I could not guess.

"I spit at her. I said 'You ....'" (Among the other epithets were

"cross-eyed" and "hook-nosed.")

"Well--how much did you pay at last?" I asked.

"I think," said Norman, "she could have got it for the seventeen...."

"Sure, I could," Nina interrupted. "But he was in a hurry and gave the

... thief twenty. It...."

The lights went down, the curtain up and a woman, whom I would not have

trusted to be kind to her own children, brought on a troupe of pitiable

dogs. Nina turned back to watch the stage.

"So you think," Norman reverted to the former subject, "that I ought to

marry her?"

"Of course not."

"If you have any reasons why I shouldn't that are not pure snobbishness,

I'd like to hear them."

"Good God," I said. "You're not seriously thinking of that, are you?"

"Hardly. But the idea has occurred to me. Why are you so frightened by

it?"

It is strange what illogical creatures we are! Up to that moment I had

been sorry for Nina. Every day I liked her more. And I saw with a sore

heart the wondering, dazed admiration grow within her for her new

master. Love is one of the most primeval passions of the race. It is

likely to be stronger--grander or more devastating--with primitive

people than with those of us who have been civilized away from the

parent type. I knew that Nina was falling in love with Norman in a way

no woman of our class ever could. He had taken her into a fairy land

and she could not, I felt, help expecting the fairy denouement.

But the hint of the possibility of his really acting the part of the

fairy prince, switched me about entirely. Nina became a negligible

quantity. I worried only for him. It is needless to repeat the

arguments against such a marriage which flooded me. They will occur to

anyone. But to oppose it--I knew Norman too well--to try that.

"Perhaps that would be the best solution of the matter--for her."

"And for me?" he insisted.

"Well. You're in a better position than I to decide that."

He laughed and leaned forward and pinched her ear. Suddenly she forgot

the stage and getting up--reckless of all observers,--came back and

kissed him.

"Nina," I asked, "if I pinched your ear, would you kiss me?"

"No," she said, convincingly. "I'd slap your face."

"There's only one thing I know about this, Arnold," he said when she had

returned to her seat. "It's bringing me to life again. I don't think I

had really laughed for months. I'd forgotten there was such a thing as

amusement in the world. I never was very strong on play. Of one thing

I'm sure. It's giving me a new insight--a new point of view--into lots

of things. Only God knows how it will turn out."

*VI*

I can only guess how it would have turned out, if Nina had not fallen

among thieves. The most insoluble mystery of life is the way in which

the very highest human values sometimes spring out of the coarsest, most

brutal wrongs.

Although to Nina, I had spoken of Blackie in a flippant tone, I knew

that he might cause trouble. I had spoken seriously about it to Norman,

advising him to avoid as much as possible, and especially after dark,

those parts of town, where Blackie's gang was likely to be encountered.

And together we had impressed on Nina and Guiseppe that she was never to

go out alone. But as nothing was heard from him for some time, we all

began to worry less.

Nina had been with us about three weeks when the storm broke. I came

home from my work about five one afternoon--and found bedlam.

Guiseppe's head was wrapped in a bloody bandage, Nina was sobbing wildly

on the divan.

It took some minutes before I could get a connected explanation from

them. After lunch they had gone out to pay the butcher's bill. Nina,

having come from "his district" had won Giuseppe's heart and he allowed

her the pleasure of playing at housewife. It pleased her especially to

pay the bills, so she was carrying the money--about thirty dollars. At

the corner of Second Avenue and First Street, they had been surrounded

by Blackie's gang. Guiseppe had fought like a true Garibaldian until

his head had been laid open with a knife and he had been thrown to the

ground by the young toughs. As quickly as they had come, they ran away.

When he picked himself up, Nina was nowhere to be seen. He had asked

the aid of a policeman, but had been laughed at. Then he had come to

the Teepee, not finding either Benson or me, he had bound up his head,

and rallying some Garibaldian comrades, had set out on a search. This

about three o'clock. A little after four they had found her sobbing

desperately behind an ash can in an alley-way. He had had some trouble

in persuading her to come back. She was afraid of Blackie's wrath--but

more afraid that Norman would be angry on account of the money.

Her story came out brokenly between spells of crying. At the first

attack, Blackie and another cadet had hustled her around the corner and

up some stairs to a rented room. There they took away the money and

beat her at leisure. The three who had manhandled Guiseppe came in

shortly and kicked her about some more. There was nothing unusual in

this--it is the well-established custom, by which the cadets keep their

girls in slavery. I doubt if a day ever passes in this great metropolis

of ours when the same scene is not enacted. They would probably have

beaten her worse, if the windfall of money had not tempted them out to

other pleasures. One after another the five men swore, emphasizing

their words with blows, that if she ever threw down Blackie again, they

would kill her. Their parting advice to her was that if she had not

earned five dollars by ten o'clock next morning, she could expect a

fresh beating.

Such stories had come to my knowledge before, they are the commonplaces

of the police courts. But as Norman had said the first morning, such

things must happen to someone near us, before we realize them. I took

the handcuffs out of my desk, put fresh cartridges in my revolver. I

had never set out after a man before in a like frame of mind....

When I think back to that evening's work, the Tombs and our convict

prisons and all the bitter horror of our penal system, is no longer

inexplicable. It is only crystallized anger. The electric chair is

only a formal symbol of collective hate. I am not at all proud of that

man-hunt. A friend of mine had been hurt. "A friend of mine"--how many

of man's and nature's laws have been broken with that preface! The

political bosses look after their "friends." More corrupt legislation

has been passed because of "friendship" than for bribes. Well. A

friend of mine had been touched. Everything by which I like to recognize

myself as a civilized man dropped away. Suddenly I became an ally of

the thing I was fighting against. As I rushed downstairs, with

handcuffs in one pocket and a revolver in the other and murder in my

heart, I was just adding my contribution to the maintenance of the

system which seems to me--when not angry--the most despicable element in

our civilization.

I left word for Benson to stay in when he came home, so that I could

reach him by telephone. I had no definite plan when I left the

Teepee--only somehow I was going to "get" Blackie. It was about an hour

before I was able to locate him. The first fury of my anger had passed,

it had had time to become cold and to harden.

Pinning my badge on the outside of my coat, I kicked open the door of

the "Tim O'Healy Social and Civic Club," and covered the crowd of twenty

young toughs who were in the room.

"Hands up," I ordered. They obeyed sullenly.

"I want Blackie," I said, "and no funny work from the rest of you."

For a moment they were irresolute.

"Say. You're making a damn fool of yourself," one of them protested,

"Blackie's president of this club--he's right next to the Old Man.

You'll get broke sure."

"Shut up. The Old Man sent me," I lied. "Blackie's been getting too

fly."

"Hell!" another piped up. "I seen the Old Man shake hands wid him an

hour ago."

"Cut it out, kid," I replied. "You talk too much. How long's the Old

Man been in the habit of warning guys he's going to light on?"

My lie worked--and saved bloodshed. It was the old tragedy of Cardinal

Wolsey acted over again. None of the gang was really afraid of my

revolver. One rush would have finished me. But they were all afraid of

the Old Man's ire. They drew away from Blackie.

"It's a lie," he growled. "Me and the Old Man's friends."

"You can talk that over with him in the morning. Come on."

He grew suddenly pale, half believing my story. He was such an

ill-visaged, rat-eyed scoundrel, I regretted that they had not made a

rush--at least I could have stopped his career. Single handed now, he

submitted sullenly.

"Wot's the charge?" he asked, holding out his hands for the irons.

"Murder in the first."

From the way he wilted, I think he must have had a murder on his

conscience.

"Now," I said to the gang, "I don't need any help from you. You'd

better go right on with your game. You can call on him later on in the

station house and bail him out--if you want to get in wrong with the Old

Man."

But instead of taking him to the nearby station house, I rushed him down

town to the Tombs. The sergeant at the desk did not know him, so I

entered him under a false name. A search revealed quite an arsenal on

his person, a short barreled revolver, a knife and some brass-knuckles.

I plastered him with all the charges I could think of--disorderly

conduct, concealed weapons, robbery in the first degree, felonious

assault. Nina might be too frightened to testify to the robbery, but

Guiseppe would swear to the assault.

As soon as I had him in a cell, I telephoned to Norman that all was

going well and rushed uptown to the home of the district attorney. The

fates were playing into my hands, for at that time--as is usual between

elections--there was civil war within the organization. The district

attorney was a machine man, but was one of the leaders of the rebellious

faction. He heard my story with great glee, a serious criminal charge

against one of the Old Man's lieutenants was fine gist for his mill. He

promised to push the case and put it on before O'Neil, whom the Old Man

could not reach.

Then I went to the "Old Man." I have already written of my encounters

with him. In general I had established friendly relations with the

machine politicians. Some of them, especially the judges, liked me

personally. Ryan's friendship for me was, I think, real. But of what

was back of the Old Man's easy going familiarity, I was less certain. I

could not count on his friendship. But he was sure to find out what I

had done. And there was nothing to be gained by letting some one else

tell him.

That night I found him in the back room of his brother-in-law's saloon.

He looked up at me, his eyes, usually cordial, decidedly hostile.

"Say, young man, haven't you been getting pretty gay?"

"I sure have," I admitted. "And I've come round to tell you what I did

and why I did it." I gave him the story from beginning to end, even my

talk with the district attorney.

"Well," he said, when I was through, "you've played it pretty slick--so

far. But how are you going to keep that gang from shooting you up, when

they find out what you put over on them?"

"It'll be a poor friend of Blackie," I said, "who takes a shot at me.

