II

_Walking Through Missouri_

TUESDAY MORNING, JUNE 4, 1912. In a hotel bedroom in Laddonia,

Missouri. I occupy this room without charge.

Through the mercy of the gateman I crossed the Hannibal toll-bridge

without paying fare, and the more enjoyed the pearly Mississippi in

the evening twilight. Walking south of Hannibal next morning, Sunday,

I was irresistibly reminded of Kentucky. It was the first real "pike"

of my journey,--solid gravel, and everyone was exercising his racing

pony in his racing cart, and giving me a ride down lovely avenues of

trees. Here, as in dozens of other interesting "lifts" in Illinois, I

had the driver's complete attention, recited _The Gospel of Beauty_

through a series of my more didactic rhymes till I was tired, and

presented the _Village Improvement Parade_ and the _Rhymes to Be

Traded for Bread_ and exhorted the comradely driver to forget me

never. One colored horseman hitched forward on the plank of his

breaking-cart and gave me his seat. Then came quite a ride into New

London. He asked, "So you goin' to walk west to the mountains and all

around?" "Yes, if this colt don't break my neck, or I don't lose my

nerve or get bitten by a dog or anything." "Will you walk back?"

"Maybe so, maybe not." He pondered a while, then said, with the Bert

Williams manner, "_You'll ride back. Mark my words, you'll ride

back!_"

He asked a little later, "Goin' to harves' in Kansas?" I assured him I

was not going to harvest in Kansas. He rolled his big white eyes at

me: "What in the name of Uncle Hillbilly _air_ you up to then?"

In this case I could not present my tracts, for I was holding on to

him for dear life. Just then he turned off my road. Getting out of the

cart I nearly hung myself; and the colt was away again before I could

say "Thank you."

Yesterday I passed through what was mostly a flat prairie country,

abounding in the Missouri mule. I met one man on horseback driving

before him an enormous specimen tied head to head with a

draught-horse. The mule was continually dragging his good-natured

comrade into the ditch and being jerked out again. The mule is a

perpetual inquisitor and experimenter. He followed me along the fence

with the alertest curiosity, when he was inside the field, yet meeting

me in the road, he often showed deadly terror. If he was a mule colt,

following his mare mamma along the pike, I had to stand in the side

lane or hide behind a tree till he went by, or else he would turn and

run as if the very devil were after him. Then the farmer on the mare

would have to pursue him a considerable distance, and drive him back

with cuss words. 'Tis sweet to stir up so much emotion, even in the

breast of an animal.

What do you suppose happened in New London? I approached what I

thought a tiny Baptist chapel of whitewashed stone. Noting it was

about sermon-time, and feeling like repenting, I walked in. Behold,

the most harmoniously-colored Catholic shrine in the world! The sermon

was being preached by the most gorgeously robed priest one could well

conceive. The father went on to show how a vision of the Christ-child

had appeared on the altar of a lax congregation in Spain. From that

time those people, stricken with reverence and godly fear, put that

church into repair, and the community became a true servant of the

Lord. Infidels were converted, heretics were confounded.

After the sermon came the climax of the mass, and from the choir loft

above my head came the most passionate religious singing I ever heard

in my life. The excellence of the whole worship, even to the preaching

of visions, was a beautiful surprise.

People do not open their eyes enough, neither their spiritual nor

their physical eyes. They are not sensitive enough to loveliness

either visible or by the pathway of visions. I wish every church in

the world could see the Christ-child on the altar, every Methodist and

Baptist as well as every Catholic congregation.

With these thoughts I sat and listened while that woman soloist sang

not only through the Mass, but the Benediction of the Blessed

Sacrament as well. The whole surprise stands out like a blazing star

in my memory.

I say we do not see enough visions. I wish that, going out of the

church door at noon, every worshipper in America could spiritually

discern the Good St. Francis come down to our earth and singing of

the Sun. I wish that saint would return. I wish he would preach

voluntary poverty to all the middle-class and wealthy folk of this

land, with the power that once shook Europe.

FRIDAY, JUNE 7, 1912. In the mid-afternoon in the woods, many miles

west of Jefferson City. I am sitting by a wild rose bush. I am looking

down a long sunlit vista of trees.

Wednesday evening, three miles from Fulton, Missouri, I encountered a

terrific storm. I tried one farm-house just before the rain came down,

but they would not let me in, not even into the barn. They said it was

"not convenient." They said there was another place a little piece

ahead, anyway. Pretty soon I was considerably rained upon. But the

"other place" did not appear. Later the thunder and lightning were

frightful. It seemed to me everything was being struck all around me:

because of the sheer downpour it became pitch dark. It seemed as

though the very weight of the rain would beat me into the ground. Yet

I felt that I needed the washing. The night before I enjoyed the kind

of hospitality that makes one yearn for a bath.

