that Fritz could change parties all in a minute. She seemed to grasp,
first of all, that it was disrespectful to his father. Some boys at
school had been putting notions into his head.
But gradually she began to see it. Fritz wanted to make money. Fritz
wanted to have it easier. And the other people did “have it easier.”
It divided her feeling: sorry and indignant for the father, secretly
glad and relieved for the boy. “He will have it easier than we had
it, papa,” she said at the last. “But it was not right of Fritz,” she
concluded, vaguely but severely.
As she washed the dishes Martha was thinking that likely Fritz's wife
would have a hired girl.
Then Martha went up to bed. He said that he would come in a few minutes,
but many minutes went by while he sat out on the side porch trying to
think it out.
The moon was shining brightly down on that hundred and sixty which Claus
Hansen was to have. And the moon, too, seemed to be saying: “What's the
use?”
Well, what _was_ the use? Perhaps, after all, the boy was right. What
had it all amounted to? What was there left? What had he done?
Two Americas, Fred had said, and his but the America of the dreamers. He
had always thought that he was fighting for the real. And now Fred said
that he had never become an American at all.
From the time he was twelve years old he had wanted to be an American.
A queer old man back in the German village--an old man, he recalled
strangely now, who had never been in America--told him about it. He told
how all men were brothers in America, how the poor and the rich loved
each other--indeed, how there were no poor and rich at all, but the
same chance for every man who would work. He told about the marvellous
resources of that distant America--gold in the earth, which men were
free to go and get, hundreds upon hundreds of miles of untouched forests
and great rivers--all for men to use, great cities no older than the men
who were in them, which men at that present moment were _making_--every
man his equal chance. He told of rich land which a man could have for
nothing, which would be _his_, if he would but go and work upon it. In
the heart of the little German boy there was kindled then a fire which
the years had never put out. His cheeks grew red, his eyes bright and
very deep as he listened to the story. He went home that night and
dreamed of going to America. And through the years of his boyhood, penny
by penny, he saved his money for America. It was his dream. It was
the passion of his life. More plainly than the events of yesterday, he
remembered his first glimpse of those wonderful shores--the lump in his
throat, the passionate excitement, the uplift. Leaning over the railing
of his boat, staring, searching, penetrating, worshipping, he lifted up
his heart and sent out his pledge of allegiance to the new land. How he
would love America, work for it, be true to it!
He had three dollars and sixty cents in his pocket when he stepped upon
American soil. He wondered if any man had ever felt richer. For had he
not reached the land where there was an equal chance for every man who
would work, where men loved each other as brothers, and where the earth
itself was so rich and so gracious in its offerings?
The old man crossed one leg over the other--slowly, stiffly. It made him
tired and stiff now just to think of the work he had done between that
day and this.
But there was something which he had always had--that something was
_his_ America. That had never wavered, though he soon learned that
between it and realities were many things which were wrong and
unfortunate. With the whole force and passion of his nature, with all
his single mindedness--would some call it simple mindedness?--he threw
himself into the fight against those things which were blurring men's
vision of his America. No work, no sacrifice was too great, for America
had enemies who called themselves friends, men who were striking heavy
blows at that equal chance for every man. When he failed, it was because
he did not know enough; he must work, he must study, he must think, in
order to make more real to other men the America which was in his heart.
He must fight for it because it was his.
And now it seemed that the end had come; he was old, he was tired, he
was not sure. Claus Hansen would have his land and his son would join
hands with the things which he had spent his life in fighting. And far
deeper and sadder and more bitter than that, he had not transmitted the
America of his heart even to his own son. He was not leaving someone to
fight for it in his stead, to win where he had failed. Fred saw in
it but a place for gain. “I lived all my life with you to learn from
failure the value of success.” That was what he had given to his boy.
Yes, that was what he had bequeathed to America. Could the failure, the
futility of his life be more clearly revealed?
Twice Martha had called to him, but still he sat, smoking, thinking.
There was much to think about to-night.
Finally, it was not thought, but visions. Too tired for conscious
thinking, he gave himself up to what came--Fred's America, his America,
the America of the dreamers--and the things which stood between. The
America of the future---what would that America be?
At the last, taking form from many things which came and went, shaping
itself slowly, form giving place to new form, he seemed to see it grow.
