The Grasshopper and the Ant
Without a doubt this trip, so illogical and so recklessly extravagant,
was due entirely to a boy's thirst for adventure. Color it as I may, the
fact of my truancy remains. I longed to explore. The valley of the James
allured me, and though my ticket and my meals along the route had used
up my last dollar, I felt amply repaid as I trod this new earth and
confronted this new sky--for both earth and sky were to my perception
subtly different from those of Iowa and Minnesota.
The endless stretches of short, dry grass, the gorgeous colors of the
dawn, the marvellous, shifting, phantom lakes and headlands, the violet
sunset afterglow,--all were widely different from our old home, and the
far, bare hills were delightfully suggestive of the horseman, the Indian
and the buffalo. The village itself was hardly more than a summer camp,
and yet its hearty, boastful citizens talked almost deliriously of
"corner lots" and "boulevards," and their chantings were timed to the
sound of hammers. The spirit of the builder seized me and so with my
return ticket in my pocket, I joined the carpenters at work on my
father's claim some two miles from the village with intent to earn money
for further exploration.
Grandfather Garland had also taken a claim (although he heartily
disliked the country) and in order to provide for both families a double
house was being built across the line between the two farms. I helped
shingle the roof, and being twenty-one now, and my own master, I
accepted wages from my father without a qualm. I earned every cent of my
two dollars per day, I assure you, but I carefully omitted all reference
to shingling, in my letters to my classmates.
At the end of a fortnight with my pay in my pocket I started eastward on
a trip which I fully intended to make very long and profoundly
educational. That I was green, very green, I knew but all that could be
changed by travel.
At the end of my second day's journey, I reached Hastings, a small town
on the Mississippi river, and from there decided to go by water to
Redwing some thirty miles below. All my life I had longed to ride on a
Mississippi steamboat, and now, as I waited on the wharf at the very
instant of the fulfillment of my desire, I expanded with anticipatory
satisfaction.
The arrival of the _War Eagle_ from St. Paul carried a fine foreign
significance, and I ascended its gang-plank with the air of a traveller
embarking at Cairo for Assouan. Once aboard the vessel I mingled,
aloofly, with the passengers, absorbed in study of the river winding
down among its wooded hills.
This ecstasy lasted during the entire trip--indeed it almost took on
poetic form as the vessel approached the landing at Redwing, for at this
point the legendary appeal made itself felt. This lovely valley had once
been the home of a chieftain, and his body, together with that of his
favorite warhorse, was buried on the summit of a hill which overlooks
the river, "in order" (so runs the legend) "that the chief might see the
first faint glow of the resurrection morn and ride to meet it."
In truth Redwing was a quiet, excessively practical little town, quite
commonplace to every other passenger, except myself. My excited
imagination translated it into something very distinctive and far-off
and shining.
I took lodgings that night at a very exclusive boarding house at six
dollars per week, reckless of the effect on my very slender purse. For a
few days I permitted myself to wander and to dream. I have disturbing
recollections of writing my friends from this little town, letters
wherein I rhapsodized on the beauty of the scenery in terms which I
would not now use in describing the Grand Canyon, or in picturing the
peaks of Wyoming. After all I was right. A landscape is precisely as
great as the impression it makes upon the perceiving mind. I was a
traveller at last!--that seemed to be my chiefest joy and I extracted
from each day all the ecstasy it contained.
My avowed object was to obtain a school and I did not entirely neglect
my plans but application to the county superintendent came to nothing. I
fear I was half-hearted in my campaign.
At last, at the beginning of the week and at the end of my money, I
bought passage to Wabasha and from there took train to a small town
where some of my mother's cousins lived. I had been in correspondence
with one of them, a Mrs. Harris, and I landed at her door (after a
glorious ride up through the hills, amid the most gorgeous autumn
colors) with just three cents in my pocket--a poverty which you may be
sure I did not publish to my relations who treated me with high respect
and manifested keen interest in all my plans.
