nostrils, with the steady monotonous clatter of the linotypes in the
ears, and the whirring of the shafting from the press-room in the
basement throbbing through one's nerves, with the very material
realisation of the office around one; we feel that only a small part of
it, and of the life about it, has been set down in these sketches.
Passing the office window every moment is someone with a story that
should be told. Every human life, if one could know it well and
translate it into language, has in it the making of a great story. It is
because we are blind that we pass men and women around us, heedless of
the tragic quality of their lives. If each man or woman could understand
that every other human life is as full of sorrows, of joys, of base
temptations, of heartaches and of remorse as his own, which he thinks so
peculiarly isolated from the web of life, how much kinder, how much
gentler he would be! And how much richer life would be for all of us!
Life is dull to no one; but life seems dull to those dull persons who
think life is dull for others, and who see only the drab and grey
shades in the woof that is woven about them.
Here in our town are ten thousand people, and yet these sketches have
told of less than two score of them. In the town are thousands of others
quite as interesting as these of whom we have written. A few minutes ago
Jim Bolton rode by on his hack. There is no reason why others should be
advertised of men and Jim left out; for Jim is the proudest man in town.
He came here when the town was young, and was president of the
Anti-Horse-Thief League in the days before it became an emeritus
institution, when it was a power in politics and named the Sheriff as a
matter of right and of course. Jim has never let the fact that he kept a
livery-stable and drove a hack interfere with his position as leading
citizen. He keeps a livery-stable, because that is his business, and he
drives a hack because he cannot trust such a valuable piece of property
in the hands of the boy. But when the street fair is to be put on, or
the baseball team financed, or when the Baptist Church needs a new roof,
or the petitions are to be circulated for a bond election, Jim Bolton
gets down from his hack, puts on his crystal slipper and is the
Cinderella of the occasion. That is why, when young men go in Jim's hack
to take young women to parties and dances, they always invite Jim in to
sit by the fire and get warm while the girls are primping. That is why,
when young Ben Mercer, just home from five years at Harvard, offered Jim
a "tip" over the usual twenty-five-cent fare, Jim quietly took off his
coat and whipped young Ben where he stood--and the town lined up for an
hour, each man eager for the privilege of contributing ten cents to the
popular subscription to pay old Jim's fine and costs in police-court.
Following Jim Bolton on his hack past the office window came Bill
Harrison, once extra brakeman on the Dry Creek Branch, just promoted to
be conductor on the main line, and so full of vainglory in his exalted
position that he wears his brass buttons on freight trains. Bill's wife
signs his pay-check and doles out his cigar money, a quarter at a time,
and when he asks for a dollar, she looks at him as if she suspected him
of leading a double life. It is her ambition to live in Topeka, for
"there are so many conductors in Topeka," she says, "that society is not
so mixed"--as it is in our town, where she complains that the switchmen
and the firemen and the student-brakemen dominate society. Once a cigar
salesman from Kansas City got on Bill's train and offered a lead dollar
for fare.
"I can't take this," protested Bill, emphasising the "I," because his
job was new.
"Well, then, you might just turn that one over to the company,"
responded the drummer.
And when the head-brakeman told it in the yards, Bill had to fuss with
his wife for two days to get money for a box of cigars to stop the
trouble.
As these lines were being written, Miss Littleton came into the office
with a notice for the Missionary Society. She has been teaching school
in town for thirty years and is not so cheerful as she was once. For a
long time the board has considered dismissing her; but it continues to
change her around from building to building and from room to room, and
to keep her out of sheer pity; and she knows it. There is tragedy enough
in her story to fill a book. Yet she looks as humdrum as you please, and
smiles so gaily as she puts down her notice, that one thinks perhaps she
is trying to dispel the impression that she is cross and impatient with
children.
On the other side of the street, upstairs in his dusty real estate
office, with tin placards of insurance companies on the wall, and gaudy
calendars tacked everywhere, Silas Buckner stands at the window counting
the liars and scoundrels, and double-dealers and villains, and thieves
and swindlers who pass. Since Silas was defeated for Register of Deeds
he has become a pessimist. He has soured on the town, and when he sees a
man, Silas thinks only of the evil that man has done. Silas knows all
men's weaknesses, forgets their strength, and looking down from the
window hates his fellow-creatures for the wrong they have done him, or
the wickedness that he knows of them. He has never given our reporters a
kindly item of news since he was turned down, but if there is a
discreditable story on any citizen going around we hear it first from
Silas, and if we do not print it he says we have taken hush money. If
we have to print it, he says we are stirring up strife. Seeing him over
there, looking down on the town which to him is accursed, we have often
thought how weary God must be looking at the world and knowing so much
better than Silas the weakness and iniquity of men. Sometimes we have
wondered if sin is really as important as Silas thinks it is, for with
Silas sin is a blot that effaces a man's soul. But maybe God sees sin
only as a blemish that men may overcome. Perhaps God is not so
discouraged with us as Silas is. But life is a puzzle at most.
[Illustration: Counting the liars and scoundrels and double-dealers and
villains who pass]
Last night Aaron Marlin died. He had lived for ninety years in this
world, and had seen much and suffered much, and has died as a child
turns to sleep. It was quiet and still at his home among the elms as he
lay in his coffin. The mourners spoke in low and solemn tones, and the
blinds were drawn as if death were shy. As he lay there in the great
hush that was over the house, there passed before it on the sidewalk two
who spoke as low as the mourners, though they were oblivious to the
house of death. They trod slowly, and a great calm was on their souls.
One of the scribes who sets down these lines stood in the shadow of the
doorway pine-tree and saw the lovers passing; he felt the silence and
the sorrow behind the door he was about to enter; and there he stood
wondering--between Death and Love--the End and the Beginning of God's
great mystery of Life. Now, with the sense of that great mystery upon
him, with all of this pied skein of life about him, he puts down his
pen, and looks out of the window as the thread winds down the street.
For "Thirty" is in for the day.
THE END