1
Almost immediately after my conversion, or at least as soon as it
had become noised about that I had consigned my holy relative to
what some of our more finicky Sisters, unable to bring themselves to
say “Hell,” referred to coyly as “the bad place,” I abandoned myself
to a life of sin and became a total spiritual loss in the eyes of
all Farmington except members of my immediate family and certain of
my intimate friends who collaborated with me in various wicked but
pleasant enterprises. That is to say, I cast aside the taboos and the
inhibitions that religion had thrown about me, and became for the
first time in my life a normal boy. I existed simply to play and raise
hell generally, and for some curious reason the activity which gave me
the most pleasure was throwing rocks at the church or in some manner
interrupting the service.
It was not long before even the most hopeful had ceased their talk
of sending me to a theological school and fitting me to carry on
the family labors, for I began to smoke cigarettes, play cards,
swear, drink when I could find a bartender willing to ignore the law
forbidding the sale of liquor to a minor, and to cock an appreciative
and appraising eye at the girls. It was then agreed that it was too
late to do anything with me or for me, and on the Sunday morning that
I mounted my new bicycle and rode brazenly past the Southern Methodist
church as the Brothers and Sisters filed with bowed heads into the
edifice for worship, I was consigned body and soul to the sizzling pits
of Hell.
I suffered a great deal of physical agony before I learned to smoke
cigarettes, and it was some time before I learned to blow smoke through
my nose with the nonchalant ease affected by the group of older boys
and young men who loafed in Doss’s barber shop and around the Post
Office Building and McKinney’s peanut and popcorn machine. My older
brother had learned a year or so before, and he frequently made himself
very offensive to me by boasting that he could smoke a whole package of
Sweet Caporals or Drums without becoming ill. I yearned to try, but he
would not give me a cigarette, and neither would any of the other boys,
and my finances were in such shape that I could not purchase any. And,
of course, such wicked things could not be purchased and charged to my
father; I could have charged a plug of chewing tobacco to him, but not
cigarettes.
But one day I was loafing hopefully in McKinney’s when my brother came
in and produced a dime that he had amassed by laborious work chopping
wood at home, and bought a package of Sweet Caporal Little Cigars.
These were really nothing but cigarettes wrapped with tobacco instead
of paper, but they resembled a cigar and were thought to be infinitely
more stylish and manly than the ordinary cigarette. I asked him for
one, and he said he would not give one to John the Baptist himself. But
I persisted, and followed him home, aghast at his determination to hide
behind the barn and smoke the whole package one after the other.
“I’ll light one from the end of the other,” he boasted.
Finally as we came opposite Brother Nixon’s house just south of Elmwood
Seminary, he relented and very carefully opened the box and handed me
a Little Cigar. It was a great moment. The yard of Elmwood Seminary
fairly swarmed with girl students, including the young lady who at the
time represented everything that was desirable in the female sex, and
I visioned their cries of startled admiration as I passed, puffing
nonchalantly, blowing smoke from my nose and perhaps from my ears.
I had no doubt of my ability to handle the innocent-looking Little
Cigar; indeed, at that time I considered no problem insurmountable.
My brother instructed me to fill my mouth with smoke and then take a
long, deep breath, and after that blow the smoke out gently and slowly,
holding the Little Cigar between the first and second finger and
crooking the little finger as we did when we drank tea or coffee, that
being a mark of gentility and refinement. As we came in front of the
old Clardy homestead less than half a block from the Seminary I struck
a match and applied it to the end of the Little Cigar, while my brother
watched anxiously and from time to time gave me advice. I puffed as he
directed.
“Got a mouthful?” he asked.
Unable to speak, my cheeks bulging, I nodded.
“Now take a long breath.”
But, alas, I did not breathe; I swallowed, and while the smoke
penetrated me and spread throughout my interior, it did not take the
correct route. I began to strangle, and my brother got excited.
“Blow it out, you damn fool!” he cried. “You’ll choke!”
I did choke. I did even worse; I became very ill, and the spectacle
which so intrigued the young ladies of the Seminary that day was not
that of a young gentleman going nonchalantly to Hell by the cigarette
route. Instead, they saw a very sick boy rolling on the sidewalk trying
desperately to stem a distressing internal upheaval.
It was several days later before I had enough courage to try again,
and I debated within myself whether or not God had caused me to be so
ill in order to show me that smoking was a sin. But I had definitely
committed myself to the Devil, so a few days later I begged a dime
from my father and bought a package of Drums and another of Sweet
Caporals, the two most popular brands of cigarettes. With these, and
a supply of matches, I went behind the barn. I made a neat pile of
sawdust to lie upon, and there I remained the whole afternoon, smoking
one cigarette after another. I was terribly ill at first, but gradually
improved until the last three or four gave me no trouble. I did not
have much appetite for dinner that night, but I had conquered the
cigarette and I felt a glow of pride at the fact that I had got a very
good start in the direction of the bad place.
The basis of my overwhelming desire to smoke cigarettes was the fact
that cigarette-smoking when I was a boy in Farmington was one of the
major sins. It ranked with adultery and just a little ahead of murder
and theft. The Preachers called them coffin nails and delivered violent
sermons against them, and every once in a while an evangelist would
come to town with medical charts showing the effect of tobacco upon
the interior human organs. But the fact that it was bad physically for
growing boys was seldom stressed at all; we were impressed instead with
the fact that God thought it a sin to smoke cigarettes, although it did
not appear that it was a sin for the tobacconist to sell them. That was
business.
