John Stuyvesant Ancestor 
 
 And Other People 
 
 By 
 
 Alvin Johnson 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HARCOURT. BRACE AND HOWE 
 1919
 
 COPYRIGHT. 1919, BY 
 HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWK. INC. 
 
 THE QU'NN a BODEN COMPANY 
 RAHWA> N J
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 FACE 
 
 JOHN STUYVESANT ANCESTOR .... 3 
 
 A PLACE IN THE SUN 55 
 
 A SYMPATHETIC STRIKE 67 
 
 THE KILLING OF DIFFERENT MAN ... 72 
 
 FORBIDDEN FRUIT 82 
 
 THE LOT OF THE INVENTOR 92 
 
 AFTER THE PENITENTIARY . . . . ' . 105 
 
 SHORT CHANGE 115 
 
 PHYLLIS THE FEMINIST 125 
 
 THE MOLTING OF ALCIBIADES . . . .133 
 
 THE MEED OF A BRUTE 145 
 
 ON LAND AND SEA 152 
 
 THE LYNCHING IN BASS COUNTY . . . 160 
 
 IVAN THE TERRIBLE 173 
 
 CARNEGIED 184 
 
 SuH-Ho IN PRAISE OF FOOTBINDING . . 194 
 
 THE CHANCES OF BEING MARRIED . . . 202 
 
 MY UNCLE 212 
 
 THE FEAR OF GOD 218 
 
 EVALINA 229 
 
 OLD SCORES 241 
 
 2228972
 
 JOHN STUYVESANT ANCESTOR
 
 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 
 
 "TTELLO Central! Hello, hello! Con- 
 J~ M. found it ! Do I have to stand here while 
 that silly girl is twiddling her thumbs? Hello! 
 Give me two- thirty. No, no, can't you hear me? 
 Two-thirty, two-three-o. I want the Charity 
 
 Organization Society Is this the C. O. S. ? Is 
 
 Mr. Palgrave there? Mr. Palgrave, this is Mr. 
 Griffith, Professor Griffith. I want you to 
 come right out to my house. To see about a 
 baby. No, no, no, I don't want one. There's 
 one here. Whose? Of course I don't know. 
 How old? Just a new one a day old, no, a 
 week or two. You'll be right out?" Mr. Grif- 
 fith hung up the receiver. " Confound it, any- 
 way ! And I've got so much work to do. Such 
 a thing happening in my house." He turned 
 almost savagely to his wife, who had been ob- 
 serving him with an amused twinkle. Instantly 
 the lady assumed an air of fathomless gravity. 
 
 3
 
 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 
 
 " I've called up Mr. Palgrave of the Charity 
 Organization Society. He'll be here directly." 
 
 " Yes, I heard. Did he say what he would do 
 about it?" 
 
 " No, but of course he'll take it away. What 
 else is there to do? You certainly don't intend 
 to keep them? Oh, Matilda, I'm all upset about 
 this. I've so much work to do, and here this 
 horrible complication comes tumbling down on 
 me. I don't think you were very considerate, 
 Matilda." The poor little man's face was twitch- 
 ing as if he were about to cry. It always did 
 when he was overwrought, and the boys in 
 school had a theory that he would be crying 
 half the time if he only had enough juice in him 
 to keep it up. 
 
 " I'm so sorry," said Matilda penitently. And 
 she was really sorry, but she was more amused, 
 and inexplicably excited. It was with difficulty 
 she maintained her habitual air of subdued se- 
 renity. If Mr. Griffith had not been so completely 
 occupied in subjugating his own emotions he 
 might have observed that her eyes were shining 
 and her cheeks red as they had not been since 
 their courtship, fifteen years ago. It would have 
 been worth Mr. Griffith's while to rest his eyes
 
 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 
 
 on Matilda. He would have been struck by an 
 unquiet beauty that was supposed to have dis- 
 appeared once and for all long before the dial 
 of her life pointed to thirty-five. But Mr. Griffith 
 saw nothing. His eyes wandered aimlessly over 
 the floor while he plucked at his vest button and 
 repeated, "Confound it! Confound it!" under 
 his breath. 
 
 It is to be admitted, he had been very badly 
 used. The wife of his bosom, from whom he had 
 never withheld a single one of his thoughts 
 they were all directed to the science and art of 
 pedagogy had engineered what amounted prac- 
 tically to a monstrous conspiracy against his 
 peace of mind. She must have known about this 
 dreadful thing for months, he reflected bitterly, 
 and never a hint to prepare him. He had al- 
 ways held to the doctrine that there should be 
 the utmost frankness between husband and wife 
 on all matters an arrangement which he had 
 assumed with the customary masculine fatuous- 
 ness would bear most heavily upon the husband. 
 Matilda had apparently accepted the general 
 principle, and yet she had stood by and watched 
 him stumble blindfold right into the morass of 
 the Social Problem, a morass he had always
 
 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 
 
 kept as far from him as possible, both on account 
 of professional expediency and on account of 
 personal squeamishness. 
 
 Picture to yourself the most orderly, the most 
 painstaking little high school principal, spare of 
 body, angular and joyless of face, with hair that 
 would have long since turned gray if it had not 
 been too thin for time to bother about. Of 
 course you'd expect to find him in a trim little 
 bungalow on the edge of town, most probably 
 in his library, among shelves loaded with educa- 
 tional treatises scientifically catalogued, seated 
 at a broad oak table which displays the latest 
 educational journals and all manner of devices 
 for holding notes securely and keeping them in 
 order. His meager income had been sufficient to 
 equip the rest of the house with furniture built 
 on approved craftsman lines and to provide the 
 usual prints and casts supposed to be educational 
 and uplifting. All this, you observe, reflects the 
 schoolmaster's taste, or rather his ethics. Are 
 we to suppose that Matilda, who is at any rate 
 capable of mischief and excitement, has no taste 
 at all? Where is her influence to be discerned? 
 Nowhere. Even the table linen exemplifies a 
 pedagogical theory. If this surprises you, you
 
 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 
 
 simply do not know the pervasive quality of the 
 true schoolmasterly tyranny. In the early years 
 of their married life Matilda had made various 
 tentatives toward interference in the household 
 decorations. She had been brought to book 
 and as she was an intelligent woman, she had 
 yielded the decorative field to her husband's cor- 
 rect if dreary rule. 
 
 Even the most unintellectual elements of the 
 domestic life had been ordered systematically by 
 Mr. Griffith. It was his choice that determined 
 whether the maid of all work should be retained 
 or discharged. For several years his policy had 
 been experimental. Finally he had settled down 
 to a grim visaged creature, Mosaic law inscribed 
 on tables of flint, and for thirteen years had kept 
 down the chronic rebellion of his wife against 
 this creature sans entrailles. The professor was 
 morally certain that in spite of her temperamen- 
 tal antipathy to the servant, Matilda had grown 
 very dependent upon her and would recognize 
 her value if ever there were danger of losing her. 
 Not so; Matilda danced with joy at her depar- 
 ture and the installation of a gentle, brown-eyed 
 creature with a neck like the swan's, and a se- 
 rene, wonderfully modeled face. Many a time
 
 8 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 
 
 I sat at the Griffiths' dinner table, sunk deep in 
 pedagogical conversation, and glanced up, star- 
 tled as something was spilled on me, to behold 
 the pose and perfect beauty of the Aphrodite of 
 Melos. She was wonderful, and she always 
 spilled things. As Mr. Griffith very quickly sur- 
 mised, she was a moron. 
 
 " She must be discharged," Mr. Griffith had 
 said at the end of the first week. 
 
 " No," Matilda had energetically replied. 
 " She is the loveliest thing I've ever seen. I'm 
 going to keep her, if she breaks every dish in the 
 house and spills hot coffee even on the chairman 
 of the school board." 
 
 For the first time Mr. Griffith had been forced 
 to yield. Week by week the service had grown 
 worse. Kate, the moron Aphrodite, had early de- 
 veloped a detestable habit of weeping as she 
 served the meals, and this habit grew on her. 
 At last her health, so Matilda had explained, had 
 become so broken as to necessitate two weeks' 
 leave, during which time Matilda had cooked and 
 dusted and made beds, to the humiliation of Mr. 
 Griffith, who considered housework far beneath 
 his spouse and the sharer of his pedagogical joys. 
 Now Kate had come back, but oh, heavens, not
 
 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 
 
 alone. The carriage that had brought her had 
 also brought a bundle done up in shawls. A 
 baby! O tempora, O mores! Mr. Griffith had 
 never even suspected, though the training of ob- 
 servation bulked large in his pedagogic theory. 
 And Matilda hadn't given him a single hint. 
 
 " I've put a crib in her room. Do come and 
 see him," cried Matilda, bursting into the study 
 with quite unbridled enthusiasm. " He's already 
 asleep, and oh, he's the dearest little thing! " 
 
 Mr. Griffith scowled. Still, wasn't it his duty 
 to look at the baby and perhaps question the 
 mother? It might be more humane than to 
 leave her to the official catechizing of the 
 C. O. S. secretary. 
 
 A pink little head, with the silkiest brown hair 
 emerged from the snow of Matilda's best linen. 
 Two wee hands, with the thinnest, longest fin- 
 gers clenched, the skin loose about the knuckles, 
 rested against the baby's tiny ears. Beside the 
 crib sat Kate, gentle brown-eyed Aphrodite, her 
 face veiled with an expression of timid pride. 
 Have you ever observed how a petted young 
 cow behaves as you stroke the bobbing, curly 
 head of her first new-born calf? She is proud, 
 and nervous, and happy, and overcome with
 
 IO John Stuyvesant Ancestor 
 
 wonder, all of which she expresses in one gen- 
 tle " Moo." Well, as Mr. Griffith touched the 
 little silky head, Kate all but said "Moo." 
 " Sweet, silly creature, how lovely you look," 
 thought Matilda. 
 
 " Nice baby," said Mr. Griffith. " What are 
 you going to name him?" 
 
 " His name is John Stuyvesant," said Kate 
 with sweet finality. 
 
 "John Stuyvesant?" queried Mr. Griffith. 
 Then he added craftily, 
 
 "I don't suppose that is his father's name?" 
 
 " It's such a pretty name, don't you think so, 
 Mrs. Griffith? And it may be his father's name. 
 Those awful boys never tell you their right 
 names." 
 
 " Those boys ! " Oh, the ignominy, and un- 
 der his own sacred roof! Mr. Griffith retired 
 bitterly to his study. He hoped the C. O. S. 
 secretary wouldn't be long in coming. 
 
 Mr. Palgrave, the Charity Organization secre- 
 tary, or more properly, the Charity Organiza- 
 tion itself, was a very tall, very bony man, bald, 
 colorless, sharp-eyed. He was not a man to 
 waste words and Mr. Griffith's account merely 
 elicited from time to time a sibilant " Yes, yes."
 
 John Stuyvesant Ancestor II 
 
 " How long has she been in your house? " de- 
 manded Mr. Palgrave with a keen look that 
 made Mr. Griffith first shudder and then blush 
 under his sallow skin. 
 
 " Why, why Mr. Palgrave, you're not cast- 
 ing suspicion at at me? You know my position 
 and and my character." 
 
 "Just a routine question. But so far as that's 
 concerned, a man in my job doesn't take much 
 stock in moral alibis." He eyed Mr. Griffith 
 still more keenly. " None of my business, 
 though." Mr. Griffith blushed still more furi- 
 ously. This was indeed degradation beyond his 
 depth ! 
 
 " Well," said Mr. Palgrave in a tone of every- 
 day business, " what do you want me to do? " 
 
 " Take them away," cried Mr. Griffith. 
 
 " I can't do that. Of course, if you kick them 
 out and they're starving, the C. O. S. will be 
 bound to do something for them. But with your 
 
 character and position " Mr. Palgrave eyed 
 
 Mr. Griffith again piercingly. 
 
 Mr. Griffith said nothing. Peace was dead. 
 Honor was gone. The values of life were ex- 
 tinct. 
 
 The door flew open and Matilda entered, girl-
 
 12 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 
 
 ish and rosy, her eyes shining, with a bundle of 
 lace-trimmed linen squeezed tight against her 
 breast. Following her came gentle Kate, still 
 almost saying " Moo." 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Palgrave, did you ever see a sweeter 
 little thing? " 
 
 Mr. Palgrave's face lighted up, like a rocky 
 hillside field under a burst of November sun. 
 
 " Pretty baby," he said judiciously. " What 
 do you want me to do with it? " he added in an 
 undertone, with a cautious glance at Kate. 
 
 " Oh, we're going to keep him, forever," said 
 Matilda with determination. 
 
 " Ah-h-h-h-h-h," breathed a little voice from 
 the bundle. 
 
 " Oh, we must put him back," cried Matilda, 
 turning to Kate in consternation. 
 
 " Well, Professor Griffith, I must be going," 
 said Mr. Palgrave, as the door closed upon the 
 baby and its devotees. " If I can do anything, 
 why, call on me. I guess the moral alibi must 
 be all right, after all. Good-by." 
 
 Mr. Griffith sank into a chair, miserably. He 
 had first been duped, and now he had been sus- 
 pected. For one who had led so exemplary a 
 life, could humiliation be deeper? Matilda
 
 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 13 
 
 glided into the room and threw her arm round 
 his neck a most novel and disquieting gesture. 
 
 " Matilda," he said inconsolably. " I have 
 been deeply humiliated. Your harboring of this 
 creature has thrust a terrible injustice upon me. 
 I have been made the subject of a monstrous 
 suspicion. I have been suspected of being of 
 being the author " 
 
 "You, Harold? Oh, how absurd !" And Ma- 
 tilda ended with a little peal of laughter. For 
 years she hadn't laughed like this. And as she 
 ran away, Mr. Griffith's anger at her flippancy 
 began to give way to the most inexplicable sense 
 of shame. Why it was he did not know, neither 
 do you, nor I. But as he strode to and fro and 
 happened to catch a glimpse of himself in the 
 glass over his desk, he discovered that his face, 
 from pointed chin to the retreating roots of his 
 sparse hair, was red as a cock's comb.
 
