"Would you tell me please where I can find the Master?" I asked,
reverently.
The boy gave me a long stare.
"Oh, you mean Mr. Spalton?"
"Yes."
"That's him ... there ... choppin' wood."
There was a young man and an older one, both chopping wood, in the back
of a building, but in fairly open view.
I walked to where they worked with both inward and outward trepidation,
for, to me, Spalton was one of the world's great men.
Just as I reached the spot, the younger of the two threw down his axe.
"So long, Dad! now I'll go into the shop and tend to those letters."
I stood in the presence of the great Roderick Spalton himself, the man
who, in his _Brief Visits to the Homes of Famous Folk_, had written more
meatily and wisely than any American author since Emerson ... the man
whose magazine called _The Dawn_, had rendered him an object of almost
religious veneration and worship to thousands of Americans whose spirits
reached for something more than the mere piling of dollars one on the
other....
I stood before him, visibly overwhelmed. It was evident that my silent
hero-worship was sweet to him. He bespoke me gently and courteously.
"So you want to become an Eoite?"
"Yes," I whispered, bending my gaze humbly before his.
"And what is your name, my dear boy."
"John Gregory, Master!"
"What have you brought with you? where is your baggage?"
"I--I lost my baggage ... all I have with me is a-a r-razor."
He leaned his head back and laughed joyously. His lambent brown eyes
glowed with humour. I liked the man.
"Yes, we'll give you a job--Razorre!" he assured me, calling me by the
nickname which clung to me during my stay....
"Take that axe and show me what you can do."
I caught up the axe and fell to with enthusiasm. The gospel of the
dignity and worth of labour that he preached thrilled in me. It was the
first time I ever enjoyed working....
As we worked the Master talked ... talked with me as if he had known me
for years--as if I, too, were Somebody.
There was nothing he did not discuss, in memorable phrase and trenchant,
clever epigram. For he saw that I believed in him, worshipped
whole-heartedly at his shrine of genius, and he gave me, in return, of
his best. For the first time I saw what human language is for. I thought
of Goethe at Weimar ... Wilde's clever conversation in London....
Never since did I see the real man, Spalton, as I saw him then, the man
he might always have been, if he had had an old-world environment,
instead of the environment of modern, commercial America--the spirit of
which finally claimed him, as he grew more successful....
Modern, commercial America--where we proudly make a boast of lack of
culture, and where artistic and aesthetic feeling, if freely expressed,
makes one's hearers more likely than not, at once uneasy and restive.
* * * * *
That night, at supper, I caught my first glimpse of the Eoites in a
body. The contrast between them and my school-folk was agreeably
different. I found among them an atmosphere of good-natured greeting and
raillery, that sped from table to table. And when Spalton strode in,
with his bold, swinging gait (it seemed that he had just returned from a
lecture in a distant city early that afternoon), there was cheering and
clapping.
Guests and workers joined together in the same dining hall, with no
distinctive division.... I sat next to Spalton's table, and a warm glow
of pleasure swept through me when he sent me a pleasant nod.
"Hello, Razorre," he had greeted me; then he had turned to the group at
his table and told them about me, I could see by their glances--but in a
pleasant way.
* * * * *
The next morning I was at work in the bindery, smearing glue on the
backs of unbound books. My wage was three dollars a week and "found," as
they say in the West. Not much, but what did it matter? There was a fine
library of the world's classics, including all the liberal and
revolutionary books that I had heard about, but which I could never
obtain at the libraries ... and there were, as associates and
companions, many people, who, if extremely eccentric, were,
nevertheless, alive and alert and interested in all the beautiful things
Genius has created in Art and Song....
Derelicts, freaks, "nuts" ... with poses that outnumbered the silver
eyes in the peacock's tail in multitude ... and yet there was to be
found in them a sincerity, a fineness, and a genuine feeling for
humanity that "regular" folks never achieve--perhaps because of their
very "regularness."
* * * * *
Here, at last, I had found another environment where I could "let loose"
to the limit ... which I began to do....
In the first place, there was the matter of clothes. I believed that men
and women should go as nearly naked as possible ... clothing for warmth
only ... and, as one grew in strength and health through nude contact
with living sun and air and water, the body would gradually attain the
power to keep itself warm from the health and strength that was in it.
So, in the middle of severe winter that now had fallen on us, I went
about in sandals, without socks. I wore no undershirt, and no coat ...
and went with my shirt open at the neck. I wore no hat....
Spalton himself often went coatless--in warm weather. His main sartorial
eccentricity was the wearing of a broad-brimmed hat. And whenever he
bought a new Stetson, he cut holes in the top and jumped on it, to make
it look more interesting and less shop-new ... of course everybody in
the community wore soft shirts and flowing ties.