As nothing offered in the township round about the Harris home, I
started one Saturday morning to walk to a little cross-roads village
some twenty miles away, in which I was told a teacher was required. My
cousins, not knowing that I was penniless, supposed, of course, that I
would go by train, and I was too proud to tell them the truth. It was
very muddy, and when I reached the home of the committeeman his mid-day
meal was over, and his wife did not ask if I had dined--although she was
quick to tell me that the teacher had just been hired.
Without a cent in my pocket, I could not ask for food--therefore, I
turned back weary, hungry and disheartened. To make matters worse a cold
rain was falling and the eighteen or twenty miles between me and the
Harris farm looked long.
I think it must have been at this moment that I began, for the first
time, to take a really serious view of my plan "to see the world." It
became evident with startling abruptness, that a man might be both
hungry and cold in the midst of abundance. I recalled the fable of the
grasshopper who, having wasted the summer hours in singing, was
mendicant to the ant. My weeks of careless gayety were over. The money I
had spent in travel looked like a noble fortune to me at this hour.
The road was deep in mud, and as night drew on the rain thickened. At
last I said, "I will go into some farm-house and ask the privilege of a
bed." This was apparently a simple thing to do and yet I found it
exceedingly hard to carry out. To say bluntly, "Sir, I have no money, I
am tired and hungry," seemed a baldly disgraceful way of beginning. On
the other hand to plead relationship with Will Harris involved a
relative, and besides they might not know my cousin, or they might think
my statement false.
Arguing in this way I passed house after house while the water dripped
from my hat and the mud clogged my feet. Though chilled and hungry to
the point of weakness, my suffering was mainly mental. A sudden
realization of the natural antagonism of the well-to-do toward the tramp
appalled me. Once, as I turned in toward the bright light of a kitchen
window, the roar of a watch dog stopped me before I had fairly passed
the gate. I turned back with a savage word, hot with resentment at a
house-owner who would keep a beast like that. At another cottage I was
repulsed by an old woman who sharply said, "We don't feed tramps."
I now had the precise feeling of the penniless outcast. With morbidly
active imagination I conceived of myself as a being forever set apart
from home and friends, condemned to wander the night alone. I worked on
this idea till I achieved a bitter, furtive and ferocious manner.
However, I knocked at another door and upon meeting the eyes of the
woman at the threshold, began with formal politeness to explain, "I am a
teacher, I have been to look for a school, and I am on my way back to
Byron, where I have relatives. Can you keep me all night?"
The woman listened in silence and at length replied with ungracious
curtness, "I guess so. Come in."
She gave me a seat by the fire, and when her husband returned from the
barn, I explained the situation to him. He was only moderately cordial.
"Make yourself at home. I'll be in as soon as I have finished my
milking," he said and left me beside the kitchen fire.
The woman of the house, silent, suspicious (it seemed to me) began to
spread the table for supper while I, sitting beside the stove, began to
suffer with the knowledge that I had, in a certain sense, deceived them.
I was fairly well dressed and my voice and manner, as well as the fact
that I was seeking a school, had given them, no doubt, the impression
that I was able to pay for my entertainment, and the more I thought of
this the more uneasy I became. To eat of their food without making an
explanation was impossible but the longer I waited the more difficult
the explanation grew.
Suffering keenly, absurdly, I sat with hanging head going over and over
the problem, trying to formulate an easy way of letting them know my
predicament. There was but one way of escape--and I took it. As the
woman stepped out of the room for a moment, I rose, seized my hat and
rushed out into the rain and darkness like a fugitive.
I have often wondered what those people thought when they found me gone.
Perhaps I am the great mystery of their lives, an unexplained visitant
from "the night's Plutonian shore."
I plodded on for another mile or two in the darkness, which was now so
intense I could scarcely keep the road. Only by the feel of the mud
under my feet could I follow the pike. Like Jean Valjean, I possessed a
tempest in my brain. I experienced my first touch of despair.
