the stormy things in my heart they kept growing stronger and stronger. I
did lots of wild, ugly things, things of which I am bitterly ashamed.
I went to another place, and I fell in with the kind of fellows you can
imagine I felt at home with. I had been told when I was a boy that it
was wrong to drink and gamble. I think that was the chief reason I took
to drink and gambling.”
There was another cough, more pronounced this time, from the party
manager, and the superintendent was twisting uneasily in his seat.
It was the strangest speech that had ever been delivered at the boys'
reformatory. The boys were leaning forward--self-forgetful, intent. “One
night I was playing cards with a crowd of my friends, and one of the
men, the best friend I had, said something that made me mad. There was a
revolver right there which one of the men had been showing us. Some kind
of a demon got hold of me, and without so much as a thought I picked up
that revolver and fired at my friend.”
The party manager gave way to an exclamation of horror, and the
superintendent half rose from his seat. But before any one could say
a word Philip Grayson continued, looking at the half-frightened faces
before him: “I suppose you wonder why I am not in the penitentiary. I
had been drinking, and I missed my aim; and I was with friends, and it
was hushed up.”
He rested his hand upon the table, and looked out at the sullen
landscape. His voice was not steady as he went on: “It's not an easy
thing to talk about, boys. I never talked about it to any one before in
all my life. I'm not telling it now just to entertain you or to create
a sensation. I'm telling it,” his voice grew tense in its earnestness,
“because I believe that this world could be made a better and a sweeter
place if those who have lived and suffered would not be afraid to reach
out their hands and cry: 'I know that road--it's bad! I steered off to a
better place, and I'll help you steer off, too.'”
There was not one of the three hundred pairs of eyes but was riveted
upon the speaker's colourless face. The masks of sullenness and defiance
had fallen from them. They were listening now--not because they must,
but because into their hungry and thirsty souls was being poured the
very sustenance for which--unknowingly--they had yearned.
“We sometimes hear people say,” resumed the candidate for Governor,
“that they have lived through hell. If by that they mean they've lived
through the deepest torments the human heart can know, then I can say
that I, too, have lived through hell. What I suffered after I went home
that night no one in this world will ever know. Words couldn't tell it;
it's not the kind of thing words can come anywhere near. My whole life
spread itself out before me; it was not a pleasant thing to look at. But
at last, boys, out of the depths of my darkness, I began to get a little
light. I began to get some understanding of the battle which it falls
to the lot of some of us human beings to wage. There was good in me,
you see, or I wouldn't have cared like that, and it came to me then, all
alone that terrible night, that it is the good which lies buried away
somewhere in our hearts must fight out the bad. And so--all alone,
boys--I began the battle of trying to get command of my own life. And do
you know--this is the truth--it was with the beginning of that battle I
got my first taste of happiness. There is no finer feeling in this world
than the sense of coming into mastery of one's self. It is like opening
a door that has shut you in. Oh, you don't do it all in a minute. This
is no miracle I'm talking about. It's a fight. But it's a fight that can
be won. It's a fight that's gloriously worth the winning. I'm not saying
to you, 'Be good and you'll succeed.' Maybe you won't succeed. Life
as we've arranged it for ourselves makes success a pretty tough
proposition. But that doesn't alter the fact that it pays to be a decent
sort. You and I know about how much happiness there is in the other kind
of thing. And there is happiness in feeling you're doing what you can to
develop what's in you. Success or failure, it brings a sense of having
done your part,--that bully sense of having put up the best fight you
could.”
He leaned upon the table then, as though very weary. “I don't know, I am
sure, what the people of my State will think of all this. Perhaps they
won't want a man for their Governor who once tried to kill another man.
But,” he looked around at them with that smile of his which got straight
to men's hearts, “there's only one of me, and there are three hundred
of you, and how do I know but that in telling you of that stretch of bad
road ahead I've made a dozen Governors this very afternoon!”
