EVANSVILLE
But I cannot possibly hope to convey the delicious sting life had in it
for me at this time as a spectacle, a dream, something in which to bathe
and be enfolded, as only youth and love know life. Not Evansville alone
but life itself was beautiful—the sky, the trees, the sun, the visible
scene. People hurrying to and fro or idling in the shade, the sound of
church bells, of whistles, a wide stretch of common. Getting up in the
morning, going to bed at night. The stars, the winds, hunger, thirst,
the joy of playing or of idly musing.
In Evansville I was just beginning to come out of the dream period which
held for me between the years of seven and eleven. The significance of
necessity and effort were for the first time beginning to suggest
themselves. Still, I was not awake, only vaguely disturbed at times,
like a silky, shimmery sea, faintly touched by vagrom winds. The gales
and storms were to come fast enough. I was really not old enough to
understand all or even any of the troublesome conditions affecting our
family. Like my companionable brother and sister, I was too young,
undaunted, hopeful. Sometimes, in my dreams, a faint suggestion of my
mood at the time comes back, and then I know how I have changed—the very
chemistry of me. I do not respond now as I did then, or at any rate, I
think not.
As we neared the city we could see the ground elevating itself in the
distance, and soon we were riding along a ridge or elevated highroad,
suggestively alive with traffic and dotted with houses.
Evansville is a southern city, in spite of the fact that it is Indiana,
and has all the characteristic marks of a southern city—a hot, drowsy,
almost enervating summer, an early spring, a mild winter, a long,
agreeable autumn. Snow falls but rarely and does not endure long.
Darkies abound, whole sections of them, and work on the levee, the
railroad, and at scores of tasks given over to whites in the north. You
see them ambling about carrying packages, washing windows, driving
trucks and autos, waiting on table. It is as though the extreme south
had reached up and just touched this projecting section of Indiana.
Again, it is a German city, strangely enough, a city to which thousands
of the best type of German have migrated. Despite the fact that
Vincennes and Terre Haute were originally French, and then English,
except for small sections through here, the German seems to predominate.
We saw many German farmers, the Americanized type, coming up from Terre
Haute, and here in Evansville German names abounded. It was as true of
my days as a boy here as it is now—even more so, I believe. There are a
number of purely German Catholic or Lutheran churches controlled by
Bavarian priests or ministers.
Again it is a distinctly river type of town, with that floating
population of river squatters—you can always tell them—drifting about. I
saw a dozen in the little while I was there, river nomads or gypsies
bustling about, dark, sallow, small, rugged. I have seen them at St.
Louis, at Memphis, in Savannah, where the boats come up from the sea and
down from Augusta. I can always tell them.
Once inside the city, I was interested to note that most cities, like
people, retain their characteristics permanently. Thus in my day,
Evansville was already noted as a furniture manufacturing city. Plainly
it was so still. In half a dozen blocks we passed as many large
furniture companies, all their windows open and the whir and drone of
their wheels and saws and planes pouring forth a happy melody. Again, it
was already at that time establishing a reputation for the manufacture
of cheap pottery; and here, to our left, was a pottery crowded in among
other things, not large, but still a pottery. If there was one, we might
expect others.
At the edge of the town, making its way through a notable gorge, was
Pigeon Creek, a stream in which Ed, Al and I had often bathed and
fished, and to the shore of which we had been led, on divers occasions,
by a stout German Catholic priest, or three or four of them, giving an
annual or semiannual picnic. The fact that the land rises at this
section was probably what attracted the first settlers here, and gives
to this creek and the heart of the city a picturesque and somewhat
differentiated character.
Not far from the center of the city, in a region which I once considered
very remote, we passed the double-steepled church of St. Anthony, an
institution which, because I was taken to its dedication by my father, I
had retained in memory as something imposing. It was not at all—a rather
commonplace church in red brick and white stone, such as any carpenter
and builder of Teutonic extraction might design and execute. A little
farther on, facing my much beloved Vine Street, where stood Holy Trinity
Catholic Church and School, and along which, morning and evening, I used
to walk, I discovered the Vanderburg County Court House, filling a space
of ground which had once been our public school playground. It was very
large, very florate, and very like every other court house in America.
