"I'll admit frankly to you, Gregory, but don't, of course, repeat what
I say--that I'll never let a nigger play on the football team ... when
they sweat they stink too badly ... no, sir, John Brown's State or not,
the negro was never meant to mix with the white on terms of equality."
* * * * *
It was mainly out of consideration for Langworth, and desire to please
him, that I now joined the Unitarian Church, of which all the old
settlers of Laurel were members. This included a testy old gentleman
named Colonel Saunders, who had been one of John Brown's company, had
quarrelled with him,--and who now, every year, maintained, at the annual
meeting of old settlers, that Brown had been a rogue and murderer ... a
mad man, going about cutting up whole families with corn knives....
At this juncture in his speech, which was made undeviatingly every year,
a sentimental woman would rise and cry out--
"John Brown, God bless him, whatever you say, Colonel Saunders, his soul
still goes marching on--"
"I grant that, madam--that his soul still goes marching on--I _never_
contested that--but _where_ does it go marching on!"
Then the yearly riot of protests and angry disputation would wake.
And every spring, in anticipation of this mêlée, reporters from the
Kansas City papers were sent to cover the story of the proceedings of
the Old Settlers' Society.
* * * * *
Bob Fitzsimmons stopped off at our town, with his show. Though I
couldn't afford to attend the performance, I did race down to the
station, go up to him, and ask the privilege of a handshake.
His huge, freckled ham of a hand closed over mine in a friendly manner
... which disappeared up to the wrist. He exchanged a few, simple, shy
words with me from a mouth smashed to shapelessness by many blows. He
smiled gently, with kind eyes.
I was prouder of this greeting than of all my growing associations with
well-known literary figures. And I boasted to the boys of meeting "Bob"
... inventing what I said to "Bob" and what "Bob" said to me, _ad
infinitum_.
* * * * *
Though the great athlete shared my admiration with the great writer,
yet my staying awake at night writing, my but one meal a day,
usually,--except when I was invited out to a fraternity house or the
house of a professor--and my incessant drinking of coffee and coco-cola
to keep my ideas whipped up--all these things incapacitated me from
attaining any high place in athletic endeavour. I was fair at boxing and
could play a good scrub game of football. But my running, on which I
prided myself most--I entered for the two-mile, one field day, and won
only third place. I had gone back in form since Hebron days.
Dr. Gunning, head of our physical instruction, informed me that,
exercise as I might, I could never hope to be stronger or put on more
weight ... "you had too many hardships and privations in your growing
years ... and you are of too nervous a temperament."
* * * * *
But my love for Vanna had regularised me somewhat. I discarded my
sandals and bought Oxford ties. And I preserved a crease in my trousers
by laying them, folded carefully, under my mattress every night. And I
took to wearing shirts with white linen collars....
And I kept a picture of the girl I adored, secretly, among my
manuscripts--it was one I had begged of "Con" Cummins, frankly taking
him into my confidence as to my state of heart toward Vanna. Which
confidence "Con" never abused, though it might have afforded endless
fields of fun.
"Con" framed the picture for me.
When alone with it, I often actually knelt to it, as to a holy image.
And I kissed and kissed it, till it was quite faded away.
* * * * *
Emma Silverman, the great anarchist leader, came to Laurel, with her
manager, Jack Leitman. I went to the Bellman House, the town's swellest
hotel, to see her. I had never met her but had long admired her for her
activities and bravery.
I found her a thick-built woman, after the gladiatorial fashion ... as
she moved she made me think of a battleship going into action. There was
something about her face ... a squareness of jaw, a belligerency, that
reminded me of Roosevelt, whom I had seen twice ... once, at Mt. Hebron,
when he had made a speech from the chapel platform ... (when I had
determined not to join in the general applause of one whom I considered
a mere demagogue--but, before I knew it, found myself on my feet
roaring inarticulately as he strode in) and again, after he had returned
from his African expedition, and had come to Laurel to dedicate a
fountain set up for the local horses and dogs by the S.P.C.A.
Jack Leitman looked to me like a fat nincompoop. Such a weakling as
great women must necessarily, it seems, "fall for." But he was an
efficient manager. Possessed of a large voice and an insistent manner,
he sold books by the dozen before and after Emma Silverman's
lectures....
Miss Silverman already knew of me through Summershire, the wealthy
socialist editor and owner of _Summershire's Magazine_, and Penton
Baxter. It thrilled me when she called me by my first name....
Her first lecture was on Sex. The hall was jammed to the doors by a
curiosity-moved crowd.
She began by assuming that she was not talking to idiots and cretins,
but to men and women of mature minds--so she could speak as she thought
in a forthright manner. She inveighed against the double standard. When
someone in the auditorium asked what she meant by the single standard
she replied, she meant sexual expression and experience for man and
woman on an equal footing ... the normal living of life without which no
human being could be really decent--and that regardless of marriage and
the conventions!
