"Come on, let's go back and look anyway. There's no harm in seeing if he
has one."
We went back and there amid pork and molasses barrels, old papers, boxes
and signs, was furniture in considerable quantity--tables,
rocking-chairs, washstands, bureaus--all cornered and tumbled about.
"Why, here are rocking-chairs, lots of them," I exclaimed. "Just the
kind I want! He said he didn't have any."
"Gar! I dunno," replied the clerk. "Here's a table, but I wouldn't dare
sell it to you."
"Why should he say he didn't have a rocking-chair?"
"Gar! I dunno. He's goin' out of the furniture business. He don't want
to sell any. I don't know what he intends to do with it."
"Well," I said in despair, "what about the table? You can sell that,
can't you?"
"I couldn't--not till he comes back. I don't know what he'd want to do
about it."
"What's the price of it?"
"I dunno. He could tell you."
I went out of the thick-aired stuffy backroom with its unwashed windows,
and when I got opposite the Bible near the door I said:
"What's the matter with him anyhow? Why doesn't he straighten things out
here?"
Again the clerk awoke. "Huh!" he exclaimed. "Straighten it out! Gar! I'd
like to see anybody try it."
"It could be," I said encouragingly.
"Gar!" he chuckled. "One man did try to straighten it out once when Mr.
Burridge was away. Got about a third of it cleaned up when he come back.
Gar! You oughta seen him! Gar!"
"What did he do?"
"What did he do! What didn't he do! Gar! Just took things an' threw them
about again. Said he couldn't find anything."
"You don't say!"
"Gar! I should say so! Man come in an' asked for a hammer. Said he
couldn't find any hammer, things was so mixed up. Did it with screws,
water-buckets an' everything just the same. Took 'em right off the
shelves, where they was all in groups, an' scattered 'em all over the
room. Gar! 'Now I guess I can find something when I want it,' he said."
The clerk paused to squint and add, "There ain't anybody tried any
straightenin' out around here since then, you bet. Gar!"
"How long ago has that been?"
"About fourteen years now."
Surprised by this sharp variation from the ordinary standards of trade,
I began thinking of possible conditions which had produced it, when one
evening I happened in on the local barber. He was a lean, inquisitive
individual with a shock of sandy hair and a conspicuous desire to appear
a well-rounded social factor.
"What sort of person is this Burridge over here? He keeps such a
peculiar store."
"Elihu is a bit peculiar," he replied, his smile betraying a desire to
appear conservative. "The fault with Elihu, if he has one, is that he's
terribly strong on religion. Can't seem to agree with anybody around
here."
"What's the trouble?" I asked.
"It's more'n I could ever make out, what is the matter with him. They're
all a little bit cracked on the subject around here. Nothing but
revivals and meetin's, year in and year out. They're stronger on it
winters than they are in summer."
"How do you mean?"
"Well, they'll be more against yachtin' and Sunday pleasures when they
can't go than when they can."
"What about Elihu?" I asked.
"Well, he can't seem to get along, somehow. He used to belong to the
Baptist Church, but he got out o' that. Then he went to a church up in
Graylock, but he had a fallin' out up there. Then he went to Northfield
and Eustis. He's been all around, even over on Long Island. He goes to
church up at Amherst now, I believe."
"What seems to be the trouble?"
"Oh, he's just strong-headed, I guess." He paused, and ideas lagged
until finally I observed:
"It's a very interesting store he keeps."
"It's just as Billy Drumgold told him once: 'Burridge,' he says, 'you've
got everything in this store that belongs to a full-rigged ship 'cept
one thing.' 'What's that?' Burridge asks. 'A second-hand pulpit.' 'Got
that too,' he answered, and takes him upstairs, and there he had one
sure enough."
"Well," I said, "what was he doing with it?"
"Danged if I know. He had it all right. Has it yet, so they say."
Days passed and as the summer waned the evidences of a peculiar life
accumulated. Noank, apparently, was at outs with Burridge on the subject
of religion, and he with it. There were instances of genuine hard
feeling against him.
Writing a letter in the Postoffice one day I ventured to take up this
matter with the postmaster.
"You know Mr. Burridge, don't you--the grocer?"
"Well, I should guess I did," he replied with a flare.
"Anything wrong with him?"
"Oh, about everything that's just plain cussed--the most wrangling man
alive. I never saw such a man. He don't get his mail here no more
because he's mad at me, I guess. Took it away because I had Mr. Palmer's
help in my fight, I suppose. Wrote me that I should send all his mail up
to Mystic, and he goes there three or four miles out of his way every
day, just to spite me. It's against the law. I hadn't ought to be doing
it, re-addressing his envelopes three or four times a day, but I do do
it. He's a strong-headed man, that's the trouble with Elihu."
I had no time to follow this up then, but a little later, sitting in the
shop of the principal sailboat maker, which was situated in the quiet
little lane which follows the line of the village, I was one day
surprised by the sudden warm feeling which the name of Elihu generated.
Something had brought up the subject of religion, and I said that
Burridge seemed rather religious.
"Yes," said the sailboat maker quickly, "he's religious, all right, only
he reads the Bible for others, not for himself."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Why, he wants to run things, that's what. As long as you agree with
Elihu, why, everything's all right. When you don't, the Bible's against
you. That's the way he is."
