New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1912
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1912
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published July, 1912.
Reprinted October, November, 1912
PRESS OF T. MOREY & SON
GREENFIELD, MASS., U.S.A.
*A MAN'S WORLD*
*BOOK I*
*I*
All books should have a preface, to tell what they are about and why
they were written.
This one is about myself--Arnold Whitman.
I have sought in vain for a title which would be truly descriptive of
the subject and form of my book. It is not a "Journal" nor a "Diary"
for these words signify a daily noting down of events. Neither
"Memoirs" nor "Recollections" meet the case, for much which I have
written might better be called "Meditations." It certainly is not a
"Novel," for that term implies a traditional "literary form," a
beginning, development and end. I am quite sure that my beginning goes
back to the primordial day when dead matter first organized itself--or
was organized--into a living cell. And whether or not I will ever "end"
is an open question. There is no "unity" in the form of my narrative
except the frame of mind which led me to write it, which has held me to
task till now.
It is the story of how I, born at the close of The Great War, lived and
of the things--common-place and unusual--which happened to me, how they
felt at the time and how I feel about them now.
"Autobiography" is the term which most truly describes what I have tried
to do. But that word is associated with the idea of great men. The
fact that I am not "great" has been my main incentive in writing. We
have text books a plenty on how to become Emperor, at least they tell
how a man named Napoleon did it. There are endless volumes to which you
may refer if you wish to become President of these United States--or
rival the career of Captain Kidd. But such ambitions are rare among
boys over eighteen.
Even before that age I began to wish for a book like the one I have
tried to write. I wanted to know how ordinary people lived. It was no
help in those days to read how this Caesar or that came and saw and
conquered. I shared the ambitions of the boys about me. To be sure
there were day-dreaming moments when we planned to explore Central
Africa or found dynasties. But this was pure make-believe. We knew that
not one man in thousands wins fame. For each moment we dreamed of
greatness there were days on end when we looked out questioningly on the
real world. We got no answers from our teachers. Most of the boys who
were in school with me are today running a store, practicing law or
medicine. They were prepared for it by reading Plutarch in class and
Nick Carter on the sly.
As a youth I wanted of course to gain a comfortable living. I wanted
mildly to win some measure of distinction, but all this was subordinate
to a more definite desire to be a man, and not to be ashamed. A book
about the ordinary life I was to enter, would have been a God-send to
me.
This then is to be the story of my life as it appears to me now, and
how, in the face of the things which happened to me, I tried to be
decent.
I have only two apologies to offer. All the rest of my writing has been
scientific--on the subject of criminology. I am unpracticed in
narration. And I have been enough in courts to realize the difference
between "evidence" and "truth." At best I can only give "evidence."
Others who knew me would tell of my life differently, perhaps more
truly. But it will be as near truth as I can make it.
And now to my story.
*II*
My earliest distinct memory is of an undeserved flogging. But from this
grew my conception of Justice. It was, I think, my first abstract idea.
My parents died long before I can remember and I was brought up in the
home of the Rev. Josiah Drake, a Cumberland Presbyterian minister of the
Tennessee Mountains. He was my uncle, but I always called him "the
Father." He was the big fact of my childhood and my memory holds a more
vivid picture of him than of any person I have known since.
He was very tall, but stooped heavily. If he had shaved he would have
resembled Lincoln, and this, I suppose, is why he wore so long and full
a beard. For he was a Southerner and hated the Northern leader with all
the bitterness of the defeated. And yet he was a Christian. I have
never known one who served his God more earnestly, more devotedly. He
was a scholar of the old type. He knew his Latin and Greek and Hebrew.
And as those were rare accomplishments among the mountain clergy of
Tennessee it gave him a great prestige. In all but name he was the
Bishop of the country-side. His faith was that of Pym and Knox and
Jonathan Edwards, a militant Puritan, fearless before the world, abject
in humility before his God.
Of his wife, my aunt Martha, I have scarcely a memory. When I was very
young she must have been important to me, but as I grew to boyhood she
faded into indistinct haziness. I recall most clearly how she looked at
church, not so much her face as her clothes. In all those years she must
have had some new ones, but if so, they were always of the same stuff
and pattern as the old. Sharpest of all I remember the ridges the bones
of her corset made in the back of her dress as she leaned forward,
resting her forehead on the pew in front of us, during the "long
prayer." There was always a flush on her face when it was over. I
think her clothing cramped her somehow.
I have also a picture of her heated, flurried look over the kitchen
stove when she was engaged in the annual ordeal of "putting up"
preserves. Even when making apple-butter she maintained a certain
formality. The one time when she would lapse from her dignity was when
one of the negroes would rush into the kitchen with the news that a
buggy was turning into our yard. The sudden scurry, the dash into her
bedroom, the speed with which the hot faced woman of the kitchen would
transform herself into a composed minister's wife in black silk, was the
chief wonder of my childhood. It was very rarely that the guests
reached the parlor before her.
All of her children had died in infancy except Oliver. As the Father's
religion frowned on earthly love, she idealized him in secret. I think
she tried to do her Christian duty towards me, but it was decidedly
perfunctory. She was very busy with the big house to keep in order,
endless church work and the burden of preserving the appearances her
husband's position demanded.
There was a large lawn before the house down to a picket fence. Mowing
the grass and whitewashing that fence were the bitterest chores of my
childhood. The main street of the village was so little used for traffic
that once or twice every summer it was necessary to cut down the tall
grass and weeds. Next to our house was the church, it was an
unattractive box. I remember that once in a long while it was painted,
but the spire was never completed above the belfry. There was a
straggling line of houses on each side of the street and two stores.
Beyond the Episcopal Church, the road turned sharply to the right and
slipped precipitously down into the valley. Far below us was the county
seat. About five hundred people lived there, and the place boasted of
six stores and a railroad station.
That was its greatest charm to my schoolmates. From any of the fields,
on the hill-side beyond the village, we could look down and watch the
two daily trains as they made a wide sweep up into this forgotten
country. There was one lad whom I remember with envy. His father was
carter for our community and sometimes he took his son down with him.
They slept in the great covered wagon in the square before the county
court house, and came back the next day. The boy's name was Stonewall
Jackson Clarke. He lorded it over the rest of us because he had seen a
locomotive at close quarters. And he used to tell us that the court
house was bigger than our two churches "with Blake's store on top."