Many efforts were made to reform me after I had begun to smoke. My
mother said she had hoped I wouldn’t, but that was all she said, and my
father said he did not give a hoot whether I smoked or not, but that he
hoped I would not be a fool and overdo it. He himself had learned the
art of chewing tobacco when he was a boy of seven in Mississippi, and
so far as I have ever been able to learn, God had never called him to
account. He died at the age of seventy-nine, suddenly, and a slab of
plug-cut was in his pocket. It is impossible for me to believe that God
refused him entrance into whatever Heaven there may be on account of
his habit, which he thoroughly enjoyed.
But the Preachers and the Brothers and Sisters did not agree with my
parents, nor would they admit that it was none of their business. On
the contrary, they said that it was the Lord’s business, and since they
were the duly accredited agents of the Lord, appointed by Him to lead
Farmington into the paths of righteousness, it was their business also.
When Brother Fontaine was our Methodist pastor he did not look with
disfavor upon chewing, because he himself was seldom without a chew and
presumably had an indulgence from God, but he looked upon the cigarette
as an invention of the Devil. In this view he was upheld by the
Ladies’ Aid Society and the Farmington branch of the Women’s Christian
Temperance Union. And the W. C. T. U., with the possible exception of
the Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohibition and Public Morals, was
and is the world’s best example of an organization maintained for the
sole purpose of minding other people’s business.
The hullabaloo over my smoking only made me more determined to smoke
until my insides turned black and I was called home by Satan and
transformed into a tobacco demon. For that reason I probably smoked too
much. As a matter of principle I always lighted a cigarette just in
front of the Southern Methodist church, and in front of the home of my
uncle, who was an enemy of anything that provided physical pleasure and
contentment. I always smoked another as I passed the Northern Methodist
church, the scene of the McConnell revival orgy, and still another in
front of the Christian church, in memory of Brother Nations. That was
four in half a mile, and of course was too many, but sometimes I was
not permitted to finish all of them. Frequently a Brother or a Sister,
seeing me thus flaunting my sin on the public highway, snatched the
nasty thing from my mouth and gave me a lecture that dripped religion
and was principally concerned with the fate of boys who defied God and
Jesus Christ by smoking cigarettes. One Sister asked me:
“Where did you get the vile things?”
I told her that I had bought them at her husband’s store, and she
shrieked:
“You saucy, blasphemous boy!”
But on that particular occasion I was not lectured, although she
telephoned my mother that I had been impudent to her. My mother told
her it was too bad.
2
I learned to play pinochle when I was about fifteen, only a few
months after I had become an accomplished cigarette fiend and was
generally considered a fine prospect for Satan, and thereafter was a
regular participant in the game that went on every night in the back
room of Karl Schliesser’s cigar factory. This was a notable den of
evil, and while religion had me in its clutches I thought black magic
was practiced there, and that its habitués had communion with the
Devil; among us it was believed that God had doubtless never heard
of the place or He would have destroyed it with a withering blast of
lightning. It was frequented by Germans and other low forms of life,
and they were principally Catholics and Lutherans, with a sprinkling
of renegade Protestants like myself. The Brothers and Sisters held the
opinion that if this crowd had a God at all he must have been a very
queer being, for bursts of ribald laughter came from Schliesser’s back
room, and there was card-playing, and I do not doubt that occasionally
someone gambled.
Schliesser was the Town Socialist, and was looked upon with grave
suspicion by the better element, as in those days it was generally
recognized that a Socialist was an emissary of the Devil. But the
Brothers and Sisters and the Preachers looked with even more suspicion
upon Victor Quesnel. In this attitude they had the support of the
Catholics. Victor Quesnel was born in France, but he had lived in
Farmington for many years. He frequently quoted Voltaire, and appeared
to believe that a man’s religion and his belief or disbelief in God was
a matter of his own personal taste, and he was therefore regarded as an
atheist. As a matter of fact he was probably more truly religious than
most of the pious Brothers and Sisters; the principal difference was
that he did not try to compel everyone he met to embrace his creed.
Frequently, and without particular regard as to who heard him,
Quesnel discussed the advantages of sleeping naked, or, as we say
in present-day journalism, undraped. That was his hobby. He said he
thought it was a healthful practice, that he slept better without
clothing, and that come what might he was going to continue to sleep
that way. This was considered heathenish doctrine; some of our finest
church members owned stores in which they sold nightgowns and pajamas,
and it was felt that Quesnel’s attitude was not only a direct affront
to God but was also injurious to business. Moreover, the Brothers and
Sisters did not consider such a practice modest; there were scores,
perhaps hundreds of people in Farmington who had never in their lives
removed all of their clothing. Once at a meeting of the Ladies’ Aid
Society I heard an old Sister say that she had reached the age of sixty
and had never been entirely undressed; and that when she bathed she
kept her eyes closed as she applied the sponge to her body. A great
deal of juicy conversation could be overheard at these Ladies’ Aid
meetings by a bright young lad who knew where the best keyholes were
located.
