ACROSS THE BORDER OF BOYLAND
As we were looking in this same window, I saw a man who looked exactly
like a man who used to be a lawyer politician in Warsaw, a small town
lawyer politician, such as you find in every town of the kind,
pettifogging their lives away, but doing it unconsciously, you may well
believe. This one had that peculiar something about him which marks the
citizen who would like to be a tribune of the people but lacks the
capacity. His clothes, nondescript, durable garments, were worn with the
air of one who says “It is good to dress plainly. That is what my
clients expect. Besides, I am a poor man, a commoner, and proud of it. I
know that my constituents are proud of it too.” He was standing at the
foot of a law office stairs from which quite plainly he had just
descended. This was not quite enough to confirm me in my idea that he
was a country lawyer—he might have been a client—but I went further and
asked him, in a roundabout way.
“What is the best road to Defiance?”
“Well,” he replied, with quite an air, as who should say, “now here is a
pleasant opportunity and diversion”—"There are two of them. One runs to
the north of here, a hard, macadam road, and the other follows the canal
and the river most of the way. Personally, I would choose the canal. It
isn’t quite as good a road, but the scenery is so much better. You have
the river nearly always in view to your left. To the right the scenery
is very attractive." He raised his hand in a slightly oratorical way.
“By the way, if you will pardon me, you are a lawyer, aren’t you?”
“Well, yes, I suppose I might lay claim to that distinction,” he
replied, with a faintly dry smile. “I practice law here.”
His coat was as brown as old brass, nearly, his shoes thick and
unpolished, his trousers baggy. The soft hat he wore was pulled down
indifferently over his eyes.
“I ask,” I said, “because years ago, in Warsaw, Indiana, I knew a lawyer
who looked very much like you.”
“Indeed! I’ve never been in Warsaw, but I’ve heard of it. We have people
here that go to Winona Lake. That’s right near there, isn’t it?”
“Practically the same place,” I replied.
“Well, when there are so many people in the world, I suppose some of us
must look alike,” he continued.
“Yes,” I replied, “I’ve met my counterpart more than once.”
He began to expatiate on the charms of this region, but seeing that we
were plainly rather anxious to be off, finally concluded and let us go.
I could not help thinking, as he looked after us, that perhaps he would
like very much to be going himself.
From here on the scenery was so simple and yet so beautiful that it was
like a dream—such a land as Goldsmith and Gray had in mind when they
wrote. This little stream, the Maumee, was delightful. It was, as he
said, paralleled by a canal nearly all the way into Defiance and between
canal and river were many little summer cottages, quaint and idle
looking.
It had become excessively hot, so much so that I felt that now, at last,
I was beginning to sunburn badly, but in spite of this we had no thought
of putting up the top or of seeking shelter by lingering in the shade.
It was so hot that I perspired sitting in the car, but even so it was
too lovely, just moving along with what breeze the motion provided. At
Napoleon, Booth had bought a light rubber ball, and with this, a few
miles out, we stopped to play. The automobile gave us this freedom to
seek ideal nooks and secluded places, and thus disport ourselves. The
grass and trees were still green, not burned. Wheat fields newly shorn
or still standing had that radiant gold hue which so pleases the eye at
this season of the year. It was so hot and still that even all insects
seemed to have taken to cover. We tossed our ball in a green field
opposite a grove and looking up I could see a lonely buzzard soaring in
the sky. Truly this is my own, my native land, I said to myself. I have
rejoiced in hundreds of days just like this. All the middle West is like
it—this dry heat, these clear skies, this sleepy baking atmosphere. For
hundreds of miles, in my mind’s eye, I could see people idling on their
porches or under their trees, making the best of it. The farmer’s wain
was creaking along in the sun, the cattle were idling in the water,
swishing their tails. Girls and boys home from school for the summer
were idling in hammocks, reading or loafing. Few great thoughts or
turmoils were breeding in this region. It was a pleasant land of drowsy
mind and idle eye—I could feel it.
By winding ways, but always with a glimpse of this same Maumee or its
parallel canal, we arrived at Defiance, and a little while later, at
dusk, at Hicksville. Both of these towns, like Napoleon, were of the
temperament of which I am most fond—nebulous, speculative, dreamy. You
could tell by their very looks that that definite commercial sense which
was so marked in places farther East was not here abounding. They were
still, as at Warsaw in my day, outside the keen, shrill whip of things.
Everyone was not strutting around with the all-too-evident feeling that
they must get on. (I hate greedy, commercial people.) Things were
drifting in a slow, romantic, speculative way. Actually I said to
Franklin, and he will bear witness to it, that now we were in the exact
atmosphere which was most grateful to me. I looked on all the simple
little streets, the one and a half story houses with sloping roofs, the
rows of good trees and unfenced lawns, and wished and wished and wished.
