"I don't want your pin."
"No offence meant," he deprecated, "and you must wear it" (for I was
putting it aside) "Mr. Mackworth and I both want you to look your best
when you meet Miss Martin at dinner to-night".... I angrily almost
decided to take his pin with me when I left, just to fulfill his
pre-supposition.
"No, that's not the place to stick it ... let me show you ... not in the
body of the tie, but further down," and he deftly placed the pin in the
right spot. Then he stepped back like an artist who is proud of having
made a good job of bad materials....
"You look almost like a gentleman."
I was about to lick into Merton and lend him a sample of a few strong
objurgations of road and jail, when I saw myself in the glass. I stood
transfixed. He had not meant to be ironic. The transformation was
startling....
"If you would only keep yourself tidy all the time that way!... it's
easy."
"Not for me ... everything material that I touch seems to fall apart....
I lose my shirts inexplicably ... my socks ... holes appear overnight in
my clothes. Books are the only things I can keep. I am always cluttered
up with them."
"Appearances mean everything ... then, if you have the rest, the goods
to deliver, there is no place a man might not go nor attain."
I looked the small town reporter over in surprise. I studied him closely
for the first time. He belonged to the world, not to Osageville ... the
world of fashion, of smartness ... a world I despised. My world and his
would always be like separate planets. He would consort with people for
the mere pleasure of social life with them. The one thing I did not like
about him was his small mouth ... but then I did not like my own mouth
... it was large, sensual, loose and cruel.
And his walk ... it was almost dainty mincing. But then my walk was a
loose, bent-kneed method of progression....
* * * * *
Miss Martin, the celebrated exposer of corrupt millionaires and captains
of industry, was dark and tall. She had been good-looking in girlhood.
She had fine eyes in a devastated face.
I found myself petted, mothered by her. As soon as she saw me she
removed a thread that hung to my coatsleeve.
At supper I was told of a new project. A group of writers, especially of
writers who were in revolt against big business and the corruption of
the trusts, were about to effect a combination and start what was to be
called the _National Magazine_; for it was to be no less than that, a
magazine embracing all America, to serve as a re-invigorant and
re-corroborant for new national ideals ... really only a tilting against
the evils of big combinations, in favour of the earlier and more
impossible ideals of small business units--the ideal of a bourgeois
commercial honesty and individual effort that could no more be
re-established than could the big shoe factory be broken up and returned
to the shanty of the village shoemaker.... Bryan's dream ... the last
effort of the middle classes to escape their surely destined
strangulation ... which gave birth to the abortive progressive party.
I was assured by Miss Martin and Mackworth that a poet who could sing
American ideals and dreams was needed by them.... Ray Stannard Baker,
Peter Finley Dunne, Upton Sinclair, were all to write for them....
I saw clearly that their revolution was a backward-working one. That the
country's business could never again be broken up into a multitude of
small shops and individual competitors.
Of course, I was at that time a Socialist of the violent, fiery
type--with a strong cast toward the anarchism of Emma Goldman.
But it flattered me to be taken, as it were, into the inner councils of
such great folk....
"Send us some of your poetry, with the right American ring to it,
Johnnie," suggested Miss Martin, "and we will make you the poet of the
group."
I think that Ally Merton's clothes on me, and his correct tie, made my
good impression, as much as my after-talk around the fireplace, where I
spun yarns of my strange life and adventures.
* * * * *
"You made a hit," commented Ally, as he conducted me back to his house,
"it's a great opening for you. Follow it up!"
"I will!"
* * * * *
That night I could not sleep. My blood made a tumult through my body.
Before dawn I had written two poems on national themes; didactic verses,
each with a moral of democracy tagged to it, and much about the worth of
simplicity in it, and the dignity of honest labour.
Yes, I would be their poet. And America's poet....
And visions of a comfortable, bourgeois success took me ... interminable
Chautauquas, with rows of women listening to my inspiring verses ...
visits as honoured guest to the homes of great popular leaders like
Roosevelt ... dignity and rides in parlour cars, instead of dusty, dirty
box cars ... interviews of weight and speeches of consequence ... and
the newspapers would drop their undercurrent of levity when I was
written about in them, and treat me with consideration.
Finally, I would possess a home like Mackworth's, set back amid shade
trees, a house not too large, not too small ... a cook and maid ... a
pretty, unobtrusive wife devoted to me....
And I would wear white linen collars every day, tie the ends of my tie
even ... and each year would see a new book of mine out, published by
some bookseller of repute ... and I could afford Red Seal records ...
and have my largest room for a library....
Middle-class comfort was upon me ... good plumbing ... electric light
... laundry sent out ... no more washing of my one shirt overnight and
hanging it up to dry on the back of a chair, while I slept ... and
putting it on, next morning, crinkly and still damp.
I was already seduced, if there hadn't been that something in me which I
myself could not control!