3
Sunday was much more enjoyable after I had become a sinner and had
left Sunday school and the Church to whatever fate the Lord had in
store for them. I arose a little later, had a leisurely breakfast and
a refreshing quarrel or fight with my brothers and sister, and then
went leisurely to my room and as leisurely put on my Sunday suit, with
no intention of removing it until I retired for the night. Curiously
enough, as soon as I quit going regularly to church and Sunday school I
began to wear my Sunday suit all day, and the little voice that I had
in the selection of this garment I raised in hopeful pleas for loud
checks and glaring colors. No longer did I wish to clothe myself in
the sombre blacks suitable for church wear and religious activity; I
desired to blossom and bloom in the more violent and pleasant colors of
Hell.
Once arrayed in my Sunday suit, I left the house, a cigarette dangling
from my lower lip, and my hat, carefully telescoped in the prevailing
mode, sitting just so on the side of my head. I tried to time my march
downtown so that I would reach Elmwood Seminary just as the young lady
students resident there marched across the street, after Sunday school,
from the Presbyterian church; they were not permitted to remain at
the church during the fifteen or twenty-minute interval because they
attracted such hordes of feverish boys intent upon everything but
religion. Usually I reached the scene in time, and leaned nonchalantly
against the Seminary fence, puffing vigorously and ostentatiously on a
cigarette and winking at various and sundry of the girls as they passed
in their caps and gowns.
For these smart-aleck activities I was presently placed upon the
school’s black list and was not permitted to call upon the one night
each month allotted to such social intercourse, but as I soon learned
to climb a rope ladder this did not annoy me greatly. Anyhow, calling
night at Elmwood Seminary was not very exciting. The procedure was to
place a dozen or so chairs about a big room, in pairs but with at least
twelve inches between them, in which sat the girls and their callers.
In the center sat a gimlet-eyed teacher, constantly ready with
Biblical and other uplifting quotations and seeing to it that nothing
scandalous occurred. From eight to ten the caller was permitted to
engage his lady love in conversation, but it was a rule that everything
that was said must be audible to the teacher on guard. Whisperings and
gigglings were taboo, and resulted in the young man being placed on
the black list, and forbidden thereafter to darken the doors of the
institution. But occasionally the teacher relaxed her vigilance for a
moment, providing an opportunity to arrange a clandestine meeting. That
was the principal reason that the boys of Farmington went to Elmwood on
calling nights.
The regular Sunday incident of the Seminary girls having been brought
to a satisfactory and successful conclusion, I went on downtown. I was
very young then, and I considered myself, in my Sunday suit, a very
striking and elegant figure. I thought of myself as a parade, and felt
morally certain that the eyes of every girl were upon me, and that
their hearts were fluttering with amatory admiration. The Methodist
church was only two blocks south of the Presbyterian edifice, and I
generally reached it as the Sunday-school pupils trooped out with their
arms full of lesson pamphlets and their souls full of salvation, Golden
Texts and catechisms. I regarded them pityingly, puffed vaingloriously
at my symbol of sin, and went on past the Christian church and the
Northern Methodist church and so to McKinney’s, the Post Office
Building and the fascinating popcorn and peanut machine.
In the winter time Doss’s barber shop was generally open until noon so
Billy Priester could shine the shoes of the young bucks who proposed to
defile the Sabbath by gallivanting around with young hussies. It was a
favorite loafing place for all abandoned wretches who did not care for
the glory that was free in all churches. But in summer we generally sat
in front of McKinney’s and the Post Office Building and, when finances
permitted, ate popcorn and peanuts, envying Riley Hough as he hurried
out now and then to attend to the machine and stuff his mouth with
popcorn before hastening back into the store.
All of the young sinners of the town loafed there during the church
services, and at twelve o’clock noon we rose in a body and walked
down the street to Pelty’s Book Store, where the Sunday papers were
distributed. The afternoons were devoted to baseball games and amatory
pursuits, and occasionally we went fishing. But this was considered
a Cardinal Sin, and was frowned upon by even our liberal element;
it was felt that it was a desecration of God’s Day to drag one of
His creatures from the river with a cruel fishhook. On week days, of
course, fishing was all right, although a waste of time, but on Sunday
an expedition to Blumeyer’s Ford, or to Gruner’s Hole, was followed
the next morning by buzzing comment all over town, and only a grown man
could hope to indulge in such sinful adventures and escape subsequent
punishment.
4
It was the custom of our pastors and pious brethren, and of the
professional sorcerers who were imported from time to time to cast
their spells and shoo the demons away from our housetops, to proclaim
loudly and incessantly that our collective morals were compounded of
a slice of Sodom and a cut of Gomorrah, with an extract of Babylon
to flavor the sorry stew. They worried constantly and fretfully over
our amorous activities; in their more feverish discourses appeared
significant references to the great difficulty of remaining pure,
and in effect they advised our young women to go armed to the teeth,
prepared to do battle in defense of their virginity.
In Farmington and other small towns of the Middle West this sort of
thing was the principal stock in trade of those who would lead their
brethren to the worship of the current god; the evangelist assured
his hearers that their town was overrun by harlots, and that brothels
abounded in which prominent men abandoned themselves to shameful
orgies, while church attendance dwindled, and collections became
smaller and smaller, and chicken appeared less and less frequently upon
the ministerial table. His tirades were generally in this fashion:
“Shall we permit these painted daughters of Jezebel, these bedizened
hussies, to stalk the streets of this fair city and flaunt their sin
in the face of the Lord? Shall we permit them to lure our sons and
brothers into their vile haunts and ply their nefarious trade in the
very shadow of the House of God? No! I say NO! Jesus Christ must live
in this town!”