"The situation as it is, is odious ... all men, with but few exceptions,
have sexual life before marriage, but they insist that their wives come
to them in that state of absurd ignorance of their own bodily functions
and consequent lack of exercise of them, which they denominate 'purity.'
...
"I doubt if there is a solitary man in this audience--a married man--who
has not had premarital intercourse with women."
All the while I kept my eye on Professor Wilton, who sat near me, in the
row ahead ... he was flushing furiously in angry, puritanic dissent ...
and I knew him well enough to foresee a forthcoming outburst of protest.
"Yes, I think I can safely say that there is not one married man here
who can honestly claim that he came to his wife with that same physical
'purity' which he required of her."
Wilton leaped to his feet in a fury ... the good, simple soul. He was
so indignant that the few white hairs on his head worked up sizzling
with his emotion....
"_Here's one!_" he shouted, forgetting in his earnest anger the
assembled audience, most of whom knew him.
There followed such an uproar of merriment as I have never seen the like
before nor since. The students, of course, howled with indescribable joy
... Emma Silverman choked with laughter. Jack Leitman rolled over the
side table on which he had set the books to sell as the crowd passed
out--
After the deafening cries, cat-calls and uproars, Emma grew serious.
"I don't know who you are," she cried to Professor Wilton, "but I'll
take chances in telling you that you're a liar!"
Again Wilton was on his feet in angry protest.
"Shame on you, woman! have you no shame!" he shouted.
This sally brought the house down utterly. The boys hooted and
cat-called and stamped again....
Emma Silverman laughed till the tears streamed down her face....
* * * * *
During the four days she remained in Laurel her lectures were crowded.
* * * * *
Walking up the hill one day, I overtook Professor Wilton, under whom I
had studied botany, and whom I liked, knowing he was sincere and had
spoken the incredible though absolute truth.
"That woman, that anarchist friend of yours, Gregory, is a coarse
woman!"
I rose to Emma's defence ... but he kept repeating ... "no, no ... she
is nothing but a coarse, depraved woman."
* * * * *
At my instigation, the Sig-Kaps gave an afternoon tea for her. And I was
proud to act as her introducer. The boys liked her. She was like a good
gale of wind to the minds and souls of us.
* * * * *
I saw Emma and Jack off at the train. I carried two of her grips for
her.
"Take Johnnie with you!" jovially shouted some of the boys--a motor car
full of them--Phi Alphs--as we stepped to the station platform....
She answered them with a jolly laugh, a wave of the hand....
"No, I'll leave him here ... you need a few like him with you!"
* * * * *
"I have something on my conscience," remarked Miss Silverman to me,
"Johnnie, do you really think that old professor was speaking the
truth?"
"I'm sure of it, Miss Silverman."
"Why, then, I'm heartily sorry ... and it was rough of me ... and will
you tell the professor for me that I sincerely apologise for having hurt
his feelings ... tell him I have so many jackasses attending my lectures
all over the country, who rise and say foolish and insincere things,
just to stand in well with the communities they live in--that sometimes
it angers me, their hypocrisy--and then I blaze forth pretty strong and
lay them flat!"
* * * * *
Professor Wilton was a Phi Alph. From that time he was spoken of as "the
only Phi Alph Virgin."
* * * * *
The periods when I had rested secure in the knowledge of where my next
meal was coming from, had been few. Life had pressed me close to its
ragged edge ever since I could remember.
Now I was accorded a temporary relief. Penton Baxter wrote me that he
had procured me a patron ... Henry Belton, the millionaire Single-Taxer,
had consented to endow me at fifteen dollars a week, for six months. I
had informed Baxter, in one of my many letters to him--for we had
developed an intimate correspondence--that I had a unique fairy drama in
mind, but could not write it because of the harassment of my struggle
for bread and life.... I had laid aside for the present my projected
"Judas."
* * * * *
Singing all the time, I packed my books in a large box which the corner
grocer gave me, and, giving up my noisy room over the tinshop, I was off
to the Y.M.C.A., where I engaged a room, telling the secretary, who knew
me well, of my good luck, and enjoining him not to tell anyone else ...
which I promptly did myself....
I selected one of the best rooms, a corner one, with three windows
through which floods of light streamed. It was well-furnished. The bed
was the finest I had ever had to sleep in.
Immediately I went to Locker's, the smart students' clothier, and put
on a ready-made suit of clothes, of blue serge. And I charged new shirts
and little white collars ... and several flowing ties. And a fine, new
pair of shoes.
"You sure look nifty," commented Locker, who himself waited on me.
Then I went to a bookstore and plunged recklessly, purchasing Gosse and
Garnett's _Illustrated History of English Literature_, in four volumes,
an expensive set.
