"Do you mean to say that you would go down to a depot without money and
wait for money to come to you?"
"Oh, brother," he said, with the softest light in his eyes, "if you only
knew what it is to have faith!"
He laid his hand softly on mine.
"What is car-fare to New Haven or to anywhere, to Him?"
"But," I replied materially, "you haven't any car-fare when you go
there--how do you actually get it? Who gives it to you? Give me one
instance."
"Why, it was only last week, brother, that a woman wrote me from Maiden,
Massachusetts, wanting me to come and see her. She's very sick with
consumption, and she thought she was going to die. I used to know her in
Noank, and she thought if she could get to see me she would feel better.
"I didn't have any money at the time, but that didn't make any
difference.
"'Lord,' I said, 'here's a woman sick in Maiden, and she wants me to
come to her. I haven't got any money, but I'll go right down to the
depot, in time to catch a certain train,' and I went. And while I was
standing there a man came up to me and said, 'Brother, I'm told to give
you this,' and he handed me ten dollars."
"Did you know the man?" I exclaimed.
"Never saw him before in my life," he replied, smiling genially.
"And didn't he say anything more than that?"
"No."
I stared at him, and he added, as if to take the edge off my
astonishment:
"Why, bless your heart, I knew he was from the Lord, just the moment I
saw him coming."
"You mean to say you were standing there without a cent, expecting the
Lord to help you, and He did?"
"'He shall call upon me, and I shall answer him,'" he answered simply,
quoting the Ninety-first Psalm.
This incident was still the subject of my inquiry when a little colored
girl came out of the yard and paused a moment before us.
"May I go down across the bridge, papa?" she asked.
"Yes," he answered, and then as she tripped away, said:
"She's one of my adopted children." He gazed between his knees at the
sidewalk.
"Have you many others?"
"Three."
"Raising them, are you?"
"Yes."
"They seem to think, down in Noank, that living as you do and giving
everything away is satisfactory to you but rather hard on your wife and
children."
"Well, it is true that she did feel a little uncertain in the beginning,
but she's never wanted for anything. She'll tell you herself that she's
never been without a thing that she really needed, and she's been
happy."
He paused to meditate, I presume, over the opinion of his former fellow
townsmen, and then added:
"It's true, there have been times when we have been right where we had
to have certain things pretty badly, before they came, but they never
failed to come."
While he was still talking, Mrs. Potter came around the corner of the
house and out upon the sidewalk. She was going to the Saturday evening
market in the city below.
"Here she is," he said. "Now you can ask her."
"What is it?" she inquired, turning a serene and smiling face to me.
"They still think, down in Noank, that you're not very happy with me,"
he said. "They're afraid you want for something once in a while."
She took this piece of neighborly interference in better fashion than
most would, I fancy.
"I have never wanted for anything since I have been married to my
husband," she said. "I am thoroughly contented."
She looked at him and he at her, and there passed between them an
affectionate glance.
"Yes," he said, when she had passed after a pleasing little
conversation, "my wife has been a great help to me. She has never
complained."
"People are inclined to talk a little," I said.
"Well, you see, she never complained, but she did feel a little bit
worried in the beginning."
"Have you a mission or a church here in Norwich?"
"No, I don't believe in churches."
"Not in churches?"
"No. The sight of a minister preaching the word of God for so much a
year is all a mockery to me."
"What do you believe in?"
"Personal service. Churches and charitable institutions and societies
are all valueless. You can't reach your fellowman that way. They build
up buildings and pay salaries--but there's a better way." (I was
thinking of St. Francis and his original dream, before they threw him
out and established monasteries and a costume or uniform--the thing he
so much objected to.) "This giving of a few old clothes that the moths
will get anyhow, that won't do. You've got to give something of
yourself, and that's affection. Love is the only thing you can really
give in all this world. When you give love, you give everything.
Everything comes with it in some way or other."
"How do you say?" I queried. "Money certainly comes handy sometimes."
"Yes, when you give it with your own hand and heart--in no other way. It
comes to nothing just contributed to some thing. Ah!" he added, with
sudden animation, "the tangles men can get themselves into, the snarls,
the wretchedness! Troubles with women, with men whom they owe, with evil
things they say and think, until they can't walk down the street any
more without peeping about to see if they are followed. They can't look
you in die face; can't walk a straight course, but have got to sneak
around corners. Poor, miserable, unhappy--they're worrying and crying
and dodging one another!"
He paused, lost in contemplation of the picture he had conjured up.
"Yes," I went on catechistically, determined, if I could, to rout out
this matter of giving, this actual example of the modus operandi of
Christian charity. "What do you do? How do you get along without giving
them money?"
"I don't get along without giving them some money. There are cases, lots
of them, where a little money is necessary. But, brother, it is so
little necessary at times. It isn't always money they want. You can't
reach them with old clothes and charity societies," he insisted. "You've
got to love them, brother. You've got to go to them and love them, just
as they are, scarred and miserable and bad-hearted."
"Yes," I replied doubtfully, deciding to follow this up later. "But just
what is it you do in a needy case? One instance?"
"Why, one night I was passing a little house in this town," he went on,
"and I heard a woman crying. I went right to the door and opened it, and
when I got inside she just stopped and looked at me.
"'Madam,' I said, 'I have come to help you, if I can. Now you tell me
what you're crying for.'
"Well, sir, you know she sat there and told me how her husband drank and
how she didn't have anything in the house to eat, and so I just gave her
all I had and told her I would see her husband for her, and the next day
I went and hunted him up and said to him, 'Oh, brother, I wish you would
open your eyes and see what you are doing. I wish you wouldn't do that
any more. It's only misery you are creating.' And, you know, I got to
telling about how badly his wife felt about it, and how I intended to
work and try and help her, and bless me if he didn't up and promise me
before I got through that he wouldn't do that any more. And he didn't.
He's working today, and it's been two years since I went to him,
nearly."
His eyes were alight with his appreciation of personal service.
"Yes, that's one instance," I said.
"Oh, there are plenty of them," he replied. "It's the only way. Down
here in New London a couple of winters ago we had a terrible time of it.
That was the winter of the panic, you know. Cold--my, but that was a
cold winter, and thousands of people out of work--just thousands. It was
awful. I tried to do what I could here and there all along, but finally
things got so bad there that I went to the mayor. I saw they were
raising some kind of a fund to help the poor, so I told him that if he'd
give me a little of the money they were talking of spending that I'd
feed the hungry for a cent-and-a-half a meal."
"A cent-and-a-half a meal!"
"Yes, sir. They all thought it was rather curious, not possible at
first, but they gave me the money and I fed 'em."
"Good meals?"
"Yes, as good as I ever eat myself," he replied.
"How did you do it?" I asked.