Friends, why is it that American architects can design nothing
different—or is it that our splendidly free and unconventional people
will not permit them? I sometimes feel that there could not exist a more
dull witted nation architecturally than we are. In so far as
intelligence is supposed to manifest itself in the matter of taste, we
give no evidence of having any—positively none. Our ratiocinations are
of the flock, herd or school variety. We run with the pack. Some
mountebank Simon in art, literature, politics, architecture, cries
“thumbs up,” and up goes every blessed thumb from the Atlantic to the
Pacific. Then some other pseudo-ratiocinating ass calls “thumbs down,”
and down go all thumbs—not a few, but all. Let a shyster moralist cry
that Shakespeare is immoral and his plays are at once barred from all
the schools of a dozen states. Let a quack nostrum peddling zany declare
that the young must not be contaminated, and out go all the works of
Montagne, Ibsen, Hauptmann, Balzac, on the ground, forsooth, that they
will injure the young. Save the sixteen year old girl, if you must make
mushheads and loons, absolute naturals, of every citizen from ocean to
ocean!
I despair, really. I call for water and wash my hands. A land with such
tendencies can scarcely be saved, unless it be by disaster. We need to
be tried by fire or born again. We do not grasp the first principles of
intellectual progress.
But our breakfast! Our breakfast! Before getting it I had to take
Franklin to view the Ohio River from Water Street (I do believe they
have changed the name to Riverside Drive, since New York has one) for I
could not rest until he had seen one of the most striking American river
scenes of which I know anything. I know how the Hudson joins the ocean
at New York, the Missouri the Mississippi at St. Louis, the Moselle the
Rhine, at Coblenz, the New and Big Kanawha in the picturesque mountains
of West Virginia, and the Alleghany the Monongahela to make the Ohio in
Pittsburg—but this sweep of the Ohio, coming up from the South and
turning immediately south again in a mighty elbow which pushes at the
low hill on which the city stands, is tremendous. You know this is a
mighty river, bearing the muddy waters of half a continent, by merely
looking at it. It speaks for itself.
Standing on this fronting street of this purely commercial city, whose
sloping levee sinks to the water’s edge, you see it coming, miles and
miles away, this vast body of water; and turning, you see it
disappearing around a lowland, over whose few wreak and yellow trees the
water frequently passes. In high water, whole towns and valleys fall
before it. Houses and cabins go by on its flood. On it ride those
picturesque sternwheelers, relics of an older order of navigation, and
here on this bright August morning were several anchored at our feet.
They were fastened to floating wharves, chained to the shore. On the
long, downward slope of cobble stones were lying boxes and bales, the
evidence of a river traffic that no inimical railroad management can
utterly kill. A river capable of bearing almost all the slow freight of
a half score of states is left to distribute the minor shipments of
perhaps four or five. Franklin and Bert were struck with it, which
pleased me greatly, for it is pleasant to bring another to a great view.
They exclaimed over its scope and beauty.
Then we went looking for a restaurant. Although the killing of game was
still out of season, we found one where broiled squirrels were being
offered for the humble sum of sixty cents. We feasted. Our conservative
chauffeur declared, as we sat down, that he did not care for anything
much, and then ordered a steak, three eggs, a pot of coffee, a bowl of
wheatena, muffins and hashed brown potatoes, topped off with a light
plate of waffles and maple syrup.
“Bert,” exclaimed Franklin, “you really aren’t as strong as you might be
this morning. You _must_ look after yourself.”
He scarcely heard. Lost in a sea of provender, he toiled on, an honest
driver worthy of his hire.
And here it was that the question of muskmelons once more arose—this
time to plague me—melons which, as we have seen, were as plentiful as
manna in the desert.
“Now,” Franklin observed with unction as we sat down, “I’m going to have
another muskmelon.”
“Right,” I congratulated him, with the air of a generous host, “now’s
the time.”
“Give me a nice large, cold muskmelon,” he observed to the darky who now
appeared, napkin on arm.
[Illustration: THE OHIO AT EVANSVILLE]
“Sorry, boss,” replied that worthy, “we ain’t got no mushmelers dis
mawnin. Dey ain’t none to be had in de maaket.”
“What’s that?” I demanded, looking up and getting nervous, for we were
in the very best restaurant the city afforded. “No muskmelons! What are
you talking about? We saw fields of them—miles of them—between here and
Vincennes and Sullivan.”
