"Good Gawd! A bum with a Bible!"
Awe and respect held the crowd for a moment.
* * * * *
The march began.
"Where are you taking us to?"
"To the calaboose."
Down a long stretch of peaceful, Sunday street we went--small boys
following in a curious horde, and Sunday worshippers with their women's
gloved hands tucked in timidly under their arms as we passed by. They
gave us prim, askance glances, as if we belonged to a different species
of the animal kingdom.
Buck negroes with their women stepped out into the street, while, as is
customary there,--the white men passed, taking us two tramps to jail. We
came to a high, newly white-washed board fence. Within it stood a
two-story building of red brick. On the fence was painted, in big black
letters the facetious warning, "Keep out if you can." A passage in
through the gate, and McAndrews first knocked at, then kicked against
the door.
The sleepy-faced, small-eyed jailer finally opened to us. The wrinkled
skin of the old man hung loosely from his neck. It wabbled as he talked.
"What the hell's the mattah with you folks?" protested McAndrews, the
night watchman, "slep' late," yawned the jailer, "it bein' Sunday
mawhnin'."
By this time the sheriff, summoned from his house, had joined us. A big
swashbuckler of a man with a hard face, hard blue eyes with quizzical
wrinkles around them. They seemed wrinkles of good humour till you
looked closer.
"--s a damn lie ... you 'en Jimmy hev bin a-gamblin' all night,"
interjected the sheriff, in angry disgust.
* * * * *
They marched us upstairs. The whole top floor, was given over to a huge
iron cage which had been built in before the putting on of the roof. A
narrow free space--a sort of corridor, ran all around it, on the
outside.
Eager and interested, the prisoners already in the cage pushed their
faces against the bars to look at us. But at the sheriff's word of
command they went into their cells, the latter built in a row within the
cage itself, and obediently slammed their doors shut while a long iron
bar was shot across the whole length, from without ... then the big door
of the cage was opened, and we were thrust in. The bar was drawn back,
liberating the others, then, from their cells.
The posse left. Our fellow prisoners crowded about us, asking us
questions ... what had we done?... and how had we been caught?... and
what part of the country were we from?... etc. etc....
From the North ... yes, Yankee ... well, when a fellow was both a Yank
and a tramp he was given a short shrift in the South.
They talked much about themselves ... one thing, however, we all held in
common ... our innocence ... we were all innocent ... every one of us
was innocent of the crime charged against us ... we were just being
persecuted.
* * * * *
That afternoon a negro preacher, short and squat, who, innocent, was yet
being held for Grand Jury, delivered us a fearful half-chanted sermon on
the Judgment Day. I never heard so moving, compelling a sermon. I saw
the sky glowing like a furnace, the star-touching conflagration of the
End of Things rippling up the east in increasing waves of fire, in place
of the usual dawn ... I heard the crying of mankind ... of sinners ...
for mountains to topple over on them and cover them from the wrath of
the Lord....
* * * * *
"In co'hse I nevah done it," explained the preacher, "I had some hawgs
of mah own. Mah hawgs had an under-bit an' an ovah-bit in dere eahs, an'
de ones I's 'cused o' stealin', dey had only an ovah-bit. But heah dey's
got me, holdin' me foh de pen."
* * * * *
The little grey-faced pickpocket--caught at his trade at the Dallas
Fair, told me how easy it was to add an under-bit to an over-bit to the
ears of the two hogs stolen, "Sure that sneakin' niggah pahson did it,"
he averred--but all the while he likewise averred that _he_ hadn't
picked the pocket of the man from whom he was accused of stealing a
wallet....
"Yes, I'll admit Ah've done sech things. But this taime they was sure
wrong. Ef I git framed up," he added, "I mean tuh study law ... pull foh
a job in th' prison libery an' read up ... an' take up practice when I
serve my term."
Beside the hog-stealing parson and the little grey-faced pickpocket
there were also:
A big negro youth, black as shiny coal, who was being held over on
appeal. He'd been sentenced to ninety-nine years for rape of a negro
girl ... if it had been a white girl he would have been burned long ago,
he said ... as it was, the sheriff's son, who was handling his case,
would finally procure his release--and exact, in return, about ten
years' of serfdom as payment. And there was a young, hard-drinking
quarrelsome tenant-farmer, who was charged with having sold two bales of
cotton not belonging to him, to get money for drinking....
There was another negro, hanging-handed, simous-faced, who had, in a fit
of jealousy, blown two heads off by letting loose both barrels at once
of his heavily charged shotgun ... the heads were his wife's ... and her
lover's. He caught them when their faces were close together ... and
they were kissing. But he seemed a gentle creature, tractable and
harmless.
On the outside of the cage in which we were cooped like menagerie
animals, a negro girl had her cot. She slept and lived out there by the
big stove which heated the place. She was a girl of palish yellow
colour. She was a trusty. She had been caught watching outside of a
house while two grown-up negro women went within to rob.
* * * * *
Monday morning "kangaroo court" was called ... that court which
prisoners hold, mimicking the legal procedure to which they grow so
accustomed during their lives. We were arraigned for trial--the charge
against us, that of "Breaking Into Jail."
The cotton thief served as prosecuting attorney. The negro youth in for
rape of one of his own colour,--the sergeant-at-arms; while the negro
preacher in for hog-stealing defended us ... and he did it so well that
we were let off with ten blows of the strap a-piece. We had no money to
be mulcted of, nor were we able to procure from friends, as the custom
is, funds for the buying of whiskey and tobacco.
* * * * *
In a few days Bud and I had settled down into the routine of jail-life.