 II 
 
 THE Griffith's home was the accepted ren- 
 dezvous of the Friday Evening Circle, an 
 organization anciently intended to circulate from 
 house to house, which had assumed a fixed habi- 
 tat, partly because Mr. Griffith was the town's 
 most tireless seeker after ultimate truth, partly 
 because everybody else found his own brilliancy 
 enhanced under the sympathetic hostess-ship of 
 Mrs. Griffith. The object of the Circle was to 
 promote philosophical thinking as a corrective 
 of the narrowing tendency of too much high 
 school teaching. In the dark ages around the 
 end of the last century, the Circle had studied 
 Browning, under the illusion that he was a deep 
 philosopher. From Browning they had ad- 
 vanced to Herbert Spencer, William James and 
 Bergson. Then they had retrograded to Rabin- 
 dranath Tagore, and still further to the sociolo- 
 gists. Now, last stage of all, they were immersed 
 in the study of eugenics. Of all the subjects they 
 had pursued, eugenics most profoundly gripped 
 them. Especially the horrors of the Jukes, the 
 tribes of Ishmael, the Kallikaks and their kind 
 
 14
 
 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 15 
 
 multiplying beyond the normal rate of mankind. 
 The Circle trembled for the coming generations, 
 in which, by the way, its vital stake was of the 
 most tenuous and altruistic. 
 
 Of the dozen or more segments of this Circle, 
 the most studied hard, said little, and attended 
 to the proceedings with knit brows and eager, 
 weary eyes. That is all I know of them, as I 
 was extremely irregular in my attendance. One 
 who stood out slightly from the group was Mr. 
 Benson, who taught French in the high school 
 and affected shrugging shoulders and pointed 
 wit. Another was Miss Platt, teacher of mathe- 
 matics and physics, veteran of over a score of 
 Commencements. Her tawny hair always ap- 
 peared somewhat unkempt and her severe gar- 
 ments were rebellious to any conceivable style. 
 She had kindly wrinkles about her eyes and 
 mouth, a pertinacious chin and conscientious 
 brow. She evidently suffered agonies under the 
 eugenics debate; too many things relating to 
 the origin and destiny of the unfit must be 
 spoken of plainly to accord with the happiness 
 of a lady brought up among all the reticences 
 of a small provincial city. But Miss Platt was 
 not a person to shirk her plain duty, and she
 
 i6 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 
 
 went through the eugenics reports like a band- 
 saw ripping through a log, knots and all. I end 
 this catalogue with Gustav Kieselbacher, enor- 
 mous, with sandy hair and red bristly beard, 
 wide eyes and brow like a cliff. Gustav taught 
 German, real German, sinewy, striding, crested 
 with Pickelhauben, with overtones of Shreck- 
 lichkeit and undertones of Wehmut and Friih- 
 lingswehen. Of course that was a scandal to 
 some while the war was on, but the city was 
 too purely American to fall into a panic over the 
 German language question. Gustav was a 
 teacher who got results. At his first roar the 
 class surrendered at discretion, and not a student 
 ever recovered fully from his initial fright. " At 
 leasd," Gustav would growl complacently, 
 " dhey learn to bronounse my name corr-r-ectly." 
 
 Great was the excitement in the circle when 
 Mr. Griffith announced, one evening, that 
 there was a high grade moron in his own 
 kitchen. 
 
 " Do bring her in ! " cried the guests in chorus. 
 " It will be so instructive to put her through the 
 tests." 
 
 "Oh no, Harold," pleaded Mrs. Griffith. 
 "The poor thing will be frightened to death."
 
 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 17 
 
 " Nonsense, Matilda. She won't understand 
 what we're driving at. Shall I call her? " 
 
 Mrs. Griffith rose. " I don't think it's fair. 
 But promise me you won't do anything to em- 
 barrass her." 
 
 Kate had just finished the dishes and was 
 leaning over a clothes basket supported on two 
 chairs, where little John Stuyvesant was sleeping. 
 
 " Kate," said Mrs. Griffith, " our guests are 
 playing a sort of game, and it is important to 
 have somebody who doesn't know anything 
 about it, to answer a lot of questions. It's just 
 a part of the game, you see. We'd like to have 
 you come in." 
 
 " Oh dear, I can't go in, in this horrid old 
 dress," objected Kate nervously. 
 
 " Well, just bring baby along, and they won't 
 even see your dress." 
 
 A smile of enlightenment broke over Kate's 
 face. " Oh ! They don't care a bit to see me 
 they want a look at John Stuyvesant." Kate 
 cautiously put back the covers of the basket and 
 took the wee sleeper into her arms. Little John 
 opened wide his dark eyes, yawned vigorously, 
 and slipped back into his slumbers. Kate fol- 
 lowed her mistress into the living-room and con-
 
 18 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 
 
 fronted the guests with a face glowing with com- 
 placent embarrassment. 
 
 " Sit here, Kate," commanded Mr. Griffith. 
 And in a tone intended for an aside, " We'll test 
 her for age eight. Now, Kate, what is the dif- 
 ference between a fly and a butterfly? " 
 
 " Why, goodness, Mr. Griffith, they ain't a 
 bit alike." 
 
 "Yes, but how do they differ?" insisted Mr. 
 Griffith. 
 
 " I'm sure I don't know what you want me to 
 say," Kate replied, bewildered. 
 
 Mr. Griffith exchanged significant glances with 
 Miss Platt. 
 
 " Kate, will you begin with twenty and count 
 backward to naught? " 
 
 "Naught? I don't know what that is." 
 
 " Well, then to one." 
 
 " One, two, three, four " 
 
 " No, no ! " cried Mr. Griffith impatiently. 
 " Begin with twenty." 
 
 " Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two " 
 
 "No, no! not that way at all!" shouted Mr. 
 Griffith. Kate's frightened eyes sought refuge 
 in Mrs. Griffith's. 
 
 " Try the pictures, Harold," suggested Mrs.
 
 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 19 
 
 Griffith firmly. " Now Kate, take a good look at 
 these pictures and tell us what you think of 
 them." She bent over Kate's chair and held be- 
 fore her four drawings, one of a face without 
 nose, another lacking mouth, another eyes, and 
 the fourth, of a figure without arms. " Now, 
 what do you think of them? " 
 
 " I don't think they are very pretty, do you? " 
 Kate looked up at her mistress with a smile of 
 amusement. 
 
 "What's wrong with them?" demanded Mr. 
 Griffith. 
 
 Kate knitted her brow. " Well, they look like 
 dagoes." 
 
 Mr. Griffith pointed with his pencil at the 
 noseless face. " Did you ever know a person 
 who looked like that? " he asked in an even, ir- 
 ritated voice. 
 
 " N-no," stammered Kate, again taking 
 fright. " He kind of favors Uncle Joe Black. 
 Is that who you mean? " 
 
 " Good God! " ejaculated Mr. Griffith. " Well, 
 we'll test for age six." 
 
 "No, Harold," said Mrs. Griffith. "You'd 
 bewilder anyone with those foolish questions. 
 Try age twelve."
 
 2O John Stuyvesant Ancestor 
 
 "And batience, batience, and still batience!" 
 roared Gustav with kindly intent but terrifying 
 result. Kate shuddered and turned a frightened 
 face toward Gustav's colossal, heaving form. 
 
 " Now, dear," said Mrs. Griffith soothingly, 
 " tell us the names of as many things as you can 
 think of while Mr. Griffith looks at his watch." 
 
 Kate contracted her brows. " Bread, butter, 
 peas, coal, dresses, things, butter, dresses, peas 
 Well, you know, Mrs. Griffith, I never went to 
 high school " 
 
 " Of course you didn't," snorted Mr. Griffith, 
 " but is that any reason why you shouldn't have 
 more than six words in your head? " 
 
 Kate's eyes filled with tears. Mrs. Griffith 
 glanced indignantly at her husband. " You are 
 forgetting what we are trying to do, Harold. 
 This isn't an entrance examination." 
 
 "That's true," admitted Mr. Griffith apolo- 
 getically. " Kate, will you please define justice? 
 Tell us what justice means?" 
 
 " I can't," sighed Kate. The tears were trick- 
 ling over her cheeks. " I ain't getting justice. 
 Oh, Mrs. Griffith, why are they poking all those 
 questions at me? I ain't done nothing." 
 
 " It was only part of the game," said Maltida.
 
 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 21 
 
 " You answered just what we wanted, dear, just 
 what the game needed. Come, now, we must 
 carry little John to his crib." 
 
 And as Mrs. Griffith drew the door to, shutting 
 out the hostile audience, Kate sobbed bitterly, 
 " And not one of them even looked at John 
 Stuyvesant." 
 
 When Matilda returned Mr. Griffith was lec- 
 turing earnestly. " From one single defective, 
 Martin Kallikak, Jr., the state has been cursed 
 with 480 descendants, of whom 143 were feeble- 
 minded, many were immoral, many drunkards 
 and some criminals. The descendants of Ada 
 Juke have cost the state a million and a quarter 
 in the course of a century. That is what makes 
 this girl and her child such a serious problem. 
 The girl is not really bad, but you can't say but 
 her child will contribute to the state just such 
 another chain of imbecility, pauperism, crime, 
 immorality. It will be a mercy if he does not 
 grow up." 
 
 Gustav stole a shrewd glance at Matilda, who 
 was standing erect, her cheeks very red, her eyes 
 flashing. 
 
 " Ja, ja," he grunted. " Dhe trouble vidth us 
 Americans is, ve don'd keep our science and our
 
 22 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 
 
 life separate. Now, as a scientist I vould haf 
 dhe unfit rooted out. I vould show no mercy. 
 I vould haf only big, strong, healthy men ja, 
 ja, vidh stiff, red beards and broad, homely, hon- 
 est faces, yust like me. Dhat is science. But, 
 Gott sei Dank, I am not dhe Divine Providence. 
 What for a life it vould be, all dhe men like me 
 and dhe ladies to correspond ! Dhat girl and her 
 baby are all wrong, from dhe scientific stand- 
 point. But from dhe standpoint of life viewed, 
 she is beaudiful and dhe baby is beaudiful and 
 dhey are happy and dhere is sun enough for all." 
 
 " That is to abdicate reason altogether," ex- 
 postulated Mr. Griffith. " Your doctrine is not 
 only fallacious, it is pernicious. You confound 
 action by advancing at the same time the most 
 contradictory principles." 
 
 " Ja, ja," growled Gustav, the joy of argument 
 upon him. " For vy I haf dhis gread, broad Ger- 
 man brain," (and he beat his brow with his huge 
 fist) " if I am not to harbor contradictions, many 
 of dhem? Dhe frog has very little brain : he has 
 no contradictions he goes straight to his pud- 
 dle. Dhe Australian black has small brain: he 
 has no contradictions he goes vhere his nose 
 leads him, looking neidher to right nor to left,
 
 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 23 
 
 to vhere dhe Walfisch lies stranded. Vidh my 
 colossal brain I see things double : science and 
 life." 
 
 Professor Griffith resumed his lecture. " Of 
 course we do not know whether feeble-minded- 
 ness is a unit character. It is not certain that 
 the child may not turn out normal. We know 
 nothing at all of his ancestry beyond the traits 
 of his mother." 
 
 The French teacher shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " Was it not Napoleon who said : Moi, je 
 sws ancetref What's the little chap's name? 
 Oh yes; John Stuyvesant, John Stuyvesant, An- 
 cestor." 
 
 Wretched flippancy, it fell flat, as it deserved. 
 But it was the one thing that poor Kate, listen- 
 ing at the door to the storm of words, could un- 
 derstand. She had already made up her mind 
 that little John ought to have a third name, and 
 Ancestor sounded very well. Henceforth so she 
 called him, despite all the protests from Matilda 
 who, although she had become a foe of the 
 science of eugenics, felt an obscure curse inher- 
 ent in the name, John Stuyvesant Ancestor.
 
 Ill 
 
 IF Mr. Griffith had cherished any hope that 
 Kate and little John, with the succession of 
 Jukes or Kallikaks potential in them would re- 
 move themselves from under the shelter of his 
 uneasy responsibility, disillusionment was to be 
 his lot. Kate was extremely contented, having 
 abdicated most of her household duties to Ma- 
 tilda, now a convert to the doctrine, despised by 
 her husband, that housework is an entertaining 
 and instructive game, after all. Kate spent most 
 of her waking hours in a rocking-chair, smiling 
 upon little John, who early learned to repay 
 smiles two for one. John was a good baby, 
 never crying except with reason, and seldom 
 having reason to cry. And this was a mercy to 
 Mr. Griffith, who had never succeeded in getting 
 the baby off his nerves. To be sure, Mr. Griffith 
 gave John no credit for his good nature. This 
 and other little unexpected traits led Mr. Grif- 
 fith to conclude that John was not like other 
 babies there was, in his opinion, something 
 very ominous in this fact of unlikeness. He was 
 of course right in regarding little John as in a 
 
 24
 
 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 25 
 
 way unique among babies. Every baby is unique 
 if you come to know it well. Only adults are 
 alike, standardized by the pressure of social life. 
 When John Stuyvesant entered upon the 
 creeping stage Kate's life became less satisfac- 
 tory. She was born to sit quietly smiling, look- 
 ing beautiful, and not really much more sentient 
 than a sunbeam. The baby's restless excursions 
 to far corners and through open doors disturbed 
 her peace. After futile efforts to restore John 
 to the habit of lying still and bartering smiles, 
 she half gave him up. More and more the care 
 of little John devolved, along with the house- 
 work, upon Matilda. Soon it was for Matilda 
 that John reserved his sunniest smiles; and it 
 was Matilda who was first honored with the 
 title " Mam-ma." Kate the beautiful rocked 
 herself into somnolence, sighing softly from time 
 to time while little John crawled tirelessly after 
 Matilda as she prepared the meals or set the 
 house in order. As he grew stronger in body 
 and will he would pull himself up by a chair, to 
 reach resolutely for the glasses on the table or 
 the flower pots in the window. " No, no, John," 
 Matilda would say reprovingly. Whereupon he 
 would drop his dimpled chin on his breast and
 
 26 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 
 
 wail heartbrokenly, until Matilda would soothe 
 his soul with a kiss. 
 
 John was docile, and once denied a desirable 
 object, he would never touch it again. He still 
 desired it and would kneel before it wistfully, 
 his eyes glowing, his tiny fingers opening and 
 closing, the sweetest picture of resisted tempta- 
 tion in the world. 
 
 Thanksgiving was at hand, and the high school 
 had to be decorated for an appropriate masque. 
 All morning the teachers had worked hard, es- 
 pecially Gustav, whose enthusiasm for " our Pil- 
 grim forefadhers " was almost pathetically lu- 
 dicrous. Matilda had been pressed into service, 
 but proved less helpful and suggestive than in 
 other years. All she wanted was to get through 
 as quickly as possible, whether the Thanksgiving 
 spirit were properly expressed or not. The day 
 was bleak, and Matilda could not be sure that 
 Kate would keep the house warm enough for 
 little John. Kate was not sufficiently sensitive 
 to changes in temperature to keep herself com- 
 fortable; John might freeze without exciting her 
 attention, or at least without arousing her to ef- 
 fort. 
 