Out beyond that land Claus Hansen was to have, a long way off, there
rose the vision of the America of the future--an America of realities,
and yet an America of dreams; for the dreamers had become the
realists---or was it that the realists had become dreamers? In the
manifold forms taken on and cast aside destroying dualism had made way
for the strength and the dignity and harmony of unity. He watched it as
breathlessly, as yearningly, as the nineteen-year-old boy had watched
the other America taking shape in the distance some forty years before.
“How did you come?” he whispered. “What are you?”
And the voice of that real America seemed to answer: “I came because for
a long-enough time there were enough men who held me in their hearts. I
came because there were men who never gave me up. I was won by men who
believed that they had failed.”
Again there was a lump in his throat--once more an exultation flooded
all his being. For to the old man--tired, stiff, smitten though he had
been, there came again that same uplift which long before had come to
the boy. Was there not here an answer to “What's the use?” For he would
leave America as he came to it--loving it, believing in it. What were
the work and the failure of a lifetime when there was something in his
heart which was his? Should he say that he had fought in vain when
he had kept it for himself? It was as real, as wonderful--yes as
inevitable, as it had been forty years before. Realities had taken his
land, his career, his hopes for the boy. But realities had not stripped
him of his dream. The futility of the years could not harm the things
which were in his heart. Even in America he had not lost His America.
“Perhaps it is then that it is like that,” he murmured, his vision
carrying him back to the days of his broken English. “Perhaps it is that
every man's America is in the inside of his own heart. Perhaps it is
that it will come when it has grown big--big and very strong--in the
hearts.”
XII
THE ANARCHIST: HIS DOG
Stubby had a route, and that was how he happened to get a dog. For the
benefit of those who have never carried papers it should be thrown in
that having a route means getting up just when there is really some fun
in sleeping, lining up at the _Leader_ office--maybe having a scrap with
the fellow who says you took his place in the line--getting your papers
all damp from the press and starting for the outskirts of the city.
Then you double up the paper in the way that will cause all possible
difficulty in undoubling and hurl it with what force you have against
the front door. It is good to have a route, for you at least earn your
salt, so your father can't say _that_ any more. If he does, you know it
isn't so.
When you have a route, you whistle. All the fellows whistle. They may
not feel like it, but it is the custom--as could be sworn to by many
sleepy citizens. And as time goes on you succeed in acquiring the easy
manner of a brigand.
Stubby was little and everything about him seemed sawed off just a
second too soon,--his nose, his fingers, and most of all, his hair. His
head was a faithful replica of a chestnut burr. His hair did not lie
down and take things easy. It stood up--and out!--gentle ladies couldn't
possibly have let their hands sink into it--as we are told they do--for
the hands just wouldn't sink. They'd have to float.
And alas, gentle ladies didn't particularly want their hands to sink
into it. There was not that about Stubby's short person to cause
the hands of gentle ladies to move instinctively to his head. Stubby
bristled. That is, he appeared to bristle. Inwardly, Stubby yearned,
though he would have swung into his very best brigand manner on the spot
were you to suggest so offensive a thing. Just to look at Stubby you'd
never in a thousand years guess what a funny feeling he had sometimes
when he got to the top of the hill where his route began and could see
a long way down the river and the town curled in on the other side.
Sometimes when the morning sun was shining through a mist--making things
awful queer--some of the mist got into Stubby's squinty little eyes.
After the mist behaved that way he always whistled so rakishly and threw
his papers with such abandonment that people turned over in their beds
and muttered things about having that little heathen of a paper boy
shot.
All along the route are dogs. Indeed, routes are distinguished by their
dogs. Mean routes are those that have terraces and mean dogs; good
routes--where the houses are close together and the dogs run out and wag
their tails. Though Stubby's greater difficulty came through the wagging
tails; he carried in a collie neighbourhood, and all collies seemed
consumed with mighty ambitions to have routes. If you spoke to them--and
how could you _help_ speaking to a collie when he came bounding out to
you that way?--you had an awful time chasing him back, and when he got
lost--and it seemed collies spent most of their time getting lost--the
woman would put her head out next morning and want to know if you had
coaxed her dog away.