"Oh, I can cook. I just went around to the markets, and told the
market-men what I wanted--heads of mackerel, and the part of the halibut
that's left after the rich man cuts off his steak--it's the poorest part
that he pays for, you know. And I went fishing myself two or three
times--borrowed a big boat and got men to help me--oh, I'm a good
fisherman, you know. And then I got the loan of an old covered brickyard
that no one was using any more, a great big thing that I could close up
and build fires in, and I put my kettle in there and rigged up tables
out of borrowed boards, and got people to loan me plates and spoons and
knives and forks and cups. I made fish chowder, and fish dinners, and
really I set a very fine table, I did, that winter."
"For a cent-and-a-half a meal!"
"Yes, sir, a cent-and-a-half a meal. Ask any one in New London. That's
all it cost me. The mayor said he was surprised at the way I did it."
"Well, but there wasn't any particular personal service in the money
they gave you?" I asked, catching him up on that point. "They didn't
personally serve--those who gave you the money?"
"No, sir, they didn't," he replied dreamily, with unconscious
simplicity. "But they gave through me, you see. That's the way it was. I
gave the personal service. Don't you see? That's the way."
"Yes, that's the way," I smiled, avoiding as far as possible a further
discussion of this contradiction, so unconscious on his part, and in the
drag of his thought he took up another idea.
"I clothed 'em that winter, too--went around and got barrels and boxes
of old clothing. Some of them felt a little ashamed to put on the
things, but I got over that, all right. I was wearing them myself, and I
just told them, 'Don't feel badly, brother. I'm wearing them out of the
same barrel with you--I'm wearing them out of the same barrel.' Got my
clothes entirely free for that winter."
"Can you always get all the aid you need for such enterprises?"
"Usually, and then I can earn a good deal of money when I work steadily.
I can get a hundred and fifty dollars for a little yacht, you know,
every time I find time to make one; and I can make a good deal of money
out of fishing. I went out fishing here on the Fourth of July and caught
two hundred blackfish--four and five pounds, almost, every one of them."
"That ought to be profitable," I said.
"Well, it was," he replied.
"How much did you get for them?"
"Oh, I didn't sell them," he said. "I never take money for my work that
way. I gave them all away."
"What did you do?" I asked, laughing--"advertise for people to come for
them?"
"No. My wife took some, and my daughters, and I took the rest and we
carried them around to people that we thought would like to have them."
"Well, that wasn't so profitable, was it?" I commented amusedly.
"Yes, they were fine fish," he replied, not seeming to have heard me.
We dropped the subject of personal service at this point, and I
expressed the opinion that his service was only a temporary expedient.
Times changed, and with them, people. They forgot. Perhaps those he
aided were none the better for accepting his charity.
"I know what you mean," he said. "But that don't make any difference.
You just have to keep on giving, that's all, see? Not all of 'em turn
back. It helps a lot. Money is the only dangerous thing to give--but I
never give money--not very often. I give myself, rather, as much as
possible. I give food and clothing, too, but I try to show 'em a new
way--that's not money, you know. So many people need a new way. They're
looking for it often, only they don't seem to know how. But God, dear
brother, however poor or mean they are--He knows. You've got to reach
the heart, you know, and I let Him help me. You've got to make a man
over in his soul, if you want to help him, and money won't help you to
do that, you know. No, it won't."
He looked up at me in clear-eyed faith. It was remarkable.
"Make them over?" I queried, still curious, for it was all like a
romance, and rather fantastic to me. "What do you mean? How do you make
them over?"
"Oh, in their attitude, that's how. You've got to change a man and bring
him out of self-seeking if you really want to make him good. Most men
are so tangled up in their own errors and bad ways, and so worried over
their seekings, that unless you can set them to giving it's no use.
They're always seeking, and they don't know what they want half the
time. Money isn't the thing. Why, half of them wouldn't understand how
to use it if they had it. Their minds are not bright enough. Their
perceptions are not clear enough. All you can do is to make them content
with themselves. And that, giving to others will do. I never saw the man
or the woman yet who couldn't be happy if you could make them feel the
need of living for others, of doing something for somebody besides
themselves. It's a fact. Selfish people are never happy."
He rubbed his hands as if he saw the solution of the world's
difficulties very clearly, and I said to him:
"Well, now, you've got a man out of the mire, and 'saved,' as you call
it, and then what? What comes next?"
"Well, then he's saved," he replied. "Happiness comes next--content."
"I know. But must he go to church, or conform to certain rules?"
"No, no, no!" he replied sweetly. "Nothing to do except to be good to
others. 'True religion and undefiled before our God and Father is
this,'" he quoted, "'to visit the widow and the orphan in their
affliction and to keep unspotted from the world. Charity is kind,' you
know. 'Charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, seeketh not its
own.'"
"Well," I said, rather aimlessly, I will admit, for this high faith
staggered me. (How high! How high!) "And then what?"
"Well, then the world would come about. It would be so much better. All
the misery is in the lack of sympathy one with another. When we get that
straightened out we can work in peace. There are lots of things to do,
you know."
Yes, I thought, looking down on the mills and the driving force of
self-interest--on greed, lust, love of pleasure, all their fantastic and
yet moving dreams.
"I'm an ignorant man myself, and I don't know all," he went on, "and I'd
like to study. My, but I'd like to look into all things, but I can't do
it now. We can't stop until this thing is straightened out. Some time,
maybe," and he looked peacefully away.
"By the way," I said, "whatever became of the man to whom you gave your
rubber boots over on Fisher's Island?"
His face lit up as if it were the most natural thing that I should know
about it.
"Say," he exclaimed, in the most pleased and confidential way, as if we
were talking about a mutual friend, "I saw him not long ago. And, do you
know, he's a good man now--really, he is. Sober and hard-working. And,
say, would you believe it, he told me that I was the cause of it--just
that miserable old pair of rubber boots--what do you think of that?"
I shook his hand at parting, and as we stood looking at each other in
the shadow of the evening I asked him:
"Are you afraid to die?"
"Say, brother, but I'm not," he returned. "It hasn't any terror for me
at all. I'm just as willing. My, but I'm willing."
He smiled and gripped me heartily again, and, as I was starting to go,
said:
"If I die tonight, it'll be all right. He'll use me just as long as He
needs me. That I know. Good-by."
"Good-by," I called back.
He hung by his fence, looking down upon the city. As I turned the next
corner I saw him awakening from his reflection and waddling stolidly
back into the house.