Every morning we swept our cells, and all the prisoners took turns
sweeping the corridor. The fine for spitting on the floor was ten lashes
laid on hard. And each day before breakfast we soaked the seams of our
clothes in vile-smelling creosote to kill off the lice and nits. We had
no chance to bathe, and were given but little water to wash our face and
hands.
* * * * *
"I wonder what they are going to do with us?"
"Anything they please," answered Bud gloomily.
"From thirty to ninety days on the county farm, I suppose?"
"We'll be lucky if we don't get from four to ten years in the pen."
"What for?"
"Burglary--didn't we break into that warehouse?"
* * * * *
Our meals were passed in to us through an open space near the level of
the floor, at the upper end of the cage, where a bar had been removed
for that purpose. We'd line up and the tin plates would be handed in,
one after the other ... two meals a day. For breakfast a corn pone of
coarse, white corn meal, and a bit of fried sow-belly. For dinner, all
the water we could drink. For supper, breakfast all over again, with
the addition of a dab of greens. On rare occasions the sheriff's son or
the jailer went hunting ... and then we'd have rabbit. The sheriff had
the contract, at so much per head, for feeding the prisoners.
Each morning I used to ask the jailer for the occasional newspaper with
which he covered the basket in which he brought our food to us. One
morning my eyes fell upon an interesting item:
The story of how two young desperadoes had been caught in the warehouse
beside the railroad track, in the act of committing burglary ... the
tale of our capture was briefly told ... the bravery of the night
watchman and the posse extolled ... and the further information was
conveyed, that, having waved preliminary examination (and we had, for
they told us the justice was continually too drunk to examine us) we
were being held over for Grand Jury ... on a charge of burglary.
Though he had predicted this, the actuality of it struck Bud all of a
heap. He paced up and down the cage for the full space of an hour,
hanging his ungainly head between his shoulders in abandonment to
despair.
My reaction was a strange one. I wanted to sing ... whistle ... dance
... I was in the midst of adventure and romance. I was a Count of Monte
Cristo, a Baron von Trenck. I dreamed of linguistic and philosophic
studies in the solitude of my cell at the penitentiary till I was master
of all languages, of all wisdom, or I dreamed of escape and of rising to
wealth and power, afterwards, so that I would be pardoned and could come
back and magnanimously shame with my forgiveness the community that had
sent me up.
Bud stopped his pacing to and fro to stand in our cell-doorway. I was
sitting on a stool, thinking hard.
"We can't do a thing," said Bud, "we're in for it, good and proper."
"--tell you what _I'll_ do," I responded, "I'll write a letter to the
owner of the warehouse and appeal to his humanity."
"You romantic jack-ass," yelled Bud, his nerves on edge. He walked away
angry. He came back calmer.
"Look here, Gregory, I want you to excuse that outburst--but you _are_ a
fool. This is _real life_ we're up against now. You're not reading about
this in a book."
"We'll see what can be done," I returned.
* * * * *
At the extreme end of the big cage, the end furthest from the entrance
door, stood two cells not occupied. The last of these I had chosen for
my study, a la Monte Cristo. The sheriff's son had lent me a dozen of
Opie Reid's novels, a history of the Civil War from the Southern
viewpoint, an arithmetic, and an algebra. Here all day long I studied
and wrote assiduously. And it was here I went to sit on my stool and
write the letter to the owner of the warehouse ... a certain Mr.
Womber....
In it I pointed out the enormity of sending to the penitentiary two
young men, on a merely technical charge of burglary. For if we had gone
into the place to rob, why had we so foolishly, then, gone to sleep? And
what, at the final analysis, could we have stolen but bales of hay,
sacks of guano, and plowshares? All of them too unwieldy to carry away
unless we had other conveyance than our backs. It was absurd, on the
face of it.
Furthermore, I appealed to him, as a Christian, to let us go free ... in
the name of God, not to wreck our lives by throwing us, for a term of
years, into contact with criminals of the hardened type--to give us one
more chance to become useful citizens of our great and glorious country.
Bud laughed sneeringly when I read the letter aloud to him ... said it
was a fine effort as a composition in rhetoric, but I might expect
nothing of it--if the perpetually drunk jailer really brought it to its
destination--except that it would be tossed unread into the
wastebasket....
I pleaded with the jailer to deliver it for me ... told him how
important it would be to our lives ... adjured him to consider our
helpless and penniless state. He promised to deliver it for me.
"I have nothing to give you, now," I ended, "but, if I ever get free,
I'll send you twenty-five dollars or so from up home, when I reach the
North."
* * * * *
A prisoner's first dream is "escape." Voices outside on the street, the
sight of the tops of green trees through bars, dogs barking far away,
the travels of the sun as shown by moving bands of light on the walls
and in the cells--all remind him of the day when he was, as he now sees
it, happy and free ... he forgets entirely, in the midst of the jail's
black restraints, the lesser evils of outside, daily life. Even the
termagant wife is turned into a domestic angel.
* * * * *
Under the smoky prison lamp made of a whiskey bottle filled with oil,
and a shred of shirt drawn through a cork, we planned to cut out.
"The way to do it is easy," said the little pickpocket, "in the sole of
every good shoe is a steel spring. I'll take the steel from my shoe.
There's already one bar removed from the chuck-hole (No use trying to
reproduce the dialect). If we saw out another bar, that will give us
enough room for going through. Then it will be easy to dig out the
mortar between the bricks, in the jail wall. Once out, we can make for
the river bottoms, and, by wading in the water, even their bloodhounds
can't track us."
"And once I get over into Indian Territory or Arkansas, you'll never see
me in Texas again," I muttered.
"How'll we conceal where we've been sawing?" Bud asked.
"By plugging up the grooves with corn bread blackened with soot that we
can make by holding the wick of this smoky lamp against the
cage-ceiling."
"And how'll we keep folks from hearing the sawing?"
