IN THE CHAUTAUQUA BELT
The centre of Indiana is a region of calm and simplicity, untroubled to
a large extent, as I have often felt, by the stormy emotions and
distresses which so often affect other parts of America and the world.
It is a region of smooth and fertile soil, small, but comfortable homes,
large grey or red barns, the American type of windmill, the American
silo, the American motor car—a happy land of churches, Sunday schools,
public schools and a general faith in God and humanity as laid down by
the Presbyterian or the Baptist or the Methodist Church and by the ten
commandments, which is at once reassuring and yet disturbing.
This day as we traveled through Wabash, Peru (the winter home of
Hagenbeck’s and Wallace’s combined shows, b’gosh!), Kokomo, where the
world very nearly came to an end for Speed and where James Whitcomb
Riley once worked in a printer’s shop (I understood he had no love for
my work)—and so on through Westfield, an old Quaker settlement, and to
Carmel (where Franklin lives), and really to Indianapolis, for Carmel is
little more than a suburb of the former,—I was more and more struck with
the facts as I have outlined them here. Certain parts of the world are
always in turmoil. Across the rasping grasses of Siberia or the dry
sands of Egypt blow winds cold or hot, which make of the people
restless, wandering tribes. To peaceful Holland and Belgium, the
lowlands of Germany, the plains of France and Italy, and indeed all the
region of the ancient world, come periodic storms of ambition or hate,
which make of those old soils burying grounds not only of individual
souls but of races. Here in America we have already had proof that
certain sections of our land are destined apparently to tempestuous
lives—the Atlantic and Pacific seaboards, Texas, Colorado, Kentucky,
various parts of the South and the West and the Northwest, where
conditions appear to engender the mood dynamic. From Chicago, or
Colorado, or San Francisco one may expect a giant labor war or social
upheaval of any kind; from Boston or Pennsylvania or New Mexico new
religious movements may come—and have; New York, Pennsylvania, Kansas,
Nebraska and Illinois can and have contributed vast political upheavals.
This is even true of Ohio, its next door neighbor.
But Indiana lies in between all this—simple, unpretentious, not
indifferent but quiescent,—a happy land of farms and simple industries
which can scarcely be said to have worked any harm to any man.
Its largest cities have grown in an unobtrusive and almost unheralded
way. Its largest contributions to American life so far have been a
mildly soporific love literature of sorts, and an uncertain political
vote. Anyone could look at these towns—all that we saw—and be sure that
the natives were of an orderly, saving, genial and religious turn. I
never saw neater small towns anywhere, nor more imposing churches and
public buildings, nor fewer saloons, nor cleaner streets, nor better
roads. A happy land, truly, where the local papers give large and
serious attention to the most innocuous of social doings and the farmers
take good care that all their land is under cultivation and well looked
after.
As we were passing through Wabash, for instance—or was it Peru?—we came
upon a very neat and pleasing church and churchyard, the front lawn of
which an old man of a very energetic and respectable appearance—quite
your “first citizen” type—was mowing with a lawnmower.
“Why should a man of that character be doing that work this weekday, do
you suppose?” I inquired of Franklin.
“To get to heaven, of course. Can’t you see? Heaven is a literal,
material thing to him. It’s like this church building and its grass. The
closer he can identify himself with that here the nearer he will come to
walking into his heaven there. I’ve noticed at home that the more
prosperous and well to do farmers are usually the leaders in the church.
They apply the same rules of getting on in religion that they do to
their business. It is all a phase of the instinct of a man to provide
for himself and his family. I tell you, these people expect to find more
or less a duplication of what they have here—with all the ills and
pinches taken out and all the refinements of their fancy, such as it is,
added.”
I felt as I thought of that old man that this was true. He reminded me
of my father, to whom to do the most menial work about a Catholic church
was an honor—such as carrying in wood, building a fire, and the like.
You were nearer God and the angels for doing it. Actually you were just
outside the pearly gates. And if one could only die in a
church—presto!—the gates would open and there you would be inside.
Truly, this day of riding south after my depressing afternoon in Warsaw
was one of the most pleasant of any that had come to me. Now that I had
recovered from my mood of the night before—a chemic and psychic
disturbance which quite did for me—I was in a very cheerful frame of
mind. Long before either Franklin or Speed had risen this morning—they
had spent the evening looking around the town—I was up, had a cold bath,
and had written various letters and visited the post office and studied
the town in general.