If one only could go back—supposing one could—unreel like a film, and
then represent one’s life to oneself. What elisions would we not make,
and what extensions! Some incidents I would make so much more perfect
than they were—others would not be in the film at all.
In Defiance we all indulged in shaves, shoe shines, drinks. As we were
nearing Hicksville we overtook two farmers—evidently brothers, on a load
of hay. It was so beautiful, the charm of the land so great, that we
were all in the best of spirits. To the south of us was a little town
looking like one of those villages in Holland which you see over a wide
stretch of flat land, a distant church spire or windmill being the most
conspicuous object anywhere. Here it was a slate church steeple and a
red factory chimney that stood up and broke the sky line. It was
fairyland with a red sun, just sinking below the horizon, the trees
taking on a smoky harmony in the distance. Spirals of gnats were in the
air, and we were on one of those wonderful brick roads I have previously
mentioned, running from Defiance to Hicksville, as smooth and
picturesque to view as an old Dutch tile oven. Once we stopped the car
to listen to the evening sounds, the calls of farmers after pigs, the
mooing of cows, the rasping of guinea hens, and the last faint
twitterings of birds and chickens. That evening hush, with a tinge of
cool in the air, and the fragrant emanation of the soil and trees, was
upon us. It needed only some voice singing somewhere, I thought, or the
sound of a bell, to make it complete. And even those were added.
As we were idling so, these two farmers came along seated on a load of
hay, making a truly Ruysdaelish picture in the amethyst light. We made
sure to greet them.
“What town is that one there?” Franklin inquired, jovially.
“Squiresburg,” the driver replied, grinning. His brother was sitting far
back on the hay.
“This is the road to Hicksville all right, isn’t it?” I put in.
“Yes, this is the road,” he returned.
“How large a place is Squiresburg, anyhow?” I queried.
“Oh, seven or eight hundred.”
“And how big is Hicksville?”
“Oh, two or three thousand.”
“But Squiresburg’s a better place than Hicksville,” put in the brother,
who sat behind, chewing a stalk of hay and smiling broadly.
“How’s that?” inquired Franklin.
The fellow’s manner was contagious.
“Oh, they’re not as hard on yuh over in Squiresburg as they are in
Hicksville.” He munched his straw suggestively. “Y' kin have a better
time there.”
He smiled again, most elusively.
“Oh, this,” said Speed, quickly, forming his fingers into a cup and
upending it before his lips.
“That’s it,” said the man. “There ain’t no license in Hicksville.”
“Alas!” I exclaimed. “And we’re bound for Hicksville.”
“Well, tain’t too late,” said the man in front. “There’s Squiresburg
right over there.”
“I’m afraid, I’m afraid,” I sighed, and yet the thought came to me what
a fine thing it would be to turn aside here and loaf in Squiresburg in
one of its loutish country saloons, say, until midnight, seeing what
might happen. The Dutch inns of Jan Steen were somehow in my mind. But
just the same we didn’t. Those things must be taken on the jump. An
opportunity to be a success must provoke a spontaneous burst of
enthusiasm. This suggestion of theirs, if it appealed to the others,
provoked no vocal acquiescence. We smiled at them approvingly, and then
rode on, only to comment later on what an adventure it might have
proved—how rurally revealing.
[Illustration:
HICKSVILLE
A Rembrandt effect
]
As we entered Hicksville the lamps were being trimmed in a cottage or
two, and I got a sense once more of the epic that life is day after day,
year after year, century after century, cycle after cycle. Poets may
come and poets may go, a Gray, a Goldsmith, a Burns in every generation,
but this thing which they seek to interpret remains forever. A Daubigny,
a Corot, a Ruysdael, a Vermeer, all American born, might well interpret
this from generation to generation. It would never tire. Passing up this
simple village street, with its small cottages on every hand, I could
not help thinking of what a Monticelli or an Inness would make it. The
shadows at this hour were somewhat flamboyant, like those in “The Night
Watch.” A sprinkling of people in the two blocks which comprised the
heart of things was Rembrandtish in character. Positively, it was a
comfort now to know that Franklin was with me, and that subsequently he
would register this or something like it either in pen and ink or
charcoal. It was so delightful to me in all its rural naïveté and
crudity, that I wanted to sing about it or sit down in some corner
somewhere and rhapsodize on paper. As it was, after exchanging a few
words with a farmer who wanted to hear the story of our tour, we went to
look for some picture postcards of Hicksville, and then to get something
to eat.
It would seem at times as if life needed not so much action as
atmosphere—certainly not action of any vigorous character—to make it
transcendently pleasing. Insofar as I could see, there was no action in
this town worthy of the name. Indeed, the people seemed to me to be of a
lackadaisical turn, rurals of a very simple and unpretentious character,
and, for the most part, as to the men, of an uncouth and workaday
aspect. Many of them were of the stuff of which railroad hands are made,
only here with the farm lands and the isolation of country life to fall
back on, they were not so sophisticated.