At last I saw a light ahead. I walked through more cataracts and

reached it. Then I knocked at the door. I entered what revealed itself

to be a negro cabin. Mine host was Uncle Remus himself, only a person

of more delicacy and dignity. He appeared to be well preserved, though

he was eighteen years old when the war broke out. He owns forty acres

and more than one mule. His house was sweet and clean, all metal

surfaces polished, all wood-work scrubbed white, all linen fresh

laundered. He urged me to dry at his oven. It was a long process,

taking much fuel. He allowed me to eat supper and breakfast with him

and his family, which honor I scarcely deserved. The old man said

grace standing up. Then we sat down and he said another. The first

was just family prayers. The second was thanksgiving for the meal. The

table was so richly and delicately provided that within my heart I

paraphrased the twenty-third Psalm, though I did not quote it out

aloud: "Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine

enemies"--(namely, the thunder and lightning, and the inhospitable

white man!).

I hope to be rained on again if it brings me communion bread like that

I ate with my black host. The conversation was about many things, but

began religiously; how "_Ol' Master in the sky gave us everything here

to take keer of, and said we mussent waste any of it_." The wife was a

mixture of charming diffidence and eagerness in offering her opinion

on these points of political economy and theology.

After supper the old gentleman told me a sweet-singing field-bird I

described was called the "Rachel-Jane." He had five children grown

and away from home and one sleek first voter still under his roof. The

old gentleman asked the inevitable question: "Goin' west harvestin'?"

I said "No" again. Then I spread out and explained _The Village

Improvement Parade_. This did not interest the family much, but they

would never have done with asking me questions about Lincoln. And the

fact that I came from Lincoln's home town was plainly my chief

distinction in their eyes. The best bed was provided for me, and warm

water in which to bathe, and I slept the sleep of the clean and

regenerated in snowy linen. Next morning the sun shone, and I walked

the muddy roads as cheerfully as though they were the paths of Heaven.

SUNDAY MORNING, JUNE 9, 1912. I am writing in the railroad station at

Tipton, Missouri.

A little while back a few people began to ask me to work for my

meals. I believe this is because the "genteel" appearance with which I

started has become something else. My derby hat has been used for so

many things,--to keep off a Noah's flood of rain, to catch cherries

in, to fight bumblebees, to cover my face while asleep, and keep away

the vague terrors of the night,--that it is still a hat, but not quite

in the mode. My face is baked by the sun and my hands are fried and

stewed. My trousers are creased not in one place, but all over. These

things made me look more like a person who, in the words of the

conventional world, "_ought to work_."

Having been requested to work once or twice, I immediately made it my

custom to offer labor-power as a preliminary to the meal. I generally

ask about five people before I find the one who happens to be in a

meal-giving mood. This kindly person, about two-thirds of the time,

refuses to let me work. I insist and insist, but he says, "Aw, come

in and eat anyway." The man who accepts my offer of work may let me

cut weeds, or hoe corn or potatoes, but he generally shows me the

woodpile and the axe. Even then every thud of that inevitably dull

instrument seems to go through him. After five minutes he thinks I

have worked an hour, and he comes to the porch and shouts: "Come in

and get your dinner."

Assuming a meal is worth thirty-five cents, I have never yet worked

out the worth of one, at day-laborer's wages. Very often I am called

into the house three times before I come. Whether I work or not, the

meals are big and good. Perhaps there is a little closer attention to

_The Gospel of Beauty_, after three unheeded calls to dinner.

After the kindling is split and the meal eaten and they lean back in

their chairs, a-weary of their mirth, by one means or another I show

them how I am knocking at the door of the world with a dream in my

hand.

Because of the multitudes of tramps pouring west on the freight

trains,--tramps I never see because I let freight cars alone,--night

accommodations are not so easy to get as they were in my other walks

in Pennsylvania and Georgia. I have not yet been forced to sleep under

the stars, but each evening has been a scramble. There must be some

better solution to this problem of a sleeping-place.

The country hotel, if there is one around, is sometimes willing to

take in the man who flatly says he is broke. For instance, the

inn-keeper's wife at Clarksburg was tenderly pitiful, yea, she was

kind to me after the fashion of the holiest of the angels. There was a

protracted meeting going on in the town. That was, perhaps, the reason

for her exalted heart. But, whatever the reason, in this one case I

was welcomed with such kindness and awe that I dared not lift up my

haughty head or distribute my poems, or give tongue to my views, or

let her suspect for a moment I was a special IDEA on legs. It was much

lovelier to have her think I was utterly forlorn.

This morning when I said good-bye I fumbled my hat, mumbled my words

and shuffled my feet, and may the Good St. Francis reward her.