I think that as a boy I knew the names of one or two stations on each
side of the county seat. But it never occurred to me that the trains
down there could take you to the cities and countries I studied about in
my geography. Beyond the valley were Missionary Ridge and Lookout
Mountain. But none of the boys I played with realized that the world
beyond the mountains was anything like the country we could see. It
would have surprised us if the teacher had pointed out to us on the
school map the spot where our village stood. The land over which
Cinderella's Prince ruled was just as real to us as New York State or
the countries of Europe, the names of whose capitals we learned by rote.
My cousin Oliver I disliked. As a youngster I did not know why. But
now I can see that he had a craven streak in him, a taint of sneakiness,
an inability to be bravely sincere. It was through him that I got my
lesson in justice.
He was then about sixteen and I eight. His hobby at the time was
carpentry and, as I was supposed to dull his tools if I touched them, I
was forbidden to play in the part of the barn where he had his bench.
He was going to make an overnight visit to some friends in a neighboring
township and at breakfast--he was to start about noon--he asked the
Father to reiterate the prohibition. A few hours later I found Oliver
smoking a corn-silk cigarette behind the barn. He begged me not "to
tell on him." Nothing had been further from my mind. As a bribe for my
silence he said I might play with his tools. The spirit of his offer
angered me--but I accepted it.
After he had left the Father found me at his bench.
"Ollie said I could," I explained.
"At breakfast," the Father replied, "he distinctly said you could not."
But I stuck to it. The Father had every reason to believe I was lying.
It was not in Oliver's nature to be kind to me without reason. And I
could not, in honor, explain the reason. The Father was not the kind to
spoil his children by sparing the rod, and there was no crime in his
code more heinous than falsehood. He tried to flog me into a confession.
There was nothing very tragic to me in being whipped. All the boys I
knew were punished so. I had never given the matter any thought. As I
would not admit that I had lied, this was the worst beating I ever
received. He stopped at last from lack of breath and sent me to bed.
"Oliver will be back to-morrow," he said. "It is no use persisting in
your lie. You will be found out. And if you have not confessed...."
The threat was left open.
I remember tossing about in bed and wishing that I had lied and taken a
whipping for disobedience. It would not have been so bad and would have
been over at once. The next morning I sat sullenly in my room waiting
for Oliver's return, wondering if he would tell the truth. I was not at
all confident. Towards noon, the blackboard turned in at the gate, one
of the negroes took the horse and I heard the Father call Oliver into
his study.
Then suddenly a door slammed and I heard the Father's step on the stair.
He was running. He burst into my room and before I knew what was
happening, he had picked me up in his arms. And, wonder of wonders, he
was crying. I had never before seen a grown man cry. He was asking me,
I could not understand what he meant, but he was asking me to forgive
him. Then I heard the Mother's voice at the door.
"What is the matter, Josiah?"
"Oh, Martha. It's horrible! I caned the lad for a lie and he was
telling the Truth! Oh, my son, my son, forgive me."
At first all I realized was that I was not to be whipped any more. But
all day long the Father kept me close to him and gradually from his talk
I began vaguely to understand that there was such a thing as justice. I
had always supposed that punishments were a matter of the parents' good
pleasure. That it had any relation to cause and effect, that sometimes
a father might be right and sometimes wrong in beating a child, had
never occurred to me.
It is interesting how such things take form in a child's mind. The
Father bought me a set of tools like Oliver's as a peace offering, and
of course I was much more interested in them than in any abstract
conception of justice. Yet in some gradual, subconscious way, the idea
arranged itself in my mind. I began to judge everything by it. I
suppose it marked the end of babyhood, the first faint beginning of
manhood.
*III*
It Is not surprising that, in that austere home, my first fundamental
idea should have been of justice rather than of love.
There may have been a time when the affection between the Father and
Mother had an outward showing. I would like to think that they had
tasted gayer, honey-mooning days. I doubt it. They were helpmates
rather than lovers. The Mother was well named Martha, busy with much
serving. Her work had dovetailed into his. It would be juster to say
her work was his. Their all-absorbing business was the winning of souls
to Christ, and anything of only human interest seemed to them of the
earth, earthy. I never saw anything like a quarrel between them, nor
any passage of affection--except that the Father kissed her when going
on a journey or returning.
It is hard for me to understand such people. Everything which has given
me solace in life, all the pleasures of literature and art, all the real
as well as the written poems, they had rigorously cut off.
Oliver and I kissed the Mother when we went to bed. I never remember
kissing the Father. Yet he loved me. Sometimes I think he loved me
more than his own son. I doubt if I was often separated from his
thoughts, ever from his prayers.
But all I knew as a boy about the affections, which expresses itself
openly, was from Mary Button, my Sunday school teacher. She was
brimming over with the joy of living and in every way the opposite of
the austerity I knew at home. She was altogether wonderful to me. When
the Mother was away at Synodical meetings, Mary used often to come for a
whole day to keep the house in order. It was strange and typical to
hear her sing rollicking college songs at our parlor organ--a wheezy
contraption which seemed entirely dedicated to Moody and Sankey.
All through my childhood Mary passed as a celestial dream, a princess
from some beautiful land of laughter and kisses.
When I was about nine, and she I suppose near nineteen, Prof. Everett,
who had been with her brother in college, began to visit the village. I
disliked him at once with an instinctive jealousy. He has since won a
large renown as a geologist, and was no doubt an estimable man, but if I
should meet him now, after all these years, I am sure the old grudge
would come to life and make me hate him. After a few months he married
her and took her away to a nearby college town.
About a year later, when the ache of her absence was beginning to heal,
and, boy-like, I was in danger of forgetting her, a photograph came of
her and the baby. It was such a loving picture! She looked so radiantly
happy! It was set up on the mantel-piece in the parlor, and seemed to
illuminate that sombre room. I remember exactly how it leaned up
against the bronze clock, between the plaster busts of Milton and Homer.
In those days I supposed one had to be blind to be a poet. The picture
kept her memory alive for me.
Some months later Mary wrote that her husband was going away to attend a
convention and she asked that I might come to bear her company for the
week.
The excitement of that first sortie out into the world is the most vivid
thing which comes to me from my childhood. The Father drove me down the
mountain-side to the county seat and so at last I saw a train at close
quarters. Even when I had watched them through the Father's campaign
glasses I had not realized how large they were. He gave me in charge of
the conductor, a man with an armless sleeve and drooping moustaches, who
had been a corporal in his regiment.
There was a rattle and jerk--we had no air-brakes on the Tennessee
trains in those days--and the railroad station and the Father slipped
out of sight. Such an amazing number of things went by the car window!
I counted all the fields to the next station. There were thirty-seven.
