YOUTHFUL DAYS AT EVANSTON
That Western village in which I grew up and struggled with so many
temptations and sins deserves a chapter to itself. Doubtless there are
some very good descriptions extant of small Middle West communities of
twenty-five and thirty years ago, but I do not happen to have run across
any which quite hit off the atmosphere and general make-up which
characterized my village on the western shore of Lake Michigan. Yet
there were probably many other settlements very similar in structure and
atmosphere all through Illinois and southern Wisconsin, peopled by
sturdy New England folk and charged with New England sentiment.
As I have already said, my village was singularized from other near-by
communities of the same size on account of the Methodists having
selected it for one of their Western strongholds. The place stood for
learning, culture and religion in sectarian form in very pronounced
outlines, and even in my childhood it was called the Athens of the West,
or at any rate one of them. They are so numerous by courtesy to-day that
it is difficult to keep track of them.
The village of my childhood was bounded for me on the north by a
lighthouse and waterworks, and on the south by the main street, or
"store" section. To the east was the lake, and to the west the "Ridge,"
a sloping elevation where the particularly "rich" people lived. This was
all the world to me until my sixth or seventh year, when perhaps I got a
fleeting glimpse of Chicago, and realized that my world was pretty thin
in settlement at least. But I did not see much of Chicago until I was
well on into my teens, so I may practically say that the village was the
one world I knew well for a number of years in spite of my runaway
trips, which were too flighty to permit me to get acquainted, except
superficially, with the communities visited.
Our house was a rambling old frame affair about midway between the main
street and the lighthouse, built very near the lake. Here I grew up with
my brother and sisters. The territory between the house and the
lighthouse was "free;" we children could roam in the fields there
without special permission, also on the shore and in the university
campus immediately in front of the house across a lane. But beyond these
limits special passports were required; the main street we were not to
explore at all, innocent affair though it was.
The lake and the shore were our particular delight, and on pleasant days
it is no exaggeration to say that my brother and I spent half our time
roasting in the sand and then dashing into the cool water for a swim.
Other boys from the village proper--real citified they seemed to
me--joined us frequently, and at an early age I had learned to smoke
cigarettes, and had a working vocabulary of "cuss" words, which I was
careful, however, to exercise almost exclusively in the sand. Whether I
took to these habits earlier than most boys do now, I cannot say, but by
nine I was a good beginner in the cigarette business, and by ten could
hold my own in a cussing contest. My mother once washed my mouth out
with soap and water for merely saying "Gee!" What she would have done to
me could she have heard some of my irreverences in the sand is pitiful
to think of. Right here was one of the main snags we boys ran up
against--in being boys, in giving vent to our vitality, we offended the
prim notions of conduct which our cultured elders insisted upon; and to
be ourselves at all, we had to sneak off to caves in the lake bank or to
swimming and cigarette smoking exercises, where, of course, we overdid
the thing, and then lied about it afterwards. I learned more about
fibbing and falsely "explanationing" how I had disposed of my time at
this period of my life than at any later period, and I boldly put the
blame now on the unmercifully strict set of rules which the culture and
religion in the place deemed essential. My mother, and later on, my
father, were steeped in this narrow view of things just as badly as were
my grandparents. The Sunday of those days I look back upon with horror.
Compulsory church and Sunday school attendance, stiff "go-to-meeting"
clothes, and a running order to be seen but not heard until Monday
morning is what I recall of my childhood Sundays. Church-going, religion
and Sunday school lessons became a miserable bore, and it is only in
very recent years that I have been able to get any enjoyment out of a
sermon, no matter how fine it may be.
[Illustration: The Boy--Josiah Flynt--at the Age of Thirteen]
My parents were to blame for all this secondarily only, as I think of it
now. They were unconsciously just as much victims of the prudery and
selfish local interpretation of the Ten Commandments as we children were
consciously _their_ victims. They had conformed to the "system" in vogue
as children in other similar communities, and they literally did not or
would not, know anything else when they were in the village. My father
very likely knew of many other things in Chicago, but he did not
ventilate his knowledge of them in the village. Before my parents, my
grandfathers and grandmothers had been among the main stalwarts in
supporting the "system."
The intellectual life of the place centered, of course, around the
university and the Biblical Institute. How broad and useful this
intellectual striving may have been I did not know as a boy, and in
later years absence from the place has made it impossible for me to
judge of its present effectiveness. The village was saturated with
religious sentiments of one kind or another, and I am inclined to
believe that overdoing this kind of thinking dwarfed the villagers'
mental horizon.