"Did he ever disagree with you?" I asked, suspecting some personal
animus in the matter.
"Me and Elihu was always good friends as long as I agreed with him," he
went on bitterly. "We've been raised together, man and boy, for pretty
near sixty years. We never had a word of any kind but what was friendly,
as long as I agreed with him, but just as soon as I didn't he took a set
against me, and we ain't never spoke a word since."
"What was the trouble?" I inquired sweetly, anxious to come at the
kernel of this queer situation.
"Well," he said, dropping his work and looking up to impress me, "I'm a
man that'll sometimes say what I don't believe; that is, I'll agree with
what I hadn't ought to, just to be friendly like. I did that way a lot
o' times with Elihu till one day he came to me with something about
particular salvation. I'm a little more liberal myself. I believe in
universal redemption by faith alone. Well, Elihu came to me and began
telling me what he believed. Finally he asked me something about
particular salvation and wanted to know whether I didn't agree with him.
I didn't, and told him so. From that day on he took a set against me,
and he ain't never spoke a word to me since."
I was unaware that there was anything besides a religious disagreement
in this local situation until one day I happened to come into a second
friendly contact with the postmaster. We were speaking of the
characteristics of certain individuals, and I mentioned Burridge.
"He's all right when you take him the way he wants to be taken. When you
don't you'll find him quite a different man."
"He seems to be straightforward and honest," I said.
"There ain't anything you can tell me about Elihu Burridge that I don't
know," he replied feelingly. "Not a thing. I've lived with him, as you
might say, all my life. Been raised right here in town with him, and we
went to school together. Man and boy, there ain't ever been a thing that
Elihu has agreed with, without he could have the running of it. You
can't tell me anything about him that I don't know."
I could not help smiling at the warmth of feeling, although something
about the man's manner bespoke a touch of heart-ache, as if he were
privately grieving.
"What was the trouble between you two?" I asked.
"It's more'n I could ever find out," he replied in a voice that was
really mournful, so difficult and non-understandable was the subject to
him. "Before I started to work for this office there wasn't a day that I
didn't meet and speak friendly with Elihu. He used to have a good many
deeds and papers to sign, and he never failed to call me in when I was
passing. When I started to work for this office I noticed he took on a
cold manner toward me, and I tried to think of something I might have
done, but I couldn't. Finally I wrote and asked him if there was
anything between us if he wouldn't set a time and place so's we might
talk it over and come to an understanding." He paused and then added, "I
wish you could see the letter he wrote me. Comin' from a Christian
man--from him to me--I wish you could see it."
"Why don't you show it to me?" I asked inquisitively.
He went back into the office and returned with an ancient-looking
document, four years old it proved to be, which he had been treasuring.
He handed me the thumbed and already yellowed page, and I read:
"MATTHEW HOLCOMB, ESQUIRE,
"DEAR SIR:--In reply to your letter asking me to set a time and
place in which we might talk over the trouble between us, would
say that the time be Eternity and the place where God shall call
us to judgment.
"Very truly,
"ELIHU BURRIDGE."
His eyes rested on me while I read, and the moment I finished he began
with:
"I never said one word against that man, not one word. I never did a
thing he could take offense at, not one thing. I don't know how a man
can justify himself writing like that."
"Perhaps it's political," I said. "You don't belong to the same party,
do you?"
"Yes, we do," he said. "Sometimes I've thought that maybe it was because
I had the support of the shipyard when I first tried to get this office,
but then that wasn't anything between him and me," and he looked away as
if the mystery were inexplicable.
This shipyard was conducted by a most forceful man but one as narrow and
religionistic as this region in which it had had its rise. Old Mr.
Palmer, the aged founder of it, had long been a notable figure in the
streets and private chambers of the village. The principal grocery
store, coal-yard, sail-loft, hotel and other institutions were conducted
in its interests. His opinion was always foremost in the decision of the
local authorities. He was still, reticent, unobtrusive. Once I saw him
most considerately helping a cripple up the lane to the local Baptist
Church.
"What's the trouble between Burridge and Palmer?" I asked of the
sail-maker finally, coming to think that here, if anywhere, lay the
solution of the difficulty.
"Two big fish in too small a basket," he responded laconically.
"Can't agree, eh?"
"They both want to lead, or did," he said. "Elihu's a beaten man,
though, now." He paused and then added, "I'm sorry for Elihu. He's a
good man at heart, one of the kindest men you ever saw, when you let him
follow his natural way. He's good to the poor, and he's carried more
slow-pay people than any man in this country, I do believe. He won't
collect an old debt by law. Don't believe in it. No, sir. Just a
kind-hearted man, but he loves to rule."
"How about Palmer?" I inquired.
"Just the same way exactly. He loves to rule, too. Got a good heart,
too, but he's got a lot more money than Elihu and so people pay more
attention to him, that's all. When Elihu was getting the attention he
was just the finest man you ever saw, kind, generous, good-natured.
People love to be petted, at least some people do--you know they do.
When you don't pet 'em they get kind o' sour and crabbed like. Now
that's all that's the matter with Elihu, every bit of it. He's sour,
now, and a little lonely, I expect. He's drove away every one from him,
or nearly all, 'cept his wife and some of his kin. Anybody can do a good
grocery business here, with the strangers off the boats"--the harbor was
a lively one--"all you have to do is carry a good stock. That's why he
gets along so well. But he's drove nearly all the local folks away from
him."
