MR. SQUEM 
 
 SOME MALE 
 
 TRIANGLES 
 
 Arthur Russell Taylor

 
 MR. SQUEM AND SOME 
 MALE TRIANGLES 
 
 ARTHUR RUSSELL TAYLOR 
 
 fINTV. OF CALIF. LIBRARY. LOS ANGELE9
 
 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 SOME MALE 
 
 TRIANGLES 
 
 BY 
 
 ARTHUR RUSSELL TAYLOR 
 
 'Frankly accept the creatureship' 
 
 NEW XSJr YORK 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
 (Ql'fc 
 
 L.i; U It: VV K ICKI 'o IK', r :
 
 Copyright, 1918, 
 By Georgt H. Doran Company 
 
 Copyright, 1917, 1918, 
 By The Atlantic Monthly Company 
 
 Copyright, 1917, 
 By The Independent 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
 IZ 7H;
 
 TO MY WIFE 
 
 2133273
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 MR. SQUEM 
 
 I PAGE 
 
 A RAILWAY EPISODE: GOD AND CULTURE 11 
 
 II 
 
 A COUNTRY-HOUSE EPISODE: BEING A GEN- 
 TLEMAN . . . . . . ' t . .35 
 
 III 
 A PLAYHOUSE EPISODE: THE SEX INSTINCT 57 
 
 IV 
 
 AN AUTOMOBILE EPISODE: "UP TO THE 
 GOOD MAN" 71 
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 
 
 V 
 
 MR. THORNTON 
 THE REVEREND MR. BOWLES THE DRIVER 93 
 
 IV 
 
 MR. SMILEY 
 MR. HUNTER MR. BRADLEY 107 
 
 VII 
 
 JUDGE ARBUTHNOT 
 
 MR. JONES DR. KENNEDY 125 
 
 vii
 
 Vlll CONTENTS 
 
 VIII PAGE 
 
 THE REVEREND AMBROSE HORTON 
 MR. THORPE THE BRAKEMAN 135 
 
 IX 
 
 THE REVEREND JUSTIN HUNT 
 DOCTOR HENDERSON MR. BLOGGS 141
 
 MR. SQUEM
 
 MR. SQUEM AND SOME MALE 
 TRIANGLES 
 
 A RAILWAY EPISODE: GOD AND CULTURE 
 
 WHY do we go on perpetuating 
 an uncomfortable breed?" 
 The man who was shaving at the 
 mirror-panelled door of the Pullman 
 smoking compartment looked at his 
 questioner on the leather seat opposite. 
 "Give it up," he answered. "Why 
 is a hen?" 
 
 The first man rapped his pipe empty 
 on the edge of a cuspidor. 
 "You answer the question," he said, 
 ,11
 
 12 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 "in the only possible way by asking 
 another." 
 
 "Right," answered the shaver, and 
 began to run the hot water. 
 
 A closely built man, in a suit so heav- 
 ily striped as to seem stripes before 
 it was a suit, lurched into the compart- 
 ment and settled himself to his paper 
 and cigar. 
 
 "That monkey-on-a-stick, " he pres- 
 ently broke out, "is still taking good 
 money away from the asses who go to 
 hear him rant about God and Hell and 
 all the rest, up in Boston. I am so 
 damn tired of him, and of that rich 
 rough-neck Freeze. It's the limit." 
 
 "Pretty much," said the man with 
 the pipe. "I was reading about the 
 Belgians just before you came in, and 
 when I jumped away from them I lit 
 on some things about Poland. Then I 
 wondered aloud to this gentleman why 
 we go on multiplying increasing such
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 13 
 
 an uncomfortable breed. Modoc gods 
 and degenerate millionaires make one 
 wonder more. ' ' 
 
 "What is your line, may I ask?'* in- 
 quired the stripe-suited man. 
 
 "Keligion." 
 
 "The hell I beg pardon. If you 
 mean you're a preacher, or something 
 like that, all I've got to say is, you're 
 a funny one. It's your job, isn't it, to 
 be dead sure that everything's all 
 right, or somehow going to be all right 
 no matter about all the mussed-up- 
 ness? Yes, that's certainly your job. 
 Yet here you are, asking why we go on 
 stocking the world with kids. I might 
 ask that, I'm in rubber tires, but not 
 you. Yes, I might only I don't." 
 
 The man who had been shaving had 
 resumed his tie, collar, and coat, and 
 now lighted a cigarette. 
 
 "I lay my money," he said, "on one 
 thing: that, if men let themselves go,
 
 14 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 they wind up shortly with God or 
 with what would be God if there were 
 any. You've come to it early through 
 the Ledger. You'd have got to it soon- 
 er or later, though, if you'd been talk- 
 ing about hunting-dogs provided 
 you'd have let yourselves go." 
 
 "Well, now," asked the closely built 
 man, "what is your line?" 
 
 "Education." 
 
 "High-brow company! Seems to me 
 the pair of you ought to be silencers for 
 a plain business man like me. Rubber is 
 my line not how the world is run. My 
 opinion on that is small change, sure. 
 Yet I think it ought to be run, the 
 world, I mean, even if it's mussed- 
 up to the limit, and I think it's up 
 to us to keep it running. The parson 
 here if he is a parson asks why we 
 should ; that is, if I get him. And then 
 I think there's a manager of it all in 
 the central office a manager, under-
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 15 
 
 stand, though he never seems to show 
 up around the works, and certainly 
 does seem to have some of the darn- 
 edest ways. The professor here if he 
 is a professor doesn't sense any man- 
 ager ; that is, if I get him straight, with 
 his ' if there were any. ' That was what 
 you said, wasn't it? I'm a picked chick- 
 en on religion and education, but, hon- 
 est, both those ideas would mean soft 
 tires for me yes, sir, soft tires." 
 
 * ' Broad Street, gentlemen, ' ' said the 
 porter at the door. 
 
 The Reverend Allan Dare walked 
 away from the train and down the 
 street. He was Episcopally faced and 
 Episcopally trim, and he was having 
 considerable difficulty in holding his 
 universe together. This is not pleasant 
 at forty-two, when you want your uni- 
 verse held together and things settled 
 and calm. He had an uncomfortable
 
 16 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 sense that this difficulty had jolted into 
 plain sight on the car. 
 
 "Ass!" he addressed himself briefly. 
 "To let your sag and unsettlement 
 loose in that way ! To say such a thing 
 as you said, and in such a place! To 
 parade your momentary distrust of 
 life ! Ass oh, ass ! * ' 
 
 He said or thought a Prayer- 
 Book collect, one which seemed rather 
 suited to asses, and continued, 
 
 "I suppose I'm three-tenths sag no 
 more ; and ' He knoweth whereof we are 
 made,' and what a devil of a world it 
 is to be in just now. But that rubber 
 man on the car he isn't sag at all. 
 Heavens, his crudeness! His beastly 
 clothes, and the bare shaved welt 
 around the back of his neck, and that 
 awful seal ring! But he's fastened. 
 Life is worth pushing at and cheering 
 for and there's a manager, if he has 
 'the darnedest ways.' I'd give some-
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 17 
 
 thing for an every-minute mood like 
 that a carrying night-and-day sure- 
 ness like that. He's not illuminated 
 lucky dog!" 
 
 Professor William Emory Browne 
 had changed cars and was continuing 
 his journey. In his lap lay a volume of 
 essays just put forth by a member of 
 his craft, a college professor. He 
 opened it, it chanced at page 27, and 
 his eye was caught by the name of his 
 own specialty. He read : 
 
 "Philosophy is the science which 
 proves that we can know nothing of the 
 soul. Medicine is the science which 
 tells that we know nothing of the body. 
 Political Economy is that which teach- 
 es that we know nothing of the laws of 
 wealth; and Theology the critical his- 
 tory of those errors from which we de- 
 duce our ignorance of God."
 
 18 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 "Confound it!" ejaculated Profes- 
 sor Browne, and closed the book. 
 
 "Room for one morel" inquired a 
 voice, and the rubber-tire man slid in- 
 to the seat. 
 
 "I just pulled off a little thing out 
 here," he said, "that ought to put a 
 small star in my crown. A down-and- 
 out a tough looker says to me, 
 'Please, mister, give me a dime. I'm 
 hungry. ' And I says to him, * Get out ! 
 What you want is a good drink, go 
 get it,' and slips him a quarter. Talk 
 about gratitude! To think there are 
 men you know it and I know it and 
 he was afraid of it who'd have steer- 
 ed him to a quick-lunch and put him 
 against soft-boiled eggs!" 
 
 " 'Man's inhumanity to man' " 
 
 ' ' Sure ! Nothing but that ever makes 
 me any trouble about things. Tear 
 ninety, George, x " this to the conduc- 
 tor, "and burn this panetella some
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 19 
 
 time. You said you were in education," 
 he went on. "I've just blown myself 
 to a Universal History five big vol- 
 umes, with lots of maps and pictures 
 and flags of all nations and hanging 
 gardens of Babylon and things like 
 that. Gave down thirty-five for it, and 
 my name is printed Peter B. Squem 
 on the first page of every book. 
 Now," Mr. Squem grew quite earn- 
 est, "you'd say, wouldn't you, that if 
 a man could take those books down, 
 chew them up, you understand, and 
 take them down, he'd have an educa- 
 tion? Not the same, of course, as nor- 
 mal school or college, and yet an edu- 
 cation." 
 
 "I think, if you know what's good 
 for you, you will steer clear of what 
 you call an education. I think I should 
 stick to rubber tires, and a few com- 
 fortable certainties and peace." 
 
 Mr. Squem stared. "How's that?"
 
 20 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 he inquired. "Education is your line, 
 you were saying, and yet you queer 
 your stuff. I'd get quick word from 
 the house, if I handled Mercury tires 
 that way." 
 
 "But you wouldn't," rejoined Pro- 
 fessor Browne, "you wouldn't, because 
 tires mean something. Tires are your 
 life-preserver they are shaped like 
 life-preservers, aren't they?" 
 
 "You've got me going," said Mr. 
 Squem, "and no mistake. I don't mind 
 telling you I'd hoped to get some hunch 
 from you on education. You see, my 
 clothes are right, I always have a room 
 with bath, and I get two hundred a 
 month and fifty on the side. I read the 
 papers and the magazine section on 
 Sunday and I got through four books 
 last year. And yet there's something 
 not there by Keefer, not there! I'd 
 give something to get it there to slide 
 it under, somehow, and bring the rest
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 21 
 
 of me up to regular manicuring and 
 ice-cream forks and the way my clothes 
 fit!" 
 
 Mr. Squem was interrupted in the 
 expression of this craving. There was 
 a tremendous jar; the car tore and 
 bumped with an immense pounding 
 over the ties, then careened and 
 sprawled down a short bank and set- 
 tled on its side. People who have been 
 through such an experience will require 
 no description. To others none can be 
 given. In the bedlam chaos and jum- 
 ble, and chorus of shrieks and smash- 
 ing glass, Professor Browne, strug- 
 gling up through the bodies which had 
 been hurled upon him, was conscious of 
 a pain almost intolerably sharp in his 
 leg, and then of a sort of striped whirl- 
 wind which seemed to be everywhere 
 at once, extricating, calming, ordering, 
 comforting and swearing. It was like 
 a machine-gun:
 
 22 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 "Keep your clothes on, nothing's go- 
 ing to bite you just a little shake-up 
 Yes, chick, we'll find your ma No, 
 you don't climb over those people; sit 
 down or I'll help you To hell with 
 your valise, pick up that child ! There 
 go the axes ; everybody quiet now, just 
 where he is You with the side-whisk- 
 ers get back, back, hear me! Now, 
 children first, hand 'em along women 
 next, so men last Why didn't you 
 say you was a doctor? Get out there 
 quick, some of those people have got 
 broke and need you!" 
 
 Professor Browne was one of these 
 last. Lifted by Peter Squem and a 
 very scared brakeman, he lay on two 
 Pullman mattresses at the side of the 
 track, waiting for the rabbit-faced 
 country doctor to reach him. He was 
 suffering very much, it seemed to him 
 that he had never really known pain 
 before, but his attention went to a
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 23 
 
 white-haired lady near by a slight, 
 slender woman, with breeding written 
 all over her. She had made her way 
 from the drawing-room of the Pullman, 
 and leaned heavily upon her maid, in a 
 state approaching collapse. Professor 
 Browne was impressed by her air of 
 distinction even in the midst of his 
 pain. Then he saw a striped arm- sup- 
 portingly encircle her, and a hand dom- 
 inated by an enormous seal ring press 
 to her lips an open bottle of Scotch. 
 
 "Let it trickle down, auntie right 
 down. It's just what you need," said 
 Peter B. Squem. 
 
 1 'What did you think of when the 
 car stopped rolling?" 
 
 Professor Browne, lying in his bed, 
 asked this question of Mr. Squem, sit- 
 ting at its side. The latter had got the 
 professor home to his house and his 
 housekeeper after the accident the day
 
 24 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 before, had found the best surgeon in 
 town and stood by while he worked, 
 had in a dozen ways helped a bad busi- 
 ness to go as well as possible, and now, 
 having remained over night, was await- 
 ing the hour of his train. 
 
 4 'Think of! Nothing. No time. I 
 was that crosseyed boy you've heard 
 about the one at the three-ringed cir- 
 cus. Did you see that newly-wed roos- 
 ter I'll bet he was that the one 
 with the celluloid collar? 'Good-bye, 
 Maude ! ' he yells, and then tries to butt 
 himself through the roof. He wouldn't 
 have left one sound rib in the car if I 
 hadn't pinned him. No, I hadn't any- 
 time to think." 
 
 He produced and consulted a watch 
 one that struck the professor as be- 
 ing almost too loud an ornament for 
 a Christmas tree. An infant's face 
 showed within as the case opened.
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 25 
 
 "Your baby?" inquired Professor 
 Browne. 
 
 "Never. Not good enough. This kid 
 I found where do you suppose? On 
 a picture-postal at a news-stand. The 
 picture was no good except the kid; 
 and I cut him out, you see. Say, do 
 you know the picture was painted by a 
 man out in Montana? Yes, sir, Mon- 
 tana. They had the cards made over 
 in Europe somewhere, Dagoes, likely, 
 and when they put his name on it, 
 they didn't do a thing to that word 
 Montana. Some spelling!" 
 
 "Why, what you have there," said 
 the professor, taking the watch with 
 interest, "is the Holy Child of Andrea 
 Mantegna's Circumcision, it's in the 
 Uffizi at Florence. Singularly good it 
 is, too. I'm very much wrapped up in 
 the question, raised in a late book, of 
 Mantegna's influence upon Giovanni 
 Bellini. There's a rather fine point
 
 26 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 made in connection with another child 
 in this same picture a larger one, 
 pressing against his mother's knees." 
 
 Mr. Squem was perfectly uncompre- 
 hending. "Come again," he remarked. 
 "No, you needn't, either, for I don't 
 know anything about the rest of the 
 picture. I told you it was no good. 
 There was an old party in a funny 
 bath-robe and with heavy Belshazzars, 
 I remember but the picture was 
 this." 
 
 He rose and began to get into his 
 overcoat. 
 
