at the pumps and started for Los Mochis. All gate keepers
encountered on the road were killed as were their families. Mr. Wilcox
estimated the combined forces participating in the raid and on the other
side of the river at 6,000.

The first intimation of the raid was at one o'clock in the morning of
Tuesday when with a "_Villa! Vive Villa! Vive Villa_!" the raiders
swarmed into Los Mochis from three sides, shooting cursing as they
galloped into town. From all over the town came the sound of smashing
doors and windows, shots, yells and screams.

When I came here the Indians all used bows and arrows. Conscripted
during the many revolutions they had deserted with their rifles until at
last, after 800 of them, in a body, went over they used the rifle
extensively. Wilcox lived at the pumps with his wife and daughter. A
cocky Englishman, he poopooed the danger. He had been in the habit of
telephoning into the town, seven miles, whenever a raid was coming. It
was agreed we Americans were to keep to our houses, take our animals off
the roads and wait with more or less excitement until it was over. We
never notified the Mexicans. Had we done so once we should not have
escaped the next raid. This time the Villistas were with the Indians. As
you saw the first thing they did was to rip out the wires. Washington
had just accepted Carranza as the power in authority and the Villistas
were angry.

Wilcox and his wife and daughter were locked in a room all the first
night while Banderas and Bacomo argued over their fate. Banderas was for
killing Wilcox and taking over his wife and daughter for camp women. But
the Indian stood out against him. It seems Wilcox had at one time given
the Indians some sacks of beans when they were hard up for food. They
remembered this. It was a good thing for the three.

At a previous raid an American engineer living near Wilcox was found
dead. He was supposed to have run. Looked just like a pin-cushion, with
the feathered arrows that were in him. Funniest thing you ever saw in
your life. There were four bullets in him also.

The Americans were too scattered to resist. It was decided to save the
few guns by hiding them. Bacomo rode up to the house with his
escort,--ordered to give up all guns and cartridges. At the last moment
he turned back from the stairs, entered Mrs. Johnson's room where the
ladies were sitting on the beds and ordered them to get up. Under the
mattress a miscellaneous collection of riot guns, rifles, shot guns,
automatics, pistols and cartridges were found. When all the guns and
cartridges to the last shell had been loaded on the horses behind the
drunken soldiers Bacomo refused C.'s request for one of the riot guns
and with a polite bow and a "_Con permiso, senores_," he rode off.

In Mr. Johnson's cellar they had found all sorts of bottles from Scotch
to German _Scheiswasser_ and had drunk it all indiscriminately.

Cattle had eaten the standing rice. The pigs had got loose and over-run
everything. Returning there were corpses on all sides. About one of
these a triple battle raged. The pigs were ranged on one side, the dogs
on another and from a third a flock of vultures crept up from time to
time. The pigs and dogs would make a united rush at the birds who would
fly a few feet into the air and settle a yard or so away.

These pictures are of Bacomo taken a year later just as he was being
taken from the train by his captors. He was a physical wreck at the time
but at the time of the raid he was a magnificent specimen of a man. It
seemed there was some silver buried near Los Mochis which they wanted.
He would not disclose its whereabouts unless they freed him and they
would not free him unless he spoke first.

The end is shown in this picture. Here he is with the pick and spade at
his feet surrounded by the Carrancista soldiers. He dug his grave and
was shot and they buried him there.

The Indians have made a local saint of him and every night you will see
candles burning on the spot and little plates of rice and other food
placed there for his spirit.--

For a moment Columbus stood as if spell-bound by the fact of this new
country. Soon however he regained his self-possession and with Alonzo
Pinzon ordered the trunks of trifles to be opened which, being opened,
the Indians drew near in wonder and began to try to communicate with
these gods.

It was indeed a new world.




CHAPTER VIII


[Illustration]

No man can tell the truth and survive--save through prestige. And no
child either. Aristocracy is license to tell the truth. And to hear it.
Witness the man William in Henry Fifth, the camp incident. Fear clutched
at his heart.

Agh-ha-ha! Shouted the _vaqueros_ plunging their spurs into the
bronchos' sides. Up with the heels. Buck, buck, buck. Agh-ha-ha!
_Fortissimo_. The wild and unexpected cry out of the Mexican Indian
country rang through the quiet house so that the pup leaped up and
rushed to the door.

Someone had taken the apple. Both denied they had had a hand in it. Each
accused the other. The truth did not appear. For an hour the man tried
his best to arrive at a just decision. Joseph Smith shook where he stood
and fell frothing at the mouth. He was of Vermont mountain stock. His
birth among the poor white trash there had not even been thought worth
recording. Yet a vision came to him of the marriage in Cana. Christ
drank the wine and Martha and Mary her sister became his wives--so to
speak. It is the truth. The world shall be saved anew, said Joseph Smith
in the mountains of Vermont--where the mushrooms are so plentiful among
the fir trees.

Who had given the boy the apple against the father's express orders? Had
he taken it himself--which he denied or had the girl gone into the store
room--as he asserted but which she denied--and selected it herself?
Where was the truth?

In Illinois Brigham Young was recruited. Off they set with fifty oxen
for the Promised Land away over the prairies and deserts--through the
Sioux country, in search of Zion. The whole world they would leave
behind and for the truth's sake they would live in that far country--to
be discovered, to which the Lord would lead them.

Go upstairs sir and take your clothes off. You shall go to bed for this
lie--I'll say I took the apple Daddy, said the boy sobbing violently,
but she gave it to me. In minute detail he repeated the story of how the
apple was picked out of the basket by the girl and handed to him to eat.

Lions of the Lord. The boy would not give up his bride to Brigham and
was _altered_, as a rebel. She went mad. In '49 a party of gold seekers
came by accident into the valley they had found. They were gently
received. A warning was given of hostile Indians and a special guard was
appointed to conduct them safely on their way. But Brigham had had a
dream. Men must not wander into the valley of Zion to disturb the ways
of God's holy ones. A blood sacrifice had been demanded of Brigham by
the Lord. John D. Lee was selected as he who must lend himself to the
Almighty will of God for the good of the church and state. Slowly the
party of gold seekers departed for California. At the narrow defile at
Mountain Meadow the treacherous business was performed. All but a child
were killed and Brigham and the Lord were revenged. Later John D. Lee
was convicted of murder by government authorities and shot. A poor
ignorant tool in the hands of that most mighty Lion of the Lord.

And you my girl. You have lied to me before this. Did you or did you not
take the apple? No one will be punished but I must have the truth.
Tomorrow is Sunday. You shall go to church, and up to the minister you
shall march, and he will ask you what I am asking you now. In the face
of God you shall say to him that you did not take that apple, then I
shall know. Did you or did you not take that apple? I will have the
truth. And you my young sir, I shall not punish you but I must have the
truth. You shall stay in bed all day tomorrow, all next week as long as
it takes for one of you to change your story. I will have the truth.

The mountains are savage about the valley. The lake is bitter, scalding
with the salt. They knew they had found the Dead Sea. At last the child
confessed, with bitter and hard tears that he had taken the fruit
himself. It was the truth.

Clear and cold the moon shone in the partly denuded poplars. It was
midnight and the little fellow to whom he had determined to teach the
meaning of the truth was snug in his bed. Years before that Utah had
been admitted to the Union as a state and polygamy had been more or less
abandoned. The young folk were beginning to be ashamed of the narrowness
of their cult and the bones of the fathers were rotten.

The glassy half moon in the dark leaves cast a dull light over the world
upon which a calm had descended. Suddenly the pleiades could be heard
talking together in Phœnician. Their words were clear as dropping
water: What things they do in this new world: they said. Let us from now
on swear to each other that we will give up every thought of wisdom and
seek no further for the truth--which is, after all a veritable moon.--At
this the moon was overcast for a moment by a falling leaf. The answer
that came from that clear but broken ball rose slowly toward the stars:
The child is asleep. Let us warn him of the folly of words. Let us bless
him only with words that change often and never stiffen nor remain to
form sentences of seven parts. To him I send a message of words like
running water.--At this the stars smiled for they were married to one--

_Elena, yo soy un_ wonder, she would say. _Vu par le jury_. And who is
the jury but myself. The boy had struck her with a stone. Come we shall
go and apologise, said Brigham Young. Into the neighbour's kitchen they
walked. An older sister was cleaning the gas range. Where is your
sister? But the truth is that all the while he had been hoping that just
what had happened would happen. His eye ran up and down the girl's form.
Secretly he was happy to have found her alone. I'm sorry, I will never
do it again, Never again. Never again. Oh never, never again.

And how can I, now that it is all over, and I am old? But at first I
tell you I cried my eyes out. I had just been admitted to the Beaux
Arts. All was as near perfect as could well be. I had the friendship of
La Baronne d'Orsay and then the stars withdrew their aid. I had to go
back to Porto Rico. I had to leave everything behind to go back to that
country where there was nothing.