I've got too many friends on the bench. And the district attorney would

sure hand him a dirty deal."

He nodded assent. According to his lights the Old Man fought fairly.

He had no mean personal animosity. He handed me a cigar. I smoked it

silently while he was thinking things out.

I had put a knife into a vulnerable spot--had thrown the apple of

discord where it was most likely to cause trouble. Tammany Hall is a

latter-day feudalism. Ability to protect one's vassals is the keynote

of the organization. The "ward heeler" is a petty count, the "district

leaders" are the great dukes. And the kingship of this realm is not

hereditary--it is not even a life-tenure. I do not think it has ever

happened, certainly not in my time, that a boss has held his position

till death. And there have been very few voluntary abdications.

The Old Man was facing a determined rebellion. Not to be able to save

Blackie would be a great blow to his prestige. Many a district

leadership has been lost on a lesser issue. He knew he could get no

help from the district attorney's office, without patching up a

humiliating peace. I could see only one outlet for him--to repudiate

Blackie. He could easily have found some excuse for backing up my lie.

I am sure this thought was in his mind, written all over with the word

"discretion." But in expecting him to take this easy way out, I

misjudged him. He loved a fight. These factional struggles were what

made life interesting within the organization and attractive to men of

his type. He had never been defeated. He did not like to lie down

before me, who in his eyes was not even a regular warrior--just a sort

of banditti.

"I've sent a man down to bail him out," he said abruptly. "I guess

there is going to be a fight. You'll get my answer in the morning.

Good night."

I found Norman in a Berserker fury. He was inclined to quarrel with me

for not having shot Blackie on sight. A doctor had sewed up the gash in

Guiseppe's head. Beyond some angry black and blue blotches, Nina had

sustained no injuries. As soon as she had been reassured about the lost

money, she had recovered her spirits.

The Old Man's answer would have caught us unawares--as he intended it

should--if it had not been for a fortunate enmity of mine. I suppose

there were many people in the Tombs who disliked me, but no one hated me

so cordially as Steger, the agent of the society for the Protection of

Childhood. Our feud was of long standing. He was an insignificant

little man, to whom no one ever paid any attention. He was employed by

the society to push the charges against everyone accused of violating

the laws for the protection of childhood and to urge the heaviest

penalties against all who were found guilty. My business was to

persuade the court to temper justice with mercy. Inevitably we came

into conflict. He would urge the judge to impose the maximum sentence,

and I would plead for leniency. My personal standing was better than

his and I invariably won out in these frequent tilts. His rancor

against me had always made me smile. I met him as I entered the court

house.

"Seems to be a nice sort of fellow--that room-mate of yours," he

sneered.

"What's up?"

"You'll know quick enough. Take my advice and disappear. It will be

hard for you to disprove complicity."

It was enough to give me the tip. Within five minutes I had the whole

story from one of my fellow "county detectives," who had seen the

warrant. Blackie and the Old Man had got Nina's mother to make an

affidavit that her daughter was only seventeen years old. Steger had

joyfully sworn out a warrant against Benson, charging him with rape in

the second degree--states prison, ten years.

In the language of the Tombs, they "had the goods on him." There is no

getting away from this charge if the girl is under eighteen. The

question of whether or not she has "led a previously chaste life," has

no bearing in rape cases.

It did not take me long to reach a telephone. Benson had left the

Teepee. As the detective was on the way with the warrant, I told

Guiseppe to take Nina at once to the Cafe Boulevard--not to wait a

minute! I luckily caught Norman at the club, just as he was calling for

his mail. The fact that I was "compounding a felony," did not occur to

me till hours afterwards.

I reached the cafe and transferred Guiseppe and Nina to a private room,

before Norman arrived. He was certainly in a belligerent frame of mind

when he did come. He had brought his family lawyer with him, a pompous

old man, with gray mutton-chop whiskers and a tendency towards apoplexy.

His dignity was sadly ruffled by having been drawn into a vulgar

criminal case.

Norman and I went with him into another room for a council of war. He

was of course ready, he told us, to act as his client directed, but he

felt it his duty to point out that he was an older man than we, with

some knowledge of worldly affairs. He hoped that I with my familiarity

with the criminal courts might point out some more satisfactory solution

than the marriage which his client in a nobly Quixotic spirit was

contemplating. We must allow an older and more experienced man to say

that marriage was a serious--if not actually a sacerdotal affair. It

was a gamble under the best circumstances. And in this case, socially

so inexpedient, financially so disproportionate, and

personally--well--so unprecedented it would be.... He hemmed and hawed,

ruffled his scanty hair and patted his paunch--in short could not I

offer a suggestion.

"Go ahead and talk," Norman growled. "Get it out of your system."

"They could skip to Canada, temporarily," I said. "If we drop the case

against Blackie, they'll squash this warrant."

The lawyer nodded approval.

"Are you all through?" Norman asked. "Well, then, listen to me. I'm

not going to skip. I'm not going to let up on that scoundrel. I'm not

going to 'quit'! Not for a minute! I'd be on my way to the City Hall

marriage bureau already, if old law-books here didn't say I needed the

consent of Nina's mother. If you want to be helpful--produce a

mother-in-law. Buy the old lady, kidnap her, club her--anything--but

produce her in a consenting frame of mind. If you don't want to

help--run along. I'll turn the trick myself. It's a cinch. We'll give

ourselves up and be married in the Tombs."

The lawyer tried to say something, but Norman was looking at me.

"All right," I said. "I'll fix that. Don't take any chances by going

out of this private room. As soon as I snare the old lady, I'll

telephone. It may be a long hunt, but sit tight."

It was not a long hunt. The Old Man, never dreaming that a rich young

man like Benson would cut the Gordian knot by marrying a prostitute, had

not taken the precaution of hiding the mother. I found her dozing in

front of her fruit store. She had not heard of Nina for several months,

until the night before when they had made her sign the affidavit about

her age. She would have consented to Nina's murder for fifty dollars,

the marriage was arranged for ten.

When she had made her mark on a legal paper drawn up by the lawyer, we

sent Guiseppe home to prepare lunch and entertain the police. He was

not to tell them anything, except that we would be back soon. Norman

and Nina, the lawyer and I, rode down to the City Hall in a closed

carriage. It rather startled me, the speed with which they tied the

knot. Back at the Teepee we found a detective and a policeman. There

was a tableau.

"Good day, gentlemen," Norman said. "Allow me to present you to Mrs.

Benson."

He handed the certificate to the detective.

"Now," he said, when the man had read it, "get out. And look here--you

policeman. Tell your captain that my wife has been brutally attacked in

his precinct. It's up to him to protect her. Tell him that if I have

to commit murder, it will be his fault."

Half an hour later, while we were eating, the telephone rang. It was

the Old Man.

"Hello," he said. "Give them my congratulations. Say. You beat me to

it in great shape. Too bad you ain't in politics. I'd like to have you

on my staff. And say--Blackie has gone on a railroad journey for his

health. Now you fellows ain't going to be nasty are you and make me pay

that five thousand dollars bail? The club's got a new president. He's

just been round to see me, says the boys are sorer than hell over the

job you put up on them. I told him to keep the lid on. I says to him,

'Those two young gentlemen are my friends.' You are, ain't you?"

"Well," I said, "when I've got what I want, I quit fighting. Forgotten

all about that case. The only thing which might remind me of it, would

be the sight of Blackie's face."

"Fine," he replied. "That's cleaned up. And say--they're taking on

some more men in the dock department to-morrow--room for any of your

friends. And--don't forget to give my best wishes to the bride--and

groom. I like a fellow that's a real sport."

An hour later a messenger boy arrived with a great bunch of white roses

for the bride. On the card, the Old Man had scrawled: "Good luck." So

peace was reestablished.

*VII*

The morning after the wedding, Norman found me in the library reading

what the newspapers had to say about it. "Eccentric Millionaire Weds

Street Walker." "Prominent Socialist Leader, to avoid state prison,

married a little girl he had seduced." When my friend, the protector of

children, found that we had beaten the warrant, he had taken this way of

venting his spleen.

"I'm glad," Norman said, as he glanced at the headlines, "that Nina

doesn't read newspapers. These might bother her."

But he made me read them aloud as he drank his coffee. And all the

while his look of amused contentment deepened.

"God! That sounds good," he commented. "I never knew just how to do

it. I've spent many a sleepless night trying to think out some

effective way of telling the 'best people' to go to hell--some way of

spitting in the eyes of the smug citizens--so they wouldn't think it was

a joke. Every time I get mad--really open up--and tell the gang what I

think of them how the stench of their hypocrisies offends my nostrils,

it adds to my reputation as a wit. I guess this will fix them! You

know that thing of Heine's...."

He jumped up and pulled the "Memoirs" from the shelf and read me the

passage where Heine tells of his boyish encounter with "Red Safchen,"

the hangman's little daughter. Although the good people of the village

where he went to school tolerated the office of public executioner, they

would have no dealing with the officer. His family was mercilessly

ostracised. Heinrich took pity on the daughter and once in a sudden

exaltation he kissed her. In these words he ends his account: "I kissed

her not only because of my tender feeling for her, but in scorn of

society and all its dark prejudices."

"That's it," Norman said gleefully. "I've always wished I could find a

hangman's daughter and kiss her somewhere in public--show the

empty-headed, full-bellied gang how I despise them. Nina's done it for

me."

Nina had taken a very passive part in all these proceedings. She had

done what she was told to do, said what she was told to say, without

question. How passive a part it had been none of us realized at the

time. But that afternoon when I came back from the Tombs, I found her

in earnest conversation with Guiseppe.

"Say," she said, after he had gone, "I want to talk to you."