The conductor told me I was not to get off till the eighteenth stop. I
started in valiantly to count them all, but my attention was distracted
by the fact that things near the track went by so much faster than
things far away. In "physics A" at college I learned an explanation of
this phenomena which seemed all right on paper but even today it is
entirely inadequate when I am in a train and actually watching the earth
revolve about distant points in either horizon. Trying to find a reason
for it on that first railroad trip put me to sleep. At last the
conductor woke me up and handed me over to Mary.
I can recall only vaguely the details of that delectable week, the
strangeness of the entire experience is what sticks in my memory. There
was the baby, so soft and round and contented. There was the German
nurse, the first white servant I had ever seen. And there were the
armchairs in the living-room, curved and comfortable and very different
from the chairs in the parlor at home. After supper, instead of sending
me off to bed, Mary read to me before the open fire, read me the
wonderful stories of King Arthur. When at last I was sleepy, she came
with me to my room. It embarrassed me to undress before her, but it was
very sweet to have her tuck me in and kiss me "goodnight."
Mary "spoiled" me, to use the Father's expression, systematically, she
let me eat between meals and gorged me with sweets. One night it made
me sick. I have forgotten whether "dough-nuts" or "pop-overs" were to
blame. When the doctor had gone away, laughing--for it was not
serious--Mary took me into her own bed. I would gladly have suffered
ten times the pain for the warm comfort of her arms about me.
It was during this visit that all the side of life we call Art began to
appeal to me. The King Arthur legends were my introduction to
literature, Malory and Tennyson's "Idylls" were the first written
stories or poems I ever enjoyed. And I think my first impression of
Beauty, was the sight of Mary nursing the baby. I am sure she did not
realize with what wondering eyes I watched her. I was only a little
shaver and she could not have guessed what a novel sight it was for me.
At home, everything human, which could not be suppressed, was studiously
hidden. I think some of the old Madonnas in which the Mother is
suckling the Child would have seemed blasphemous to the Father. Art has
always seemed to me at its highest when occupied with some such simple
human thing.
*IV*
I had two playmates in those days, Margaret and Albert Jennings. Their
father had been on "Stonewall" Jackson's staff. "Al" was my own age,
but seemed older and Margot was a year younger. Until I went away to
school we were almost inseparable. Only in affairs of the church were
we apart, for they were Episcopalians.
Our biggest common interest was a "Chicken Company." We had built an
elaborate run in the back yard of the parsonage and sometimes had as
many as thirty hens. This enterprise led us into the great sin of our
childhood--stealing.
Why I stole I cannot explain. I never pretended to justify it. We
would sell a dozen eggs to my household and then take as many out of the
pantry as were necessary to complete a dozen for Mrs. Jennings. We did
this off and on for four or five years. When the hens laid freely we
did not have to. But if there were not eggs to satisfy the demands of
the two families, we stole. I think we blamed it on the chickens. Al
and I were always full of great projects for improving the stock or the
run and so needed money. There was little danger of discovery, because
housekeeping was a very unexact science in our southern homes. And just
because the chickens refused to lay as they should, seemed a very
trivial reason for sacrificing our plans. But we did not like to do it.
We always searched the nests two or three times in the hope of finding
the eggs we needed.
Al was a queer chap. I remember one time we were two eggs short.
"We'll have to steal them from your mother," I said.
"You may be a thief," he retorted angrily, as we started after the
spoils. "But I intend to pay it back. It's just a loan."
There was a weak subterfuge to the effect that Margot knew nothing of
our dishonesty. The three of us had decided upon this in open council,
to protect her in case we were caught. If there were to be any
whippings, it was for the masculine members of the firm to take them.
But Margot knew, just as well as we did, how many eggs were laid and how
far our sales exceeded that number. But the candy she bought did not
seem to trouble her conscience any more than it did her digestion. I
have met no end of older women, in perfectly good church standing, who
are no more squeamish about how their men folk gain their income.
There was another very feminine trait about Margot. We divided our
profits equally, in three parts. Al and I always put most of our share
back into the business. Margot spent hers on candy. Al used to object
to this arrangement sometimes, but I always stood up for her.
This was because I expected to marry her. I do not remember when it was
first suggested, but it was an accepted thing between us. Col. Jennings
used laughingly to encourage us in it. I spoke of it once at home, but
the Father shook his head and said it would grieve him if I married
outside of our denomination. The Baptists were his special aversion,
but next to them he objected to Episcopalians, whom he felt to be
tainted with popery.
This led to a quarrel with Margot. I told her flatly that I would not
marry her, unless she became a Presbyterian. She was a little snob and,
as the most considerable people of the county belonged to her church,
she preferred to give me up rather than slip down in the social scale.
For several days we did not speak to each other. I refused to let any
misguided Episcopalians in my yard. As the chicken run was in my
domain, Al, who was smaller than I, became an apostate. But Margot held
out stubbornly, until her mother intervened and told us, with great good
sense, that we were much too young to know the difference between one
sect and another, that we had best suspend hostilities until we knew
what we were fighting about. So peace was restored.
This calf-love of mine was strangely cold. Some of the boys and girls
in school used to "spoon." But "holding hands" and so forth seemed
utterly inane to me. I do not know what Margot felt about it, but I no
more thought of kissing her than her brother. The best thing about her
was that she also loved King Arthur. Mary had given me a copy of
Malory. Up in our hay-loft, Margot and I used to take turns reading it
aloud and acting it. Only once in a long while could we persuade Al to
join us in these childish dramatics. I was generally Launcelot.
Sometimes she would be Elaine, but I think she loved best to be the
Queen.
At fourteen I discovered Froissart's Chronicles in the Father's library.
It had a forbidding cover and I might never have unearthed it, if he had
not set me to work dusting his books in punishment for some minor
delinquency. On the bottom shelf there were three big lexicons, Latin,
Greek, and Hebrew. Next to them was the great family Bible. Then came
Cruden's Concordance, a geography of Palestine, "The Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire," Motley's "Dutch Republic"--and Froissart! As I was
dusting it gloomily, it slipped from my hands and fell open to an old
engraving of the Murder of Richard II. There were twenty-four plates in
that volume. Never did boy enter into such a paradise.
I can only guess what the Father would have thought of my filling my
mind with such lore. I took no chances in the matter. With great
pains, I arranged the books so that the absence of Froissart would not
be noticed. Until I went East to school at sixteen, it reposed in the
bottom of the bran bin in the loft, and when at last I went, I gave it
to Margot as my choicest treasure.