_My Brother Paul_
I like best to think of him as he was at the height of his all-too-brief
reputation and success, when, as the author and composer of various
American popular successes ("On the Banks of the Wabash," "Just Tell
Them That You Saw Me," and various others), as a third owner of one of
the most successful popular music publishing houses in the city and as
an actor and playwright of some small repute, he was wont to spin like a
moth in the white light of Broadway. By reason of a little luck and some
talent he had come so far, done so much for himself. In his day he had
been by turn a novitiate in a Western seminary which trained aspirants
for the Catholic priesthood; a singer and entertainer with a
perambulating cure-all oil troupe or wagon ("Hamlin's Wizard Oil")
traveling throughout Ohio, Indiana and Illinois; both end- and middle-man
with one, two or three different minstrel companies of repute; the
editor or originator and author of a "funny column" in a Western small
city paper; the author of the songs mentioned and a hundred others; a
black-face monologue artist; a white-face ditto, at Tony Pastor's,
Miner's and Niblo's of the old days; a comic lead; co-star and star in
such melodramas and farces as "The Danger Signal," "The Two Johns," "A
Tin Soldier," "The Midnight Bell," "A Green Goods Man" (a farce which he
himself wrote, by the way), and others. The man had a genius for the
kind of gayety, poetry and romance which may, and no doubt must be,
looked upon as exceedingly middle-class but which nonetheless had as
much charm as anything in this world can well have. He had at this time
absolutely no cares or financial worries of any kind, and this plus his
health, self-amusing disposition and talent for entertaining, made him a
most fascinating figure to contemplate.
My first recollection of him is of myself as a boy often and he a man of
twenty-five (my oldest brother). He had come back to the town in which
we were then living solely to find his mother and help her. Six or seven
years before he had left without any explanation as to where he was
going, tired of or irritated by the routine of a home which for any
genuine opportunity it offered him might as well never have existed. It
was run dominantly by my father in the interest of religious and moral
theories, with which this boy had little sympathy. He was probably not
understood by any one save my mother, who understood or at least
sympathized with us all. Placed in a school which was to turn him out a
priest, he had decamped, and now seven years later was here in this
small town, with fur coat and silk hat, a smart cane--a gentleman of the
theatrical profession. He had joined a minstrel show somewhere and had
become an "end-man." He had suspected that we were not as fortunate in
this world's goods as might be and so had returned. His really great
heart had called him.
But the thing which haunts me, and which was typical of him then as
throughout life, was the spirit which he then possessed and conveyed. It
was one of an agile geniality, unmarred by thought of a serious
character but warm and genuinely tender and with a taste for simple
beauty which was most impressive. He was already the author of a cheap
songbook, "_The Paul Dresser Songster_" ("All the Songs Sung in the
Show"), and some copies of this he had with him, one of which he gave
me. But we having no musical instrument of any kind, he taught me some
of the melodies "by ear." The home in which by force of poverty we were
compelled to live was most unprepossessing and inconvenient, and the
result of his coming could but be our request for, or at least the
obvious need of, assistance. Still he was as much an enthusiastic part
of it as though he belonged to it. He was happy in it, and the cause of
his happiness was my mother, of whom he was intensely fond. I recall how
he hung about her in the kitchen or wherever she happened to be, how
enthusiastically he related all his plans for the future, his amusing
difficulties in the past. He was very grand and youthfully
self-important, or so we all thought, and still he patted her on the
shoulder or put his arm about her and kissed her. Until she died years
later she was truly his uppermost thought, crying with her at times over
her troubles and his. He contributed regularly to her support and sent
home all his cast-off clothing to be made over for the younger ones.
(Bless her tired hands!)
As I look back now on my life, I realize quite clearly that of all the
members of my family, subsequent to my mother's death, the only one who
truly understood me, or, better yet, sympathized with my intellectual
and artistic point of view, was, strange as it may seem, this same Paul,
my dearest brother. Not that he was in any way fitted intellectually or
otherwise to enjoy high forms of art and learning and so guide me, or
that he understood, even in later years (long after I had written
"Sister Carrie," for instance), what it was that I was attempting to do;
he never did. His world was that of the popular song, the middle-class
actor or comedian, the middle-class comedy, and such humorous æsthetes
of the writing world as Bill Nye, Petroleum V. Nasby, the authors of the
Spoopendyke Papers, and "Samantha at Saratoga." As far as I could make
out--and I say this in no lofty, condescending spirit, by any means--he
was entirely full of simple, middle-class romance, middle-class humor,
middle-class tenderness and middle-class grossness, all of which I am
very free to say early disarmed and won me completely and kept me so
much his debtor that I should hesitate to try to acknowledge or explain
all that he did for or meant to me.
Imagine, if you can, a man weighing all of three hundred pounds, not
more than five feet ten-and-one-half inches in height and yet of so
lithesome a build that he gave not the least sense of either undue
weight or lethargy. His temperament, always ebullient and radiant,
presented him as a clever, eager, cheerful, emotional and always highly
illusioned person with so collie-like a warmth that one found him
compelling interest and even admiration. Easily cast down at times by
the most trivial matters, at others, and for the most part, he was so
spirited and bubbly and emotional and sentimental that your fiercest or
most gloomy intellectual rages or moods could scarcely withstand his
smile. This tenderness or sympathy of his, a very human appreciation of
the weaknesses and errors as well as the toils and tribulations of most
of us, was by far his outstanding and most engaging quality, and gave
him a very definite force and charm. Admitting, as I freely do, that he
was very sensuous (gross, some people might have called him), that he
had an intense, possibly an undue fondness for women, a frivolous,
childish, horse-playish sense of humor at times, still he had other
qualities which were absolutely adorable. Life seemed positively to
spring up fountain-like in him. One felt in him a capacity to do (in
his possibly limited field); an ability to achieve, whether he was doing
so at the moment or not, and a supreme willingness to share and radiate
his success--qualities exceedingly rare, I believe. Some people are so
successful, and yet you know their success is purely selfish--exclusive,
not inclusive; they never permit you to share in their lives. Not so my
good brother. He was generous to the point of self-destruction, and that
is literally true. He was the mark if not the prey of all those who
desired much or little for nothing, those who previously might not have
rendered him a service of any kind. He was all life and color, and
thousands (I use the word with care) noted and commented on it.
When I first came to New York he was easily the foremost popular
song-writer of the day and was the cause of my coming, so soon at least,
having established himself in the publishing field and being so
comfortably settled as to offer me a kind of anchorage in so troubled a
commercial sea. I was very much afraid of New York, but with him here it
seemed not so bad. The firm of which he was a part had a floor or two in
an old residence turned office building, as so many are in New York, in
Twentieth Street very close to Broadway, and here, during the summer
months (1894-7) when the various theatrical road-companies, one of which
he was always a part, had returned for the closed season, he was to be
found aiding his concern in the reception and care of possible
applicants for songs and attracting by his personality such virtuosi of
the vaudeville and comedy stage as were likely to make the instrumental
publications of his firm a success.