 At last the work was done, and Gustav insisted
 
 John Stuyvesant Ancestor .27 
 
 on conveying Mr. Griffith and Matilda to their 
 door in his car. The distance was not great, but 
 Gustav's car was new and had to be admired. 
 Whatever speed laws there were in town Gustav 
 violated, and in a twinkling the three were in- 
 side the Griffiths' door. The house was cold, in 
 fact, and Matilda ran anxiously to the kitchen. 
 In a moment she returned, pale and tearful, 
 crumpling a scrap of paper in her fingers. 
 
 " They're gone ! " she said despairingly. 
 
 "Gone?" exclaimed Mr. Griffith, suppressing 
 an impulse to cheer. 
 
 " Yes, look at this note. I shouldn't have 
 left the house this morning." 
 
 Mr. Griffith read : " Dear Mrs. Gruffus. Im 
 goin home. Im sorry to leve you fokes. Im not 
 feelin very wel. I guess Im not strong enuf for 
 housewurk. Im all broke down 
 
 Yrs. truly Kate " 
 
 Mr. Griffith chuckled. " Poor thing, all broke 
 down. Why, Gustav, she hasn't done a thing 
 for months. She's too lazy even to look after 
 her own baby." 
 
 Matilda was crying softly. " Poor little John. 
 Whatever will become of him? I'm just sure 
 that girl will let him die. My own baby John."
 
 28 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 
 
 Gustav's face was working with emotion. 
 " Vhere iss her home? Maybe I get her for you 
 again? " 
 
 Mr. Griffith shook his head violently. 
 
 "Oh, Gustav, do you think you could?" 
 pleaded Matilda. " She used to live at Vinton, 
 and I suppose that's where she's gone." 
 
 "Vinton? Ja, ja. Sixty miles around by dhe 
 railroad, twenty miles over dhe hills. I meet 
 her at dhe train." 
 
 " But Gustav," protested Mr. Griffith, pursu- 
 ing him to the car. " Gustav ! " 
 
 Gustav heard nothing, amid the sharp ex- 
 plosions of his machine. Mr. Griffith shouted 
 angrily, but to no avail. Gustav's car was plung- 
 ing down the slope, a tail of black smoke from 
 the exhaust lengthening out behind it. 
 
 The afternoon was graying toward nightfall. 
 Matilda was seated at the window, looking anx- 
 iously down the street, while Mr. Griffith paced 
 the floor with quick, irritated steps. 
 
 " At last ! " cried Matilda, springing up. 
 " And he's got them ! " 
 
 "Confound it!" ejaculated her husband. 
 " Put on your coat, anyway. It's no use tak- 
 ing cold, into the bargain."
 
 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 29 
 
 Matilda flew down the walk, her husband fol- 
 lowing, grumbling in an undertone. 
 
 " Heisa, Jucche!" shouted Gustav, bumping 
 his wheel against the curve. " Home again ! " 
 He sprang out and threw open the door for Kate, 
 who descended wearily, holding little John to 
 her breast. Matilda snatched the baby from 
 Kate's arms and scrutinized his rosy face anx- 
 iously to see if he had taken harm. He smiled 
 divinely. 
 
 "You're coming in, Gustav?" asked Matilda. 
 And then she observed that Kate was gazing 
 into Gustav's face with an expression of settled 
 despair. Gustav was visibly embarrassed. 
 
 "You're coming in, Gustav?" repeated Ma- 
 tilda. 
 
 Gustav started. " No, I must to my home. 
 You vill understand, Mrs. Griffith, sometimes 
 misinterpretations arise, most innocently on 
 both sides?" 
 
 " What on earth do you mean, Gustav? " 
 
 " I can't explain yust now," replied Gustav, 
 mounting to his seat. " Au revoir, friends." 
 
 Matilda was deeply perplexed, but in a mo- 
 ment she had forgotten Gustav and everything 
 else except little John, soft and warm against
 
 30 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 
 
 her breast. Kate was following at her elbow, 
 but she never thought of Kate either until she 
 was aroused to Kate's existence by a burst of 
 sobs. 
 
 " Oh, Mrs. Griffith," wept Kate, " I just can't 
 marry that awful Dutchman." 
 
 " Marry him ! " exclaimed Matilda, " is he pro- 
 posing to marry you?" 
 
 " Yes, of course. He didn't exactly say it, but 
 can't I see?" Kate smiled knowingly. "All 
 those Dutchmen are marrying men. And what 
 did he come after me for?" 
 
 " I wouldn't worry, dear," said Matilda laugh- 
 ing. 
 
 " If he didn't have such an awful name. I 
 told him I couldn't marry a man with an awful 
 name like Kieselbacher. I said he could change 
 his name. Don't you think Orlando Lavelle is 
 a pretty name? " 
 
 " Yes," laughed Matilda. " What did Gustav 
 think of it?" 
 
 Kate resumed her weeping. " He said he 
 wouldn't change his name to marry a princess. 
 He said if I married him he would always call 
 me Katereeny Kieselbacher. Till I died. Isn't 
 he horrid?"
 
 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 31 
 
 " Yes," agreed Matilda, choking down her 
 laughter. Gustav's cryptic words about " mis- 
 interpretations " were clear enough now. 
 
 The next day, Kate wept every time the door 
 bell rang, certain that that awful Dutchman had 
 come to torment her. But Gustav did not come 
 that day, nor the next. On the third day, he 
 appeared, very constrained in manner, as one 
 who has an important explanation to make. Ma- 
 tilda meant to be polite, but it was impossible 
 for her to contain her merriment. 
 
 " Well, Gustav, she's run away again. And 
 it's all your fault." 
 
 " So-so? " exclaimed Gustav in a tone of con- 
 sternation. 
 
 " But she left little John. He's mine now for 
 keeps." 
 
 " Ja-ja." Gustav's face brightened. 
 
 " I suppose I ought to condole with you, Gus- 
 tav." 
 
 " Condole? " Gustav blushed. 
 
 " I suppose I ought to feel worried about that 
 poor girl. But I don't." 
 
 " Dhe awful egoism of dhe female. You haf 
 her baby, vhat you care for dhe sorrowing 
 mother?"
 
 32 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 
 
 " Not a bit. Besides, she isn't sorrowing. 
 Her parting from little John she will recall as 
 just a sweet tragedy. This escape is a wonderful 
 adventure to her." 
 
 "Escape?" Gustav lifted his shaggy brows. 
 
 " Yes, escape from you." Matilda laughed 
 joyously. " Here's her letter." Gustav read, 
 scowling fiercely. 
 
 " Dere Mrs. Griffus. Im goin away this time 
 wher that oful man cant find me. I must say 
 farwel to my deer littl John Stivesant Anstor. 
 He loves you moren me. He does not no what 
 his poor mother has suferd for him. Be kind 
 and good to him and hevon will reward you. I 
 couldn't marry him. My poor mother wud turn 
 over in her grave if she new I married a forener. 
 We are all an old American famly. We came 
 over in a ship I ferget its name. We dont go 
 much by foreners. He has such an oful name. 
 Id die ruthern be called Catereeny Kezulbocker. 
 "yrs truly Kate." 
 
 "Ja-ja," growled Gustav. "As a yung Loch- 
 invar, I am a gross und dismal failure. But " 
 and he grinned grotesquely " Mr. Griffith vill 
 be so pleased! Ve haf safed little John Stuy- 
 vesant Ancestor."
 
 IV 
 
 THE disappearance of one familiar face 
 seemed not greatly to disturb little John, 
 even though the face was that of his natural 
 mother. Mr. Griffith looked the matter up in 
 the books, and found that obtuseness to the 
 claims of the blood is characteristic of certain 
 strains of defectiveness. Dire are the conse- 
 quences, too, at times. But Matilda would have 
 none of this discovery. Kate was by nature a 
 good mother to a very little baby, but incapable 
 of persisting in her devotion to a baby who 
 wouldn't lie still. The natural relation had been 
 broken, not by John, but by his mother. There- 
 fore nothing could be inferred as to John's char- 
 acter from the fact that he remained cheerful 
 under his bereavement. Besides, John was too 
 much occupied to find time to brood. He was 
 just learning the two fascinating arts of talking 
 and walking. Upon awaking in the morning he 
 would lie still, patiently exploring the capacity 
 of his tongue and lips to shape new sounds. 
 Dressed and fed, he would get himself balanced 
 
 33
 
 34 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 
 
 on his wobbly little legs, and make a brave ef- 
 fort to walk across the room. Many and mighty 
 were the falls he experienced, but beyond a little 
 " Huh ! " these drew no expression of annoyance 
 from him. Soon he came to regard a tumble as 
 a great joke, and prostrate, would wriggle his 
 head around so that he could exchange a smile 
 with Matilda. A droll little head it was, with 
 only a thin brown fuzz from the back of his 
 neck to his crown and from his crown to his 
 forehead a narrow strip of long hair falling in 
 thick ringlets on either side. 
 
 In the fond hope that Matilda might be re- 
 lieved from her slavery to John, Mr. Griffith had 
 installed in the house a maid of uncertain dis- 
 position but fully guaranteed competence, said 
 to be an adept at winning the confidence of chil- 
 dren. This paragon John politely ignored. If 
 her advances became too insistent, he would 
 gently struggle to withdraw himself, appealing 
 to Matilda for succor with his eloquent brown 
 eyes. If Matilda left John alone in the house 
 with the competent Anna, he would climb upon 
 a settee by the window, where he could com- 
 mand a view of the approach to the house, and 
 wait with the infinite patience of babyhood for
 
 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 35 
 
 Matilda's return. The wistful little face peer- 
 ing through the window almost moved Matilda 
 to tears, and each time she resolved she would 
 never again desert her charge. Mr. Griffith 
 fumed about the little parasite who might just 
 as well have made up to Anna so as to leave a 
 little freedom to Matilda. As for Matilda, she 
 was quite content. A baby's preference is after 
 all the most seductive flattery in the world. 
 
 " Oh, yes, I know I'm spoiling him," she would 
 say apologetically. " But you are constantly re- 
 peating that it can be for only a little time. 
 There is nothing about him now that isn't lovely. 
 Soon the traits of his defective heredity will be- 
 gin to emerge, one by one, until he is all marred. 
 So you say. Then why shouldn't I make the 
 most of him, before the dark days come? But 
 they never will." And Matilda would snatch 
 up the wee creature tugging at her skirts and 
 kiss his cheeks all rosy. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that Matilda's liberty 
 was the only thing sacrificed to the seductive 
 whims of little John. Through the fifteen years 
 of their married life, Matilda and her husband 
 had always read the same books and journals 
 and had thus attained a broad basis for stimulat-
 
 36 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 
 
 ing discussion. Now Matilda read nothing. Mr. 
 Griffith tried to continue his devotion to the lit- 
 erature of education, but it was a joyless and 
 profitless proceeding. Instead of taking in the 
 meaning of a page at a glance, he fell victim to 
 such a sense of lack of connection that it was 
 often a puzzle to him whether he had read a 
 page or no. He began to have a low opinion of 
 books that he had formerly accepted as almost 
 divinely inspired. Nothing was the same since 
 that little waster had established himself in the 
 house. 
 
 The Circle still assembled, and still discussed 
 eugenics. But the savor had gone out of the in- 
 quiry. Mr. Griffith found his mind growing stiff 
 and stale ; he was no longer able to hold a com- 
 manding position in the debate. More and more, 
 frivolous ideas began to find expression, under 
 the contagion of Matilda's irresponsible moods. 
 Gustav had taken to the detestable habit of dis- 
 puting axioms, and the French teacher would 
 interpolate anecdotes that had no better object 
 than to raise a laugh. Mr. Griffith felt that it 
 would perhaps be best to disband the Circle. 
 He was suffering keenly, and Miss Platt suf- 
 fered in sympathy. She alone of the Circle re-
 
 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 37 
 
 alized how matters were turning, and under- 
 stood the true cause, in Matilda's pathologic 
 concentration on little John. 
 
 One day when Miss Platt had concluded a 
 discussion of school discipline with Mr. Griffith, 
 she succeeded, at the cost of great mental per- 
 turbation, in broaching the question of what was 
 amiss in the Griffith household. Mr. Griffith had 
 reached a point where he had to confide in some- 
 one, and set forth his despairs so eloquently that 
 Miss Platt made up her mind that it was her 
 duty to do something about it. Did Mr. Griffith 
 think it would be all right for her to have a heart 
 to heart talk with Matilda? Mr. Griffith 
 clutched at the straw eagerly, desperately. It 
 was agreed that Miss Platt should call that very 
 evening. 
 
 Accordingly at eight Miss Platt, all weary 
 with screwing up her resolution to see if it would 
 stick, rang the Griffith doorbell. Mr. Griffith, 
 all weary with rehearsing the arguments Miss 
 Platt ought to use, admitted her. 
 
 " She's putting the baby to bed," said Mr. 
 Griffith in a low voice. " It will take some time, 
 but perhaps it would be best to wait." 
 
 " I think I'll go in and see her," breathed Miss
 
 38 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 
 
 Platt, finding her resolution behaving like the 
 sand in an hourglass. 
 
 Matilda's door was ajar. Miss Platt stepped 
 noiselessly into the room. Little John, all rosy 
 and naked down to a last pink stocking, lay flat 
 on the white coverlet, his big eyes, black in the 
 lamplight, fixed upon Matilda's face smiling 
 down upon him. Matilda was reciting with lisp- 
 ing rhythm, 
 
 " My son John 
 
 Went to bed with his tockies on 
 One tockie off and one tockie on." 
 
 Suddenly she swooped down and kissed him 
 on his neck. John shrieked with laughter and 
 struck out valiantly with his chubby arms and 
 legs. Matilda rose, and John lay flat again, his 
 defenses mobilized for the invited attack, his 
 eyes and cheeks glowing, his mouth open with 
 anticipation of laughter. 
 
 Miss Platt's resolution had ebbed to the last 
 grain, and a chilling embarrassment seized her. 
 To have intruded upon such sweet intimacies! 
 She had a vaguely troubled feeling, as a stake 
 set green, not quite dead, may form abortive 
 buds when spring bursts upon the fields. She 
 tiptoed backwards through the door.
 