But she found it hard to begin.

"What is it?" I encouraged her.

"The old man, Guiseppe, is a fool," she blurted out. "Says your friend

married me."

"Well. That isn't foolish. He did marry you."

"Aw hell! Don't lie to me. Fine men like him don't marry girls they

pick up in the street."

"Not very often," I admitted. "But Benson certainly married you."

She sighed profoundly, as though there was no hope of getting the truth

in a world of men.

"You must think I'm easy," she persisted. "He won't never marry me. Of

course it don't matter how poor you are. Sometimes rich men from uptown

marry factory girls, like in 'From Rags to Riches'--but not girls like

me. Not girls that have been bad."

I tried to translate into the lingo of the Bowery the old proposition

that it is never too late to mend. And then I asked her, "Didn't you go

to the City Hall with him?"

"Don't I know? Haven't I seen people get married?" she retorted half in

discouragement, half in anger. "Don't I know you have to have a white

dress and a priest? Wot's the game?"

I did my best to explain that in America, we have civil marriages which

are just as binding as the ones in a church. But all I could get from

her was a reluctant admission that there might be two varieties of

marriage--a half way kind at the City Hall and a truly kind with a

priest. She insisted that it was a sin to have children without a white

dress and a ring.

When Norman came in, I took him to my room and, closing the door, told

him about it. He rolled around on the bed and kicked his heels in the

air.

"Think of it!" he howled. "Me--done up in orange blossoms! Me--going

to a priest! Arnold, get out your white gloves--polish your silk

hat--you'll have to see me through with this."

He dashed out to order Nina's dress. But he said nothing to her about

it, pledged me to secrecy. It was a complete surprise to her when it

came.

I have never seen anything in all my life so wonderful as her face, when

she opened the package--the gradual melting away of doubt, the gradual

awakening of certainty--and then the way she walked over to Norman, her

eyes so wide with joy, and threw herself sobbing into his arms. I had

to go to my room to hide my tears.

In a few minutes, Norman came in--his voice was also stiff and husky.

"What in hell do you think is the latest?" he asked. "She's gone off

with Guiseppe--to confessional! Says it would be a sin to get married

without it. My God! My God!"

I was the "best man" and Guiseppe gave her away in the crypt of the

Jesuit Church. We came home and dressed--all four of us--and went up to

Delmonico's to dinner.

We made something of a sensation as we threaded our way between the

tables to our place. Guiseppe, in evening clothes, with all his

campaign medals, looked like the veriest nobleman. Nina was wonderful.

Usually she was gay beyond words when taken to a restaurant, but this

evening she was very solemn and a little pale. Of course a number of

people recognized Norman and gossip started in vigorously. But of this

Nina was unconscious. Her solemnity went deeper than that. When the

cocktails were brought, she refused hers.

"Why not?" Norman asked.

A little blush started in her cheeks, fought its way to her temples and

down her throat.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

"I'm married now," she stammered. "Good women don't drink cocktails."

We both glanced about and saw that if Nina's statement had been audible,

it would have caused a protest:

"Why--there's Mrs. Blythe over there," Norman said. "She built a

church. She's drinking a cocktail--she's awfully good."

"No, she ain't," Nina insisted doggedly. "She's painted herself. She's

a sporting girl."

Norman looked very solemn. It was several seconds before he spoke.

"All right, little wife. I'll never ask you to drink any more

cocktails."

The problem of what to do with Nina's mother troubled us somewhat for a

time, but it solved itself with rather dizzying simplicity. She told

Norman that with five hundred dollars for capital she could buy a larger

fruit store and live in comfort. He investigated the matter carefully

and, as it seemed to him a sound business proposition, he gave her the

money. That was the last we saw of her. The gossips of the

neighborhood said that one of her boarders, attracted by this

magnificent dowry, had married her and that they had returned to Italy.

I could not discover the man's name. And we never heard of her again.

It was a joyous thing to watch Nina in the weeks and months that

followed her marriage. Always I had a sort of impatience with Norman.

It did not seem to me that he realized what was going on within her, how

her soul under the strains and stresses of her new surroundings, was

being shaped to beauty.

There was much discussion in the scientific circles of those days over

the relative force of heredity and environment in the formation of

character. Most of the pundits were inclined to the belief that the

congenital element, the abilities and tendencies with which we are born,

is the greatest part of us. Watching Nina, kept me from this error. It

may be that she was unusually plastic, peculiarly adaptable. But the

change was amazing. It was not only that she left off swearing, learned

to handle a fork as we did, came to wash her face without being urged.

It went much deeper than this.

I thought that Norman was giving small account of the change. I did not

realize I was unjust to him for a good many months. But one day I went

to the station to see him off on a western trip. Just before the train

started, he laid hold of my arm.

"We--Nina is expecting a baby."

He swung aboard the train and waved his hand to me. The news meant that

he was not afraid of Nina's heredity. That he had not told me until

there was no chance of discussing it, gave me a sudden pang of jealousy.

Without my noticing it, a new element had come into my friend's life,

which was too holy for him to talk over with me. It made me feel very

lonely for awhile.

In the months which were left to her time, Nina went about the

Teepee--singing. The wonder grew in her eyes, as did also the certainty

of her high calling. To me--an outsider--there was something

uncomfortable in the sight of their happiness those last weeks before

the baby came. I felt like a trespasser, a profaner of some high

mystery. But Norman begged me not to leave.

*BOOK VI*

*I*

Of course Ann was immensely interested in Nina's adventure. From the

first she was sure it would turn out well. Ignoring the shell, as she

always did, the kernel of the matter did not seem at all strange to her.

She went much further than the Professor in "Sartor Resartus," who

thought of people without clothes. She stripped them of their vocations

as well. For her there existed no such categories as "street car

conductors," "actresses," "bank presidents," "seamstresses." She saw

only men and women. The way they earned their living was as unimportant

to her as the _mode_ of their garments. It was not what people did, but

the way they did it, which mattered. A man, who had chosen cooking as a

career and cooked passionately, threw all his energy into soups and

_souffles_ ranked higher with her than a listless, perfunctory poet.

The doing heartily of any job whatsoever would sanctify it in her eyes.

Of course she knew that working at the match trade or with white lead

poisons a person, that some of the "dusty trades" ruin the lungs. But

it would have been hard to get her to admit that pleasant, stimulating

work might make a person more moral or that a vile job can damn a man.

Nina's success in her new role, seemed to Ann, to depend entirely upon

the intensity with which she entered it. It mattered not at all whether

she had been previously a street walker or a queen. This point of

view--utterly different from mine--I found very common among the people

I met at Cromley.

Sooner or later I made the acquaintance of most of the leading

anarchists of this country and many from abroad. They were sure of a

welcome from the Bartons, sure of a meal and of any bed or sofa in the

house which chanced to be vacant. They were an interesting and in many

ways an attractive group. Like Ann, they were little interested in the

outward accidents of a person's life, but very intense in regard to a

rather indefinite inner life. They were, of course, vehemently opposed

to the police. But I was accepted without question. I remember old

Herr Most said, one time, his long gaunt forefinger tapping my badge.

"It's not that which makes a policeman. It's not the symbol we're

fighting but the habit of mind."

The anarchists are beginning to take the place in our fiction which was

formerly held by the gypsy. Half a dozen novels of the last few years

have had such types as their heroes. It is hard to resist the romantic

charm of a person who is utterly unattached. The vagabond who, in a

land of conventional dwelling houses, sleeps out under the stars, casts

a spell over us. These anarchists are intellectual nomads. In order

that they may be free to wander according to their fancy in the realm of

thought, to stroll at will in the pleasant valleys of poesy, to climb at

times up onto the great white peaks of dreams, that in the winter days

they may trek south to meet their friend, the sun, they have foresworn

the clumsier impedimenta of our traditional ideas. As the Beduoin and

the tramp despise the "Cit" who is kept at home by his business

engagements, by the cares of his family and of his lands and goods, so

these anarchists look down on us who are held stationary in the world of

thought.

I remember a young Russian exile, who spoke English so faultlessly,

after the manner of Macaulay's Essays, that it seemed queer, saying that

he was "a cynic of the material." It struck me as a wonderfully apt

phrase to distinguish their way of thinking from the more usual. Of all

the "kitchenside of life,"--the meals we eat, the clothes we wear, the

beds we sleep in, bankbooks, and property deeds, of vested rights and

established institutions, of the applause and approbation of the

mob--which most of us consider important, they were cynical. I, for

instance, must admit to a certain unreasoning respect for clean linen.

It is hard for me, even in the face of ocular demonstration, to separate

it from clean straight thinking. But this group which gathered at Mrs.

Barton's was certainly indifferent in the matter. Ann's bacteriological

training had made her a fervent apostle of cleanliness. "Germs," she

would say, "are only filth." But as often as not, some of the guests

were evidently unafraid of microbes. Some of the dirtiest of them were

the cleanest, straightest thinkers.

I have never met any other group of people who so sympathetically

understood how I felt about life. In one way or another they had come to

see life as I did--as I believe anyone, having the energy to avoid

hardening, would see it, if they worked long in the Tombs. Try it

yourself. Go into the Tombs--there is one in every town--if you have

any love of justice and rectitude in your being you will come out in

violent revolt against the smug complacency of our social machine. You

will find anarchists pleasant people to talk with.