 "There's one thing about this kid," 
 he said, in a casual tone which some- 
 how let earnestness through. "I know 
 a man, he travels out of Phillie, and 
 he's some booze-artist and other things 
 that go along, who's got one of those 
 little * Josephs.' You know, those lit- 
 tle dolls that Catholics tote around? 
 Separate him from it? Not on your
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 27 
 
 life. Why, he missed it one night on a 
 sleeper, and he cussed and reared 
 around, and made the coon rout every- 
 body out till he found it. It's luck, you 
 see. Now this kid" Mr. Squem was 
 pulling on his gloves "isn't luck, but 
 he works like luck. He talks to me, un- 
 derstand, and" here a pause "he 
 puts all sorts of cussedness on the 
 blink. You can't look at him and be an 
 Indian. I was making the wrong sort 
 of date in Trenton one day, and I saw 
 him just in time sent the girl word 
 I'd been called out of town. I was fig- 
 uring on the right time to pinch a man 
 in the door, he 'd done me dirty, and 
 I saw him again. Good-night ! I 'm nev- 
 er so punk that he doesn't ginger me 
 doesn't look good to me. The manage- 
 ment is mixed up with him and I hook 
 up to him. Here's the taxi. So long, 
 professor. Rats! I haven't done one
 
 28 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 little thing. Good luck to your game 
 leg!" 
 
 It was Sunday morning, and service 
 was under way in the Church of the 
 Holy Faith. For the thousandth time 
 the Reverend Allan Dare had dearly 
 beloveded his people, assembled to the 
 number of four hundred before him, ex- 
 horting them in such forthright Eng- 
 lish as cannot be written nowadays, not 
 to dissemble nor cloak their sins before 
 God, and to accompany him unto the 
 throne of the heavenly grace. He had 
 had a sick feeling, as he read this ex- 
 hortation, so full of pound, rhythm, 
 heart-search, and splendid good sense, 
 to the courteous abstractedness in the 
 pews. 
 
 "Heavens!" he had thought, "once 
 this burnt in!" He had wanted to 
 shriek or fire a pistol in the air and 
 then crush the meaning into his people ;
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 29 
 
 crush God into them, yes, and into him- 
 self. 
 
 He was four-tenths sag that morning 
 the Rev. Allan Dare. In the Jubi- 
 late, a small choir-boy a phenomenon 
 who was paid a thousand a year, and 
 was responsible for the presence of not 
 a few of the four hundred had sung 
 "Be ye sure that the Lord he is God," 
 to the ravishment of the congregation 
 not of the rector, who stood looking 
 dead ahead. The First Lesson had been 
 all about Jonadab, the son of Rechab, 
 and drinking no wine frightful inept- 
 ness! What could it mean to any 
 one! how help any one? Here 
 was Life, with all its cruel tan- 
 gles, tighter and more choking every 
 day. Here was Arnold's darkling 
 plain, and the confused alarms and the 
 ignorant armies clashing by night. 
 
 There came back to Dare the creed 
 he had heard in the smoking compart-
 
 80 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 ment: "I think it ought to be run, 
 the world, even if it's mussed-up to 
 the limit, and I think it's up to us to 
 keep it running. I think there's a man- 
 ager of it all in the central office a 
 manager, understand, though he never 
 seems to show up around the works, 
 and certainly does seem to have some 
 of the darnedest ways." 
 
 "0 God!" breathed Alla'n Dare, 
 1 'there are so many things so many 
 things ! ' ' 
 
 It was the same Sunday. Professor 
 William Emory Browne was for the 
 first time on crutches, and stood sup- 
 ported by them at his window. 
 
 "Back again," he ruminated. "I can 
 probably drive to my classes in another 
 week. Then the same old grind, show- 
 ing ingenuous youth who fortunately 
 will not see it how "the search hath 
 taught me that the search is vain. ' ' Ho,
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 31 
 
 hum ! How very kind, that Mr. Squem, 
 he did so much for me, and how 
 very funny! I should like to produce 
 him at the seminar with his just-right 
 clothes, his dream of culture via his 
 Universal History, his approach to re- 
 ality through a picture postal card!'* 
 
 He turned on himself almost savage- 
 ly. Then, 
 
 "What the devil are you patronising 
 him for? Don't you see that he is hook- 
 ed to something and you are not, that 
 he is warm and you are freezing, that 
 he is part of the wave, the wave, man, 
 and that you are just a miserable, 
 tossing clot?" 
 
 It was the same Sunday. Mr. Squem 
 sat in his room extremely dennish, 
 smitingly red as to walls, oppressive 
 with plush upholstery. A huge deer- 
 head, jutting from over the mantel, 
 divided honours with a highly-coloured
 
 32 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 September Morn, affrontingly framed. 
 On a shelf stood a small bottle. It 
 contained a finger of Mr. Squem, am- 
 putated years before, in alcohol. 
 
 On the knees of the owner of the 
 room was Volume One of the Universal 
 History Number 32, so red-ink fig- 
 ures affirmed, of a limited edition of 
 five hundred sets. Mr. Squem 's name 
 was displayed, in very large Old Eng- 
 lish on the fly-leaf, and above was "an 
 empty oval wherein his portrait might 
 be placed. 
 
 "No use," soliloquised the owner of 
 this treasure, "no use. If I could chew 
 it up and get it down or two of it 
 that wouldn't slide under the thing that 
 isn't there. Nothing will ever put me 
 in the class of Professor Browne or 
 that preacher on the car, or bring the 
 rest of me up to my clothes." 
 
 He rose and stretched. 
 
 "Maybe," he said, addressing a huge
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 33 
 
 chocolate-coloured bust of an Indian 
 lady, " maybe I can eaten up to those 
 fellows some time but not here. Noon, 
 I bet," looking at his watch, "and 
 it is to eat." 
 
 He contemplated the Mantegna baby. 
 
 "So long," he said, "you're running 
 things" and snapped his watch.
 
 n 
 
 A COUNTRY-HOUSE EPISODE: BEING A 
 GENTLEMAN 
 
 A GOOD-LOOKER and a high 
 hooker!" This was the verdict 
 of Mr. Squem upon Miss Cynthia 
 Browne. 
 
 Professor William Emory Browne 
 had been asked down to the country- 
 house of his widower brother, on the 
 ocean, to dine and stay the night, and 
 his niece had written him to bring any 
 one he liked. 
 
 The professor had at once thought 
 of Mr. Squem, travelling representative 
 of the Mercury Rubber-Tire Company, 
 to whom he was indebted for services 
 openhandedly rendered in a pinch a 
 35
 
 36 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 railway accident. "Just the way to 
 recognise him," thought the professor, 
 and was rather comfortable. Indeed, 
 reflecting upon the opportunity thus 
 opened to Mr. Squem, he almost 
 glowed. Behind was the feeling a bit 
 zestful that in this way he would be 
 exhibiting to his brother's household a 
 unique and quite amusing person pro- 
 viding the party with an experience. 
 A singular blend of motives, which Mr. 
 Squem could not possibly have under- 
 stood. 
 
 Professor Browne's brother had 
 come into the world and lived in the 
 world with just one object to make a 
 million dollars. This he had done, and 
 there seemed nothing more to say. Yes, 
 one thing more : he had fathered Cyn- 
 thia, now a girl of twenty-two, with 
 the ghost of a soul-starved mother 
 who, in common with everything else, 
 had stood aside for the million dollars
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 37 
 
 looking out of her eyes. The brother, 
 the brother's daughter, and a Mr. Dud- 
 ley Ledgerwood, were the people whom 
 Professor Browne invited Mr. Squem 
 to the country-house to meet and to 
 amuse. 
 
 Mr. Squem arrived in state, bearing 
 a large suit-case and a hat-box, the lat- 
 ter 's maiden appearance, though it had 
 been a treasured possession for five 
 years. The house and its scale im- 
 pressed him, and particularly a foun- 
 tain copy of Verrocchio's Boy with 
 the Dolphin well placed before the 
 main entrance; but he could not help 
 feeling a certain bareness, not to say 
 meagreness, in the room to which he 
 was conducted by the very correct 
 maid. True, Tony's Seven Chair Sani- 
 tary Shaving Parlor was not more im- 
 maculate, and if he knew a good bed, 
 there it was; but the room lacked in 
 colour-warmth, Mr. Squem thought of
 
 38 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 his own green carpet and red walls, 
 there were but three wall pictures, and 
 they most unstriking, and the mantel 
 was destitute of such decorative bric-a- 
 brac, picked up at Atlantic City and 
 elsewhere, as the guest loved. Mr. 
 Squem noted these limitations, then 
 adjured himself to "quit knocking," 
 and proceeded to dress for dinner. He 
 was the only one who did, the butler 
 excepted, the three other gentlemen be- 
 ing in light summer clothes. 
 
 Miss Cynthia greeted him with frank 
 cordiality; rarely had his "pleased to 
 meet you" received so warming a 
 come-back. She was a thoroughbred 
 her features, her carriage, her total, 
 persuaded Mr. Squem of that. Yes, a 
 thoroughbred a good-looker and a 
 high-hooker! Her father came out of 
 his million-dollar grave long enough to 
 assure the visitor that he was welcome, 
 and then ceased to exist, and Mr. Dud-
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 39 
 
 ley Ledgerwood bowed faintly, looking 
 over Mr. Squem's head. 
 
 This Mr. Ledgerwood was a life- 
 weary person of thirty-five, with the 
 bored expression of one permanently 
 waiting for a train. He seemed chroni- 
 cally tired, but not so tired as certain 
 who encountered him. He had trained 
 a really capable mind upon things 
 which he was certain were affected by 
 very few. He wrote always from a 
 quite Olympian standpoint occasional 
 reviews of books for magazines of lim- 
 ited circulation, and was suspected of 
 having dark designs upon a Book of his 
 own. He was bare of any convictions, 
 their place being taken by a passion 
 for being different. So his life went 
 in dissatisfiedly sniffing things. His 
 thoughts were not intentionally other 
 people's thoughts, or his ways, where 
 he could help it, their ways. A mys-
 
 40 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 terious providence had given him con- 
 siderable money. 
 
 The dinner struck Mr. Squem as an 
 all-right thing and function, although 
 simpler than at some hotels he knew, 
 and he wondered a bit that there was 
 no orchestra. They had scarcely fin- 
 ished the soup before Professor 
 Browne, thinking it time for the enter- 
 tainment to begin, remarked, 
 
 "Mr. Squem, though an active man 
 of affairs, is no stranger to liberal cul- 
 ture. Perhaps he will tell you about 
 his Universal History." 
 
 "No good," said Mr. Squem with de- 
 cision, "no good! You see," he frank- 
 ly took in the company, "I only got 
 as far as the sixth grade and you 
 know you feel that, when you begin to 
 shuck the day coach for the Pullman 
 and have your clothes built for you and 
 hang out at four-per hotels. You sure 
 do. Something isn't there. I felt it
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 41 
 
 after I got to giving sixty straight for 
 a sack-suit, and after I got my car 
 some car, believe me! Well, I was tell- 
 ing the professor here how maybe I 
 could put it there the thing that was- 
 n't by chewing up a thirty-five dollar 
 Universal History I bought some- 
 thing elegant and classy. But it was 
 no go no go. I want to tell you I lit 
 into that thing for fair loaded up on 
 the pyramids and the Monroe Doctrine 
 and radium and a lot of other things. 
 But it didn't put over what wasn't 
 there, not one little bit, and I kept 
 on getting up against people who made 
 me feel it. So I say it was no good, 
 relish an olive, Miss Browne! I gave 
 it to the Home for the Friendless." 
 
 "Lamentable!" said Mr. Ledger- 
 wood. "Really " 
 
 A diversion came at this point, the 
 punctilious butler for the first recorded 
 time spilling something. It was mush-
 
 42 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 room sauce, and a very little trickled 
 down the left and right arms of Mr. 
 Sqnem and Mr. Ledgerwood, seated 
 side by side. The latter bent upon the 
 man a look which might have pene- 
 trated armour-plate. He was extreme- 
 ly irritated and let it be seen. Not so 
 Mr. Squem. 
 
 "Whoa, George!" he beamed reas- 
 suringly upon the unhappy butler. 
 "I'm no Lillian Russell. No milk-baths 
 for me!" 
 
 Miss Cynthia instantly covered up. 
 
 "So sorry," she said, "so very sor- 
 ry!" And then hurriedly: "Oh, I do 
 so thank you, Mr. Ledgerwood, for the 
 picture my note was the poorest 
 thing. Will you try to know what a 
 satisfaction it is, and what a prize to 
 own ? I 'm going to have it brought my 
 uncle must see it. You'll envy me," 
 she added to Professor Browne. 
 
 Then there was borne in, and placed
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 43 
 
 for all to see, such a painting as Mr. 
 Squem had never in all his days, out- 
 side a junk-shop, beheld ; a copy of the 
 Becanati Annunciation of Lorenzo 
 Lotto; exceedingly old and dingy, and 
 with blisters here and there a fearful 
 wreck, in a woefully tarnished frame! 
 Why was it there ? 
 
 "Well enough," said Mr. Ledger- 
 wood with languor, as candles were 
 shifted here and there before the can- 
 vas, ' ' and by way of being early fair- 
 ly early. Of course it's been ' com- 
 forted' a bit. The vehicle is reason- 
 ably clear, with something of the orig- 
 inal's subtle qualities of tint." (He 
 had cribbed this phrasing from Mr. 
 Berenson.) "The lights and shadows, 
 too, are treated with ah, genuine sci- 
 ence, as there. Does the cat here at all 
 suggest the lion of the Hamburg St. 
 Jerome, Professor Browne!" 
 
 Professor Browne was as Mr.
 
 44 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 Ledgerwood devoutly hoped would be 
 the case unable to say, and further 
 conversation permitted a display of im- 
 pressive connoisseurship worth giv- 
 ing a picture for any day. At length 
 the professor turned to the silent and 
 still astonished Mr. Squem. 
 
 "What do you think of the picture?" 
 he asked. "How does it appeal to 
 you?" 
 
 What Mr. Squem really thought, and 
 what he had for some moments been 
 affirming to himself, was that the whole 
 thing was enough to make a man swal- 
 low his tonsils. What he said, survey- 
 ing the cat affrighted at the angel, 
 was, 
 
 "Some scared pussy!" 
 
 A silence followed, which at length 
 pricked him to a sense of his guest's 
 duty. "Just been out to Denver," he 
 said, "over the Q. First time in years. 
 It's a spry burg, and no shrinking vio-
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 45 
 
 let, either. Something happened to me 
 there once." 
 
 "Tell us about it," urged Professor 
 Browne with ringmaster's readiness. 
 
 "Well, you see it was this way no 
 spinach for me, thanks. I was on my 
 first long trip. Hadn't been west of 
 Pittsburg before, and I never hope for 
 a ride like that again. Gee! those 
 brush-balls rolling over the prairie 
 hundreds and hundreds of 'em rolling 
 and rolling ! Spookish things. And the 
 wooden-toothpick fence-posts m i 1 e s 
 and miles of them. Then old Pike's 
 looming 'up, not twenty minutes off, 
 you'd bet; near enough to spit on, 
 you'd say, but staying there, just stay- 
 ing there, for hours ! A Denver man in 
 the seat ahead says, 'I thought it would 
 make your jaw drop on your wish-bone' 
 and he was right. It was great ! ' ' 
 
 "Hcc olim," volunteered Mr. Led- 
 gerwood, with a touch of ohill.
 