 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 39 
 
 "Well?" said Mr. Griffith anxiously. 
 
 Miss Platt glanced at him with a curiously 
 veiled expression. 
 
 She shook her head. " I don't think it best 
 to broach those subjects we discussed. Not now. 
 Good-night" And she was gone. 
 
 "Didn't I hear you speaking to someone?" 
 inquired Matilda emerging into the living-room 
 with a little figure in fuzzy white from toe to 
 crown riding on her shoulder. 
 
 " Yes, it was Miss Platt. She wanted to speak 
 to you, but she went away when she found you 
 occupied with the baby." 
 
 " Oh, I'm sorry, I wonder what she had on 
 her mind? " 
 
 " I think it was about the Circle. You know, 
 Matilda, the Circle doesn't seem to amount to 
 much nowadays." 
 
 " Oh, do you think so? I hadn't noticed any- 
 thing wrong. But I'm not paying much atten- 
 tion to the Circle now." 
 
 " That's just the trouble, Matilda. You were 
 the life of the Circle. You have abandoned 
 it, just like everything else we held worth 
 while." 
 
 "Oh, that's the trouble?" Matilda seated
 
 40 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 
 
 herself and drew little John down into her lap. 
 " You hear that, you terrible baby." She 
 pinched John's cheeks. " You've spoiled the 
 Circle, and everything else worth while." 
 
 "Matilda," said Mr. Griffith, with a note of 
 despair, " I wish you would at least take me 
 seriously." 
 
 "Very well, we will, won't we, John? " John 
 smiled winsomely. 
 
 " You are an intelligent, refined, educated 
 woman. To what use are you putting your tal- 
 ents? To serving as nurse for a single child, 
 and that not one with potentialities equivalent 
 to your own, but the child of a defective, a 
 moron." 
 
 Matilda laughed. " According to the statis- 
 tics that is what we intelligent, educated, refined 
 women are coming to. What else do we have to 
 nurse? And anyway, did you ever see anything 
 so sweet as this little defective?" She stood 
 little John erect upon her lap and pressed his 
 cheek against her own, which seemed to grow 
 rosy by contagion. 
 
 Mr. Griffith sighed. It was really of 
 no use, but he might as well go through 
 with it.
 
 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 41 
 
 " We ought to bear in mind that we have laid 
 out our lives upon a definite plan. The need of 
 the world, as we have seen it, is better care of 
 the people already in it. Especially better train- 
 ing for the troops of children rising year by year 
 to manhood and womanhood. For this work 
 we fitted ourselves, to the best of our ability. 
 We have not spared effort in keeping ourselves 
 abreast of the best that is being done in the edu- 
 cational field. To this end we have subordinated 
 everything. We agreed that we would forego 
 many things that go to make up the ordinary 
 happiness of life. We agreed that we could not 
 be handicapped by cares of a purely individu- 
 alistic, domestic character." 
 
 "We agreed?" demanded Matilda saucily. 
 " No, you agreed." 
 
 Mr. Griffith sank back in his chair, visibly 
 shaken. 
 
 "I agreed? Well, anyway, you assented." 
 
 "Of course," Matilda laughed. "I'm being 
 terribly unkind. But, Harold, do you ever look 
 backward over our educational strivings? Think 
 how enthusiastic we were, when we were very 
 young, over the substitution of science for clas- 
 sics in the high school course. We thought that
 
 42 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 
 
 would extirpate the children's indifference and 
 idleness. It didn't. How many other enthusi- 
 asms we've had since; manual training, training 
 for citizenship, moral training, industrial train- 
 ing, and what not. And it is the same old strug- 
 gle with children who don't want to surrender 
 their personalities to us. We can't get very near 
 to the children in the schools. I am near to this 
 little piece of humanity anyway." 
 
 " I think you're not quite fair to our schools, 
 Matilda," said Mr. Griffith weakly. " We do get 
 better results. We do interest a greater propor- 
 tion. There are more children now who like to 
 go to school." 
 
 " Oh, yes, I suppose I am unfair. I suppose 
 it is because I've been so frightfully bored 
 through all these years. Those educational 
 books and journals I've forced myself to grind 
 through ! Heavens, how did I ever survive 
 them? There wasn't the least bit about them 
 that was real, to me. I didn't know why I was 
 coming to feel so old before my time. Now I 
 know, because I've found something real in this 
 wee child of sin. Why, he's fast asleep. It was 
 the educational talk that did it. He must away 
 to his little bed. And don't mind the nonsense
 
 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 43 
 
 I've talked, Harold. Somehow I seem to be in- 
 toxicated. Perhaps it's the spring." 
 
 Don't mind? Imagine that at the cost of your 
 youth and much travail you have erected a tem- 
 ple, not spacious nor lofty, perhaps, but built 
 according to the most approved canons you 
 know. And within it you have nourished a flame 
 of the ideal, rather thin, emitting little light and 
 less warmth, but still a flame. And one day the 
 woman that God gave you opens the temple 
 door, gazes calmly upon the flame, and with a 
 breath puts it out. Don't mind!
 
 MATILDA'S mood was for all the world 
 like that of the June breeze, playing 
 through the open window beside her. Now the 
 breeze would be soft as a child's breath, joyous 
 with its burden of fragrance from the apple 
 trees; now it would whip itself into a petulant 
 humor, scattering the blossoms like drifting 
 snowflakes. For some minutes you'd feel the 
 coolness and soft exuberance of the spring just 
 expiring. Suddenly the character of the breeze 
 would change and you'd become conscious of 
 the glow and tense purpose of the summer. Ma- 
 tilda was watching little John, seated cross- 
 legged on the floor, constructing towers of 
 blocks. Her eyes glowed gently; John looked 
 to her more beautiful and adorable than she had 
 imagined anything mortal could look. His 
 cheeks were a dusky flame under their soft tan; 
 his eyes were great limpid jewels; his hair was 
 a mass of lustrous brown curls. His whole heart 
 was in the success of his tower, and so by sym- 
 pathy was Matilda's. It was John's project and 
 
 44
 
 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 45 
 
 Matilda refrained from interfering. But when 
 he would lay a block out of the true, dooming 
 his whole structure to collapse, Matilda could 
 hardly keep from crying sharply : " No, no, 
 John, not that way at all ! " 
 
 The blocks annoyed her. They were decorated 
 with big letters and numerals, animals, birds, 
 ships, locomotives, all done in hideously crude 
 colors. It was not the crude color that offended 
 Matilda, but the na'ive and crafty educational 
 purpose. Disgusting trickery, to try to catch 
 the purest and sweetest thing in the world, a 
 child's instinct for play, and foist a bit of educa- 
 tion on it. Matilda had commissioned Mr. Grif- 
 fith to get plain blocks, but none were to be had 
 in town. The educational plot against babyhood 
 was all-pervading, and Matilda indignantly sus- 
 pected Mr. Griffith of being in sympathy with 
 it. She had caught him trying to teach John 
 the names of the letters, and she had not only 
 put a stop to this endeavor, but she had made 
 Mr. Griffith promise to do the blocks over in 
 plain colors. 
 
 Down came the tower with a crash that made 
 Matilda put her hands to her ears. "Huh!" 
 exclaimed little John, turning his bright face to
 
 46 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 
 
 Matilda. He picked up a block and pointed a 
 tiny finger at a grotesque hippopotamus. 
 
 " A-e-e," he lisped sweetly. He took up an- 
 other block without looking at it. 
 
 " B-e-e." 
 
 Now he stooped over and examined a block 
 with his little brows puckered as for a mighty 
 intellectual effort. His finger wandered over 
 the figure of an automobile of the horseless car- 
 riage stage. 
 
 " The-ee." He threw the block as far away 
 as he could and laughed so merrily that Matilda 
 laughed herself into a sunny humor. After all, 
 in the contest between education and babyhood, 
 it's babyhood that wins. 
 
 "Matilda!" Mr. Griffith appeared in the 
 doorway. His face had grown thinner of late, 
 and a nervous weariness had become habitual 
 with him. Just now his brow was knotted with 
 perplexity and the corners of his mouth 
 twitched. 
 
 " I've been hunting this house over for Dug- 
 dale's Jukes. It seems to have disappeared com- 
 pletely. You haven't seen it?" 
 
 Matilda's cheeks flushed but her eyes rested 
 calmly on her husband's face.
 
 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 47 
 
 " I burned it." 
 
 " Burned it ! " gasped Mr. Griffith. 
 
 " Yes, I burned it. I also burned Goddard's 
 Kallikak Family, and Davenport, and Saleeby." 
 
 " But my dear ! Those were public library 
 books ! " 
 
 " Yes. The public library shouldn't have such 
 books. They should never have been written. 
 They hang like a dreadful curse over my sweet 
 little son John." Her eyes filled with tears. 
 "My innocent, beautiful baby John." 
 
 "It's all right, my dear, "said Mr. Griffith 
 apologetically. But the storm of sorrow was 
 upon Matilda now and was not so easily to be 
 checked. Little John stared up at Matilda with 
 round eyes of wonder. His mamma crying? 
 Why? One thing was clear to him, however; 
 whatever you have to cry for, it's a great comfort 
 to be kissed. He trotted to Matilda's couch and 
 climbed upon it. " Poo' Ma, poo' Ma," he said 
 soothingly, and showered kisses on her wet 
 cheek. The charm seemed not to work well. 
 Matilda began to sob violently, and then sud- 
 denly became very pale and still. 
 
 " My dear ! " cried Harold, aghast. He set 
 John on the floor and supported Matilda's head
 
 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 
 
 with cushions. Then he ran to the telephone. 
 Little John, overwhelmed with a vague woe, 
 pressed his brow against the floor and wailed 
 miserably. 
 
 " You needn't have called the doctor," said 
 Matilda faintly. " I'm much better now." 
 
 The next morning little John awoke to a new 
 order of the universe. His mamma was not at 
 hand to dress him. Instead, there was a brusque, 
 stout person who explained to him that she was 
 Mrs. Lake, a practical nurse. This seemed no 
 good reason to John why she should violate his 
 liberty by dressing him. He resisted to the best 
 of his ability, but succumbed to superior force. 
 Softly crying, he set out for a tour of the house. 
 " Ma de' ! Ma de' ! " Mr. Griffith, who had just 
 returned to the house, encountered John emerg- 
 ing from the study. 
 
 " My dear son John," he said tenderly, " your 
 mamma isn't in the house. She has gone away 
 for a few days. Then she will come back." 
 
 John stared incredulously. There were still 
 two rooms to explore. He went through them 
 calling despairingly, " Ma de' ! Ma de' ! " Soon 
 he returned to the living-room and climbed upon 
 the settee to watch the approach to the house.
 
 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 49 
 
 He was taken away for breakfast, and after 
 breakfast reluctantly followed Mrs. Lake for a 
 walk. But on this day, and the days following, 
 whenever he could escape the tyranny of supe- 
 rior force he would make for the settee and gaze 
 down the walk toward the street. In the morn- 
 ings he would slip quietly from his bed and plant 
 himself on the settee until Mrs. Lake should 
 come to dress him. 
 
 One night Mr. Griffith, whose room adjoined 
 John's, was awakened by the sound of a little 
 body bumping against his bed. It was John 
 walking in a stupor. " Ma de'," he whimpered. 
 Mr. Griffith caught the little somnambulist in 
 his arms and was startled to find his face flaming 
 hot. Plainly something was amiss with little 
 John. The doctor, summoned from his bed, said 
 that there was probably not much the matter, 
 but he would call again the next day. In the 
 morning, John was pale and quiet, wholly con- 
 tent to lie abed, until his cheeks again began to 
 glow and his eyes to shine with fever. The doc- 
 tor made show of taking cultures and looked 
 very wise and efficient. Mrs. Lake was thor- 
 oughly quizzed as to where she had taken little 
 John on her walks, and whether he had been
 
 50 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 
 
 with other children. According to the manner 
 of practical nurses, Mrs. Lake asserted stoutly 
 that she knew nothing and had not taken John 
 to any place where he could possibly have been 
 exposed to infection. Whatever the malady 
 that had befallen little John, it was plainly be- 
 yond the competence of the doctor. Half the 
 child's days had fallen from him, and he was 
 again an inarticulate little thing, passive, except 
 for his tiny hands with fingers opening and clos- 
 ing persistently as if grasping for something 
 forbidden him. Life, no doubt, and light and 
 the world, beautiful as it is to the wide eyes of 
 babyhood. 
 
 It was all over with little John, and the menace 
 of defective traits emerging was defeated. No 
 longer did his restless little form throw a long 
 shadow over posterity, Jukes or Kallikaks, crimi- 
 nal and pauper youths, foolish maids dancing 
 down a primrose path extending through the 
 generations. That, said Gustav, was the science 
 of it, but the life of it was, the sun would be 
 less bright, the springtime less sweet, the world 
 less beautiful, because little John was not. The 
 doctor offered sage opinions as to the low sur- 
 vival capacity of individuals of defective stock.
 
 No doubt John had harked back to an ancestor 
 who had a penchant for dying in infancy. Oh, 
 excellent science ! It did not save a baby's life, 
 but it saved a brave professional face. 
 
 Of all this Matilda was unaware. She had 
 very nearly met death herself, and at the time 
 when John was swiftly declining to extinction, 
 Matilda in her mortal weakness had accepted as 
 quite cogent the reasons presented by Mr. Grif- 
 fith for not bringing little John to see her. John 
 had a cold that might be infectious, and there 
 was another person to be considered, John's 
 new brother, tiny and wizened, but evincing an 
 unshakable determination to live. This excuse 
 held even after Matilda's strength had greatly 
 improved. Matilda might have wondered at the 
 persistence of the indisposition if what remained 
 of her consciousness beyond pain and weariness 
 had not been occupied with a series of revela- 
 tions as to what you can find out about a per- 
 sonality at its very dawn. The new baby was in- 
 credibly interesting. As you can see, a hideous 
 obligation to report the truth rested upon Mr. 
 Griffith, poor broken creature, whose cares in 
 the late weeks had quite consumed whatever 
 initiative he had possessed.
 
 52 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 
 
 One Sunday morning Gustav called, at Mr. 
 Griffith's urgent request. Mr. Griffith met him 
 as he approached the house. 
 
 " They are at home again," said Mr. Griffith 
 nervously. 
 
 " Ja, so. But how does she bear it? " Gustav 
 eyed Mr. Griffith narrowly. 
 
 " She doesn't know yet. She jumped to the 
 conclusion that he was out with Mrs. Lake, and 
 I I want you to tell her, Gustav." 
 