He looked from row to row of them, trying to think of some last word
which would leave them with a sense of his sincerity. What he did say
was: “And so, boys, when you get away from here, and go out into the
world to get your start, if you find the arms of that world aren't quite
as wide open as you were told they would be, if there seems no place
where you can get a hold, and you are saying to yourself, 'It's no
use--I'll not try,' before you give up just remember there was one man
who said he knew all about it, and give that one man a chance to show
he meant what he said. So look me up, if luck goes all against you, and
maybe I can give you a little lift.” He took a backward step, as though
to resume his seat, and then he said, with a dry little smile which took
any suggestion of heroics from what had gone before, “If I'm not at the
State-house, you'll find my name in the directory of the city where your
programme tells you I live.”
He sat down, and for a moment there was silence. Then, full-souled,
heart-given, came the applause. It was not led by the attendants this
time; it was the attendants who rose at last to stop it. And when the
clapping of the hands had ceased, many of those hands were raised to
eyes which had long been dry.
The exercises were drawn to a speedy close, and he found the party
manager standing by his side. “It was very grand,” he sneered, “very
high-sounding and heroic, but I suppose you know,” jerking his hand
angrily toward a table where a reporter for the leading paper of the
opposition was writing, “that you've given them the winning card.”
As he replied, in far-off tone, “I hope so,” the candidate for Governor
was looking, not at the reporter who was sending out a new cry for
the opposition, but into those faces aglow with the light of new
understanding and new-born hopes. He stood there watching them filing
out into the corridor, craning their necks to throw him a last look,
and as he turned then and looked from the window it was to see that
the storm had sobbed itself away, and that along the driveway of the
reformatory grounds the young trees--unbroken and unhurt--were rearing
their heads in the way they should go.
VII
HOW THE PRINCE SAW AMERICA
They began work at seven-thirty, and at ten minutes past eight every
hammer stopped. In the Senate Chamber and in the House, on the stairways
and in the corridors, in every office from the Governor's to the
custodian's they laid down their implements and rose to their feet. A
long whistle had sounded through the building. There was magic in its
note.
“What's the matter with you fellows?” asked the attorney-general,
swinging around in his chair.
“Strike,” declared one of the men, with becoming brevity.
“Strike of what?”
“Carpet-Tackers' Union Number One,” replied the man, kindly gathering up
a few tacks.
“Never heard of it.”
“Organised last night,” said the carpet-tacker, putting on his coat.
“Well I'll--” he paused expressively, then inquired: “What's your game?”
“Well, you see, boss, this executive council that runs the State-house
has refused our demands.”
“What are your demands?”
“Double pay.”
“Double pay! Now how do you figure it out that you ought to have double
pay?”
“Rush work. You see we were under oath, or pretty near that, to get
every carpet in the State-house down by four o'clock this afternoon. Now
you know yourself that rush work is hard on the nerves. Did you ever get
rush work done at a laundry and not pay more for it? We was anxious as
anybody to get the Capitol in shape for the big show this afternoon. But
there's reason in all things.”
“Yes,” agreed his auditor, “there is.”
The man looked at him a little doubtfully. “Our president--we elected
Johnny McGuire president last night--went to the Governor this morning
with our demands.”
The Governor's fellow official smiled--he knew the Governor pretty well.
“And he turned you down?”
The striker nodded. “But there's an election next fall; maybe the
turning down will be turned around.”
“Maybe so--you never can tell. I don't know just what power
Carpet-Tackers' Union Number One will wield, but the Governor's pretty
solid, you know, with Labour as a whole.”
That was true, and went home. The striker rubbed his foot uncertainly
across the floor, and took courage from its splinters. “Well, there's
one thing sure. When Prince Ludwig and his train-load of big guns show
up at four o'clock this afternoon they'll find bare floors, and pretty
bum bare floors, on deck at this place.”
The attorney-general rubbed his own foot across the splintered,
miserable boards. “They are pretty bum,” he reflected. “I wonder,” he
added, as the man was half-way out of the door, “what Prince Ludwig will
think of the American working-man when he arrives this afternoon?”
“Just about as much,” retorted the not-to-be-downed carpet-tacker, “as
he does about American generosity. And he may think a few things,” he
added weightily, “about American independence.”
“Oh, he's sure to do that,” agreed the attorney-general.