"By dancing and singing while Baykins here" (alluding to a "pore white"
fiddler who had almost killed a man at a dance) "while Baykins here
plays 'whip the devil.'"
The very next day we began dancing and singing and taking turns at the
chuckhole bar.
"Whip the Devil" is an interminable tune like the one about the "old
woman chasing her son round the room with a broom."...
The mistake was, that in our eagerness we "whipped the devil" too long
at a time. Naturally, the jailer grew suspicious of such sudden and
prolonged hilarity. But even at that it took almost a week for them to
catch on. We knew it was all up when, one morning at breakfast, the
sheriff came in with the jailer.
"Boys, all back into your cells!" he growled.
The long bar was thrown over our closed doors.
The sheriff stooped down and inspected the chuck-hole.
"Why, Jesus Christ, they'd of been through in two more nights. It's good
we caught them in time or they'd of been a hell of a big jail-delivery
... do you mean to tell me," turning to the jailer, "you never noticed
this before?" and with one finger he raked out the blackened corn bread.
"You see, I'm a little near-sighted, Mistah Jenkins."
"Too damned near-sighted, an' too damned stupid, too."
The big iron door of the cage was locked again, the long bar thrown off
our cell doors.
"Now, you sons of b---- can come out into the cage again; but, mind you,
if any of you try such a thing again, I'll take you out one by one and
give you all a rawhiding."
We received the abuse in sullen silence. For three days our rations
lacked cornpone, for punishment.
We decided among ourselves that the negro preacher, to stand in well
with the authorities, had given us away....
And if he had not, panic-stricken, pleaded with the sheriff to be taken
out and put in a separate cell, I believe we would have killed him.
* * * * *
There was one more way. It was so simple a way that we had not thought
of it before. The mulatto girl, who slept by the big stove, on a cot,
just outside the cage ... a trusty and the jailer's unwilling concubine
... this slim, yellow creature was much in love with the lusty young
farmer who had stolen the bales of cotton and sold them for a drunk. And
it was he who suggested that, through her, we get possession of the
keys. For, every day, she informed us, she passed them by where they
hung on a nail, downstairs, as she swept and cleaned house for the
jailer.
It was not a difficult matter to procure them. She would bring them up
to us and hand them in through the chuck-hole, which the village
blacksmith had repaired and once more reinforced with extra bars, "so
them bastards won't even think of sawing out again," as the jailer had
expressed it.
The evening she handed the keys in to us we were so excited we wanted to
have "Whip the Devil" played again for our singing and dancing. But this
might have once more awakened suspicion. Before, we had raised such a
row as to have caused pedestrians to stop and listen in groups,
wondering what made the men inside so happy....
There were three separate locks on the great cage door. One, two of them
went back with an easy click. For the third we could find no key. There
was nothing else to do now but to have recourse to singing and dancing
again. Baykins started sawing his fiddle furiously while the big negro
in for rape hammered and hammered on the lock to break it, with one
prison stool after another, till all were tossed aside, broken as
kindling wood is broken. It was good that the jailer was either deaf,
or, like the heathen gods in the Old Testament, away on a journey.
Finally, we gave up in despair. The big negro collapsed with a wail. The
first sign of weakness I ever detected in him.
"Now it's shore either ninety-nine yeahs in de pen foh me, or ten yeahs
for th' sheriff's son foh lawyah fees ... an' the footprints in de
flowah bed ... of the man what done de rape was two sizes biggah dan
mine."
* * * * *
The next day the jailer, of course, missed the keys. Panic-stricken, the
mulatto girl was afraid to slip them back to their accustomed nail, for
fear she'd be seen at it; or was it out of vindictiveness against the
jailer that she had now actually hidden them somewhere (for, finding
them of no use, we had handed them back to her)!
That same afternoon the sheriff, with his son and the little,
shrivelled, stuttering, half-deaf jailer, came in at the door of the big
room. It was easy to see what they wanted. They wanted the keys and they
were going to make the girl confess where they were ... as she was the
only other person, beside the prison authorities, that was in the way to
come at them.
"Martha, we want them keys! Show us where they is, like a good girl!"
"'Deed, Ah don' know where dey is a-tall, Marse Sheriff!"
"Come on, gal, you was the only one downstairs exceptin' Jacklin heah!"
pointing to the jailer.
The jailer nodded his head asseveratingly.
"Yes, Martha, tell us whar the keys air," urged the latter, with
caressing softness and fright in his voice. He didn't want his mistress
whipped.
"If you don't, by God, I'll whup the nigger hide clean off yore back,"
and the sheriff reached for the braided whip which his son Jimmy handed
him.
"I sweah Ah don' know where dey is!"
"You dirty liah," taking out a watch; "I'll give you jest five minutes
t' tell, an' then--" he menaced with the up-lifted whip.
In stubborn silence the girl waited the five minutes out.
"Jimmy!... Jacklin!... throw her down an' hold her, rump up, over that
cot." They obeyed. With a jerk the sheriff had her dress up and her bare
buttocks in view.
"I'm a-goin' to whup an' whup till you confess, Martha."
Crack! Crack! Crack! the whip descended, leaving red whelts each time.
The mulatto girl writhed, but did not cry quits. Beads of perspiration
glistened on the jailer's face. The girl shook off his lax grip on her
arms ... the sheriff's son was holding her legs. We were crowded against
the bars, angry and silent. We admired the girl's hopeless pluck. We saw
she was holding out just to, somehow, have vengeance on the jailer for
her being held in unwilling concubinage by him, hoping he would catch it
hard for having let the keys hang carelessly in open view, and so,
stolen.
"Damn you, Jacklin," shouted the sheriff, "I believe you're a little
soft on the gal ... come here ... you swing the whip an' I'll hold her
arms."
