“_A really high-class horse is one that is consistent, game,
intelligent, gentle, obedient, courageous, and at all times willing
and able to go any route with weight up and maintain a high rate
of speed and overcome all ordinary difficulties under adverse
conditions._
“_Remember that horses are not machines._”
--_Trainer and Cloeker’s Handicap (strictly private)._
A NARROW beam of yellow light against the satin surface of purplish
gray wood, wood become soft of texture, touched with these delicate
shades of color. The light from above falls straight down the face
of a great heavy beam of the wood. Or is it marble rather than wood,
marble touched also by the delicate hand of time? I am perhaps dead and
in my grave. No, it cannot be a grave. Would it not be wonderful if I
had died and been buried in a marble sepulchre, say on the summit of a
high hill above a city in which live many beautiful men and women? It
is a grand notion and I entertain it for a time. What have I done to
be buried so splendidly? Well, never mind that. I have always been one
who wanted a great deal of love, admiration and respect from others
without having to go to all the trouble of deserving it. I am buried
magnificently in a marble sepulchre cut into the side of a large hill,
near the top. On a certain day my body was brought hither with great
pomp. Music played, women and children wept and strong men bowed their
heads. Now on feast days young men and women come up the hillside to
look through a small glass opening left in the side of my burial place.
It must be through the opening the yellow light comes. The young men
who come up the hillside are wishing they could be like me, and the
young and beautiful women are all wishing I were still alive and that I
might be their lover.
How splendid! What have I done? The last thing I remember I was working
at that place where so many kegs of nails had to be rolled down an
incline. I was full of beer too. What happened after that? Did I save a
besieged city, kill a dragon like Saint George, drive snakes out of the
land like Saint Patrick, inaugurate a new and better social system, or
what could I have done?
I am somewhere in a huge place. Perhaps I am standing in that great
cathedral at Chartres, the cathedral that Judge Turner told me about
when I was a lad and that I myself long afterward saw and that became
for me as it has been for many other men and women the beauty shrine of
my life. It may be that I am standing in that great place at midnight
alone. It cannot be that there is any one with me for I feel very
lonely. A feeling of being very small in the presence of something vast
has taken possession of me. Can it be Chartres, the Virgin, the woman,
God’s woman?
What am I talking about? I cannot be in the cathedral at Chartres
or buried splendidly in a marble sepulchre on a hillside above a
magnificent city. I am an American and if I am dead my spirit must now
be in a large half-ruined and empty factory, a factory with cracks in
the walls where the work of the builders was scamped, as nearly all
building was scamped in my time.
It cannot be I am in the presence of the Virgin. Americans do not
believe in either Virgins or Venuses. Americans believe in themselves.
There is no need of gods now but if the need arises Americans will
manufacture many millions of them, all alike. They will label them
“Keep smiling” or “Safety first” and go on their way, and as for the
woman, the Virgin, she is the enemy of our race. Her purpose is not our
purpose. Away with her!
The beam of wood I see is just a beam of wood. It was cut in a forest
and brought to the factory to support a wall that had begun to give
way. No one touched it with careless hurried hands and so it aged as
you see, quite beautifully--as trees themselves age. All about me are
broken wheels. In the factory the great steam-driven wheels are forever
still now.
Broken dreams, ends of thoughts, a stifled feeling within my chest.
Aha, you Stephenson, Franklin, Fulton, Bell, Edison--you heroes of
my Industrial Age, you men who have been the gods of the men of my
day--is your day over so soon? “In the end,” I am telling myself, “all
of your triumphs come to the dull and meaningless absurdity, of say
a clothespin factory. There have been sweeter men in old times, half
forgotten now, who will be remembered after you are forgotten. The
Virgin too, will be remembered after you are forgotten. Would it not
be amusing if Chartres continued to stand after you are forgotten?”
Is it not absurd? Because I do not want to work in a warehouse and roll
kegs, because I do not want to work in a factory anywhere I must needs
go getting gaudy and magnificent and try to blow all factories away
with a breath of my fancy. My fancy climbs up and up.
Democracy shall spread itself out thinner and thinner, it shall come to
nothing but empty mouthings in the end. Everywhere, all over the earth,
shall be the dreary commercial and material success of, say the later
Byzantine Empire. In the West and after the great dukes, the kings and
the popes, the commoners--who were not commoners after all but only
stole the name--are having their day. The shrewd little money-getters
with the cry “democracy” on their lips shall rule for a time and then
the real commoners shall come--and that shall be the worst time of
all. Oh, the futile little vanity of the workers who have forgotten
the cunning of hands, who have long let machines take the place of the
cunning of hands!