Some of the fellows had dogs that went with them on their routes. One
day one of them asked Stubby why he didn't have a dog and he replied in
surly fashion that he didn't have one 'cause he didn't want one. If he
wanted one, he guessed he'd have one.
And there was no one within ear-shot old enough or wise enough--or
tender enough?--to know from the meanness of Stubby's tone, and by his
evil scowl, that his heart was just breaking to own a dog.
One day a new dog appeared along the route. He was yellow and looked
like a cheap edition of a bull-dog. He was that kind of dog most
accurately described by saying it is hard to describe him, the kind you
say is just dog--and everybody knows.
He tried to follow Stubby; not in the trusting, bounding manner of the
collies--not happily, but hopingly. Stubby, true to the ethics of his
profession, chased him back where he had come from. That there might
be nothing whatever on his conscience, he even threw a stone after him.
Stubby was an expert in throwing things at dogs. He could seem to just
miss them and yet never hit them.
The next day it happened again; but just as he had a clod poised for
throwing, a window went up and a woman called: “For pity _sake_, little
boy, don't chase him back _here_.”
“Why--why, ain't he yours?” called Stubby.
“Mercy, _no_. We can't chase him away.”
“Who's is he?” demanded Stubby.
“Why, he's nobody's! He just hangs around. I wish you'd coax him away.”
Well, that was a _new_ one! And then all in a heap it rushed over Stubby
that this dog who was nobody's dog could, if he coaxed him away--and the
woman _wanted_ him coaxed away--be his dog.
And because that idea had such a strange effect on him he sang out, in
off-hand fashion: “Oh, all right, I'll take him away and drown him for
you!
“Oh, little _boy_,” called the woman, “why, don't _drown_ him!”
“Oh, all right, I'll shoot him then!” called obliging Stubby, whistling
for the dog--while all morning long the woman grieved over having sent a
helpless little dog away with that perfectly _brutal_ paper boy!
Stubby's mother was washing. She looked up from her tubs on the back
porch to say, “Wish you'd take that bucket--” then seeing what was
slinking behind her son, straightway assumed the role of destiny with,
“Git out o' here!”
Stubby snapped his fingers behind his back as much as to say, “Wait a
minute.”
“A woman gave him to me,” he said to his mother.
“_Gave_ him to you?” she scoffed. “I sh' think she would!”
Then something happened that had not happened many times in Stubby's
short lifetime. He acknowledged his feelings.
“I'd like to keep him. I'd like to have a dog.”
His mother shook her hands and the flying suds seemed expressing her
scorn. “Huh! _That_ ugly good-for-nothing thing?”
The dog had edged in between Stubby's feet and crouched there. “He could
go with me on my route,” said Stubby. “He'd kind of be company for me.”
And when he had said that he knew all at once just how lonesome he had
been sometimes on his route, how he had wanted something to “kind of be
company” for him.
His face twitched as he stooped down to pat the dog. Mrs. Lynch looked
at her son--youngest of her five. Not the hardness of her heart but the
hardness of her life had made her unpractised in moments of tenderness.
Something in the way Stubby was patting the dog suggested to her that
Stubby was a “queer one.” He _was_ kind of little to be carrying papers
all by himself.
Stubby looked up. “He could eat what's thrown away.”
That was an error in diplomacy. The woman's face hardened. “Mighty
little'll be thrown away _this_ winter,” she muttered.
But just then Mrs. Johnson appeared on the other side of the fence and
began hanging up her clothes and with that Mrs. Lynch saw her way to
justify herself in indulging her son. Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Lynch had
“had words.” “You just let him stay around, Stubby,” she called, and
you would have supposed from her tone it was Stubby who was on the other
side of the fence, “maybe he'll keep the neighbour's chickens out! Them
that ain't got chickens o' their own don't want to be bothered with the
neighbours'!”
That was how it happened that he stayed; and no one but Stubby knew--and
possibly Stubby didn't either--how it happened that he was named Hero.
It would seem that Hero should be a noble St. Bernard, or a particularly
mean-looking bulldog, not a stocky, shapeless, squint-eyed yellow dog
with one ear bitten half off and one leg built on an entirely different
plan from its fellow legs. Possibly Stubby's own spiritual experiences
had suggested to him that you weren't necessarily the way you looked.