I listened to this comfortable sail-loft sage, and going back to the
grocery store one afternoon took another look at the long, grim-faced
silent figure. He was sitting in the shadow of one of his moldy corners,
and if there had ever been any light of merriment in his face it was not
there now. He looked as fixed and solemn as an ancient puritan, and yet
there was something so melancholy in the man's eye, so sad and
disappointed, that it seemed anything but hard. Two or three little
children were playing about the door and when he came forward to wait on
me one of them sidled forward and put her chubby hand in his.
"Your children?" I asked, by way of reaching some friendly
understanding.
"No," he replied, looking fondly down, "she belongs to a French lady up
the street here. She often comes down to see me, don't you?" and he
reached over and took the fat little cheek between his thumb and
forefinger.
The little one rubbed her face against his worn baggy trousers' leg and
put her arm about his knee. Quietly he stood there in a simple way until
she loosened her hold upon him, when he went about his labor.
I was sitting one day in the loft of the comfortable sail-maker, who, by
the way, was brother-in-law to Burridge, when I said to him:
"I wish you'd tell me the details about Elihu. How did he come to be
what he is? You ought to know; you've lived here all your life."
"So I do know," he replied genially. "What do you want me to tell you?"
"The whole story of the trouble between him and Palmer; how he comes to
be at outs with all these people."
"Well," he began, and here followed with many interruptions and side
elucidations, which for want of space have been eliminated, the
following details:
Twenty-five years before Elihu had been the leading citizen of Noank.
From operating a small grocery at the close of the Civil War he branched
out until he sold everything from ship-rigging to hardware. Noank was
then in the height of its career as a fishing town and as a port from
which expeditions of all sorts were wont to sail. Whaling was still in
force, and vessels for whaling expeditions were equipped here. Wealthy
sea-captains frequently loaded fine three-masted schooners here for
various trading expeditions to all parts of the world; the fishers for
mackerel, cod and herring were making three hundred and fifty dollars a
day in season, and thousands of dollars' worth of supplies were annually
purchased here.
Burridge was then the only tradesman of any importance and, being of a
liberal, strong-minded and yet religious turn, attracted the majority of
this business to him. He had houses and lands, was a deacon in the local
Baptist Church and a counselor in matters political, social and
religious, whose advice was seldom rejected. Every Fourth of July during
these years it was his custom to collect all the children of the town in
front of his store and treat them to ice-cream. Every Christmas Eve he
traveled about the streets in a wagon, which carried half a dozen
barrels of candy and nuts, which he would ladle out to the merry
shouting throng of pursuing youngsters, until all were satisfied. For
the skating season he prepared a pond, spending several thousand dollars
damming up a small stream, in order that the children might have a place
to skate. He created a library where all might obtain suitable reading,
particularly the young.
On New Year's morning it was his custom to visit all the poor and
bereaved and lonely in Noank, taking a great dray full of presents and
leaving a little something with his greetings and a pleasant handshake
at every door. The lonely rich as well as the lonely poor were included,
for he was certain, as he frequently declared, that the rich could be
lonely too.
He once told his brother-in-law that one New Year's Day a voice called
to him in church: "Elihu Burridge, how about the lonely rich and poor of
Noank?" "Up I got," he concluded, "and from that day to this I have
never neglected them."
When any one died who had a little estate to be looked after for the
benefit of widows or orphans, Burridge was the one to take charge of it.
People on their deathbeds sent for him, and he always responded, taking
energetic charge of everything and refusing to take a penny for his
services. After a number of years the old judge to whom he always
repaired with these matters of probate, knowing his generosity in this
respect, also refused to accept any fee. When he saw him coming he would
exclaim:
"Well, Elihu, what is it this time? Another widow or orphan that we've
got to look after?"
After Elihu had explained what it was, he would add:
"Well, Elihu, I do hope that some day some rich man will call you to
straighten out his affairs. I'd like to see _you_ get a little
something, so that _I_ might get a little something. Eh, Elihu?" Then he
would jocularly poke his companion in charity in the ribs.
These general benefactions were continuous and coeval with his local
prosperity and dominance, and their modification as well as the man's
general decline the result of the rise of this other individual--Robert
Palmer,--"operating" to take the color of power and preëminence from
him.
Palmer was the owner of a small shipyard here at the time, a thing which
was not much at first but which grew swiftly. He was born in Noank
also, a few years before Burridge, and as a builder of vessels had been
slowly forging his way to a moderate competence when Elihu was already
successful. He was a keen, fine-featured, energetic individual, with
excellent commercial and strong religious instincts, and by dint of hard
labor and a saving disposition he obtained, soon after the Civil War, a
powerful foothold. Many vessels were ordered here from other cities.
Eventually he began to build barges in large numbers for a great
railroad company.
Early becoming a larger employer of labor than any one else in the
vicinity he soon began to branch out, possessed himself of the allied
industries of ship-rigging, chandlering, and finally established a
grocery store for his employees, and opened a hotel. Now the local
citizens began to look upon him as their leading citizen. They were
always talking of his rise, frequently in the presence of Burridge. He
said nothing at first, pretending to believe that his quondam leadership
was unimpaired. Again, there were those who, having followed the various
branches of labor which Palmer eventually consolidated, viewed this
growth with sullen and angry eyes. They still sided with Burridge, or
pretended still to believe that he was the more important citizen of the
two. In the course of time, however--a period of thirty years or
more--some of them failed; others died; still others were driven away
for want of a livelihood. Only Burridge's position and business
remained, but in a sadly weakened state. He was no longer a man of any
great importance.