Although I had never had more than thirty dollars at any one time, I had
never been without money. Distinctions had not counted largely in the
pioneer world to which I belonged. I was proud of my family. I came of
good stock, and knew it and felt it, but now here I was, wet as a sponge
and without shelter simply because I had not in my pocket a small piece
of silver with which to buy a bed.
I walked on until this dark surge of rebellious rage had spent its force
and reason weakly resumed her throne. I said, "What nonsense! Here I am
only a few miles from relatives. All the farmers on this road must know
the Harris family. If I tell them who I am, they will certainly feel
that I have the claim of a neighbor upon them."--But these deductions,
admirable as they were, did not lighten my sky or make begging easier.
After walking two miles further I found it almost impossible to proceed.
It was black night and I did not know where I stood. The wind had risen
and the rain was falling in slant cataracts. As I looked about me and
caught the gleam from the windows of a small farmhouse, my stubborn
pride gave way. Stumbling up the path I rapped on the door. It was
opened by a middle-aged farmer in his stocking feet, smoking a pipe.
Having finished his supper he was taking his ease beside the fire, and
fortunately for me, was in genial mood.
"Come in," he said heartily. "'Tis a wet night."
I began, "I am a cousin of William Harris of Byron--"
"You don't say! Well, what are you doing on the road a night like this?
Come in!"
I stepped inside and finished my explanation there.
This good man and his wife will forever remain the most hospitable
figures in my memory. They set me close beside the stove insisting that
I put my feet in the oven to dry, talking meanwhile of my cousins and
the crops, and complaining of the incessant rainstorms which were
succeeding one another almost without intermission, making this one of
the wettest and most dismal autumns the country had ever seen. Never in
all my life has a roof seemed more heavenly, or hosts more sweet and
gracious.
After breakfast next morning I shook hands with the farmer saying: "I
shall send you the money for my entertainment the first time my cousin
comes to town," and under the clamor of his hospitable protestations
against payment, set off up the road.
The sun came out warm and beautiful and all about me on every farm the
teamsters were getting into the fields. The mud began to dry up and with
the growing cheer of the morning my heart expanded and the experience of
the night before became as unreal as a dream and yet it had happened,
and it had taught me a needed lesson. Hereafter I take no narrow
chances, I vowed to myself.
Upon arrival at my cousin's home I called him aside and said, "Will, you
have work to do and I have need of wages,--I am going to strip off this
'boiled shirt' and white collar, and I am going to work for you just
the same as any other hand, and I shall expect the full pay of the best
man on your place."
He protested, "I don't like to see you do this. Don't give up your
plans. I'll hitch up and we'll start out and keep going till we find you
a school."
"No," I said, "not till I earn a few dollars to put in my pocket. I've
played the grasshopper for a few weeks--from this time on I'm the busy
ant."
So it was settled, and the grasshopper went forth into the fields and
toiled as hard as any slave. I plowed, threshed, and husked corn, and
when at last December came, I had acquired money enough to carry me on
my way. I decided to visit Onalaska and the old coulee where my father's
sister and two of the McClintocks were still living. With swift return
of confidence, I said good-bye to my friends in Zumbrota and took the
train. It seemed very wonderful that after a space of thirteen years I
should be returning to the scenes of my childhood, a full-grown man and
paying my own way. I expanded with joy of the prospect.
Onalaska, the reader may remember, was the town in which I had gone to
school when a child, and in my return to it I felt somewhat like the man
in the song, _Twenty Years Ago_--indeed I sang, "I've wandered through
the village, Tom, I've sat beneath the tree" for my uncle that first
night. There was the river, filled as of old with logs, and the clamor
of the saws still rose from the sawdust islands. Bleakly white the
little church, in which we used to sit in our Sunday best, remained
unchanged but the old school-house was not merely altered, it was gone!
In its place stood a commonplace building of brick. The boys with whom I
used to play "Mumblety Peg" were men, and some of them had developed
into worthless loafers, lounging about the doors of the saloons, and
although we looked at one another with eyes of sly recognition, we did
not speak.
