MICHAEL 
 FORTH 
 
 by 
 
 MARY JOHNSTON 
 
 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 "TO HAVE AND TO HOLD" "AUDREY" LEWIS RAND" 
 "SIR MORTIMER" "FOES" 
 
 Harper & Brothers Publishers 
 New York and London 
 
BOOKS BY 
 MARY JOHNSTON 
 
 MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 FOES 
 
 SIR MORTIMER 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK 
 [ESTABLISHED 1817] 
 
 MICHAEL FORTS 
 
 Copyright; 1919 by Mary Johnston 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
m 
 
 MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 WAS born at Restwell, two miles from the small 
 
 town of Whitechurch, in the county of 
 
 in Virginia. The night of my birth, by going to 
 the top of Lone Tree Hill behind Restwell, one 
 might see the smoke and flare of a dying battle 
 and hear in diminuendo the guns of North and 
 South. I know this because Daddy Guinea went 
 up there and heard and saw and told me about it 
 when I was six years old and sitting with him in his 
 cabin over the fire. 
 
 " Fo de Lawd, dat s so!" said Daddy Guinea. 
 "De tree shivered an Guinea shivered. De sky 
 low down wuz on fire lak you burnin breshwood, 
 an de guns holler hoarser n bullfrogs ! Dey soun 
 jes lak de folks in hell buttin dey haids togedder. 
 N yo father was dere an yo grandfather an yo 
 uncle Gilchrist an mo ob yo cousins dan you 
 could shake er stick at! An er passel ob other 
 folk. An de folk on de other side -de Yanks. An 
 de light flicker lak breshwood burnin , an de guns 
 holler lak bullfrogs in hell, whar dere ain t no water! 
 An de tree shiver an Guinea shiver." 
 
 "Did I shiver, Daddy Guinea?" 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 I don know bout de shiverin , but I sho know 
 dat you hollered! I come down from Lone Tree 
 Hill, an* de big house wuz lighted up, an* I heard 
 you hollerin* befo* I got to de kitchen door." 
 
 "What was I crying about?" 
 
 Daddy Guinea scraped the sweet-potatoes that 
 we were roasting out of the ashes. "Dat s er ques 
 tion with er powerful lot ob joints ! Dar now ! De 
 ashes off de little, long tater, jes lak you laks hit!" 
 
 My father, my grandfather, and Uncle Gilchrist 
 came safely from the battle visible from Lone Tree 
 Hill. But three months later in a skirmish a hun 
 dred miles from Restwell my father was killed. So 
 I do not remember him. A daguerreotype and a 
 photograph carte de visile show a strong, irregular 
 face. He was twenty-six when he died, and I was 
 his only child. I was born and he was killed in the 
 second year of the war. I was three years old when 
 came the Surrender. At present my native region 
 found itself midseas in that long and trying episode 
 called Reconstruction. South of Mason and Dixon 
 at this moment in history it was called Domination. 
 War, Surrender, Reconstruction, or Domination 
 they were but words to a six-year-old, yet words 
 with something mystic, awful, wrapped around them. 
 He could not but feel that, watching the faces of the 
 grown-ups who spoke them. 
 
 Daddy Guinea was old and bent and charcoal 
 black and seamed. He had been born at Restwell, 
 but his father and mother were born in Africa. He 
 was one of the handful of men and women, slaves 
 once but now free, who stayed on at Restwell after 
 the war. He was free, but made no great fuss over 
 
 2 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 it, took his wage in kyid and in the very few dollars 
 my grandfather could give him, and once told me, 
 "I wuz all de time free in er place inside! * 
 
 Now, sitting in the cabin that was dark save for 
 the hearth-fire, waiting for the sweet-potato, watch 
 ing Daddy Guinea s manipulations, all of a sudden 
 he linked and brought together for me the feel of all 
 the negro folk that I knew intimately or had casually 
 viewed. He was like them and not like them, as all 
 the others were like one another and yet had their 
 differences, so that I never mistook Uncle Plutus 
 for Mandy s Jim, nor Mandy for Aunt Esther, nor 
 Mammy for either of these, nor one of the children 
 with whom I played for another. Daddy Guinea, 
 now bending, now rising, from the fire, was certainly 
 Daddy Guinea. Yet, like the giant shadow upon 
 the wall and ceiling, there was something around 
 that was holding Daddy Guinea and Uncle Plutus, 
 Mandy s Jim and Mandy and Aunt Esther and all 
 the others. I don t suppose in the least that sitting 
 there, a small boy roasting sweet-potatoes, I con 
 sciously entertained an idea of race or accomplished 
 a considerable synthesis. Yet I did, with a sudden 
 sense of wideness, of novelty, open into a perception, 
 not of Daddy Guinea or Mammy or Uncle Plutus 
 or Esther, but of colored people. I was due to meet 
 often in life, am due still to meet often, that sense 
 of generalization. It came then, as it comes now, 
 with the breath of space, with a dawnlike, happy 
 surprise. 
 
 I sat staring into the embers. "Don* you lak 
 yo sweet - potato?" asked Daddy Guinea. "Eat 
 hit!" 
 
 3 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 When it was eaten he took me home to the big 
 house. Outside the cabin was darkness and stars, 
 the sound of the river and wind in the oaks. Also 
 a whippoorwill was crying : Whip-poor-will ! Whip- 
 poor-will!" I pressed close to Daddy Guinea. 
 
 Mammy waited for me in the kitchen door. 
 "Never wuz such a chile for gallivantin off to 
 cabins! Come in an say yo prayers an* celerate 
 yo self into bed!" 
 
 I always said my prayers kneeling beside my 
 mother. Now I said them and climbed into my bed 
 and she kissed me good night. She went out of 
 the room, and Mammy, who had a bed in the corner, 
 sat at a table by the lamp and hemmed a great 
 white neckerchief. It was a warm night. Moths 
 came in at the windows and flew around the light. 
 Mammy s shadow moved on the wall. Her head 
 nodded, up and down went her arm. I lay upon 
 my side and watched the shadow. The room was 
 large and square and the whippoorwilTs voice, no less 
 than the moths, came in at the window. I grew 
 lonely, and to brighten matters sat up and demanded 
 a drink of water. Mammy brought it to me in my 
 silver mug and told me to go to sleep. I held her by 
 her ample apron. 
 
 " Daddy Guinea saw them fighting from Lone 
 Tree Hill. Did you see them, Mammy?" 
 
 Mammy looked down at me, and with a large, 
 brown hand pushed the hair from my forehead. 
 "You go to sleep, honey! Yo haid s as damp as a 
 dish-rag! It s a hot night. You go to sleep!" 
 
 "Did you see them?" 
 
 "No! Where d I fin time to go up to Lone Tree 
 
 4 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 Hill ? First I wuz wukkin with yo mother, an* den 
 I wuz holdin you in dese two hands. Now you lay 
 right down an* go to sleep!" 
 
 I obeyed her, but in the nighttime I woke, 
 terribly afraid. At my loud crying my mother 
 came in. 
 
 "Dar now!" said Mammy. " First you waked 
 yo self, an den you waked Mammy, an* den you 
 waked yo mother!" 
 
 I clung to my mother. "Daddy Guinea said the 
 sky was like brushwood and the guns were like bull 
 frogs in hell, where there isn t any water!" 
 
 My mother sat down beside me on the bed. 
 * There, Michael there, Michael!" 
 
 "And I wouldn t ever tell! I was down at the 
 big gate and a colored man came by and he came 
 over and made a face at me. And he said, You 
 were beaten poor and I hope you ll be beaten 
 poorer! And he pulled my hair and he said, *I 
 couldn t useter do that ! And he said : Don t you 
 dare go tell! If you do I ll come at night and make 
 mincemeat of you!" 1 I burst into a loud cry. 
 "I ve told I ve told!" 
 
 "Michael! Michael!" 
 
 "Will he make mincemeat of me?" 
 
 "No! He can t. He was a poor fool!" 
 
 Mammy s voice came from the other side of the 
 room. "Dat s jest what he wuz! Some no- count, 
 po colored trash!" 
 
 I lay for a moment, quieted, in the bend of my 
 mother s arm. But then came new perturbations, 
 salt tears. "What did we do to the colored people? 
 What did they do to us?" 
 
 5 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 "My Lawd!" exclaimed Mammy. " Listen to 
 dat chile!" 
 
 My mother moved upon the bed. "Mammy, I ll 
 stay with him until he goes to sleep. Suppose you 
 go lie down upon the little bed in my room." 
 
 "Ef you wants to talk to him, Miss Gary, I ain t 
 gwine listen!" 
 
 "What should I care if you did! But, Mammy, 
 you go get your sleep " 
 
 Mammy, sheets and pillow in her arms, went into 
 the next room. My mother retook her place beside 
 me. "Michael, I think sometimes that you are as 
 old as I, or that I am as young as you! Now let s 
 talk to each other and get rid of being afraid!" 
 
 She had on a muslin wrapper tied with a blue 
 ribbon. I remembered it always, I thought. In the 
 years since I could notice she had had few new 
 clothes. Now I wiped away my tears with her flow 
 ing sleeve. 
 
 "What did we do to the colored people?" 
 
 After a moment she answered. "There isn t any 
 body here but just ourselves. I am going to tell 
 you how I see things. You ve got a mind under 
 that tousled hair. Let us straighten out things 
 together! . . . Our great-grandfathers and great- 
 great-grandfathers and great - great - great - grand 
 fathers robbed the colored people out of Africa. 
 They didn t ask to come out of Africa. The white 
 folk, North and South, and English, and everybody 
 else, just stole them or bought them from other 
 robbers that were black. The white folk wanted to 
 make wealth with them or out of them. They 
 brought them over the sea in ships called slave- 
 
 6 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 ships. The white men who took them were slavers. 
 The white folk who bought them were slave 
 holders. The words, slave, slaver, slaveholder were 
 written over everything. For all the words of good 
 ness that were written, these words were written, too ! 
 
 * Written where, mother ? Written over where we 
 live?" 
 
 "Yes! Written over where we live. But it isn t 
 to be forgotten," said my mother, with a kind of 
 passionateness, "that on a time and no such far 
 time, either they were written over everywhere else 
 on earth! They are written over some places still. 
 It s a matter of progression in time and place, and 
 over varying obstacles, and they wouldn t always 
 have been written over us!" 
 
 I hardly think that she was speaking directly to 
 me now, though we did talk all manner of things 
 over together, she and I. She was genial, with vision 
 and reach and an independence of speech that 
 brought her into disfavor with many. Now she sat 
 upon the bed in the white wrapper and bkie ribbon 
 and seemed to brood upon the darkness outside the 
 window. The lamp had been lighted again and the 
 moths flew around it. There came, too, the odor of 
 the lilies in the garden. The whippoorwill had 
 stopped calling, but there mounted and entered a 
 whole tide of little cricket sounds. 
 
 "Was the war about the colored people?" 
 
 My mother turned her face to me. "As I see it, 
 it was partly about that and partly about another 
 thing, called Theory of Government, and partly, 
 I reckon, about other things. . . . Oh, Michael, it 
 was a dreadful war!" 
 
 7 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 She bent herself and clung to me, and I cried 
 again because she was crying. But she did not cry 
 a long time. She shook her tears away and made a 
 face at me and laughed so that I might laugh. 
 " It s over! We re all in the Union again, or will be 
 one day when those we fought think we re punished 
 enough! And the slaves are free!" 
 
 "Are you sorry, mother?" 
 
 "No!" 
 
 "And they re not sorry?" 
 
 "The slaves? No!" 
 
 "Well" 
 
 "Well isn t it we should be happier than we 
 were? And some day we shall be some day we 
 shall be, Michael!" 
 
 "The war killed father and made us poor." 
 
 "Yes, yes! It killed father and made us poor. 
 So many fathers and so much poverty! And pain 
 and humiliation. . . . Everybody concerned, through 
 long ages, might have been wiser, I think! Our 
 great-grandfathers everywhere, our fathers, ourselves, 
 and all. North and South and over all the world. 
 Pain and wreck and darkness. . . . But if nights 
 are long, days are long, too, Michael! And there 
 is a place I believe it! where there is no night. 
 And we are going to travel out of the night, 
 Michael, Michael! You and I and father and all 
 of us" 
 
 "And the colored people " 
 
 "Yes, yes and the colored people!" 
 
 "Mammy wouldn t hurt us. Nor Daddy Guinea, 
 nor Uncle Plutus, nor Mandy s Jim, nor Mandy, nor 
 Aunt Esther" 
 
 8 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 "No, no! They re good people. Almost all the 
 colored people I ve ever seen were good people." 
 
 "But the man at the gate " 
 
 "He was giving back the harm of the past. But 
 maybe at the bottom he wasn t wicked. Don t be 
 frightened at him, Michael, and don t be angry at 
 him. All your life try to understand and to like 
 all colors of people." 
 
 She rose from beside me and walked up and down 
 in the room, and then, going to a window, stood there 
 looking out. The warm wind lifted her hair. When 
 she came back to me her voice was gay and rich 
 and kind, as I liked it as I like it now, down all 
 the years, around me and with me in the midst of the 
 years! "Now I am going to sing Happy Land! 
 And you are going to shut your eyes and go to sleep." 
 
 She sang and I went to sleep. And in the morning, 
 when I waked, the sun was shining and Mammy was 
 making her bed, and I remembered that I was going 
 for blackberries with Ahasuerus, Aunt Esther s 
 twelve-year-old. I seem somewhere to have heard 
 that, had the old regime continued, Ahasuerus would 
 have been given to me for body-servant. But it 
 had not continued, and Ahasuerus was my equal 
 before the law. It did not trouble me then, nor 
 has it troubled me since. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 /COLONEL DUGALD FORTH, my grandfather, 
 v-> fought very bravely through the war, from first 
 Manassas to Appomattox. He saw two sons and a 
 brother slain, and many kinsmen and many friends. 
 He was five times wounded, and the last hurt, at 
 Cold Harbor, made him limp through life. He had 
 put all the money he could raise into Confederate 
 bonds. "The government must be supported, sir!" 
 He had seen his government go down into the 
 Swire Deep of lost governments. The bonds were 
 worthless. When he came home, after the Surrender, 
 to Restwell, it was to find the house standing, and 
 that was better fare than had many of his neighbors 
 and friends. But the negroes were free, and were 
 gone, most of them, to the four winds. Those that 
 stayed were the inwardly attached, and that, in a 
 case like this, meant chiefly the elderly. And, staying, 
 they must henceforth not only be clothed, housed, 
 and fed, but paid. He did not see whence the money 
 was to come with which to do it. It was spring 
 time when he came home. The fields lay unplowed, 
 unplanted, unkempt, desolate. The fences had dis 
 appeared. The cattle, the horses, were gone from 
 the meadow-land. Where was stock to come from 
 implements seeds even? Who would labor the 
 fields? The earth of the plantation stood, and the 
 
 10 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 old pillared, brick house. Behind, at the foot of 
 Lone Tree Hill, were the quarters, three-fourths 
 deserted. Over by the big oak rose the overseer s 
 house. But his old overseer was dead, killed at 
 Sharpsburg. He could not get, nor did he need, a 
 new one. Down by the creek he saw a ruin where 
 had been his mill. He could not rebuild. 
 
 The bridge was gone from over the river. He had 
 to find and cross by the old ford. Rest well, at that 
 time, stood eight miles from a railway. He rode 
 these miles over a highway, unmended for so long 
 that it must have forgotten the very look of road- 
 menders. The railroad the railroads by which 
 he had traveled from Richmond were painful, de 
 crepit things. The fields to either side lay fenceless, 
 turned out, dead. The villages, the wayside houses, 
 had a beaten look. Gaunt chimneys stood up, all 
 that was left of burned homes. All the South was 
 broken down. My grandfather loved the South. 
 Before him and his region, to be traveled, perforce, 
 ran the painful bitter road of the years after the war. 
 Generosity is a great virtue and is slow of acquisition. 
 It hung over North and South, it descended here and 
 there, but in these years there was little common, 
 public attempt to bring it down and mix it with the 
 daily bread. 
 
 Colonel Dugald Forth came home. My grand 
 mother met him with ejaculations of thankfulness and 
 welcome. His unmarried daughter, my aunt Sarah, 
 clung about him. My mother, his widowed daughter- 
 in-law, came with the genial look behind the tears 
 in her eyes. I was set upon his knee. Mammy came 
 and Uncle Plutus and Aunt Esther. 
 
 ii 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 " We ll begin again, Dugald!" 
 
 "Father, they re here still around and with us 
 cloud of sharers! And here s Michael to grow 
 up and help you!" 
 
 Courage in any form insures a possible courage 
 elsewhere. My grandfather, at fifty-five, took up 
 an altered life and walked with it bravely. The 
 year after the war my grandmother died. I can 
 remember her a small, active, gallant woman. My 
 mother and I lived on at Rest well. The man to 
 whom my aunt Sarah had been betrothed had died 
 in the third year of the war, a prisoner at Camp 
 Chase. Her life was at this time almost wholly sub 
 jective, a dreamy intercourse with the past and with 
 the future across the grave. My grandmother, feeling 
 herself going, had turned to my mother. "Cary, 
 you take the housekeeping. You make them com 
 fortable!" Later, when they were all around her, in 
 the dead of night, she opened her eyes and said, "My 
 key-basket to Cary!" Then she took her husband s 
 hand and held it, and with her odd, inscrutable 
 smile, died. 
 
 So my mother took the reins that she dropped. 
 My mother had a strong power of liking and loving. 
 And as she gave she drew. My grandfather, my 
 aunt Sarah, the servants, the place, took light and 
 warmth from her, and gave her from their own store, 
 great or small. She was a flame-kindler, a beneficent 
 ferment. Kindred and acquaintance differed from 
 her at many points, would sometimes hotly argue 
 with her. But the level lifted where she was. 
 
 Uncle Gilchrist was the youngest of my grand 
 father s children. Nineteen when he fought in the 
 
 12 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 battle to be seen from Lone Tree Hill, he was pres 
 ently transferred to the Army of Tennessee and 
 henceforth fought out of Virginia. When the end 
 came he was artillery captain, somewhere far south. 
 Thence he wrote that as soon as might be he would 
 go to Mexico. He went, and Rest well heard of him 
 as fighting with Juarez. At very long intervals came 
 a letter to his father. 
 
 My father was dead, and my uncle Robert. Uncle 
 Gilchrist was in Mexico. Aunt Sarah lived at Rest- 
 well. There were left my aunts Harriet and Kate 
 Mrs. Warringer, Mrs. Dallas. Aunt Harriet lived in 
 Richmond, Aunt Kate at Flowerfield, in the next 
 county. The husbands of both were living General 
 Warringer, Major Dallas, the latter with an empty 
 sleeve but both men were impoverished, involved, 
 like the rest of our world, in the huge debacle. They 
 could not help Colonel Forth. 
 
 My grandfather took up his burden. Trouble of 
 the past and of the present, a cloudy day over 
 spreading, to him, the future, made it somewhat 
 grim and heavy. Men like him like Warringer, 
 like Dallas must somehow hold the time until 
 children like me, like Warringer s five and Dallas s 
 four, grew up to improve it. The present work was 
 to keep the South Virginia the heritage s head 
 above water. That must be done despite very com 
 plete poverty, despite disfranchisement, despite a 
 stinging cloud of daily defeats, despite a veritable 
 upas-tree of memory, perpetually waving a wel 
 come, perpetually murmuring, "Come, sleep under 
 me!" 
 
 My grandfather assumed his task, but it bent him 
 
 13 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 like the stony masses that they bear in the first 
 round of the Mountain of Purgatory. 
 
 He must find an inner way to make it lighter, 
 since there was no outer way. He first tried blind, 
 proud endurance, an exoteric Stoicism. After a 
 time this broke down. He began to be a reader, a 
 ponderer. Restwell owned a very fair number of 
 books. The Forths possessed a good many, and 
 my mother had brought with her from her old home 
 in eastern Virginia her inherited portion of a con 
 siderable and well-chosen library. My grandfather 
 turned from book to book. At last, in two or three 
 quartos, lie came upon Swedenborg. 
 
 Despite Scotch blood and name, the Restwell 
 Forths were Episcopalians. Every Sunday, in the 
 old time, the old, roomy, high-swung carriage, the 
 two sleek, strong chestnuts, and Mingo or Daniel 
 on the box, had taken the women of the family to 
 St. Matthew s, in the oak-grove, in the middle of 
 Whitechurch. Colonel Forth and his sons had rid 
 den there. In the new time, in fine weather, my 
 mother and Aunt Sarah walked the two miles. In 
 bad weather the two farm-horses were put to the 
 old carriage, rusty now and shaken, and Uncle 
 Plutus, rusty too, drove them to St. Matthew s. 
 My grandfather, alone, rode upon Selim, brought 
 somehow through the war, but old now and with a 
 trick of stumbling. 
 
 The Rev. Thomas Millwood belonged to St. 
 Matthew s and St. Matthew s to him. He also be 
 longed to Whitechurch and Whitechurch to him. 
 And to the county at large and the county to him. 
 And likewise to Virginia and Virginia to him. When 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 the war clanged down upon us he became a fighting 
 chaplain. Then the army belonged to him and he to 
 the army. After the Surrender all the one-time 
 comrades-in-arms belonged to him and he to them. 
 Later in history, I do not think that he missed a 
 single Confederate reunion. A younger man than 
 my grandfather, the two had been at the university 
 in the same half -decade. They had an affection for 
 each other. There was Mrs. Millwood, but she 
 moved like a cool, pale moon around the orb in 
 activity that was her husband. The pair had no 
 children, but relatives, temporarily stranded, were 
 always more or less permanently at home in the 
 pleasant, large-gardened, brick parsonage around the 
 corner from St. Matthew s. 
 
 During and after the war, the Millwoods, too, 
 must cut the cloth of life after altered patterns. 
 Old, pleasant, easy living and giving had to be re 
 linquished. The toll-gate bar swung decisively 
 across the road of expenditure. They gave up much, 
 but kept their dogmas. 
 
 Mr. Millwood always spoke of himself as an active 
 Christian. He preached good orotund sermons, and 
 he practised a thousand brotherly charities and 
 kindlinesses. He had, though always within his own 
 frontiers, a strong social gift. I think that he was 
 an active Christian, though perhaps not as active 
 as he considered himself. 
 
 His marked impatiences were with religious doubts : 
 "How can you doubt, sir? Here and here! Isn t 
 it plain?" And with tokens of a changing mind 
 where social and political theories were in question: 
 "Change, sir! Look at the French Revolution! 
 
 is 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 Look at the French character to-day! Look at this 
 tragic country! What has brought about all these 
 horrors? Old ways not good enough! Unrest! 
 Minds bitten by tarantulas! What has been the 
 result is it lovely and of good report? Look at 
 the Northern character!" 
 
 Mr. Millwood came often to Restwell. All there, 
 white and black, had an old fondness for him, for 
 all could remember many a goodness. He was a 
 large man, with a broad, fresh-colored face and a 
 manner at once blufT and cordial. He came one 
 afternoon and stayed to supper, the moon being 
 full and the night fitted for a ride back to White- 
 church on his most venerable gray Dobbin. After 
 supper, upon the porch, while they smoked, my 
 grandfather opened upon his inner preoccupations. 
 
 1 I read more than I used to, you know, Millwood 
 turn things over more in my mind. Origins and 
 destinies, and so forth, you know. I happened, a 
 while ago, upon Swedenborg." 
 
 "Ah yes! Swedenborg! I tried to read him once 
 and couldn t, * said Mr. Millwood. " Origins and 
 destinies! Stick to Moses, Colonel, and to Matthew, 
 Mark, Luke, and John, and to Paul!" 
 
 "Swedenborg says that he is only giving the 
 spiritual sense of the Scriptures." 
 
 "Haven t you all your life heard given the spir 
 itual sense of the Scriptures? What is the pulpit 
 for?" 
 
 "Yes, I know. But somehow. . . . We take help 
 where we are lucky enough to find it, Millwood!" 
 
 "Don t you go wandering after nightshade think 
 ing you re getting strawberries! Swedenborg!" 
 
 16 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 "If God is Total and Divine Man" 
 
 "God is God, and man is man! I must say that 
 you surprise me, Forth " 
 
 "As a commentary " 
 
 "Heterodoxy always begins as a commentary! 
 You stick to the plain letter of the Bible! Look 
 where the age is being led! Emerson and Beecher 
 this man Darwin in England wild theories of 
 communism women forgetting their nature! For 
 God s sake, Forth, don t you be running after 
 strange idols! Don t you become a betrayer!" 
 
 Now loyalty stood very high in my grandfather s 
 scale of virtues. For some days after this conversa 
 tion he read no more Swedenborg. Indeed, he read 
 nothing. It happened to be a depressing week. 
 Poverty bore hard upon the South ; unmagnanimous 
 political measures were abroad. There fell a chill 
 rain. The crops at Restwell proved small, and yet, 
 such as they were, it was hard to get them gathered. 
 The interest was due on the mortgage he had had 
 to place. Colonel Forth s shoulders were beginning 
 to be bowed. 
 
 One day, w r hen it rained too much to be out in 
 the fields, he took from his desk the small Testament 
 which he had carried through the war. He had read 
 in it not infrequently during those four years. But 
 the reading had been more or less perfunctory, 
 blind, unintelligent. What the book had chiefly 
 given him was a sense of protection, of lightness in 
 having it upon his person. It had been something 
 very like an amulet, a fetish. It had turned no 
 bullets, averted no saber strokes, but the feel of it 
 under his gray vest had been a help to strength. 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 Once he had missed it. There had been a desperate 
 charge, a hand-to-hand fight. At the first possible 
 instant he returned to the scene of this, and, at risk 
 of death or capture, picked the book out of a blood 
 stained, trampled hollow. 
 
 Now he sat down before the long window, with the 
 sobbing day outside, and opened the Testament. 
 It opened at the Letter to the Romans. The Colonel 
 read, and now he touched idea where before had 
 been uncomprehended sound. He held the book in 
 his hand and sat gazing out at mist and rain. "I 
 see," he thought. "But Swedenborg helped me to 
 see. Where is the harm, then, in Swedenborg?" 
 He kept on thinking. "Paul explained, interpreted. 
 . . . Why should interpretation stop when every 
 thing here was bound together? . . . It has never 
 stopped. It is going on now." 
 
 My grandfather began now to read both the 
 Bible and Swedenborg. It was a comfort to him 
 when he dug from the latter that members of all 
 churches might apprehend the Church above the 
 New Church and yet still sit among old congre 
 gations. He did not want to cease to go to St. 
 Matthew s. He did not want to break with Millwood, 
 or his neighbors, or kin. He did not want the county 
 to talk about Colonel Forth and his defections. 
 He only wanted all helps toward finding a shore 
 above his wasted world. Presently he began to 
 read other mystics besides Swedenborg. And now 
 the Bible was often in his hands. He acquired a 
 habit of shaking or of nodding his head in church, 
 at first only at points in the sermon. Fortunately, 
 St. Matthew s construed this as a slight palsy, 
 
 18 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 creeping upon the colonel and manifesting itself at 
 inconvenient seasons. 
 
 Now I begin to remember my grandfather as he 
 appeared to a small boy. He was a tall, bent man, 
 with a beard, with dreamy blue eyes and lines of 
 care above_them. He had a deep voice, somewhat 
 drawling and caressing what is called "a Southern 
 voice." I used to follow him about field or orchard 
 or barn wherever he was going. And often I rode 
 behind him on Selim. 
 
 I was very fond of him. His long silences did not 
 trouble me. There was always so much to see or 
 to think about while he was saying nothing. When 
 he did speak his voice wrapped me like a deep, old 
 wood, half melancholy, slow, and always kind. He 
 answered my questions, too, with a satisfying 
 open door in the answer. In that he and my mother 
 were alike. When, by the next day, I had found 
 another closed door to which the open door had led, 
 he did his best, with a simple seriousness, with this 
 one also. 
 
 Dear grandfather! Dear old movements about 
 the old Restwell place ! Dear childhood ! I go there 
 now at will. I move or sit or stand at will in the 
 bright and tender world of Memory. I alter there 
 where I see that alteration is needed. I condense 
 or expand, strengthen or disintegrate. I hasten or 
 linger, I heighten, widen, and deepen. I recognize 
 form within form. The "irrecoverable Past" 
 there is no such thing! I treat my past as an artist 
 should. It is mine and I visit my vineyard when I 
 will. I prune and tend the vineyard. I make wine 
 from the grapes, and in one chalice, in deep moments, 
 
 19 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 know my past s essence. "My" past! These pro 
 nouns are the bane of existence. "My" past is the 
 past all the past. And where has the past gone to? 
 It is very sufficiently here! Open the gate and go 
 into it at your will. There is not even a gate; there 
 is no barrier. 
 
 20 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 MY aunt Sarah gave me my first book of poems. 
 It had her name in it, and she wrote mine 
 beneath hers on my seventh birthday. Within its 
 worn blue covers was found a garland old poems, 
 old and fine gathered from twenty gardens. The 
 donor said that I could not read the book now, but 
 that later I should. She said that evidently I was 
 going to be fond of reading. So I was I was already 
 fond of it. And it was not so long before I read the 
 garland, and not so long before I set to work to 
 memorize certain favorite pieces. Before I was ten 
 I knew by heart a number of these component 
 blossoms. And by then I had found in the house 
 other books of poetry. 
 
 My aunt Sarah at the time when she gave me the 
 book, stood a pale, slender woman, dressed always, 
 when she could, in white, not very strong, rather 
 silent, and with beautiful eyes. Every side of Rest- 
 well life laid claim upon my mother s time. Aunt 
 Sarah was not idle. She sewed swiftly and beauti 
 fully. Her long-fingered, delicate hands accom 
 plished many a task in a house where now all must 
 work. But she stood aside from planning and over 
 seeing, from account-book and calculation. Her 
 needle flashed, her long fingers wiped and dusted, 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 but all the time heart and mind were traveling. 
 She did not desire household authority. I think that 
 it was only with strong relief that she saw matters 
 flowing toward my mother for decisions. Her own 
 decisions were almost wholly upon inner things 
 though that means, of course, that she did then 
 choose and decide outer things yet to come. She 
 was a great reader. But here, too, she read for 
 practical aid in that other-lighted kingdom. Her 
 inner theme was the ultimate union of all lovers. 
 The strengthening of every perception, every in 
 tuition, that said, "It is so!" had become her intense 
 preoccupation. She read to this end, thought to 
 this end, held herself still and invited her intuitions. 
 What marked her off from many women of her ac 
 quaintance who had also lost, who also dreamed 
 reunion, was that she sought corroboration, related 
 experience, acceptable evidence, not alone in the 
 Bible or in books of devotion, but wherever she saw 
 or heard of a rainbow glint. Her mind was bold in 
 her good cause. A defined, intense, personal will, 
 patient and massive, led her over the bound into a 
 transcendentalism that gathered food from every 
 sea. My grandfather, weary of trouble, turned 
 definitely to sacred writings. But my aunt sought 
 everywhere. 
 
 About an eighth of a mile from the house there 
 lay, on the eastern slope of a little hill, the Restwell 
 graveyard. Here were laid in earth the frames of 
 my father and my uncle Robert, and of my grand 
 mother beside two infants she had lost. And others 
 were here, men, women, and children of my grand 
 parents generation, and older graves of the genera- 
 
 22 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 tion before these. Piety kept fair the Restwell 
 burying-ground. Lack of working hands might in 
 volve old lawn and garden in barbarous upgrowths, 
 but in the graveyard weeds were kept down, the 
 grass duly cut and the flowers tended. My mother 
 and Aunt Sarah both worked here. But my aunt 
 Sarah was oftenest in the place. It had become for 
 her a secret palace, a cloister, a refuge. Under the 
 oak-tree she had put a cross for the man who was 
 buried far away, where he died in prison. The 
 Whitechurch mason made it for her, cut out of gray 
 stone. Above it rose the oak, of a hundred years 
 and more, with outcropping great roots. My aunt 
 Sarah sat beneath it, with the cross before her. 
 Upright and arms, looked at so, it quartered the 
 field of the sky. She brought flowers and laid them 
 against the base. She had a pansy-bed just for this. 
 She laid against the stone every color of pansy. 
 She scattered there fragrant leaves, bits of lavender 
 and myrrh, leaves of rose geranium and citronalis. 
 She planted straw-flowers "immortelles" so that 
 in the autumn she might gather them, white and 
 purple heads like clover, wider, sun-hued disks, and 
 treasure them until the snows came. Then, a cluster 
 at a time, she placed them against this cross, and 
 with them sprays of cedar or white pine, ivy or holly. 
 She had a stand of house plants and as they bloomed 
 she cut from these and brought the glowing bits 
 of color to the graveyard. The mounds of others 
 there were not neglected. Flower and herb and 
 evergreen went to these, too. She was scrupulous 
 as to this. But the clinging passion was for the cross 
 that had no mound. 
 
 23 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 As a child I spent much time in this graveyard. 
 I remember it when I was five and I remember it 
 when I was ten. I entered it with my mother or 
 with my aunt, and here, while they worked or 
 dreamed, I pursued my own ends. There was much 
 that might entertain a child used to collating and 
 devising for himself. With an old pair of scissors I 
 might cut away dead roses, or make my own small 
 haymows of shorn grass. Or I might play at various 
 houses between the numerous upstanding oak roots. 
 I had many mansions here, and with bits of clay 
 and gravel made roads that linked the whole. The 
 place overhung the river. In a far corner rose a 
 growth of ailanthus whence came excellent long 
 poles for many uses. In another corner grew a 
 wild apple-tree. The apples reddened and hung 
 among the green leaves. Later they might lie red 
 upon the ground. I could not understand why my 
 mother and my aunt would not let me eat them. 
 They lay there, red, in the grass. 
 
 A stone wall divided in half the Restwell burying- 
 ground. On the fairer aspect of the hill, with the 
 richer trees and the rarer flowers, with the marble 
 headstones and footstones and the half-dozen older 
 flat slabs of granite, lay Restwell Forths. On the 
 other side of the wall, in a stretch not untended and 
 not unfair, but distinctly simplified, were Restwell 
 servants. Here ranged themselves many small, up 
 right wooden slabs, with two or three of stone show 
 ing resting-places of old, responsible negroes held 
 in affection by the big house. The slabs were marked, 
 the place was sweet, overwrought with dark, run 
 ning periwinkle, with here and there a bush of lilac 
 
 24 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 or althea, with locust-trees, heavy and sweet in 
 May. But still there was the wall between, and a 
 contrast running from of old. ... I often scrambled 
 over this wall and played hide-and-seek with myself 
 in and out among the mounds and the wooden slabs. 
 And, first and last, I learned to spell many words in 
 the two-sided Restwell burying-ground. On our 
 side of the wall lichen and moss were to be kept 
 from the gravestones. I liked to follow my aunt as 
 she made each name and the inscription beneath 
 fair and clean. She read them all to me. Even be 
 fore I could read I knew the graves by name and 
 verse. But I learned to read before I was five. 
 
 The bank that sloped to the river was truly a 
 fairy place of moss and fern and jutting rock and 
 tremulous, slender trees. It early became to me an 
 enchanted wood. There was a shelf where I could 
 stand and throw small stones into the river over the 
 bushy heads of willow and alder. Down in an arc 
 went the flung stone; there followed a silver flash 
 and a liquid sound, then widening rings. I stood 
 here throwing stone after stone. . . . Sometimes there 
 was a rabbit or a squirrel, and always there were 
 birds and other winged things, and creeping, charm 
 ing grotesques. Now and then I had a human play 
 mate. At considerable intervals Ahasuerus came 
 upon the scene. "Miss Sarah done axed me ter 
 help her!" Ahasuerus worked for a time, then, dis 
 missed, he and I crossed the wall and scampered 
 over the matted periwinkle, past the graves of his 
 color, to the long, sloping bank. Here, in the 
 amplest camaraderie, we carried on Lilliputian ex 
 plorations, industries. But Mandy s Jim almost 
 
 25 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 always needed Ahasuerus in potato-patch or corn 
 field. 
 
 My aunt Sarah and I grew into a kind of com 
 munion. She was oftener in the graveyard than was 
 my mother, and I was often there with her. She 
 was also fond of walking by the river or through 
 the home woods, and here I was her companion. 
 My circle and hers found their point of interfusion. 
 We had each a sense of Nature and of all musical 
 language. That I was a child and she a woman 
 made little difference. We could talk and listen each 
 to the other. She had a way of repeating poems to 
 me, and she let me say over to her the verses I 
 learned. It was she who first told me old legends 
 and romances. And it was she who most distinctly 
 aided me to see the arabesque, the come and go, of 
 natural phenomena, of night and day, rain and shine, 
 the seasons, the return and rhythm of all things. 
 She aided the birth of my sense of periodicity, 
 directed my ear to the drum of time. She never 
 condescended to me, but talked as to an equal. 
 Of what she said much went by me like the speaking 
 wind. But it went to return in later life and give me 
 up then its meaning. 
 
 I recall many an hour spent with her. Here is one. 
 
 On a sunny morning we weeded the graveyard. 
 Then we sat down under the oak and, taking a book 
 that she had brought with her, she began to read 
 while she rested. She often did this, and some 
 times I pursued my own ends while she read, and 
 sometimes I came to her and said, "Read it 
 to me." 
 
 I said it this day. She looked at me with her 
 
 26 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 beautiful, seeking eyes. * It s a piece by Edgar Allan 
 Poe. I found it by chance in this old magazine. I 
 read it yesterday, and now I m reading it again. 
 But you won t understand it. You had better keep 
 on playing." 
 
 But I was tired of playing and said so, and lay 
 down on the clean ground with my head against her 
 knee. Suddenly she began to read. She read well, 
 after a quiet, clear, impressive fashion. Be it under 
 stood that in speaking of my childhood I speak now 
 according to its simple, momentary impressions, 
 and now after the larger knowledge of the upheaping, 
 remembering, sorting, comprehending years. Now 
 I speak after the one book and now after the other. 
 She read Poe s "Colloquy of Una and Monos." 
 
 UNA. "Born again!" 
 
 MONOS. "Yes, fairest and best-beloved Una, < born again. " 
 
 UNA. "Death!" 
 
 MONOS. " . . . You are confused and oppressed by the ma 
 jestic novelty of the Life Eternal. Yes, it was of Death I 
 spoke. And here how singularly sounds that word. . . ." 
 
 On went my aunt Sarah s voice. The two lovers, 
 both "dead," both living, moving, speaking in a 
 land of added senses, new tones in the scale, pursue 
 their colloquy. They speak of what they thought 
 of Death, in the old world, and of the mistakes and 
 woes of that world. And Monos had "died," and 
 Una, a year later, had "died." And time had passed, 
 and here they met, with emotion and memory clear, 
 sonorous, golden-true. Una asks Monos for a de 
 tailed recital of his passage from the old plane into 
 the other. He accedes and speaks further: 
 
 27 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 MONOS. ". . . Wearied at heart with anxieties which had their 
 origin in the general turmoil and decay, I succumbed to the 
 fierce fever. After some few days of pain, and many of dreamy 
 delirium replete with ecstasy the manifestation of which you 
 mistook for pain, there came upon me, as you have said, a 
 breathless and motionless torpor, and this was termed Death 
 by those who stood around me. 
 
 "Words are vain things. My condition did not deprive me of 
 sentience. . . . 
 
 "I breathed no longer. The pulses were still. The heart had 
 ceased to beat. Volition had not departed, but was powerless. 
 The senses were unusually active, although, eccentrically so 
 assuming often each other s functions at random. The taste and 
 the smell were inextricably confounded, and became one senti 
 ment, abnormal and intense. . . . All my perceptions were purely 
 sensual. The materials furnished the passive brain by the senses 
 were not in the least degree wrought into shape by the deceased 
 understanding. Of pain there was some little; of pleasure there 
 was much; but of moral pain or pleasures none at all. ... And 
 this was in truth the Death of which these bystanders spoke 
 reverently, in low whispers. . . . 
 
 "They attired me for the coffin three or four dark figures 
 which flitted busily to and fro. . . . The day waned. . . . 
 
 "And now from the wreck and the chaos of the usual senses 
 there appeared to have arisen within me a sixth, all perfect. 
 In its exercise I found a wild delight yet a delight still physical, 
 inasmuch as the understanding had in it no part. Motion in 
 the animal frame had fully ceased. No muscle quivered; no 
 nerve thrilled, no artery throbbed. But there seemed to have 
 sprung up in the brain that of which no words could convey to 
 the merely human intelligence even an indistinct conception. 
 Let me term it a mental, pendulous pulsation. It was the moral 
 embodiment of man s abstract idea of Time. By the absolute 
 equalization of this movement or of such as this had the 
 cycles of the fundamental orbs themselves been adjusted. By 
 its aid I measured the irregularities of the clock upon the mantel, 
 and of the watches of the attendants. Their tickings came 
 sonorously to my ears. The slightest deviation from the true 
 proportion and these deviations were omni-prevalent affected 
 
 28 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 me just as violations of abstract truth are wont, on earth, to 
 affect the moral senses. Although no two of the timepieces 
 in the chamber struck individual accords accurately together, 
 yet I had no difficulty in holding steadily in mind the tones, 
 and the respective momentary errors of each. And this this 
 keen, perfect, self-existing sentiment of duration, this senti 
 ment existing (as man could not possibly have conceived it to 
 exist) independent of any succession of events this idea this 
 sixth sense upspringing from the ashes of the rest, was the first 
 obvious and certain step of the intemooral soul upon the thresh 
 old of the temporal Eternity. 
 
 " It was midnight, and you still sat by my side. . . . They had 
 deposited me in the coffin. The lamps burned flickeringly. . . . 
 The perfume in my nostrils ceased. Forms affected my vision 
 no longer. The oppression of the Darkness uplifted itself from 
 my bosom. A dull shock like that of electricity pervaded my 
 frame, and was followed by total loss of the idea of contact. 
 All of what man has termed sense was merged in the sole con 
 sciousness of entity, and in the one abiding sentiment of duration. 
 The mortal body had been at length stricken with the hand 
 of the deadly Decay. 
 
 "Yet had not all of sentience departed; for the consciousness 
 and the sentiment remaining supplied some of its functions by 
 a lethargic intuition. I appreciated the direful change now in 
 operation upon the flesh I was not unconscious of those move 
 ments which displaced you from my side, which confined me 
 within the coffin, which deposited me within the hearse, which 
 bore me to the grave, which lowered me within it, which heaped 
 heavily the mold upon me. . . . 
 
 "And here . . . there rolled away days and weeks and months; 
 and the soul watched narrowly each second as it flew, and, 
 without effort, took record of its flight without effort and with 
 out object. 
 
 "A year passed. The consciousness of being had grown hourly 
 more indistinct, and that of mere locality had, in great measure, 
 usurped its position. The idea of entity was becoming merged 
 in that of place. The narrow space immediately surrounding 
 what had been the body was now going to be the body itself. . . . 
 
 "Many lustra had supervened. Dust had returned to dust. 
 
 29 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 The form had food no more. The sense of being had at length 
 utterly departed, and there reigned in its stead instead of all 
 things dominant and perpetual the autocrats Place and 
 Time. For that which was not for that which had no form 
 for that which had no thought for that which had no sentience 
 for that which was soulless, yet of which matter formed no 
 portion; for all this nothingness, yet for all this immortality, 
 the grave was still a home, and the corrosive hours co-mates." 
 
 There was no more of the colloquy. It ended 
 there, with the definiteness of a stone dropped into 
 the river. Yet after the stone the widening rings! 
 My aunt put down the book. "It says no more. 
 But Una and Monos are talking, in happiness, each 
 to the other. They move, they touch, they remember, 
 reason, desire, and love. They speak of being 
 born again* and of the august Eternal Life. I 
 think that as desire and will slept and rested, so now 
 they awoke, moved, and gathering themselves to 
 gether, found richer being in a richer world ! At any 
 rate, separation passed away like a dream." 
 
 She sat with her hands locked over her knees, 
 looking afar. I had a little heap of acorns, and I 
 played with these one acorn, then a line, then 
 two lines, then a square. 
 
 Ahasuerus taught me to swim, Mandy s Jim to 
 shoot, my grandfather to ride. My mother taught 
 me to read, to write, and to cipher. She carried me 
 into geography and history, and through the gate 
 of Latin. All persons and all things at Restwell 
 taught me. I was born a listener and a gatherer 
 a giver, too, I hope, of what I thought valuable. . . . 
 Out of a thousand faults I pick pride, an indolent 
 will, some fear, some obscure strains of cruelty, 
 
 30 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 fretted thin, I hope, by now. I see, too, oversensitive- 
 ness to blame, and some finesse. Now and then 
 I lied, but not often ; generally under some strong, 
 imagined stress. Physically, I was fairly strong, 
 fairly healthy. I was early used to being told that 
 I had a good mind. "You have a good mind you 
 ought to study hard." "You have a good mind; 
 you might grow up to be the greatest help! * . . . 
 The wings to carry me, to lift my feet from the 
 clogging faults, were a hunger and thirst after 
 understanding, a sense for the cleanly and the har 
 monious, a considerable synthesizing power, a con 
 siderable power of idealization. So I ranged my 
 first decade here at Restwell in Virginia small tiger 
 in small jungle, small lion in small desert, small man 
 in small earth, small angel in small heaven. 
 
 Though I lived chiefly with grown persons there 
 were times when I forgathered with children. 
 Ahasuerus had a toddling brother, Creed, and a sis 
 ter, Mirny. They were younger than I, but I made 
 mud pies with them down by the creek that flowed 
 past the quarters. And when we went to Whitechurch 
 or to neighboring country houses I met children. 
 And there were the Dallas cousins at Flowerfield, 
 twenty miles away. Each summer they came to 
 Restwell for two or three weeks my aunt Kate and 
 the four young Dallases, John, Miriam, Catherine, 
 and Lewis. And, usually in October, my aunt Sarah 
 went to Flowerfield for as long a time, and I went 
 with her. 
 
 Flowerfield! That was a brick house somewhat 
 larger than Restwell, but otherwise quite like it. It 
 stood upon a hilltop and commanded a most lovely, 
 
 31 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 wide view. Before the war Flowerfield had meant 
 two thousand acres of rich land, green, watered mead 
 ows, and a famous breed of horses. During the 
 war the land went down, the horses were taken away. 
 The house stood in the path of a noted "raider." 
 Together with its many outbuildings, it was first 
 looted, then fired. Barns, stables, cabins, went off 
 in flame. But the thick-walled house withstood. 
 Great damage was done, but the strong shell rested. 
 After the war the two thousand acres were parted into 
 three lots. One moiety went for debt; one for some 
 money with which to stock and cultivate the re 
 maining third. The money it brought was little 
 enough. There were no more famous horses. The 
 damage done to the house could be but meagerly 
 repaired. When I knew it as a child, bare indeed was 
 the furnishing ! The raider had taken all that could 
 be taken and had smashed the rest. To help Flower- 
 field into a livable condition all that could be spared 
 was sent from Restwell. And more fortunate neigh 
 bors had given with prompt kindness what they 
 could. But all the Flowerfield region stood in the 
 swathe of destruction. Not much could be given 
 from one to the other. For years after the Surrender 
 Flowerfield, house and place, exhibited a bareness 
 not without its own distinction. War-wrecked, it 
 sang like a ballad. 
 
 Of the young Dallases, John and Miriam were 
 about of my age. John was is square-made, 
 solid and good. Miriam was is Miriam! 
 
 Winter and spring I looked forward to their com 
 ing with summer to Restwell. My aunt Kate, my 
 mother said, was like my father. I see now her 
 
 32 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 strong, irregular face, her brown eyes, both intent 
 and quizzical. She and my mother were good friends. 
 * Gary Kate I hear their voices now. 
 
 Major Dallas, like his father-in-law, Colonel Forth, 
 like his county and like his state, w r as whelmed in 
 the difficulties of a shattered order. He must build 
 again, with effort, with struggle must do his part 
 in the building up, after new patterns, of the South. 
 A young man still, he put hand and mind to his work, 
 with determination, with courage and ableness. 
 His left sleeve hung empty, two-thirds of his land 
 must go, his house stood half a ruin. There were 
 children to educate, a bedridden mother to keep 
 in something like old comfort. He set to work. 
 I do not remember him often at Restwell, but at 
 Flowerfield I knew and liked him. He was a big 
 man, magnetic, humorous, fond of children. Before 
 the war, at the university, he had read law, had 
 been admitted to the bar in 61. In 66 he rented 
 the quaintest of law-offices in the shadow of the 
 court-house in the county seat, four miles from 
 Flowerfield. In two years he had become the prin 
 cipal lawyer of the county. There was law business 
 enough, the lord of law knows, in those troubled 
 years ! But it was business for impoverished clients, 
 individuals, fellow- Confederates, widows and or 
 phans. Major Dallas made little money. But he 
 grew rich in the good-will of his people. These were 
 the years when Achilles drew the body of Hector 
 around Troy. Major Dallas waked and wrought 
 for his region, fought gloom and bitterness, cheered 
 To-morrow, backed Time to bring in one and all 
 as winners. He declined to be pessimistic as to the 
 
 33 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 United States even to be ironic over the "united." 
 "If we re big enough, each man jack of us, North 
 and South, we ll find that we are united!" 
 
 He turned gray early. But, for all his empty 
 sleeve and his gallant record, he was a better soldier 
 after the war than during it. 
 
 I loved Flowerfield. I see it in autumn with all 
 its noble trees scarlet and gold, and, in the no great 
 distance, blue waves of mountains. The house had 
 has an emanation for me, indescribable, its 
 own, welcome to the inner senses. I loved the 
 bare, clean, little room where I slept with John, 
 loved the old, wide stair, the big empty hall; loved 
 the front porch, pillared differently from ours at 
 Restwell; loved the wide, sunny two-storied back 
 porch; loved the dogs that lay there. October is, 
 to me, to this day, a royal month. 
 
 John and Miriam and I ranged together. Cath 
 erine and Lewis were too small for deep plans and 
 purposes, long strides afield. But the first three 
 owned the world in those Octobers. 
 
 In mid-October came the nutting, came the smell 
 of wood smoke, came the Indian summer. We might 
 be poor, we might be surrounded by dubitations and 
 brain-rackings, we might encounter among our adult 
 acquaintances sighs and furrowed brows, we might, 
 at times, from visiting folk, hear bitter or indignant 
 utterance when newspapers were unfolded and read, 
 we might be dimly aware that we had a life of work 
 before us. A bitter war had been fought with im 
 mediately bitter results. But yet children might be 
 happy. On the whole, we children thought precious 
 little about the war, or reconstruction, or poverty, or 
 
 34 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 a new order ripped from the womb of the old. We 
 thought at times, of course, archaically, queerly. 
 But then surged in the vital present of chinkapin 
 strings, ripening persimmons and black haws, drop 
 ping chestnuts and tumbling walnuts. 
 
 June again, when Aunt Kate and the children 
 came to Restwell. . . . 
 
 Miriam was said to be like her mother, as her 
 mother was said to be like my father. Now she 
 was active, now she was a dreamer. I have seen her 
 for half an hour on end, sitting in the sun or in the 
 shade, a little, motionless figure, her chin on her 
 knees, her eyes on the ground. But when she arose 
 she arose with a spring, became at once the whole 
 hearted player. She and I early found the corridor 
 between our natures. I knew her know her from 
 within, and she knows me. 
 
 35 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE Warringers lived in Richmond, considerably 
 more than a hundred miles away. When, in 
 the summer, they could leave town, they usually 
 went to General Warringer s parents, in Gloucester 
 County. I early gathered, from some source or other, 
 that my aunt Harriet and my uncle Gilchrist were 
 like each other and somewhat unlike my father, 
 Uncle Robert, Aunt Sarah, and Aunt Kate. Rest- 
 well and Flowerfield did not seem to have hold on 
 them. Daddy Guinea told me a little about this. 
 
 "Mr. Gilchrist an* Miss Harriet, dey restless. Lak 
 de Flowerfield colts all wantin 7 ter be racers!" 
 
 "Isn t it good to be a racer?" 
 
 "Sho! Ef you s er bawn racer. But some of 
 de colts jus* restless, V thinkin dey see er race 
 track where ain t any! Of co se," said Daddy 
 Guinea, "dey re jus pawin n zigzaggin dere way 
 ter hit! Ez I see hit, we re all on de big race-track." 
 
 "Is Aunt Harriet pretty?" 
 
 "She sho is ! N sweet ez honey de way she talks !" 
 
 I found this out for myself when I was something 
 more than eight years old and my grandfather took 
 me with him to Richmond. That was an event! 
 
 The Surrender lay five years in the background. 
 The South showed faint signs of recuperation. But 
 
 36 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 many individuals, speaking in terms of material 
 prosperity, were still upon the descending arc. 
 Others apparently rested precisely at the nadir. 
 This last I gather to have been my grandfather s 
 case. He had done his best. Now he must have 
 help, or, despite all struggle, Restwell would go 
 under the hammer. He went to Richmond to see 
 General Warringer. Just why he took me with him 
 I do not remember, but he took me. 
 
 Mandy s Jim and the ancient carriage conveyed 
 us through Whitechurch and so on by the old high 
 way, by long hills and level stretches, to the small 
 town that bragged of a railroad. The colonel and 
 I together had a small leather trunk and a worn 
 valise. He wore the broadcloth he had had before 
 the war. My suit had been fashioned by my mother 
 and Aunt Sarah out of clothes that had been my 
 father s. The colonel s hat was the Southern, wide- 
 brimmed, soft, black felt. I had a cap that my 
 mother had made. 
 
 Every one on the train appeared to know my 
 grandfather. Every one seemed to speak to me. It 
 was so novel ! The rows of seats covered with dark- 
 red velvet, and the windows like parallel lines of 
 dirty glass beads, and the stove at one end and the 
 water-cooler at the other, and the lamps up in the 
 painted roof, and the roar and the swaying and the 
 jolting, and the smell and grime of soft smoke, and 
 the telegraph-poles going by, and the rushing coun 
 try I sat with my eyes wide and my teeth coming 
 down hard upon my lip. I have reason to believe 
 that we made something under twenty-five miles 
 an hour. But all things are relative. Mandy s Jim, 
 
 37 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 the plow-horses, and the carriage made four and 
 a half miles an hour. And when the whistle screamed 
 what half -fearful, half-delightful agitation! 
 
 The conductor said: " You don t often travel with 
 us, Colonel. Glad to see you!" He had a patch 
 over one eye and a great scar running across fore 
 head and cheek. When he had punched my grand 
 father s ticket and gone by, and my grandfather 
 had explained why he had punched the ticket, we 
 entered upon this. 
 
 "Did he get hurt in the war?" 
 
 "Yes. At Malvern Hill." 
 
 "Is he poor?" 
 
 "Yes, he s poor." 
 
 "Is everybody in the cars poor?" 
 
 "Mostly." 
 
 "If it lets us travel, I don t care!" 
 
 My grandfather smiled. "Do you like to travel?" 
 
 I produced two of Mammy s big words. "I ex 
 tremely and fastidiously like it." 
 
 Mr. Millwood was on the train. I do not re 
 member where he was going not to Richmond, for 
 the latter part of the day we went on without him. 
 But here he was, and an obliging farmer changed 
 seats with him so that he might be next to us. At 
 first I was afraid of hurting the red velvet (though 
 already it was hurt enough), but at last, as the train 
 was overhanging the river and there was a boat 
 upon it and men fishing, I got upon my knees and 
 glued my forehead to the window. It was a very 
 dirty window, but I managed to find an unsmeared 
 lane. Now the train ran under limestone cliffs, and 
 how it roared! Now it careered into open country, 
 
 38 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 and I saw the willows of the river and fields and 
 houses. 
 
 Behind me Colonel Forth and Mr. Millwood were 
 talking. 
 
 "So I thought I would go see Carter Warringer " 
 
 I hope he can help. I wish I could help, Dugald !" 
 
 "I know you do, Tom. If I can struggle on, I d 
 like to keep the place for the boy." 
 
 "You ll pull through! The Lord isn t going to 
 desert you even if you do read stuff and nonsense!" 
 
 "The boy s got a good mind and strong affec 
 tions. He ought to do well. Dugald had it in 
 him. ... If I can give Michael his schooling and start 
 him fair " 
 
 Mr. Millwood nodded his big head. "In ten years 
 time Major Dallas might take him in his office. 
 Then, as a lawyer, he d be made! If Virginia ever 
 gets up from the ground John Dallas can do what 
 he wants to " 
 
 "Yes. John s a strong man. Sometimes I think 
 that Michael won t take to the law." 
 
 "Why not? Now I don t see him," said Mr. 
 Millwood, "in the pulpit. . . . I ve heard ever so 
 many war doctors say that henceforth doctors would 
 have a great showing " 
 
 "Doctor Gilbert doesn t believe he ll be a doctor. 
 Just as I," said Colonel Forth, "don t see him as a 
 farmer." 
 
 "It s a right hard thing to find a way of living 
 that your whole heart s in! I found it," said Mr. 
 Millwood. "The law s the road to political life 
 if ever we have any political life again!" 
 
 "I don t know. I feel sometimes," said my grand- 
 
 39 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 father, "strange new things in the earth, pushing 
 up. A curtain s down, Millwood!" 
 
 We were on the river again. It flashed and bent. 
 There was a broken dam. Then a mill with a great 
 wheel. . . . Now we were away from the water, 
 rushing through forest. The whistle screamed. My 
 knees sank into the worn and blackened velvet; 
 my hands held the cinder-strewn window-sill, my 
 forehead pressed the glass where the last shower 
 had left dirty tear marks. Inside me was wild, 
 bright, tense, rushing adventure. 
 
 After a while I tumbled back and slept. 
 
 When I waked, Mr. Millwood was gone. My 
 grandfather, in the seat behind me, read a news 
 paper. We had dinner out of the willow basket 
 packed by my mother, and we shared it with an old 
 lady and her grandson, a boy of sixteen, also on their 
 way to Richmond. The boy was to be entered with 
 a cousin in the tobacco business. "Make what men 
 want and sell it to them!" said the old lady. "Just 
 farming and lawing and ruling have got to sit back 
 for a spell, Colonel!" 
 
 In the physical landscape the mountains had sunk 
 from sight. The hills had all lowered in height. 
 The wooded country showed another aspect. Broom 
 sedge became plentifully in evidence. All that ride, 
 out of my window, might be seen agricultural pov 
 erty, poverty of town and village. With something 
 of frequency rose out of green or brown earth, like 
 ruined tombs, chimneys and hearths and nothing 
 more. Everywhere fencing was makeshift, and once- 
 painted houses had forgotten the event. The roads 
 that the train crossed or paralleled showed stony 
 
 40 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 ledge, rut, and mud-hole. But the sun was shining 
 and the spring woods were greening. 
 
 A stout, well-dressed man came and sat beside 
 my grandfather. "Glad to see you, Colonel Forth! 
 Well, what s the news in your part of the state?" 
 
 They talked. After a while said the stout man, 
 looking out of window: "I have been North. Their 
 country looks prosperous!" 
 
 My grandfather rested his thin brown hands, 
 palm in palm, upon his newspaper. His voice when 
 he spoke had an unusual deep vibrancy. * I am glad 
 that part of our country is prosperous." 
 
 " Our country !" So you have come to that?" 
 
 "Yes," said my grandfather. "Our South, our 
 North, our East, our West. Our America, our 
 Europe, our Asia, our Africa. Our earth." 
 
 "Well, I ll be! You didn t talk that way, 
 Colonel, during the Seven Days, nor in the Peters 
 burg trenches ! % 
 
 "No," said my grandfather. "Live and learn, 
 Otway! Live and learn." 
 
 "Well, I can tell you," said Otway, "that where 
 I ve been it s Our North and you in the South, 
 damn you! " 
 
 "Yes," said my grandfather. "They, too, have 
 got to live and learn. We haven t been doing much 
 living, any of us!" 
 
 "All that s a new lingo!" said the stout man, and 
 presently went back to his companion at the end 
 of the car. I think that he said: "The old Colonel 
 must have been a Union man before the war. I never 
 heard of it, but he must have been!" 
 
 The worn engine and the worn cars and the worn 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 road-bed, the engineer with a wooden leg, the brake- 
 man too young to have fought, the conductor with 
 the patched eye and the scar, the passengers discuss 
 ing Readmittance, and bad times, and better times 
 perhaps in the misty future, crops and Ku-Klux 
 and the war in Europe, creaked and jolted and 
 roared, twenty-odd miles an hour. Twice occurred 
 prolonged halts. We were an hour and a half late 
 and came upon Richmond red in a great sun 
 set flare. The stout man, passing the colonel 
 and me, said, "It looks like the burning five 
 years ago!" 
 
 Colonel Forth and I got out of the train. He 
 carried the old valise and I the willow basket. There 
 seemed a kind of long shed, and so many persons 
 speaking and hurrying in the shadows, that I felt 
 vague fear and pressed close to my grandfather. 
 Then we heard General Warringer s authoritative 
 voice. "Here they are! Well, Colonel, and how are 
 you ? Is this giant Michael ? How do you like travel 
 ing, youngster?" 
 
 A negro with the general took basket and valise. 
 We went through the station. Outside we encoun 
 tered a throng of negro drivers, vociferous, extolling 
 the merits of various hotels The Ford The Wash 
 ington The Exchange, and Ballard gesticulating, 
 long whip in hand, toward painted omnibuses or 
 ancient hacks. Coming to a carriage, we entered it, 
 waited for the leather trunk to be deposited beside 
 the coachman, then moving off, began presently to 
 climb a hill. The sunset reddened all the sky. My 
 grandfather sat as in a dream. "I have not been 
 here since the Evacuation." He bent forward. 
 
 42 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 " There s the Capitol! . . . The Stars and Bars The 
 Stars and Stripes." 
 
 The Warringers house, old, large, square, gray 
 stucco, with tall magnolias about it, furnished within 
 with pier-glasses and crystal chandeliers, long damask 
 curtains and much mahogany, inspired me with 
 some awe. The Warringers said they were poor, but 
 I couldn t immediately see it. And Richmond was 
 a broken city. But to me it showed Aladdin marvels 
 of shop windows, spires of churches, street-car, and 
 market, General Washington on his bronze horse 
 far up against the blue sky, and squirrels in Capitol 
 Square that took peanuts from one s hand as one 
 sat on benches. I had never been able to get a 
 squirrel in a real wood to do this. And the bronze 
 horse and rider that never moved, that stayed there ! 
 Wouldn t you go galloping through the sky? 
 
 Twice I was taken to the theater. I saw a play 
 of the West, California, and the gold-diggers. And 
 I saw a noted actress in "Maria Stuart." . . . Wonder 
 world ! 
 
 I did not love the Richmond Warringers as I 
 loved the Flowerfield Dallases. Yet I loved them. 
 It is my way to taste persons, to perceive them 
 volatilized, as it were, so that the mind passes in 
 and out among spoken and unspoken words, gest 
 ures, obvious and unobvious goes, too, off the 
 absurd, medicine-dropper business of present mo 
 ments. . . . 
 
 My aunt Harriet had a beautiful skin, beautiful 
 hair, a beautiful mouth. She dressed beautifully, 
 for all of poverty. She loved people around her, 
 and she talked wittily. The table was always laugh- 
 
 43 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 ing. She had a gift of mimicry. She was ambitious 
 for herself, her husband, and her children. She 
 wished General Warringer to become a public man. 
 She was sure that it was going to be possible, now 
 that Virginia was readmitted, and Southern men 
 were beginning to lay hands again on their own 
 affairs. She meant, in the first place, Southern 
 white men, and in the second place the old propertied 
 class. " Their own affairs !" meant traditional things, 
 political, social, and economic. For herself she wished 
 beautiful clothes, leisure to attend to her beautiful 
 body, leisure also to read clever books, to observe, 
 go about, "experience," feed her wit. Leisure and 
 money money being with positiveness the only 
 way to get leisure and the rest of it! As women 
 could not make money, General Warringer must 
 make it. Such was her triple-walled castle. Yet 
 there was a corner where the walls were really only 
 honeycombs. She had a gay sweet garden here. 
 
 They had lost two children. There remained 
 Carter, Royal, and Dorothea. These made friends 
 with me. We fed the squirrels together. They 
 boasted of the sea to which they went in the summer, 
 and I of the mountains. 
 
 My grandfather and I spent ten days in Richmond. 
 He got, I know, the loan from his son-in-law, though 
 I know, too, that there were difficulties. General 
 Warringer considered him a dreamer. Good money 
 would go after bad at Restwell, and God knew 
 there was little enough money, good or bad! The 
 colonel would not be able to keep the place. . . . 
 But he was fond of the colonel, and they were his 
 wife s people. General Warringer, whose interests 
 
 44 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 were tobacco and mining, managed to scrape to 
 gether the three or four thousands needed to stave 
 off the sale of Restwell. 
 