Not unnaturally, this question of local supremacy was first tested in
the one place in which local supremacy is usually tested--the church
where they both worshiped. Although only one of five trustees, Burridge
had been the will of the body. Always, whatever he thought, the others
had almost immediately agreed to it. But now that Palmer had become a
power, many of those ardent in the church and beholden to him for profit
became his humble followers. They elected him trustee and did what he
wished, or what they thought he wished. To Burridge this made them
sycophants, slaves.
Now followed the kind of trivialities by which most human feuds are
furthered. The first test of strength came when a vagrant evangelist
from Alabama arrived and desired to use the church for a series of
evening lectures. The question had to be decided at once. Palmer was
absent at the time.
"Here is a request for the use of the church," said one of the trustees,
explaining its nature.
"Well," said Burridge, "you'd better let him have it."
"Do you think we ought to do anything about it," the trustee replied,
"until Mr. Palmer returns?"
Although Burridge saw no reason for waiting, the other trustees did, and
upon that the board rested. Burridge was furious. By one fell stroke he
was put in second place, a man who had to await the return of
Palmer--and that in his own church, so to speak.
"Why," he told some one, "the rest of us are nothing. This man is a
king."
From that time on differences of opinion within the church and elsewhere
were common. Although no personal animosity was ever admitted, local
issues almost invariably found these two men opposed to each other.
There was the question of whether the village should be made into a
borough--a most trivial matter; another, that of creating public works
for the manufacture of gas and distribution of water; a third, that of
naming a State representative. Naturally, while these things might be to
the advantage of Palmer or not, they were of no great import to
Burridge, but yet he managed to see in them an attempt or attempts to
saddle a large public debt upon widows and orphans, those who could not
afford or did not need these things, and he proceeded to so express
himself at various public meetings. Slowly the breach widened. Burridge
became little more than a malcontent in many people's eyes. He was a
"knocker," a man who wanted to hold the community back.
Although defeated in many instances he won in others, and this did not
help matters any. At this point, among other things the decay of the
fishing industry helped to fix definitely the position of the two men as
that of victor and vanquished. Whaling died out, then mackerel and cod
were caught only at farther and farther distances from the town, and
finally three- and even two-masted schooners ceased entirely to buy their
outfits here, and Burridge was left dependent upon local patronage or
smaller harbor trade for his support. Coextensively, he had the
dissatisfaction of seeing Palmer's industries grow until eventually
three hundred and fifty men were upon his payrolls and even his foremen
and superintendents were considered influential townspeople. Palmer's
son and two daughters grew up and married, branched out and became
owners of industries which had formerly belonged to men who had traded
with Burridge. He saw his grocery trade dwindle and sink, while with age
his religiosity grew, and he began to be little more than a petty
disputant, one constantly arguing as to whether the interpretation of
the Bible as handed down from the pulpit of what he now considered _his_
recalcitrant church was sound or not. When those who years before had
followed him obediently now pricked him with theological pins and
ventured to disagree with him, he was quick and sometimes foolish in his
replies. Thus, once a former friend and fellow-church-member who had
gone over to the opposition came into his store one morning and said:
"Elihu, for a man that's as strong on religion as you are, I see you do
one thing that can't quite be justified by the Book."
"What's that?" inquired Burridge, looking up.
"I see you sell tobacco."
"I see you chew it," returned the host grimly.
"I know I do," returned his visitor, "but I'll tell you what I'll do,
Elihu. If you'll quit selling, I'll quit chewing it," and he looked as
if he had set a fancy trap for his straw-balancing brother, as he held
him to be.
"It's a bargain," said Burridge on the instant. "It's a bargain!"
And from that day on tobacco was not offered for sale in that store,
although there was a large local demand for it.
Again, in the pride of his original leadership, he had accepted the
conduct of the local cemetery, a thing which was more a burden than a
source of profit. With his customary liberality in all things reflecting
credit upon himself he had spent his own money in improving it, much
more than ever the wardens of the church would have thought of returning
to him. In one instance, when a new receiving vault was desired, he had
added seven hundred dollars of his own to three hundred gathered by the
church trustees for the purpose, and the vault was immediately
constructed. Frequently also, in his pride of place, he had been given
to asserting he was tired of conducting the cemetery and wished he could
resign.
In these later evil days, therefore, the trustees, following the star of
the newer power, saw fit to intimate that perhaps some one else would be
glad to look after it if he was tired of it. Instantly the fact that he
could no longer boast as formerly came home to him. He was not essential
any longer in anything. The church did not want him to have a hand in
any of its affairs! The thought of this so weighed on him that
eventually he resigned from this particular task, but thereafter also
every man who had concurred in accepting his resignation was his bitter
enemy. He spoke acidly of the seven hundred he had spent, and jibed at
the decisions of the trustees in other matters. Soon he became a
disturbing element in the church, taking a solemn vow never to enter the
graveyard again, and not long after resigned all his other official
duties--passing the plate, et cetera--although he still attended
services there.