Immediately everyone shouted “Amen, Brother!” and “Praise the Lord!”
But it was sometimes difficult to determine whether the congregation
praised the Lord for inspiring the evangelist so courageously to defy
the harlots, or for permitting him to discover them. If the Man of God
could find them, why not the damned, too? Certainly there were always
many who wondered if the brother had acquired any good addresses or
telephone numbers since coming to town. Not infrequently, indeed, he
was stealthily shadowed home by young men eager to settle this question.
These charges and denunciations were repeated, with trimmings, at the
meetings for men only which were always a most interesting feature of
the revivals. At similar gatherings for women, or ladies, as we called
them in small-town journalism, his wife or a devout Sister discussed
the question from the feminine viewpoint. What went on at these latter
conclaves I do not know, though I can guess, for I have often seen
young girls coming out of them giggling and blushing. The meetings for
men were juicy, indeed. The evangelist discussed all angles of the
subject, and in a very free manner. His own amorous exploits before
he was converted were recited in considerable detail, and he painted
vivid word pictures of the brothels he had visited, both as a paying
client and in the course of his holy work. Almost invariably they were
subterranean palaces hung with silks and satins, with soft rugs upon
the floor, and filled with a vast multitude of handsome young women,
all as loose as ashes. Having thus intimated, with some smirking, that
for many years he was almost the sole support of harlotry, he became
confidential. He leaned forward and said:
“There are such Dens of the Devil right here in your town!”
This was first-hand information, and immediately there was a stir in
the audience, many of his hearers betraying an eagerness to be gone.
But before they could get away the evangelist thundered:
“Shall we permit them to continue their wicked practices?”
I always hoped to be present some day when the audience forgot itself
and answered that question with the thought that was so plainly in its
mind, namely, “Yes!” But, alas, I never heard it, although there was
much shouting of “Amen!” and “Glory to God!” These meetings for men
only were generally held in the afternoon, and their net result was
that the business of the drug store increased immediately, and when
night fell bands of young good-for-nothings scurried hither and yon
about the town, searching feverishly for the Dens of the Devil. They
searched without fear, confident that modern science would save them
from any untoward consequences, and knowing that no matter what they
did they would go to Heaven if they permitted a preacher to intercede
for them in the end, or a priest to sprinkle them with holy water.
But the Dens of the Devil were not found, neither in Farmington nor in
any other small town in that region, for the very good reason that they
did not exist. The evangelist did not know what he was talking about;
he was simply using stock blather which he had found by experience
would excite the weak-minded to both sexual and religious emotions.
He knew that when they were thus upset they would be less likely to
question his ravings--that they would be more pliable in his hands and
easier to convert.
Our small towns were not overrun by harlots simply because harlotry
could not flourish in a small town. It was economically impossible;
there were not enough cash customers to make the scarlet career
profitable. Also, the poor girls had to meet too much competition from
emotional ladies who had the professional spirit but retained their
amateur standing by various technicalities. And harlots, like the rest
of us, had to live; they required the same sort of raiment and food
that sufficed their virtuous sisters; it was not until they died that
they wore nothing but the smoke of Hell and were able to subsist on a
diet of brimstone and sulphur.
Many men who in larger communities would have patronized the
professionals could not do so in a small town. They could not afford
to; it was too dangerous. The moment a woman was suspected of being
a harlot she was eagerly watched by everyone from the mayor down to
the preachers, and the name of every man seen talking to her, or even
looking at her, went winging swiftly from mouth to mouth, and was
finally posted on the heavenly bulletin board as that of an immoral
wretch. A house in which harlotry was practiced was picketed day and
night by small boys eager to learn the forbidden mysteries, and by
Brethren and Sisters hopefully sniffing for sin. It was not possible
for a harlot to keep her clientèle secret, for the sexual life of a
small town is an open book, and news of amorous doings could not travel
faster if each had a tabloid newspaper.
Exact statistics, of course, are not available, but it is probably true
that no small American town has ever harbored a harlot whose income
from professional services was sufficient to feed and clothe her. Few
if any such towns have ever been the abode of more than one harlot at
a time. When I was a boy every one had its town harlot, just as it had
its town sot (this, of course, was before drunkards became extinct) and
its town idiot. But she was generally a poor creature who was employed
by day as a domestic servant and practiced her ancient art only in her
hours of leisure. She turned to it partly for economic reasons, but
chiefly because of a great yearning for human companionship, which
she could obtain in no other way. She remained in it because she was
almost instantly branded a Daughter of Satan, and shunned by good and
bad alike. She seldom, if ever, realized that she was doing wrong;
her moral standards were those of a bedbug. She thought of harlotry
in terms of new ribbons and an occasional pair of shoes, and in terms
of social intercourse; she was unmoral rather than immoral, and the
proceeds of her profession, to her, were just so much extra spending
money.
