[Illustration]
Calang-glang! Calang-glang! went the bells of the little Episcopal
Church at Allandale. It was eight o'clock in the evening. A row of cars
stood along the curb, each with its headlights lit, but dimmed so as not
to make too much of a glare on the road, at the same time to save the
battery while complying with the law!
On sped the little family all crowded into one seat, the two children
sleeping.
In the Dutch church on the old Paramus Road Aaron Burr was married to
Mrs. Prevost, Jataqua! It is near Hohokus, cleft-in-the-rocks, where the
Leni Lenapes of the Delaware nation had their village from time
immemorial. Aaron, my darling, life begins anew! It is a new start. Let
us look forward staunchly together--
The long, palm-like leaves of the ailantus trees moved slowly up and
down in the little wind, up and down.
And along this road came the British. Aaron, the youth from Princeton,
gathered his command together and drove them back. Mother I cannot sleep
in this bed, it is full of _British soldiers_. Why so it is! How horrid.
And he too, on his memorable retreat, that excellent judge of
horseflesh, George Washington, he too had passed over this road; and
these trees, the oldest of them, had witnessed him. And now the wind has
torn the finest of them in half.
Nothing more wonderful than to see the pears attached by their stems to
the trees. Earth, trunk, branch, twig and the fruit: a circle soon to be
completed when the pear falls. They had left at eleven and soon they
would be home. The little car purred pleasantly to itself at the thought
of the long night. Oh, to be a woman, thought the speeding mechanism.
For they had wrapped something or other in a piece of newspaper and
placed it under the seat and there were pictures there of girls--or
grown women it might be, in very short skirts. Steadily the wheels spun
while on the paper were printed these words:
The Perfection of Pisek-designed Personality Modes: A distinctly forward
move in the realm of fashion is suggested by the new personality modes,
designed by Pisek... modes that are genuine inspirations of individual
styling, created for meeting the personal preferences of a fastidiously
fashionable clientele, the woman and the miss who seek personality in
dress in keeping with their charms, characteristics and station . . .
Thus you can expect at Pisek's only those _tailleurs_, gowns, wraps and
frocks that bear the unmistakable stamp of individuality--styles that
encourage and inspire admiration for their splendid simplicity and
differentness... come to Pisek's . . . (the more the better) . . . see
the new ideas in fashions . . . You'll not be disappointed . . .
What chit of a girl could have appreciated you, my darling boy, as I do.
A man of your personality, so fresh in wit, so brimming with vigor and
new ideas. Aaron my dear, dear boy, life has not yet begun. All is new
and untouched in the world waiting, like the pear on the tree, for you
to pluck it. Everyone loves you and will wait on you. For you everything
is possible. Bing! and Hamilton lies dead.
As old Mr. Goss, who lost his hearing from an explosion of fireworks in
Philadelphia after Lee's defeat, has said in his high nasal twang: Quite
right, quite right, I've seen the country saved 8 times in the last
fifty years.
At any rate it was a new world to them; they two together would conquer
and use, life had smiled upon them. _Nuevo Mundo_.
Along the road the Dutch settlers came out from their attractive brown
stone houses as the happy and distinguished couple went by. It was a
great day for the little colony of New Jersey. There over the misty
meadows the lights of Weehawken were beginning to glimmer as the little
car and its precious freight drew near the end of the journey. The pear
fell to the earth and was eaten by the pigs.
I wonder if he'll recognise me in my Greenwich Village honkie-tonk
bobbed hair. The hairdresser said: Don't you do it, when I said I'd like
mine bobbed too. So many of the girls had theirs done a year ago and now
its just at that impossible stage where you can't do a thing with it.
Better go to Europe or California until it grows again. There's a reason
for travel: As the hair progresses the days grow fewer.
But is South Africa after all the country of the future?
Over the great spaces of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana he sped
in the Pullman car. City after city swept up to him, paused awhile at
his elbow and plunged away to the rear with the motion of a wheel whose
hub was hidden in infinity. And such indeed was exactly the case. He was
being ground between two wheels, one on either side of the car and it
was their turning that thrust him forward at such speed. The wheat was
up in the fields but a fellow passenger assured him that in Kansas, only
two days before, he had seen wheat twice as high--which explains the
cause of so many abandoned farms in Vermont, he remembered, and settled
back to another hour of idle staring. A new country he kept saying to
himself. On a siding were cars loaded with emigrants from Holland booked
through to San Francisco.
Into the elevator stepped the young man in a petty officer's uniform.
His Spanish was exquisite to hear. The first battleship since the
Spanish-American war was anchored in New York harbor. How well he bears
himself. The Spanish are the only people in Europe whom civilization has
not ruined. Savage men, big bearded chins--but shaved clean. They know
how to treat their women--better than the French for the French--after
all are _blagueurs_ to a man. The Spanish stand still. What an ass a man
will make of himself in a strange country! In armor De Soto wandering
haphazard over Alabama. The Seminoles for guides. Buried him in the
Mississippi. It is my river, he said. Roll Jordan roll. It is _my_ river
for I discovered it and into it let my body, in full armor, be put to
rest. The cat-fish ate it. So roll Jordan roll. Diada Daughter of
Discord: read it.
In Illinois, far in the west, over that trackless waste of forest and
mountain and river and lake they came at last to a valley that pleased
them and there they determined to build. So they fell to hewing trees
and building their houses, work to which they had been bred and trained
for two generations since Plymouth and Salem days. Cornwallis had been
beaten fifty years before and Pitt had rushed to see the King crying:
All is lost. A new world had been born. Here in the primeval forest the
little colony of New Englanders hoped to realize success and plenty.
In Bonnie, Illinois, the Presbyterian minister is a very good man. He is
as good a preacher as Bonnie can afford and if anybody said that Bonnie
is made up of mad-men--He would be shot. _Nuevo Mundo_, shouted the
sailors. But their cry was by now almost extinct.
In polite stories the world had been made acquainted with the
picturesque lives of these commonplace but worthy people. In detail
their story had been told. Over the precipice in Yosemite the Bridal
Veil Falls had been launching its water for a thousand years and
ignorance was fattening his belly apace.
Bonnie, Ill., October 22. Dear Bill: Am up to my ears in painting, and
am preparing to go to Alton, Ill., to work in the State Hospital, if I
get a call, so am too busy now to read your book but think I'm going to
like it and will devour it later. Sincerely. A. N. Turner.
And the little boy crept into the great chest like Peppo into the
Cardinal's tomb and began to pick up the mothballs that had been left
there when the winter things were removed.
An Indian would sense the facts as he wished. A tree would speak to him
with a definite identity. It would not at least seem endowed with human
characteristics: a voice, that would be all.