Decoration Day rolled around, the G.A.R. Post of which he was an ardent
member prepared for the annual memorial services over the graves of its
dead comrades. Early on the morning of the thirtieth of May they
gathered before their lodge hall, Burridge among them, and after
arranging the details marched conspicuously to the cemetery where the
placing of the wreaths and the firing of the salute were to take place.
No one thought of Burridge until the gate was reached, when, gun over
shoulder and uniform in perfect trim, he fell conspicuously out of line
and marched away home alone. It was the cemetery he had vowed not to
enter, his old pet and protégé.
Men now looked askance at him. He was becoming queer, no doubt of it,
not really sensible--or was he? Up in Northfield, a nearby town, dwelt a
colonel of the Civil War who had led the very regiment of which Burridge
was a member but who during the war had come into serious difficulty
through a tangle of orders, and had been dishonorably discharged.
Although wounded in one of the engagements in which the regiment had
distinguished itself, he had been allowed to languish almost forgotten
for years and finally, failing to get a pension, had died in poverty.
On his deathbed he had sent for Burridge, and reminding him of the
battle in which he had led him asked that after he was gone, for the
sake of his family, he would take up the matter of a pension and if
possible have his record purged of the stigma and the pension awarded.
Burridge agreed most enthusiastically. Going to the local congressman,
he at once began a campaign, but because of the feeling against him two
years passed without anything being done. Later he took up the matter in
his own G.A.R. Post, but there also failing to find the measure of his
own enthusiasm, he went finally direct to one of the senators of the
State and laying the matter before him had the records examined by
Congress and the dead colonel honorably discharged.
One day thereafter in the local G.A.R. he commented unfavorably upon the
indifference which he deemed had been shown.
"There wouldn't have been half so much delay if the man hadn't been a
deserter," said one of his enemies--one who was a foreman in Palmer's
shipyard.
Instantly Burridge was upon his feet, his eyes aflame with feeling.
Always an orator, with a strangely declamatory style he launched into a
detailed account of the late colonel's life and services, his wounds,
his long sufferings and final death in poverty, winding up with a vivid
word picture of a battle (Antietam), in which the colonel had gallantly
captured a rebel flag and come by his injury.
When he was through there was great excitement in the Post and much
feeling in his favor, but he rather weakened the effect by at once
demanding that the traitorous words be withdrawn, and failing to compel
this, preferred charges against the man who had uttered them and
attempted to have him court-martialed.
So great was the bitterness engendered by this that the Post was now
practically divided, and being unable to compel what he considered
justice he finally resigned. Subsequently he took issue with his former
fellow-soldiers in various ways, commenting satirically on their church
regularity and professed Christianity, as opposed to their indifference
to the late colonel, and denouncing in various public conversations the
double-mindedness and sharp dealings of the "little gods," as he termed
those who ran the G.A.R. Post, the church, and the shipyards.
Not long after his religious affairs reached a climax when the minister,
once a good friend of his, following the lead of the dominant star, Mr.
Palmer, publicly denounced him from the pulpit one Sunday as an enemy of
the church and of true Christianity!
"There is a man in this congregation," he exclaimed in a burst of
impassioned oratory, "who poses as a Christian and a Baptist, who is in
his heart's depth the church's worst enemy. Hell and all its devils
could have no worse feelings of evil against the faith than he, and he
doesn't sell tobacco, either!"
The last reference at once fixed the identity of the person, and caused
Burridge to get up and leave the church. He pondered over this for a
time, severed his connections with the body, and having visited Graylock
one Sunday drove there every Sabbath thereafter, each time going to a
different church. After enduring this for six months he generated a
longing for a more convenient meeting-place, and finally allied himself
with the Baptist Church of Eustis. Here his anchor might possibly have
remained fast had it not been that subtle broodings over his wrongs, a
calm faith in the righteousness of his own attitude, and disgust with
those whom he saw calmly expatiating upon the doctrines and dogmas of
religion in his own town finally caused him to suspect a universal
misreading of the Bible. This doubt, together with his own desire for
justification according to the Word, finally put the idea in his mind to
make a study of the Bible himself. He would read it, he said. He would
study Hebrew and Greek, and refer all questionable readings of words and
passages back to the original tongue in which it had been written.
With this end in view he began a study of these languages, the
importance of the subject so growing upon him that he neglected his
business. Day after day he labored, putting a Bible and a Concordance
upon a pile of soap-boxes near the door of his store and poring over
them between customers, the store meantime taking care of itself. He
finally mastered Greek and Hebrew after a fashion, and finding the word
"repent" frequently used, and that God had made man in the image of
Himself, with a full knowledge of right and wrong, he gravitated toward
the belief that therefore his traducers in Noank knew what they were
doing, and that before he needed to forgive them--though his love might
cover all--they must repent.
He read the Bible from beginning to end with this one feeling
subconsciously dominant, and all its loving commands about loving one
another, forgiving your brother seventy times seven, loving those that
hate you, returning good for evil, selling all that you have and giving
it to the poor, were made to wait upon the duty of others to repent. He
began to give this interpretation at Eustis, where he was allowed to
have a Sunday-school, until the minister came and told him once, "to his
face," as the local report ran: "We don't want you here."