I may as well say here that he had no more business skill than a fly. At
the same time, he was in no wise sycophantic where either wealth, power
or fame was concerned. He considered himself a personage of sorts, and
was. The minister, the moralist, the religionist, the narrow, dogmatic
and self-centered in any field were likely to be the butt of his humor,
and he could imitate so many phases of character so cleverly that he was
the life of any idle pleasure-seeking party anywhere. To this day I
recall his characterization of an old Irish washerwoman arguing; a
stout, truculent German laying down the law; lean, gloomy, out-at-elbows
actors of the Hamlet or classic school complaining of their fate; the
stingy skinflint haggling over a dollar, and always with a skill for
titillating the risibilities which is vivid to me even to this day.
Other butts of his humor were the actor, the Irish day-laborer, the
negro and the Hebrew. And how he could imitate them! It is useless to
try to indicate such things in writing, the facial expression, the
intonation, the gestures; these are not things of words. Perhaps I can
best indicate the direction of his mind, if not his manner, by the
following:
One night as we were on our way to a theater there stood on a nearby
corner in the cold a blind man singing and at the same time holding out
a little tin cup into which the coins of the charitably inclined were
supposed to be dropped. At once my brother noticed him, for he had an
eye for this sort of thing, the pathos of poverty as opposed to so gay a
scene, the street with its hurrying theater crowds. At the same time, so
inherently mischievous was his nature that although his sympathy for the
suffering or the ill-used of fate was overwhelming, he could not resist
combining his intended charity with a touch of the ridiculous.
"Got any pennies?" he demanded.
"Three or four."
Going over to an outdoor candystand he exchanged a quarter for pennies,
then came back and waited until the singer, who had ceased singing,
should begin a new melody. A custom of the singer's, since the song was
of no import save as a means of attracting attention to him, was to
interpolate a "Thank you" after each coin dropped in his cup and between
the words of the song, regardless. It was this little idiosyncrasy which
evidently had attracted my brother's attention, although it had not
mine. Standing quite close, his pennies in his hand, he waited until the
singer had resumed, then began dropping pennies, waiting each time for
the "Thank you," which caused the song to go about as follows:
"Da-a-'ling" (Clink!--"Thank you!") "I am--" (Clink!--"Thank you!")
"growing o-o-o-ld" (Clink!--"Thank you!"), "Silve-e-r--" (Clink!--"Thank
you!") "threads among the--" (Clink!--"Thank you!") "go-o-o-ld--"
(Clink! "Thank you!"). "Shine upon my-y" (Clink!--"Thank you!")
"bro-o-ow toda-a-y" (Clink!--"Thank you!"), "Life is--" (Clink!--"Thank
you!") "fading fast a-a-wa-a-ay" (Clink!--"Thank you!")--and so on ad
infinitum, until finally the beggar himself seemed to hesitate a little
and waver, only so solemn was his rôle of want and despair that of
course he dared not but had to go on until the last penny was in, and
until he was saying more "Thank yous" than words of the song. A
passer-by noticing it had begun to "Haw-haw!", at which others joined
in, myself included. The beggar himself, a rather sniveling specimen,
finally realizing what a figure he was cutting with his song and thanks,
emptied the coins into his hand and with an indescribably wry
expression, half-uncertainty and half smile, exclaimed, "I'll have to
thank you as long as you keep putting pennies in, I suppose. God bless
you!"
My brother came away smiling and content.
However, it is not as a humorist or song-writer or publisher that I wish
to portray him, but as an odd, lovable personality, possessed of so many
interesting and peculiar and almost indescribable traits. Of all
characters in fiction he perhaps most suggests Jack Falstaff, with his
love of women, his bravado and bluster and his innate good nature and
sympathy. Sympathy was really his outstanding characteristic, even more
than humor, although the latter was always present. One might recite a
thousand incidents of his generosity and out-of-hand charity, which
contained no least thought of return or reward. I recall that once there
was a boy who had been reared in one of the towns in which we had once
lived who had never had a chance in his youth, educationally or in any
other way, and, having turned out "bad" and sunk to the level of a bank
robber, had been detected in connection with three other men in the act
of robbing a bank, the watchman of which was subsequently killed in the
mêlée and escape. Of all four criminals only this one had been caught.
Somewhere in prison he had heard sung one of my brother's sentimental
ballads, "The Convict and the Bird," and recollecting that he had known
Paul wrote him, setting forth his life history and that now he had no
money or friends.
At once my good brother was alive to the pathos of it. He showed the
letter to me and wanted to know what could be done. I suggested a
lawyer, of course, one of those brilliant legal friends of his--always
he had enthusiastic admirers in all walks--who might take the case for
little or nothing. There was the leader of Tammany Hall, Richard Croker,
who could be reached, he being a friend of Paul's. There was the
Governor himself to whom a plain recitation of the boy's unfortunate
life might be addressed, and with some hope of profit.
All of these things he did, and more. He went to the prison (Sing Sing),
saw the warden and told him the story of the boy's life, then went to
the boy, or man, himself and gave him some money. He was introduced to
the Governor through influential friends and permitted to tell the tale.
There was much delay, a reprieve, a commutation of the death penalty to
life imprisonment--the best that could be done. But he was so grateful
for that, so pleased. You would have thought at the time that it was his
own life that had been spared.
"Good heavens!" I jested. "You'd think you'd done the man an inestimable
service, getting him in the penitentiary for life!"
"That's right," he grinned--an unbelievably provoking smile. "He'd
better be dead, wouldn't he? Well, I'll write and ask him which he'd
rather have."
I recall again taking him to task for going to the rescue of a "down and
out" actor who had been highly successful and apparently not very
sympathetic in his day, one of that more or less gaudy clan that wastes
its substance, or so it seemed to me then, in riotous living. But now
being old and entirely discarded and forgotten, he was in need of
sympathy and aid. By some chance he knew Paul, or Paul had known him,
and now because of the former's obvious prosperity--he was much in the
papers at the time--he had appealed to him. The man lived with a sister
in a wretched little town far out on Long Island. On receiving his
appeal Paul seemed to wish to investigate for himself, possibly to
indulge in a little lofty romance or sentiment. At any rate he wanted me
to go along for the sake of companionship, so one dreary November
afternoon we went, saw the pantaloon, who did not impress me very much
even in his age and misery for he still had a few of his theatrical
manners and insincerities, and as we were coming away I said, "Paul, why
should you be the goat in every case?" for I had noted ever since I had
been in New York, which was several years then, that he was a victim of
many such importunities. If it was not the widow of a deceased friend
who needed a ton of coal or a sack of flour, or the reckless, headstrong
boy of parents too poor to save him from a term in jail or the
reformatory and who asked for fine-money or an appeal to higher powers
for clemency, or a wastrel actor or actress "down and out" and unable to
"get back to New York" and requiring his or her railroad fare wired
prepaid, it was the dead wastrel actor or actress who needed a coffin
and a decent form of burial.