It was a halcyon morning, partly grey with a faint tint of pink in the
East, when I first looked out, and such an array of house martins on
five telegraph or telephone wires over the way as I had not seen in a
long time. Birds are odd creatures. Their gregariousness without speech
always fascinates me. These, ranged as they were on the different wires,
looked exactly like the notes of a complicated and difficult fugue—so
much so that I said to a passing citizen who seemed to show an interest:
“Now, if you had a piano or an organ just how would you play that?”
He looked up at the wires which a wave of my hand indicated, then at me.
He was a man of over forty, who looked as though he might be a traveling
salesman or hotelkeeper.
“They do look like notes, don’t they?” he agreed.
We both smiled, and then he added: “Now you make me wonder.” And so we
parted.
Towns of this size, particularly in the Middle West—and I can scarcely
say why—have an intense literary and artistic interest for me. Whether
it is because of a certain comic grandioseness which accompanies some of
their characters or an ultra seriousness entirely out of proportion to
the seeming import of events here—or whether one senses a flow of secret
and subconscious desires hindered or trammeled perhaps by cluttering or
suffocating beliefs or weaknesses, or a lightness and simplicity of
character due to the soil and the air—I do not know; but it is so. In
this region I am always stirred or appealed to by something which I
cannot quite explain. The air seems lighter, the soil more grateful; a
sense of something delicately and gracefully romantic is abroad.
Like children they are, these people, so often concerned with little
things which do not matter at all—neighborhood opinions, neighborhood
desires, neighborhood failures and contempts which a little more mind
could solve or dissolve so readily. Whenever I see a town of this size
in Indiana I think of our family and its relation to one or many like
it. My mother and sisters and brothers suffered so much from
conventional local notions. They made such a pathetic struggle to rid
themselves of trammeling, minor local beliefs.
And did they succeed?
Not quite. Who does? Small life surrounds one like a sea. We swim in it,
whether we will or no. In high halls somewhere are tremendous councils
of gods and supermen, but they will not admit us. Zeus and Apollo will
not suffer the feeble judgments of humble man. And so here we sit and
slave and are weary—insects with an appointed task.
North Manchester, like all the small Indiana towns, appealed to me on
the very grounds I have outlined. As I went up the street this early
morning with my letters I encountered an old man, evidently a citizen of
importance—present or past—being led down by his daughter (I took her to
be). The latter was a thin, anæmic person who looked endless devotion—a
pathetic, yearning solicitude for this man. He was blind, and yet quite
an impressive figure, large, protuberant as to stomach, a broad,
well-modeled face somewhat like that of the late Henry Ward Beecher,
long, snow white hair, a silk hat, a swinging cutaway coat of
broadcloth, a pleated soft-bosomed shirt ornamented with a black string
tie, and an ivory-headed cane. Under his arm were papers and books. His
sightless eyes were fixed on nothing—straight ahead. To me he looked
like a lawyer or judge or congressman or politician—a local big-wig of
some kind yet stricken in this most pathetic of all ways. The girl who
was with him was so intent on his welfare. She was his eyes, his ears,
his voice, really. It was wonderful—the resignation and self-effacement
of her expression. It was quite moving.
“Who is that man?” I asked of a grocer clerk putting out a barrel of
potatoes.
“That? Oh, that’s Judge Shellenberger—or he was judge. He’s a lawyer now
for the Monon (a railroad that runs through here). He used to be judge
of the circuit court.”
I watched them down the street, and as they turned into a block of
buildings where I suppose was his office, my mind was busy conjuring up
the background which enmeshed them. Life is so full of great tales—every
life in its way a masterpiece if seen in its entirety and against the
vast background of life itself. Poor, fluttering, summer loving man! The
bones of him make the chalk cliffs of time.
To the curb in front of another grocery store as I was coming back to
the hotel drew up a small, rickety buggy—so dilapidated and antique,
scarcely worthy or safe to be hauled about rough country roads any
longer. In it were “my Grandfather Squeers”—jackknife legs and all—and
his wife, a most spare and crotchety female, in a very plain black
dress, so inexpensive, a grey linseywoolsey shawl and a grey poke
bonnet. She looked so _set_ and fixed and yet humanly interesting in her
way. I felt sorry for the two of them at once, as I always do for age
and that limited array of thoughts which has produced only a hard,
toilsome life. (We laugh at ignorance or dullness or condemn them so
loudly, but sometimes they are combined with such earnestness and effort
that one would rather cry.) “My Grandfather Squeers” was plainly a
little rheumatic and crotchety, too. He reminded me of that Mr. Gridley
who was occupying my old room in Warsaw, only he was much older and not
quite so intelligent. He was having a hard time getting down between the
wheels and straightening out some parcels under the seat, the while Aunt
Sally stared on straight ahead and the horse looked back at them—a not
overfed bay mare which seemed very much concerned in their affairs and
what they were going to do next.