 There came up, too, the question of my future. 
 
 "If he s intelligent and energetic, I might, when 
 he s finished his schooling, find some opening for 
 him. If I were you I d give him a scientific 
 education. 
 
 "Scientific?" 
 
 j" Colonel, our old world is changing! You and I 
 got along very well with the classics and what not. 
 But I m going to make Carter an engineer, and I 
 want Royal to train for finance, railroading some 
 thing live and moving " 
 
 "Scientific." It was a new thought to my grand 
 father. It had not occurred to him in the train, 
 talking to Millwood. . . . Swedenborg had begun with 
 Science. 
 
 At General Warringer s he heard much speculative 
 talk. Men came there who were looking ahead. 
 The South was to be developed, that was evident. 
 Canals, railroads, furnaces, factories the day for 
 such things was at hand. "Five years, and you ll 
 see it beginning beginning beginning! A quarter 
 of a century and the South 11 be richer than ever it 
 was ! Northern capital ? Certainly at first ! We ll 
 mix forget- get our arms round one another there 
 first. In business!" 
 
 Colonel Forth made a diffident remark. "We ll 
 seek more, too, don t you think, in ourselves? Get 
 things together there?" 
 
 "I don t know about all that," said his son-in- 
 law, drinking his coffee. "Material enterprises are 
 
 45 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 big enough for me just now! You mustn t under 
 rate them, Colonel! That s the danger for your 
 kind." 
 
 The colonel admitted it. But you mustn t 
 think either that mining and engineering and rail 
 roading and canalling aren t carried on upon other 
 floors. They go all through, I think." 
 
 Spring burst out softly, fully, while we were in 
 Richmond. The ten days passed. We said good-by 
 to all the Warringers. Here once more was the train. 
 ... As we went through country that had been 
 ground of battle, and again battle, and again battle, 
 the dogwood made a milky way of each piece of wood 
 land. Once more, with knees sunk into grimed 
 velvet, I looked out of window. The day was so 
 warm that the glass was up. The world was the 
 clearer for that. 
 
 My grandfather left me alone for a while. At 
 last he came back, "Michael!" I turned from the 
 window. 
 
 "General Lee is in the next car. Come! I want 
 to show you to him." 
 
 He straightened my tie for me, brushed back my 
 hair, and saw that my hands were pretty clean. 
 We went into the next car, and to a white-bearded, 
 gentle, very fine-looking man. He put out his hand 
 to me, asked me a question or two which I an 
 swered, and I stood held against his knee for five 
 minutes while he and the colonel talked. Then we 
 went, my grandfather and I, back to our own car 
 and the dogwood stars outside the window and the 
 rushing country and the blue sky and the flight 
 of birds. 
 
 46 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 MADAM BLACK had a French mother and a 
 Russian father, an education partly French, 
 partly English, and an English husband who brought 
 her with him to America on a hunt for Fortune, to 
 be found, presumably, on a tract of Virginia land 
 bought, without seeing it, from an agent. The land 
 proved a heinous disappointment. Mr. Black died. 
 His wife was left with admirable powers and educa 
 tion, but with no money, and in what to her was a 
 foreign country. She must sell, if she could, her 
 poor piece of land. Needing lawyer s advice, she 
 came to the nearest small town to her disastrous, 
 stony mountain-side, and to Major Dallas s office 
 under the court-house oaks. He gave her counsel; 
 she sold the land, though for a tiny sum, and pres 
 ently moved into the town, to a small, small white 
 house behind syringa and althea bushes. The towns- 
 folks discussed her, her foreign ways, her gestures, 
 her peculiar, stripped, efficient housekeeping. She 
 was a big woman, somewhat gaunt, but supple and 
 powerful, with iron-gray hair, with a beak of a nose, 
 and a mouth beneath, wide and wise and humorous. 
 She spoke in Virginia a beautiful, pure, book Eng 
 lish, but thought in three languages. 
 
 My aunt Kate, at Major Dallas s instigation, 
 
 47 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 went to see her, liked her, went again, brought her 
 to Flowerfield for two or three days. The children 
 liked her. She had a great store of folk tales of 
 all lands and she told them with the vivid distinc 
 tion of a good witch. She was capable, as all her 
 friends soon found out, as she herself with honesty 
 acknowledged, of explosions of anger quite alarming 
 to the uninitiated. But these never occurred of tener 
 than once a week. Moreover, they were generously 
 abstract. The individual was only chastised in the 
 whole. The storm cleared the air, and until the next 
 thunder-clap she was as good as sugar brown 
 sugar, maple sugar. She was a pianist of no mean 
 ability, she had a wide knowledge of letters, she read 
 and spoke English, French, Russian, and German 
 and she got along well with children. 
 
 Major Dallas and Aunt Kate had the same 
 thought. In six months after she had taken the 
 little white house, Madam Black closed it and came 
 to Flowerfield as governess. I don t think anybody 
 ever regretted it. The Dallases and she flowed 
 together with a certain natural grace and strength. 
 
 I was nine years old. My mother s life from morn 
 till night was filled with activities. She had a fair 
 Southern education, and a beautiful, strong, lucid 
 mind and heart that made the best of what she had. 
 But she said that she saw that I was going ahead 
 of her. (I could never go ahead of her in the things 
 of truest value.) She taught me for two hours each 
 day, but then things waited for her at the door. 
 I see her now, sitting in a low chair in the flickering 
 green light from the window, reading a letter from 
 Aunt Kate, and then, the letter in her lap, looking 
 
 48 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 at me drawing pictures on my slate. I was copying 
 a ship out of my geography. 
 
 Two or three days later she and I took the old 
 red stage at Whitechurch and went for a short 
 visit to Flowerfield. Madam Black was there. My 
 mother liked her, too. In less than a week we were 
 back at Restwell. 
 
 I couldn t go to sleep that night. I sat up in my 
 bed and stared at the starry squares that were 
 windows. Then I took it into my head that there 
 were giants in the room and that I had better go 
 down-stairs. Mammy no longer had her bed in 
 the corner, and I made sure through the open door 
 that my mother was not in her room. I stole out 
 of bed and over the cool, dark floor, out of the room 
 and across the landing to the stair and half-way 
 down it. Thence I could see in my grandfather s 
 room, for that door, too, was open. Grandfather 
 and mother and Aunt Sarah were sitting there, 
 talking. I could not hear what they said only 
 the murmur of one voice, now of another. They 
 looked so earnest! They all sat near the table, 
 where were grandfather s books and papers, where he 
 and my mother went over accounts together. The 
 lamp that stood here made a kind of pale sunlight 
 about them. Grandfather, with his white beard, 
 looked like like like King David! This brought 
 forth another imagination. We had a book of fine, 
 tinted prints The Women of the Bible. Mother 
 and Aunt Sarah were sitting there out of this book. 
 I had a curious feeling. The giants were forgotten. 
 I sat on the stairs, holding my feet in my hands. 
 The sensation was of being somewhere outside, 
 
 49 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 looking in upon the world. After a time I started 
 to speak but they looked so earnest. I turned 
 and without noise went up-stairs and across the 
 upper hall and into bed. Anyhow, the giants were 
 gone. I faced a square of branchy stars. One of 
 them caught and held me . . . and then I went 
 to sleep. 
 
 The next morning my mother told me that when, 
 in October, I went with Aunt Sarah to Flowerfield, 
 I was not coming back when Aunt Sarah came. I 
 was going to stay with Aunt Kate and Uncle John 
 and go to school to Madam Black, with John and 
 Miriam and Catherine and Lewis. At Christmas I 
 should come home for a week, and in May I should 
 come for the whole summer. And grandfather would 
 see me sometimes at Flowerfield, and mother was 
 certainly coming in the winter. And I was to be 
 her Michael still, and learn, and grow "grow al 
 ways more good, more wise, my Treasure, my 
 Blessing" 
 
 It awed me to be leaving home. There was awe, 
 too, in the thought of living at Flowerfield. I moved 
 about, exalted. Space seemed to have enlarged be 
 tween me and the sky, between me and the horizon. 
 I experienced a desire for solitude. I achieved this 
 on the side porch that gave on the lilac walk, and 
 where there was nothing more disturbing than a 
 procession of young turkeys, in and out of the light 
 and shadow upon the grass. I sat here with my chin 
 on my knees. Really to live live half the time 
 at Flowerfield! Restwell was dear Flowerfield was 
 dear. I figured it out that, after all, a half to each 
 wasn t a bad thing. Everybody at Restwell was 
 
 50 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 going to write to me, and I was going to write to 
 them. My, mother would write every week, and I 
 was to draw pictures for her and send them. I 
 dug out something else. "Every time I think of 
 them I can see them." I shut my eyes. "Now I am 
 thinking of grandfather. I see him. Now I am 
 thinking of mother " 
 
 I tried this with other persons. I was the experi 
 menter, full swing. The going from home fell into 
 the background. Persons and things in Richmond 
 at Whitechurch at Flowerfield I could see them, 
 hear them! The train to Richmond I could make 
 that so real that I felt the velvet, smelled the coal 
 smoke, found in my body the swaying and jolting, 
 turned a little dizzy. ... I left that and sat in Capitol 
 Square, above me, against the blue sky, bronze 
 General Washington. Consciously, with desire and 
 forethought, I walked into the past. There had been 
 a broken bench that we could not use, under the 
 greatest tree, whence one might see General Wash 
 ington to best advantage. I now mended the bench 
 and sat there. I was on the road to discovery that 
 where there s a will there s a way to alter anything ! 
 
 In October I went to Flowerfield. For the next 
 four years I spent the major part of each year at 
 Flowerfield. I learned there, I grew there, as in a 
 spring season, as in south-by-west zephyrs. 
 
 Madam Black taught us in a bare, sunny room, 
 in an ell of Flowerfield house. Outside were turf 
 and a tremendous tulip-tree. Catherine and Lewis 
 had their lessons early, were out and gone by eleven 
 o clock. John and Miriam and I were her real 
 scholars. 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 I think that she was a born teacher/ Madam 
 Black Madam Black, I find you in me at many 
 turns a welcome inflowing! 
 
 She had a cosmopolitan mind. She dwelt among 
 ideas, hunted relations, pounced upon likenesses. 
 She was as daring an explorer as ever sailed for the 
 pole. Many a notion that I have watched emerge, 
 in these later days, tentatively, slowly, even now 
 weighed most doubtfully in the general hand, was 
 hers in the seventies. She had a way of say 
 ing, "I fancy " and then, from under her eagle 
 nose out of her wide mouth, in her deep, posi 
 tive voice came "fancies" of an extraordinary 
 viability. 
 
 She was a geographer of the first water. With 
 her for ciceronej we saw our earth throughout its 
 structure, as pupils of our age, I am sure, very rarely 
 see it. She had a genius for relating things, for con 
 tinuities and correspondence, for the stroke of the 
 eye. She ranged like an eagle, swooped and rose 
 like one. The same traits appeared when she taught 
 us history. We got out of "favored" lands and 
 times and "chosen" people chosen, at least, in 
 any orthodox sense. The cells called Kings and 
 Queens and Important Events and Great Battles 
 ceased to protrude monstrously from the cellular 
 tissue. The emphatic note, "Height of Mount 
 Everest," became but an orderly detail in the pas 
 sage, "Himalayas," as the Himalayas subordinated 
 themselves to "mountains," and mountains re 
 membered valleys, and both that they were of the 
 lithosphere. When, for reasons, we came to majesties 
 of form and height, to the pictured off, she could well 
 
 52 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 make us see Mount Everest and the Himalayas. 
 She herself knew Alp and Apennine and Caucasus. 
 Remembering, I feel again snowy and deep-chasmed 
 grandeur! 
 
 She did with watery surfaces as she did with the 
 solid. No one who went to school to Madam Black 
 might ever, for instance, see Niagara as a giant 
 plunge out of nothing into nothing, nor a strait or 
 channel like a waste snippet of thread. What came 
 before and after, what flowed on the one side and on 
 the other, what to any ranging eagle would be 
 simultaneous, contemporaneous, she saw herself and 
 made her pupil see. Niagara and Gibraltar Strait 
 came into a water symphony that sounded from 
 pole to pole, that ran, like Alpheus, underground, 
 and flew in clouds in the air. 
 
 So with tribes, nations, races, species. Hers was 
 a rich and large realism in which abstractions and 
 universals became, as it were, tangible and visible, 
 phenomena like other phenomena to the born 
 eagle phenomena into which other phenomena were 
 resolved. 
 
 She was a bold reader. She had a friend in New 
 York a man doing some kind of research work 
 who sent her from time to time great parcels of books, 
 English, French, and German. She used to sink 
 like an eagle into these, to rise with meat in her 
 talons. . . . These were the years in which, certainly 
 to the mass of the United States, "Darwin" sounded 
 mightily like "Antichrist, 1 Huxley and Haeckel, 
 and all their company, like the Miltonic lesser fallen 
 angels. They were the years when throughout a 
 wide swathe of society Middlemarch was slurred 
 
 S3 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 because its author was not married to Lewes; when 
 all French literature was called immoral, when the 
 good died young in Sunday-school books, when 
 Browning was thought unintelligible, when Ingersoll 
 was certainly damned, when architecture and fur 
 niture went into a senile doze. Up a long stair from 
 this, it was the period of Dickens and Thackeray, 
 and Lord Tennyson was at his height of fame. 
 But Madam Black belonged to force-lines in 
 the background reserves in the shadows of the 
 future. She took from books hall-marked "ad 
 vanced" what suited her, and flew on over the 
 landscape. 
 
 Because of her very scope, she had a passion for 
 the single word. Every word opened into the whole 
 scope of things, as back of every facet opens the 
 whole diamond. She had a drill for us that I hold 
 to be a good drill for any. For half an hour each 
 day she gave us words, one at a time, never more 
 than a dozen in the half-hour nouns and verbs 
 and adjectives, later on, pronoun and adverb, con 
 junction and preposition. There seemed no lesson 
 about it we did not then repeat to her what we 
 learned. We simply and quietly, in firelight or sun 
 light and each for one s self, regarded the word 
 that her deep voice gave out and what it carried. 
 The game was to see what volume was there and 
 what vistas would open. Farmer soldier preacher 
 city house tree sugar salt earth, water, fire, 
 and air working, playing, moving, resting truth, 
 wisdom, beauty, strength, and courage moon, 
 earth, and sun hundreds of words. ... To our 
 young strength and powers they expanded as they 
 
 54 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 might. We saw countries within countries. And 
 we learned to pass the first gate of contemplation. 
 
 Again, myths. She had here an extraordinary 
 knowledge. I have since learned that there was old 
 scholarship in her blood. She told world-imaginings, 
 world-symbolizations of its own drama, as a woman 
 Homer might. Indian, Chaldean, Egyptian, Greek, 
 Hebrew, Scandinavian we knew the huge figures, 
 localities, happenings. Moreover, she compared 
 them, linked them for us until there was a great 
 carcanet. It was not given to our years to see what 
 was behind them all. But she told us that there was 
 something behind them all, and that we would 
 find it out for ourselves one day. In the mean time 
 there was huge entertainment ! We sat, rapt, before 
 a Demeter-like woman. 
 
 She taught us arithmetic, put us into algebra, and 
 the last year we were w4th her, into geometry. The 
 last named was another strength. We learned to 
 read French as we did English and to speak it fairly. 
 We read German. We had little formal " Science." 
 She taught us the constellations and the simpler 
 sidereal wonders. And we had a clean, straight, 
 honest, lofty physiology with never an organ or 
 function blue-penciled. And here I praise the 
 adult Forths and Dallases who, in a half-century 
 that thought otherwise, said, "Give it to them 
 thus." 
 
 Year after } T ear at Flowerfield. ... But at last 
 there came letters for Madam Black from Russia. 
 An estate had been settled, there was money a 
 brother in poor health, in the country near Moscow, 
 longed to see her. Madam Black thought a night, 
 
 55 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 then the next day told us she must go. Flowerfield 
 grieved for that. ... It was the springtime. In 
 two weeks she was gone to New York, whence she 
 sailed. For a long time letters from Russia came to 
 Flowerfield. But five years after her going she was 
 killed in a railway accident. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 NOW I speak of Miriam and myself when we were 
 ten and eleven and twelve and thirteen. 
 Even so, how we can divide from all the rest take 
 ourselves out of painting, canvas and frame, swim 
 away, two waves of the sea, rise and float off, two 
 violins, from the orchestra? The orchestra and the 
 sea and the painting, canvas and frame, are Miriam 
 and me. 
 
 But we still explain the new by the old. . . . 
 
 I cannot remember when, at Rest well or Flower- 
 field, I first made the acquaintance of my cousin 
 Miriam. We must have been very young children. 
 Casting back, I have the feeling of having been 
 always with her. 
 
 In the days before we went to Madam Black, 
 in the Flowerfield Octobers and the Rest well Junes, 
 it was John, Miriam, and I. And always, in a 
 measure, it has been John, Miriam, and I. It was 
 so the four years at Flowerfield. But inside the 
 triangle she and I paired with spontaneity, vigor, 
 and thoroughness. The three of us roamed together, 
 learned, worked, and played together. It was 
 brothers and sister, a simple, deep familiarity, a 
 give and take, impersonally sound. But at last, 
 within the general one-and-threeness, Miriam and 
 I sat on one throne. 
 
 57 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 She was oil to my fire and I was oil to hers. Our 
 flames shot up, blended, coruscated, sang. All 
 vases held more, every color had lamps behind it, 
 every word rang with a doubled power. Salt, zest, 
 importance, showered into everything undertaken. 
 When we were together light penetrated farther, 
 was intenser warmth was warmer. . . . 
 
 But now we were children still. Yet we would 
 have said in those days, too, "I understand Michael." 
 "I understand Miriam." 
 
 We are in the barn at Flowerfield, in the hayloft. 
 It is Saturday morning. There is a fine rain 
 we cannot go after walnuts as we had planned. 
 We lie in a scooped-out place in the hay. Around 
 us are shaggy, fragrant walls; before us, one great 
 open square through which comes the moist air 
 and gray light, and a dim, shifting view of autumn 
 hills. The roof is the peaked roof of a brown tent. 
 Against the beams are barn-swallows nests, old 
 and empty. The swallows are flying south. The 
 hay smells dry and sweet. We have wine-sap 
 apples and the Arabian Nights. John has, besides, 
 a piece of red, fragrant cedar and a jack-knife. He 
 is making a set of checkers. I am the story-teller. 
 I tell the story of the " Fisherman and the Genie." 
 John listens, carving his round checkers. Miriam, 
 half buried in the hay, listens. We know all the 
 fat blue volume from "AH Baba" to "Sinbad." 
 We have learned from Madam Black something of 
 how to tell stories. We had rather tell them than 
 read them from the book. 
 
 I tell. I have told the story before we all know 
 it but I am on the spiral above the last telling, 
 
 58 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 and the auditors are above the last listening. And 
 it is a good story-telling day. The genie comes out 
 of the bottle. "I see him," says Miriam, rising on 
 her elbow. (The audience always interrupts, as 
 sists.) "He curls that way," she demonstrated with 
 her free arm. "Thick and smoky! Round and 
 round and up ! He hides the sea. There s the bottle. 
 It s hard and round and small. It looks like an acorn 
 under a tree." 
 
 John, whittling, nodded. "I reckon that fisher 
 man s frightened! I reckon he s thinking he s let 
 out Satan!" 
 
 "I tell you I do see it!" said Miriam. She sat 
 up, cross-legged, tailor fashion. Her hands rested 
 on her knees. "But I m safe! He can t get me. 
 I m everywhere." 
 
 "If you re everywhere you re right where the 
 genie is. You re fc*m," said John. "You re just 
 seeing yourself." 
 
 The fisherman and the genie argue together. 
 The fisherman seems about to meet destruction. 
 Then his wits work and he gets the genie back 
 into the bottle. When he lets him out again he 
 is a reasonable quantity, a harnessed energy. He 
 takes the fisherman into the apparent desert where 
 is the strange pool in the midst of barrenness. The 
 fisherman, having the clue to wealth, goes fishing 
 and takes four fish, white, red, blue, and yellow. 
 
 Miriam s voice rises again. "I see them. I know 
 their names: Mussulman, Parsee, Christian, Jew!" 
 
 John again answers. "Of course you know them! 
 If you didn t know the story, and then knew them, 
 that would be something!" 
 
 59 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 "I couldn t know them unless I knew them. How 
 could I? But I know them higher and deeper and 
 faster and louder. I know them like that!" She 
 began to clap her hands together. "Mussulman, 
 Parsee, Christian, Jew!" 
 
 "Now he takes them to the Sultan," directed 
 John. I continue to tell the story and we go on 
 to the King of the Black Isles who was half man and 
 half marble. . . . The barn and the slanting rain and 
 the warmth and the fragrance of the hay, the smell 
 of the cedar, the taste of the wine-saps leave the 
 screen. 
 
 It is March. The robins are here. The plowed 
 earth pleases them. The maples are fire-tipped, 
 the bloodroot blooms. A roaring wind goes around 
 the house and shakes the trees. There is a swing 
 fastened to a great outstretching bough of the tulip- 
 tree. The bough is high, the ropes of the swing are 
 long, the board is wide. Miriam and I stand here, 
 swinging. We have gotten a great start, we go 
 higher and higher, we bend together, rise together, 
 the wind is in our hair. We go up, we go out, the 
 leaves swirl up after us, we are as high as the high 
 windows. We are drawn back, we rush forward, 
 high, high. The wind is strong about us, there is 
 delight, there is thrill! We shut our eyes. The 
 swing seems to have left the tulip-tree. We seem 
 to be going away, away, through the air. We are 
 high as a cloud and far as the mountains. Flower- 
 field quits us we are in the air there is not even 
 the swing. We are birds flying. . . . We are one bird, 
 flyingj great -winged. The space we are in cracks 
 wide. There is other space. We feel exhilaration 
 
 60 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 that becomes a pounding thrill, a huge chord vibra 
 tion. Some one calls us from the house. We come 
 back. We are swinging high, that is all, up and out, 
 but locked still to the tulip-tree. 
 
 It is yet March, and cold, with a sudden spear 
 from the north. There is a great wood fire in the 
 school-room, burning at dusk. Miriam and I sit 
 on two hassocks, on either side the hearth, watch 
 ing the fire. Catherine and Lewis are in the room, 
 but they seem to be quiet. John sprawls on the 
 hearth-rug, reading Ivanhoe. Madam Black, in the 
 parlor, two rooms away, is playing Beethoven. 
 Miriam and I sit very still. The fire. . . . Pine feeds 
 it. The flames bend, roar together, rise superb. 
 Suddenly, again, as in the swing, Miriam and I 
 flow into one. The "she" and "I," the "twoness," 
 come into "weness." But the "weness" itself and 
 that is the increase springs into a new "Iness." 
 Something, flashing together, uses the "twoness," 
 but as we use arms or hands. More than that, the 
 very room comes in. The fire, the logs that burn, 
 the forest just behind them the walls and the fur 
 niture Catherine and Lewis by the window, John 
 and Madam Black come in. The music comes in. 
 It is quite simple, but very satisfying. Catherine 
 and Lewis, by the window, fall out over their box 
 of colors. And there is again the school-room fire, 
 and Miriam and Michael sitting upon hassocks. 
 
 It is the same springtime. We are thirteen. 
 Madam Black is going. Presently I shall return 
 to Rest well. October will come, but it will not bring 
 me to Flowerfield. I am going to Hilltop Academy, 
 in Whitechurch. That is an old school, reconstituted, 
 
 61 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 invigorated, said to be full of promise. John is 
 going, too. He will live at Restwell as I have lived 
 at Flowerfield. The old South is behind us, and 
 around us are the middle seventies. Miriam s 
 going to school is of less importance than is John s. 
 She will have lessons at home with Aunt Kate. In 
 a year or two, perhaps, she may go to Richmond, to 
 a school there, staying with the Warringers. 
 
 There is a hillside of dark trees, white pine and 
 hemlock, sloping steeply to a brook that here pro 
 ceeds with a deep, sliding stillness, and here plunges 
 from ledge to ledge like a white-maned water- 
 steed. John, Miriam, and I come to this place. 
 We have been gathering wake-robins on the other 
 side the hill, where there is a sunnier wood. Then 
 we pass around the shoulder to the shaded side, 
 cool and old. We sit down on the brown-scented 
 earth, clean save for a mat of needles and fallen 
 cones. We have great bunches of the wake-robins, 
 the pink and the white. We put them down on 
 the cool earth in the deep shade. John and I are 
 going to Restwell in a week. Meantime the three 
 of us are pursuing one of our inner travels. We lift, 
 at will, from the great book and reservoir of other- 
 selves, compagnons de voyage. Our present scene 
 is set in the island of the Swiss Family Robinson. 
 But the characters who figure are from other prov 
 inces. Ourselves of course, Uncas from The Last 
 of the Mohicans; Gurth from Ivanhoe; a Knight and 
 a Lady, first found in the Faery Queen; Ariel, Oberon, 
 and Titania; and Ulysses the Greek wanderer. I 
 think, to-day, that it is a good choice and suited to 
 an isle of all climes and products. 
 
 62 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 We take up our adventures where we left them, 
 over the hilltop. They have their reality the 
 reality of music, of dream, of play, of lacework, of 
 dance, of art. Our bodies rest under the pine-trees, 
 but the image-making self has swooped to the island. 
 There we follow Uncas through a wood that spreads 
 as far and climbs as high as we desire. Uncas 
 finds directions, Gurth fells the trees. Ulysses 
 and we make whatever plan there lies ahead; 
 Uriel, with moth wings, flies beside us but Oberon 
 and Titania only look out doubtfully from ferny 
 recesses. We are making a road for the Knight and 
 the Lady. Eventually we mean to build a castle 
 seven castles, like those the King of China built 
 for his daughter. When we need to expand the island 
 we expand it. When we need more and different 
 persons, hey, presto! in they tumble! Oh, life of 
 Uncas and of Gurth life of Ariel life of Ulysses 
 life of the Knight and the Lady ! 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 JOHN and I went to Restwell. I cannot say that 
 I missed Miriam, for I seemed to take Miriam 
 with me. I missed the others at Flowerfield. 
 
 But Restwell was most dear to me. I loved 
 mother and grandfather and Aunt Sarah, Daddy 
 Guinea, Mammy, Ahasuerus, and the rest, the ani 
 mals and the trees and the house, and every other 
 aspect. I loved the graveyard and the bank going 
 down to the river, and the river itself. John knew 
 all the haunts, but now he learned them better 
 with me. 
 
 What my grandfather had not read in these four 
 years I do not know. Colonel Forth s pecuniary 
 affairs were yet shot with strain and difficulty. 
 But somehow and I know here how greatly my 
 mother helped him he managed to pay the interest 
 on the mortgage. The old Restwell shelter sheltered 
 still. Around him the affairs of the South were 
 slowly bettering. The war was no longer blindingly, 
 thunderously present. It had changed its shape, 
 lowered its voice. Its boulder weight was become 
 spread sand. It was always there, always would 
 be there. You could as little kill the war as kill 
 anything else. On thundered the long freight-train 
 stacked with effects. At every station something 
 
 64 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 was deposited. But also other unkillable things 
 breathed on, such as man s ineradicable hope of 
 understanding all, of enjoying all, of being all. 
 
 My grandfather looked older and gentler. He 
 was busy all day with a thousand active, patient 
 adjustments. But after supper, by lamplight, until 
 almost midnight, he read. He had found his way 
 to Jacob Boehme, to Spinoza, to Blake. 
 
 My aunt Sarah read less, I thought, than she used 
 to do less, that is, in books. Remembering, I am 
 aware, by the now stronger light, that she had turned 
 to that inner library, greater than any housed col 
 lection. There two and two, in a thousand places, 
 came together and made four. 
 
 My mother burned, as always, a light, a warmth, 
 fed steadily by a willing sacrifice. She herself went 
 with joy into the fire of herself. 
 
 Oh, Restwell, and all that made Restwell! 
 
 John and I, in good and bad weather, walked to 
 Whitechurch and walked home again. Hilltop 
 Academy rose at the edge of town. The distance 
 was nothing to strong youths, country bred. We 
 carried our books and our dinner. The many and 
 many things that along the way we ruminated, 
 debated! All the way there and the way back 
 again, the two hundred and odd school-days in each 
 year, three years on end! There are trees that rise 
 in memory hung with talk as with fruit. 
 
 Hilltop Academy, brick, long and gaunt, had the 
 luck to have gathered about it a dozen really splendid 
 cedars. Except for these its hill was a somewhat 
 bare and windy one. As each morning we approached 
 it we might see the boys running, jumping, playing 
 
 65 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 ball, or knotted together the younger ones over 
 marbles. In memory a wind seems always to blow. 
 Sometimes snow falls. There is a high, shifting 
 veil, and it and the boys are all of a piece. Boarding 
 pupils and town and country pupils, there were not 
 far from a hundred boys. Out of this number a 
 score made our group. Out of this group two or 
 three pressed closer. They and John and I heard 
 very nearly the same sounds. One of them, Gamaliel 
 Young, came closer than the others. 
 
 The principal of the academy was his father, Dr. 
 Abner Young. 
 
 I would say at once that Doctor Young was 
 estimable. There was even about him a kind of 
 sweetness, some errant fragrance, some spice lurk 
 ing beneath fold after fold of mummy linen. His 
 archaic rigidity of line was not without distinc 
 tion. . . . Lot s wife looked back, remembered too 
 exclusively the plain the plane that must be 
 left, and became a pillar of salt. Salt preserves. 
 Where it is too abundant green things do not grow. 
 She loved the past not wisely, but too well. Yet 
 love is love and covereth a multitude. And little 
 by little, doubtless, age by age, the rain and the 
 wind and the fire undid the form. 
 
 Hilltop Academy employed a number of teachers. 
 But Doctor Young kept in his own hands Greek and 
 Latin, history and English. In the letter of the 
 languages he taught well. In the letter of history 
 and of the literature of England he had knowledge. 
 But he was mineralized, and what he did and what 
 he gave partook of that quality. An honest min 
 eral, with mineral beauty. 
 
 66 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 Each morning, at the ringing of a bell, occurred a 
 Scripture reading, a short homily, a prayer. Doctor 
 Young read, expounded, prayed. The hundred 
 boys sat as still as they could. Sometimes something 
 caught them, oftener nothing. It was a mill-wheel 
 turning. One must feel reverential when one sat 
 by the mill-race and the wheel began to turn. But 
 the wheat in the hopper very rarely indeed made any 
 connection with one s own private oven. (Doubt 
 less, now I think of it, that was because the oven 
 was not large enough.) The mill-wheel stopped, 
 the church feeling flew away, out trooped the hun 
 dred boys into the big, bare, echoing hall. 
 
 Each Wednesday, at two in the afternoon, Doctor 
 Young lectured. He made these talks into occasions. 
 They took place in the assembly-hall. The smallest 
 boys were excused, but the rest of us sat in solemn 
 rows with clean hands and smoothed hair. All the 
 teachers were there, seated where they might ob 
 serve both us and the principal. It happened it 
 grew by degrees into settled custom that friends 
 of the academy, of Doctor Young, leading citizens 
 of Whitechurch, seeking culture, came to these 
 Wednesday talks. There was always a little block 
 of comfortable chairs, filled from Whitechurch. 
 Ladies and gentlemen both attended. They seemed 
 to think it necessary to listen very closely, to nod 
 their heads at regular intervals. They did not ap 
 plaud, because it seemed too much like church 
 and the Word of God. I have forgotten to say that 
 in his early manhood Doctor Young had been a 
 minister. He believed with intensity that he still 
 ministered to souls. 
 
 67 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 The least of the Wednesday talks lasted half an 
 hour. I have known them to run over the hour. 
 He spoke well, without a ragged edge, without a 
 sign of indefiniteness, and always as one having 
 authority. He had a thin, severe enthusiasm, very 
 far from unction, but carrying over. Unwavering 
 belief in one s own revelation cannot but do it. 
 He was the Apostle of the Status quo Ante. 
 
 Gamaliel sat with John and me and fidgeted. 
 This father and son loved each other, but it was love 
 dashed with profound care and dissent. Doctor 
 Young felt the impatience in the corner. His eyes 
 darted over. I remember more than once or twice 
 in the sequence of Wednesdays a pause, a "Keep 
 order there !" I remember an angry Gamaliel " ! 
 
 Gamaliel broke off his absent-minded drumming 
 upon the desk before him. He sat up and looked 
 at the speaker. The father looked back. Struggle 
 was in the air. "You will break from me!" "I 
 am breaking from you!" "Yet you are me!" 
 "Yet I will carry you with me Anchises on ^Eneas s 
 shoulders!" There were, of course, no such articu 
 late words. 
 
 These Wednesday discourses varied as to subject. 
 Doctor Young was intensely interested in keeping 
 the world good in salting it down, so to speak. 
 To do this one must be active and wary on all sides. 
 Weeds would grow! But he would do what he could 
 to fix the soil in the young minds before him. 
 Specifically and sharply to fix it in Gamaliel s mind. 
 There was jealousy of Gamaliel. He must not 
 take the Inheritance and riot with it. 
 
 The Inheritance was stored in treasure-houses 
 
 68 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 labeled Religion Political Life Economics Sci 
 ence Arts and Letters. Doctor Young stood before 
 the door of each and expounded how all things must 
 be kept and polished. 
 
 He was a strict disciplinarian. The younger boys 
 the little fellows came in, not infrequently, for 
 corporal punishment. Gamaliel was not among the 
 younger boys. But out of school, in the father s 
 bare study, he might yet taste the whip. It was 
 not often, and this mode of dealing with him ceased 
 before he was fifteen. And no doubt Doctor Young 
 prayed afterward a quarter of the night. 
 
 I speak as though I did not like the pillar of salt. 
 But I did. There were yearnings and sincerity, 
 and an Egyptian moonlight of old beauty, and great 
 willingness to be kind if only we would stay within 
 bounds ! 
 
 I hear him now upon the mad that was a great 
 word with him the mad attempt, originating in 
 England, to undermine the Christian Religion. He 
 withered with irony Messrs. Darwin, Huxley, Spen 
 cer, and Tyndall. Hilltop Academy must sooner 
 or later go forth into the world. He would arm 
 its units against insidious modernity! He pro 
 ceeded to arm us. I remember that Mr. Millwood 
 was among those from the town who was present 
 that day. I see now the big head and shoulders 
 vibrating assent. The flaying of the evolutionists 
 lasted an hour. 
 
 Again political economy. Doctor Young gave up 
 the divine right of kings, but quite subtly and 
 passionately inculcated divine right of class. He 
 was devoted to the point of romance to class, 
 
 69 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 order, hierarchy, successiveness. How feudal, rea 
 sonable, logical he was! 
 
 Out of his numerous " literary" talks I recall most 
 plainly that upon " Paradise Lost. 1 He labored 
 Shakespeare, but he loved Milton. I remember, 
 too, a scorching warning away from most modern 
 novels, poems, and other works "modern" and 
 highly explosive, that is, in 1876, to country-living 
 folk. George Eliot was armed against no less 
 than George Sand. A young poet then writing, 
 named Swinburne we must never touch! There 
 were qualities in Browning, but also dangerous 
 heresies, to say nothing of impossible style. The 
 evolutionists how few were untainted by the evo 
 lutionists! Coming to our own country, Mr. Emer 
 son was undoubtedly able, but could be followed 
 only a little way and through careful selection. 
 Bryant, Longfellow, and Whittier were safe. Mr. 
 Millwood, who was again among the listeners, shook 
 his head, remembering utterances "against the 
 South." 
 
 But Doctor Young differed here from Mr. Mill 
 wood. It was not the South that he thought of, 
 but the moral nationality. ... I think of him as a 
 kind of Switzerland, shot up high from a narrow base. 
 
 Gamaliel had a stub of a pencil and the back of 
 a long envelop and was drawing while his father 
 talked. He drew a man reading and made the 
 figure look like himself. The book held in both 
 hands was quite large. The pencil hesitated, then 
 printed on the cover, SWINBURNE. He next stood 
 on end around the reader a number of volumes, the 
 back of each of which he proceeded to letter. GEORGE 
 
 70 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 SAND GEORGE ELIOT EMERSON DARWIN. There 
 was just a tremor, then the pencil added INGERSOLL. 
 
 Now I know Gamaliel, and he was not in the least 
 trying to be " smart." Father and son were alike 
 in dead earnest. 
 
 In the late summer, just before the beginning 
 of my second year at Hilltop, I met with an accident. 
 A colt that I was breaking threw me and broke my 
 ankle. It was set and healed, but for a long time 
 was weak. Doctor Gilbert said that I must not 
 walk each day to and from Whitechurch. It ended 
 in my becoming, from October to Christmas, one 
 of the boarding boys. 
 
 Mrs. Young was an invalid. She lay on a sofa 
 and looked with dark, hollow eyes at some inner 
 pageant. The house where ate and slept and for 
 gathered twenty boys, under the eyes of four teach 
 ers and of Doctor Young, was kept by two maiden 
 sisters, cousins of the principal. It was well kept 
 after our easy-going Southern fashion. The teach 
 ers were intelligent and good - natured, the two 
 maiden sisters amiable, maternally-minded women. 
 Every one intended kindness. It was a pretty fair 
 home. The twenty boys slept in four rooms. I 
 had the luck to be with Gamaliel. Moreover, two 
 out of the five in our room went home in November 
 upon some contingency. The remaining one was a 
 "little fellow" of whom we were fond and who had 
 the good habit of going to sleep immediately upon 
 getting into bed. Gamaliel and I could talk till late. 
 
 But I do not speak now of the lasting nearness of 
 Gamaliel and me. With John and Miriam he came 
 near. We were countrymen, though Miriam and 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 I were more closely countrymen than any. But we 
 were all of one language. Gamaliel spoke it with 
 poignancy and thrill, differing there from John s 
 long, slow waves, quiet and massive. 
 
 Whitechurch rambled around the foot of Doctor 
 Young s hill like a pleasant trailing vine, then went 
 up and down and over a hill of its own. The spire 
 of St. Matthew s, the spires of the Presbyterian, 
 Baptist, and Methodist churches, leaned against 
 the sky. The square old court-house held its place. 
 There was Garth s Hotel with its row of horse- 
 chestnuts edging the brick pavement, pleasant for 
 men s souls who wished to loaf. The Bank was 
 found retired behind a sycamore beneath which 
 Indians may have lighted council fires. Up and down 
 the High Street signs guided to stores where gen 
 eral merchandise was bought and sold. White- 
 church expected a railroad, but as yet only ex 
 pected it. A ramshackle stage left Garth s in 
 the morning light and returned in the evening. 
 Folk looked out of window or stopped upon the 
 sidewalk to see it pass, with or without passengers. 
 "There s the stage!" Back from the High Street, 
 down short ways named for pioneers, Indian fighters, 
 and Colonial governors, along Washington Street 
 that paralleled High Street, gathered the homes, 
 brick and frame, large and small, each a unit com 
 pounded of units, a person synthesizing persons as 
 Whitechurch was a person, and the county a person, 
 and the state a person, and the country a person, 
 and the world a person. Most of the houses had 
 gardens, large or small. In the spring there bloomed 
 old shrubs, bowery and fragrant, lilac and snowball 
 
 72 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 and syringa and weigelia. And there were trees and 
 again trees, so many that in June the place grew 
 leafy and sang like a forest. 
 
 Whatever there had been before the war, or might 
 be in the future, the present Whitechurch had ex 
 ceedingly little money. Just in these years the 
 whole country, North and South, knew financial 
 depression. Inflation met Nemesis in the road. 
 Whitechurch was poor, but Whitechurch prided 
 itself upon its ability to rise above what it 
 called "material considerations." Mr. Millwood 
 was a good leader here, and Doctor Young likewise, 
 and four or five other estimable figures, men and 
 women, whom I see now through a mist of laughing 
 and liking. There was plenty of grit in Whitechurch. 
 It prided itself upon its sense of values, religious, 
 esthetic, and social. 
 
 Ten of the Hilltop boarding pupils were boys 
 above fourteen. Out of this number the principal 
 saw sparks of promise in at least five. And there 
 were the boarding teachers who should, who must, 
 give scholastic distinction to the cultural life of 
 Whitechurch. The principal himself felt the weight 
 of his responsibility. Doctor Young, the four board 
 ing teachers, the five boys that scintillated and the 
 five that were supposed to be deader coals, at 
 tended in a body the fortnightly meetings of the 
 Whitechurch Literary and Debating Society. When 
 there were concerts we went; when there came to 
 town stray lecturers (if Doctor Young approved their 
 subjects) we went. Twice or thrice when there were 
 passionate political harangues (Democratic) we went. 
 Each summer and each winter each church had a sup- 
 
 73 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 per or festival or lawn party. The Women s Mite 
 Society or the Women s Missionary Society made, 
 collected, and sold good things to eat. We went to 
 these fund-raising church affairs. And of course we 
 went to church. There Hilltop divided. Episcopa 
 lians went to St. Matthew s, Presbyterians to Doc 
 tor Baird s church, Baptists to the Baptist church, 
 Methodists to the Methodist church. We had no 
 Catholics nor Quakers, nor Unitarians, nor other 
 sectarians. Church-going was not conceived of as 
 among cultural activities. It was a flat command of 
 God. Commands of God were outside of question or 
 modification and outside of comparison with other 
 activities. I discussed this with Gamaliel. "Then 
 something acts besides God?" He answered. "Of 
 course! Don t you know your devil?" We went to 
 Sunday-school and were in Doctor Young s class, 
 and heard there indeed of a fearful devil. . . . Only 
 only he linked on so beautifully to the devil 
 Mandy s Jim believed in ! He was a devil of physical 
 terror but, even so, of grotesque terror! 
 
 For all the devil that it talked about Whitechurch, 
 s a whole, was of a sunny temperament. Evils 
 were there, shadows of ignorance and weakness, 
 ancient falsehoods, lusts, vanities, arrogances, and 
 angers. But it wanted to do right, it wanted to 
 grow. Gamaliel wanted that, and I wanted that, 
 and Doctor Young and Mr. Millwood, and Mrs. 
 Young upon her sofa, and the maiden cousins, and 
 Aunt Ailsy in the kitchen, and the teachers and the 
 loafers about Garth s Hotel, and all the townsfolk, 
 those who had more momentum and those who had 
 less, souls ripening, and souls green and crude. 
 
 74 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 ONCE in a long while there came to Whitechurch 
 the drama. In those days stock companies 
 in dilution, shadows of the shadows of metropolitan 
 companies, might be met with traveling, might at 
 times be regarded upon extemporized stages in the 
 smaller towns and larger villages of the country. 
 Such a one came to Whitechurch and played in 
 the big room of Garth s Hotel. An ambitious 
 shadow, it opened its three nights course with 
 " Midsummer Night s Dream." 
 
 Doctor Young permitted us to go. He went him 
 self with the four teachers. 
 
 The advertisements promised "a classic per 
 formance." The Clarion, the weekly paper published 
 in a neighboring town, said that the actors were of 
 somewhat extraordinary goodness and that none 
 should miss the performance. And Shakespeare is 
 always Shakespeare. The best of Whitechurch 
 prepared to go. Such was the bruit and rumor that 
 folk were coming in from the country. Fortunately 
 the room at Garth s was really big, as big as a barn, 
 as big as an ordinary hall. Of old it had been used 
 for political gatherings and the like. There was a 
 platform with small rooms opening upon it, and 
 floor space and rows of benches. 
 
 75 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 John, appearing at Hilltop that morning, brought 
 news that grandfather and my mother were coming 
 in. There had not been a play in Whitechurch for 
 a long time, certainly not Shakespeare. John would 
 stay in town, would indeed, at Doctor Young s in 
 vitation, return to Hilltop after the play and spend 
 the night with Gamaliel and me. 
 
 All that day it was exciting to think of Garth s 
 big room being turned into a theater exciting to 
 envisage the company at Garth s. Forth goes Im 
 agination, questing his livelihood! 
 
 Evening came. Eight of the boys at Hilltop had 
 tickets and were going. Doctor Young would shep 
 herd us down. 
 
 He did so; Gamaliel, John, and I at the tail of 
 the string. The night, I remember, was full of 
 stars, magnificent, Decemberish. The air seemed 
 to rise on tiptoe, thrill, rise again, thrill. . . . 
 
 Once in the High Street we meet with people, set 
 in a stream, going to Garth s. The old hotel seems 
 to blaze, perhaps it does blaze, perhaps it is only 
 our spirits! We hear voices of men and voices of 
 women, talking, laughing, thrilling, expectant. We 
 enter the big room and see that Shakespeare will 
 have an audience. 
 
 So full was the place that Doctor Young s flock 
 could not be herded together. Gamaliel and John 
 and I found ourselves upon a bench remote from the 
 remainder of Hilltop. Ladies entered by the door 
 near us and could not find seats. We gave them 
 ours and removed to the broad window-sill. So 
 much the better! We perceived that we were going 
 to be able to see splendidly. 
 
 76 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 We looked first at the curtain, that was of some 
 dark stuff, and, to the heightened fancy, wide and 
 high. A row of lamps burned before it, shaded on 
 our side, bright toward the stage that would presently 
 be revealed. Ah! what mysteries behind it all, 
 what delight, what warm adventure ! 
 
 We were none too early. This side the lamps a 
 piano and two violins and a horn were getting ready. 
 It was a stately company, that had seen better 
 days, that once would have smiled and passed by 
 Whitechurch. 
 
 The great room was warm and packed with men 
 and women and not a few children. Young men and 
 young women predominated. But all the leading 
 citizens were here, all save those who would not go 
 to the theater even if it was Shakespeare! 
 
 Colonel Forth and my mother came in. A man 
 rose and beckoned and they found a place beside 
 the Beech wood Corbins and the Mt. Pleasant 
 Byrds. They were at a distance from our window, 
 but almost immediately my mother saw me, and 
 then my grandfather. We touched in the face of 
 " space. " 
 
 The piano, the violins, and the horn began. 
 There seemed a start, a thrill in the curtain s self. 
 I thrilled, and John and Gamaliel. One wave broke 
 against the three of us, perched in the deep window. 
 Piano and violin; now the horn Greek horns 
 hunting-horns of Theseus! 
 
 The curtain parted. 
 
 Undoubtedly this company stood above the kind 
 that was wont to play in villages. It was no worse 
 off for scenery than was the sixteenth century when 
 
 77 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 the Mermaid Tavern went to plays. Greek cos 
 tumes are easily managed fairy dress, no less. 
 
 Theseus speaks. It begins. . . . Theseus, Hermia, 
 Demetrius, Bottom, and the fairy king and queen 
 are well played the others more so-so. But it is all 
 good enough; it answers. It is delicate, fine drama. 
 
 The room and the stage grow one. We desire, 
 will, and act in England Athens, ever old and ever 
 new! It is delicate, upper-key drama. We are not split 
 into violent partizanships. We can like, we can 
 hold them all. We even find Bottom within, not 
 without us. 
 
 Varying applications are made, similitudes seen. 
 When Egeus complains against his child, cries that 
 she is his, that he may, can, and will rule her desti 
 nies, I know that Gamaliel shoots a thought across 
 to Doctor Young. John likes the whole, but he 
 shakes all over when the Athenian "rude mechan 
 icals" play. So with all others present. There are 
 individual linkings-up. But the whole comes under 
 our skin fairies and all. 
 
 There is rhythm in the big room. Forth and 
 return, forth and return, with a soft, powerful, 
 piston beat. . . . 
 
 "Midsummer Night s Dream" goes on "Mid 
 summer Night s Dream" comes to an end. At least, 
 the woolen curtain draws to; the violins slip into 
 their cases. Whitechurch, after liberal applause, is 
 on its feet, is going out. It must be over but I 
 doubted it, even then. 
 
 I greet mother and grandfather. My ankle is as 
 strong as ever. I am going home before Christmas. 
 There is in grandfather s and in my mother s eyes 
 
 78 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 the same look of distance and width that I feel in 
 my own. I note the tranquil measure in their 
 voices, deep on deep, perspective. They are in 
 Whitechurch, but they are also in the wood that 
 neighbors Athens and in other woods. 
 
 I have never questioned the literalness of being 
 there. I was there, as also, certainly, here. The 
 there and here stood on a level. It seemed that 
 there was a largeness that held them both. 
 
 Gamaliel and John and I walked to Hilltop under 
 the stars. Doctor Young and the others came on 
 some distance behind us. We had half a mile to go. 
 The night was high and starry, cold and still. We 
 did not talk. Our feet beat out rhymes, our hands 
 were in our pockets, we slanted a little forward, as 
 though we met a wind, though there was no wind 
 materially perceptible. 
 
 Something was happening to me or I was hap 
 pening into something. It seemed to be a bigger 
 kind of memory. 
 
 The world as Drama opened. There was a 
 cracking a breaking through a crust into a great 
 sea, wide-shored. There came first a strong feeling 
 of Madam Black, and then this deepening. I went 
 under the surface. 
 
 There I met the course of true loves that did 
 never run smooth, the Warrior, and the Amazon 
 Bride worth all labor of gaining; the child and the 
 parent, now together, now asunder; friends, and the 
 lightnings that rended them apart, and the rushings 
 together again when the lightnings explained them 
 selves; honest, clownish attempt as seen in its own 
 mirror, and as seen from a balcony above, Asses 
 
 79 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 Heads and Pucks, and frostwork, lacework, magic 
 fabrics, night and day, and quarrel and reconcilia 
 tion, and a spectacle and a pageant, a symphony 
 playing itself, with many voices and fine contrapuntal 
 work. Everywhere and all the time. . . . 
 
 My feet bore my body on under the stars, but an 
 inner man stood with parted lips. Like sprang to 
 like even here. All arranged itself, sprang where the 
 composition demanded. Then what huge Art and 
 what towering Artist? What Shakespeare built of 
 Shakespeares fused from myriads of Shakespeares 
 fused and conscious? 
 
 I was half-way up a stair. 
 
 Doctor Young s voice caught us from behind. 
 "Wait, Gamaliel! I want you to hear what I am 
 saying." 
 
 Down I came we came to the surface of the 
 surface. 
 
 But this night started with Gamaliel and me 
 and with John, too new voyages. All our old 
 dreams, all our old make-believe, changed somewhat 
 in character. The sphere of fancy, iridescent, 
 tenuous, hollow, gave way to the great orb of im 
 agination. End and Use came in, though we were 
 not conscious, then, of their entrance. None has 
 ever come to conclusions with Imagination, nor seen 
 where its high Verity begins or ends. 
 
 At Christmas I went home to Restwell. For the 
 remainder of the school year John and I walked to 
 and fro. I missed Gamaliel. In the springtime my 
 mother persuaded Doctor Young to let him spend 
 a week at Restwell. . . . He and John and I swimming 
 in the river! 
 
 80 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 Hilltop Academy closed doors behind pupils until 
 mid-September should come. What I had chiefly 
 learned there was Gamaliel. That was not a little 
 to me. 
 
 Summer came on. It was the summer of 1876, the 
 Centennial summer. My grandfather, sitting be 
 tween the pillars upon the porch, after supper, 
 twilight about him, the fireflies beginning to sparkle, 
 the frogs singing down by the little pond, the even 
 ing star bright in the west, was wont, this summer, 
 to cast back and talk of early statesmen and of 
 events that broke into light at this step and at that 
 of the road called American. He could remember 
 Jefferson. He had had some acquaintance with Mr. 
 Madison and to a lesser degree with Mr. Monroe. 
 He remembered when railroads and steamboats came 
 into general use. He was a boy of nine when he heard 
 of the cession of Florida to us by Spain. He had 
 made up his mind that now Florida was ours he 
 would go afoot and find Ponce de Leon s fountain 
 of youth. He had thought: "What a present it will 
 be for them all! I ll let most everybody drink!" 
 He had started and had gotten beyond Whitechurch 
 when Daddy Guinea, who was then a young man, 
 overtook him. . . . 
 
 A night or two after this I went to see Daddy 
 Guinea. He was much older than my grandfather; 
 he could not have been far from ninety. Daddy 
 Guinea remembered General George Washington. 
 He remembered the building of Rest well. 
 
 I sat on the cabin door-step and he sat beside me, 
 his great veined hands hanging over his knees. 
 "What is dishyer Centennial I heah erbout?" 
 
 81 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 "It s a hundred years since the Declaration of 
 Independence. 
 
 "Sho-ly! En what was er hundred years befo 
 that?" 
 
 I thought for a moment. "We were colonies. 
 We lived along the Atlantic Ocean, but everywhere 
 back in the hills the Indians lived." 
 
 "En er hundred years befo that?" 
 
 "The Indians lived on the ocean, too. We lived 
 in England and Scotland and Ireland and France 
 and Germany and Spain and Italy and Africa." 
 
 Daddy Guinea"^ great hands moved together. 
 "Sho-ly! Sho-ly! In en out. In en out. Look at 
 hit one way en hit draws out long longer n from 
 heah to neber ! Look at hit ernother way en hit ain t 
 enny bigger n er bag of gyarden seed ! All those 
 places en the N United States. ... en above the 
 N United States Beulah Land, where old Guinea 
 gwine, gwine!" 
 
 He sat in silence. There shone above us soft, 
 reflected light. The creek was running to the river, 
 the river was running to the sea, the sea Up 
 and down of continents, and mankind in waves! 
 I knew that earth and all were flying through space. 
 For a moment I grasped intellectual space, and the 
 traveling and the travelers there. Then there were 
 just the homey cabin, and Daddy Guinea, and the 
 whippoorwills. 
 
 The next day, Ahasuerus and I hoeing corn in the 
 field under Lone Tree Hill, Ahasuerus, too, wanted 
 to know about the Centennial. That evening, after 
 an early supper, my mother was looking over a pile 
 of magazines new ones, and rather old ones sent 
 
 82 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 by Aunt Harriet from Richmond. Most current 
 literature came to us from the Warringers. Grand 
 father sat smoking, resting, dreaming back or for 
 ward. Aunt Sarah, seated where she could get the 
 western light, was hemstitching ruffles, and where 
 her deep desire and will had gone I do not know. 
 Our old mastiff, Hercules, lay by me on the steps. 
 My mother spoke: "This is a little bit, father, that 
 I think you ll like. It s from Topics of the Time, 1 
 in the January Scribner s Monthly. She began to 
 read. 
 
 "All good Americans are looking forward to the passage of 
 the year 1876 with great interest; and it is not to be denied that 
 they are animated by a new hopefulness. The financial failures 
 that occur da not depress business circles as they once did. 
 There is a belief that we have seen the worst, that it is well that 
 the rotten houses should go down, and that we shall practically 
 start, during our Centennial, on a new and prosperous national 
 life. 
 
 " Of a certain kind of business there will undoubtedly be more 
 done during the year than ever before. The passenger traffic 
 on the railroads will be immense. All the West is coming East. 
 All the men and women who have been desiring throughout their 
 lives to visit the Eastern coast, yet have never found the oc 
 casion for such an expenditure of time and money, will come to 
 the great Exhibition. The thousands in Europe who have long 
 intended to visit America will naturally desire to take it at its 
 best and they will come this year. The Southern States will be 
 similarly moved, and all the lines of travel converging upon 
 New York will be crowded. Railroads and steamboats will 
 do unprecedented passenger business and hotels will be over 
 whelmed with guests. The whole Eastern coast of the country 
 north of Baltimore will feel this great influx of life. Newport 
 and Saratoga . . . will be full. Every Englishman every 
 foreigner indeed will visit Niagara. There will be a tremendous 
 shaking up of the people, a great going to and fro in the land, 
 
 83 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 a lively circulation of money, and a stimulation of trade. . . 
 There is still another reason for hopefulness. The nation is to 
 be brought together as it has never been brought together before 
 during its history. In one hundred years of intense industry 
 and marvelous development we have grown from a few feeble 
 colonies to a powerful nation of more than forty millions of people. 
 We have been so busy that we have never been able to look 
 one another in the face, except during four terrible years of civil 
 war. In a friendly way, for brotherly courtesies, we have never 
 come together. Well, that which divided us is past. We are 
 now all members of a consolidated nationality, and this year 
 around the old family altar at Philadelphia we expect to meet 
 and embrace as brothers. We are profoundly hopeful that this 
 year is to do much to cast into forgetfulness the bitterness en 
 gendered by the Civil War, and to make the nation as united and 
 sympathetic in feeling as it is in the political fact. Of one thing 
 we are certain, if the South comes to the Centennial, it will re 
 ceive such a welcome as will be accorded to no guests from any 
 other part of the world. The glories of the old Declaration are 
 a part of their inheritance, and without them our festivals 
 would be but a mockery. They are the guests without whom we 
 cannot get along without whom there would be bitterness in 
 our bread, sourness in our wine, and insignificance in our re 
 joicings." 
 
 My mother laid down the magazine. "I don t 
 think anything could be handsomer than that! * 
 
 My grandfather knocked the ashes from his cigar. 
 General Warringer sent him good cigars. You re 
 right, Gary! All one country all one country. 
 Like a family -sometimes we pull against one an 
 other, and we have differences ; but we come together 
 again. More than that like an individual. We 
 are an individual. ... I d like to talk with that 
 editor." 
 
 On the steps, beside Hercules, I became conscious 
 of a great desire to go to the Centennial. 
 
 84 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 WANT and fine lines come together to supply! 
 In less than a week we heard from Aunt Kate. 
 It had been a fairly prosperous year at Flowerfield. 
 Major Dallas, Aunt Kate, John, and Miriam were 
 going to the Centennial and they wanted me to go 
 with them. Uncle John would give me the trip. 
 We were going in two weeks. We might be away a 
 month, even longer. We would stop in Washington 
 on the way to Philadelphia. There was a possibility 
 of New York beyond Philadelphia. There was 
 there was just a possibility of Niagara Falls. 
 
 How slowly went by those two weeks! 
 
 They passed. I went to Flowerfield; we started 
 from there. I see us now, at the railroad station, 
 in the county town. Look at 1876 pictures to see 
 the type of clothes we wore, we who would not be 
 too far behind Fashion, but who certainly walked 
 in her rear. But Major Dallas would have rested, 
 no matter what he wore, a big, magnetic man, able, 
 and very kind. Aunt Kate had a slight, small 
 body, but a big oh! a big nature. John and 
 Miriam and I stood in a brown study waiting for 
 the train to come. I remember how the day was 
 sunny, but not heated. John was fifteen. Miriam 
 a little under, I a little over, fourteen. 
 
 8s 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 The train came we were aboard with our ancient 
 satchels, our unfashionable umbrellas and baskets. 
 Began our wonder- trip to the Centennial Exhibition. 
 
 Virginia scenery was good, was desirable, but the 
 love of our life, for Miriam, John, and me, was getting 
 out of Virginia. We had never been out of Virginia. 
 The long miles, the quite a number of hours that 
 must be overpassed before we entered the District 
 of Columbia, rather appalled us. But then the 
 journey, even through Virginia, grew interesting. 
 John and I sat together, Miriam had the seat across 
 the aisle. The train that day was not filled ; we could 
 move about, exchange. Uncle John and Aunt Kate 
 were lovely persons with whom to travel. When the 
 boy came through with fruit we had fruit. When he 
 brought magazines Uncle John bought our choice 
 for each of us. We were traveling finely, comme il 
 faut, with the bloom on the event. 
 
 Miriam wore a blue-green poplin, with an em 
 broidered tie at the throat. She had a small round 
 hat of straw, colored like the dress, with a wreath 
 of cornflowers. She was dark and slight and straight, 
 with strange, deep eyes, and a smile that was like 
 a different dawn each time it came. 
 
 In the late afternoon we approached the confines 
 of Virginia. At Alexandria we began to thrill. Now 
 the Potomac River, great and wide, with some little 
 boats upon it. Now the Virginia shore behind us. 
 Now before us Washington. . . . "Look, children! 
 There s the dome of the Capitol!" 
 
 Ours was an old hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, 
 where we had three rooms, and outside the long 
 windows a narrow, ironwork balcony. Standing 
 
 86 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 here we saw, we felt, a sycamore-tree, a languorous, 
 summer air, warmer than in our part of Virginia 
 where we lived well above the sea, a pearly twilight, 
 and out of it the gas street-lights springing then, 
 with a white flash, an arc-light. That was an amaze 
 ment to more than us that summer ! Electric light ! 
 I remember first reading this year a phrase that was 
 beginning to come in like a star in bright twilight, 
 seen and not seen and then again seen, "The Age of 
 Electricity." . . . We young folk leaned upon the 
 balcony rail. How wide was Pennsylvania Avenue 
 much wider than Richmond streets and how 
 long and how straight! We might also have said, 
 in 1876, what strange, shabby buildings line much 
 of it! 
 
 But we are in glamour. The All of it was all 
 right. All right is, presently, the hotel dinner in 
 stead of the supper familiar to us. All right is the 
 walk before bedtime that we take with Uncle John 
 and Aunt Kate. We walk to the Capitol. By the 
 happiest circumstance there hangs in the sky a full, 
 a golden moon. With that and with the street-lights 
 we might see the faces of the pedestrians whom we 
 passed or overtook or accompanied. We liked the 
 sound of the many feet upon the pavement. Some 
 seemed to say, "We live in this happy place." Some 
 said, "We are travelers like you; we are going to the 
 Centennial!" 
 
 Now we saw the Capitol. We were in its grounds. 
 We stood still, we travelers from Virginia, and gazed 
 and gazed upon the moonlighted, white mountain 
 with the rounded crest. It swam upon us in a beauty 
 that was pain. Oh, all ye symbols, belting us like 
 
 87 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 a Zodiac, three dimensional mother-language, thick 
 with visions. . . . 
 
 We found a bench and sat down. Major Dallas 
 spoke. "I don t suppose that there have been many 
 periods more politically corrupt than the one we re 
 in. Financially corrupt, too. There s rottenness. 
 The sign of hope is that we smell it, we see it, and 
 are beginning to be ashamed of it. I think we ll 
 have a house-cleaning. But it s going to be hard to 
 get the especial stain of! these years. . . . Well! 
 And still, Kate, there s the White Capitol!" 
 
 It seemed lambent there before us. It grew more 
 and more beautiful. I heard Miriam sigh with 
 delight. 
 
 We went back to the hotel. Oh, the compounded 
 taste, the long, twisted romance and adventure of 
 the hostel, inn, tavern, hotel! Miriam, John, and 
 I, I know, contacted many an inn beside this one on 
 Pennsylvania Avenue. 
 
 We slept and woke to strong enchantment still. 
 We stayed in Washington four days. And here we 
 went and there we went, and we returned thrice to 
 the Capitol. We went, upon a river boat, down to 
 Mount Vernon. "Now I feel at home!" said Aunt 
 Kate, and laughed. "That is, I feel more at home." 
 
 But Miriam and John and I were where the novel 
 was to us home. . . . We loved the Capitol, and we 
 loved the balcony before our rooms at that hotel. . . . 
 Four days, and we went to the great Centennial 
 Exhibition. 
 
 I have seen world s fairs since, but beside them 
 always comes up 1876 in Philadelphia, so small in 
 comparison, but to the child-country so full of taste, 
 
 88 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 so vivid, so sonorous, so remarkable! We from Vir 
 ginia had a new pleasant tavern to dwell in and a 
 new city to see. We stood in Independence Hall 
 before the cracked bell. "Shut your eyes!" said 
 Miriam. "Close the crack lift the bell. Now it s 
 up in the steeple ! It s whole it s ringing ringing !" 
 
 We see Philadelphia. We see the great Exposition 
 of the country and its products, of other nations and 
 their products. All is so novel -and yet is it so? 
 Or is it familiarity in perspective that makes it so 
 rich, so entertaining? Old fairs, great markets, 
 medieval, ancient, further- than-ancient, seem in 
 volved in, floating in, the present. Always nation 
 and product have gathered to look at, value, exchange 
 with, nation and product. . . . The Chinese and 
 Japanese greatly please us; the Swiss, the Italians. 
 Look at the glass-blowers! The iridescent shapes 
 form, drop from the blower s pipe. 
 
 Alike the Occident and the Orient please us. 
 
 We went to see the great machinery in which the 
 West, and especially our own country, excelled. I 
 do not remember in what factory, nor to any nicety 
 for what purpose the machine was devised but I 
 remember Leviathan before which before whom 
 we stood. And again Miriam and I seemed to open 
 like two windows upon one garden. In and out, 
 stilly, mightily, with ease, with grace, rhythmically, 
 incredibly swiftly, went a mighty piston. Beneath 
 it giant wheels turned, according. There were lesser 
 wheels and lesser, and between the wheels ran swiftly 
 flowing bands. There were rods and cogs and what 
 not, and all important, all upholding all. The air 
 vibrated. Up and down, and in and out, and to and 
 
 89 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 fro, and here and there, and now and then, and 
 around and around, and without a word coined to 
 express it in the atmosphere of purpose, end, per 
 formance acted the machine. Time and space and 
 mass were caught at work. We partook of we were 
 that complex-simple motion. 
 