Meekly he went forth and, joining a church across the Sound on Long
Island, sailed over every Sunday and there advanced the same views until
he was personally snubbed by the minister and attacked by the local
papers. Leaving there he went to Amherst, always announcing now that he
held distinctive views about some things in the Bible and asking the
privilege of explaining. In this congregation he was still comfortably
at rest when I knew him.
"All sensitiveness," the sail-maker had concluded after his long
account. "There ain't anything the matter with Elihu, except that he's
piqued and grieved. He wanted to be the big man, and he wasn't."
I was thinking of this and of his tender relationship with children as I
had noticed it, and of his service to the late colonel when one day
being in the store, I said:
"Do you stand on the Bible completely, Mr. Burridge?"
"Yes, sir," he replied, "I do."
"Believe every word of it to be true?"
"Yes, sir."
"If your brother has offended you, how many times must you forgive him?"
"Seventy times seven."
"Do you forgive your brothers?"
"Yes, sir--if they repent."
"If they repent?"
"Yes, sir, if they repent. That's the interpretation. In Matthew you
will find, 'If he repent, forgive him.'"
"But if you don't forgive them, even before they repent," I said,
"aren't you harboring enmity?"
"No, sir, I'm not treasuring up enmity. I only refuse to forgive them."
I looked at the man, a little astonished, but he looked so sincere and
earnest that I could not help smiling.
"How do you reconcile that with the command, 'Love one another?' You
surely can't love and refuse to forgive them at the same time?"
"I don't refuse to forgive them," he repeated. "If John there,"
indicating an old man in a sun-tanned coat who happened to be passing
through the store at the time, "should do me a wrong--I don't care what
it was, how great or how vile--if he should come to me and say,
'Burridge, I'm sorry,'" he executed a flashing oratorical move in
emphasis, and throwing back his head, exclaimed: "It's gone! It's gone!
There ain't any more of it! All gone!"
I stood there quite dumbfounded by his virility, as the air vibrated
with his force and feeling. So manifestly was his reading of the Bible
colored by the grief of his own heart that it was almost painful to
tangle him with it. Goodness and mercy colored all his ideas, except in
relation to his one-time followers, those who had formerly been his
friends and now left him to himself.
"Do you still visit the poor and the afflicted, as you once did?" I
asked him once.
"I'd rather not say anything about that," he replied sternly.
"But do you?"
"Yes, sir."
"Still make your annual New Year round?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, you'll get your reward for that, whatever you believe."
"I've had my reward," he said slowly.
"Had it?"
"Yes, sir, had it. Every hand that's been lifted to receive the little
I had to offer has been my reward."
He smiled, and then said in seemingly the most untimely way:
"I remember once going to a lonely woman here on New Year's Day and
taking her a little something--basket of grapes or fruit of some kind it
was. I was stopping a minute--never stay long, you know; just run in and
say 'Happy New Year!' leave what I have and get out--and so said, 'Good
morning, Aunt Mary!'
"'Good morning, Elihu,' says she.
"'Can't stay long, Aunt Mary,' I said. 'Just want to leave you these.
Happy New Year!'
"Well, sir, you know I was just turning around and starting when she
caught hold of my sleeve and says:
"'Elihu Burridge,' she says, 'give me that hand!' and do you know,
before I knew what she was about she took it up to her lips and kissed
it! Yes, she did--kissed my hand!
"Now," he said, drawing himself up, with eyes bright with intense
feeling, "you know whether I've had my reward or not, don't you?"
_"Vanity, Vanity," Saith the Preacher_
Sometimes a single life will clearly and effectively illustrate a
period. Hence, to me, the importance of this one.
I first met X---- at a time when American financial methods and American
finances were at their apex of daring and splendor, and when the world
was in a more or less tolerant mood toward their grandiose manners and
achievements. It was the golden day of Mr. Morgan, Senior, Mr. Belmont,
Mr. Harriman, Mr. Sage, Mr. Gates, Mr. Brady, and many, many others who
were still extant and ruling distinctly and drastically, as was proved
by the panic of 1907. In opposition to them and yet imitating their
methods, now an old story to those who have read "Frenzied Finance,"
"Lawless Wealth," and other such exposures of the methods which produced
our enormous American fortunes, were such younger men as Charles W.
Morse (the victim of the 1907 panic), F. Augustus Heinze (another if
less conspicuous victim of the same "panic"), E.R. Thomas, an ambitious
young millionaire, himself born to money, David A. Sullivan, and X----.
I refuse to mention his name because he is still alive although no
longer conspicuous, and anxious perhaps to avoid the uncomfortable glare
of publicity when all the honors and comforts which made it endurable in
the first place are absent.
The person who made X---- essentially interesting to me long before I
met him was one Lucien de Shay, a ne'er-do-well pianist and voice
culturist, who was also a connoisseur in the matters of rugs, hangings,
paintings and furniture, things in which X---- was just then most
intensely interested, erecting, as he was, a great house on Long Island
and but newly blossoming into the world of art or fashion or culture or
show--those various things which the American multi-millionaire always
wants to blossom or bloom into and which he does not always succeed in
doing. De Shay was one of those odd natures so common to the
metropolis--half artist and half man of fashion who attach themselves so
readily to men of strength and wealth, often as advisors and counselors
in all matters of taste, social form and social progress. How this
particular person was rewarded I never quite knew, whether in cash or
something else. He was also a semi-confidant of mine, furnishing me
"tips" and material of one sort and another in connection with the
various publications I was then managing. As it turned out later, X----
was not exactly a multi-millionaire as yet, merely a fledgling, although
the possibilities were there and his aims and ambitions were fast
nearing a practical triumph the end of which of course was to be, as in
the case of nearly all American multi-millionaires of the newer and
quicker order, bohemian or exotic and fleshly rather than cultural or
æsthetic pleasure, although the latter were never really exactly
ignored.
