IV

Every soul

Resident

In the earth's one circus tent!

Every man a trapeze king

Then a pleased spectator there.

On the benches! In the ring!

While the neighbors gawk and stare

And the cheering rolls along.

Almost every day a race

When the merry starting gong

Rings, each chariot on the line,

Every driver fit and fine

With the steel-spring Roman grace.

Almost every day a dream,

Almost every day a dream.

Every girl,

Maid or wife,

Wild with music,

Eyes a-gleam

With that marvel called desire:

Actress, princess, fit for life,

Armed with honor like a knife,

Jumping thro' the hoops of fire.

(Listen to the lion roar!)

Making all the children shout

Clowns shall tumble all about,

Painted high and full of song

While the cheering rolls along,

Tho' they scream,

Tho' they rage,

Every beast

In his cage,

Every beast

In his den

That aforetime troubled men.

V

I am the Kallyope, Kallyope, Kallyope,

Tooting hope, tooting hope, tooting hope, tooting hope;

Shaking window-pane and door

With a crashing cosmic tune,

With the war-cry of the spheres,

Rhythm of the roar of noon,

Rhythm of Niagara's roar,

Voicing planet, star and moon,

SHRIEKING of the better years.

Prophet-singers will arise,

Prophets coming after me,

Sing my song in softer guise

With more delicate surprise;

I am but the pioneer

Voice of the Democracy;

I am the gutter dream,

I am the golden dream,

Singing science, singing steam.

I will blow the proud folk down,

(Listen to the lion roar!)

I am the Kallyope, Kallyope, Kallyope,

Tooting hope, tooting hope, tooting hope, tooting hope,

Willy willy willy wah HOO!

Hoot, toot, hoot toot, hoot toot, hoot toot,

Whoop whoop, whoop whoop,

Whoop whoop, whoop whoop,

Willy willy willy wah HOO!

Sizz.....

Fizz.....

SUNDAY MORNING, JUNE 23, 1912. I am writing on the top of a pile of

creosote-soaked ties between the Santa Fé tracks and the trail that

runs parallel to the tracks. Florence, Kansas, is somewhere ahead.

In the East the railroads and machinery choke the land to death and it

was there I made my rule against them. But the farther West I go the

more the very life of the country seems to depend upon them. I

suppose, though, that some day, even out West here, the rule against

the railroad will be a good rule.

Meanwhile let me say that my Ruskinian prejudices are temporarily

overcome by the picturesqueness and efficiency of the Santa Fé. It is

double-tracked, and every four miles is kept in order by a hand-car

crew that is spinning back and forth all the time. The air seems to be

full of hand-cars.

Walking in a hurry to make a certain place by nightfall I have become

acquainted with these section hands, and, most delightful to relate,

have ridden in their iron conveyances, putting my own back into the

work. Half or three-fourths of the employees are Mexicans who are as

ornamental in the actual landscape as they are in a Remington drawing.

These Mexicans are tractable serfs of the Santa Fé. If there were

enough miles of railroad in Mexico to keep all the inhabitants busy on

section, perhaps the internal difficulties could be ended. These peons

live peacefully next to the tracks in houses built by the company

from old ties. The ties are placed on end, side by side, with plaster

in the cracks, on a tiny oblong two-room plan. There is a little

roofed court between the rooms. A farmer told me that the company

tried Greek serfs for a while, but they made trouble for outsiders and

murdered each other.

The road is busy as busy can be. Almost any time one can see enormous

freight-trains rolling by or mile-a-minute passenger trains. Gates are

provided for each farmer's right of way. I was told by an exceptional

Mexican with powers of speech that the efficient dragging of the

wagon-roads, especially the "New Santa Fé Trail" that follows the

railroad, is owing to the missionary work of King, the split-log drag

man, who was employed to go up and down this land agitating his hobby.

When the weather is good, touring automobiles whiz past. They have

pennants showing they are from Kansas City, Emporia, New York or

Chicago. They have camping canvas and bedding on the back seats of the

car, or strapped in the rear. They are on camping tours to Colorado

Springs and the like pleasure places. Some few avow they are going to

the coast. About five o'clock in the evening some man making a local

trip is apt to come along alone. He it is that wants the other side of

the machine weighed down. He it is that will offer me a ride and spin

me along from five to twenty-five miles before supper. This delightful

use that may be made of an automobile in rounding out a day's walk has

had something to do with mending my prejudice against it, despite the

grand airs of the tourists that whirl by at midday. I still maintain

that the auto is a carnal institution, to be shunned by the truly

spiritual, but there are times when I, for one, get tired of being

spiritual.

Much of the country east of Emporia is hilly and well-wooded and

hedged like Missouri. But now I am getting into the range region.