 Of all the shows in the Centennial Show, I most 
 liked this Machine. It began to spin for me trains 
 of ideas. 
 
 We saw and heard at work the newly invented 
 telephone. There was a marvel, due to expand, like 
 the Genie out of the Bottle in the Arabian Nights! 
 
 We saw much at the great exhibition. Paintings, 
 for instance, and models of many things upon the 
 face of the earth. And the people and the people 
 and the people, the American people, who went in 
 and out at gates ! The clusters, the groups, the rela 
 tionships within relationship, the dramas within 
 drama! Habit, manner, clothes, gesture, voices, 
 eyes, hands what a variorum under summer light 
 and warmth, what rainbow molecules astir in a 
 guessed-at form ! 
 
 We spent a week in Philadelphia, and went each 
 day to the Great Exhibition. Then we traveled on 
 to New York. 
 
 We stayed at a hotel, much used in those days 
 by Southerners. . . . And out of New York I pick now 
 the journeying forth from New York to see the 
 ocean. That happened on the seventh day of our 
 visit. We had seen the eight-story (I forget whether 
 eight or ten-story) building, the child skyscraper. 
 We had been to Wall Street and the Stock Exchange 
 and old Trinity. We had seen the Bowery and 
 
 90 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 Newspaper Row and the City Hall and A. T. 
 Stewart s store. The horse-cars carried us from sight 
 to sight. We had walked upon Fifth Avenue. We 
 knew Union Square and Madison Square, and far, 
 far up-town, Central Park, named Central when it 
 seemed to us Outlying, gave us a green welcome. 
 We went over to the banks of the Hudson and 
 looked across to the Palisades. General Grant was 
 in the White House, there was no pillared white 
 mausoleum as now. We saw churches within and 
 without, and we visited the Metropolitan Museum 
 of Art. 
 
 Major Dallas, relatively speaking, knew New York. 
 Affairs had brought him here three or four times 
 in late years. He was our pilot. It was the wrong 
 season for a number of things. Old acquaintances, 
 Southerners now living here, were away for the heated 
 months. And the theaters offered very light enter 
 tainment. On the other hand, it was prime out-of- 
 door weather, and there was so much to be seen from 
 out-of-doors! We crossed to Brooklyn by the ferry. 
 We walked on the Battery and visited Castle Garden. 
 We rose early one morning and went to see an ocean 
 liner depart for England. It was the Scythia, a 
 Cunarder. . . . Again, for a moment, Madam Black 
 seemed to be with us. Floating houses, moving 
 bridges, devices to bring into one mind Here and 
 There. ... 
 
 Then, one day, we ourselves board a small boat 
 and go to see the main ocean. We go to Coney 
 Island. 
 
 The air is fresh and drenched with light, the salt 
 is in our nostrils. We are going to view the sea that 
 
 91 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 we think Miriam and John and I that we have 
 never seen. True, the harbor is filled from the sea, 
 but we dream of surf and thunder and land so far 
 away that the world seems water. In the mean 
 time there is delight in the boats in the harbor and 
 the various shore. There is as yet no Statue of 
 Liberty. We pass Bedloe Island, but the giant 
 woman does not rise above it. We are in the 
 America of years and years ago. 
 
 We saw the ocean. We landed from our boat. 
 Coney Island was not then the flaming, clamant 
 amusement park it was to become. But there was 
 a beginning. We landed at a pier; we saw a hotel 
 and tents and booths; some kind of music was play 
 ing; persons moved about In a moderate throng. 
 But we had come to see the ocean. We went upon 
 the beach, we walked until we were alone. Here 
 stretched the gleaming, solitary sand, here moved 
 and sounded the waves, here dwelt Ocean. We 
 sat down in the shadow of a dune, the five of us. 
 
 At sunset, returning to the city, Miriam and John 
 and I kept to the stern of the boat. Major Dallas 
 and Aunt Kate were forward, talking with some 
 chance-met acquaintance. We three sat, arms upon 
 rail, keeping Ocean still with us. The Doat left a 
 wake of dark green, foam streaked and edged, but 
 tapering at last into sunset-colored water beneath 
 the sunset sky. There was aboard a band of four or 
 five pieces. It played "Suwanee River." 
 
 The last note died. Said Miriam: "Rivers and 
 ocean and cities. ... I am going to travel and travel 
 and travel! Travel come home love that and 
 love travel. Travel, come home, travel " 
 
 92 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 "You ll have to go on your own wings," said John. 
 "Travel like that takes money. * 
 
 "Well, I ll grow the wings then or make the 
 money then. Make the honest money grow the 
 honest wings." She rested her cheek upon her 
 arms, folded upon the rail. Her eyes looked to where 
 met sea and air. She began to sing under her breath. 
 
 " Hear taste see. 
 Taste see hear. 
 Power behind you 
 Go!" 
 
 The band was playing airs from "Norma." Uncle 
 John summoned us to look at the light upon the 
 approaching city. 
 
 A day or two after this we said farewell to New 
 York. We went to Niagara. We stayed at the 
 Cataract House. We saw the young moon above 
 the earth-shaking, long plunge of the waters. 
 
 Then, after two days, we turned back to Virginia, 
 to Restwell and Flowerfield. 
 
 93 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 T ATTENDED Hilltop Academy until I was seven- 
 -l teen. Of course, I got a good deal of instruc 
 tion; of course, I grew. But it remains that Ga 
 maliel was for me the living point there. He had 
 based his lever upon an intention to see what was 
 existence outside his father s formula. His advent 
 ures upon that line were due to give him some 
 wounds and bruises, but he proceeded with the quest. 
 
 From June to September I kept to Restwell and 
 more and more became a farmer. There was need 
 for all who could work to work. My grandfather 
 was now an old man. He had done and done largely 
 his part. More and more my mother and I helped 
 him; took at last the major part of effort. From 
 September to June, in the short afternoons, I worked 
 still, in the fields, or with the stock, or at the barn, 
 or where not. Mandy s Jim, Ahasuerus, a hugely 
 humorous son of Africa named Bob, and I worked 
 together. In the evenings came book-work pre 
 paratory for next day s classes. All times and coun 
 tries the like has fallen to boys and girls. I, for one, 
 do not quarrel with what strenuousness there was. 
 
 And I remember many and many a strong splash 
 of sunshine. 
 
 I graduated from the academy, John and Gamaliel 
 and I together. I led in some things, the others in 
 
 94 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 others. Now stood out the question whether my 
 "education" should stop here, or whether I might 
 be spared and financed for the university. There 
 was need of me at home, and need of every dollar 
 at home. If we could keep Rest well, it and my pro 
 fession lay in one before me. I should farm, with 
 what help I could employ, the three hundred acres. 
 
 I was a knower and lover of the country. I had, 
 of course, often and often again, dreams and long 
 ings, cloudy aspirations, passionate tangential move 
 ments toward more or less vague otherwheres, other 
 spheres of action. But I loved home, I loved Rest- 
 well, I loved my mother, my grandfather, Aunt 
 Sarah, the colored folk, the animals, trees and plants, 
 sticks and stones. I could not see my grandfather 
 and Aunt Sarah happy elsewhere. My mother would 
 take her Restwell with her wherever she might be. 
 But my grandfather was growing too old to root 
 elsewhere on this earth. And Aunt Sarah held to the 
 place like a trail of ivy. . . . Farming was a most use 
 ful profession. So long as the world believed that 
 it must have wheat and corn for food, some part 
 of the world must sow and tend and reap the same. 
 
 I told my mother, when we talked it over, on the 
 door-step of the summer-house in our old flowery 
 tangle of a garden, that I thought I had better take 
 what education I had, and become what I already 
 was, that is, a farmer. I said that I shouldn t mind 
 it; that, indeed, there was much about it that I 
 liked. 
 
 My mother listened, softly striking against her 
 lips a piece of honeysuckle. Then she said, "I want 
 you to go to the university." 
 
 95 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 "How can I?" 
 
 "I ve got the loan, Michael. Some day you ll 
 pay it back to Carter Warringer. I m perfectly 
 confident as to that!" 
 
 "But* 
 
 "It s enough to let us hire Wilson Reynolds for 
 the spring and fall work. You ll be here, just the 
 same, all the long summer. I want you to go. I 
 want you to be able to choose whether you ll farm 
 or do something else. You ll take engineering. You 
 want to do that, don t you?" 
 
 11 Yes, I want to. But" 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 "I do not know if it is what I shall do in the 
 end." 
 
 "It will be part of what you do in the end. I 
 fancy," said my mother, "that there 11 always be 
 some kind of building roads and driving tunnels 
 and getting at mines and bridging rivers. Even when 
 we travel through the air!" 
 
 I went to the university John and I, still together. 
 
 Gamaliel did not go. He was in trouble with his 
 father. Doctor Young wished him to continue with 
 all the classics and become a teacher. First he 
 should be his father s assistant; then, when in the 
 course of nature that father passed on to his reward, 
 there would be for the son Hilltop, livelihood, use 
 fulness, a great and dignified profession. 
 
 "I do not want to teach," said Gamaliel. "Not, 
 at least, until I learn something." 
 
 "This is nothing to you then?" asked the father. 
 His gesture described a circle with himself seated in 
 the middle. 
 
 06 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 Gamaliel answered: "I don t mean that. I love 
 you, father, and I am built on all that. But I want 
 to stand on it all, and go on. You want me to stay 
 in it, and to be just it." 
 
 "You do not know what I want! You are simply 
 selfish, ungrateful, mulish " 
 
 "If I could take chemistry or biology " 
 
 "You will take the courses I indicate or none at 
 all. Biology! That is the way your Darwins and 
 the like begin! * 
 
 Gamaliel turned pale. His mouth, his brows, 
 made dark, straight lines across his face. He spoke 
 dryly, unemotionally. "I am not going, father, to 
 the university." 
 
 The other answered in a strangled voice: "Then 
 you shall clerk it, right here in Whitechurch! I hear 
 that Walter Gilbert wants a youth for the drug 
 store." 
 
 "May I go to see him about the job?" 
 
 "Yes!" 
 
 Gamaliel got up and said, "Thank you, father!" 
 and left the study. Doctor Young sat rigid in his 
 chair. He saw his own anger before him. He had 
 intensity; he did not have breadth. He sat staring 
 for a long time, little by little relaxed. He put his 
 head down upon the desk and said a short prayer. 
 Then, bolt upright again, he turned to finish the letter 
 before him. "Gamaliel" was the last written word. 
 Now he went on. " Gamaliel has always opposed me. 
 Now he declares that he will not go to the university. 
 Very well! I am going to let him find out his own 
 mistake ! I shall give him a year to work for his own 
 bread here in Whitechurch. I have just sent him to 
 
 97 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 Walter Gilbert, who, I hear, wants a clerk. A year, 
 I have no doubt, will teach the lesson. At eighteen 
 he will be more amenable to reason and my wishes 
 than he is at seventeen. It will not be too late for 
 him then, though I should prefer that he went now. 
 Of course, my pride is hurt, but it is for the boy 
 himself that I am anxious " 
 
 So Gamaliel did not go with John and me to the 
 university. Nor did he go at eighteen. 
 
 He came to Restwell to tell me good-by. We 
 went to the river and sat on the bank above the old 
 swimming-hole. " Don t you fellows forget me!" 
 
 "We won t." 
 
 "Life s just a fight. " 
 
 "We three don t fight." 
 
 "That s true. But fighting s such a sharp, close 
 reality. It feels realer like pain! I ve had a lot 
 of pain." 
 
 We sat and threw small stones into the river. 
 The rings widened. 
 
 "How s the old drug-store?" 
 
 "I don t mind it so much. I like the mixing 
 things in the room behind. Mr. Gilbert shows me 
 a lot. I m learning a lot. And I never knew that 
 he had all those books! My father doesn t know it 
 now. I m there at night, you know. I take a book, 
 and if any one comes in to buy I sell. Then when the 
 store s empty there s the book again. And I like 
 to get with my mind into the middle of all the jars 
 and things the liquids and the powders and the 
 grains and the bark. But everybody that comes 
 in seems to know that my father and I have quar 
 reled. I hate lectures and I hate pity!" He lifted 
 
 98 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 a good-sized stone and flung it. The water splashed, 
 the rings spread. 
 
 "What are you going to do next year?" 
 
 "I don t know. What are we, anyway? That s 
 what I want to know!" 
 
 But I, no more than he, could answer that. We 
 lay by the river, and after a while we climbed the 
 old fairy bank and coppice to the graveyard, and 
 passed through this, and so across the field to the 
 house and up to my room. And at the last it was 
 again just: 
 
 "Don t you fellows forget me!" 
 
 "We won t!" 
 
 John and I went to the university. Major Dallas 
 accompanied us, to see us established, to show us 
 his old haunts and my father s, to introduce us to 
 old professors. It was still in much the university 
 of the simpler Jeff ersonian day. Uncle John left us ; 
 John and I settled down. We felt strong men, and 
 in the world! 
 
 We had rooms in one of the "ranges," all so 
 cloister-like. But our meals we took at Doctor 
 X s house, Doctor X s wife being a cousin of my 
 mother s. We began to learn our fellow-students, 
 to place ourselves. We stood initiations. We sorted 
 our friends and no-friends. . . . 
 
 The university was built upon a plan broad and 
 free. A student had great liberty. He might do 
 or he might refrain from doing. Karma piled in either 
 case, but outside of some agreed-upon matters, none 
 attempted forcibly to mold karma. The student 
 lived and took the consequences. 
 
 In this year John and I skirted various obvious 
 
 99 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 temptations. Twice or thrice perhaps oftener 
 we ceased to skirt them; we dived or sank, we 
 embraced them, mer-things in old depths. 
 
 But we are men of the air, not of the sea. That 
 was an ancient home, but we have parted from it. 
 The sea is in our veins, but there comes something 
 other than the sea. It was hardly a question or 
 it was a question, as you please of virtue. Simply, 
 we did not like the taste, we turned, we revolted. 
 Those ancient waters were no longer for our thirst. 
 John, here, came out first, and I followed him. We 
 stood upon the shore, we breathed the air. John 
 said: "I don t see any fun in all that. It s messy 
 and dirty and small!" 
 
 So we came out and we found that we still had 
 company. 
 
 We loved the university very well. For its out 
 ward appearance there was the antique and beau 
 tiful simplicity that still sets it apart. We had 
 fondness for many who taught us. Even those we 
 did not like were no worse than stimuli. We liked 
 the life, half free, half bounded, the throng of our 
 fellows, the friends we made, the societies we joined. 
 We liked our rooms, our independence. In retro 
 spect, those two years are thick, for me, with tastes, 
 aromas, touches, characteristic, endearing. Of course 
 there were lassitudes, dislikes, friction, and quarrels, 
 stupidities, ugliness, hot heads and hot hearts, 
 tragic emotions. But these I let disintegrate. I 
 understand them and let them vanish. But the 
 honey of the other I conserve, and put it in its due 
 cell in the great hive. 
 
 Out of the hundreds of our fellows, out of all the 
 
 100 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 friendly sort, I pick three. Royal Warringer, John s 
 and my cousin, was there. I admired then and 
 pulled against Royal Wamnger, and the doing both 
 persisted. His was the magnificent genius of ma 
 terial acquisition. He knew all his life how to gather 
 into barns, and it is a great power. But he meant to 
 live, just himself, and of course his wife and children, 
 his friends, his servants, his " court," upon the wide- 
 gathered store. Of course he gave gifts, but he re 
 garded them as gifts, and would direct where they 
 fell. So I think that, in a partial and temporary 
 fashion, he was harmful, though he never saw him 
 self as harmful, and so was no hypocrite. And per 
 haps that is the case with more of us than Royal. 
 He was a little older and in the year above John 
 and me. He had the intention of being kind to us 
 because we were his kin. He had even then more 
 money than had we. He was a handsome fellow, 
 with a large, dreamy, almost mystical face. 
 
 And there was Phillip Garrett who was born for 
 political life in a high sense. And Conrad Conrad 
 who used to pass and repass, in the dark or at dawn 
 or sunset, the cell-like room of Poe. I think that he 
 tried to conjure Poe forth, to walk, cloaked, beside 
 him. 
 
 Life flowed on, bright and strong. 
 
 I went home for Christmas. I went home for 
 the summer, I went home again at Christmas, and for 
 three days to Flowerfield. I now began to see Miriam 
 as she will look and be in glory. 
 
 101 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 IT was the second summer of that university 
 stretch of existence. I was nineteen. When I 
 returned, that June, to Restwell, acquaintances, 
 meeting me, said : You ve grown. You are a man ! 
 
 Whitechurch, too, they said, was grown. I saw 
 the new buildings, but yet Whitechurch seemed 
 shrunken. It occurred to me for the first time that 
 it was a village. . . . Gamaliel was not there. He 
 had never come to the university nor returned to 
 his father s way of thinking. A year past he had 
 gone to Baltimore, Mr. Gilbert, to my thinking, 
 secretly helping him. There he was drug clerk, 
 in a larger pharmacy than could be found in White- 
 church. He clerked, he studied. Out of his letters, 
 which came once a month, I might piece a curious, 
 keen, absorbed life. I talked of him with Mr. Gil 
 bert, the quaint, silent, big-eyed druggist. 
 
 "He s an observer, a thinker, and a feeler, in about 
 equal parts," said Mr. Gilbert. "He won t go off 
 in a dream, either ! He ll get up and act. He doesn t 
 fancy; he imagines. You ve got imagination, too, 
 Michael. What always interests me is a person 
 strong enough to occupy his imaginations move in, 
 so to speak! * 
 
 At Restwell we managed, this summer, to retain 
 the services of Wilson Reynolds. He freed me for 
 
 102 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 a wider social life. I went to parties. I spent 
 hours at Beechwood and Mt. Pleasant, where 
 bloomed young male and female Byrds and Corbins. 
 I went to see Whitechurch young ladies. I dressed 
 very carefully for church, having first thoroughly 
 groomed Boreas, upon whom I rode beside the 
 carriage where sat my grandfather, my mother, and 
 Aunt Sarah. 
 
 And in August I went to Flowerfield. 
 
 Flowerfield was filled and gay this summer. John 
 had brought Phillip Garrett home with him. Aunt 
 Harriet, sparing a month from the White Sulphur, 
 was here, and with her Dorothea. The Dallases pos 
 sessed in full the Southern genius for hospitality. 
 Neighborhood girls and youths rode in, walked in, 
 at the old, ivy-covered gate. Windows and doors 
 stood open ; you heard the ripple of the piano, chat 
 ter, singing, laughter, the sound of croquet balls. 
 If solitude was wanted or if solitude & deux was 
 wanted you had the oak-grove, the willowy meadow, 
 the orchard, where the grass grew long and the trees 
 close and sweet. There was also a lane called 
 from old time Lovers Lane. 
 
 In mid-August came the tournament and that 
 belongs to the old South. You do not meet it any 
 longer, I imagine, in the South that grows out of the 
 old South. 
 
 The Flowerfield county was a debonair county, 
 addicted to social meetings, an entertained and en 
 tertaining county, a county, moreover, of good 
 horses and good riders. This year, too, was a young- 
 man-and-woman year. The sun rejoiced, the moon 
 was mild at night. 
 
 103 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 From a bouquet of lesser gatherings rises stately 
 the picnic and tournament to be held at Green 
 Groves, between Flowerfield and the town. Here 
 spread a field for carriages, and shady, gently sloping 
 Watteau banks for the assembly that drove or rode 
 or came afoot, while full before these stretched an 
 ideal course for the mounted knights. I may say 
 at once that the only tilting was riding at the ring. 
 Seven poles, seven crosspieces, seven dangling iron 
 rings, stood at dignified distances. The knights 
 each shook a spear, rode the course at a gallop, rode 
 in all three times the round, came out with as many 
 of those rings as might be gleaming the length of the 
 spear. It was not so extremely easy to gather the fruit ! 
 
 Town and country, twenty knights entered them 
 selves upon the marshal s list. Each knight rode for 
 a lady. There would be a flowery crown for a Queen 
 of Love and Beauty, and lesser chaplets for three 
 Princesses. The knights chose each their lady, mak 
 ing application to be her knight. 
 
 John must ask Dorothea, she being the guest of 
 his house, though he wanted, I knew, to ride for Amy 
 Page. But it happened that Dorothea, who was as 
 imperious as Semiramis, had set her heart upon 
 George Allen, whom she had seen ride at the White. 
 He did ride and shoot very well and she thought that 
 he would get the wreath. She gave him opportunity 
 to ask her, just so soon as the tournament was in the 
 air, and he took it, under the grape-arbor in the 
 garden. So John, after all, could ask Amy Page. 
 
 I forestalled Phillip Garrett and asked Miriam. 
 She said, "All right, Michael." 
 
 The day of the tournament approached, arrived. 
 
 104 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 It was gay, clear, bright, dry August weather. The 
 grass was browned, trillions of insects sang. I was 
 the Knight of the Green Wreath; John, the Knight 
 of the Mountain, Phillip, the Knight of the Climbing 
 Star. We carried these devices upon light wooden 
 or pasteboard silvered or gilded shields. We rode 
 in long boots with spurs, we had sash or scarf, we 
 had silvered casques or plumed hats. We decked our 
 horses. We followed to the top of its bent all the 
 bright foolery and dead earnest of youth. 
 
 Green Groves presented a throng. There were 
 there every one you knew and some you did not 
 know. The brown lists stretched to right and left. 
 The marshals overpaced them. Beyond was the 
 beechwood where, pending need of them, the knights 
 horses were fastened. We did not go so far in the 
 ways of chivalry as to have squires, though Lewis, 
 indeed, volunteered to act for any one of the three 
 of us from Flowerfield. 
 
 The day at Green Groves began gaily, went well. 
 The tournament was for the afternoon. . . . After 
 noon came. The knights withdrew themselves, re 
 paired to the beechwood and their horses. Youth 
 and middle age and elder years left the plateau 
 where had been spread the abundant picnic feast, 
 and came upon the slopes where all might see. The 
 marshals rode around, making sure that the rings 
 swung right. They backed their horses to the bar 
 rier. Forth rode a herald in a tabard Dick Yorke, 
 who knew how to wind a bugle, and had a voice 
 like that of Stentor. The bugle sounded, Dick made 
 proclamation. Into the lists paced King Talliaferro, 
 for the nonce the Knight of the Heart and the Arrow. 
 
 105 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 The youngest women, the girls of seventeen and 
 eighteen and nineteen and thereabouts, sat in a bright 
 parquet upon a middle bank, beneath branchy, huge 
 oaks. It was a day of half-draped, half-princess 
 dresses, of flower-hung, bent, enshadowing hats. 
 They sat in flowered or delicate-colored muslin, 
 nainsook, lawn, organdie, dimity, mull. Marian, 
 Miriam, Dorothea, Nancy, Anne Amy, Lucy, 
 Nelly, Margaret, Alice Elizabeth, Judith, Mary, 
 and Betty Molly, Carrie, Fanny, Meta, and Hope. 
 They seemed a flower-garden, they and the rainbow- 
 scarfed knights. There was a breeze, a murmur, 
 that was like the bees going to and fro. When 
 Talliaferro rode out there might doubtless have been 
 observed a lift of Fanny s bosom beneath her rose 
 organdie. . . . How long and wide and rich are the 
 vistas of the matter-of-fact ! 
 
 Well, the tournament! After all, George Allen 
 did not win the queen s wreath. After all, John won 
 it. Warren Lightfoot won the first princess s wreath, 
 I the second, Talliaferro the third. We rode to the 
 Watteau bank and laid the wreaths at the feet of 
 Amy, Alice, Miriam, Fanny. Fiery blushes, laughter, 
 applause through Green Groves flowery speeches 
 by the best speechmakers good knights, fair ladies, 
 beauty, devoir! . . . Echoes and echoes when the 
 shell of the ages is held to the ear! 
 
 The picnic at Green Groves dissolves away. But 
 that night, at Flowerfield, we had dancing fifty 
 young people and a dozen of the elders to watch, 
 and Jim Dandy, David, and Daniel, the best three 
 negro fiddlers in the county. Jim Dandy called the 
 figures. 
 
 106 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 The day was over. The dance was over. I lay 
 in bed I slept at last. The next day the house 
 seemed still, resting, reminiscent. Individuals ap 
 peared inclined to go individual ways. I saddled 
 and mounted Boreas and rode to the great wood 
 by Lost Creek. When I was deep in the brown 
 shadows I fastened Boreas and went myself and lay 
 under a beech-tree. 
 
 Miriam. . . . 
 
 I shut my eyes. Miriam and I were together. 
 There was no environment. Just Miriam and I 
 together. 
 
 All things came into the circle of Miriam and me. 
 . . . Miriam and all things came into the circle of me. 
 . . . Miriam and I and all things all persons, all 
 tilings dissolved into Being, into Energy, that with 
 ache and with bliss communed with itself. 
 
 Time went by. But I was in a timeless deep world 
 where extreme motion and extreme rest meet. I 
 thought in no separate, edged fashion of Miriam. 
 There was a world, and Miriam and I, having 
 created it, moved within it Miriam-Michael the 
 name of the god. 
 
 The simple, strong delight wavered and frayed 
 down. The light of the great sun, the warmth of 
 the great body, diminished and diminished. I came 
 back to separation, to the half-god; farther still to 
 one Michael Forth in a wood by Lost Creek. ... I 
 looked at the sky and noted the time of day. Pres 
 ently I left the earth beneath the beech-tree, and, 
 untying Boreas, mounted him and rode homeward. 
 
 But there stayed the glow from the experienced fire. 
 
 When I met Miriam at Flowerfield I saw a loved 
 
 107 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 figure a gate to Being, Wisdom, and Joy. She and 
 I were two leaves of one gate. 
 
 At the end of the week I went home to Rest well, 
 and Miriam and I had said nothing of any new 
 depths. 
 
 At Restwell for the remainder of the summer 
 and the early autumn there was work enough to 
 do, despite the presence of Wilson Reynolds. I 
 worked with energy, earning sleep, earning also 
 periods up above conscious work, when the machine 
 moved exquisitely, when there came rays from the 
 sun behind the sun. 
 
 Between these and the work of the fields fell 
 periods more swiftly vibrating than the one, less 
 swiftly vibrating (clumsy words we use!) than the 
 other. In one of these moods I began to versify. 
 I must express, and so I took a way at hand. 
 
 I may have known dimly, for a long while, that it 
 lay at hand. I could remember Madam Black say 
 ing, "You may turn to writing. * At the academy, 
 Doctor Young s class in English Composition had 
 not bored me. A dance in fetters was still dancing. 
 At the university, "Write it out!" that I have seen 
 have terrors enough for some minds came to me with 
 an old familiarity, as of a chord sounding back of 
 the university and the academy, back of Madam 
 Black, back of childhood ... at any rate, of this 
 childhood. 
 
 Now the vast Field of the Emotional potently 
 quickening once again, potently feeling again the 
 breath of spring, I began again to sing, for the bird 
 sings in May. Before work, in the dawn, after work 
 when there was summer night, I wrote down lyrics. 
 
 108 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 But even so even then a stronger mood than 
 alone the lyric began to repossess me. I came one 
 day to filling out between three lyrics. A drama in 
 one long act, infantine enough, doubtless, but to 
 my then eyes poetic, grandiose, and true, came out 
 of my brain and nested in a quire of foolscap paper. 
 I enjoyed writing it. It was quite true, as my mother 
 said! Engineering did not confine itself to one 
 species of material. Driving roads, making con 
 nections, leveling mountains, raising towers, con 
 ducting commerce, surveying the Unattempted, At 
 tempt in mind, appeared a continuous process, in 
 operation upon more planes than one. 
 
 109 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 1 RETURNED to the university. I came home at 
 Christmas. Again I returned to the university, 
 and all seemed well. In mid- January came the tele 
 gram. My mother was ill with pneumonia. 
 
 Aunt Sarah, Mammy, and I nursed her. We would 
 have held her in our arms, with us, if we could. But 
 on the seventh day she died. ... I touch through all 
 the cells my woe again. 
 
 The wave was one that swept me forth. In three 
 months they found one morning my grandfather, 
 very tranquil, smiling, dead upon his couch. 
 
 The Dallases came from Flowerfield, General War- 
 ringer and Aunt Harriet from Richmond. There 
 was again a funeral, and all the people round about. 
 . . . Then dead stillness, and the two fresh, raw 
 mounds in the graveyard. It was early spring, but 
 I sat there beside them in what seemed December. 
 
 General Warringer and Major Dallas consulted 
 in the house. Restwell was heavily mortgaged. I 
 was nearly twenty must finish my education. If 
 then I did well, engineering might take me afar. 
 There was scarcely any ready money. I could not 
 keep and farm Restwell. "He would feel the wrench, 
 but he would get over it! All in all, it may well be 
 the best for him. But Sarah* 1 said Uncle John. 
 
 no 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 General Warringer drummed upon the table. "I 
 want to talk to Harriet " 
 
 It was Uncle John who, a week later, asked me to 
 walk with him, and when we were by the river opened 
 upon Restwell. "Had I thought?" 
 
 I said that I knew that we were dreadfully in 
 debt, but that I thought that Aunt Sarah and I 
 might yet manage to pay the interest. 
 
 * It was your idea to remain at Restwell and farm ? 
 
 I said that I didn t see anything else to do. 
 
 "Is it more for Sarah, or for yourself ?" 
 
 I said that I supposed that it was for both. But 
 at any rate, Aunt Sarah wouldn t be happy elsewhere. 
 
 "But you could be so?" 
 
 "How can I feel just now that I would be happy 
 anywhere? . . . Yes, I suppose so. But it is pointed 
 out, sir, that I should stay here and try to pay the 
 debts and keep the place." 
 
 "No. It is only one way pointed out, Michael! 
 Now listen to me a bit. I ve always recognized in 
 you a spring of joy and strength. You ve got the 
 root of genuine growth. You won t be unhappy 
 long, and you ll carry with you wherever you go 
 all that you want out of the past, and no more than 
 what you want. You ve got the faculty of selec 
 tion. Now listen to me. Carter Warringer and 
 Harriet want to buy Restwell." 
 
 It came to me with a positive physical shock and 
 wrench. I was being uprooted. I leaned against 
 a tree; my feet clung, pressed into the soil. The 
 river, the hills, the graveyard, the unseen house 
 seemed to strain with me. 
 
 Uncle John watched me without seeming to watch 
 
 in 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 me. He spoke on in his good, manly, genial voice. 
 "It seems to us the simplest and best thing, Michael. 
 The Warringers have been looking for a country 
 place. Harriet has a natural love for Restwell. 
 She is extremely anxious that the matter shall go 
 through. It provides for Sarah. She will simply 
 live on here in her own room and place. Daddy 
 Guinea, Mammy nothing of that kind will be 
 changed. The Warringers do not mean to give up 
 the Richmond house. They will be there in the 
 winter- time, and Sarah with them, if she likes it so. 
 If she does not, you know, Michael, and she knows, 
 that there is always Flowerfield. More than that, 
 Warringer would take on Wilson Reynolds as mana 
 ger, giving him and his wife the old overseer s house. 
 Sarah is fond of Mrs. Reynolds; if she wishes she 
 can stay at Restwell even in the winter. Harriet 
 has talked to Sarah, and she is content. She thinks 
 that it will be better for you. She thinks about 
 you just as you think about her. Carter Warringer 
 is making money. He is quite able to buy the place 
 and to clear off at once the mortgages. It isn t a 
 favor to the situation. He and Harriet have got 
 a strong desire for Restwell. ... Of course, it won t 
 be the old Restwell. Still, Harriet s the colonel s 
 daughter, your father s sister. Carter and Royal 
 and Dorothea are your close kin. ... I think the price 
 should be about this figure." He named it. "That 
 will clear the place and take care, besides, of your 
 debt to Warringer. What is left it won t be much 
 should be invested for Sarah, with only enough kept 
 out to put you through the university and maintain 
 you until you are earning for yourself. Between 
 
 112 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 us, Warn iger and I can certainly find you an open 
 ing. After that, I haven t the slightest doubt of 
 your making your way. ... It really is the only thing, 
 Michael! There is a heavier load of debt than we 
 thought. You could not keep the place from being 
 sold. This way it goes still to Forths and Sarah s 
 happiness is cared for." 
 
 I said, hoarsely, that I wanted to do what was 
 right. . . . 
 
 General Warringer bought Restwell. 
 
 They did not come to it that year. Repairs were 
 in order, much refitting and refurnishing. General 
 Warringer or Aunt Harriet came from time to time. 
 But for the greater part of the summer Aunt Sarah 
 and I bided alone together under the old roof. 
 Wilson Reynolds was in the manager s house, and 
 more men in the fields than I ever remembered there. 
 I was fond of Wilson, but I did not work with him 
 nor with Ahasuerus and Mandy s Jim, as I had been 
 used to doing. I offered to do this, but Aunt Harriet 
 had said, with decision, "I had rather you wouldn t, 
 Michael. ..." The Dallases would have had Aunt 
 Sarah and me come to Flowerfield, but she did not 
 wish it, and I did not .wish it not this summer. 
 Had I felt an aching absence between Miriam and 
 me I might have wished it. But I felt Miriam here 
 -here at Restwell. That was a passion now and 
 again of the body, but steadfastly steadfastly 
 of the Idea. 
 
 Aunt Sarah and I lived dreamy months at Rest- 
 well. I say "dreamy," and yet that is not the 
 word. 
 
 What is the word, I wonder? 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 I lay in the graveyard under the oak. Aunt 
 Sarah, who had been cutting dead bloom from the 
 Seven Sisters rose, came and sat near me. A fleet 
 of clouds sailed in a deep-blue sky, a wind tempered 
 June warmth. Aunt Sarah looked at the graves and 
 at the cross without a mound, and then into the 
 sky not up into the sky, but into the levels which 
 ran with our hilltop. "The dead come inside of us," 
 she said, "come home inside of us! Just as they 
 feel now that we have come inside them come home 
 inside them. Waves back into the sea our sea 
 touching everywhere! . . . What is accomplished, 
 everywhere and always, is a distillation, an elixir 
 of life, free to all. . . . I ve reached to that with my 
 finger-tips." She smiled, and her smile, I thought, 
 had new beauty, the dawn of a golden humor. 
 "Just," she said, "as you all have beautifully, lov 
 ingly, cared for my staying here, I touch with my 
 finger-tips, I begin to draw myself to where it truly 
 does not much matter to me if I stay or go! And 
 that is not," she said, "that I do not truly love resting 
 here at Restwell, for I do. . . . And I love the goodness 
 of all of you, as I love the goodness of those we said 
 were dead." She watched the sky. "It is simple 
 when once you find the key your own key. . . . 
 The ever-stored elixir of life. . . . They are safe with 
 us, as we are safe with them." 
 
 I understood her. I felt that way at times about 
 the world, near and far. 
 
 At any rate, I ceased to trouble about Aunt 
 Sarah s happiness. And, this summer, I struggled 
 with and threw a ^qualid jealousy that I felt of the 
 Warringers more of Carter, Royal, and Dorothea, 
 
 114 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 than of the parents who had been the buyers of 
 Restwell. My mother helped me here. . . . 
 
 I was to return to the university and end, this 
 year, my training there. By next June I should be 
 an engineer, earning my living, mining out my 
 career . . . somewhere. Faring forth, independence, 
 the world outside the boy s round all these stood 
 and sang to me, no evil sirens! I was bent to go 
 with them. 
 
 And then in late August Aunt Kate came to Rest- 
 well. With her came Miriam. 
 
 Miriam was slender, dark and straight, healthful, 
 rightly energized. She would walk ten miles with 
 out hesitation; she rode well as she danced well, 
 swam and skated well. She had wit, could tell finely 
 a good story; could mimic, but rarely did it un 
 kindly. Back of her wit lay a clear mind and beauti 
 ful, guided moods. She had a hand upon herself. 
 
 I was so free now from having to work that she 
 and I might, and did, roam afar. Aunt Kate watched 
 us go. I think that she and Major Dallas both 
 guessed that we fitted together. I think that any 
 skilled soul watching us would know that. I think 
 that Madam Black had known it when we went to 
 school to her. But Aunt Kate and Uncle John said 
 nothing and doubtless they did not know how 
 closely we could fit, and probably, as parents will, 
 they thought of us as being children still. 
 
 And Miriam and I had not yet said, "Let us be 
 together on every plane!" 
 
 We wandered to the river, we followed it up or 
 down in a boat that I had. I got a horse for her 
 from Whitechurch, and she upon Elf and I upon 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 Boreas rode to far points. We took a book and 
 read aloud to each other in the garden, in the sum 
 mer-house, or in the shade of our huge linden-tree. 
 In the evening we sat by the white pillars upon 
 the porch, the steps between us, and watched the 
 fireflies. 
 
 But I began to ache for Miriam and Miriam for me. 
 
 Then, suddenly, Aunt Kate took her away. She 
 had written, I think, to Uncle John. At any rate, 
 she had a letter from him one morning, and, an hour 
 later, she spoke to me upon the porch where I stood 
 waiting for Miriam. We had planned to spend the 
 morning in the boat, drifting along under the wil 
 lows. " Major Dallas writes that company is coming 
 and that Catherine and Lewis are running wild. 
 I ve determined, Michael, to go to-morrow instead 
 of next Monday. Miriam says don t wait for her 
 to-day. She s helping me pack.* 
 
 Aunt Kate s voice was perfectly kind, but I caught 
 the thread of decision. "You are children. You 
 are first cousins. Do not let us kindle here a great 
 fire until we know where we are and what we are 
 about! Perhaps I ought not to have brought 
 Miriam." 
 
 So they went the next day. 
 
 The night after she was gone I sat by the window 
 in my room and laid plans. . . . When I left the 
 university I should be twenty-one. Having studied 
 hard, having had some equipment to bring to the 
 studying, having incentive, having will, I meant, 
 when that formal preparation was over, to work 
 hard, to earn, to make my name to be spoken when 
 experts spoke of engineering. I should be away 
 
 116 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 from Restwell away from the county, and from 
 Flowerfield s county away, perhaps, from Vir 
 ginia. . . . Engineering: that was the art of turning 
 streams and reservoirs of power to human use. . . . 
 General Warringer had vaguely spoken of coal-lands, 
 South and West, in which he was interested. I did 
 not know where I might go. Very good ! But before 
 I went Miriam and I must put forth in words that 
 we wished to marry. Put it forth for ourselves, 
 Aunt Kate and Uncle John, everybody. . . . What 
 would be the salary that we could live upon, hardily 
 brought up, knowing how to be simple and to do 
 things ourselves, as we did? I pondered, then set 
 a figure. How long three years, four years, five 
 years before I should earn it? Certainly we must 
 wait. ... But when I went to Flowerfield next 
 summer we were going to talk about it. I was 
 settled as to that. 
 
 I sat in the window. The moon shone bright, the 
 night was filled with the papery, minute, ecstatic 
 voice of an insect world. Beauty flowed in upon me. 
 ... I saw that beauty was wide love. 
 
 My mother came toward me, and with her my 
 father. I saw them as lovers, and behind them 
 others, and others, and others. Everything, every 
 body loved. I touched the garden of it through the 
 universe. The universe was the garden. 
 
 The sense of Drama lifted and surged in me. I 
 ached with the falling away of love for and with 
 the dying suns . . . cold . . . dark. I endeavored 
 for and with all who endeavored to maintain radi 
 ance, or, darkened, endeavored to regain, relume. 
 I knew great bliss when the energy streamed and 
 
 117 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 lifted. All love. . . . Red suns golden suns great, 
 white, intense suns, the high lovers, who loved lovers, 
 loved love. . . . The highest Sun nurse, mother and 
 father and lover of all the reaper, the gatherer, 
 feaster, the Eternal Laborer and Enjoyer, the im 
 mortal Lover and Beloved together! 
 
 I sat in the window and knew old Vaughan s 
 "bright shoots of everlastingness." 
 
 118 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE following summer John and I, Phillip Garrett, 
 Royal Warringer, Conrad Conrad, and a num 
 ber beside, graduated from the university. John 
 saw before him the management of Flowerfield, and, 
 if he cared for it, a partnership with his father. 
 Phillip was for the law. But for him the law would 
 prove but a stepping-stone to political life. Conrad, 
 who had a little money, was boldly, flat-footedly, 
 for travel. When the money gave out he proposed 
 journalism. Royal had no immediate plans. 
 
 Major Dallas came to the university to see John 
 and me step from formal tuition into a massive, un 
 official school. How green was the lawn, the trees, 
 how white the pillars, how warmly fragrant the air, 
 how kindly, intoxicating, the ceremonies, the fare 
 wells! . . . Arrived the moment when Uncle John, 
 knocking at my door, was asked to enter and given 
 the one good chair. I leaned against the mantel. 
 "I wanted a moment to ourselves, Michael. . . . 
 You ve done mighty well! We re proud of you. 
 We re sure of you." 
 
 I thanked him. 
 
 "Has Warringer spoken to you?" 
 
 "Yes. He says I may have the place of assistant 
 engineer at Landon." 
 
 119 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 "Just so. Does it please you?" 
 I thought. "Yes. It s a long way off, but they 
 say it s a big field. I should wish to earn promotion, 
 
 sir." 
 
 "If you earn it you ll get it. The Landon concern 
 has alliances all over the country. You ll find pas 
 sages open. Well! Do your derndest, boy! Keep 
 honest keep kind keep open to the big waves. 
 You ll go, Carter says, to Landon in the fall. He 
 proposed that in the mean time you come to them 
 at Restwell." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "I told Carter that it was natural that that might 
 be painful to you. I suggested that you go to them 
 for two or three weeks, but then come to Flowerfield." 
 
 "Thank you, uncle. Conrad is going on a riding 
 trip from one end of the valley to the other. He 
 had asked me to go with him, and I should like that. 
 Then if I might stay ten days at Restwell, and then 
 come to Flowerfield " 
 
 "All that s feasible. All right!" 
 
 I went and sat by the table near him. "I want to 
 come to Flowerfield, uncle, but I want you and Aunt 
 Kate to know something first. ... I love Miriam. 
 I want to marry her just as soon as I can make 
 and keep a home. We haven t spoken about it, but 
 I am sure that she loves me and wants to marry me." 
 
 Uncle John, his elbow on the table, shaded his 
 eyes with his hand. We sat very still. Laughter 
 of men and women floated over the lawn, June 
 groups going by. ... I experienced, suddenly, 
 strongly, the feeling of Miriam with me. I could 
 have said, "Miriam!" I could have expected to 
 
 120 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 hear her answer, "Michael!" Uncle John dropped 
 his hand. "Well, I can t say that I am surprised, 
 for I m not. Neither Kate nor I. ... Any one seeing 
 you together must see that you and Miriam are 
 happy together. Your differences don t seem to 
 make any difference. . . . There s a feeling against 
 first cousins marrying. I don t know whether it s 
 right or not." 
 
 "It s right for us to marry," I said. 
 
 He smiled. "I suppose any cousin-couple would 
 say that! . . . Well, I shouldn t put it in your way 
 if you truly love each other, and I believe that you 
 do. But you ll have to wait, Michael. I wouldn t 
 hear to your marrying before you were twenty-six." 
 
 I took his hand and the eyes of both of us were 
 wet. "It s all right. It s all right !" he said. "You ll 
 come to Flowerfield, and you and Miriam may talk 
 it out together. . . . The world s built so we take 
 our turn at the building to be good builders, that s 
 the desideratum!" 
 
 I went home with Conrad from the university. 
 General Warringer and Aunt Harriet were so good 
 as to send Boreas to me there, Ahasuerus bringing 
 him. Conrad s home held sisters and genial par 
 ents. We had a week of country gaiety, after which 
 we set forth, like knights of old, upon that planned 
 riding- jaunt. We meant to see good part of our 
 state, to wander for a month. Around and about, 
 we might cover some hundreds of miles. Riding 
 so was an old fashion in Virginia, beginning now to 
 fade with the tournaments, the barbecues, the camp- 
 meetings, and twenty other features of the fields 
 behind us. 
 
 121 
 
MICHAEI/FORTH 
 
 Conrad was Conrad Conrad, though now he 
 thought that he was Poe come again, and now darkly 
 hinted at some earlier wight. Dark, not tall, slight, 
 he was intent upon wearing his hair somewhat long 
 and upon growing on lip and chin an imperial like 
 Poe s. He wished, besides, to wear a cloak instead 
 of an overcoat. Occasionally he tried to get drunk, 
 but he did not really like whisky. As years went 
 on he dropped the Poe and was content to be Con 
 rad. The latter had idiosyncrasies enough to please 
 him, without borrowing. 
 
 Conrad and I had great bouts of talk, alternating 
 with as equally great, long and significant riots of 
 silence. In some things each was the extreme of 
 the other and so we met. I liked him, and I suppose 
 that he liked me. I did not have to see everything 
 as he saw it, but it interested me, what he saw. 
 
 So we rode green miles through Virginia in very 
 good fellowship. The country lay beautiful, around, 
 behind, before us. We slept in small towns of red 
 brick and frame houses, abounding in trees, or in 
 farm-houses that were taking on a prosperous air. 
 By 1882 Virginia wore a different look from that 
 war-worn look I could remember. The South was 
 beginning to prosper. As we rode we saw schools 
 building, paint going on houses, fences standing 
 whole, roads slowly bettering. Persons whom we 
 met bore a cheerful aspect. An old farmer told us: 
 1 Yes, by gosh ! Times air surely improving. Reckon 
 we ve pulled out of the mudhole!" 
 
 Conrad grumbled. We had another long, free 
 silence, then out he came with his advocacy of the 
 crumbled and broken-down. He was a lover, I 
 
 122 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 told him, of vestigial remains. He grinned. "Well, 
 you go in for germinal things ! If I see the one, you 
 go poking around for the other! You don t rest in 
 this landscape, either. If it wasn t for your very 
 comfortable, earthy sense of earthy drama you d 
 float or perhaps fly!" 
 
 "If you hadn t built a raft out of a kind heart and 
 a sense of harmony down you d sink!" 
 
 "I don t know about that. Look at that terrible 
 house! They ve fresh painted the house, and not 
 only that, they ve painted the fence and the horse 
 block and the well, and not only that, they ve 
 painted the trees!" 
 
 "They ve mended the chimney, too!" 
 
 "There s a great career in truly going in for 
 dilapidation." 
 
 I whistled as I rode; then I said, "If you d turn 
 you might become Lord Mayor of London." 
 
 "That is, there s as vast the other way." 
 
 "Vaster." 
 
 "Well, I don t know," said Conrad. "At any 
 rate, I don t like paint on trees, and I don t believe 
 that you do, either." 
 
 He showed me much as we traveled. He had a 
 gift for the elusive, the just to be perceived then 
 vanished. "Thought forms affection forms," he 
 called them, even then. His range of color was 
 extraordinary. He showed me hues and combina 
 tions of which I had not been aware. He saw some 
 thing through the dismal and ugly. He had an in 
 flux of enthusiasm for neglected territories which 
 removed the neglect, gave them life, made them 
 shine with a weird, metallic or vegetative beauty. 
 
 123 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 The same thing poured over a decrepit horse, over 
 wandering swine, over a cur dog which ran along 
 the roadside. At last I caught the key the gipsy, 
 wild, aromatic, piteous values. First and last, 
 Conrad gave me much. Everybody and everything 
 gave me much. 
 
 We had no hard and fast route. From the Valley 
 pike, up and down which had marched the weary 
 armies, blue and gray, we turned aside through 
 New Market Gap to the Caverns of Luray. We also 
 went to Wier s Cave, near Staunton. After that, 
 riding southward, we visited the Natural Bridge. 
 
 We felt what it was, in these caverns, to be in 
 the deeps of the earth. We breathed the unmoving 
 air, mortally still and cold; tasted beyond our candle 
 rim the thick dark; saw the stony shapes, the sta 
 lactites and stalagmites. When we struck them, un 
 couth echoes were about us. There flowed under 
 ground water. We felt dark height above, and 
 guessed that there was a roof to us that was a 
 floor to beings who walked in a different world. 
 When we came out the rushing air> the heat, the 
 light, were for an appreciable time excessive, painful. 
 It had been Conrad s whim to stay within the earth 
 longer much longer than did the usual visitor, 
 and he had paid our guide to cease descriptions and 
 engage in silence. 
 
 Coming to the Natural Bridge, we found there a 
 hotel filled with summer folk, and among them two 
 or three acquaintances. We were welcomed with 
 empressement young men at summer resorts are 
 always so welcomed. We saw pretty girls upon the 
 porches, flitting in and out of rooms. We caught a 
 
 124 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 glimpse of a tennis-court. Colored musicians, some 
 where in the background, were tuning fiddles. 
 Almost immediately a great supper-bell rang. The 
 pretty girls came into the dining-room in thin silk 
 or fine muslin dresses. If I remember correctly, it 
 was the period of the polonaise. Conrad s and my 
 acquaintances introduced us to heads of families 
 and to their bright daughters. It appeared that there 
 was to be a dance, and that we were counted upon. 
 Fortunately, we had each with us a small portman 
 teau. We danced, and there was a long porch for 
 promenading, and steps and dusky angles where 
 groups of two might sit and murmur, and starlight 
 and a midnight moon, and around all the place the 
 herding shapes of the Blue Ridge. The fiddlers 
 fiddled, we danced the lancers and we waltzed. 
 There was punch. But dancing and all were held 
 within bounds. Conrad and I had been in bed two 
 hours when the cocks began to crow and the sum 
 mer dawn overlaid stars and moon. 
 
 The coming day was the Fourth of July. During 
 and after the war the South had scantly or not at 
 all celebrated this day. But now it had come to 
 be that the Fourth had stolen back, and this 
 summer throng was going to celebrate it. 
 
 In the afternoon the country people were expected 
 to come in. The hotel chanced temporarily to shelter 
 a political light. The light had consented to shine. 
 We were to have a Fourth of July oration. At night 
 a novel thing would be done. Paper lanterns were 
 being hung from the hotel to the gorge of Cedar 
 Creek and down the steep path to the gorge floor 
 where you stood and gazed upon the mighty rock 
 
 125 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 bridge. Bonfires were heaping, above and below, 
 and the bridge was to be illuminated by Bengal 
 lights. There would be fireworks. 
 
 Conrad and I, descending, found ourselves counted 
 upon in the office, upon the long porch, in the dining- 
 room. There was to be a ramble under the bridge, 
 to the cave, as far as the Lace Falls. Twenty pretty 
 girls and certainly not, without us, twenty swains! 
 I may say at once that it would have been a shock 
 to us if we had not been counted upon. . . . My 
 picture of the Natural Bridge of Virginia remains 
 wreathed about with morning-glories. 
 
 Returning to the hotel, we had dinner with Fourth 
 of July features. 
 
 By two o clock country phaetons, carry-alls, bug 
 gies, sulkies, were arriving, together with horsemen 
 and walkers. A pleasant, friendly country crowd 
 spread itself over the lawn. Without the white 
 social pale, within their own social pale, drawn under 
 their own clump of trees, there had gathered, too, 
 to hear the speaking, a number of colored folk. 
 Speaking over, they would not further mix, but 
 would go on to their church, some distance away, 
 where under the pine-trees they would have their 
 own festival. At night they might come back and 
 look at the bridge when it was illuminated. Where 
 the two colors came into chance neighborhood there 
 fell neither harshness nor sullenness of greeting. 
 That was due, perhaps, on both sides, to some 
 genialness of inner climate. 
 
 Apparently the management at the Natural Bridge 
 would outdo itself. It had provided a brass band, 
 though a diminutive brass band. Now this dis- 
 
 126 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 coursed music, " Dixie," "The Star-spangled Ban 
 ner," " Yankee Doodle." The war was over by 
 seventeen years. 
 
 The orator appeared. He had the build tall, 
 spare frame, great chest, smooth face, hair worn 
 just a little longer than was the fashion. He had 
 the voice. He had the tradition. And, a most for 
 tunate plus, he had a fair share of insight and 
 foresight. 
 
 He spoke from the steps of the hotel, the summer 
 guests massed in the porch to right and left, the coun 
 try gathering taking the foreground of grass and 
 driveway, checkered with light and shade. The 
 brass band ended "Hail, Columbia," a gentleman 
 of the old school introduced the orator. We all 
 applauded. Lord Orator bowed to all. . . . Virginia 
 and the Revolution Rockbridge County Nature s 
 Triumphal Arch at hand George Washington who 
 had climbed and cut his name far up upon it 
 Thomas Jefferson who often had ridden here to 
 gaze upon it, who had called it in his Notes "the 
 most sublime of Nature s works" soldiers and 
 statesmen who had gazed upon it and now we, my 
 friends 
 
 Presently he was fingering the ancient thread of 
 triumph over old Mother England. It was in the 
 Fourth of July repertory of orators. This one over 
 did it less than others I have heard. Nor was he 
 wildly, loosely, childishly spread-eagle. A change 
 had come or was coming to the best of the type. 
 There was state spread-eagleism and United States 
 spread-eagleism. In Virginia inevitably still, at 
 this period, it was state spread-eagleism Southern 
 
 127 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 spread-eagleism. But he muted it, used the soft 
 pedal. Even when he talked of the Confederacy. 
 He did not fight the war all over again. He quoted 
 Wordsworth 
 
 " Old, unhappy, far-off things 
 And battles long ago, \ 
 
 and left it at that. Presently he really was panegyr 
 izing the whole country. It had to be a panegyric, 
 being the Fourth of July. He had a word of good 
 for New England, two for the Middle States, three 
 for the unrolling West. Vaguely might be seen above 
 him the angel of rapprochement, of unification, He 
 spoke more and more appreciatively of the United 
 States of America. A sense of enlarged being, a sense 
 of nation, really stretched and shimmered around 
 us, through us. 
 
 Emerson and Longfellow had died this year. The 
 Fourth of July speaker at the Natural Bridge in 
 Virginia gave them a meed. They were "ours." The 
 Greely Expedition battled with Arctic seas. He 
 spoke of "when we gain the Pole." There were 
 Apache risings in Arizona. He spoke of "our" settlers 
 out there. The East was beginning, accumulatively, 
 to know labor troubles. He said, I don t see the out 
 come for the country, but we ll hope for the best" 
 not, of course, that he said it short and unadorned 
 like that. "The country." The phrase, slowly, 
 bashfully, came in in place of "My state." 
 
 There occurred even an adumbration of a wider 
 unity. He closed his hour s speech with something 
 about "mankind." 
 
 There was applause. The band played "Dixie," 
 "Yankee Doodle," "The Star-spangled Banner." 
 
 128 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 A lawyer from Lexington spoke. Plans and pur 
 poses of very huge moment of the Democratic party. 
 There was applause. The band played "Home, Sweet 
 Home." 
 
 Dusk sifted into the air, but with warmth yet and 
 a faint glowing. The Chinese lanterns were lighted, 
 there leaped a bonfire at the rim of the ravine. A 
 ragged procession, here thick, here dwindled to an 
 Indian file, crossed the plateau of the hotel and 
 cottages and, beginning to descend, dipped beneath 
 conifers Thuja occidentalis, arbor- vitae which may 
 have been standing when Columbus discovered 
 America. Some of the figures themselves bore lan 
 terns; below by the creek another bonfire flamed. 
 Above, around, below, the craggy gorge with the 
 bridge of rock was thrown into moving shadows and 
 faint ruddy light. 
 
 The procession, breaking, established itself wher 
 ever was vantage-ground. Conrad and I, counted 
 upon still, found a nook for four. Up and down 
 spread a Dore illustration. The fireworks began, 
 sent from the plateau above. The band still played. 
 Roman candles shook forth bright planets. Rockets 
 rising with energy curved far up, broke in stars red, 
 green, and silver. The Chinese lanterns bobbed with 
 delight. Up and down, bass, barytone, tenor, con 
 tralto, soprano, voices and voices rose into a chirping, 
 singing sound. The great-boled trees, ever green, may 
 have thought of old Indian acquaintances, of bear 
 and wolf and panther, of parent and grandparent 
 trees who held tradition of still a different earth. 
 And yet all through had held the chirping, singing 
 sound. Old and old and old we are so old ! 
 
 129 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 Down by the creekside dark figures touched off 
 the colored light. The water, the tree masses, the 
 seamed cliff, the arch of rock two hundred feet above 
 the stream it spanned, turned fire-red, turned living 
 orange. Ah ! Ah ! 
 
 The lights sank. A final lonely rocket burst into 
 a last group of stars. The band had done its duty 
 and its wages worth; it wasn t going to play any 
 more. In the Chinese lanterns the candles guttered 
 down. There was indicated much helping up steep 
 ways of those who counted upon us. The trees of 
 life saw us go, settling back to their cool dark dream 
 under the stars. Back upon the level before the 
 hotel the wheels of all the country vehicles seemed 
 in motion. Shadowy horsemen pushed away. After 
 the Bengal lights, all the dark seemed spectral. 
 
 In the morning Conrad and I, too, rode away. 
 We quitted the place in the sunshine, after breakfast, 
 the porch filled with genial summerers. The twenty 
 pretty maidens waved farewell, the young men 
 whom we left behind us grinned cheerfully. We 
 looked as well in the saddle as we knew how we 
 rode away, riding over the Natural Bridge, plunging 
 into the green day. We were for the Peaks of 
 Otter. 
 
 130 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 /CROSSING James River in an ancient flat-bot- 
 ^-^ tomed, open ferry-boat, we rode at leisure 
 through the July weather, dined at a farm-house, 
 and in the golden afternoon light, by a road suf 
 ficiently long, rough, and steep, climbed the moun 
 tain. Well below the rocky top we found a make 
 shift shed with spring water, and with hay piled in 
 a corner. Boreas and Conrad s mare Jenny we left 
 here and climbed on afoot. At the top stood a cabin 
 and stood watching us the solitary caretaker. He 
 greeted us, "Evenin l" 
 
 "Evening!" we answered. 
 
 "I m not," he said, "the regular man. He s 
 taking his Fourth of July. But I reckon I kin make 
 you comfortable." 
 
 The hut was not remarkably clean, but we would 
 not let that trouble us. The man set about filling 
 the stove with wood. "You-all take coffee? I kin 
 make good coffee." 
 
 We left him making it and went without to see 
 the sunset. A great boulder propped us. Four 
 thousand feet in air, we looked and saw the cone 
 shadow of the mountain lying purple upon the land. 
 We sat and gazed. "We ve got a fair earth! Look 
 at the geometry of it the circle and the cone." 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 Conrad answered, "It s a tarnation queer place 
 -old earth!" 
 
 The sun sank, but great rays, lanes of light in 
 the sky, spread like an open fan. The Chinese 
 lanterns of last night came into mind. Variousness !" 
 said Conrad. "My God! what an Artist !" 
 
 The air changed its quality, a carpet of violets 
 covered the earth, Venus was born in the western 
 gold sea. The caretaker spoke from behind us. 
 "I thought maybe you d like your coffee and bread 
 out here," and put down upon the rock a battered 
 tray. There were three cups and three plates and 
 we sat and ate together. He was a man of thirty- 
 five, long, tawny, with blue eyes and a drooping 
 tawny mustache. He had a drawling voice like 
 dropping honey. When we had eaten and drunk 
 he piled the dishes upon the tray and set it aside, 
 then leaning back against the boulder, lit a brier- 
 root pipe. By now he knew our names and whence 
 we had ridden and where we were going. We knew, 
 too, his name, and that he had a bit of a farm, and 
 that he had been in the war the last year, when he 
 was seventeen, and had been wounded at Cold 
 Harbor, and hadn t any education beyond a little 
 free schooling, but wished that he had. He was 
 married and had children. 
 
 There was yet coral in the sky. Below us, in the 
 vast expanse of hill and vale flattened by our height, 
 lights, separate and small, were twinkling forth. 
 The day had been warm, and the night up here 
 struck only pleasantly cool, like July water. "You 
 see a right fair slice of Virginia," said the man. 
 "Thar! Did you see that shooting-star?" 
 
 132 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 It was a considerable meteor and dripped gold . Ship 
 and wake went out. "You ve been to the university,* 
 said the man. "I wish you d tell me what that is " 
 
 One of us told him what the text-books said. 
 "That s interestm ," he remarked and smoked his 
 pipe. "I take spells of wonderin . ... A smashed-up 
 earth a-shootin for ages in little pieces here and 
 there as it gets drawn. Well " 
 
 He and Conrad smoked. I did not smoke. We 
 all watched the sky where now the stars were press 
 ing thickly. "I was raised a Baptist," said the 
 caretaker. "I ve got an inquirin mind, and I gather 
 that all kinds of strange notions are goin around. 
 Do you believe in damnation?" 
 
 I said I didn t not in the old way. Conrad said 
 he didn t know. I said that I thought I believed 
 in occasional, finite damnations temporary damna 
 tions, so to speak. 
 
 "But they could last a long time?" 
 
 I agreed as to that. "And one might tumble 
 into them again and again." 
 
 "But you don t believe in hell-fire?" 
 
 I said that I thought that was a metaphor. But 
 that it might get mighty near reality sometimes. 
 
 "Damned near!" said the man. "Well, who do 
 you think damns you or saves you?" 
 
 I said that I thought that I did. 
 
 "That s the way I twist," said the tawny man. 
 "Times air changing! We re like the past and we 
 ain t just like it. ... Old Daddy Religion s got a 
 son that appears to him somehow different! Might 
 as well own him. That s what I tell the preachers 
 when they get after me." 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 Conrad yawned. 
 
 "I heard much talk of it about and about, 
 But where I went in I still came out! 
 
 Listen to the locusts in those bushes ! They haven t 
 stopped talking since Troy fell!" 
 
 "I ve got a habit of thinkin* and thinkin ," said 
 the tawny man. "Kind of rememberin and re 
 memberin . . . . Anyhow, I believe in kindness I" 
 
 We looked again around us Scorpio in the south, 
 the Bear in the north, the Eagle in the east, the 
 Lion in the west, and right overhead the Crown. 
 The tawny man took up the tray of dishes and we 
 all moved to the cabin. I have slept in better beds, 
 but Conrad and I were tired and we slept. Waking 
 once or twice, I heard without the window the 
 locusts still talking. 
 
 We were up for the sunrise. The man called us 
 while the stars still lighted the sky, and gave us 
 hot coffee and corn-cakes. He had been down, he 
 told us, to the horses and had watered and fed 
 them. We ate and drank, the thin light stealing in. 
 Then we went out again to our boulder, but faced now 
 the east. Silver silver and amethyst amethyst; a 
 cloud shoal turning gold, in the forest below us bird 
 song, then the sun and the hollow of the air and 
 the earth beneath warm and sheen. ... So we said 
 good-by to the tawny man, paid our reckoning, ran 
 down the rough way to Boreas and Jenny, and in 
 the saddle again departed the mountain. 
 
 We rode and we rode on through Virginia, and we 
 saw our state a lovely country, aiming at being 
 lovelier lovelier lovelier, body and soul! 
 
 134 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 In two weeks more Conrad and I bade each other 
 good-by. He rode to his own home, and I to Rest- 
 well. 
 
 I came to Restwell in a shimmery, warm after 
 noon. Uncle Carter and Aunt Harriet were very 
 kind. 
 
 I had my old room. ... I rose when the cocks were 
 crowing, dressed, and, letting myself out, went over 
 the gray fields to the graveyard. I saw the dawn 
 from there, lying with my head upon my mother s 
 grave. 
 
 That afternoon I came here again with Aunt 
 Sarah. . . . Aunt Sarah and I clung together, though 
 not with any bodily touch. It was one of her 
 "ways," the standing aside from all that. I never 
 saw her give physical caress or embrace, or invite 
 caress or embrace. But her spirit hovered, inclosed, 
 was kind. 
 
 She said that she was happy that they let alone 
 her island, respected territorial waters. "They re 
 the best the very best of Nineveh, Babylon, and 
 Rome ! They let me go softly in my far Atlan tides. * 
 We sat beneath the oak, and then she took the 
 dead bloom from the roses, and I held the basket 
 for her as of old. 
 
 Dorothea, Carter, and Royal were at home. 
 Royal was more to me than were the others for all 
 that there was a picket fence somewhere which, 
 from his side, he refused to cross, and I from my side 
 refused. But there was something of the colossal 
 in Royal that must be recognized. He made me 
 think of a vast, tireless, mental rather than physical 
 bull-god Apis who was acting very simply, accord- 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 ing to his nature, and yet was big . . . and feared . . . 
 and sacrificed to, and on some sides certainly might 
 be admired and even loved. 
 