When I asked the way to Tipton the farmer wanted me to walk the

railroad. People cannot see "why the Sam Hill" anyone wants to walk

the highway when the rails make a bee-line for the destination. This

fellow was so anxious for the preservation of my feet he insisted it

looked like rain. I finally agreed that, for the sake of avoiding a

wetting, I had best hurry to Tipton by the ties. The six miles of

railroad between Clarksburg and Tipton should be visited by every

botanist in the United States. Skip the rest of this letter unless you

are interested in a catalogue of flowers.

First comes the reed with the deep blue blossoms at the top that has

bloomed by my path all the way from Springfield, Illinois. Then come

enormous wild roses, showing every hue that friend of man ever

displayed. Behold an army of white poppies join our march, then

healthy legions of waving mustard. Our next recruits are tiny

golden-hearted ragged kinsmen of the sunflower. No comrades depart

from this triumphal march to Tipton. Once having joined us, they

continue in our company. The mass of color grows deeper and more

subtle each moment. Behold, regiments of pale lavender larkspur. 'Tis

an excellent garden, the finer that it needs no tending. Though the

rain has failed to come, I begin to be glad I am hobbling along over

the vexatious ties. I forget my resolve to run for President.

Once I determined to be a candidate. I knew I would get the tramp-vote

and the actor-vote. My platform was to be that railroad ties should

be just close enough for men to walk on them in natural steps, neither

mincing the stride nor widely stretching the legs.

Not yet have we reached Tipton. Behold a white flower, worthy of a

better name, that the farmers call "sheep's tea." Behold purple

larkspur joining the lavender larkspur. Behold that disreputable

camp-follower the button-weed, wearing its shabby finery. Now a red

delicate grass joins in, and a big purple and pink sort of an aster.

Behold a pink and white sheep's tea. And look, there is a dwarf

morning glory, the sweetest in the world. Here is a group of

black-eyed Susans, marching like suffragettes to get the vote at

Tipton. Here is a war-dance of Indian Paint. And here are bluebells.

"Goin' west harvestin'?"

"I have harvested already, ten thousand flowers an hour."

JUNE 10, 1912. 3 P.M. Three miles west of Sedalia, Missouri. In the

woods. Near the automobile road to Kansas City.

Now that I have passed Sedalia I am pretty well on toward the Kansas

line. Only three more days' journey, and then I shall be in Kansas,

State of Romance, State of Expectation. Goodness knows Missouri has

plenty of incident, plenty of merit. But it is a cross between

Illinois and northern Kentucky, and to beg here is like begging in my

own back-yard.

But the heart of Kansas is the heart of the West.... Inclosed find a

feather from the wing of a young chicken-hawk. He happened across the

road day before yesterday. The farmer stopped the team and killed him

with his pitchfork. That farmer seemed to think he had done the Lord a

service in ridding the world of a parasite. Yet I had a certain

fellow-feeling for the hawk, as I have for anybody who likes chicken.

This walk is full of suggestions for poems. Sometimes, in a

confidential moment, I tell my hosts I am going to write a chronicle

of the whole trip in verse. But I cannot write it now. The traveller

at my stage is in a kind of farm-hand condition of mind and blood. He

feels himself so much a part of the soil and the sun and the ploughed

acres, he eats so hard and sleeps so hard, he has little more patience

in trying to write than the husbandman himself.

If that poem is ever written I shall say,--to my fellow-citizens of

Springfield, for instance:--"I have gone as your delegate to greet the

fields, to claim them for you against a better day. I lay hold on

these furrows on behalf of all those cooped up in cities."

I feel that in a certain mystical sense I have made myself part of the

hundreds and hundreds of farms that lie between me and machine-made

America. I have scarcely seen anything but crops since I left home.

The whole human race is grubbing in the soil, and the soil is

responding with tremendous vigor. By walking I get as tired as any and

imagine I work too. Sometimes the glory goes. Then I feel my own

idleness above all other facts on earth. I want to get to work

immediately. But I suppose I am a minstrel or nothing. (There goes a

squirrel through the treetops.)

Every time I say "No" to the question "Goin' west harvestin'?" I am a

little less brisk about reciting that triad of poems that I find is

the best brief exposition of my gospel: (1) _The Proud Farmer_, (2)

_The Illinois Village_ and (3) _The Building of Springfield_.

If I do harvest it is likely to be just as it was at the Springfield

water-works a year ago, when I broke my back in a week trying to wheel

bricks.

JUNE 12, 1912. On the banks of a stream west of the town of

Warrensburg, Missouri.

