SUNDAY, JUNE 1, 1912. By the side of the road, somewhere in Illinois.
Last night I was dead tired. I hailed a man by the shed of a
stationary engine. I asked him if I could sleep in the engine-shed all
night, beginning right now. He said "Yes." But from five to six, he
put me out of doors, on a pile of gunny sacks on the grass. There I
slept while the ducks quacked in my ears, and the autos whizzed over
the bridge three feet away. My host was a one-legged man. In about an
hour he came poking me with that crutch and that peg of his. He said
"Come, and let me tell your fortune! I have been studying your
physiognifry while you were asleep!" So we sat on a log by the edge of
the pond. He said: "I am the Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. They call
me the duck-pond diviner. I forecast the weather for these parts.
Every Sunday I have my corner for the week's weather in the paper
here." Then he indulged in a good deal of the kind of talk one finds
in the front of the almanac.
He was a little round man with a pair of round, dull eyes, and a dull,
round face, with a two weeks' beard upon it. He squinted up his eyes
now. He was deliberate. Switch engines were going by. He paused to
hail the engineers. Here is a part of what he finally said: "You are a
Child of Destiny." He hesitated, for he wanted to be sure of the next
point. "You were born in the month of S-e-p-t-e-m-b-e-r. Your
preference is for a business like clerking in a store. You are of a
slow, _pigmatic_ temperament, but I can see you are fastidious about
your eating. You do not use tobacco. You are fond of sweets. You have
been married twice. Your first wife died, and your second was
divorced. You look like you would make a good spiritualist medium. If
you don't let any black cats cross your track you will have good luck
for the next three years."
He hit it right twice. I _am_ a Child of Destiny and I _am_ fond of
sweets. When a prophet hits it right on essentials like that, who
would be critical?
An old woman with a pipe in her mouth came down the railroad
embankment looking for greens. He bawled at her "Git out of that." But
on she came. When she was closer he said: "Them weeds is full of
poison oak." She grunted, and kept working her way toward us, and
with a belligerent swagger marched past us on into the engine-room,
carrying a great mess of greens in her muddy hands.
There was scarcely space in that little shed for the engine, and it
was sticking out in several places. Yet it dawned on me that this was
the wife of my host, that they kept house with that engine for the
principal article of furniture. Without a word of introduction or
explanation she stood behind me and mumbled, "You need your supper,
son. Come in."
There was actually a side-room in that little box, a side room with a
cot and a cupboard as well. On the floor was what was once a rug. But
it had had a long kitchen history. She dipped a little unwashed bowl
into a larger unwashed bowl, with an unwashed thumb doing its whole
duty. She handed me a fuzzy, unwashed spoon and said with a note of
real kindness, "Eat your supper, young man." She patted me on the
shoulder with a sticky hand. Then she stood, looking at me fixedly.
The woman had only half her wits.
I suppose they kept that stew till it was used up, and then made
another. I was a Child of Destiny, all right, and Destiny decreed I
should eat. I sat there trying to think of things to say to make
agreeable conversation, and postpone the inevitable. Finally I told
her I wanted to be a little boy once more, and take my bowl and eat on
the log by the pond in the presence of Nature.
She maintained that genial silence which indicates a motherly
sympathy. I left her smoking and smiling there. And like a little
child that knows not the folly of waste, I slyly fed my supper to the
ducks.
At bedtime the old gentleman slept in his clothes on the cot in the
kitchenette. He had the dog for a foot-warmer. There was a jar of
yeast under the table. Every so often the old gentleman would call for
the old lady to come and drive the ducks out, or they would get the
board off the jar. Ever and anon the ducks had a taste before the
avenger arrived.
On one side of the engine the old lady had piled gunny-sacks for my
bed. That softened the cement-floor foundation. Then she insisted on
adding that elegant rug from the kitchen, to protect me from the fuzz
on the sacks. She herself slept on a pile of excelsior with a bit of
canvas atop. She kept a cat just by her cheek to keep her warm, and I
have no doubt the pretty brute whispered things in her ear. Tabby was
the one aristocratic, magical touch:--one of these golden coon-cats.
The old lady's bed was on the floor, just around the corner from me,
on the other side of the engine. That engine stretched its vast bulk
between us. It was as the sword between the duke and the queen in the
fairy story. But every so often, in response to the old gentleman's
alarm, the queen would come climbing over my feet in order to get to
the kitchen and drive out the ducks. From where I lay I could see
through two doors to the night outside. I could watch the stealthy
approach of the white and waddling marauders. Do not tell me a duck
has no sense of humor. It was a great game of tag to them. It occurred
as regularly as the half hours were reached. I could time the whole
process by the ticking in my soul, while presumably asleep. And while
waiting for them to come up I could see the pond and a star reflected
in the pond, the star of my Destiny, no doubt. At last it began to
rain. Despite considerations of fresh air, the door was shut, and soon
everybody was asleep.
The bed was not verminiferous. I dislike all jokes on such a theme,
but in this case the issue must be met. It is the one thing the tramp
wants to know about his bunk. That peril avoided, there is nothing to
quarrel about. Despite all the grotesquerie of that night, I am
grateful for a roof, and two gentle friends.
Poor things! Just like all the citizens of the twentieth century,
petting and grooming machinery three times as smart as they are
themselves. Such people should have engines to take care of them,
instead of taking care of engines. There stood the sleek brute in its
stall, absorbing all, giving nothing, pumping supplies only for its
own caste;--water to be fed to other engines.
But seldom are keepers of engine-stables as unfortunate as these. The
best they can get from the world is cruel laughter. Yet this woman,
crippled in brain, her soul only half alive, this dull man, crippled
in body, had God's gift of the liberal heart. If they are supremely
absurd, so are all of us. We must include ourselves in the farce.
These two, tottering through the dimness and vexation of our queer
world, were willing the stranger should lean upon them. I say they had
the good gift of the liberal heart. One thing was theirs to divide.
That was a roof. They gave me my third and they helped me to hide from
the rain. In the name of St. Francis I laid me down. May that saint of
all saints be with them, and with all the gentle and innocent and
weary and broken!