Yesterday, after several miles of treeless land that had never known

the plough, I said to myself: "Now I am really West." And my

impression was reinforced when I reached a grand baronial

establishment called "Clover Hill Ranch." It was flanked by the houses

of the retainers. In the foreground and a little to the side was the

great stone barn for the mules and horses. Back on the little hill,

properly introduced by ceremonious trees, was the ranch house itself.

And before it was my lord on his ranching charger. The aforesaid lord

created quite an atmosphere of lordliness as he refused work in the

alfalfa harvest to a battered stranger who bowed too low and begged

too hard, perhaps. On the porch was my lady, feeding bread and honey

to the beautiful young prince of the place.

I have not yet reached the wheat belt. Since the alfalfa harvest is on

here, I shall try for that a bit.

SUNDAY AFTERNOON, JUNE 30, 1912. In the spare room of a Mennonite

farmer, who lives just inside the wheat belt.

This is going to be a long Sunday afternoon; so make up your minds for

a long letter. I did not get work in the alfalfa. Yet there is news. I

have been staying a week with this Mennonite family shocking wheat for

them, though I am not anywhere near Great Bend.

Before I tell you of the harvest, I must tell you of these Mennonites.

They are a dear people. I have heard from their reverent lips the name

of their founder, Menno Simonis, who was born about the time of

Columbus and Luther and other such worthies. They are as opposed to

carnal literature as I am to tailor-made clothes, and I hold they are

perfectly correct in allowing no fashion magazines in the house. Such

modern books as they read deal with practical local philanthropies and

great international mission movements, and their interdenominational

feelings for all Christendom are strong. Yet they hold to their

ancient verities, and antiquity broods over their meditations.

For instance I found in their bookcase an endless dialogue epic called

_The Wandering Soul_, in which this soul, seeking mainly for

information, engages in stilted conversation with Adam, Noah, and

Simon Cleophas. Thereby the Wandering Soul is informed as to the

orthodox history and chronology of the world from the Creation to the

destruction of Jerusalem. The wood-cuts are devotional. They are worth

walking to Kansas to see. The book had its third translation into

Pennsylvania English in 1840, but several American editions had

existed in German before that, and several German editions in Germany.

It was originally written in the Dutch language and was popular among

the Mennonites there. But it looks as if it was printed by Adam to

last forever and scare bad boys.

Let us go to meeting. All the women are on their own side of the

aisle. All of them have a fairly uniform Quakerish sort of dress of no

prescribed color. In front are the most pious, who wear a black

scoop-bonnet. Some have taken this off, and show the inevitable

"prayer-covering" underneath. It is the plainest kind of a lace-cap,

awfully coquettish on a pretty head. It is intended to mortify the

flesh, and I suppose it _is_ unbecoming to _some_ women.

All the scoop-bonnets are not black. Toward the middle of the church,

behold a cream-satin, a soft gray, a dull moon-gold. One young woman,

moved, I fear, by the devil, turns and looks across the aisle at us.

An exceedingly demure bow is tied all too sweetly under the chin, in a

decorous butterfly style. Fie! fie! Is this mortifying the flesh? And

I note with pain that the black bonnets grow fewer and fewer toward

the rear of the meeting house.

Here come the children, with bobbing headgear of every color of the

rainbow, yet the same scoop-pattern still. They have been taking

little walks and runs between Sunday-school and church, and are all

flushed and panting. But I would no more criticise the color of their

headgear than the color in their faces. Some of them squeeze in among

the black rows in front and make piety reasonable. But we noted by the

door as they entered something that both the church and the world must

abhor. Seated as near to the men's side as they can get, with a

mixture of shame and defiance in their faces, are certain daughters of

the Mennonites who insist on dressing after the fashions that come

from Paris and Kansas City and Emporia. By the time the rumors of what

is proper in millinery have reached this place they are a

disconcerting mixture of cherries, feathers and ferns. And somehow

there are too many mussy ribbons on the dresses.

We can only guess how these rebels must suffer under the concentrated

silent prayers of the godly. Poor honest souls! they take to this

world's vain baggage and overdo it. Why do they not make up their

minds to serve the devil sideways, like that sly puss with the

butterfly bow?

On the men's side of the house the division on dress is more acute.

The Holiness movement, the doctrine of the Second Blessing that has

stirred many rural Methodist groups, has attacked the Mennonites also.

Those who dispute for this new ism of sanctification leave off their

neckties as a sign. Those that retain their neckties, satisfied with

what Menno Simonis taught, have a hard time remaining in a state of

complete calm. The temptation to argue the matter is almost more than

flesh can bear.

But, so far as I could discover, there was no silent prayer over the

worst lapse of these people. What remains of my Franciscan soul was

hurt to discover that the buggy-shed of the meeting-house was full of

automobiles. And to meet a Mennonite on the road without a necktie,

his wife in the blackest of bonnets, honking along in one of those

glittering brazen machines, almost shakes my confidence in the Old

Jerusalem Gospel.