Perhaps the problem of a night's lodging has been solved. I seem to

have found a substitute for the spare bedrooms and white sheets of

Georgia and Pennsylvania. It appears that no livery stable will refuse

a man a place to sleep. What happened at Otterville and Warrensburg I

can make happen from here on, or so I am assured by a farm-hand. He

told me that every tiniest village from here to western Kansas has at

least two livery stables and there a man may sleep for the asking. He

should try to get permission to mount to the hay-mow, for, unless the

cot in the office is a mere stretch of canvas, it is likely to be

(excuse me) verminiferous. The stable man asks if the mendicant has

matches or tobacco. If he has he must give them up. Also he is told

not to poke his head far out of the loft window, for, if the insurance

man caught him, it would be all up with the insurance. These

preliminaries quickly settled, the transient requests a buggy-robe to

sleep in, lest he be overwhelmed with the loan of a horse-blanket.

The objection to a horse-blanket is that it is a horse-blanket.

And so, if I am to believe my friend with the red neck, my good times

at Warrensburg and Otterville are likely to continue.

Strange as it may seem, sleeping in a hayloft is Romance itself. The

alfalfa is soft and fragrant and clean, the wind blows through the big

loft door, the stars shine through the cottonwoods. If I wake in the

night I hear the stable-boys bringing in the teams of men who have

driven a long way and back again to get something;--to get drunk, or

steal the kisses of somebody's wife or put over a political deal or

get a chance to preach a sermon;--and I get scraps of detail from the

stable-boys after the main actors of the drama have gone. It sounds as

though all the remarks were being made in the loft instead of on the

ground floor. The horses stamp and stamp and the grinding sound of

their teeth is so close to me I cannot believe at first that the

mangers and feed-boxes are way down below.

It is morning before I know it and the gorged birds are singing

"shivaree, shivaree, Rachel Jane, Rachel Jane" in the mulberry trees,

just outside the loft window. After a short walk I negotiate for

breakfast, then walk on through Paradise and at the proper time

negotiate for dinner, walk on through Paradise again and at six

negotiate for the paradisical haymow, without looking for supper, and

again more sleepy than hungry. The difference between this system and

the old one is that about half past four I used to begin to worry

about supper and night accommodations, and generally worried till

seven. Now life is one long sweet stroll, and I watch the sunset from

my bed in the alfalfa with the delights of the whole day renewed in my

heart.

Passing through the village of Sedalia I inquired the way out of town

to the main road west. My informant was a man named McSweeny, drunk

enough to be awfully friendly. He asked all sorts of questions. He

induced me to step two blocks out of my main course down a side-street

to his "Restaurant." He said he was not going to let me leave town

without a square meal. It was a strange eating-place, full of

ditch-diggers, teamsters, red-necked politicians and slender

intellectual politicians. In the background was a scattering of the

furtive daughters of pleasure, some white, some black. The whole

institution was but an annex to the bar-room in front. Mr. McSweeny

looked over my book while I ate. After the meal he gathered a group of

the politicians and commanded me to recite. I gave them my rhyme in

memory of Altgeld and my rhyme in denunciation of Lorimer, and my

rhyme denouncing all who coöperated in the white slave trade,

including sellers of drink. Mr. McSweeny said I was the goods, and

offered to pass the hat, but I would not permit. A handsome black

jezebel sat as near us as she dared and listened quite seriously. I

am sure she would have put something in that hat if it had gone round.

"I suppose," said Mr. McSweeny, as he stood at his door to bow adieu,

"you will harvest when you get a little further west?"

That afternoon I walked miles and miles through rough country, and put

up with a friendly farmer named John Humphrey. He had children like

little golden doves, and a most hard-working wife. The man had

harvested and travelled eight years in the west before he had settled

down. He told me all about it. Until late that night he told me

endless fascinating stories upon the theme of that free man's land

ahead of me. If he had not had those rosy babies to anchor him, he

would have picked up and gone along, and argued down my rule to travel

alone.

Because he had been a man of the road there was a peculiar feeling of

understanding in the air. They were people of much natural

refinement. I was the more grateful for their bread when I considered

that when I came upon them at sunset they were working together in the

field. There was not a hand to help. How could they be so happy and

seem so blest? Their day was nearer sixteen than eight hours long. I

felt deathly ashamed to eat their bread. I told them so, with

emphasis. But the mother said, "We always takes in them that asks, and

nobody never done us no harm yet."

That night was a turning point with me. In reply to a certain question

I said: "_Yes. I am going west harvesting._"

I asked the veteran traveller to tell me the best place to harvest. He

was sitting on the floor pulling the children's toes, and having a

grand time. He drew himself up into a sort of oracular knot, with his

chin on his knees, and gesticulated with his pipe.

"Go straight west," he said, "to Great Bend, Barton County, Kansas,

the banner wheat county of the United States. Arrive about July

fifth. Walk to the public square. Walk two miles north. Look around.

You will see nothing but wheat fields, and farmers standing on the

edge of the road crying into big red handkerchiefs. Ask the first man

for work. He will stop crying and give it to you. Wages will be two

dollars and a half a day, and keep. You will have all you want to eat

and a clean blanket in the hay."