I charged everything on the strength of my endowment, and, of course, in
order to gain the credit I sought, I showed Baxter's letter, and pledged
each storekeeper not to spread the story....
Before nightfall practically the whole student body knew of my good
luck. And Jack Travers had found me, lying back, luxuriously clad in my
newly acquired, big blue bathrobe, in my morris chair....
He looked me over with keen amusement.
Somehow, for several years, my one dream of luxury and affluence had
been to own a flowered bathrobe to lounge in, and to wear on the
athletic field. I had hitherto had to be content with a shabby overcoat.
On my new sectional bookcase stood a statue of the Flying Mercury, that
my eye might continually drink in my ideal of physical perfection.
Opposite that, stood my plaster cast of Apollo Belvedere, as indicative
of the god of song that reigned over my thoughts and life.
* * * * *
"Jack, I want you to come and have supper with me!"
"Johnnie, you are just like a big baby ... all right, I'll dine with
you, after I've shot in the story about your endowment to the _Star_."
"Hurry up, then,--it's after five now. I've never had enough money
before, to treat you ... it's you that have always treated me."
"Where'll we dine?"
"At the swellest place in town, the Bellman House ... Walsh will charge
me." Walsh Summers was the proprietor.
* * * * *
Big, fat Walsh welcomed me and Travers.
"No, Johnnie, I won't charge you. Instead, you and Jack are dining as
guests of the house."
And he would have it no other way.
* * * * *
Ally Merton was right about appearances. To have your shirts laundered
regularly makes a man a different being. People that only noticed me
before with a sort of surreptitious mockery now began to treat me with
surprised respect. Professors invited me even more--the more
conservative of them--to dine at their homes.
And it was delightful to have living quarters where there was both hot
and cold running water. I took a cold bath, every morning, after my
exercise, and a hot bath, every night, before going to bed.
The place was well-heated, too. I no longer had to sit up in bed, the
covers drawn to my chin to keep from freezing, while I read, studied,
wrote. Nor did I need sit on my hands, in alternation, to keep one warm
while I rhymed with the other, during those curious spells of
inspiration, those times of ecstasy--occurring mostly in the night--when
I would write and write so rapidly that morning would find me often not
able to decipher the greater part of what I had written ... five or ten
poems in a night ... scrawled madly almost like automatic writing....
* * * * *
William Jennings Bryan came to talk to us at our school auditorium. His
lecture, _The Prince of Peace_, soon degenerated into an old-fashioned
attack on science and the evolutionary theory.
The professors sat bored and mute on the platform beside him, while he
evacuated the forty-year-old wheeze of "your great-great-great-grandfather
might have been a monkey, but, thank God, mine was not!" he won the
usual great response of handclapping and laughter with this....
And then he held out a glass of water, to prove that miracles might
happen, because God, being omnipotent, could, at will, suspend natural
laws.
"Look at this glass of water. I hold it out at arm's length, so. If I
did not hold it, it would drop to the floor and shatter into pieces.
Thus I, by a human act, suspend the law of gravitation ... so God!--"
There was huzzaing and applause. Several professors uneasily shifted the
crossing of their knees ... one or two stared diplomatically at the
ceiling.
I grew angry and sent forth several sharp hisses before I knew what I
was doing ... the effect was an electric stillness for the moment. Then
a roar of indignant applause drowned my protest. And I stopped and
remained quiet, with much craning of necks about me, to look at me.
As the crowd poured out, I ran out into the road, from group to group,
and, wherever I found a professor walking along, I vociferated my
protest at our allowing such a back-water performance at the State's
supposed centre of intelligence.
"But, Gregory, it makes no difference ... the argument is settled, let
platform orators like Bryan tilt at windmills all they may."
"The hell it doesn't make a difference! if you professors are worth your
salt, you won't let a Chautauqua man get by with such bunco."
* * * * *
The writing of my fairy drama progressed amain.
I mailed a copy of it to Penton Baxter, who said that it had genuine
merit. Was not great, but showed great promise.
Henry Belton, from London, wrote me that it was beautiful and fine, but
too eccentric for production in even the eccentric theatre.
And Belton kept deluging me with Single Tax pamphlets. And I wrote him
hot letters in reply, villifying the Single Tax theory and upholding
revolutionary Socialism. And he grew angry with me, and informed me that
he had meditated keeping me in his patronage longer, but I was so
obdurate that he would end my remittance with the six months ... as, in
fact, was all that was originally promised me.
I replied that it made no difference ... that I would be always grateful
to him. His letters stopped. The money stopped. But I went on living at
the Y.M.C.A., charging up rent ... said that I was nearing the end of my
rope again, glad because I had shown to myself that I was capable of
sustained creative effort.
* * * * *
Many well-known men came to Laurel for lectures to the students.
