"I won't draw it; that's what I think of it."
Benson flushed angrily and looked up at him.
"We are paying you a very large salary, Mr. Kittrell, and your work, if
you will pardon me, has not been up to what we were led to expect."
"You are quite right, Mr. Benson, but I can't draw that cartoon."
"Well, great God!" yelled Burns, "what have we got here--a gold brick?"
He rose with a vivid sneer on his red face, plunged his hands in his
pockets, and took two or three nervous strides across the room. Kittrell
looked at him, and slowly his eyes blazed out of a face that had gone
white on the instant.
"What did you say, sir?" he demanded.
Burns thrust his red face, with its prognathic jaw, menacingly toward
Kittrell.
"I said that in you we'd got a gold brick."
"You?" said Kittrell. "What have you to do with it? I don't work for
you."
"You don't? Well, I guess it's us that puts up--"
"Gentlemen! Gentlemen!" said Glenn, waving a white, pacificatory hand.
"Yes, let me deal with this, if you please," said Benson, looking hard
at Burns. The street-car man sneered again, then, in ostentatious
contempt, looked out the window. And in the stillness Benson continued:
"Mr. Kittrell, think a minute. Is your decision final?"
"It is final, Mr. Benson," said Kittrell. "And as for you, Burns," he
glared angrily at the man, "I wouldn't draw that cartoon for all the
dirty money that all the bribing street-car companies in the world could
put into Mr. Glenn's bank here. Good evening, gentlemen."
It was not until he stood again in his own home that Kittrell felt the
physical effects which the spiritual squalor of such a scene was certain
to produce in a nature like his.
"Neil! What is the matter?" Edith fluttered toward him in alarm.
He sank into a chair, and for a moment he looked as if he would faint,
but he looked wanly up at her and said:
"Nothing; I'm all right; just a little weak. I've gone through a
sickening, horrible scene--"
"Dearest!"
"And I'm off the _Telegraph_--and a man once more!"
He bent over, with his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands, and
when Edith put her calm, caressing hand on his brow, she found that it
was moist from nervousness. Presently he was able to tell her the whole
story.
"It was, after all, Edith, a fitting conclusion to my experience on the
_Telegraph_. I suppose, though, that to people who are used to ten
thousand a year such scenes are nothing at all." She saw in this trace
of his old humor that he was himself again, and she hugged his head to
her bosom.
"Oh, dearest," she said, "I'm proud of you--and happy again."
They were, indeed, both happy, happier than they had been in weeks.
The next morning after breakfast, she saw by his manner, by the
humorous, almost comical expression about his eyes, that he had an idea.
In this mood of satisfaction--this mood that comes too seldom in the
artist's life--she knew it was wise to let him alone. And he lighted his
pipe and went to work. She heard him now and then, singing or whistling
or humming; she scented his pipe, then cigarettes; then, at last, after
two hours, he called in a loud, triumphant tone:
"Oh, Edith!"
She was at the door in an instant, and, waving his hand grandly at his
drawing-board, he turned to her with that expression which connotes the
greatest joy gods or mortals can know--the joy of beholding one's own
work and finding it good. He had, as she saw, returned to the cartoon of
Clayton he had laid aside when the tempter came; and now it was
finished. Its simple lines revealed Clayton's character, as the
sufficient answer to all the charges the _Telegraph_ might make against
him. Edith leaned against the door and looked long and critically.
"It was fine before," she said presently; "it's better now. Before it
was a portrait of the man; this shows his soul."
"Well, it's how he looks to me," said Neil, "after a month in which to
appreciate him."
"But what," she said, stooping and peering at the edge of the drawing,
where, despite much knife-scraping, vague figures appeared, "what's
that?"
"Oh, I'm ashamed to tell you," he said. "I'll have to paste over that
before it's electrotyped. You see, I had a notion of putting in the
gang, and I drew four little figures--Benson, Burns, Salton and Glenn;
they were plotting--oh, it was foolish and unworthy. I decided I didn't
want anything of hatred in it--just as he wouldn't want anything of
hatred in it; so I rubbed them out."
"Well, I'm glad. It is beautiful; it makes up for everything; it's an
appreciation--worthy of the man."