He joined the crowd in the corridor. They were swarming out from all
the offices, all talking of the one thing. “It was a straight case of
hold-up,” declared the Governor's secretary. “They supposed they had us
on the hip. They were getting extra money as it was, but you see they
just figured it out we'd pay anything rather than have these wretched
floors for the reception this afternoon. They thought the Governor would
argue the question, and then give in, or, at any rate, compromise. They
never intended for one minute that the Prince should find bare floors
here. And I rather think,” he concluded, “that they feel a little done
up about it themselves.”
“What's the situation?” asked a stranger within the gates.
“It's like this,” a newspaper reporter told him; “about a month ago
there was a fire here and the walls and carpets were pretty well knocked
out with smoke and water. The carpets were mean old things anyway,
so they voted new ones. And I want to tell you”--he swelled with
pride--“that the new ones are beauties. The place'll look great when we
get 'em down. Well, you know Prince Ludwig and his crowd cross the State
on their way to the coast, and of course they were invited to stop. Last
week Billy Patton--he's running the whole show--declined the invitation
on account of lack of time, and then yesterday comes a telegram saying
the Prince himself insisted on stopping. You know he's keen about Indian
dope--and we've got Indian traditions to burn. So Mr. Bill Patton had to
make over his schedule to please the Prince, and of course we were all
pretty tickled about it, for more reasons than one. The telegram didn't
come until five o'clock yesterday afternoon, but you know what a hummer
the Governor is when he gets a start. He made up his mind this building
should be put in shape within twenty-four hours. They engaged a whole
lot of fellows to work on the carpets to-day. Then what did they do but
get together last night--well, you know the rest. Pretty bum-looking old
shack just now, isn't it?” and the reporter looked around ruefully.
It was approaching the hour for the legislature to convene, and the
members who were beginning to saunter in swelled the crowd--and the
indignation--in the rotunda.
The Governor, meanwhile, had been trying to get other men, but
Carpet-Tackers' Union Number One had looked well to that. The biggest
furniture dealer in the city was afraid of the plumbers. “Pipes burst
last night,” he said, “and they may not do a thing for us if we get
mixed up in this. Sorry--but I can't let my customers get pneumonia.”
Another furniture man was afraid of the teamsters. For one reason or
another no one was disposed to respond to the Macedonian cry, and when
the Governor at last gave it up and walked out into the rotunda he was
about as disturbed as he permitted himself to get. “It's the idea of
lying down,” he said. “I'd do anything--anything!--if I could only think
what to do.”
A popular young member of the House overheard the remark. “By George,
Governor,” he burst forth, after a minute's deep study--“say--by Jove, I
say, let's do it ourselves!”
They all laughed, but the Governor's laugh stopped suddenly, and he
looked hard at the young man.
“Why not?” the young legislator went on. “It's a big job, but there are
a lot of us. We've all put down carpets at home; what are we afraid to
tackle it here for?”
Again the others laughed, but the Governor did not. “Say, Weston,” he
said, “I'd give a lot--I tell you I'd give a lot--if we just could!”
“Leave it to me!”--and he was lost in the crowd.
The Governor's eyes followed him. He had always liked Harry Weston. He
was the very sort to inspire people to do things. The Governor smiled
knowingly as he noted the men Weston was approaching, and his different
manner with the various ones. And then he had mounted a few steps of the
stairway, and was standing there facing the crowd.
“Now look here,” he began, after silence had been obtained, “this isn't
a very formal meeting, but it's a mighty important one. It's a clear
case of Carpet-Tackers' Union against the State. What I want to know
is--Is the State going to lie down?”
There were loud cries of “No!”--“Well, I should say not!”
“Well, then, see here. The Governor's tried for other men and can't get
them. Now the next thing I want to know is--What's the matter with us?”
They didn't get it for a minute, and then everybody laughed.
“It's no joke! You've all put down carpets at home; what's the use of
pretending you don't know how to do it? Oh yes--I know, bigger
building, and all that, but there are more of us, and the principle of
carpet-tacking is the same, big building or little one. Now my scheme
is this--Every fellow his own carpet-tacker! The Governor's office
puts down the Governor's carpet; the Secretary's office puts down the
Secretary's carpet; the Senate puts down the Senate carpet--and we'll
look after our little patch in the House!”