In mute agony Jacklin obeyed ... whipping the woman of whom he was fond.
"Harder, Jacklin, harder," and the sheriff drew his gun on him to
emphasise the command.
Under such impulsion, a shower of heavy blows fell. The girl screamed.
"I'll give up ... Oh, good Lordy, I'll give up."
And she dug the keys out from under the mattress across which they had
whipped her.
After they had gone she lay crying on her face for a long while. When
night came she still lay crying. Nothing any of us could say would
console her. Not even the little white cotton thief had power to allay
her hurt....
At last we began cursing and railing at her. That made her stop, after a
fashion. But still she occasionally gave vent to a heart-deep, dry,
racking sob.
* * * * *
Locked in there behind bars and forced to be impotent onlookers, the
whipping we had witnessed made us as restless as wild animals. That
night, under the dim flare of our jail-made lamps, the boys gambled as
usual, for their strips of paper,--and as eagerly as if it were real
currency. I, for my part, drew away to the vacant cell at the far end of
the cage to study and read and dream my dreams....
As I sat there I was soon possessed with a disagreeable feeling that a
malignant, ill-wishing presence hovered near. I shifted in my seat
uneasily. I looked up. There stood, in the doorway, the lusty young
farmer who was in for stealing the bales of cotton. He wore an evil,
combative leer on his face. He was "spoiling" for a quarrel--just for
the mere sake of quarrelling--that I could see. But I dissembled.
"Well, Jack?" I asked gently.
"You're a nice one," he muttered, "you pale-faced Yankee son of a b----
... think you're better 'n the rest of us, don't ye?... readin' in yore
books?"
"Nonsense, what are you picking at me for? I'm not harming anybody, am
I?"
"No, but you're a God damned fool!"
"Look here, what have I ever done to you?"
"Nothin', only you're a white-livered stinker, an' I'm jest a-spoilin'
foh a fight with you-all."
"But I don't want to fight with you."
"I'll make you," he replied, striding in; and fetching me a cuff on the
ear ... then, in a far-away voice that did not seem myself, I heard
myself pleading to be let alone ... by this time all the other boys had
crowded down about the cell to see the fun.
I was humiliated, ashamed ... but, try as I would, the thought and
vision of my uncle came on me like a palsy.
Bud stepped up. He had always been so meek and placid before that what
he did then was a surprise to me.
"_I'll_ fight!"
"What! you?" glowered the young farmer, surprised.
"Yes, I'll give you all the fighting you want, you dirty cotton thief!"
Instantly the farmer made at him. Bud ran in, fetched him two blows in
the face, and clinched.
It was not going very well for the desperado. From somewhere on his
person he whipped forth a knife, and, with a series of flashes through
the air, began stabbing Bud again and again in the back.
I thank God for what came over me then. Too glad of soul to believe it,
I experienced a warm surge of angry courage rushing through me like an
electric storm. All the others were panic-stricken for the moment. But I
burst through the group, rushed back to the toilet, and, with frenzied
strength, tore loose a length of pipe from the exposed plumbing. I came
rushing back. I brought down the soft lead-pipe across "Jack's" ear,
accompanying the blow with a volley of oaths in a roaring voice.
The farmer whipped about to face his new antagonist, letting Bud drop
back. Bud sank to the iron floor. The farmer was astonished almost to
powerlessness to find facing him, with a length of swinging pipe in his
hand, the boy who had a few minutes before been afraid.
But he rapidly recovered and came on at me, gibbering like an incensed
baboon.
By this time all the humiliations I had suffered in the past, since
succumbing to the fear-complex that my uncle had beaten into me--all the
outrage of them was boiling in me for vengeance. I saw the blood bathing
the torn ear of my antagonist. It looked beautiful. I was no longer
afraid of anything. Yelling my uncle's name I came on ... I beat the
knife out of the other's hand and bloodied his knuckles with the next
blow. I beat him down with rapid blows, threshing at him, shouting and
yelling exultantly.
The other men thought me gone crazy. I had, for the time, gone crazy.
The fellow lay at my feet, inert. I stopped for the moment.
In that moment the gang began to close in on me, half frightened
themselves. I threatened them back.
"By hell, I've had enough of bullying," I shouted wildly; "I'm not
afraid of anything or anybody any more ... if there's anyone else here
that wants a taste of this pipe, let them step up."
"We ain't a-tryin' to fight you-all," called out the big negro who was
in for rape, "we jest don' want you to kill him an' git hung foh
murduh."
At the word "murder" I stepped quickly back.
"Well, don't let him come bothering me or my pal for a fight any more
when we've done nothing to him."
"Don' worry, he won't no moh!" assured the fiddler....
I threw down the lead pipe. It had seemed to me that all the while it
was my Uncle Landon who had received the blows.
The rough-neck farmer was in bad shape; he was bloodied all over like a
stuck pig. The mulatto girl on the outside had for the last five minutes
been occupied in calling out of the window for help. She managed to
attract the attention of a passerby-by.
"What's the matter?" was called up to her....
"The jailer ain't downstairs ... an' de boys is killin' each other up
heah!"
* * * * *
By the time the angry-faced sheriff came with his son, the jailer, and a
couple of doctors, we had quieted down.
Bud and the farmer were taken out; by the side of each a pail of water
was placed ... they were seated on stools, stripped to the waist. The
surgeons dressed their wounds as if on a battlefield. "Jack" needed ten
stitches in his scalp.... Bud had four knife wounds that demanded sewing
up. Both the boys went pale like ghosts and spewed their bellies empty
from weakness and loss of blood....
"Mind you, you chaps in there have raised 'bout enough hell ... ef I
hear o' any more trouble, I'll take you all out one by one an' treat
each one o' you-all to a good cowhidin', law or no law!"