 46 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 "We didn't stop at that place," said 
 Mr. Squem. "It was an express. Well, 
 I went into the diner an hour this side 
 of Denver anything I can reach you, 
 Mr. Browne? and when I'd squared 
 for my meal, do you know, I had just 
 sixty-seven cents left I Sixty-seven 
 cents, and I didn't know a soul in Col- 
 orado, not a soul! Figured I'd be 
 about three days too soon to find a 
 draft from the house, and my only bag- 
 gage was one of these bird-size grips. 
 Well, I took a hack at the station for 
 White's Palace Hotel, it hurt me fifty 
 cents, and I stood up at the green- 
 marble counter and hancocked the reg- 
 ister and asked for my mail. Nothing 
 doing, as I supposed. No mail. So 
 there I was, a right smart from home, 
 as they say in Baltimore, with nothing 
 I could put up for my board and no- 
 body in the state I could strike for a 
 dollar. They'd had an awful pest of
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 47 
 
 hotel-beats, too, with smooth stories, 
 just before and me there, with seven- 
 teen cents!" 
 
 "What a situation!" said Miss 
 Browne. "But surely there was the 
 telegraph." 
 
 "Nobody was taking any chances on 
 collect-wires East," said Mr. Squem. 
 "They'd as soon set up mileage to Chi- 
 cago. That would have meant a swift 
 kick. As I said, others had been there 
 before me, and some of them were do- 
 ing time right then." 
 
 "What did you do!" Miss Cynthia 
 was keen with the question. 
 
 "I went and bought a shave," said 
 Mr. Squem. "I needed it. While the 
 mahogany brother was mowing me, 
 it was a tonsorial parlour I was in, not 
 a shop, he says, 'You need a hair- 
 cut,' and I says, 'I need the price' 
 and told him all about it. 'Why,' he 
 says, 'you look good to me. Have the
 
 48 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 hair-cut, and this shave, too, on the 
 place, till you get your letter. Sure, 
 that 'sail right. '" 
 
 Mr. Squem fingered his demi-tasse a 
 moment, then said slowly 
 
 "That coon was sure an answer to 
 prayer; I was up against it. He'll nev- 
 er know what he did for me, but I've 
 never forgot him. I've been giving 
 twenty-five a year to Shiloh Baptist 
 Church ever since. Well, I had the 
 hair-cut, and a sea-foam, too, and got 
 out of the chair and let him chalk it 
 up. I wanted to celebrate some way, 
 for my nerve was back, so I went to 
 the bar and got a grown person's drink. 
 It was fifteen cents, and I had two cents 
 left. Then I leaned down by the bar 
 and dropped the two cents in a spittoon 
 and went broke." 
 
 Miss Cynthia's eyes snapped. 
 
 "Then," continued Mr. Squem, "I 
 walked straight up to the hotel desk,
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 49 
 
 as independent as a hog on ice, excuse 
 me, Miss Browne, and says to the 
 lady-cashier, 'Ten dollars, please, and 
 charge to Room 17.' " 
 
 ''Aplomb!" interjected Mr. Ledger- 
 wood. 
 
 "No, not a plum," said Mr. Squem, 
 "a peach. She was a peach. She 
 pushed the ten right across. Seemed 
 kind of sorry I hadn't made it ten 
 more. I did, two days later, and it 
 came just as easy. She sensed the con- 
 fidence in me, see the ginger that bar- 
 ber put there. I never could have done 
 it without him. On the fourth day my 
 draft came and I was on Easy Street." 
 
 Mr. Ledgerwood had not enjoyed 
 this narrative in the least, and the less 
 because Miss Cynthia evidently had. 
 She was not merely amused: she was 
 positively it seemed to him almost ad- 
 miringly interested. Said he, with an 
 access of sourness,
 
 50 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 "Chacun a son gout. Travelling 
 about in that happy-go-lucky way 
 with insufficient funds smells of the 
 canaille. It has a suggestion of va- 
 grancy." 
 
 "You mean I was going too short!" 
 inquired Mr. Squem innocently. "Well, 
 just that morning I'd had a twenty- 
 dollar yellow-back pinned to my under- 
 shirt, excuse me, Miss Browne, but 
 I met a man on the train, selling on 
 commission he was, and business had 
 been bum, who'd been wired to come 
 home to a mighty sick kid, and he had- 
 n't the money to get there. His mile- 
 age was out and he was going to be put 
 off. So I had to unpin the twenty." 
 
 Miss Cynthia leaned forward. ' ' That 
 was dear of you!" she said impulsive- 
 
 ly. 
 
 Mr. Squem looked puzzled. "Had to 
 do it, of course," he said. "Anybody 
 would."
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 51 
 
 As the party rose from the table, he 
 left a silver dollar at his place. He 
 thought it might be helpful to the other 
 man in evening clothes. 
 
 There were two hours on the porch 
 in the summer-night quiet, to the ac- 
 companiment of some excellent cigars 
 of Mr. Squem's providing. He had 
 brought them along and insisted that 
 they be tried. "Yours are no good," 
 he jocularly informed the host. Pro- 
 fessor Browne made some further ef- 
 fort to display his protege, but Mr. 
 Squem had noticed that the master of 
 the house was treated as a sort of nec- 
 essary furniture, and to the astonish- 
 ment of the other two men actually suc- 
 ceeded in thawing him out and get- 
 ting him alive. It was a great surprise, 
 and infinitely warming to Professor 
 Browne 's brother ; and to Miss Cynthia 
 it seemed a kind of beautiful miracle.
 
 52 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 She could not remember when she had 
 seen her father's eyes light up or heard 
 him laugh, and it made a catch in her 
 throat. 
 
 As the evening wore on, she sat down 
 at the piano in the open-doored room 
 and began to play. Mr. Ledgerwood 
 and Professor Browne continued an 
 earnest discussion of some problem 
 connected with Renaissance Art, but 
 Mr. Squem fell silent before the music 
 stealing to the porch from within. It 
 was of a type unfamiliar to him, and he 
 was sure it would not whistle. Under 
 other conditions, it is doubtful if he 
 could have held it music at all; but 
 there was something in it, as things 
 were, which strangely moved him, and 
 there was an effect and a concord with- 
 in, which, as it was not maimed by any 
 attempted expression, made the spin- 
 dling spiritual experience of Dudley 
 Ledgerwood show as mockery indeed.
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 
 
 Mr. Squem sat on the edge of his bed 
 in the twelve-dollar silk pajamas which 
 he had bought expressly for this occa- 
 sion, and, as he preluded sleep with a 
 cigarette, thought about the stage of 
 the evening and the persons of the 
 play. 
 
 ''Some swell shack," he soliloquised. 
 "That big hall, and the kid in the 
 front yard squeezing the mackerel, 
 such things cost real money. But then, 
 no dress-suits; and that ratty old pic- 
 ture of all the cold gravy ! That man 
 with the cocoanut whiskers," thus he 
 recalled Mr. Ledgerwood, "he's some 
 sour brother, but then he's sick. That's 
 easy; he's a sick man. Professor 
 Browne is the best ever. Let me do all 
 the talking and hugged the wall; took 
 a back-seat himself. George, / got to 
 do more of that ! That brother of his, 
 poor duffer ! All he needs is somebody 
 to fuss over him and wake him up. Miss
 
 54 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 Cynthia!" he hesitated, unwilling 
 now to apply the complimentary phrase 
 of some hours before. "All to the 
 good," he sighed, and the music that 
 wouldn't whistle was back with him. 
 He surveyed himself at full length in 
 a mirror door. "It isn't there," he 
 said, "not there!" And then again, 
 "All to the good!" 
 
 In another part of the house the but- 
 ler showed a maid the silver dollar, 
 which some way seemed to him more 
 than money seemed to have proper- 
 ties lacking in money. 
 
 "He isn't a gentleman," he said; 
 ' ' of course, not at all a gentleman. But 
 he's all right all right!" 
 
 In the drawing-room Miss Cynthia 
 addressed Mr. Ledgerwood. "Oh, I 
 know," she said, "any one would say I 
 was impossible if I were put in a story
 
 &OME MALE TRIANGLES 55 
 
 or else that I'm one of the kind who 
 run away with the chauffeur. But I've 
 met a gentleman at last, I don't care 
 what you say, a gentleman at last. 
 You remember in The Flight of the 
 Duchess 
 
 So all that the old Dukes had been without 
 
 knowing it, 
 This Duke would fain know that he was, 
 
 without being it. 
 
 I've been thinking of that all the even- 
 ing. Don't you see, can't you see, 
 Mr. Ledgerwood, that we've had 
 something real here to-night that one 
 of the old Dukes has been here?" 
 
 And then 
 
 * ' No one can be a gentleman and feel 
 being so. I've known the kind who 
 feel being so. Mr. Squem doesn't 
 and he's a gentleman!"
 
 rn 
 
 A PLAYHOUSE EPISODE : THE BEX INSTINCT 
 
 ME. PETER SQUEM had been 
 thoroughly barbered shaved, 
 massaged, shampooed and anointed 
 with ' * Roses of Avalon. ' ' Also he had 
 had "tonic." Then he had donned his 
 evening clothes correct in every de- 
 tail, according to the House of Fashion 
 stylebook and in a state of extreme 
 fragrance had made his way to a par- 
 quet chair costing three dollars at the 
 Lyric Theatre. Wagner opera it was 
 to be. Mr. Squem knew little of this, 
 but he understood it was "classy," and 
 he knew that three dollars meant that 
 one must "come along with the 
 clothes. ' ' 
 
 57
 
 58 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 He did not achieve rapport with the 
 music, and was unable to differentiate 
 much of it from the preliminary tun- 
 ing of the instruments. During one of 
 the most impressive numbers, his 
 thoughts were upon the liquid secre- 
 tions and frequent emptyings of a large 
 horn. " Regular old geyser," he 
 thought. When the first part ended it 
 seemed quite long he turned to a gen- 
 tleman in the chair next his and re- 
 marked : 
 
 "I guess you have to learn how in 
 this kind of business, the same as you 
 do with caviare." 
 
 ' ' Well, yes, ' ' was the answer, ' ' learn 
 or pretend you have. It doesn 't appeal 
 to you?" 
 
 "It hasn't got my post-office address 
 yet," said Mr. Squem. " Think a cor- 
 respondence-school would help!" 
 
 "Doubtful," replied the other, 
 * ' though some one was talking the oth-
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 59 
 
 er day about lion-taming by corre- 
 spondence. It's 'the music of the fu- 
 ture,' you see that's what they call it 
 that you are hearing to-night, and 
 that's what has brought seventy per 
 cent of these people here. They don't 
 really hear any more music than you 
 do, and it almost bores them to death 
 there's considerable suffering around 
 us ; but to be among the early arrivals 
 in the future, you know something a 
 little more than up to date" 
 
 "You mean they don't come for the 
 show," interrupted Mr. Squem, "but 
 only to get in front!" 
 
 "Your phrase," said the gentleman, 
 "explains their suffering and immola- 
 tion. They want exactly that to get 
 in front, or keep close to people they 
 think in front, and they'll endure a lot 
 for that. Your feeling about Wagner 
 reminds me of a very old story. They 
 say a Chicago pork millionaire once
 
 60 MR. SQTJEM AND 
 
 went to Baireuth and there heard a 
 Wagner opera of course the thing to 
 do. When they asked him what he 
 thought of it, he said: 'It just proves 
 what I've always said that a man 
 ought to stick to his job. As long as 
 this man Wagner stuck to making 
 sleeping-cars, he was all right.' " 
 
 "Off, wasn't he?" said Mr. Squem 
 quite seriously. "It wasn't the same 
 Wagner at all! You can understand 
 it, though. Do you care for him!" 
 
 The other smiled. "I am interested 
 in people," he said. "I try to write 
 books about people, and so I have to 
 study them. I find Wagner opera a 
 particularly good place to do that an 
 excellent place to study a very funny 
 breed." 
 
 "Excuse me," said Mr. Squem. 
 "The price is too high for the come- 
 back. Three plunks to see a lot of 
 pikers and sit in a planing-mill to do
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 61 
 
 it! I've had my dose, and this is an 
 overhead charge for the Mercury Tire 
 Company. I'm going in next door to 
 see Charlie Chaplin." 
 
 Mr. Henry Barton Greene, without 
 explaining that Mr. Squem himself was 
 the real magnet, asked if he might go. 
 "I've swung my butter-fly net enough 
 here to-night," he said, "and I'd really 
 like to see some motion-pictures. So if 
 you'll permit me 
 
 "Sure! Come along," said Mr. 
 Squem. "It'll make you forget this 
 gold-brick. You'll see some folks, too 
 live ones." 
 
 It was drizzling as they left the the- 
 atre, and Mr. Squem elevated an um- 
 brella to which he drew his companion's 
 attention. "Imported," he said, "and 
 weighs exactly seventeen ounces." He 
 fondled the ivory handle, carved after 
 the similitude of a female's nether limb. 
 "The firm's Christmas to me," he
 
 62 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 added, "and set 'em back twenty-two 
 fifty." 
 
 Mr. Chaplin was super-active and in- 
 conceivably contortionate. He pushed 
 hand-carts into man-holes and fell in 
 after them. He tripped up policemen 
 and buried them under park benches. 
 He made prodigal use of paste, which 
 he impartially applied to walls and pic- 
 tures and the features of bystanders. 
 For all of which he had his reward in 
 deafening shouts of merriment and up- 
 roarious applause. It was a ravished 
 audience. 
 
 "Comic!" gasped Mr. Squem, wiping 
 his streaming eyes with an immense 
 silk handkerchief of startling pattern, 
 "Sure comic! Woof! These people 
 come for the show, and they're getting 
 it getting it now ; no * future ' monkey- 
 business; see? They ain't worried 
 about getting in front, either they're
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 63 
 
 seeing what's in front. Some Stuff! 
 And all for ten cents ! Those poor dubs 
 up there at the funeral and at three 
 dollars per!" 
 
 Mr. Chaplin's part of the entertain- 
 ment drew toward its close, and as he 
 volleyed a large mass of dough into the 
 face of an elderly lady on crutches, Mr. 
 Squem punctuated the crowd's de- 
 lighted screeches: 
 
 "You get the plot, don't you see? 
 That's what the plot. There wasn't a 
 smell of one in the Wagner business, 
 not a snuff. Honest, it was just bug- 
 house. Here's another film not comic, 
 but I bet it's good 'The Crucifixion 
 of Imogene.' I guess we'd better 
 stay." 
 
