“POP” STREETER’S PROPOSITION
FOR the first time he could remember, Billy was sleepless till the sun
rose. All night long he thought and thought. He had considered his life
rather complex—he was leader of one of the patrols of his troop, the
Olympics; he had a part in the school drama which he had believed very
important. And on waking came the sudden remembrance of the talk Mr.
Streeter was to give soon on the matter of Good Citizens’ Clubs. Billy
was sponsor for that, and must see it through. Also it looked still more
as if he would not be able to avoid the clash with the bully.
But all this was trivial now, childish. He could no longer think of
himself alone,—there would be two. That kiss—that kiss was his pledge, a
consecration of his life to Erminie’s happiness.
By the time the sun had struck through the window into his large attic
room he had mapped out his course. He would have to continue school till
vacation—his mother would insist on that; but by that time he would have
secured work of some sort. He regretted having sold the “ha’nt” in
California and invested his money with his mother’s—by Mr. Smith’s
advice—in the City of Green Hills; but it was too late to change that.
Yet he would work hard, attend night school, and prepare himself for his
real life-business, which was to be Journalism. He spelled it with a
capital, for he would be no small truckling reporter, but a faithful,
inspiring leader of the people.
Resolutely he put aside the thought of marriage although it lay, coiled
and conscious like fate, at the back of all his plans. Other men married
young, why not one more? The conventions were ridiculous; a man was a
man when he was grown! He drew himself up and measured again before his
mirror. Almost six feet!
Yet he must not subject Erminie to ridicule. The world must see that she
was marrying a man who could support and protect her. He would not have
to wait very long,—he looked twenty-one,—and his mother would consent
when she saw he was well prepared, saw how pitiful was Erminie’s
situation. Shyly—though there was none to see—he rubbed his rough chin
and wondered how he would look with mustache and imperial.
The elation of the night still lifted him. His body was strangely light;
he felt as if he could move a mountain. The need for secrecy increased
the stimulation, and he looked on forest, lake, and Sound with new
vision. The yellow rose of sunrise touched Cascades and Olympics alike
with a splendor he had not before recognized, and lighted the vast
reaches between ranges with a clear thin radiance not seen in southern
lands.
Billy’s heart ached with this new fulness of life. Visions undreamed
before opened his eyes to his own manhood; and the impulse came to put
this experience into rhythm,—the impulse that touches every normal young
creature. Some may not have the wit to fix it on paper, but all sing the
song.
Billy sang it,—sang in a lilting, rather difficult metre, beginning
ambitiously with an apostrophe to his love,
“Ermine-white soul of my Erminie,”
and leaping immediately to the next rhyme which should be “burn in
me”—he was not acquainted with the exactions of prosody. However, his
Muse proceeded for a couple of verses; and if she limped at times, it
was no more than appears in the work of some real poets when they push
the lady too hard.
He read the lines several times, softly whispering the passioned words.
They sounded rather good, though not by a tithe were they adequate. What
miserable, foolish little things were written words! Still he marvelled
that he could write even these. He would copy them on a typewriter and
gave them to Erminie. No one could then guess their authorship, not even
her father should he chance upon them.
At breakfast he was silent, preoccupied; but his mother, being tired
from a night of watching with the baby, who had been fretful, did not
notice Billy, nor object when he said he would not be home at noon.
[Illustration: Billy gazed down on her with tender eyes, his heart
beating faster with a manly, protecting feeling new to him]
He hurried off, hoping to meet Erminie in the halls before she went to
her class-room; but she was barely prompt, passing him as the bell rang,
with a hasty nod. Billy thought it cool, till he saw that Walter Buckman
was right behind her.
The hours droned by, seemingly interminable. Automatically he went from
class to class. Twice he had to be reminded that the bell had tapped. In
the midst of defining the powers of the Constitution of the United
States of America, he saw a picture of a little house with a vine over
it, and Erminie sitting in the tiny living-room. And while walking down
the hall to his German Class he built still other castles, followed
impossible adventures that involved Erminie, himself, and two other men
who wanted her; and vanquished them both just at the moment his teacher
said, “Guten Morgen, Herr Bennett.”
Yet as the day proceeded, he had to wake to his many duties. At the noon
recess he was besieged by boys asking of the meeting to be addressed in
the assembly-room by Mr. Streeter, its importance, and if they could not
go would he tell them all about it later? And the girls appealed to him
to know if they were _really_ invited. A delayed English exercise _had_
to be copied; and at the moment—hoped for, watched for—when Erminie went
down the main hall on her way back from luncheon, a teacher was
explaining to Billy some stubbornly hidden point in his geometry.