We addressed each other by first names and nicknames. Spalton went under
the appellation of "John." One day a wealthy visitor had driven up.
Spalton was out chopping wood.
"Come here, John, and hold my horses."
Spalton dropped the axe and obeyed.
Afterward he had been dismissed with a fifty cent tip.
He told the story on himself, and the name "John" stuck.
* * * * *
Working in the bindery, I began to find out things about the community
of Eos that were not as ideal as might be ... most of the illumination
of the books was done by girls, even by children after school hours. The
outlines of the letters and objects to be hand-illumined were printed in
with the text, the girls and children merely coloured them between the
lines.
In each department, hidden behind gorgeous, flowing curtains, were
time-clocks, on which employees rang up when they came to work, and when
they left. Also, each worker was supposed to receive dividends--which
dividends consisted in pairs of mittens and thick woolen socks
distributed by the foremen at Christmas time ... or maybe an extra
dollar in pay, that week.
"Two dollars a week less than a fellow would draw at any other place
that ran the same sort of business," grumbled a young bookbinder who was
by way of being a poet, "and a pair of woolen mittens or socks, or an
extra dollar, once a year, as dividends!"
However, I think that the artworkers had finer lodgings and board than
most workers could have supplied for themselves ... and the married
couples lived in nicer houses ... and they heard the best music, had the
best books to read, lived truly in the presence of the greatest art and
thought of the world ... and heard speak in the chapel, from time to
time, all the distinguished men of the country ... who came, sooner or
later, to visit Spalton and am? community....
What though the wages were not so big, what though you rang up the time
of arrival at work and the time of departure from it, on hidden
time-clocks, what though every piece of statuary, every picture, every
stick of furniture, had, on the bottom of it, its price label, or,
depending from it, its tag that told the price at which it might be
bought!...
* * * * *
Spalton had begun his active career as a business man, had swung out
from that, his fertile mind glimpsing what worlds of thought and
imagination lay beyond it!
But now Big Business was calling him back again, using him for its
purposes.
Oftener and oftener magnificently written articles by him began to
appear in his remarkable little magazine, _The Dawn_. And the Ingersoll
of Dollar Watch fame crowded out the Ingersoll of brave agnosticism ...
and when he wrote now of artists and writers, it was their thrifty
habits, their business traits, that he lauded.
"A great man can be practical and businesslike, in fact the greatest of
them always are," he defended. "There was Voltaire, the successful
watchmaker at Ferney ... and there was Shakespeare, who, after his
success in London, returned to Avon and practically bought up the whole
town ... he even ran a butcher shop there, you know."
* * * * *
"The people expect startling things ... and, as the winds of genius blow
where they list--when they refuse to blow in the direction required,
divine is the art of buncombe," he jested.
I suppose this applied to his musician-prodigy, a girl of eight, who
worked, in the afternoons, in the bindery. And when a visiting party
swept through that department, it was part of her job to rise as if
under the impulse of inspiration, leave her work, and go to a nearby
piano and play ... the implication being that the piano was placed there
for the use of the workers when melody surged within them....
But she was the only one who played. And she never played except when
she was tipped the wink. And it was only one thing--a something of
Rubenstein's ... which she had practised and practised and practised to
perfection; and _that_ rendered, with haughty head like a little sibyl,
she would go back to her work-bench. And if urged to play more, she
would answer, lifting her great, velvet eyes in a dreamy gaze, "no, no
more to-day. The inspiration has gone." And, awed, the visitors would
depart.
* * * * *
Back of the bindery stood the blacksmith shop, where MacKittrick, the
historian-blacksmith, plied the bellows and smote the anvil.
MacKittrick took a liking to me. For one day we began talking about
ancient history, and he perceived that I had a little knowledge of it,
and a feeling for the colour and motion of its long-ago life.
"I want you to come and work for me," he urged, "my work is mostly
pretty," he apologised, with blacksmith sturdiness, "--not making
horseshoes, but cutting out delicate things, ornamental iron work for
aesthetic purposes, and all that ... all you'll have to do will be to
swing the hammer gently, while I direct the blows and cut put the dainty
filigree the "Master" sells to folk, afterward, as art."
"Well, isn't it art?" I asked.
"I suppose it is. But I like the strong work of blacksmithing best. You
see, I was born to be a great historian. But destiny has made me a
blacksmith," he continued irrelevantly ... "do come out and work for me.
I'm hungry for an intelligent helper who can talk history with me while
we work."
My transfer was effected. And I was immediately glad of it. "Mac," as we
called him, was a fine, solid man ... and he did know history. He knew
it as a lover knows his mistress. He was right. He should have been a
great historical writer--great historian he _was_!