When Kittrell entered the office of the _Post_, the boys greeted him
with delight, and his presence made a sensation, for there had been
rumors of the break which the absence of a "Kit" cartoon in the
_Telegraph_ that morning had confirmed. But, if Hardy was surprised, his
surprise was swallowed up in his joy, and Kittrell was grateful to him
for the delicacy with which he touched the subject that consumed the
newspaper and political world with curiosity.
"I'm glad, Kit," was all that he said. "You know that."
Then he forgot everything in the cartoon, and he showed his instant
recognition of its significance by snatching out his watch, pushing a
button, and saying to Garland, who came to the door in his shirtsleeves:
"Tell Nic to hold the first edition for a five-column first-page
cartoon. And send this up right away."
They had a last look at it before it went, and after gazing a moment in
silence Hardy said:
"It's the greatest thing you ever did, Kit, and it comes at the
psychological moment. It'll elect him."
"Oh, he was elected anyhow."
Hardy shook his head, and in the movement Kittrell saw how the strain of
the campaign had told on him. "No, he wasn't; the way they've been
hammering him is something fierce; and the _Telegraph_--well, your
cartoons and all, you know."
"But my cartoons in the _Telegraph_ were rotten. Any work that's not
sincere, not intellectually honest----"
Hardy interrupted him:
"Yes; but, Kit, you're so good that your rotten is better than 'most
anybody's best." He smiled, and Kittrell blushed and looked away.
Hardy was right. The "Kit" cartoon, back in the _Post_, created its
sensation, and after it appeared the political reporters said it had
started a landslide to Clayton; that the betting was 4 to 1 and no
takers, and that it was all over but the shouting.
That night, as they were at dinner, the telephone rang, and in a minute
Neil knew by Edith's excited and delighted reiteration of "yes," "yes,"
who had called up. And he then heard her say:
"Indeed I will; I'll come every night and sit in the front seat."
When Kittrell displaced Edith at the telephone, he heard the voice of
John Clayton, lower in register and somewhat husky after four weeks'
speaking, but more musical than ever in Kittrell's ears when it said:
"I just told the little woman, Neil, that I didn't know how to say it,
so I wanted her to thank you for me. It was beautiful in you, and I wish
I were worthy of it; it was simply your own good soul expressing
itself."
And it was the last delight to Kittrell to hear that voice and to know
that all was well.
But one question remained unsettled. Kittrell had been on the
_Telegraph_ a month, and his contract differed from that ordinarily made
by the members of a newspaper staff in that he was paid by the year,
though in monthly instalments. Kittrell knew that he had broken his
contract on grounds which the sordid law would not see or recognize and
the average court think absurd, and that the _Telegraph_ might legally
refuse to pay him at all. He hoped the _Telegraph_ would do this! But it
did not; on the contrary, he received the next day a check for his
month's work. He held it up for Edith's inspection.
"Of course, I'll have to send it back," he said.
"Certainly."
"Do you think me quixotic?"
"Well, we're poor enough as it is--let's have some luxuries; let's be
quixotic until after election, at least."
"Sure," said Neil; "just what I was thinking. I'm going to do a cartoon
every day for the _Post_ until election day, and I'm not going to take a
cent. I don't want to crowd Banks out, you know, and I want to do my
part for Clayton and the cause, and do it, just once, for the pure love
of the thing."
Those last days of the campaign were, indeed, luxuries to Kittrell and
to Edith, days of work and fun and excitement. All day Kittrell worked
on his cartoons, and in the evening they went to Clayton's meetings. The
experience was a revelation to them both--the crowds, the waiting for
the singing of the automobile's siren, the wild cheers that greeted
Clayton, and then his speech, his appeals to the best there was in men.
He had never made such speeches, and long afterward Edith could hear
those cheers and see the faces of those working-men aglow with the hope,
the passion, the fervent religion of democracy. And those days came to
their glad climax that night when they met at the office of the _Post_
to receive the returns, in an atmosphere quivering with excitement, with
messenger boys and reporters coming and going, and in the street outside
an immense crowd, swaying and rocking between the walls on either side,
with screams and shouts and mad huzzas, and the wild blowing of
horns--all the hideous, happy noise an American election-night crowd can
make.
Late in the evening Clayton had made his way, somehow unnoticed, through
the crowd, and entered the office. He was happy in the great triumph he
would not accept as personal, claiming it always for the cause; but as
he dropped into the chair Hardy pushed toward him, they all saw how
weary he was.