Two o’clock came finally, and Billy, waiting till the last moment,
hoping vainly to see Erminie, went to the assembly-room, where a crowd
of noisy boys waited for Mr. Streeter’s coming.
“Who is he, anyway?” asked a boy new to the city and the school.
“He’s the best, jolliest ever,” Billy answered. “They say he’s never
grown up and never will. But the boys like him that way, and the fathers
and mothers trust him to the limit.”
“What does he do?”
“For a living? Nothing now. He’s had a fortune come to him, ten times as
much a year as he used to earn.”
“That must beat the old game for fun.”
“He gets his fun with the boys,—spends his time and money that way. You
see he’s had the university, Europe, and all that.”
When Mr. Streeter tapped for order, it was instant, for he always had
some message the boys were eager to hear, though they knew as little of
the scope of his work as did their busy fathers.
He had a round, jolly face; and near each end of his brown mustache a
dimple that was the envy of every girl who knew him. But in spite of
dimples, and kind eyes that grew dark and tender at a tale of suffering,
those eyes could compel, the dimples could disappear in a look that few
disregarded.
After his greeting, and one of the funny stories that he told well, he
said, “I have a message more serious than usual for you to-day, a plan
that touches not only you but your city of the future, for which in five
years nearly every one of you before me will be responsible.
“I wonder if you know, boys and girls, how different this city of ours
is from the older, Eastern cities? It has risen almost by magic. Your
fathers and mothers are still busy with their hard fight with nature,
cutting down trees and washing mountains into the sea, filling deep
valleys or making land where water was. They don’t have time to think of
the future.
“But it’s coming, and it will have as hard nuts to crack as any we have
now. I wonder if you wish to learn a little about them now, before they
are dropped down on you?
“Don’t we want a beautiful city? Want our city to look as well on post
cards as Paris looks, or any city on earth? No city in the world has
more beauty from nature; if we should do as well with our building as
Paris has with hers, all the people on earth would sell all their goods
and travel here to see us,—come any way they could, on foot if they
couldn’t fly,—to see the beautiful City of Green Hills.
“Do you know how we could have it that way? By making out of every boy
and girl living here a good citizen, a patriotic citizen, who would no
more be wasteful of her wealth or beauty than he would strike himself.
You are beginning here in the right way. Your playground politics, your
attempt to make it a clean place, beautiful and pleasant for ear as well
as eye,—that is fine. But nothing of that sort amounts to much unless it
reaches out to all: that’s it, to _all_. No city is fine or lasting, or
ought to last, if the set of people that are making fine avenues and
boulevards let its poor folk live in holes and sow tin cans instead of
roses in the alleys.”
He stopped a moment to get the temper of the meeting. They knew that his
hobby was hunting boys, to help them. He hunted them as other men hunt
game, or business opportunities. Only the recording angel knew how many
waifs he “rounded in for rations.” The street boys adored him for his
power as well as for his goodness. He was the champion all-round amateur
athlete of the town, and though slow to anger, in the language of the
“newsies,” when “he does let go his bunch o’ fives, skidoo the bunch!”
There were plenty of cheers, and cries of, “Go on!”
“Scouts and Sunday schools and school politics are all good; but we need
something that includes all in one larger work, as the schools and the
city include all. I have thought of a chain of Young Citizens’ Clubs
that should reach all. How many of you know about your city, her
population, income, resources, officers? Would you like to know? I am
willing to lead such a movement if you’d like it.
“There isn’t time to tell you in detail all the different schemes I have
thought out! Bands—I will see that every boy that will learn is taught
to play some instrument; drills, scouting parties in the city to spy out
what we’d like to do to make it better; the best speakers in the city
and State, to tell us just what sort of a pie the politicians cook for
us each year; picnics and camping, to learn how much fun there is out
under the sky, and how a man can jolly along without much but a blanket
and a frying pan, and have the time of his life; and each year some
great celebration the young citizens would themselves manage that would
really mean things—all these ideas, our history, our future,—do you get
this, young people? Would it be great? Or am I just dreaming?”
They caught the bigness of his idea and responded as heartily as boys
and girls always will when they are enlisted.
Jim Barney and his followers were there in force, because it was
necessary for them to be in touch with all that was going on. They saw,
or their leader did, that this Good Citizens’ Club meant the end of
their influence and of his rule.
“Of course you don’t mean girls,” Jim drawled in a slow, confident tone.
“Can girls be loyal to the city? Isn’t your mother as good a citizen as
your father?”