There life ended. But it is over now. I was just beginning to do things.
I tell you I cried my eyes out. But I am old now. I wanted you to see
these drawings, to show you it was not a bluff.

The Indians are gone. It is late now. It is cold. September is over.
October is cold. Words should be--Words should be--I am tired to death.

But two enormous women, middle aged, dignified, with still broad backs
came down the street just as the very dirty little boy was crossing
over. The three arrived at the entrance to the path at the same moment.
The women looked hard at the filthy little boy whose face was stickily
from apple-juice and black, with a great circle of dirt around the
mouth. The women looked and the little boy hung his head and stumbled
off into the long grass, almost falling into the abandoned foundation.

And so the little company went on foot 20,000 miles along what later
became known as Emigration Trail, overcoming incredible obstacles,
eating the draught oxen, through savage mountains on, on to the Mountain
Meadow Massacre. For they would worship the Lord their God in peace and
in their own way. At last the Mayflower was in the harbor and the
pilgrims had landed and dispersed.

Yes, it was a New World.

But they have prospered and today the Mormon Church is all for goodness
and it is powerful and rich.

A favorite trick of the Mayo Indians is, if they meet a man with good
clothes, to take what they want and let him go on in his drawers.

So it was with infinite satisfaction that on looking up the little boy
saw those two terrible viragos suddenly as low as he. _Nuevo Mundo_.




CHAPTER IX


[Illustration]

Calang-glang! Calang-glang! went the bells of the little Episcopal
Church at Allandale. It was eight o'clock in the evening. A row of cars
stood along the curb, each with its headlights lit, but dimmed so as not
to make too much of a glare on the road, at the same time to save the
battery while complying with the law!

On sped the little family all crowded into one seat, the two children
sleeping.

In the Dutch church on the old Paramus Road Aaron Burr was married to
Mrs. Prevost, Jataqua! It is near Hohokus, cleft-in-the-rocks, where the
Leni Lenapes of the Delaware nation had their village from time
immemorial. Aaron, my darling, life begins anew! It is a new start. Let
us look forward staunchly together--

The long, palm-like leaves of the ailantus trees moved slowly up and
down in the little wind, up and down.

And along this road came the British. Aaron, the youth from Princeton,
gathered his command together and drove them back. Mother I cannot sleep
in this bed, it is full of _British soldiers_. Why so it is! How horrid.

And he too, on his memorable retreat, that excellent judge of
horseflesh, George Washington, he too had passed over this road; and
these trees, the oldest of them, had witnessed him. And now the wind has
torn the finest of them in half.

Nothing more wonderful than to see the pears attached by their stems to
the trees. Earth, trunk, branch, twig and the fruit: a circle soon to be
completed when the pear falls. They had left at eleven and soon they
would be home. The little car purred pleasantly to itself at the thought
of the long night. Oh, to be a woman, thought the speeding mechanism.
For they had wrapped something or other in a piece of newspaper and
placed it under the seat and there were pictures there of girls--or
grown women it might be, in very short skirts. Steadily the wheels spun
while on the paper were printed these words:

The Perfection of Pisek-designed Personality Modes: A distinctly forward
move in the realm of fashion is suggested by the new personality modes,
designed by Pisek... modes that are genuine inspirations of individual
styling, created for meeting the personal preferences of a fastidiously
fashionable clientele, the woman and the miss who seek personality in
dress in keeping with their charms, characteristics and station . . .
Thus you can expect at Pisek's only those _tailleurs_, gowns, wraps and
frocks that bear the unmistakable stamp of individuality--styles that
encourage and inspire admiration for their splendid simplicity and
differentness... come to Pisek's . . . (the more the better) . . . see
the new ideas in fashions . . . You'll not be disappointed . . .

What chit of a girl could have appreciated you, my darling boy, as I do.
A man of your personality, so fresh in wit, so brimming with vigor and
new ideas. Aaron my dear, dear boy, life has not yet begun. All is new
and untouched in the world waiting, like the pear on the tree, for you
to pluck it. Everyone loves you and will wait on you. For you everything
is possible. Bing! and Hamilton lies dead.

As old Mr. Goss, who lost his hearing from an explosion of fireworks in
Philadelphia after Lee's defeat, has said in his high nasal twang: Quite
right, quite right, I've seen the country saved 8 times in the last
fifty years.

At any rate it was a new world to them; they two together would conquer
and use, life had smiled upon them. _Nuevo Mundo_.

Along the road the Dutch settlers came out from their attractive brown
stone houses as the happy and distinguished couple went by. It was a
great day for the little colony of New Jersey. There over the misty
meadows the lights of Weehawken were beginning to glimmer as the little
car and its precious freight drew near the end of the journey. The pear
fell to the earth and was eaten by the pigs.

I wonder if he'll recognise me in my Greenwich Village honkie-tonk
bobbed hair. The hairdresser said: Don't you do it, when I said I'd like
mine bobbed too. So many of the girls had theirs done a year ago and now
its just at that impossible stage where you can't do a thing with it.
Better go to Europe or California until it grows again. There's a reason
for travel: As the hair progresses the days grow fewer.

But is South Africa after all the country of the future?

Over the great spaces of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana he sped
in the Pullman car. City after city swept up to him, paused awhile at
his elbow and plunged away to the rear with the motion of a wheel whose
hub was hidden in infinity. And such indeed was exactly the case. He was
being ground between two wheels, one on either side of the car and it
was their turning that thrust him forward at such speed. The wheat was
up in the fields but a fellow passenger assured him that in Kansas, only
two days before, he had seen wheat twice as high--which explains the
cause of so many abandoned farms in Vermont, he remembered, and settled
back to another hour of idle staring. A new country he kept saying to
himself. On a siding were cars loaded with emigrants from Holland booked
through to San Francisco.

Into the elevator stepped the young man in a petty officer's uniform.
His Spanish was exquisite to hear. The first battleship since the
Spanish-American war was anchored in New York harbor. How well he bears
himself. The Spanish are the only people in Europe whom civilization has
not ruined. Savage men, big bearded chins--but shaved clean. They know
how to treat their women--better than the French for the French--after
all are _blagueurs_ to a man. The Spanish stand still. What an ass a man
will make of himself in a strange country! In armor De Soto wandering
haphazard over Alabama. The Seminoles for guides. Buried him in the
Mississippi. It is my river, he said. Roll Jordan roll. It is _my_ river
for I discovered it and into it let my body, in full armor, be put to
rest. The cat-fish ate it. So roll Jordan roll. Diada Daughter of
Discord: read it.

In Illinois, far in the west, over that trackless waste of forest and
mountain and river and lake they came at last to a valley that pleased
them and there they determined to build. So they fell to hewing trees
and building their houses, work to which they had been bred and trained
for two generations since Plymouth and Salem days. Cornwallis had been
beaten fifty years before and Pitt had rushed to see the King crying:
All is lost. A new world had been born. Here in the primeval forest the
little colony of New Englanders hoped to realize success and plenty.

In Bonnie, Illinois, the Presbyterian minister is a very good man. He is
as good a preacher as Bonnie can afford and if anybody said that Bonnie
is made up of mad-men--He would be shot. _Nuevo Mundo_, shouted the
sailors. But their cry was by now almost extinct.

In polite stories the world had been made acquainted with the
picturesque lives of these commonplace but worthy people. In detail
their story had been told. Over the precipice in Yosemite the Bridal
Veil Falls had been launching its water for a thousand years and
ignorance was fattening his belly apace.

Bonnie, Ill., October 22. Dear Bill: Am up to my ears in painting, and
am preparing to go to Alton, Ill., to work in the State Hospital, if I
get a call, so am too busy now to read your book but think I'm going to
like it and will devour it later. Sincerely. A. N. Turner.

And the little boy crept into the great chest like Peppo into the
Cardinal's tomb and began to pick up the mothballs that had been left
there when the winter things were removed.

An Indian would sense the facts as he wished. A tree would speak to him
with a definite identity. It would not at least seem endowed with human
characteristics: a voice, that would be all.




CHAPTER X


[Illustration]

Arnold, this wind is, the wise and sagacious captain. Henchman of the
wind. The wind is a lion with hooked teeth. The saber-toothed tiger
inhabited the region west of the Alleganies throughout the pleistocene
age. With a snarl it wrenches the limbs of the trees from their places
and tosses them to earth where they lie with the leaves still
fluttering.

Vacuous; full of wind. Her whole pelvis is full of intestine but aside
from the ptosis I find nothing really wrong. The uterus appears to be
normal. The bleeding may come from a cyst. At least there is no good
reason for removing--for a hysterectomy. There it is. It. Like some
tropical fruit color of the skunk cabbage flower. There it is, that
mystical pear, glistening with the peritoneum. Here the cavern of all
caverns. Alpha if not omega. Talk politely and obey the law. But do not
remove it.