And the tired men of the arts. Oh, the cunning smart little men of
the arts of New York and Chicago! Painters making advertising designs
for soap, painters making portraits of bankers’ wives, story-tellers
striving wearily to “make” the _Saturday Evening Post_ or to be
revolutionists in the arts. Artists everywhere striving for what?
Respectability perhaps--to call attention to themselves perhaps.
They will get--a Ford. On holidays they may go see the great automobile
races on the speedway at Indianapolis Indiana. Not for them the
flashing thoroughbreds or the sturdy trotters and pacers. Not for them
freedom, laughter. For them machines.
Long ago that Judge Turner had corrupted my mind. He played me a hell
of a trick. I have been going about trying to have thoughts. What a
fool I have been! I have read many books of history, many stories of
men’s lives. Why did I not go to college and get a safe education? I
might have worked my way through and got my mind fixed in a comfortable
mold. There is no excuse for me. I shall have to pay for my lack of a
proper training.
In the next room to the one in which I am lying two men are talking.
FIRST VOICE. “He took straw, ground it, put it into some kind
of rubber composition. The whole was mixed up together and subjected to
an immense hydraulic pressure. It came out a tough kind of composition
that can be made to look like wood. It can be grained like wood. He
will get rich. I tell you he is one of the great minds of the age.”
SECOND VOICE. “We shall have prohibition after a while and
then you’ll see how it will turn out. You can’t down the American mind.
Some fellow will make a drink, a synthetic drink. It won’t cost much to
make. Perhaps it can be made out of crude oil like gasoline and then
the Standard will take him up. He’ll get rich. We Americans can’t be
put down, I’ll tell you that.”
FIRST VOICE. “There is a man in New York makes car wheels out
of paper. It is ground, I suppose, and made into a kind of mush and
then is subjected to an immense hydraulic pressure. The wheels look
like iron.”
SECOND VOICE. “Do you suppose he paints them black like iron?”
FIRST VOICE. “It’s a great age we live in. You can’t down
machinery. I read a book by Mark Twain. He knocked theories cold, I’ll
tell you what. He made out all life was just a great machine.”
* * * * *
Where am I? Am I dreaming or am I awake? It seems to me that I am
somewhere in a great empty place. I shall have one of my terrible fits
of depression if I am not careful now. Sometimes I walk gayly along the
streets and talk to men and women gayly but there are other times when
I am so depressed that all the muscles of my body ache. I am like one
on whose back a great beast sits. Now it seems to me I am in a huge
empty place. Has the roof of a factory in which I was at work at night
fallen in? There is a long shaft of yellow light falling down a beam of
wood or marble.
Thoughts flitting, an effort to awaken out of dreams, voices heard,
voices talking somewhere in the distance, the figures of men and women
I have known flashing in and out of darkness. There is a tiny faint
voice speaking: “The money-makers will grow weary and disgusted with
their own money-making and labor shall have lost all faith, all sense
of the cunning of the hand. The factory hands shall rule. What a mess
it will be!”
* * * * *
Where am I? I am in a bed somewhere in a room in a workers’ rooming
house. Two young mechanics live in the next room and now they are
getting out of bed and are talking cheerfully. Once on cold nights
monks awoke in cold cells in monasteries and muttered prayers to God.
Now in a cold room two young mechanics proclaim their faith in new gods.
Words in a brain trying to come into consciousness out of heavy sleep.
“Service! They make a point of service,” says one of the young men’s
voices. My brain, a voice in my own brain, chattering: “The woman
who had been taken in adultery came to wash with her hands the tired
feet of the Christ. She wiped his feet with her long hair and poured
precious ointment upon them.” A distorted thought born of the effort
to awaken from a heavy dream: “Many men and women are going along a
street. They all have long hair and bear vessels of precious ointment.
They are going to wash the feet of a Rockefeller, of ‘Bet a million’
Gates, of a Henry Ford or the son of a Henry Ford, the gods of the new
day.”
And now the dream again. Again the great empty place. I cannot breathe.
There is a great black bell without a tongue, swinging silently in
darkness. It swings and swings, making a great arch and I await silent
and frightened. Now it stops and descends slowly. I am terrified. Can
nothing stop the great descending iron bell? It stops and hangs for a
moment and now it drops suddenly and I am a prisoner under the great
iron bell.