 I had a strange feeling about Royal. Now he 
 attracted me and now he repelled. Either way, I 
 understood him. It seemed to me that far down 
 time we had been nearer together. I did not seek 
 him again, but I felt the pull of him. 
 
 Carter was a smaller person altogether amiable, 
 a little weak. He was a handsome fellow, with an 
 agreeable voice, and he danced well and was talka 
 tive and Aunt Harriet s idol. His father was am 
 bitious for him, his eldest son, named for him. But 
 by degrees it grew evident that Carter might adorn 
 a fortune, or a society built on fortunes, but that 
 he could neither make a fortune nor strongly help 
 others to make one. He was able to spend. He was 
 good-natured, and I do not know that he ever did 
 any especial harm. 
 
 Dorothea was another proposition. I did not 
 know whether I liked or disliked Dorothea. She 
 had a sultry beauty, and an arrogance that fitted 
 her like a low-lying haze, a misty, heat atmos 
 phere. Out of this started at times twisted beau 
 ties of thought or deed. . . . 
 
 My cousins meant to be kind and were kind. 
 There must have been a general agreement that 
 it would be hard for me to return so to Restwell, 
 and that it must be made to seem like home and 
 family. They did their best. I was not, I hope, 
 ungrateful. 
 
 There were guests besides myself. The Warringers 
 kept the house filled, entertained with something of 
 
 136 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 the old before-the-war lavishness. Here were two 
 sons and a daughter who must be persuaded not to 
 miss the Old White and Old Point. Aunt Harriet 
 liked, too, many and young faces about her. 
 
 Twice or thrice I rode into Whitechurch. There I 
 saw Mr. Millwood and everybody else and Doctor 
 Young, to whom I did not speak of Gamaliel and 
 Mr. Gilbert, the druggist, to whom I did. Gamaliel 
 still lived in Baltimore, earning and studying with 
 a chemist there. He wrote to me, but less frequently 
 than at first he had written. In his last letter, after 
 a paragraph of surface details, he had suddenly 
 dropped a line and written: "How long and wide 
 have we lived, anyhow? Where do we begin or stop, 
 or are beginning and stopping words of ignorance? 
 I am going to work until I find out possibly after 
 I find out." 
 
 Mr. Gilbert showed me a letter from the Baltimore 
 chemist. Gilbert s drug-store had before it a vast 
 horse-chestnut, giving in summer a solid shade. The 
 place rests in mind forever dim and cool, small, 
 old-time, dispensing few articles besides drugs, hav 
 ing no throng of customers. One went down a step 
 to go in at the door. A bell rang, the door opened, 
 there came a waft of odors compounded so that 
 one caught far times and far lands. A gnomelike, 
 bright-eyed, elderly man shuffled in from a back 
 room. Something that tasted of eternity was in 
 the place. 
 
 The Baltimore chemist stated that Gamaliel 
 Young was getting on very well. He attended to 
 business and in his odd hours studied hard. "I 
 should say that he had a streak of genius but 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 he s as unsociable as any hermit-crab ! He s got some 
 queer associates. They aren t wild, except in their 
 thinking. They re wild enough there!" 
 
 Mr. Gilbert folded the letter. " Sampson s a good 
 man, but he s a pedant. He doesn t know eaglets 
 when he sees them." 
 
 I said: "I think Gamaliel s an eaglet. I m glad 
 that you think so, too, sir." 
 
 "I don t know what, precisely, he s hunting. 
 But he s a seeker, all right." 
 
 "He wants to find what he is what we are," 
 I said. 
 
 "Does he? Well, that s a considerable job!" said 
 the druggist. "See if you can find what we are not! 
 When he s as old as I am he ll be content if he has 
 laid hand upon one new land. It takes a fleet made 
 up of fleets to find the universe!" 
 
 "In short, it takes the universe." 
 
 "Quite so! ... Well, and Michael, you re to be an 
 engineer " 
 
 Going out of town that day, I overtook Mr. Mill 
 wood upon the road to Restwell, driving himself 
 in an old buggy. He said that he wanted to talk 
 to me, and so, dismounting, I fastened Boreas 
 behind the vehicle and took my seat beside our old 
 family friend. He talked about Landon and the 
 kind of place they said it was, and about my going 
 away, and about my mother and grandfather. But 
 what he most wanted to say was that he hoped that 
 I would take the Lord Jesus with me. 
 
 Now I truly loved Jesus of Nazareth, but I could 
 not talk nor think of Him as Mr. Millwood talked 
 and thought, as Mr. Millwood wished me to talk and 
 
 138 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 think. So it ended in silence on my part. Mr. 
 Millwood sighed. "One day you will know and love 
 Him, Michael! A young man may keep on harden 
 ing his heart, but the Lord is the Lord and will 
 break it in His hands!" 
 
 I said: "That sounds like Doctor Young, Mr. 
 Millwood. I don t suppose that I love Jesus well 
 enough that s true. But I profoundly do not feel 
 that He s my enemy nor that I am His enemy. I 
 feel, instead, that we are friends." 
 
 "But you must see that He is your Lord and 
 Saviour! If you do not see that, you see nothing!" 
 
 As we jogged on I had a vision of Canaan and 
 Galilee, and of a young Jewish man who walked in 
 and out of little villages and talked with the folk, 
 or who sat solitary on hillsides or by the blue water. 
 He came warm against my heart. I could feel a 
 brown, lean, strong hand in mine, a hand with grip 
 and meaning. I could and did feel for Him love and 
 vast reverence, but I could not feel that He alone 
 was Only God. I could feel the Christ Idea, that had 
 always been in the world, nearer Him, not so near 
 to me, and to that extent He was diviner than me. 
 The extent might be huge. He might be adult and 
 I a babe. But Idea is free ocean and free atmosphere. 
 I, too, swam and flew toward myself as Risen Man. 
 
 Nor do I think that there was, this sunny day, more 
 pride and self in me, sitting there, than in the old 
 priest of the temple who had baptized me and who 
 now quite sorrowfully believed that, despite it, he 
 might have eventually to number me among the 
 lost. But Mr. Millwood s imagination was not the 
 imagination of Doctor Young. He could not devise 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 a great lurid picture of the damned like the sands 
 of the sea for .number, and of hell like an illimitable 
 Inquisition torture-chamber. He felt discomfiture, 
 some anger and solicitude. But he was an opti 
 mistic, cheerful, ruddy man, and he could not dis 
 like me long, nor really picture me as sawn asunder 
 and sawn asunder again, or plunged into scalding 
 oil in an eternal sequence of horror. Before we came 
 to the new bridge across the river he was once more 
 discoursing of Landon and the temptations and dan 
 gers, broadcast before young men, which he trusted 
 I would avoid. "But you will!" he said. "Your 
 father and mother, and grandfather and grandmother 
 have saved you from that." 
 
 So we came to Restwell. He missed old faces, but 
 he was fond of Aunt Harriet and she was fond of 
 Mr. Millwood. 
 
 I stayed at Restwell three weeks. It was not only 
 the big house and those in it, but it was Daddy 
 Guinea and Mammy and Mandy s Jim and Ahasu- 
 erus. I loved these four a little more vigorously 
 than I loved Uncle Carter and Aunt Harriet and, 
 I may think, just as dutifully. I should hardly see 
 Daddy Guinea again on this stretch of the way. No 
 one knew how old he was, but he was very old. He 
 would talk a little, but then he would sit on the door 
 step in long silences. I sat with him, and I fell to 
 looking back of him into Africa back of the fields, 
 the slave-markets, the slave-ships, the enslavers, 
 back, back back of the Guinea Coast into the 
 center. . . . And the white man, back, back, back 
 and here, too, were forests and miry, steamy river 
 bottoms and naked skins and the whirling rattle. 
 
 140 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 There came into my memory Blake s "The Little 
 Black Boy." My mother read it to me more than 
 twice or thrice when I was little. 
 
 And those black bodies, and this sunburnt face, 
 
 Are but a cloud and like a shady grove . . . 
 
 When I from black, and he from white cloud freed . . . 
 
 And I thought of untruth and ungenerosity and un 
 love, clothed in whatever color it might be, and of 
 the relativity of all things. 
 
 141 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 I WENT on to Flowerfield. The singing house still 
 sang. I tasted its richness and simpleness. It 
 was so big and uncluttered, so largely, wealthily 
 itself. Uncle John and Aunt Kate were the nearest 
 now to father and mother. Catherine and Lewis 
 had a bright, flashing quality, skimming about like 
 birds. They went after their own devices. Old 
 loved John showed preoccupied this summer. Winds 
 that blew him toward Green view, nine miles away, 
 where lived Amy Page, were good winds, great, 
 balmy trade-winds. Other winds left him inatten 
 tive. He was at Greenview, or on the road to 
 Greenview, or on the road from Greenview. 
 
 Miriam and I went together. That was old times 
 keeping on. But now there had fallen down from 
 heaven a full, strange, added bliss. 
 
 We came out of the old school-room door and 
 crossed to the tulip-tree where hung the swing, 
 long-roped, wide-seated. It was my third morning 
 at Flowerfield. In this part of the place we thought 
 of Madam Black. Looking over our shoulder, we 
 might almost see her in the school-room door. We 
 came under the tulip-tree and looked up into the 
 green and towering cone where branches made many 
 a section, and then we sat in the swing. "When we 
 
 142 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 used to swing up, up out and away! Do you 
 remember once when we and the swing and all 
 seemed to be flying? There was such a thrill!" 
 
 "Yes, yes . . . Thrill. ... A big, blossoming feeling, 
 everything dawning!" She closed her eyes and kept 
 them shut for half a minute. Opening them, she 
 turned full to me. " Michael! I told father and 
 mother that I wanted to tell you myself. I am going 
 to Baltimore next month. I am going to be a nurse." 
 
 "To be a nurse" 
 
 "Yes. A trained nurse. You know more and more 
 women are doing that. One can make it a kind of 
 big work if one chooses! It s all in the choosing. 
 ... I don t feel urged toward teaching school. I m 
 not a writer. I ve tried, and it isn t very good. I 
 haven t been to college, and there aren t many 
 things open to women. . . . Nursing is certainly half 
 of doctoring of doctoring and healing. Even if I 
 had been to college I should still like to doctor and 
 heal. There s a real star shining along that lane of 
 clouds. So I am going, Michael!" 
 
 I was getting up all my luggage and following her. 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Why? ... I want to work and earn. I want to 
 learn more and other things. I want to be, I want 
 to do fuller and fuller. I want to take I want to 
 give. I want better to know how to take and 
 to give." 
 
 I said: "You work here; you help no end. You re 
 joy to Uncle John and Aunt Kate. Uncle John can 
 carry all." 
 
 "Yes, yes!" said Miriam. "But I am going out 
 I am going out of the nest, Michael. Wings 
 
 143 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 mustn t always stay in nests. Father and mother 
 agree. They understand. ... I don t know that I 
 think about it. I feel about it. At first, somewhere, 
 sometime, I must have thought about it. But now 
 I feel. ... So I am going, Michael!" 
 
 She told the details of her plan. She watched me 
 as she talked. I was thinking only. "We cannot 
 marry before we are twenty-six. Will this come in 
 that s way?" I had to find out. Catherine and Lewis 
 came skimming around the corner of the house. I 
 was rather glad. Just here, before the house, was 
 not the place in which to find out. 
 
 I said, "Will you come this afternoon to Wake- 
 robin Hill?" 
 
 "Yes. . . . I ll be ready at four." 
 
 We moved under the great hemlocks on the 
 purple, somber side of Wake-robin Hill. "Somber" 
 is not the word; it was coolly, darkly lifted, pillared 
 and ample, a true natural temple. Blue space 
 waked, far up, beyond the tracery of the roof. An 
 organ wind rose and fell, but not in storms of sound. 
 There was incense. One felt in the place gathered 
 means, gathered ends. Purpose lifted from the 
 throng of small desires. Cause stood whole in 
 effect. 
 
 Miriam and I went to our most loved hemlock 
 and sat down upon the dim, purple carpet. For some 
 time we rested without words. The place took us 
 as it always took us. The fret and foam, eddies 
 and bubbles, the debris gathered and carried, still 
 moved, outside, on the surface of the current. But 
 here were to be felt the purified strength and depth, 
 the eternal dimensions, the immortal impetus. Quiet 
 
 144 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 so far from quietism, stillness so far from death, 
 intension so far from inaction. . . . 
 
 We sat upon the earth. We had not spoken for a 
 considerable time. Our inner being flowed together, 
 with a deeper sense of a deeper pulse. Came a 
 momentary vision again of that mighty machine we 
 had watched at the Centennial Exhibition. So 
 doubled and redoubled, so strong, so eased. . . . 
 
 Power and love and knowledge! Two rays fused 
 into one beam, and the resultant richly conscious 
 
 "Sat we two, one another s best. . . . 
 Our souls which to advance their state 
 Were gone out hung betwixt her and me." 
 
 Miriam understood and I understood. When at 
 last we said, "I love you" and I know not which 
 said it first it was but the deep music playing on 
 this stair, also, which had long been playing every 
 where else. ... I do not know when Miriam and I 
 first met and loved. I do not think there is any 
 "when" or "first" about it. 
 
 We moved nearer together, we put our arms about 
 each other, we kissed. . . . We sat hand in hand, and 
 the organ wind was like the lifting, falling, forming, 
 dissolving, reforming of earths and eons . . . and 
 ever wiser, more beautiful! 
 
 One red sunset shaft came into the hemlock wood 
 by Wake-robin Hill. We stirred we must go back 
 to Flowerfield. 
 
 Somewhere, going, we laid the specter of separa 
 tion because she would have knowledge, and use it, 
 of nursing and healing. The specter was a rather 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 weak-jointed, grotesque elemental. We were not 
 so easy to separate as that came to! 
 
 We felt bliss we saw our milestone on the way 
 to All All All I First, the integration that names 
 itself the conscious individual. Second, the inte 
 gration that says, "We love together we two are 
 one! * Third ... is it family, clan, nation, world 
 ... is it an integration called Christ, on the way to 
 God? 
 
 Miriam and I were happy most happy. But 
 still we saw the star some star that drew. Love 
 must go there, love must broaden its beam. We 
 must carry our love on carry on ... 
 
 We felt how it transfigured, how the rivers heard 
 the ocean. 
 
 Early in September I parted from Flowerfield 
 and all there, going to Restwell again for a week, 
 and thence out of Virginia, south and west by some 
 hundreds of miles, to Landon, where coal and iron 
 were being mined, where eventually steel would be 
 made. I went to a position carrying, for a young 
 man, a fair beginning salary. Behind me was General 
 Warringer with his large interests. I should be given 
 opportunity. * For the rest, you ll have to do it your 
 self," said my uncle. "You can make or you can 
 mar, you know!" He sighed. I covered with mine 
 his hand, lying before him on the table. "You ve 
 been good to me, Uncle Carter " 
 
 Ahasuerus went with me to Landon. He said 
 that he did not want to stay any longer at Rest- 
 well. Miss Harriet and the general were mighty 
 good folk but he didn t like it without the colonel 
 
 146 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 and Miss Gary. Of course, if Miss Sarah wanted 
 him but she didn t seem to need any one. . . . 
 He thought that he could get a job down there 
 where Mr. Michael was going. He d like, he told 
 me, to drive a big wagon. He stood six feet and 
 strong, an even, beautiful brown, -with an open, not 
 at all unintelligent face. He was older by some 
 years than I, but we had been in each other s land 
 scape for a long, long time. We had played together 
 and we had worked together. I was fond of him, 
 and he was fond of me. He had neither wife nor 
 child. He wanted to go where I went, and at last 
 it was so agreed. He could read and write, and he 
 had that practical knowledge of basic economic 
 processes which many a college man might envy. 
 He was genial, as his people are, happy in himself. 
 Travelers, he must go in one car and I in another. 
 That was custom, presently was to become law. He 
 must obey it, I must obey it. There were plenty of 
 other customs for instance, he must give me the 
 "Mr.," but I never gave it to him plenty of cus 
 toms, not a few laws. I suppose that some day 
 the colors of the spectrum will recognize that some 
 where they really are together, and that there is 
 little use in playing ostrich. 
 
 I had said good-by to Flowerfield. Now I said 
 good-by to Restwell. The boat that was upon the 
 river saw that it was sharply turning. Willows, 
 hills, would come between it and the known, familiar 
 reaches. There would be new scenery. I said good- 
 by. Ahasuerus and I traveled west and traveled 
 south. 
 
 147 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 TANDON, spreading over and between low hills, 
 JLrf opened upon a bit of a plain where furnaces 
 were building. Shaggy, higher hills, called by cour 
 tesy mountains, made sides of an amphitheater. In 
 this direction coal was being mined; in that, iron. 
 Near at hand ran a muddy, sluggish river crossed 
 by an un triumphant bridge. The woods were largely 
 pine and small oak, the climate warmer than that 
 I had left. 
 
 At this time the population of Landon might 
 number three thousand. That was two thousand 
 more than had been in presence three years earlier. 
 The dwelling-houses, big and little, were frame, 
 and there were many little and very few big, and the 
 big only so by contrast with the others. The rail 
 way station was frame, the hotel, the two churches. 
 But the offices of the company of which General 
 Warringer was a director were brick, as were the 
 Landon Bank and the company stores. Brick, too, 
 was the office of the Landon & Gulf Railway Com 
 pany. All these constituted themselves into finger 
 posts which proclaimed: "Here is Solidity and Per 
 manence. We point to a Future in which we shall 
 be larger much larger and stone!" 
 
 The company into whose service I came owned 
 
 148 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 the mines, a range of hills stuffed with coal, and a 
 divergent range where iron outcropped. It owned 
 the furnaces being constructed; in great measure 
 it owned Landon. Its rival was a company seated 
 eight miles up the river, with other coal and iron 
 ownings, furiously building a furnace beside its 
 own wooden town, with its own brick offices. 
 
 Ahasuerus and I descended from the train at 
 Landon. About us was a scrambling crowd, white 
 men and negroes. A slight, blond young man met 
 me. "Mr. Forth 1" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "I am Alec Battle, draftsman in the office here. 
 Your chief asked me to get you and pilot you about. 
 That darky with you?" 
 
 "Yes. Ahasuerus Robertson. I m responsible 
 for him. He s all right. He wants to drive a 
 wagon." 
 
 "I ll turn him over to William at the office. You ll 
 find a number of Virginians here." 
 
 That proved true. The Landon Coal and Iron 
 Company was built, to an extent, with Northern 
 capital, as the Landon & Gulf Railway Company 
 was built to an extent with Northern capital. But 
 the working force was predominantly Southern and 
 drawn from almost every state below Mason and 
 Dixon. The president of the Landon Coal and Iron 
 came indeed from Pennsylvania, and the president 
 of the Landon & Gulf from Ohio. These gentlemen 
 did not live at Landon. They came there in private 
 cars, visited for a few days, showed themselves 
 very genial with the generality, sometimes genial, 
 sometimes the reverse with the closeted few. Then 
 
 149 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 V .. 
 
 the private car, at the end of the passenger express, 
 disappeared around the curve. But superintendent 
 and manager and down the line lived at Landon. 
 The railway, too, was building beyond, looking 
 darkly meantime at the probable construction, just 
 across the river, of a competing feeler from the 
 Debenham & Atlantic. The sense of a career, of 
 a future, hung strongly over Landon. Go up the 
 river those few miles to Parisia and you encountered 
 the like prophetic sense for Parisia. But Parisia 
 granted for Landon no other career than one of 
 disaster. And Landon returned the compliment. 
 They stood opposed like bulls with lowered heads. 
 . . . All this, and much besides, came later to my 
 knowledge. Now, in the moment, I left with Battle 
 and Ahasuerus the dirty station and stepped into the 
 main street of Landon. There shone the brightest 
 autumn sunlight, from the bluest sky. 
 
 I have come to realize the ills of the world s 
 present economic life, and I with others strive after 
 a more understandable and understanding system. 
 The sins and evils are great, and must be seen and 
 outgrown. Else smash and smash again and 
 again and at last, facing every one, the ugliest 
 monster to be dealt with, and all the power of 
 dealing enfeebled! But I was in it, there and then, 
 in the system, not especially protesting, taking it for 
 granted, working in it with some cheerfulness, some 
 conscience, and some aspiration, and if with growing 
 longings, growing doubts, yet with no crystalline 
 vision of direction out of it. And so, by my own 
 experience, I know that others, too, in the old sys 
 tem, worked with cheerfulness, conscience, and aspi- 
 
 150 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 ration. And yet how hedged, frontiered in, continu 
 ously defeated, were the three! And most folk 
 seemed unaware of anything on the whole to change. 
 Their individual satisfactions ought to expand. The 
 circumstances of themselves and their immediate 
 families ought to change. Nothing in the world with 
 all of them was so certain as that! There they 
 worked toward change quite ardently and ardu 
 ously. But they thought of everything as happening 
 in the system. / go up; then, relatively speaking 
 at least, you go down. We didn t seem to be able 
 to make good general. It was, they seemed to 
 think, on the whole God s system and the way the 
 world was made. . . . Unhappy world! 
 
 There was mistake, I think. But in this universe 
 of power and joy so much that is not mistake lives 
 within us! So steadily does what heaven we have 
 gained work at heavenizing our earth ! I feel mainly 
 now the lift in persons and things. I see that from 
 imperfect systems, syntheses, grow steadily the im 
 perfect yet, but the more perfect. ... At Landon, 
 for all the narrow serving, for all the low-order 
 social mechanism, for all our dim vision, dim alike 
 with educated and uneducated, official and laborer, 
 we were not hopeless. We had industry, pluck, 
 vigor. We could laugh and clap a man upon the 
 back. We could show kindness. I remember now 
 how many good folk were there in the offices, the 
 bank, the churches, on the road, at the furnaces, 
 in the mines. 
 
 Battle and Ahasuerus and I went along Main 
 Street. Under the bright sunshine there fell a gild 
 ing cheerfulness over the shacks and shanties, the 
 
 151 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 Italian-kept fruit-stand, the colored barber standing 
 beside his barber-pole, the Chinaman ironing, the 
 gold mortar and pestle before a drug-store that might 
 have gone into a pocket, the buzz about a saloon. 
 
 "Have a drink?" asked Battle. 
 
 I shook my head. "No, I made a promise long 
 ago." 
 
 "Well, you re lucky to have kept it!" 
 
 He pointed out as we went the more marked 
 features of the town. Every one whom we met, 
 white and negro, spoke to him and he to them. 
 He placed many for me. "I ve been here two years. 
 Every one s fastened together like a bead necklace. 
 The company s the string the company and the 
 Landon & Gulf. There s the office but I m going 
 to take you first to your boarding-place. You ll want 
 to get rid of your bags and see where you are. Gen 
 eral Warringer s mother was my father s second 
 cousin. So we re kind of kin. Cousin Harriet wrote 
 to me to get you a good place to live in. This is the 
 best here." 
 
 We had turned at right angles and were going up 
 a steep and dusty side-street, or, rather, road. He 
 indicated a large, rambling, one-story house or con 
 siderable cottage behind maples and water-oaks. 
 It looked neatly kept, with a veranda, vines and 
 flowers in a small yard. "Mrs. Sayre s," he ex 
 plained. "Doctor Sayre s legally, but Mrs. Sayre s 
 colloquially. They belong in this state, but they 
 moved from a plantation somewhere to Landon 
 because they ve got two sons here with the company. 
 Clerks. Bob and Ferry. The doctor is crippled by 
 rheumatism. He doesn t practise. Three-fourths 
 
 152 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 of his time he lies in a hammock and reads. She s 
 a benevolent despot. You can t help liking her. 
 She s a captain housekeeper. I board here, too. 
 See that little cottage at the side? They own it. 
 Four rooms in it yours, mine, Bob s, and Ferry s." 
 
 We mounted the veranda steps. A colored girl 
 was sweeping away fallen vine leaves. Behind her 
 the house door stood hospitably open, showing a 
 hall with an old clock and two or three pictures. 
 A large lady in a pleasant, clean, and thin flowery 
 gown, with a palm-leaf fan in her hand, came toward 
 us. So I met Mrs. Sayre, before whom my mind 
 still halts in a kind of half-humorous amazement 
 and regard. 
 
 From Mrs. Sayre s I never heard it called any 
 thing but that I was conveyed by Battle to the 
 office. Mrs. Sayre capably disposed of Ahasuerus. 
 She had a cook and a man, Mirandy and Harris, 
 who lived in the alley. Landon already had alleys. 
 Mirandy and Harris could put Ahasuerus some 
 where. If he was a handy man Mrs. Sayre could 
 give him work until his proper job appeared. Har 
 ris, summoned, took Ahasuerus in charge. My room 
 in the cottage the big cottage was called the house 
 proved small and furnished with a simplicity. 
 But it was fresh and clean, and one of its two windows 
 gave a wide view of eastern sky and of the last roofs 
 of Landon, of plain and building furnaces, river and 
 hills. 
 
 Battle and I went down the street together and 
 on to the office, half-way between Mrs. Sayre s and 
 the railway station. As we went he discoursed 
 various economic aspects of Landon. He did not 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 use the word "economic." It had not come per 
 fectly into general use in the eighth decade of the 
 nineteenth century. The decade used an older 
 jargon. Words that are common to-day stayed at 
 that time in learned print. The labor at Landon 
 was in mass negro, and one mine used convict labor. 
 The bosses, the foremen, petty heads of kinds, were, 
 of course, white, and chiefly American, though with 
 a good sprinkling of Irish and German. There was 
 one gang of Italians. Mechanics, carpenters, ma 
 sons, etc., were white and mainly from Yankee- 
 land and Dixie. The clerical force, paymasters, 
 commissary men, bookkeepers, clerks, and so forth, 
 appeared to have come from every state east of the 
 Mississippi. As for other citizens of Landon, here 
 on their own, there seemed an ethnic ruck of these. 
 Jewish names, Greek, Chinese emerged. . . . And 
 there were certain ladies. . . . 
 
 Battle looked aside at me. I shook my head. 
 "The same promise. And I do not want it, anyhow, 
 any longer." 
 
 " Lucky man!" said Battle. "Oh, my Lord, it 
 is a net!" 
 
 The street was dusty, dirty; the sidewalk narrow, 
 made of board and fouled with torn paper, fruit 
 peeling, tobacco juice. The east-bound Landon & 
 Gulf, puffing bituminous-coal smoke and with a 
 loud-clanging bell, went by out of Landon. Children 
 were crying in a room above the tintype man s 
 booth. Farther down Mr. Abrahams stood in front 
 of his clothing-shop. "Goot day, frients!" he said, 
 as we passed. 
 
 I looked about me. The exhilaration of the morn- 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 ing, arrival, novelty, the sunshine, faded a little. 
 What s going to be here, after all?" 
 
 Battle grew animated. "A big town! The biggest 
 kind of big town. There s enough coal and iron 
 and limestone in these mountains to run the United 
 States! Presently there 11 be blast-furnaces and 
 blast-furnaces. I can imagine it any night, with 
 the sky all lit up. The old Landon & Gulf won t 
 be the only railroad, either, though it would like to 
 be! Parisia " He gave the word with quite inde 
 scribable scorn. "Parisia will take a back seat. She 
 hasn t got the capital or the brains. Landon s got 
 both. We ve grown a thousand since last year." 
 He took on an exalted look. "It s coming. . . . 
 Street-cars electric light ice-cream parlors thea 
 ters bigger salaries " 
 
 I saw in Battle, and was to see in many at Landon, 
 the overflowing of the personality over something 
 growing. There collected a pool of triumphing affec 
 tion when the growing thing was esteemed friendly 
 to the self, but for the held-to-be-unfriendly a 
 boding dislike amounting at times to hatred. Fear 
 of the growing thing always chose contempt for 
 disguise. Towns, industries, institutions, parties, 
 systems points of view. The pale earth seedling 
 bent the way it was inclined, then proclaimed at 
 once papal infallibility. "This, that, with mathe 
 matical certitude, I know to favor me, is saved ; this, 
 that, with like certainty, I am sure opposes me, is 
 damned! And not at all relatively so, but in the 
 eternal Absolute. So, acclaiming this growth, so, 
 fighting and despising yonder growth, I with pride 
 become fanatic before the temple door!" 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 Well. . . . There is the joy of the fanatic! 
 
 We arrived before the office of the Landon Coal 
 and Iron Company. The building was brick, three- 
 storied, quite well and widely paved in front, with 
 a big door, with rows of moderately clean windows, 
 behind which might be dimly seen much activity. 
 Men stood in the doorway, men went in and 
 came out. The passageway which we entered felt 
 most gratefully cool after the midday sun. Battle 
 turned toward a large room to the right. Til 
 introduce you to Colonel Ringgold. Then we ll 
 go up-stairs." 
 
 It was the general superintendent s office. Colonel 
 Ringgold turned in his swivel-chair. Large, satur 
 nine, with a scar acquired at Chickamauga running 
 from brow to chin, he looked at me with intent 
 gray eyes. "Well, Mr. Forth! General Warringer 
 says we must look after you. Do you believe in 
 reciprocity?" 
 
 "I do, sir." 
 
 "Very good! We don t want to dig and dig only 
 to find that the seam has switched off or petered 
 out, or wasn t at its thickest very thick. We want 
 to make a drift into power, not into the reverse. 
 How do you find Mrs. Sayre s? I understand you re 
 boarding there." 
 
 I said that I was very well pleased. He nodded 
 and ever so slightly turned the swivel-chair. Battle 
 said that we wouldn t trespass longer. "All right!" 
 answered Colonel Ringgold. "Rather a busy day. 
 My good wishes, Mr. Forth!" 
 
 In the passage Battle remarked, in a lowered 
 voice: "Mrs. Sayre and the doctor are cousins of 
 
 156 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 his. He s very good stuff, but he ll drive you like 
 the devil!" 
 
 But for me I liked Colonel Ringgold, though I 
 have seen him drive the weak like the devil. 
 
 We mounted the stairs. There was a room with 
 clerks. Battle grinned at the collectivity, then took 
 me across to a gentle, elderly man, Mr. Allen, the 
 bookkeeper, sitting in a kind of cage. From this 
 room we went down a narrow passage to my especial 
 purview : " Mr. Maxwell may be at the mine, or gone 
 riding somewhere. But his clerk, Jim Standard, is 
 here." 
 
 It turned out that Mr. Maxwell had just come in. 
 Looking out of window, one might see his horse, a 
 strong, gaunt sorrel, in charge of a black Flibberti 
 gibbet. 
 
 My chief stood, tall, raw-boned, sandy, blue- 
 eyed. He wore a gray flannel shirt and corduroy 
 breeches tucked into dusty riding-boots. His slouch- 
 hat hung on a nail above a shelf whereon was ranged 
 specimens of ore. In his hand he held a piece of red 
 hematite, and he was dictating in a clipped, rau 
 cous voice to Jim Standard, who took his words down 
 in shorthand. It was somewhat before the day of 
 women clerks, and only one letter in so many ap 
 peared typewritten. Maxwell swung around at our 
 entrance. He was lithe, thirty-five about, trained, 
 I afterward found, in Edinburgh and Germany; 
 still a British subject, drawn to America through 
 that old hunger for experience. After greeting me 
 in a dry, casual manner he finished his letter. Then 
 he said: "I am going to ride ten miles to-morrow. 
 I suppose that you ride?" 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 I answered that I did. "I ll expect you here, then, 
 at eight o clock. Get a horse. Country s rough. 
 We ll be gone all day." His look added: "Try you 
 out to-morrow. If I don t like you the company 
 may keep you but not as my assistant!" 
 
 158 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 ON that day and that ride my chief put me 
 through every known pace, and through some 
 that I had to devise, create, assemble from the 
 All-Egg on the moment s spurring. I saw what he 
 was doing, and it became an acquiescence, with a 
 real, aroused curiosity as to what he could get out 
 of me. The one thing I was bent upon was that the 
 sponge should fill from its background as fast as it 
 was wrung. That measure kept, let him squeeze 
 away! 
 
 To change the figure, by the time we rode back 
 into Landon at dusk I felt that I had been wrestling 
 all day. I had respect, admiration, for the thew 
 and sinew that had deliberately and with such con- 
 tinuousness tried my own. 
 
 The next day was an office day. He had a little 
 kind of laboratory, a drawing-desk, a long, well- 
 filled bookcase, a variety of maps, surveys, what 
 not, pinned against the wall, drawers filled with 
 specimens of ores and woods, a case of fossils, a 
 small safe, his own desk, a desk for Jim Standard. 
 I had an adjoining small room, very bare at the 
 moment. 
 
 The wrestling continued through this day. Dusk 
 found us both standing in his room, by the shelf of 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 ores. He took his hat from the nail above. Standard 
 was gone. He spoke in his dry, succinct voice. 
 "The company may keep you as my assistant, Mr. 
 Forth. I fancy we may get on together. I am going 
 down the river in the morning by train. You d 
 better take the day off for your own affairs. I d 
 buy that horse of Smith s " 
 
 I began to settle into Landon. Power, knowledge, 
 joy of living, were to be mined there as elsewhere. 
 
 Ahasuerus was presently driving his wagon. He, 
 too, incorporated into the Landon Coal and Iron. He 
 took to Mirandy and Harris, domiciled himself with 
 them. 
 
 My room in the cottage beside the Sayres* house 
 was quite well enough. Restwell and Flowerfield 
 also had Spartan simplicities, in many ways trained 
 for these. So that there was cleanliness and there 
 was that here I was pleased enough. The eastern 
 window gave upon extent and, to a considerable 
 degree, beauty. I sat in this window and wrote to 
 Miriam. I drew my bed so that at night I got the 
 mounting stars, and at dawn first the white rose, then 
 the pink. 
 
 In the adjoining house lived and administered 
 Mrs. Sayre, with an easy capacity in action, an in 
 stinct for process, that amounted to genius. She 
 was so large and soft, and yet she moved with such 
 efficiency ! Four of the Landon Coal and Iron Com 
 pany s men boarded with Mrs. Sayre; three of the 
 Landon & Gulf men and three independents came 
 to her table for meals. We dwelt in a town of dust 
 and coal smoke, of increasing noise, of at once an 
 energetic and extraordinarily careless humanity. 
 
 160 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 To a considerable extent the negro population had 
 been drawn from yet farther south, from cotton 
 and rice fields. Among them were to be found 
 few who were trained for house service. White 
 and colored, Landon exhibited a surface disor- 
 derliness in varieties. But Mrs. Sayre and Mrs. 
 Sayre s house and table, her porches, vines, grass, 
 and flowers, her picket fence and gate and the bit of 
 cinder path before them, displayed old, smooth 
 order, suave, accomplished standards. I never saw 
 her reading, though I think that she did read; she 
 was an infrequent speaker; she sat at the head 
 of her long table, a slow, easy empress. Inert, a 
 stranger would have said, looking for the able min 
 isters who made her reign. But if ministers there 
 were, they were in Mrs. Sayre. After a time it 
 might be seen that she did nothing and said noth 
 ing apart from the purpose of some dim, central in 
 dividuality. One ended by being impressed with the 
 sheer power of that individuality. She was Chinese 
 Confucian. 
 
 Doctor Sayre sat at the foot of the table, a small 
 man with a dome of a forehead and a slender, sen 
 sitive mouth and jaw, and wide-apart, sunken eyes. 
 He was subject to long, melancholy, brooding silences 
 I have known them last three days out of which 
 he burst at last with a torrent of talk. When he 
 rose from table it was seen how crippled he was by 
 some rheumatic trouble. One end of the veranda 
 running the length of the house was his especial 
 holding. He had a hammock here and a pictured 
 screen that must have come down frcm long ago, 
 and a table heaped with books. He read the evo- 
 
 161 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 lutionists, and all the works on archeology that he 
 could find. 
 
 The two sons, each with his room in the smaller 
 cottage, were again different. Bob Sayre, good- 
 natured, good-looking, with tolerable abilities, had 
 for avocation the sowing of a few wild oats. He 
 and Battle ran together. Ferry, the younger, went 
 to church, liked flowers, was a quiet, manly fellow. 
 
 Father Vesey lived at the Sayres . Mrs. Sayre 
 I discovered somewhat to my surprise, and then 
 on second thought not to my surprise was a Catho 
 lic. Father Vesey had a big room with a little 
 veranda of his own. He was a good talker, loved a 
 joke, had two chins, a massive frame, and a good 
 eye. Jim Standard and Mr. Allen, the bookkeeper, 
 made the other inmates. The table-boarders pre 
 sented each his facet of the sempiternal diamond. 
 We had Robinson, the freight agent of the Landon 
 & Gulf; Walter Dupuy, the telegraph operator, and 
 others. I grew to see a good deal of Walter Dupuy. 
 He was a thin, dark, slight fellow with an intense 
 face. He, too, was a reader ... a born romantic 
 and revolutionist. 
 
 Days slipped into weeks, weeks into months. At 
 Christmas there were still a few pale roses in Mrs. 
 Say re s garden-plot. I felt that I had been set in 
 the Landon pattern a long, long time. 
 
 Maxwell was a taskmaster that I could work 
 under with no sense of ennui. A man who worked 
 for Maxwell, recognizing his authority, went into 
 a school of parts. The school reached deep, had a 
 lateral sweep of arm. If there were softness, vague 
 ness, indolence, Maxwell was a whole college of 
 
 162 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 ascetics to get it out. He was a drill of steel, a 
 directed engine, a shaft of the dryest light. I worked 
 for him and with him ten and sometimes twelve 
 hours a day, eighty minutes an hour. He had in 
 him a titan, dry, spare, and tireless. 
 
 Capital continued to come into the Landon Coal 
 and Iron Company. The latter continued to send 
 out questing antennae through a wide and long 
 region of mineral wealth. It had a brace of lawyers 
 said never to be beaten it was developing a lobby 
 at the state capitol. Tract on tract of land was 
 being gently, quietly acquired. Up the river the 
 Parisia Company worked on similar lines. But the 
 Parisia Company was going to go under go under 
 and come up, absorbed into the Landon Coal and 
 Iron. Some would laugh and some would groan. 
 
 It was Maxwell s and my business to examine 
 and report upon these lands. We had, besides, 
 abundant occupation at the mines, new and old, 
 and about the furnaces, and no little work that must 
 be done in the office. The New Year brought wintry 
 rain, sleet, a little snow. Maxwell and I worked on, 
 indoors and out-of-doors in all weather. He did 
 not seem involved, caught, in the Landon Coal and 
 Iron Company s future, nor overmuch in the fact 
 that he was paid a salary to do so and so. He had 
 undertaken to locate coal and iron, to see that coal 
 and iron hills were properly opened, and to attend 
 to various cognate matters, and he did the job as 
 it ought to be done. 
 
 January and February, raw and gray, rounded 
 into spring. The sky cleared, grew azure; we 
 dipped into a riot of leaf and blossom. Maxwell 
 
 163 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 and I, out in the hills, saw bloom the yellow jas 
 mine and the pink honeysuckle. One day we had 
 ridden some miles, and at noon, finding a trickling 
 spring, sat by it and ate the cold meat and bread 
 I carried in an old geologizing bag. Maxwell began 
 to talk. By this time we had gone far into each 
 other, and that though we were not chatterers. 
 "Of course one day this system will die into 
 another." 
 
 " This system. The economic system, you 
 mean?" 
 
 "It s lot and part with everything else! One 
 species grows in the womb of another at last buds 
 off. Yesterday transmutes into to-day; to-day into 
 to-morrow. . . . This is your first field, but I have 
 seen a lot of others. Landon isn t yet typical. Black 
 labor with the agricultural mind. Africa strained 
 through rice, cotton, and tobacco fields. But white 
 labor is coming in will be coming in in gushes 
 presently. Natives and immigrants. This is going 
 to be a city. Things are going to change." 
 
 "What do you think of labor-unions?" 
 
 "I think that they are healthy children." He 
 drank from the spring and settled back again. "A 
 good many things appear to me to be in the schedule 
 of the Future. Everywhere in civilization gen 
 eralized, as it were." 
 
 "Dupuy, the telegraph operator, loaned me Karl 
 Marx s Capital." 
 
 "Dupuy is going to lose his place one of these 
 days. . . . Das Kapital. . . . Yes." 
 
 "I d like to know what you think of it." 
 
 "I ve not the clearest leading as to what, from 
 
 164 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 cover to cover, I do think of it. I d agree here, 
 and differ there. But, on the whole, I think it is 
 a formulation that 11 count. It comes into the 
 guide-post category." 
 
 "The road doesn t stop can t stop. Every 
 thing s road bridge." 
 
 "Yes. Perpetually more grandiosely so. Effects 
 are cumulative. ... A prolonged, insensible rise, 
 swellings and sinkings, but more swelling than 
 sinking. At last emerges climax a new continent 
 out of the sea. The Ark on Ararat. Then life goes 
 on upon that wheel . . . until it s time to rise again." 
 
 We finished our bread and meat. He leaned 
 back against the rock, his hands clasped around 
 his knee. "It s an unco strange warld," he said. 
 "Bonny and terrible!" 
 
 The fact that we both had Scotland behind us, 
 though considerably nearer to him than to me, had 
 its effect in our relationship. Now and again, in 
 our frequent voyaging together, he spoke of the 
 country there. He had love for it as I had love for 
 Virginia. I think that at times he was homesick 
 for it, as certainly at times I was homesick for Vir 
 ginia. He said once: "Go a little back and every 
 body is kin. Edinburgh now, the Carse of Stirling, 
 loch and sea! Step backward and we mingle there. 
 You came a little earlier to America. I came a 
 little later. Somewhere, everything is certainly 
 one." 
 
 I recall a day when we came out blackened from 
 the Red Hill mine and, riding back to Landon, 
 were caught in a great drive of wind and rain and 
 took refuge in the log house of two rooms and a 
 
 165 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 lean-to occupied by Roger Bins Roger, his wife 
 and eight children were perfectly hospitable. He 
 had been there, or his father, grandfather and great 
 grandfather had been there for a long time, on the 
 scrawny hillside, with a kind of view and a kind 
 of garden-patch. They had welcomed passers-by, 
 " strangers," taken their bit of contact, their sup of 
 news, and settled back when the "strangers" went 
 on. The storm over, we remounted and rode away. 
 
 "There s a seam that runs around the globe!" said 
 Maxwell. "It s peat. Low-order energy. Getting 
 relatively lower and lower getting covered over. 
 Perhaps miners will dig it out one day, exploit it, 
 use it, as we use peat and coal. There s a law, I 
 hold, of retardation. The environment grows hos 
 tile to Roger Bins in the degree that it s quickened. 
 Can t keep up can t even stay put sinking sink 
 ing becomes a left-over, a left-behind. A creeper 
 a racer and the interval widening. A left-behind 
 species, a barely man, while Man goes on. One day 
 there was a settling of the dregs called Apes. The 
 same thing goes on to-day. Bins and plenty of 
 others, city and country, and up and down. They 
 come on, but, relatively speaking, slower and slower. 
 . . . An under species in all its degrees." 
 
 "That s a proclamation of aristocracy." 
 
 "I have no objection to the word, so that it s 
 properly understood." 
 
 "If Bins thinks anything he thinks that he s 
 within the aristocracy." 
 
 "Yes. I have known millionaire and university 
 and ecclesiastical Binses. There are a lot of royal 
 Binses." 
 
 1 66 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 "Your species finds you out wherever you are. * 
 
 "Precisely. . . . Whoever had any right to suppose 
 that out of the human species would not grow 
 another species out of man more than man ? Then 
 comes a day when what is left is classed as simply 
 human." 
 
 We came upon Landon in a great golden glow of 
 after-rain. A bit of rainbow hung against a yet 
 dark cloud. "But all move," I said. "When the 
 bell rings for their day the slow will come upward, 
 too." 
 
 "Oh yes," answered Maxwell. "That is the rain 
 bow and I m not denying that the rainbow has 
 some kind of reality. But Binses around the world 
 will have to do some hard work!" 
 
 "Perhaps the racer here is retarded, too. Perhaps 
 there is an order out of sight before us. Perhaps 
 the fleetest here has hard work to do. Perhaps what 
 you call the aristocracy, the very vanguard as we 
 think it, itself fell out, straggled, malingered, was 
 left in the rear now itself has to catch up. . . . 
 Sometimes you think you see the twinkling of feet 
 before you." 
 
 "Very like!" said Maxwell. "The caravan before 
 the caravan. . . . All right! Let Bins some day 
 catch the twinkling of feet before him." 
 
 I recall another day. There was a tract to be 
 examined too far from Landon for riding. We went 
 by train, with us Captain Joyce, one of the company 
 lawyers. Getting off at a flag-station, we found 
 there the owner of the land with horses. We waited 
 until the train had passed, then rode quietly into 
 the woods. It was not on the cards to make dis- 
 
 167 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 play of destination and purpose. Parisia or other 
 spies in the land might be watching. 
 
 We spent some hours upon this man s acres. 
 The lawyer, who was a very quick, expansive, jesting, 
 good fellow and sympathetic with the farmer and 
 his wife, talked with the two at the corner of their 
 crumbling porch. Papers passed between them. 
 We had country dinner, got back to the flag-station, 
 took the ingoing train. Presently some trouble up 
 the line halted us, kept us waiting half an hour. 
 We sat in an almost empty car, and Captain Joyce 
 fell upon discourse. He was in a good humor. The 
 man s holding was wanted against the glittering, 
 widening future of the company, and he could get 
 it, and get it cheaper than Colonel Ringgold and 
 Martin and others had thought possible. He talked. 
 Maxwell put in an occasional question or comment 
 in his voice dry as Sahara s sands. I sat and lis 
 tened. Captain Joyce embarked upon business, 
 politics, and the country at large. Arthur was 
 in the White House, but next year would see a 
 presidential election. Names came into Captain 
 Joyce s talk Republican names, Elaine and others; 
 Democrat names, Cleveland and others ; the People s 
 party, in a tone and with a grimace of doubt mixed 
 with amusement. There was certainly a possibility, 
 after long years of under dog, of a Democratic vic 
 tory. The country was getting out of the worst 
 post-bellum tangles. Captain Joyce saw Prosperity 
 and described the jade. Her most prominent feat 
 ures were bigger and bigger combinations of capi 
 tal, and underneath, like mouth beneath nose, ever 
 skilfuller and skilfuller lawyers. Press and legisla- 
 
 168 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 tures made, as it were, fields for the working (for 
 the good of all) of Money and Law. I even divined 
 that he had an eye to the school and the pulpit. 
 In his personal aspect he was very jolly, likable. 
 Dupuy said that he was known to have hanged 
 Justice, but Dupuy said many bitter things. The 
 chief engineer listened, put in a slight word now and 
 then in a voice dry as oak leaves in January. At 
 last he said, "How about action as a totality?" 
 
 "That s not possible. Must have incentive 
 something to pull against somebody to compete 
 with, defeat! Must fight conquer! Contest of 
 wits, you know, and all that." 
 
 "The irresistible force must continue to meet the 
 immovable body?" 
 
 "That s a way of putting it." 
 
 "Horns locked to eternity. . . . Bull similes!" 
 
 The block up the road got itself removed. The 
 whistle shrieked and we went on into town. 
 
 169 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 L \NDON grew all the time. When I had been 
 there a year I saw how it had grown over the 
 autumn day when Battle met Ahasuerus and me. 
 When I had been there two years and more it had 
 six thousand people. The Debenham & Atlantic 
 was an actuality. At night, when there occurred a 
 run, furnace glare reddened the sky to a strange 
 impermanent sunrise. There were streets where 
 had been none, houses where had stood pine-trees. 
 Two-story houses rose, better houses for the higher- 
 up people. The huddle of houses for hand-workers 
 grew into great and greater huddles, but the houses 
 stayed mean. Along Main Street were rising, fast 
 as mushrooms, brick stores, a larger hotel, a news 
 paper office, buildings of various sorts. Paving was 
 in contemplation, sewerage, a glare of street-light 
 ing. Enterprises and enterprises had started up. 
 A number stood in the magic rounds of the Landon 
 Coal and Iron, the Landon & Gulf, and the Deben 
 ham & Atlantic. Others were players for themselves. 
 Up the river Parisia wore a blighted look. 
 
 Men and women from everywhere might be found 
 collecting, streams into a pool, at Landon. One 
 recognized America, Europe, a little of Asia, a quan 
 tity of Africa. And in the air the ghost of red men 
 
 170 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 and the creatures that they hunted. And under 
 foot, down and down and down again, the carbon 
 world, the iron world. At times, when upon hot 
 summer nights sleep did not come swiftly, when I 
 sat in my window that gave over a wide stretch of 
 low roofs and broken, straggling wood, and sky 
 flushed by that furnace glare, I sank with imagina 
 tion or memory through the damp heat into a yet 
 heavier, closer atmosphere, far and far away, down 
 in time, heavier, closer, steamy, heated. . . . Here 
 was the uncouthly high and broad; here the ferns 
 and grasses, weird trees, the very moss of to-day 
 high overhead. Dense, palpitant, sluggish, choked, 
 gigantic, the Carboniferous stretched around. Forms 
 that were not fallen trees nor banks of black soil, 
 nor arms of the marsh moved. . , . Heavy voices 
 were about me, like the voice of the furnaces. . . . 
 I gasped in the un-thin air! Up! And here was 
 Landon living upon that and here was that living 
 in Landon. I looked up into the great night sky. 
 Landon, too, all of us, were at the bottom of what ? 
 Something there thinking, back thinking, down into 
 our strata. . . . 
 
 Two years. Miriam was a nurse in a great hos 
 pital in Baltimore. In the two years I had had a 
 month s holiday, dividing it between Flowerfield 
 and Restwell. Miriam had come from Baltimore 
 for a week. Miriam and Michael and each a 
 traveler who had not been idle in the two years, 
 and so who kept together, kept together. It was two 
 explorers meeting, each with a great tale to tell, 
 with maps of life to compare, with knowledge grow 
 ing from the long marches of each, with the urge of 
 
 171 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 the undiscovered beckoning, beckoning! Two dis 
 coverers who loved heart and mind and soul. 
 
 Two years and more! I wrote to her, she wrote 
 to me, each Sunday. 
 
 Two years slipped toward three years. Landon 
 swelled each year, a bigger and bigger Landon. 
 The South was growing, the country growing. With 
 Cleveland in the White House, time had swung in, 
 after many years, a Democratic administration. 
 The Democratic South felt itself moving toward 
 power. Business enterprise began to grow thickly, 
 south of Mason and Dixon. Capital came, com 
 panies formed, companies began to combine. Cor 
 porations, trusts, swam on the horizon line. All 
 the country was growing in money wealth. Money 
 flowed into rivers. If you owned the river-banks 
 and used them for villa sites and inclosed parks, 
 there were due to ensue difficulties as to general 
 irrigation. . . . 
 
 I worked hard. As Landon grew, as the Landon 
 Coal and Iron perfected its holdings, dug its mines, 
 engineer duties changed aspect. There was no 
 longer the simple hard day s riding, geologizing, 
 indicating, reporting, the straightforward construc 
 tion, supervision, of the first year or two. Occupa 
 tion was abundant but nondescript. Time passed. 
 Colonel Ringgold became president of the company, 
 and with unexpectedness the directors offered Max 
 well the position of general superintendent. He 
 declined it. "If I went up as they call it you 
 might get my place, Michael! But I don t care to 
 be general superintendent. ... I sha n t stay here 
 longer than next year, I think." He sat down and 
 
 172 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 stared out of the office window, then came back to 
 me. "I have an old friend and distant kinsman in 
 England who is down for African exploration. Head 
 of the Nile, Mountains of the Moon, and so forth. 
 I rather think I ll go with him. D ye want to come 
 along?" 
 
 "I want to with one part of me very decidedly 
 want to. But I stay here, I think." 
 
 "You re an explorer after the deep I," he an 
 swered. "I knew that early in our acquaintance. 
 ... I suppose that the opening up of Africa is on 
 the big voyage chart, and I suppose your explora 
 tion to be on it." 
 
 " We re both romantics," I said. "I take your 
 Africa and walk about it inside. Old Nile and 
 Mountains of the Moon and tropical forest, the 
 waste and the sand, the lakes, the cataracts and 
 water-holes." 
 
 "And the tribes of native black men " 
 
 "And the tribes of naked black men. The chim 
 panzees, the hippopotamuses, parrots, and croco 
 diles. Themselves and their correspondences." 
 
 He sat tilted in his chair, looking at me. "When 
 are you going to organize all that you do?" 
 
 I answered truthfully. "I don t know how." 
 
 "You have remarkably," he said, "the sense of 
 the presence of the universe and of all time." 
 
 I spoke. "Hold yourself very deep and steady 
 and perceive matters. . . . Event now! Everywhere 
 from the world of the molecules and below, to the 
 hugest synthesis we can grasp. Event in all its 
 range, physical, emotional, mental, and what we 
 call spiritual. And up and down and round about 
 
 i73 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 in Time. Event in my body, in your body, in this 
 room, this building, this town all bodies, towns, 
 countrysides. Event in this state in America 
 event in the world. Carry it over to other worlds, 
 not forgetting the ether between. To suns and 
 systems of suns. Event. All event. Feel it mul 
 titudinous, beyond multitude, multitude distilled 
 from multitudes. Event. Life yesterday, to-day, 
 and forever. Nebula to nebula and repeat. The 
 universe, all, visible and invisible, the invisible just 
 as real, just as eventual as the visible. Event and 
 over event. Event made of events. Motion, emo 
 tion, intense and shining movement mind-motion 
 spirit, intense, intense, light of light and heat of 
 heat, life of life! Divine it somehow, spread into 
 it. ... Of course I mean that it is perceived almost 
 infinitely too palely, almost infinitely too far away, 
 almost infinitely too infrequently, too tenuously. 
 It s what we call a concept now. But once strong 
 enough, the concept would become percept apper- 
 cept. We should walk into a new, an immense, 
 reality. . . . Do you think I am talking insanely?" 
 
 "No, I do not. That s overman. . . . Well, I sup 
 pose it s the only reasonable ambition! 1 * 
 
 That talk with Maxwell had leadings forth, at 
 the moment not seen. At the moment we fell back 
 to work. The days went on. A new general super 
 intendent came in. Landon continued in its tread 
 ing around itself an ever larger circle, 
 
 By now I knew pretty thoroughly the older layers 
 of population. In a certain sense Landon was home. 
 I must feel did feel the energy there, the driving 
 through and over obstacles, the sunniness on the 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 whole of men s hopes, the clasping hands, the de 
 termined feet. So much was good, so much was 
 promising! There was the feeling, splendid and 
 precious, of strength. In much it might be mis 
 applied, yet it was there, inestimable. 
 
 I knew, of this population of all stations, hun 
 dreds of names and faces, with a little of the real 
 man clinging thereto. A few scores I knew better, 
 and out of these a handful better yet. Landon had 
 a "social" life. Officials, men starting various en 
 terprises, professional men, had by now brought 
 wives and families. There was visiting, entertain 
 ing, among these. There was plenty of dear, good 
 people. Young men, away from home and kindred, 
 were in Landon in numbers; and these families, 
 making them welcome, gave them new ties and 
 feeling of home. There was the church life. Five 
 denominations now, each with its church and Sunday- 
 school, each in its own way helping along. And 
 there was a life of the street, of saloon and brothel. 
 And there was an alley life for negroes. And near 
 the furnaces, in a wide huddle of mean houses there 
 was a life of white laborers and the smallest em 
 ployees. Landon had now a newspaper and was 
 building a theater and better school-houses. Evi 
 dently it was to become a railroad center. And 
 more and more the glare from furnace stacks red 
 dened the night sky. . . . There was in Landon power, 
 but again and again came an ache with the power. 
 
 In these three years I read no little. There were 
 the evenings and the Sundays. 
 
 Then suddenly or then quietly after long prep 
 aration I was again borne afar. 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 Maxwell and I sat in his office alone. He had 
 despatched Jim Standard upon some errand. There 
 were letters, maps, beside him upon his desk, and 
 as he talked his fingers rested on a long envelop 
 with a British stamp. What he wanted was that I 
 should go with him to Africa. What he had beneath 
 his hand was the formal offer to him of a post in the 
 organizing expedition. The latter s objective was 
 a further understanding of the headwaters of the 
 Nile and a push across Africa by way of the Congo. 
 The expedition was expected to serve science as 
 well as sheer exploration. It was large, rightly 
 equipped and financed. It offered Maxwell a very 
 good salary for his services as geologist and engi 
 neer and it empowered him to choose and employ 
 an assistant. 
 
 "That is where you come in," said Maxwell. 
 "I know these men. They re my kind. It s all 
 right. Now I want you! ... If you don t know 
 that you re after cognition and development of your 
 self, I know it. And I m not meaning the selfish 
 self, either! You best know if something like this 
 isn t in your day s work." 
 
 He offered me no less than I was receiving from 
 the Landon company. I might be from America 
 two years perhaps even three years. I said that 
 I must have a fortnight in which to determine. I 
 took a day and night to walk around it as well as 
 I might. Then I wrote to Miriam. 
 
 The letter went, lay, I knew, in her hands, was 
 read by her. Waiting, I worked on, with the mat 
 ter as far as might be out of my head. Three nights 
 after the letter was sent I came into my room 
 
 176 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 and, putting out the lamp, sat in the eastern window. 
 There was no moon; a quiet night with the stars 
 burning softly. Minutes passed. . . . Then rose like 
 a fountain out of ground the consciousness of 
 Miriam. She was present in me she was not pres 
 ent out of me. There came a profound calm, pro 
 found, yet full of the sense of event. There was a 
 filling out of nature, to the extent that what had been 
 in appearance two orbs became in some sort one. 
 Something made naught of space, naught of time, 
 naught of outward form. Miriam and I talked with 
 out words, met in a large land behind Time and 
 Space and Form as we had known them. 
 
 It was affirmation. ... I saw that I w r ent with 
 Maxwell. I saw that it was somehow indicated 
 that that had its place in the world of experi 
 ence. I saw that Miriam could as little desire to 
 hold me as to hold herself from the fullness of life. 
 I saw that we were one in the desire to have knowl 
 edge, growth, and to have it more abundantly. I 
 saw that we played into each other s hands. I 
 saw that the wealth of one flowed with the wealth 
 of the other. . . . There came an increase over even 
 that perception. Things that love stay together. 
 I knew now how profoundly she was with me. I 
 knew that she was me. ... Wherever she might be 
 wherever I might be we could rise the one in the 
 other. 
 
 177 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 EXPERIENCE widened again for me. I wrote to 
 L* Major Dallas, to General Warringer, and to 
 Aunt Sarah. When I had the return letters I told 
 Maxwell that I would go. He nodded. 
 
 "All right! I am glad that you have determined 
 so. Will you ride out this afternoon and see what 
 is the matter at the Red Mine?" 
 
 Maxwell and I resigned from the employ of the 
 Landon Coal and Iron. The company was good 
 enough to say that it regretted our going and to 
 offer an increase of salary. But we must go, and 
 the company turned without more ado to a list of 
 names of engineers. 
 
 I had affection by now for many, for much, in 
 Landon. Landon in much would stay with me. I 
 had learned here, I had grown here. I had come to 
 feel the striving soul behind all this industrial urge, 
 to respect the wrestler with industrial imperfection. 
 He was president and manager, he was engineer 
 and builder, he was clerk and operator, he was 
 spademan and pickman. Up and down and all 
 around, he was really one, though he had not wak 
 ened to that fact. I regarded my own boyhood at 
 Restwell. I had not recognized it then, but in all 
 that countryside of farms and villages, what had 
 obtained but the same struggle? The farmer and 
 
 178 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 his men, white and black, the miller and the smith, 
 the boatmen on the river, and the village storekeeper. 
 ... I felt again the heat of the sun when I used to 
 hoe corn with Ahasuerus and Mandy s Jim, when I 
 used to plow the long field. All one with these 
 furnace and railroad workers! And professional 
 men, schoolmen, artists, inventors, men of research 
 and experiment, shapers of mind-matter these, too, 
 were tillers and producers, transmuters of energy, 
 spreaders of food before the infant man that is to 
 be. All one, changing and sustaining, gathered into 
 the vast We, the world I. Where, in the whole, 
 stopped the Worker where, in the whole, began the 
 Thinker ? The Worker thought, the Thinker worked. 
 
 I was leaving Landon, and I saw now how, despite 
 all doubts, I did like Landon. 
 
 And I liked Mrs. Sayre and the doctor, and Father 
 Vesey and Mr. Allen, and Walter Dupuy and Battle, 
 Bob and Ferry, Mirandy and Harris, too, and Lula, 
 the waitress, and Bruno, the doctor s old setter. 
 They all made a clamor of home about me when I 
 must go. 
 
 Mrs. Sayre sat one evening upon the veranda, 
 waving to and fro her palm-leaf fan. The doctor 
 was in his room, Father Vesey away upon some 
 parochial business, Mr. Allen had just said good night 
 and was gone. I sat upon the step, my eyes on the 
 furnace flare, reddening low-hanging clouds. When 
 one paid attention the furnace throb was there as 
 well, dull in the warm, damp air. Mrs. Sayre began 
 to speak. She had a slow, lulling voice. 
 
 "Travel, now. There are all kinds of travel. 
 Doctor travels, lying in his hammock there and 
 
 179 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 Walter Dupuy travels and you were traveling, 
 Michael, even before Mr. Maxwell asked you to 
 go to Africa with him." 
 
 "Yes," I answered. "I was I am." 
 
 "Yes, I know it. I am a large, stay-at-home body 
 who seems somehow to have nursed you all, nursed 
 and managed for you all. For a long time." Her 
 fan went tranquilly to and fro. "You leam to notice 
 little things when you nurse and manage for all. 
 You re on the lookout for signs. ... I suppose, after 
 all, one rears children for travel . . . nurses, manages, 
 gives them a base to start from." 
 
 "You ve traveled pretty far yourself," I said. 
 
 "Oh, I travel very slowly! I have so many little 
 things to think of. Seeds in the earth " She ceased 
 to speak and sat, slowly and tranquilly moving the 
 fan to and fro. 
 
 It was springtime and violets and daffodils were 
 blooming beside the veranda. I saw, as it were, 
 plant life underground, the tree and the rose under 
 ground, over all the earth. All animals little and 
 warmly laired, all birds nested ... all men and 
 women, the oldest, the strongest, the wisest, cradle- 
 babes. Traveling slowly, with multitudes and mul 
 titudes of little things 
 
 Ferry came in at the gate and up the path and 
 steps and sat down with his head resting against 
 her chair. I said good night and left them, and at 
 my own window my mother rose in me. 
 
 Maxwell and I finished apace at Landon. He was 
 a scimitar-edge and a dry light. 
 
 The men to take our places came in. We showed 
 them the lines and the steeds that had to be driven. 
 
 180 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 The office gave us a present, to each as handsome 
 a rifle as money could buy. The Landon News made 
 a full page of our departure and African exploration. 
 Hundreds in Landon shook hands and wished us well. 
 
 Ahasuerus was to go with me. He had made 
 determined appeal and I went to Maxwell about it. 
 He listened, then: "I don t see any reason against 
 it, if he wants to go. He s strong and devoted. 
 That s the kind such expeditions want." 
 
 I said good-by to Mrs. Sayre s, to all at the office, 
 to Landon. Maxwell was already gone to New York, 
 where business of sorts awaited him. The east- 
 bound express roared in. Bob and Ferry and Battle, 
 Father Vesey, Mr. Allen, and a half-dozen more 
 waved and cried farewell. We left the dark station; 
 the houses went by, the furnaces, the hills. 
 Ahasuerus and I, three and a half years older than 
 when first we had come to Landon, were going from 
 Landon, going home to Flowerfield and Rest well, 
 then going overseas, afar and afar. 
 
 The train roared through the landscape toward 
 Virginia. I sat in a brown study. I was going afar, 
 into I knew not what of physical adventure. Mental 
 adventure, adventure of the imagination, I knew. 
 In some measure I could feel with, feel into, all ad 
 venture. I took it as scientifically true that, could 
 all of me speak, it could speak of all things. But it 
 was blocked from finding voice. ... In my inner 
 world I had come to where I was in a manner keep 
 ing time, waiting on a slow assimilation, waiting 
 for some strengthening of pulse and forward thrust. 
 There was a cry within me for flooding light, color, 
 fervent heat. I knew that it was for light and heat 
 
 181 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 from the interior. But it retarded its coming, and 
 there grew in me an urge toward review, recapitu 
 lation, seeing where I had been wrong, mistaken, 
 bettering perhaps, seeing how to take apart, dissolve, 
 remold the past. The feeling was obscure, deep. 
 But I was going to old, interior continents and search 
 them over again. . , . And there had grown a longing, 
 too, for other, outward contacts, for wider surges 
 here. So had run my mind when finally I had 
 agreed with Maxwell. 
 