"Well, you know how it is, Thee" (he nearly always addressed me thus),
"when you're old and sick. As long as you're up and around and have
money, everybody's your friend. But once you're down and out no one
wants to see you any more--see?" Almost amusingly he was always sad over
those who had once been prosperous but who were now old and forgotten.
Some of his silliest tender songs conveyed as much.
"Quite so," I complained, rather brashly, I suppose, "but why didn't he
save a little money when he had it? He made as much as you'll ever
make." The man had been a star. "He had plenty of it, didn't he? Why
should he come to you?"
"Well, you know how it is, Thee," he explained in the kindliest and most
apologetic way. "When you're young and healthy like that you don't
think. I know how it is; I'm that way myself. We all have a little of it
in us. I have; you have. And anyhow youth's the time to spend money if
you're to get any good of it, isn't it? Of course when you're old you
can't expect much, but still I always feel as though I'd like to help
some of these old people." His eyes at such times always seemed more
like those of a mother contemplating a sick or injured child than those
of a man contemplating life.
"But, Paul," I insisted on another occasion when he had just wired
twenty-five dollars somewhere to help bury some one. (My spirit was not
so niggardly as fearsome. I was constantly terrified in those days by
the thought of a poverty-stricken old age for myself and him--why, I
don't know. I was by no means incompetent.) "Why don't you save your
money? Why should you give it to every Tom, Dick and Harry that asks
you? You're not a charity organization, and you're not called upon to
feed and clothe and bury all the wasters who happen to cross your path.
If you were down and out how many do you suppose would help you?"
"Well, you know," and his voice and manner were largely those of mother,
the same wonder, the same wistfulness and sweetness, the same bubbling
charity and tenderness of heart, "I can't say I haven't got it, can I?"
He was at the height of his success at the time. "And anyhow, what's the
use being so hard on people? We're all likely to get that way. You don't
know what pulls people down sometimes--not wasting always. It's
thoughtlessness, or trying to be happy. Remember how poor we were and
how mamma and papa used to worry." Often these references to mother or
father or their difficulties would bring tears to his eyes. "I can't
stand to see people suffer, that's all, not if I have anything," and his
eyes glowed sweetly. "And, after all," he added apologetically, "the
little I give isn't much. They don't get so much out of me. They don't
come to me every day."
Another time--one Christmas Eve it was, when I was comparatively new to
New York (my second or third year), I was a little uncertain what to do,
having no connections outside of Paul and two sisters, one of whom was
then out of the city. The other, owing to various difficulties of her
own and a temporary estrangement from us--more our fault than hers--was
therefore not available. The rather drab state into which she had
allowed her marital affections to lead her was the main reason that kept
us apart. At any rate I felt that I could not, or rather would not, go
there. At the same time, owing to some difficulty or irritation with the
publishing house of which my brother was then part owner (it was
publishing the magazine which I was editing), we twain were also
estranged, nothing very deep really--a temporary feeling of distance and
indifference.
So I had no place to go except to my room, which was in a poor part of
the town, or out to dine where best I might--some moderate-priced hotel,
was my thought. I had not seen my brother in three or four days, but
after I had strolled a block or two up Broadway I encountered him. I
have always thought that he had kept an eye on me and had really
followed me; was looking, in short, to see what I would do As usual he
was most smartly and comfortably dressed.
"Where you going, Thee?" he called cheerfully.
"Oh, no place in particular," I replied rather suavely, I presume. "Just
going up the street."
"Now, see here, sport," he began--a favorite expression of his,
"sport"--with his face abeam, "what's the use you and me quarreling?
It's Christmas Eve, ain't it? It's a shame! Come on, let's have a drink
and then go out to dinner."
"Well," I said, rather uncompromisingly, for at times his seemingly
extreme success and well-being irritated me, "I'll have a drink, but as
for dinner I have another engagement."
"Aw, don't say that. What's the use being sore? You know I always feel
the same even if we do quarrel at times. Cut it out. Come on. You know
I'm your brother, and you're mine. It's all right with me, Thee. Let's
make it up, will you? Put 'er there! Come on, now. We'll go and have a
drink, see, something hot--it's Christmas Eve, sport. The old home
stuff."
He smiled winsomely, coaxingly, really tenderly, as only he could smile.
I "gave in." But now as we entered the nearest shining bar, a Christmas
crowd buzzing within and without (it was the old Fifth Avenue Hotel), a
new thought seemed to strike him.
"Seen E---- lately?" he inquired, mentioning the name of the troubled
sister who was having a very hard time indeed. Her husband had left her
and she was struggling over the care of two children.
"No," I replied, rather shamefacedly, "not in a week or two--maybe
more."
He clicked his tongue. He himself had not been near her in a month or
more. His face fell, and he looked very depressed.
"It's too bad--a shame really. We oughtn't to do this way, you know,
sport. It ain't right. What do you say to our going around there," it
was in the upper thirties, "and see how she's making out?--take her a
few things, eh? Whaddya say?"
I hadn't a spare dollar myself, but I knew well enough what he meant by
"take a few things" and who would pay for them.
"Well, we'll have to hurry if we want to get anything now," I urged,
falling in with the idea since it promised peace, plenty and good will
all around, and we rushed the drink and departed. Near at hand was a
branch of one of the greatest grocery companies of the city, and near
it, too, his then favorite hotel, the Continental. En route we meditated
on the impossibility of delivery, the fact that we would have to carry
the things ourselves, but he at last solved that by declaring that he
could commandeer negro porters or bootblacks from the Continental. We
entered, and by sheer smiles on his part and some blarney heaped upon a
floor-manager, secured a turkey, sweet potatoes, peas, beans, a salad, a
strip of bacon, a ham, plum pudding, a basket of luscious fruit and I
know not what else--provender, I am sure, for a dozen meals. While it
was being wrapped and packed in borrowed baskets, soon to be returned,
he went across the way to the hotel and came back with three grinning
darkies who for the tip they knew they would receive preceded us up
Broadway, the nearest path to our destination. On the way a few
additional things were picked up: holly wreaths, toys, candy, nuts--and
then, really not knowing whether our plan might not mis-carry, we made
our way through the side street and to the particular apartment, or,
rather, flat-house, door, a most amusing Christmas procession, I fancy,
wondering and worrying now whether she would be there.
But the door clicked in answer to our ring, and up we marched, the three
darkies first, instructed to inquire for her and then insist on leaving
the goods, while we lagged behind to see how she would take it.