But when they tried to convert me, I was cold. I could go with them all

the way in their criticism of and contempt for things as they are. Much

of what they said and wrote seemed to me platitudes--I had seen it also

keenly myself. I knew the things of which our civilization can boast,

its universities, and culture, its music and painting, the triumphs of

its sciences, its marvelous subjugation of nature, its telegraphs and

transcontinental trains, and all this seemed very small return for the

frightful price we pay. For years I had been living in the slums. I

knew the debit side of the ledger also--the tuberculosis laden

tenements, the sweat-shops, the children who never grow up, the poverty,

the crime. The time they spent in trying to convince me that society

was bankrupt, was wasted. And the dream of communism they offered in its

place was enticing. I do not see how anyone can object to the ideals of

anarchism, unless they are of the turn of mind which enjoys the kind of

arrangements we now have--where one can steal and murder and still be

respectable. Of course a scamp would have a pretty bad time in a

communist society. But the means by which they hoped to realize their

dream--well--that was a different affair.

It is possible to believe in all the miracles of Jesus--from his birth

to his resurrection--but it takes "faith." It is possible to believe

that, if by some miracle we were all made free we would be very much

better than we are. The anarchists hold that our vices come from our

manifold slavery. That is their creed. But it also takes "faith." I

have not been able to believe anything in that way, since I was sixteen.

But I was quite ready to agree with them that much work such as mine was

pitifully futile.

*II*

There were two incidents in my work which grew to great proportions in

my mind. They happened close together, when I had been about seven

years in the Tombs.

Walking one day along a corridor of the prison, past the cells, my

attention was caught by an old man. He sat on a low stool, close to the

grated door, his face pressed against the bars. On it was written

appalling, abject despair.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

He glared at me sullenly. It was some time before he replied.

"They've got me wrong," he said.

The date on the door of his cell gave the history of the case. His name

was Jerry Barnes. Arrested three weeks ago, without bail, he had pled

guilty the day before to burglary in the third degree, and was awaiting

sentence before Justice Ryan.

"What did you plead guilty for?" I asked, "if they had you wrong?"

"Wot's the use? You won't believe me."

With a little urging his story came in a rush. He was an old-timer, had

done three bits in state prison, but coming out four years before he had

decided to "square it." He wanted to die "on the outside." He had no

trade, but had wrung out a meagre living, stuffing straw into

mattresses. In the rush season he earned much as a dollar a day.

Sometimes only twenty cents. And sometimes there was no work at all.

He slept in a ten-cent lodging house, ate ten cent meals--forty cents a

day, plus twenty cents a week for tobacco. What was left went into the

Bowery Savings Bank. He wanted to have enough so he would not be buried

in the Potters' Field. It had been a barren life. But the fear of

prison--the fear which only an old-timer, who wants to die outside,

knows--had held him to it.

Coming home from work one night he had stopped to watch a fire. As the

crowd broke up he saw on the sidewalk several bags of tobacco and some

boxes of cigarettes. He picked them up and almost immediately was

grabbed by two detectives.

While the crowd had been watching the fire, someone had broken into a

tobacco store and looted it. The detectives led Jerry to Central

Office, identified him by the Bertillon records, and charged him with

burglary in the second degree, for which the maximum sentence is ten

years.

Jerry said that he knew nothing of the burglary. When he had been

brought into court the district attorney had told him that if he would

consent to plead guilty of burglary in the third degree, for which the

maximum is only five years, he would intercede with the judge and ask

for a light sentence.

Jerry had been hopeless of proving his innocence in the face of his

previous record and the fact that some of the proceeds of the burglary

had been found on his person. He had no friends. He did not believe

that a poor man had any chance in court. So he had pled guilty in the

hopes of a short sentence.

His story rang true, but I took great pains to verify it.

The police believed that Jerry was one of three or four who committed

the burglary. One hundred dollars in money and twice as much stock had

been taken. They had no evidence against Jerry except the packages of

tobacco found in his pockets, and his record.

Mr. Kaufman, his employer, spoke highly of him. Jerry had been a regular

applicant for work, and a preferred employee. If there was any work at

all it was given to him. And sometimes in slack seasons, he had been

employed out of charity. Kaufman said he would be glad to come to court

and testify to Jerry's regular habits during the last three years. The

lodging house keeper was also willing to appear on his behalf. Jerry

had earned a definite reputation for quietness and sobriety. He had

kept very much to himself and certainly had not been associating with

professional criminals.

I took the whole story to Judge Ryan. He always placed great reliance

on my judgment in such matters, and I was convinced of Jerry's

innocence. Ryan said he would allow him to withdraw his plea of guilty

and stand trial. I had a harder time persuading Jerry to do so. He was

inclined to take his medicine--let well enough alone. He might live

through a couple of years in prison and die outside, but he was afraid

to take a chance on a long term. But finally I argued him into doing

it.

When at last the case came up for trial, Ryan was off on his vacation,

and it was set down before O'Neil, with whom I had less than no

influence. Mr. Kaufman had been called out of town by the death of his

father. No one appeared to speak for Jerry except the lodging house

keeper, who made a poor showing, being mightily frightened under the

cross-examination. The district attorney produced a handful of Rogues'

Gallery photographs of Jerry. The police expanded their memory to the

point of swearing that they had seen Jerry in the rifled premises. The

jury convicted him without leaving the room, of burglary in the second

degree. And the judge gave him eight years....

I sneaked out of the court room and locked myself in my office. It is

not a pleasant thing to think about or write down even now.... I am

sure he was innocent. If I had not meddled--he had not asked me to--he

would have gotten off light. And eight years was the same as "life" for

him.

The next two days when duty took me into the prison, I kept as far as

might be from Jerry's cell. What could I say to him?

But on the afternoon of the second day, I met him by accident face to

face. He was one of a line of ten men, old and young, chained

together--just starting up the river. He jumped at me so hard, it threw

the entire line off their feet. His slow, desperate curses as they led

them out to the prison-van still haunt me, sometimes, at night.

Now that Jerry is dead--he died during the fourth year--I, more than

ever before, wish I could believe in a life beyond death. I cannot

imagine another life in which we would not understand and forgive the

wrongs done us in this. And I cannot think of anything I would rather

have than Jerry's forgiveness.

About the same time, I had taken up the work of supervising the men "on

parole" from the reformatory. It was very hard to find satisfactory

employment for these boys. I wrote an article which was translated and

printed in one of the Yiddish dailies. I described the reformatory,

told of the conditions on which the inmates were paroled and the civic

duty of encouraging them to make good. And I appealed to the Jews to

help me find work for the sons of their race. Many offers of employment

came as a result of this article.

One day a fine old Russian Jew, named Lipinsky, came to my office on

this business. He was a fur merchant on Second Avenue. He and his son,

about nineteen, worked together, and he could use an assistant who would

accept apprentice wages and live in the family. I liked the old man; he

was a sturdy type, had worked up through endless hardships and reverses

to the point where he was beginning to make a surplus and win respect in

his trade. He was ambitious for his son, on whom all his hopes

centered.

It seemed to me an unusually fine opening, the home conditions I felt

sure would be good, and the first Jewish boy who came down--his name was

Levine--I sent to Lipinsky. I called two or three times and everything

seemed to be going well. But after about three months the crash came.

Levine and young Lipinsky were arrested in the act of burglary in a

large fur warehouse. They had several hundred dollars' worth of choice

ermine skins in their bags. Young Lipinsky went to pieces under the

"third degree" and confessed everything. They had been at it for more

than a month. It had been a strong combination--his knowledge of furs

and Levine's skill with the "jimmy." In an apartment on Fifteenth

Street, where they had been keeping two girls, the police recovered

large quantities of expensive furs.

Levine got seven years in state prison, and young Lipinsky, because he

had turned state's evidence and because of my influence, got off with a

sentence to the reformatory.

Old Lipinsky was utterly ruined. His rivals accused him of complicity.

The detectives raided his store. They found nothing, but it was enough

to ruin his credit. He peddles shoe-strings now on Hester Street.

But greater than this material loss was the blow to his heart--his hope

in his only son shattered. He knocks at the door to my office now and

then to ask news of his boy. It is sad news I have to tell him. His

son is now doing his second term in state prison, a confirmed crook.

Old Lipinsky does not curse me as Jerry did--he relies on me to pay his

rent and coal bills. He weeps.

I tried to look at these discouraging incidents, with reason. I tried

to tell myself that my intentions had been good, and that intentions

counted more than results. I tried to recall the very many families to

whom I had brought a blessing. It is not a matter to boast of--nor to

be modest about. The work I had chosen gave me daily opportunity to

bring help to those in awful need. But try as I would to preserve what

seemed to my reason proper proportions, the curses of Jerry, the wailing

of old Lipinsky, drowned out all else. It obsessed me.

Looking back over those years it is hard for me to decide whether Norman

was the determining element in my thinking, or whether from different

angles, by different processes of mind, we reached the same conclusions.

Certain it is that many times a conversation with him would precipitate

fluid-vague feelings of mine into the definite crystals of intellectual

convictions. A talk on this subject--of intentions and results--stands

out as clear in my mind as any memory I have of him.

It started, I believe, by some jovial effort of his to lift me out of my

profound discouragement. We had lit our pipes, Guiseppe was clearing

the supper litter from the table. Nina was dividing her attention

between a pile of to-be-darned stockings in her lap and Marie, who was

safe in her cradle and needed no attention at all. Nina was a constant

factor in all our arguments in those days. She was always silent. Much

of our talk must have been far above her comprehension, but she would

sit on the divan, her feet tucked up under her, and listen for hours on

end. Her presence in some subtle way contributed to our discussions.

The ancient Egyptians brought a skeleton to their feasts to remind them

of death. Nina was to us a symbol of life--a silent chorus of

actuality. Some word or look of mine that night showed Norman how

desperately serious was my discouragement, and he dropped his flippant

tone.