* * * * *
I was let alone after that. My cowardice had gone forever. I was now a
man among men. I was happy. I saw what an easy thing it is to fight, to
defend yourself. I saw what an exhilaration, a pleasure, the exchanging
of righteous blows can be.
* * * * *
Always my dream was of being a big man when I got out--some day. Always
I acted as if living a famous prison romance like that of Baron Von
Trenck's.
* * * * *
I collected from the living voices of my fellow prisoners innumerable
jail and cocaine songs, and rhymes of the criminal world. I wrote them
down on pieces of wrapping paper that the jailer occasionally covered
the food-basket with in lieu of newspaper.
"Oh, coco-Marie, and coco-Marai,
I'se gon' ta whiff cocaine 'twill I die.
Ho! (sniff) Ho! (sniff) baby, take a whiff of me!"
(The sniffing sound indicating the snuffing up into the nostril of the
"snow," or "happy dust," as it is called in the underworld.)
Then there was the song about lice:
"There's a lice in jail
As big as a rail;
When you lie down
They'll tickle your tail--
Hard times in jail, poor boy!..."
And another, more general:
"Along come the jailer
About 'leven o'clock,
Bunch o' keys in his right hand,
The jailhouse do'h was locked....
'Cheer up, you pris'ners,'
I heard that jailer say,
'You got to go to the cane-brakes
Foh ninety yeahs to stay!'"
As you can guess, most of these jail songs and ballads of the underworld
could only be printed in asterisks. I was hoping, in the interests of
folklore, to preserve them for some learned society's private printing
press.
* * * * *
A fresher green came to the stray branches of the trees that crossed our
barred windows. The world outside seemed to waken with bird-song. It was
spring, and time for the sitting of the grand jury that was to decide
whether we were, each of us, to be held over for trial by petty jury ...
days of fretful eagerness and discontent ... from the windows the yellow
trusty-girl said she could see lines of buggies driving in to town. It
was the custom of farmers for miles around to drive in to their county
seat during the court assizes ... a week or so of holidays like a
continuous circus for them.
When the sheriff would have occasion to come into the room in which
stood our big cage, the boys would crowd up to the bars, each one hoping
for news favourable to his case ... the prevailing atmosphere was one of
hope.
* * * * *
The negro who had murdered his wife and her sweetheart with a shotgun
had already had his trial. He was--and had been--but waiting the arrival
of the prison contractor, as the latter went from county jail to county
jail, gathering in his flock, and taking them away, chained together, to
the penitentiary and the cane brakes ... "where only a big buck nigger
can live," the little pickpocket had told me, with fear in his voice....
He came ... the contractor ... to our jail at midnight. All of us leaped
from our mattresses to witness the dreary procession of neck-chained and
be-manacled convicted men. In the light of the swinging lanterns, a
lurid spectacle. Our man was taken out and chained in with the gang.
They clanked away down the stairs, leaving us who remained with heavy
chains on our hope instead of on our necks and hands and legs ...
because of the sight we had just seen. For the passing day or so we were
so depressed that we wandered about saying nothing to each other, like
dumb men.
* * * * *
One after the other the men had true bills found against them, and
little slips of folded paper were thrust in to them through the bars of
their cells. And shyster lawyers who fatten on the misfortunes of the
prison-held being, began to hold whispered conversations (and
conferences) from without, mainly to find out just how much each
prisoner could raise for fees for defence....
Bud and I were the only ones left. All the others had had true bills
found against them.
* * * * *
But there came an afternoon when the big, hulky sheriff, with the cruel,
quizzical eyes, came to the back bars of our cell and summoned us up
with a mysterious air....
"Well, boys," he began, pausing to squirt a long, brown stream of
tobacco juice, "well, boys--" and he paused again.
My nerves were so on edge that I controlled with difficulty a mad
impulse to curse at the sheriff for holding us in such needless
suspense....
Taking another deliberate chew off his plug, he told us that after
mature deliberation the grand jury had decided that there was not enough
grounds for finding a true bill against us, and, as a consequence, we
were to be let go free.
* * * * *
The following morning I had the satisfaction of hearing from old
Jacklin, the jailer, that Womber, the owner of the warehouse, had
himself gone before the grand jury and informed them that he did not
wish to press the charge of burglary against us....
Womber, Jacklin said, had received my letter and at first had tossed it
aside ... even thrown it contemptuously into the wastebasket. But his
wife and daughter had raked it out and read it and had, day and night,
given him no peace till he had promised to "go easy on the poor boys."
This was my triumph over Bud--the triumph of romance over realism.
"I'm glad we're getting out, but there's more damn fools in the world
than I thought," he remarked, with a sour smile of gratification.
* * * * *
And now, with new, trembling eagerness, we two began waiting for the
hour of our release. That very afternoon it would be surely, we thought
... that night ... then the next morning ... then ... the next day....
But until a week more had flown, the sheriff did not let us go. In order
to make a little more profit on his feeding contract, averred our
prisoners.
But on Saturday morning he came to turn us loose. By this time we seemed
blood brothers to the others in the cage ... negro ... mulatto ... white
... criminal and vicious ... weak, and victims of circumstance ...
everything sloughed away. Genuine tears stood in our eyes as with strong
hand-grips we wished the poor lads good luck!
We stumbled down the jail stairway up which, three months before, we had
been conducted to our long incarceration in the cage. The light of free
day stormed in on our prison-inured eyes in a blinding deluge of white
and gold ... we stepped out into what seemed not an ordinary world, but
a madness and tumult of birds, a delirious green of trees too beautiful
for any place outside the garden of Paradise.
"Come on," said Bud, "let's go on down the main street and thank Womber
for not pressing the case--"
"To hell with Womber!"