For two glorious months I was with him. And during those two months, I
learned more about the touch and texture of the historic life of man
than three times as many years in college could have taught me.
"Mac" talked of Cæsar as if only yesterday he had shaken hands with him
in the Forum ... and he was shocked over his murder as if it had
happened right after....
"Ah, that was a bad day for Rome and the future of the world, when those
mad fellows struck him down there like a pig!" he cried.
And Mary, Queen of Scots, was "a sweet, soft body of a white thing that
should have been content with being in love, and never tried to rule!"
* * * * *
"Can you cook?" asked Spalton of me one day, just as Barton had done at
"Perfection City."
"No," I replied honestly, thinking back to that experience.
"Fine!" was the unexpected rejoinder, "I'm going to send you put to the
camp to cook for my lumber-jacks for a few weeks."
"But I said I couldn't cook."
"You know how to turn an egg in the pan? you know enough not to let ham
and bacon burn?... you know water won't scorch, no matter how long it
stands over the fire?...
"You'll make an excellent cook for lumber-jacks ... so long as it's
something to eat that's stuck under their noses, they don't give a
damn!... they're always hungry enough to eat anything ... and can digest
anything....
"Get ready! I'm sending you out on one of the waggons by noon."
* * * * *
Perched on the high seat of the waggon by the side of the driver! The
latter was bundled up to the chin ... wore a fur cap that came down over
the ears ... was felt-booted against the cold ... wore heavy gloves.
It was so cold that the breath of the horses went straight up into the
air like thick, white wool. As we rode by, the passing farmers that were
driving into town almost fell off their seats, startled, and staring at
me. For there I perched ... coatless and hatless ... sockless feet in
sandals ... my shirt flung open, a la Byron, at the neck.
It is true that the mind can do anything. I _thought_ myself into being
composed and comfortable. I did not mind, truly I did not mind it.
The driver had protested, but only once, laconically:
"Whar's y'r coat an' hat?"
"I never wear any," I explained, beginning a propagandistic harangue on
the non-essentiality of clothes....
He cut in with the final pronouncement:
"Damn fool, you'll git pneumony."
Then he fell into obdurate, contemptuous silence.
* * * * *
The snow was deep about our living shanty and cook-shack in one, but
hard-frozen enough to bear a man's weight without snow-shoes. Over the
crust had fallen a powdery, white, new snow, about four inches deep.
Every morning, after the "boys" had eaten their breakfast and left for
the woods, I went through my exercises, stripped, out in the open ... a
half hour of it, finished by a roll in the snow, that set me tingling
all over.
One morning I made up my mind to startle the "boys" by running,
mother-naked, in a circle, whooping, about them, where they were sawing
up fallen trees and felling others.
It was a half mile to where they worked.
For more bizarre effect, I clapped on a straw hat which I found in the
rafters--a relic of the preceding summer....
* * * * *
"Gosh a'mighty, what's this a-comin!"...
Everybody stopped working. Two neighbour farmers, who had come over for
a bit of gossip, stooped, their hands on their knees, bowed with
astonishment, as if they had beheld an apparition.
One of the "boys" told me the two held silence for a long time--till I
was entirely out of sight again, and after.
Then one exclaimed, "air they any more luny fellers like thet, back at
them Artwork shops?"
The incident gave birth to the legend of a crazy man under Spalton's
care, whose chief insanity was running naked through snowdrifts.
Spalton had three sons. Roderick was the eldest: named after his father.
Level-headed and businesslike, he followed his father's vagaries because
he saw the commercial possibilities in them ... though he did so more as
a practical man with a sense of humour than as a man who was on the
make. Spalton, who knew men thoroughly and quickly appraised their
individual natures, had installed Roderick in the managing end of
things,--there with the aid of an older head--one Alfoxden, of whom
Spalton made too much of a boast, telling everyone he had rescued him
from a life of crime; Alfoxden, when younger, forged a check and had
served his term for it. Coming out into the world again, no one would
trust him because of that one mistake, Spalton, at this juncture, took
him in and gave him a new chance--but--as I said unkindly, in my mind,
and publicly, he made capital of his generous action.
But Alfoxden was a soul of rare quality. He never seemed to resent
"John's" action. He was too much of a gentleman and too grateful for the
real help Spalton had extended to him.
Alfoxden was a slight, Mephistophelian man ... with bushy, red eyebrows.
And he was totally bald, except for the upper part of his neck, which
was fiery with red hair. He had a large knowledge of the Rabelaisan in
literature ... had in his possession several rather wild effusions of
Mark Twain in the original copy, and a whole MSS. volume of Field's
smutty casual verse....