"After all intentions don't justify anything. We must demand results.

But what results? When I see a chap, whose efforts I know to be good,

get discouraged, I'm sure he's looking for the wrong kind of results. Of

course, our unseen, unintentional influence is much greater than the

influence we consciously exert. Some little of it we know about, the

greater part we ignore. You're worried because some of your

well-intentioned efforts have gone wrong, because our fight for a

reformatory ended in a fizzle. These two cases, you speak of--Jerry and

Lipinsky--are on your mind. There are probably dozens of others, just as

bad, which you don't know about. Are they the kind of results on which

you have a right to judge your work? I think not.

"The one real result of human activity is knowledge. Zola makes a

character in 'Travail' say that science is the only true revolutionist.

And if science is something more than dead laboratory data, if it's live

workable human knowledge, a real aid to straight thinking, he is right.

"That must be the test of your activity--the judging result. What does

it matter to the race that Jerry is beating his head against the walls

of Sing Sing? In all the black history of the race, in all the long

up-struggle, which rubbed off most of our hair, what does a little added

injustice signify? Nothing. Unless--and this is the great

chance--unless you can make the race realize the stupidity of such

injustice. If you could make Jerry's tragedy bite into us like Uncle

Tom's--well--then you and he would have earned the right to wrap the

draperies of your couch about you and all that.

"It's the same with good results. They are insignificant! In terms of

the race, they matter as little as the half hundred slaves Mrs. Stowe

helped to escape via the underground railroad. Take Tony--this wreck

you've dragged into dry-dock and repaired. It's important to him that

you came along at the right time. But what does it matter to all the

other immigrant craft that are trying to find safe anchorage on this

side of the world? There's a new Tony launched every minute.

"Seven years you've been in the Tombs--had your nose in the cesspool.

What have you learned--not just subjective acquisition of information,

but what has it taught you for the race? Sooner or later, you'll begin

to teach. You can't help it. It's too big for you--it will force an

outlet.

"Prisons are a stupidity. Why do we cling to them? Natural viciousness?

Innate cruelty? You don't believe that. It's ignorance! Dense black

ignorance! Sodden ways of thinking. You've seen, you know. Well--that's

footless--unless you can make the rest of us see and know. One man

can't add much to this great racial mind. But if you can do the little,

the very little, that Beccaria did, that John Howard and Charles Reade

did--one lightning gleam--these little results you are worrying about

now will sink into insignificance.

"You won't solve the problem of crime. That's too much to expect. What

you teach about reform--reforms of judicial procedure, reforms of police

and prisons--won't interest me much. I know these things seem big to

you, but it will be mostly out of date before it's off the press. What

I will look for is some help in understanding the problem. That will be

your contribution--the judging result of your living. Perhaps some

youngster, one of the generation to come, will read your book and go

into the Tombs, see it for himself and in two years understand all it

has taken you ten years to learn. That's human progress!

"We must saturate ourselves with the idea of evolution. Think of

ourselves, our little lives, as tiny steps in that profound procession.

Knowledge is the progressive element in life, just as nerve cells are

the only progressive tissue in our bodies. We won't develop any more

legs as we evolve through the ages ahead of us--the change will be in

our brains."

The conversation rambled off into some by-paths which I forget. But it

was this same night, I think, that he struck the main road of his

philosophy, mapped out before me his idea of the country the race has

yet to explore.

"The impediment to progress," he said, "is our fool idea of finality.

It's funny how humanity has always been looking for an absolute, final

court of appeal. The king can do no wrong. The pope is infallible. God

is omniscient! Now we have the age of reason. The old gods have been

driven from Olympus. And in place of Jehovah and Zeus our college

professors have made a god of truth, the absolute, the final! Sooner or

later we've got to learn that progress--growth of any kind--is in exact

antithesis to this idea of finality.

"A large part of the scientific world and, I suppose, ninety-nine per

cent of what is called "the enlightened public," believe that Darwinism

is the last work in natural science. There are a thousand question

marks strewn about the theory of natural selection. Only those

biologists, who have sense enough not to accept the finality of

anything, are trying to answer these questions.

"Socialism is a spectacular example. What did Karl Marx do? He

stumbled along through the life which was given him, doing kind things

and mean things by the way, all of which is, or ought to be, forgotten.

The real thing he did--his contribution--was to keep his eyes open, to

look at life without blinders. In the long process of thinking, this is

the most important, the fundamental thing. And what he saw he pondered

over, sweated over, prayed atheistical prayers over--and then he spoke

out fearlessly. The people about him were hypnotized by the wonderfully

growing industrialism of the day. It was going to solve all the ills of

the race. No one had any responsibility any more. _Laissez faire_!

Virtue and happiness and the next generation were automatic. The praise

of the machine became an enthusiasm, a gospel. Marx had looked at it

harder than the rest, had seen through its surface a glitter. And like

Cassandra he shouted out his forebodings, careless of whether the world

listened or not. 'It's a sham,' he said, 'this industrialism of yours is

fundamentally immoral. It bears within itself death germs. They are

already at work. This thing in which you put your trust is already

putrid.' I don't know anything more amazing in the history of the human

mind than Marx prophecies. Wrong in some details of course. He didn't

claim any divine inspiration. But those three volumes in German are

stupendous. And the secret of it is that he turned his penetrating eyes

on the life about him. He looked!

"But the socialists of today--are they following his example? No. Marx

did not believe in finalities; they make a finality of him. He sought

new knowledge. They are defending what is already old, and like

everything old, some of it is wrong now. Marx was a revolutionist--one

of the greatest. The Marxists are conservatives. Think of it. Not an

American socialist has tried to analyze Wall Street! Instead of

scrutinizing the life about them, they spend their time arguing over his

agrarian theory. No country in the world offers such glaring examples

of industrial injustice as these United States and the books they

circulate are translations from German. Some day they'll wake up--then

I'll join them.

"The trouble comes from thinking there are finalities in life--ultimate

truths. We've got to get it into our heads that truth itself evolves.

"It's coming to me stronger and stronger that the point of attack ought

to be on our ideals of education. My God! You quit college at the end

of your freshman year and wasted exactly three years less than I did. I

feel so sure that this is the real issue that I'm losing interest in

everything else.

"A system of education which wakes up the human mind instead of putting

it to sleep! Education which begins where it ought to! At the

beginning! the process of seeing, of looking at life with our own

eyes--instead of through some professor's spectacles. If we could only

teach the trick of original observation!

"The trouble isn't so much that we think incorrectly. We don't see

straight. I remember our professor used to tell us that logic is a

coffee-mill. If we put coffee in at the top it will come out at the

bottom in a more usable form. But if we put in dirt--it stays dirt, no

matter how fine we grind it. And then he switched off to train our

coffee-mills--a lot of rigamarole about syllogisms, the thirteen

fallacious ones--perhaps it was fourteen. But not a single word about

how to distinguish dirt from coffee. It's the original assumptions that

need questioning. I don't believe Darwin was a better logician than

Saint Augustine. But he went out into the world and looked. He used

observed facts for his coffee-mill. Saint Augustine ground up a lot of

incoherent beliefs and dirty assumptions. Anyone can learn the laws of

logic in a three months college course, or in as many weeks from a

text-book. But I don't know of any place where they even try to teach

original observation.

"Education, everybody says, is the bulwark of democracy. And we

Americans really want democracy in a way the most radical European never

dreamed of. Yet we are content with our schools! Nobody really worries

about improving them. We assume that our system is the best in the

world, perfect. Final! Damn finality! I'm not sure that our system

isn't the worst. We consistently kill all originality. The minute the

kids strike school the process begins. 'This, my child, is what you

must believe,' you say. 'This block,' the kindergarten teacher says 'is

red.' Of course what she should say is, 'What color is this block?'

The college professor says to his senior seminar, 'Goethe is the

greatest German poet; if you prefer Heine, you are a barbarian.

Milton's epics are the pride of English letters; if you prefer

L'Allegro, you show your lack of culture. Shelley was undoubtedly a

great poet, but, I regret to say, an incendiary. Of course you must

read The Ode to the West Wind and the Clouds, but I warn you against the

Revolt of Islam.' From grammar school to university it is all this

business of predigested tablets.

"Just look at the effect this sort of business has had on our politics!

We Americans are dead. New ideas, discussion of fundamental political

principles are fomenting everywhere but here. A Paris cab-driver thinks

more about the theory of government than our congressman. We Americans

sit back--our feet on the table--puff out our chests and say 'complete

and absolute liberty for all time was decreed by the fathers in 1789.'

How many men do you know who ever seriously questioned that proposition?

How many Americans really believe that it takes 'eternal vigilance' to

be free? No. Our Constitution is the most glorious document penned by

man. It's final--it's stagnant and stinking!

"If we don't revolutionize our education, we'll rot or give up

democracy. It's a clear choice. A national Tammany Hall and dizzy

Roman decadence or Neo-aristocracy with restricted suffrage and

hare-brained experiments in human stock breeding. If we don't learn to

educate in a truer way, if we don't manage to kill this folly of

finality, it's a choice between physiological decay and eugenics.

"I'm getting out of everything else--can't see anything but education.

No more personal charity, no more checks to shoddy philanthropies. All

the money I can lay my hands on goes into a trust fund to finance an

educational insurrection. It's the only revolution I'm interested in.

"I tried to write about it. But--hell--people won't take me seriously.

I knew somebody would giggle if I talked, so I ground out an article. I

found a man in the club laughing over it--said it was 'clever.'

Well--I've put what I think about it in my will. Perhaps they won't

laugh when they read that."