But even so. He was a typical multi-millionaire in the showy and even
gaudy sense of the time. For if the staid and conservative and socially
well-placed rich have the great houses and the ease and the luxury of
paraphernalia, the bohemian rich of the X---- type have the flare,
recklessness and imagination which lend to their spendings and
flutterings a sparkle and a shine which the others can never hope to
match.
Said this friend of mine to me one day: "Listen, I want you to meet this
man X----. You will like him. He is fine. You haven't any idea what a
fascinating person he really is. He looks like a Russian Grand Duke. He
has the manners and the tastes of a Medici or a Borgia. He is building a
great house down on Long Island that once it is done will have cost him
five or six hundred thousand. It's worth seeing already. His studio here
in the C---- studio building is a dream. It's thick with the loveliest
kinds of things. I've helped buy them myself. And he isn't dull. He
wrote a book at twenty, 'Icarus,' which is not bad either and which he
says is something like himself. He has read your book ("Sister Carrie")
and he sympathizes with that man Hurstwood. Says parts of it remind him
of his own struggles. That's why he wants to meet you. He once worked on
the newspapers too. God knows how he is making his money, but I know how
he is spending it. He's decided to live, and he's doing it splendidly.
It's wonderful."
I took notice, although I had never even heard of the man. There were so
very, very many rich men in America. Later I heard much more concerning
him from this same de Shay. Once he had been so far down in the scale
that he had to shine shoes for a living. Once he had walked the streets
of New York in the snow, his shoes cracked and broken, no overcoat, not
even a warm suit. He had come here a penniless emigrant from Russia. Now
he controlled four banks, one trust company, an insurance company, a
fire insurance company, a great real estate venture somewhere, and what
not. Naturally all of this interested me greatly. When are we
indifferent to a rise from nothing to something?
At de Shay's invitation I journeyed up to X----'s studio one Wednesday
afternoon at four, my friend having telephoned me that if I could I must
come at once, that there was an especially interesting crowd already
assembled in the rooms, that I would meet a long list of celebrities.
Two or three opera singers of repute were already there, among them an
Italian singer and sorceress of great beauty, a veritable queen of the
genus adventuress, who was setting the town by the ears not only by her
loveliness but her voice. Her beauty was so remarkable that the Sunday
papers were giving full pages to her face and torso alone. There were to
be several light opera and stage beauties there also, a basso profundo
to sing, writers, artists, poets.
I went. The place and the crowd literally enthralled me. It was so gay,
colorful, thrillful. The host and the guests were really interesting--to
me. Not that it was so marvelous as a studio or that it was so
gorgeously decorated and furnished--it was impressive enough in that
way--but that it was so gracefully and interestingly representative of a
kind of comfort disguised as elegance. The man had everything, or nearly
so--friends, advisors, servants, followers. A somewhat savage and
sybaritic nature, as I saw at once, was here disporting itself in
velvets and silks. The iron hand of power, if it was power, was being
most gracefully and agreeably disguised as the more or less flaccid one
of pleasure and friendship.
My host was not visible at first, but I met a score of people whom I
knew by reputation, and listened to clatter and chatter of the most
approved metropolitan bohemian character. The Italian sorceress was
there, her gorgeous chain earrings tinkling mellifluously as she nodded
and gesticulated. De Shay at once whispered in my ear that she was
X----'s very latest flame and an expensive one too. "You should see what
he buys her!" he exclaimed in a whisper. "God!" Actresses and society
women floated here and there in dreams of afternoon dresses. The
automobiles outside were making a perfect uproar. The poets and writers
fascinated me with their praises of the host's munificence and taste. At
a glance it was plain to me that he had managed to gather about him the
very element it would be most interesting to gather, supposing one
desired to be idle, carefree and socially and intellectually gay. If
America ever presented a smarter drawing-room I never saw it.
My friend de Shay, being the fidus Achates of the host, had the power to
reveal the inner mysteries of this place to me, and on one or two
occasions when there were not so many present and while the others were
chattering in the various rooms--music-, dining-, ball-, library and so
forth--I was being shown the kitchen, pantry, wine cellar, and also
various secret doors and passages whereby mine host by pressing a flower
on a wall or a spring behind a picture could cause a door to fly open or
close which gave entrance to or from a room or passage in no way
connected with the others save by another secret door and leading always
to a private exit. I wondered at once at the character of the person who
could need, desire or value this. A secret bedroom, for instance; a
lounging-room! In one of these was a rather severe if handsome desk and
a steel safe and two chairs--no more; a very bare room. I wondered at
this silent and rather commercial sanctum in the center of this
frou-frou of gayety, no trace of the sound of which seemed to penetrate
here. What I also gained was a sense of an exotic, sybaritic and purely
pagan mind, one which knew little of the conventions of the world and
cared less.
