"Your omnipotent God must be hard put to it when He has to rely on the
help of such sneakiness to keep His Book (and I couldn't help laughing
at the literary turn I gave to my denunciation) before the public!"
Stanton's eyes flamed behind their glasses.
"Gregory, I shall have to ask you to leave the Hill as soon as you can
get your things together," he shouted.
"--which can hardly be soon enough for me," I replied.
"Come, my boy," continued Stanton, as if ashamed at himself for his
outburst, and putting his hand on my shoulder, "you're a good sort of
boy, after all ... you have so much in you, so much energy and power ...
why don't you put it to right uses?... after your father has made such
sacrifices for you, I hate to see you run off to a ravelled edge like
this.
"Even yet, if you'll only promise to behave and preserve a proper
dignity in the presence of the other students--even yet we would be glad
to have you stay and graduate ... and we might be able to procure you a
scholarship at Harvard or Princeton or Yale or Brown. Lang says you put
yourself into the spirit of Homer like an old Greek, always doing more
work than the requirements,--and Dunn says, that you show him things in
Vergil that he never saw before."
Moved, I shook my head sadly. I hated myself for liking these people.
"If you mean that I should be like other people ... I just can't ...
it's neither pose nor affectation." (He had intimated that some of the
professors alleged that as the core of the trouble.) "I guess I don't
belong here ... yes, it would be better for me to go away!"
* * * * *
That night, unobserved, I stole into the chapel that stood on the Crest
of the hill, against the infinite stars.
I spent nearly all the night in the chapel, alone. The place was full of
things. I felt there all the gods that ever were worshipped ... and all
the great spirits of mankind. And I perceived fully how silly, weak,
grotesque, and vain I was; and yet, how big and wonderful, it would be
to swim counter, as I meant, to the huge, swollen, successful currents
of the commercial, bourgeois practicality of present-day America.
* * * * *
I pinned up a sign on the bulletin board in the hall, in rhyme,
announcing, that, that afternoon, at four o'clock, John Gregory would
hold an auction of his books of poetry.
* * * * *
My room was crowded with amused students. I mounted the table, like an
auctioneer, while they sat on my cot and on the floor, and crowded the
door.
At first the boys jeered and pushed. But when I started selling my copy
of Byron and telling about his life, they fell into a quiet, and
listened. After I had made that talk, they clapped me. Byron went for a
dollar, fetching the largest price. I sold my Shelley, my Blake, my
Herrick, my Marvell, my Milton ... all....
My Keats I could not bring myself to sell. I kept that like a treasure.
What I could not sell I gave away.
My entire capital was ten dollars ... one suit of clothes ... a change
of underwear ... two shirts. I discarded my trunk and crammed what
little I owned into my battered suitcase.
That night, the story of my dismissal from school having travelled about
from mouth to mouth, and the tale of my poets' auction--the boys
cheered me, as I came into the dining hall--cheered me partly
affectionately, partly derisively.
* * * * *
In the morning mail I received a letter from the New York _Independent_,
a weekly literary magazine. Dr. Ward, the editor, informed me that I
possessed genuine poetic promise, and he was taking two of the poems I
had recently submitted to him, for publication in his magazine.
* * * * *
Like the vagrant I was, I considered myself indefinitely fixed, with
that ten dollars. I went to Boston ... hung about the library and the
waterfront ... stayed in cheap lodging houses for a few days--and found
myself on the tramp again.
* * * * *
I freighted it to New York, where I landed, grimy and full of coal-dust.
And I sought out my uncle who lived in the Bronx.
I appeared, opportunely, around supper time. I asked him if he was not
glad to see me. He grimaced a yes, but wished that I would stop tramping
about and fit in, in life, somewhere.... He observed that my shirt was
filthy and that I must take a bath immediately and put on a clean one of
his.
In Boston I had ditched everything but the clothes I wore ... and my
suit was wrecked with hard usage.
"Get work at anything," advised my Uncle Jim, "and save up till you can
rig yourself out new. You'll never accomplish anything looking the way
you do. Your editor at the _Independent_ will not be impressed and think
it romantic, if you go to see him the way you are ... ragged poets are
out of date."
* * * * *
At "Perfection City" I had made the acquaintance of a boy, whom,
curiously enough, I have left out of that part of the narrative that has
to deal with the Nature Colony. He was a millionaire's son: his father,
a friend of Barton's, had sent him out to "Perfection City" with a
tutor. His name was Milton Saunders. He was a fine, generous lad, but
open as the weather to every influence ... especially to any which was
not for his good.
One morning I saw him actually remove his own shoes and give them to a
passing tramp who needed them worse than he.