* * * * *
It was when I caught Mackworth on the streets of his town and in his
newspaper office that I discovered the man himself.
In our country, especially in the Middle West, everybody watches
everybody else for the least lapse in the democratic spirit.
Though he was truly democratic at heart, Mackworth laid it on in
theatric outward appearance, in true line with the Kansas tradition of a
sockless Jerry Simpson, who went without socks, as the adjective
implies, and made Congress on that one platform of his sartorial lack
... of William Roscoe Stubbs, who rode into the office of governor
partly on the fact that his daughter could make salt-rising bread ... a
form of bread-making cultivated by the hardy pioneers of the state, and
now no longer necessary.
Mackworth was "in-legged" ... that is, his legs on the insides rubbed
together from the crotch to the knees ... and he wore old patches,
hanging there actually in strips ... and, I think, had his trouser-seat
patched, too ... and though he could have afforded a car, he drove
about, he and his family, in a rickety old two-seated rig, deliberately
kept, it seemed, in ill-repair ... and it was such an old ex-plow horse
that dragged it about!
His fellow townsmen laughed, but they liked it. "Jarv's all right! No
nonsense about Jarv, even ef he is one o' them lit'rary fellers!"
To call everybody by the first name--that was the last word in honest,
democratic fellowship.
* * * * *
Whether this exterior appearance of Mackworth was sincere or affected in
him I never could quite tell. I am almost inclined to believe it was not
done for effect,--but out of an Assisian simplicity of heart, as a sign
manual of Bourgeois integrity.
If it was an affectation, his personal attitude toward the people with
whom he came into contact was not ... in his office everybody loved him,
and worked for him with that easy efficiency that comes of good will and
respect....
Unostentatiously and affectionately he went about helping people.
"We've got a wonderful town here ... very little vice, except that which
always will be in every community because it is inherent in human nature
... we have a fine college of our own ... a fine electric plant ...
everybody's lawn is well-kept ... nobody in this town need be out of a
job ... for miles around us the land is rich in real wealth of waving
corn and wheat....
Kansas will be the centre, the Athens, of our civilisation, one day....
We have a fine Harvey Eating House at our railway station, managed by a
hustler ... you must have Ally take you there for dinner before you go
back to Laurel."
The idealisation of small comfort ... in a case like Mackworth's, fairly
unobjectionable ... but in most cases insufferably stodgy ... the
dry-rot of art, literature, life ... leading to a smug conceit that in
turn ends in that school of "two hills of corn where one cluster of
violets grew before."
No wonder that the _National Magazine_, starting with a splendid
flourish of knight-errantry, degenerated into the mere,
"let-well-enough-alone" thrift-crier it is.... "'How I Became an Expert
Tombstone Salesman' ... 'How I collected Tin Foil After Work-Hours and
Added Three Hundred a Year Extra to My Salary as Stenographer.'..."
Rather, far rather, the Rockefeller, that shrewd manipulator of
businesses ... with all his parsimony in personal economics ... his diet
of bread and milk ... and his giving away of millions to missions and
scientific institutions....
Rather the big Morgan, who knew the old masters as well as he knew the
weaknesses of men ... who hobnobbed, not as a democrat, but as
aristocratic as the best of them, with princes, kings, emperors, in his
grim, forbidding dignity.
This at least presented bigness and romance!
* * * * *
"Want to meet Uncle Bill?" and Mackworth led me into a close-shut room
blue-thick with smoke....
I coughed and choked. A fire extinguisher should have preceded our
entry.
There sat--the lumbering trot of his typewriter heard long before he
assumed visible, hazy outline--William Struthers, known to the newspaper
world as "Old Uncle Bill," the writer of daily prose-verse squibs on the
homely virtues, the exalter of the commonplaces of life, the deifier of
the ordinary.
Uncle Bill's head of strong, black hair stood upright like thick wire.
His thick, stubby fingers trotted like cart horses on and on. He stopped
and drew up a chair for me.
"Of course I ain't calling my stuff poetry," he began deprecatingly,
"but I do a lot of good for folks ... folks read my stuff when they
ain't got time to read the real poets."
Instead of flattering him, I gave him, frankly but gently, my opinion
of the cornfed school of literature, easing the sting by inferring that
he without doubt had bigger things up his sleeve than his so-called
prose poems.
What I said struck the right chord.
"Of course a fellow has to make a living first."
(But, in my heart, I thought--it is just as vile for a man to send his
wife out as a street-walker, and allege the excuse about having to live,
as it is for a poet to prostitute his Muse.)
* * * * *
Nevertheless, Mackworth, Uncle Bill and I stood together, in the sunny
street outside, posing for the photographer. And I swelled with
inordinate pride. Though I knew I was bigger than both of them put
together, yet, in the eyes of the world, these men were big men--and
having my photograph taken with them was an indication to me, that I was
beginning to come into my own.