The chickens were pretty well kept out, though no one ever saw Hero
doing any of it. Perhaps Hero had been too long associated with chasing
to desire any part in it--even with roles reversed. If Stubby could help
it, no one really saw Stubby doing the chasing either; he became skilled
in chasing when he did not appear to be chasing; then he would get Hero
to barking and turn to his mother with, “Guess you don't see so many
chickens round nowadays.”
The fellows in the line jeered at Hero at first, but they soon tired of
it when Stubby said he didn't want the cur but his mother made him
stay around to keep the chickens out. He was a fine chicken dog, Stubby
grudgingly admitted. He couldn't keep him from following, said Stubby,
so he just let him come. Sometimes when they were waiting in line Stubby
made ferocious threats at Hero. He was going to break his back and wring
his head off and do other heartless things which for some reason he
never started in right then and there to accomplish.
It was different when they were alone--and they were alone a good deal.
Stubby's route wasn't nearly so long after he had Hero to go with him.
When winter came and five o'clock was dark and cold for starting out
it was pretty good to have Hero trotting at his heels. And Hero always
wanted to go; it was never so rainy nor so cold that that yellow dog
seemed to think he would rather stay home by the fire. Then Hero was
always waiting for him when he came home from school. Stubby would sing
out, “Hello, cur!” and the tone was such that Hero did not grasp that he
was being insulted. Sometimes when there was nobody about, Stubby
picked Hero up in his arms and squeezed him--Stubby had not had a large
experience with squeezing. At those times Hero would lick Stubby's face
and whimper a little love whimper and such were the workings of Stubby's
heart and mind that that made him of quite as much account as if he
really had chased the chickens. Stubby, who had seen the way dogs can
look at you out of their eyes, was not one to say of a dog, “What good
is he?”
But it seemed there were such people. There were even people who thought
you oughtn't to have a dog to love and to love you if you weren't one
of those rich people who could pay two dollars and a half a year for the
luxury.
Stubby first heard of those people one night in June. The father of the
Lynch family was sitting in the back yard reading the paper when Hero
and Stubby came running in from the alley. It was one of those moments
when Hero, forgetting the bleakness of his youth, abandoned himself to
the joy of living. He was tearing round and round Stubby, barking, when
Stubby's father called out: “Here!--shut up there, you cur. You better
lie low. You're going to be shot the first of August.”
Stubby, and as regards the joy of living Hero had done as much for
Stubby as Stubby for Hero, came to a halt. The fun and frolic just
died right out of him and he stood there staring at his father, who had
turned the page and was settling himself to a new horror. At last Stubby
spoke. “Why's he going to be shot on the first of August?” he asked in a
tight little voice.
His father looked up. “Why's he going to be shot? You got any two
dollars and a half to pay for him?”
He laughed as though that were a joke. Well, it was something of a joke.
Stubby got ten cents a week out of his paper money. The rest he “turned
in.”
Then he went back to his paper. There was another long pause before
Stubby asked, in that tight queer little voice: “What'd I have to pay
two dollars and a half for? Nobody owns him.”
His parent stirred scornfully. “Suppose you never heard of a dog tax,
did you? S'pose they don't learn you nothing like that at school?”
Yes, Stubby did know that dogs had to have checks, but he hadn't
thought anything about that in connection with Hero. He ventured another
question. “You have to have 'em for all dogs, even if you just picked
'em up on the street and took care of 'em when nobody else would?”
“You bet you do,” his parent assured him genially. “You pay your dog tax
or the policeman comes on the first of August and shoots your dog.”
With that he dismissed it for good, burying himself in his paper. For a
minute the boy stood there in silence. Then he walked slowly round the
house and sat down where his father couldn't see him. Hero followed--it
was a way Hero had. The dog sat down beside the boy and after a couple
of minutes the boy's arm stole furtively around him and they sat there
very still for a long time.
As nobody but Hero paid much attention to him, nobody save Hero noticed
how quiet and queer Stubby was for the next three days. Hero must have
noticed it, for he was quiet and queer too. He followed wherever Stubby
would let him, and every time he got a chance he would nestle up to him
and look into his face--that way even cur dogs have of doing when they
fear something is wrong.