 I sat and mused and the train rushed on. It was 
 taking me toward much, and it was taking me first 
 to Restwell and Flowerfield. Miriam was with me, 
 thinking with me. 
 
 A man came and sat beside me. He had a little, 
 withered face and figure and very limpid, untroubled 
 eyes. He held a book in his hand, and I saw that it 
 was an anthology that I knew. 
 
 "I like to read," he said, and presently. " We re 
 all a big book. Le lime de Vunivers. A great story 
 book to some upper layer. That layer s dream life. 
 It s reverie when it rests in the shade." 
 
 I turned the pages of the book. " Don t you think 
 we may be our own reverie?" 
 
 "Oh yes, I do!" he nodded. "Quite sure of it. 
 It s the personal pronouns that get in the way." 
 
 "Did you ever," I asked, "achieve impersonality?" 
 
 "It depends upon what you mean by that. Do 
 you mean a larger personality?" 
 
 "It may come to the same thing." 
 
 "I think it does," he said. "These things are per 
 fectly definite. The trouble with folk is that they 
 will not recognize grades of cognition. It s a long, 
 
 182 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 long stair to the last, biggest personality. But it s 
 wonderful just to have lifted a step." 
 
 "Do you think there s a common experience 
 among those who have lifted a step ?" 
 
 "They come under a common sky. That means 
 a great deal. But there would be always variation 
 in experience naturally." 
 
 "Yes," I said. "But fast experience would be, 
 in a way, pooled." 
 
 "Yes. Recognized as pooled. It s been done 
 always, but not cognized as done. Of course it is 
 the food of the new experience." 
 
 "I see that. . . . We are still occupied with the 
 chase with the garnering of food. Still in a struggle 
 with raw material." 
 
 "Yes. But of course the artist, the conscious 
 festival, comes along." 
 
 "Then after a while, when it is ripe, that plane 
 also becomes food for the gods. The willing 
 sacrifice." 
 
 "Yes," he said. 
 
 "Each stage the womb of the higher." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 We sat looking out of the window. "It s all ws," 
 said the man. "Knowing that, we know a good deal. 
 We ve seen our Jacob s ladder." 
 
 "The profound quest the real Grail." 
 
 "Yes. / 
 
 It is the star to every wandering bark, 
 Whose worth s unknown, although his height be taken. 
 
 The poets have always dimly known it, up in the 
 dome of their house where the angels live." 
 
 183 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 Before long he left me, the train bringing him to 
 his station. I said that I hoped we should meet 
 again. "Oh, we will!" he answered. "Life s full of 
 these encounters, when you begin to look for them." 
 
 The train roared on, the landscape glided by. 
 There stretched a night between me and Restwell. 
 I lay in my berth and lifted the window-shade. 
 Dark woods were going by, then came a calm and 
 broad stretch of country with the horizon stretched 
 afar. Jupiter hung in the sky. There stole into 
 me from the upper realms, cool, pure, exalted and 
 exalting, a sense of the greatness, of the utter great 
 ness, of the destiny of us all. . . . When I slept it 
 was with that clean and quiet aroma still about me. 
 
 When I awoke Virginia fields, Virginia mountains, 
 were framed in the window. 
 
 184 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 RESTWELL made much of Ahasuerus and me. 
 General Warringer and Aunt Harriet had ac 
 quiesced in my going with Maxwell, but not before, 
 as in duty bound, they had set forth a row of objec 
 tions. Aunt Harriet s resolved into the propositions, 
 that I might be killed that so I could not marry 
 and carry on the family fortunes; that, while there 
 might result some distinction from being an explorer 
 (a successful one), she had noticed that men who 
 went into wild places for any length of time carried 
 it around with them ever afterward and lost touch 
 with the society into which they were born. "We 
 met an Arctic man once at Old Point. Well, when 
 it came to the amenities he was nothing but a polar 
 bear walking upright!" 
 
 I said that if I came back like a rhinoceros or 
 crocodile she must have me shot. 
 
 She looked at me a little wistfully. "You know, 
 Michael, you re the only bit of Dugald and Gary 
 we ve got. More than that, you seem somehow to 
 hold and bring back father. . . . You ve got a faculty, 
 somehow, of enwrapping and carrying with you a 
 lot of things SL lot of people, even." She sighed. 
 "I m not that kind myself, but I know that there 
 are all-around folk." 
 
 185 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 I kissed her and said that we were in the same 
 boat. I knew that there must be all-around folk 
 but I was only a little of that myself nothing like, 
 nothing like, the all-around that I could image. We 
 sat on the summer-house step, and I found that we 
 could talk, in some ways, as my mother and I had 
 used to talk ... no ! as my mother and I talked. 
 
 General Warringer, likewise, was concerned about 
 my future. "This life s a bitter race, Michael. If 
 you begin to step aside to pick flowers, down you 
 go smothered under! I ve seen a lot of men 
 men with brains scheduled just so to be poor and 
 unknown all the rest of their lives. If you had 
 chosen to stay you could have had Maxwell s place 
 when he went. As Landon grew you could have left 
 engineering, become assistant superintendent su 
 perintendent what not. You ve got brains and a 
 steady-going energy not flashy. You might have 
 gone straight on up to the top. You ve got pull 
 here, too, remember. There s no helping you in 
 Africa. Your savings, too. I had it in mind to 
 speak to you about that. As you earned and saved 
 I could invest for you in a stock that 11 presently be 
 paying I don t know what it won t be paying! 
 And if, after a time, you wanted to speculate, I 
 should see to it that you got the inside word. This 
 country s traveling, double-quick, toward the biggest 
 kind of expansion! You might become a rich man 
 rich and useful the most valuable kind of citi 
 zen. But if you break with the run now it s going 
 to be hard to get back. As I said before, this world s 
 a breathless Keep your place, or I ll take it! " 
 
 I said that I knew that it was a serious step, 
 
 186 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 but that, as far as engineering went, I felt that I 
 could always find employment. I had no quarrel 
 with engineering as a profession. But I did not feel 
 myself fitted for the further course he had out 
 lined. It might be a mistake, my going with Max 
 well, but I had felt a strong inward urging. I thought 
 that I should come back, and that the experience 
 would not be loss. ... I said that I was grateful to 
 him, and to many at Landon. 
 
 "That s all right. I gather that you gave very 
 good work in return. . . . Well, if you won t, you 
 won t, Michael! . . . Royal is going to be a rich man 
 rich and powerful. * 
 
 "If I had been Holbein or Rembrandt I should 
 have liked to paint Royal." 
 
 Royal was at home at the moment. But he was 
 going to New York, into a big broking company in 
 Wall Street. In appearance he was so different 
 from his father, and yet they subtly paired. The 
 son stood intellectually higher by a head. They sat, 
 as it were, above and below the salt but at the 
 same board, in the same castle hall. One must 
 give respect to the castle, it was so vast and powerful. 
 London Tower or Carcassonne, a thousandfold. 
 
 Dorothea was very friendly. . . . We went out 
 together one morning upon the river. It had become 
 fairy spring weather, bloom and song and first ver 
 dure. We ran under the sweeping willows, by banks 
 of violets and bluebells. 
 
 "I should like to see Africa and Asia and all 
 the old buildings and the old lands. Oh, Michael, 
 you re lucky!" 
 
 "Why don t you travel? You could." 
 187 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 "Some day maybe I will . . . but I ll take myself 
 along." 
 
 "Why don t you sort out yourself and choose the 
 best traveling-dress?" 
 
 "Oh, I m lazy except when people get in my 
 way. What do you do when people get in your way ?" 
 
 "They re in the way because they re out of the 
 way. Get them in order inside you. Penetrate 
 them understand them be at one with them. 
 Then the whole ship moves with the helmsman s 
 hand. You and they are one, you know." I laughed 
 at the face she made. "Gibberish, isn t it? And 
 nine times out of ten I fail to practise my own magic. 
 . . . All the same, don t poison them, Dorothea! 
 If you do you ll feel the pangs." 
 
 "I like to poison them starve them." 
 
 "Stop it or you ll feel the pangs!" 
 
 She caught at the willows under which we were 
 passing. "Oh, I am not so bad as I make myself 
 out! . . . Sometimes often I feel kind and good." 
 The boat went a few strokes farther. Stop rowing, " 
 she said. "Let s rest here a bit. Go close to the 
 bank, by the violets." I obeyed. She stretched her 
 arms, then, leaning forward, looked at me. "You 
 meet most persons, Michael. Now I want to see 
 if you meet me!" 
 
 "Fire away!" 
 
 "Do you ever feel wicked?" 
 
 "Often." 
 
 "Just how? Can you feel yourself murderer, 
 thief, and all the rest of it?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Well, to get off the plane of actually poisoning 
 
 188 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 people or jerking the bread out of their mouths. . . . 
 When the world looks lovely, not hateful and you 
 want all the jewelry in the window . . . but are too 
 sleepy to go after it ... and so you only lust for it, 
 envy it. Do you know that, too?" 
 
 "Yes. At times I should like to roll in gold-dust 
 and violets. 11 
 
 "Yes!" 
 
 "A great elephant to ride upon caparisoned an 
 easy, swaying, powerful gait. No obstacles all the 
 crowd at once worshiping and getting out of the 
 
 way" 
 "Yes!" 
 
 "Idle Lakes and Mirth to row me and Bowers 
 of Acrasy " 
 
 "H-mm?" 
 
 "The Faery Queen. The second book. It s a 
 perfectly true tale." 
 
 "What else? Your elephant figure I do most cer 
 tainly understand though I understand the others 
 likewise." 
 
 "I d weary you with all the rest. At the bottom 
 of the bag. . . . Something big and dark wind and 
 wave wishing just to roll over and destroy. The 
 utterest explosive wishing to rend sun, moon, and 
 stars. Split them into little pieces. Blow them into 
 dust in the wind. And without a bit of better plan, 
 without any plan any ultimate idea. Blank Noth 
 ing impossible to obtain! But go toward it, and 
 so save oneself trouble. Decline to make the God." 
 
 She stared; then, "I see . . ." 
 
 "It s the bottom of the bag. But notice, will you, 
 that still, blank and mad as it is, it assumes cohesion. 
 
 189 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 It s to have force to do all that. ... So, after all, 
 it will have to take trouble." 
 
 "Yes, I see that." 
 
 "Better take the full cup of finer effort! Better 
 make of yourself a world that won t want to blow 
 its brains out!" 
 
 She sighed. "Get me a bunch of violets and let 
 us go home." I picked her her violets, stepped back 
 into the boat, put them in her lap, and retook the 
 oars. She said, "You could have been an evil 
 soul." 
 
 "There s plenty of evil yet. But the soul wants 
 to change it to good, Dorothea." 
 
 "But it understands it still." 
 
 "Yes, it understands it still." 
 
 We went on beneath the willows. "Did you never 
 read The Faery Queen? Well, read it all, but es 
 pecially the second book." We traveled silently upon 
 the clear river. After a while she would have talked 
 of Miriam. But I did not want to talk of Miriam, 
 who was Una, who was Alma, who was Belphcebe, 
 who was Britomart to me. So at first we spoke of 
 just the weather and then of Restwell plans, and at 
 last she deliberately fell silent, and when I saw that 
 it was deliberate I followed her lead, rowing without 
 speaking, in a moving dream with the long oar- 
 stroke. She sat with her eyes upon the violets in 
 her hand. We made landing and I helped her out 
 and we went together up the bank and toward the 
 house. But under the wood where the wild plum 
 was blooming she stood still. 
 
 "Michael . . . we re cousins." 
 
 I nodded. 
 
 190 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 "That ought to mean warm hearts toward each 
 other." 
 
 "Agreed." 
 
 She was very close to me. She put her hand upon 
 my breast. "Like me, Michael . . . like me!" I felt 
 her breath, her cheek touched mine. "Like me 
 as I like you." She kissed me and I kissed her. 
 But then I felt the stroke of the crowned man. 
 As best I might I got back from the edge of the 
 precipice. I drew myself away from her hands and 
 her face. 
 
 "Dorothea, Dorothea, Dorothea! leave that! 
 That s not innocent, because it s not sincere. You re 
 stooping low with your mind tempting deliber 
 ately! And I m the leopard the slave the worm 
 yet. . . . Leave it! Let s at least stand upright!" 
 
 She drew a long breath. "Well ... I wondered " 
 
 "Stop wondering! It s all there, in my blood as 
 it is in yours. I could, as you could. Almost half 
 of me plays the siren to just more than half that s 
 just wise enough to use every thong it can find to 
 keep it to the mast " 
 
 "Well, you will please to understand that it was 
 the mind just wanting to see " 
 
 "I understand. Now I want to tell you. ... I 
 think that we roved together a lot in the past, you 
 and I. ... Suppose you, also, try to stop that lorelei 
 work of taking oneself in one s own net. Every fish 
 you take lovers, pride, domination, cruelty, in 
 dolence, self-love, and all the rest of it pulls you 
 deeper yet into the ancient sea. I know, for not so 
 long ago and not so far away I have been there 
 am there quite sufficiently still! Throw the net 
 
 191 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 away, stop the old singing, and see if you can t hear 
 a lark overhead!" 
 
 "You re preaching!" 
 
 "No, I m not. I m calling your attention to some 
 facts in nature." 
 
 She began to walk again. "I don t see that our 
 old, long past was so very wrong." 
 
 "I don t in the least say that. I won t say a word 
 against the ancient sea. When we were in it, if 
 we were sincere, it was all that we could do. It 
 had its own powers, beauties, and truths. But the 
 winged thing mustn t return to the finned thing." 
 
 She looked at me over the violets that she had 
 pinned at her throat. "After Grandfather Forth s 
 death I heard a man call him a mystic. ... I suppose 
 that s you, too, Michael?" 
 
 But the word didn t well describe how I felt as 
 to the out-of-doors around our houses of ancient 
 habit. She began to talk of things away from this 
 hour. We climbed the hill and crossed the May 
 grass to the porch. 
 
 At no other time while I was at Restwell did we 
 recall the one to the other this morning. She went 
 her way and I went mine. But I felt her sultry 
 beauty and the ancient sea call. I piled images 
 against it, and drew at last strength from that 
 dimension that fronts the east. And yet I knew, 
 and that without shame, that life of old sense through 
 which certainly, in a million, million shapes, I had 
 gone. It streamed and weltered, fought and gloried, 
 thrilled through its coils of murky splendor, survived 
 and somehow surpassed itself, and rose. Dorothea 
 was me in that eon and I was Dorothea. Miriam 
 
 192 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 and I and Dorothea had all been together. If two 
 were out, were partly out, another would follow. 
 
 The days went by at Rest well. Daddy Guinea 
 was dead, but Mammy, Aunt Esther, Mandy s Jim, 
 and others still lived there. Ahasuerus made him 
 self happy. Restwell was oiled, smoothly running, 
 with money as never had I remembered it. It was 
 not that the Warringers were hugely wealthy; they 
 were not. Royal would pass into that category, 
 but that time was not yet. But they had means 
 beside which my grandfather s and my mother s 
 old struggles seemed piteous enough. 
 
 Aunt Sarah had not oldened. Her pale, smooth 
 skin kept its firmness, her hair its brown luster, 
 her eyes their not young nor old, still, immortal 
 look. I sat with her in her room, always so clean, 
 hushed, unlit tered, or on the upper porch without 
 her windows where in summer she kept her many 
 plants that would bloom in winter. And three times 
 we were together in the graveyard. 
 
 "I understand better than I did," I said, "what 
 you meant when you said that they are within us." 
 
 "You ll grow to understand it better yet. . . . 
 It s a vast world, Michael, that within us !" 
 
 "I am fast coming to see that." 
 
 "So vast that all things are there." 
 
 "I begin to see it." 
 
 "I have not the energy strongly to move and 
 make move within it. It goes as a kind of still 
 dream. The faintest dawn is on the waters and 
 they lie still beneath it. But I do not grieve any 
 longer, nor am I anxious. It is a gain when women 
 do not grieve, nor are anxious." 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 The days swam on. I went to Whitechurch. I 
 climbed the academy hill and listened to Doctor 
 Young in his study. He reminded me of some 
 castle keep, narrow and darkened, but firm, built 
 with a fierce honesty of purpose, with good stone. 
 A life he fought was rising around his hold outer 
 walls were crumbling now under strange shafts and 
 rays but still stood the keep with fierce constancy. 
 I asked him about Gamaliel. His face twitched. 
 "I have not seen him for three years. I hear that 
 he has put himself through some sort of scientific 
 school. I suppose that he will go over, body and 
 soul, to science." The timbre of the fortress voice 
 carried, "Oh, thou deep traitor to me thou, my 
 son, who grew from me! * I felt the drawbridge 
 go up. ... 
 
 The days and nights went by. In middle May I 
 said good-by to Restwell; as it proved, for three 
 years. 
 
 194 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 /CATHERINE and Lewis were away Lewis at 
 v^ the university, Catherine at Elton School. John 
 met me in town and drove out in the phaeton. John 
 and Amy Page would soon marry; he beamed on 
 me with a full-orbed serenity. He was always serene, 
 big, quiet, humorous, fond of children and all ani 
 mals. He had interior mass. In my own fashion I 
 considered most people by this. Mrs. Sayre had it. 
 Maxwell had it interior mass with a dry, clear 
 desert sweep and light. Gamaliel had it, with a 
 keen, north-temperate clime. My mother had pos 
 sessed it, and to a somew r hat lesser degree my 
 grandfather. Aunt Sarah, too, but with her it was 
 moonlighted. Major Dallas and Aunt Kate did not 
 lack it. Madam Black had great mass. Others 
 whom I knew possessed it, some more, some less. 
 Miriam and I, wherever we were ranked, were 
 twinned. . . . 
 
 Flowerfield shone before us. "Miriam comes to 
 morrow." John had a fondness for reminiscence. 
 Each time he brought richer appreciation of the 
 "isness" of what has been. "I was thinking as I 
 came along of our old days in the barn and nutting 
 and all over! Weren t we aren t we happy?" 
 
 The house greeted me. I seemed to merge into it, 
 it into me. That night I had my talk with Uncle 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 John and Aunt Kate. Africa, and away assuredly 
 for several years, and dangers to life and limb as 
 great as if I were going to war my profession and 
 the possibilities of advance here at home in abey 
 ance Miriam and a long engagement. ... It was all 
 true, and yet related to a line of superseded truths, 
 part of a truth that seemed to me to be dimming 
 before truth in swifter, lighter planes. And Uncle 
 John and Aunt Elate, though they tried to be con 
 ventionally prudent, careful, anxious, were them 
 selves away from the old line. 
 
 What I wished of widened experience that was 
 now to me as food what I dimly felt of powers that 
 might not, but yet might at last lead me from the 
 physical into other types of engineering what I 
 could get into words of that road wherever we went 
 between Miriam and me, and of what I knew to be 
 her deep consent to my going of all this I managed 
 to give to Uncle John and Aunt Kate enough to turn 
 doubt into some fullness of assent. We sat around a 
 lightwood fire John, too, was there and it chanced 
 to be in the dear old school-room. We talked of 
 Miriam. Her training was done; she had taken an 
 assistant superintendent s place in a small, just- 
 established hospital. Her father had been on to 
 Baltimore. "She s loved and trusted she s a fine 
 child!" Her mother made a little, murmuring sound. 
 "Miriam. . . ." 
 
 She came next day. I knew that they watched us 
 together and were satisfied. John said, "You two 
 lay in fairy cradles!" 
 
 The spring was around and through Miriam and 
 me a magical spring. 
 
 196 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 She stood just on the near side of tall, rightly 
 slender, with a gipsy, free, lithe vigor. She had a 
 wonderful brow, deep eyes that said the happiest 
 things, a short, well-cut nose, a mouth generously 
 wide and expressive. Her skin had delicate wine 
 hues, faintest browns. Her hair was thick and dark 
 brown with beautiful tendrils. No one with a poor 
 nature could have owned her speaking voice. Her 
 hands were long, strong, and fine. Watching them, 
 one felt the movements they had made, the things 
 they had modeled, the growth of ages, the fine, 
 perpetual change from far-sunken tentatives, through 
 all apprenticeships, all artisanries, crafts, to artist s 
 knowledge. 
 
 We went here, we went there, we went to Wake- 
 robin Hill. We stretched ourselves upon the good 
 brown earth, we smelled the pine and hemlock. 
 We laughed we were so glad; we understood in 
 such full draughts . . . though we knew that all the 
 rivers and fountains on earth could not hold the 
 first spring cup of the perfected, the ultimate under 
 standing. The blue air floated within, without, 
 above our wood, the birds sang and rejoiced in 
 their wings, and we, too, sang and rejoiced in our 
 wings. 
 
 She said, "Don t you know that we really meet 
 really, really, really ! for all that you may be under 
 the earth in a mine and I may be walking a hospital 
 ward?" 
 
 "We meet so really that the preoccupation is to 
 strengthen, strengthen, strengthen reality." 
 
 "Yes, I know. ... I deliberately try." 
 
 "And I." 
 
 197 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 "Sometimes there is a beautiful terror at what 
 might come!" 
 
 "I mean the terror to lose itself in the beauty." 
 
 "And the goodness the beauty and the wisdom." 
 
 "Yes, just." 
 
 "There couldn t be beauty unless there was wis 
 dom . . . goodness." 
 
 "The false Florimel and the true Florimel." 
 
 She laughed. "I thought that first!" 
 
 "I always did take the word from you like that." 
 
 "And I from you." 
 
 We smelled the rich and dark hemlock, we lis 
 tened to the birds, we sailed with the white clouds 
 across the brilliant blue. "All through earth, every 
 where, there are surely centers where is beginning 
 a marvelous knitting together. . . . There is coming 
 to consciousness the planetary spirit. . . . For us how 
 exquisite that we guess it together!" 
 
 "Where will it stop? ... Oh, it will not stop!" 
 
 "No." 
 
 She sighed. She put out her hands to me. We rested 
 against the hemlock bank, our hands clasped, our 
 faces touching. "There will be a sweetness, even in 
 great light, in remembering night in remembering 
 when we were little!" 
 
 "We ll not lose that, either. We ll not lose any 
 thing that we want to keep. We shall taste it as 
 we never did, as we never could before!" 
 
 We rested silent, and the magnificence of the 
 spring was all around us. 
 
 We were walking the next day in the meadow. 
 There flowed here a small, clear stream, with pebbly 
 margins, and small, overhanging sycamores and wil- 
 
 198 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 lows, with mint, marsh-marigold, and violets, with 
 soldier blackbirds coming and going. We had walked 
 in silence. It had always been with Miriam and 
 me that we did not need to talk. We had been 
 going, as it were, in a brown study, a reverie. Im 
 perceptibly this deepened. 
 
 I do not know in any detail how it was. What 
 will one day be general powers are mysterious yet, 
 fleeting in manifestation, withdrawing ere one can 
 say, "It lightens!" Those who perceive, perceive 
 imperfectly, far and far away imperfectly, it is evi 
 dent. And they cannot well tell what they perceive. 
 They say laboriously one and one and one and 
 one and one and so on, with one and one. They 
 cannot say they have not yet the word then- 
 tongue cannot say it and none has ears to hear it 
 they cannot say TEN ! And then a certain number 
 begin to see "ten" to try to say it and their own 
 and the tribe s ancient vocabulary is not well fitted. 
 And evidently there is great variety upon which 
 the new door opens. It is "Ten" but on that 
 plane may be found a world of speeds and powers 
 and goods. All sail from the old world to the new 
 world, and all have worked their way, but they sail 
 in divers crafts and land in divers zones. There are 
 evidently all manner of adventure, slight and great 
 but all get out of space as we knew it before we 
 said "Ten," and out of time as we knew it. For 
 Miriam and me I will say that we had begun, though 
 palely, faintly, childishly enough, to realize the world 
 of imagination, of memory, and of inference. I do 
 not suppose that there are roof, floor, or walls to 
 that world. 
 
 IQQ 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 There was the meadow and the sliding stream 
 and the smell of mint. We were moving in a brown 
 study, a reverie, aware, as profoundly we always 
 were aware, of each other, but with all surface 
 spray and glancing subdued silent, smooth, run 
 ning deep. . . . Our bodies came automatically, as it 
 were, to rest. There lay about us stones warmed by 
 the sun, with green grass growing around them. 
 We sat down. Our bodies fell into attitudes of quiet, 
 of repose, all their myriads of living points working 
 on in some deep harmony of their own, the spirit 
 of the hive taking care of that. . . . But on upper 
 levels Miriam and I broke bounds. 
 
 We passed into an experience common to both, 
 rememberable by both when we came back to the 
 sunlit meadow by Flowerfield and to what we had 
 called, and called only, actuality. Now we never 
 again called it the only actuality. 
 
 The bond that we broke was that of narrowed 
 space and narrowed time. We came out of prison 
 and we said, "Why should we have stayed in that 
 one room?" In our prisons we had learned our book. 
 We knew in some wise in stronger wise, I must 
 think, than did most of our acquaintance how to 
 imagine and remember, how to draw ends together, 
 and like to like, how to ponder, brood, speculate, 
 how at last to desire and to will. ... So one day, 
 suddenly, things began to be put into practice. 
 
 We were away from the Flowerfield meadow. We 
 left it as sailors might leave ships at anchor while 
 they themselves went into the strange port. . . . 
 There came a reinforced sense of being, of very 
 rapid, unobstructed motion, perception in sweeps 
 
 200 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 instead of in points. We were at once mingled and 
 apart. We were one larger self we felt, as it were, 
 the film that held us enveloped. We were one self, 
 and yet at the moment s will moved Miriam and 
 Michael. As we thought we traveled, as we imaged 
 or remembered we saw, we heard, we touched. The 
 concepted became the actually perceived. We were 
 in the world of idea, grown vivid, solid, real. We 
 were as babes there. Planes overlapped, powers 
 were uneven; now we sank and now we swam. But 
 all weakness given, yet had we left the ship, yet were 
 we out of the dark tower. 
 
 Miriam and I stood in a city it was Washington 
 we leaned upon the rail of the ironwork balcony 
 of an ancient hotel. It was evening, coral-lighted. 
 The long and broad shadow of a sycamore dappled 
 all the street. The air breathed warm, still, striped 
 with melody and with romance. We were there as 
 we had been and as we had not been. "As it was" 
 hung modeled, colored, understood by the larger 
 now. Thought moved, we moved. We sat upon a 
 bench under trees, in moonlight, before the white 
 capitol. . . . This sufficed for moments new mo 
 ments of new time of wonder, of the more than 
 doubled beating life and interest. Then again that 
 movement unobstructed, too swift for counting. . . . 
 We were not in Washington, we were beside heaped 
 sand and the waves of the Atlantic. We were girl 
 and boy by the waves, and we were man and woman, 
 and we were something beyond man and woman, 
 inclosing, knowing, enjoying much. . . . We knew 
 vaguely that we were the ocean and the sand and 
 the sky, just as well as the boy and girl, the man 
 
 201 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 and woman. We knew, though hesitatingly, dimly, 
 that they were our Ideas, that we had set a stage. 
 In and through that heightened rate of vibration, 
 with that doublement of energy, our ideas became 
 solid, three-dimensional. 
 
 In the Flowerfield meadow a soldier blackbird 
 flew to the stream to drink and alighted at the feet 
 of the two sitting there. Ere one could say or think, 
 "The lightning goes!" we were back. The bird flew 
 away before beak had touched water. We saw him 
 alight again a hundred feet away. We moved, we 
 passed hands over eyes. "Michael!" "Miriam!" 
 "What happened?" 
 
 "We went into the past together. Into the time 
 dimension where we keep all things. We went 
 together " 
 
 "The ocean sounds still in my ears!" 
 "The capitol the balcony of the hotel " 
 "Yes, of course. The pink sky behind the syca 
 more. . . . Oh, the strength, the abounding music! 
 . . . Now I feel shrunken." 
 
 We rose walked. "Do you think we can do that 
 again? . . . There is something tremendous coming. 
 . . . Oh, how could the world ever think that this 
 was all!" 
 
 "We shall try again. Not now " 
 "No. The door opened, then the door shut." 
 We moved up the meadow in silence. The little 
 stream rippled, the willows stirred in the spring 
 breeze, the blackbirds chattered. Far off, cocks 
 were crowing, a dog barking. We smelled the per 
 fume of flowers, of young leaves. She said: "All 
 this is vivid but that memory is as present as is 
 
 202 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 this meadow! There, in effect, is the sea, there the 
 capitol, the balcony " 
 
 "That is because the experience was so strong! 
 The memory is in proportion. We doubled desire, 
 pooled energy. Now the very memory has what 
 until just now we called reality/ And besides 
 that " I looked around me. "Miriam! isn t the 
 day deeper, more vivid, more resounding?" 
 
 She stopped short. "Yes! Oh, we keep something 
 of the strength and the glory! We made a strange 
 step and it counts all around. . . . And oh, it all 
 feels so blessedly natural!" 
 
 "Miriam! a part of the world is passing beyond 
 old powers into new. We are somehow in the ranks 
 of that expeditionary force. I don t know just where 
 away at the end, perhaps but there, there to 
 gether ! Miriam-Michael Michael-Miriam ! What 
 ever is coming, there s that bliss!" 
 
 "Yes, bliss!" She paused, she looked at the land 
 and the sky, and then we gazed into each other s 
 eyes. "Everything deepens " Suddenly we put 
 arms around each other, strained together, kissed. 
 "Oh, Love Oh, Love!" 
 
 203 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 EARLY in June Ahasuerus and I joined Maxwell 
 in New York. In a few hours we sailed for 
 Liverpool, made the voyage in ten days, and were 
 presently in London. Here I lodged with Maxwell. 
 He strode off to find his chiefs, while Ahasuerus and 
 I mounted to the top of an omnibus and went to 
 see what we could of this world-city. The next day 
 Maxwell carried me with him to report to the two 
 men heading the expedition. 
 
 The first of these was Sir Charles Grantham, who 
 had served in India, who knew Egypt, and had shot 
 and adventured in Abyssinia, Somaliland, and 
 Uganda, and had had some acquaintance with 
 Speke and Burton and with Baker. He was a 
 medium-sized, middle-aged, stocky man of little 
 speech and a steady eye, with a mouth shutting 
 on what he said like a trap, with broad, full temples 
 and a finely stubborn chin. This was Maxwell s 
 ancient friend and some kind of remote kinsman. 
 They had, I think, a common great-grandmother. 
 The other head, Mr. Hugh Llewellyn, had been 
 twice in Equatorial Africa. He was a man of fifty, 
 lean, of an Arab brown, with a black and vivid eye, 
 a cool, restrained, enduring enthusiasm. Behind 
 him doubtless were Welsh chiefs and Welsh bards. 
 
 204 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 With all the glamour of a kind of Glendower, he had 
 abundant practical strength, could appraise skil 
 fully, seize wisely, hold tenaciously. Ethnology 
 was his passion. He served his science like a knight 
 and lover. Maxwell presented me to these two. 
 They talked and questioned me. They had cham 
 bers together, somewhere above a roaring street. 
 
 The next day I met John Sydney, the physician 
 of the expedition. Before long I knew also Philip 
 Grantham, the young half-brother of Sir Charles, 
 and Carthew Roberts, a general utility, purely ad 
 venturous spirit with an invaluable knack of seeing 
 the joke in the hardest places. Somewhat later I 
 became acquainted with Mannheim, the naturalist. 
 We were, in all, eight white men. Twice we dined 
 with Sir Charles and Mr. Llewellyn to get the hang 
 of one another, said our hosts. We met, too, various 
 backers of the expedition, Royal Geographic men, 
 men of scientific societies, and others. Sir Charles s 
 was largely the money, but to some extent there 
 was help from these bodies. Preparations of sorts 
 were still making. Sir Charles seized Maxwell, but 
 the latter released me. "You ve got two weeks. 
 Go where you want to and report here on the 
 first." I left Ahasuerus with a West Indian man of 
 color whom we found employed in the small hotel 
 where we stopped, and I myself went far and wide 
 in that holiday. I went for two or three days to 
 Edinburgh, thinking of my grandfather, and of how 
 he had talked of Scotland as though he saw it, 
 when his great-grandfather had been the last, in 
 his direct line, to see it. Scotland England 
 glowed fair to me that summer. 
 
 205 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 It was at York that there befell me a piece of 
 reality subjective, if you please, but of such 
 strength that the subjective forced, at least for 
 itself and to itself, the outer, the objective covering. 
 
 I had walked about the town and upon the old 
 wall, and I had spent an hour in the cathedral. I 
 went to my inn and sat down to write to Miriam. 
 I told her of the day the minster the streets 
 the walls. The page was half covered. . . . 
 
 The old life of this place and of many another 
 such place beat in me strongly. The rhythm grew 
 marked, powerful a great pendulum a great 
 piston-rod a mill turning a dusky, stilly moving 
 fervor, wide under the arched sky, beginning to emit 
 sparks. I put down the pen, and sat motionless, 
 aiding the widening and deepening. Sometimes I 
 could do this to an extraordinary extent. There was 
 nothing supernatural about it. How can there be 
 anything supernatural? All that can be said is that 
 there is much of the natural that is not yet per 
 ceived or lived by us, and that certain energy- 
 complexes know a little more of the natural than do 
 others. Take a thinker, take an artist let him 
 somehow find out how to prepare, concentrate, in 
 tensify, in a high degree take memory, imagina 
 tion, knowledge, power of inference, power of syn 
 thesis make all more mighty by ten, twenty, fifty, 
 a hundred per cent. and that complex will know 
 more of reality than it did. If all is within the mind 
 then the athlete mind, in its periods of highest, 
 skilfullest exercise, will meet its own phenomena in 
 a kinglier garb. Sensation and emotion may find 
 themselves oceanic. But where is the unnaturalness ? 
 
 206 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 Now here so long as the control increases with the 
 rest. 
 
 I went consciously, with volition, in and in. And 
 there I met a self that was larger than the travel 
 ing, penetrative edge usually called myself. I was 
 Michael Forth, sitting at the inn table, but there 
 was in presence I of it, and it of me a far larger, 
 permeative, recollecting, moving power. There were 
 the background and the thickness of things. Then 
 out of the generalness, the universality, one sector 
 struck into light. It was as if a Titan mind did as 
 does the mind of the average man remembered a 
 past strain of things. 
 
 The inn was gone, the table, Michael Forth sit 
 ting there. Town and country held, but they were 
 changed. The minster rose, but smaller; the walls 
 were there, but warded. There spread over river 
 flats, over a shaggy forest, and over a wold, red light 
 from a red and sinking sun, red and great. Here the 
 river ran pale and gleaming like vellum held before 
 a candle, and here it ran red like missal paint. Far 
 and near and in and out made little difference when 
 the Titan was remembering. Black boats crept 
 over the sea; black boats rode in the river s mouth 
 many of them. The rowers and those who rowed 
 not left them. We were Northmen with shields 
 and spears and knives. . . . Wold and forest, but also 
 grain-fields, meadows with kine feeding, rough roads, 
 timber homesteads with ruder, smaller houses clus 
 tering around, with fence and ditch. Taken far and 
 wide, many of these might be named ; also there were 
 larger clusters, hamlets, villages. And in all men 
 were arming. We were mostly tall men, fair, strong. 
 
 207 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 The wold cut the sun in the middle, then the wold 
 ate the sun. Dark! 
 
 We poured from homestead, hamlet, village, and 
 we joined the Northmen. (They were common to 
 me, in me; I was them all.) We of the boats, we of 
 the land, Saxon-English and Danes, we moved like 
 the rivers of spring, bent on cleansing York. 
 
 We were asleep in York we, Northmen also, by 
 way of Normandy. Many and many we were 
 asleep, in the castle, in stone houses that we held. 
 We slept also, citizens of York, Saxon-English men 
 and women and children, sleeping, sleeping, dream 
 ing. Castle sentinels waked, and warders of the wall. 
 Normans all were these. Certain of the citizens 
 waked, men and women with arms at hand, but hid 
 den yet, with beating hearts, with whispering speech. 
 
 My life my life and Miriam s life poured along 
 roads with the oncoming, watched with the watch 
 ing, slept with the sleeping. . . . Knowledge did not 
 descend to detail; small, sharp, inclosed events re 
 mained unentered upon. But there was massive, 
 beating perception, long, deep, and wide percep 
 tion and emotion. 
 
 This increased until there grew roar and surge of 
 it. Michael Forth had not known that brain and 
 heart could answer to such reverberations. 
 
 Men of the black boats, Danes English atheling 
 and freeling and last we reached the walls of York. 
 English within we opened a gate. Norman within 
 we shouted, "Arouse! * and started wildered from 
 sleep. Attackers and attacked, we locked and 
 fought. We fiercely locked, we fiercely fought. 
 Self murderously fought self. 
 
 208 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 Wrath and pain and woe, and all titanic, for it 
 was one body! There was one body there, one ap 
 prehension, one confused, fierce mind, one volume 
 of murky and terrible passion struck through here 
 and there with clean fierce light. There was hideous 
 fear, anger, woe, the mouth brass, the ear discord, 
 the touch pain. All of us together! All of us, in 
 no wise separate, tearing at our own flesh, own 
 ^o,nds at own throats. . . . 
 
 To that joined, enlarged, through-and- through 
 consciousness all this thousandfold event came as 
 would come to the lesser, the minute, the atomic 
 consciousness painful, heavy thought. It brought a 
 pang of self -weariness, lostness, and despair. So 
 painful was it that the giant consciousness must dis 
 miss it as a man dismisses a negative, dragging, 
 poisoned mood. 
 
 The wave sank stiller yet stiller. The sea lay 
 calm. 
 
 The inn came back, the room, the table, Michael 
 Forth. ... I drew long breath, I lifted my head from 
 my hands. Before me lay the letter to Miriam, and 
 the sentence where I had put down the pen. "I 
 believe, and you believe, that sooner or later we ll 
 be able to walk at will in the past. It is us it is 
 our past we own it." 
 
 I put out my hand toward the paper, then with 
 drew it. The sea was rising again. That conscious 
 ness that could think and remember in solids took 
 repossession. The Michael Forth of me again 
 rested, head in hands. 
 
 There was the outdoors, wide, wide! There was 
 the indoors in the monastery stone passages, 
 
 209 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 stone cells, stone church. We were chanting, monks 
 were chanting. Not only monastery in one place 
 only, not only one company of monks, but far and 
 wide, double monasteries, men and women, abbeys, 
 priories, nunneries, hermit-cells. That Awareness 
 flickered through them all. ... It was as though that 
 greater consciousness, fevered and harmed the mo 
 ment before, had turned in its reverie and brought 
 forward for relief another long thought, a tran- 
 quilizing element. The feeling now, though so 
 spacious, the composite feeling now, was artless, a 
 little melancholy, a little lifted. ... It had been 
 artless before, too, like a child s pain and rage 
 vastened. (On that plane how could the brain of 
 the man by the table take more than lower, almost 
 infantine vibrations?) . . . The waves then were 
 calmer, the feeling was musical, plaintive. Within 
 it might have been picked out a thousand discords, 
 but these were covered by harmonies, and the whole 
 melted into this music. (I felt now that there 
 had been music in the state before this state, but 
 more turbulent, heavier, greatly alloyed.) 
 
 I willed to contract, to find a concrete life in 
 all these lives. ... I was the monk Eadwine in 
 his cell. 
 
 There was some penance for some heretical word. 
 I lay face down, cross-shaped upon the flags, had 
 lain there long, must lay there long. Cold was the 
 cell, aching my body. I heard the cock crow beyond 
 the garden. I heard my brothers chanting in the 
 church hard by. And still there went round in my 
 brain just that for which I lay there. "What should 
 God make souls out of other than Himself, seeing 
 
 210 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 that He is all ? Then, being of God, and there being 
 no other than God, the soul is still God " 
 
 The cock crew, the chanting swelled, fainted, died. 
 There were darkness and wind upon the wold. 
 
 Back I came to Michael Forth, sitting in the 
 York inn. I drew breath and shook myself. I 
 touched the letter to Miriam. I gathered round me 
 Flowerfield and Rest well. Deep is life deep, deep 
 wide is life, wide as from Sinus to Vega high is 
 life! 
 
 I rose and walked the room. I laid aside the letter 
 till morning. I stood at the window and looked out 
 upon the minster and the stars behind it. Ere I 
 went to bed I prayed to the upper reaches, to the 
 heart and mind and spirit of that which we surely 
 are, that Whole, that God. 
 
 On the day named I reported to Maxwell in 
 London. Presently we were gone from England. 
 
 It was the time of war with the Mahdi. Egypt 
 and the Nile that way had ceased for a time to be 
 practicable. From Suez, Red Sea, and Indian Ocean 
 we passed to Zanzibar, and here, in a month s stay, 
 we outfitted beyond the outfitting in England. 
 When we touched the coast of the old continent, 
 when the in-country took us, we were a party of 
 not far from two hundred, counting many ebon 
 men and chocolate-hued men and a few pale-brown 
 men and a handful of white men. We had pack- 
 animals, mules, and donkeys, and all the parapher 
 nalia of a right scientific expedition. At Zanzibar 
 we had found awaiting us an old African trader who 
 knew many things and had seen much since his 
 boyhood on the Cornish coast, and with him Fer- 
 
 211 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 raro, the Italian anthropologist. These two joined 
 us. We had besides, at the start, two missionaries 
 from Mombasa who wished to go to a daughter 
 mission in the hills. So we went into Africa, and 
 more than two years passed before, at the mouth of 
 Congo, we saw with rising hearts an English ship. 
 
 212 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 OICKNESS and a Masai raid befell us early in our 
 O adventure. The porters suffered from the first, 
 but in the raid all alike. An Arab caravan-man 
 was killed, four negroes were wounded, Sir Charles 
 had a flesh wound from a flung spear, and I a rifle- 
 ball through the left arm, breaking the bone. The 
 Masai, finding us too strong, left as suddenly as 
 they had come. We made camp, buried the Arab, 
 and stayed to heal the sick and the hurt in a place 
 out of a fairy-book, so strange and beautiful it was. 
 With my wound I had more than a touch of fever. 
 Ahasuerus and Maxwell nursed me and John Sydney 
 set the bone and helped me up and out. This was 
 the end for me of illness. I came out of it seasoned, 
 and the rest of Africa gave me only momentary 
 hurts, though many an adventure when it seemed 
 that death or maiming was nigh. 
 
 We recovered the sick and moved on. By degrees 
 the first novelty, beautiful, with a dash of terror, 
 passed. There set in routine interest, routine toil. 
 
 We were not primarily an exploring expedition. 
 Exploration of much of the route taken had been 
 done for us. But it fell to us to lighten certain ob 
 scurities that overhung affluents of the two great 
 streams. Nor had our enterprise political color. 
 
 213 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 Yet, where we lived days or weeks with savage 
 tribes, and some of these not at all without glim 
 merings of things to be, we gave, I suppose, seed- 
 ideas. At one place, on high land, we met a tribe 
 that was assuredly lifting. It had a king who was, 
 in his way, an Alfred. This man learned more than 
 one thing that would, in the long run, serve him. . . . 
 The expedition s official intent was to increase 
 knowledge of life in various forms, to read the 
 rocks, make a great collection of plants, draw and 
 photograph wild, moving life, learn all we might for 
 zoology, anthropology, ethnology. We were to put 
 down in black and white observation, experience, 
 deduction. We were to bring back to Europe some 
 valuable journal journal made at last of journals, 
 half a dozen contributing. 
 
 Maxwell was no journalist. He deputed it to 
 me, and I kept our common record. But, besides 
 this, I began, beyond Victoria Nyanza, a record 
 and comment of my own, written after my own 
 fashion. In the weeks that we waited where Congo 
 enters Atlantic, and upon the England-bound ship, 
 I put this in order, and it became Letters from Africa. 
 The idea of the African Dream came to me under 
 Ruwenzori, but I did not write it for three years. 
 
 At times this expedition tasted beauty and marvel 
 to the height; at times it wrestled with dangers, 
 trials, and fears. At times it met gross weariness, 
 or stumbled in tunnels of anxiety with a feeling of 
 all Africa caving in upon it. Sickness visited us, 
 and now and again death. 
 
 Ere we were two months upon our way Philip 
 Grantham died from some poisonous thing. 
 
 214 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 We felt grief, we felt awe, he had been so bright, 
 vigorous, like a Greek boy. Sir Charles stood, sat, 
 moved, with lips so pressed together that there was 
 but one dark line. We buried the shell out of which 
 was gone the young master. We raised a little cairn 
 over it, we stayed there by it two days and nights. 
 We marched on, Sir Charles very stern-looking, but 
 himself, with a will to keep his cloud of sorrow in 
 his own sky. 
 
 That night we made camp in a sandy country, 
 above a trickle of water, with a sighing wind about 
 us, blowing, twisting, the smoke from our fire. The 
 white men s tents were pitched together, the Arabs 
 lay a little apart, the many negroes couched about a 
 fire with their heads almost in the embers. Each 
 night two white men shared the watch. One slept 
 till the dark was half gone, when his fellow waked 
 him and himself slept. The trader Robinson and 
 I parted this night between us. He slept upon the 
 sand, gleaming under a half -moon. I sat and lis 
 tened to the wind and all it talked about. The 
 moon traveled westward, the camp lay still. I 
 thought that in one place I saw something move, 
 and I went softly that way, to find that it was a 
 dwarf tree stirring in the wind. Returning, as I 
 passed Sir Charles s tent I heard him groan. 
 
 I sat near the sleeping trader, and I looked toward 
 Sir Charles, and I wished I willed I tried to 
 help him. 
 
 If indeed, and I believed it, we were members 
 one of another, then he was in me and I in him. 
 And the "dead" youth, the invisible youth so 
 visible to the mind s eye, so penetrated by the 
 
 215 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 mind s touch, so felt for and felt with, understood, 
 warmed with liking, recognized as hardly had he 
 been before what perversity to say that he was 
 wholly gone! He had not gone he was here in 
 that sea wherein all we bathed, in that organism 
 where death and separateness faded out. 
 
 I sat upon the sand, above the watercourse be 
 neath the moon. I drew myself together, concenter 
 ing, until the spark came, until the vibration changed, 
 until there were long, swift light and warmth no 
 forms, but fluidity, energy, radiance. I was aware 
 that if I had been strong enough to go farther, I 
 might remake forms make them fairer, even, subt 
 ler, less destructible, greater. But I was not strong 
 enough nothing like strong enough. I tried to 
 direct the waves of assurance, of comfort. I wished 
 him in the dark tent to feel them. I tried to soothe 
 as I would have tried to soothe my own hurt hand 
 or arm, as I would have tried to comfort and recover 
 myself. He was myself, his hurt my hurt. That 
 was the thing that I believed with passion of all 
 things. I tried to bring the living youth alive in 
 him. If there was continuum, if there was plenum, 
 we were all one. I tried to make the underneath 
 flowing rise in him, bring the strongest comfort. I 
 did not go out to him; he was in myself. I found him 
 there; I tried to make the true blood flow in a 
 numbed part of myself and that self was not just 
 Michael Forth. Michael Forth was but a fiber of 
 that self. All the small "I s" of earth were but 
 surface colorations of that Identity. 
 
 The perception the action if action there were 
 could not be long sustained. I had tried from 
 
 216 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 a fourth dimension to engender light and warmth 
 in one who suffered. I did not know I do not 
 know H there was success though I think that 
 there was some success filmy enough, undoubtedly. 
 . . . The inner sphere closed again from view. The 
 moon shone, the wind sighed, the water murmured. 
 It was time to wake the trader. 
 
 We looked upon Victoria Nyanza and headwaters 
 of Nile. We lived for a time beside a village in 
 western Uganda, clean, with banana-groves, in 
 habited by a Bahima folk, tall and handsome. We 
 were plentifully provided with objects of barter, 
 and they brought us in return what we needed. 
 The country was most beautiful, high, and healthful. 
 Here were cattle and game in herds, and many a 
 strange great quadruped. The native chiefs and 
 strong men, the women, the old men, and the 
 children showed themselves friendly. They came by 
 the paths that were everywhere, a faint reticulation 
 over all the land, to our camp, or we trod the same 
 lines to the village. We sat under the trees that 
 they favored. Llewellyn and Ferraro more especially 
 throve here. Llewellyn had picture-books which he 
 showed the Bahima; he told them stories like an 
 old Welsh bard. He had the gift of discrimination. 
 I would watch his bright eye dart and fix upon some 
 one member of the bronze circle. "There s one who 
 can tell a story! Come ye forth, friend, there, and 
 unpack us tale or ballad!" Two out of three times 
 Llewellyn succeeded. The glories of the Bahima 
 jetted forth. Meantime the Welshman, in the 
 shadow of some one s broad shoulder, drew out 
 pocket tablet and pencil and fell to transcribing. 
 
 217 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 He and Ferraro had great knowledge of peoples and 
 types. 
 
 We had in Africa strenuous hours, and again 
 hours unoccupied. In some of the latter I put my 
 self to school to Llewellyn and Ferraro. I learned 
 much from them. I heard corroborated that which 
 I had always guessed, the profound unity of the 
 human family. And out of the unity, that stem, 
 that vine, but never detached from it, the multi 
 tude of branches. Some were wildings and some 
 garden and orchard and vineyard glories all in 
 proportion, it seemed to me, as they kept knowledge 
 of the fire and sap of the whole. I learned much of 
 great drama from the Welshman and the Italian s 
 lore strange tales of the divers leaves and buds, 
 twigs and branches of the ash Yggdrasil. 
 
 But it was with Mannheim, the naturalist, that I 
 roamed farthest. This man, twenty years my elder, 
 son of a Jewish rabbi, born in Hamburg, raised in 
 London, had broken from cities into gardens, into 
 fields and lane sides, into forests. The king who 
 knew alike the cedar and the hyssop of the wall 
 might have found somewhat of himself in this mind. 
 Mannheim had a tall, thin figure, soft, curled hair 
 upon head and chin, a hooked nose, eyes now keen 
 and now deep, still, and inward-looking. Sometimes 
 for days I went with him, in and out of Uganda 
 forests. We took Ahasuerus with us and three or 
 four Bahima men. At times Mannheim talked about 
 himself, his youth and hard schooling and emerging 
 purposes. "Each one finds what he seeks," said 
 Mannheim, "and each one seeks what he is able 
 to find." 
 
 218 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 "Even if he seek the ultimate circle and the 
 original fountain?" 
 
 "Even that. But he must give himself time. As 
 you say, Rome was not built in a day. . . . Certainly 
 the new Jerusalem is not built in a day." 
 
 We sat beneath an acacia and looked at lilies in 
 an arm of marsh-water. I repeated aloud: 
 
 "Bring me my bow of burning gold, 
 
 Bring me my arrows of desire, 
 Bring me my spear! oh, clouds unfold, 
 
 Bring me my chariot of fire! 
 I will not cease from mental fight, 
 
 Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, 
 Till we have built Jerusalem 
 
 In England s green and pleasant land." 
 
 "Who said that?" 
 
 "Blake." 
 
 We sat silent for a time. Then said Mannheim: 
 "The next century is to be the psychic century. 
 Fin de sibcle they call this piece of time; nineteen 
 hundred will begin to listen to a still, small voice." 
 
 "You mean that the conscious subjective and, cor 
 respondingly, the objective will widen its borders?" 
 
 "Yes. We shall begin to use nerve and muscle 
 that have been forming." 
 
 "What are the first movements of the new child?" 
 
 "They have great variety. Naturally. At first 
 the freedom seems wholly interior." 
 
 "Old self is very gloomy and insists to larger self 
 that it is mistaken." 
 
 "Yes. All kinds of idle fears. Babes learning to 
 walk the chair and mother s arms too far away!" 
 
 219 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 " Perseverance and courage?" 
 
 "Yes. It s worth all boldness." 
 
 I looked at the lilies by the reeds. They were very 
 fair; they trembled on the dark water; they seemed 
 lit from beneath, sapphire, exquisite. The reeds 
 grew musical instruments and living green and of 
 a vivid grace. It was a flash of transfiguration. 
 I knew these at times. They came and went, rifts 
 of heaven, which then closed. I spoke. "All that 
 you call psychical double-strengthened memory, 
 imagination at white heat, intuition that is a long 
 reasoning process flashed together, response to all 
 manner of stimuli that once were not noticed all 
 that is by no means all of it. There is no rest short 
 of the conscious Totality!" 
 
 "I agree," said Mannheim. "All that we can 
 now conceive, or that we can conceive to-morrow, 
 is conceived but to be lost in greater light. All the 
 same, take what we can now do, and let it bring 
 forth what wonder it will! It is first steps. After 
 walking comes running; after running, flying; after 
 flying we may begin to look toward that wide home 
 which is omnipresence." He sat silent; then: "I 
 recognized you as one of the new children. There 
 are more of these children now than used to be. 
 Presently there will be many another race. Then 
 will the mass of things begin to change." 
 
 One of the men brought him a strange flower. 
 Mannheim studied it, touching, handling, with the 
 naturalist s respect and understanding. 
 
 "I have not seen one like it," I said. 
 
 "No," he answered. "It has fellows, but they are 
 rare. It is emerging from a class. See, here and 
 
 220 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 here, how it differs. . . . But all that it is doing is 
 simply using its powers." 
 
 "There s a thing," I said, "in Dante s Purgatory 
 that struck me sharp and quick when I read it as 
 a boy. There s a round of the mountain where the 
 souls lie prostrate with face pressed and eyes blinded 
 against rock and dust. They have lain there, each 
 one, very long. My soul hath cleaved unto the dust. 9 
 . . . One of them stirs, rises upon hands, rises to 
 knees, stands, and goes. The mountain thrills and 
 gives forth a cry of praise. Presently to Dante and 
 Virgil appears the shade risen from that rock like 
 Christ from the grave. They converse, and the 
 soul it is one Statius tells them that the moun 
 tain trembles and acclaims when any spirit among 
 those prostrate ones who have been covetous only 
 of earth, of metal, and of dust, and all the dream and 
 cozenage of life 
 
 feels itself 
 
 So purified, that it may rise, or move 
 For rising. . . . 
 Purification, by the will alone 
 Is proved, that free to change society 
 Seizes the soul rejoicing in her will. . . . 
 Free wish for happier clime. 
 
 4 So Statius. Then says Virgil: 
 
 "Now I see the net 
 That takes ye here; and how the toils are loosed." 
 
 "Yes," said Mannheim. "I hold that to be true 
 through every order." 
 
 221 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 With the flower still in his hand we went back 
 to camp. Two or three days after this we were out 
 at the foot of a fairly high mountain, in a grove of 
 bamboo. It was a grove of strange and rich sug 
 gestion; fairy pillars, fairy arcades, smoothness, 
 straightness, jewel-light and fine, sere whispering. 
 After a while we rested, lying on dry, clean earth. 
 Outside the bamboo the men with us sat under a 
 breadfruit-tree and played some game with bits of 
 bone. We saw them brokenly, glintingly, through 
 the forest of bronze-green jointed stalks. 
 
 Said the naturalist: "There s a kind of experi 
 menting that must go on all the time if we are to 
 get anywhere. Laboratory work like any other 
 patient trials and then patient trials again. If 
 once in a hundred times there comes fluorescence 
 results we are glad and praise the America 
 beyond the foam. . . . You get into wide past and 
 wide present easily?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "And you travel within, as one calls it? You 
 say, I am in my birthplace or, I am in New 
 York or London or maybe Can ton or Calcutta?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "You use all your knowledge, sense of probabili 
 ties, associative power, and so forth, and sometimes 
 palely, sometimes less palely comprehend, comprise, 
 are things, situations, movements, events, and trains 
 of these?" 
 
 "Yes. I go many places within myself, and I 
 do many things. But the reality feeling is sometimes 
 very weak." 
 
 "The reality will increase. . . . Let us experiment. 
 
 222 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 ... I have been in America. I have been to your 
 Niagara Falls. Have you been there?" 
 
 "Yes long ago." 
 
 "Can you recall the cataract? The rush of the 
 river down, the thunder, and the upflung churned 
 water" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Then recall it now with all the energy you can! 
 I will do likevvise. See if we can meet and double 
 the perception. Sometimes it is possible. It is 
 worth the trying." 
 
 The bamboo grove held as as in some magic 
 grot, cool and dim, stately, whispering. I shut 
 my eyes and sat still, breathing lightly. The inner 
 man, into whose hands all places run, gave heed to 
 Niagara. 
 
 It was here, the roar and the intense, deep, swift, 
 utter push of the river over the brim! The ground 
 trembled; I knew again the smell of the mass, the 
 chill, the thundering fall, the outflung enormous 
 spray. Niagara! Very well, it was here, and in a 
 high degree of reality. I had put my strength to 
 bringing it here. There was the sense, as always 
 when a thing like this was done, of a widened brain, 
 of a changed breathing, of a lifted inner firmament. 
 I held Niagara in presence. But Mannheim? That 
 needed another strength. I put forth energy of 
 recognition. ... I felt him. For one instant the two 
 Niagaras roared together. . . . Immense sound, 
 motion, light all significance doubled sense of 
 river where had been brooks, sense of eagle where 
 had been eaglets, sense of triumphing, outfilling 
 life, memory, knowledge the subjective brain, the 
 
 223 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 objective brain, great planets where had been lesser 
 ones everywhere a changed dynamic. . . . The in 
 stant sank and passed. There fell diminution, pal 
 ing, slowing. . . . Here was only the single Niagara, 
 and it seemed a wraith beside what had been. It 
 disappeared. Two men sat in Africa in a grove of 
 bamboo. 
 
 Said Mannheim: "That was a fleeting synthesis 
 of two. Conceive, will you, how it will be when 
 we are all one!" 
 
 224 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 WE were in high country covered with tall grass, 
 sparsely set with trees, sweeping to a climb 
 ing forest. There was a ragged, deep-cut water 
 course, and there were ant-hills, little lower than 
 the native huts and shaped much like these. So 
 high were we that there was no great heat. We 
 breathed salubriousness. The mountains above us 
 had snow upon their brows. This was elephant 
 country, and we kept fires about our camp to ward 
 off any trampling rush from the herds we saw, 
 chiefly afar, but sometimes near. We had had a 
 stiff three days march through broken and hilly 
 country, thinly inhabited. Sir Charles called a 
 halt of two days and nights. 
 
 Maxwell, Ferraro, and I, and with us Ahasuerus 
 and two Bantu porters, made our way along the 
 flanks of a hill a mile or two from camp. We had 
 climbed a bold point and had gazed thence over a 
 green and tawny, just undulating sea to gigantic 
 tumbled, frozen waves, white- tipped. Coming down, 
 we saw below us at no great distance a piece of the 
 forest in agitation, shaking and bending as though 
 a bag of Eolus were opening just there and nowhere 
 else. " Elephants!" said the Bantus. 
 
 We came from the hillside out upon the plain and 
 
 225 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 began to cross this toward the watercourse. Trees 
 were still about us, but not many. Between us and 
 the camp stretched a ribbon of wood through which 
 we must pass. We neared it. Suddenly it, too, 
 shook, and there poured from it angry trumpeting. 
 We stopped short. The Bant us began to chatter. 
 "They surmise," said Ferraro, who was the language- 
 master of the three, "that the camp made some 
 elephants angry, coming near it perhaps and driven 
 away by shots and sight of fire. We missed hear 
 ing the shots because the wind is blowing straight 
 from us to the camp. But by the same token we had 
 best look to ourselves, for the elephants will pres 
 ently know that we are here. And they are angry. 
 Some one of them is hurt." 
 
 We were as far from the deeper forest that clothed 
 the hill as from the ravine of the watercourse, down 
 which we might conceivably make our way safely 
 enough. The grass grew so tall that in part it 
 screened us. We began to move quickly across the 
 plain to the watercourse. We had gone but a little 
 way when the note of the trumpeting changed. 
 "They ve got our wind," said Maxwell. 
 
 The edge of the ribbon of wood seemed to bulge, 
 to start forward, to shake out pieces of shadow. 
 There were ten or twelve of these protuberances. 
 They came away from the ribbon showed them 
 selves for angry giants willing to charge us, over 
 take and trample us. We were men, not elephants, 
 but we must and did run. There was a great bull in 
 front. We reached the watercourse, before us a 
 precipitous bank, down which we might plunge with 
 some risk to neck and limb, but which the angered 
 
 226 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 herd and the more than angered leader might hardly 
 attempt. Ferraro, Maxwell, Ahasuerus, the Bantus, 
 and myself all seemed there. Ahasuerus 
 
 We were over the rim when I missed Ahasuerus. 
 I turned back. I saw him a hundred yards and 
 more away, limping, trying to run. The eight or 
 ten cows and young elephants with the great bull 
 had stopped in a grove of slender trees to the right, 
 near the hill. But the bull, with lifted trunk, with 
 gleaming tusks, was racing, trumpeting, toward him. 
 I ran. I shouted. I waved above my head, above 
 the grass, a coat that I carried. 
 
 The oncoming elephant saw me and swerved from 
 Ahasuerus. I ran, drawing him farther. . . . There 
 was little in my mind but a singing of old days in 
 the corn-field, Ahasuerus and I working in the hot 
 sun, in the same furrow. The corn-field and the 
 swimming-hole 
 
 The voice of the elephant was in my very ears. I 
 seemed to see blended with my shadow the shadow 
 of his tusks, of the trunk curving toward me like 
 a sickle, of the vast, lifted leg. The report of Max 
 well s rifle blended with the trumpeting. 
 
 The elephant received the ball, but was not ap 
 parently severely hurt. He half wheeled, missed 
 me, tore beyond me, and stopped, bellowing. Then 
 from the distant wood, in agitation, came a burst of 
 calling. The cows moving in this direction now also 
 called. The elephant seemed for one moment to 
 think. Then he swung his bulk about and left us, 
 trumpeting of his griefs. 
 
 Ahasuerus, running with the rest of us, had 
 caught foot in some root, suffered a heavy fall and 
 
 227 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 a sprained ankle. Now we gathered him up and, 
 keeping to the watercourse, made our way to camp. 
 
 Ahasuerus said: " Twas worse n cramp in the 
 swimmin -hole ! First, I saw the horrors and noth 
 ing else to amount to anything. And then I saw 
 Daddy Guinea, sitting somewhere, smoking his 
 pipe, and looking happy as a June-bug, and he said, 
 Come erlong, boy come erlong through! I sho 
 was glad to hear you shouting at that elephant!" 
 
 Maxwell, in camp that night, supper eaten and 
 bedtime come, leaned against a tree before the 
 tent. "Ahasuerus all right?" 
 
 "Oh yes! Hell have to ride one of the mules for 
 several days. 
 
 Maxwell stood listening to the night sounds in 
 the bush, beyond the smoky ring of our fires. "If 
 that fellow had trampled you into pulp, as for a 
 little it certainly seemed that he would . . . what 
 then? What next?" 
 
 "I didn t think," I answered; "but if I had, I 
 should have said, There will still be a "then," 
 and a "next." How are you going to stop there 
 being? The rush of a bull-elephant yes, or of 
 Niagara is nothing to the impetus of you or 
 of me!" 
 
 Lying on my bed that night the "you" and "me" 
 went more subtly together. Variation and Unity. 
 Why did we think "Variation," and then "Unity," 
 and turn from one to the other, restless, perplexed, 
 still keeping succession, opposition, parties to choose 
 between? But Variation-and-Unity, or Unity-and- 
 Variation the phrase one noun. ... I lay there one 
 power, an organism, and yet, God knows, I included 
 
 228 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 variousness. ... To feel as and with this camp, both 
 in its oneness and its multiplicity what was that 
 but self -cognition as a larger organism? This camp, 
 this Africa, these seven seas and five continents, 
 this earth, this solar system, this visible and in 
 visible universe. . . . Ever a greater, more conscious 
 self. . . . 
 
 Magnitude was around me, power, an upper realm 
 of mind. But it sank away, it vanished, like sheet 
 lightning. It ever vanished thus, and I cried within, 
 "O God! when will the wings hold? * 
 
 But out of the flash came always, I knew, an angel 
 into one of my many hells. Down there, under my 
 daily consciousness, a light in darkness, it continued 
 to work. 
 
 Definitely now, in my life, I was come to the plane 
 where two lives, the inner and the outer, are in the 
 crucible and must melt together. Now the heat 
 and light that were the crucible increased in intensity, 
 and now they sank to scarcely a glowing. The 
 crucible was immense, the lives within it multiform; 
 the process due to extend itself over centuries, 
 possibly through eons. Much was within the 
 crucible that was obstinate, ignorant, selfish, and 
 perverse. But I knew at least that I was in the 
 crucible . . . also that I was the crucible. 
 