Oh my country. Shall it be a hysterectomy? Arnold there is a wind with a
knife's edge.

And Remy says the spring of curiosity is broken at thirty. Nothing left
at fifty but the facts of bed and table. He has the lilt of Heine at his
best and in places quite equals the work of the author of Danny Deever.
The catgut had slipped out of the needle. The young interne held the
point of the suture between his fingers and the nurse approached the
needle as accurately as she could. But the man's hand trembled slightly.
For a moment they tried to complete the connection but failing in their
attempt the nurse took the end in her other hand and soon had the needle
threaded. The young doctor looked up as much as to say thank you.

Such a wind. At fifteen they seem noble, desirable beyond dreams. In the
winter the trees at least remain stems of wood that resist with a will,
whose branches rebound against the impact of sleet. At thirty they are
what they are. The boy rebels and she with her hair in distressed
tangles about the disorderly boudoir cap, at mid-day, whines and
snatches at him as he jerks and defies her. It is beyond her strength to
control a boy of nine. Clutching her dressing sack--oh slobbery
morsel--about her breastless form with one hand she rushes as far as she
dares to the porch edge, glancing furtively about for chance gentlemen
or neighbors and tries to overtake the youngster. No, the young man has
really escaped. He goes to school filthy again and what will they think
of his mother.

At fifteen they are slender and coquettish and they cry if you are rough
with them. Great burly fellow, she seemed to him all that he was not,
the quintessence of Ibsenism, the wind among the reeds. Or perhaps the
reed in the wind. Something to love, to take into the arms, to
protect--If you can find any reason for doing a hysterectomy doctor, do
it. Her husband is good for nothing at all. She at least is a power in
her family. She is not like the native American women of her class, she
is a Polock. You never saw such courage.

The schooner left Southampton bound for New York with a cargo of
rails--steel rails. But the English emigrants were not like these modern
messes. Those round, expressionless peasant faces of today. See that one
there with the little boy at her side. Castle Garden. At last we are to
be in America, where gold is in the streets. Look at that face. That is
the kind of immigration we want. Look at the power in that jaw. Look at
that nose. She is one who will give two for every stroke she has to
take. Look at the intensity of her gaze. Well, she's English, that's the
reason. Nowadays they have no more of that sort. These Jews and Polocks,
Sicilians and Greeks. Goodbye America!

The head nurse's legs under her practical short skirt were like mighty
columns. They held the seriousness of her looks, her steady, able hands.
A fine woman.




CHAPTER XI


[Illustration]

The American background is America. If there is to be a new world Europe
must not invade us. It is not a matter of changing the y to i as in
Chile. They are bound.

The background of America is not Europe but America.

_Eh bien mon vieux coco_, this stuff that you have been writing today,
do you mean that you are attempting to set down the American background?
You will go mad. Why? Because you are trying to do nothing at all. The
American background? It is Europe. It can be nothing else. Your very
method proves what I say. You have no notion what you are going to write
from one word to the other. It is madness. You call this the background
of American life? Madness?

As far as I have gone it is accurate.

It is painting the wind.

Ah, that would be something.

_Mais ça_, are you a plain imbecile? That is a game for children. Why
do you not do as so many of your good writers do? Your Edgar Lee
Masters, your Winesburg, Ohio. Have you not seen the photographs of men
and women on your walls? They are a type, as distinct as a Frenchman or
a German. Study these men, know their lives. You have a real work to do,
you have the talent, the opportunity even. This is your work in life.
You Americans, you are wasteful, mad--

Our background.

You would paint the wind. Well, it has been tried--many times, and do
you know where that leads?

I know where it has led.

But do you know? Have you seen, felt, heard what they have seen, felt,
heard, our Villons--

Apollo was out of breath but the nymph was more tired than he. The chase
must soon have ended when she falling to her knees half from the will to
be there half from fatigue besought her mistress Diana to save her from
the God's desire. And she was changed into a laurel bush.

All about the hills where they stood the hard waxen leaves of the laurel
glistened above the dead leaves of the hardwood trees, the beech, the
maple, the oak.

You imagine I am French because I attack you from the continental
viewpoint. You are wrong. I am from the country of your friends
Mussorgsky, Dostoevsky, Chekov. At least if you will not yield me the
point that America cannot be new, cannot do anything unless she takes
the great heritage which men of all nations and ages have left to the
human race.

You mean that I should not be an American but--Turgenev, enjoy you more
if, well, if you were more comprehensible, a little more particular,
_vous comprenez_? You sweep out your arms, you--I see no faces, no
details of the life, no new shape--

The druggist's boy cannot be distinguished from his master when he says,
Hello, over the phone--Is that what you mean?

Well, you are very much children, you Americans.

It is not to be avoided as far as I can see.

Let us have now a beginning of composition. We have had enough of your
improvisations.

I am consumed by my lusts. No American can imagine the hunger I have.

It is the itch, monsieur. It is neurasthenia. Desire is not a thing to
speak of as if it were a matter of filling the stomach. It is wind, gas.
You are empty my friend. Eat. Then and then only.

Like all men save perhaps the Chinese you are most transparent when you
imagine yourself most protected.

Her bosom reached almost to her knees. That morning in the October
garden she had picked a violet for him and placed it in his coat.
Watching the feet of men and women as they touched the pavement a strong
odor of violets crossed his path.

He turned and saw the massive Jewess waddling by. It had been good
perfume too.

These Polocks. Their heads have no occiput. They are flat behind. It is
why when they put on their American hats the things slip down about
their ears. The nigger's head isn't that way. You know how the bump goes
out behind in so many of them. The club sandwich on her plate kept
sliding apart, the top slice of bread would slip. Then she took the
pieces in her fingers and poked the lettuce in under the sheet. On her
breast was a black pin. It formed a circle. She looked up with her mouth
full of food and resting both elbows on the table chewed America
thoughtfully while she held the state of Maryland in her firm fingers.
The ends of each finger were stubby, the nails cut short and as clean as
well manicured nails could well be. Clatter, clatter, clatter. He could
see himself in the plate glass behind her. He was conscious of his hat
which he had not removed. He was at this table with these five
women--one of them young, ready--and he had not removed his hat. There
was in fact no place to put it.

I am begging, frankly. Ten cents a ticket. I have to raise fifty dollars
by the end of next week. We want to fit up a room in our hall where the
colored working girls can come and rest. On Thursdays we serve tea. Then
they go back to the office. When the impact is over the man must think.
I tell you I do not contemplate with relish seeing my children bred out
of all these girls. Is it wrong? Well, I thought you said you had an
appetite. Impregnate eighty of them, right and left as you see them here
in this room. It would not be impossible. I cannot think of my children
running about in the environment in which these have to live. My dear
sir, you are a fool. You are lying to yourself--As to the girls, I
frankly desire them. I desire many, many, many.

There she sat on the bench of the subway car looking idly about, being
rushed under the river at great speed to the kitchen of her mother's
flat. Malodorous mother. Or wrinkled hard-put-to-it mother. Savior of
the movies. After the impact his great heart had expanded so as to
include the whole city, every woman young and old there he having
impregnated with sons and daughters. For everyone loved him. And he knew
how to look into their eyes with both passion and understanding. Each
had taken him to her soul of souls where the walls were papered with
editorials from the Journal and there he had made himself father to her
future child. As they went upstairs he saw how her heels were worn--Who
will understand the hugeness of my passion?

But he had understood. The truth lay under the surface. Why then not--No
two can remain together without training. Who better than that one who
is practiced. The faithful husband of the clothing store madam is used
to her. They functionate well together. He puts his hat in the right
place. His money in the right bank. His arm fitted in just the posture
best suited to their mutual height and width. All their practices were
mated.

But he was an outsider. He was new to all. Her shoes are stitched up the
back.

Card-index minds, the judges have. Socialism, immorality and lunacy are
about synonyms to the judge. Property is sacred and human liberty is
bitter, bitter, bitter to their tongues.

Walk up the stairs there little girl. But she is naked! These are all
doctors. So the little tot struggled up the very high clinic steps,
naked as she was, and all the doctors looked at her. She had some spots
on her body that had been there a year. Had I been her father I would
know why I am a fool.

Naked and free, free to be damned in to hell by a chance vagrant to whom
she had taken a fancy. Her father did not know her. Did not even know
that she existed. Cared less. We will look after her said the head
doctor.




CHAPTER XII


[Illustration]

That cat is funny. I think she'd be a good one for the circus. When
she's hungry she bites your legs. Then she jumps at you as much as to
say: _Carramba_, give me something.

America needs the flamboyant to save her soul--said Vachel Lindsay to
the indifferent mountains.