Perhaps our picture would be reproduced in some Eastern paper or
magazine ... perhaps even in the _Bookman_.
* * * * *
"Uncle Bill Struthers is an example of what Kansas can do for a man...."
said Mackworth, when we were alone. "Bill, in the old days, was a sort
of tramp printer ... clever, but with all his ability in him unexpressed
... he was always down and out ... and drink! It verged on dipsomania.
He never held a job long ... though he was a good compositor, he was
always on the move from place to place....
"Then he came to Kansas where we have prohibition ... and it has panned
out in Uncle Bill's case pretty fine.
"He came to work for me ... fell by chance into his prose-poetry vein.
It took; was instantly copied in all the newspapers ... of course, I
could do it as well, or anyone else with a rhyming turn ... but he was
the originator ... and people liked his sturdy common sense, his
wholesome optimism.
"Now Bill is happy; his stuff's syndicated--in thousands of households
wherever English is spoken his name is a familiar word. He gives whole
communities strength to go on with the common duties of life."
"And his drinking?"
"He has conquered that entirely ... once every so often the fit comes
over him--the craving for it--then, when Uncle Bill turns up missing, as
the Irishman puts it, none of us worries....
"We all know he has hitched up his horse and buggy and is off, driving
and driving and driving across country, to work the fit out ... no, he
never touches anything stronger than tobacco and coffee now....
"In a few days he comes back ... no one says a word ... we all know ...
and love and respect him....
"He's happy now, is Uncle Bill ... married a young wife ... has a home
all his own ... money piling up in the bank."
* * * * *
Ally Merton smiled quizzically when I spoke of Uncle Bill to him....
"Yes, Uncle Bill's a fine, quaint old chap ... whenever he has a tiff
with his wife--of course, never anything serious--he locks himself in
the kitchen ... closes all the windows ... smokes up terrifically with
his corncob ... and plays and plays for hours on end ... his Red Seal
records of classical music of which he is so fond.
"This behaviour of his is a well-known joke among us, a joke with his
wife, to!" ... the speaker paused, to continue--
"He has a good library and quite a large knowledge of the English
poets."
"That makes it all the more terrible," I replied, "for if he wrote his
verse-prose out of ignorance, he might be somewhat forgiven ... but he
knows better."
* * * * *
I gave a lecture on Keats to a woman's club. They paid me thirty dollars
for the lecture....
"Well, you surely made a killing ... those old birds will worship you
for life," sniggered Ally.
* * * * *
Mackworth and I had a farewell talk before I returned to Laurel. We
stood again in front of his office, on the sunny street ... he had come
out to bid me good-bye.
We talked of the folk poetry of America.... Mackworth recited to me
several of the songs and ballads which I have since seen in Lomax's book
of Cowboy Songs.... I repeated the tale of how I had collected the
jail-songs that I subsequently lost while jumping a freight....
"There's lots of poetry in American life ... Stephen Foster Collins
scratched the surface of it ... but he was a song writer....
"There's poetry on farm, ranch, in small town, big city, all waiting for
the transmuting touch of the true singer ... not newspaper rhymes ...
neither the stock effusions on Night, Love, Death and Immortality
inserted as tail-piece to stories and articles in magazines....
"There's the negro mind ...--ought to hear them sing, making up songs as
they load and unload boats along the Mississippi ... nobody's ever dug
back into the black mind yet--why don't you do these things?"...
* * * * *
"Good-bye, Mister Mackworth--I've had a fine time!"
"Good-bye, my boy ... be a good boy ... God bless you!"
* * * * *
At the Harvey Eating House the manager brought me out a cardboard box
neatly packed, full of all manner of good things to eat....
"Good-bye, Ally! thanks for your hospitality, Ally! thank your folks for
me again!"
"I will. See you up at Laurel some day soon!"
For Merton was coming to study there, in the fall.
* * * * *
Back in Laurel I resumed my studies again in my intense though haphazard
way. Doctors' degrees and graduation certificates did not interest me. I
meditated no career in which such credentials would stand me in stead.
But the meat and substance of what the world had achieved, written,
thought--it was this that I sought to learn and know.
Already the professors were beginning to row about me and report me for
cutting recitations. On the score of my scholarship and my knowing my
subject they had no complaint. It was that I disrupted their classes and
made for lax discipline.
But I seldom cut class deliberately.... I would find myself lost in a
book back in the "stack" as the big room that housed the tiers of books
was called. The day would be dusking, the lights of evening glimmering
below in town, to my bewildered eyes! The day gone, when I had stepped
back among the books at nine o'clock, intending to while away a half
hour between classes! (Once it was Sidney's Arcadia that entranced me
so).