At the end of three days Stubby, his little freckled face set and grim,
took his stand in front of his father and came right out with: “I want
to keep one week's paper money to pay Hero's tax.”
His father's chair had been tilted back against a tree. Now it came down
with a thud. “Oh, you _do_, do you?”
“I can earn the other fifty cents at little jobs.”
“You _can_, can you? Now ain't you smart!”
The tone brought the blood to Stubby's face. “I think I got a right to,”
he said, his voice low.
The man's face, which had been taunting, grew ugly. “Look a-here, young
man, none o' your lip!”
The tears rushed to Stubby's eyes but he stumbled on: “I guess Hero's
got a right to some of my paper money when he goes with me every day on
my route.”
At that his father stared for a minute and then burst into a loud laugh.
Blinded with tears, the boy turned to the house.
After she had gone to bed that night Stubby's mother heard a sound from
the alcove at the head of the stairs where her youngest child slept. As
the sound kept on she got out of her bed and went to Stubby's cot.
“Look here,” she said, awkwardly but not unkindly, “this won't do. We're
poor folks, Freddie” (it was only once in a while she called him that),
“all we can do to live these times--we can't pay no dog tax.”
As Stubby did not speak she added: “I know you've taken to the dog, but
just the same you ain't to feel hard to your pa. He can't help it--and
neither can I. Things is as they is--and nobody can help it.”
As, despite this bit of philosophy Stubby was still gulping back sobs,
she added what she thought a master stroke in consolation. “Now you just
go right to sleep, and if they come to take this dog away maybe you can
pick up another one in the fall.”
The sobs suddenly stopped and Stubby stared at her. And what he said
after a long stare was: “I guess there ain't no use in you and me
talking about it.”
“That's right,” said she, relieved; “now you go right off to sleep.”
And she left him, never dreaming why Stubby had seen there was no use
talking about it.
Nor did he talk about it; but a change came over Stubby's funny little
person in the next few days. The change was particularly concerned with
his jaw, though there was something different, too, in the light in his
eyes as he looked straight ahead, and something different in his voice
when he said: “Come on, Hero.”
He got so he could walk into a store and demand, in a hard little voice:
“Want a boy to do anything for you?” and when they said, “Got more boys
than we know what to do with, sonny,” Stubby would say, “All right,” and
stalk sturdily out again. Sometimes they laughed and said: “What could
_you_ do?” and then Stubby would stalk out, but possibly a little less
sturdily.
Vacation came the next week, and still he had found nothing. His father,
however, had been more successful. He found a place where they wanted a
boy to work in a yard a couple of hours in the morning. For that Stubby
was to get a dollar and a half a week. But that was to be turned in for
his “keep.” There were lots of mouths to feed--as Stubby's mother was
always calling to her neighbour across the alley.
But the yard gave Stubby an idea, and he earned some dimes and one
quarter in the next week. Most folks thought he was too little--one kind
lady told him he ought to be playing, not working--but there were people
who would let him take a big shears and cut grass around flower beds,
and things like that. This he had to do afternoons, when he was supposed
to be off playing, and when he came home his mother sometimes said some
folks had it easy--playing around all day.
It was now the first week in July and Stubby had a dollar and twenty
cents. It was getting to the point where he would wake in the night and
find himself sitting up in bed, hands clenched. He dreamed dreams about
how folks would let him live if he had ninety-nine cents but how he only
had ninety-seven and a half, so they were going to shoot him.
Then one day he found Mr. Stuart. He was passing the house after having
asked three people if they wanted a boy, and they didn't, and seemed so
surprised at the idea of their wanting him that Stubby's throat was all
tight, when Mr. Stuart sang out: “Say, boy, want a little job?”
It seemed at first it must be a joke--or a dream--anybody asking him if
he _wanted_ one, but the man was beckoning to him, so he pulled himself
together and ran up the steps.
“Now here's a little package”--he took something out of the mail box.
“It doesn't belong here. It's to go to three-hundred-two Pleasant
street. You take it for a dime?”
Stubby nodded.
As he was going down the steps the man called: “Say, boy, how'd you like
a steady job?”
For the first minute it seemed pretty mean--making fun of a fellow that
way!