 "Me!" cried Gustav, outraged. "I? Und 
 vy me? Vy me? " 
 
 "Gustav," pleaded Mr. Griffith. "I simply 
 can't do it. She is so happy, and I'm well, 
 I'm " 
 
 " You are her husband," said Gustav aus- 
 terely. "Vat am I? Nodhing. I am a Ger- 
 man, and therefore you think I haf no heart. 
 But Gemuth, Gustav ! " He strode past Mr. 
 Griffith to the door. 
 
 Matilda was in the living-room, on the settee 
 by the window where she could command the 
 approach to the house. By her side was a bas- 
 ket, wherein one could discover a little pink head 
 peeping out of the white with two tiny wrinkled 
 hands pressing against the pearl-colored ears.
 
 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 53 
 
 " Ah, how glad we are to see you home again, 
 Mrs. Griffith, looking so veil and beaudiful," 
 rumbled Gustav. " See, see, dhat is dhe little 
 son ! Fine head ; it is dhe head of a philosopher ! 
 And dhose little strong hands; he vill haf a vill 
 of his own ! Much trouble he vill make you, and 
 much more joy." 
 
 "Yes," smiled Matilda, "much trouble, but 
 I'm not afraid. As for joy, I already have it. 
 Do you know, Gustav, little John hasn't seen 
 him yet? Won't he be an astonished baby? " 
 
 Gustav cleared his throat. If only he had a 
 manageable voice ; but his bass was sure to split 
 if he tried to soften it. 
 
 " Dear lady little John vas very sick. Ve 
 dared not tell you. Ve did all ve could. Dhe 
 doctor vas splendid, it vas as if it had been a 
 little prince. But ve could nodhing. Little 
 John Stuyvesant Ancestor is gadhered to his 
 fadhers." 
 
 Matilda was very still. Gustav did not dare to 
 look at her. But the world had to go on, and 
 something had to be said. 
 
 " It is a fine baby you haf, dhat is sure. And 
 vat vill ve call dhe little heir of dhe House of 
 Griffith?"
 
 54 John Stuyvesant Ancestor 
 
 Matilda remained silent, an aeon, it seemed, to 
 Gustav. Then in a voice that seemed quite calm, 
 she said: 
 
 " I shall call him John Stuyvesant 2nd. For 
 after all it was the coming of little John that 
 changed " 
 
 A sob interrupted her. Deep awe fell upon 
 Gustav; he was in the presence of mystery. He 
 tiptoed away, the floor creaking mightily under 
 him.
 
 II 
 A Place in the Sun 
 
 THE Limited had been making up time, pick- 
 ing its way among bare, red-brown hills 
 scattered at random over a plain so burned and 
 dead that not even the candelabra cactus could 
 raise its spiny arms except in the rare depres- 
 sions of extinct water courses. But now the 
 train had come to a halt that promised to be 
 protracted. The passengers were leaving the 
 cars, and from my window I observed what ap- 
 peared to be a party organizing to scale a 
 nearby hill. Already two girls were a hundred 
 yards from the tracks; and headed toward the 
 same hill, if not directly following, were most 
 of the younger male passengers. 
 
 "Did you ever see such fools?" asked the 
 Omaha lady who occupied the seat facing mine. 
 But then she had all along borne an unaccount- 
 able grudge against those two girls now climbing 
 with shrieks of laughter from rock to rock. To 
 my mind they made up a very pretty picture, 
 
 55
 
 56 A Place in the Sun 
 
 with their hair of miraculous blond hue, their 
 red blouses and green skirts lighting up the deso- 
 late hillside. What if their eyes were a little 
 too innocently blue, their cheeks a little too. 
 radiantly pink, on close inspection? 
 
 " It's no use sitting here indefinitely," I said, 
 rising. 
 
 " I suppose you'll climb the hill too? " queried 
 the Omaha lady contemptuously. 
 
 " I might, if it weren't so hot and I weren't so 
 lazy," I replied. " But I'm going to see the 
 town." 
 
 "Town? Huh!" 
 
 The conductor stood in the shadow of the car, 
 beside the little pedestal that helps you to alight. 
 
 "How long are we to be here?" I inquired. 
 
 " Lord knows. There has been a washout up 
 the track." 
 
 "Washout!" I exclaimed incredulously, scan- 
 ning the hard blue sky. 
 
 " You think it never rains in this country. 
 But it does. Once in ten years. And then, oh 
 Lord! I've seen two feet of water in the sta- 
 tion down there." 
 
 I looked down the track toward the station, 
 a little stuccoed mission structure, confronted
 
 A Place in the Sun 57 
 
 across the track by a half dozen other buildings 
 rising out of the hot sand. Two feet of water 
 there? Railway men are of course always to 
 be believed, but how did the water have a chance 
 to accumulate? After all, that was not much 
 more incredible than that people could actually 
 be living here. I decided to go down the track 
 to assure myself on this point. 
 
 The first building bore the sign, " James Black 
 and Co. Fuel and Feed." A grim joke, one 
 might suppose, in a place where the ther- 
 mometer is fixed at 100 and where excepting 
 horned lizards there can be no animal life what- 
 soever. Through the open window of the 
 " office " I saw the lank figure of a man, uncom- 
 fortably disposed over a revolving chair, his 
 feet on the desk before him. He appeared to be 
 dozing, but really no one could doze in such a 
 position. 
 
 " Hello ! " I said. " How's business? " 
 
 " Go to hell ! " he retorted, turning toward me 
 with a melancholy grin. " It's right near here." 
 
 The next building, with the sign, " General 
 Merchandise " on its front, appeared to be va- 
 cant. Indeed, there were no further signs of 
 life until I reached the last building, a green
 
 58 A Place in the Sun 
 
 bungalow, opposite the station. In a hammock 
 on the veranda a woman in a white linen dress 
 was reading. Her hair was a luminous 
 reddish brown, like the landscape where the 
 sun's rays fell aslant. Somehow I could not re- 
 sist the temptation to pause to gaze at it. The 
 woman turned her face toward me. 
 
 "Why!" I exclaimed, " Estelle Ayers!" 
 " Estelle Ayers, that was," she replied calmly. 
 " Haven't you forgotten that I have a husband? " 
 " Oh no, I remember that well enough. I've 
 forgotten your husband's name, but I remember 
 a lot about him. He had just inherited a whole- 
 sale hardware business, and he was going to 
 learn the difference between a miter box and 
 an adz." 
 
 " Yes, that is what he told you." 
 "But aren't you surprised over my call?" 
 " No. Everybody calls on one here, if one 
 stays long enough." 
 
 "Yes, I suppose so. But how long have you 
 been staying here? " 
 
 " Three years." 
 , "Health, I suppose?" 
 ' " No. Bread and butter." 
 
 I gasped. Estelle Ayers, the most brilliant
 
 A Place in the Sun 59 
 
 girl in her college class, marooned here in the 
 desert? 
 
 " I'll answer your question even if you don't 
 ask it," she said. " I married money, or at any 
 rate a lot of hardware. But Mr. Bruce and I 
 soon exhausted all the intellectual content of the 
 hardware business. We traded it for a news- 
 paper, which we made educational and indepen- 
 dent. We reported the wrong things about the 
 right people, and lost our advertising. So we 
 traded the paper for an academy in a western 
 state, but the county opened a union high school 
 in the same town. We sold the academy to the 
 Y. M. C. A. and bought a mine. Then we de- 
 cided that in this epoch of transportation we 
 ought to attach ourselves to the railways. As 
 Mr. Bruce said, we would get all the romance 
 out of it by beginning at the bottom and work- 
 ing up. This is the bottom." 
 
 " Well, well ! " cried a thin masculine voice at 
 my elbow. " I am delighted." Mr. Bruce seized 
 my hand and wrung it enthusiastically. He was 
 a little man, with bright brown eyes and a viva- 
 cious mouth fringed with a silky black mus- 
 tache. I had seen him only once before and 
 had liked him as well as one may be expected
 
 60 A Place in the Sun 
 
 to like the man who carries off into matrimony 
 a girl for whom one has predicted a brilliant 
 career. I liked him very little now that he was 
 proved unsuccessful, and I found myself trying 
 to recall that I had set him down as flighty and 
 irresponsible. 
 
 " Wonderful country this is ! " he exclaimed. 
 " The air is perfect, and such sunshine ! If only 
 we had time, I'd take you to the top of that big 
 mountain over there." 
 
 I glanced at the mountain, a forbidding mass 
 of burned rock. 
 
 "What would we see?" I inquired. 
 
 " Other mountains just like it," said Estelle, in 
 a weary voice. " You see how these mountains 
 are made? First a little hump, then a bigger 
 one, then another hump much bigger, then one 
 not quite so big, and finally a very little one." 
 
 I ran my eyes over the outlines of the dozen 
 or more mountains within range of my vision. 
 
 " They are all really of a pattern," I admitted. 
 
 " Yes, do you know what Estelle calls them? " 
 cried Mr. Bruce, laughing immoderately. " She 
 calls them the Devil's wall paper. But I'll tell 
 you what I'll do. I'll show you my farm. Come 
 on!"
 
 A Place in the Sun 61 
 
 He seized my arm and led me across the rail- 
 way track to a slight depression near the water 
 tank. 
 
 "See that dripping leak?" asked Mr. Bruce 
 with a large gesture. " Observe it well. It is 
 the causa causans, the prime source. When the 
 company sends up a gang to stop the leak, we 
 have a drought on my farm. But the winds 
 rock the tank until she springs a new leak, and 
 then my farm flows with milk and honey." 
 
 We had arrived at the farm. It was a carefully 
 leveled space, five feet by thirty, with a conduit 
 of old sheet iron down its center. The end 
 nearest the track was a rich green, with beets, 
 lettuce and onions. Half way down the vege- 
 tation became stunted and yellow, and near the 
 farther end only a few tightly curled dry leaves 
 gave evidence of husbandry. But at the very 
 end of the conduit loomed a cabbage, dark 
 green, immense, flat as a drumhead. 
 
 "See that cabbage?" cried Mr. Bruce. 
 " Greedy fellow, he's eaten half my water. Do 
 you realize, that is the only cabbage growing 
 within a hundred miles of this spot? Come up 
 on this knoll " Mr. Bruce leapt upon a heap of 
 broken stone. " You get a good view of the
 
 62 A Place in the Sun 
 
 whole farm. Hullo ! There are your fellow pas- 
 sengers on top of Mount Marcos. Wonderful 
 how far you can see through this clear air. 
 Those two girls, now; you can see their hair is 
 yellow. My, they're jolly, aren't they? And the 
 boys seem to be having a good time, too. Look 
 at those bored old captains of industry swelter- 
 ing beside the train. Bet they're thirsty. Oh 
 say, I've got an idea! Let's run back to the 
 house." 
 
 We really ran, Mr. Bruce eagerly, I protest- 
 ingly. I don't like the exercise especially when 
 I don't know why I'm running. 
 
 " Estelle ! " cried Mr. Bruce excitedly. " Get 
 me a bucket and some lemons. I'm going to re- 
 fresh that crowd down by the train." 
 
 " They have plenty of lemonade in the buffet 
 car," said Estelle. 
 
 " Not my kind." Mr. Bruce darted into the 
 bungalow. 
 
 "Estelle! Where's the molasses? " 
 
 " Top shelf," replied Estelle. I looked at her 
 in wonder. She shrugged her shoulders. 
 
 Presently Mr. Bruce returned to the veranda 
 with a bucket full of a brown tinted liquid, in 
 which a few slices of lemon were swimming. He
 
 A Place in the Sun 63 
 
 had discarded his coat and had donned a dusty 
 old hat and a pair of many-wrinkled top boots. 
 Even if you had never seen a boot-legger you 
 would have taken him for one. 
 
 "What do you think of my lemonade?" he 
 asked, dipping a glassful and holding it up to 
 the light. " What does it make you think of? " 
 He shook with suppressed laughter. " ' Here 
 gents, your nice cool lemonade. The more you 
 drink the thirstier you get. For gents only. 
 Ten cents a glass!' That will get the captains 
 of industry, I guess." He set out for the train 
 at a half trot, the bucket splashing against his 
 leg. 
 
 For several moments neither Estelle nor I 
 spoke. I was embarrassed, and felt that I ought 
 to say something, but about what? Estelle 
 wasn't embarrassed, but was taking a mild satis- 
 faction in my helplessness. 
 
 " What are you reading? " I asked at last. 
 
 She handed me her book. It was yellow with 
 age, apparently a thriller of an earlier genera- 
 tion. 
 
 " The House on the Marsh," I read aloud. 
 
 " A very worthless book, you are thinking," 
 she said quietly.
 
 64 A Place in the Sun 
 
 " No, who am I to pass judgment on books I 
 have never read? " 
 
 " Well, it is really worthless. But why should- 
 n't I read worthless books?" 
 
 " You wrote very pretty verses in college. 
 And I recall that encouraging letter you had 
 from Mr. Howells on your first story. Are you 
 writing anything now? " 
 
 " No, why should I write? As you see, I have 
 attained my place in the sun." 
 
 Surely there was still something to be said, 
 but I could not think what it was. So I remained 
 silent, pretending an interest in the red burned 
 mountain opposite, and in its blue-black shadow 
 now lengthening across the plain. Estelle closed 
 her eyes. 
 
 " The glare makes one's eyes very tired, in the 
 end," she said. But that did not revive my 
 tongue from paralysis. It was with immense re- 
 lief that I espied Mr. Bruce, returning from the 
 train with all the spirit of one of those dancing 
 little desert whirlwinds. 
 
 " The basis of a fortune," he shouted as he 
 ascended the steps. " Listen ! " He jingled his 
 pocket. " They bit like sandflies. There was 
 only one insect in my ointment." He drew from
 
 A Place in the Sun 65 
 
 his pocket a handful of coins and picked out one 
 of them. " Look at that." 
 
 " Why, it is a lead quarter, not even washed 
 with silver," I said. 
 
 " If you are my friend, you'll manage to step 
 on the foot of that big, fat captain of industry 
 with a squint eye, after the train moves on. The 
 rest of them were game. They'd take a swallow, 
 make a face, then gulp it down and laugh. 
 * Good stuff! ' they'd say; I needed a bat to keep 
 the rest off. But that old captain of industry, 
 confound him, emptied his glass, winked and 
 gave me this quarter. ' Now let's both squeal,' 
 he said, ' or you give me change.' ' 
 
 " Plainly we've missed our calling," said Es- 
 telle. " Perhaps it's not too late even now to 
 go into business, at the bottom." 
 