 We went on from this country. Here we changed 
 carriers save for a few who would still accompany 
 us. Zanzibar and Coast men, well paid, in good 
 humor, gave us ample good-bys. Uganda men, 
 tall and strong, shouldered rolls and cases. The 
 moving line stretched afar over rolling grassland. 
 I thought of Indians afile long since, through Amer- 
 
 229 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 ican woods. These Uganda folk, Hamitic men, 
 placed beside the Indian might not seem so very 
 different. 
 
 The mountains rose higher. We gazed upon 
 purple giants, with helmets, under the equator, of 
 silver. As we marched the robes grew green, and 
 we saw the shoulders of naked rock, and the whitened 
 heads held stark and high. Now we were climbing, 
 a moving line like an ant army, upon the lower 
 reaches of the giant s robe. About us were trees of 
 wonder, and from them monkeys chattered at us. 
 
 At sunset the extended line subsided into the root- 
 knot of camp. We slept in the midst of a forest 
 much less than half asleep. Plateau that we had 
 left, slope that we had mounted, we were eight 
 thousand feet above the sea. High above us yet 
 watched the snowy heads. 
 
 The following day we sought and found a lofty 
 pass through which the line might cross the range 
 and begin the descent upon the western side. Here, 
 in a hollow of fine Alpine grass and flowering shrub, 
 we slept, ten thousand feet above the far-distant 
 sea. The next day and night camp rested here, 
 under charge of Robinson, the trader, long known 
 and well liked by the Bahima men. With him 
 stayed Carthew Roberts, and likewise Ahasuerus. 
 The rest of us would climb to the helmet that lifted 
 over the pass, to the very helmet feather. 
 
 So we did. In the good, late afternoon light we 
 came out below the snow, upon a wide ledge of rock, 
 from which we might see afar from north to south 
 by way of the west. The white head above us, the 
 very crest, we left for sunrise. This ledge was fitted 
 
 230 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 for the night. There was not only right surface, 
 but at the back a sheltered half -cavern. 
 
 Chancing to be in advance, I came first upon the 
 ledge. I saw, with an intake of the breath, the great 
 view. To right and left mountain arms; below in 
 the pass the fairy plumes of our camp-fires ; out and 
 beyond and very far below, washed in the gold of 
 the lowering sun, illimitable forest. I stood and 
 looked. Out of a belt of dwarf growth, up the 
 difficult stony slope toward the ledge, came the 
 others, one by one. With the sun behind me, I 
 watched their coming. Maxwell, with his long 
 stride and his dry, poised strength, was ahead. 
 Ferraro, so much smaller, but agile as a grass 
 hopper, came next, then Llewellyn, then Mannheim, 
 then Sir Charles, then John Sydney 
 
 As I stood there Conrad Conrad flashed into 
 mind Conrad and the Peaks of Otter and the tawny 
 man. 
 
 The rich, the amber light bathed me standing 
 on the rock, and bathed them coming on. But to 
 my senses there seemed something more than warm 
 light from a ninety-odd million miles away, eight 
 hundred thousand miles in diameter, ball of fire. 
 There streamed from within outward a happiest 
 sense of strength and lightness. It was as though 
 I had caught a ray from a supersensible sun. My 
 frame felt vast, fluid without waste, transparent 
 without colorlessness, strong without weight, plastic 
 to thought, a thrilling, lucent, finer matter. I felt 
 this of the frame I called mine, and I felt it of those 
 companions in Africa coming toward me. It was 
 as though, feeling it of the one frame, I must feel it 
 
 231 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 of the others, because all were in truth one frame. 
 The sense was of new bodies breaking from old 
 sheaths, bodies fed with, built up from, elements 
 highly evolved, grain of upland fields ground in 
 golden mills. It came with indescribable breadth 
 and depth, indescribable exquisiteness of sensation, 
 indescribable delicacy, richness, and strength of emo 
 tion. Maxwell, stepping now upon the rock, was 
 beautiful to me, and so were Ferraro and Mannheim, 
 Llewellyn, Sir Charles, John Sydney, and so were 
 the two Bahima men. 
 
 They mounted to the shelf of rock with the farther 
 snowy crest behind and half Africa, it seemed, 
 below. "Ha!" said Sir Charles. "I suppose we live 
 for high lights such as these!" His grim face relaxed. 
 There came to him, and I suppose to all of us, the 
 wave of Philip Grantham s hand and his infectious 
 laughter. 
 
 Below the ledge was broken scrub enough. We 
 gathered wood and made a great fire. We had food 
 with us and we cooked and ate our supper. It tasted 
 most good there in the winey air, by the crackling 
 flame. Supper over, we examined the half-cave 
 behind us for sleeping-quarters and we gathered 
 more wood. 
 
 We felt as yet no desire for sleep, and the west 
 was magnificent, while all the land below lay still 
 beneath a purple pall. Llewellyn broke into song. 
 The words were Welsh. "In praise of mountains," 
 explained the singer. "Of mountains and the spirit 
 who couches among them!" 
 
 * ! We sat about the fire and fell to talking. 
 Llewellyn, usually rather silent, seemed to have 
 
 232 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 his lips unlocked by this place. " There comes out 
 the golden Venus Venus Urania! Mannheim! 
 Where do you think may be what they call the fourth 
 dimension?" 
 
 "In the subjective. Within us." 
 
 "We must be just being born in that world," 
 said the Welshman. "Earth and heaven! What 
 an objective we ll make ere we are grown!" 
 
 Sir Charles spoke. "Where do you think are the 
 dead?" 
 
 "Within us." 
 
 "But there s no real realization of that any 
 more than there is of other things I read about, 
 hear talked about, in this amazing world!" 
 
 "Give Time time. You ve just said that it is 
 amazing." 
 
 Llewellyn began a half -spoken, half-chanted pro 
 cessional of thought. It may have been partly an 
 improvisation, partly a recitation from some old 
 bard. It began about the mountains, and it went 
 on about the great drama and beauty of the earth. 
 He chanted of seas and islands and continents, of 
 zone and clime, of the outstretched landscape of 
 time, of scintillant currents of peoples. And all 
 came under the mantle of an Individual. 
 
 He ceased his chant. We looked at the stars 
 Rigel and Canopus and Sirius, Achernar and the 
 Southern Cross. John Sydney spoke. "Universal 
 Energy or Everlasting God? Which do you say, 
 Mannheim?" 
 
 "I say the Self that I merge toward," answered 
 Mannheim. "It is the same with Universal Energy 
 and Everlasting God." 
 
 233 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 "And you, Michael ?" 
 
 "I say the same." 
 
 We watched the sky. There was splendor, there 
 was pureness, there was vigor. Each one seemed to 
 feel the center in the other, take thence the point of 
 view. Therefore we had many mountain-tops in one. 
 
 234 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 WE were in the forests where the water sank 
 and trickled toward Congo, not toward Nile. 
 There rose about us a fearful, a magical beauty. 
 
 A path ran that seemed a chain of roots and root 
 lets, kindly pushed above the soil by the trees for 
 our use. So light and yielding was this soil that we 
 seemed to step upon black air or black water that did 
 not wet, but into which there might be sinking. The 
 soil was black vegetal life asleep, thick memories, 
 premonitions of life in infinite leaf. We came into 
 arcades, aisles where water ran, where, far up, so 
 far up, there glowed fillets of blue. Away from these 
 there had never been aught since the world began 
 but a green heaven, a mighty emerald and jade 
 arabesque. 
 
 The air hung humid, warm, oppressively still; the 
 light, green light, rayed from a sun that must be 
 far away and small. Birds or the face of a chim 
 panzee looked down or out upon us. 
 
 The thin, extended line of burdened men wound 
 on slowly, following the naked guide ahead. Foot 
 print fell in footprint, over the black, low-settled 
 mist of old life, so pregnant, so fecund, so instant- 
 ready the moment the spark should call. . . . 
 
 I walked in a forest of my own thought. I was 
 remembering that the earth was alive that those 
 
 235 
 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 whom we called planets stars suns were persons, 
 individuals that there was communication between 
 them that they made a society that they pursued 
 an ideal unity and spoke of an over-self. 
 
 Planetary consciousness solar consciousness 
 universal consciousness, universal, eternal, inte 
 grated ! I saw the star ahead, faint and far, and be 
 tween were light-years as the sands of the sea for 
 number, light-years and their vast successiveness of 
 event. The strange sweetness was that the ray it 
 sent was a ray of home and drew with the cords of 
 home. 
 
 All feeling, all knowing, all doing rang forth from 
 that. There was the heart of action. There was all 
 the action. . . . But what was the action? How to 
 further it? How definitely to let go the little will, 
 let the One Will pour through? How to increase the 
 mind s weak zephyr until the eternal cleansing truth 
 blew free? 
 
 The path wound, though still it went on. The 
 powdery earth that was half -life seemed hardly to 
 afford footing, and yet did give support. Strange 
 trees, ferns, mazy creepers, air-plants, roof over 
 roof, light like the depths of the sea! Suddenly, 
 smilingly, there walked into my mind child-verses 
 learned at my mother s knee: 
 
 Little drops of water, 
 
 Little grains of sand, 
 Make the mighty ocean 
 
 And the pleasant land. 
 
 Still the huge controversy! Was that so or the 
 mighty ocean and the pleasant land did they make 
 
 236 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 the water drops, the sand grains? Or was there no 
 true problem, and the whole vexed question but a 
 lantern -fantasy to melt in the flooding day? 
 
 The flooding day that was what I wanted. 
 
 The enormous forest slept, a sea of strange shapes. 
 I wished to know the life that made the shapes 
 drew limiting lines around its own essence for its 
 own uses knew the use, the purpose, was at itself, 
 gathered its mind together and knew itself. . . . 
 The only path was the inner path, the way of the 
 ever more inclusive, ever less inhibited "I" or "We** 
 just as one chooses to call it. Now Michael Forth 
 called it "I," and now he called it "We." But never 
 did he mean only that manacled, dungeoned par 
 ticle, born in the year 1862. 
 
 The forest halted. Here came and passed and 
 stayed a stream crossed by a swaying bridge of 
 woven lianas. Upon the farther bank, in a brown 
 and green space, appeared rows of smallest, frailest 
 huts of cane, and a body of Pygmies, warned that 
 we were friendly, drawn up by their talk-house to 
 meet us. They struck their drums. Boom ! Boom ! 
 Their fetish-men advanced, striving hard to look 
 terrible. And all around stood the forest, the 
 rooted, the yet further manacled. 
 
 We dwelt several months by this stream, with 
 these Pygmies. They were a simple, low-scale folk, 
 away down, away down. 
 
 I listened to the drum-beat in this village. I 
 watched the ritual of the fetish-men. They were 
 children in height, but they wore head-dresses that 
 they thought made them towering. Around and 
 around they went in a circle. ... It was as though 
 
 237 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 there was an invisible stake, an invisible rope; they 
 got to the end of their tether and went round and 
 round. I thought, "Break the rope, for God s sake, 
 and rise! * 
 
 One night, in a half -dream I saw more than these 
 Pygmies. I saw Africa and its stake and rope and 
 weary circle. . . . Asia and its circle Europe and its 
 circle America and its circle. . . . 
 
 This village, this forest, this stay with the Pygmies, 
 came, with me, into the column of turning-points, the 
 hinge column. 
 
 I was weary of inner debate, weary of turning 
 around my own stake in my own circle. There 
 would come upon me here, if I stayed here forever, 
 withered horror. ... I would clear out trust to 
 rising but move anyhow! 
 
 I had had intimations of a path. To treat syn 
 theses as phenomena to be realized, used, and grown 
 by just as their component phenomena had been 
 realized, used, and grown by to take Memory and 
 Imagination as the great Powers that they were 
 to use Reason with a wider swing to trust Intui 
 tion to cease saying, "It is not penetrable," or, 
 "It is afar," or, "It is dead," or, "Past and Future 
 areunenterable," or, "There is no participation nor 
 perception outside this circle." 
 
 The night held dark and warm and close. There 
 was something tolling in the forest. A red light up- 
 sprang by the talk-tree, and the fetish-men began 
 again their twisted dance. All the Pygmies followed 
 with their eyes ; their bodies also moved in sympathy. 
 
 At Landon once there had been a lynching. I 
 had been among those who tried to stop it. But 
 
 238 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 we had word too late and were there too late. I 
 saw again the swinging body, the crew of masked 
 Pygmies beneath. ... I thought of many another 
 crippled truth and frozen love. America and its 
 weary, ancient circle. . . . 
 
 Break, break from ignorance! Nor halt from 
 fearing, "Is this a path?" Go the way you can go, 
 and trust to its widening and serving the others! 
 
 That night, my body lying straight in the tent 
 that I shared with Maxwell, I went away in the 
 inner man. Just as much as that inner man could 
 reap of inner space, time, and form, he might reap. 
 Just as much as he could understand and share he 
 might understand and share. There was no barrier 
 save himself. 
 
 It had been an oppressive day in this forest and 
 this Pygmy town. The rains were at hand. We 
 faced a considerable stay here, and the prospect 
 had some distaste. ... I went away. I fled like the 
 eagle upon the breathing air. Beneath me flowed 
 the sea. Then there was land and mountain-tops. 
 . . . But up in the air up and up! till it thinned, 
 till atmosphere lay below me as hydrosphere and 
 lithosphere lie under atmosphere. The Sea of Air 
 and I saw its surface as from a cliff is seen the 
 surface of the sea. It was in waves, little and great, 
 and the upper forces dashed against and through 
 it, and there was a wild spray of utterest light. 
 
 Down in the Pygmy village arose some night dis 
 turbance. Maxwell sat up. "It s Ferraro s watch " 
 
 I rose. "I ll go see." 
 
 The affair proved to be nothing more than the 
 push of some forest beast against the last cane 
 
 239 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 hut s most diminutive garden-patch. I returned to 
 the tent. "It s all right." 
 
 Maxwell lay back. "I was dreaming of Scotland. 
 I smelled the moors had heather in my hand. . . . 
 Michael, don t you think that the whole round earth 
 may be within us?" 
 
 "I certainly do. Look in upon Scotland whenever 
 you will!" 
 
 He turned. I knew that there was a woman with 
 him upon the moor. In sleep it mattered not at all 
 that she was what they called "dead." I divined 
 other planes where, too, it did not matter. 
 
 The rains began in the basin of the Congo. We 
 stayed their season out among this Pygmy people. 
 
 We made for ourselves indoor work. . . . For one 
 thing, among others, while I was in this place, I 
 wrote the beginning of a story. I never finished it, 
 never used, later, the fragment. I place it here be 
 cause I was writing out of my own straining toward 
 light, and my own intuitions of certain of the forms 
 and ways of that faint, faint dawn which was all 
 that as yet I knew. 
 
 The fragment follows here as I wrote it in the 
 huts of the Pygmies, in tropical Africa. 
 
 ESCAPE 
 
 He had been in prison ten years. The prison was a fortress 
 where were kept offenders against the state. His prison chamber 
 was a place of stone pillars and arches, long, but not so wide. 
 The shadows hung about the ends of it. The loophole, grated 
 window was set in the middle of the outer wall; the lamp swung 
 from the middle pillar. There was a low bed and a heavy chair 
 and table. The floor was stone and sounded when he walked 
 
 240 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 to and fro, unless he walked lightly. He walked much, to and 
 fro, and to and fro. 
 
 Morning and evening came" a jailer with food and water, a 
 silent jailer with a heavy and a weary air. He evoked pity, 
 chained to a monotonous life. Few others came. If any came 
 it was at tremendously long intervals. Nor were they friends 
 of heart and mind who came. 
 
 Often enough it was cold enough in the prison room that in 
 part was sunk below a river level. In time of flood the river might 
 be heard without. The prisoner had a thick coverlet for his bed, 
 and a long, wide and warm cloak. He needed both when he 
 saw, high up, the gray snowflakes behind the window-grating. 
 Both had been the gift of a woman. He had never seen the 
 woman. At long intervals some comfort a book perhaps 
 had come from her, brought by the jailer. She must have 
 influence. He knew that the giver was a woman only because 
 the jailer said, "A woman sends it." And again, "A woman 
 yes, the same woman sends it." But now for a long time, for 
 nearly two years, nothing had come from her. The prisoner 
 believed that she was dead. 
 
 Ten years. . . . 
 
 He knew very well his dungeon with pillars and arches. 
 There were the two shadowy ends. Lying on his bed, he gazed 
 at one and the other until they seemed to stretch forth like a 
 giant stretching his arms. What was at the giant s finger-tips? 
 And what just beyond the giant s reach? When he walked that 
 way it was merely into dimmer parts of the fortress room. There 
 was the window high in the side wall. Beyond it spread breadth 
 of the earth. But the walls about the window space, and the 
 bars across, and his body passing to and fro beneath, were alike 
 material, and the first held back the second. The free space of 
 the window was smaller than his body. It could not go through. 
 
 How rigid were conditions! 
 
 Ten years. ... To and fro to and fro. The dropping mo 
 ments, falling in a line. . . . Stalactite and stalagmite meeting 
 the pillar of them. 
 
 When first he came to this place he had been active with plans 
 for release or escape. His mind had moved swiftly this way 
 and that, searching iron keys for an iron door, means to reach 
 
 241 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 friends without, means to change the views of foes without. 
 With his hands, with a file made from some scrap of iron, he 
 had worked at the stone that cased the window. In none of 
 these things had he succeeded. In them all like was opposed 
 by like, by a more numerous and massive like. At last he saw 
 that a heavy like was opposing a less heavy like, and that in 
 the nature of things, the latter could not beat down nor pene 
 trate the first. He desisted from these efforts. That had been 
 a long time ago. 
 
 Dull stagnation and despair. There had been a frozen year 
 of that gray, icicle-hung . . . 
 
 Out of that, little by little, he had reached a more clement 
 season. How he came into this he hardly knew. Something had 
 worked for him, underground or overhead, in his own nature. As 
 the floor upon which he trod was the roof of cellars and gave forth 
 low sound as he walked, so, doubtless, his own being had stories. 
 
 He came to where he could help himself, in that story where 
 he consciously dwelt and so, doubtless, helped all the other 
 stories. . . . 
 
 Now he took up again, though not in the first fevered strain, 
 and with difference of aim and method, the deliberate, day-by- 
 day endeavor to remove himself from this prison. If what op 
 posed was too numerous and too massive to-day, that might 
 not be the case to-morrow. He worked with brain and hand. 
 Necessarily, it was inch work. . . . The opposing forces had an 
 air of resting yet in their age-deep bed. He persevered, but he 
 saw that an angel must break these prison bars. Well . . . 
 make the angel! Make or awaken he cared not which, so that 
 the winged being arose. 
 
 He was born a thinker and artist. It was the artist in him 
 that had set him here. He had laid hands upon a misshapen 
 state, trying to bring it into juster proportions and beauty. But 
 Behemoth had elected to remain for the present Behemoth. 
 Now he was here in prison, but he would widen this from 
 above if he could. Where there s a mill there s a way. Where 
 there s a will there s a w$y. 
 
 The books were few that he had in his prison, but worth 
 while. He had been allowed to bring a certain number with 
 
 242 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 him upon his coming here. That same woman had sent more 
 who now sent no more. So well did he know them now that he 
 knew much in them that was not written down. He had also 
 the much that he had read before coming here. Pondering this 
 mass, traveling in mind to and fro upon its surface, learning 
 by degrees to sink into its interior, to permeate, as it were, its 
 molecular structure he found open to him, in a sort, fields of 
 space and rivers of time. Emotional freedoms likewise, releases 
 of energy, desires, longings, aspirations, satisfactions . . . and 
 higher vineyards, orchards, and wheat-fields where the mind 
 strengthened itself . . . and mountain summits where the sky of 
 spirit seemed not far away. 
 
 It was a life. . . . But yet, compared to life that he longed 
 for, it was pallid, hushed, slow, twilight, a land never to be 
 scorned, a real land, always to be loved and thanked for good 
 help for travelers, but yet a Stygian land compared 
 
 Compared to what? Traveling to what? 
 
 He had a power of longing but all was cut across by a wall 
 of pearly mist. . . . There must be light there, for he saw the wall. 
 
 When neither lamp nor window showed him the page of his 
 book, or when he lay awake upon his bed, he might sink into 
 the sea of memory. That was a dense element in which he was 
 at home. He could move to and fro there and take much pleas 
 ure. It was a very ancient, very wonderful sea. He became a 
 skilled navigator, over and through its waves and currents. . . . 
 Mnemosyne! Her face was fair, though turned always over 
 her shoulder. . . . 
 
 He wrapped memory about him like a cloak, he sat beside it 
 like a fire. Motionless upon his bed, or in his chair beneath 
 the faded window, he wrought until the dead lived again and the 
 past put on the present s crown. Until the dead almost lived 
 again and the past almost put on the present s crown. He 
 wrought and wrought until he opened blocked-up paths. With 
 an infinite patience he matched ends and colors. . . . 
 
 He began to see his life as he had not seen it before. He 
 sorted past phenomena and put them in sequences. He recovered 
 moods and let like flow into like, and felt the river systems of 
 them and the uninterruptedness of their being. He put together 
 
 243 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 purposes and saw that always they were threads of larger 
 purposes. 
 
 What at first he had called memory, and had bathed in for 
 sensuous warmth, repose, security for a finer, haunting, 
 melancholy pleasure for rhythm and returning chords passed 
 by stair and stair into Recollection. Mnemosyne came alive, 
 looked around, moved. . . . The change was profound. It was 
 as though a geisha, soft, attractive, exquisitely skilled to soothe 
 material care, had given way to a goddess such a goddess as 
 a man must be very high, subtle, and deep to serve! 
 
 Yet were all these but inns, but shrines, but cities on the way 
 out. He must not rest, lob-lie-by-the-fire, in the inn he must 
 not kneel too long before the image in the shrine he must 
 not even dwell, a busy citizen, too long in the ant-hill city. He 
 was addressed to real escape, with all his being. . . , 
 
 Every power of desire, will, knowledge, judgment! He 
 brooded like a witch over her caldron upon the data of science. 
 Each bit of knowledge was a chink in the wall. Get a finger 
 in, work and work until the hand slipped through. . . . 
 
 Power of Recollection. As a man awaked from sleep, as a 
 man turned to saneness from delirium, so there might be a still, 
 smooth, deep, and entire return to one s self. Then these walls 
 would be paper and mist. 
 
 Power of Imagination. He was alive to possibilities here. 
 It was his belief that mankind was not using for flight one 
 feather of that mighty wing. Then imagine! 
 
 What was reality? 
 
 What were real perception, real knowledge, real will, real 
 action what was recognition of reality? 
 
 Could one make reality; give it, as it were, birth from desire, 
 mind, and will? 
 
 Make or find or recover reality. . . . 
 
 He was a man religiously minded, for all that nine out of 
 ten had called him infidel or atheist. Much of that life of his, 
 outside this prison, had been spent in what seemed to the nine 
 destruction of ancient and venerable buildings. . . . The work, 
 too, within himself, of dilapidation how many years he had 
 
 244 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 given to that! To see fall from his own interior world this tower 
 and that keep to take away the clinging ivy to disturb the 
 winged life that had built in every cranny what sad and heavy 
 and dogged work much of it had been ! Yet he could do no else, 
 for his own power drove him on, and there was a word that rang 
 somewhere above him. In the light stood justification. 
 
 That anguished toil had passed into something like building 
 and into hopeful joy in building long ago it had passed. 
 
 Religion! To remember the god in you! 
 
 Every day a day of splendor, but fairly shadowy, almost 
 night, before the more splendid dawn it foresaw. Ever the 
 hunter in the keen air of his own being ever the adventurer 
 with the wild-grape scent from the new land just within his nos 
 tril ever the lover with the beloved wearing a starrier crown. 
 
 Religion! Ever more comprehensive, comprehending, until 
 there was consciously but the Various One who might have 
 his own vast days and dawns. . . . 
 
 He paced his prison, up and down, across, around. He sat 
 in his heavy chair, motionless, his eyes upon space. One enter 
 ing would have thought him carved there, while all the time, 
 within, was intensity of action. He lay upon his bed, his arms 
 straight at his sides or crossed upon his breast, so still that he 
 might have been thought dead. Without the grated window 
 the snow fell, the wind struck the fortress like a flail. The river 
 could not be heard, for it was covered with ice. His mind was 
 warm with its own deep speed. 
 
 Freedom . . . 
 
 Plato s World of Ideas not Plato s solely, but any man s 
 before him and after him, who might grasp the rim of that world 
 and draw himself up into it over the wall, through the window. 
 
 Pragmatic Sanction. . . . What would work, what you could 
 bring into experience. Truth. The Actual. Make it with 
 your magic, if you were so fortunate a magician. 
 
 The mind-born. The born of mind and will. 
 
 "If ye have faith ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove, 
 and it shall remove." 
 
 Strength of a larger self on the road to a larger yet. 
 
 Freedom 
 
 Eleven years. He had been in this fortress eleven years. 
 
 245 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 He lay on his bed and the snow fell without the window. He 
 lay wrapped in the cloak that the woman had given. The 
 gray flakes fell, he knew that the wind was high. Then very 
 quietly, gently, without a jar, quite simply, naturally, he him 
 self, his consciousness, awoke outside his body. 
 
 It was both without and within. It was as though he were 
 free in the room, but had left just that much of himself a 
 guard within the body. The body lay as though it were asleep. 
 When, presently, he would try experiments, he was immediately 
 back within it, awake, and looking at the falling snow behind the 
 grating. It was as if a very high volition of itself raised or 
 lowered its rate of vibration. The lower rate laid it here within 
 the thick body, the higher freed it. He gathered force and 
 again passed out from that citadel. He knew \vhere he left it, 
 he kept a fine line of communication open between him and that 
 guard left within. But with the intensed rest of him he was out 
 and away. 
 
 Not, indeed, that there was fullness here, either! Even with 
 so much of blessed freedom, he was aware of stronger and vaster 
 volitions to be attained, to be exercised. Compared to what 
 might be here was only a slow-spinning, cold, and dim star. The 
 blaze of glory was yet above. But compared to what had been 
 he experienced strength and bliss. 
 
 He passed out of the fortress, to his consciousness with 
 drawing from it like a cloud, a vapor, or like light, like radiant 
 energy, passing through the pores of the stone, as if the stone 
 were no more than a gray fog-bank. He was aware of sentries, 
 but the sentries did not stop him. One or two might turn head 
 as he went by, but they did not call nor start forward nor 
 threaten with any weapon. He realized that they did not know 
 why they had turned. 
 
 He remembered an old wood, known to him when he was a 
 boy, and remembered it in its summer dress. . . . The wood was 
 about him, and it was green and the sun filtered in between the 
 leaves. 
 
 That fact of infinite gradations in vibration, infinite intensi 
 ties of imagery and will! He was here in the wood, and as 
 formless as air. Into mind came the old warm pressure of the 
 soil, the odor of sun-washed pine and fern, the bird song from 
 
 246 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 coverts, the boy s happy abandon, down-flung upon Mother 
 Earth. ... He took form. Whether his power slackened to that 
 or heightened to that he was not then clear. But he was here, 
 in the fair shape of a man, and he first kneeled and then lay 
 upon the warm earth, and felt deep joy. 
 
 Of old time, in this wood, when he was a boy and afterward in 
 manhood, he had been well able to image and remember, to 
 dream and picture, to disintegrate and bring into new com 
 binations experiences of his own or of others, to live in a manner 
 in poetry-land, romance-land, history-land, and in the news of 
 the world that came to him hot from the oven. His faculty 
 in this wise had been very considerable. And he could share in 
 elemental life. Wind and water, earth and fire, were wide and 
 deep words to him, holding wonder. . . . That so straitly bound, 
 that steel and iron, that painful fortress life, had forced, for very 
 relief s sake, his ancient power to exert itself and grow in massive- 
 ness and edge. He recognized now that this present enormous 
 access of strength was a matter of altered degree rather than 
 kind. Hastened by great need, lifted at last by will grown 
 athlete, he had in one effort overpassed many degrees. He had 
 come into superconsciousness, but into what degree of that, 
 or high or low, he was not prepared to say. He saw that his 
 degree bordered the old consciousness, in part blended with it. 
 He was not arrogantly minded, and he was prepared to believe 
 that it was not, save relatively speaking, a high country. But 
 oh, beside the old, it was high and wide and blissful! 
 
 This wood was dear to him whether it slumbered or whether, 
 as now, it bent its boughs in the summer wind. A little thing 
 that he thought he had forgotten started solidly forth again. 
 A straying dog came by and started a rabbit-hunt. The rabbit 
 went like a flash down the forest-scape. She and the dog dis 
 appeared, whereupon a pheasant stood out from some dead 
 leaves and twigs upon the ground and looked at him, lying 
 there motionless, with a knowing eye, then, turning, whirred 
 away. That old time he had laughed, and now he sat up, 
 arms about knees, and laughed. The dear old wood, the 
 rabbit only half scared, the knowing pheasant! 
 
 He laughed, then that without-wire spoke to him, and im 
 mediately he was in the fortress chamber, returning as he had 
 
 247 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 gone forth, slipping again into the body there, coalescing with 
 the guard he had left. The key grated in the door, the jailer 
 appeared bearing evening food and water. The prisoner sat 
 up, rose from the bed, and came to the table. "Good evening, 
 friend!" 
 
 "Good evening," said the jailer. He set down the dish and 
 jug. "You look very well, tall and strong," he said. "I 
 wonder!" 
 
 He stood and stared. "Things turn inside out," he said. 
 "It seems to me that the jailed are better off than the turn 
 keys." 
 
 "Perhaps they are," said the prisoner. "I wish that we 
 were well off together! There must be a way to that, too." 
 
 "Well, it s all a riddle," the other made reply, and went 
 away. "Good night," he said at the door. 
 
 "Good night good night!" 
 
 The key turned and was withdrawn. The prisoner, seated 
 at the table, ate sparingly, drank water. Rising, he paced 
 the floor, up and down, up and down. Outside the grating 
 the snow was falling, falling, the gray light fading. The 
 prisoner lay down upon his bed, drew the thick coverlet over 
 him. Once or twice a fear had knocked at his heart, hurriedly 
 whispering at a keyhole. "How do you know that you can 
 do that again? How do you know that it was not a dream? " 
 Yet he knew that it was not a dream, and that he could 
 go free. 
 
 He lay still, he gathered energy, he heightened conscious 
 ness, he felt that fear dissolve in inner light. He left the body 
 and the fortress. 
 
 The snow. He had watched it of late and imaged the fall of 
 it, the heaped silver of it far and wide. Now with his freed 
 consciousness he entered, as it were, into the snow. He was 
 finding that it would be difficult to resist the taking of form. 
 There was here a most prolonged memory whether to be in 
 dulged or overcome later judgment might tell. He thought of 
 the veil, the continuity, the movement of falling snow, thought of 
 it with pleasure. . . . 
 
 The air was thick with snow, drifting, endless. He was 
 snowing over vast fields, steppes, tablelands and mountain 
 
 248 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 systems, steadily, quietly, restfully. He needed this great 
 escape into space, this subdued mood, even, so solitary for so 
 long had he been, this solitariness. With a quiet indifference, 
 neither pleasure nor pain, but stillness, he moved in whitening 
 flakes. He felt both the movement and the rest where they 
 lay. He stretched himself in gleaming white over leagues of 
 land, and touched and melted into leagues of ocean. . . . His 
 thought changed and with it his form. He left the gray, multi 
 tudinous, crystalline peacefulness and became the liquid sea. 
 He lay afar beneath the air, and here was sunlight and here 
 dark space and the stars. The earth kept him curved about 
 her, but he quivered also toward the moon and followed her in 
 tides. But most, he thought, he felt the sun. When he did so 
 he rose, in part, from himself, he became mist and vapor, he 
 rode on high as clouds. Liquid again, he fell as rains, torrential 
 or fine. He sank upon the earth and into the earth, he drew 
 from springs and brooks into rivers, and then in a vein-work of 
 rivers great and small, and with a lullaby, lullaby of going home, 
 the mother calling and the thousand thousand children return 
 ing, bringing experience, he returned to himself and was ocean 
 with an added hue and dream. Again, elsewhere, he mounted, 
 and that perpetual wheel rolled on. With his waves he struck 
 a thousand coasts and felt the rebound; in long rollers he ad 
 vanced upon the smooth beaches. Currents flowed in him, 
 rivers vast and small, and he was their stream, their bed, their 
 shores. He felt whirlpools, deeps, and shallows. He lay 
 quiet beneath the stars and the sun, and where the air thickened 
 and moved against him he rose in a storm. In hills of water 
 with far-flung spray, he contended with the air. Yet down 
 below was quiet, and elsewhere he and the air lay at peace 
 together. He saw how universal was drama. 
 
 Water. ... He followed himself afar. Cloud and sea and 
 stream, but he was also present elsewhere. He was locked in 
 earth and mineral, he was held in receptacles of myriad shapes 
 and sizes. He was cradled in the plant, in the grass of the 
 field, the reed, the rose, the oak and the palm, the wheat ear 
 and the grape. In him, where he gathered together and was the 
 sea, moved the fish, waved the sea-growths, dwelt the creat 
 ures of shell houses. But likewise he was within and of the fish, 
 
 249 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 the sea-flowers and the shell creatures and their houses. The 
 ships moved over his waves, but in minute waves he moved 
 within the timber of the ships and the bodies of the sailors. 
 He was in the cup that was raised to the lips, and in the hand 
 that held the cup. . . . 
 
 Beyond this orb, far in the fields of space, he felt himself, 
 where about other earths he stretched himself in other seas. 
 
 . . . Also, by likeness, in thought and imagination. Like a 
 great dawn he realized presence in subtler fields. As at a bell 
 from a tower, or a thunderclap, or a lark s song, he was in a 
 realm like and not like, changed and yet similar. 
 
 In the old, more narrowly conscious life, in the old remember 
 ing, imagining, conceiving, in the huge dialectic that the emo 
 tions and the mind, under some approval of the ultimate spirit, 
 carried forever on, there had been provided in line and color 
 many a mise-en-scne and of characters a multitude. Always 
 there had been a central self and those portions of its periphery 
 to which it gave provisional attention. But that peripheral 
 world had been without visible body and self-movement. In 
 dreams, truly, there was in some sort body and self-movement. 
 But from dreams was lacking something of great value, present 
 in "waking" commerce with memory and imagination and 
 prophecy. But however strong might be these latter they had 
 never been able to march beyond a certain point. Now, that 
 center moving with heat and light unknown before or long 
 forgotten, they marched. They became three-dimensional and 
 vital. That middle power, fire of desire and of will, rayed forth 
 in correspondence with its central strength. All that now it 
 abstracted from itself and looked at, all that it imaged or re 
 membered, had gone up a stage. It was become what in that 
 old world they called reality. . . . And still he knew that he 
 but dimly divined himself across great space. 
 
 The present Adventure seemed new, yet in some wise he fol 
 lowed old lines, traceries, co-ordinations. He had made them, 
 they were truly to be used, scroll and arabesque, illumination 
 in gold and silver, scarlet and green and blue, border of the great 
 text of himself that he could only stumble over, so little a child 
 was he in Recollection! Yet he had garments that he wove and 
 wore, wealthy, lovely, and in their moment satisfying. 
 
 250 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 He drew himself together from the silver sea. A promon 
 tory, rock and sand and sere sea-grass and small, twisted trees, 
 rose at hand. Behind spread an ancient, lovely country wound 
 with tendrils of the sea, and green-sloped mountains lifted above 
 them. "Poseidon!" he said. "I am Poseidon." 
 
 He rose, a giant form, strong, immortally young and potent, 
 fluent and various and mighty. He moved upon his sea beaches, 
 he stood upon the promontory and looked far and wide. At no 
 great distance gleamed a small temple with columns and a 
 sculptured relief showing the god of the sea and the goddess 
 Demeter. It glowed in light. . . . 
 
 A giant woman came toward him. Majesty breathed around 
 her, but she was genial, too. . . . He remembered the prisoner in 
 the fortress, the cloak and the books that had been sent. In 
 stantaneously he was behind the barred window, within the body 
 there the prisoner of state who had been shut away eleven 
 years. 
 
 He sat up, he rose, he went to the table, he laid his hands 
 upon the books piled there. Among others he touched a 
 small and curiously bound volume Dante s Vita Nuova. . . . 
 He lifted a fold of his cloak and pressed his brow and cheek 
 against it. This was an accustomed action. He had felt that 
 so he touched comfort of his kind pity, humaneness. . . . 
 
 And all the time had she been himself? Was her name Bea 
 trice? By the sea he had named her Demeter 
 
 The written fragment went no farther, ended 
 there. . . . The rains came down. The Pygmies 
 swarmed or slept. They were not ill folk, and each 
 in his casket kept the spark of intelligence. In some 
 the spark had better fuel, in some not so good. 
 But in all it burned and taught the fuel to draw 
 toward it. 
 
 251 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 MANNHEIM died in this Congo forest, among 
 these Pygmies. At first his sickness seemed 
 but a low fever, obstinate, but not especially peril 
 ous. He lay in his tent and refused to let us trouble 
 overmuch about him. "Go about your work. I 
 do perfectly well, lying here, with a whole world 
 to roam in!" 
 
 After a time his sickness was seen for the final one 
 that it was. He wasted like snow in March. When 
 he had lain there a week he himself said that he was 
 going. John Sydney tended him well, but gave 
 Sir Charles and the rest of us no false hopes. Mann 
 heim himself never asked. 
 
 It seemed best that he should have one of us for 
 nurse. This grew into my hands, with the others 
 ready to give all needed relief. His mind was quite 
 clear. At times there* was great weakness following 
 attacks of coughing. But for the most part he did 
 not suffer. 
 
 He lay very quiet and easy to nurse. He liked to 
 hear talk of the camp and daily happenings, and 
 liked the few minutes visits from Sir Charles and 
 the others. He had humor, and he laughed at the 
 stories Carthew Roberts brought. At other times, 
 when we were alone, he lay most still, with an in- 
 
 252 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 gathered look. Now and then, in his stronger hours, 
 he talked or bade me talk. He was entirely serene, 
 really happy. "Everything that is can be perceived 
 and shared," he said. "It is a matter of growing 
 desire and will. This body is disintegrating, but I 
 myself am integrating." 
 
 He could with no adequacy tell his visions any 
 more than I could tell mine. But now and then 
 word or phrase lit up a landscape. And occasionally 
 he tried to describe what he was perceiving. I re 
 member a velvet -black night when he could not 
 sleep. He slept little at any time. "We are one 
 Person," he said. "All these words kind and kin 
 and what not ! What do they mean except that just 
 somewhere all slip into one? All the partial con 
 sciousnesses flash into the whole. Give me water, 
 Michael! I want to tell you " I gave him to 
 drink. He went on. "I saw just now, in picture, 
 a little child a babe sitting upon its bed and bent 
 upon observing and handling its foot. I saw that it 
 believed that its foot was a separate thing, and that 
 it had not yet said of each and all its members, That 
 is me I am that. But it was beginning to suspect 
 and to experiment. It was a determined child, 
 and it made me laugh the way it went about it. 
 . . . We live embedded in symbols. If I could bind 
 together all the visions that ever I have had, it 
 would come to something! . . . Well, that was 
 page the first of this vision. But page the 
 second " He lay still for a few moments. "I 
 cannot well tell that. I saw the dim shape of 
 man, and all the nations and all the ages and the 
 rich and the poor and the fortunate and the 
 
 253 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 unfortunate moved within the shape. But its mind 
 was shadow and denied that this extremity or that 
 member was itself. Limb gazed at limb, and organ 
 upon organ as at a stranger, a foreigner, an unre 
 lated existence across space. But for all that the 
 great shape and it was very great was suspecting 
 and experimenting, just as was doing the child on 
 the first page." As Mannheim looked at me he 
 visibly gathered energy. He assumed strength, he 
 lifted himself on his arm. "Then, Michael, I saw 
 the sun rise over the mind ! No longer these myriad, 
 myriad, partial, contending things, held only as 
 by a film, an atmosphere, into a shape but where 
 they had been, a glory of light and warmth, essential, 
 sufficing a consciousness, a Being! Man conscious 
 at last of Man s Self the great Male-Female the 
 great Man-Woman-Child the Trinity the One! 
 . . . And all so simple, far simpler than being thou 
 sands apart!" 
 
 His face shone, he lay back; the light faded, 
 and I thought for a moment that he was going. 
 I gave him a stimulant. After a while he spoke 
 again: "You re one of the new children. The 
 new children will come into the sense of it. There 
 has been preached brotherhood. But brotherhood 
 supposes something closer yet. You will preach 
 identity." 
 
 A few nights later he died. Sir Charles and 
 Llewellyn, Sydney, and I watched him go. It was 
 a quiet death, simple and silent, a gradual mounting 
 a stair into light and distance. 
 
 We laid Mannheim s body in the forest, under a 
 palm-tree. 
 
 254 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 The rains now were come. The stream poured 
 dark and swollen, the forest was like sea moss, the 
 sky all gray, the fall steady, flooding, and loud. 
 We lived out this season in the Pygmy village. 
 Routine life and work carried themselves on. We 
 kept alike our own men and the small people our 
 hosts in hand and in a mood of amity. With the 
 former Ahasuerus was, throughout Africa, a mighty 
 help. He became, as it were, their far-traveled 
 prince and magician. What tales he told them I 
 would not inquire too closely. But he was a tall, 
 strong man, inside as outside, and he helped us 
 greatly in many a pinch. 
 
 Carthew Roberts, too, the born laugher, helped. 
 Once, as we sat around our fire, he gave us his 
 philosophy. " Haven t you seen in some park or 
 estate, perched on some big viewpoint, a pavilion 
 or some such structure where each side is set with 
 glass of a different color? There used to be one in 
 the grounds of some villa above Genoa. Through 
 this window showed a red world, through this one 
 a blue. One saw everything cut in bronze, and 
 another had a leaden earth and sky, and to another 
 the entire thing was bathed in couleur-de rose. The 
 world s the way you look at it! You re the seer. 
 It s perfectly possible to view the whole great toy 
 shop as filled with the friendliest, grinning, grotesque, 
 pleasant things. To a seer with a certain apparatus 
 it s an amusing place, quite profoundly odd and funny ! 
 That s me. The instant that isn t amusing gives the 
 fillip to the next instant that is. I ve heard the 
 very skies laugh and as for the small things that 
 laugh ! Don t you know what it is for a situation 
 
 255 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 a piece of the pattern, length of Penelope s web 
 to laugh?" 
 
 "It s ironic laughter, often," said Ferraro. 
 
 "Oh yes! I see, too, when the hook doesn t hit 
 the eye but there s a laugh of pure delight because 
 there s fun in the heart of things!" 
 
 "Oh, I grant you," answered the Italian. "The 
 thing that isn t at the heart of things isn t anywhere. 
 And as for your windows, one may look out of them 
 all in turn. Were we more evolved perhaps we might 
 look out of all at once! But that would be fused 
 rays light of glory " 
 
 At night, ere I slept, I went from this village, this 
 forest, to Restwell and Flowerfield. I now definitely 
 ceased to say, "I go in memory," or, "in imagina 
 tion," or, "I go there because the reasoning mind, 
 holding these places to be in being, attended by 
 such-and-such features, can, by its own power, col 
 lect them before it nay more, because it is brought 
 into a condition of calm and unhurry and, speaking 
 relatively, can see somewhat into the depth of things 
 and set them in wholes, it can give with correctness 
 a heightened reality." I ceased to explain to my 
 self. I acted. I simply went to Flowerfield and 
 Restwell went in leading-strings, with the limi 
 tations and inabilities of that but one degree ad 
 vance in powers, but went, as you, too, O reader, 
 may go! And if I went, or if I said, "Arise in me!" 
 what odds, so long as there came into presence the 
 desired? 
 
 Restwell Flowerfield. I lay in my old bed, in 
 my old room. Mammy sang to me. She sang 
 "Golden Slippers," or she sang: 
 
 256 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 "Swing low, sweet chariot, 
 Coming for to carry me home " 
 
 The stars looked in at the window. The dawn 
 blossomed. The crowing cock cried, * Boy, it s day !" 
 I went about the farm with my grandfather. His 
 gentle, drawling voice said this, said that. My 
 mother and I walked in the orchard. . . . Aunt Sarah 
 and I kept the gravestones clean. The fire burned 
 in Daddy Guinea s cabin, and he told me how the 
 fox and the bear and the deer and the rabbit grew 
 acquainted. 
 
 A thousand, thousand days and hours great 
 picture-books turned, leaf by leaf and all capable 
 of a strange, rich vivification! The farther road 
 brought to the aid of the earlier road poems 
 learned long ago seen into now. . . . The past lost 
 nothing worth the while; it stood through and 
 through to be the gainer. 
 
 I pervaded, like the ether, the big, unencumbered, 
 singing house at Flowerfield. Every house, every 
 place, had always for me its own note, flavor, odor, 
 personality, effect built from innumerable effects. . . . 
 Flowerfield and Miriam and I in one there. . . . John, 
 too, was with us. 
 
 Madam Black. Swiftly, decisively, came aware 
 ness of our old teacher. Now it was something more 
 than that, now she was better understood. There 
 was communication between adults. 
 
 An old, wise, rich spirit was here. 
 
 Death is not an idle word, nor is change, nor ab 
 sence. But they are far other than that which to 
 most of us they seem. 
 
 257 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 Now far away from the surface mind, behind the 
 golden vase that hides so much, there was talk 
 again with Madam Black, and in a surer, swifter 
 language than the surface tongue has mastered. 
 
 You three," she said, "are all new children." 
 She used the term that Mannheim had used. "I 
 felt that when I taught you, but it is clearer now. . . . 
 For those who can touch and hold there is endless 
 magic, richness, goodness! Every single thing is a 
 key and a portal. What so many call life is only 
 the skin of the grape." 
 
 Madam Black and Miriam and John and I went 
 far afield together. She was like an old and very 
 wise chieftainess, priestess, prophetess a great per 
 son with whom to mark the earth and the history 
 of it. 
 
 "Of course we are many that is much in one!" 
 she said. "Everybody is everybody else. We bathe 
 in one another s beams and find they are our own. 
 What is the Great Day but the day when All re 
 members All? The glorious Recollection. Then we 
 all find our market that we ve been weaving for 
 and planning for. The market is Life Everlasting. 
 The road to Recollection is by recollecting to 
 Recognition by recognizing to All Love is by 
 loving. Come! Let us remember in great land 
 scapes and streams. Where we dive in does not 
 greatly matter. One thing leads to another." 
 
 I said to her, "What about that which should be 
 forgotten?" 
 
 I felt her smile within me. "Well ! It forgets 
 itself in light." 
 
 We who were always together went far and wide 
 
 258 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 with Madam Black. And as she said, there is magic 
 and richness and goodness. 
 
 There was now a deep world back of the outward 
 point of attention that called itself, that was called, 
 Michael Forth. Behind that point, as behind all 
 such points, are interpenetrative spheres. 
 
 259 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 OEPARATION from those who are "dead" had 
 O melted from me. Separation from those who 
 are living I saw to be a phantasm. It would last 
 as long as we chose to let it last; it would go away 
 when we chose that it should go away. Separation 
 from those to come they are ourselves! We re 
 turning, we continuing, we the world s future as we 
 are its present and its past. 
 
 The task was for the small city, the small country, 
 at present calling itself Michael Forth, to realize 
 into all that it yet held to be without, into all that 
 it must hold to be above. That was the task, that 
 was the desire . . . desire that all cities and countries 
 waken to the mounting interest, the song, the lovers 
 meeting of reality. 
 
 "Journeys end in lovers meetings 
 
 Every wise man s son doth know " 
 
 The rains were past. We were gone from the 
 stream and the Pygmies village, and the grave of 
 Mannheim beneath the palm. Maxwell and Fer- 
 raro undertook care and furtherance of the nat 
 uralist s collection, and, later, Llewellyn and I 
 brought "Mannheim s Notes" into order, and later 
 yet saw to their publication. 
 
 260 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 We journeyed on through middle Africa. We 
 encountered heated, endless forests, and tribes, much 
 alike, of men near the foot of the ladder. Some had 
 an uneasy stirring, looking toward the rung above. 
 We saw individuals who were climbing thither. And 
 never, in Africa nor anywiiere else, did I see, have 
 ever I seen, anything save climbing stuff! 
 
 Time passed. At a certain village capital of a 
 king named Tamewa we were made and held pris 
 oners for seven weeks. There were days here when 
 we confidently looked for death. There was a night 
 when we white men, and with us Ahasuerus, were 
 bound with withes and heard without the hut sav 
 age preparations for an execution, and saw red, 
 darting light of kindled fires. But when the cocks 
 were crowing came rescue. A man from among our 
 carriers, stealing away, had gone leagues through 
 the forest, back to a friendly people from w r hose 
 village we had come to Tamewa s had gone and 
 come again with chiefs and a considerable company 
 of men and loud representations to Tamewa. At 
 last, after enormous discussion, entered agreement. 
 Released from bonds, we became fantastically hon 
 ored guests and yet might not go from Tamewa s 
 town until that seven weeks had passed. 
 
 The night that we were tied within the hut, seeing 
 that there could be no sleeping, and it was best 
 there be no talking, each went, doubtless, according 
 to his own drawing into the inner country. I was 
 thinking. . . . 
 
 A fact of communication between minds at a 
 distance space distance, time distance, state of 
 consciousness distance. An over-voice, as written 
 
 261 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 or printed words, as telephone or telegraph were 
 over-voices but without pen, paper, mail-trains, 
 poles and wires. Transmitters and receivers, each 
 both . . . vastly subtler telegraphing, telephoning, 
 interhearing, interseeing, interknowing. . . . Cir 
 culation of thought, circulation of emotion, sensa 
 tion; circulation of experience, understanding for 
 ever flowing, forever, as it turned upon itself, richer, 
 wiser, than it had been before. So, though it turned, 
 it was not the same; so it became a spiral movement, 
 concentric rings, each including the earlier turnings, 
 each, in the long run, bettering those before. . . . 
 Shoreless sea of energy, refining itself, transmuting 
 forever its own cold into fervor, its dark into light, 
 changing forever less knowledge for more, less love 
 for more, less power and joy for more. 
 
 I thought it an absurdity if there be no deepen 
 ing speech, no farther-carrying vision, between part 
 and part of a thing that as a whole perpetu 
 ally changed state for better state. As the whole 
 grew more richly conscious, every part must do so, 
 too. ... Or as every part grew more richly con 
 scious the whole must do so, too. . . . Put it as you 
 choose ! 
 
 The immediate sharing of sensation or of knowl 
 edge. ... In strong concentration, in contemplation, 
 there was no thought given to the field through 
 which, from "far" points, perception flashed. All 
 was lost in I-ness One-ness Continuousness. Dis 
 tance in space distance in time partialness in 
 event ceased their troubling. 
 
 By the light passage we were but ten minutes from 
 the sun. The universal draw of attraction took no 
 
 262 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 time at all. Ethereal perfectly penetrative and 
 penetrable. . . . Learn to use the ether! 
 
 My mother spoke to me. "Michael, they are 
 coming through the forest men to help. They will 
 be here in an hour." 
 
 I said to the others: "The Bangala that we left 
 are coming through the forest. Zurti persuaded 
 them. They will be here in an hour." 
 
 It happened so. ... Sir Charles spoke to me, aside, 
 the next day. "How did you know that, Michael?" 
 
 "How do we know anything? It s all of a piece 
 that can be unrolled, which is to say, understood, 
 further and further. . . . My mother told me." 
 
 "Within you? You said on the mountain that all 
 that was within you." 
 
 "Yes. But within you* opens into a great land. 
 The Kingdom of Heaven is within you. It isn t a 
 small kingdom." 
 
 "Tell me plainly," he said. "Do you think that 
 your mother lives?" 
 
 "I do." 
 
 "But conscious remembering able to act?" 
 
 "Yes. Able to grow that is, to increase in con 
 sciousness and power." 
 
 "And you expect to meet her?" 
 
 "I do meet her. I expect to meet her more com 
 pletely. Far more completely." 
 
 "I wish that I knew!" he said. "There are per 
 sons with whom I wish to live again." 
 
 The time-water flowed over the time-wheel. This 
 tribe, uncertain between slaying and saving, let us 
 go. We went on. Sometimes we traveled through 
 the forest. Sometimes often indeed we went in 
 
 263 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 boats, long distances down the full river in native 
 boats. We tarried in villages; we left the rubbing 
 and beating of drums, the chanting, the dancing, 
 and we came in little time again to rubbing and 
 beating of drums, to chanting and dancing. We 
 left idols and came to idols. I felt no contemptu- 
 ousness toward these. Idols are divinities and have 
 a kinship, or in their stage of True-God-on-High, 
 or in their stage of relegation. 
 
 Middle Africa Africa sloping to the west, country 
 of the Congo with all its ancestors gathered in its 
 bosom. . . . There began, as it were, an inward mur 
 muring of ocean, of England America. 
 
 The ancient, imperfect, compounded ideation that 
 we call these bodies, these purposes and acts, this 
 environment, situation, circumstance, this earth 
 under our poor two eyes, all the accustomed, re 
 membered, repeated, " living, " flowed or stumbled 
 quite enough as usual. I was aware of certain dif 
 ferences. All outward matters must finally change 
 as changes the inward star. If the center strongly 
 shines the circumference will know it. If the center 
 grows lethargic, all the outland stiffens, darkens. I 
 was aware that there must be shining all along the 
 way from the star. Light grew intenser, colors more 
 brilliant. Thorn hedges and hard walls vanished, 
 and there were richer wholes. There was sense of 
 the in-ness of things, and sometimes cause and 
 effect were seen as one form. The time sense, too, 
 was changing. . . . But yet it was all but one taste of 
 the honey 
 
 Llewellyn and I were moving in a boat up some 
 arm of Congo, volunteers to discover what lay be- 
 
 264 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 yond a certain sharp point of shore. The negroes 
 who rowed us had their own preoccupations. The 
 banks were somber, the stream deep and still and 
 darkened by overhanging clouds. We had been 
 sitting in silence. Llewellyn broke it. "I, too, 
 have the historic sense," he said. "When you have 
 that very thoroughly you assume an individual and 
 his acts. You can t say him or her; it s both. 
 Hermaphrodite, or some better word than that, if 
 you please! It is all right as long as you know that 
 all sex and no sex is there. You may call it This 
 World, or Earth, or Planetary Being, or Man, or 
 what you please. But the inorganic must go in as 
 well as the organic, plant as well as animal, animal 
 as well as human, one kind as well as another kind! 
 All the classes and castes. Then This World thinks 
 itself out, changing from power to power. Hence 
 Drama its own. Narratives, Epics, Tragedies, 
 Comedies, and the hair balance between. Lyrical 
 outbursts . . . Mnemosyne Pythoness Dionysos 
 Aphrodite Apollo Pallas Zeus! The wildest, 
 greatest, most abandoned, most controlled drama 
 in three dimensions. . . . This world s a Genius!" 
 
 "More light than dark." 
 
 "I should hope so. At any rate, the light must 
 be growing. ... I seem to see that it s had its infancy 
 and childhood, and that now it s in the strangest 
 turmoil of adolescence. But infancy and childhood ! 
 My God! What resumes of what in our little way 
 we call Ancient Sin, Adult Wrong!" 
 
 We went on in silence for a time. I looked at the 
 leaden sky. Llewellyn had been thinking aloud, 
 and now I, too, thought aloud. "In the Confessions 
 
 265 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 of Saint Augustine there is a page that well gives 
 what is coiled up, remembered, stored, in one s 
 self as little infant in a little cradle. It runs like 
 this. Was it then good, even for a while, to cry 
 for what, if given, would hurt? bitterly to resent 
 that persons, free and its own elders, yea, the very 
 authors of its birth, served it not ? that many besides, 
 wiser than it, obeyed not the nod of its good pleasure ? 
 to do its best to strike and hurt because commands 
 were not obeyed which had been obeyed to its hurt ? 
 The weakness of infant limbs, not its will, is its 
 innocence. Myself have seen and known even a 
 baby envious; it could not speak, yet it turned pale 
 and looked bitterly on its foster-brother. ... Is that, 
 too, innocence, when the fountain of milk is flowing 
 in rich abundance, not to endure one to share it, 
 though in extremest need? . . . This age I am yet loath 
 to count in this life of mine which I live in this 
 world. For no less than that which I spent in my 
 mother s womb is it hid from me in the shadows of 
 forgetfulness. . . . But, I beseech thee, O my God, 
 where, Lord, or when was I guiltless?"" 
 
 The banks were somber, the sky was a roof of 
 whirling vapor. And elsewhere he says, Did my 
 infancy succeed another age of mine that died be 
 fore it? Was it that which I spent within my moth 
 er s womb . . . and what before that life again, O 
 God my joy! was I anywhere or anybody? For 
 this I have none to tell me, neither father nor mother 
 nor experience of others, nor mine own memory. " 
 
 The boat moved on. The forest was still, but the 
 river voice carried fathomless undertones. "What 
 do you think there?" said Llewellyn. 
 
 266 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 "I think that some day we will take, unravel, and 
 look at our cell life, embryonic life, child life. Then 
 will we know in our own proper person, plane after 
 plane, that past living that at each point we called 
 adult. Species-mind cognizing species-life. World- 
 mind cognizing world-life. Then shall we see where 
 came in the lethargies, mistakes, self-limitations, 
 inhibitions, perversions, mislikes, recoils, fears 
 that at last we must call thick ignorance, hatred, 
 terror, guilt ..." 
 
 Beyond the point of shore we found a long, narrow 
 reach of w r ater, and upon one bank a diminutive 
 settlement, a very few thatched huts dwelt in by 
 a remnant of a tribe, wasted apparently by disease 
 and war. By now the clouds had broken in a down 
 pour. The day was advanced and our rowers un 
 willing to turn down-stream into wet and night. 
 We were armed, and we had with us beads and cloth 
 for purposes of propitiation and exchange. Standing 
 off the bank, we made due explanations and proffers 
 of friendship to the men who had run from the huts 
 with bows and arrows and menacing shouts. Re 
 assured, they let us land. The shining beads and 
 scarlet cloth worked as almost always they worked. 
 Presently we had food and shelter for the night. 
 
 Llewellyn and I lay in a fairly clean hut in thick 
 darkness, with river and wind for lullaby. We lay 
 wakeful, in silence. "Well! Let us go to sleep," 
 he said at last, and turned. 
 
 I addressed myself to sleep but instead of enter 
 ing that land a curtain parted and I was in another. 
 Before I crossed the frontier I was re-aware of a day 
 at Restwell, two years ago. The river there a 
 
 267 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 boac Dorothea and I rowing beneath the willows. 
 That hour had extension and volume it had not 
 seemed then to possess. . . . That scene closed. I 
 was over the frontier no longer Michael Forth 
 only, but many-folded sensation, knowledge, pas 
 sion, life. 
 
 Without more warning than the mood of this place 
 and that flash of association, I stumbled into the 
 woe of the world. 
 
 "So I returned and considered all the oppressions 
 that are done under the sun" 
 
 It seemed to me that I should die. . . . 
 
 The oppressions and the woe were my own. 
 Peine forte et dure and I was the victim under the 
 stone, and I was the weight that crushed, and I was 
 they who stretched me there and put the millstone 
 on me. And the misery of all three was the same. 
 
 "If the red slayer think he slays, 
 
 Or if the slain think he is slain " 
 
 Woe and woe and double woe ! 
 
 Into me drew, around, within me, whirled pain and 
 guilt, the great maelstrom. 
 
 Over and over the brain gave images but it was 
 that which touch gave me, not that which sight 
 gave. . . . Oh, God in me my own hope in me 
 raise hell to purgatory, purgatory to the beginning 
 of wisdom! 
 
 Woe of the world light-lack, love-lack. ... As 
 there can be no going out, as never, never can we go 
 out where they lack, what can be but aching want? 
 
 I ached I ached. 
 
 268 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 It seemed recapitulation, it seemed also lateral 
 sharing. All of us down there in those moments 
 and all of us now in these moments. All of us from 
 pole to pole. All of us that were one and are one. 
 Mankind is one being. It feels the woe of head and 
 the woe of foot, the woe of the one hand and of the 
 other hand. It is the worse for the ice-bound heart, 
 and the worse for the tattered, lack-thrift brain that 
 will not learn to use its wealth. 
 
 It longed for health poor Mankind poor God- 
 that-would-be! with all its members warring, with 
 hardly a piece of tissue glimpsing the truth! 
 
 Oh, long woe and sickness ! Oh, tatters and dungeon 
 of ignorance! Oh, hearth where the fire is but a 
 spark! . . . Where shall we get fuel? 
 
 Lay the little self tliere for fuel. 
 
 . . . Time passed, though time passed slowly. . . . 
 The wind and the rain outside had ceased, there fell 
 a great hush. In me, too, was now a stillness. It 
 was dark, but the air of it was not heavy a clear 
 darkness, clean, with a taste of myrrh. This en 
 larged there seemed a firmament very deep and 
 vast, still, pure, ineffable, though still dark. . . . 
 Then gathered from somewhere the sense of truth 
 and there was a white and splendid star in the 
 dark. 
 
 269 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 / 
 
 SIX months from that night we were out of Africa. 
 Sir Charles and Llewellyn, Maxwell, Ferraro, 
 Roberts, Sydney, and I entered the English ship. 
 
 But in that very port town where we waited for 
 it Ahasuerus died. 
 
 He and I held hands at the last. We had been 
 together since so early at Rest well, when he used to 
 lift me in his arms. I lifted him now in my arms 
 and he said that he saw Daddy Guinea and 
 went. . . . 
 
 Those of us who came again to England walked the 
 deck of the slow-sailing ship, or by the rail watched 
 the tumbling waves and smelled the healthful brine. 
 Down in the cabin we gathered together; we went 
 over the written records of over two years. Such 
 and such things were sheaves for the granary of 
 knowledge. Again we must contemplate abortive 
 attempts. Even so, there had been learning, even 
 by the rule of false. The trying out was not wasted. 
 Here is thoroughfare here seems no thoroughfare. 
 Out of all came enough well to repay the backers of 
 the expedition. As for us, the adventurers, we had 
 the gain of experience each one his sack of raw 
 material for further experience. 
 
 Upon the ship I put into legible shape Letters from 
 Africa. ... By now I fully saw that I might not 
 
 270 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 return to that engineering for which I had trained. 
 I said as much to Maxwell. "I ve thought that for 
 some time," he answered. "You re a good civil 
 and mining engineer. I ve a curious, haunting feel 
 ing that I knew you once somewhere in the Middle 
 Ages when you were a good military engineer. But 
 I think you ll go on now with another material, or 
 the same material in another condition I don t 
 know which! Engineering intellect, engineering im 
 agination " He fell silent, looking at the meeting- 
 place of blue sky and blue sea. 
 
 "The old words are mostly good words," I said. 
 "They are sound kernels that sprout and grow, and 
 presently wave overhead where once they thrilled 
 underfoot. So then I continue engineering!" 
 
 "Look at that blue," he said. "How deep do you 
 suppose it is ? I am going with Sir Charles to Persia. 
 He wants to know if you ll come, too." 
 
 "No. I am going home now." 
 
 "What is before the world, Michael? I m a kind 
 of desert spirit dry light and an uncluttered habi 
 tat. . . . But I do certainly feel that there are things 
 preparing in the very hollow of light." 
 
 "We re in the age of talk and dream." 
 
 "So! Well, when is the world creature going to 
 work? 19 
 
 "It s an embryo. It s fed yet from its mother, 
 breathes yet with its mother. Wait till it breathes of 
 itself." 
 
 "It s all figures and images and symbols!" 
 
 "It can t help it. It,s got to talk through its 
 mother earth with tongue of moon, sun with tongue 
 of earth. . . . Wait! It will get its own words." 
 
 271 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 "We are consciously to be the mighty one we 
 dream at times?" 
 
 * Yes. When the consciousness unfolds sufficiently 
 we shall leave the mother. ... It is the second birth." 
 
 Sir Charles called him from the cabin door. He 
 went, but I stayed by the rail, watching that marvel 
 of sapphire. The ship and the wind lived and sang. 
 Old Mother Sea and all her people ran free. They 
 cried, "We, too, are in you, and you are in us!" 
 
 I had a vision. I saw the inhabitants of the 
 earth and a many and a many were they and I 
 felt them in my veins. I saw them as I would see 
 the points of my body, and I felt them as I felt my 
 own warmth. I heard the ocean voice of them, and 
 it was such a sound that God give us joy in sustaining 
 it ! " We are in you and you are in us!" 
 
