FROM now on, because of this companionship, my life in St. Louis took on
a much more cheerful aspect. Hitherto, in spite of my work and my
natural interest in a strange city, I had had intensely gloomy moments.
My favorite pastime, when I was not out on an assignment or otherwise
busy, was to walk the streets and view the lives and activities of
others, not thinking so much how I might advantage myself and my affairs
as how, for some, the lightning of chance was always striking in
somewhere and disrupting plans, leaving destruction and death in its
wake, for others luck or fortune. I never was blinded to the gross
favoritism practiced by nature, and this I resented largely, it may be,
because it was not, or I thought it was not, practiced in my behalf.
Later in life I began to suspect that a gross favoritism, in regard to
certain things at least, was being practiced in my behalf. I was never
without friends, never without some one to do me a good turn at a
critical moment, never without love and the sacrifice of beauty on the
part of some one in my behalf, never without a certain amount of
applause or repute. Was I worthy of it? I knew I was not and I felt that
the powers that make and control life did not care two whoops whether I
was or not.
Life, as I had seen and felt from my earliest thinking period, used
people, sometimes to their advantage, sometimes not. Occasionally, as I
could see, I was used to my advantage as well as to that of some one or
something else. Occasionally I was used, as I thought, to my
disadvantage. Now and then when I imagined I was being used most
disadvantageously it was not so at all, as when for a period I found
myself unable to write and so compelled to turn to other things—a
turning which resulted in better material later on. At this time,
however, I felt that whatever the quality of the gifts handed me or the
favors done me, they were as nothing compared to some; and, again, I was
honestly and sympathetically interested in the horrible deprivations
inflicted upon others, their weaknesses of mind and body, afflictions of
all sizes and sorts, the way so often they helplessly blundered or were
driven by internal chemic fires, as in the case of the fascinating and
beautiful-minded John T. McEnnis, to their own undoing. That great
idealistic soul, that warm, ebullient heart!
The opportunity for indulging in these moods was due to the fact that I
had plenty of time on my hands, that just at this time I was more
interested in seeing than in reading, and that the three principal
hotels here, Southern-fashion, were most hospitable, equipping their
lobbies and even their flanking sidewalks with comfortable
rocking-chairs where one might sit and dream or read or view the passing
scene with idle or analytic eye. My favorite hotel was the Lindell,
rather large and not impressive but still successful and popular, which
stood at the northwest corner of Sixth and Washington Avenue. Here I
would repair whenever I had a little time and rock in peace and watch
the crowd of strangers amble to and fro. The manager of this hotel, a
brisk, rather interesting and yet job-centered American, seeing me sit
about every afternoon between four-thirty and six and knowing that I was
from the _Globe_, finally began to greet me and ask occasionally if I
did not want to go up to dinner. (How lonely and forlorn I must have
looked!) On Thanksgiving and Christmas afternoons of this my first
season there, seeing me idle and alone, he asked me to be his guest. I
accepted, not knowing what else to do. To make it seem like a real
invitation he came in after I was seated at the table and sat down with
me for a few minutes. He was so charming and the hotel so brisk and
crowded that I soon felt at home.
The daily routine of my work seemed to provide ample proof of my
suspicions that life was grim and sad. Regularly it would be a murder, a
suicide, a failure, a defalcation which I would be assigned to cover,
and on the same day there would be an important wedding, a business or
political banquet, a ball or a club entertainment of some kind, which
would provide just the necessary contrast to prove that life is
haphazard and casual and cruel; to some lavish, to others niggardly.
Mere money, often unworthily inherited or made by shabby methods, seemed
to throw commonplace and even wretched souls into such glittering and
condescending prominence, in this world at least. Many of the business
men with whom I came in contact were vulgarians, their wives and
daughters vain and coarse and inconsiderate. I was constantly impressed
by the airs of the locally prominent, their craving for show and
pleasure, their insane greed for personal mention, their hearty
indifference to anything except money plus a keen wish to seem to
despise it. I remember going one afternoon to an imposing residence
where some function was in progress. I was met by an ostentatious butler
who exclaimed most nobly: “My dear sir, who sent you here? The _Globe_
knows we never give lists to newspaper men. We never admit reporters,”
and then stiffly closed the door on me. I reported as much to the city
editor, who remarked meekly, “Well, that’s all right,” and gave me
something else to do. But the next day a list of the guests at this
function was published, and in this paper. I made inquiry of Hartung,
who said: “Oh, the society editor must have turned that in. These
society women send in their lists beforehand and then say they don’t
receive reporters.”