When I saw her ten years ago, she showed me the old book. The sight of
it threw us both under constraint, bringing back those old days when we
had planned to marry. The funeral of a dream always seem sadder to me
than the death of a person.
Permanent camp meetings, the things which grew into the Chautauqua
movement, were just beginning their popularity. One had been started a
few score miles from our village and the year I went away to school, the
Father had been made director. We left home early in the summer, and I
was to go East without coming back.
On the eve of my departure, I went to see Margot. It was my first formal
call and, in my new long trousers, I was much embarrassed. For an hour
or so we sat stiffly, repeating every ten minutes a promise to write to
each other. I remember we figured out that it would take me ten years
to finish the Theological Seminary and be ready to marry her. It was
ordained that I was to study for the ministry. No other career had ever
been suggested to me.
The constraint wore off when I asked her for a photograph to take with
me to school. From some instinct of coquetry she pretended not to want
me to have one. Boys at school, she said, had their walls covered with
pictures of girls, she would not think of letting hers be put up with a
hundred others. When I solemnly promised not to have any picture but
hers, she said she had no good one. There was one on the mantel, and I
grabbed it in spite of her protest.
She was a bit of a tomboy and a hoydenish scuffle followed. In the
scramble my hand fell accidentally on her breast. It sent a dazzling
thrill through me. The vision came to me of Mary nursing the baby and
the beauty of her white breast. The idea connected itself with Margot,
struggling in my arms. I knew nothing of the mystery of life. I cannot
tell what I felt--it was very vague--but I knew some new thing had come
to me.
Margot noticed the change. I suppose I stopped the struggle with her.
"What's the matter?" she asked.
"Nothing."
But I went off and sat down apart.
"What's the matter?" she insisted, coming over and standing in front of
me. "Did I hurt you?"
"No," I said. "But we mustn't wrestle like that. We aren't children any
more."
She threw up her head and began to make fun of me and my new long
trousers. But I interrupted her.
"Margot! Margot! Don't you understand?"
I took hold of her hands and pulled her down beside me and kissed her.
It was the first time. I am sure she did not understand what I meant--I
was not clear about it myself. But she fell suddenly silent. And while
I sat there with my arm about her, I saw a vision of Mary's home and the
warm joy of it. Margot and I would have a home like that; not like the
Father's.
I was under the spell of some dizzying emotion which none of our grown
up words will fit. The emotion, I suppose, comes but once, and is too
fleeting to have won a place in adult dictionaries. It was painful and
awesome, but as I walked home I was very happy.
*V*
Of course I never questioned the Father's religious dogmas. I did not
even know that they might be questioned. But two things troubled me
persistently.
I had been taught that our Saviour was the Prince of Peace, that His
chief commandment was the law of love. But when adults got together
there was always talk of the war. I do not think there was any elder or
deacon in our church who had not served. How often I listened to
stories of the wave of murder and rapine that had swept through our
mountains only a few years before!
I remember especially the placing of a battle monument just outside our
village and the horde of strangers who came from various parts of the
state for the ceremony. The heroes were five men in gray uniforms, all
who were left of the company which had stood there and had been shot to
pieces. One was an old man, three were middle aged, and one was so
young that he could not have been more than sixteen on the day of the
fight. The man who had been their captain stayed at the parsonage.
After supper the principal men of the village gathered in our parlor. I
stood by the Father's chair and listened wide-eyed as, in his cracked
voice, the Captain told us all the details of that slaughter. I
remember that in the excitement of his story-telling the old soldier
became profane, and the Father did not rebuke him.
Somehow I could not feel any romance in modern warfare, there seemed no
similarity between these men and the chivalric heroes of The Round
Table. Perhaps if Launcelot had been a real person, there in the
parsonage parlor, and had told me face to face and vividly how he had
slain the false knight Gawaine, had made me see the smear of blood on
his sword blade, the cloven headed corpse of his enemy, that also they
might have seemed abhorrent.
As a little boy I could not understand how a follower of Jesus could be
a soldier. I did not know that grown men were also asking the same
question. Years afterwards I remember coming across Rossetti's biting
sonnet--"Vox ecclesiae, vox Christi"--
"O'er weapons blessed for carnage, to fierce youth
From evil age, the word has hissed along:--
Ye are the Lord's: go forth, destroy, be strong:
Christ's Church absolves ye from Christ's law of ruth."
I do not know what the Father would have thought of those words, for,
like some of the Roundhead leaders of Cromwell's time, he had been
Chaplain as well as Captain of his company. If the war had broken out
again, as the "Irreconcilables" believed it surely would, and if Oliver
had refused to enlist on the ground that he was studying for Christ's
ministry, I think the Father would have cursed him.
The other thing which worried me was a "gospel hymn," which we sang
almost every Sunday. It had a swinging tune, but the words were
horrible.
There is a fountain filled with blood,
Drawn from Emanuel's veins;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains.
Such a gory means of salvation seemed much more frightful to my childish
imagination than the most sulphurous hell.
These things I was told I would understand when I grew up. This was the
answer to so many questions, that I got out of the habit of asking them.
I believed that the Father was very wise and was willing to take his
word for everything.
At eleven he persuaded me "to make a profession of faith" and join the
church. It is only within these latter, mellower years that I can look
back on this incident without bitterness. It was so utterly unfair. The
only thing I was made to understand was that I was taking very serious
and irrevocable vows. This was impressed on me in every way. I was
given a brand new outfit of clothes. I had never had new underwear and
new shoes simultaneously with a new suit and hat before. Such things
catch a child's imagination. I had to stand up before the whole
congregation and reply to un-understandable questions with answers I had
learned by rote. Then for the first time I was given a share of the
communion bread and wine. The solemnity of the occasion was emphasized.
But there was no effort--at least no successful one--to make me
understand what it was all about. When I became old enough to begin to
think of such things, I found that I had already sworn to believe the
same things as long as I lived. Try as hard as I can to remember the
many kindnesses of my adoptive parents, realizing, as I surely do, how
earnestly and prayerfully they strove to do the best for me, this folly
remains my sharpest recollection of them. It was horribly unfair to a
youngster who took his word seriously.
But I never had what is called a "religious experience" until that
summer in camp meeting when I was sixteen.
In after years, I have learned that the older and richer sects have
developed more elaborate and artistic stage-settings for their
mysteries. I cannot nowadays attend a service of the Paulist Fathers,
or at Saint Mary the Virgin's without feeling the intoxication of the
heavy incense and the wonderful beauty of the music. But for a boy, and
for the simple mountain folk who gathered there, that camp was
sufficiently impressive.