 Mr. Bruce laughed joyously, and ran across 
 the track to the station. As for me, I was again 
 puzzling about what to say, as if that in the least 
 mattered. I was delivered from my perplexity 
 by the sound of the locomotive bell and a long 
 drawn " All aboard " from the conductor. 
 
 " Good-by, Estelle," I said, offering my 
 hand. 
 
 " Good-by," said Estelle impassively, picking
 
 66 A Place in the Sun 
 
 up The House on the Marsh with her disengaged 
 hand. 
 
 The passengers were again on board. All the 
 younger men and some not so young had 
 crowded into my car around the two girls who 
 had led the expedition to the hilltop. All had 
 discarded their surnames and were evidently 
 bent on a most sociable time. The Omaha lady 
 facing me looked grim as an Aztec figurine. 
 Slowly the train began to move. As it passed 
 the station I watched for the chance of another 
 glimpse of Estelle. She was standing at the edge 
 of the veranda, facing the east, from which a 
 strong wind was blowing. What had become of 
 her passivity? With the wind in her hair and 
 garments, she seemed a symbol of life just 
 awakening. 
 
 Some months later I wrote to Estelle, with a 
 literary project as pretext. But my letter was 
 returned to me unopened by Mr. Bruce, with 
 the statement that Estelle was visiting friends 
 in the East, and he had unfortunately mislaid the 
 card with her address. The air was simply 
 glorious, he added, and he was expecting to en- 
 large his farm, as the water tank was leaking 
 exuberantly.
 
 Ill 
 A Sympathetic Strike 
 
 HE was a pockmarked Jew, crinkly-haired, 
 with features set pugnaciously ; but peace- 
 fully enough sipping his rye and soda over the 
 foam-stained bar. It was late and business was 
 slow; the very lights seemed depressed in their 
 vain efforts to cheer up the dim corners of Neb- 
 bin's Palace. The Aphrodite Anadyomene lay 
 dead upon the rear wall, and the nymphs and 
 satyrs above the bottled goods were perishing 
 from tedium. The host, bald, pink, enormous, 
 undulated to and fro behind the bar as if there 
 were an eager row of customers to serve. Pres- 
 ently he paused and leered at the Jew. 
 
 "Remember that coat you sold me? All the 
 buttons busted off." 
 
 "What the devil you expect?" retorted the 
 Jew fiercely. " You saloonkeepers get fatter 
 and fatter; no coat could hold you. Look at 
 you, now bearing down all over you. You're 
 a fine one to fit." 
 
 67
 
 68 A Sympathetic Strike 
 
 The saloonkeeper chuckled uncomfortably. 
 "Where are you now, Leo? I heard that you 
 were leaving Erismann's." 
 
 "Me leaving? No, I went on strike. That's 
 what you heard. Tell you about it. You re- 
 member Baruch? No he never spent a cent 
 in such a place as this. Awful nice fellow, 
 Baruch is. He had a sick wife and four little 
 children, and the boss paid him eighteen dollars 
 a week. Paid me thirty-six, because I'm single 
 and don't need the job. Every dollar the boss 
 spends in wages has got to produce six. That's 
 his principle. But every dollar he spent on 
 Baruch produced twelve. Baruch had to be 
 thankful for anything, with his sick wife and 
 little children. He worked awful hard, jumping 
 out on the street and dragging in customers and 
 holding them till the boss could sell them. 
 
 " Well, Baruch's wife got worse and had to 
 go to the madhouse, and Baruch couldn't keep 
 from crying sometimes. And the boss didn't 
 like it : ' How can I sell a customer with that 
 fellow pulling his long face around?' In the 
 busy time he stood for it, but so soon as the 
 slack time came, Baruch came to me, and he 
 said, ' The boss is going to lay me off three days
 
 A Sympathetic Strike 69 
 
 in the week. I can't feed my little children on 
 nine dollars, let alone the railway fare to see 
 my wife, poor woman, so lonesome among all 
 those nuts.' 
 
 " I got pretty hot. I went to the boss, and I 
 said, ' What you want to lay Baruch off for, 
 poor devil, with his four little children and his 
 wife in the madhouse? You are certainly a good 
 Jew ! You ought to be out in the cemetery with 
 a marble canopy over your head, where the 
 other good Jews are.' 
 
 " ' You Jew yourself, throwing it up to me,' 
 he yelled. * You shut up or I'll lay him off en- 
 tirely ! If you had any business in you, you'd 
 see I got to cut my costs in these slack times. 
 Here I got expenses of two hundred and fifty 
 dollars a week. Where is the money coming 
 from? You tell me, you smart Jew. How many 
 customers did Baruch drag in to-day? Three. 
 And what did I sell them? One twenty-cent tie 
 and two pair of Boston garters/ 
 
 " ' If you got to save money,' I said, ' why 
 don't you lay me off? Lay me off two days and 
 you'll save more money than on Baruch's three 
 days. I can get along. Lay me off three days if 
 you want to.' Then I began to get excited.
 
 jo A Sympathetic Strike 
 
 'Hell, lay me off four days, five days, six days! 
 I don't want to work for a good Jew like you, 
 that takes the bread out of a poor devil's mouth 
 because he is in trouble.' 
 
 " ' Yes, see if you can get another job these 
 slack times ! ' yelled the boss. ' You'll come back 
 here to-night, and I'll lay you off three days, and 
 fire Baruch.' 
 
 " Well, I went over to the store opposite, and 
 they said, ' Yes, we'll take you, same pay.' But 
 I don't like the boss, and so I go down the street 
 to another store and they say, ' Times are slack, 
 but you got lots of customers you can take away 
 from Erismann : we'll take you on.' I make up 
 my mind to see what I can do in other stores, and 
 some of them wanted me and some didn't. At 
 night I come back to Erismann's and I say to the 
 boss: 
 
 " ' Boss, I want you to tell me which of these 
 six jobs I got offered to me is the best? ' 
 
 ' Six jobs ! ' he yelled. ' Yes, you got six 
 jobs ! Everybody wanted a pocky Jew like you, 
 of course.' 
 
 " ' There's the list/ I said. ' Call them up if 
 you want to.' 
 
 " The boss looked at my list. ' Say, Leo, what
 
 A Sympathetic Strike 71 
 
 you want a new job for? Haven't you got a job 
 enough here? Ain't I always been good to 
 you? Don't I take things from you another boss 
 wouldn't take? ' 
 
 "'How about Baruch?' 
 
 " ' Well, I've changed my mind about laying 
 him off. Poor devil, with his four little children, 
 and wife in the madhouse ! He ain't worth much 
 now, but I guess we can afford it.' ' 
 
 The saloonkeeper yawned. Leo threw down a 
 Canada dime and a misshapen nickel, and sham- 
 bled out into the darkness. 
 
 " Lord," said the saloonkeeper. " Ain't it 
 awful to have to listen to 'em? And his trade 
 here ain't worth fifty cents a month."
 
 N 
 
 IV 
 The Killing of Different Man 
 
 OT that he was so very unlike you or 
 
 me, even if he was a Reservation Indian, 
 tried and found guilty of murder by twelve good 
 men and true (and white), and lying in Minne- 
 cadusa jail waiting to be hanged. When his 
 mother first opened her eyes after the burst of 
 anguish that gave him light, they fell upon a 
 man other than one she had expected to see. 
 And so he came by his name of Different Man, 
 instead of Rainbow-on-the-Hill, or White-Faced 
 Bull, or other name to appeal to the Indian 
 amateurs of the Eastern seaboard. 
 
 I had known Different Man from the time he 
 was a gawky boy of fourteen, with the legs of 
 his jeans stopping short half-way down his spare 
 brown calves. He never amounted to much. 
 He would come into my store and try to get 
 goods on credit, especially tobacco and New Or- 
 leans molasses. He had a sweet tooth, and he 
 would stand at the counter and beg: "My 
 
 72
 
 The Killing of Different Man 73 
 
 uncle, he send me for tobacco; one-half plug, 
 Climax. Please. My uncle, he sick, must have 
 tobacco, Climax. He pay Monday; he come to 
 store. One-half plug, Climax, please." 
 
 " Go 'way, you trifler ; you haven't got any 
 uncle. Can't get any tobacco here. Go up to 
 my house and chop half a cord of wood. I'll 
 give you a whole plug and some molasses, too." 
 His jaw would drop and his eyes would take on 
 a sad blue-black hue. He hated work more than 
 he loved tobacco and molasses. He knew I kept 
 a pile of dry ash wood especially for him. He 
 never seemed to bear a grudge against me for 
 it, though one day, when his dog snapped at me, 
 he said, " My dog, his heart is bad because you 
 won't give me tobacco for my uncle." 
 
 Everybody, Indian and white, thought he was 
 a good-for-nothing, but that didn't trouble Sun- 
 shine-in-the-Eyes. She was a likely girl, not so 
 very homely when you're used to Indians. Her 
 mother, a frightful old squaw, looked higher, 
 and set the dogs on Different Man and tore him 
 up considerably. He was not discouraged, how- 
 ever, and one dark night he crept up and stole 
 the girl right out of the hut while the old squaw 
 slept. He hadn't even a tepee for his bride, but
 
 74 The Killing of Different Man 
 
 it was May, and they lived in the willows for 
 several weeks. When June rains came on they 
 would sneak into town, and I would let them 
 have a blanket for the night in the back of my 
 store. 
 
 One morning Different Man left the girl in 
 the store and went to the other end of the town 
 to clean out a stable. He wanted to earn a dol- 
 lar to pay me for some green beads Sunshine-in- 
 the-Eyes had cajoled out of me. I told him they 
 were a gift, but he would not have it so. As 
 soon as he was well out of sight, in came the old 
 squaw. She had known all along that they were 
 coming to my store, though they had thought 
 they were making a successful secret of it. I 
 told the squaw the girl had gone, but she said I 
 lied, and started to go through the store. I tried 
 to put her out, but whew! And such a scene as 
 there was when she dragged her daughter from 
 behind the flour barrels! Finally the girl gave 
 in and let herself be led down to the river, 
 where her mother put her into a canoe and 
 slipped off down-stream. Different Man came 
 back at noon. I told him what had happened, 
 and he crumpled up and said, " My heart is 
 bad." I gave him a drink it wasn't lawful, of
 
 The Killing of Different Man 75 
 
 course, but I couldn't help it and he started 
 off on a trot down the river. 
 
 About a week later I heard that he had found 
 them, and had smashed in the old squaw's skull 
 with a club. Next day the officers got him at 
 a dance. He had a fair trial; nothing to object 
 to, except perhaps that they brought in two of 
 his enemies, Black Bull and Walking Squirrel, 
 to testify falsely to his bad character. I hoped 
 they would let him off with life imprisonment, 
 considering the provocation, but the law wasn't 
 taking any chances with bad Indians. So he was 
 sentenced to be hanged between the loth and 
 25th of September. I suppose they put it in that 
 way to make a sheriff earn his money. How 
 does a man feel when he gets up in the morning 
 if he is obliged to say to himself, " Well, shall I 
 go out and hang him this morning, or shall I put 
 it off till to-morrow? " 
 
 On the 24th of September I went down to 
 Minnecadusa on business and put up at the 
 hotel. That evening a man came to my room 
 and introduced himself as the sheriff. I said I 
 didn't know that I cared if he was a sheriff; I 
 hadn't been doing anything unlawful recently. 
 He grinned in a sickly way and said he wanted
 
 76 The Killing of Different Man 
 
 to ask a favor of me. He understood I'd come 
 from the Reservation and knew most of the In- 
 dians ; would I go over to the jail with him and 
 tell Different Man it was going to be the next 
 day? I didn't like it, but the sheriff was plainly 
 all gone to pieces, so I went. Different Man 
 shouted with joy as I entered his cell. He took 
 my hand and wouldn't let it go, and inquired 
 about the agency, and asked how my wife and 
 babies were he had been devoted to my family. 
 Then he said : " The men here are all liars. 
 They have two tongues, one for me and one for 
 themselves. I ask them, ' When are you going 
 to kill me?' They say, 'Pretty soon, maybe.' 
 You have one tongue, Mr. Spenser. Tell me, 
 when will they kill me?" 
 
 " To-morrow, Different Man." 
 
 " Good." 
 
 It hadn't been so very difficult, after all. I re- 
 turned to the hotel and went to bed, but I wasn't 
 very sleepy, so I got up and lit a cigar and 
 started in on an old Chicago paper I found in my 
 closet. I read it through about four times before 
 I began to feel sleepy, and then it was nearly 
 morning. I was just dozing off when there was 
 a knock at my door.
 
 The Killing of Different Man 77 
 
 "Mr. Spenser! Say, Mr. Spenser! I'm going 
 to do it now. Won't you please come along? " 
 
 " For God's sake," I said, " go and kill your 
 Indian yourself. It's not my job." 
 
 " I'm sick, and I ain't sure I can get through 
 with it. I never hung a man. I wouldn't have 
 run for this damn office if I'd thought I'd have 
 to. I've tried to get a deputy, but there ain't a 
 man will do the job." 
 
 I was feeling pretty cross. A mighty big im- 
 position, to ask that sort of thing of a perfect 
 stranger. But I knew the sheriff would stay 
 around until I came out of my room, even if the 
 execution had to be postponed until sundown. 
 So I dressed, took a nip from my flask, and went 
 out into the hall. The sheriff was waiting, all 
 huddled up on a settee. What a state he was in ! 
 
 When we got to the jail he gave me the key 
 to the cell; he wanted to stay in the fresh air. 
 As I opened the door of the cell Different Man 
 leaped from his cot and greeted me gaily. He 
 was smoking a cigar, pulling it for dear life. 
 
 "Have you come to kill me?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 He took the cigar from his lips and looked at 
 it regretfully. Two-thirds unfinished, and life so
 
 78 The Killing of Different Man 
 
 short! "Give it to the man in the other cell," 
 he said. " I don't need it." 
 
 " Have you any message you want me to take, 
 Different Man? Anything you want to leave to 
 anybody? " 
 
 The Indian reflected a moment. " Yes." I 
 sharpened my pencil. 
 
 " You, Black Bull, you big liar, you, I 'queathe 
 and devise to you one section good land, with 
 house and barn and hay land, if you find him. 
 You, Walking Squirrel, you big liar, I 'queathe 
 and devise to you one two-horse wagon and one 
 span mules, if you find him. You, Sunshine-in- 
 the-Eyes, you left me; my heart is bad. I 
 'queathe and devise to you my sorrel pony, and 
 my saddle and bridle. My heart is bad. My 
 head is good. I die." 
 