He might have added that America tries to satisfy this need in strange
and often uncatalogued ways. America, living an exemplary
three-meals-a-day-and-bed-time life in a wall-papered home, goes now and
then _en masse_, by Gosh, to the circus to see men, women and animals
perform exquisite and impossible feats or daring. What could be more
flamboyant than the trapeze-performer hurtling through the air, the
tiger leaping through man-made hoops, or the elephant poising his mighty
bulk on his two forelegs lifted to the top of bottles? What more
flamboyant than the painted clown, timeless type of the race, laughing
that he may not weep, grinning through a thousand tragic jests while
little human beings perform their miraculous tricks around him?

Jazz, the Follies, the flapper in orange and green gown and war-paint of
rouge--impossible frenzies of color in a world that refuses to be drab.
Even the movies, devoid as they are of color in the physical sense, are
gaudy in the imaginations of the people who watch them; gaudy with
exaggerated romance, exaggerated comedy, exaggerated splendor or
grotesqueness or passion. Human souls who are not living impassioned
lives, not creating romance and splendor and grotesqueness--phases of
beauty's infinite variety--such people wistfully try to find these
things outside themselves; a futile, often a destructive quest.

The imagination will not down. If it is not a dance, a song, it becomes
an outcry, a protest. If it is not flamboyance it becomes deformity; if
it is not art, it becomes crime. Men and women cannot be content, any
more than children, with the mere facts of a humdrum life--the
imagination must adorn and exaggerate life, must give it splendor and
grotesqueness, beauty and infinite depth. And the mere acceptance of
these things from without is not enough--it is not enough to agree and
assert when the imagination demands for satisfaction creative energy.
Flamboyance expresses faith in that energy--it is a shout of delight, a
declaration of richness. It is at least the beginning of art.

All right go ahead: A TEXAS PRIZE CONTEST--The Southern Methodist
University at Dallas, Texas, recently emerged from a prize contest which
had a strange _dénouement_--

Look here young man, after this you examine those girls in the cold
weather.

Who is Warner Fabian? _Flaming Youth_ is the story of the super-flapper,
of her affairs at country clubs and cozy home-dances with all the
accompaniments of prohibition stimulants. Warner Fabian believes that
the youth of this country feeds on excitement and rushes to knowledge
"heeled" by way of petting parties and the elemental stimulus of jazz.
The barriers of convention are down. Youth makes its own standards and
innocence, according to the author, has been superseded by omniscience.

It doesn't matter that Warner Fabian is a _nom de plume_ which conceals
the identity of one of the ablest scientists of this country who has
dared to look facts in the face, facts physical, moral and emotional. He
has written the truth about youth, the youth of today as he sees it.

FLAMING YOUTH by Warner Fabian is the writing on the wall. It is the
_Quo Vadis_? of the present moment.

Those who are following in the Metropolitan Magazine the fortunes of
Pat, the most sophisticated and yet at the same time one of the most
deliciously lovely heroines of recent novels, and the fortunes of her
two sisters, may protest that Mr. Fabian's portrayal of youth in this
novel is outscotting Fitzgerald and overdancing in the Dark. We feel
however that this story of three girls and their many men is one which
may sufficiently frighten mothers and electrify fathers and hit the
younger set hard enough between the eyes to help America's youth to, at
least, a gradual return to sanity.

And so the beginning of art ends in a gradual return to sanity.

Today Modern scientific research has provided the most efficient agent
for the treatment of local inflammation: DIONAL applied locally over the
affected area acts promptly with prolonged effect. Drugless.
Non-irritant. Non-toxic. Indicated in Mastitis, Burns, Boil,
Tonsillitis, Mastoiditis, Sprain, Abscess, Bronchitis, Mumps, Contusion,
Ulcers, Pneumonia.

If a man died on a stretcher he simply said: Dump it out. And ordered us
back for another load.

Intended to stop at the school but his mind waylaid him. Down the hill
came the ash-cart--on the wrong side of the street. He, up the hill,
perforce went wrong also and with great headway. Just as he was about to
pass the cart another car swung out from behind it, headed down hill at
full speed. It was too late for any of the three to stop. In three
seconds there would be death for someone. Angels would be waiting for
mother's little boy. Without the minutest loss of time, in time with the
Boston Symphony Orchestra at its best he swung far to the left, up over
the curb, between two trees, onto the sidewalk--by luck no one was
passing--and going fifty feet came back between two trees, over the curb
to the roadway and continued his empty progress, rather hot in the face,
it must be confessed. He felt happy and proud.

But he had missed his street.

Well let it go. Far away in front of him a locomotive stood
indifferently at the avenue end, emitting great clouds of smoke. It was
autumn, clear and cold.

But you Scandinavians, said the Frenchman, it is impossible to live in
this way. Why France, which is ten times as rich as your countries,
could not do it. You do not know what money is for. You throw it away
like a sickness. To drink champagne like this is madness, and it is
every night, everywhere, in Christiania, Copenhagen, everywhere.

And there she sits staring out, not at the sea, but over Long Island
Sound. Dreaming of her sons--and of the money she will make next year
by renting the better of her two little shacks.

When you have paid up the twenty shares you may, if you like, retain
them as paid up shares in which case you will receive the 5% interest,
or, if you feel that you would like to do so, you may increase your
holding to thirty shares and receive the 6%. Of course everyone is not
able to do that. Do not worry about it, we will notify you in plenty of
time when your book is balanced at the end of the six months.

Let's see. What is the number of your house? Four eighty? I'll see that
they send it right up.

You know last Sunday was my birthday. Seventy-three years old. I had a
party, a surprise party--my relatives came from all sides. But I
couldn't get her downstairs. She's afraid. We had a banister put on the
stairs, cost me nine dollars but she will not do it. She's so fat you
know, she's afraid of falling.

Re Commissions due--Amount $1.00. Dear Sir:--You will please take notice
that unless we receive payment in full of your account within FIVE DAYS
after receipt of this letter, we shall draw upon you for the amount due.

A collection agency draft notifies the banks--those great institutions
of finance--that there is serious doubt regarding the way you pay your
honest obligations. The bank will take note of it. From there the
information quietly passes to the various Mercantile Agencies, Dun's,
Bradstreet's, Martindale's. And this is ONLY ONE cog in the wheel of
ARROW SERVICE. Our reports cover the whole field of credit reporting.

Your continued indifference to our requests for payment has forced us to
consider this action. The draft, with a full history of the debt leaves
our office in five days unless your check is received in the meantime.

Let your better judgement guide you, and pay this account without any
more trouble or expense. Yours very truly--MEMBERS: Retail Credit Men's
National Association. Commercial Law League of America. Rotary
International. O Rotary International!

At this, De Soto, sick, after all the months of travel, stopped out of
breath and looked about him. Hundreds of miles he had travelled through
morass after morass, where the trees were so thick that one could
scarcely get between them, over mountain and river but never did he come
to the other side. The best he had done was to locate a river running
across his path, the greatest he had ever seen or heard of, greater than
the Nile, greater than the Euphrates, no less indeed than any. Here he
had confronted the New World in all its mighty significance and
something had penetrated his soul so that in the hour of need he had
turned to this Mighty River rather than to any other thing. Should it
come to the worst he had decided what to do. Out of the tangle around
him, out of the mess of his own past the river alone could give him
rest. Should he die his body should be given to this last resting place.
Into it Europe should pass as into a new world.

Near the shore he saw a school of small fish which seemed to look at
him, rippling the water as they moved out in unison. Raising his heavy
head De Soto gave the order to proceed. Four of the men lifted him on an
improvised stretcher and the party, headed by the Indians, started again
north along the bank.

The whole country was strange to them. But there at the edge of that
mighty river he had seen those little fish who would soon be eating him,
he, De Soto the mighty explorer--He smiled quietly to himself with a
curious satisfaction.




CHAPTER XIII


[Illustration]

It was a shock to discover that she, that most well built girl, so
discrete, so comely, so able a thing in appearance, should be so stupid.
There are things that she cannot learn. She will never finish school.
Positively stupid. Why her little brother, no bigger than Hop o' my
Thumb has caught up to her and will soon outstrip her. Her older brother
is the brightest boy in the High School. She will I suppose breed stupid
children. Plant wizards choose the best out of lots running into the
millions. Choose here there everywhere for hybrids. A ten-pound white
leghorn cockerel, hens that lay eggs big enough to spoil the career of
any actor. She might though have bright children. What a pity that one
so likely should be so stupid. Easier to work with but I should hate a
child of mine to be that way. Excuses--Try first. Argue after. Excuses.
Do not dare.

There sat the seven boys--nine years old and there-abouts--planning
dire tortures for any that should seduce or touch in any way their
sisters. Each strove to exceed the other. Tying his antagonist to a tree
Apollo took out his knife and flayed him. For sweet as the flute had
been yet no man can play the flute and sing at the same time. But the
God had first played his harp and then sung to his own accompaniment--a
thing manifestly unfair. No doubt, his sense of being in the wrong
whetted his lust for the other's hide. In any case he got what he was
after. He was the winner and that was all there was about it.