Small-town men who occasionally visited the larger cities, and there
thought nothing of spending from ten to fifty dollars in metropolitan
brothels, were very stingy in dealing with the town harlot. They
considered a dollar an enormous price for her, and frequently they
refused to give her anything. Many small communities were not able to
support even a part-time harlot; consequently some members of the craft
went from town to town, taking secular jobs and practicing harlotry
as a side line until driven out by the godly, or until the inevitable
business depression occurred. I recall one who made several towns along
the O. K. Railroad in Northeastern Missouri as regularly as the shoe
drummers. Her studio was always an empty box car on the town siding,
and she had a mania for inscribing in such cars the exact dates and
hours of her adventures, and her honoraria. It was not unusual to find
in a car some such inscription as this:
“Ten P.M., July 8. Fifty cents.”
These writings, scrawled in lead pencil or with a bit of chalk, were
signed “Box Car Molly.” Once, in a car from which I had unloaded many
heavy bags of cement, I came across what seemed to be a pathetic bit of
very early, and apparently authentic, Box-Car-Molliana. On the wall was
this:
“I was ruined in this car May 10.
“BOX CAR MOLLY.”
Our town harlot in Farmington was a scrawny creature called variously
Fanny Fewclothes and Hatrack, but usually the latter in deference
to her figure. When she stood with her arms outstretched she bore a
remarkable resemblance to the tall hatracks then in general use in
our homes, and since she was always most amiable and obliging, she
was frequently asked to pose thus for the benefit of drummers and
other infidels. In time, she came to take a considerable pride in this
accomplishment; she referred to herself as a model, and talked vaguely
of abandoning her wicked life and going to St. Louis, where she was
sure she could make a living posing for artists.
Six days a week Hatrack was a competent and more or less virtuous
drudge employed by one of our best families, but Sunday was her day
off, and she then, in turn, offered her soul to the Lord and went
to the Devil. For the latter purpose she utilized both the Masonic
and Catholic cemeteries. Hatrack’s regular Sunday-night parade, her
descent from righteousness into sin, was one of the most fascinating
events of the week, and promptly after supper those of us who did not
have engagements to take young ladies to church (which was practically
equivalent to publishing the banns) went downtown to the loafing place
in front of the Post Office and waited impatiently.
On week days Hatrack turned a deaf ear to the blandishments of our
roués, but on Sunday night she was more gracious. This, however, was
not until she had gone to church and had been given to understand,
tacitly but none the less clearly, that there was no room for her in
the Kingdom of Heaven. Our Sunday-night services usually began about
eight o’clock, following the meetings of the various young people’s
societies. At seven-thirty, regardless of the weather, the angular
figure of Hatrack could be discerned coming down the hill from the
direction of the cemeteries. She lived somewhere in that section and
worked out by the day. She was always dressed in her best, and in her
eyes was the light of a great resolve. She was going to church, and
there was that in her walk and manner which said that thereafter she
was going to lead a better life.
There was always a group of men waiting for her around the Post Office.
But although several muttered “Here she comes!” it was not good form
to speak to her then, and she walked past them as if she had not seen
them. But they, with their wide knowledge of the vagaries of the Agents
of God, grinned hopefully and settled down to wait. They knew she would
be back. She went on up the street past the Court House and turned
into the Northern Methodist church, where she took a seat in the last
row. All about her were empty seats; if they were not empty when she
got there they were soon emptied. No one spoke to her. No one asked
her to come to Jesus. No one held out a welcoming hand. No one prayed
for her. No one offered her a hymn book. At the protracted meetings
and revivals, which she invariably attended, none of the Brothers and
Sisters tried to convert her; she was a Scarlet Woman and belonged to
the Devil. There was no place for her in a respectable congregation.
They could not afford to be seen talking to her, even in church, where
God’s love, by their theory, made brothers and sisters of us all.
It was pitiful to watch her; she listened to the Word with such rapt
attention; she sang the hymns with such fanatical fervor, and she so
yearned for the comforts of that barbaric religion and the blessings
of easy intercourse with decent people. But she never got them. From
the Christians and their God she got nothing but scorn. Of all the
sinners in our town Hatrack would have been easiest to convert; she
was so pathetically eager for salvation. If a Preacher, or a Brother,
or a Sister, had so much as spoken a kind word to her she would have
dropped to her knees and given up her soul to the Methodist God. And
her conversion, in all likelihood, would have been permanent, for
she was not mentally equipped for a struggle against the grandiose
improbabilities of revealed religion. If someone had told her, as I was
told, that God was an old man with long whiskers, she would not have
called Him “Daddy,” as some of her more flippant city sisters might
have done; she would have accepted Him and gloried in Him.
But she was not plucked from the burning, for the workers for the
Lord would have nothing to do with her, and by the end of the service
her eyes had grown sullen and her lip had curled upward in a sneer.
Before the final hymn was sung and the benediction pronounced upon the
congregation, she got to her feet and left the church. None tried to
stop her; she was not wanted in the House of God. I have seen her sit
alone and miserably unhappy while the Preacher bellowed a sermon about
forgiveness, with the whole church rocking to a chorus of sobbing,
moaning amens as he told the stories of various Biblical harlots, and
how God had forgiven them.