“Now, don’t you forget about them seed onions,” came a definite caution
from the figure on the seat.
“No, I won’t,” he replied.
“And ast about the potatoes.”
“Yes.”
He cricketed his way into the store and presently came out with a small
bag followed by a boy carrying a large bag—of potatoes, I assumed.
“I guess we can put them right in front—eh, mother?” he called.
“Yes, I suppose so,” she assented, rather sharply, I thought, but not
angrily.
The while the boy roughly bestowed the bag between them he went back for
something, then came out and readjusted the potatoes properly.
“He didn’t have any red tape,” he called loudly, as though it was a
matter of considerable importance.
“Well, all right,” she said. “Come on and get in.”
With much straining of his thin, stiff legs he got up and as he did so I
noticed that his coat and trousers were home-made—cut, oh! most
amazingly—and out of some old, faded wine colored cloth to begin with,
probably worn years before by someone else. It made me think of all the
old people I had known in my time, scrimping along on little or nothing,
and of the thousands and thousands perhaps in every land for whom life
is so hard, so meagre! If an artist takes a special case in hand and
depicts it, one weeps, but no scheme has been devised to relieve the
intense pressure on the many; and we forget so easily. I most of all. If
I were a god, I have often said to myself, I would try to leaven the
whole thing a little more evenly—but would I? Perhaps if I were a god I
would see a reason for things as they are—a strangeness, a beauty, a
requital not present to these mortal eyes.
These streets of North Manchester were hung with those same triangular
banners—red, white, blue, green, pink, orange—which we had seen in the
East and which announced the imminence of a local Chautauqua. I do not
know much about that organization, but it certainly knows how to
advertise in country towns. In the store windows were quite striking
pictures of Stromboli, the celebrated band leader, a chrysanthemum
haired, thin bodied Italian in a braided white suit, who had been
photographed crouching, as though he were about to spring, and with one
thin hand raised high in the air holding a bâton. His appearance was
that of one who was saying: “One more crash now and I have won all.” And
adjoining him in every window was the picture of Madame Adelina Scherzo,
the celebrated soprano prima donna “straight from the Metropolitan Opera
House, New York,” who was shown photographed with manager and friends on
the observation platform of her private car. Madame Scherzo was in black
velvet, with bare arms, shoulders and throat, an entrancing sight. She
was rather pretty too, and a line under the picture made it clear that
she was costing the management "$800.00 a day," a charge which
interested me, considering the size of the town and county and the
probable audiences which could be got out to see anything.
“How large is the hall where the Chautauqua entertainments are held?” I
asked of the local bookstore man where I was buying some picturecards.
“It isn’t a hall; it’s a tent,” he replied. “They bring their own tent.”
“Well, how many will it seat or hold?”
“Oh, about fifteen hundred people.”
“And how many can they count on at any given performance?”
“Oh, about a thousand.”
“Not more than that?” I queried.
“A thousand is a good crowd for a fair night,” he persisted.
“And how much can they average per head?” I continued.
“Oh, not more than twentyfive cents. The seats run fifteen, twentyfive,
thirtyfive and fifty cents.”
“Then say they average forty cents,” I said to myself. “That would mean
that they took in four hundred dollars at a single performance—or if
there are two a day, between seven and eight hundred dollars a day. And
this one singer costs them eight hundred.”
I saw the horns and hoofs of the ubiquitous press agent.
“Do you think that Madame Scherzo gets the sum they say she does?” I
asked of this same bookstore man, wondering whether he was taken in by
their announcement. He looked fairly intelligent.
“Yes, indeed! She comes from the Metropolitan Opera House. I don’t
suppose she’d come out here for any less than that.”
I wondered whether he intended this as a reflection on Indiana or a
compliment to North Manchester. It was a little dubious.
“Well, that’s a good deal for a tent that only seats fifteen hundred,” I
replied.