"Well, then, I'm going to thank him."
"I'm grateful enough.... I might write him a letter thanking him ...
but I'm not anxious to linger in this neighbourhood."
So Bud and I parted company, shaking hands good-bye; he headed west ...
to China and the East, finally, he said ... I never knew his real name
... neither of us gave his right name to the town's officials....
As I sought the railroad tracks again, the good air and my unwonted
freedom made me stagger, so that several negroes laughed at me heartily,
thinking I was drunk.
* * * * *
I sat down on a railroad tie and tenderly and solicitously took a brown
package out of my inside pocket--the brown paper on which I had
inscribed with enthusiasm the curious songs of jail, cocaine, criminal,
and prostitute life I had heard during my three months' sojourn behind
bars.
I looked them over again. With all their smut and filth, they were yet
full of naïve folk-touches and approximations to real balladry. I was as
tender of the manuscript as a woman would be with her baby.
* * * * *
The sky grew overcast. A rain storm blew up. A heavy wind mixed with
driving wet ... chilly ... I found shelter under a leaky shed ... was
soggy and miserable ... even wished, in a weak moment, for the
comparative comfort of my cell again....
The fast freight I was waiting for came rocking along. I made a run for
it in the rapidly gathering dusk. I grabbed the bar on one side and made
a leap for the step, but missed, like a frantic fool, with one
foot--luckily caught it with the other, or I might have fallen
underneath--and was aboard, my arms almost wrenched from their sockets.
Not till I had climbed in between the cars on the bumpers did I realise
that my coat had been torn open and my much-valued songs jostled out.
Without hesitation I hurled myself bodily off the train. My one idea to
regain the MSS. I landed on my shoulders, saw stars, rolled over and
over. I groped up and down. And tears rained from my eyes when I
understood those rhymes were lost forever....
It was midnight before I caught another freight. I climbed wearily into
an empty box car while the freight was standing still. I was seen. A
brakeman came to the door and lifted up his lantern, glancing within, I
was crouching, wet and forlorn, in a corner of the car, waiting for the
freight to be under way.
"Come on out with you! Hit the grit!" commanded the "shack" grimly.
I rose. I came to the door. I hated him in my heart, but quite simply
and movingly I recited the story of my imprisonment, ending by asking
him to let me ride, in the name of God.
He crunched away down the path, his lantern bobbing as he went.
* * * * *
All night long I rode ... bumpity-bump, bumpity-bump, bumpity-bump! All
night long my head was a-ferment with dreams of the great things I would
achieve, now that I was free of the shadow of imprisonment.
* * * * *
When I walked down the streets of Haberford once more, though I was
leathery and stronger-looking, my adventures had added no meat to my
bones. I was amused at myself as I walked along more than usually erect,
for no other reason than to keep my coat-tail well down in back in order
not to show the hole in the seat of my trousers. As I came down the
street on which my father and I had lived, an anticipatory pleasure of
being recognised as a sort of returned Odysseus beat through my veins
like a drum. But no one saw me who knew me. It hurt me to come home,
unheralded.
I came to the house where I had dwelt. I pulled the bell. There was no
answer. I walked around the corner to the telegraph office. I was
overjoyed to see lean, lanky Phil, the telegraph operator, half
sleeping, as usual, over the key of his instrument.
"Hel-lo, John Gregory!" he shouted, with glad surprise in his voice.
* * * * *
He telephoned my father ... who came over from the works, running with
gladness. I was immediately taken home. I took three baths that
afternoon before I felt civilised again....
* * * * *
My father had returned to the Composite Works. I was alone in my little
room, with all my cherished books once more. They had been, I could
plainly observe, kept orderly and free of dust, against cay home-coming.
I took down my favourite books, kissing each one of them like a
sweetheart. Then I read here and there in all of them, observing all the
old passages I had marked. I lay in all attitudes. Sprawling on the
floor on my back, on my belly ... on my side ... now with my knees
crossed....
Whitman, Shakespeare, Scott, Shelley, Byron ... Speke, Burton, Stanley
... my real comrades!... my real world! Rather a world of books than a
world of actuality!...
I was so glad to be among my books again that for a month I gave no
thought to the future. I did nothing but read and study ... except at
those times when I was talking to people prodigiously of my trip and
what I had seen and been through. And naturally and deftly I wove huge
strips of imagination and sheer invention into the woof of every tale or
anecdote....
I captained ships, saw Chinese slaughtered by the thousands, fought
bandits on the outskirts of Manila, helped loot the palace of the
empress in the Sacred City at Pekin ... tales of peril and adventure
that I had heard others relate at camp-fires, in jail, in the
forecastle, on the transport, I unhesitatingly appropriated as my own
experiences.
All the papers printed stories about me. And I was proud about it. And I
became prouder still when I sold a story in two parts to a New York
Sunday paper ... I liked the notoriety....
But as usual, the yarns I retailed struck in upon my own imagination,
too ... just as had my earlier stories of killing Indians. Particularly
the tale I had related of having seen dead Chinamen in heaps with their
heads lopped off. A nightmare of this imaginary episode began to come to
me. And another dream I had--of a huge Boxer, with a cutlass, standing
over me. And he was about to carve me piecemeal while I lay bound and
helpless before him. The dream persisted so strongly that, after I
awoke, I still seemed to see him standing in a corner of my room. And I
cried aloud. And felt foolish when it brought my father in. So I stopped
making up adventures, especially the disagreeable ones, because they
eventually had more effect on me than they did on my auditors.
* * * * *
My father had changed boarding places ... but, as usual, it was not
better food, but a little, dark widow that attracted him to that
boarding house.
* * * * *
I now devoted myself exclusively to poetry--the reading of it. I always
had a book in my pocket. I read even at meals, despite my father's
protests that it was bad-mannered.