Each boy would think with a secret glow of a new torture: I would dip
his hands in boiling lead--they often melted old pieces of lead in a
plumber's pot over a field fire to make slugs for their bean
shooters--then I would tie a rope to his feet and drag him on cinders
etc.... each inventing a worse torture than that pictured before. And
all for their sisters' virtue. So there under the east wall of the
Episcopal Church they sat in a group on the grass and talked together
for an hour.

The real empire builders of our colonial period were not the statesmen,
the men of wealth, the great planters but the unknown pioneers who
fought single-handed and at once both the primeval wilderness and the
lurking savage. The hand crooked to the ploughtail was shaped to the
trigger.

The Mesa Verde cliff dwellers--a much advanced race--formed a
partnership with nature in the science of home building. Masterpieces of
architecture, the survivals of the cliff dwellings tell the story of the
ages.

On the top of a point high above the steep cliffs stood Sun Temple, so
called, scene of the great ceremonial dramas of the clan. The building
is in the form of the letter D and many of the stones which make up the
thousand-odd feet of walls are highly decorated.

The corner stone of the building contains a fossil leaf of a palm tree.
Influenced by anything which even in shape resembled the sun, the
primitive people walled in the leaf on three sides and made a shrine.

The word _bayeta_ is merely Spanish for _baize_. Great quantities of
this were made in England for the Spanish and Mexican trade, the major
part of which was of a brilliant red color. In this way English _baize_
became Spanish _bayeta_ to the Indians of the American Southwest.
Familiar with the art of weaving, these Indians unraveled the bayeta,
retwisted it into one, two or three strands, and then rewove it into
their blankets, which are now almost priceless. This old blanket was
picked up by the author in a New Mexican corral, for the purpose of
wiping his buggy axle. It was covered with filth and mud. A number of
washings revealed this glorious specimen of the weaver's art.

Accepted by a cultured and talented belle, Lincoln, according to his law
partner, had already been refused by Sarah Rickard, an obscure miss of
sixteen, of whom apparently nothing further is known.

It was twelve feet from the rock into the water. As he stood looking
down it seemed twenty. His eyes being five feet from his heels made it
seem by that much higher than it was. He had never dived from such a
height in his life. He had climbed up there to dive and he must dive or
yield. What would he yield? At least it was something he did not intend
to yield. He tried his best to imitate the others, he stood on the edge
and plunged. It seemed to him that he plunged. As a matter of fact he
dropped over the edge with his body bent almost double so that his
thighs hit the water with a stinging impact, also the lower part of his
belly, also the top of his head. He did not feel certain of himself for
a moment or two after rising to the surface. That was about enough.
Memory began to fill the blank of his mind.

There it was still, the men around Mrs. Chain's table on Locust St.:
$3.50 a week. A week? Yes, three-fifty a week. And that place in Leipzig
where they had only half cooked fresh pork. _Schwein schlacherei_! Bah.
One week was enough there. Fraulein Dachs, _pflaumen suppe_. That purple
and sweet soup. The white cakes they sold on the station platform near
Malaga, what were they called? It seemed to be some native bake peculiar
to the place. The devil fish in a black sauce in Seville. Big lumps of
dough, big as snowballs, _sauer braten_. But Mrs. Chain's prunes were
the most wonderful. Watery tidbits. It was prunes or applesauce. Her
daughter was simple I guess. Did her best to land one of the students,
kept it up for twenty years. At that table I met one of my dearest
friends. Will you have some bread? Yes. That look. It was enough. Youth
is so rich. It needs no stage setting. Out went my heart to that face.
There was something soft there, a reticence, a welcome, a loneliness
that called to me. And he, he must have seen it in me too. We looked,
two young men, and at once the tie was cemented. It was gaged accurately
at once and sealed for all time. The other faces are so many prunes.

Have you ever seen a dish of small birds all lying on their backs on the
dish and with feet in the air, all roasted stiff but brown and savory?
Rice birds I think they called them. Or snails or baked eggs?

The old man raked slowly. It took him all day to finish the small lawn.
But it was autumn and the leaves had fallen thickly. The bird bath was
full of leaves. It was a sentimental picture. But after all why? The
leaves must fall into every corner. If they fall into the bird bath that
is all there is to it. Still it calls many things to the mind that are
not evoked by the twingling of waves on a lake shore in August.

Clark had taken a job as clerk at Pocono, and she was a Quakeress. They
got to know each other very, very well. And this girl in the steamer
chair, it was the cattle men who attracted her. Let her go then, he said
tying the cord with a piece of gauze twisted into a rope. When you bathe
the baby for the first time do not put him into a tub but sponge him off
carefully before the fire with castile soap and warm water. Be careful
not to get the soap into his eyes. Is it nitrate of silver they use for
a baby's eyes?

I could not tell whether it was a baby or a doll the little girl was
coddling. The Italians' babies are often so very small. They dress them
up so grotesquely too. It must be a rigid custom with them.

Nothing at all. All at once it seemed that every ill word he had ever
heard spoken struck his ear at the same moment. What a horrible roar it
made. But there were other things, too many to record. Corners of rooms
sacred to so many deeds. Here he had said so and so, done so and so. On
that picnic he had dared to be happy. All the older women had watched
him. With one girl under each arm he had let his spirit go. They had
been closer than anything he could now imagine.




CHAPTER XIV


[Illustration]

Particles of falling stars, coming to nothing. The air pits them, eating
out the softer parts. Sometimes one strikes the earth or falls flaming
into Lake Michigan with a great hiss and roar. And if the lawless mob
that rules Ireland with its orderly courts and still more orderly minds
will not desist it must be crushed by England. So that to realize the
futility of American men intent upon that virtue to be found in
literature, literature, that is, of the traditional sort as known in
France and Prussia--to realize how each serious American writer in turn
flares up for a moment and fizzles out, burnt out by the air leaving no
literary monument, no Arc de Triomphe behind him, no India subdued--To
realize this it is necessary to go back to the T'ang dynasty where
responsibility rested solely on the heads of the poets--_etc., etc_...
Or better still why not seek in Aleppo or Jerusalem for the strain to
save us.

America is lost. Ah Christ, Ah Christ that night should come so soon.

And the reason is that no American poet, no American man of letters has
taken the responsibility upon his own person. The responsibility for
what? There is the fire. Rush into it. What is literature anyway but
suffering recorded in palpitating syllables? It is the quiet after the
attack. Picking a sliver of bone from his mangled and severed leg he
dipped it in his own gore and wrote an immortal lyric. Richard Cœur de
Lion shot through the chest with an iron bolt wrote the first
English--no, French, poem of importance. What of democratic Chaucer? He
was only a poet but Richard was a man, an adventurer, a king. The half
mad women rush to impregnate themselves against him. And this is
literature. This is the great desirable. Soaked in passion, _baba au
rhum_, the sheer proof of the spirit will do the trick and America will
be King. Up America. Up Cœur de Lion. Up Countess Wynienski the queen
of Ireland.

Polyphemus took first one shape then another but Odysseus, the wise and
crafty, held firm. He did not let go but Polyphemus did. In fact the God
could not exist without Odysseus to oppose him.

Why man, Europe is YEARNING to see something new come out of America.

In a soup of passion they would see a little clam. Let us smile. This
is--

The danger is in forgetting that the good of the past is the same good
of the present. That the power that lived then lives today. That we too
possess it. That true novelty is in good work and that no matter how
good work comes it is good when it possesses power over itself. Europe's
enemy is the past. Our enemy is Europe, a thing unrelated to us in any
way. Our lie that we must fight to the last breathe is that it is
related to us.

We are deceived when they cry that negro music is the only true American
creation. It IS the only true from the European point of view.
Everything is judged from that point of view. But to us it is only new
when we consider it from a traditional vantage. To us it means a
thousand things it can never mean to a European. To us only can it be
said to be alive. With us it integrates with our lives. That is what it
teaches us. What in hell does it matter to us whether it is new or not
when it IS to us. It exists. It is good solely because it is a part of
us. It is good THEREFORE and therefore only is it new. Everything that
is done in Europe is a repetition of the past with a difference.
Everything we do must be a repetition of the past with a difference. I
mean that if negro music is new in an absolute sense---which it is not
by any means, if we are to consider the Ethiopian--the probable
Ethiopian influence in Egypt--then it is new to Europe as it is to
us.

It is not necessary for us to learn from anyone but ourselves--at least
it would be a relief to discover a critic who looked at American work
from the American viewpoint.

We are a young nation and have not had time or opportunity to catch up
with nations that had ten centuries start of us. We still labor under
the handicap of our Puritan lineage....

We shall not be able to plead childhood any longer.

Eric the Red landed in Providence, Long Island, and was put in a cage so
everyone could see him.