On my first visit, as I was leaving, I was introduced to the host just
within his picture gallery, hung with many fine examples of the Dutch
and Spanish schools. I found him to be as described: picturesque and
handsome, even though somewhat plump, phlegmatic and lethargic--yet
active enough. He was above the average in height, well built, florid,
with a huge, round handsome head, curly black hair, keen black eyes,
heavy overhanging eyebrows, full red lips, a marked chin ornamented by a
goatee. In any costume ball he would have made an excellent Bacchus or
Pan. He appeared to have the free, easy and gracious manner of those who
have known much of life and have achieved, in part at least, their
desires. He smiled, wished to know if I had met all the guests, hoped
that the sideboard had not escaped me, that I had enjoyed the singing.
Would I come some evening when there was no crowd--or, better yet, dine
with him and my friend de Shay, whose personality appeared to be about
as agreeable to him as his own. He was sorry he could not give me more
attention now.
Interestingly enough, and from the first, I was impressed with this man;
not because of his wealth (I knew richer men) but because of a something
about him which suggested dreams, romance, a kind of sense or love of
splendor and grandeur which one does not often encounter among the
really wealthy. Those cracked shoes were in my mind, I suppose. He
seemed to live among great things, but in no niggardly, parsimonious or
care-taking way. Here was ease, largess, a kind of lavishness which was
not ostentation but which seemed rather to say, "What are the minute
expenses of living and pleasuring as contrasted with the profits of
skill in the world outside?" He suggested the huge and Aladdin-like
adventures with which so many of the great financiers of the day, the
true tigers of Wall Street, were connected.
It was not long thereafter that I was once more invited, this time to a
much more lavish affair and something much more sybaritic in its tone,
although I was really not conscious of what it was to be like when I
went there. It began at twelve midnight, and to this day it glitters in
my mind as among the few really barbaric and exotic things that I have
ever witnessed. Not that the trappings or hangings or setting were so
outré or amazing as that the atmosphere of the thing itself was relaxed,
bubbling, pagan. There were so many daring and seeking people there. The
thing sang and was talked of for months after--in whispers! The gayety!
The abandon! The sheer intoxication, mental and physical! I never saw
more daring costumes, so many really beautiful women (glitteringly so)
in one place at one time, wonderful specimens of exotic and in the main
fleshy or sensuous femininity. There was, among other things, as I
recall, a large nickeled ice-tray on wheels packed with unopened bottles
of champagne, and you had but to lift a hand or wink an eye to have
another opened for you alone, ever over and over. And the tray was
always full. One wall of the dining-room farther on was laden with
delicate novelties in the way of food. A string quartette played for the
dancers in the music-room. There were a dozen corners in different rooms
screened with banks of flowers and concealing divans. The dancing and
singing were superb, individual, often abandoned in character, as was
the conversation. As the morning wore on (for it did not begin until
after midnight) the moods of all were either so mellowed or inflamed as
to make intentions, hopes, dreams, the most secret and sybaritic, the
order of expression. One was permitted to see human nature stripped of
much of its repression and daylight reserve or cant. At about four in
the morning came the engaged dancers, quite the pièce de
résistance--with wreaths about heads, waists and arms for clothing and
well, really nothing more beyond their beautiful figures--scattering
rose leaves or favors. These dancers the company itself finally joined,
single file at first, pellmell afterwards--artists, writers,
poets--dancing from room to room in crude Bacchic imitation of their
leaders--the women too--until all were singing, parading, swaying and
dancing in and out of the dozen rooms. And finally, liquor and food
affecting them, I suppose, many fell flat, unable to do anything
thereafter but lie upon divans or in corners until friends assisted them
elsewhere--to taxis finally. But mine host, as I recall him, was always
present, serene, sober, smiling, unaffected, bland and gracious and
untiring in his attention. He was there to keep order where otherwise
there would have been none.
I mention this merely to indicate the character of a long series of such
events which covered the years 19-- to 19--. During that time, for the
reason that I have first given (his curious pleasure in my company), I
was part and parcel of a dozen such more or less vivid affairs and
pleasurings, which stamped on my mind not only X---- but life itself,
the possibilities and resources of luxury where taste and appetite are
involved, the dreams of grandeur and happiness which float in some
men's minds and which work out to a wild fruition--dreams so outré and
so splendid that only the tyrant of an obedient empire, with all the
resources of an enslaved and obedient people, could indulge with safety.
Thus once, I remember, that a dozen of us--writers and artists--being
assembled in his studio in New York one Friday afternoon for the mere
purpose of idling and drinking, he seeming to have nothing better to do
for the time being, he suddenly suggested, and as though it had but now
occurred to him, that we all adjourn to his country house on Long
Island, which was not yet quite finished (or, rather, furnished), but
which was in a sufficient state of completion to permit of appropriate
entertainment providing the necessaries were carried out there with us.
As I came to think of this afterward, I decided that after all it was
not perhaps so unpremeditated as it seemed and that unconsciously we
served a very useful purpose. There was work to do, suggestions to be
obtained, an overseer, decorator and landscape gardener with whom
consultations were absolutely necessary; and nothing that X---- ever did
was without its element of calculation. Why not make a gala affair of a
rather dreary November task--