 It puzzled Different Man that I should take so 
 long about folding up a bit of paper. 
 
 " Different Man," I said, drawing a cord from 
 my pocket, " the sheriff asked me to tie your 
 hands behind your back." 
 
 " All right." He turned his back to me and 
 threw back his arms, firm and warm. 
 
 " Come on, now," I said, praying that the busi- 
 ness might be finished before I reached a state
 
 The Killing of Different Man 79 
 
 equivalent to the sheriff's. We struck across the 
 yard, the sheriff falling in behind us. Different 
 Man ascended the steps of the scaffold, light as a 
 bird. I helped the sheriff to mount them. 
 
 " We've got to tie his legs together," whis- 
 pered the sheriff, gasping. " Here, take this 
 rope." 
 
 I wouldn't touch it. The sheriff knelt beside 
 Different Man and put the rope around his legs. 
 The Indian looked down in grave surprise. 
 "Are you going to hang me by the feet?" 
 
 " No," I explained. " We have to tie your 
 legs together so you won't kick so. It looks 
 awful, you know." 
 
 " Oh ! " One of the white man's peculiar de- 
 cencies, to be accepted like life or death. 
 
 " I never can tie that damn knot," wailed the 
 sheriff. " Please, Mr. Spenser " 
 
 Well, I tied the knot. Different Man's legs 
 stood like bronze columns as I drew the rope 
 about them. Mine did not. 
 
 We got the job off, somehow. If you must 
 know, it was I that killed Different Man. That 
 worthless sheriff couldn't get the mask over his 
 head a perfectly simple operation when you're 
 doing it, horrible when it's done. Next there
 
 8o The Killing of Different Man 
 
 was the noose. Of course, I had to take it off the 
 sheriff's hands. Finally I had to spring the 
 trap, and had to hold the sheriff from jumping 
 off the scaffold as I did it. 
 
 I don't know how it seems to you, but it some- 
 how doesn't seem right to me. Did I execute 
 Different Man, or did I just kill him? It seems 
 to me I killed him. Maybe it wouldn't seem so 
 hideous to me if I had killed him while the crime 
 was still fresh in him and while vengeance was 
 still hot in my heart. But after three months 
 no living soul had a thing against Different Man, 
 and his crime had had time to ooze out of him. 
 He was again just the same Indian, of no ac- 
 count, trifling but square enough, that I had 
 known for ten years. 
 
 And maybe it would seem all right to me if I 
 had been a duly constituted officer of the law. 
 If that sheriff had made me his deputy some- 
 thing he couldn't possibly have done. . . . Sup- 
 pose, though, that I had accepted the post of 
 deputy. I could pretend that not I, but the law, 
 killed Different Man. But as it is, I have noth- 
 ing whatever to hide behind. I broke the neck 
 of a man, not by any means the worst man I've 
 known, a man who looked upon me as his friend.
 
 The Killing of Different Man 81 
 
 Why? Just to oblige another man, not very 
 much of a man, either; a man I had never seen 
 before that September evening, and never want 
 to see again.
 
 Forbidden Fruit 
 
 IF you could spy upon Margaret as she sits in 
 her tiny study, a deeply serious, widely ac- 
 claimed modern book open before her on the leaf 
 of her desk, I wonder what you would surmise 
 supposing, that is, you are given to surmises 
 about women. She isn't really reading, although 
 the stiff words of the page print themselves 
 dimly upon her consciousness, along with the 
 blacks and reds of the mahogany grain of her 
 desk, where a long ray of December sun lights 
 it into a rich glow. Margaret's brow is con- 
 tracted in thought and her lips, sweet and firm, 
 appear full of suppressed emotion. There is a 
 deliciously baffling trace of color in her pale 
 cheeks, a color which seems to ebb and flow with 
 the waves of her thought. She sits free and well 
 poised in her chair, like a woman with unusual 
 strength of body and activity of mind. Her 
 figure, neither slender nor full, suggests power, 
 awaiting the summons to action. From some- 
 
 82
 
 Forbidden Fruit 83 
 
 thing about the cut and color of her dress and 
 the way she does her hair, you infer that her age 
 falls in the early forties. But another glance 
 and you dismiss the inference: she may be 
 twenty-five or thirty-five or forty : it is all one. 
 She is woman, life and strength and goodness, 
 more potential than actual. She is woman 
 eternal. 
 
 But now the street door opens and closes, and 
 a slight, habitual cough is heard in the reception 
 hall. Observe the subtle change that takes place 
 in Margaret. The glow of the mahogany grain 
 dies out of her consciousness and the color out 
 of her cheeks. The pose of free strength has 
 fallen from her body; she leans half wearily 
 against the back of her chair. Her lips move 
 pronouncing the dogmatic nothings of the page 
 before her. Plainly, she is forty or more, and a 
 wife. And if you are at all quick, you can infer 
 the type of husband, before the study door is 
 gently opened and he stands before his lady, tall, 
 spare, a kindly light in his dim eyes, an enforced 
 cheerfulness of voice and countenance. He is 
 apparently somewhat older than his wife, not so 
 sound of constitution nor so generous of spirit, 
 but a good soul nevertheless. He wears a
 
 Forbidden Fruit 
 
 general professional appearance, which narrows 
 down on close inspection to that of professor, 
 probably, on closer inspection still, professor of 
 science. And as you look at this wedded pair 
 you feel the mood of one of those dim days in 
 early September, when the summer glory has 
 gone out of the foliage, but the colors of autumn 
 have not arrived. 
 
 The professor strides over-lithely to Mar- 
 garet's side and kisses her cheek. He glances 
 at the book, " ' Not only are the conscious dis- 
 criminations between our kinsesthetic ideas ' " 
 he intones. " Very deep, very deep," he com- 
 ments, with a tone of forced raillery. " Am I 
 disturbing you? " 
 
 " No, not at all," says Margaret languidly. 
 But the professor is not blind enough to remain. 
 He remarks cheerfully on some pressing work 
 he has to do and betakes himself off, revealing 
 his unconfessed dejection only by that slight out- 
 ward curve in the small of the back which in 
 rigidly self-drilled persons does duty for an in- 
 finitude of sighs. 
 
 Now, what do you surmise about Margaret, 
 supposing you are given to surmises? Whether 
 she would admit it even to herself, her soul
 
 Forbidden Fruit 85 
 
 yearns for forbidden fruit. This is elementary. 
 But what fruit? That is where canny surmises 
 go astray. 
 
 Margaret is not disillusioned of her husband 
 the professor. They climbed the hill of life to- 
 gether, and she would not forego any part of 
 the experience for worlds, not the painful read- 
 justment of life when Helen, their daughter, sud- 
 denly changed from a child into a woman and 
 set out to train herself for a career in a distant 
 city; not even the devastating anguish of a son 
 born in hope, reared in. joy through the first 
 year of inarticulate wonder, and lost. Neither 
 would Margaret forego for worlds the final com- 
 munity of the journey of life, descending the 
 hill together. But the vast flat space between 
 up grade and down, that is Margaret's problem. 
 It used to be that there was only a breathing 
 stage between the time when a woman is young 
 and the time when she is old. Modern hygiene, 
 the modern outlook on life, have extended this 
 stage incredibly into a wide plateau. At forty is 
 not one's mind as alert, one's will as strong, one's 
 body as enduring as at any earlier stage in life? 
 And need one's faculties, one's impulses to ac- 
 tivity, decline notably before seventy? It was
 
 86 Forbidden Fruit 
 
 not so with Bernhardt, nor with Terry, nor with 
 a long array of distinguished women artists. It 
 is not so with the average man; why should it 
 be with the average woman? But thirty years 
 is a long age to contemplate for one whose whole 
 profession consists in the status of wife in a 
 household whence the last birdlet has flown. 
 
 " You are all worn out, my dear," the pro- 
 fessor is in the habit of insisting sympathetically. 
 " Helen's last year in the high school taxed you 
 more than you realize. Now you must try to 
 rest." Rest! There will be time enough for 
 that when one is dead. But when one is alive, 
 when in fact one is tingling, quivering with life 
 that demands expression, what is the meaning of 
 rest? The professor is not so stupid, to be sure, 
 as to advise Margaret to sit with hands folded, 
 drinking in rest. He addresses himself very seri- 
 ously to the problem of finding means for occu- 
 pying Margaret's time restfully. He has in- 
 veigled her into some honorary office connected 
 with a sorority, by means of which she can de- 
 vote hours and hours to hearing the pseudo-con- 
 fidences of twenty young ladies who keep their 
 real confidences for younger ears. He presses 
 her to attend his colleagues' lectures and report
 
 Forbidden Fruit 87 
 
 on them, on the pretext that only so can he gain 
 a comprehensive view of the whole course of 
 instruction. He brings home books, books, 
 books. And naturally after America entered the 
 war, the professor employed all the craft of a 
 politician to get Margaret on one committee on 
 war work after another, until Margaret's week 
 was nothing but a succession of committee meet- 
 ings and extra-committee activities. And yet 
 you can read in Margaret's every movement, 
 Life is empty, empty. The professor can't quite 
 read this, but he lives ill at ease. Is some deeply 
 hidden malady sapping the spirit and the life of 
 his beloved wife? The medical fraternity of the 
 town have been called into consultation, but 
 they can find nothing. But suppose he had ac- 
 cess to more expert medical service, would the 
 results be equally negative? Pity the poor pro- 
 fessor. There is nothing in the world more 
 real than the solicitude that gnaws at his 
 heart. 
 
 From plague and fire on land, from wreck at 
 sea and from unreasonable, discontented wives, 
 good Lord deliver us. Thus no doubt you pray ; 
 and having prayed, let us return to Margaret, 
 seated before her desk, her eyes absently resting
 
 Forbidden Fruit 
 
 upon the selfsame page of meaningless profun- 
 dities. Exactly what is it that so tyrannizes over 
 her consciousness? Yes, to be sure, a human 
 face. 
 
 It is the face of a gentle little Italian woman, 
 Giulia Pellerino, who lives in the tumble-down 
 cottage beyond the lumber yard. Giulia's is a 
 lovely face, oval, olive pale, with the greatest, 
 profoundest eyes, half veiled with pain. Cluster- 
 ing about the face of Giulia are three miraculous 
 little heads, Pietro, aged three, with splendid 
 black curls and deep violet eyes; Elena, nearly 
 two, with thinner curls and larger, darker eyes, 
 and Giovanni, three months, almost all eyes. 
 Since Giovanni was born Giulia has not been 
 well. She ought not to walk about, but the Pel- 
 lerino budget can provide neither nurse nor 
 maid. Pietro senior goes to his work early and 
 returns late; he is earning some money and sav- 
 ing it; he has a keen eye to the future. He is 
 kind and does not make it too manifest that he 
 considers himself a very unfortunate man to 
 have a sickly wife. 
 
 " Now, if I could put in a trained nurse there 
 and keep that little Italian woman in bed, and 
 straighten out the children's diet, and bully the
 
 Forbidden Fruit 
 
 husband a bit, it would come out all right," says 
 Dr. Baker, Margaret's medical counselor. 
 
 " But why can't I do all those things without 
 being a trained nurse? " demands Margaret. 
 
 " Because you are nothing to such people but 
 an idle woman who has come down to spy and 
 pry and regulate. You would hurt Giulia more 
 than you'd help her. You have to have profes- 
 sional standing. That is the only key to com- 
 munication across class and race lines. But if 
 you had it, think what it would mean to people 
 like these. What a nurse you'd make! You'd 
 save me a dozen lives a year." 
 
 What would it mean to Margaret? That, is 
 what she has been thinking, month after month. 
 If only she could! All her life desire to help 
 has been her ruling passion. To devote the rest 
 of her life altogether to helpfulness would en- 
 tirely solve her problem. But think of the 
 obstacles ! 
 
 In the first place, what institution wants to 
 train women of forty? There are just as many 
 illusions now current about the incapacity of the 
 mature woman for severe training as used to be 
 current about woman's incapacity in general. 
 Those illusions will pass, but for the present
 
 90 Forbidden Fruit 
 
 there is a difficult road for any woman who chal- 
 lenges them, and Margaret is not of a challeng- 
 ing type. 
 
 And, then, there is the professor to think of. 
 He is broad-minded, in his way, and sympa- 
 thetic, but his conceptions of human nature are 
 traditional. If Margaret were to announce her 
 conviction that something besides conjugal love 
 is needed to fill up a woman's life, the professor 
 would take it as a judgment of his own personal 
 inadequacy. So would the community. And 
 would it be right for Margaret to place a just 
 and kind husband in so humiliating a position, 
 even though the humiliation springs from noth- 
 ing but illusions? 
 
 If what Margaret wanted to do were to write, 
 or to paint pictures, or to enact significant roles 
 on the stage, it would not be so difficult a mat- 
 ter. It is already agreed that a woman may, 
 without repudiating her husband, sacrifice her 
 home life to such ambitions. But to make the 
 sacrifice just to be humbly useful, to accept a 
 status in a professional hierarchy supposed to 
 be on a lower plane than her husband's for 
 this there is not sufficient precedent. As well 
 dismiss the thought and reconcile herself to rest-
 
 Forbidden Fruit 91 
 
 ing to the end of her days, or to making pre- 
 tense of occupying herself with the innumerable 
 amateur social and charitable activities of the 
 community. 
 
 If only her husband had been of a different 
 temperament. If he had been like that disagree- 
 able college mate of his, Geoffrey Blake, obstrep- 
 erous social philosopher at large, who goes about 
 the country, proclaiming the most fervent ad- 
 miration for fair women and the most profound 
 contempt for their tolerance of the futility of 
 their lives. After all, Margaret reflects, is not 
 the contempt justified? 
 
 The door opens noiselessly and the professor 
 appears, smiling. 
 
 " Guess who's in town. I've invited him to 
 come to dinner. Geoffrey Blake." 
 
 " Geoffrey Blake? I don't want to see him! " 
 cries Margaret vehemently. 
 
 The professor stares. Margaret's cheeks be- 
 gin to glow, and a disquieting surmise passes 
 through the professor's mind like a flash of light- 
 ning in December. 
 
 " No," he comments to himself. " It can't be 
 that. He's such a brute. But yet, psychology 
 is tricky. Forbidden fruit, and all that."
 