 We are One! Now I am out to encounter the 
 thoughts and feelings of the One. 
 
 Only the all can know, enjoy, love the all. 
 
 The great lover and the as great beloved. 
 
 Ah, mighty hope of union ah, romance ever 
 lasting! . . . 
 
 The ship and the wind and the sapphire sea voy 
 aged and came to England. 
 
 I stayed a month in England. Flowerfield cabled 
 in answer to my cable that all were well at Restwell 
 and Flowerfield all well, all living. Miriam cabled : 
 
 MICHAEL. Wake-robin Hill. 
 
 MIRIAM. 
 
 Maxwell was not now returning to America. I 
 was much with him in this month and with the 
 
 272 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 others, all of whom I loved. Sir Charles had an 
 old, beautiful home in Kent. I went here for a few 
 days with Maxwell. And I went with John Sydney 
 to an ancient, not large, house that from the Sussex 
 downs faced the sea. In London befell for all of us the 
 to-be-expected lionizing. Not excessive lionizing, 
 for the expedition was a quiet and solid thing and 
 only some small extension of knowledge appeared 
 as result. But the societies immediately interested 
 welcomed us, and the newspapers had their accounts. 
 
 I sought out Mannheim s lodging and found a 
 set of old rooms, high, fairly large, quiet, sparely 
 furnished. Beneath the window roared London of 
 the poor. Here lived a sister, a brother, and a 
 cousin. The sister was much like the man whose 
 body lay under the palms in Africa. She showed 
 me the room where Mannheim had worked, and his 
 books and collections. Once her tears fell, but she 
 wiped them away. "He and I understand," she said. 
 "It is going to be all right. There is little to fret 
 about." But back in the outer room the cousin was 
 full of woe and could only croak and toll, poor 
 thing! of separation. And going down-stairs the 
 brother was full of fears. "There was very little 
 money. Yes, I made him have his life insured 
 but it isn t much. I ll do my best, of course, but he 
 was the eldest. He ought to have " 
 
 Going away from here, poor London streamed 
 about me. I stood in a church porch and watched 
 the flood, listened to its voice. Poverty more than 
 of clothes and dwellings 
 
 I began to see in streams my own faults. 
 
 I saw them again when I went, a day or two later, 
 
 273 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 to view some great show where, a show itself, rich 
 London went by. 
 
 One body and its humors. 
 
 Self -correction. . . . Oh, star in the dark, show how! 
 
 From within without and behind every bit of 
 without the vast within! In the within was some 
 thing like free movement. In the within was coun 
 sel. Long patience long effort in patience. . . . 
 
 I went here, I went there in London. From the 
 country behind this country Miriam and I looked 
 at these things together Miriam and I and all 
 our race. . . . Cities! I saw them one night 
 in panorama ancient and middle time and to-day 
 by the sea and among the hills, by young rivers, 
 on windy plains, and under volcanoes and where 
 the earthquake shook them and where the snow 
 fell; cities where the throngs moved in spare, light 
 clothing, and cities where they flung furs about their 
 shoulders; cities where the muezzin cried to prayer, 
 and cities where the church-bells rang, and half- 
 ruinous cities of old temples; quiet cities; clanging, 
 roaring cities. . . . And behind the stones and above 
 the streets hung the motive and purpose of cities 
 and their desires. And over all that the supra- 
 sensible city whence these descend. 
 
 One evening I was at a concert of music with 
 Carthew Roberts. When it was over he took me 
 to a small club for which he seemed half apologetic, 
 half proud. It proved a happy oddity, a good- 
 natured gargoyle, a whimsy captured and content 
 somewhere in London. There seemed to be here 
 artists of sorts one even who was a member of 
 Parliament. They capped speeches, sang, told 
 
 274 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 stories, or sat silent behind tobacco smoke as it 
 pleased them. I thought that I caught sight of 
 Aristophanes, Falstaff, and Pantagruel. There were, 
 besides, a fry of court jesters come again. Necessary 
 salt for such a society, finding in turn their own salt 
 market here, appeared half a dozen of the solemner 
 kind of earth. I made out that one had a church 
 somewhere, and that another helped edit a news 
 paper so heavy that it crushed many an opponent. 
 And one seemed sad because the country was going 
 to the dogs. 
 
 We had an extraordinarily amusing evening. And 
 they said when they were going that they were 
 coming oftener into this department of happiness. 
 
 Pantagruel went homeward with us. He made a 
 large gesture that seemed to gather a bunch of stars 
 under his arm. "Conceive a Lord of the Cosmos 
 who could not take a joke make it and take it!" 
 
 It was Carthew Roberts again who showed me 
 English royalty going by, progressing from Buck 
 ingham to Windsor, or from Windsor to Bucking 
 ham. I looked at the old queen with a daughter or 
 two beside her and I felt a kind of mist of regret 
 for old sharp realities growing tinsel and worn 
 velvet. . . . The weather of it changed. What was 
 worth keeping was ever kept! Let the husk sink 
 away, work done! Elsewhere in space, in younger 
 earths, Plantagenets, Tudors Richards, Edwards, 
 Henrys, Elizabeths still hewed, still flashed in 
 strong glamour. To each day its miracle of unfold 
 ing! Speed the parting, welcome the coming guest, 
 and in due order love both. 
 
 Again it was with Roberts and also with Pan- 
 
 275 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 tagruel that I heard a historic debate in the House 
 of Commons. Far peoples were talked of, were 
 handled, so to speak, like engraved gems of a col 
 lector. Were they so dense, so slumbering, so still 
 as gems, I wondered? And then I knew that they 
 were no such thing, and that it was the House of 
 Commons error. Coming away, said Pantagruel, 
 "I love to hear Littleman dispose his destinies! 
 Now, gentlemen, I take myself from this pocket, 
 and I put myself in this pocket! Applaud the 
 juggler! " 
 
 Pantagruel and I went to the British Museum 
 together. "It is Pi," he said. " Noble Pi, but Pi! 
 Imagine a giant child sitting down in this hall and 
 trying from the four corners of the place to get a 
 clear sentence out of an alphabet, pounded, broken, 
 and mixed " 
 
 "A shivered mirror. Hans Christian Andersen s 
 Snow Queen one!" 
 
 " Thoroughly shivered! And yet Littleman the 
 chimaera must put the pieces together " 
 
 "In order to cease being chimerical." 
 
 11 Precisely so. Amusing, isn t it?" 
 
 He appeared still to be studying this at the end 
 of our day in the museum. As we went down the 
 steps he said: "I know a man who sees only the 
 terror of the task. I try to get him into a more 
 manly, not to say goodly, mind but he delays and 
 fears!" 
 
 I went alone in London here and there. Sitting 
 one day by the fountain in the Temple precinct, 
 Miriam and I were strongly together. I mean that 
 on a plane which is not the plane of small bodies, 
 
 276 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 we were together, using images, as water is together, 
 as air is together, as flame is together. We inter 
 fused. I do not know. Had I unconsciously fallen 
 to writing upon the cover of the book beside me 
 the writing might have been as much the hand of 
 Miriam as the hand of Michael. However that may 
 be, there was felt the doubled power of another 
 plane. It was a mind world, and a world, too, of 
 sensation and of sentiment, but in a far wealthier 
 kind than the lower plane could know. . . . And yet, 
 though one speaks of planes, planes, too, blend as 
 fire blends! The universe is unimaginably fluid and 
 powerful. 
 
 Miriam-Michael but behind those two signs 
 the widest transfusion! Hosts that we had called 
 separate, separate, were there. Behind the skin of 
 here and now, the enormous communion! away 
 from the stiffened cross-sections that we call form. 
 ... I sat still and the oceans played together. 
 
 All that I had known was here, and there was a 
 whispering of much further that I should know. 
 
 And there was love and there was enjoyment. 
 
 This very London this England I felt what 
 it was to love a country love a world. The very 
 ones that a man calls foes it is impossible but to 
 love them! The fire in the veins is the fire of all 
 life. 
 
 277 
 
CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 I BADE well-liked companions good-by and I 
 sailed west. Then flowed eight days of jade, 
 emerald and lapis sea, and we came under the figure 
 of Liberty, to the American shore. 
 
 Another day and I was in Baltimore. 
 
 I waited in a small, simple parlor, in a corner of 
 a hospital. It was Miriam s. At twenty-eight she 
 was superintendent here. I waited. It was evening. 
 A soft light flooded and pulsed. She came. . . . 
 
 We wished to be together, to work together, learn, 
 know joy together on all planes. Marry! That 
 was simple, though our marriage now would be 
 more and other than many an older marriage of 
 ours. The second day in Baltimore she took holi 
 day, and we went in the early morning out of the 
 city into the country. We found a small, quaint 
 village with a tolerable hotel, and thence we walked 
 into woodland. We were profoundly, of old time, 
 at home in forest. 
 
 We sat down on the dry, clean earth under a 
 beech. It was early spring. The branches above, 
 the boles of surrounding trees, the curtains of ame 
 thyst made a council-chamber. We sat, a king and 
 queen, and took counsel. 
 
 We wished living and home together. We pon 
 dered, pacing around Ways and Means. It was her 
 
 278 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 wish to keep her profession. But wherever were hu 
 man beings there was room for the health-bringer. 
 She could work, if need were, elsewhere than in 
 Baltimore. If I continued engineering, and if that 
 meant, perforce, a place like Landon, or where not, 
 we would go there. She could organize and work 
 toward healthful tissue there as elsewhere. 
 
 But, alike, we had an intuition that I would not 
 again take up or not for long take up just that 
 engineering. We could not settle this now; we laid 
 it by; whatever difficulties might arise we would 
 meet and straighten when we better knew their 
 field. We w r ere not without money. I had saved 
 from what I had been paid as Maxwell s assistant. 
 She, too, had put something by. She had worked 
 hard and constantly in her hospital for two years. 
 She had trained one into whose hands she could put 
 the reins. Let us take a good long holiday two 
 months, three months and look about us! We 
 agreed that we would do so. 
 
 Our marriage. We were of a mind here, too. 
 "Do you think they would be hurt at Flowerfield ?" 
 
 "If it were Catherine I think they might be. 
 But not with us. ... They ve got a grasp on us, and 
 we on them. They are here and we are there, any 
 how, and they feel it so. Aunt Sarah, too, at 
 Restwell." 
 
 We determined to be married in Baltimore, within 
 a week a civil marriage. She thought that she 
 could so arrange that within a few days thereafter 
 she might take her good long holiday. We would 
 go then to Flowerfield. 
 
 We rested upon the brown earth in the forest, or 
 
 279 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 we strayed and rambled at will in the differing beauty 
 of every vista. Toward evening we turned back 
 to the village and the rushing train and the lit and 
 murmurous city. 
 
 The next day I went to New York, and, sleeping 
 there that night, arose in the morning and took a 
 letter that Llewellyn had given me, and the manu 
 script of Letters from Africa to a certain publisher. 
 He read the letter, he talked a little, then drew tow 
 ard him the packet of manuscript. " We ll read this 
 at once, Mr. Forth. Where are you staying? Sup 
 pose you come in three days from now." 
 
 I used in various ways this length of time. One 
 was to view artists canvases, one just to mark and 
 mark again the life of this great hive. The three 
 days passed. I went again to the publishing-house. 
 They would publish the Letters from Africa. They 
 thought it should have a certain success how much 
 or how little, of course, could not be predicted. It 
 might prove caviar to the general, and then, again, 
 popular taste being the great X, it might experience 
 a certain demand. One could never tell about these 
 things out of the usual run. At any rate, they would 
 publish in the autumn and they would be glad 
 to see anything else that I was doing. The publisher 
 glanced at the clock. "It s about luncheon-time. 
 There s a good cafe around the corner. Come with 
 me and tell me about Africa." In mind I saw him 
 pin me and Llewellyn s letter and the possible in 
 terest of the house together. He was a pleasant, 
 oldish fellow. "African explorer!" he said. "There 
 are people you ought to meet. Come with me to 
 my club to-night." 
 
 280 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 The following day I signed a contract with the 
 publishing-house. When it was done I walked along 
 Broadway. The air lifted and moved, brilliantly 
 clear. One could read detail afar. A huge city, and 
 to be more huge. It was strongly under my tongue, 
 in my nostrils, before my eyes 
 
 A man coming toward me glanced at me, looked 
 hard, stopped short. "Isn t it Michael Forth?" 
 
 Isn t it Conrad Conrad?" 
 
 We turned into Madison Square and sat upon a 
 bench . Certainly seven years ! 
 
 " Nearly that. Do you still walk about with 
 Poe?" 
 
 "Poe and others. Do you still hammer at 
 continuity?" 
 
 "Perhaps. Or, having got it, I cease hammering." 
 
 "I heard that you were in Africa." 
 
 "I thought of you as yet in Paris." 
 
 "I was so till two years ago. Paris, and all the 
 Elsewhere to which the Paris roads lead!" 
 
 "When I last heard from you you had taken to 
 painting. Are you making strange, good demon 
 pictures?" 
 
 He made his old grimace with the earnest coming 
 out through the faun mask. "I partly own and edit 
 The Compass. Occasionally I write, and in vacation 
 I paint pictures on my own walls." 
 
 "What is The Compass?" 
 
 "It is a radical sheet. It s by way of being very 
 radical." 
 
 "Politically?" 
 
 "Politics, Economics, Social Arrangements in 
 general. Esthetics also. But chiefly economics. 
 
 281 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 We re subversive there. It s 1890. I give the world 
 ten years. Then I think change will begin to be 
 apparent to the dullest!" 
 11 The Compass assisting?" 
 
 " Certainly! Though I don t limit it to The 
 Compass." 
 
 "Just a few quintillions of other points " 
 "Exactly! But do your individual mightiest all 
 the same!" 
 
 "Just as though Hercules was not a composite?" 
 "Again you catch the idea. Don t you want to 
 do an article for the June issue? I think you could 
 do it, Old Continuity! Continuity of Cosmic Ad 
 venture, for instance? Continuity of Pioneering 
 
 "For we cannot tarry here, 
 
 We must march, my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger, 
 We the youthful, sinewy races, all the rest on us depends " 
 
 "It is Whitman now, not Poe?" 
 
 "I carry Poe in Whitman. ... I tell you, Michael, 
 after a while, if you re truly an artist, you ve got 
 to get your hands on the whole material!" 
 
 "Agreed! Just so long as, like Whitman, you 
 guard every particle of the I* that s flowing 
 through and through the material." 
 
 "In other words, consider the Bigness of the 
 Right?" 
 
 "Just." 
 
 "Do you remember that riding-trip we took? 
 The Bridge and the Fourth of July oration and the 
 Peaks? Do you remember that debate on the 
 Color of Reality, in the Ultra- Violet Club?" 
 
 "Aye. Iridescence, the Various We, for the de- 
 
 282 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 scending arc White Light, Sunlight, for the ascend 
 ing. But you took black, old Conrad, and made a 
 very good case for it!" 
 
 "Well, I see the forlorn beauty in the shadow 
 still. . . . But change comes to one in thunder 
 claps. I d like to tell you about it one day. What 
 are you doing? Can t you come with me?" 
 
 "I am going to-night to Baltimore. But I have 
 till then." 
 
 We spent the remainder of the day together. I 
 went with him to see The Compass and its far down 
 town and eastward-bearing habitat. I divined I 
 had divined at Landon the onward-coming, eco 
 nomic readjustment of our lives. It was necessary, 
 it was to be! How soon I did not know probably 
 a slow change toward health. But it must be. 
 Here, in the organism, was anemia; here the blood 
 ran so thick that it clotted. I looked at Fifth 
 Avenue in one hand, and at this street in the other. 
 . . . Walter Dupuy was walking with us. ... Back 
 of this change, back of all changes now, was the 
 growing sense of union, essential, organic. That 
 was the change s metaphysic. . . . 
 
 Conrad wore his old elvish look. But he was good 
 sprite, and I knew it. He and Walter Dupuy and 
 many others fused, welded together. Now they 
 seemed Hephaestos, smith of the gods, building 
 machines for the gods, better machines each age 
 than the last. The figure took magnitude, took 
 beauty, sublimed, became ethic. It was economic 
 lift now in the widest, utterest sense, nutriment of 
 the body, mind, and spirit. All came together 
 up stood the Genius filling space between earth and 
 
 283 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 heaven. Where had been earthly sprites, where had 
 been limping Hephaestos. . . . Prometheus! 
 
 Conrad was not the traveler over the earth, as he 
 and we had seen it at the university. I was not to 
 stay at just the engineering all then saw me in. 
 Miriam did not rest at Flowerfield. Gamaliel did 
 not teach at Hilltop Academy. He had passed from 
 apprenticeship to mastership. Only yesterday I had 
 seen his name in a scientific journal. The article 
 had spoken with respect of "Young s discovery." 
 Who did according to the first paper plans? The 
 greater seized the less, the real destiny, the fancied. 
 
 Conrad went with me to my train. Crossing the 
 ferry to Jersey City, leaning against the rail, watch 
 ing the moving lights in the water and above the 
 water, feeling the quickening of the salty wind, 
 smelling night and ocean, he began again to speak 
 of Walt Whitman. 
 
 I had a feeling for Shelley, I had a feeling for 
 Whitman, I had a feeling for Blake, and for others 
 and for others! 
 
 I listened to Conrad s good talk, his intellectual 
 rapture. Back of waking, back of the dream rapids, 
 I felt the exquisite high air, the stillness that is 
 world s end to world s end from stagnation! 
 
 We came to Jersey City, and, leaving the ferry 
 boat, Conrad and I parted at the gates to the trains. 
 We said good-by, but each meant truly to keep the 
 other. I might never write that article for The 
 Compass. But I knew that that change in human 
 affairs with which The Compass concerned itself was 
 coming, and I felt little grief over its coming. 
 Socialism, communism, had no terrors for me. What 
 
 284 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 was truly my "property," truly "proper" to me, 
 could not be taken away. But aggregate "prop 
 erty" should be to the aggregate, to whom it is 
 truly "proper." ... I guessed, indeed, that that 
 word "aggregate" stopped nowhere. 
 
 The train moved toward Baltimore. I sat and 
 gazed upon the shadowy, fast-flying landscape, and 
 at last I hardly saw that, but went deeper and 
 deeper within. Human life, the sea of it ; far-sound 
 ing voice and infinite contact! The mean between 
 difference and likeness. . . . Wherever, in the deeps 
 of space, Eternal Energy fell upon a certain pace, a 
 certain swing of the arm, there was human life. 
 All that was I, and the experiences and thoughts of 
 it. ... But where Eternal Energy used Power with 
 a wider sweep there came quickening. The little 
 I opened its gates. A greater I set crown upon its 
 head and came through, a lord of glory. . . . All that 
 was I, and the experiences and thoughts of it. 
 
 As ever yet, illumination could not hold. It came 
 a flash from above, from the future, perhaps the very 
 far future, when the clouds should pass from be 
 tween earth and sun. I was content to conceive it 
 as from the future. If all the past of human life is 
 mine, it is impossible but that all the future of 
 human life is mine, too. 
 
 Wings flagged, eyes dimmed, perception lessened. 
 Yet it kept somewhat aloft, skimming, as it were, 
 in mental space. Now it had to do with liking, with 
 contemplating, with unharmful entering into en 
 vironment and experience of so-called "others." 
 Perhaps it sunned itself only in the emanations, 
 the aura, so to speak, of those "others." Perhaps 
 
 285 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 there was deeper sharing I and I through af 
 finity one I. "Love thy neighbor as thyself." 
 
 First it was Conrad-Michael, here on the train, 
 there in the great city. . . . Since such and such is 
 so, so, too, must be this and this. It is barns full 
 of data, sublimated sorting and reasoning, so swiftly 
 done that a thousand acts run together into an ap 
 parent one. The data was gathered, the sorting 
 was learned, I must think, through many an age. 
 We have gone to school through many an eon. . . . 
 That problem of distribution that Conrad and many 
 another were set to solve. How cosmic was the 
 problem ! I saw earth and the world, and the trans 
 figuration, transvaluation of it all, through the 
 Conrad window. Work, work, to keep the life flow 
 ing through the veins. Work, work, to make the 
 place a little, even were it a very little, juster, 
 sweeter! 
 
 Again I turned. Now it was Maxwell. Maxwell 
 had to me the dry light, the cleanness and inde 
 pendence of the desert. Naught was there of the 
 humid, naught of the florid. With him great heat 
 was dry and healthful, sparely energetic, rightly 
 parsimonious. How I finally went, or where I 
 finally went, I would not miss out Maxwell. There 
 moved a desert spirit, clean, spare, very strong, 
 tireless, building desert cities, or, nomad, journeying 
 with tents or with no tents. There were in the spirit 
 old echoes of desert lions, golden-maned, ruby-eyed; 
 echoes of Arab sheiks. But the spirit was tall as a 
 palm-tree, and as it desired and thought, it was in 
 every desert of the universe, in desert cities and in 
 all the oases, and afar in the heaped sand. 
 
 286 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 Conrad and Maxwell and others. Others who to 
 most are dead. They are not dead and they are not 
 away. 
 
 Shelley. ... I entered into that personality. . . . 
 Gone was the train and the flying, inland country. 
 There sailed a boat, and around was the Mediter 
 ranean, and around and above was air, now dawn, 
 now midday, now evening, colored the higher, rarer 
 colors, sustaining voices that the gross ear might 
 hardly be strained to catch. . . . Water, air, and fire, 
 and the ache for the lift of the spirit beyond air 
 for the lift into ether. 
 
 I turned a little from that center and I met Blake. 
 
 In the fifth act of the second "Faust," in the scene 
 before heaven, Pater Seraphicus speaks to the 
 blessed children, who have had their death and found 
 their life young. 
 
 "Half unsealed the sense and brain. . . . 
 Enter in mine eyes, enjoy them, 
 
 Organs for the earthy sphere, 
 As your own ye may employ them 
 
 Look upon the landscape here!" 
 
 He takes them into himself. 
 
 " There are trees, there rocks defend us! 
 
 Here s a stream that leaps below, 
 And with plunges, wild, tremendous, 
 Shorteneth its journey so." 
 
 The orb that was Blake had giant and terrible 
 landscapes indeed but also, by crystal streamlets 
 the tenderest, freshest, loveliest small flowers! 
 
 Goethe. The natural path leading from the 
 
 287 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 "Faust" thought brought me there, too. . . . The 
 world from the rounded, Goethe nature, from the 
 rounded Plato nature. Love and the union of love, 
 and the sublimation of love, and the sublimation 
 of the union of love. 
 
 The train clove the night. There was moonlight, 
 and the shadow of the cars and of the plume above 
 the engine raced with us. We ran into industrial 
 towns and out again. Fire and lamp, gas and electric 
 light, ruby, gold, and silver, pointed and splashed 
 the night, then again was only the broken, weakened 
 light tossed to us from the moon. I thought of the 
 prisons of the earth, the hovels and streets of dis 
 aster. Assuredly they, too, were mine. Mine the 
 criminal and the sick and the mad, the impoverished, 
 the adversity-trodden and the strong swimmer in 
 his agony. Mine were the seer, the thinker, and 
 the artist, and mine the wretched and the brutal. 
 I had the shining roads, the approaches to heaven, 
 and I had the brute castles of mistake, and the 
 thieves dens and the streets of the prostitute. Mine, 
 too, was all the so-so country, the half -lighted, and 
 mine, too, the simple, fair stretches, quiet vales, low 
 hills. Mine the Himalaya peak, and mine the pit, 
 and mine the long line between. . . . 
 
 On rushed the train. 
 
 There came a picture of the vibratory ether. The 
 swift thunders and lightning ate up, quickened, the 
 less swift. Ever the swiftness above swiftness acted 
 as an enzyme, an energizer. The dim and dull, 
 slow moving, cold, heavily lumbering, was not left 
 behind was not long left behind in limbo. The 
 stagnant, the running the other way, were over- 
 
 288 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 taken. Fearful hell was for them only till they 
 quickened. Through measureless heights and depths 
 I saw continuing transformation. I saw the rela 
 tivity of things; the hells and pits were relative; 
 they lifted; they were now only what yesterdays 
 had held to be not unlovely meadows, dells, and 
 hollows. But the fairer things were now dazzling. 
 I felt an illimitable and general movement toward 
 light that was as darkness, and voices or a voice 
 that was as silence, because as yet there was no 
 organ that could distinguish things there. 
 
 One approached that sun not as fragments of a 
 fragment. There must be some wholeness ere one 
 traveled far. 
 
 I hold, with Berkeley, that the world is truly in 
 the mind. Therefore, self -quickening is world- 
 quickening. What thrill comes is felt through that 
 which we call God, from the transcendent I to the 
 poorest, meanest, weakest I. The one increases its 
 light; the other, relatively yet the opposing pole, 
 is positively less midnight dark. At last the dark 
 ness comes to the place of what to-day we should 
 call light. 
 
 I saw that earth was to become sun. 
 
 289 
 
CHAPTER XXX 
 
 MIRIAM and I walked under fair old trees in 
 Druid Hill Park. I told her of New York, 
 and the publisher, and the apparent prospect for 
 Letters from Africa. We rejoiced. All in all, we were 
 glad to think that earning and writing might with 
 me go together. We did not delude ourselves with 
 dreams of any great sum. But what I earned and 
 what she earned might give us fair living. We 
 talked of dwelling in Baltimore, a pleasant city and 
 a rational one for slender purses. She also had 
 news. Her hospital would give her this summer, 
 welcoming her retxirn in the autumn. 
 
 We set three days from this fair day for our mar 
 riage. It was spring. She knew a little, quiet, old- 
 timey neighborhood by the sea. She had been there 
 three or four times, staying always at Miss Sally 
 Paradise s house. "We ll go there. " 
 
 Gamaliel had not been in Baltimore since my 
 coming. Some meeting of scientific men had car 
 ried him so far north as Boston. But he would be 
 back, they told me this morning at the house where 
 he lived, within the week. Miriam and I agreed 
 that he should come to us for three or four days 
 at Miss Sally Paradise s. 
 
 Druid Hill Park shone and sang. 
 
 290 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 A day and another day and another. Then, on 
 a shining, singing, dancing day of lovely spring 
 Miriam and I married. 
 
 We took a boat, we came in a coral, bright evening 
 to a Chesapeake Bay wharf, to a few old houses, 
 and back among blossoming peach, cherry, pear, 
 and damson trees, to Miss Sally Paradise s. That 
 was an old house of brick, with echoing, cool, high- 
 ceilinged rooms. The wind murmured in them till 
 it was like a sea-shell held up to catch voices from 
 an infinite sequence of shores. . . . We were happy 
 at Miss Sally Paradise s. 
 
 We had a sailboat and an ancient mariner sailed 
 it for us. The garden beneath our windows had an 
 ancient cultivator. We knew about gardens, and 
 we helped him administer, order, raise the powers of 
 earth. A fair country road ran back from the sea. 
 We followed it, and came to lanes and paths and 
 followed them. Now and again where was none we 
 made a path. At night we wandered under stars. 
 We loved grandmother moon, silver, wrinkled. We 
 loved Mother Earth, colored, genial. We loved the 
 world to come. We loved each other. We loved the 
 infinite, the eternal, the uncaused in each other. 
 Our hearts stood as one; our minds as one. We en 
 tered together a rich reality. We saw how every 
 ring melted into a larger, and how there was no 
 ending nor beginning, and how we had to grasp both 
 the unity and the difference. 
 
 We talked, we were silent; we wandered in thought 
 at will, and came back with our sheaves to one 
 another and a golden, common barn. Once we were 
 sailing slowly, dreamlike, for the wind just pushed 
 
 291 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 us. There was a great, sinking sun, and a light upon 
 water. The east hung ineffably blue, serene, still, 
 holding knowledge of the sun s travel and a rising 
 day out of ancient sea. Miriam and I sat still. We 
 had with us a book of poetry and it lay open beside us. 
 
 "The world s great age begins anew, 
 The golden years return. . . . 
 
 A brighter Hellas rears its mountains 
 
 From waves serener far; 
 A new Peneus rolls his fountains 
 
 Against the morning star; 
 Where fairer Tempes loom, there sleep 
 Young Cyclades on a sunnier deep. 
 
 A loftier Argo cleaves the main, 
 
 Fraught with a later prize; 
 Another Orpheus sighs again, 
 
 And loves, and weeps, and dies; 
 A new Ulysses leaves once more 
 Calypso for his native shore. 
 
 . . . Although a subtler Sphinx renew 
 Riddles of death Thebes never knew ..." 
 
 Earth and sea and sky transfigured to us both. 
 All the tragedy, all the joy and mirth, all the ro 
 mance, questing, seeking, searching out, finding, 
 recovering, all the lustrous truth that the strength 
 of her and of me could hold, brimmed and sounded 
 and shone. It tasted and it touched. A great voice 
 was singing. We fell into rhythm oh! into a 
 mighty rhythm ! the boat and the sea and the earth 
 and the sky into rhythm. It was the sun singing, 
 
 292 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 the mighty sun that was sun to its outermost drop 
 of light and that knew it was sun and had recon 
 ciled separation. 
 
 We had been ten days at Miss Sally Paradise s 
 when Gamaliel came to us from Baltimore. We met 
 him at the wharf and took him with us to the pleas 
 ant house, to his big, bare room drenched with sun 
 light and the salt of the sea. 
 
 Gamaliel moved or stood, spare and dark, with 
 dark, deep-set eyes. He had unfolded strongly. He 
 had put behind him the childishness of bitterness. 
 He talked of Hilltop Academy and of his father, 
 quietly, naturally, gold of understanding gleaming 
 in the river-bed. I could remember when his laugh 
 ter had been scornful. Sometimes still it was pained 
 laughter. But into it was stealing patience, humor, 
 with a kind of admiration for the turn and twist of 
 things. He did not vituperate Hilltop Academy 
 nor the principal of it, nor Whitechurch (saving 
 out always Mr. Gilbert), though he parted from 
 them parted from them only eventually to take 
 them up into himself and there alter and fulfil, 
 not destroy. He said once to me: "After all, it s 
 one stuff only, though, Heaven above ! how it mean 
 ders ! . . . Ancient choices. . . . Well, dive underneath, 
 and see what we can do. . . . Come out, perhaps, at 
 some other side!" 
 
 As we sailed, as we walked, we talked of his work. 
 "There lacks some idea some fourth side to most 
 that we do. Now and then we get wind of him 
 almost see him. . . . Then comes up the damned 
 fog! ... But it s dogged does it!" 
 
 293 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 We talked of the world of the closing nineteenth 
 century, and of that express train, the future, rush 
 ing toward it. " There s one thing the world s got 
 to give up, and that is that there is any hard and 
 fast line between anything and anything! I don t 
 believe in impenetrability and our miles and mo 
 ments are of the doubtfulest validity ever! The 
 atom? I don t believe it is the last word! Electri 
 cal? What is electrical? Is there a law of gravi 
 tation? Then, at a certain power, comes one of 
 levitation, too. . . . Our old perception level is chang 
 ing. Our consciousness is changing. Truth! she 
 has a new face each morning and I mean nothing 
 cynical nor despairing by that! * 
 
 We sailed, the three of us, under a high, blue 
 sky. We roved the green country, we sat at eve 
 upon the pillared porch. Miriam had a good, con 
 tralto voice, pure, expressive, sweet, with a kind of 
 wilderness and gipsy ring. We found in the house 
 a guitar. She sang the old-time cherished songs, 
 songs of the negroes in the field, ballads, hymns of 
 the traveler soul. Sometimes we talked, sometimes 
 we sat in deep silence, having darted, each of us, 
 afar. We darted each afar, and the middle sea of 
 harmony continually widened, richened. 
 
 What had been hard or resistive in Gamaliel, the 
 quality of the father, what had been bitter, what had 
 been envious, was turning. What had been felt from 
 the first, what was also in the father fiber, grit, 
 indomitableness was there more strongly. With 
 these was now uncovered a partly grim, partly 
 humorous, partly compassionate approach to an 
 understanding of the inadequacies, discomforts, dan- 
 
 294 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 gers, even, of the inns of the road of the heartaches, 
 the beaten brains. He was riding to break the ring, 
 riding to fetch sunlight for the old cracks and 
 crevices. He was determined toward that, deter 
 mined as Conrad, as others that I knew, many others, 
 as Miriam and me. 
 
 In our school-days we had greatly liked each 
 other s company. This in no wise changed. There 
 was always with Gamaliel and me an intuitive, 
 inner handclasp. Now Miriam and he liked also. 
 Through great countries we kept step, we three. 
 And with a strange, rich fitness, there seemed to 
 walk with us, out of all others, Madam Black 
 Madam Black and my mother and, I think, 
 Maxwell. 
 
 He returned after five days to Baltimore, but 
 Miriam and I stayed another week. We walked by 
 the shore, we loved, we lived, we knew! From 
 plane to plane we felt the fire shoot. We traveled 
 from affinity to affinity; we held them together in 
 the beautiful spectrum, we ran into the color of 
 light, we broke on the other side into new iridescence. 
 We wished, we willed forever to cast the magic 
 net in the upper seas, to radiate, to gather our own, 
 to give bloom, sonorousness, giving beauty, recover 
 ing beauty . . . growing wise, lit with wisdom. 
 Wisdom was our word of aspiration. Wisdom was 
 love and knowledge made one, and power was the 
 child. We wished and willed to keep the great com 
 mandment, and the second that was like unto it 
 ever better to keep. . . . 
 
 In mid-May we went to Flowerfield. Uncle John 
 and Aunt Kate welcomed us, forgiving the marriage 
 
 295 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 away from the old place and way. John and Amy 
 Page, living now at Flowerfield, welcomed us, and 
 Catherine and Lewis, and all the colored folk, and 
 the animals who remembered. The neighborhood 
 came to see us, and we returned its visits. There 
 spread around the loveliness of full spring. 
 
 After a month at Flowerfield John and Amy, 
 Miriam and I, went to Restwell. As we came in 
 sight of the river Ahasuerus was in my mind. The 
 spirit in me touched him somewhere, strong and 
 growing, companying with Daddy Guinea. . . . 
 Mammy, too, had died. 
 
 Aunt Sarah, at Restwell, was both changed and 
 not changed. More of inner light had come through, 
 more warmth and strength. Aunt Harriet and 
 General Warringer stood and moved, hospitable, 
 gracious, really fond of us. There was talking and 
 laughing; many persons went in and out of the 
 house. Aunt Harriet and I walked once or twice 
 together. One day for a while she had been quiet, 
 thoughtful. Suddenly she said: "I used to think 
 Miriam was an ugly duckling but she s not! She s 
 beautiful. Some day, when there s time, Michael, 
 I d like, too, to grow like that " 
 
 General Warringer talked much of politics and 
 industrial growth, and the country s future. "Of 
 course all these booms a boom wherever 
 you can shake a stick won t last! But they re 
 bands at the head of the procession. We re going 
 to have wealth and power! That is, the people who 
 are wise enough to get in the wagon are going to 
 have wealth and power!" 
 
 "And the others?" 
 
 296 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 "Well, I tell you, Michael like the lazy every 
 where, they ll have to take the leavings! That s a 
 law of nature." 
 
 Carter, who had married Mary Grimes, was with 
 his wife at the White Sulphur. But Royal came to 
 Restwell from New York for a week. 
 
 He was still so paintable more paintable than 
 ever ! He was large, he looked neither old nor young ; 
 if, on the one side, he could have been used for 
 Mammon or a Roman emperor, on another side he 
 stood for patient, massive adaptation, eagle eyes 
 and wings. He looked here like an eleventh-century 
 alchemist, like a Chaldean, Egyptian watcher of 
 the stars. Perhaps he watched them to use them 
 for black magic perhaps he did not know what 
 he did, but was compounded out of black and 
 white, and acted with a dreamy strength, fatal, 
 automatic. 
 
 I watched him. He had a dragon power to draw 
 me. I could not understand him and not be him. 
 Miriam watched me watch him. Once she turned 
 to me in that inner movement and speech which we 
 used. "Take care! He s us, his ill and his good! 
 Don t let him draw too hard. Give toward him, 
 as you take from him!" 
 
 Dorothea. . . . Miriam knew here, too. . . . Doro 
 thea, Miriam, Royal, and I! If we lived with Vera 
 Black, with Mannheim, with Maxwell, Conrad, 
 Gamaliel if we lived with others we lived with 
 Dorothea and Royal, too. "Do I understand Doro 
 thea? Are we not sisters and more than sisters? 
 Here and here and here I meet her," said Miriam, 
 "and she meets me. The waters flowing together 
 
 297 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 must acknowledge their own waves. I am her sea 
 as she is mine." 
 
 We knew that, and we knew that all that is in 
 us all that is us must lift and lift . . . that is, 
 that everywhere the one mass must lift ... as it is 
 lifting! 
 
 We went to Whitechurch; we embraced in the 
 gold of the summer all there. We went to see the 
 Millwoods, the Millwoods came to see us. 
 
 Mr. Millwood sat with me one evening on the 
 porch. The others were walking to and fro in the 
 bright dusk and perfume, with Vesper shining above 
 the hills. He said, after a pause, "Have you found 
 Christ, Michael? * 
 
 I thought how best to answer him. At last I 
 said : " Have I come to Risen Man? I draw there, I 
 hope and I believe, at least a first, fluttering breath. 
 Risen Man hasn t drunk up yet all the night dews. 
 But Christ in me me-Christ lights up all the 
 horizon. The sun out of the sea. . . . The manger- 
 babe, weak yet in its swaddling clothes, laid where 
 the grain and the dried grass have been, where ani 
 mals have fed, where human forms bend and move 
 about it ... and the star that is its forehead above 
 the roof. . . . They are all great symbols ! Man that 
 is beyond men Man that is the container of men. 
 ... I believe that Christ which is Enlightenment is 
 born in me." 
 
 "Ha!" said Mr. Millwood, and moved impatiently. 
 "In the plain prose of the Bible, do you believe that 
 Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified by the Jews 
 and Pontius Pilate is your Lord and Saviour?" 
 
 "One reads the Bible in one way, one in another " 
 
 298 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 Mr. Millwood struck the porch floor with his large 
 foot. "There you go just like your grandfather!" 
 He spoke with a kind of peevishness. "I knew that 
 you were still wandering when I heard that you had 
 not been married in a church!" 
 
 But I liked him, and I knew that he did duties 
 that belonged to the way of the Risen Man. In a 
 moment he was more genuinely an old, kind heart. 
 Aunt Harriet approached, and residence and pro 
 fession and details of Miriam s and my household 
 life to be came to the fore in their old warm cloak. 
 
 I saw Doctor Young on his hilltop, in his chill, 
 northerly-bearing study, where fire flickering on the 
 hearth above ashes caught at this unburned frag 
 ment and at that. I longed somehow to heap the 
 fire and warm the place. He was solitary, and he 
 gathered his solitariness about him and dwelt with 
 it, forlornly proud. I so strongly saw Gamaliel 
 in him, him in Gamaliel and yet Gamaliel gone 
 forth, gone on ... and yet Anchises on the younger 
 man s shoulders. Sinbad- the old man of the 
 sea; Anchises-^Eneas desperately, hopefully, one! 
 . . . What war in the members of one being was 
 here and yet somewhere what agreement ! 
 
 We visited Mr. Gilbert in his most cool, most 
 quiet place of business, with the shadow of broad 
 leaves almost covering the pavement, with the 
 tinkling bell, and the deep compounded aroma of 
 many a land. 
 
 The days ran by, swift, effective, graceful, strong. 
 Days at Flowerfield at Restwell again at Flower- 
 field. Autumn came. When the color of October was 
 over the land Miriam and I went home to Baltimore. 
 
 299 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 We found a small house in a street just by Miriam s 
 hospital. We furnished it simply and barely, but 
 with what, according to our notions, had worth and 
 beauty. Friends helped. There came to us from 
 Flowerfield Dacia, who was as good a cook and 
 marketer and cleaner as might be found all that 
 and a few things besides. We entered into a fragrant 
 home life home and fragrant, for all that both 
 man and woman made contacts and worked in what 
 is called the outside world. 
 
 In October was published Letters from Africa. It 
 was fortunate in its appeal to a few men whose 
 names counted. It grew to a certain success. This 
 winter I wrote the African Dream, and it was pub 
 lished the following autumn. 
 
 I was at work upon The Branch of Coral, and we 
 had lived with Dacia almost two years in the small 
 house by the hospital, when there came an offer to 
 Miriam from New York. There was a chance to 
 reconstruct, to build fairer a great organ of useful 
 ness. She had in Baltimore the trained comrade 
 who might take over her work. She accepted the 
 widening field, and we went from Baltimore to the 
 huger city. It had drawn Gamaliel the year before, 
 to a chair in a great school. When we went we were 
 thirty-two, Miriam and I, for I was born in March 
 and she in October of the same year. 
 
 300 
 
CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 SEVEN years passed over us. It was nine years 
 since Miriam and I had made our home together. 
 Many things were done in the world. Many rudi 
 ments pushed upward, many vestiges tended de 
 cisively toward the Button Molder s caldron 
 not, in the long, long run, a hopeless place. Other 
 vestiges received a temporary strengthening, other 
 rudiments a temporary weighting down, dungeoning. 
 But on the whole and for the whole, assuredly, 
 naturally, completer life gained. 
 
 The Spanish War blew up, thundered through a 
 spring and summer, and sank into silence, where its 
 consequences worked on. The nineteenth century 
 passed into the twentieth century. McKinley lived 
 in the White House. Colonel Roosevelt was making 
 his legend with might and main. One evening I 
 had gone to see, at his hotel, an Italian painter who 
 had brought me a letter from Ferraro. I found him 
 with a group of others, viewing from a gallery the 
 annual dinner of an important society. There had 
 arrived the moment of speeches. A general and an 
 admiral spoke, a senator spoke, and I remember 
 not whom besides. But the last speaker, a better 
 speaker than most who had gone before, was a 
 teacher, a man named Woodrow Wilson. 
 
 301 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 In these days many were sensible of a change in 
 all the atmospheres. Throughout America, pre 
 sumably throughout the world, a subtle alteration; 
 a physical, moral, psychical, mental, spiritual change 
 might be perceived by all who were attuned to note 
 it. The century came in with a sense of liquid dawn. 
 Many did not feel it, too closely held in Egypt. But 
 to many there seemed in the air the virginal freshness 
 of a promised land. 
 
 The earth turned, full of promise. Regarding the 
 conflicting forces, the reluctant mother, the pangs 
 of birth, the ancient strong titans, the young gods, 
 there might have been foreseen, perhaps dimly was 
 foreseen, war yet in many shapes, huge war. But 
 there lived a feeling that those who warred were 
 coming over, that the center of gravity was changed 
 and would draw all men. Conrad said it was the 
 Rousseau period before the Revolutionary crash. 
 I in some sort agreed with him. Change of char 
 acter doubtless was apt to exhibit halcyon premoni 
 tory light, followed by downcrash, pangs of dissolu 
 tion, tragic bewilderment! Then might rise the 
 great apparition, the new order clear of the fallen 
 old, for a long time wreathed yet with torn cloud 
 and mist of the old. The character ever changed, 
 building up and building up, so that the god of to 
 day was to-morrow s titan, and to-morrow yet a 
 younger, diviner Olympian ! . . . I saw, then, revolu 
 tion approaching. But my revolution and Con 
 rad s revolution, too had not to do with blind and 
 deaf and powerless war. . . . 
 
 The twentieth century rose, then, with a sense of 
 dawn. 
 
 302 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 Miriam and I lived in an unfashionable quarter, 
 in a rather ancient, rather large, rather good house 
 there. Gamaliel lived with us, and Wythe the en 
 graver, and Mrs. Lobb the old actress. And there 
 were Dugald and Kate, the two children whom 
 Miriam and I had taken from an orphanage and 
 made our own. Besides Dacia we had Martin and 
 Mary to take household care of us, and Norah for 
 the children. Each winter Catherine came for a 
 month, and there were other visitors. Usually there 
 was a guest in the house. Conrad and his wife 
 Geralda lived in the next street. 
 
 Miriam s was become a known name through much 
 of the United States. Hers was the administrator s 
 genius. She could patiently disentangle the confused 
 strands, firmly hold the skein, wind off with light, 
 exquisite touch the ball for use, and see that it was 
 truly used. Mrs. Sayre, at Landon, came into mind. 
 She had had the same faculty, though not yet lifted 
 and widened as was Miriam s. Miriam worked for 
 the people through institutions and through move 
 ments. She worked with heart and head. Her pen 
 wrote, her voice spoke. Her papers, scattered here 
 and there through journals of sociology and where 
 not, may one day be gathered together. She was an 
 able and a winning speaker. Everywhere she used 
 the moment as best she could, and everywhere she 
 regarded and drew breath in the future. So she 
 worked and so she earned, and above all the objec 
 tive activity, raying down into the objective, went 
 on an intense and wide upward living and earning. 
 In our house she was frank and kind and true and 
 wise, with her gipsy tang as of some wild, most good, 
 
 303 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 most aromatic herb. Dugald and Kate loved her 
 dearly, as she loved them. Out of the house, or of 
 houses like it, she often met, as I often met, a dire 
 opposition. We knew that it was dire because it 
 was our opposition, through deep time and wide 
 place made by ourselves. We met it, let it roar 
 over and around us, converted, each time, what we 
 could of the tempest. . . . We had made it and we 
 must alter it. 
 
 My own work whereby I earned lay now in the 
 written drama. Occasionally, and of late years with 
 increasing frequency, a piece of it reached the 
 theater, where it had a longer or shorter playing. 
 Displeased critics called it "impracticable meta- 
 physic, barely playable." Pleased critics they were 
 by no means so many said that to-day s meta- 
 physic becomes to-morrow s physics, and that it 
 was increasingly playable. There was enough audi 
 ence to justify the staging, and the published vol 
 umes found their readers. These were the years 
 when I wrote Out and Away The Two Inns Color 
 and Another Color Who Cried? The Blessed House 
 Mr. X. 
 
 I worked hard. I knew many people and many 
 lines of life. I had all manner of contacts and 
 insights. 
 
 We went in summer to Flowerfield. To Dugald 
 and Kate that was Paradise. . . . The circle at Flower- 
 field stayed unbroken. Each year Aunt Sarah came 
 there from Restwell for a month. Her body was 
 growing old, but she herself, Miriam and I thought, 
 had new freshness, serenity, and bloom. She told 
 me that she had found her lover. "But not in the 
 
 304 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 old here, Michael and there is much more of 
 him than I had guessed. More of him and more of 
 me. Being together is life and the background 
 of life." 
 
 Each summer Miriam and I spent a fortnight at 
 Restwell. Occasionally, but not often, Royal was 
 there. He was now a rich man, creator of a huge 
 monopoly, at home in many boards. He had mar 
 ried wealth. He and his wife had a great house upon 
 Fifth Avenue. There were children. He gave 
 largely, he collected paintings. His especial liking 
 was for illuminated missals. His own living was 
 spare, healthfully abstemious. As ever, he was a sub 
 ject for a great artist. His eyes looked out of dream 
 capitals, from dream thrones 
 
 Dorothea had not married. She traveled now; she 
 went here and there over the earth. But now and 
 then we found her at Restwell. She looked at me 
 with her enigmatical face. It seemed to say, "I 
 like you and I like you not." And I, too, could have 
 said in my turn, "I like you and I like you not." 
 But Miriam went steadily out to Dorothea. I have 
 seen the two dim forms at twilight, moving in the 
 orchard or seated under the great oak. 
 
 There rest deeps and deeps, inmosts and inmosts, 
 yet to find. 
 
 Miriam and I worked hard and constantly. Much 
 was to be done in the plain, apparent, known dimen 
 sions. We, too, with all our kind, were household 
 ers. We, too, recapitulated, drew out the essences, 
 learned to manage a little better and a little bet 
 ter yet, daily living. We were not immoderates; 
 we had a loving-kindness for daily living. When 
 
 305 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 the fleeting is known to be fleeting it can be well 
 enjoyed ! 
 
 As best we knew how we did what our hand found 
 to do. We were not out of the plane of physical 
 needs, neither we nor ours. We worked as others 
 worked, for food and shelter. If we bent ourselves 
 to put wisdom in this very getting if we saw, now 
 less clearly, now more clearly, other food and shelter 
 yet must we work where we were with so great 
 part of our consciousness! Even in the summer 
 when we went to Flower-field we worked still, study 
 ing, planning, writing. We found that to do one 
 thing was to do many things. 
 
 In these years something in us of upper lands 
 measurably rested from further beckoning, further 
 climbing. 
 
 Yet there was inner action, and that of an in 
 tensity. . . . Levels and levels below must somehow 
 be worked out, and their life come up to reinforce 
 before the journeyer might move on. Strength had 
 to go and did go to disintegrating ancient bars and 
 reefs. . . . That principle of sensibility which I felt 
 in myself, that permeativeness, pervasion of time 
 and space, touch afar and near, worked for a long 
 time obscurely, in darkened chambers. Herakles, I 
 knew, had his own Hades to visit, his own stable 
 to clean, and both were vast enough to make for 
 a weary, long job! At times Herakles inclined to 
 think there was naught besides Hades, naught besides 
 stable, naught besides hydra, bear, lion. Even, once 
 and again, Herakles trembled toward contentment 
 with, identification with, rest with, the monsters 
 and the dismal places and the squalor. 
 
 306 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 He trembled toward it, then he stood still and 
 took thought, then, dimly, dimly, he saw again the 
 star above the murk and turned and took up his 
 task. 
 
 Outer life and its thousand cries I knew and must 
 respond to. But the inner life saw the fight, the 
 crusade, the quest, intense, intense. . . . What I say 
 of Michael applies also to Miriam. 
 
 There came sense of another turning, breaths of 
 dawn. 
 
 The twentieth century was born. We felt a 
 trembling, trembling together of mankind. We 
 said, She begins to be conscious Humanity!" 
 Many were saying it, many scattered through the 
 earth. 
 
 Miriam and I stood at thirty-eight. Dugald and 
 Kate were our children. They were nine-year-olds, 
 a happy pair with health and good minds. Miriam 
 and I had friends. We had what the world calls 
 name and place. We were not rich, but we were not 
 at all grindingly poor. . . . The spirit went on. The 
 spirit cried to itself, "Awake awake!" 
 
 I had finished the play, "Catch and Catch Again." 
 Y., the actor, had it a subtle, good actor. He and 
 the play made an entry into public liking. One of 
 the consequences of this was the arrival of some 
 means wherewith to travel. 
 
 Miriam, too, had made end of a train of work and 
 there was breathing-space before another tangled 
 skein should lie in her hands. She and I took holi 
 day. We left the children and Norah at Flowerfield 
 and for two months went wandering over the Western 
 slopes of this country. 
 
 307 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 At last, one day, we stood upon the Pacific shore. 
 We gazed in silence, the wind murmuring about us, 
 stirring the sere grass above the sand. We went afar 
 in thought and touch, through and over the waves. 
 A power that had somewhat drowsed away awoke 
 in us quick and strong. I go forth like a blue cloud ! 
 said Miriam. I nodded. It seemed to us that we 
 were that ocean and all within it, and the ships 
 that sailed it, and the islands that rose from it, and 
 their peoples, and the farther shores, and all the 
 Penelope web of interrelations, woven, unwoven, 
 woven anew! "Seems! ... 7 know not seems. " 
 
 Dimly we felt the Malay moving, faintly we made 
 sail with seamen brown and yellow and white. 
 Miriam sank upon the sand. We rested against a 
 dune. The sea wind went over us, in the long 
 grass. ... In her first, then in me, in us both, arose 
 the barn at Flowerfield. It is raining; we are chil 
 dren telling stories in our burrow in the hay. John 
 cuts his round checkers out of his piece of cedar. 
 The barn-swallows flit by. We are telling stories 
 there, and we sit here by the Pacific Ocean. Coil 
 within coil, the Fisherman and the Genie rise about 
 us, in an Araby that likewise has room. The Fisher 
 man having the clue to wealth goes fishing and takes 
 four fish white, red, blue, and yellow. 
 
 Miriam spoke and her voice was made out of all 
 the voices of the sea. She swayed with a movement 
 like the movement of the sea. 
 
 "Mussulman, Par see, Christian, Jew " 
 
 Her voice sank. The barn and the children there 
 drew back. . . . The Pacific sea, the ships and the 
 islands, Japan, China, India 
 
 308 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 * They are all in our limbs, she said. I feel them ! 
 The film goes over the universe." 
 
 A month from this day we were in the mesa land 
 of Arizona. A friend of Miriam s lived here upon a 
 small ranch with a brother who must have the dry 
 sunshine. We stayed a week with them. It was 
 a lonely, silver-gray spot, depending for beauty upon 
 space and light. Hardly anywhere else have I seen 
 such a canopy of stars at night. The earth tasted, 
 smelled, very lonely, wild, to itself. If one liked it 
 not he hurried or tried to hurry away; if one liked 
 it he might like it mightily. There was room for 
 thinking, and the inner life might come out upon 
 the door-step. The sister and brother, Miriam and I, 
 rode, and in the evenings talked beside a crackling 
 fire. And in the mornings, when the other two were 
 busy, Miriam and I wandered upon the mesa. 
 
 Here one day we sat, without speaking, in the 
 deep light. At last she broke the silence. I feel 
 that something that has been still a long time is 
 moving on again! It was still to serve purposes, 
 and it moves on to serve purposes." 
 
 "I understand," I answered. "I feel that." 
 
 "We have worked hard. Doubtless we shall 
 keep on working. But some land is drawing stronger 
 and stronger! Work there isn t iust like work here." 
 
 "No." 
 
 We walked again, then rested again. The earth 
 lay wide and clear, lifted, still, and sunny. I spoke : 
 "You and I have all along been developing powers. 
 Now and again we have vibrated more swiftly, 
 or we have entered greater vortexes, or we have 
 felt a zephyr torch from super-consciousness, or we 
 
 309 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 have known, as in a mist, the touch of godhood. 
 The terminology doesn t so much matter! Bio 
 logically speaking, a new center of consciousness, 
 another sense, is in process of development. When 
 we have it fully many things will be self -explained. 
 When it is developed in a sufficient number of the 
 species, there will be a new heaven and a new earth. 
 As Mr. X would say, It is very simple. . . . Perhaps 
 it is, but the effect is still a very wonder!" 
 
 "A marvel, a beauty, an awful, glorious sea." 
 
 "Each time, in all our life, that we have left the 
 accustomed plane to go higher rests in memory, 
 grapes from Eshcol ! There is a humbling sense that 
 those times have been few. All the same, they have 
 made a standard of comparison. There is a longing 
 for reunion, homesickness for Trueself. . . . More 
 realness more realness on the way to Reality!" 
 
 So!" she said. "Well, I feel that we start up 
 from the camp-fire and move on!" 
 
 But our days in Arizona, breathing, alert, silver- 
 gold as they were and our journey across the 
 continent, filled, as it was, with mind-zest and our 
 homecoming that glowed and crooned as it always 
 did and the uptaking of familiar work, hardly 
 carried the acute and actual perception of a camp- 
 fire left and a frontier crossed. And yet I, with 
 Miriam, felt a premonition, felt hands upon the 
 tent-pegs ! 
 
 310 
 
CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 I WAS writing in the study. Now I sat at the desk, 
 and now I walked to and fro. I was at work upon 
 Aldebaran. It struck eleven. The house stood quite 
 quiet, above and below. Some work that she was 
 doing had taken Miriam farther north for a week. 
 It was late. Standing at the window, I saw only 
 quiet night, dark houses. The feet of some passer-by 
 rang loud on the pavement. A train passed on the 
 "L," a block away. 
 
 Work had gone to-night nor well nor badly. I 
 had finished a scene, but knew that to-morrow I 
 must make much of it over. I laid work by and 
 turned toward the book-shelves. . . . 
 
 Light seemed in my brain light! The room, the 
 old earth, all trains and loops and garlands and 
 nooses of phenomena vanished. There was light 
 in excelsis. There was no form, as old form is con 
 ceived, but there was control. There was no labor 
 of motion, but there was thrill. There was not 
 change as change here is conceived, but I think 
 there was change. Only it was so vast. . . . The sense 
 was of power and infinite experience, of wisdom and 
 of floods of balm. In the midst of the balm there was 
 fiber, activity, mind, and all in a time and space 
 into which our time and space melted, raindrops 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 into sea! I have said that there was no form, but 
 there was a sense that some supreme effort of per 
 ception might reveal form, though of a magnitude 
 and contour! The feeling was that what yesterday 
 had been a collectivity diffused, planetary life 
 was become, in a flash that tore the heavens and 
 rolled them away, a self-conscious, a living Spirit. 
 The Earth became a Spirit with a vesture. And that 
 was I I was That. And all history and all experi 
 ence and all "otherness" was but the honey in that 
 hive! And the hive was conscious as a man is con 
 scious. . . . There came another flash core-light, 
 core-voice. . . . Still, still, there were other forms, 
 there were companion planets! . . . There came a 
 climax. I knew the great dominant whom the old 
 congeries, in the old time, named "The Sun" . . . 
 Light, light, light! 
 
 The intensity of experience lessened. The great 
 thing, in all its scope, paled, entered memory. 
 
 But out of lower space and out of lower time, and 
 out of lower form, stayed the sense of goal. I knew 
 the pilgrims and the pilgrimage, the task, the quest, 
 the America over the waves, the Grail, the immortal 
 adventure, eternal romance 
 
 And Miriam, that was the spirit most near, most 
 dear to me? Before twenty-four hours had passed 
 there came a letter from her. 
 
 MICHAEL: Last night, about midnight, my soul sprang for 
 ward with a certain burning quality. There was great light, 
 and in an inner firmament I saw the sun that we are. MIRIAM. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 MIRIAM and I made nucleus of that moment. 
 To it, through inner space came, drawn, all of 
 its slightest kindred. All intimations, intuitions, 
 all experience of planes that were not of every-day, 
 every flavor of Self that understood and transcended 
 the old self, every piece of delimitation, every re 
 moval of inhibition, every positive approach to new 
 power that we had known came into that light and 
 certitude. We had centered, we had the point of 
 view. That which was now our part was, with ever- 
 increasing fullness, to be, to know, to enjoy, to act 
 from that center. 
 
 Certain things emerged, could be handled and 
 looked at without shock and dazzling. 
 
 There existed a consciousness surpassing old levels 
 that we had known. Mankind was tending toward 
 this consciousness. As man s consciousness was 
 larger than the animal s, so was this larger than 
 the old human. As each higher dimension holds 
 and surpasses the dimensions below it, so this con 
 sciousness would contain and surpass all the old, 
 fainter, slower rates. The point goes on reproduc 
 ing and reproducing itself, establishing memory, 
 growing a sense of relation. One day it is capable 
 of an electric flash, a communication, a filling out I 
 Oneness is born again. Point becomes line. There 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 is perception, action, knowledge, enjoyment, in the 
 greater universe of the line. The line, now the unit, 
 in its turn reproduces itself, acting right and left. 
 Line memory appears, relation among lines. One 
 day, an electric flash, communication, sense of con 
 tinuity, filling out, oneness ! Plane is here, and acts 
 from the great universe of the plane that contains 
 and unifies lines and points, and goes upon its own 
 adventure, under new skies, to a dimly guessed great 
 future. The flash and containing and yet beyond 
 the sense of all planes, lo! an overplane is born to 
 you. And the solid runs its race. But one day 
 again the flash! Again Oneness, containing all that 
 went before, with its own career beckoning, with, far 
 away, another transcendence beckoning! One day 
 the hyper-solid 
 
 A house is built. The builder-owner comes in 
 and takes possession, and begins another stretch 
 of undying life. 
 
 Any man, attaining this consciousness, finds him 
 self to be all men. 
 
 Love of Humanity and of a super-Humanity 
 becomes love and care for a Self that is old Human 
 ity, new Humanity, and Humanity to be. That sub 
 human, dubbed animal, plant, and mineral, is like 
 wise to be comprehended. It is all the Self, to be 
 realized and lifted through every level. Environ 
 ment is the Self, Nature the Self, God the Self. 
 The smaller God is dead, but by no means the 
 greater God. That overarches, inheres, yet! 
 
 Miriam and I looked about us. We saw vast 
 streams of tendency, rivers in which many a hun 
 dred smaller rivers flowed. We saw Occident and 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 Orient interfusing. We saw over the armies, the 
 bayonets, the fortresses and dreadnaughts of the 
 nations, over wars past and present and very prob 
 ably to come, the approach of internationalism. 
 We could say, "It comes Tennyson s Parliament 
 of man, the Federation of the world!" 1 We saw 
 socialization at hand, the common inheritance held 
 as common inheritance. We saw woman and man 
 alike free, the hands of the sexes joined, their brows 
 touching. We saw a changing attitude toward the 
 child, and a changing toward education. We saw 
 medicine and law opening windows in their man 
 sions. Business was growing humane, politics clean. 
 Art and letters and music subtly transformed them 
 selves. We saw in the ancient body of the church, 
 Protestant and Catholic and Jewish, Mohammedan, 
 Hindu and Buddhist, and what other names are 
 given, fountains rise of wider practice of religion. 
 We saw healthful revolt. The Christian Scientist 
 went forth, the Theosophist, the man of New 
 Thought, and others. . . . We saw a strong tide 
 flowing, religious tolerance and more than that, 
 religious understanding, and more than that, relig 
 ious love. We saw the folk take up beauty; idea 
 stretching wing in a sunrise of loveliness. We heard 
 the voices growing richer, deeper. Travel in the air 
 was upon us, and a power of intercommunication 
 once only longed for. Many an extension of enjoy 
 ment was upon us, and knowledge in great breadths. 
 We saw that the scientific man had come into ground 
 once trodden only by the mystic. We heard science 
 say, "Here it makes of itself material, and here it 
 rests immaterial." What Berkeley had said, gather- 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 ing into a line many a tome, hung to-day in the 
 atmosphere. "All is spirit and its ideas." . . . Those 
 compacted ideas of spirit that we called "the body!" 
 Kindness and sacredness were coming into the com 
 pact, and new temperance and a new energy. . . . 
 The great bells rang for the great century. 
 
 Grandeur brooded over our time. 
 
 We knew conflict did we not know it feelingly? 
 But through all storms that were and storms to 
 come, streamed on the unifying! True unifying 
 comes only by love and understanding. We touched 
 the profoundness with which already it was here. 
 It was not a dream; it was here, though yet only as 
 a shadow of itself. Conflict and conflict until in 
 the dawn it rose into itself! But we saw now the 
 immense extent of blue sky and sunshine, and how 
 local were all storms, even the worst. 
 
 We saw men accepting their neighbors. We took 
 Jesus of Nazareth s definition of neighbors. 
 
 More and more the ships made the fleet. Mul 
 tiplicity did not vanish, but it held together. 
 
 We saw that, truly speaking, there is but one man, 
 one woman, one child. Comprising, transcending 
 these, there will walk a Being 
 
 That one is us. 
 
 We call it "I" because it is "I." 
 
 When we cease to talk of multiplicity we shall 
 cease to talk of unity. I shall live with my ideas, 
 of all dimensions. 
 
 Orientation sense of direction sense of right 
 sense of the future sense of destiny such terms 
 grew vital. 
 
 316 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 New mind, new fulcrum! Will the lifter, the lever, 
 applied itself to new tasks. 
 
 Further and further, deeper and deeper, Miriam 
 and I began to know ourselves. There was no end 
 to that, could be no end to that. We met great 
 countries that we had thought somehow to be 
 "other" and found to be our own. We desired ever 
 more adequate ideas, fairer, stronger, kinder! ever 
 more beautiful, ever more potent thought. We 
 wished to dissolve concepts not well or wisely put 
 together and to assemble mightier, richer experi 
 ences. Out of the horn of our own plenty again and 
 again and forever these might be drawn. 
 
 There is no barrier between in and out. All that 
 is thought, all that is imaged, lives and moves, acts. 
 
 We addressed ourselves to discovery, to assimila 
 tion of that which has been discovered, and to fresh 
 discovery. We set our minds to higher and wider 
 imagery. Whatever, little or much, that we could 
 find or do of value would be for all, as in truth it 
 would be All that was finding or doing. There is 
 no other than All. . . . But there is yet self -confusion, 
 self -dissipation, and now we speak from one degree 
 of the Jacob s stair, and now from another. . . . But 
 for all that, all that we could do or find would be for 
 all. We might not print it nor speak it, nor see it, 
 woven into a present institution. But nevertheless 
 would it flow and penetrate. Motion in that world 
 is spherical and inconceivably rapid. . . . 
 