This sort of stupidity we have to combat. I am not talking of the mass
of plumbers and carpenters. I am talking of the one thing that is
permanent. Spirits. I am saying that America will screw whom it will
screw and when and how it will screw. And that it will refrain from
screwing when it will and that no amount of infiltration tactics from
"superior civilizations" can possibly make us anything but bastards.

We are only children when we acknowledge ourselves to be children.
Weight of culture, weight of learning, weight of everything such as
abandon in any sense has nothing to do with it. We must first isolate
ourselves. Free ourselves even more than we have. Let us learn the
essentials of the American situation.

We who despise the blackguards in the old sense. We too are free. Free!
We too, with paddles instead of turbines will discover the new world. We
are able. We are kings in our own right.

We care nothing at all for the complacent Concordites? We can look at
that imitative phase with its erudite Holmeses, Thoreaus, and Emersons.
With one word we can damn it: England.

In Patagonia they kick up the skulls of the river men out of the dust
after a flood. In Peru, in Machu Pichu the cyclopean wall on the top of
the Andes remains to rival the pyramids which after all may have been
built of blocks of some plaster stuff of which we have lost the
combination.

I know not a land except ours that has not to some small extent made its
title clear. Translate this into ancient Greek and offer it to Harvard
engraved on copper to be hung in the waterclosets which freshmen use.

And why do they come to naught? these falling stars, etc.

It has been generally supposed that among the peoples of the earth the
age of maturity comes earliest in the tropics and increases gradually as
one goes northward. But in North America this rule has one striking
exception. It is not rare among Esquimau women that they have their
first child at 12 and children born before the mothers were 11 have been
recorded. Point Barrow Alaska 300 miles north of the Arctic circle.

But the early maturity of the Esquimau girls is strictly in accord with
the supposition that the hotter the environment the earlier the
maturity. To all intents and purposes the typical Esquimau lives under
tropical or subtropical conditions. The temperature of the Esquimau
house indoors frequently rises to 90°. When they go out the cold air
does not have a chance to come in contact with the body, except for the
limited area of the face. When an Esquimau is well dressed his two
layers of fur clothing imprison the body heat so effectively that the
air in actual contact with his skin is always at the temperature of a
tropical summer. He carries the climate about with him inside his
clothes.

When an Esquimau comes inside such a house as the one I have been
speaking of he strips off all clothing, immediately on entering, except
his knee breeches, and sits naked from the waist up and from the knees
down. Great streams of perspiration run down the face and body and are
being continually mopped up with handfuls of moss.

The effect of the overheated houses is more direct upon the women than
the men for they remain indoors a large part of the winter.

Otherwise in North America among the Indians as one goes north from
Mexico toward the arctic sea the colder the average temperature of the
air that is in contact with the body through the year, the later the
maturity of the girls. The most northerly of the Atabasca Indians appear
to suffer a great deal from the cold.

The Dog Rib and Yellow Knife Indians are often so poorly clad that they
have to be continually moving, for if they stop for even half an hour at
a time their hands become completely numb.

In the evenings their wigwams are cheerful with a roaring fire but while
one's face is almost scorched with the heat of the roaring flames one's
back has hoar-frost forming upon it. At night the Indians go to sleep
under their blankets covering up their heads and shivering all night.
The average age of maturity of the girls of these tribes is as high or
higher than that of north European whites.

But north from the Slavey and Dog Rib Indians to the Esquimau country
the conditions suddenly change. One comes in contact with a people that
has a system of living almost perfectly adapted to a cold climate, while
the northern Indians have a system almost unbelievably ill adapted to
the conditions in which they live.

In Puritan New England they wrapped the lover and his lass in one
blanket and left them before the dying hearth after the family retired.
There was a name for it which I have forgotten.




CHAPTER XV


[Illustration]

It was another day ended. Another day added to the days that had gone
before. Merest superstition. The eternal moment remained twining in its
hair the flowers of yesterday and tomorrow. The newer street lights
sparked in the dark. The uphill street which that morning had been
filled at its far end with the enormous medal-with-rays of the sun was
now flecked with sparkles. It was Carlstadt, established as a free
thinker's corporation by Carl Weiss of Berne from which all churches had
been excluded. Another day--any day--.

There lay that great frame of a man with his heavy features relaxed his
loose jowls rising and falling with each breath while the busy surgeons
tinkered at his elbow. Soon they struck gold and out spurted the red.
Martha, who had not gone downstairs for over an hour caught it in a
white porcelain bowl, an ounce, two ounces--she thought--estimating the
amount swiftly. Then four ounces, eight. He was a large man. When will
they check it! His breathing had grown easier. He was benefited. A
pint! He was white. In an hour men on horseback were riding north and
south. Washington was dead. It was another day. Any day.

Davy Crockett had a literary style. Rather than blow his squirrel to
bits he'd strike the tree just under its belly so that the concussion
would stun it. Such was the country with the element of time subtracted.
What is time but an impertinence?

Homesteading in the far western states was a struggle. Every child born
there had a mother who is thrice a heroine. A woman in such a country
approached motherhood at a time when her husband had to be away from
home. Up to the day of her confinement she had to milk, churn, care for
the chickens, work in the garden and carry water to the house from a
well three hundred yards away... The day of her confinement she did a
large washing then walked two miles to the home of a neighbor.

For that the brat seized her by the lug with his little sharp teeth and
drew blood. We'll have to put him on the bottle.

Nothing, save for the moment! In the moment exists all the past and the
future! Evolution--! Anti-peristalsis. Eighty-seven years ago I was born
in a little village in the outskirts of Birmingham. The past is for
those that lived in the past, the present is for today. Or--today! The
little thing lay at the foot of the bed while the midwife--It was in
England 1833. And now by the sea a new world death has come and left his
chewing gum in an artery of her brain. But I'll pay you for this, she
said as they were sliding her into the ambulance, I'll pay you for this.
You young people think you are awfully smart, don't you. I don't want to
see them again, those fuzzy things, what are they, trees?

Good gracious, do you call this making me comfortable? The two boys had
her on the stretcher on the floor. Yes, stay here a week then I can do
what I please but you want to do what you please first. I wonder how
much she planned.




CHAPTER XVI


[Illustration]

Another day, going evening foremost this time. Leaning above her baby in
the carriage was Nettie Vogelman, grown heavier since we knew her in the
sixth grade twenty-five years before and balancing great masses of
prehistoric knowledge on her head in the shape of a purple ostrichplume
hat.

But where is romance in all this--with the great-coat she was wearing
hanging from the bulge of her paps to the sidewalk? Romance! When
knighthood was in flower. Rome. Eliogabalus in a skirt married his man
servant.

We struggle to comprehend an obscure evolution--opposed by the true and
static church--when the compensatory involution so plainly marked
escapes our notice. Living we fail to live but insist on impaling
ourselves on fossil horns. But the church balanced like a glass ball
where the jets of evolution and involution meet has always, in its
prosperous periods, patronised the arts. What else could it do? Religion
is the shell of beauty.

The fad of evolution is swept aside. It was only mildly interesting at
the best. I'll give you a dollar my son for each of these books you
read: Descent of Man and Origin of Species, reprinted by Dombie and
Sons, Noodle Lane, Ken. W. London; England 1890.

Who will write the natural history of involution beginning with the
stone razor age in Cornwall to the stone razor age in Papua? Oh China,
China teach us! Ottoman, Magyar, Moor, teach us. Norse Eric the
Discoverer teach us. Cœur de Lion, teach us. Great Catherine teach us.
Phryne, Thaïs, Cleopatra, Brunehilde, Lucretia Borgia teach us. What
was it, Demosthenes, that she said to you? Come again?

Borne on the foamy crest of involution, like Venus on her wave, stript
as she but of all consequence--since it is the return: See they return!
From savages in quest of a bear we are come upon rifles, cannon. From
Chaldeans solving the stars we have fallen into the bellies of the
telescopes. From great runners we have evolved into speeches sent over a
wire.

But our spirits, our spirits have prospered! Boom, boom. Oh yes, our
spirits have grown--

The corrosive of pity, Baroja says, giving up medicine to be a baker.

Marriage is of the church because it is the intersection of _loci_ by
which alone there is place for a church to stand. Beauty is an arrow.
Diana launched her shaft into the air and where the deer and the arrow
met a church was founded and there beauty had died.

So youth and youth meet and die and there the church sets up its
ceremony.

Who will write the natural history of involution?

I have forgotten something important that I wanted to say. Thus having
forgotten and remembered that it was important the folly of all thought
is revealed.

The deer lay panting on the leaves while Diana leaned over it to stab it
in the neck with her dagger.

I have forgotten what I wanted to say.

Venus and Adonis.

The second time I saw her it was in a room of a hotel in the city.