 The production was a specially ob- 
 vious form of the triangle. It began in 
 California, amid scenery which im- 
 pressed the exacting Mr. Greene as 
 marvellous, then moved to an appal-
 
 64 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 lingly elaborate hotel one of the sort 
 described as existing to provide exclu- 
 siveness for the masses in New York, 
 and ended in Switzerland. The hus- 
 band, a gentleman of cold and haughty 
 bearing and brittle morals, appeared in 
 five carefully cut suits of clothing in 
 as many scenes, waved servants about 
 with imperial gestures and used a desk 
 telephone three time^. The wife 
 achieved her whole duty by being sac- 
 charinely sweet and by incessantly 
 weeping curiously without the least 
 disarray of her features. The snaky 
 villainess there was nothing else to 
 do after the husband 's swift and rather 
 puzzling reclaim to glaring impeccabil- 
 ity obligingly fell down the Matter- 
 horn by dummy-proxy at the end. Mr. 
 Greene felt that there was nothing to 
 say, and Mr. Squem that it was impos- 
 sible to say enough. 
 
 ' ' Gee ! " he ejaculated, as the pseudo-
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 65 
 
 body of the temptress, lying under low 
 light at the foot of the mountain, faded 
 into the vision of husband and wife in 
 uncomfortably close embrace, and the 
 crashed-out Mendelssohn's wedding 
 march "Gee!" 
 
 He relieved his surcharged soul. 
 
 "What do you say to hot dogs and 
 suds over at Snotty's?" he asked. 
 
 At Spotty 's he was able to talk about 
 it. "Some great piece," he said. "I 
 bet even the ticket-man bawled. It's 
 got all the preachers scorched for fair, 
 and it's just like it said on the curtain, 
 'A Lesson for Every Home.' " 
 
 He addressed himself to his mug, and 
 went on. 
 
 "There's only one thing I'd have 
 changed or put in. It ended right, all 
 right; but that guy some snappy 
 dresser, wasn't he? ought to have got 
 more jolts. I liked his wife's forgiving 
 him, and, Great Scott, I'd have him get
 
 66 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 back you've just got to have that, or 
 we'd all better croak but he ought to 
 had more jolts. A whipping-post 
 would have been a good stunt and it 
 would have added to the interest, too 
 and him tied up by the thumbs, and 
 paying up with about twenty-five lashes 
 on his bare back. He really needed 
 'em to make good." 
 
 * ' That would have been pretty stren- 
 uous," said Mr. Greene. "You see 
 nothing pathological in the gentleman 's 
 lapse!" 
 
 "I only got as far as the sixth 
 grade," said Mr. Squem humbly. 
 
 "I mean, you don't see anything like 
 well, what people call disease, in his 
 forgetting his wife ! ' ' 
 
 "If it was that," replied Mr. Squem, 
 "the twenty-five lashes would have 
 been dandy medicine. Call it what you 
 like, as long as he got *em,"
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 67 
 
 * ' You are probably not familiar with 
 Sigmund Freud V 9 
 
 "Freud, Freud, " ruminated Mr. 
 Squem, "I did know a Dutchman 
 named that foreman in a brewery 
 over in Cincinnati but he was Johann. 
 Maybe a brother or something. Does 
 this one have buck teeth?" 
 
 Mr. Greene confessed ignorance and 
 continued : 
 
 "You know there are people nowa- 
 days who would regard you as a pur- 
 ist." 
 
 "They'd have another guess; I sell 
 tires." 
 
 "These people would say that you 
 have well rather childish ideas 
 about the relations of men and women 
 about sex. They would say that to 
 fuss over it as 'holy' is all a silly and 
 childish and frightfully back-number 
 business. They think that while, for 
 general convenience, husbands and
 
 68 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 wives had best well stick to each 
 other, not too much is to be made of 
 it when they don't." 
 
 Mr. Squem looked at Mr. Greene 
 very hard. 
 
 "Do you mean," he asked, "that any 
 man who isn't a skunk says a thing 
 like that?" 
 
 "The word is harsh," replied Mr. 
 Greene. "These people think they see 
 beyond our present small normal ar- 
 rangements see into structure, you 
 know. They think we must rise above 
 certain popular notions of ours really 
 superstitions in this matter of sex; 
 get over the idea that it is 'holy,' or 
 anything like that, you know, and 
 well grant considerable leeway to and 
 make considerable allowance for the 
 sex-instinct." 
 
 "Oh, Lulu!" said Mr. Squem. "Do 
 they say that about the swipe-instinct 
 hogging things, you know? Do they
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 69 
 
 say that about the gun-instinct shoot- 
 ing guys in the back, like those Indians 
 in New York? Allowance Rats! Men 
 I know men who would spoil the air 
 of a stable know that that's mush!" 
 
 He rose from his chair and straight- 
 ened. "You know what I think?" he 
 asked. "I think people who say that 
 well, the best you can say of 'em is 
 that they're smart Alecks, and smart 
 Alecks make you sick. If they're not 
 that, then they're just a bunch of 
 snakes." 
 
 "I am a man," he went on, in a voice 
 somewhat changing, "and some spot- 
 ted; and I'm looking for a whipping- 
 post for some things in my life look- 
 ing for it, and by God I'm going to 
 have it! It's coming to me and it's 
 mine. I'm getting some of it right 
 along, too every day for something 
 I done fifteen years ago. And it wasn 't
 
 70 MR. SQUEM 
 
 the sex-instinct that done it. It was 
 me!" 
 
 "I am a man," he repeated, "and a 
 man who knows mighty little except 
 rubber, Almighty God knows! But I 
 know better than that thing you said, 
 and I am a man and not a hound!" 
 
 And then he added, very solemnly, 
 a word which, someway seeming at 
 once an anathema and a prayer, testi- 
 fied the massive decency at the heart 
 of the common man: 
 
 "To hell with your sex-instinct!"
 
 IV 
 
 AN AUTOMOBILE EPISODE: "UP TO THE 
 GOOD MAN" 
 
 PETER B. SQUEM, representative 
 of Mercury Tires, was on a trip 
 with his car an Ariel roadster, blind- 
 ingly yellow save for the broad pur- 
 ple streak about its body and with red- 
 rimmed wheels. He enjoyed using this 
 vehicle which the Ariel people adver- 
 tised as "the uttermost expression of 
 modernity," and whose colouring was 
 Mr. Squem's own idea. "I guess it 
 will make the yaps sit up," the sales 
 agent had remarked on delivering the 
 car, and he was right. It made every- 
 body sit up .and the more after the pur- 
 chaser had added a pink top, with the 
 
 71
 
 72 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 final happy touch of a portrait of him- 
 self looking out of the oval window 
 at the back. "They get me coming 
 and going, you see," said Mr. Squem. 
 Below the portrait was a line or two 
 apropos the merits of Mercury tires. 
 
 At the hotel he had persuaded a 
 breakfast-table acquaintance to ride 
 with him to a town some twenty miles 
 distant, instead of waiting an hour for 
 a train; and the gentleman, after a 
 startled look at the car it occurred to 
 him that a camel would be consider- 
 ably less conspicuous had tucked him- 
 self in and the two had got underway. 
 The host had an agreeable sense of 
 rhyming with his car. A Sunday paper 
 had shown him illustrations of the very 
 latest in automobile togs, and as a con- 
 sequence his coat, goggles and cap 
 were all strictly contemporaneous if 
 not, indeed, a little more. 
 
 He had a good deal of pleasure in
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 73 
 
 "letting her out." It was not enough 
 that the car should be a thing of unique 
 of almost piercing beauty. It must 
 be there with the goods. Mr. Squem 
 had received from a "lady friend," at 
 Christmas, a gift of cigars cigars in- 
 dividually wrapped in silver paper and 
 reposing in a mistletoe-emblemmed 
 box, with "The Season's Greetings" 
 in gold tracery on top. A dainty thing, 
 yet those cigars when lighted so Mr. 
 Squem imparted to a friend tasted 
 like something long dead. He was glad 
 now, as always, to demonstrate the 
 Ariel no such proposition. So he "let 
 her rip" and they came, a yellow flash, 
 doing a full mile a minute over the pike 
 and with the culverts through which 
 they passed clashing like cymbals in 
 their ears. And then ! A sudden cave 
 in a summer-road down at the side, a 
 swift whirl of the wheel, and the car 
 desperately ploughing at right angles
 
 74 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 off into a field, shaking like a Newfound- 
 land, rearing like a broncho, heavily 
 smashing at last into a stump. 
 
 The two sat motionless for five sec- 
 onds after the jar. Then Mr. Squem 
 said with feeling: 
 
 "You want to hump yourself and 
 be damn sure to thank the Lord for 
 this same as you rap on wood. I 
 always do." 
 
 To which curious bidding to prayer 
 his companion, after a moment's pause, 
 unsteadily rejoined: 
 
 "A close close call. It might have 
 been death. " 
 
 "Sure, just what I meant," said Mr. 
 Squem, "Thank the Lord and get it 
 over. Some crimp in the car, all right. 
 Look at that radiator. We'll have to 
 hoof it for help." 
 
 There were two miles of the hoofing. 
 "I've got a hunch," said Mr. Squem, 
 as they began to step off, "that I don't
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 75 
 
 sell tires to-day. This siding we're 
 coming to, well, they'll flag something 
 they call a train at about eleven and 
 you can get out; but it's on the cards 
 for me to telephone the Dutch town 
 for some kind of a car-tink and then 
 roost here till he comes. Some pic-nic ! 
 You know those community mausole- 
 ums? They got the idea for 'em from 
 this burg I'm going to be hung up in." 
 
 He paused to light a stogie and then 
 added: 
 
 " Thank Pratt, I can do something 
 besides fight flies." 
 
 Then, rummaging in the pockets of 
 his billowing automobile coat, he pro- 
 duced, to the considerable surprise of 
 his companion, a copy of The Contem- 
 porary Review. " A fellow was telling 
 me in Poughkeepsie last week," he 
 said, "that this has some class. It 
 sure ought to have. They want four 
 bones a year for it and it hasn't got
 
 76 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 a smell of a picture in it not a smell. ' ' 
 
 "I want to take off my hat," said 
 the other, "to your nerve, your won- 
 derful spring back from the shock 
 we've just had. You know I'm all 
 shaken up. It's going to last a long 
 while with me that awful pitching 
 down the field and the car on the edge 
 of going over. And then that gully 
 did you see it! showing just be- 
 yond that stump that saved us. We 
 were mighty close to eternity. We 
 were within an ace of death." 
 
 "It was up to the Good Man," said 
 Mr. Squem with an air of dismissal, 
 "and we're here." 
 
 "But it was death, you know," per- 
 sisted the other, "death just as close 
 as death comes to the trenches. That 
 was what we were against. How can 
 you pass it off as you dot" 
 
 "Same as I passed off the small- 
 pox I skipped last year," answered
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 77 
 
 Mr. Squem, "The time I got into the 
 pest-house at Keokuk "by mistake. 
 What's the good of going around and 
 thinking about it? What I'm thinking 
 about is how to get out of this mess. 
 That's the job, not thinking about 
 death." 
 
 "But heavens, man, we've had some- 
 thing to make us think about it. Just 
 make us think about it. Lots of peo- 
 ple think about it without anything at 
 all to make them and here you are 
 with your nerves as steady as a clock." 
 
 "Nothing doing," interrupted Mr. 
 Squem. 
 
 "Well, lots do," said the other, ap- 
 parently glad to talk. "Anyway, don't 
 you have to sometimes, if you think at 
 all? It's only thin, surface living that 
 doesn't sometimes. I remember a 
 poem, whose writer, full of thoughts of 
 his own death, ends two of the verses :
 
 78 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 " 'I wonder what day of the month, 
 I wonder what month of the year! ' n 
 
 Mr. Squem's reception of this was 
 laconic. "Some nut," he said. Then, 
 emitting a yell, he caught the other by 
 the collar and violently dragged him to 
 the middle of the road, pointing in ex- 
 planation, a second later, to a rattle- 
 snake, in coil and ready to strike, per- 
 ilously close to the path. 
 
 "Good God!" exclaimed the guest. 
 "Can anything more happen to-day?" 
 
 Mr. Squem volunteered no opinion 
 on this head, but with deliberation and 
 coolness proceeded to despatch the 
 ugly reptile with stones, after which 
 he evidently considered the incident 
 entirely closed, and remarked: 
 
 "I don't know if you're a preach- 
 er ." 
 
 "Lawyer," said the other, his voice 
 shaking. 
 
 "I wasn't going to say anything if
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 79 
 
 you was a preacher people don't. We 
 got to have men around to believe 
 things the rest of us can't, and then 
 bat 'em out to us, overdose us see? 
 with things we ought to believe 
 some. Yes, we just call them 'Rev- 
 erend' and let them talk it's all tom- 
 my rot, thinking about death, and it's 
 the best horse-sense not to ever think 
 about it, at least until it gets here 
 and then a quick deal. I was to see 
 Mach Leondard before he died last 
 week it was cancer and he says to 
 me: 'I've just shook hands with God, 
 and I'm ready when he is.' That's all 
 right just business, you understand. 
 But until the time sure comes, I figure 
 the job is my business, and nothing 
 else and the rest is up to the Good 
 Man." 
 
 "A new Euthanasia," said the law- 
 yer. 
 
 "What's the name of a sleeping car
 
 80 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 got to do with it ! ' ' queried Mr. Squem. 
 The guest, whose name was Robin- 
 son, very decently insisted upon wait- 
 ing for Mr. Squem, so they did not flag 
 the train. The two put in the morning 
 smoking and playing cards in the office 
 of the New Aldine Hotel the most 
 out-at-elbows of all the dingy build- 
 ings of the settlement. During the 
 forenoon the entire population, save 
 one sorely disappointed bed-ridden 
 man, filtered in to see the visitors and 
 speculate as to why in the world they 
 were there, one native conjecturing to 
 another that Mr. Squem might per- 
 haps be Mr. Schwab, minded to buy 
 the town. The dinner, when it came, 
 was not exactly an orgy, the ham be- 
 ing quite salt, the potatoes quite hard, 
 the coffee quite indefinite in flavour 
 and the pie quite popular with numer- 
 ous energetic flies. This last circum-
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 81 
 
 stance woke an old memory in Mr. 
 Squem. 
 
 "Makes you think, " lie said, "of 
 that guy at the railroad eating- joint. 
 * What kind of pie ? ' they says ; and he 
 says, * Blackberry. ' 'Oh,' they says, 
 'that ain't blackberry,' and blew on it. 
 And, believe me, it wasn't. It was cus- 
 tard!" 
 
 With such table talk and with pleas- 
 antries at the expense of the frowzled 
 waitress Mr. Squem demanding chill- 
 ed grape-fruit and other such delicacies 
 and making up for her perturbation 
 with a dollar bill at the end the meal 
 passed and at two a car-tink arrived 
 in a large autombile from the Dutch 
 town. The distance to the invalid 
 Ariel was soon covered, such of the 
 population as could walk footing it in 
 wake of the car it was not every day 
 that such things happened. The ex- 
 pert went over the roadster and said it
 
 82 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 could travel to the hospital on its own 
 wheels and a farmer's team dragged it 
 slowly, and with many a bump, back to 
 the road. Seven dollars was the fee 
 for this service. "Dirt cheap," the 
 farmer had assured Mr. Squem, who, 
 in answer, remarked, "You got every- 
 thing, every darned thing, but the bris- 
 tles. " 
 
 Then the automobile man attached 
 the roadster by chains to his own car 
 and the start was made. 
 