 Miriam and I worked on in our visible earth, 
 with daily life, with written dramas, with aid against 
 the raw cruelty of many a human situation. But 
 activity widened, though it flowed invisibly. So 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 flowing, however, the order of results nearest to the 
 old daily living tended to become visible. Or, 
 rather, these merging with daily living, the latter 
 stood up stronger, brighter-eyed. 
 
 We knew that we were immortal. So we drank, 
 day by day, of that fountain Ponce de Leon sought. 
 
 We experimented now with deliberation. We 
 planned experiments, and we caught on the wing 
 the birds of paradise that flew our way. We mined 
 in this direction bridged here volatilized this 
 mass redistributed. Volatilization is one word for 
 process. More and more particles left trie old earth, 
 rose to a new level, and there recombined. We did 
 not discard old words; we used them. But they 
 indicated, each one, something far more entire than 
 once was the case. We learned volume and we 
 learned momentum. Touch, taste, smell, color, 
 sound, muscular sense, sense of equilibrium, sense 
 of motion, all senses, changed from fleeting sprites 
 to strong angels. We had faith that where was ex 
 tension there were we, and where was non-extension 
 there were we. That is, we were in this place or 
 that, and beside that, back of that, under that, over 
 that, we were everywhere. We had faith that we 
 touched all time, and that eternity was our name. 
 We knew that we were spirit, and that we were more 
 conscious, more awakened, than once was so. Being 
 more conscious, being more awake, we entered with 
 naturalness into our mode of life. Over our heads, 
 like a star, hung knowledge that there was yet con 
 sciousness, yet waking, fuller and fuller conscious 
 ness, awakening, to which all our new experience 
 that we found so rich might come, nay, must come, 
 
 318 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 to seem the hour of a child, a dream, a faint sound 
 of singing, thin shells upon the shore just making 
 one guess at the life in the sea! 
 
 That which we set ourselves to do as far as we 
 could was to think, image, feel, act, into conscious 
 being the Oneness of mankind, the I-ness of all this 
 that says, "We are separate hard, concrete atoms, 
 mostly opposed to one another! each for itself, 
 living and dying, and Wholeness your fancy!" 
 
 We had dimly seen for long the including Shape. 
 We had written of it worked for it. But now we 
 saw it far more plainly, now we felt the vast magnetic 
 drawing of it. But now we had become convinced 
 that the external ways were not the only ways. Now 
 we saw that the clasping, demonstrating action 
 worked from within outward. All these "selves," 
 to find it truly, must find it from the inner side. 
 They could not be pinned together. They must 
 flow together. Spirit willing, seeing, everywhere! 
 But those who sailed the inner seas might start 
 thence waves of help outgiven stimuli that might 
 pass from part to part. 
 
 Miriam and I strongly yearned over our kind. We 
 wished union. We wished the super-organism with 
 the super-powers the super-mind, the super-heart. 
 We wished Earth to cross the Red Sea, to come out 
 of Egypt. We saw that all things worked to that 
 end, if they knew it, or if they knew it not. . . . 
 
 Where all are seas of God, the diver may enter from 
 where he stands must enter from where he stands. 
 
 Miriam and I had certain dawning powers. We en 
 tered through them. That is, they grew to fuller pow 
 ers, and around them, infant yet, rose other powers. 
 
 319 
 
CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 A YEAR after that moment of illumination we 
 found ourselves upon a ship bound for Eng 
 land. We had sailed for months of travel. There 
 were errands. An international body, of which 
 Miriam was an officer, met that summer in Geneva, 
 and she was to speak for certain measures dear to 
 her mind and heart. In London was to be found a 
 group of men whom I wished to see. There, too, was 
 being played "Mr. X," and Llewellyn, writing of 
 it and its reception by a London ready for "strange 
 poetry," urged me to come over and stay awhile 
 with him, "for I am going to die some time, and 
 we may not meet in these old dresses that we have 
 liked. You see I expect meeting indeed, to say 
 it all, I don t wait for death to practise meeting 
 but yet, my friend, I want to see you in the old ways, 
 too! I likewise want to see Miriam." 
 
 We went. After England, after the Continent, 
 we were going to meet Maxwell, in Egypt. 
 
 The sea was smooth, the hour dusk, on the horizon 
 line a pale gold and green light, cool and pure, in 
 the sky the strongest stars. Miriam and I walked, 
 then came to our deck-chairs and lay there, in sheer, 
 exquisite rest, in the envelop of sea and sky. Other 
 passengers had gone below; only a few figures paced 
 the deck or reclined, moveless, in the wide silence. 
 
 320 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 We sat still. . . . Suddenly, definitely, with all dis 
 tinctness, I saw Maxwell. He was in a boat upon a 
 river. He made landing, stepped out and, turning, 
 spoke to the rowers. I saw green-clad hills, palm- 
 trees, the roof of a temple. There was with him 
 an Englishman in uniform, and also a stout, dark- 
 skinned, turbaned individual. The three went up a 
 flight of river steps. Night came over it, it was gone. 
 Here were the sea and the horizon light and the 
 stars. Miriam turned a little in her chair and spoke 
 softly. "What did you see?" 
 
 I told her. "He is somewhere in India." 
 
 "Curved light," she said. "What is the date? 
 Can you tell if at all he saw you?" 
 
 "I think that he did. For just one moment as 
 he reached the top of the steps." 
 
 We rested in our chairs in silence. The sky came 
 down, dark blue, to the sea, the stars thickened. 
 Darkness that was light, brine and tune of the sea, 
 kiss of the wind, held us. ... Something more than 
 these, for now we entered with our faint, nebulous 
 power of perception, into a consciousness confused, 
 multitudinous, but real. Inchoately, faintly, we 
 perceived our own life. Vision and voice, touch, 
 presence, peoples, tribes and nations, groups, in 
 dividuals, flowed in us. We held them as the sea 
 holds its own, as the heaven holds the stars. The 
 active principle knew that it surrounded, contained, 
 pervaded, preserved, transcended the ideas that it cre 
 ated. These ideas were three-dimensional, colored, 
 real; they were the sensible and intelligible world. 
 
 We lay, oceans whispering each to each, lost or 
 found, with all number in one. The perceptions 
 
 321 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 played. So fathomless, so wealthy was the feeling, 
 so wealthy, so deep! The broad face of the earth 
 was there, Asia and Europe and America were there, 
 history, and names great and small, yesterday , to-day , 
 and to-morrow. Vast events hung in that inner 
 space; they contained, as clouds contain the water 
 that had been and will be again in drops, myriads of 
 small events. We tasted faiths and cultures, wilder 
 nesses, cities, movements of the spirit continuing 
 from of old. Salt of the sea, tone of the wind, we 
 upheld desire, love. We had the knowledge of the 
 heart, we embraced the law of kindness. Within us 
 long, long human love glowed and chanted. We were 
 all lovers, we were all parents. We were all children. 
 We experienced family love, village, and tribal love, 
 nation love, world love. We knew comrade love, and 
 we knew also kneeling reverence for the Wholeness 
 all unattained. We knew sublimity, we knew awe. 
 . . . We knew the flash of difference, the outward 
 passing sparks, the falling stars. Yet were they in 
 the whole, and on the mission of the whole! Dif 
 ference and Likeness, for so was attained the essen 
 tial rich variety, the sweet taste of novelty, the wild 
 grapes of romance. . . . Faces came and went. . . . 
 Summations and essences made the honey of the 
 Ancient of Days. 
 
 The ship s musicians began to play overture of 
 "Die Meistersinger. " Miriam and I rose and walked 
 the deck one or twice, then went within to the lights 
 and voices of the saloon. 
 
 That night, in our state-room, as she put out the 
 light and stood before the opened window, and all 
 the zest and fragrance of the sea made entry, she 
 
 322 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 said : "How rich is every man and woman and child 
 in the world! Golconda and California and Kim- 
 berley hang on the bough above their head!" 
 
 "We shall not get the fruit until we grow tall 
 enough." 
 
 "Yes. But we are growing taller every moment. 
 Not a dwarf but shall some day reach it! oh, my 
 darling world!" 
 
 We sailed across the sea. We had acquaintances 
 on this ship and we made others. By now, in our 
 degree, she and I had that earth-fame which brought 
 folk to glance as we passed. "That is Miriam Forth 
 That is Michael Forth." One evening an enter 
 tainment had been arranged for some seamen s fund. 
 A star of opera sang three songs. A mountain- 
 climber related an adventure in the Himalayas, a 
 dancer danced, a famous violinist played a sweet, 
 uncanny, ancient melody. Miriam spoke, ten min 
 utes, her theme, "To-morrow." She was the 
 mountain-climber, the dancer, the violinist, and her 
 self, herself! She spoke to-night with extraordinary 
 power. ... I, listening, was aware of Madam 
 Black. That great personality and Miriam and I 
 made union. Behind the speaker, behind the lis 
 tener, in a clear, vibrating darkness, pulsed all 
 Russia, all Europe, America. 
 
 A day after this, the sea running free, the sky like 
 an archipelago, many cloud islands, great and small, 
 with deep straits of blue air between, a man came up 
 to us where we rested against the rail and watched 
 the foam-mosaic at the side of the ship. We had 
 noted him before; we knew that he was Ransome, 
 the traveler. He greeted us and we him ; we did not 
 
 323 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 need to give names to and fro. After a little we 
 moved to our chairs, placed where we might watch 
 the sea. He found one for himself and sat before 
 us, dark and thin, with a fine eagle face. It seemed 
 that he read and liked the dramas of Michael Forth. 
 We passed to talk of his wanderings. He knew all 
 the zones and man in varieties of mind and passion 
 
 With many an arm and maw and face and eye. 
 
 Presently I do not remember the connection 
 he was speaking of Lourdes and more ancient pil 
 grimage goals, Compostella, and where not, of faith 
 and shrines of miracle, and legendary doings in the 
 Middle Ages and all other ages, in Europe and all 
 other continents. He brushed Arabia, Persia, and 
 India, and talked of Yogins and Sufis; then, with the 
 calm, wide curve of a broad-pinioned bird, he was 
 
 in London, where, last year, he had gone with 
 
 and , Psychical Researchers, to see , who 
 
 came near to the powers of Stainton Moses. "Yes. 
 He did some quite wonderful things! Why under 
 the sun shouldn t an exceptional person now and 
 then? We allow every other machine to improve. 
 Why shouldn t the human machine why shouldn t 
 it begin to respond to wider ends ?" Between the first 
 ship, with its oar or rag of a sail, and this liner, 
 differences in power! The nature of development 
 desire will mind did the one. Why isn t it doing 
 the other? I hold that it is doing it and that there 
 isn t any unnaturalness !" 
 
 He regarded blue sea and blue sky. "Old wits con 
 tinually bettered and new wits continually inaugu 
 rated and more and more fully adopted. The sum 
 
 324 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 growing larger all the time, finer, too, as it works 
 itself over and over, keener, more lustrous. . . . What 
 else is there than just the- to-be-expected ? ... I 
 do not think to be of the substance of a throned 
 idiot nor a throned villain, either!" 
 
 The sea ran around the world. The fluid air was 
 not here nor there, it flowed afar and near. ... I 
 sat upon the deck of the Zeus and listened to Ran- 
 some the traveler but also I was away from this 
 all around and all through. . . . Flowing mind that 
 was also Ransome s mind, as it was Miriam s mind, 
 and others and others and others in incalculable 
 numbers the host of mind. . . . Strong was the 
 rapture! Thought there had great voice god 
 voice. It sank away, but its shadow, its echo, 
 lingering, clothed itself in words from an ancient 
 dialogue between man and Man between the in 
 dividual and the Generic Consciousness. 
 
 " Then the son of Pandu beheld the whole world with 
 all its differences gatlwred together in the body oj that 
 God of gods." 
 
 The strong music rolled away. Ransome was still 
 speaking : "So, little by little, do we acquire powers. 
 Genus Homo pulls himself together ! Mother Nature 
 learns finer magic !" 
 
 Miriam sang under her breath: 
 
 " Magic magic! 
 Out of the cave, 
 Out of the lead! 
 Touch the gold, 
 Spread the wings 
 Magician!" 
 
 " Magic? What is it?" spoke Ransome. "Un- 
 
 325 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 conscious truth? . . . What is it that is emerging 
 faster and faster butterfly out of chrysalis? Every 
 fifth person you meet to-day has an inkling of it! 
 It is in the air. What should you call it? Another 
 sense? A superior field of consciousness? Specie- 
 thought? Self -recognition? The Real?" 
 
 "Somewhat of all that, perhaps! Each fraction of 
 understanding as it is reached takes its fractional 
 name. . . . Thousands of marvelous half-way houses. 
 ... In the end a Person that endures conceives, 
 acts, and enjoys." 
 
 The Zeus sailed on jade-colored seas and tur 
 quoise sky and a healthful, singing wind. 
 
 We came to the Irish coast. Out of those about 
 us watching the bare, the wild, the emerald beauty, 
 rose a girl s voice. "I wish we had time for Kil- 
 larney!" 
 
 One instant after the word fell, then Miriam 
 sharply turned her head and drew me with her gray 
 eyes. Our inner senses sprang each to each, leaped 
 together far down. . . . We were in Killarney. 
 
 The peat burned on the hearth, the smoke made 
 itself tasted. The boy was dying, having received a 
 sword-thrust in the battle. The girl sat upon the 
 earth floor beside the low bed. The hands of the two 
 touched on the covering of frieze; she sat staring, 
 seeing union and separation. . . . He felt the hurt of 
 the sword; things went in a mist, armies in a mist, 
 the wings of sorrow. The grandmother sat gathered 
 together in the corner of the hearth. Now she was 
 silent and now she keened. The sound was bitter. 
 The door opened and men and women came in. 
 There was a burly priest carrying soul-comfort. 
 
 326 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 Behind him walked a soldier, and it was all long ago, 
 back perhaps as far as Elizabeth s time. The grand 
 mother never left the corner where the peat smoke 
 curled about her, for all that the Host was coming 
 in. The grandmother was heathen, wild, believing 
 a god in the lake and the mountain. Who would 
 work for her now, and the times so horribly ill? 
 . . . Boy and girl, grandmother, priest, the English 
 soldier, the mistier, fainter others, we, Miriam- 
 Michael, we leaning there against the rail of the 
 Zeus, we were them all we were Killarney. The 
 thing was there with a great pang and vividness 
 then it was not. . . . We sighed, we came back to the 
 Zeus. . . . There was a link made with a night long 
 ago at York and with the monk Eadwine listening 
 to the chanting in the church. The infinite sea of 
 the memory of this earth! Moments entered con 
 sciousness so, they are restored so and whence they 
 came there are decillions of others ! 
 
 What are words? . . . 
 
 The Irish shore faded, the Zeus came to Liverpool. 
 Ransome traveled with us in the railway carriage 
 to London. We gazed and gazed again upon the 
 country through which we drew. 
 
 England s green and pleasant land 
 
 So fair it was ! So far fairer it might become, would 
 become. After a time, when the eye was somewhat 
 sated, Ransome began again to talk of Psychical 
 Research. We had had companions in the carriage, 
 but they had dismounted at some town. For a 
 while we were alone. He wished to introduce us 
 
 327 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 in London to three or four men and women whom he 
 named. We agreed, and we came to owe to Ransome 
 more than one valued connection, besides his own 
 rich mind. At last he took out a pocket book and 
 from it a paper which he unfolded. " That s a 
 scheme of powers that the late Frederick Myers 
 drew up. It belongs in his book that is to be pub 
 lished. A friend showed it to me, and I asked leave 
 to copy it." 
 
 I took it from him and Miriam and I read together 
 Myers s Synopsis of Vital Faculty. 
 
 First Series. Phenomena Supraliminally Controlled, or Occur 
 ring in Ordinary Life . . . 
 
 Second Series. Phenomena Subliminally Controlled . . . 
 Third Series. Phenomena Claimed as Spiritually Controlled . . . 
 
 We read it with attention, acquiescence. " That s a 
 good compendium. We should say Spirit or Self, 
 where he says spirits " 
 
 The country went by, so verduous, so sweet ! All 
 the towns, villages, solitary houses "It is all in 
 us, in us all," said Miriam. "Bone of bone and flesh 
 of flesh and blood of blood and spirit of spirit. Oh ! 
 world our mother world our child world our self!" 
 
 328 
 
CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 T LEWELLYN had aged. His beard was almost 
 *- white. He talked of an old house crumbling to 
 pieces. "I see some lines that the new will follow. 
 Partly like the old, partly not. . . . Michael, do you 
 remember that evening on the mountain-top above 
 Africa, where we lit our fire, and the air was some 
 thing finer than air, and we felt, all of us, friends for 
 ever? I remember what a strange beauty vibrant, 
 shining you had that night!" 
 
 "You had it, too all had it! We saw each upon 
 the other the radiance that we all gave." 
 
 "Well, it was there! Well, we are friends forever, 
 meeting and meeting and meeting again. . . . Pil 
 grims, adventurers, explorers, poets all the race of 
 
 romance." 
 
 We sat in the London house which he shared with 
 Sir Charles. Sir Charles was in India Maxwell, 
 too. "I go there also, pretty often," said Llewellyn. 
 "On the wings of Poetry! That is, without wings. 
 . . . He who flies without wings. . . . The one who is 
 there anyhow without flying is the poet we call God. 
 There and here!" He turned to Miriam. "Don t 
 you sing? I should say that you did." 
 
 She sang for him, sitting there in the rich dusk, 
 sang without instrument, thrillingly, exquisitely. 
 
 329 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 The notes died. We sat quietly till the lights were 
 brought. "I look forward to million -folded wis 
 dom," said Llewellyn, abruptly. "The most vital, 
 the vastest experience!" 
 
 "It is." 
 
 "Yes . . . Michael, I have always waked at dawn. 
 It has always been my season. The bloom of the 
 vineyard, the wind over the palms is then . . . More 
 and more I get wonder, pleased surprise, a sense of 
 Olympian food." 
 
 "The right bread and wine." 
 
 "Just! You two, I am glad that you came." 
 
 John Sydney was in Australia. But I met again 
 Carthew Roberts, and I was happy to find Panta- 
 gruel. . . . Miriam and I went together to the house 
 yet lived in by the Mannheims. The brother was in 
 the city, at his place of business, where, said Llewel 
 lyn, he prospered. Mannheim s sister also was away, 
 but would return presently. Would we wait? We 
 waited, and talked with the plaintive, fearful cousin. 
 Her easy tears came yet for Mannheim, but chiefly 
 for herself. She said that the world was a selfish, 
 cruel place, distressing to God! The house was 
 clean, these three people loved and clung together, 
 but the cousin and, I knew, the brother heard fog 
 horns day and night, dreaded collisions, suffered 
 shadowy shipwreck all the time. 
 
 Mannheim s sister came in. A thousand thousand 
 fingers of thought and feeling had modeled her 
 strong Jewish face. She greeted us, and we talked 
 of Mannheim. After a while she took us to the small 
 room where yet were kept his books and specimens. 
 We stood beside his old, large, shabby desk. Above 
 
 330 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 hung a small painting, a good one, by an unknown 
 artist Moses leading the people forth. 
 
 Mannheim s sister spoke: "My brother and my 
 cousin in the other room think he s dead. The most 
 that they can do is to see him in some little outward 
 way, as he looked or sat or spoke some day when, 
 they say, he was living." 
 
 Upon the desk stood an old hour-glass. Her large, 
 dark eyes regarded it. "They think, His life was 
 an hour-glass, and the sand is run. I know that it 
 is no such thing. He is all hours, and his movement 
 does not stop." 
 
 That night, waking after sound sleep, I very 
 clearly saw Mannheim. The sense was that we had 
 met in the dreamless state, that I had made swift, 
 preoccupied return through the dream-belt, bringing 
 him with me so wholly that, simply and swiftly, the 
 objective senses opening, the presence of him w r as 
 transferred from the subjective, held, and he stood 
 in the room clad in the old familiar seeming. Was 
 this just the process or was it not, I powerfully felt 
 Mannheim, and for an instant he stood visibly before 
 me, like a light-filled figure from a stained-glass win 
 dow. He moved, was gone. 
 
 I lay with a clear brain, not thinking in words, 
 but receiving impacts, understanding them as they 
 came. The process, the motion, was always one of 
 expansion, bringing with it a sense of clear order and 
 tranquillity. Then followed a specific light and 
 warmth, then with a deep sense of pleased surprise 
 the intellect took count of the moment s content. 
 The content was oftenest a wide, fresh ordering of 
 much data, a sense of things coming from sequence 
 
 331 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 into scope, a mrstery of the octave and the rhythm. 
 Mastery of the old octave a..id the old rhythm by 
 no means mastery of the new. On the one hand, the 
 moments were syntheses; on the other hand, but 
 the barest elements. They were "bright shoots of 
 everlastingness." Miriam and I and many another 
 divined the kingdom of everlastingness, and that 
 we should walk there. But we could not walk there 
 yet not boldly and bodily, through all our moments. 
 
 But every moment that we caught from the new 
 order near id us there ; and through us, as through all 
 others who sailed for that America, neared the whole 
 world. We, with all those others, who were no 
 "others," after all, were spiritual ancestors. 
 
 Lying there in the London bedroom, at the turn 
 of the night, Michael Forth saw how simply the dead 
 are alive, saw how, presently, the plane of com 
 munication widens until we know that, until we 
 touch again. Touch the absent in time as we shall 
 touch the absent in space. 
 
 I slept again and waked to the divine morning 
 freshness blessing the city. Miriam set apart the 
 door between our rooms. "I went home last night 
 and saw Kate and Dugald and mother and father 
 and all." 
 
 In London we saw much, met many folk. Eng 
 land was not yet through with bitter war. The 
 Russo-Japanese cloud gathered. We heard talk, 
 excited or depressed, as the case might be; we noted 
 hate in many dilutions. Miriam and I sat silent 
 here. . . . We had parted with war. It had not been 
 always thus with us by no means always thus 
 but it was so now. 
 
 332 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 London tasted to us; massively, dearly, was us. 
 We touched artists, players, write , j, and men and 
 women workers toward upward alteration in many 
 a social form. There were men of science with whom, 
 through Gamaliel, we came into relation. Ransome 
 gave us a fourth group. All interested us; all were 
 doing their work where they found themselves. And 
 in and through and over all hung the sense of 
 traveling. One by one, we waked to find ourselves 
 on a far journey. 
 
 Now and again we went to the churches. Here, 
 too, as in America, there seemed to us change. 
 Miriam said, "They seem to be throwing away and 
 they are coming closer." 
 
 She and I sat one day in Westminster Abbey. The 
 organ had ceased, the clergy were gone, the folk 
 had dispersed. The light rayed down upon us 
 through the rose window. The great place of the 
 great dead held so for a little, then it rocked and 
 split and vanished and there stood a Living Man. . . . 
 
 Death? Outgrow death. 
 
 But do not think that death will teach you to 
 outgrow death. It has to be done by the living. 
 
 To save one mother alive . . . Christ, that is 
 Power and Wisdom and Love flowing, rising, in 
 each and all. . . . 
 
 Miriam and I went out into the soft sunshine of 
 London town. She and I with many another walk 
 ing the earth to-day and yesterday and to-morrow 
 would grow into that Image, so profoundly general, 
 so profoundly individual! We should grow into it 
 as, in Judea, one named Jesus had grown into it. 
 All, unconsciously and then consciously, would grow 
 
 333 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 there. Christ and the comprehension of Christ grow 
 ing by multiplication, accretion, fusion, intuition. . . . 
 
 In and through and over London town, holding 
 London town and all the towns, a sense of rock, a 
 sense of power, a sense of warmth, a sense of light, 
 a sense of Personality, a sense of Risen Life 
 
 "There is a natural body and there is a spiritual 
 body. 
 
 "It is sown in corruption, it is raised in Incorrup- 
 tion" 
 
 Miriam and Michael Forth went down to Thames- 
 side and found a bench and sat there. They turned 
 each to the other; their eyes shone each into the 
 other s. They saw immortal, reciprocal love, filling 
 time and space and supporting these. 
 
 The light came down on the river. The river grew 
 luminous. The great town spoke and said: "Oh, 
 great indeed shall I become; oh, wise indeed; oh, 
 fair indeed!" We sat there long, tasting truth that 
 was relative, but nearer kin to the real than our old 
 relativities. We thought of the old, and we smiled 
 at each other as we smiled at Kate and Dugald s 
 play. 
 
 The colored river flowed on. We leaned upon 
 the parapet of Westminster Bridge and watched it 
 flow. The clock behind us struck the hour we 
 walked home to Llewellyn s house. 
 
 The London days went by. We bade these Eng 
 lish selves farewell and, Llewellyn with us, crossed 
 to France, that, too, had its great flavor, magic, 
 multitudinous, one! 
 
 334 
 
CHAPTER XXXVI 
 
 MIRIAM and I lingered at an inn in Savoy, await 
 ing the day when we must go to Geneva. The 
 place in which we found ourselves was so very fair 
 such high, green slopes, such woods of chestnuts, 
 so blue, so mountain-pure a lake, such gracious, 
 stately mountain shapes crowned with white wreaths ! 
 We walked great distances, we lay in the long, sweet 
 grass, ate the bread we brought with us, and drank 
 from our one flask wine of the country. On a cer 
 tain day we walked to a small gray village high above 
 the lake, under a splendid mountain wall. There, 
 with a definite tone of strangeness, fitness, sweet 
 ness, whom should I meet again but the little, 
 wrinkled man with the book of verse who had sat 
 down beside me on the train from Landon, years and 
 years ago, when I would go to Africa? 
 
 We found him in the churchyard, sitting medita 
 tively among the dark crosses. I stood before him, 
 looking down into his eyes that were remarkably 
 limpid, past trouble and deep. He put up a hand. 
 11 Wait a moment until I steady, until I steady the 
 glass ! . . . You sat beside me on a train in the South. 
 We talked. You were poet, too. Yes ! . . . I told you 
 that we d meet again!" 
 
 He was traveling with a party whom he must, 
 
 335 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 presently, rejoin at the nearest large town. "I ve 
 just another day in this country. I walked up here 
 from ." 
 
 I told him who was Miriam, and Miriam how the 
 two of us had met. He gave us his name, " Allen 
 Christopher Allen." We walked through the vil 
 lage that was a tiny place, and we sat under a great 
 fir with the mountain towering behind us, and the 
 lake thrown below like a sapphire. Four or five 
 children, walking on the road, stood still, then came 
 shyly over to us. They had berries, which we bought, 
 and they answered questions; then one, quite sud 
 denly, said: "I know the story of the place. Do you 
 want me to tell it to you?" 
 
 She told it in a wild-bird way, on a treble note, 
 a legend half pagan, half Christian. It ran now a 
 grim and now a delectable phantasy. She finished. 
 We applauded the legend, her art and her kindness. 
 A bell rang, sweet in the distance. As though it 
 were some understood signal, the children bobbed and 
 bowed to us and ran away down the road. Where 
 they had been a friendly dog appeared and came to 
 be patted. Then a sweet bird sang, and a butterfly 
 with a coat of many colors sailed to and from a tall 
 flower. We heard the drone of bees; ants at our feet 
 went by in a line. The odor of the mountain world 
 was in our nostrils, sun entered our very hearts. 
 
 Our tongues uttered few words. The inner world 
 was shining, ringing, loving. We loved this place 
 and all places. We loved these beasts, walking, 
 creeping, and flying, and all beasts walking, creeping, 
 and flying up the Time-road out of beasthood. We 
 loved the children and all children wherever they 
 
 336 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 might be under the four winds. We loved the world 
 oh, bright and dark, we loved the world ! 
 
 Said Miriam, in a low voice: "We are coming to 
 the waters meet. Don t you hear the great sea?" 
 
 The man of ancient days, and he had again with 
 him a book of verse, sat gazing with us and we with 
 him at the blue lake. Joy from within out makes 
 beauty, love from within out makes goodness, wis 
 dom from within out makes knowledge and power, 
 motion from within out makes event. All the music 
 of the world plays for the coming of intuitional life. 
 
 The scene about us rested, but a thousand more 
 rolled in, wave on wave . . . mass sense of an ex- 
 haustless ocean rolling to eternity. Memory waked 
 and saw all her far homes, far and near, near and 
 far. We remembered ourself, and ourself was the 
 world. World past, world present, world to come. 
 World past we held the clearest world present was 
 a sound, a thrill, a grief, a gladness world to come 
 was radiance. 
 
 The throb, the vision, the voice of understanding, 
 passed on, wave form. We three had shared the 
 impact. . . . How to teach that the thought has 
 muscle and moves, that the dream and the vision go 
 forth, that desire and will, that the image and the 
 deed and the life are circulatory! 
 
 I had not spoken aloud, but the man beside me 
 took with ease my thought. He carried it on, 
 speaking with his eyes upon a flower which his hand 
 moved to and fro : There s not a desire nor deter 
 mination, nor mood, nor thought, nor aspiration, 
 intuition, super- thought, nor feeling that is not pub 
 lic, general, common goods! Where s the wall just 
 
 337 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 now between the minds of us sitting here? If in 
 old life there seemed a wall, new life flies over it, 
 runs through it! Share and share alike. All we are 
 one. . . . That, just now, was a lovely glow from to 
 morrow warmth from heaven, breeze from home! 
 Going up to the One. But for long, for very long, 
 my friend, it may almost seem forever, we shall 
 find in One a society! * 
 
 "I shall not quarrel there. It is all one/* 
 
 "It is all music," said Miriam. 
 
 We went down the lake, over the happy roads to 
 the inn. Going, there held a sense of exquisiteness, of 
 harmonious movement throughout humanity, quint 
 essential pleasantness of vast give and take, in 
 finite variousness of liking. The intensity of the 
 glow up there on the mountain receded the strong, 
 aromatic breeze from home passed on. But for all 
 that they seemed to pass and seemed to recede, 
 was left as ever a knowledge, a lift, a treasure of 
 leaven! Wider and wider, higher and higher, sub 
 tler and subtler grows the brain. 
 
 The new-old companion stayed with us through 
 the day and evening. In the morning he must go 
 to join those others with whom also he was traveling. 
 
 We walked by the lake. There shone a young 
 moon, and breathed around a dry, healthful air, 
 wave-break of delicate odors, delicate sounds. Those 
 over-perceptions, upon the shore of whose vast plane 
 and order we had come, gave us of their new, their 
 delicious flowers and fruits. Blossom after blossom, 
 purple cluster, gold orb, they fell in our way. 
 
 In the morning, very early, Miriam and I were up 
 to see the comrade go. How many comrades we 
 
 338 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 were gathering, finding were gathering, finding us! 
 . . . Delicate and strange are the ways of the All. 
 
 He walked away in the coral light. We had coffee 
 and rolls together, with simple talk of mountains, 
 roads, and towns. He went away who did not go; 
 we stayed who also went. 
 
 Miriam that morning had letters to write. I 
 walked to a fir wood sloping upward. The ground lay 
 all purple, brown, and clean. Innumerable pillars 
 ranged themselves, strong and high, while there 
 sprang overhead a deep and marvelous roof, moving, 
 fragrant. I lay down among strong roots, on the 
 purple ground. There was stillness, and yet the 
 ineffable, whispering surf. 
 
 It was to-day a surf of recollection. . . . 
 
 Every one is Satan and every one is Christ and 
 every one is that third who moves from Satan into 
 Christ. 
 
 I came full upon Royal and Dorothea came 
 upon them in my own nature where they are because 
 there is nowhere else for them to be. 
 
 Place, moment, expanded, extended. Here were 
 seas of Royal-Dorothea. . . . And still they were 
 seas of myself my seas as Michael and Miriam 
 were seas of them in America, their seas, found 
 in their nature because there is nowhere else for 
 them to be. ... We flowed together then some 
 thing rose out of the seas and understood them all. 
 Oh, my clay that is to be given life! Oh, the all of me 
 that must be adventured, lived, loved, sublimed! 
 
 There is an "I" that is to vanish, and there is an 
 "I" that is to come, and time is long. 
 
 I sat in the fir wood, and on every hand it passed 
 
 339 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 into infinity. . . . And then, like soundless thunder, 
 there was a cry, and like invisible lightning there was 
 a shock, a change! Miriam was with me as always 
 she was with me, but there was a difference felt from 
 head to foot! There was rending, sundering, and 
 there was entrance. . . . She was not at the inn yon 
 der for that one instant she had been in the fir 
 wood now, I knew, I knew, she was in the realm 
 to which you go by the inner gate! 
 
 I ran from the wood and up the path. . . . She 
 was sitting at the table by the window, a letter to 
 her mother under her hand. Her head was lifted, 
 resting so against the chair s high back. She had 
 died in a moment, the heart stopping some trouble 
 we had not guessed. Her face wore her gipsy smile, 
 dauntless, magical. 
 
 I buried the loved body of her by the blue lake 
 where the mountains reflected, where the song of birds 
 was heard. Around it lay dust of a mountain people. 
 
 I would not go back across the sea to Flowerfield 
 just yet. It was full home to Kate and Dugald. 
 Aunt Kate and Uncle John, John and Amy, Catherine 
 and Lewis, all who loved Miriam, loving her still, 
 for she lived still and always, would find comfort . . . 
 still, still, as stair after stair is mounted, compan 
 ionship with that other mounting spirit! 
 
 Miriam ! 
 
 I wrote that I should come to Flowerfield in 
 October. 
 
 Maxwell s whereabouts were known now to me. 
 I wrote asking him to meet me in Athens. I stayed 
 a month in Savoy, by the lake, among the mountains, 
 in this inn, by this grave. 
 
 340 
 
CHAPTER XXXVII 
 
 THE "I" posited itself in a realm somewhat 
 nearer to the All. It tented there. 
 Miriam was there, profoundly, deeply, truly, 
 really there. 
 
 death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is 
 thy victory? 
 
 1 saw man that I was, that I had come through 
 as one turns and sees a flower, a bird! 
 
 I was out, and about me was a cloud. I could 
 not yet well distinguish where I was I was a babe 
 there. But under me now was the old kingdom I 
 had come through. A part of me lived there yet, a 
 vast part but a vaster part was out. 
 
 The "I" that yet functioned in that kingdom 
 was upon a ship on the Mediterranean, on the 
 JEgean but the "I" that was above knew many a 
 ship, on many a sea, in many an age ! Walking the 
 sea, walking the land. . . . 
 
 I came to Greece, to Athens, and found there 
 Maxwell. 
 
 The heat burned, strong deserts seemed to spring 
 about us deserts loved, wide, and clean, the super 
 fluous stripped away. A flash, a beam in the whole, 
 returned that day in Landon when he stood, sinewy, 
 tanned, beside his shelves of ores and we first grew 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 acquainted ... or thought then that we first grew 
 acquainted. Other beams fell from those African 
 days. Ten years and more had passed since we had 
 met in the body like this. Each had traveled far. 
 But where we were now, as where then we had been, 
 we found ourselves acquainted, and acquaintable, 
 able to take the same stride, to work together, 
 liking each other well in those great, quiet, desert 
 spaces filled with dry light. 
 
 ... But that first night in Athens it was Miriam 
 with me, Miriam and my mother and Madam Black 
 and the man with the book of verse. 
 
 I say "the first," but "firstness" applies only to 
 that projection of me named Michael Forth, and 
 to those named projections of the others. There 
 was not any firstness in the case of I myself of 
 we ourselves. We had seen Athens built. As Athens 
 lasted, so lasted our presence there. 
 
 Maxwell and I went up and down in Hellas. We 
 saw the old sights again, the temples, hills, and 
 seas. 
 
 There was a place where we sat among blocks of 
 man-wrought stone, by the pillars of a little, roofless 
 fane. Honey-hued, the shafts rose behind us ; around 
 grew a scant, parched herbage, before us poised the 
 still blue sea, and the profound sky held a cloud 
 like Argo and a cloud like the Golden Fleece. 
 
 We had been talking of Africa, of Mannheim, 
 Ferraro, and Sir Charles, but finally we fell silent 
 and sat so for some time, the moving sapphire filling 
 the world. Maxwell broke the stillness. "Early in 
 April an errand took me up the Jamuna. Just as 
 I landed from a small boat at a certain place, sud- 
 
 342 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 denly like that! distinctly, vividly, consciously, I 
 was at sea, upon a steamer called the Zeus, with 
 you and with Miriam. She was no more strange to 
 me than were you. Effectively, we were all one ! I 
 was there simply because you were there." 
 
 "Yes. You were climbing an old river-stair with 
 a temple above. You stood still when you felt the 
 ship about you. You had with you an English officer 
 and a Hindu." 
 
 "Thorncliffe and Sastriar." 
 
 "We were effectively one. I was there simply 
 because you were there!" 
 
 He drew a long breath. "Well! Follow a clue 
 like that, and one might come out of the labyrinth. 
 ... I feel like Franklin with his key and his kite 
 and overhead all that was to come to be meant by 
 electric! . . . Michael, where are we going?" 
 
 "Into beyond-man. What we call heaven and 
 God." 
 
 "All of us?" 
 
 "Surely! Some particles are ahead, some in the 
 rear. It is true that some are almighty slow ! There 
 are plenty of stragglers. But they won t always 
 straggle. All are going Self-drawn. And with 
 each day the momentum increases." 
 
 "I think it does. But look at the present world!" 
 he said. 
 
 We were lying by the temple, above the sea. That 
 which happened was that forthwith we looked. We 
 looked at ourself as Man. And we were the Hotten 
 tot in the Bush, and we were what seers there have 
 been and are. We were our neighbors whom we 
 loved, and we were our neighbors with whom we 
 
 343 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 were at war. We cheated ourself , sold ourself and 
 redeemed ourself. We slew ourself, and we rose 
 from battle-fields, grew bodies again, and slew our 
 self again. We put out our own lights, and then 
 with long pain relumed them. With pangs and pangs 
 again we gave birth to ourself, and all the while 
 feverishly we dug graves for ourself that we had 
 birthed. We said, "You die ha, ha! You go 
 under ha, ha!" and we died and went under, and 
 still we stayed not there. We were a welter, a brew 
 in a caldron, a chaos 
 
 Maxwell s voice came as from out a darkness. 
 "So at times I see it " 
 
 "I see also. . . . There is truth in it, but it is too 
 short range. Look now!" 
 
 Out of chaos was coming cosmos. Men were be 
 coming Man christs becoming Christ gods be 
 coming God. Perpetually we learned. We lost 
 ignorance, but did not lose wisdom; lost discord, but 
 did not lose harmony; lost hatred, but did not lose 
 love; lost weakness, but did not lose might. Despite 
 all dull, distracted, hypnotized clutching at the one 
 it fell from us. The other stayed. And that which 
 went was of time, and that which stayed was 
 timeless. 
 
 We returned to the self by the temple. 
 
 "Bitter-sweet sad and bright!" he said. "I pin 
 by courage." 
 
 "Courage and good-will. . . . Love is power." 
 
 We sat silent, sat so for long. Gradually our 
 minds again united. The intellect grew larger, 
 keener, the feeling at once vivid and extended. 
 Thought, emotion, sensation were toward lands and 
 
 344 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 peoples. We felt them, felt Greece and England and 
 America, felt France, Germany, Spain, Italy, felt 
 China and Japan and India, and all the others 
 felt them as complexes in the One Man as we felt 
 the sexes in the One as we felt in the One the 
 children, the young, renewing points, and the prime, 
 and the fading before transformation that they call 
 age. There was a mighty integration and we felt 
 the upstanding god. 
 
 We sank back, always still we sank back. " We 
 could not hold the chord, keep the form! Disinte 
 gration but continually the muscles grew stronger 
 to draw all together again! 
 
 Maxwell sighed and moved. "Nomads, Bedouins, 
 wandering in the desert and lifting eyes to the city 
 of God." 
 
 "It is there the truer self! We dwelt there a 
 moment." 
 
 "A moment of a moment." 
 
 "It was an earnest. When we can dwell there an 
 hour, how much, O Miriam, shall we know and be!" 
 
 "Vast, lifted, simple" 
 
 "Blissful, intimate. ... All the beautiful old 
 words, all myths have meant it. ... Gather the mem 
 bers of Osiris. . . . Feel as a tree and find it as simple, 
 one, natural, as feeling as a leaf. Feel as the Ash 
 Yggdrasil." 
 
 Again one day we sailed to an island and sat 
 among rocks where some sweet-scented low shrub 
 sent out an odor combining exquisitely with that 
 of the sea. "I suppose," said Maxwell, "that there 
 is everywhere emerging a higher range of faculties. 
 The type of consciousness changes, advances. I 
 
 345 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 meet of late years all kinds of explorers, each with 
 a different tale to tell, but all telling of the new 
 continent. . . . What we begin to be able to do falls 
 under so many heads. The past now all our his 
 tory! It is profoundly with me in a kind of brood 
 ing regard/* 
 
 "You may walk in the past observe it and 
 alter it as a garden. * 
 
 "You say alter. I believe that too. The past 
 can be altered." 
 
 * Yes. You have abundant power of motion in it. " 
 
 A bird passed us, high in air. A wind came, bend 
 ing the grass. "You know that I loved," he said, 
 "a woman who is dead. It is growing that she and 
 I walk hand in hand." 
 
 "That old blank wall is crumbling so that you 
 can see the sun through it. Who that is dead has 
 vanished? We shall gather all the living and we 
 shall gather all the dead!" 
 
 He sat with his eyes upon the burning blue of 
 that Greek sky. For me, I was in that country, but 
 also Miriam and I climbed Wake-robin Hill. "An 
 other thing develops in me," said Maxwell. "I 
 begin to integrate waking life and sleeping." 
 
 "Yes. It is to be done. All manner of integra 
 tions. . . ." 
 
 We mounted a long slope of brown light. Atop, 
 we stood under a pine-tree, we looked afar. "Do 
 you think that you ever began to live?" 
 
 "I do not. I never began and I shall never end." 
 
 "Oh, the mystery!" 
 
 "Is it so mysterious? Standing there, you say 
 I. Standing here, I say I. It is the same word. 
 
 346 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 I take it that the quest, the searched-for treasure, the 
 Grail of all the ages, is for every I to find I 
 wherever it is, and that is everywhere. All I is 
 I. I AM THAT I AM. Each one is to find that all the 
 Ts go into One Word. The first and only Word 
 the Word of God. . . . God, self-conscious, saying 
 
 <T > 
 
 "I see," he said. We faced each other, eyes meet 
 ing. " /, " he said. "I say it of what I have called 
 you.? 
 
 I answered. "I. I say it of what I have called 
 
 Going Athens-ward that day, all Greece sprang 
 whole again. Not one age of it, but all ages of it, 
 and the nimbus around its head that was the future. 
 . . . All earth sprang whole and had its nimbus. 
 
 Maxwell and I journeyed for a month. Each 
 liking, each understanding has its own fragrance, 
 characteristic tone, strength. Maxwell and I joined 
 fast in strong intellectual spaces, and in common 
 care for a clean, taut, athletic physical, and in a 
 heart that loved wild and careless beauty. 
 
 At the end of this time I must go home to Vir 
 ginia, to Flowerfield. He, who had been engineering 
 in the East, was now on his way to England, where 
 a new project awaited him. We traveled together 
 to Italy and northward to Genoa where I could 
 get my boat. Arriving in Rome, we spent there a 
 week. 
 
 All countries were now homes all cities my cities 
 all peoples myself. . . . Over and over again the 
 integrating energy slackened, weakened there was 
 instantaneous descent just to Michael Forth. Over 
 
 347 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 and over again ! But there were times when the deep 
 past and the wide present seemed to stand in one 
 form in some tremendous light and warmth that 
 were the future. . . . And all the myriad shades, 
 degrees, varieties, so rich each one, of experience! 
 
 Once here, walking at night, I was suddenly at 
 one with an alchemist who had lived I know not 
 when. 
 
 Another time I knew that I, and Miriam with me, 
 and, I thought, my mother, had been martyred here 
 in Rome nearly two thousand years ago. ... I looked 
 from a cross, and I saw over a space of sand, lifted 
 and pierced in the same way, Gamaliel. 
 
 The monk Eadwine connected here. . . . 
 
 Countless multitudes of lives that are our moments, 
 phases! . . . Stand in One Life and see from the 
 center thy universe! "Michael Forth" was now to 
 me one of the moments, the phases. 
 
 Maxwell and I left Rome and came to Genoa, 
 where I was to take ship. Our inn had been a palace ; 
 we sat that night, with candles burning, in a room 
 so large that the verges were lost in shadow. We 
 sat silent. In at window came the ringing of a dis 
 tant bell, sweet and slow. We were going to part 
 on the morrow, who liked each other well. 
 
 To my perception time changed, space changed. 
 Many more causes were simultaneously seen; many 
 more effects. Miriam and I did not part, and Max 
 well and I did not part. The larger life is here and 
 now. Heaven is here and now. 
 
 He said: "There came then a wave of truth. 
 From what land do they blow, these things? . . . 
 At any rate, you and I do not part." 
 
 348 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 The next evening the sea ran in vast blues and 
 purples about the ship. The Italian shore was 
 sinking; the mind s eye saw Africa and Spain and 
 the Strait, the Atlantic and America. . . . There held 
 me an emotion delicate and powerful, fragrant as 
 the wild grape, all melody and color and zest, and 
 above it walked unhidden intelligence. And Miriam 
 and I met in the whole. 
 
 349 
 
CHAPTER XXXVIII 
 
 IN New York, Conrad, who lived in the next street, 
 came to see me almost at once. We walked up and 
 down in the study that was a long, high-ceilinged 
 room. He looked about him. "I don t think she 
 has gone," he said. 
 
 "No. She s not gone." 
 
 We walked up and down, Miriam with us. "You 
 were already profoundly one," he said. 
 
 The city roared without the windows, the great 
 city. Now it was Blake s tiger, tiger burning bright, 
 and now Blake s lion with ruby eyes and mane of 
 gold, now half man and half brute centaur and 
 now whole man, and now half man, half god. 
 
 In very ancient times what long effort prolonged, 
 broken to stand upright, to use the hand, the 
 tongue! And now, upon the huge, next stair, diffi 
 cult, too ! 
 
 We talked of Conrad s especial work. He also 
 had grown in these years, was stiller, more patient, 
 massive, than he had been. 
 
 Around him beat difficulties of a disturbed hive, 
 clouds of stinging bees. He could say, "I sting, I 
 fret and hamper myself" and work on toward 
 better things. He, with all of us, was on the way to 
 knowledge and the master reconciliation. The long 
 road oh, the long., long road! oh, the only road 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 worth traveling! He was like and not like the old 
 Conrad of the university, or the Conrad even of 
 ten years ago. He worked hard, with vision and 
 with temperance, building not with gusty strokes, 
 but to last. The gain in him was that there used to 
 be the gusty strokes. The emotion of the Whole, 
 the fusing passion, held him now so closely that he 
 grew steadfast. 
 
 His old paper The Compass continued, and he was 
 starting a journal named The Evolutionist. I said 
 that Evolutionist-Involutionist was the better, if 
 longer word unless, serving a turn already made, 
 he was ready plainly to say Involutionist. 
 
 "It is too revolutionary a title yet! As I see the 
 formula, it goes: X Evolution Pause Turn 
 Involution X. 
 
 "X is the equilibrium, the identity, the Eternal 
 Person." 
 
 "I suppose that is so." He put his hands behind 
 his head and leaned back, his eyes upon the rows 
 of books. "None does anything else but build at, 
 build into the Greater Person. . . . All men are 
 different, said yesterday. All men are equal, says 
 a part of to-day. All men are identical, will say 
 to-morrow. . . . Each man and woman, consciously 
 or unconsciously, lover and servant of that great 
 Art that makes us One! All are pilgrims, seekers, 
 workers in that studio. . . . But one reaches Bewlah 
 Land, while another is still at Hill Difficulty." 
 
 His hands came down upon the table. I put 
 mine over them. "All right, brother " 
 
 We talked late. When he went away Cygnus 
 was over the house-tops. As I fell to sleep a great 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 star shone in the inner world and it had mind and 
 feeling and power and beauty! 
 
 I had found that Gamaliel was away from the 
 city. But the day after Conrad he came. It was 
 a day of autumnal beating rain and a wind that cried 
 in the chimney and at the window. Martin had built 
 me a fire in the study. There was work to do before 
 I could go to Flowerfield. I had worked almost all 
 the day, but in the rainy, late afternoon came 
 Gamaliel. 
 
 I had always loved him and I did so now and 
 should do so to-morrow and all the days after. 
 Maxwell was comrade of manhood. Gamaliel was 
 that, too, but comrade besides of boyhood. This 
 afternoon it was boyhood that came all around us. 
 And he knew what it was to suffer and to struggle, 
 and far ages of that of my own had been in this 
 room to-day. He knew he was Whitechurch and 
 Baltimore, Restwell, Flowerfield. We could walk 
 together in the still, the living, land of the past. 
 How far we could walk together we had never 
 plumbed, but we knew that it was very far it was 
 very far and in the present and in the future as 
 well as the past. I understood the world Gamaliel, 
 and he the world Michael. There was free trade 
 between us. The two capitals were homes each to 
 the other; the two banners had a common, splendid 
 over-banner. There was variousness, for richness, 
 for refreshment. But in and through and with the 
 variousness ran the common passion for the All. 
 That Beatrix that Mary tore none apart, made 
 none jealous. . . . 
 
 Gamaliel and I cohered, interpenetrated, tasted 
 
 352 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 each other and liked the taste. We sat beside the 
 fire, with the rain streaming, beating, against the 
 pane. "I came from Whitechurch last night. My 
 father is dead. 
 
 "I did not know that! Tell me" 
 
 "It was a short illness. He had changed in this 
 last year, Michael. Walls were beginning to come 
 down. ... I did not mean to leave him, nor to be 
 left by him. . . . He lay, clear-headed and still, at the 
 last. His small, bare room and he lying there, 
 straight and gray. ... I watched and the stillest 
 kind of night outside and picture after picture 
 coming up. Do you remember the night we saw 
 * Midsummer Night s Dream ? That came up. How 
 hardly I thought that night of all fathers! Old 
 ^Dgeus who would kill his daughter if she went not 
 his way and my father who would hold me with 
 both hands to be still the same. ... I watched, and 
 at last the cocks crew. He turned his head and 
 opened his eyes. He said, Gamaliel, if you conquer 
 
 "I answered that I didn t want to conquer. Not 
 now. Not unless in some way we both conquered 
 ... by loving by knowing. 
 
 "Do you know, Michael, what happened? I held 
 his hand. . . . And we were one ! ... All his memories 
 were mine. ... I felt his hand gather my hand. He 
 said, Gamaliel but that is my name, too! . . . 
 It was as though a hand passed over his face and 
 wiped out severity and put there knowledge. Life, 
 he said. Life everlasting! And he drew my hand 
 up to his heart . . . and under it the heart stopped. 
 But then I felt it beat in me." 
 
 "Just so." 
 
 353 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 He rose and walked the room, then came back to 
 the hearth. The fire reddened all the place, and his 
 tall form and lined and intellectual face. As the 
 flame played it seemed to do away with all rigidity 
 in that appearance. It seemed to change, to be 
 come, dissolve, re-become and now it carried with 
 it this environment and now that. I thought I 
 saw great Proteus who could change from form to 
 form, from face to face, because all were his. . . . 
 Gamaliel spoke, "And we shall revive our dead." 
 
 We sat together through the closing day. Now 
 vve talked and now we sat in a silence of under 
 standing, rest in company. He supped with me, 
 and we came back to the study and built up the fire 
 and talked of work, his work, and mine, and 
 Miriam s. 
 
 So stormy was the night that he agreed to stay 
 with me. It was eleven when a cab stopped before 
 the house and we heard Mrs. Lobb s key in the door. 
 "She still plays?" 
 
 "She has a small part in Out and Away." 
 
 "Just as Wythe, the engraver, still engraves where 
 he can get work and both would be sadder, very 
 wistful, if they thought they could not die in this 
 house! They can?" 
 
 "Yes. Kate and Dugald and I shall live here, 
 too, in the winter. And Mary and Martin and 
 Norah and Dacia. And Miriam. 19 
 
 Mrs. Lobb tapped at the study door. It was her 
 habit, coming in so, when she saw that the room 
 was yet lighted. I opened the door for her. She 
 entered, wrapped in her long, warm cloak, and with 
 the rouge yet faintly on her cheeks. 
 
 354 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 When she had greeted Gamaliel, whom she liked, 
 she sighed with pleasure over the fire. "The theater 
 was cold and all the winds of heaven are in the 
 streets! But I played my old Madame part well 
 ah, well!" She sat and warmed herself by the fire, 
 and she, too, looked magic, many in one, to-night. 
 "The passion for the ideal!" she said. "One only 
 finds the real by that! Ideal passion. I did well, 
 and I felt as young as I shall be when I die. . . . 
 For we go toward youth, I am perfectly sure of that !" 
 
 Warmed, she said good-night, and left us. There 
 was magic about her and about everything to-night 
 or not magic, but a true and powerful light. 
 
 Gamaliel and I sat still until the wood should burn 
 away. Pictures wrapped us. ... 
 
 The next day came to see me Royal Warringer. 
 His secretary telephoned, asking if I were at home. 
 He came in a high, clear, sunny day, the storm gone 
 by, the streets glistening, the air free and thrilling. 
 I met him down-stairs, in the parlor that with love 
 and care Miriam and I had made right. But he 
 said at once: "Haven t you a study? Let us go 
 there." 
 
 In the study, when he had swept it with his eye, 
 he went at once to the small painting of her that 
 
 Y had made and given us. He said, "She was 
 
 more lovely, Michael, than I thought." 
 
 We stood before the painting. It showed her very 
 simply, sitting in a flush of marvelously painted 
 dawn. "It is sunset light?" he said. "No. I see. It 
 is dawn light." 
 
 "Yes. Dawn light." 
 
 We sat down, and he began to talk of Rest well. 
 355 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 How may any part of spirit change and not all 
 change? As I moved he moved as I heard the 
 oceans he heard them or as he heard the oceans I 
 heard them it matters not which. He had great 
 power and subtlety. ... I found in him what I had 
 not found before what I had not been strong 
 enough to find before I found in him, in remote, 
 half-tended gardens, small flowers of love. We 
 opened one toward the other. . . . 
 
 He stayed the better part of an hour and then 
 went who, like all persons else, yet stayed. An 
 aspect of him went, but aspects remained. . . . Some 
 thing powerful over us was correcting the one of us 
 by the other gathering from each the desirable, the 
 useful, regarding the leaden portion of each, lifting 
 the leaden portion of each toward the crucible. ... 
 We were coming together up higher. 
 
 Michael, Royal, Miriam, and Dorothea 
 
 356 
 
CHAPTER XXXIX 
 
 THREE days and I was in Virginia. The train 
 ran through October lands to October hills and 
 mountains. I loved them, loved Virginia, loved the 
 Indian-summer day. The South was mine as was 
 New England, the West and the Middle West as was 
 America to the south, and the northern Dominion, 
 and the Indies. And Europe was mine, and Africa, 
 Asia, and all the islands of the seas. And the sub 
 merged continents and the continents to be. Owned 
 without harm as all may own all. . . . 
 
 The train rushed on. That emotion that is above 
 cry or laughter and that thought that is above 
 words held me. . . . 
 
 Here was the county town, here were greetings. 
 At the last I had come a day or two earlier than was 
 thought for. None from home was at the station. 
 I walked to Flowerfield. 
 
 There lay a hilltop on the way where, walking 
 or riding or driving, or on the returning wings of 
 thought, every lover of beauty made pause and 
 feasted. Beside the way rested a wide boulder 
 how often and how often had we who were walkers 
 rested there with it! I rested there to-day. 
 
 A farm-wagon went by and the man in it and I 
 called greeting. A negro carrying a bag of meal 
 
 357 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 came by and we greeted; three boys and a dog fol 
 lowed and we greeted. Then came a surrey and 
 women driving and we greeted then an old colored 
 woman hobbling along with a stick and we greeted. 
 Then for a space the road ran bare; just the October 
 wind blowing red and gold leaves across and along. 
 Around flowed the widest landscape. 
 
 I saw. I saw my country, earth, times, desires 
 and passions and determinations, the bound spirit 
 and the spirit heaving against its bonds, and the 
 spirit partly free, and high above the bound I felt 
 the spirit free! One spirit as we say "one man and 
 his freedoms and unfreedoms." 
 
 The wind blew down the leaves. A great ray of 
 sun traveled like a search-light. Again negroes were 
 passing, this time a number together, and the one 
 ahead sang, "Roll, Jordan Roll!" We greeted. I 
 rose from the boulder and went on to Flowerfield. 
 
 Kate and Dugald were making a canal and tow- 
 path down by the streamlet under the willows. I 
 heard their caroling talk and went that way. They 
 flung themselves upon me. . . . 
 
 We sat under the willows and talked of her whom 
 they called "mother" who was profoundly mother, 
 as she was also child mother and child and lover 
 and self of all! They were so young they felt 
 her everywhere. We talked then we finished and 
 smoothed the tow-path and planted witch-hazel 
 twigs for fairy trees to shade the elf drawers of an 
 elf boat. Then we washed our hands in the stream 
 and went up to the house. 
 
 Oh, Flowerfield! 
 
 John and Amy, Aunt Kate and Uncle John, 
 
 358 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 Catherine, Lewis dear lands of being! The house 
 sang its old ballad, the splendid trees burned like 
 the phenix, seeing winter, divining the recurrent 
 spring. . . . 
 
 When a week had passed I went for a week to 
 Restwell. 
 
 Nor Dorothea nor Carter nor Royal were there. 
 I had all kindness from Aunt Harriet and General 
 Warringer. Aunt Sarah and I walked or sat, talked 
 or were silent together. 
 
 Her hair was now gray, but her eyes held their 
 still glow, her face was unwrinkled, her figure kept 
 its grace, her step lightness. We went here, we went 
 there, about the old place; we sat by the river or 
 under the orchard trees. But oftenest we went to 
 the graveyard. Still she brought the flowers there. 
 We felt the ancient sweet presences, and other days 
 and days came now into the garland. She met 
 herself as a young woman there. Over the wall 
 I heard Ahasuerus calling, and he and I, boys, 
 rampaged in the sloping, fairy wood. Or, back this 
 side the wall, I moved where my mother moved. . . . 
 Under the apple-tree, in the far corner, the red ap 
 ples lay on the ground. . . . Oh, miracle, marvel 
 magical life! 
 
 My aunt Sarah spoke: "Ten years or so ago, I 
 entered a new world. Perhaps imagination and 
 memory and intuition and mind and emotion and 
 judgment were always on the road. . . . Perhaps we 
 come, each of us, like Christian, to a boundary- 
 line, and there the burden drops and we walk on, 
 new man, new woman ! At any rate, I walk on, and 
 now each morning I say, What exquisite, sweet 
 
 359 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 surprise shall I know to-day? Behind all outer 
 meanings are inner meanings, and they come first, 
 come last are Alpha and Omega into which all 
 things go, out of which all things come!" 
 
 The days slipped by at Restwell. I walked to 
 Whitechurch. Hilltop Academy had another prin 
 cipal, Mr. Smith, the history teacher, teaching where 
 had taught Doctor Young. I went to see Mr. Gil 
 bert. The great tree shadowed the pharmacy. One 
 descended a step as into the cave of a good anchorite. 
 The little bell rang. 
 
 The hermit was now an old man. "Oh yes, I shall 
 bury this!" he said. "But I shall simply live on. 
 Immortality is desirable. I take it that the school- 
 books and the newspapers haven t yet the last word 
 in physics and mathematics.* 
 
 I went to see the rector of St. Matthew s. Mr. 
 Millwood was in his study, but presently we stepped 
 into the garden and paced the path by white and 
 pink and purple asters. He spoke of Miriam. 
 
 I said: "Death is a plane of consciousness. By 
 degrees the living and the dead are finding and 
 making a plane in which to meet. When the con 
 sciousness has grown great wings " 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 "Then there is no death/" 
 
 "Consciousness planes and states degrees of 
 awareness! I hate," said Mr. Millwood, with vigor, 
 "all the new-fangled lingo!" 
 
 I laughed. I agreed that language was yet 
 Boeotian. 
 
 But the sunshine was not Boeotian nor the colors 
 of the garden. The three-dimensional language was 
 
 360 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 not Boeotian. ... Or was it, too, Boeotian to what 
 should be, would be? 
 
 We walked the brick path. . . . 
 
 That evening at Restwell I went to Daddy 
 Guinea s cabin. It stood vacant, the door open, 
 behind it cavernous dark, before it red sumach and 
 farewell-summer. I sat upon the door-step and all 
 my childhood came about me. 
 
 I had learned to walk in the past as simply as 
 one turns from the thronged street to walk in the 
 park. I walked there now. Fire burned on the 
 cabin hearth and there Daddy Guinea and I baked 
 sweet potatoes and he told me about the battle 
 seen from Lone Tree Hill. But I asked him ques 
 tions such as I had not asked then, and I saw in 
 his answers what I had not seen then and yet was 
 it play, recreation ! The past is the vast playground 
 where things are learned in play. There is motion 
 there as everywhere. 
 
 The past ran into the now, the now rose from the 
 past. Spread in all directions the tremendous shape 
 of the present! Flux and throb and impact, shud 
 dering thrill and thunder mine of choices. . . . 
 
 The future lifted me. . . . Those who live in the 
 future live! 
 
 Chaplets of stars appeared. The night wind 
 breathed. "Tu-whoo! Tu-whoo!" said an owl in 
 the wood. The cricket world chirped. The soil, 
 the plant world, entered in fragrance. . . . Oh, beauty 
 and might and wisdom! AUM, saith the Hindu. 
 ALL ALL. 
 
 We are Brahma, we are Vishnu, we are Shiva 
 Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. 
 
 361 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 I looked at my little life, and I looked at my 
 larger life, and I saw that the one was to melt into 
 the other. 
 
 The larger was to be the simple, continuing, 
 every-day life as the little life had been. The 
 momentary was to become the day long. ... I felt 
 movement about me presences Presence. I could 
 not bring all into radiance I could not step wholly, 
 bodily, into that super-world that I divined outer 
 islands, I divined, of an inner world so great, so 
 bright ! Ignorance held me, lethargy, weakness, 
 unwisdom, unlove. I saw through a glass darkly, 
 but all my being was bent toward one day seeing 
 clearly. We pass into it as, long ago, we passed 
 through the brute into the human. All the world 
 shall go up with a shout into God shall find itself 
 in its own heights. 
 
 I left the cabin and went down to the river and 
 heard the sea talking in it, to it. I touched the 
 sea that had put it forth and was taking it again. 
 It was no distance, or I had overpassed distance. 
 All experience had been, was, and would be mine 
 . . . and thine . . . ours . . . the ultimate, the 
 un-selfed I. 
 
 In a week I went from Restwell back to Flower- 
 field. 
 
 Indian summer pervaded the land. In the spring 
 violets cover the ground, in the late, late autumn 
 they fill the air. 
 
 John and I walked the old road. "Show me, 
 Michael, some of the things you see!" 
 
 "I see how good, how strong, how dear you are, 
 John, John!" 
 
 362 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 "But you ve stepped over a stream that still runs 
 before me. I can see that. You call to me from the 
 other side." 
 
 "You will come. You feel yourself moving. . . . 
 It s dogged does it. Dogged finds the direction 
 dogged pursues it. Dogged is your true knight 
 errant, his adventure found " 
 
 "But the mood," he said, "ceases to be one of 
 doggedness." 
 
 "You are right. It becomes a burning glory." 
 
 We walked in silence. He drew a quick breath. 
 "I saw just then, time, space, and causation." 
 
 "You are crossing the stream! This is a world 
 beyond the old. We passed into it because we were 
 ready to pass into it. But we are babes here, half- 
 blind new-comers, stammerers, uncertain feelers tow 
 ard bright truths. That will change. We shall 
 grow." 
 
 "The I sense where does that go?" 
 
 "It passes into We and that passes into 
 God." 
 
 We walked on, and Flowerfield and the County 
 and the State and the Country and the World were 
 vividly fair. . . . 
 
 The next day was a day of rain, the day after one 
 of blowing wind, but the third day broke in glory. 
 I went that morning to Wake-robin Hill. I passed 
 the lesser wood where in spring the flowers abounded. 
 I climbed to the crown and lay under hemlocks. 
 Still, still, was I hunting Reality, the thing which 
 Is ... thing? . . . the Person Who Is! 
 
 Miriam and I sought together. She was with 
 me on Wake-robin Hill. 
 
 363 
 
MICHAEL FORTH 
 
 We sought and, as ever, seeking, we found. We 
 found wonder, high peace, work to be done, advent 
 ure mystic, beckoning, vistas of travel! 
 
 To hear the voice of understanding, and to live 
 the unselfish life 
 
 THE END