Eagerly I visited the old coulee, but the magic was gone from the hills,
the glamour from the meadows. The Widow Green no longer lived at the
turn of the road, and only the Randals remained. The marsh was drained,
the big trees cleared away. The valley was smaller, less mysterious,
less poetic than my remembrances of it, but it had charm nevertheless,
and I responded to the beauty of its guarding bluffs and the deep-blue
shadows which streamed across its sunset fields.
Uncle William drove down and took me home with him, over the long hill,
back to the little farm where he was living much the same as I
remembered him. One of his sons was dead, the other had shared in the
rush for land, and was at this time owner of a homestead in western
Minnesota. Grandfather McClintock, still able to walk about, was
spending the autumn with William and we had a great deal of talk
concerning the changes which had come to the country and especially to
our family group. "Ye scatter like the leaves of autumn," he said
sadly--then added, "Perhaps in the Final Day the trumpet of the Lord
will bring us all together again."
We sang some of his old Adventist hymns together and then he asked me
what I was planning to do. "I haven't any definite plans," I answered,
"except to travel. I want to travel. I want to see the world."
"To see the world!" he exclaimed. "As for me I wait for it to pass away.
I watch daily for the coming of the Chariot."
This gray old crag of a man interested me as deeply as ever and yet, in
a sense, he was an alien. He was not of my time--scarcely of my country.
He was a survival of the days when the only book was the Bible, when
the newspaper was a luxury. Migration had been his lifelong adventure
and now he was waiting for the last great remove. His thought now was of
"the region of the Amaranth," his new land "the other side of Jordan."
He engaged my respect but I was never quite at ease with him. His
valuations were too intensely religious; he could not understand my
ambitions. His mind filled with singular prejudices,--notions which came
down from the Colonial age, was impervious to new ideas. His character
had lost something of its mellow charm--but it had gained in dramatic
significance. Like my uncles he had ceased to be a part of my childish
world.
I went away with a sense of sadness, of loss as though a fine picture on
the walls of memory had been dimmed or displaced. I perceived that I had
idealized him as I had idealized all the figures and scenes of my
boyhood--"but no matter, they were beautiful to me then and beautiful
they shall remain," was the vague resolution with which I dismissed
criticism.
The whole region had become by contrast with Dakota, a "settled"
community. The line of the middle border had moved on some three hundred
miles to the west. The Dunlaps, McIldowneys, Dudleys and Elwells were
the stay-at-homes. Having had their thrust at the job of pioneering
before the war they were now content on their fat soil. To me they all
seemed remote. Their very names had poetic value, for they brought up in
my mind shadowy pictures of the Coulee country as it existed to my
boyish memories.
I spent nearly two months in Onalaska, living with my Aunt Susan, a
woman of the loveliest character. Richard Bailey, her husband, one of
the kindliest of men, soon found employment for me, and so, for a time,
I was happy and secure.
However, this was but a pause by the roadside. I was not satisfied. It
was a show of weakness to settle down on one's relations. I wanted to
make my way among strangers. I scorned to lean upon my aunt and uncle,
though they were abundantly able to keep me. It was mid-winter, nothing
offered and so I turned (as so many young men similarly placed have
done), toward a very common yet difficult job. I attempted to take
subscriptions for a book.
After a few days' experience in a neighboring town I decided that
whatever else I might be fitted for in this world, I was not intended
for a book agent. Surrendering my prospectus to the firm, I took my way
down to Madison, the capital of the state, a city which seemed at this
time very remote, and very important in my world. Only when travelling
did I have the feeling of living up to the expectations of Alice and
Burton who put into their letters to me, an envy which was very sweet.
To them I was a bold adventurer!
Alas for me! In the shining capital of my state I felt again the world's
rough hand. First of all I tried The State House. This was before the
general use of typewriters and I had been told that copyists were in
demand. I soon discovered that four men and two girls were clamoring for
every job. Nobody needed me. I met with blunt refusals and at last
turned to other fields.
