They had prohibition there, too ... long before it won nation-wide power
... consequently the negroes drove a vast trade in bootlegging ... and a
concomitant prostitution of coloured women and girls throve. One or two
students on the hill had, to my knowledge, negro mistresses of whom they
were fond....
The drug stores did a thriving business in the sale of spiritus
frumenti--for "snake bite" and "stomach trouble," which seemed to be
prevalent and epidemic throughout the community.
* * * * *
Saturday was market day for the farmers who lived in the adjoining
countryside ... and the livery stables where they put up their horses
were also resorts for gambling and the selling of "bootleg" booze....
These farmers were a wild lot ... something like European peasants in
their smacking of the soil and the country to which they belonged, but
with a verve and dash of their own distinctly American.
There were three or four cheap restaurants that catered solely to their
trade ... "a square meal for a quarter" ... and a square meal they
served ... multitudes of fried stuff ... beefsteak, potatoes, boiled
ham, cabbage, heaps of white bread constantly replenished as it was
voraciously devoured ... always plenty of hot, steaming coffee. Where
these restaurants profited I could never see ... unless by a little
bootlegging on the side.
It was to one of them that I repaired when I left my malodorous job. The
same one where I had spent my first night in town.
* * * * *
Langworth sent for me one day.
"I have heard wild tales about you, Johnnie. I don't usually listen to
gossip, but these tales are so recurrent and persistent ... about your
going about with the degraded people who live in the Bottoms, that I
considered I ought to see you about it."
I confessed that, though I did not drink their bootleg booze, I did have
a wide acquaintanceship with the folk of the Bottoms, and that I knew
all the rowdies among the farmers ... that I passed a lot of time about
the livery stables talking with them. That I often rode out to their
farms in the hills and spent Saturdays and Sundays there. I avowed that
there people were more interesting to me than the carefully tailored
professors and students.
My schoolmates had met me on the streets in company with these
wild-looking yokels, sometimes taking them to their waggons when they
were too drunk to pilot themselves effectively. And they had applied to
me the proverb of "birds of a feather."
* * * * *
Before I left, Langworth drew from me the admission that I was away
behind in my board bill at the Farmers' Restaurant. My hopes of making
immediate money as a writer of poems for the magazines had so far been
barren of fruit.
"Sh! sit down a minute and wait." His wife was coming downstairs,
querulously, waveringly; her eyes red from weeping.
"Laddie has just died."
"The shepherd dog?" I enquired; for she had spoken as of a human demise.
"Yes, the dog ... but he was human, if anyone was." There was an
acidulous resentment in the tone of her answer that indicated that she
wanted her husband to send me away.
"She wants you to go," whispered Langworth, humouring his wife like a
sick child. He escorted me into the storm porch. "You have no idea," he
apologised defensively, "how human a dog can be, or how fond of one you
can become...."
"What's this?" I asked, taken aback. He had thrust a check into my hand
as he shook hands good-bye.
"It's a check I've just endorsed over to you. Royalties on a recent
text-book. Please do take it." I had intimated that I would probably be
compelled to quit college and go on the tramp again ... confessing
frankly, also, that a stationary life got on my nerves at times.
"I want you to keep on, not go back to the tramp life ... we'll make
something of you yet," he jested, diffidently, steering me off when he
noticed that I was about to heap profuse thanks on him.
"How can I ever thank you--"
"By studying hard and making good. By becoming the great poet I wanted
to be."
"But how can I pay this back? It will take a long time--"
"When you arrive at the place where you can afford to pay me back, pass
it on to someone else who is struggling as you are now, and as I myself
have struggled."
* * * * *
Always, always I wrote my poetry and kept studying in my own fashion ...
marks of proficiency, attendance at class went by the board. My studying
was rather browsing among the multitudes of books in the college
library. I passed hours, back in the stacks, forgetting day and night
... recitations ... meals....
I was soon in trouble with my professors ... I was always up, and even
ahead, with my studies, but I was a disrupting influence for the other
students, because of my irregularity.
I discovered wonderful books back there in the "stack" ... the works of
Paracelsus, who whispered me that wisdom was to be found more in the
vagabond bye-ways of life than in the ordered and regulated highways.
That the true knowledge was to be garnered from knocking about with
vagrants, gipsies, carriers ... from corners in wayside inns where
travellers discoursed....
And there was Boehmen, the inspired German shoemaker, who was visited
by an angel, or some sort of divine stranger, and given his first
illumination outside his shop ... and later walked a-field and heard
what the flowers were saying to each other, seeing through all creation
at one glance, crystal-clear.
And there were the unusual poets ... old Matthew Prior, who wrote
besides his poems, the Treaty, was it, of Utrecht?... hobnobbed with the
big people of the land ... yet refused all marks of honour ... the best
Latinist of the day ... at a time when Latin was the diplomatic language
of Europe.
When he wasn't hobnobbing with the aristocracy or writing treaties he
was sitting in inns and drinking with teamsters ... had a long love
affair with a cobbler's wife, and married the lady after the cobbler
died....
There was Skelton and his rough-running, irregular rhythmic rather than
strictly metrical verses ... mad and ribald ... often tedious ... but
with wild flashes of beauty interwoven through his poems ... the poem
about his mistress's sparrow ... the elegy on its death ... where he
prayed God to give it the little wren of the Virgin Mary, as a wife, in
heaven--"to tread, for _solas_!"
And Gay, the author of many delightful fables ... who must wait still
longer for his proper niche, because he showed gross levity on the
subject of death and life ... he who wrote for his own epitaph:
"Life is a jest, and all things show it;
I thought so once, but now I know it."
For all those who would not keep step, who romped out of the regular
procedure and wantoned by the way, picking what flowers they chose, I
held feeling and sympathy.
* * * * *
The _Annual_, a book published by the seniors each spring, now
advertised a prize for the best poem submitted by any student ... a
prize of twenty-five dollars. I had no doubt but that the prize was mine
already. Not that I had become as yet the poet I desired, but that the
average level of human endeavour in any art is so low that I knew my
assiduity and application and fair amount of inspiration would win.
I wrote my poem--_A Day in a Japanese Garden_, ... only two lines I
remember:
"And black cranes trailed their long legs as they flew
Down to it, somewhere out of Heaven's blue,"
descriptive of a little lake ... oh, yes, and two more I remember,
descriptive of sunset:
"And Fujiyama's far and sacred top
Became a jewel shining in the sun."
The poem was an over-laquered, metaphor-cloyed thing ... much like the
bulk of our free verse of to-day ... but it was superior to all the rest
of the contributions.
The prize was declared off. After an evening's serious discussion the
committee decided that, though my effort was far and away the best, it
would not do to let me have the prize, because I was so wild-appearing
... because I was known as having been a tramp. And because seniors and
students of correct standing at the university had tried. And it would
not be good for the school morale to let me have what I had won.
They compromised by declaring the prize off.
A year after, Professor Black, assistant professor in English
literature, who served on the judging board, told me confidentially of
this ... though he declared that he had fought for me, alleging how I
needed the money, and how I had honestly won the award.