But for Hatrack there was no forgiveness. Mary Magdalene was a saint
in Heaven, but Hatrack remained a harlot in Farmington. Every Sunday
night for years she went through the same procedure. She was hopeful
always that someone would speak to her and make a place for her, that
the Brothers and Sisters who talked so volubly about the grace and the
mercy of God would offer her some of the religion that they dripped
so freely over everyone else in town. But they did not, and so she
went back down the street to the Post Office, swishing her skirts and
brazenly offering herself to all who desired her. The men who had been
waiting for her, and who had known that she would come, leered at her
and hailed her with obscene speech and gesture. And she gave them back
leer for leer, meeting their sallies with giggles, and motioning with
her head toward the cemeteries.
And so she went up the hill. A little while later a man left the group,
remarking that he must go home. He followed her. And a moment after
that another left, and then another, until behind Hatrack was a line of
men, about one to a block, who would not look at one another, and who
looked sheepishly at the ground when they met anyone coming the other
way. As each man accosted her in turn Hatrack inquired whether he was
a Protestant or a Catholic. If he was a Protestant she took him into
the Catholic cemetery; if he was a Catholic they went into the Masonic
cemetery.
5
I fell a willing victim to the wiles of the Rum Demon on the night of
my conversion, and thereafter, in common with other boys of the town
who were aflame with revolt against the religious taboos which had so
oppressed us, I drank whenever I could obtain the liquor. This was not
often, because I seldom had any money and it was difficult to find a
bartender who would sell a drink to a minor. The eagle eye of the W. C.
T. U. was constantly upon him. But occasionally the darkies would buy
for us in return for one swig at the bottle, and as often as possible
we purchased by this means a pint or quart of whisky or gin. I did not
drink because I liked the taste of liquor, for I didn’t, and I do not
now, but I thought it was smart and manly to get drunk.
And there was another, and a deeper reason. It seemed to me that in
the eyes of the Preachers and the Brothers and Sisters a man could
commit no more heinous sin than to get tight; it was even worse than
smoking. Such being the case, I felt that it was incumbent upon me to
achieve that condition, and thereby show them that I had no use for
them and the things for which they stood. And that was also the reason
we sang vulgar songs, and roared with gusto the parodies on hymns
that we learned from time to time. It was our custom to get as drunk
as possible and then group ourselves about the pump in the courthouse
yard, where we bellowed ditties and parodies until the town marshal or
some outraged Brother or Sister stopped us.
There were few such songs that we did not sing; it was at the pump,
on a summer night, that I first heard the “Song of Jack Hall.” It
was taught to us by a shoe drummer from St. Louis, who sang it with
appropriate gestures, and for a long time it was our favorite song. The
version that we sang was this--it should be rendered with great gusto
and feeling, and the final line of each verse should be dragged from
deep down in the chest:
Oh, me nyme it is Jack Hall, ’tis Jack Hall,
Oh, me nyme it is Jack Hall, ’tis Jack Hall;
Oh, me nyme it is Jack Hall,
And I’ll tell youse one and all,
The story of me fall,
God damn your eyes.
Oh, I killed a man ’tis said, so ’tis said,
Oh, I killed a man ’tis said, so ’tis said;
Oh, I killed a man ’tis said,
And I kicked his bloody head,
And I left him lyin’ dead,
God damn his eyes.
So they chucked me here in quod, here in quod,
So they chucked me here in quod, here in quod;
So they chucked me here in quod,
With a ball and chain and rod,
They did, so help me God,
God damn their eyes.
Well, the parson he did come, he did come,
Well, the parson he did come, he did come;
Well, the parson he did come,
And he looked so God-damned glum,
As he talked of Kingdom Come,
God damn his eyes.
And the sheriff he came, too, he came, too,
And the sheriff he came, too, he came, too;
And the sheriff he came, too,
With his little boys in blue,
He said: “Jack, we’ll see you through,
God damn your eyes.”
So it’s up the rope I go, up I go,
So it’s up the rope I go, up I go;
So it’s up the rope I go,
And those devils down below,
They’ll say: “Jack, we told you so!”
God damn their eyes.
The parodies on hymns that we sang were almost innumerable, and were
undoubtedly sung all over the country by other boys who, in the eyes
of their elders, were only being smart-alecky, but who, like us,
had a deeper reason for the eagerness with which they paraded their
disrespect for the Church and for religion. It was one of the few ways
we knew to flaunt our sin, and nothing pleased us more than to break up
a church service, or at least interrupt it, by bellowing at the top of
our voices some disreputable and unholy parody that had reached us in
one way or another.
One of our most enjoyable Sunday-night escapades was to gather in a
group outside a church window, and sing a parody immediately after
the choir and the congregation inside had sung the hymn itself. We
persisted in this until finally the pastor of the Northern Methodist
church had Wint Jackson, the Night Marshal, chase us away. We went
without comment or objection when Jackson ordered us to disperse,
because he had just killed a desperado named Yates, and we considered
him something of a hero; we thought that he went about with his finger
constantly in the trigger of his revolver, and that the finger itched.
On this particular night the parody which made the Methodist minister
so angry, and swept from his mind all thought of his Christian duty to
turn the other cheek for us to swat, was on “Oh, that will be glory for
me.” Our version went like this:
Oh, there will be no chicken for me,
No chicken for me, no chicken for me;
When all the preachers have gulped their share,
There’ll be no chicken, no chicken for me.