The stage arrangement worked as planned. My sister opened the door and
from the steps below we could hear her protesting that she had ordered
nothing, but the door being open the negroes walked in and a moment or
two afterwards ourselves. The packages were being piled on table and
floor, while my sister, unable quite to grasp this sudden visitation and
change of heart, stared.
"Just thought we'd come around and have supper with you, E----, and
maybe dinner tomorrow if you'll let us," my brother chortled. "Merry
Christmas, you know. Christmas Eve. The good old home stuff--see? Old
sport here and I thought we couldn't stay away--tonight, anyhow."
He beamed on her in his most affectionate way, but she, suffering
regret over the recent estrangement as well as the difficulties of life
itself and the joy of this reunion, burst into tears, while the two
little ones danced about, and he and I put our arms about her.
"There, there! It's all over now," he declared, tears welling in his
eyes. "It's all off. We'll can this scrapping stuff. Thee and I are a
couple of bums and we know it, but you can forgive us, can't you? We
ought to be ashamed of ourselves, all of us, and that's the truth. We've
been quarreling, too, haven't spoken for a week. Ain't that so, sport?
But it's all right now, eh?"
There were tears in my eyes, too. One couldn't resist him. He had the
power of achieving the tenderest results in the simplest ways. We then
had supper, and breakfast the next morning, all staying and helping,
even to the washing and drying of the dishes, and thereafter for I don't
know how long we were all on the most affectionate terms, and he
eventually died in this sister's home, ministered to with absolutely
restless devotion by her for weeks before the end finally came.
But, as I have said, I always prefer to think of him at this, the very
apex or tower window of his life. For most of this period he was gay and
carefree. The music company of which he was a third owner was at the
very top of its success. Its songs, as well as his, were everywhere. He
had in turn at this time a suite at the Gilsey House, the Marlborough,
the Normandie--always on Broadway, you see. The limelight district was
his home. He rose in the morning to the clang of the cars and the honk
of the automobiles outside; he retired at night as a gang of repair men
under flaring torches might be repairing a track, or the milk trucks
were rumbling to and from the ferries. He was in his way a public
restaurant and hotel favorite, a shining light in the theater managers'
offices, hotel bars and lobbies and wherever those flies of the
Tenderloin, those passing lords and celebrities of the sporting,
theatrical, newspaper and other worlds, are wont to gather. One of his
intimates, as I now recall, was "Bat" Masterson, the Western and now
retired (to Broadway!) bad man; Muldoon, the famous wrestler; Tod Sloan,
the jockey; "Battling" Nelson; James J. Corbett; Kid McCoy; Terry
McGovern--prize-fighters all. Such Tammany district leaders as James
Murphy, "The" McManus, Chrystie and Timothy Sullivan, Richard Carroll,
and even Richard Croker, the then reigning Tammany boss, were all on his
visiting list. He went to their meetings, rallies and district doings
generally to sing and play, and they came to his "office" occasionally.
Various high and mighties of the Roman Church, "fathers" with fine
parishes and good wine cellars, and judges of various municipal courts,
were also of his peculiar world. He was always running to one or the
other "to get somebody out," or they to him to get him to contribute
something to something, or to sing and play or act, and betimes they
were meeting each other in hotel grills or elsewhere and having a drink
and telling "funny stories."
Apropos of this sense of humor of his, this love of horse-play almost, I
remember that once he had a new story to tell--a vulgar one of
course--and with it he had been making me and a dozen others laugh until
the tears coursed down our cheeks. It seemed new to everybody and, true
to his rather fantastic moods, he was determined to be the first to tell
it along Broadway. For some reason he was anxious to have me go along
with him, possibly because he found me at that time an unvarying
fountain of approval and laughter, possibly because he liked to show me
off as his rising brother, as he insisted that I was. At between six and
seven of a spring or summer evening, therefore, we issued from his suite
at the Gilsey House, whither he had returned to dress, and invading the
bar below were at once centered among a group who knew him. A whiskey, a
cigar, the story told to one, two, three, five, ten to roars of
laughter, and we were off, over the way to Weber & Fields (the Musical
Burlesque House Supreme of those days) in the same block, where to the
ticket seller and house manager, both of whom he knew, it was told. More
laughter, a cigar perhaps. Then we were off again, this time to the
ticket seller of Palmer's Theater at Thirtieth Street, thence to the bar
of the Grand Hotel at Thirty-first, the Imperial at Thirty-second, the
Martinique at Thirty-third, a famous drug-store at the southwest corner
of Thirty-fourth and Broadway, now gone of course, the manager of which
was a friend of his. It was a warm, moony night, and he took a glass of
vichy "for looks' sake," as he said.
Then to the quondam Hotel Aulic at Thirty-fifth and Broadway--the center
and home of the then much-berated "Hotel Aulic or Actors' School of
Philosophy," and a most impressive actors' rendezvous where might have
been seen in the course of an evening all the "second leads" and "light
comedians" and "heavies" of this, that and the other road company, all
blazing with startling clothes and all explaining how they "knocked 'em"
here and there: in Peoria, Pasadena, Walla-Walla and where not. My
brother shone like a star when only one is in the sky.
Over the way then to the Herald Building, its owls' eyes glowing in the
night, its presses thundering, the elevated thundering beside it. Here
was a business manager whom he knew. Then to the Herald Square Theater
on the opposite side of the street, ablaze with a small electric
sign--among the newest in the city. In this, as in the business office
of the _Herald_ was another manager, and he knew them all. Thence to the
Marlborough bar and lobby at Thirty-sixth, the manager's office of the
Knickerbocker Theater at Thirty-eighth, stopping at the bar and lobby of
the Normandie, where some blazing professional beauty of the stage
waylaid him and exchanged theatrical witticisms with him--and what else?
Thence to the manager's office of the Casino at Thirty-ninth, some bar
which was across the street, another in Thirty-ninth west of Broadway,
an Italian restaurant on the ground floor of the Metropolitan at
Fortieth and Broadway, and at last but by no means least and by such
slow stages to the very door of the then Mecca of Meccas of all
theater- and sportdom, the sanctum sanctorum of all those sportively au
fait, "wise," the "real thing"--the Hotel Metropole at Broadway and
Forty-second Street, the then extreme northern limit of the white-light
district. And what a realm! Rounders and what not were here ensconced at
round tables, their backs against the leather-cushioned wall seats, the
adjoining windows open to all Broadway and the then all but somber
Forty-second Street.