It stood on the edge of a mirror lake, under the shadow of Lookout
Mountain, in one of the most beautiful corners of Tennessee. Stately
pines crowded close about the clearing and beyond the lake the hill
dropped away, leaving a sweeping view out across the valley. Man seemed
a very small creature beneath those giant trees, in the face of the
great distances to the range of mountains beyond the valley. There was
nothing about the camp to recall one's daily life. The thousand and one
things which insistently distract one's attention from religion had been
excluded.
Every care had been taken to make the camp contrast with, and win people
from, "The Springs,"--a fashionable and worldly resort nearby. There
was no card playing nor dancing, as such things were supposed to offend
the Deity. The stage to the railroad station did not run on Sunday.
After breakfast every day the great family--a hundred people or
more--gathered by the lake-side and the Father led in prayer. During
the morning there were study courses, most of which were Bible classes.
I only remember two which were secular. One was on Literature and the
King James Version was taken as a model of English prose. No mention
was made of the fact that much of the original had been poetry. There
was also a course on "Science." A professor of Exigesis from a
neighboring Theological Seminary delivered a venomous polemic against
Darwin. The "Nebular Hypothesis" was demolished with many convincing
gestures.
My little love affair with Margot had put me in a state of exaltation.
Other things conspired to make me especially susceptible to religious
suggestion. Oliver was back from his second year in the seminary. My
dislike for him was forgotten. He seemed very eloquent to me in the
young people's meetings, which he conducted.
Mary was there with her three children and had taken for the summer the
cottage at one end of the semi-circle overlooking the lake. Her
husband, Prof. Everett, had been away for several months on the
geological expedition to Alaska, which was, I believe, the foundation of
the eminence he now holds in that science. Mary also had been caught up
in the religious fervor of the place. To me she seemed wonderfully
spiritualized and beautiful beyond words. Oliver and I used often to
walk home with her after the evening meetings and, sitting out on her
porch over the water, talk of religion.
Sundays were continuous revival meetings. Famous fishers-of-souls came
every week. All methods from the most spiritual to the coarsest were
used to wean us from our sins. It was "Salvation" Milton, who landed
me.
He was the star attraction of the summer's program. He stayed in the
camp two weeks, fourteen days of tense emotion, bordering on hysteria.
To many people "Salvation" Milton has seemed a very Apostle. His
message has come to them as holy words from the oracle of the Most High.
To such it may, I fear, seem blasphemous for me--a criminologist--to
write of him as a specimen of pathology. But I have met many who were
very like him in our criminal courts.
I have no doubt of his sincerity--up to the limit of his poor distorted
brain. He had moments of exaltation when he thought that he talked face
to face with God. He believed intensely in his mission. He had lesser
moments, which he regretted as bitterly as did his friends who, like the
sons of Noah, covered him with a sheet that his drunken nakedness might
not be seen by men. He was pitifully unbalanced. But I think that if he
had been given the strength of will to choose, he would have always been
the ardent servant of God we saw in him at the camp meeting.
He was a master of his craft. By meditation and fasting and prayer he
could whip himself into an emotional state when passionate eloquence
flowed from his lips with almost irresistible conviction. He was also
adept at the less venerable tricks of his trade.
It was his custom in the afternoon about four to walk apart in the woods
and spend an hour or more on his knees. Once he took me with him. I
remember the awe of sitting there on the pine needles, in the silence of
the forest and watching him "wrestle with the Spirit." I tried to pray
also, but I could not keep my mind on it so long. Suddenly he began to
speak, asking Christ's intercession on my behalf. And walking home, he
talked to me about my soul. For the first time I was "overtaken by a
conviction of sin." That night he preached on the Wages of Sin.
I will never forget the horror of fear which held me through that
service. Milton was in the habit of dealing with and overcoming men of
mature mind. Such a lad as I was putty in his hands. When, out of the
shivering terror of it, came the loud-shouted promise of salvation,
immunity from all he had made me feel my just deserts, I stumbled
abjectly up the aisle and took my place among the "Seekers." I must say
he had comfort ready for us. I remember he put his arm over my shoulder
and told me not to tremble, not to be afraid. God was mighty to save.
Long before the world was made He had builded a mansion for me in the
skies. He would wash away all my sins in the blood of the Lamb. Milton
had scared me into a willingness to wade through an ocean filled with
blood if safety lay beyond.
The next morning brought me peace. I suppose my overstrained nerves had
come to the limit of endurance. I thought it was the promised "peace
which passeth all understanding." I was sure of my salvation. Several
weeks of spiritual exaltation followed. I read the Bible passionately,
sometimes alone, more often with Oliver or Mary, for it was the fashion
to worship in common. Whenever the opportunity offered in the meetings,
I made "public testimony."
But I would have found it hard to define my faith. I had been badly
frightened and had recovered. This, I thought, came from God. I had
only a crude idea of the Deity. In general, I thought of Him as very
like the Father, with white hair and a great beard. I thought of Him as
intimately interested in all I did and thought, jotting it all down in
the tablets of judgment--a bookkeeper who never slumbered. I was not at
all clear on the Trinity. These mountain Presbyterians were Old
Testament Christians. The Christ had a minor role in their Passion
Play. They talked a good deal of the Holy Ghost, but God, the Father,
the King of Kings, the jealous Jehovah of Israel was their principal
deity. We were supposed to love Him, but in reality we all feared Him.
However, I was very proud in the conviction that I was one of His elect.
Advancing years bring me a desire for a more subtle judgment on things
than the crude verdict of "right" or "wrong." I look back on my
religious training, try to restrain the tears and sneers and think of it
calmly. I doubt if any children are irreligious. Some adults claim to
be, but I think it means that they are thoughtless--or woefully
discouraged. We live in the midst of mystery. We are born from it and
when we die we enter it again. Anyone who thinks must have some
attitude towards the Un-understandable--must have a religion. And
loving parents inevitably will try to help their children to a clean and
sweet emotional relation towards the unknown. Evidently it is not an
easy undertaking. For the adults who surrounded me in my childhood, in
spite of their earnest efforts, in spite of their prayers for guidance,
instead of developing my religious life, distorted it horribly. They
were sincerely anxious to lead me towards Heaven. I do not think it is
putting it too strongly to say they were hounding me down the road which
is paved with good intentions.
I can think of no more important task, than the development of a sane
and healthy "course of religious education for children." The one
supplied in our Sunday schools seems to me very far below the mark. It
is a work which will require not only piety, but a deep knowledge of
pedagogics.