“Da’s right, boss. Da’s where dey grows. You see 'um dere all right. But
dey don’t allus bring ’um down here. Dis ain’t no maaket. Dey go noth
and east—to New Yawk and Chicago. Da’s what it is.”
“You mean to say you can’t get me a single melon?” queried Franklin
feebly, a distinct note of reproach in his voice. He even glanced my
way.
“Sorry, boss. If dey wuz to be had, we’d have ’um. Yessir—dis is de
place. We cain’t git ’um—da’s it.”
Franklin turned upon me coldly.
“That’s what comes of not eating all that I wanted to when I wanted to.
Hang it all.”
“Franklin,” I said. “I am stricken to the earth. I crawl before you.
Here is dust and here are ashes.” I gesticulated with my arms. “If I had
thought for one moment——”
“And all those fine melons up there!”
“I agree,” I said.
He buried his face in the bill of fare and paid no attention to me. Only
Bert’s declining state of health restored him, eventually, and we left
quite cheerful.
Only a block or two from our restaurant was the St. George Hotel, my
brother’s resort, unchanged and as old fashioned as ever, white, with
green lattices, rocking-chairs out in front, an airy, restful, summery
look about it. How, once upon a time, he loved to disport himself here
with all the smart idlers of the town! I can see him yet, clothed to
perfection, happy in his youth, health and new found honors, such as
they were. Then came Holy Trinity (church and school), at Third and
Vine, an absolutely unchanged institution. It had shrunk and lost
quality, as had everything else nearly with which I had been connected.
The school fence, the principal’s red brick house at the back (how I
used to dread it), the church next door, with the rear passage by which,
when we were extra good, we went to receive colored picture cards of the
saints or Jesus or Mary, and when we were bad—to be warned by the
priest.
The latter adventure was terrible. It had never befallen me, but other
boys had experienced it.
I cannot possibly convey to you, I fear, how very definitely this
particular school and church impressed me at the time. Although I had
started in several schools, this was really my first. By this time my
mother was beginning to doubt the efficacy of Catholic schools in
general (how they would have condemned her for that!), but as yet she
was not quite positive enough in her own mind to insist on a change.
When I found it was another Catholic school I was to attend I was very
downhearted. I was terrorized by the curriculum, the admixture of
priests, nuns and one bewhiskered Herr Professor, very young and as he
seemed to me very terrible, a veritable ogre, who ruled the principal
school room here. Really he was a most amazing person in his way. He had
blazing eyes, heavy black eyebrows, black hair, a full black beard, and
he walked with a dynamic stride which, as it seemed to me, was
sufficient to shake the earth. He controlled the principal or highest
grade, and I, now eleven years of age and with a tendency to read a
little of everything, was deemed fit to be put there—why I never can
tell.
Oh, those two terrible years! The best I can say for them or the worst
is this, that outside the school and at home was heaven; inside was
hell. This young professor had the German idea of stern, vigorous
control; in which he was supported by the parish rector. He whipped boys
vigorously, and possibly for the type of youth under him this was just
the thing. They were unquestionably a tough, thick-bottomed lot, and
they made my life a nightmare into the bargain. It seems to me now as I
look back on it that I learned nothing at all, not even catechism. The
school rooms were always being prowled over by the rector and various
nuns and sisters superior, whose sole concern seemed to be that we
should learn our catechism and be “graduated,” at twelve years of age,
whether we knew anything or not. Think of it! I am not grossly lying or
exaggerating about the Catholic Church and its methods. I am telling you
what I felt, saw, endured.
During these two years, as it seems to me, I never learned anything
about anything. There was a “Bible history” there which entertained me
so much that I read in it constantly, to the neglect of nearly
everything else; and some of the boys brought “Diamond Dick” or its that
day equivalent, and these we read under the seats, I among others,
though I liked my “Bible history” and my geography (such as it was)
better. On several occasions I had my hands severely marked by a ruler,
wielded by the Herr Professor Falk—great red welts put across both my
palms, because I whispered or laughed or did not pay attention. And once
he pulled my ear so hard that I cried. He had a “habit” (shall I call
it) of striking disorderly boys across the cheek so hard and so fiercely
that their faces blazed for an hour; or of seizing them, laying them
over a bench and beating them with a short rawhide whip. Once I saw a
boy whom he intended so to whip turn on him, strike him across the face,
and run and jump out the window to the ground, say seven feet below. To
me, at that time, with my viewpoint on life, it was dreadful. My heart
used to beat so I thought I would faint, and I lived in constant dread
lest I be seized and handled in the same way. Whenever we met him or the
Catholic priest or any other dignitary connected with the school or
church we were supposed (compelled is the right word) to take off our
hats. And if it was a priest we had to say, in German, “praised be Jesus
Christ,” to which he would reply “Amen.” When school was over, at four
P. M., I would creep away, haunted by the thought that on the morrow I
would have to return.