“But you don’t want to forget that they play to two audiences a day,” he
returned solemnly, as though he had solved it all.
I thought it unkind to argue with him. Why shouldn’t North Manchester
have a celebrated prima donna costing eight hundred dollars a day? Think
how the knowledge of that would add to the natives' enjoyment of her
music!
“You’re right,” I said. “I hadn’t thought of that.” And out I went.
While we were trifling about getting ready to start, a singular
combination of circumstances produced an odd case of repetition or
duplication of a set of facts which had occurred the year before, which
impressed me greatly, the more so as it corresponded exactly with a
number of similar instances in my own life.
I might preface my remarks by saying that throughout my life experiences
and scenes have to a certain extent tended to duplicate or repeat
themselves. Nietzsche remarks somewhere that we all have our typical
experiences. It is not a particularly brilliant deduction, considering
the marked predilections of certain temperaments. But when we connect up
the fact with chemical or physical law, as we are likely some day to do,
it becomes highly significant. Personally, I am one who believes that as
yet we have not scratched the surface of underlying fact and law. I once
believed, for instance, that nature was a blind, stumbling force or
combination of forces which knew not what or whither. I drew that
conclusion largely from the fumbling nonintelligence (relatively
speaking) of men and all sentient creatures. Of late years I have
inclined to think just the reverse, i. e., that nature is merely dark to
us because of her tremendous subtlety and our own very limited powers of
comprehension; also that in common with many other minor forces and
forms of intelligence—insects and trees, for example—we are merely tools
or implements—slaves, to be exact—and that collectively we are used as
any other tool or implement would be used by us.
Thus there is a certain species of ant, the Dorylii, which is plainly a
scavenger so far as the surface of the earth is concerned, appearing at
the precise moment when a dead body is becoming offensive and burying
and devouring it. This may be said to be equally true of buzzards,
jackals, carrion crows, creatures which a Darwinian naturalist would
explain as the result of an unintentional pressure—and natural
selection. On the other hand, current biology tends to indicate that all
is foreshadowed, prearranged; that indications of what will be are given
ages before it is permitted to appear. Ontogenetic Orthogenesis it is
called, I believe. The creative forces have an amazing way of working.
They may use strange means—races of men and insects, of no particular
value to them—to accomplish certain results. Thus man might well be a
tool intended to release certain forces in the soil—coal, iron, stone,
copper, gold—and all his social organization and social striving merely
the physico-legal aspects or expression of the processes by which all
things are done. Multiple unit forces must work in some harmonious way,
and all these harmonious processes would therefore need to be provided
for. They may be the chemical and physical laws by which we are
governed. How otherwise can one explain the fact that although there is
apparently sufficient wisdom in the universe to sustain immense sidereal
systems in order and to generate all the complex organisms which we see
and can examine at our leisure, yet man remains blind and dumb as to the
processes by which he comes and goes? He has examined a little. He has
prepared a lexicon of laws whose workings he has detected. Beyond these
must be additional laws, or so he suspects, but what are they? In the
meantime, instead of nature permitting him to go on (once he has his
mind prepared for thought along these lines), it strikes him down and
puts new, ignorant youth in his place—new, ignorant generations of
youths.
Actually (I sincerely believe this) it is not intended that man should
ever be permitted to know anything. The temperaments of the powers to
whom we pray are not magnanimous. Man is a slave, a tool. The fable of
Prometheus and the divine fire has more of fact than of poetry in it. At
every turn of man’s affairs he is arbitrarily and ruthlessly and
mockingly confused. New generations of the dull and thick are put forth.
False prophets arise. Religionists, warriors, dreamers without the
slightest conception of the import of that which they seek or do, arise,
slay, burn, confuse. Man stands confounded for a time, a slave to
illusion, toiling with forces and by aid of forces which he does not
understand, and effecting results the ultimate use of which he cannot
possibly grasp. We burn gas! For ourselves alone? We generate
electricity! For ourselves alone? We mine coal, iron, lead, etc.—release
it into space eventually. For ourselves alone? Who knows, really? By
reason of the flaming, generative chemistry of our bodies we are
compelled to go on. Why?
At the critical moment when man becomes too inquisitive he may be once
more chained to the rock, Prometheus-like, and the eagles of ignorance
and duty set at his vitals. Why the astounding bludgeoning of each other
by the nations of Europe? Cosmically—permanently—what can they gain?