As I said I am not sure whether Norman gave me my ideas, or whether he

voiced conclusions which were forming already in my mind. At least I

owe him their concrete shape.

My work in the Tombs took on a new visage. I began to think of it as

something to communicate. I went about it with the feeling of a showman

or a guide. There was always someone at my shoulder, to whom I tried to

explain the essentials back of the details. The routine which had begun

to be mechanical was revivified. I began thinking out my book. What I

wanted to do was to draw a picture of the complex phenomena of crime and

to contrast with it the dead and formal simplicity of our Penal Code, to

show its hopeless inadequacy. I began work on a section devoted to

"Theft." From my notes and my daily experience, I tried to show the

kind of people who steal, the motives which drive them to it, the means

they develop towards their end, petty sneak thieves, swindle promoters,

bank robbers, pickpockets, fraudulent beggars, defaulting cashiers. The

reality of theft is an infinitely more tangled thing than one would

suppose from reading the meagre paragraphs in our statutes which deal

with "Larceny." The book grew slowly. I felt no hurry. Now and then I

published sections in the magazines--"Stories of Real Criminals."

*III*

It was when I was getting close to thirty-five that I first saw the

name: Suzanne Trevier Martin--attorney and counsellor at law. We had

heard rumors of women lawyers from the civil courts. But I think she

was the first to invade the Tombs. It was Tim Leery, the doorman, of

Part I, who called my attention to her.

"Say," he greeted me one morning about noon, "There's a fee-male lawyer

here today--looking for you. And say--she's a peach!"

I do not know why I thought he was joking. I suppose I shared the comic

paper idea that most professional women were pop-eyed and short-haired.

Anyhow it was a definite surprise when I caught sight of her. Leery was

pointing me out to her.

Yes. I am sure surprise was the chiefest element in the impression she

made on me. Everything about her was different from what I expected of

women. She was the most matter-of-fact looking person I have ever

seen--and the most beautiful. I cannot describe her way of dressing,

all that sticks in my mind is the crisp, white collar she wore. Somehow

one's attention centered on that clean, orderly bit of linen. There was

no suggestion of aping man-fashion about her, nor were there any

frivolous tweedledees nor tweedledums. It was all as straightforward as

that collar.

She had a mass of Titian red hair. A complexion so delicate that the

sun had freckled it already in early spring. The lines of her face were

altogether beautiful. Her mouth was firm and immobile. Her shifts of

mood showed only in her eyes. They were always changing color, from

deep tones of brown to a glowing chestnut almost as red as her hair.

The way her head balanced on her neck, made me want to cheer. It seemed

a victory for the race, that she--one of us--could carry her head so

fearlessly.

"Here is an introduction," she said.

It was a letter from a young lawyer. The junior member of his firm, he

was sometimes sent into the Tombs to defend the servants of their rich

clients. I had often given him pointers on the practice of our courts,

which differs materially from that of the civil courts. He asked the

same courtesies for his friend, Miss Martin.

I felt with some embarrassment the amused stares of the crowded

corridors.

"This isn't a very convenient place to talk," I said. "Let's go round to

Philippe's and lunch."

As we walked downstairs, I sized her up as about twenty-five. I noted

that the grace of her neck extended down her spine. I have never seen a

straighter back. There was something definitely boyish in the way she

walked, in her stride and the swing of her shoulders. This impression

of boyishness was always coming and interfering with realization that

she was a beautiful woman.

We found a quiet table at Philippe's and she explained her case. She

was counsel for the Button-Hole Makers' Union. They were on strike and

one of the girls had been arrested on the charge of assaulting a private

policeman. The question at issue invoked the legality of picketing. If

the girl had been within her rights in standing where she did, the

watchman, who tried to drive her away, was guilty of assault. It was a

case to fight out in the higher courts. The unions demanded a definite

decision. Miss Martin wanted to have her client convicted, and still

have grounds to take it up on appeal. It was simple and I had given her

the necessary points before we had finished our coffee.

The very first sight of her in the Tombs had stirred me, as the first

sight of no other woman had ever done. It was not so much a desire for

personal possession as a vague feeling that the man to whom she gave her

love would be happy above other men. In the back of my brain, as I sat

talking to her, was a continual questioning. She had said she was a

socialist. I saw that she had the fearless, open attitude to life,

which is the hallmark of the revolutionists. I wondered if she had a

lover. Was the friend, who had given her the introduction, the lucky

man? What were her theories in such matters?

But if she made a more direct sensuous appeal to me than other women, to

an even greater degree she seemed to ignore the possibility of such

ideas being in my mind. I have never known even an ugly woman who was

less coquettish. She was strangely aloof. She made the purely business

side of our meeting dominate, did not seem to realize there might be a

personal aspect. The way in which she made it quite impossible for me

to suggest paying for her lunch was typical. She shook hands with me

firmly, frankly, as a boy would with a man who had given him some slight

help, and strode up the street to her office. I was surprised.

In and out of the Tombs, she walked for the next few weeks. Judge Ryan,

before whom she tried her case, and who believed that all women should

marry and keep indoors as soon after eighteen as a man would have them,

was mightily exercised over her invasion.

"Damn her soul, Whitman," he said, "she isn't a woman--she's just brain

and voice. She sits there before the court opens and looks like a

woman--good-looking woman at that--then she gets up on her hind legs and

talks. Hell! I forget she is a woman--forget she wears skirts. And,

so help me God, there aren't a dozen men in the building who know as

much law as she does. She's got the goods. That's the devil of it.

You can't snub her. You can't treat her the way she deserves. You want

to call her unwomanly and she won't let you remember she's a woman."

She had made Ryan, facing her from the bench, feel the same aloofness,

she had impressed on me across the table at Philippe's. But if the

judge found it impossible to snub her, it was just as impossible, I

found, to be friendly with her. We had frequent encounters in the

corridors. I frankly sought them, and she did so as frankly--when she

wanted some information. Away from her, I thought of her as a desirable

woman. Face to face, she forced me to consider her as a serious minded

socialist.

Aside from the details of her case, we had only one talk. The second

day she was at court she cross-questioned me on my politics. I had

none. "Why not?" she demanded. She had all the narrow-minded prejudice

which most socialists have towards the mere reformer, the believer in

palliatives, the spreaders on of salve. Did I not realize the futility

of such work as mine? I was more keenly aware of it than she. Well,

why did not I go to the root of the matter? Why not attack the basic

causes? I was not sure what they were. She was. Although she had not

been in the Tombs as many days as I had years, she knew all about it.

The whole problem of crime sprang from economic maladjustment.

Socialism would cure it. It was all so beautifully simple! I have

unspeakable admiration for such faith. It is the most wonderful thing

in the world. But all I can do is to envy it. I cannot believe.

Her aloofness increased noticeably after she had sounded the depth of my

unbelief. When the case was finished, she sought me out to thank me for

the very real service I had rendered. Despite my intentions in the

matter, her hand slipped out of mine quicker than I wished. I hoped to

see her again. She was uncertain how soon, if ever, her work would

bring her back to the Tombs. I suggested that I might call on her. She

seemed really surprised.

"Why," she exclaimed; "thank you. But you know I'm very busy. I have

five or six regular engagements a week--committees and all that. And

this strike takes what time is left. I am too busy for the social game.

I'm sorry. But we'll run into each other again some time. Goodbye. No

end obliged."

It was the snub direct. Her friendship was only for those who saw the

light. She had no time for outsiders, for "mere reformers."

She filled more of my mind after she was gone than in the few days of

our intercourse. For the first time in my life romance laid hold on my

imaginings. I am not sure whether it was real love or simply wounded

_amour propre_. But I dreamed of all sorts of extravagant ways of

winning her esteem and love--generally at the cost of my life. I was

not nearly unhappy enough to want to die, but I got a keen, if somewhat

lugubrious delight in picturing her kneeling at my bedside, realizing at

last the mistake she had made in snubbing me--repenting it always

through a barren, loveless life.

The memory I held of her was altogether admirable--the straight line of

her back, the glorious poise of her head, the rich brown of eyes, her

frank and boyish manner. But pride held me back from seeking her out. I

knew a snub would be the result.

Once, a month or so later, I passed a street corner crowd, under a

socialist banner. She was just getting up to speak. I walked a block

out of my way for fear she would see me and think I was trying to renew

our acquaintance. But I also was busy. Too busy to waste time over a

phantom, gradually she sank back into a vaguer and vaguer

might-have-been. A year later I ran across her name in the paper in

connection with some strike. For a day or two her memory flared up

again. That sentimental spasm I thought was the last of her. I was

deep in proof-reading.

*IV*

That my book brought recognition from professional penologists was a

surprise to me. I had written it with the intent of interesting laymen.

But a German psychological journal gave it a long review. It was

quickly translated into French and Italian. I was made contributing

editor of "La revue penologique." Last of all the American Prison

Society took notice of me and chose me as a delegate to the

International Congress at Rome.

Europe never attracted me, and I doubt if I would have gone, except for

the urgings of Norman and Ann. I was sea-sick for five days, and bored

beyond words the rest of the way over. It rained so hard the day I

spent in Naples that I got no good view of Vesuvius.