CHAPTER XVII


[Illustration]

As the Southern mountains are not like other mountains, so the
mountaineers are not like others. For all their beauty these mountains
are treacherous and alien, and the people who must wring a livelihood
from the sawmills or from the tiny perpendicular farms high up under the
sky come to be wary and secret like their woodlands.

The Cumberland mountain mother, by nature sharp and sane, has studied
the moods of the mountains and of the animals. Illiterate though she be,
she is full of ripe wisdom. Many, superior to the mountain woman in,
say, sanitation might learn from sitting on cabin doorsteps that they
are most often inferior to her in sanity.

Yet, frankly, it is often better to sit on the cabin doorstep than to go
inside. The mountain mother struggles bravely against dirt, but if you
live in a lonely two-room cabin, if you are the sole caretaker of six
children under ten, and two cows and a large stony garden, and must help
in the cornfield besides, you are excusable if in the end you "quit
struggling." The mountain mother does not make herself and her husband
and her children slaves to the housekeeping arts.

A mountain woman dips snuff--surreptitiously if she is young, frankly if
she is old.

We settle down on the doorstep probably on straight chairs with seats of
cornhusks twisted into a rope and then interwoven. There is a sound to
which the mountains have accustomed me--the sharp jolting thud when a
mother, if she possesses neither cradle nor rocker, puts her baby to
sleep by jerking forward and backward on two legs of a straight chair.
There is usually some two-year-old lying fast asleep on the bed just
inside the door; or on the porch floor, plump and brown as a bun and
studded with flies thick as currants.

Mountain children are as vigorous as baby oaks until they reach their
teens, and then over-work begins to tell on growing bodies. A reedy boy
of thirteen, just beginning to stretch to the length of spine and limb
that characterises the mountaineer, often gets a stoop that he never
afterward conquers. In the more remote lumber districts I have seen boys
of ten and twelve work all day loading cars. There too, slim mountain
girls of twelve and fourteen stand all day in the icy spray of the flume
to stack bark on the cars.

Here where isolation makes people fiercely individualistic public
opinion is as slow to deny a man's right to marry at the age he wishes
as it is to deny his right to turn his corn into whisky. At the age when
boys and girls first awake to the fact of sex they marry and the
parents, although regretfully, let them.

The unmarried mother is most rare. A boy of sixteen sets himself to all
the duties of fatherhood. A fourteen-year-old mother, with an ageless
wisdom, enters without faltering on her future of a dozen children.

But here is Lory. But again a digression--: In any account of the
mountains one must remember that there are three distinct types: the
people of the little villages, almost all remote from railroads; the
itinerant lumber workers, woodchoppers and mill-hands who follow the
fortunes of the portable sawmill as it exhausts first one remote cove
then another; and the permanent farmers who have inherited their
dwindling acres for generations. Yet at bottom the mountain mother is
always the same.

Lory lives in a one-room lumber shack, and moves about once in three
months. The walls are of planks with inch-wide cracks between them.
There are two tiny windows with sliding wooden shutters and a door. All
three must be closed when it is very cold. For better protection the
walls are plastered over with newspapers, always peeling off and gnawed
by woodrats. The plank floor does not prevent the red clay from oozing
up. The shack is some fifteen feet square. It contains two stoves, two
beds, two trunks, a table and two or three chairs. In it live six souls:
two brothers, their wives and a baby apiece.

Lory is part Indian, one surmises from the straight hair dropping over
her eyes and her slow squawlike movements. Her face is stolid except
when it flashes into a smile of pure fun. Dark though she is her breast,
bared from her dark purple dress, is statue white. She looks down on her
first baby with a madonna's love and her words have in them a madonna's
awe before a holy thing: "I ain't never a-goin' to whip him. He ain't
never a-goin' to need it, for he won't get no meanness if I don't learn
him none."

The setting is fairyland. Mountain folk go far toward living on beauty.
The women may become too careless and inert even to scrape away the
underbrush and plant a few sweet potatoes and cabbages. They may sit
through lazy hours mumbling their snuff sticks, as does Mrs. Cole, while
children and dogs and chickens swarm about them: but even Mrs. Cole can
be roused by the call of beauty.

"My husband he's choppin' at the first clearin' two miles from here, and
he's been plumb crazy over the yaller lady slippers up that-a-way. He's
been sayin' I must take the two least kids, what ain't never seen sech,
and go up there and see 'em 'fore they was gone. So yesterday we went.
It sure was some climb over them old logs, but Gawd them lady slippers
was worth it." I shall never understand the mystery of a mountain
woman's hair. No matter how old, how worn or ill she may be, her hair is
always a wonder of color and abundance.

Ma Duncan at fifty-five is straight and sure-footed as an Indian; tall
and slim and dark as a gypsy, with a gypsy's passionate love of
out-of-doors. Her neighbors send for Ma Duncan from far and near in time
of need. Going forth from her big farm boarding-house on errands of
mercy. Up wild ravines to tiny cabins that seem to bud out like lichens
from grey boulders wet with mountain streams, over foot logs that sway
crazily over rock creeks, through waist-high undergrowth Ma Duncan goes
with her stout stick.

As we reach a little grassy clearing Ma Duncan drops down to stretch out
happily: So as I can hear what the old earth has to say me... Reckon it
says, "Quit your fussin' you old fool. Ain't God kept your gang a young
uns all straight so fur? He ain't a-going back on you now, just because
they're growd."

Presently Ma Duncan sits up, her hands about her knees, her hat fallen
from her wealth of hair, her gun on the ground beside her--often she
carries a gun in the hope of getting a gray squirrel to be done in
inimitable brown cream gravy for breakfast.

She looks out sadly over much worn woodland, with the great stumps
remaining:

"I wish you could have seen the great old trees that used to be here. If
folks wasn't so mad for money they might be here and a preachin' the
gospel of beauty. But folks is all for money and all for self. Some-day
when they've cut off all the beauty that God planted to point us to him,
folks will look round and wonder what us human bein's is here fur--"

"The mountain woman lives untouched by all modern life. In two centuries
mountain people have changed so little that they are in many ways the
typical Americans."

"The Lord sent me back" former pastor tells men in session at the
church. With tears in his eyes, he enters meeting, escorted by two sons.
Dramatic scene follows as he asks forgiveness for mistake he has made.
Was in Canada and Buffalo. His explanation of absence is satisfactory to
family and members he met last night.

Miss Hannen in seclusion at home. Her family declines to give statement.

Dominie Cornelius Densel, forty eight years old, former pastor, etc...
who left his wife and eight children etc. came home last night.

Miss T. Hannen, twenty-six years old, etc... who disappeared from her
home, etc... on the same afternoon that the dominie was numbered among
the missing also came to her home the same evening.

Pictures of the missing dominie and member of his church who are home
again.




CHAPTER XVIII


[Illustration]

Commodius renamed the tenth month Amazonius. But he died a violent death
and the old name was returned.

I had five cents in my pocket and a piece of apple pie in my hand, said
Prof. M. I. Pupin, of Columbia University describing the circumstances
of his arrival in America in the steerage of the steamship Westphalie
from Hamburg half a century ago.

Today that American scholar of Serbian birth holds the chair in
electro-mechanics at Columbia University.

Prof. Pupin is merely one of a host of former immigrants whose names are
linked with the great strides in science, commerce, finance and industry
and whose careers furnish living proof that America, besides breeding
great men, imports them.

Claude Monet was born in Columbia, Ohio.

In industry and commerce the stories of many of the successful
immigrants read like romances.

There is C. C. A. Baldi of Philadelphia who began with nothing and who
is now one of America's foremost citizens of foreign birth. When he
landed in this country thirty years ago he had only a few pennies in the
pockets of his ragged trowsers. He knew no English and knew nothing of
American customs, but he had heard of the opportunities which America
offers to a wide-awake, ambitious immigrant willing to work.

Mr. Baldi bought thirty lemons with his pennies. He peddled them and
with the proceeds of sales bought more lemons and peddled them. Before
long he had a cart loaded with hundreds of lemons. In time the push-cart
became a store and the store grew into a great business.

Other spectacular instances of success are furnished by the careers of
Louis J. Horowitz, one of America's greatest builders and S. M.
Schatzkin, who came to this country twenty-five years ago with 3 dollars
carefully tucked away in his clothes and began peddling coal in the East
side of New York. Today Schatzkin has large sums invested in many big
American enterprises.

Horowitz, who came here thirty years ago, built the Woolworth and the
Equitable buildings, one the tallest and the other the largest office
building in point of floor space in the world. His first job was that of
an errand boy. Later he worked as a parcel wrapper, then as a stock boy
and then as a shoe salesman. After selling shoes he started selling real
estate.

Witness? oh witness these lives my dainty cousins. Dear Madam:--It has
often been said that one of the most interesting spots in America is the
small space covered by the desk of the editor of the Atlantic Monthly.