Lyman Abbott appeared.
"The ancient bell-wether of the Standard Oil," Travers irreverently
dubbed him.
The College Y.M.C.A. accorded him a reception. I was one of those
invited to meet him.
After he had delivered a brief talk on God and The Soul, questions were
invited--meant only to be politely put, that the speaker might shine.
But my question was not put for the sake of social amenity ... though
I'll admit, just a little for the sake of showing off.
"Dr. Abbott," I asked, "it is quite possible that there are other worlds
in the sky--that, also, the rest of the planets either are or will be,
homes for souls, for living beings equal to or higher than our present
human grade of development?"
"Yes, yes, that is quite probable."
"Well, then, God, to prove a just God, would have to send his Son to be
crucified a million times--once for each world ... for, if He did not,
then the souls on these worlds would either be damned without a chance
for salvation, or, if God made an exception in their case, that would be
an unfair deal--for us to suffer from a fault other worlds are free of."
Dr. Abbott hemmed and hawed.
"It is not yet proven that there are other inhabited worlds. I an only
dealing with questions of practical theology," he answered, with some
heat and an attempt to be sarcastic.
The members of the Y.M.C.A. were indignant at me for putting a maladroit
question.
"It doesn't do to invite Gregory anywhere. You can't tell what stuff he
might pull."
"A legitimate question--" egged on Travers at my side, "bump the old boy
again, Johnnie."
But I was not given another chance. After a short but painful silence
the Secretary rose and put a suave and stereotyped query ... and others
filled the breach in rapid succession. And the prestige of the great
theologian was salvaged.
Commencement day approached. There came to deliver the address for the
day, George Harvey, then editor of _Harper's Weekly_. Travers was
assigned to interview Harvey....
"The fellow's a pompous big stiff," complained Jack, "the kind that
makes a fetish of morning and evening dress ... wears kid gloves ... and
a top hat ... he has both valet and secretary with him."
"That's no disgrace. Don't you think, Jack, that we Middle-Westerners
only make fun of such people and their habits for the reason that we're
either unable to do the same, or do not dare do it because of our
jealousy of each other--our so-called hick democratic spirit?"
"There's a lot of truth in that. But fundamentally I would say that the
newspaper editors who are here this week, holding a conference and
tendering Harvey a banquet, _mean_ their plainness of dress and life ...
and do not hanker after the clubman's way of life as Harvey represents
it to their eyes ... you just watch for what Ed. Lowe and Billy Dorgan
do to our Eastern chap at the banquet ... they'll kid him till he's
sick."
That banquet will live in the memory of Kansas newspapermen.
Harvey, when he entered the hall where the journalists were already
seated, first snapped his top hat sidewise to his attending valet. Then
he sat down grandly.
Billy Dorgan and Ed. Lowe "rode Harvey around," as Jack phrased it. The
distinguished editor, with his solemnity, invited thrusts. Besides, most
of those present were what was denominated as "progressive" ... Jarvis
Alexander Mackworth was there ... and Alden ... and Tobbs, afterward
governor.
* * * * *
The next day Travers printed a supposititious interview with Harvey's
English valet on how it felt to be a valet of a great man. Both the
valet and Harvey waxed furious, it was said.
* * * * *
Arthur Brisbane visited us. He ran down from Kansas City over night.
This man was Jack Travers' God ... and we of the Press or Scoop Club--a
student newspaper club of which I had recently been made a member--also
looked up to him as a sort of deity.
Travers informed me reverentially that Brisbane was so busy he always
carried his stenographer with him, even when he rode to the Hill in an
auto ... dictating an editorial as he drove along.
"A great man ... a very great man."
I won merit with Travers by reciting an incident of my factory life.
Every afternoon the men in my father's department would bring in
Brisbane's latest editorial to me ... and listen to me as I read it
aloud. To have the common man buy a newspaper for its editorials--that
was a triumph.
And Brisbane's editorials frequently touched on matters that the mob are
supposed not to be interested in ... stories of the lives of poets,
philosophers, statesmen....
One of the men who could barely read ... who ran his fingers along the
lines as he read, asked me--
"Who was this guy SO-krats?"
It was an editorial on Socrates and his life and death that brought
forth the enquiry ... after I had imparted to him what information I
possessed:
"Where can I find more about him, and about that pal of his, Plato?"
* * * * *
I was hanging on to my comfortable room at the Y.M.C.A. by bluff. I had
not let on to the secretary that my Belton subsidy had stopped. Instead,
I affected to be concerned about its delay. But I did this, not to be
dishonest, but to gain time ... I was attempting to write tramp stories,
after the manner of London, and expected to have one of them accepted
soon, though none ever were....
Decker, the student-proprietor of the restaurant where I ate every day,
was more astute.
"Now look here, Gregory, you just can't run your bill up any higher."