“But you've got more fellows than anybody else,” cried a member of the
Senate.
“Right you are, and we'll have an over-flow meeting in the corridors
and stairways. The House, as usual, stands ready to do her part,”--that
brought a laugh for the Senators, and from them.
“Now get it out of your heads this is a joke. The carpets are here; the
building is full of able-bodied men; the Prince is coming at four--by
his own request, and the proposition is just this: Are we going to
receive him in a barn or in a palace? Let's hear what Senator Arnold
thinks about it.”
That was a good way of getting away from the idea of its being a joke.
Senator Arnold was past seventy. Slowly he extended his right arm and
tested his muscle. “Not very much,” he said, “but enough to drive a tack
or two.” That brought applause and they drew closer together, and the
atmosphere warmed perceptibly. “I've fought for the State in more ways
than one,”--Senator Arnold was a distinguished veteran of the Civil
War--“and if I can serve her now by tacking down carpets, then it's
tacking down carpets I'm ready to go at. Just count on me for what
little I'm worth.”
Someone started the cry for the Governor. “Prince Ludwig is being
entertained all over the country in the most lavish manner,” he began,
with his characteristic directness in stating a situation. “By his own
request he is to visit our Capitol this afternoon. I must say that I,
for one, want to be in shape for him. I don't like to tell him that we
had a labour complication and couldn't get the carpets down. Speaking
for myself, it is a great pleasure to inform you that the carpet in
the Governor's office will be in proper shape by four o'clock this
afternoon.”
That settled it. Finally Harry Weston made himself heard sufficiently
to suggest that when the House and Senate met at nine o'clock motions to
adjourn be entertained. “And as to the rest of you fellows,” he cried,
“I don't see what's to hinder your getting busy right now!”
There were Republicans and there were Democrats; there were friends
and there were enemies; there were good, bad and--no, there were no
indifferent. An unprecedented harmony of thought, a millennium-like
unity of action was born out of that sturdy cry--Every man his own
carpet-tacker! The Secretary of State always claimed that he drove the
first tack, but during the remainder of his life the Superintendent of
Public Instruction also contended hotly for that honour. The rivalry
as to who would do the best job, and get it done most quickly, became
intense. Early in the day Harry Weston made the rounds of the building
and announced a fine of one-hundred dollars for every wrinkle. There
were pounded fingers and there were broken backs, but slowly, steadily
and good-naturedly the State-house carpet was going down. It was a good
deal bigger job than they had anticipated, but that only added zest
to the undertaking. The news of how the State officials were employing
themselves had spread throughout the city, and guards were stationed at
every door to keep out people whose presence would work more harm than
good. All assistance from women was courteously refused. “This is solemn
business,” said the Governor, in response to a telephone from some of
the fair sex, “and the introduction of the feminine element might throw
about it a social atmosphere which would result in loss of time. And
then some of the boys might feel called upon to put on their collars and
coats.”
Stretch--stretch--stretch, and tack--tack--tack, all morning long it
went on, for the State-house was large--oh, very large. There should
have been a Boswell there to get the good things, for the novelty of the
situation inspired wit even in minds where wit had never glowed before.
Choice bits which at other times would fairly have gone on official
record were now passed almost unnoticed, so great was the surfeit.
Instead of men going out to lunch, lunch came in to them. Bridget
Haggerty, who by reason of her long connection with the boarding-house
across the street was a sort of unofficial official of the State, came
over and made the coffee and sandwiches, all the while calling down
blessings on the head of every mother's son of them, and announcing in
loud, firm tones that while all five of her boys belonged to the union
she'd be after tellin' them what she thought of this day's work!