Another time it was the residence of the Catholic archbishop of St.
Louis, a very old but shrewd man whom, so it was rumored in newspaper
circles, the local priests were plotting to make appear infirm and
weakminded in order that a favorite of theirs might be made coadjutor. I
was sent to inquire about his health, to see him if possible. At the
door I was met by a sleek dark priest who inquired what I wished,
whereupon he assured me that the archbishop was too feeble to be seen.
“That is exactly why I am here,” I insisted. “The _Globe_ wishes to
inform the public of his exact condition. There seems to be a belief on
the part of some that he is not as ill as is given out.”
“What! You accuse us of concealing something in connection with the
archbishop! This is outrageous!” and he firmly shut me out.
It seemed to me that the straightforward thing would have been to let me
meet the archbishop. He was a public official, the state of whose health
was of interest to thousands. But no; official control regulated that.
Shortly afterward he was declared too feeble to perform his duties and a
coadjutor was appointed.
Again I was sent to a fashionable west end hotel to interview a visiting
governor who was attending a reception of some kind and who, as we
understood, was leaving the next day.
“My dear young fellow,” said a functionary connected with the
entertainment committee, “you cannot do anything of the sort. This is no
time to be coming around for anything of this kind.”
“But he is leaving tomorrow....”
“I cannot help that. You cannot see him now.”
“How about taking him my card and asking him about tomorrow?”
“No, no, no! I cannot do anything of the sort. You cannot see him,” and
once again I was shunted briskly forth.
I recall being sent one evening to attend a great public ball of some
kind—The Veiled Prophets—which was held in the general selling-room of
the stock exchange at Third and Walnut, and which followed as a rule
some huge autumnal parade. The city editor sent me for a general view or
introduction or pen picture to be used as a lead to the full story,
which was to be done by others piecemeal. For this occasion I was
ordered to hire a dress-suit (the first I had ever worn), which cost the
paper three dollars. I remember being greatly disturbed by my appearance
once I got in it and feeling very queer and conspicuous. I was greatly
troubled as to what sort of impression my garb would make on the various
members of the staff. As to the latter I was not long in doubt.
“Say, look at our friend in the claw-hammer, will you?” this from
Hazard. “He looks like a real society man to me!”
“Usher, you mean,” called Bellairs. “Who is he? I don’t seem to remember
him.”
“Those pants come darned near being a fit, don’t they?” this from some
one who had laid hold of the side lines of the trousers.
I could not make up my mind whether I wanted to fight or laugh or
whether I was startlingly handsome or a howling freak.
But the thing that weighed on me most was the luxury, tawdry enough
perhaps to those intimately connected with it, which this ball
presented, contrasted with my own ignoble state. After spending three
hours there bustling about examining flowers, decorations, getting
names, details of costumes, and drinking various drinks with officiating
floormasters whose sole duty appeared to be to look after the press and
see that they got all details straight, I returned to the office and
began to pour forth a glowing account of how beautiful it all was, how
gorgeous, how perfect the women, how marvelous their costumes, how
gracious and graceful the men, how oriental or occidental or Arabic, I
forget which, were the decorations, outdoing the Arabian Nights or the
fabled splendors of the Caliphate. Who does not recognize this
indiscriminate newspaper tosh, poured forth from one end of America to
another for everything from a farmers’ reunion or an I. O. O. F. Ladies’
Day to an Astor or a Vanderbilt wedding?
As I was writing, my head whirring with the imaginary and impossible
splendors of the occasion, I was informed by my city editor that when I
was done I should go to a number in South St. Louis where only an hour
before a triple or quadruple murder had been committed. I was to go out
on a street-car and if I could not get back in time by street-car I was
to get a carriage and drive back at breakneck speed in order to get the
story into the last edition. The great fear was that the rival paper,
the _Republic_, would get it or might already have it and we would not.