It was wonderful, the loud clothes, the bright straw hats, the canes,
the diamonds, the "hot" socks, the air of security and well-being, so
easily assumed by those who gain an all too brief hour in this pretty,
petty world of make-believe and pleasure and pseudo-fame. Among them my
dearest brother was at his best. It was "Paul" here and "Paul"
there--"Why, hello, Dresser, you're just in time! Come on in. What'll
you have? Let me tell you something, Paul, a good one--". More drinks,
cigars, tales--magnificent tales of successes made, "great shows" given,
fights, deaths, marvelous winnings at cards, trickeries in racing,
prize-fighting; the "dogs" that some people were, the magnificent,
magnanimous "God's own salt" that others were. The oaths, stories of
women, what low, vice-besmeared, crime-soaked ghoulas certain reigning
beauties of the town or stage were--and so on and so on ad infinitum.
But his story?--ah, yes. I had all but forgotten. It was told in every
place, not once but seven, eight, nine, ten times. We did not eat until
we reached the Metropole, and it was ten-thirty when we reached it! The
handshakes, the road stories--"This is my brother Theodore. He writes;
he's a newspaper man." The roars of laughter, the drinks! "Ah, my boy,
that's good, but let me tell you one--one that I heard out in Louisville
the other day." A seedy, shabby ne'er-do-well of a song-writer maybe
stopping the successful author in the midst of a tale to borrow a
dollar. Another actor, shabby and distrait, reciting the sad tale of a
year's misfortunes. Everywhere my dear brother was called to, slapped on
the back, chuckled with. He was successful. One of his best songs was
the rage, he had an interest in a going musical concern, he could confer
benefits, favors.
Ah, me! Ah, me! That one could be so great, and that it should not last
for ever and for ever!
Another of his outstanding characteristics was his love of women, a
really amusing and at times ridiculous quality. He was always sighing
over the beauty, innocence, sweetness, this and that, of young
maidenhood in his songs, but in real life he seemed to desire and
attract quite a different type--the young and beautiful, it is true, but
also the old, the homely and the somewhat savage--a catholicity of taste
I could never quite stomach. It was "Paul dearest" here and "Paul
dearest" there, especially in his work in connection with the
music-house and the stage. In the former, popular ballad singers of
both sexes, some of the women most attractive and willful, were most
numerous, coming in daily from all parts of the world apparently to find
songs which they could sing on the American or even the English stage.
And it was a part of his duty, as a member of the firm and the one who
principally "handled" the so-called professional inquirers, to meet them
and see that they were shown what the catalogue contained. Occasionally
there was an aspiring female song-writer, often mere women visitors.
Regardless, however, of whether they were young, old, attractive or
repulsive, male or female, I never knew any one whose manner was more
uniformly winsome or who seemed so easily to disarm or relax an
indifferent or irritated mood. He was positive sunshine, the same in
quality as that of a bright spring morning. His blue eyes focused
mellowly, his lips were tendrilled with smiles. He had a brisk, quick
manner, always somehow suggestive of my mother, who was never brisk.
And how he fascinated them, the women! Their quite shameless daring
where he was concerned! Positively, in the face of it I used to wonder
what had become of all the vaunted and so-called "stabilizing morality"
of the world. None of it seemed to be in the possession of these women,
especially the young and beautiful. They were distant and freezing
enough to all who did not interest them, but let a personality such as
his come into view and they were all wiles, bending and alluring graces.
It was so obvious, this fascination he had for them and they for him,
that at times it took on a comic look.
"Get onto the hit he's making," one would nudge another and remark.
"Say, some tenderness, that!" This in reference to a smile or a melting
glance on the part of a female.
"Nothing like a way with the ladies. Some baby, eh, boys?"--this
following the flick of a skirt and a backward-tossed glance perhaps, as
some noticeable beauty passed out.
"No wonder he's cheerful," a sour and yet philosophic vaudevillian, who
was mostly out of a job and hung about the place for what free meals he
could obtain, once remarked to me in a heavy and morose undertone. "If
I had that many women crazy about me I'd be too."
And the results of these encounters with beauty! Always he had something
most important to attend to, morning, noon or night, and whenever I
encountered him after some such statement "the important thing" was, of
course, a woman. As time went on and he began to look upon me as
something more than a thin, spindling, dyspeptic and disgruntled youth,
he began to wish to introduce me to some of his marvelous followers, and
then I could see how completely dependent upon beauty in the flesh he
was, how it made his life and world.
One day as we were all sitting in the office, a large group of
vaudevillians, song-writers, singers, a chance remark gave rise to a
subsequent practical joke at Paul's expense. "I'll bet," observed some
one, "that if a strange man were to rush in here with a revolver and
say, 'Where's the man that seduced my wife?' Paul would be the first to
duck. He wouldn't wait to find out whether he was the one meant or not."
Much laughter followed, and some thought. The subject of this banter
was, of course, not present at the time. There was one actor who hung
about there who was decidedly skillful in make-up. On more than one
occasion he had disguised himself there in the office for our benefit.
Coöperating with us, he disguised himself now as a very severe and even
savage-looking person of about thirty-five--side-burns, mustachios and
goatee. Then, with our aid, timing his arrival to an hour when Paul was
certain to be at his desk, he entered briskly and vigorously and,
looking about with a savage air, demanded, "Where is Paul Dresser?"
The latter turned almost apprehensively, I thought, and at once seemed
by no means captivated by the man's looks.
"That's Mr. Dresser there," explained one of the confederates most
willingly.
The stranger turned and glared at him. "So you're the scoundrel that's
been running around with my wife, are you?" he demanded, approaching him
and placing one hand on his right hip.
Paul made no effort to explain. It did not occur to him to deny the
allegation, although he had never seen the man before. With a rising
and backward movement he fell against the rail behind him, lifting both
hands in fright and exclaiming, "Why--why--Don't shoot!" His expression
was one of guilt, astonishment, perplexity. As some one afterwards said,
"As puzzled as if he was trying to discover which injured husband it
might be." The shout that went up--for it was agreed beforehand that the
joke must not be carried far--convinced him that a hoax had been
perpetrated, and the removal by the actor of his hat, sideburns and
mustache revealed the true character of the injured husband. At first
inclined to be angry and sulky, later on he saw the humor of his own
indefinite position in the matter and laughed as heartily as any. But I
fancy it developed a strain of uncertainty in him also in regard to
injured husbands, for he was never afterwards inclined to interest
himself in the much-married, and gave such wives a wide berth.
But his great forte was of course his song-writing, and of this, before
I speak of anything else, I wish to have my say. It was a gift, quite a
compelling one, out of which, before he died, he had made thousands, all
spent in the manner described. Never having the least power to interpret
anything in a fine musical way, still he was always full of music of a
tender, sometimes sad, sometimes gay, kind--that of the ballad-maker of
a nation. He was constantly attempting to work them out of himself, not
quickly but slowly, brooding as it were over the piano wherever he might
find one and could have a little solitude, at times on the organ (his
favorite instrument), improvising various sad or wistful strains, some
of which he jotted down, others of which, having mastered, he strove to
fit words to. At such times he preferred to be alone or with some one
whose temperament in no way clashed but rather harmonized with his own.