Just at that moment the roar in the street below swelled to a mighty
crescendo, and Hardy cried:
"Look!"
They ran to the window. The boys up-stairs who were manipulating the
stereopticon, had thrown on the screen an enormous picture of Clayton,
the portrait Kittrell had drawn for his cartoon.
"Will you say now there isn't the personal note in it?" Edith asked.
Clayton glanced out the window, across the dark, surging street, at the
picture.
"Oh, it's not me they're cheering for," he said; "it's for Kit, here."
"Well, perhaps some of it's for him," Edith admitted loyally.
They were silent, seized irresistibly by the emotion that mastered the
mighty crowd in the dark streets below. Edith was strangely moved.
Presently she could speak:
"Is there anything sweeter in life than to know that you have done a
good thing--and done it well?"
"Yes," said Clayton, "just one: to have a few friends who understand."
"You are right," said Edith. "It is so with art, and it must be so with
life; it makes an art of life."
It was dark enough there by the window for her to slip her hand into
that of Neil, who had been musing silently on the crowd.
"I can never say again," she said softly, "that those people are not
worth sacrifice. They are worth all; they are everything; they are the
hope of the world; and their longings and their needs, and the
possibility of bringing them to pass, are all that give significance to
life."
"That's what America is for," said Clayton, "and it's worth while to be
allowed to help even in a little way to make, as old Walt says, 'a
nation of friends, of equals.'"
BRAND WHITLOCK
Brand Whitlock, lawyer, politician, author and ambassador, was born in
Urbana, Ohio, March 4, 1869. His father, Rev. Elias D. Whitlock, was a
minister of power and a man of strong convictions. Brand was educated
partly in the public schools, partly by private teaching. He never went
to college, but this did not mean that his education stopped; he kept on
studying, and to such good purpose that in 1916 Brown University gave
him the degree of Doctor of Laws. Like many other writers, he received
his early training in newspaper work. At eighteen he became a reporter
on a Toledo paper, and three years later was reporter and political
correspondent for the Chicago _Herald_. While in Chicago he was a member
of the old Whitechapel Club, a group of newspaper men which included F.
P. Dunne, the creator of _Mr. Dooley_; Alfred Henry Lewis, author of
_Wolfville_; and George Ade, whose _Fables in Slang_ were widely popular
a few years ago.
He was strongly drawn to the law, and in 1893 went to Springfield,
Illinois, and entered a law office as a student. He was admitted to the
bar, and shortly after went to Toledo, Ohio, to practice. In eight years
he had established himself as a successful lawyer, and something more.
He was recognized as a man of high executive ability, and as being
absolutely "square." Such men are none too common, and Toledo decided
that it needed him in the mayor's chair. Without a political machine,
without a platform, and without a party, he was elected mayor in 1905,
reelected in 1907, again in 1909, again in 1911--and could probably have
had the office for life if he had been willing to accept it. In the
meantime he had written several successful novels; he wanted more time
for writing, and when in 1913 he was offered the post of United States
Minister to Belgium, he accepted, thinking that he would find in this
position an opportunity to observe life from a new angle, and leisure
for literary work. In August 1914 he was on his vacation, and had begun
work on a new novel. In his own words:
I had the manuscript of my novel before me.... It was somehow just
beginning to take form, beginning to show some signs of life; at
times some characters in it gave evidence of being human and alive;
they were beginning to act now and then spontaneously, beginning to
say and to do things after the manner of human beings; the long
vista before me, the months of laborious drudging toil and pain,
the long agony of effort necessary to write any book, even a poor
one, was beginning to appear less weary, less futile; there was the
first faint glow of the joy of creative effort.
and then suddenly the telephone bell rang, and announced that the
Archduke of Austria had been assassinated at Sarajevo.
The rest of the story belongs to history. How he went back to Brussels;
how when the city seemed doomed, and all the government officials left,
he stayed on; how when the city was preparing to resist by force, he
went to Burgomaster Max and convinced him that it was useless, and so
saved the city from the fate of Louvain; how he took charge of the
relief work, how the King of Belgium thanked him for his services to the
country; how the city of Brussels in gratitude gave him a picture by Van
Dyck, a priceless thing, which he accepted--not for himself but for his
home city of Toledo; how after the war, he went back, not as Minister
but as Ambassador,--all these are among the proud memories of America's
part in the World War.