Or I would set out for class ... hatless ... my hair tousled and long
... in my sandals that were mocked at by my colleagues ... my books
under arm ... and fall into a reverie that would fetch me up, two miles
or so away, a-stray up a by-road flanked with a farmhouse and young
cornfields.
Then it would be too late for my schoolday, and I would make a day of it
... would perhaps get acquainted with some farmer and his family, have
dinner and supper at his house, and swap yarns with him and the rest of
his people.
* * * * *
Jack Travers was as proud of my foot-trip to Osageville as if he had
accomplished it himself.
"The boys out at the Sig-Kappa house expect three or four kegs of beer
in from Kansas City ... come on out and help us to celebrate."
"But I don't drink."
"Go on! you've told me about the time you did what you called 'slopping
up' down in Texas!"
"That was only once ... and since then I've become a physical
culturist."
"Well, come and join the party anyhow ... it won't hurt you to look on."
My curiosity impelled me to accept the invitation to the "keg party" as
such a jamboree was known among the students.
The kegs of beer waited us at the station ... disguised with misleading
labels ... "chemicals, handle with care." Tenderly we loaded them on the
waggon that had been hired. The driver sat smiling as the solicitious
students heaved them up and secured them firmly....
We sat dignified and quiet, till the outskirts of the town were reached
... then the whip was brought down and away we whooped, bouncing along
the country road....
We whipped off down the road into the open country with a roar of
singing and shouting. We sat on the kegs to keep them from jumping out,
as we urged the driver to ply the whip.
* * * * *
There was a corner in a cornfield that bent inward, hidden from the
casual passer-by by a grove of Osage orange trees. Here we drew up,
jumped out, tenderly conveyed the kegs forth ... the ground we had
chosen, in the corner of the field, was too rocky for planting. It was
sultry early afternoon, of a late spring day.
The driver was offered a drink.
"Nope," he shook his head, grinning wisely, "I'm a teetotaler."
"Be back for us at dark," we shouted, as he jee-d about, heading toward
town again.
"Here's to old Gregory and his first drunk!"
Tin cups had been produced, and the bung of one of the barrels started
... the boys lifted their full, foaming cups in unison.
"Bottoms up!"
I joined in the drinking, despite my previous protestation that I would
not....
"Where's the old boy that runs this farm?"
"All the family's probably in town, this being Saturday afternoon."
"Let's whoop 'er up, then!"
We sang and shouted at the top of our voices.
The cups had been four times filled.
Though I had poured half of mine on the ground, I already felt dizzy.
But also a pleasant tingling, a warmth, was slowly increasing in my
nerves and veins and body ... an increased sense of well-being permeated
me. I stopped spilling my beer on the ground and drank it eagerly.
Someone proposed races up and down the cornfield. We rolled up our
trousers, to make it more hilarious, and ran, smashing through the
tender spring growth ... yelling and shouting....
Then the game unaccountably shifted into seeing who could pull up the
most corn stalks, beginning at an equal marked-off space out in each row
and rushing back with torn-up handfuls....
The afternoon dropped toward twilight and everybody was as mellow as the
departing day--which went down in a riot of gold....
A great area of the field looked as if it had fallen in the track of a
victorious army, or had been fallen upon by a cloud of locusts.
A chill came in with twilight, and we built a fire, and danced about it.
I danced and danced ... we all danced and howled in Indian disharmony
... wailing ... screeching ... falling ... getting up again ... when I
danced and leaped the world resumed its order ... when I stood still or
sat down plump, the trees took up the gyrations where I had left off,
and went about in solemn, ringing circles ... green and graceful minuets
of nature....
"Here's to good old Gregory, drink 'er down, drink 'er down!" I heard
the boys, led by Jack Travers, bray discordantly.
"Want 'a hear some songs?" I quavered, interrogating.
"What kind o' songs?" asked a big, hulking boy that we called 'Black
Jim,' because of his dark complexion.
"Real songs," I replied, "jail songs, tramp songs, coacaine songs!"
All those Rabelaisan folk-things I had lost while hopping the freight,
came surging back, each not in fragments, but entire. Drunk, I did then
what my brain since, intoxicated or sober, cannot do ... I rendered them
all, one after the other, just as I had copied them down....
* * * * *
"And more! Gregory, more!" the boys kept shouting.
I sat down and began to cry because I had lost the script. It had all
gone out of my head again as quickly as it had come, so that I could not
even repeat one they'd asked for.
"Hell, he's got a crying drunk the first thing!"
"Cheer up, old scout ... here's another cupful."
"No ... I don't want any more ... I'm never going to drink again."
And I knocked the cup out of Travers' hand with a violent drunken sweep
of negation.
"No use getting huffy about it," someone put in belligerently.
"If anybody wants to fight," it was Black Jim, huge and menacing and
morose, advancing....
Fight! knives! jails!...
Ah, yes, I was still in jail ... and Bud and the burly cotton thief were
at it....