To give the proper swing to the tune, “gulped” must be pronounced
“gulluped.”
Perhaps the most celebrated of all the parodies, at that time, was on
the favorite old hymn, “At the Bar.” We sang it thus:
At the bar, at the bar,
Where I smoked my first cigar,
And the nickels and the dimes rolled away;
It was there, by chance,
That I ripped my Sunday pants,
And now I can wear them every day.
Another parodied “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” thus:
Nero, my dog, has fleas,
Nero has fleas;
Although I wash him clean,
Nero, my dog, has fleas.
And thus, to the tune of “Hallelujah, Thine the Glory”:
Hellilujah, I’m a hobo,
Hellilujah, I’m a bum;
Hellilujah, give us a handout,
Revive us again.
There was also in circulation at that time a great number of parodies
on hymns in which mention was made of Beecham’s Pills, the merits
of which were emblazoned on every barn and fence throughout the
countryside. I have heard that these parodies were circulated by
the Beecham Pill people themselves in response to a plea of English
churches for hymn books, but I do not know if the story is true. One of
our favorites of this collection was the parody on “Hark, the herald
angels sing.” It went:
Hark, the herald Angels sing,
Beecham’s Pills are just the thing;
Peace on earth and mercy mild,
Two for man and one for child.
6
To my long list of unhallowed but frequently pleasant accomplishments
I added, in my sixteenth summer, journalism and dancing; I went to
work on the Farmington _Times_ and learned to waltz and two-step, and
on occasion danced the Virginia Reel and the quadrille with spirit
and abandon if not with elegant grace. The practice of journalism was
not then, in all quarters, considered a sin of the first magnitude;
nor is it so considered to-day except when various Preachers and
other goody-bodies find their names mentioned infrequently and their
daily denunciations ignored. It is then the fashion to denounce the
newspapers, and to deplore the low plane to which the fourth estate has
fallen. But in Farmington in my youth the feeling against the Sunday
newspaper was so great that it was felt generally that all journalism
was at least slightly tainted, and so I list it as a sin. So far as the
financial rewards go, it is even now nothing less than a crime.
There was no question about the sinfulness of dancing, especially the
round dances, as we used to call the waltz and two-step. In some parts
of the country exception was made for the square dances, but everywhere
in my section of Missouri the waltz and two-step were considered Steps
toward Hell. I frequently heard Preachers and Brothers and Sisters
pronounce solemn judgment against young girls who indulged in such
heinous practices, and brand them before God and man as abandoned
scarlet women glorying in the unsanctified embraces of wicked men. That
was the way the Preachers usually talked, too. One man in our town was
even criticized for waltzing with his wife.
Not only was the wicked waltz and the devilish two-step, no matter
how decorously performed, a Sunday taboo in our town, but in our most
religious families it was taboo at all times, and several persons were
dismissed from church for participating in such orgies. We had one
Preacher who informed us that both Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed
by God because their inhabitants danced and for no other reason, and
the prediction was freely made that Farmington was destined for the
same dreadful end, and he intimated that we would not even reap the
resultant benefits of great fame and publicity. His tirades were
strikingly similar to the ones that are being made every day now by the
Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohibition and Public Morals against
New York City and other centers of sin.
As I have said, for many years the Presbyterians, city slickers at
heart, had a virtual monopoly of dancing in Farmington. It was they
who introduced the waltz and the two-step, to the great horror of
all of our old women, both male and female, and it is they who must
be held responsible when God sends His avenging angels to blast and
destroy. Occasionally a Baptist or a Methodist backslid sufficiently to
trip the light fantastic toe, as I delighted to call it as a juvenile
reporter on the _Times_, but not often; generally the Presbyterians
alone thus flaunted their wickedness. But when God failed to perform
as expected, others became bold and abandoned all caution, and when I
left Farmington, dancing was general and the town was obviously headed
straight for Hell. But even then there was very little dancing done on
Sunday night.
We had two newspapers in Farmington, the _Times_ and the _News_, the
former owned by Mr. Theodore Fisher and the latter by the Denman
brothers, extraordinarily devout members of the Northern Methodist
church and leaders in most of the town’s religious activities. Mr.
Fisher was a Presbyterian, a liberal at heart, but for business
reasons he was unable to do or say anything to stem the tide of
prying Puritanism. Both papers were controlled by the churches of the
town, and published everything that the Preachers and the Brothers
and Sisters asked them to; as I grew older, Mr. Fisher became more
confidential and frequently expressed his disgust at many things that
went on in Farmington, but he was powerless. If he had said a word in
favor of a more liberal attitude his paper would have had an even more
difficult time getting along, and Heaven knows it was hard enough as
it was; Mr. Fisher frequently had to spend all of Saturday morning
collecting advertising accounts so he could pay wages in the afternoon.
But the _News_ was always very prosperous.
When I went into the newspaper business, or game, as it is called in
the motion pictures and the schools of Journalism, I went in with the
enthusiastic thoroughness with which I had abandoned myself to a life
of sin. Mr. Fisher hired me at $2 a week, during the summer vacation,
to be the office devil, and for that princely wage I built the fires
each morning, swept the office, carried copy, set type, distributed pi,
kicked the job press, cranked the gasoline engine on Thursdays, fed the
big roller press, folded the papers, wrote names on them and carried
them to the Post Office in sacks. And I had many other duties besides.