"That's nothing, dad's money will be sufficient to buy me a new pair,"
he explained, going back to his tent, in his bare feet, his socks in his
hand--to put on his sneakers while he hastened to the shoe store in
Andersonville.
* * * * *
Milton had urged me to be sure to come and see him if I chanced to be in
New York.
I now called him on the telephone and was cordially invited to visit
him, and that, immediately.
The servants eyed me suspiciously and sent me up by the tradesmen's
elevator. Milton flew into a fury over it. His friend was his friend, no
matter how he was dressed--he wanted them to remember that, in the
future!
He brought out a bottle of wine, had a fine luncheon set before me. I
went for the food, but pushed the wine aside. He drank the bottle
himself. I was still, for my part, clinging to shreds of what I had
learned at "Perfection City." ...
He rushed me to his tailor. I had told him of my first poems' being
accepted.
"Of course, you must be better dressed when you go to see the editor."
The tailor looked me over, in whimsical astonishment. He vowed that he
could not have a suit ready for me by ten the next morning, as Milton
was ordering.
"Then you have a suit here for me about ready."
"It is ready now."
"Alter it immediately to fit Mr. Gregory ... we're about the same
height."
The tailor said _that_ could be done.
For the rest of the day Milton and I peregrinated from one saloon
back-room to another ... in each of which the boy seemed to be well
known. He drank liquor while I imbibed soft drinks ... the result was
better for him than for me. I soon had the stomach-ache, while he only
seemed a little over-exhilarated.
At his door-step he shoved a ten dollar bill into my hand. I demurred,
but accepted it.
"I'd hand you more," he apologised, "but the Old Man never lets me have
any more than just so much at a time ... says I waste it anyhow ... but
I manage to do a lot of charging," he chuckled.
"Have you a place to stay to-night?"
"Yes ... I have an uncle who lives uptown."
* * * * *
When I showed up at my uncle's, that night, I showed him my new rig-out,
and explained to him how I came into possession of it. But he did not
accept my explanation. Instead, he shook his head in mournful
dubiousness ... indicating that he doubted my story, and insinuating
that I had not come by my suit honestly; as well as by the new dress
suitcase Saunders had presented me with, and the shirts and
underclothing.
"God knows where you'll end up, Johnny."
After supper Uncle Jim grew restive again, and he came out frankly with
the declaration that he did not want me to stay overnight in the house,
but to pack on out to Haberford to my father ... or, since I must stay
in town to see my editor (again that faint, dubious smile), I might stay
the night at a Mills Hotel ... since my rich friend had given me money,
too ... besides my aunt was not so very strong and I put a strain on
her.
* * * * *
At the Mills Hotel I was perched in a cell-like corner room, high up.
The room smelt antiseptic. Nearby, Broadway roared and spread in
wavering blazons of theatric gold. I looked down upon it, dreaming of my
future fame, my great poetic and literary career ... my plays that would
some day be announced down there, in great shining sign-letters.
* * * * *
The sound of an employée's beating with a heavy stick, from door to iron
door, to wake up all the Mills Hotel patrons, bestirred me at an early
hour.
* * * * *
I meditated my next move, and now resolved on another try at community
life.... The Eos Artwork Studios, founded in the little New York State
town of Eos, by the celebrated eccentric author and lecturer, Roderick
Spalton.
I was in such impatience to reach Eos that I did not cross over to
Haberford, to drop in on my father. I feared also that my leaving school
the second time, "under a cloud," would not win me an enthusiastic
welcome from him.
* * * * *
By nightfall I was well on my way to Eos, sitting in an empty box-car. I
had with me my new clothes--which I wore--and my suitcase, a foolish way
to tramp. But I thought I might as well appear before Roderick Spalton
with a little more "presence" than usual. For I intended spending some
time in his community.
Characteristically, I had gone to the office of the _Independent_, had
not found the editor in, that morning, and had chafed at the idea of
waiting till the afternoon, when I might have had a fruitful talk with a
man who was interested in the one real thing in my life--my poetry.
* * * * *
I reached Rochester safely. It was on the stretch to Buffalo that I paid
dearly for being well-dressed and carrying a suitcase ... as I lay
asleep on the floor of the box-car I was set upon by three tramps, who
pinioned my arms and legs before I was even fully awake. I was forced to
strip off my clothes, after wrestling and fighting as hard as I could. I
floated off into the stars from a blow on the head....
When I came to, I was trembling violently both with cold and from the
nervous shock. My assailants had made off with my suitcase ... I was in
nothing but my B.V.D.'s and shirt. Even my Keats had been stolen. But
beside me I found the ragged, cast-off suit of one of the tramps ... and
my razor, which had dropped out of my coat pocket, while the tramp had
changed clothes, and not been noticed. Gingerly, I put on the ragged
suit....
* * * * *