 On the journey, pursued at some- 
 thing more than twenty miles an hour, 
 but characterised by Mr. Squem as 
 "Some toad funeral" Mr. Robinson 
 did some thinking. He was still in- 
 wardly rocking from what had hap- 
 pened the ' ' close-up ' ' to death, of the 
 morning, and the weaving head of a 
 rattle-snake, which insisted on getting 
 into his field of view, had repeatedly 
 made goose-flesh rise upon him through
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 83 
 
 the day. He was much put out by the 
 collapse of his philosophy before the 
 situation. He remembered and did 
 not like to remember a paper on 
 "The Cultivation of Self-Sufficing- 
 ness" which he had recently read be- 
 fore a group of cool and emancipated 
 spirits like himself its upshot and 
 burden being that to the soul stripped 
 of superstitious fancies and firmly 
 grasping life, the soul reposing upon 
 itself and its strength, nothing could 
 really happen. He had drawn freely 
 upon Emerson and the Upanishads in 
 the representation of this view which 
 had immensely regaled all the cool and 
 balanced spirits on the premises elect 
 samples of the poised who had regard- 
 ed it as a tribute to themselves. And 
 now it made him sick he had been 
 shaken and beaten down and pulled 
 about. He had lost balance, and been 
 afraid was still afraid ! It was rough
 
 84 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 on the self-sufficingness theory, and es- 
 pecially rough on Eustace Robinson. 
 And it had all been so different with 
 this Mr. Squem, an entirely unreflec- 
 tive, not to say absurd, being, of at 
 most twelve mental years, who had 
 been not the least thrown off balance, 
 not the least afraid: who, using the 
 most primitive materials, seemed 
 somehow to have fashioned a weather- 
 proof cosmos one that met test by 
 acting and working like a cosmos, and 
 not like a bad umbrella. Of course 
 one might be amused Mr. Robinson 
 had been considerably amused by the 
 naivete of the man and by the archi- 
 tecture of his shanty-town cosmos. 
 "The Good Man!" thought the law- 
 yer. "Ridiculous! The Good Man!" 
 and smiled. The smile did not stay. 
 Something told Mr. Robinson sud- 
 denly jolting again toward death, sud- 
 denly seeing again something hideous-
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 85 
 
 ly weaving in his path that Peter 
 Squem was not ridiculous; that what 
 was ridiculous was himself. 
 
 It may be that this nettled him. 
 
 "I've been thinking," he said as 
 they lurched along, "of what you said 
 this morning about some things being 
 up to the Good Man." 
 
 Mr. Squem took a look at the Ariel 
 trailing along behind. "Who the devil 
 would they be up to?" he asked. 
 
 "That's just it just it. Who? That's 
 where the trouble comes in. Some of 
 us think that it's really that that's be- 
 ing of the War" 
 
 "All you got to do," said Mr. Squem 
 cheerfully, "is to use the brains God 
 gave you and not be a quitter. Speak- 
 ing of the War " 
 
 "Wait a minute. You know, of 
 course, that there can't be a forty mil- . 
 lion mile high giant a big good mem 
 running things down here. We can't
 
 86 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 think that sort of thing sheer, child- 
 ish anthropomorphism any more." 
 
 "I know a nigger barber in Paoli," 
 said Mr. Squem, "who'd give you five 
 dollars five anyway for that word! 
 What's the reason you can't think 
 that? The underpinning is sure a man 
 or something like a man. Everybody 
 says 'He,' don't they!" 
 
 Mr. Robinson suddenly reflected that 
 Mr. H. G. Wells was doing just this 
 very thing. 
 
 "Sure, it stands to reason," contin-. 
 ued Mr. Squem, then, "Ease her up, 
 George, here's a bridge." 
 
 "Well, counting that out," said Mr. 
 Robinson, "and letting the man part 
 go, what is there to prove that He's 
 good? .Look at the world! (a bright 
 woman said to me not a week ago that 
 a cow could have arranged a better 
 universe than this) think of the horri- 
 ble snake you killed this morning!"
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 87 
 
 < < 
 
 'He's up to the Good Man for 
 fair," said Mr. Squem with something 
 like pity in his voice. " Nobody else 
 can take care of him.*' 
 
 "Do you know," asked Mr. Robin- 
 son, "that Flammarion, the astrono- 
 mer, said, not long ago, that this is a 
 world not much worth fighting for 
 anyway " 
 
 "Quitter!" interrupted Mr. Squem, 
 "Look here, let's get down to brass 
 tacks. I'm not living in a world that 
 hasn't got the best that's in me, be- 
 hind it seel If that isn't so, every- 
 thing's bug-house! I'm not letting 
 anything smaller 'n that get back of 
 things and run the works, understand? 
 I'll ask some gent to kick me and 
 real hard when I do, though honest 
 I'd be too punk for anybody to kick. 
 Things don't look good? What does 
 that Flim-flam man know about 'em? 
 I know come on the road a week with
 
 88 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 me, just one little week, and see. A 
 quitter bets the boss is no good any- 
 body can lay down and squeal I'm 
 playing up I've got to, to have any 
 use for myself either the boss is all 
 right or everything's bug-house, and 
 I'm no quitter, and no fooling with the 
 works for me ! Think that and you're 
 bug-house. I say he's all right no, 
 the boss of these works is no bonehead 
 and I put every cent of my pile on the 
 Good Man.'* 
 
 Then the perfectly tragic things hap- 
 pened. A mite of a child she could 
 not have been more than three dart- 
 ed through the gate of a yard they 
 were passing and out into the road. 
 She was a winsome thing, dainty and 
 fairylike Titian's Virgin of the Pres- 
 entation grown small. Her hair 
 streamed behind her, her white frock 
 fluttered in the breeze she was making,
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 89 
 
 as she chased a scrap of a kitten. The 
 kitten frolicked toward the centre of 
 the road, and the child, with eyes for 
 nothing else, headed suddenly full on 
 the car. There was no time no way 
 only the gleam of a tiny white object 
 in front and then a quiver of the heavy 
 machine. In another moment three 
 horror-stricken men leaped from their 
 seats, and, a few feet behind, Peter 
 Squem gathered in his arms a most 
 lovely but no longer living thing. 
 "Poor Lambie," he said, with his face 
 torn into depths whose wonder the 
 lawyer felt in the thick of the horror. 
 4 'Poor Lambie!" 
 
 "Some one must take her in there/' 
 said Robinson, pointing to the house 
 behind the trees, "take her in and tell 
 them. God knows I can't I can't!" 
 
 "I never could," said the driver 
 shaking like an aspen, "I've got one 
 her age. I'd die."
 
 90 MR. SQUEM 
 
 Peter Squem bore the little burden 
 through the gate and up the path. He 
 did not knock at the door, but turned 
 the knob and entered. A sweet-faced 
 woman came down the hall. 
 
 "I've got the baby," he said. "She 
 ran into the car. I wish it had been 
 me but it was her. You've got to 
 take on, and you're going to ache to 
 die for a long long time just ache, 
 to die. But you want to remember" 
 and the reeling mother looking into 
 his eyes had the feel of arms beneath 
 her in an overwhelming flood "you 
 want to remember that it's going to 
 be all right somehow all right some- 
 way. It's up to the Good Man."
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES
 
 MB. THORNTON 
 THE REV. MR. BOWLES THE DRIVER 
 
 THE man with the string tie looked 
 and was precisely the sort of 
 person to call a book "meaty," and 
 he was riding in the back seat of the 
 country carriage with a man likely to 
 call a book "inept." Which means 
 that neither could possibly understand 
 the other. 
 
 It was the burying of Alexander 
 Moffatt, who at Selby's Corners had 
 for years been joining house to house 
 and field to field, and now desisted 
 from that intense and silent job. For 
 Alexander's neighbours the future life 
 was something mixed with musical in- 
 93,
 
 94 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 struments and pervaded by aesthetic 
 joys. Alexander did not in the least 
 fit into that would not, as the post- 
 master had once remarked in another 
 connection, "corroborate" with that. 
 He had left or relinquished his 
 farms, and, when severed from them, 
 utterly dissolved. 
 
 The man with the string tie minis- 
 ter of the Baptist Church at Selby's 
 Corners had "preached the funeral. " 
 The difficulty of the situation had been 
 considerable, and the dead Alexan- 
 der's face, with its bull-dog expression 
 and perfectly straight-across mouth, 
 had not helped. Therefore, the minis- 
 ter had been noisy and emphatic be- 
 yond his wont. He had heavily ground 
 in the austere fact of mortality, and at 
 the end had made the most of "not 
 slothful in business," and the circum- 
 stance that Alexander had been a good 
 provider. After this a quartette with
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 95 
 
 a terribly projecting alto had sung 
 "One Sweet Day." 
 
 The other man was Alexander's 
 nephew by marriage, representing a 
 niece by blood who was sick and un- 
 able to come. He was a city lawyer, 
 and looked the part in garments, face 
 and carriage. His wife had long since 
 sloughed all the characteristics of the 
 Moffatt stirps. Such things are al- 
 ways happening in America. 
 
 The sepulture of Alexander had im- 
 pressed the proxy mourner as a fas- 
 cinating clinic in folk-lore. At the 
 house he had dimly recalled something 
 of Kipling's about pagan rites and 
 American middle-class burials, and 
 something else of Spencer's about the 
 need of a professional religious class 
 to keep alive the sense of mystery in 
 the breed. At the grave the service 
 had been in charge of the Independent 
 Order of Bisons. Their ritual had
 
 96 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 been stickily sentimental, and their 
 chaplain had made more than one im- 
 pressive reference to "the diseased. " 
 Then they had, man by man, deposited 
 small white cloth cut-outs of buffaloes 
 in the grave, and withdrawn. 
 
 "Just like the South Sea Islands!" 
 thought Alexander's nephew. "These 
 people know about telephones and all 
 that; but after all, it's about the 
 same." 
 
 Now, on the way back from the cem- 
 etery, the two ill-assorted passengers 
 had nothing to say to each other. The 
 gulf between them so asserted itself as 
 to discourage even talk about the 
 weather. The driver turned conversa- 
 tional and came to the rescue. 
 
 "Well, Reverend Bowles," he ob- 
 served, "Alick's gone to his reward, 
 all right." 
 
 The minister squirmed.
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 97 
 
 "Most too good to damn, an' yet 
 hardly good enough to save. He give 
 thirty dollars toward the new hose- 
 cart an* helped on the uniforms for 
 the silver cornet band. You know how 
 he laid 'em all out at the big festival 
 you had for foreign missions. An' 
 yet, if he was after a farm, my, how 
 anybody got stepped on that come in 
 his way widows or orphans or any- 
 body! It's going to be some job for 
 the Almighty to sift things out with 
 Alexander." 
 
 "Why should you think any Al- 
 mighty must sift things out?" inquired 
 the nephew by marriage. 
 
 The Reverend Mr. Bowles, delighted 
 to have Alexander pushed into the 
 background, and not displeased by a 
 promising scent of battle, instantly un- 
 limbered. 
 
 "The Word," he answered in a tone
 
 98 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 pugnaciously pious, "the Word. Ro- 
 mans fourteen and ten says we shall 
 stand before the judgment seat, and 
 Second Corinthians five and ten says 
 the same and more, too ; and Hebrews 
 nine and twenty-seven tells how 'it is 
 appointed unto men once to die, but 
 after this the judgment.' Then there's 
 John's Revelation, which says right 
 out, "The books shall be opened' 
 books, understand. See, too, Matthew 
 twenty-five, thirty-one to end." 
 
 Mr. Bowles felt it a happy circum- 
 stance that he had preached on this 
 subject at Conference only the week 
 before. 
 
 The driver was a happy man. At 
 his livery and feed establishment he 
 had heard that "the new Reverend," 
 lately come to the Corners, was mighty 
 in the Scriptures, and that he owned 
 above three hundred books. Would 
 he put it all over this city chap?
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 99 
 
 "I see," said the lawyer pleasantly. 
 "You get this out of certain old writ- 
 ings which are authority for you. Mil- 
 lions of other people, in blocks of 
 varying sizes, get something quite dif- 
 ferent out of other old writings which 
 are authority for them. Millions more 
 of us get something still more differ- 
 ent out of no writings at all. Are you 
 entirely sure that all these millions are 
 wrong, and that you alone and those 
 with you have excuse me picked out 
 the ace?" 
 
 Mr. Bowles had never preached 
 about anything like this, and did not 
 readily find a text. He came back, 
 however, after a pause, with words 
 averring that spiritual things must be 
 spiritually discerned. 
 
 "I see," said the lawyer again. 
 "You have picked out the ace. And 
 when any one has done that, there's
 
 100 ME. SQUEM AND 
 
 nothing more to say. Do you mind if 
 I light a cigar?" 
 
 Mr. Bowles did mind, but did not 
 say so; and he did not understand 
 why, with his shots so well aimed and 
 so vigorously sped, he did not feel 
 more comfortable. 
 
 "Look here," he began, "Mr. ah" 
 -"Thornton." 
 
 "Mr. Thornton, this blessed book," 
 he held up his Bible "written with 
 the finger of God and declaring the 
 whole counsel of God, says we shall all 
 stand before the judgment seat and all 
 give account. It tells of a worm that 
 dieth not and of the wrath of the 
 Lamb. It " 
 
 "Oh, yes, I know," interrupted the 
 lawyer. "It tells of a great many 
 things like that, and what it says about 
 them may take hold doubtful, though 
 of three-tenths of the present popu- 
 lation of this country. You belong to
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 101 
 
 the three-tenths. The other seven- 
 tenths of us quietly go our own ways, 
 leaving you happy with the ace which 
 for us is really the two-spot. In this 
 matter of the after-death" he blew 
 a column of smoke in the air "the 
 seven-tenths of us just don't know 
 anything about it anything. We 
 know we're here, and that's all. Even 
 with the three-tenths, or a good many 
 of them, you'd find, if you were to peel 
 of the wrappings, that all they really 
 know and are sure of is that they're 
 here. They wouldn't bet or stake their 
 lives on anything more. Put them up 
 against a crisis and see. Of course 
 there are a few people, like Oliver 
 Lodge, who think they've broken 
 
 through into something, but ' 
 
 "Who," heatedly demanded Mr. 
 Bowles, finding his voice at last, "who 
 is Senator Lodge compared with the 
 Apostle Paul?"
 
 102 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 "The Apostle Paul remains faintly 
 part of 'the current prejudice,' as 
 John Morley once called it. He talks 
 about judgment seats and somebody 
 to stand before them after dying, and 
 we respectfully let him talk, just as we 
 respectfully go to funerals and respect- 
 fully listen to impossible things. You 
 three-tenths have the only opinion that 
 is organised there it is but the real 
 general conviction is miles and miles 
 away from it. The bed-rock is, that 
 we know we're here. When it comes 
 to the scratch, that is all that the 
 seven-tenths of us yes, and more 
 will bet on or stake our lives on. Put 
 almost anybody against a crisis and 
 see." 
 
 The driver stopped his horses at the 
 Empire Hotel, and left his passengers 
 at that hostelry. Mr. Thornton, mak- 
 ing ready for supper, repeated, 
 "We're here, and that's all."
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 103 
 
 Mr. Bowles felt that he had been in 
 conversation with a damned soul. 
 