It was a United States Senator who did the awful trick, and, to be fair,
the Senator did not think of it as an awful trick at all. He came over
there in the middle of the morning to see the Governor, and in a few
hurried words--it was no day for conversation--was told what was going
on. It was while standing out in the corridor watching the perspiring
dignitaries that the idea of his duty came to him, and one reason he was
sure he was right was the way in which it came to him in the light of
a duty. Here was America in undress uniform! Here was--not a thing
arranged for show, but absolutely the thing itself! Prince Ludwig had
come with a sincere desire to see America. Every one knew that he was
not seeing it at all. He would go back with memories of bands and flags
and people all dressed up standing before him making polite speeches.
But would he carry back one small whiff of the spirit of the country?
Again Senator Bruner looked about him. The Speaker of the House was
just beginning laying the stair carpet; a judge of the Supreme Court
was contending hotly for a better hammer. “It's an insult to expect any
decent man to drive tacks with a hammer like this,” he was saying.
Here were men--real, live men, men with individuality, spirit. When
the Prince had come so far, wasn't it too bad that he should not see
anything but uniforms and cut glass and dress suits and other externals
and non-essentials? Senator Bruner was a kind man; he was a good fellow;
he was hospitable--patriotic. He decided now in favour of the Prince.
He had to hurry about it, for it was almost twelve then. One of
the vice-presidents of the road lived there, and he was taken into
confidence, and proved an able and eager ally. They located the special
train bearing the Prince and ordered it stopped at the next station.
The stop was made that Senator Patton might receive a long telegram
from Senator Bruner. “I figure it like this,” the Senator told the
vice-president. “They get to Boden at a quarter of one and were going
to stop there an hour. Then they were going to stop a little while at
Creyville. I've told Patton the situation, and that if he wants to do
the right thing by the prince he'll cut out those stops and rush right
through here. That will bring him in--well, they could make it at a
quarter of two. I've told him I'd square it with Boden and Creyville.
Oh, he'll do it all right.”
And even as he said so came the reply from Patton: “Too good to miss.
Will rush through. Arrive before two. Have carriage at Water Street.”
“That's great!” cried the Senator. “Trust Billy Patton for falling
in with a good thing. And he's right about missing the station crowd.
Patton can always go you one better,” he admitted, grinningly.
They had luncheon together, and they were a good deal more like
sophomores in college than like a United States Senator and a big
railroad man. “You don't think there's any danger of their getting
through too soon?” McVeigh kept asking, anxiously.
“Not a bit,” the Senator assured him. “They can't possibly make it
before three. We'll come in just in time for the final skirmish. It's
going to be a jolly rush at the last.”
They laid their plans with skill worthy of their training. The State
library building was across from the Capitol, and they were connected
by tunnel. “I never saw before,” said the Senator, “what that tunnel
was for, but I see now what a great thing it is. We'll get him in at
the west door of the library--we can drive right up to it, you know, and
then we walk him through the tunnel. That's a stone floor”--the Senator
was chuckling with every sentence--“so I guess they won't be carpeting
it. There's a little stairway running up from the tunnel---and say, we
must telephone over and arrange about those keys. There'll be a good
deal of climbing, but the Prince is a good fellow, and won't mind. It
wouldn't be safe to try the elevator, for Harry Weston would be in it
taking somebody a bundle of tacks. The third floor is nothing but store
rooms; we'll not be disturbed up there, and we can look right down the
rotunda and see the whole show. Of course we'll be discovered in time;
some one is sure to look up and see us, but we'll fix it so they won't
see us before we've had our fun, and it strikes me, McVeigh, that for
two old fellows like you and me we've put the thing through in pretty
neat shape.”
It was a very small and unpretentious party which stepped from the
special at Water Street a little before two. The Prince was wearing
a long coat and an automobile cap and did not suggest anything at
all formidable or unusual. “You've saved the country,” Senator Patton
whispered in an aside. “He was getting bored. Never saw a fellow jolly
up so in my life. Guess he was just spoiling for some fun. Said it would
be really worth while to see somebody who wasn't looking for him.”
Senator Bruner beamed. “That's just the point. He's caught my idea
exactly.”
It went without a hitch. “I feel,” said the Prince, as they were
hurrying him through the tunnel, “that I am a little boy who has run
away from school. Only I have a terrible fear that at any minute some
band may begin to play, and somebody may think of making a speech.”