"The Bottoms now I sing, where whiskey flows
And two-cent makes life coleur de rose,
Where negro shanties line the sordid way
And rounders wake by night who sleep by day--"
* * * * *
By noon of the day, hints of what was coming were riding the winds of
general report....
Carefully we read the proofs.
At last there it was--all the data, statistics, and details of the
town's debauchery and corruption ... damning, in cold type, the
administration, and the aquiescent powers in the university.
We ourselves had not as yet begun to perceive what it would lead to--a
state-wide scandal that would echo in the Chicago, San Francisco and New
York newspapers, and result in severe criticism of the university
faculty for remaining blind to such a condition of affairs ... and how
there would be interrogations in the Kansas Legislature and a complete
shake-up of the political power in Laurel.
* * * * *
News of the forthcoming exposé spread mysteriously in "The Bottoms"
before the paper was off the press. To avoid the coming storm, already
negro malefactors and white, were "streaming" as Travers phrased it, "in
dark clouds" out of town, for brief sojourns, beyond reach of the
compelling subpoena, in Kansas City, Missouri.
By five o'clock the edition, an extra large one, had been almost
exhausted, and people were lining up at the newspaper office, paying
five cents a copy....
"Senator" Blair rushed back, having heard of what he called our
"treachery" and abuse of his confidence, over telephone....
He looked sick and worried, as if he had run in all the way from the
little lake, five miles from town, where he had gone for his week-end of
idyllic, peaceful fishing....
"You've ruined me, you boys have!" he almost sobbed, collapsing fatly in
his chair, then he flamed, "by God, I'll have you each investigated
personally and clapped in jail," ... which threat, however, he did not
even try to carry through....
Instead, his paper, and the other two town papers, tried to turn off the
affair as a mere college joke, played on a whole community....
But we had expected just such action--rather the executive genius of
Jerome had expected it--for which reason we had confronted the readers
of the _Globe_ with damning facts and statistics, carefully gathered,
which presented an insurmountable barrier to evasion.
And as we also had expected, the Civic Betterment League was also dead
against us....
"Why," cried Langworth to me, "why didn't you bring all the evidence to
us, and let _us_ proceed calmly and soberly with the case?"
"Professor Langworth, you are a friend of mine, and a very good
one--but you know very well that the conditions exposed you people knew
of all along ... and for years you have dallied along without acting on
it."
"We were biding the proper time!"
"The reason you never started something was your fear of involving the
university in the publicity that was sure to follow!..."
Langworth was a good man, but he knew I had him. He hemmed and hawed,
then covered his retreat in half-hearted anger at me....
"You know well enough, Johnnie Gregory, that all you boys did it for was
to 'pull a stunt'--indulge in a little youthful horseplay."
"Granted--but we have effected results!"
* * * * *
"What results? merely a lot of trouble for everybody!"
"The Civic Betterment League now has a chance afforded it to make good
... we've provided you with the indisputable data, the evidence ... it's
up to you, now, to go ahead."
"So God help me, Johnnie, sometimes you make me wish I had never
sponsored you here."
* * * * *
The editor of the _Globe_ made a right-about-face--repudiating us.
Jack Travers, in the style of his beloved Brisbane, put an editorial in
the school paper, the _Laurelian_, addressed to Blair, beginning, "Get
back into the collar of your masters, you contemptible cur."
* * * * *
The usual thing took place. Most of the worst criminals were
mysteriously given ample time to make their get-away ... probably aided
in it. The humorous side of the resulting investigation and trials of
various minor malefactors were played up almost exclusively.
Little by little the town dropped back to its outward observance of not
seeing in its civic life what it did not care to see, and which no one
could radically remedy till human nature is itself different.
* * * * *
The school year was drawing to a close, my last year at Laurel.
Professor Black, of the English department, had assured me that, if I
would tone down a bit, I could easily win a scholarship in his
department, and, later, an assistant professorship.
But I preferred my rambling, haphazard course of life, which was less
comfortable, but better for the freedom of mind and spirit that poets
must preserve....
Dr. Hammond, when I had given him that luncheon on the borrowed money,
had taken me aside and informed me that one of the professors--an
influential man on the Hill (beyond that, he refused to identify him
further) had advised him, Hammond, not to accept the luncheon in his
honour....
"We don't approve generally of Gregory, on the Hill, you know...."