* * * * *
But I was in the lumber camp, cooking for the "boys."...
"Hank," Spalton's youngest son (there was a second son, whose name I
forget ... lived with his mother, Spalton's divorced wife, in Syracuse,
and was the conventional, well-brought-up, correct youth)--Hank worked
in the camp, along with the other lumber-jacks.
The boy was barely sixteen, yet he was six feet two in his stocking feet
... huge-shouldered, stupendous-muscled, a vegetarian, his picture had
appeared in the magazines as the prodigy who had grown strong on "Best
o' Wheat," a prepared breakfast food then popular.
I asked him if the story that he had built his growth and strength on it
was a fake.
"Yes. I never ate 'Best o' Wheat' in my life, except once or twice," he
answered, "I like only natural food ... vegetables ... and lots of milk
... but I draw the line at prepared, pre-digested stuff and baled
breakfast foods."
"Then why did you lend them the use of your name?"
"Oh, everybody that has any prominence does that ... for a price ... but
I really didn't want to do it. 'John' made me ... or I wouldn't have."
"And now you have your hair cropped close, why is that?"
"I suppose it's all right to wear your hair long ... but, last summer,
it got so damned hot with the huge mop I had, that I always had a
headache ... so one day I went down town to the barber and slipped into
his chair. 'Hello, Hank,' says he, 'what do you want, a shave?' (joking
you know--I didn't have but one or two cat-hairs on my face)....
"'No, Jim, I want a hair-cut.' At first he refused ... said 'The
Master' would bite his head off ... but then he did it--
"John wouldn't speak to me that night, at table ... but the other
fellows shouted and clapped....
"I don't exactly get dad's idea all the time ... he's a mighty clever
man, though....
"Books? Oh, yes ... the only ones I care about are those on Indians and
Indian lore ... I have all the Smithsonian Institution books on the
subject ... and I have a wigwam back of the bindery--haven't you noticed
it?--where I like to go and sit cross-legged and meditate ... no, I
don't want to study regular things. Dad always makes me give in, in
fact, whenever I act stubborn, by threatening to send me off to a
regular school....
"No, I want nothing else but to work with my hands all my life."
* * * * *
But, with all his thinking for himself, "Hank" was also childishly
vulgar. He gulped loudly as he ate, thinking it an evidence of hearty
good-fellowship. And he deliberately broke wind at the table ... then
would rap on wood and laugh....
I, on my dignity as cook, and because the others, rough as they were,
complained to me in private about this behaviour, but did not openly
speak against it because "Hank" was their employer's son. I took
exception to the good-natured "lummox's" behaviour.
One morning he was the last to climb out from over the bench at the
rough, board table....
"Hank ... wait. I want to speak to you a minute."
"Yes, Razorre, what is it?" he asked, waiting....
"Hank, the boys have delegated me to tell you that you must use better
manners than you do, at meals."
"The hell you say! and what are you going to do if I don't?"
"I--why, Hank, I hadn't thought of that ... but, since you bring up the
question, I'm going to try to stop you, if you won't stop yourself."
"--think you can?--think you're strong enough?"
"I said '_try_'!"
"Listen, Razorre," and he came over to me with lazy, good-natured
strength, "I'll pick you up, take you out, and roll you in the snow, if
you don't keep still."
"And I'll try my best to give you a good whipping," replied I, setting
my teeth hard, and glaring at him.
He started at me, grinning. I put the table between us, and began taking
deep breaths to thoroughly oxygenate my blood, so it would help me in my
forthcoming grapple with the big, over-grown giant.
He toppled the table over. We were together. I kept on breathing like a
hard-working bellows, as I wrestled about with him.
He seized me by the right leg and tried to lift me up, carry me out. I
pushed his head back by hooking my fingers under his nose, like a prong.
Then I grabbed him by the seat of the britches and heaved. And they
burst clean up the back like a bean pod....
Unexpectedly Hank flopped on the bench and began to shout with
laughter....
My heavy, artificial breathing, like a bellows, for the sake of
oxygenating more strength into my muscles, had struck him as being so
ludicrous, that he was in high good humour. I joined in the laughter,
struck in the same way.
"I surrender, Razorre, and I'll promise to be decent at the table--you
skinny, crazy, old poet!"
And he rumbled and thundered again with Brobdingnagian mirth.
* * * * *
Back from the lumber camp. Comparatively milder weather, but still the
farmers we passed on the road were startled by my summery attire. But by
this time the lumber-jacks and I were on terms of proven friendship ...
I had told them yarns, and had listened to their yarns, in turn ... the
stories of their lives ... and their joys and troubles....