And so, my head full of pearls, diamonds, silks, satins, laces, a world
of flowers and lights, I was now hustled out along the dark, shabby,
lonely streets of South St. Louis to the humblest of cottages, in the
humblest of streets where, among unpainted shacks with lean-tos at the
back for kitchens, was one which contained this story.
An Irish policeman, silent and indifferent, was already at the small
dark gate in the dark and silent street, guarding it against intruders;
another was inside the door, which stood partially open, and beyond in
the roadway in the darkness, their faces all but indistinguishable, a
few horrified people. A word of explanation and I was admitted. A faint
glow from a small smoky glass lamp illuminated the front room darkly. It
turned out that a very honest, simple, religious and good-natured
Irish-American of about fifty, who had been working by the day in this
neighborhood, had recently been taken ill with brain fever and had on
this night arisen from his feverish sickbed, seized a flatiron, crept
into the front room where his wife and two little children slept and
brained all three. He had then returned to the rear room, where a grown
daughter slept on a couch beside him, and had first felled her with the
iron and then cut her throat with a butcher knife. Murderous as the deed
seemed, and apparently premeditated, it was the result of fever. The
policeman at the gate informed me that the father had already been taken
to the Four Courts and that a hospital ambulance was due any moment.
“But he’s out av his mind,” he insisted blandly. “He’s crazy, sure, or
sick av the fever. No man in his right sinses would do that. I tried to
taalk to him but he couldn’t say naathin’, just mumble like.”
After my grand ball this wretched front room presented a sad and ghastly
contrast. The house and furniture were very poor, the dead wife and
children homely and seemingly work-worn. I noticed the dim, smoky flame
cast by the lamp, the cheap bed awry and stained red, the mother and two
children lying in limp and painful disorder, the bedding dragged half
off. It was evident that a struggle had taken place, for a chair and
table were upset, the ironing-board thrown down, a bureau and the bed
pushed sidewise.
Shocked beyond measure, yet with an eye to color and to the zest of the
public for picturesque details, I examined the three rooms with care,
the officer in the house following me. Together we looked at the
utensils in the kitchen, what was in the cupboard to eat, what in the
closet to wear. I made notes of the contents of the rooms, their
cheapness, then went to the neighbors on either hand to learn if they
had heard anything. Then in a stray owl-car, no carriages being
available, I hurried to the Four Courts, several miles cityward, to see
the criminal. I found him, old, pale, sick, thin, walking up and down in
his small iron cell, plainly out of his mind, a picture of hopeless,
unconscious misery. His hands trembled idly about his mouth; his shabby
trousers bagged about his shoes; he was unshaven and weak-looking, and
all the while he mumbled to himself some unintelligible sounds. I tried
to talk with him but could get nothing. He seemed not even to know that
I was there, so brain-sick was he. Then I questioned the jail
attendants, those dull wiseacres of the law. Had he talked? Did they
think he was sane? With the usual acumen and delicacy of this tribe,
they were inclined to think he was shamming.
I hurried through dark streets to the office. It was an almost empty
reportorial room in which I scribbled my dolorous picture. With the
impetuosity of youth and curiosity and sorrow and wonder I told it all,
the terror, the pity, the inexplicability. As I wrote, each page was
taken up by Hartung, edited and sent up. Then, having done perhaps a
column and a half (Bellairs having arrived with various police
theories), I was allowed finally to amble out into a dark street and
seek my miserable little room with its creaky bed, its dirty coverlets,
its ragged carpets and stained walls. Nevertheless, I lay down with a
kind of high pride and satisfaction in my story of the murder and my
description of the ball, and with my life in consequence! I was not so
bad. I was getting along. I must be thought an exceptional man to be
picked for two such difficult tasks in the same evening. Life itself was
not so bad; it was just higgledy-piggledy, catch-as-catch-can, that was
all. If one were clever, like myself, it was all right. Next morning,
when I reached the office, McCord and Hazard and some others pronounced
my stuff “pretty good,” and I was beside myself with glee. I strolled
about as though I owned the earth, pretending simplicity and humility
but actually believing that I was the finest ever, that no one could
outdo me at this game of reporting.
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