The university had a clause in its charter from the State authorities
which forbade the sale of all intoxicating liquors within a four-mile
radius of the university building. A small hamlet four miles to the
north and a cemetery village four miles to the south were the nearest
points where the village boys could get any liquor. The village fathers
have always been very proud of the prohibitory clause, and in my day
were much given to flattering themselves, that, thank God! they were not
like other people. Now, what were the facts as I learned to know them as
a boy? I have referred to the "Ridge," the slope on the west, where the
richer people lived. I make no doubt whatsoever that the "Ridge"
families that wanted wine and beer had it in their homes--the university
charter could not stop that--but their boys, or many of them, for the
fun and lark of the thing, made pilgrimages to the northern and southern
drinking stations, and at times reeled home in a scandalous condition.
Those old enough to go to Chicago would also stagger back from there
late at night. Of the boys and young men, from the "Ridge" as well as
from down in the village, who participated in such orgies, I can
remember a dozen and more, belonging to the "nicest" families in the
place, who went to the everlasting bow-wows. I say a dozen offhand,
there were in reality more, because I have heard about them later, after
leaving the village. Far be it from me to put the blame on the
university charter, but I am compelled to say that in all such
communities the existing drunkenness and lewdness at least _seem_ worse
than in communities where liquor is sold and drunk openly. Perhaps they
seem so because a drunken person is theoretically an anomaly in
prohibition towns and villages, but whatever the reason, our village,
with all its goodness, learning and piety, turned out much more than
its share of ne'er-do-wells. As I have tried to show, I gave every
promise of becoming one of the failures on whom the refining village
influences had worked in vain, and for years I am sure that the
neighbors prophesied for me a very wicked career and ending, but I do
not recall ever having made a trip to the drinking bouts, north or
south.
The educational facilities, public school, high school, the academy
(preparatory to the university), and the university itself, all in the
village, made it easy for those boys who would and could, to complete
their academic courses within call of their own homes. My public school
attendance was short, and I was then taught at home by my mother or by
tutors. I ran away from school as regularly as from home. Finally, to
have a check on me, my mother and teacher hit upon this plan: The
teacher, every day that I appeared in the classroom, was to give me a
slip of paper with "All Right" written on it, which I was to show to my
mother on returning home. One day, when I was about ten years old, the
"hookey" fever captured me, and I paid a visit to my grandmother--my
father's mother--whose doughnuts were an everlasting joy to me. When the
noon hour arrived, and it was about time for me to show up at home, I
said to my grandmother: "Grandma, you write something for me to copy,
and see how well I write." "All right, my boy," said my grandmother, who
took much interest in my school progress. "What shall I write?"
"Suppose you write the words 'All Right,'" I replied. "I have been
practicing on them a good deal." The good old soul wrote for me the
desired "copy" quite unsuspectingly, and to allay any suspicions that
she might otherwise have had, I dutifully copied her writing as best I
could. Then I thanked her, and on the way home, trimmed my grandmother's
"All Right" to the size of the slips held by the teacher. I did not seem
to realize that the teacher wrote any differently from my grandmother,
or that my mother was well acquainted with my grandmother's handwriting.
Indeed, for a lad who could be as "cute and slick as they make 'em,"
when it came to a real runaway trip, I was capable at other times of
doing the most stupid things--to wit, the "All Right" adventure. My
mother detected the trick of course, and I was reported to my father,
but he seemed to see the humorous side of the affair, and let me off
with a scowl.
Winter underclothing and overcoats assisted in making my public school
attendance a trial. For some reason I abhorred these garments, and my
mother very rightfully insisted on their being worn, particularly when I
trudged to the schoolhouse in winter. The coat was shed as soon as I was
out of my mother's sight, and the underclothing was hidden in an
outhouse in the schoolyard until time to go home. At home also I
discarded such things whenever possible, and, one day, I was caught in
the act, as it were, by one of our family physicians, a woman. I was
sitting on her lap, and she was tickling me near the knee. She noticed
that my stockings seemed rather "thin," and began to feel for my
underclothing. "Why, where is it, Josiah?" she finally exclaimed.
"Oh, it's rolled up," I replied nonchalantly. Again the good woman tried
to locate it, but without success. "Rolled up where?" she asked. "Oh,
'way up," I answered, trying to look unconcerned. Pressed to tell
exactly how "high up" the rolling had gone, I finally confessed that the
garments were rolled up in my bureau drawer. Again the humor of the
situation saved me from a whipping, and I gradually became reconciled to
the clothing in question.