The country lunch room which we encountered amused us all from one point
of view and another. It was so typically your male center of rural life,
swarming with all the wits and wags of the community and for miles
around. Here raw yokels and noisy pretenders were eating, playing cards,
pool, billiards, and indulging in rural wit, and we heard all the
standard jests of country life. I gained the impression that the place
had once been a barroom before the no-license limitation had descended
upon it, and that many of its former patrons were making the best of the
new conditions.
And here it was that for the first time in my life I tasted banana pie.
Did you ever eat banana pie? Well! The piece I had here, in lieu of
apple for which I inquired, a quarter section, with a larger layer of
meringue on top, filled a long felt want and a void. It made up for the
fact that I had to content myself with a ham sandwich and two fried
eggs. It was thick—all of an inch and a half—and very pastryish. I asked
the clerk (I cannot conscientiously call him a waiter) if he knew how to
make it, but he did not. And I have been seeking ever since for a recipe
as good as that from which this pie was made.
Next door to this restaurant was the Hotel Swilley—mark the name—and
farther up the street, “Mr. and Mrs. C. J. Holmes, Undertaker.” In the
one drug and book and stationery store, where the only picture postcards
we could find were of the depot and the “residence of N. C. Giffen,”
whoever he might be, several very young girls, “downtown for a soda,”
were calling up some other girl at home.
“Hello, Esther! Is this you, Esther? Well, don’t you know who this is,
Esther? Can’t you tell? Oh, listen, Esther! Listen to my voice. Now
can’t you tell, Esther? I thought you could. It’s Etta, of course. Wait
a minute, Esther, Mabel wants to speak to you. Well, goodbye, Esther.”
(This last after Mabel had spoken to much the same effect as Etta.)
After idling about in what seemed an almost Saturday night throng, so
chipper and brisk was it, we made our way to Fort Wayne. It was a brisk,
cool ride. The moon was on high, very clear, and a light wind blowing
which made overcoats comfortable. Just outside Hicksville we encountered
another detour, which shut us off from our fine road and enraged us so
that we decided to ignore the sign warning us to keep out under penalty
of the law and to go on anyhow. There seemed a good road ahead in spite
of the sign, and so we deliberately separated the boards on posts which
barred the way and sped on.
But the way of the transgressor—remember! Scarcely a mile had gone
before the road broke into fragments, partially made passable by a
filling of crushed stone, but after that it swiftly degenerated into
mud, rubble and ruts, and we began to think we had made a dreadful
mistake. Supposing we were stalled here and found? What would become of
my trip to Indiana! Fined and detained, Franklin might get very much out
of sorts and not care to go on. Oh, dear! Oh, dear!
We bumped along over rocks and stumps in the most uncomfortable fashion.
The car rocked like a boat on a helter-skelter at Coney Island. Finally
we came to a dead stop and looked into our condition, fore and aft.
Things were becoming serious. Perspiration began to flow and regrets for
our sinful tendencies to exude, when, in the distance, the fence at the
other end appeared.
Immediately we cheered up. Poof! What was a small adventure like this?—a
jolly lark, that was all. Who wouldn’t risk a car being stuck in order
to achieve a cutoff like this and outwit the officers of the law? One
had to take a sporting chance always. Why certainly! Nevertheless, I
secretly thanked God or whatever gods there be, and Franklin and Speed
looked intensely relieved. We jogged along another eight hundred feet,
tore down the wire screen at the other end, and rushed on—a little
fearfully, I think, since there was a farm house near at hand with a lot
of road-making machinery in the yard. Perhaps it was the home of the
road foreman! I hope he doesn’t ever read this book, and come and arrest
us. Or if he does I hope he only arrests Franklin and Speed. On
reflection a month or so in jail would not hurt them any, I think.
And then, after an hour or so, the city of Fort Wayne appeared in the
distance. It does not lie on high ground, or in a hollow, but the
presence of some twenty or thirty of those antiquated light towers which
I mentioned as having been installed at Evansville, Indiana, in 1882,
and which were still in evidence here, gave it that appearance. It
seemed at first as though this town must be on a rise and we looking up
at it from a valley; as we drew nearer, as though it were in a valley
and we looking down from a height. We soon came to one of those
pretentious private streets, so common in the cities of the West in
these days—a street with a great gate at either end, open and unguarded
and set with a superfluity of lights; which arrangement, plus houses of
a certain grade of costliness, give that necessary exclusiveness the
newly rich require, apparently. It was quite impressive. And then we
came to a place where, quite in the heart of the city, two rivers, the
St. Mary and the St. Joseph, joined to make the Maumee; and here, most
intelligently, I thought, a small park had been made. It was indeed
pleasing. And then we raced into the unescapable Main Street of the
city, in this instance a thoroughfare so blazing with lights that I was
much impressed. One would scarcely see more light on the Great White Way
in New York.