* * * * *
Breasted's book store, down in Newark, was where I was nearly always to
be found, in the late afternoons.
It was there, in the murky light of a dying twilight, that I came Upon
the book that has meant more to my life than any other book ever
written....
For a long time I had known of John Keats, that there was such a poet.
But, in the fever of my adolescence, in the ferment of my tramp-life, I
had not yet procured his poetry....
Now, here were his complete works, right at hand, in one volume ... a
damaged but typographically intact copy....
I had, once before, dipped into his _Endymion_ and had been discouraged
... but this time I began to read him with his very first lines--his
dedication to Leigh Hunt, beginning:
"Glory and loveliness have passed away."
Then I went on to a pastoral piece:
"I stood tiptoe upon a little hill."
I forgot where I was. A new world of beauty was opened to me.... I read
and read....
"Come, Gregory, it's time to close"--a voice at my elbow. It was
Breasted's assistant, a little, curious man who reminded me of my
sky-pilot at Sydney. He, also, wore a black, long-tailed coat. He was
known as "the perfessor."
"You've been standing here as quiet as a crane for three hours."
"How much do you want for this book?"
"A quarter ... for you!" He always affected to make me special
reductions, as an old customer....
A quarter was all I had. I paid for my Keats, and walked home. Walked? I
went with wings on each heel. I was as genuinely converted to a new life
as a sinner is converted to the Christian religion.
I lit the light in my room. All night I read and re-read, not a whit
sleepy or tired.
I went for a week in a mad dream, my face shining and glowing with inner
ecstasy and happiness.
* * * * *
There did not seem to be time enough in the twenty-four hours of each
day for reading and studying and writing. And a new thing came to me: a
shame for my shadow thinness and a desire to build myself into a better
physical man.
At that time _McFadden's Physical Culture Magazine_ was becoming widely
read. I came across a copy of it. I found in it a guide to what I was in
search for. Faithfully I took up physical culture. Fanatically I kept
all the windows open, wore as little clothing as possible ... adopted a
certain walk on tiptoe, like a person walking on egg-shells, to develop
the calves of my legs from their thinness to a more proportionate shape.
And, as I walked, I filled and emptied my lungs like a bellows. I kept a
small statue of Apollo Belvedere on top of my bookcase. I had a print of
the Flying Mercury on the wall, at the foot of my bed. Each morning, on
waking, I filled my mind full of these perfect specimens of manhood,
considering that by so doing I would gradually pilot my body to physical
perfection.... I know that many things I say about myself will appeal to
the "wit" as humorous. I can't help it if I am laughed at ... everybody
would be, if they told the truth about themselves, like this.
* * * * *
I joined the Y.M.C.A. for the physical side, not for the spiritual. I
found a spirit that I did not like there, a sort of mental deadness and
ineffectually. But one thing the Y.M.C.A. did for me: I found on the
bulletin board one day an announcement of the summer term of Mt. Hebron
Preparatory School.... It was a school for poor boys and men ... neither
age nor even previous preparation counted ... only earnestness of
purpose. And, as each student had his two hours' work a day to do, the
expense for each term was nominal.
I had been paid fifty dollars for my article on my adventures in the New
York Sunday paper. A Newark Sunday paper bought several articles also.
To the money I had saved up my father contributed as much again. I
started for preparatory school.
* * * * *
Mt. Hebron School consisted of a series of buildings set apart on a
hill. It was an evangelical school founded by a well-known
revivalist--William Moreton.
Around it lay pine forests and, at its feet, the valley of the
Connecticut River.
No matter what subjects they taught, the main endeavour of its
professors, in season and out, was the conversion of every freshman
immediately to Evangelical Christianity, as soon as he had had his
quarters assigned to him....
Scarcely had we settled ourselves, each with his roommate, than the two
weeks' revival began. I will not enter into the details of this revival.
This was merely the opening of the summer term. At the opening of the
school year in the fall--that was when they held the _real_
revival,--and the story of the whipped-up frenzy of that will afford a
more characteristic flavour.
* * * * *
It put a singing in my heart to find myself at last a student in a
regular preparatory school, with my face set toward college.
I had passed my examinations with credit, especially the one in the
Bible. This won me immediate notice and approval among the professors.
Fortunate, indeed, I now regarded those three months in jail ... the
most fruitful and corrective period of my life. For not only had I
studied the Bible assiduously there, but I had learned American
history--especially that of the Civil War period ... and I had studied
arithmetic and algebra, so that in these subjects I managed to slide
through.
* * * * *
I was put to cleaning stalls and currying horses for my two hours' work
each day. Though I hated manual labour, I bent my back to the tasks with
a will, glad to endure for the fulfillment of my dream.
That first summer I took Vergil and began Homer. I had studied these
poets by myself already, but found many slack ends that only the aid and
guidance of a professor could clear up. And, allowing for their narrow
religious viewpoints, real or affected, in order to hold their
positions, they were fine teachers--my teachers of Latin and Greek--with
real fire in them.... Professor Lang made Homer and his days live for
us. The old Greek warriors rose up from the dust, and I could see the
shining of their armour, hear the clash of their swords.
Professor Dunn made of Vergil a contemporary poet....
Lang was of the fair Norse type, so akin to the Greek in adventurous
spirit. Dunn was of the dark, stocky, imperial Roman type. In a toga he
would have resembled some Roman senator....
That summer there were long woodland walks for me, when I would take a
volume of some great English poet from the library and roam far a-field.
* * * * *
After that first summer it was my father who kept me at school. He was
too poor to pay in a lump sum for my tuition, so he sent four dollars
every week from his meagre pay, to keep me going.