Village playmates, the cosmopolitans of the main street as I considered
them, entered very little into my life under ten, and I associated
principally with my brothers and sisters and a neighbor's boy--the
nephew of a celebrated writer--who lived very near our great brown
house. Whether other children quarreled and wrangled the way we did it
is hard to say--I hope not--but without doubt we gave our mother a great
deal of trouble. Strangely enough, for I was very prone at times to
assert my rights and fight for them, too, I once outdid my older brother
and sister in a competitive struggle to be good for one week. It was
while my father was still alive. He had promised us a prize, and when
anything like that was in sight, I was willing to make a try for it
anyhow. So I shut off steam for a week, minded my p's and q's pretty
carefully, and lo, and behold! when Saturday night came, and my mother
was asked to give the decision, I was the lucky competitor. The prize
was the New Testament--a typical gift--bound in soft red leather, with
a little strap to hold it shut when not in use. On the fly-leaf my
father wrote these words: "To Josiah, from his father, for having
behaved for one week better than his older brother and sister." The
victory over the older children was my main gratification, but I found
the Testament useful also, committing to memory from it for twenty-five
cents, at my grandmother's request, the fourteenth chapter of John.
I can only account for a very "soft" thing that I let myself into not
long after winning the prize to the weakening process in being good for
the week in question.
My father had a cane, a twisted and gnarled affair, which he seldom
used, but preserved very carefully in a closet off the "spare room" of
the house. I have always believed that my brother and sister broke it,
but they got around me, and wheedled me into saying that I had done it.
Indeed, they bribed me with marbles and a knife, and said that the
voluntary confession would be so manly that my father could not possibly
punish me. Consequently, I did not wait for the broken cane to be
discovered, but went boldly to my father, one night, and told him that I
was the culprit, and how sorry I was. He looked at me earnestly with his
immense blue eyes for a moment, and then, putting his long, thin hand on
my shoulder, said: "Noble lad! to have come and told me. Perhaps we can
mend it somehow," and that was the last that was ever heard of the
matter.
My playmate over the fence, the celebrated writer's nephew, was my most
intimate companion during all this period; I was nearer to him in play
and study than to either of my sisters or brother. Although a good boy
in every way, as I now recall him, I fear that our companionship did us
both harm for a while. He was stockier and taller than I was, and if he
had realized and been willing to exercise his strength, he could have
put me in my right place very soon, but he did not appreciate his power.
The consequence was that he allowed me to bully him unmercifully, and
his accounts of my prowess gained for me a fighter's reputation in the
village, a fictitious notoriety which clung to me strangely enough for
several years. Besides being called a "bad" boy I became known as a
youngster who knew how to use his fists--a myth if there ever was
one--and I was enough of an actor and sufficiently cautious in my
encounters to be able to give some semblance of truth to this report.
The evil effects of this posing on me were that I allowed myself to be
put in a false light as a "scrapper," and I was continually on the watch
not to risk my reputation in any fair struggle; my companion over the
fence lost confidence in himself, and allowed me to bully and browbeat
him, his manliness suffering accordingly.
Many and varied were our escapades in our part of the village, and for
years we were seldom seen apart. The most reckless adventure that I can
recall now occurred when my companion's house was being built, a
three-story affair. The other boy and I were exercising our skill one
day on the floor timbers of the third story, or garret, walking across
the beams, a leg to a beam, the space between the beams running through
to the cellar. Suddenly I made a misstep, and fell through the open
space to the cellar, partially breaking the fall by my hands clutching
madly at the cellar-floor beams. I escaped with a few scratches, but I
now count the escape one of the narrowest of several that I have had.
As a playmate I was generally tractable and willing, but I never lost an
opportunity to "boss," if I could do so without loss of prestige.
Bird-nesting, baseball, riding bareback on an old farm horse, swimming
and walking were the main summer pastimes; in winter, there was skating,
sledding, snow-balling, and "shinny"--both sets of amusements being
typical of a Middle West boy's life twenty to thirty years ago. There
was also fishing and hunting, but I was too fidgety to fish
successfully, and I was never presented with a gun. "Vealish" love
affairs with girl companions were indulged in by some of the boys, but
my uncertain reputation and a "faked" or natural indifference to girls,
I know not which, kept me out of such entanglements; probably
bashfulness had as much to do with the indifference as anything else.
That I was so bashful and at the same time a bully and would-be leader
sounds inconsistent, but at the time of my father's death, there was
probably not a boy in the village who could be made to shrink up, as it
were, from social timidity, as I could. Indeed, this characteristic
impresses me now, on looking back over my childhood, as the predominant
one in my nature at that time, and even to-day, it crops out
inconveniently, on occasion. A friend, who knows me well, recently
remarked to a common friend of both of us: "Why is it that Flynt draws
into his shell when strangers join us at dinner. When we three are
alone, he talks as much as any of us. Let an outsider or two drop in,
and he shuts down instanter. Can you explain it?" I can. Those silent
fits are an aftermath of the exaggerated bashfulness of my childhood--I
simply cannot overcome them.