Arrived in Rome, I found that they had put down my name for the first

day's program, and I spent the time, till the congress opened, in my

room writing up my paper. I had chosen for my subject: "The Need of a

New Terminology in the Study of Crime." More and more this reform seems

imperative to me. The effort to express the modern attitude towards

crime in the old phraseology is like putting new wine in old skins. Just

as we no longer say that a man is "possessed of the devil," but use such

newer words as "paranoia," "paresis" and so forth, we must give up such

terms as "burglary in the second degree." It is a remnant of mediaeval

scholasticism and means nothing today. It is a dead concept of an act

and gives no account of the live human being who is supposed to have

committed it. "Murder," the code implies, "is always murder, just as

oxygen is always oxygen." But while one atom of oxygen is exactly like

every other, no two murderers are at all alike. Crime is infinitely

complex. "Larceny"--a fixed and formal term--cannot describe the

intricate reactions from the varied stimuli of environment, which lead a

particular bunch of nerve cells to steal. We must turn our back on the

abstract words of the ancient law books and develop a vocabulary which

expresses actualities.

That first day of the congress, seemed to me the very apotheosis of

absurd futility. Half a hundred delegates from all corners of the world

assembled in one of the court rooms of the palace of justice. We were

supposed to be serious, practical men, come together to devise means of

improving the methods of combating crime. We sat for an hour and a half

through tiresome, bombastic exchanges of international greetings. The

election of a chairman, of honorary presidents and vice-presidents, of a

real secretary and a host of honorary secretaries took up the rest of

the morning. A nation's parliament could have organized in less time

and we had only come together to exchange ideas, we had no power.

When we convened after lunch, I was called on. There were three

delegates from England, one from Canada and another from the United

States. The rest had only a long-distance knowledge of English. I have

rarely felt more uncomfortably foolish than I did, reading my paper to

that uncomprehending audience.

The first two to discuss my thesis were Germans. Neither had completely

understood my argument, they attacked me with acrimony. The third

speaker was an Italian, who shook his fist at me. I have not the

faintest idea what he was talking about. Then one of the English

delegation, a bishop, got up and said that it was well to have a note of

humanism in our discussion, after all criminals were--or at least had

been--men like us. As Archbishop Somebody had said on seeing a prisoner

led out to execution--"There, but for the grace of God, go I."

Then a Frenchman, with carefully groomed beard and equally carefully

groomed cynicism, said I was a sentimentalist. He told us that he was a

"positivist." He referred frequently to Auguste Compte--a philosopher

whom I had up till that moment always regarded very highly. My

mawkishness he felt was a most regrettable incident in a scientific

assembly. Criminology unless it could be reduced to an exact science

like mineralogy or mathematics was no science at all. He ended up by

telling us that he was glad to report that the sentimental objections to

corporal punishment were rapidly dying out in France and that there was

every prospect of the cat-o'-nine-tails being reintroduced into their

prisons in the near future. What that had to do with my subject I could

not see.

How to reply to such critics? It was not only the difficulty of

language. Somehow I was oppressed with loneliness. I was a barbarian,

an outlandish person among them. In their thoughts they were

"officials," they were "pillars of society"--what Norman scornfully

called "the best people." It was a stupid mistake which had brought me

before them. They knew nothing about crime, except a jumble of words.

They never would.

And so--being weary of soul--I said, that as far as I had understood,

they were all against me except the gentleman from England. I wanted as

far as possible to repudiate his attitude. I protested against the

blasphemy of his archbishop. I was no churchman, but I could not find

heart to blame the Deity for our outrageous human injustice. I was

sorry that he believed in a God so immoral as to exercise special acts

of grace to keep him and me out of prison. I felt that a better motto

for prison reform would be--"There but for pure luck, go we."

This was taken as a witty sally by everyone but the English delegates

who understood what I said and we adjourned to a state reception at the

Quirinal; there was a dinner afterwards given by the Italian prison

society. The congress reconvened the next day at two in the afternoon.

The subject was "Prison Ventilation." I sneaked out and found my way to

The Forum. There I encountered a congenial soul--a youthful guide who

had learned to speak English in New York. We sat down on a piece of

ancient Rome and he told me about his adventures in the new world.

"Ever arrested?" I asked.

"Twict."

"In the Tombs?"

"Sure," he said with a broad grin. "Fer a fight."

I engaged him for the rest of my stay in Rome. He led me to a little

restaurant near-by and after supper we sat in the very top gallery of

the Coliseum and talked about Mulberry Square. So I missed the dinner

tendered us by the municipality.

The next day the great Lombroso was to discuss head measurements.

Antonio and I visited the Vatican. He was an anti-clericalist and the

indecent stories he told me about the dead popes, as he showed me their

tombs in Saint Peter's were much more vivid than the sing-song guide

book phrases he used in commenting on the wonder and the beauty of the

place. He took me to supper with his family in a tenement district of

Rome. So the "sights" I saw were not so much the pictures and the ruins

as the souls of the down-trodden peasant folk bitter against church and

state. I lost a chance--undoubtedly--to increase my meagre store of

"culture," but I do not regret it.

My fellow delegate from America was shocked at my desertion of the

congress. He thought I was in a pet over the reception given my paper

and said it was not decent to stay away. So I went the next day and

listened to a discussion on the advisability of introducing drugs into

prison diet to reduce unpleasant nervous disorders among the inmates.

Everyone seemed in favor of the proposition, the only opposition came

from a realization of the expense involved. The chairman expressed the

hope that some drug might yet be discovered which would be effective,

and at the same time cheap.

When the congress was finished the delegates were taken as guests of the

government to visit a model prison, recently opened in North Italy. Our

inspection consisted of a hurried stroll through the cell-blocks and a

banquet in the warden's palatial apartments. We drank several toasts to

members of the royal family and then, someone proposed a bumper to the

International Prison Congress. I noticed by chance that the bottle,

from which a convict waiter filled my glass, was labelled, "_Lacrimae

Christi_."

"Tears of Christ!" I said to my next neighbor. "It would be more

fitting to drink this toast of the water in which Pilate washed his

hands."

My neighbor was a Frenchman with a loud laugh--so the thoughtless jibe

had to be repeated. The English delegate seized the opportunity to

return my accusation of blasphemy. There was considerable angry

comment. It was a regrettable incident, as it did no good.

The Hungarian government had also invited us to visit some of their

blue-ribbon prisons. But in the railroad station at Milan, where we

were waiting to take train for Trieste and Budapest, I heard the _Chef

de Gare_ call the Paris express. It came over me with a rush. I could

get home a week earlier. Why waste more time with these barren old

gentlemen? I bolted, had just time to rescue my baggage.

Arrived in Paris in the early morning, I drove at once to Cook's and

reserved passage on the first boat home. As I was turning away from the

steamship desk, I had to walk past the window where mail is distributed.

I do not think I was consciously looking at the crowd of men and women

who were waiting for letters, in fact I remember quite well that I was

losing my temper over an effort to put a too large envelope into my

pocket, but suddenly I saw Suzanne Martin's back. It was impossible to

mistake it, or the glorious pile of hair above her slender neck.

I walked on, intending to hurry away. But I stopped at the door. I

picked up one of those highly colored tourist pamphlets--I think it was

an advertisement of a "Tour to Versailles in motor cars"--and over the

top of it I watched Suzanne gradually approach the window, get her

handful of letters, and sit down in one of the easy chairs to read them.

At last she finished with them and started towards the door. I wished

that I had not waited, but was ashamed to let her see me run away. I

became deeply interested in the little book. She would have to walk

right past me but if she did not care to recognize well---she should not

know that I had seen her.

*V*

"Why--hello--Mr. Whitman."

It was not till I heard her voice that I realized how much it mattered

to me, whether she spoke or not. Somehow or other we got out of the door

onto the Avenue de l'Opera.

"Which way are you going?" she asked.

"Nowhere in particular. May I walk along with you?"

So here I was in Paris walking beside Suzanne. I suppose it had been a

beautiful day before--it was early June, but it had suddenly become

resplendent. The day had begun to laugh. I found out that she was

intending to spend several weeks in Paris, so I lied and said I also was

there for a month. With selfish glee I learned that Suzanne was lonely.

She was evidently glad to have some one to talk to. Afraid that if I

did not keep busy some other way, I might shout, I launched into a

whimsical account of the prison congress. This carried us as far as a

bench in the garden of the Tuileries. And there some chance word showed

her that this was my first visit to Paris, that I had arrived hardly an

hour before we met.

"Oh!" she said, jumping up, "Then, the very first thing you must do, is

to climb the tower of Notre Dame. That's the place to get your first

look at Paris."

"_Allons donc_," I cried. I would have said the same if she had

suggested the morgue.

I remember that, as we rode along, Suzanne pointed out various places of

interest, but I doubt if my eyes went further afield than the gracious

hand with which she pointed. Then suddenly we turned a corner and came

out into the place before the cathedral. The charm of youth beside me

was broken for a moment by the wonder of antiquity. How alive the old

building seems with the spirits of the long dead men who built it! They

say that Milan Cathedral is also Gothic. But my fellow delegate must

have stood in my way. I had not seen it as for the first time I saw

Notre Dame.

"You can look at the facade afterwards," Suzanne said--her voice

breaking the spell. "The important thing is to get the view from the

top first."

The twisting, worn stairs of the North Tower was one of the treasures of

my memory. A strange impression--the thick masonry, our twinkling

little tapers in the darkness, stray wisps of Hugo's romance and of even

older stories, the beads of moisture on the stones, the chill dank

breath of very-long-ago and dominating it all, Suzanne's two tiny and

very modern tan shoes and little glimpses of her stockings. I remember

the sudden glare of the first balcony. I caught a quick view down the

river and wanted to stop. But Suzanne, who was "personally conducting"

this tour, said we could climb higher. So we entered the darkness again

and came at last to the top.

I could not tell you how Paris looks from the tower of Notre Dame. I

only remember how Suzanne looked. The stiff climb had shortened her

breath and heightened her color. The breeze caught a stray wisp of her

hair and played delightful tricks with it. And how her eyes glowed with

enthusiasm.