 Down at the stable the driver made 
 report to certain interested friends: 
 "The new Reverend is certainly hell 
 on the Bible. What sent him to the 
 ropes was the lawyer's gittin' him off 
 the track away from the subject. 
 Their way, you know." 
 
 The Empire Hotel burned that night, 
 making for Selby's Corners what the 
 setting up of Angelo's David made for 
 Florence a new date from which to 
 reckon time. The lawyer and the min- 
 ister, who perforce had stayed over 
 night, since the railroad's one daily 
 train would not leave until morning, 
 were the only persons sleeping on the 
 third floor. Awakened by the yells of 
 the entire population, they threw open 
 their room doors, only to recoil before 
 thick clouds of choking smoke. Thorn-
 
 104 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 ton crept on hands and knees down the 
 narrow hall to a window. Leaning out 
 to breathe, he felt presently beside him 
 another man the minister who in 
 utter panic began to babble incoherent 
 prayers. 
 
 "0 God!" he shrieked, " remember 
 thine ancient mercies ! Remember I 'm 
 in the ministry a family, too, God, 
 you know that! I can't die just can't 
 die and go away from all I know to 
 what I don't know! I've got work to 
 do here your work! Get me out of 
 this, God quick!" 
 
 "Quiet, man!" said Thornton. "You 
 want your head." 
 
 "The stairs are gone," wailed on 
 the minister, "and we're thirty foot 
 from the ground ! There's fire belchin* 
 out from the window under us, too! 
 To die!" the wail passed into an ap- 
 palling screech "To die, die, die!
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 105 
 
 Where are you are you anywhere, 
 God?" 
 
 The ends of a ladder pushed up 
 through the smoke to the window- 
 ledge. A roar of voices came from 
 the crowd below, and one above all 
 others : ' * Quick, before it burns ! Quick, 
 for God's sake, quick!" 
 
 "On to it, you!" said Thornton to 
 the collapsing Bowles. "You have 
 children and I haven't. Hurry!" 
 
 Bowles swung over the ledge, still 
 babbling. He began to make his way 
 down. Little flames were licking at 
 the ladder's sides and rungs. Five 
 feet below, he looked back at the win- 
 dow, and, as the craven self for a mo- 
 ment cleared out of his features, saw 
 Thornton's face, with a look on it he 
 never forgot a look to last any man's 
 life. He knew only that it was big 
 too big for him to understand.
 
 106 MR. SQUEM 
 
 "But you'll die," he screamed a,s he 
 descended. "I'm to live, but you'll 
 die!" 
 
 "No!" called back Thornton, above 
 the crackle and through the smoke. 
 "I'm up against it and I've changed 
 my mind! I know I'm here, and more 
 than here more ! I shall not die ! ' ' 
 
 And the building fell in with a crash 
 as Bowles stood safe on the ground.
 
 VI 
 
 ME. SMILEY 
 ME. HUNTEE ME. BBADLEY 
 
 IN every small town there is one 
 business man who wears a silk hat. 
 He is born to it ; it is part of the Great 
 Order, and nobody jeers. Mr. Hunter 
 was that man in Parkerton. 
 
 He happened one night into Smiley 's 
 drug-store, and while the proprietor 
 was putting up his prescription com- 
 panionably made talk. 
 
 "Potatoes are still going up," he 
 observed. "How people are going to 
 get on, I don't see. Did you hear about 
 that fire up near Harrisburg farm- 
 er's barn with eight hundred bushels 
 of potatoes, I think it was? He was 
 107
 
 108 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 holding them for a higher price even 
 when they were out of sight. I think 
 the Lord had a hand in that fire." 
 
 "You could hardly say that, could 
 you?" inquired a gentleman sitting by 
 the stove. 
 
 "Why not, Mr. Bradley! He can do 
 what He wants, can't He! And if 
 sparrows don't fall without His notic- 
 ing, I guess this kind of piggishness 
 gets his attention." 
 
 "Yes," said Mr. Bradley, "but you 
 don't think God set that barn on fire, 
 do you?" 
 
 ' * He permitted it to burn, ' ' answered 
 Mr. Hunter, burnishing his hat; "He 
 permitted it to burn." 
 
 "Yes, and might have permitted it 
 if the farmer had been selling the po- 
 tatoes at one-fourth the market, or 
 planning to give them to the Chil- 
 dren's Home."
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 109 
 
 "But it wasn't that way," said Mr. 
 Hunter. 
 
 Mr. Smiley, having wrapped the 
 prescription with much deftness and 
 rung fifty cents on his cash-register, 
 entered the conversation. 
 
 "I saw a picture the other day," he 
 said, "of two Testaments which had 
 saved soldiers' lives in the trenches. 
 A bullet was sticking half-way through 
 one of them, and the other one was 
 pretty nearly torn to flinders. What 
 do you think of that?" 
 
 "That they happened to be in the 
 way, ' ' said Mr. Bradley. * * One of those 
 'Ford Jokes' books or an almanac 
 would have done the same thing." 
 
 "Well, do you think God has any- 
 thing to do with anything!" inquired 
 Mr. Hunter testily. "I'm glad of the 
 chance to ask you, for I know you 
 never go to church, and I saw a book 
 you had ordered down at Brown's yes-
 
 110 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 terday Creative Evolution, by Berg- 
 man or something like that and I 
 heard you criticise the President for 
 appointing a day of prayer for peace. 
 Do you think God has anything to do 
 with anything?" 
 
 "I think," said Mr. Bradley, "that 
 God has everything to do with every- 
 thing, and I think that God is much 
 too big for such little mites as we to 
 talk about or think about." 
 
 Mr. Smiley 's drug-store had been 
 the scene of many an argument and 
 discussion controllingly political. 
 Frequently had the very substantial 
 blunders of the President been pointed 
 out by sundry gentlemen, and his sig- 
 nal sagacities by others, the interested 
 proprietor listening or participating, 
 the while he took care of trade or con- 
 structed Smiley 's Infallible Troches. 
 Debate was at times punctuated by 
 small talk, for the disputants had a
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 111 
 
 genuine interest in their kind, particu- 
 larly such of it as dwelt in the neigh- 
 bourhood, and the assemblage had once 
 been described as "the sewing circle," 
 by a female person who lived opposite. 
 From which it may be inferred that 
 Smiley 's was quite a human sort of 
 place. It had not gone in much for the 
 gods, however. 
 
 "You see," went on Mr. Bradley, 
 "you people who seem most interested 
 in God not that you really are 
 you * herded and branded' religious 
 people, as somebody calls you, have 
 God mixed up with such little things, 
 and you keep Him pottering with such 
 little things and that just kills God 
 for the rest of us." 
 
 Mr. Hunter was acutely conscious of 
 two facts that of being under fire and 
 that of his eldership in the Presbyte- 
 rian Church. 
 
 "Having the understanding darken-
 
 112 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 ed," he began solemnly and his hat 
 seemed like a mitre "having the un- 
 derstanding darkened 
 
 "Not on your life!*' interrupted Mr. 
 Bradley with emphasis. "It's exactly 
 the other thing. It's having the un- 
 derstanding broadened and enlighten- 
 ed that makes just about seventy-five 
 of every hundred men in the average 
 American town let you religious peo- 
 ple go your own way. It's your not 
 having enough God for them to believe 
 in, that's the trouble. It's that you 
 will keep God fussing with little 
 things." 
 
 Mr. Smiley got a tube of dentifrice 
 for a customer with ill-dissembled 
 haste. He did not wish to lose a word. 
 Just as Mr. Hunter was about to re- 
 ply, there was a fumbling at the door, 
 which finally opened, and admitted the 
 local dipsomaniac, Mr. Book Bevan, 
 picturesquely drunk. Dilapidated, un-
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 113 
 
 steady, yet urbane, he made a sweep- 
 ing bow. 
 
 "Doc," he said, "I am a ree-novated 
 man all ree-novated up and as a 
 ree-novated man I come in here to get 
 you to go along to Elder Squigg's tent 
 and get ree-novated like I done last 
 night. The Elder says for me to do 
 this and get you saved ree-novated, 
 understand like me." 
 
 "Now, if you can resist that, 
 Smiley!" put in Mr. Bradley. 
 
 The wandering eye of Mr. Bevan 
 rested on the lawyer. 
 
 "Ree-novated," he murmured, 
 "that's it. We want everybody ree- 
 novated; every damn I mean every 
 single man in town ree-novated. 
 Only" a maudlin pathos stole into 
 his tone "everybody can't git ree- 
 novated. You can't" here a finger 
 shot out at Mr. Bradley "for you 
 ain't got any more religion than one
 
 114 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 of them bull-fightin' cuspidors. You 
 can" the finger veered to Mr. Hun- 
 ter "for no man can wear that plug 
 hat and not be called." 
 
 He made his way uncertainly to the 
 show-case behind which Mr. Smiley 
 was standing. 
 
 "I want alcohol," he said, with 
 something of a child's pleading in his 
 voice; "please, doc, I want alcohol." 
 
 The show-case was a low, all-glass 
 affair, with sundry shelves, also of 
 glass, and laden with numerous small 
 articles, suspended within. When Mr. 
 Book Bevan tripped and fell on and 
 into this case, the ensuing crash was 
 brilliant. Two-thirds of his body was 
 down among pomades, shattered vials, 
 and tooth-brushes, while his legs ges- 
 ticulated wildly above. The effect was 
 striking and brief. He was dragged 
 forth almost instantly, and Mr. Smiley, 
 wiping "Maiden Blush" and other cos-
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 115 
 
 metics from the luckless features, af- 
 fixed court-plaster to certain ugly cuts. 
 
 ''Shall I telephone for the mar- 
 shal!" asked Mr. Hunter. 
 
 "Oh, no," said Mr. Smiley; "poor 
 devil, he sort of looks to me to jolly 
 him along and see to him and it sort 
 of seems up to me to do it. Wait a jiff 
 till I give him something quieting and 
 get him to bed. He's got a cubby in 
 the building next door." 
 
 Mr. Bevan, with his countenance 
 pleasantly diversified by the bits of 
 court-plaster and supported by the 
 arm of Mr. Smiley, beamed amiably 
 as he withdrew. 
 
 "Of course," he said, "everybody 
 can't git ree-novated. " 
 
 Mr. Smiley, returning ten minutes 
 later, surveyed the ruin which -had 
 been a show-case a bit ruefully. 
 
 "It'll set me a plumb hundred," he
 
 116 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 said, "and I do need the hundred. 
 Well, I'll put it down with the twenty- 
 five I dug up to get him the Keeley. 
 If I need, gee, how he needs! Let's 
 get our minds off of this. When Book 
 broke in, you was saying something 
 about God's fussing with little things, 
 Mr. Bradley, and I think Mr. Hunter 
 was getting ready to come back." 
 
 Mr. Hunter had been getting ready, 
 and had utilised certain moments of 
 Mr. Bevan's stay in the process. He 
 had not been for years teacher of a 
 men's Bible class for nothing, and now, 
 with his batteries well placed, he pro- 
 ceeded to a conventional and very well 
 executed declaration of the whole coun- 
 sel of God, as deduced and held by re- 
 ligionists of his kind. It began with 
 the Garden of Eden, abounded in cov- 
 enants and decrees, and was every- 
 where stiffened with texts a miracu- 
 lous number of them, it seemed to Mr.
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 117 
 
 Smiley, who was much impressed. Mr. 
 Hunter fancied comfortably that the 
 scale had been big enough. 
 
 "The whole human race," he said, 
 ''figures in this mighty drama the 
 whole human race!" 
 
 "Oh, dear, oh, dear!*' said Mr. 
 Bradley; "what's the use? Don't you 
 see that you make God ridiculously 
 small when you keep Him eternally 
 nosing round among such small fry as 
 the human race? Don't you see that 
 that's the trouble? People nowadays 
 don't believe that God does anything 
 of that kind. 'The Lord Talketh Fa- 
 miliarly with Moses' that's a chap- 
 ter-head in the Bible. I don't believe 
 He did. Neither do folks in general. 
 They feel just as Carlyle did when he 
 said that it was as sure as shooting 
 that such things never happened. They 
 feel as a late English prime minister 
 did when he said that such conceptions
 
 118 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 stifled him. It's all like painting God 
 with whiskers, as the Old Masters used 
 to do." 
 
 A small boy of four in an Oliver 
 Twist suit came into the store and de- 
 manded a stick of licorice, which Mr. 
 Smiley provided, with the adjuration, 
 "Skip." 
 
 The conversation was not resumed. 
 Mr. Hunter seemed stalled and Mr. 
 Bradley hopeless. Then said Mr. 
 Smiley 
 
 "Now you know I'm just an ordin- 
 ary man. You, Mr. Bradley, are a law- 
 yer, and you read a lot of books, too, 
 everybody says. A man told me the 
 other day he'd bet you've read a thou- 
 sand books. And you, Mr. Hunter, 
 are a great Bible scholar, if you are in 
 the dry-goods line and you've been 
 to the Holy Land. I'm not in the same 
 class with either of you. You know 
 that weepy-lookin' dog of Alick Me-
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 119 
 
 Cue's? Some one asked Alick what 
 breed he was, and Alick says, 'Oh, no 
 particular breed just dog.' That's 
 me. But just as a plain proposition 
 and as it hits a plain man in the drug 
 business, Mr. Bradley 's God seems to 
 be too busy with everything to attend 
 to any particular thing, and Mr. Hun- 
 ter's God too busy with particular 
 things to attend to everything. Hon- 
 est, that's about the way it seems to 
 me." 
 
 There was an interlude while a soda- 
 water patron was served. Then Mr. 
 Smiley continued, 
 
 "About God, you know, I get my 
 idea from Samuel." 
 
 "Ah, the prophet?" asked Mr. Hun- 
 ter with the pleased expression of one 
 expecting reinforcement. 
 
 "Goodness, no," said Mr. Smiley. 
 "The rat who was here for licorice 
 my Samuel. You see, he plays a lot
 
 120 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 with his choo-choos and things about 
 the house, all alone. Sometimes a half 
 day '11 go without his seeing his mother 
 she'll be at work in the kitchen or 
 somewhere, and he in another part of 
 the house. Doesn't seem to miss her. 
 Doesn't seem to know he has a mother. 
 But don't you make any mistake. He 
 can forget her only because he knows 
 she 's there. He can get all wrapped up 
 in his choo-choos and things, only be- 
 cause he's got a sure feel of her being 
 there. If it once came to him that she 
 wasn't there well, I wouldn't like to 
 have it happen, for he'd cry his heart 
 out. He pretty nearly did it once, too, 
 when he wanted something of her and 
 she'd slipped out for five minutes. 
 
 1 ' Well, I says to myself, noticing this 
 about Samuel, isn't it a good deal the 
 same about people and God? They 
 forget Him, but they know He's there; 
 and they couldn't wrap themselves all
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 121 
 
 up in their jobs and things, and go on 
 having a fairly good time, if they did- 
 n't know or feel that He was there. 
 Of course, they don't know what He's 
 doing Samuel could never guess 
 what his mother was doing in the 
 kitchen and if they did, they could- 
 n't understand it, any more than Sam- 
 uel understands a lot his mother does. 
 They just know or feel that He's in 
 the house. Just in the house. That's 
 the way it is with me, and a lot of 
 other plain men like me, I do believe." 
 