It was an unfortunate question. Jim’s mother had run off with a man his
father despised; while the father, a successful saloon-keeper, and good
to Jim according to his light, was the boy’s idol.
“You bet she ain’t. Women and girls don’t count in politics.”
The girls scowled, some boys hissed, but too many cheered.
“If they don’t count, America is a lie,” Mr. Streeter said when the
noise had ceased. “Yet even that aspect of the case is futile. The
amendment to enfranchise the women of Washington will surely carry; your
mothers and sisters will be citizens whether you like it or not. What
will you do about it?”
Cheering and laughing, good-natured jeers and one or two faint hisses
followed. But the majority were interested, and an organization on Mr.
Streeter’s basis followed, with Reginald Steele and Cicero Jones as
president and vice-president, Bess Carter secretary, and Billy
treasurer. As these four were of the strongest opposers of Jim Barney,
it was not surprising that he rose and rather boisterously led his gang
out.
Mr. Streeter did not quite understand, but said rivalry was sometimes
wholesome, and perhaps Mr. Barney would organize something himself.
“You may think it strange that I come with this proposition so near the
end of the school year. I wonder if you will like my further plans? How
do you think we can make this most effective? I had thought we could
have every member of this club, and those that are forming in the other
schools, start a little feeder in his own neighborhood. The Scouts are
already enthusiastic. And my biggest notion of all is to have a band in
each club; and when these bands are studying and playing about the city,
we’ll select the very best of them, and the ten best citizens,—that is,
those who, on the vote of all the rest have done most in this work,—and
we’ll go abroad with them. East, all over our own States, and then to
Europe. Well, it’s a pretty big jump, that is; I won’t propose Mars till
next time.”
“But that would take a heap of money; we couldn’t—” The “doubting
Thomas” hesitated and subsided.
“There is a city on this coast where they are doing just that thing. And
when, after a tour of six months, those thirty boys came home, having
earned their way by their splendid music, and won the applause and
goodwill of all the countries they visited, what do you suppose their
own city did? Gave them the freedom of the city, made one of them mayor
of the town for a week, and the entire city feted them.”
“Well, what do you think of that?” one astonished person upspoke in
meeting.
“That may be far away, but I have one idea coming that isn’t,—a flag for
the city. Do you like that idea? Would it be a good thing for a city to
have its own banner floating with the Stars and Stripes on every school
house, shop, ship, and home?”
“Has any other city a flag?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Gee! Then we’ll be the first! Let’s have it!”
They cheered this to the satisfaction of even Mr. Streeter.
“I shall offer a prize of fifty dollars for the best design, to be
competed for by the members of the Good Citizens’ Clubs. The Chamber of
Commerce likes the idea, and will add another fifty. We’ll begin our
annual historic pageants this year, in September, and award the prize
then. How does that strike you?”
It struck them happily, and they despatched a few more details of the
organization, arranged for the meeting hour, and for immediate
cooperation with the playground campaign,—for that was good citizens’
work,—and adjourned.
Billy had to remain with Bess after the rest to receive, and receipt
for, the money paid in for dues. A teacher gave them a drawer in one of
the desks in the library, and Billy had a key to it. On passing out of
the larger room he had managed to sign to Erminie, who had attended the
meeting, to wait for him. He and Bess finished their work together,
Billy remaining on some invented pretext till after she had gone; though
he had to follow her immediately, for the teacher was anxious to lock up
and get away.
Very casually, Billy thought, he sauntered along to where Erminie was
standing, looking nowhere in particular as he came up, and, under
pretence of showing her his club accounts, handed her a folded paper.
But even a pair of thoughtless boys passing read his beaming face; and a
teacher going by smiled in spite of himself; smiled, and scowled at
Erminie without knowing it.
She caught the look, read her own meaning into it, and turned away with
a casual, “Thank you, Billy,” that chilled him as no wind ever had. He
little dreamed she was saving him at her own expense, as she did again a
moment later, when the teacher repassed with Barney by his side, and she
gave the bully the brilliant smile Billy had expected for his own.
“I didn’t mean you should kiss him with your eyes,” Billy growled,
jealousy flaming so ludicrously in his face that Erminie laughed when
she would better have been serious.
“Don’t be foolish, Billy; you told me to square with him. Sh—! Here they
come again,” she added, and with a hasty good-bye left Billy to gloom
all the way home about that smile.
Of course he himself had advised the recognition, but not like that. Oh,
that smile!
He arrived at home to hear that his dear little comrade of earlier days,
May Nell Smith, had been hurt and was coming home.
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