* * * * *
There was a wide, wind-swept oval for an athletic field. From it you
gazed on a beautiful vista of valleys and enfolding hills. Here every
afternoon I practiced running ... to the frequent derision of the other
athletes, who made fun of my skinny legs, body, and arms....
But as I ran, and ran, every afternoon, my mile, the boys stopped
laughing, and I heard them say among themselves, "Old Gregory, he'll get
there!"
After the exercise there would be the rub-down with fragrant witch hazel
... then supper!
A dining-room, filled to the full, every table, with five hundred
irrepressible boys ... it was a cheerful and good attendance at each of
the three meals. We joined together in saying a blessing. We sang a
lusty hymn together, accompanied on the little, wheezy, dining-room
organ. I liked the good, simple melodies sung, straight and hearty,
without trills and twirls....
Every night, just before "lights out," at ten, fifteen minutes was set
aside, called "silent time"--and likewise in the morning, just before
breakfast-bell--for prayer and religious meditation.
* * * * *
Jimmy Anderson, my little blond roommate, fair-haired and delicate-faced
as a girl (his sisters, on the contrary, not femininely pretty, as he,
but masculine and handsome)--Jimmy Anderson read his Bible and knelt and
prayed during both "silent times."
I read the Bible and prayed for the quiet, religious luxury of it. My
prayer, when I prayed, was just to "God," not Jehovah ... not to God of
any sect, religion, creed.
"Dear God," ran always my prayer, "Dear God, if you really exist, make
me a great poet. I ask for nothing else. Only let me become famous."
* * * * *
I was so happy in my studies,--my work, even,--my wanderings in the
woods and along the country roads, with the poets under my arms.... I
read them all, from Layamon's _Brut_ on. For, for me, all that existed
was poetry. At this stage of my life it was my be-all and end-all.
* * * * *
My father was a most impractical man. He would sit in his office as
foreman, read the New York _Herald_, and suck at an unlit cigar, telling
anyone who listened how he would be quite happy to retire and run a
little chicken farm somewhere the rest of his life.
The men all liked him ... gave him a present every Christmas ... but
they never jumped up and lit into their work, when they saw him coming,
as they did for the other bosses. And the management, knowing his
easiness, never paid him over twenty or twenty-five dollars a week. But
whenever I could cozen an extra dollar out of him, alleging extra school
expenses, I would do so. It meant that I could buy some more books of
poetry.
* * * * *
I was sent from the stable out into the fields to work ... harder and
more back-breaking than currying horses. But my labour was alleviated by
the fact that a little renegade ex-priest from Italy worked by my
side,--and while we weeded beets or onions, or hoed potatoes, he taught
me how to make Latin a living language by conversing in it with me.
* * * * *
There were no women on the hill but the professors' wives, and they were
an unattractive lot. We were as exempt from feminine influence as a
gathering of monks--excepting when permission was given any of us to go
over to Fairfield, where, besides the native New England population of
women and girls, was situated the girls' branch of our educational
establishment....
* * * * *
The fall term ... the opening of the regular school year. The regular
students began to pour in, dumping off the frequent trains at the
little school station ... absurd youths dressed in the exaggerated
style of college and preparatory school ... peg-top trousers ...
jaunty, postage-stamp caps ... and there was cheering and hat-waving
and singing in the parlours of the dormitories on each floor.
* * * * *
There were three dormitory groups on the "hill." The "villas" were the
most aristocratic. There the "gentlemen" among the students, and the
teachers' favourites, dwelt--with the teachers. Then there was Crosston
Hall, and Oberly. Crosston was the least desirable of the halls. It was
there that I lived.
We were hardly settled in our rooms when the usual fall revival
began....
One of the founders of the school, a well-known New England
manufacturer, came on his yearly pilgrimage ... a fanatic disciple of
the great Moreton, he considered it his duty to see to the immediate
conversion, by every form of persuasion and subtle compulsion, of every
newly arrived student.
Rask was a tall, lean, ashen-faced man. He had yellow, prominent teeth
and an irregular, ascetic face. In his eyes shone an undying lightning
and fire of sincere fanaticism and spiritual ruthlessness that, in
mediæval times, would not have stopped short of the stake and fagot to
convince sinners of the error of their ways.
The evangelist's two sons also hove on the scene from across the river
... both of them were men of pleasing appearance. There was the
youthful, elegant, dark, intellectual-browed John Moreton, who had
doctorates of divinity from half a dozen big theological seminaries at
home and abroad; and there was the business man of the two--Stephen,
middle-aged before his time, staid and formal ... to the latter, the
twin schools: the seminary for girls and the preparatory school for
boys--and the revivalistic religion that Went with them, meant a, sort
of exalted business functioning ... this I say not at all invidiously
... the practical business ideal was to him the highest way of men's
getting together ... the _quid pro quo_ basis that even God accepted.
* * * * *
The first night of the opening of the term, when the boys had scarcely
been herded together in their respective dormitories, the beginning of
the revival was announced from the little organ that stood in the middle
of the dining-room ... a compulsory meeting, of course. In newly
acquainted groups, singing, whistling, talking, and laughing, as
schoolboys will, the students tramped along the winding path that led to
the chapel on the crest of the hill.
On the platform sat the teachers. In the most prominent chair, with
its plush seat and its old-fashioned peaked back, sat the
evangelist-manufacturer, Rask,--the shine of hungry fanaticism in his
face like a beacon, his legs crossed, a dazzling shine on his shoes,
his hands clutching a hymn book like a warrior's weapon.
Little Principal Stanton stood nearby, his eyes gleaming spectrally
through his glasses, his teeth shining like those of a miniature
Roosevelt.
"We will begin," he snapped decisively, "with John Moreton's favourite
hymn, when he was with us in this world."