Certainly the new and better regime will discourage precocious
"professions of faith." I do not think it will insist that we are born
in sin and born sinful. Above all it will take care not to make
religion appear ugly or fearsome to childish imagination. Even the most
orthodox Calvinists will learn--let us hope--to reserve "the fountain
filled with blood" and the fires of Hell for adults. The Sunday school
of the future will be held out in the fields, among the flowers, and the
wonder of the child before this marvelous universe of ours will be
cherished and led into devotion--into natural gratitude for the gift of
the earth and the fulness thereof. Surely this is wiser than keeping
the children indoors to learn the catechism. I can think of nothing
which seems to me less of a religious ceremony than those occasions,
when Bibles are given to all the Sunday school scholars who can recite
the entire catechism. What have youngsters to do with such finespun
metaphysics? Oh! the barren hours I wasted trying to get straight the
differences between "Justification," "Sanctification," and
"Adoption"--or was it "Redemption." One would suppose that Jesus had
said "Suffer the little children, who know the catechism, to come unto
me."
But, of course, at sixteen, I had no such ideas as these. I knew of no
religious life except such as I saw about me. I had been carefully
taught to believe that a retentive memory and a glib tongue were
pleasing to the Most High. I was very contemptuous towards the children
of my age who were less proficient.
*VI*
In the midst of this peace a bolt fell which ended my religious life.
Its lurid flame momentarily illumined the great world beyond my knowing.
And the visioning of things for which I was unprepared was too much for
me. I may not be scientifically correct, but it has always seemed to me
that what I saw that July night stunned the section of my brain which
has to do with "Acts of faith." Never since have I been able to
believe, religiously, in anything.
It was a Sunday. At the vesper service, all of us seated on the grass
at the edge of the lake, the Father had preached about our bodies being
the temples of God. As usual, Oliver led the young people's meeting
after supper. These more intimate gatherings meant more to me than the
larger assemblies. Our text was "Blessed are the pure in heart." I
remember clearly how Oliver looked, tall and stalwart and wonderful in
his young manhood. He has a great metropolitan church now and he has
won his way by oratory. The eloquence on which he was to build his
career had already begun to show itself.
Mary sang. I have also a sharp picture of her. She wore a light lawn
dress, which the brilliant moon-light turned almost white. Her years
seemed to have fallen from her and she looked as she had done on her
wedding night. In her rich, mellow contralto she sang the saddest of
all church music: "He was despised."
Something delayed me after the service and when I looked about for
Oliver and Mary they were gone. I went to her house but the maid said
they had not come. The mystery of religious fervor and the glory of the
night kept me from waiting on the verandah, called me out to wander down
by the water's edge. But I wearied quickly of walking and, coming back
towards the house, lay down on the grass under a great tree. The full
moon splashed the country round with sketches of ghostly white and dense
black shadows.
Two ideas were struggling in my mind. There was an insistent longing
that Margot might be with me to share this wonder of religious
experience. Conflicting with this desire, compelled, I suppose, by the
evening's texts, was a strong push towards extreme asceticism. I was
impatient for Oliver's return. I wanted to ask him why our church had
abandoned monasticism.
How long I pondered over this I do not know. Perhaps I fell asleep, but
at last I heard them coming back through the woods. There was something
in Oliver's voice, which checked my impulse to jump up and greet them.
It was something hot and hurried, something fierce and ominous. But as
they came out into a patch of moonlight, although they fell suddenly
silent, I knew they were not quarreling. Mary cautioned him with a
gesture and went into the house. Through the open windows I heard her
tell the negro maid that she might go home. I heard her say "Good
night" and lock the back door. The girl hummed a lullaby as she walked
away. All the while Oliver sat on the steps.
I do not know what held me silent, crouching there in the shadow. I had
no idea of what was to come. But the paralyzing hand of premonition was
laid upon me. I knew some evil was approaching, and I could not have
spoken or moved.
"Oliver," she said, in a voice I did not know, as she came out on the
porch, "you must go away. It is wrong. Dreadfully wrong."
But he jumped up and threw his arms about her.
"It's sin, Oliver," she said, "you're a minister."
"I'm a man," he said, fiercely.
Then they went into the house. It was not till years afterwards, when I
read Ebber's book--"Homo Sum" that I realized, in the story of that
priest struggling with his manhood, what the moment must have meant to
Oliver.
I tiptoed across the grass to the shade of the house. A blind had been
hurriedly pulled down--too hurriedly. A thin ribbon of light streamed
out below it.
I could not now write down what I saw through that window, if I tried.
But in the frame of mind of those days, with my ignorance of life, it
meant the utter desecration of all holiness. Oliver and Mary had stood
on my highest pedestal, a god and goddess. I saw them in the dust. No.
It seemed the veriest mire.
I turned away at last to drown myself. It was near the water's edge
that they picked me up unconscious some hours later. The doctors called
it brain fever. Almost a month passed before I became rational again. I
was amazed to find that in my delirium I had not babbled of what I had
seen. Neither Oliver nor Mary suspected their part in my sickness.
More revolting to me than what they had done was the hypocrisy with
which they hid it.
Above all things I dreaded any kind of an explanation and I developed an
hypocrisy as gross as theirs. I smothered my repugnance to Mary's
kisses and pretended to like to have Oliver read the Bible to me. And
when I was able to get about again, I attended meetings as before.
There was black hatred in my heart and the communion bread nauseated me.
What was left of the summer was only a longing for the day when I should
leave for school. Nothing mattered except to escape from these
associations.
I am not sure what caused it--the weeks of religious hysteria which
accompanied my conversion, what I saw through the crack below the window
curtain, or the fever--but some time between the coming of "Salvation"
Milton and my recovery, that little speck of gray matter, that minute
ganglia of nerve-cells, with which we _believe_, ceased to function.
*BOOK II*
*I*
Early in September Oliver took me East to school. It was not one of our
widely advertised educational institutions. The Father had chosen it, I
think, because it was called a Presbyterial Academy and the name assured
its orthodoxy.
I remember standing on the railroad platform, after Oliver had made all
the arrangements with the principal, waiting for the train to come which
was to carry him out of my sight. How long the minutes lasted! It is a
distressing thing for a boy of sixteen to hate anyone the way I hated my
cousin. I was glad that he was not really my brother.
It is strange how life changes our standards. Now, when I think back
over those days, I am profoundly sorry for him. It was, I think, his
one love. It could have brought him very little joy for it must have
seemed to him as heinous a sin as it did to me.