Brand Whitlock is so much more than an author that it is with an effort
that we turn to consider his literary work. His first book, _The
Thirteenth District_, published in 1902, was a novel of American
politics; it contains a capital description of a convention, and shows
the strategy of political leaders as seen by a keen observer. In _Her
Infinite Variety_ he dealt with the suffrage movement as it was in
1904, with determined women seeking the ballot, and equally determined
women working just as hard to keep it away from them. _The Happy
Average_ was a story of an every-day American couple: they were not
rich, nor famous, nor divorced,--yet the author thinks their story is
typical of most American lives. _The Turn of the Balance_ is a novel
that grew out of his legal experiences: it deals with the underworld of
crime, and often in a depressing way. It reflects the author's belief
that the present organization of society, and our methods of
administering justice, are the cause of much of the misery in the world.
Following these novels came two volumes of short stories, _The Gold
Brick_ and _The Fall Guy_: both deal with various aspects of American
life of to-day. In 1914 he published an autobiography under the title
_Forty Years of It_. This is interesting as a picture of political life
of the period in Ohio. His latest book, _Memories of Belgium under the
German Occupation_, tells the story of four eventful years. In all that
trying time, each night, no matter how weary he was, he forced himself
to set down the events of the day. From these records he wrote a book
that by virtue of its first-hand information and its literary art ranks
among the most important of the books called forth by the Great War.
THE TRAVELING SALESMAN
_The traveling salesman is a characteristic American type. We laugh at
his stories, or we criticise him for his "nerve," but we do not always
make allowance for the fact that his life is not an easy one, and that
his occupation develops "nerve" just as an athlete's work develops
muscle. The best presentation of the traveling salesman in fiction is
found in the stories of Edna Ferber. And the fact that her "salesman" is
a woman only adds to the interest of the stories. When ex-President
Roosevelt read Miss Ferber's book, he wrote her an enthusiastic letter
telling her how much he admired Emma McChesney. We meet her in the first
words of this story_.
HIS MOTHER'S SON
BY
EDNA FERBER
"Full?" repeated Emma McChesney (and if it weren't for the compositor
there'd be an exclamation point after that question mark).
"Sorry, Mrs. McChesney," said the clerk, and he actually looked it, "but
there's absolutely nothing stirring. We're full up. The Benevolent
Brotherhood of Bisons is holding its regular annual state convention
here. We're putting up cots in the hall."
Emma McChesney's keen blue eyes glanced up from their inspection of the
little bunch of mail which had just been handed her. "Well, pick out a
hall with a southern exposure and set up a cot or so for me," she said,
agreeably, "because I've come to stay. After selling Featherloom
Petticoats on the road for ten years I don't see myself trailing up and
down this town looking for a place to lay my head. I've learned this one
large, immovable truth, and that is, that a hotel clerk is a hotel
clerk. It makes no difference whether he is stuck back of a marble
pillar and hidden by a gold vase full of thirty-six-inch American Beauty
roses at the Knickerbocker, or setting the late fall fashions for men in
Galesburg, Illinois."
By one small degree was the perfect poise of the peerless personage
behind the register jarred. But by only one. He was a hotel night clerk.
"It won't do you any good to get sore, Mrs. McChesney," he began,
suavely. "Now a man would----"
"But I'm not a man," interrupted Emma McChesney. "I'm only doing a
man's work and earning a man's salary and demanding to be treated with
as much consideration as you'd show a man."
The personage busied himself mightily with a pen, and a blotter, and
sundry papers, as is the manner of personages when annoyed. "I'd like to
accommodate you; I'd like to do it."
"Cheer up," said Emma McChesney, "you're going to. I don't mind a little
discomfort. Though I want to mention in passing that if there are any
lady Bisons present you needn't bank on doubling me up with them. I've
had one experience of that kind. It was in Albia, Iowa. I'd sleep in the
kitchen range before I'd go through another."
Up went the erstwhile falling poise. "You're badly mistaken, madam. I'm
a member of this order myself, and a finer lot of fellows it has never
been my pleasure to know."