 A month after this conversation at 
 Smiley 's the country went to war. 
 There was enlisting and recruiting, 
 and three self-forgetting men the 
 three who had met at the drug-store 
 put themselves at the Nation's serv- 
 ice, and were accepted and ordered 
 with their company to a mobilisation 
 camp. They might, so rumour said, be
 
 122 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 sent to France to fight in the trenches, 
 and with this possibility before them 
 they said good-bye to their friends, 
 amid the waving of flags and blaring 
 of bands, at the train. 
 
 "Good-bye," said Mr. Hunter to the 
 young men of his Bible Class who had 
 escorted him to the station. "Remem- 
 ber me when you pray. I don't mean, 
 ask God to do particular things for 
 me, for God has everything to do with 
 everything, and this that we're going 
 in for may reach beyond humanity and 
 beyond this planet. Only think of me 
 when you think of God remember me 
 when you pray." 
 
 "Good-bye," said Br. Bradley, grasp- 
 ing the hand of his law-partner and 
 closest friend. "It has been a tug to do 
 this, but I have orders orders, Frank ! 
 Do you know" he was clearly agi- 
 tated "I have almost the sense of a 
 hand on my shoulder almost the
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 123 
 
 sense of a voice talking familiarly in 
 my ear?'* 
 
 " Good-bye,*' said Mr. Smiley to the 
 small Samuel. "I don't know how I'm 
 going to stand for it, old chum, I sure 
 don't. I just couldn't go if it wasn't 
 for one thing: we're going to make 
 'em stop taking their daddies away 
 from little tads like you." 
 
 And the collar of the Oliver Twist 
 suit was moist, as he pressed its wear- 
 er close to his heart.
 
 vn 
 
 JUDGE ABBUTHNOT 
 MB. JONES DB. KENNEDY 
 
 TIE the heart of a bat with a red 
 silken string to the right arm, 
 and you will win every game at cards 
 you play.' 
 
 "If you please!" said the man sit- 
 ting opposite. "In the language of 
 the natives, what-fer book is that, 
 Judge?" 
 
 The third man at the Club dining- 
 table smiled. "I've a fancy I know," 
 he said. "Isn't it 'The Long Lost 
 Friend?' " 
 
 "None other," replied the Judge, 
 and read the title-page of the thin lit- 
 tle black-bound volume: " 'The Long 
 
 125
 
 126 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 Lost Friend, Containing Mysterious 
 and Invaluable Arts and Remedies for 
 Man as well as Animals.' There you 
 have it, and of all the incredible luna- 
 cies ! A friend sent it to me as a curi- 
 osity, but I want to say that it is one 
 of the most depressing things I have 
 met in long." 
 
 "Let's have a look," said the man 
 who had asked for information a 
 manufacturer named Jones, and 
 leafed the book through, as the others 
 lighted their cigars. 
 
 "Some colossal work," he remarked. 
 "Look here! Your job will suffer, Dr. 
 Kennedy, if this gets to be a best- 
 seller. All you have to do for whoop- 
 ing cough is cut three bunches of hair 
 from the head of a child who has never 
 seen its father, sew the hair in an un- 
 bleached rag and hang it around the 
 neck of the sufferer. Here's a pre- 
 caution against injuries the right
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 127 
 
 eye of a wolf fastened inside the 
 sleeve. Look at this double-barrelled 
 thing: you write this acrostic on pa- 
 per, and chuck it into a fire, which will 
 at once go out; or else you put it in 
 your cow's feed and she can't be 
 'hexed.' Here's something for me: 
 'To win a lawful suit' I've got one. 
 I'm to take some of the largest kind 
 of sage, and write the names of the 
 twelve apostles on the leaves, and put 
 them in my shoes before I enter the 
 court-house, and appear before Judge 
 Arbuthnot here." 
 
 "I know the book, as I said," re- 
 marked Dr. Kennedy. "I don't see 
 why it should depress anybody. I find 
 it good fun." 
 
 ''Not if you think," said Judge Ar- 
 buthnot, "not if you remember that 
 people have actually trusted this book 
 and its madness and are almost cer- 
 tainly doing it now. I know it was
 
 128 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 first published many years ago when 
 people were less enlightened, but 
 please notice that this copy was print- 
 ed not so long back. I gravely fear 
 that many are committed to these 
 monstrous superstitions. Certainly 
 this is depressing. I can not share 
 your levity over the book." 
 
 "Oh, I don't know," said Mr. Jones 
 easily. "That sort of thing doesn't 
 hurt people much. They aren't any 
 less honest or useful for having a few 
 superstitions. Take that darkey who 
 just brought you your check. He's 
 none the worse for the rabbit's foot in 
 his pocket and more interesting for 
 it; I don't know but more human for 
 it. Mighty good people do some of 
 those 'Long Lost Friend' things 
 kick about passing under ladders, for 
 instance, or carry dried lemon-peel in 
 their pockets, or something like that. 
 We all have to eat our peck of dirt,
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 129 
 
 and perhaps we need it, as birds do 
 gravel. ' ' 
 
 "Speaking of lemon-peel," said the 
 Doctor, "you remember Emerson's 
 owning up that he once carried a 
 horse-chestnut or was it a potato? 
 about with him against rheumatism. 
 Very efficacious, he said, as he never 
 had it afterward, and he thought it 
 must have worked backward, as he had 
 never had it before." 
 
 "Yes, and old Dr. Samuel Johnson," 
 said Mr. Jones. "Didn't he have a 
 full cargo of superstitions always 
 entering a room with the right foot in 
 advance, you know, and touching every 
 rung of a balustrade, and so on and 
 so on? Those things never hurt him, 
 and they make him a lot more pictur- 
 esque." 
 
 The three puffed at their cigars for 
 an interval. 
 
 "I try to see your side of it," Judge
 
 130 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 Arbuthnot observed, "but I wonder if 
 you get below the surface. I wonder 
 if you remember voodooism or recall 
 witchcraft, or realise the dreadful 
 things for which superstition has been 
 responsible in the past. Truly, I feel 
 something like nausea as I look at this 
 horrible little book. To think that peo- 
 ple are to-day fooling with such things 
 things that belong to jungle life and 
 jungle ways!" 
 
 "I wouldn't take it so hard, Judge," 
 said Dr. Kennedy. " These things mean 
 only a kind of good-natured betting on 
 the inconceivable possibilities of the 
 universe and enough of those have 
 been revealed to justify betting on 
 'most anything. People in general have 
 left ' The Long Lost Friend ' a long way 
 behind by this, and their little irra- 
 tionalities here and there are only 
 proofs of their living wonder at the 
 universe and their consequent alive-
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 131 
 
 ness in it. I wouldn't worry over the 
 discovery of such a survival." 
 
 "Little symptoms often mean seri- 
 ous things," replied the Judge. "The 
 one hope for our advance lies in what 
 Huxley called 'veracity of thought.* I 
 am disturbed by finding in print to- 
 day such a foe to that as is this book 
 yes, genuinely disturbed and de- 
 pressed." 
 
 Mr. Jones borrowed "The Long 
 Lost Friend," and the three men sep- 
 arated. 
 
 Judge Arbuthnot was to take an 
 early morning train on the following 
 day. He was driven in his car to the 
 station, and saw on the platform there 
 three bodies awaiting a train. 
 
 "Are those corpses all to go on the 
 six-fifty?" he asked of the baggage- 
 agent. 
 
 "Yes, Judge Arbuthnot, all three."
 
 132 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 "Henry," said the Judge to his 
 chauffeur, "I can not go until to-night, 
 after all. Drive home." 
 
 He went that night. As the train 
 started, there entered his Pullman a 
 friend who congratulated him upon his 
 fine physical form. 
 
 "It's good that Grippe hasn't caught 
 you, Judge," he said, "it's landed on 
 nearly everybody." 
 
 "Safe so far," Judge Arbuthnot re- 
 plied and rapped with his fingers 
 upon the wooden arm of the car seat. 
 
 Behind the curtains of his berth the 
 Judge found a clothes-hanger, and 
 having achieved the acrobatics of un- 
 dressing disposed his garments upon 
 the same and sank to sleep. The 
 white-jacketed porter, coming along an 
 hour later, stopped at Section Seven. 
 
 "If we wasn't honest," he said,
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 133 
 
 stooping over, " these ca'leless passen- 
 gers surely would get their jolts." 
 
 And he picked up what had slid 
 from Judge Arbuthnot's pocket four 
 silver coins, a knife aiid some bits of 
 dried lemon-peel.
 
 VIII 
 
 THE REVEREND AMBROSE HOETON 
 MB. THORPE THE BRAKEMAN 
 
 THE Reverend Ambrose Horton 
 had always maintained the com- 
 plete moral right of a clergyman to 
 smoke. So it peculiarly exasperated 
 him that he should feel uncomfortable 
 while wearing a clerical suit in a smok- 
 ing car. This, and not draughts, was 
 at the bottom of his retaining his over- 
 coat on the rather mild morning he 
 was riding from Baltimore to Wash- 
 ington. He felt it dissembled his 
 rabat. 
 
 "I guess," said his seat-mate, dis- 
 pelling this impression, "I probably 
 belong to your Church or did, before 
 
 135
 
 136 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 I married a Methodist. You're an 
 Episcopalian, aren't you!" 
 
 Mr. Horton bowed. 
 
 "Well, I was one, but I've gone with 
 her, since we were married eight years 
 ago. It sort of seemed right she was 
 all wrapped up in her Church. So I've 
 gone with her. That is, sometimes." 
 
 "Not regularly?" 
 
 ' * N-no ; only once in a while. But I 
 "kind of thought I ought to give up, 
 you know go with her when I do go. 
 That's mostly in the winter. Except 
 then I generally golf Sundays." 
 
 "May I ask where you live!" en- 
 quired Mr. Horton. 
 
 "Certainly Cincinnati. I sell hard- 
 ware out of that town my name is 
 Thorpe and have been doing it ever 
 since I was twenty-one, fourteen years 
 ago. On the road all the time except 
 Sundays, and those days a caddy-bag 
 looks good to little Willie."
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 137 
 
 Mr. Horton politely declined a cigar 
 and refilled his pipe. 
 
 "You interest me," he said. "I live 
 in a Pennsylvania city of the third 
 class a rather enterprising and pro- 
 gressive town within easy reach of the 
 great centres. If you sell goods there 
 and I imagine you do you know 
 it's alive. Well, anything like general 
 Sunday golf is unknown there 
 wouldn't go there. A few venture- 
 some individuals at most go in for it. 
 In general, it would be looked at 
 well, obliquely." 
 
 Mr. Thorpe's reception of this was 
 laconic expressed in the brief voca- 
 ble "Woof!" 
 
 "That sort of thing is viewed as the 
 Sunday theatre is viewed," went on 
 Mr. Horton. "I believe you have that 
 also in Cincinnati?" 
 
 "Sure," said Mr. Thorpe. 
 
 "I think that in a majority of East-
 
 138 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 era towns such as mine Sunday golf 
 and Sunday theatres go together- 
 and don't go. The community-sense 
 holds both to be a moral let-down. As 
 you go West, it doesn't seem to do 
 that." 
 
 "I think," said Mr. Thorpe, "that 
 you ought to wake up and hear the 
 birdies sing. The idea of anybody's 
 getting the dog-eye because he plays 
 golf on Sunday! And where is there 
 any harm in seeing a good play on 
 Sunday night? I would do it if I 
 wanted to, but golf is about all I care 
 for except an occasional horse-race. 
 I certainly do love to see the ponies 
 run." 
 
 "I can understand that," replied 
 Mr. Horton, "and I don't see why you 
 shouldn't. The racing itself has really 
 nothing to do with the betting and so 
 on which makes the prejudice against 
 it."
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 139 
 
 "Sure," said Mr. Thorpe again. 
 "That's what queers it, and you ought 
 to be careful. I do once in a while 
 put a dollar or so on a horse never 
 more than two just to add to the in- 
 terest; and, say, one afternoon what 
 do you suppose ? I put out two dollars 
 to start and came away with three 
 hundred and eighty-one ! Honest ! My 
 wife never liked that part of it, some- 
 way, but I stopped on the road home 
 and picked up a pair of dandy por- 
 tieres she'd had her eye on, and she 
 didn't say so much." 
 
 The clergyman sighed. 
 
 "Ethics are an awful mess nowa- 
 days," he said. "The Puritans had 
 an easy time: just two bins, and no 
 possibility of making mistakes. We 
 have fifty bins and make a lot of them. 
 I do not adjust to the modern situa- 
 tion and I get severely jolted. Here is 
 the woman who smokes she is every-
 
 140 MR. SQUEM 
 
 where with her cigarettes, and more 
 everywhere every day. Not the reck- 
 less, but the really nice type, you un- 
 derstand; not the 'smart/ but the su- 
 perior woman. For people of the old 
 regime 
 
 Mr. Thorpe, who had grown very 
 grave, interrupted. 
 
 "That," he said, "is the limit. That 
 is darn near horrible. I've heard how 
 much you do of that in the East, and 
 I want to say that such things 
 
 "Washington!" bawled the brake- 
 man, and stopping by the two gentle- 
 men said: 
 
 "You never can tell, can you? That 
 skirt I helped off at the last station 
 you'd a said was a perfect lady but 
 you never can tell. * Careful, ' she says 
 as I helped her down, 'careful, I've 
 had an accident to my leg.' Leg, gee- 
 whiz!"
 
 IX 
 
 THE REVEREND JUSTIN HUNT 
 DOCTOR HENDERSON MR. BLOGGS 
 
 THE Reverend Justin Hunt stood 
 beside his wife's bed at 
 3:15 A. M. 
 
 "There's a strange, blind thing," he 
 said, "roaming about this house. It 
 came upstairs ahead of me just now 
 and went into the study. I'm not 
 afraid of it, but" his language was 
 as unclerical as the bath-robe he was 
 wearing "I'd like to know what the 
 devil it is." 
 
 The non-neurotic lady in the bed had 
 waked at the creaking of the stairs 
 and had called her husband's name, 
 with this sequel. 
 
 141
 
 142 MR. SQUEM AXD 
 
 "Mercy, Justin!" she said, "what 
 do you mean! Get yourself together 
 come, be sane." 
 
 "I am together, all right," he an- 
 swered. "I fell awake a couple of 
 hours back maybe it was the spa- 
 ghetti, I don't know and went to 
 mulling over Sir Oliver Lodge's book, 
 'Raymond,' in the sitting-room. Wait, 
 I wasn't reading the seance part at 
 all, but the mighty good stuff at the 
 end, the 'Life and Death' I think it 
 ought to be all of the book, and the 
 rest chucked and then ' 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "Well, then this strange, blind thing 
 began to get into the game began to 
 grow up around me. I just wasn't 
 alone felt in my bones I wasn't 
 along. I picked up Life, and read Mr. 
 Martin's editorials well, it was there. 
 Then I went and brewed some coffee, 
 and it was there in the kitchen. I'm
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 143 
 
 not an ass, Marie, and I don't see 
 things at night you know that." 
 