Living with one of my sisters for a period of years, he had a room
specially fitted up for his composing work, a very small room for so
very large a man, within which he would shut himself and thrum a melody
by the hour, especially toward evening or at night. He seemed to have a
peculiar fondness for the twilight hour, and at this time might thrum
over one strain and another until over some particular one, a new song
usually, he would be in tears!
And what pale little things they were really, mere bits and scraps of
sentiment and melodrama in story form, most asinine sighings over home
and mother and lost sweethearts and dead heroes such as never were in
real life, and yet with something about them, in the music at least,
which always appealed to me intensely and must have appealed to others,
since they attained so wide a circulation. They bespoke, as I always
felt, a wistful, seeking, uncertain temperament, tender and illusioned,
with no practical knowledge of any side of life, but full of a true
poetic feeling for the mystery and pathos of life and death, the wonder
of the waters, the stars, the flowers, accidents of life, success,
failure. Beginning with a song called "Wide Wings" (published by a small
retail music-house in Evansville, Indiana), and followed by such
national successes as "The Letter That Never Came," "I Believe It, For
My Mother Told Me So" (!), "The Convict and the Bird," "The Pardon Came
Too Late," "Just Tell Them That You Saw Me," "The Blue and the Grey,"
"On the Bowery," "On the Banks of the Wabash," and a number of others,
he was never content to rest and never really happy, I think, save when
composing. During this time, however, he was at different periods all
the things I have described--a black-face monologue artist, an end- and
at times a middle-man, a publisher, and so on.
I recall being with him at the time he composed two of his most famous
successes: "Just Tell Them That You Saw Me," and "On the Banks of the
Wabash," and noting his peculiar mood, almost amounting to a deep
depression which ended a little later in marked elation or satisfaction,
once he had succeeded in evoking something which really pleased him.
The first of these songs must have followed an actual encounter with
some woman or girl whose life had seemingly if not actually gone to
wreck on the shore of love or passion. At any rate he came into the
office of his publishing house one gray November Sunday afternoon--it
was our custom to go there occasionally, a dozen or more congenial
souls, about as one might go to a club--and going into a small room
which was fitted up with a piano as a "try-out" room (professionals
desiring a song were frequently taught it in the office), he began
improvising, or rather repeating over and over, a certain strain which
was evidently in his mind. A little while later he came out and said,
"Listen to this, will you, Thee?"
He played and sang the first verse and chorus. In the middle of the
latter, so moved was he by the sentiment of it, his voice broke and he
had to stop. Tears stood in his eyes and he wiped them away. A moment or
two later he was able to go through it without wavering and I thought it
charming for the type of thing it was intended to be. Later on (the
following spring) I was literally astonished to see how, after those
various efforts usually made by popular music publishers to make a song
"go"--advertising it in the _Clipper_ and _Mirror_, getting various
vaudeville singers to sing it, and so forth--it suddenly began to sell,
thousands upon thousands of copies being wrapped in great bundles under
my very eyes and shipped express or freight to various parts of the
country. Letters and telegrams, even, from all parts of the nation began
to pour in--"Forward express today ---- copies of Dresser's 'Tell Them
That You Saw Me.'" The firm was at once as busy as a bee-hive, on "easy
street" again, as the expression went, "in clover." Just before this
there had been a slight slump in its business and in my brother's
finances, but now once more he was his most engaging self. Every one in
that layer of life which understands or takes an interest in popular
songs and their creators knew of him and his song, his latest success.
He was, as it were, a revivified figure on Broadway. His barbers,
barkeepers, hotel clerks, theatrical box-office clerks, hotel managers
and the stars and singers of the street knew of it and him. Some
enterprising button firm got out a button on which the phrase was
printed. Comedians on the stage, newspaper paragraphers, his bank teller
or his tailor, even staid business men wishing to appear "up-to-date,"
used it as a parting salute. The hand-organs, the bands and the theater
orchestras everywhere were using it. One could scarcely turn a corner or
go into a cheap music hall or variety house without hearing a parody of
it. It was wonderful, the enormous furore that it seemed to create, and
of course my dear brother was privileged to walk about smiling and
secure, his bank account large, his friends numerous, in the pink of
health, and gloating over the fact that he was a success, well known, a
genuine creator of popular songs.
It was the same with "On the Banks of the Wabash," possibly an even
greater success, for it came eventually to be adopted by his native
State as its State song, and in that region streets and a town were
named after him. In an almost unintentional and unthinking way I had a
hand in that, and it has always cheered me to think that I had, although
I have never had the least talent for musical composition or song
versification. It was one of those delightful summer Sunday mornings
(1896, I believe), when I was still connected with his firm as editor of
the little monthly they were issuing, and he and myself, living with my
sister E----, that we had gone over to this office to do a little work.
I had a number of current magazines I wished to examine; he was always
wishing to compose something, to express that ebullient and emotional
soul of his in some way.
"What do you suppose would make a good song these days?" he asked in an
idle, meditative mood, sitting at the piano and thrumming while I at a
nearby table was looking over my papers. "Why don't you give me an idea
for one once in a while, sport? You ought to be able to suggest
something."
"Me?" I queried, almost contemptuously, I suppose. I could be very lofty
at times in regard to his work, much as I admired him--vain and yet more
or less dependent snip that I was. "I can't write those things. Why
don't you write something about a State or a river? Look at 'My Old
Kentucky Home,' 'Dixie,' 'Old Black Joe'--why don't you do something
like that, something that suggests a part of America? People like that.
Take Indiana--what's the matter with it--the Wabash River? It's as good
as any other river, and you were 'raised' beside it."
I have to smile even now as I recall the apparent zest or feeling with
which all at once he seized on this. It seemed to appeal to him
immensely. "That's not a bad idea," he agreed, "but how would you go
about it? Why don't you write the words and let me put the music to
them? We'll do it together!"
"But I can't," I replied. "I don't know how to do those things. You
write it. I'll help--maybe."
After a little urging--I think the fineness of the morning had as much
to do with it as anything--I took a piece of paper and after meditating
a while scribbled in the most tentative manner imaginable the first
verse and chorus of that song almost as it was published. I think one or
two lines were too long or didn't rhyme, but eventually either he or I
hammered them into shape, but before that I rather shamefacedly turned
them over to him, for somehow I was convinced that this work was not for
me and that I was rather loftily and cynically attempting what my good
brother would do in all faith and feeling.
He read it, insisted that it was fine and that I should do a second
verse, something with a story in it, a girl perhaps--a task which I
solemnly rejected.
"No, you put it in. It's yours. I'm through."