"Yes, I know," drawled Emma McChesney. "Do you know, the thing that gets
me is the inconsistency of it. Along come a lot of boobs who never use a
hotel the year around except to loaf in the lobby, and wear out the
leather chairs, and use up the matches and toothpicks and get the
baseball returns, and immediately you turn away a traveling man who uses
a three-dollar-a-day room, with a sample room downstairs for his stuff,
who tips every porter and bell-boy in the place, asks for no favors, and
who, if you give him a halfway decent cup of coffee for breakfast, will
fall in love with the place and boom it all over the country. Half of
your Benevolent Bisons are here on the European plan, with a view to
patronizing the free-lunch counters or being asked to take dinner at the
home of some local Bison whose wife has been cooking up on pies, and
chicken salad and veal roast for the last week."
Emma McChesney leaned over the desk a little, and lowered her voice to
the tone of confidence. "Now, I'm not in the habit of making a nuisance
of myself like this. I don't get so chatty as a rule, and I know that I
could jump over to Monmouth and get first-class accommodations there.
But just this once I've a good reason for wanting to make you and myself
a little miserable. Y'see, my son is traveling with me this trip."
"Son!" echoed the clerk, staring.
"Thanks. That's what they all do. After a while I'll begin to believe
that there must be something hauntingly beautiful and girlish about me
or every one wouldn't petrify when I announce that I've a six-foot son
attached to my apron-strings. He looks twenty-one, but he's seventeen.
He thinks the world's rotten because he can't grow one of those fuzzy
little mustaches that the men are cultivating to match their hats. He's
down at the depot now, straightening out our baggage. Now I want to say
this before he gets here. He's been out with me just four days. Those
four days have been a revelation, an eye-opener, and a series of rude
jolts. He used to think that his mother's job consisted of traveling in
Pullmans, eating delicate viands turned out by the hotel chefs, and
strewing Featherloom Petticoats along the path. I gave him plenty of
money, and he got into the habit of looking lightly upon anything more
trifling than a five-dollar bill. He's changing his mind by great leaps.
I'm prepared to spend the night in the coal cellar if you'll just fix
him up--not too comfortably. It'll be a great lesson for him. There he
is now. Just coming in. Fuzzy coat and hat and English stick. Hist! As
they say on the stage."
The boy crossed the crowded lobby. There was a little worried, annoyed
frown between his eyes. He laid a protecting hand on his mother's arm.
Emma McChesney was conscious of a little thrill of pride as she realized
that he did not have to look up to meet her gaze.
"Look here, Mother, they tell me there's some sort of a convention here,
and the town's packed. That's what all those banners and things were
for. I hope they've got something decent for us here. I came up with a
man who said he didn't think there was a hole left to sleep in."
"You don't say!" exclaimed Emma McChesney, and turned to the clerk.
"This is my son, Jock McChesney--Mr. Sims. Is this true?"
"Glad to know you, sir," said Mr. Sims. "Why, yes, I'm afraid we are
pretty well filled up, but seeing it's you maybe we can do something for
you."
He ruminated, tapping his teeth with a penholder, and eying the pair
before him with a maddening blankness of gaze. Finally:
"I'll do my best, but you can't expect much. I guess I can squeeze
another cot into eight-seven for the young man. There's--let's see
now--who's in eighty-seven? Well, there's two Bisons in the double bed,
and one in the single, and Fat Ed Meyers in the cot and----"
Emma McChesney stiffened into acute attention. "Meyers?" she
interrupted. "Do you mean Ed Meyers of the Strauss Sans-silk Skirt
Company?"
"That's so. You two are in the same line, aren't you? He's a great
little piano player, Ed is. Ever hear him play?"
"When did he get in?"
"Oh, he just came in fifteen minutes ago on the Ashland division. He's
in at supper."
"Oh," said Emma McChesney. The two letters breathed relief.
But relief had no place in the voice, or on the countenance of Jock
McChesney. He bristled with belligerence. "This cattle-car style of
sleeping don't make a hit. I haven't had a decent night's rest for three
nights. I never could sleep on a sleeper. Can't you fix us up better
than that?"
"Best I can do."
"But where's mother going? I see you advertise 'three large and
commodious steam-heated sample rooms in connection.' I suppose mother's
due to sleep on one of the tables there."
"Jock," Emma McChesney reproved him, "Mr. Sims is doing us a great
favor. There isn't another hotel in town that would----"