 "Did you see this?" 
 
 "Certainly not; more, and a lot 
 more. Felt it felt it in my bones, as 
 I said, and to my boots. Heavens, the 
 feel of it ! It was with me all the way 
 upstairs up to the time you spoke, 
 and then it seemed to crack and go 
 through the study door." 
 
 "Well, I'm not going to divorce 
 you," said the lady, "but we're not 
 going to have any more spaghetti at 
 night. Why do you call it blind?" 
 
 "I give you my word I don't know," 
 said the Reverend Justin. "I just 
 have to. See here, Marie, you must 
 know I'm pretty well wrenched, or I'd 
 never tell you this. Don't chaff in 
 God's name, don't chaff! I've just 
 met and I don't care whether it's 
 outer or inner something horribly un- 
 canny, something outside of life which
 
 144 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 oughtn't to get at life which beats 
 life down if it does. I'm not afraid of 
 it only horrified and I'll prove it!" 
 He was gone from the bedside, and 
 in thirty seconds there was a heavy 
 fall on the floor of the study. 
 
 * 
 
 His physician allowed him to leave 
 his bed in ten days, giving a six-syl- 
 labled name to what had brought him 
 there, and then, uttering the single 
 word "Rest," withdrew. A devoted 
 congregation provided for the rest, the 
 clergyman kissed the non-neurotic lady 
 good-bye, and exactly two weeks from 
 the night of his collapse arrived in St. 
 Augustine. He sat that evening, de- 
 clericalized and with a distinct sense 
 of freedom, in a wonderful hotel, 
 watching the brilliant parade of laces 
 and diamonds, and noting the dog-like 
 convoy of heavy beeves in evening 
 clothes who paid the bills. The man in
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 145 
 
 the chair at his left spoke startlingly 
 to his thought. 
 
 "Chewing-gum dukes and breakfast- 
 food barons," he said. "Rings in their 
 noses, poor devils. They do feed, 
 though. Look at their paunches." 
 
 "Not much soul, certainly," replied 
 the Reverend Justin. 
 
 "Pardon me," said the man in the 
 chair on the right, cutting in, "you 
 have to use words, of course, but I 
 wouldn't use that word. It isn't 'souP 
 that's lacking it's just that these 
 chaps aren't really live animals. I 
 suppose that is what you mean. 'Soul' 
 is just re-acting to something more 
 than cocktails and bills-of-fare, being 
 a live animal. Hold it to that, and 
 you're all right, but you have to look 
 out not to tangle it up with oh, well, 
 things above living and superstitious 
 things. ' ' 
 
 "If you don't tangle it up with
 
 146 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 things above living " began the 
 
 clergyman. 
 
 "Then you are safe from such mel- 
 ancholy moonshine as has come recent- 
 ly from Sir Oliver Lodge. Have you 
 seen his last book! And what do you 
 think of a mind like his condescending 
 to tipping tables and mediums and all 
 the rest of it?" 
 
 The mention seemed to block reply 
 with the Reverend Justin. The man 
 at the left who had been industriously 
 smoking pointed across the lobby. 
 
 "You see that little shrimp over 
 there by the cigar-stand ? ' ' he enquired. 
 "Well, I've seen him around here, 
 looking kind of lost and lonely and 
 generally half-baked, for two or three 
 days. Yesterday I made up to him 
 looked as if he needed it but didn't 
 get any come-back. Acted brain- 
 scared. Somebody says to me after- 
 ward, * Heavens, he's a first family of
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 147 
 
 Philadelphia!' Seemed to think I 
 ought to cash up to somebody for the 
 privilege of speaking to him. Funny, 
 wasn't it?" 
 
 1 ' I wonder, ' ' he went on after an in- 
 terval, "if you gentlemen would feel 
 like taking a ride in the morning. A 
 coon who drives one of these two- 
 seated carriages you see everywhere 
 was telling me about the Ponce de 
 Leon Spring. He says old Ponce de 
 Leon is buried out there and that folks 
 ought to see it. Of course it would 
 cost a lot less for three than for one. 
 What do you say?" 
 
 Mr. Hunt and the man on the right 
 said yes, and the three gave each other 
 their respective names. He on the left 
 proclaimed himself Mr. Simon Bloggs, 
 and readily added that he was a county 
 sheriff from Michigan, making his first 
 visit to the East. The gentleman who 
 objected to 'soul' produced cards read-
 
 148 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 ing, " Ernest Douglas Henderson, 
 M.D." Mr. Hunt, uttering the mono- 
 syllable which labelled him, added no 
 more. 
 
 
 
 A horse supernaturally thin in har- 
 ness astonishingly smart dragged the 
 party toward the Spring next day, and 
 the very black driver interspersed ob- 
 servations to his beast addressed as 
 "George" with comments on objects 
 along the road. 
 
 "You see 'at house, gen'lemen?" he 
 asked, pointing to a forlorn shack. 
 "Some murder theah, a couple yeahs 
 ago. Woman cut off huh husband's 
 haid with an axe in the night clean, 
 plumb off. He's been hantin' the 
 house eveh since screechin' and 
 carryin' on ev'y night. Nobody won't 
 go nigh it afteh dark it's broke up 
 the prayeh-meetin' up heah at Shiloh 
 Chu'ch, for the membehs won't pass
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 149 
 
 the place. Wash Simmons, forgittin', 
 come by one night about ten and 
 heah was that man standin' by the 
 gate, holdin' his haid straight out in 
 front of him in bofe hands, and the 
 mouth a-yellin'. Wash ain't speshu- 
 ally swift not as a reg'lar rule but 
 he sho'ly got some speed on that 
 night." 
 
 "This, you see," said Dr. Hender- 
 son, addressing Mr. Hunt, "is the kind 
 of thing I meant when I spoke of 'soul' 
 last night. It's the " 
 
 "Gosh!" exclaimed Mr. Bloggs, 
 glaring back at the haunted hut, * ' look 
 at that face at the window!" 
 
 They had scarcely turned to see, 
 when George answered a tremendous 
 cut by violently bolting forward. All 
 held tight to the carriage, which 
 lurched and swayed at high speed for 
 a matter of two-hundred yards. Then 
 it came to a stop.
 
 150 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 "How we goin' to git back is what 
 I want to know," said the driver with 
 his teeth chattering. "You don't tell 
 me that hant has taken to ^a^-time! 
 I ain't no ways anxious to go by theah. 
 But how we goin' to git back?" 
 
 "Cut around through a field if you 
 want to," said Mr. Bloggs. "We'll 
 drive George back there and hitch him, 
 and then go through that house. I'm 
 not so darn sure what is in there I 
 sure never saw such a map as the one 
 that grinned out of that window, no, 
 never! but I'm for going through 
 that house." 
 
 "I may as well say that I've poor 
 nerves," said Mr. Hunt. "That is 
 really why I'm down here. Of course, 
 it's all physical, but I believe I'll walk 
 around with the driver." 
 
 "All right," Mr. Bloggs replied. 
 "That's good sense. You do that, and 
 leave the house to me and the Doctor."
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 151 
 
 They found absolutely nothing, 
 though they searched every nook and 
 corner of the wretched cabin. There 
 was the feel that nothing living had 
 been there for months. After ten min- 
 utes they walked toward the road. 
 "I'd like to know," said the Doctor, 
 "if a darkey who had never heard of 
 the murder would notice anything un- 
 usual here at midnight. One of them 
 started the tale and screech owls or 
 something like them did the rest. As 
 for the face at the window I didn't 
 see it, for I was holding on for my life 
 that was likely due to the fall of the 
 sunlight on waves in the glass. That 
 sort of thing, you know 
 
 "Lord!" broke in Mr. Bloggs, "look 
 at the horse!" 
 
 They had come within thirty feet of 
 George, and beheld him settled back 
 and straining at his halter in evident 
 terror. His eyes glared at something
 
 152 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 apparently ahead. He drew long, 
 shuddering breaths. 
 
 "Sick," said the Doctor. 
 
 "Scared," said Mr. Bloggs, "scared 
 at something, and scared blue." 
 
 They untied the trembling animal 
 and led him down the road, where, an 
 eighth of a mile distant, they found 
 Mr. Hunt and a very silent negro. The 
 wealth of the Indies could not have 
 tempted the latter again to pass the 
 house. So they returned to the hotel. 
 
 That night their chairs were again 
 together, and the talk went to what had 
 happened in the morning. 
 
 "Of course it was ridiculous," the 
 Doctor said, "our searching that 
 shanty. I did feel an ass." 
 
 "I really can't see," the clergyman 
 said, "why you should. Anything 
 that strikes ignorant people as mys- 
 terious and crawly anything ill-un-
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 153 
 
 derstood ought, I think, to be looked 
 into to get it understood. Haunted 
 houses are a persistent proposition, 
 the crowd has been afraid of them for 
 hundreds of years, and you remember 
 Huxley's saying that the ghosts are 
 older than the gods. Whatever there - 
 is back ought to be dragged out. Why 
 shouldn't you look?" 
 
 "Answering that," replied Dr. Hen- 
 derson, "because to look is to take se- 
 riously old and pestilent superstitions 
 things of a lower level which ought 
 to be left to die and helped to die. To 
 look at such things is like taking off 
 your clothes and putting on a breech- 
 clout." 
 
 "I give you up," said Mr. Hunt. 
 "You are one of those scientifically- 
 minded people that I just give up. 
 You are all for looking into things 
 and probing things to the bottom, but 
 this one thing you won't look at at all.
 
 154 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 You just say there's nothing in it. To 
 explain it is the best way to prove 
 that, I should say. And then there is 
 something like a psychical world, isn't 
 there?" 
 
 The Doctor smiled. 
 
 "Do you remember," he asked, 
 "what Thoreau on his death-bed said 
 to his friend Parker Pillsbury? Pills- 
 bury asked him if he saw anything on 
 the other side he was very nearly 
 gone and Thoreau whispered, 'One 
 world at a time, Parker.' That's what 
 I think; and I notice that when peo- 
 ple fool with another world they gen- 
 erally go well, dippy. I haven't any 
 room for gods or ghosts. All I know 
 is Being Alive. That is man's ap- 
 propriate job. Anything else is er 
 not intended." 
 
 * ' Delicious ! ' ' said Mr. Hunt. * Per- 
 fectly delicious! Of course without 
 gods nothing can be 'intended.' "
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 155 
 
 The Doctor looked a little foolish, 
 and Mr. Bloggs took a hand. 
 
 "I guess," he said, ''that there's 
 just about as much goose-flesh ready 
 to rise on people as there ever was. I 
 heard a man say in a lecture it was 
 at Pontiac that there was a French 
 woman once Madam Somebody who 
 said she was all through believing 
 in ghosts, but was afraid of them just 
 the same. That's about the way, I 
 reckon, with most of us. I did have 
 chills down my spine this morning and 
 no mistake whether it was ripples in 
 the glass or not and I'm not so dead 
 sure that horse was sick. I guess there 
 is a whole lot of things we don't know 
 about, and I judge they ought to be 
 looked into. But not by most of us 
 unless we come up against them like 
 this morning. I wouldn't be a quitter 
 when that happens I'd look, all right 
 but as for hunting up such things,
 
 156 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 that isn't for me. It's for some one 
 who knows more than me. I think 
 there's cussed little in this spiritualist 
 business. I went to a seance once, and 
 my brother Wesley so they said 
 talked to me through the medium. It 
 was all about blue suspenders! Yet 
 I think even such things ought to be 
 looked into to see what they are." 
 
 "You are two against one," said the 
 Doctor, ''and we can't get together. I 
 say the way to kill superstition is to 
 ignore it and the way to perpetuate 
 it and get caught in it is to attend to 
 it, never mind with what high-sound- 
 ing talk about 'psychical research' 
 and all that. Of course we have the 
 legacy of the past in us somewhat 
 the superstition that there is some- 
 thing somewhere beyond being alive, 
 which is the one solid fact a man can 
 go on. Better let our current Religion 
 take care of that legacy. It's really
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 157 
 
 doing it mighty well, for it has shaved 
 the other-world business down to two 
 big ghost-stories one nineteen hun- 
 dred years behind us and the other on 
 ahead, after we're dead leaving life 
 here for living, as it should be left. 
 Good blinders, packing all the mystery 
 into an innocuous block which doesn't 
 interfere with life." 
 
 "An original apologetic," said Mr. 
 Hunt, with an edge to his voice. "I 
 assume that you think that there is 
 no reality for us outside this life and 
 this world." 
 
 "I think there is plenty of reality 
 in the two," replied the Doctor, 
 "plenty for anybody. As for secrets 
 beyond, we shall make those out only 
 when we make out what Mr. Wells 
 calls 'the secret of the jumping cat 
 within the human skull' which will be 
 never. ' ' 
 
 " Speaking of cats," said Mr.
 
 158 MR. SQUEM AND 
 
 Bloggs, as the three rose from their 
 chairs, "we had one once his name 
 was Seth and he used to have fits 
 the worst kind and when he'd get 
 through rearing around and come to 
 himself again, he'd back, all tuckered 
 out and draggled, into a corner al- 
 ways back, understand. Seemed to 
 think something had tackled him from 
 the outside, and he was going to guard 
 against another attack. Maybe that's 
 the way it is here. Maybe I had some- 
 thing like a fit something inside 
 after the coon's story this morning, 
 and thought it was outside." 
 
 "I think it very likely," said Dr. 
 Henderson, * * and I think your analogy 
 would cover a lot of other cases, too." 
 
 "I'm not so sure, though," went on 
 Mr. Bloggs, "I'd 'a' bet I saw some- 
 thing I'd almost bet now I saw some- 
 thing. Then there was the horse. I'm 
 not so darn sure."
 
 SOME MALE TRIANGLES 159 
 
 "That, I think/' said the clergyman, 
 "covers more cases than your cat. 
 The hard churchmen, of course" 
 here a bow to the Doctor "say bosh, 
 and some people talk about the sub- 
 liminal consciousness or dual person- 
 ality as explanatory of strange things 
 which come bolting into life which 
 is much the same, I think, as saying 
 a thing 'goes by electricity'; but the 
 real creed of the time on the 'super- 
 normal' which is, of course, just old- 
 fashioned ghosts is in your admir- 
 able phrase, we are no matter how 
 cool and emancipated 'not so darn 
 sure.' " 
 
 "It's crawly, anyway," said Mr. 
 Bloggs, "crawly anyway you look at 
 it. Ghosts inside you are as bad as 
 ghosts outside. Good night." 
 
 Mr. Hunt, slowly preparing for bed, 
 paused and addressed himself.
 
 160 MR. SQUEM 
 
 "I wonder," he said, "I wonder if 
 this Doctor is right, and there is 
 nothing in it all. I wonder if my Doc- 
 tor was right with his big medical 
 word for what happened to me. I 
 wonder if Mr. Bloggs' cat explains 
 everything. ' ' 
 
 Then, after a moment : 
 
 U I wonder if there's something out- 
 side of life which oughtn't to get at 
 life, and which beats life down if it 
 does."
 
 JSSSSBaasm LIBRARY 
 
 A 000038380