Yet let me not indulge in disrespect. Every spiritual warfare must

abound in its little ironies. They are keeping their rule against

finery as well as I am keeping mine against the railroad. And they

have their own way of not being corrupted by money. Their ministry is

unsalaried. Their preachers are sometimes helpers on the farms,

sometimes taken care of outright, the same as I am.

As will later appear, despite some inconsistencies, the Mennonites

have a piety as literal as any to be found on the earth. Since they

are German there is no lack of thought in their system. I attended one

of their quarterly conferences and I have never heard better

discourses on the distinctions between the four gospels. The men who

spoke were scholars.

The Mennonites make it a principle to ignore politics, and are

non-resistants in war. I have read in the life of one of their heroes

what a terrible time his people had in the Shenandoah valley in the

days of Sheridan.... Three solemn tracts are here on my dresser. The

first is against church organs, embodying a plea for simplicity and

the spending of such money on local benevolences and world-wide

missions. The tract aptly compares the church-organ to the Thibetan

prayer-wheel, and later to praying by phonograph. A song is a prayer

to them, and they sing hymns and nothing but hymns all week long.

The next tract is on non-conformity to this world, and insists our

appearance should indicate our profession, and that fashions drive the

poor away from the church. It condemns jewels and plaiting of the

hair, etc., and says that such things stir up a wicked and worldly

lust in the eyes of youth. This tract goes so far as to put worldly

pictures under the ban. Then comes another, headed Bible Teaching on

Dress. It goes on to show that every true Christian, especially that

vain bird, the female, should wear something like the Mennonite

uniform to indicate the line of separation from "the World." I have a

good deal of sympathy for all this, for indeed is it not briefly

comprehended in my own rule: "Carry no baggage"?

These people celebrate communion every half year, and at the same time

they practise the ritual of washing the feet. Since Isadora Duncan has

rediscovered the human foot æsthetically, who dares object to it in

ritual? It is all a question of what we are trained to expect.

Certainly these people are respecters of the human foot and not

ashamed to show it. Next to the way their women have of making a dash

to find their gauzy prayer-covering, which they put on for grace at

table and Bible-lesson before breakfast, their most striking habit is

the way both men and women go about in very clean bare feet after

supper. Next to this let me note their resolve to have no profane hour

whatsoever. When not actually at work they sit and sing hymns, each

Christian on his own hook as he has leisure.

My first evening among these dear strangers I was sitting alone by the

front door, looking out on the wheat. I was thrilled to see the

fairest member of the household enter, not without grace and dignity.

Her prayer covering was on her head, her white feet were shining like

those of Nicolette and her white hymn-book was in her hand. She

ignored me entirely. She was rapt in trance. She sat by the window and

sang through the book, looking straight at a rose in the wall-paper.

I lingered there, reading _The Wandering Soul_ just as oblivious of

her presence as she was of mine. Oh, no; there was no art in the

selection of her songs! I remember one which was to this effect:

"Don't let it be said:

'Too late, too late

To enter that Golden Gate.'

Be ready, for soon

The time will come

To enter that Golden Gate."

On the whole she had as much right to plunk down and sing hymns out of

season as I have to burst in and quote poetry to peaceful and

unprotected households.

I would like to insert a discourse here on the pleasure and the

naturalness and the humanness of testifying to one's gospel whatever

that gospel may be, barefooted or golden-slippered or iron-shod. The

best we may win in return may be but a kindly smile. We may never make

one convert. Still the duty of testifying remains, and is enjoined by

the invisible powers and makes for the health of the soul. This

Mennonite was a priestess of her view of the truth and comes of

endless generations of such snow-footed apostles. I presume the sect

ceased to enlarge when the Quakers ceased to thrive, but I make my

guess that it does not crumble as fast as the Quakers, having more

German stolidity.

Let me again go forward, testifying to my particular lonely gospel in

the face of such pleasant smiles and incredulous questions as may

come. I wish I could start a sturdy sect like old Menno Simonis did.

They should dress as these have done, and be as stubborn and rigid in

their discipline. They should farm as these have done, but on reaching

the point where the Mennonite buys the automobile, that money and

energy should go into the making of cross-roads palaces for the

people, golden as the harvest field, and disciplined well-parked

villages, good as a psalm, and cities fair as a Mennonite lady in her

prayer-covering, delicate and noble as Athens the unforgotten, the

divine.

The Mennonite doctrine of non-participation in war or politics leads

them to confine their periodic literature to religious journals

exclusively, plus _The Drover's Journal_ to keep them up to date on

the prices of farm-products. There is only one Mennonite political

event, the coming of Christ to judge the earth. Of that no man knoweth

the day or the hour. We had best be prepared and not play politics or

baseball or anything. Just keep unspotted and harvest the wheat.

"Goin' wes' harvesin'?"

I have harvested, thank you. Four days and a half I have shocked wheat

in these prayer-consecrated fields that I see even now from my window.

And I have good hard dollars in my pocket, which same dollars are

against my rules.