Five years later he married. I am sure he has been scrupulously
faithful to his wife. She is a woman to be respected and her ambition
has been a great stimulus to his upclimbing. But I doubt if he has
really loved her as he must have loved Mary to break, as he did, all his
morality for her. To him love must have seemed a thing of tragedy. But
boyhood is stern. I had no pity for him.
His going lifted a great weight from me. As I walked back alone to the
school, I wanted to shout. I was beginning a new life--my own. I had
no very clear idea of what I was going to do with this new freedom of
mine. I can only recall one plank in my platform--I was going to fight.
The one time I can remember fighting at home, I had been thrashed by the
boy, caned by the school teacher and whipped by the Father, when he
noticed my black eye. Fighting was strictly forbidden. After this
triple beating I fell into the habit of being bullied. As even the
smallest boy in our village knew I was afraid to defend myself, I was
the victim of endless tyrannies. The first use I wanted to make of my
new freedom was to change this. I resolved to resent the first
encroachment.
It came that very day from one of the boys in the fourth class. I
remember that his name was Blake. Just before supper we had it out on
the tennis-court. It was hardly fair to him. He fought without much
enthusiasm. It was to him part of the routine of keeping the new boys
in order. To me it was the Great Emancipation. I threw into it all the
bitterness of all the humiliations and indignities of my childhood. The
ceremonial of "seconds" and "rounds" and "referee" was new to me. At
home the boys just jumped at each other and punched and bit, and pulled
hair and kicked until one said he had enough. As soon as they gave the
word to begin, I shut my eyes and hammered away. We battered each other
for several rounds and then Blake was pronounced victor on account of
some technicality.
They told me, pityingly, that I did not know how to fight. But all I
had wanted was to demonstrate that I was not afraid. I had won that.
It was the only fight I had in school. Even the bullies did not care to
try conclusions with me, and I had no desire to force trouble. I had
won a respect in the little community which I had never enjoyed before.
In a way it was a small matter, but it was portentous for me. It was
the first time I had done the forbidden thing and found it good. The
Father had been wrong in prohibiting self-defense. It was an entering
wedge to realize that his wisdom had been at fault here. In time his
whole elaborate structure of morals fell to the ground.
The school was a religious one, of course. But the teachers, with
eminent good sense, realized that other things were more important for
growing boys than professions of faith. It seemed that, after my
illness, my mind woke up in sections. The part which was to ponder over
Mary and Oliver, which was to think out my relation to God, for a long
time lay dormant. I puttered along at my Latin and Greek and Algebra,
played football and skated and, with the warm weather, went in for
baseball.
In the spring a shadow came over me--the idea of returning home. The
more I thought of another summer in the camp, the more fearsome it
seemed. At last I went to the doctor.
He was the first, as he was one of the most important, of the many
people whose kindness and influence have illumined my life. He was
physical director of the school and also had a small practice in the
village. There were rumors that he drank and he never came to church.
If there had been another doctor available, he would not have been
employed by the school.
I never knew a man of more variable moods. Some days on the football
field he would throw himself into the sport with amazing vim for an
adult, would laugh and joke and call us by our first names. Again he
would sit on the bench by the side-line scowling fiercely, taking no
interest in us, muttering incoherently to himself. One day another boy
and I were far "out of bounds" looking for chestnuts. We saw him coming
through the trees and hid under some brush-wood. He had a gun under one
arm, but was making too much noise for a hunter. He gesticulated wildly
with his free arm and swore appallingly. We were paralyzed with fear.
I do not think either of us told anyone about it. For in spite of his
queer ways, all the boys, who were not sneaky nor boastful, liked him
immensely.
One Saturday afternoon I found courage to go to his office. There were
several farmers ahead of me. I had a long wait, and when at last my turn
came I was mightily frightened.
"If I go home this summer," I blurted out, "I'll be sick again."
Oliver had told him about my illness. At first he laughed at me, but I
insisted so doggedly that he began to take me seriously. He tried to
make me tell him my troubles but I could not. Then he examined me
carefully, tapping my knee for reflexes and doing other incomprehensible
things which are now commonplace psychological tests. But for a country
doctor in those days they were very progressive.
"Why are you so excited?" he asked suddenly, "Are you afraid I'll hurt
you?"
"No," I said, "I'm afraid I'll have to go home."
"You're a rum chap."
He sat down and wrote to the Father. I do not know what argument he
used, but it was successful. A letter came in due course giving me
permission to accept an invitation to pass the summer with one of my
schoolmates.
It was a wonderful vacation for me--my first taste of the sea. The
boy's family had a cottage on the south shore of Long Island. The
father who was a lawyer went often to the city. But the week ends he
spent with us were treats. He played with us! He really enjoyed
teaching me to swim and sail. I remember my pride when he would trust
me with the main-sheet or the tiller. The mother also loved sailing.
That she should enjoy playing with us was even a greater surprise to me
than that my friend's father should. Whatever their winter religion was,
they had none in the summer--unless being happy is a religion. I
gathered some new ideals from that family for the home which Margot and
I were to build.
In the spring-term of my second and last year in the school, we were
given a course on the "Evidences of Christianity." It was a formal
affair, administered by an old Congregationalist preacher from the
village, whom we called "Holy Sam." He owed the nickname to his habit
of pronouncing "psalm" to rhyme with "jam." He always opened the Sunday
Vesper service by saying: "We will begin our worship with a holy sam."
I think he took no more interest in the course than most of the boys
did. It was assumed that we were all Christians and it was his rather
thankless task to give us "reasonable grounds" for what we already
believed.
It had the opposite effect on me. The book we used for a text was
principally directed against atheists. I had never heard of an atheist
before, it was a great idea to me that there were people who did not
believe in God. I had not doubted His existence. I had hated Him. The
faith and love I had given Mary and Oliver had turned to disgust and
loathing. Their existence I could not doubt, and God was only the least
of this trinity.
It would be an immense relief if I could get rid of my belief in God.
The necessity of hate would be lifted from me. And so--with my
eighteen-year-old intellect--I began to reason about Deity.
The pendulum of philosophy has swung a long way since I was a youth in
school. To-day we are more interested in the subjective processes of
devotion--what Tolstoi called the kingdom of God within us--than in
definitions of an external, objective concept. The fine spun scholastic
distinctions of the old denominational theologies are losing their
interest. Almost all of us would with reverence agree with Rossetti:
To God at best, to Chance at worst,
Give thanks for good things last as first.
But windstrown blossom is that good
Whose apple is not gratitude.