Every morning I went among the merchants seeking an opportunity to clerk
or keep books, and at last obtained a place at six dollars per week in
the office of an agricultural implement firm. I was put to work in the
accounting department, as general slavey, under the immediate
supervision of a youth who had just graduated from my position and who
considered me his legitimate victim. He was only seventeen and not
handsome, and I despised him with instant bitterness. Under his
direction I swept out the office, made copies of letters, got the mail,
stamped envelopes and performed other duties of a manual routine kind,
to which I would have made no objection, had it not been for the
gloating joy with which that chinless cockerel ordered me about. I had
never been under that kind of discipline, and to have a pin-headed gamin
order me to clean spittoons was more than I could stomach.
At the end of the week I went to the proprietor, and said, "If you have
nothing better for me to do than sweep the floor and run errands, I
think I'll quit."
With some surprise my boss studied me. At last he said: "Very well, sir,
you can go, and from all accounts I don't think we'll miss you much,"
which was perfectly true. I was an absolute failure so far as any
routine work of that kind was concerned.
So here again I was thrown upon a cruel world with only six dollars
between myself and the wolf. Again I fell back upon my physical powers.
I made the round of all the factories seeking manual labor. I went out
on the Catfish, where, through great sheds erected for the manufacture
of farm machinery, I passed from superintendent to foreman, from foreman
to boss,--eager to wheel sand, paint woodwork, shovel coal--anything at
all to keep from sending home for money--for, mind you, my father or my
uncle would have helped me out had I written to them, but I could not do
that. So long as I was able to keep a roof over my head, I remained
silent. I was in the world and I intended to keep going without asking a
cent from anyone. Besides, the grandiloquent plans for travel and
success which I had so confidently outlined to Burton must be carried
out.
I should have been perfectly secure had it been summertime, for I knew
the farmer's life and all that pertained to it, but it was winter. How
to get a living in a strange town was my problem. It was a bright,
clear, intensely cold February, and I was not very warmly dressed--hence
I kept moving.
Meanwhile I had become acquainted with a young clergyman in one of the
churches, and had showed to him certain letters and papers to prove that
I was not a tramp, and no doubt his word kept my boarding mistress from
turning me into the street.
Mr. Eaton was a man of books. His library contained many volumes of
standard value and we met as equals over the pages of Scott and Dickens.
I actually forced him to listen to a lecture which I had been writing
during the winter and so wrought upon him that he agreed to arrange a
date for me in a neighboring country church.--Thereafter while I glowed
with absurd dreams of winning money and renown by delivering that
lecture in the churches and school-houses of the state, I continued to
seek for work, any work that would bring me food and shelter.
One bitter day in my desperate need I went down upon the lake to watch
the men cutting ice. The wind was keen, the sky gray and filled with
glittering minute flecks of frost, and my clothing (mainly cotton)
seemed hardly thicker than gossamer, and yet I looked upon those working
men with a distinct feeling of envy. Had I secured "a job" I should have
been pulling a saw up and down through the ice, at the same time that I
dreamed of touring the west as a lecturer--of such absurd contradictions
are the visions of youth.
I don't know exactly what I would have done had not my brother happened
along on his way to a school near Chicago. To him I confessed my
perplexity. He paid my board bill (which was not very large) and in
return I talked him into a scheme which promised great things for us
both--I contracted to lecture under his management! He was delighted at
the opportunity of advancing me, and we were both happy.
Our first engagement was at Cyene, a church which really belonged to
Eaton's circuit, and according to my remembrance the lecture was a
moderate success. After paying all expenses we had a little money for
carfare, and Franklin was profoundly impressed. It really seemed to us
both that I had at last entered upon my career. It was the kind of
service I had been preparing for during all my years at school--but
alas! our next date was a disaster. We attempted to do that which an
older and fully established lecturer would not have ventured. We tried
to secure an audience with only two days' advance work, and of course we
failed.