"This is my favorite spot on earth," she said. "It's the very center of

civilization. From here you can see the birthplace of almost every idea

which has benefited the race, the battle-fields where every human

victory was won. See! Over there on the Mont Ste. Genevieve is where

Abelard shattered mediaevalism and commenced the reformation. And over

there in the Latin Quarter is the oldest faculty of medicine in the

world. It was in one of those houses on the hillside that men dared for

the first time to study anatomy with a knife. And there--further to the

west--is where Voltaire lived. Nearby is the house of Diderot, where the

encyclopedists met to free the human mind. And here--on the other side

of the river--is the Palais Royal. See the green clump of trees. Under

one of them Camille Desmoulins jumped upon a chair and made the speech

which overthrew the Bastille. And there--see the gold statue of victory

above the housetops--that's all there is left of the grim old fortress.

And so it goes. All the history of man's emancipation spread out before

you in brick and mortar."

How lifeless it sounds now, as I write down the ghosts of her words

which haunt my memory! But how wonderfully alive they sounded that

dazzling summer morning--Paris spread out at our feet--we two alone on

the top of the world! Even then her words might have seemed dead

things, if they had not been illumined by her vibrant beauty, by the

glorious faith and enthusiasm within her. All this history was vitally

alive to her. So had passed the first acts in the great drama of

progress. And she saw the last act--the final consummation of universal

brotherhood--as something near indeed, compared to the long centuries

since Abelard had rung up the curtain. We are always attracted by what

we lack and her faith threw new chains about me.

A swarm of German tourists broke in upon us, and to escape them we went

down to lunch. At this second meal with her she told me something of

her life. She had been bred to the faith. Her mother, a Frenchwoman,

had married an American. Suzanne had been born in New York. But her

three uncles had been involved in the Communard revolt of 1871. One had

died on the barricade. The other two had been sent to New Caledonia.

The younger, living through the horrors of that Penal Colony, had

escaped to America and had brought the shattered remnant of his life to

his sister's home. He had been the mentor of Suzanne's childhood.

Six months before I encountered her in Paris, she had fallen sick from

overwork, and had come to relatives in Southern Prance to regain her

strength. Recovered now, she was spending the last month of her vacation

sight-seeing in Paris. She asked me where I was stopping, which

reminded me that I had not yet secured a place to sleep. I blamed it on

her for having taken me off to the cathedral when I should have been

looking up a hotel.

"Why waste money on a hotel?" she asked. "If you're going to be here

several weeks a _pension_ is lots cheaper."

She told me of the place where she was staying over on the Left Bank.

There were vacant rooms. I dashed away to cancel my sailing, to collect

my baggage and, before I had time to realize my good fortune, I was

installed under the same roof with her. My memory of the next few days

is a jumble of Suzanne in the Musee Carnavelet, Suzanne in the

Luxembourg, Suzanne in the Place de la Concorde, pointing out where they

had guillotined the king, Suzanne under the dome of Les Invalides,

denouncing Napoleon and all his ways.

Coming back from Versailles one evening, I asked her if she ever thought

of living permanently in France.

"No," she said emphatically. "I love France, but I don't like the

French. The men don't know how to treat a woman seriously. They always

talk love."

"I envy them the _sang froid_ with which they express their feelings."

Suzanne's eyes shot fire. Displaying all her storm signals, she flared

out into a denunciation of such flippancy. This business of telling a

woman at first sight that she made your head swim, disgusted her. This

continual harping on sex, seemed nasty. "Why can't men and women have

decent, straightforward friendships?" she demanded. She liked men,

liked their point of view, liked their talk and comradeship. But

Frenchmen could not think seriously if a woman was in sight. Friendship

was impossible with them.

"It's pretty uncertain with any men, isn't it?" I asked.

"Well. Anyhow American men are better. I've had some delightful men

friends at home."

"And did the friendships last?" I insisted.

"Well, no." She was wonderfully honest with herself. "Why is it? It

wasn't my fault."

"Probably nobody's fault," I said. "Just the grim old law of nature.

You don't blame the sun for rising. You can't blame a man for....."

"Oh, don't you begin it," she interrupted. "I give you fair warning."

We sat glum on opposite seats until the train reached Paris.

"Oh, bother!" she said, as we got out. "What's the use of moping?

Let's be friends. Just good friends."

She held out her hand so enticingly I could not help grasping it.

"Honest Injun," she said. "No cheating? Cross your heart to die."

So I was committed to a platonic relation which even at the first I knew

to be unstable.

The next morning, as though to prove the firmer basis of our friendship,

she told me that she was expecting two comrades, a Mr. and Mrs. Long,

who were then in Germany, to arrive in Paris in a few days. They were

planning a tramp through Normandy--to take in the cathedrals. Would I

join them? We spent the afternoon over a road map of North-western

France, plotting an itinerary.

And then, two days before we expected to start, came a telegram from the

Longs. They were called home suddenly, were sailing direct from

Hamburg.

"Let's go, anyhow," I said. "We can put up the brother and sister game.

These French don't know whether American brothers and sisters ought to

look alike or not. Anyhow, what does it matter what anybody thinks?"

Well. We had bought our rucksacs. The trip was planned. All its

promises of pleasures and adventures had taken hold on both of us. She

hesitated. I became eloquent. After a few minutes she broke

out--evidently not having listened to me.

"Would you keep your word?--Yes--I believe you would. I'll go if you

promise me to--well--not to get sentimental--really treat me like a

sister."

"Isn't there any time limit on the promise? Am I to bind myself to a

fraternal regard till death us do part? I don't approve of such vows."

"You're either stupid or trying to be funny," she snapped. "You propose

that we go alone on a tramping trip. You could make it miserably

uncomfortable--spoil it all. I won't start unless you promise not to.

That's simple."

"Well," I said. "Give and take. I'll promise not to get sentimental,

if you'll promise not to talk socialism. Agreed? We'll draw up a

contract--a treaty of peace."

And in spite of her laughing protests that I was a fool, I drew it up in

form. Suzanne, Party of the First Part, Arnold, Party of the Second

Part, do hereby agree, covenant, and pledge themselves not to talk

sentiment nor sociology during the hereinafter to be described trip....

So it was ordained. We started the next morning--by train to St.

Germain-en-Laye.

*VI*

One of my treasures is a worn road map of Northwestern France. Starting

from Paris, a line traces our intended course, down the Seine to Rouen,

across country to Calais. It is a clear line. I had a ruler to work

with, and the map was laid out on the marble top of a table in the

little Cafe de la Rotonde. Also starting from Paris is another line,

which shows the path we did follow. It is less dearly drawn, traced for

the most part on a book balanced on my knee. Stars mark the places where

we stopped, at night. From St. Germain-en-Laye, we doubled back to St.

Denis, then a tangent off to Amiens, a new angle to Rheims. It stops

abruptly at Moret-sur-Loing.

I can command no literary form to do justice to that Odyssey--it led me

unto those high mountains from which one can see the wondrous land of

love.

What did we do? I remember hours on end when we trudged along with

scarcely a word. I remember running a race with her through the forest

of Saint Germain. I remember a noontime under the great elm in the

Jardin of a village cafe. There was delectable omelette and _Madame la

patronne_ chattered amiably about her children and chickens and the

iniquitous new tax on cider. I remember the wonder of those century old

windows at Rheims and Suzanne's talk of the Pucelle. I remember trying

to teach her to throw stones and her vexation when I laughingly told her

she could never learn to do it like a man. And here and there along our

route, I remember little corners of the Elysian Fields where we rested

awhile and talked. Suzanne had found me unappreciative of Browning.

Often by the wayside she would take a little volume of his verse out of

her rucksac and make me listen. The first poem to charm me was "Cleon."

It led us far afield into a discussion of the meaning of life and

Suzanne--to make more clear Browning's preference for the man who lives

over the man who writes about life--read "The Last Ride Together." Her

voice faltered once--she realized I think how near it came to the

forbidden subject--but she thought better to read on. After that I

belonged to Browning.

Those verses seemed written to express our outing. Whether she looked

beyond our walk or not I do not know. I did not. What would happen

when our pilgrimage was over I did not ask. The present was too

dizzyingly joyful to question the future.

At last we came to Moret on the border of the great forest of

Fontainebleau. It had been our intention to push on and sleep at

Barbizon, but we had loitered by the way, and at the little Hotel de la

Palette, they told us the road was too long for an afternoon's comfort.

So there we stopped, to stroll away some hours in the forest and get an

early start in the morning.

They gave us two garret rooms, for the hotel was crowded with art

students and the better part was filled. I recall how the bare walls

were covered with sketches and caricatures. There was a particularly

bizarre sunset painted on the door between our rooms.

Lunch finished, we started for the forest. We came presently to a

hill-top, with an outlook over the ocean of tree-tops, the gray donjon

keep of Moret to the north. Suzanne as was her custom, threw herself

face down in the long grass. I seem to hold no sharper memory of her

than in this pose. I sat beside her, admiring. Suddenly she looked up.

"Tomorrow night Barbizon," she said, "the next day Paris and our jaunt

is over."

She looked off down a long vista between the trees. I do not know what

she saw there. But no matter which way I looked, I saw a cloud of tiny

bits of paper, fluttering into a waste-paper basket.

"And then," I said, "a certain iniquitous treaty of peace will be torn

into shreds."

My pipe had burned out before she spoke again. Her words when they did

come were utterly foreign to my dreaming.

"Why did you write that kind of a book?"

There was earnest condemnation in her voice. To gain time, I asked.

"You don't like it?"

"Of course not. It's insincere."