Even if no prayer uplift thy face
Let the sweet right to render grace
As thy soul's cherished child be nurs'd.
The Father's generation held that a belief in God, as defined by the
Westminster confession was more important than any amount of rendering
grace. I thought I was at war with God. Of course I was only fighting
against the Father's formal definition. Our text book, in replying to
them, quoted the arguments of Thomas Paine. The logic employed against
him was weak and unconvincing. It was wholly based on the Bible. This
was manifestly begging the question for if God was a myth, the
scriptures were fiction. Nowadays, the tirades of Paine hold for me no
more than historic interest. The final appeal in matters of religion is
not to pure reason. The sanction for "faith" escapes the formalism of
logic. But at eighteen the "Appeal to Reason" seemed unanswerable to
me.
I began to lose sleep. As the spring advanced, I found my room too
small for my thoughts and I fell into the habit of slipping down the
fire-escape and walking through the night. There was an old mill-race
near the school and I used to pace up and down the dyke for hours. Just
as with egg-stealing something pushed me into this and I worried very
little about what would happen if I were found out.
After many nights of meditation I put my conclusions down on paper. I
have kept the soiled and wrinkled sheet, written over in a scragly
boyish hand, ever since. First of all there were the two propositions
"There is a God," "There is no God." If there is a God, He might be
either a personal Jehovah, such as the Father believed in, or an
impersonal Deity like that of the theists. These were all the
possibilities I could think of. And in regard to these propositions, I
wrote the following:
"I cannot find any proof of a personal God. It would take strong
evidence to make me believe in such a cruel being. How could an
all-powerful God, who cared, leave His children in ignorance? There are
many grown-up men who think they know what the Bible means. They have
burned each other at the stake--Catholics and Protestants--they would
kill each other still, if there were not laws against it. A personal
God would not let his followers fight about his meaning. He would speak
clearly. If he could and did not, he would be a scoundrel. I would
hate such a God. But there are no good arguments for a personal God.
"An impersonal God would be no better than no God. He would not care
about men. Such a God could not give us any law. Every person would
have to find out for himself what was right.
"If there is no God, it is the same as if there was an impersonal God.
"Therefore man has no divine rule about what is good and bad. He must
find out for himself. This experiment must be the aim of life--to find
out what is good. I think that the best way to live would be so that
the biggest number of people would be glad you did live."
Such was my credo at eighteen. It has changed very little. I do not
believe--in many things. My philosophy is still negative. And life
seems to me now, as it did then, an experiment in ethics.
My midnight walks by the mill-race were brought to an abrupt end. My
speculations were interrupted by the doctor's heavy hand falling on my
shoulder.
"What are you doing out of bed at this hour? Smoking?"
I was utterly confused, seeing no outlet but disgrace. My very fright
saved me. I could not collect my wits to lie.
"Thinking about God," I said.
The doctor let out a long whistle and sat down beside me.
"Was that what gave you brain fever?"
"Yes."
"Well--tell me about it."
No good thing which has come to me since can compare with what the
doctor did for me that night. For the first time in my life an adult
talked with me seriously, let me talk. Grown-ups had talked to and at
me without end. I had been told what I ought to believe. He was the
first to ask me what I believed. It was perhaps the great love for him,
which sprang up in my heart that night, which has made me in later life
especially interested in such as he.
I began at the beginning, and when I got to "Salvation" Milton, he
interrupted me.
"We're smashing rules so badly to-night, we might as well do more. I'm
going to smoke. Want a cigar?"
I did not smoke in those days. But the offer of that cigar, his
treating me like an adult and equal, gave me a new pride in life, gave
me courage to go through with my story, to tell about Oliver and Mary,
to tell him of my credo. He sat there smoking silently and heard me
through.
"What do you think?" I asked at last, "Do you believe in God?"
"I don't know. I never happened to meet him in any laboratory. It
sounds to me like a fairy story."
"Then you're an atheist," I said eagerly.
"No. A skeptic." And he explained the difference.
"How do you know what's good and what's bad?"
"I don't know," he replied. "I only know that some things are
comfortable and some aren't. It is uncomfortable to have people think
you are a liar, especially so when you happen to be telling the truth.
It is uncomfortable to be caught stealing. But I know some thieves who
are uncaught and who seem quite comfortable. Above all it's
uncomfortable to know you are a failure."
His voice trailed off wearily. It was several minutes before he began
again.
"I couldn't tell you what's right and what's wrong--even if I knew. You
don't believe in God, why should you believe in me? If you don't
believe the Bible you mustn't believe any book. No--that's not what I
mean. A lot of the Bible is true. Some of it we don't believe, you and
I. So with the other books--part true, part false. Don't trust all of
any book or any man."
"How can I know which part to believe?"
"You'd be the wisest man in all the world, my boy, if you knew that," he
laughed.
Then after a long silence, he spoke in a cold hard voice.
"Listen to me. I'm not a good man to trust. I'm a failure."
He told me the pitiful story of his life, told it in an even, impersonal
tone as though it were the history of someone else. He had studied in
Germany, had come back to New York, a brilliant surgeon, the head of a
large hospital.
"I was close to the top. There wasn't a man anywhere near my age above
me. Then the smash. It was a woman. You can't tell what's right and
wrong in these things. Don't blame that cousin of yours or the girl.
If anybody ought to know it's a doctor. I didn't. It's the hardest
problem there is in ethics. The theological seminaries don't help.
It's stupid just to tell men to keep away from it--sooner or later they
don't. And nobody can tell them what's right. You wouldn't understand
my case if I told you about it. It finished me. I began to drink.
Watch out for the drink. That's sure to be uncomfortable. I was a
drunkard--on the bottom. At last I heard about her again. She was
coming down fast--towards the bottom. Well, I knew what the bottom was
like--and I did not want her to know."
He smoked his cigar furiously for a moment before he went on. He had
crawled out and sobered up. This school work and the village practice
gave him enough to keep her in a private hospital. She had consumption.
"And sometime--before very long," he ended, "she will die and--well--I
can go back to Forgetting-Land."
Of course I did not understand half what it meant. How I racked my heart
for some word of comfort! I wanted to ask him to stay in the school and
help other boys as he was helping me. But I could not find phrases. At
last his cigar burned out and he snapped the stub into the mill-race.
There was a sharp hiss, which sounded like a protest, before it sank
under the water. He jumped up.
"You ought to be in bed. A youngster needs sleep. Don't worry your head
about God. It's more important for you to make the baseball team. Run
along."