I called a halt. I could not experiment on the small fund which my
father had given Frank for his business education.
However, I borrowed a few dollars of him and bought a ticket to Rock
River, a town near Chicago. I longed to enter the great western
metropolis, but dared not do so--yet. I felt safe only when in sight of
a plowed field.
At a junction seventy miles out of the city, we separated, he to attend
a school, and I to continue my education in the grim realities of life.
From office to office in Rock River I sullenly plodded, willing to work
for fifty cents a day, until at last I secured a clerkship in a small
stationery jobbing house which a couple of school teachers had strangely
started, but on Saturday of the second week the proprietor called me to
him and said kindly, but firmly, "Garland, I'm afraid you are too
literary and too musical for this job. You have a fine baritone voice
and your ability to vary the text set before you to copy, is remarkable,
and yet I think we must part."
The reasons for this ironical statement were (to my mind) ignoble;
first of all he resented my musical ability, secondly, my literary skill
shamed him, for as he had put before me a badly composed circular
letter, telling me to copy it one hundred times, I quite naturally
improved the English.--However, I admitted the charge of
insubordination, and we parted quite amicably.
It was still winter, and I was utterly without promise of employment. In
this extremity, I went to the Y. M. C. A. (which had for one of its aims
the assistance of young men out of work) and confided my homelessness to
the secretary, a capital young fellow who knew enough about men to
recognize that I was not a "bum." He offered me the position of
night-watch and gave me a room and cot at the back of his office. These
were dark hours!
During the day I continued to pace the streets. Occasionally some little
job like raking up a yard would present itself, and so I was able to buy
a few rolls, and sometimes I indulged in milk and meat. I lived along
from noon to noon in presentable condition, but I was always hungry. For
four days I subsisted on five cents worth of buns.
Having left my home for the purpose of securing experience in the world,
I had this satisfaction--I was getting it! Very sweet and far away
seemed all that beautiful life with Alice and Burton and Hattie at the
Seminary, something to dream over, to regret, to versify, something
which the future (at this moment) seemed utterly incapable of
reproducing. I still corresponded with several of my classmates, but was
careful to conceal the struggle that I was undergoing. I told them only
of my travels and my reading.
As the ironical jobber remarked, I had a good voice, and upon being
invited to accompany the Band of Hope which went to sing and pray in the
County Jail, I consented, at least I took part in the singing. In this
way I partly paid the debt I owed the Association, and secured some
vivid impressions of prison life which came into use at a later time. My
three associates in this work were a tinner, a clothing salesman and a
cabinet maker. More and more I longed for the spring, for with it I knew
would come seeding, building and a chance for me.
At last in the midst of a grateful job of raking up yards and planting
shrubs, I heard the rat-tat-tat of a hammer, and resolved upon a bold
plan. I decided to become a carpenter, justifying myself by reference to
my apprenticeship to my grandfather. One fine April morning I started
out towards the suburbs, and at every house in process of construction
approached the boss and asked for a job. Almost at once I found
encouragement. "Yes, but where are your tools?"
In order to buy the tools I must work, work at anything. Therefore, at
the next place I asked if there was any rough labor required around the
house. The foreman replied: "Yes, there is some grading to be done."
Accordingly I set to work with a wheelbarrow, grading the bank around
the almost completed building. This was hard work, the crudest form of
manual labor, but I grappled with it desperately, knowing that the pay
(a dollar and a half a day) would soon buy a kit of tools.
Oh, that terrible first day! The heavy shovel blistered my hands and
lamed my wrists. The lifting of the heavily laden wheelbarrow strained
my back and shoulders. Half-starved and weak, quite unfitted for
sustained effort of this kind, I struggled on, and at the end of an
interminable afternoon staggered home to my cot. The next morning came
soon,--too soon. I was not merely lame, I was lacerated. My muscles
seemed to have been torn asunder, but I toiled (or made a show of
toiling) all the second day. On the warrant of my wages I borrowed
twenty-five cents of a friend and with this bought a meat dinner which
helped me through another afternoon.