All the qualities which make up the interest of life,--joy, sorrow,
romance, ambition, experience,--seem to center in this spot in turn,
radiating from every nook and corner of the world.

"Adventures," remarked the talented Mr. Disraeli, "are for the
adventurous," and it is to those who think of life as the supreme
adventure that the Atlantic is most confidently addressed.

If you care for a magazine that satisfies, vexes and delights by turn,
you can safely subscribe to the Atlantic Monthly for the coming year.

Public Service Railway Company, Newark, N. J. Amazonius 10, 1920.--To
our Patrons: As a fair minded citizen, your impartial consideration of
the facts set forth in subjoined letter, written by me to the Board of
Public Utility Commissioners under date of Amazonius 7th. 1920, is
respectfully requested. Very truly yours? Thomas N. McCarter, President.

To the Board of Public Utility Commissioners of the State of New Jersey,
Trenton, New Jersey. Dear Sirs: The rate of fare of 7 cents, with one
cent for a transfer, etc..., etc... Such large cities as Boston, New
Haven, Hartford and Pittsburg already have a 10c. flat rate. Etc...
etc... Under the foregoing statement of facts the company is forced to
file herewith a flat rate of 10c. where 7c. is now charged. Etc...
Etc...


Now when Christmas bells ring clear
Telling us that love is here
And children sing
Gifts that speak of thoughtful love
Just like angels from above
Glad tidings bring.


Rugs, mirrors, chairs, tables, W. & J. Sloane, N.Y., Wash., San F.
Christmas Gifts Sure to be Appreciated.: Standing lamps, table lamps,
book ends, Sheffield ware, desk sets, framed prints, porcelains, soft
pillows, foot rests (D-2968 Rocking foot rest in Mahogany. Formerly
$45.00. Sale Price $30.00!) sconces, mantel clocks, wall clocks, tall
clocks, small tables, smoking stands, occasional chairs, screens,
oriental rugs, Chinese embroideries, vacuum cleaners--Mirrors. Small
Oriental Rugs: Mossouls, Pergames, Beloochistans, Lilehennas, Sarouks
and Kirmanshahs.

California was peopled by the Indians first and then by the Padres who
brought with them their sprigs of vine and of orange and of fig and also
the art of irrigation. So that you will find today from the very
northernmost part, from Klamath Lake down to the Imperial Valley in the
South, the lands of California watered and made as fertile as the valley
of the Nile.

That's all right. Yes Sir. But I come from the Eastern shore of
Maryland. I'm an East Sho' man. Have you ever been on the Eastern Sho'?
No? Well sir, we're a strange people and we have some strange legends on
the East Sho'. When Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden they fell
sick and the Lord was very much disturbed over them, so he called a
council of his angels and wanted to know where they should be taken for
a change of air.

Gabriel suggested the Eastern Sho' of Maryland but the Lord said, No,
No; that wouldn't be sufficient change.

Yes sir, down at Chincoteague they have the biggest and the finest
oysters in the world. Big as your hand and when you get a half dozen of
them a couple of hours out of the water you know you have something.

It was at Chincoteague two Spanish galleons went ashore in the old days
and some ponies swam ashore. To this day they have a yearly round-up on
the island where the breed of these ponies is coralled, a short special
breed of horse.

Tangier Island is another place. That's where the sheriff shot the boy
who wouldn't go in off his front porch on Sunday morning during church
service. Either in church or in the house during that hour. He shot him
all right. They have little individual canals up to their back doors
from the bay.

And the native, coming up to him suddenly with a knife as long as your
arm, said; _Yo soy mas hombre que tu_! and started a swing at him. Had
he not been so quick to seize a chair and bring it down on the man's
head--What would have happened?




CHAPTER XIX


[Illustration]

Sometimes the men would come in and say there was a turkey nest down in
the meadow and they'd send me to look for it.

Once I fell in the mireage up to my waist. My, they was mad at me.
"Can't tramp a meadow without falling in the mireage?" they said.

I miss it often. At nine they let me drive the hay-hoist with one horse
and later with two. One morning I had the young team out. It was Allie's
team of greys, they was only just no more than colts. They shied at a
piece of paper. I could hear the men up in the barn yelling. "Hey,
what's the matter down there!" But it was no use. I tried to get to
their heads. I wasn't afraid of them. Allie said afterward he wouldn't
have been surprised to have seen me killed.

One of the women stood in the road waving a broom. I can see her yet. I
might have been able to manage them if it hadn't been for her but they
simply jumped over a wagon and smashed the hay-fork and ran down the
road two miles. Then they came back again. My but the old man was mad at
me. All the black looks I got!

I used to hate the Old Man. Sometimes I'd be getting wood and he'd ask
me why I hadn't done something. I'd say I hadn't gotten round to it yet.
Maybe he'd throw a piece of wood at me.

I can remember the churning. I wouldn't exactly like to go back to it
all but sometimes I miss it terribly. Sometimes it would n't take you
more than five minutes to get the butter and sometimes you'd churn for
45 or two hours and sometimes it would never come. We'd get four or five
pounds or more at a churning. Then it would have to be washed and salted
and packed in jars in the cellar.

So now that it is raining. So now that it is Amazonius--we go to buy a
metal syringe at the factory because we know the men who live on our
street who own the bricks that make the walls that hold the floors that
hold the girls who make mistakes in the inventories:

Every order that comes in is copied. You must rely on your help. As the
orders come in they are handled by a girl who puts them on our own
uniform order sheets. So right there it begins. You have to rely on a
young flyaway who has perhaps been up dancing the night before. It's
easy enough for her to write "with" for "without" and--that's the sort
of thing that happens. There is a certain minimum of error that you must
count on and no reputable house will fail to make good promptly.

The glass blowers have never in my entire experience of 17 years
suffered any harm from their trade. Why we had a boy in the old factory,
a cripple, a withered leg, the weakest, scrawniest lad you ever saw.
He's been blowing for us for 15 or 17 years and you should see him
today. Why the fat fairly hangs down over his collar.

In our thermometer work they blow the bulb then fill it with mercury
which is in a special container like the cups you get at Child's
restaurant say. They never have to touch the stuff. When the bulb is
full they seal it. Then the mercury in the bulb is warmed by passing the
bulb through a flame. This is to drive it up the capillary tube. There
can be no volatilization since the mercury is in the tube and this is
the only time the stuff is heated. Then when the metal rises from the
heat the other end of the glass is dipped in the stuff so that as the
bulb now cools the mercury is sucked up filling the thermometer
completely.

Sometimes, of course, a bulb breaks in heating so that the floor is full
of the stuff.

The hydrofluoric acid for marking is used under a hood with a special
exhaust-blower that has nothing else to do but exhaust that hood. There
is not the slightest odor of fumes in the room. The air is as good there
as here.

And what is your business?

Rag merchant.

Ah yes. And what does that mean?

Our main specialty is shoddy.

Ah yes. Shoddy is made from--

From woolen rags. The whole mass is put into a vat and the cotton
dissolved out. It comes out in a great wet heap of stuff that has to be
washed and dried.

Sometimes they burn the cotton out with gas. For instance you'll see a
piece of cloth, grey cloth. The gas will take out the black cotton and
leave the wool fibres all running in one direction. One of the secrets
of the trade is the selection of the colors. That is red shoddy is made
from red rags and so on. But they even take the dyes out of the cloth
and use it over again.

You know the army coats the boys wore. They were 70% shoddy. It's all
wool but the fibre has been broken. It makes a hard material not like
the soft new woven woolens but it's wool, all of it.

After the stuff from the vats is dry they put it on the donkeys which
turn it into loose skeins. From that stage it goes on to the making of
the yarn for weaving when any quantity of fresh wool can be mixed that
you desire.

The shortest fibre, that can't be used for anything else, is made into
these workingmen's shirts you see. The wool is held in a container in
the loosest state possible. This is connected up with a blower in front
of which a loom is set for weaving a fairly tight cotton mesh. Then as
the loom is working the wool is BLOWN IN! Where the cotton warp and woof
cross the shoddy is caught.

Recently a Jew came in to complain of the lightness of the shirts he was
getting. All we did was to yell out, "George turn on the blower a little
stronger." One washing and the wool is gone. But the Jews are the smart
ones. You got to hand it to them. They invent machinery to do anything
with that stuff. Why one man made a million before the government
stopped him by making cheap quilts.

He took any kind of rags just as they were collected, filth or grease
right on them the way they were and teased them up into a fluffy stuff
which he put through a rolling process and made into sheets of wadding.
These sheets were fed mechanically between two layers of silkolene and a
girl simply sat there with an electric sewing device which she guided
with her hand and drew in the designs you see on those quilts, you know.

You've seen this fake oilcloth they are advertising now. Congoleum.
Nothing but building paper with a coating of enamel.

¡_O vida tan dulce_!