These multitudinous activities sufficed me for a few weeks, because
in doing them, and in so being engaged in journalistic practice, I
had the same feeling that so encouraged me when I danced or drank or
smoked cigarettes; I was confident that I was doing something of which
the righteous did not wholly approve. But later I became ambitious. I
wanted to be an editor. Only God knows why, but I did. So I became an
editor; indeed, I became many editors. Using the small job press and
Mr. Fisher’s stock of vari-colored inks, I printed cards informing the
world that I was sporting editor, society editor, fire editor, crime
editor, baseball editor, football editor, financial editor, religious
editor, and barber-shop editor, this last because I purposed to
interview the customers in Doss’s barber shop.
Thus equipped, I felt able to handle any journalistic problem that
might confront me, and I spent my spare time interviewing people
and gathering items which, because of the extreme godliness of our
citizens, usually consisted of nothing more exciting than announcements
that so-and-so was on the sick list, or had been on the sick list and
was now improving. When I asked a banker if he knew any news I gravely
presented him with my financial-editor card; and when it became my
proud duty to interview my youthful idol and our most famous citizen,
Mr. Barney Pelty, the major-league baseball pitcher, he learned by
ocular proof that I was both sporting editor and baseball editor,
and as such fully competent to transmit to type and to posterity his
deathless utterances. As I recall them, these were generally that he
would be in town to visit his relatives or because some member of his
family was on the sick list, and would then return to St. Louis to
take up again the onerous duties of his profession. Once he predicted
that the Browns would win the pennant, and I wrote this exclusive
information with all the large and handsome words at my command, but he
was mistaken.
As time went on I became almost everything that it was possible
to be on the _Times_; I was printer, pressman, reporter, mechanic,
editor of this and that, and what not. But I was never permitted to
write editorials or chronicle the doings of our best people. The
_Times_ was passionately addicted to the Democrats, and each week our
editorial page trumpeted the widely known and indisputable fact that
the Republicans were a lot of skunks. These blasts were written, and
well written, by Mr. Fisher himself, and my own share in the good work
was merely to put them into type, and occasionally correct Mr. Fisher’s
phraseology when I did not think that he had expressed himself clearly.
And since these corrections were made at the case after the proof had
been corrected, they nearly always got printed, sometimes with dire
results. Once Mr. Fisher wrote, in jovial vein, about the gaudy house
in which a certain political candidate resided, and I corrected it
to read “bawdy house,” holding that the latter was more definitely
descriptive.
Another member of Mr. Fisher’s family, who had previously spoken to me
pleasantly when she met me on the street but who regarded me as nothing
but hired help after I had accepted employment, wrote about the social
activities of our first families on Columbia Street and the second and
third families in Doss’s Addition. I was occasionally permitted to
describe the pitiful doings of the Catholics, the Lutherans and other
curious humans down near the ice plant, and the weekly dances given
by the abandoned young people at our chief source of civic pride, the
insane asylum. But the functions of Society were obviously beyond
the descriptive powers of a mere printer’s devil. It was bad enough
that such a person had to set the type. Nevertheless I attended these
functions, and gained great comfort by inserting my name in the list
of those present, and by adding the important and vital information
that dainty and delicious refreshments had been served and a good time
had by all. If it was a birthday party the host was wished many happy
returns of the day. It was my belief at that time that it was against
the law to publish an account of a social event without so stating. It
was not always true; frequently the refreshments were not delicious
and no one had a good time, but in those days I did not have that high
regard for the truth that I have since acquired through labors on the
great metropolitan journals; indeed, a night seldom passes now that I
do not ask myself: “Have I written the truth to-day?” The answer, has,
so far, eluded me. But Mr. Fisher, and to an even greater extent the
Brothers Denman, sole owners of the _News_, frankly tried to please the
advertisers and the subscribers; there was not then that fine spirit of
independence which is such an essential part of modern journalism.
I advanced rapidly on the _Times_, and eventually was receiving $7
a week and had appointed myself to so many editorships that my cards
filled two pockets. I was satisfied, and probably would have remained
so for some years, but the end of my allotted time in Farmington was
drawing near. I went to Northeast Missouri to visit relatives, and Mr.
Fisher discharged me for over-staying my leave. This was a terrific
blow; it seemed to me that my journalistic career had been cut off in
the flower of its youth. I went to work in a lumber yard, and kept the
job until the first carload of cement came in. But after I had pulled
and tugged at the ninety-eight-pound sacks for ten hours I concluded
that the lumber business held out no glowing promise for a young man
who wished to retain his health and have leisure for a reasonable
amount of traffic with Satan.
So I resigned and went to Quincy, Ill., where after considerable
negotiations I obtained a job as reporter on the Quincy _Journal_ and
embarked on a career in daily journalism. So far this has kept me in
the cities, where the opportunities for sin are vastly more numerous
than in the small towns, but where there is less sin in proportion
to the number of inhabitants. This is true despite the horde of
wailing prophets and professional devil-chasers and snoopers whose
principal occupation is violent and false denunciation of every city
large enough to have an electric-light plant. And in a city one can,
by diligent search, find a few people who will admit that a man’s
religion, or his lack of religion, is his own affair.