The third day was less painful and by the end of the week, I was able to
do anything required of me. Upon receiving my pay I went immediately to
the hardware store and bought a set of tools and a carpenter's apron,
and early on Monday morning sallied forth in the _opposite direction_ as
a carpenter seeking a job. I soon came to a big frame house in course of
construction. "Do you need another hand?" I asked. "Yes," replied the
boss. "Take hold, right here, with this man."
"This man" turned out to be a Swede, a good-natured fellow, who made no
comment on my deficiencies. We sawed and hammered together in very
friendly fashion for a week, and I made rapid gains in strength and
skill and took keen pleasure in my work. The days seemed short and life
promising and as I was now getting two dollars per day, I moved out of
my charity bed and took a room in a decayed mansion in the midst of a
big lawn. My bearing became confident and easy. Money had straightened
my back.
The spring advanced rapidly while I was engaged on this work and as my
crew occasionally took contracts in the country I have vivid pictures of
the green and pleasant farm lands, of social farmers at barn-raisings,
and of tables filled with fatness. I am walking again in my stocking
feet, high on the "purline plate," beetle in hand, driving home the
oaken "pins." I am shingling on the broad roof of a suburban house from
which I can see the sunny slopes of a meadow and sheep feeding therein.
I am mending a screen door for a farmer's wife while she confides to me
the tragedy of her life--and always I have the foolish boyish notion
that I am out in the world and seeing life.
Into the midst of this busy peaceful season of manual labor came my
first deeply romantic admiration. Edwin Booth was announced as "the
opening attraction of the New Opera House" and I fairly trembled with
anticipatory delight, for to me the word _Booth_ meant all that was
splendid and tragic and glorious in the drama. I was afraid that
something might prevent me from hearing him.
At last the night came and so great was the throng, so strong the
pressure on the doors that the lock gave way and I, with my dollar
clutched tightly in my hand, was borne into the hall and half-way up the
stairs without touching foot to the floor, and when at last, safe in my
balcony seat I waited for the curtain to rise, I had a distinct
realization that a shining milestone was about to be established in my
youthful trail.
My father had told me of the elder Booth, and of Edwin's beautiful
Prince of Denmark I had heard many stories, therefore I waited with awe
as well as eagerness, and when the curtain, rising upon the court scene,
discovered the pale, handsome face and graceful form of the noble Dane,
and the sound of his voice,--that magic velvet voice--floated to my ear
with the words, "Seems, madame, I know not seems," neither time nor
space nor matter existed for me--I was in an ecstasy of attention.
I had read much of Shakespeare. I could recite many pages of the
tragedies and historical plays, and I had been assured by my teachers
that _Hamlet_ was the greatest of all dramas, but Edwin Booth in one
hour taught me more of its wonders, more of the beauty of the English
language than all my instructors and all my books. He did more, he
aroused in me a secret ambition to read as he read, to make the dead
lines of print glow with color and throb with music. There was something
magical in his interpretation of the drama's printed page. With voice
and face and hand he restored for duller minds the visions of the poet,
making Hamlet's sorrows as vital as our own.
From this performance, which filled me with vague ambitions and a
glorious melancholy, I returned to my association with a tinker, a
tailor, and a tinner, whose careless and stupid comments on the play
both pained and angered me. I went to my work next day in such absorbed
silence as only love is supposed to give.
I re-read my _Hamlet_ now with the light of Booth's face in my eyes and
the music of his glorious voice in my ear. As I nailed and sawed at pine
lumber, I murmured inaudibly the lofty lines of the play, in the hope of
fixing forever in my mind the cadences of the great tragedian's
matchless voice.
Great days! Growing days! Lonely days! Days of dream and development,
needing only the girl to be perfect--but I had no one but Alice to whom
I could voice my new enthusiasm and she was not only out of the reach of
my voice, but serenely indifferent to my rhapsodic letters concerning
_Hamlet_ and the genius of Edwin Booth.