Next to the school was the Church, and this also had been more or less
of a torture to me, though not quite so much so. Here the Reverend Anton
Dudenhausen (I am not inventing his name) was supreme, and here I made
my first confession (no real sins at all, really—fibbing to my mother
was the worst), and received my first communion. It was not a very
striking church, but then with its gilt altars, the candles, the stained
glass windows, the statues and stations of the cross, it seemed quite
wonderful—only I was always afraid of it all! It seemed alien to the
soul of me.
Entering it this day I found it just the same, not quite as large as I
had fancied but still of good size as such churches go.
I recalled now with a kind of half pleasure, half pain, all the
important functions that went on in this church, the celebrations of
Easter, Christmas (the whole Christ-child manger fable set forth life
size and surrounded by candles), Palm Sunday, Good (or Black) Friday,
when everything in the church was draped in black, the forty days of
Lent, and the masses, high or low, sung on every great saint’s day or
when bishops or missionaries (the latter to billysunday us) or other
dignitaries came to visit us. My father was always much wrought up about
these things when he was at home and the church always seemed to blaze
with banners, candles and crowds of acolytes in red and white or
visiting priests in white and gold. I always felt as though heaven must
be an amazing and difficult place to reach if so much fuss over the mere
trying for it here was necessary.
Then, in addition, there were the collections, communions, church fairs,
picnics, raffles—a long line of amazing events, the chief importance of
which was, as it seemed to me, the getting of money for the church.
Certainly the Catholics know how to keep their communicants busy, and
even worried. My recollection of school and church life here is one
confused jumble of masses, funerals, processions lessons in catechism,
the fierce beating of recalcitrant pupils, instructions preparatory to
my first confession and communion, the meeting of huge dull sodalities
or church societies with endless banners and emblems—(the men a poor
type of workingmen)—and then marching off somewhere to funerals, picnics
and the like out of the school or church yard.
Inside (and these were partly what I was coming to see today) were the
confessional, where I once told my sins to the Reverend Anton, and the
altar rail and the altar, where once I had been received in Holy
Communion and was confirmed by the Bishop, sitting on a high throne and
arrayed in golden canonicals of the church. I can see him now—a pale,
severe German, with a fine nose and hard blue eyes. I can feel his cool
fingers anointing my forehead. Think of the influence of such formulas
and all gorgeous flummery on the average mind! Is it any wonder that so
many succumb permanently to theories and isms so gloriously arrayed? The
wonder to me is that any child should ever be able to throw off the
oppressive weight—the binding chains thus riveted on him.
Today, because it was so near September, they were cleaning the
schoolrooms and preparing them for a new batch of victims. Think of the
dull functioning of dogma, century after century, age after age. How
many millions and billions have been led—shunted along dogmatic runways
from the dark into the dark again. They do not fell them with an axe as
at the stockyards, nor open their veins with a knife as befalls the
squealing swine, but they fell and bleed them just the same. I am not
ranting against Catholicism alone. As much may be said of Mohammedanism,
Confucianism, Shintoism, Brahmanism, Buddhism—the Methodist,
Presbyterian, Baptist yokes. It is possible that for the latter it may
be said that the chains are not so difficult to break. I don’t know. But
here they come, endless billions; and at the gates dogma, ignorance,
vice, cruelty seize them and clamp this or that band about their brains
or their feet. Then hobbled, or hamstrung, they are turned loose, to
think, to grow if possible. As well ask of a eunuch to procreate, or of
an ox to charge. The incentive to discover is gone.
Says the dogmatist, “See, this is the manner of it. If you dare to think
otherwise, you are damned. Your soul will grill in hell—and here is the
nature of that hell.”
Poor life! I wonder that ever an Athens came to pass or a Rome arose, to
have so glorious a fall!