 VI 
 The Lot of the Inventor 
 
 r-pHIEVES! Sharks! Muttonheads ! " 
 
 JL. I had not been aware of my companion, 
 except for a dim, uninterested recognition of the 
 fact that a tall man, very Yankee in outline, had 
 remained with me on the upper deck of the 
 Sound boat when all the other passengers had 
 fled below to escape a few drops of rain. Solilo- 
 quizing, however, is nearly a lost art, and natu- 
 rally excites one's attention. I turned my chair 
 so as to command a good view of the soliloquist, 
 who was leaning against the rail and looking 
 toward the great glow of light on the western 
 clouds that indicated the direction of New York. 
 "Thieves! Scoundrels! Idiots!" 
 The soliloquist's voice was low, and I could 
 catch only the words of special emphasis. Why 
 should a man be hurling such epithets at the 
 cloudy halo of New York? Was it drink? No. 
 There was a certain erectness in the man's car- 
 riage, a certain angularity in his lines, that be-
 
 The Lot of the Inventor 93 
 
 spoke the total abstainer. Was it a woman? 
 No. His face had the texture of one shaved only 
 once a week and his clothes were such as are 
 selected by men who find difficulty in remember- 
 ing that there are women in the universe. Was 
 he a bit out of joint mentally? Apparently not. 
 He had a very fine, smooth brow, an aquiline 
 nose and formidable chin, and his eyes were as 
 round and gray and piercing as an eagle's. 
 
 " Pirates ! Bandits ! " 
 
 " I beg your pardon, sir," I ventured. " You 
 seem to be thinking of New York. I'm inter- 
 ested." 
 
 He turned to me with a look of surprise. 
 " New York? Yes, I was thinking of New York. 
 Den of spiders. Old fat fellows; they sit there 
 and spin and watch, and we fool flies go buzzing 
 up to them to get sucked out. That's how New 
 York lives." 
 
 "Perhaps," I replied doubtfully. "But I've 
 lived in New York, and it never occurred to me 
 I was a spider." 
 
 " You weren't. You were just one of the 
 spider's parasites. That is the way with most 
 New Yorkers. Here is how it is. New York 
 doesn't produce anything. But from all over the
 
 94 The Lot of the Inventor 
 
 country men who have found means of produc- 
 ing something mines, railway projects, inven- 
 tions come in a steady stream to New York, 
 to get robbed. That's where your big fellows 
 make their money. Of course they have to di- 
 vide up with their friends and relatives, with 
 the politicians, real-estate men, hotel keepers 
 and such. And then these divide up with fellows 
 still further down, who have to dance like the 
 dickens to get their shares, and think they earn 
 them. That's you. But just the same, all the 
 money really comes from those muttonheads 
 that keep coming in from the country with ideas, 
 to be robbed. That's me." 
 
 " So they robbed you? " 
 
 " That's just what they did." He seated him- 
 self in the chair beside me. " Now, I'll tell you 
 just how they did it: Maybe you can learn to be 
 a, spider yourself, and not just a parasite. Sup- 
 pose you have an idea to sell, an idea with mil- 
 lions in it, and you can prove it. You have a 
 letter from your local banker to, say, Mr. Clin- 
 ton. Says Mr. Clinton, ' Sorry, but there's too 
 much risk in your proposition. I'll give you a 
 card to Mr. Schultz.' It takes you three or four 
 days to find Mr. Schultz. Says Mr. Schultz :
 
 The Lot of the Inventor 95 
 
 ' Your idea may have something in it, but I can't 
 see it. But I'll make an appointment for you 
 with Mr. Loewe.' You're a week in finding Mr. 
 Loewe. Says Mr. Loewe, ' Excuse me, but I am 
 terribly pestered with cranks who think they 
 have valuable ideas. But I'll give you just one 
 minute: what have you got to sell? No, don't 
 go. I'll give you a letter to Mr. McGrath.' In 
 time you find Mr. McGrath. He hears you 
 through, and says he doesn't see how he can do 
 anything, but he'll see you again Monday week, 
 three o'clock sharp. You come at three, and he 
 keeps you waiting until five. He's been think- 
 ing over your proposition, he says, and he's a 
 gambler, he's willing to take a chance, even if 
 everybody will call him a fool for doing it. So 
 he has fixed up a scheme, with bonds and first 
 preferred stock and second preferred and com- 
 mon and God knows what else; all you've 
 got to do is to put down your name. You're 
 pretty discouraged by this time and ready to 
 take anything. You come away, figuring that 
 your idea will have to earn nineteen dollars for 
 McGrath for every one it earns for you, and 
 McGrath gets his nineteen dollars first. That's 
 rough, but when you begin really to get mad is
 
 96 The Lot of the Inventor 
 
 when you find that McGrath and Loewe and 
 Schultz and Clinton are partners, and have run 
 you about from office to office just to break your 
 spirit and lower your price." 
 
 " Still," I objected, " these men are putting 
 up their money and if the project fails they will 
 suffer a material loss. All you will actually suf- 
 fer is the disappointment of an idea proved 
 worthless." 
 
 " There's where you're entirely wrong. Why, 
 I spent over $100,000 on the preliminary work. 
 What do you think McGrath and the rest are 
 putting up? Just $50,000. It's a million dollar 
 corporation, but the idea itself has to make up 
 the rest of the capital. I get half a million of 
 common stock. Come on. I'll show you some- 
 thing." 
 
 I followed him to his stateroom. He opened 
 a black leather bag and produced a handful of 
 little square samples of cloth. " What's this 
 one?" 
 
 " Some kind of canvas," I guessed. 
 
 "What's this?" 
 
 " Worsted." I plucked at the threads trying 
 to appear expert. " Not all wool, I should 
 judge."
 
 The Lot of the Inventor 97 
 
 " What's this? " It was a fine white cloth and 
 felt gritty as you rolled it between your fingers. 
 
 "Irish linen?" 
 
 "And this?" It was the most gossamer-like 
 fabric I had ever seen. Silk, of course, but 
 what kind? 
 
 " It looks very much like a Formosan silk," I 
 ventured. 
 
 " Well, you're wrong on all of them. They're 
 all wood pulp. That's the idea I've been trying 
 to sell." 
 
 " Why, that's impossible," I replied. " Look 
 at these ravelings. They are natural fiber, that's 
 plain. You couldn't possibly make fibers of this 
 strength out of wood pulp." 
 
 " And why not? Can't I work with the same 
 molecular material nature works with? I can't 
 arrange it in cells, but can't I produce a molec- 
 ular arrangement having equal cohesive power? 
 Haven't I got an advantage over nature in the 
 matter of binders? I can use any that gives in- 
 creased strength; nature has to limit herself to 
 those that won't kill cell growth. That's why 
 I can make a stronger and finer fiber than nature 
 can possibly make." He handed me the sample 
 of gossamer texture. " Tear it."
 
 The Lot of the Inventor 
 
 I tore the sample. It was real silk. The in- 
 vention was a fake, I was convinced. 
 
 "How cheap can you make these fabrics? " I 
 inquired politely. 
 
 " The woolen, linen, and coarse cottons I can 
 make for almost nothing. You see, I don't have 
 to weave them. I make them just like paper and 
 imitate the texture of cloth. See this sample. 
 Unravel it if you can." 
 
 I plucked at the thread ends in a piece of 
 flannel. They refused to run even a millimeter. 
 I tore the sample. The rent followed zigzag 
 lines. 
 
 " Heavens ! " I exclaimed. " What is going to 
 happen to the cotton and woolen industries? " 
 
 " Well, I had figured they'd have to stop plant- 
 ing cotton. Cotton would become a weed, and 
 those farmers down South would be thanking 
 God for the boll weevil. As for wool, I figured 
 that the agricultural colleges would have to 
 breed up a naked sheep. But those New York 
 financiers have fixed all that. They aren't going 
 to allow me to make any of the cheap stuffs. 
 We're going to concentrate on this fine cloth, 
 which is dearer than silk. They don't care to 
 make good warm suits so cheap that poor people
 
 The Lot of the Inventor 99 
 
 would never need to go cold or ragged. No, it's 
 the demand of the rich they are after, and to get 
 it, we've got to keep my invention out of reach 
 of the poor. Dudes will get thinner socks, fine 
 ladies will get thinner waists than they've ever 
 worn before. And that's all I've accomplished, 
 by my twenty years of work. Your financiers 
 have turned me into just a silk worm." 
 
 The inventor paused dejectedly for a moment. 
 Then his face brightened. " Well, I don't care 
 much about that invention, anyway. I can't 
 keep up much interest in an invention, once it's 
 done. My weakness. I've got a garret full of 
 inventions I've never even tried to sell. There's 
 just one thing in the world I'm interested in, and 
 that's leather." 
 
 He opened his bag and produced a long strip 
 of black leather. " What do you think of that 
 for artificial leather?" 
 
 I manipulated the strip suspiciously. 
 
 " You've given me the wrong sample," I said. 
 " This is real leather." 
 
 " What makes you think so? " 
 
 " The smell." 
 
 " Oh, I imitated that. When I first made this 
 leather it was odorless. But your financiers said
 
 ioo The Lot of the Inventor 
 
 that wouldn't do. So I told them I could make 
 it smell as bad as they pleased. You know what 
 this smell is? Diluted Russian glue and que- 
 bracho extract." 
 
 I bent the sample and twisted it, and, by per- 
 mission, cut off a corner of it, without arriving at 
 certainty. 
 
 " If this isn't real leather," I said, " it's a won- 
 derful invention. It would deceive anybody. 
 But will it wear?" 
 
 " Wear? This bag is made of it. Look at it. 
 I've carried it around for three years." 
 
 I took the bag and turned it round and round, 
 looking for scratches or cracks. Not one. It 
 might have been carried around for three years, 
 but there seemed to be no reason for believing it. 
 
 " You must handle your baggage very care- 
 fully," I said. " Now if I were to smash this bag 
 against the edge of the door, as a porter might, 
 the leather would crack, wouldn't it? " 
 
 "I don't think it would. No, don't try it. 
 You probably don't see many men of my kind, 
 and don't realize what kind of chemical com- 
 pounds we're likely to be working with when 
 we're on problems like this. High explosives, a 
 lot of them. Let me tell you about an incident
 
 The Lot of the Inventor 101 
 
 that happened to me six years ago. I went down 
 to New York to try to interest the financiers in 
 my leather. Of course they wouldn't believe in 
 it; thought they could buy it from me for noth- 
 ing. And when I held out they tried to find all 
 kinds of fault with it. ' It's too brittle, you 
 couldn't cover a square corner with it,' they'd 
 say. And I'd call their attention to my bag. 
 Well, what do you think? One of those impu- 
 dent old money bags walked right over to my 
 bag and gave it a kick. Bang! Off went his 
 foot! See," he rolled up his sleeve, "here's 
 where the heel of his shoe hit me. Well, sir, that 
 set me back years. There wasn't a financier 
 that would let me come near him." 
 
 " It's wonderful how those financiers hang to- 
 gether," I remarked, depositing the bag very 
 gently on the floor and wishing myself far away, 
 on dry land. 
 
 "Yes, isn't it? If they'd given me a chance, 
 I'd have revolutionized the whole leather busi- 
 ness by this time. I can imitate every kind of 
 leather there is, and I can make an entirely new 
 product as superior to natural leather as natural 
 leather is superior to paper. I can make you a 
 pair of shoes, without seams, for twenty-five
 
 IO2 The Lot of the Inventor 
 
 cents, and I can imitate the seams for a fraction 
 of a cent more. For ten cents I can make work- 
 ing gloves that will last a year and the finest kid 
 gloves for twenty-five cents. But do you sup- 
 pose they will let me do it? " 
 
 " No, of course not," I admitted. " There are 
 the cattlemen and the beef trust and the shoe- 
 machinery trust and the shoe factories. Your 
 artificial leather would produce a terrible com- 
 mercial crisis." 
 
 " Yes, that's what they say. But let me show 
 you something they do let me make." He drew 
 from his pocket what looked like a handful of 
 little buff buttons. On closer examination I saw 
 that they were leather washers, concave on one 
 side, and nearly hemispherical on the other. 
 
 " What do they use those for? " I asked. 
 
 " Hanged if I know. I was working on a ma- 
 chine for something else and I saw it would 
 make these things. So I ran off a few dozen of 
 them, just for fun, and sent them around to my 
 friends. I got a letter from a big concern in 
 New York asking me to call when I came down. 
 I went around there yesterday, and what do you 
 think? They gave me $10,000 for that ma- 
 chine." He drew from his bill case a paper for
 
 The Lot of the Inventor 103 
 
 my perusal. It was the contract of conveyance 
 of the patent. 
 
 " Ten thousand dollars for a machine to make 
 these little things," I reflected aloud. " Real 
 money? Did they let you take all that money 
 away from New York? " 
 
 " That's what they did. You've been doubt- 
 ing me all along, just like a financier. You're 
 in doubt about that money now. Do you know 
 $1,000 bills when you see them?" 
 
 " My hands are up," I admitted. " Who can 
 doubt a man who carries ten of these bills around 
 in his pocket? Still, I should think it would be 
 easier for you to imitate ten thousand dollars 
 than to get it for those tiny washers." 
 
 The inventor rolled the washers around in his 
 palm. "What I've got in here "he tapped his 
 forehead " is the clothing and shoes of the 
 world. What they let me make is a little thing 
 like this, good for God knows what. Queer, isn't 
 it, that this is all the use they can find for a 
 man like me." 
 
 I rose. Suddenly the cloud passed from the 
 inventor's face and he was again erect, buoyant. 
 
 " Come and see me in Boston. I'll show you 
 something superb. It's a motor. Those French-
 
 IO4 The Lot of the Inventor 
 
 men think they've got miracles of motors on 
 their aeroplanes. Wait till they see mine; the 
 best motors they've got will be junk. Say, she's 
 a beauty! She generates twice the power and 
 weighs half as much." 
 
 " But they won't let you make it," I suggested 
 pessimistically. 
 
 " That's where you're wrong. I'm not touch- 
 ing your financiers. I don't have to: I've got 
 the British government on the string. There'll 
 be no monkey business this time. It's for use in 
 war."
 
 VII 
 After the Penitentiary 
 
 "TAILBIRDS have no call to kick." That is 
 I what the editor of the Thompsonville 
 Courier said to me when I offered to let his read- 
 ers knows how a dead middle-western village 
 seems to a graduate from an up-to-date peniten- 
 tiary. It may be that you feel the same way 
 as the editor. When I confess to four years be- 
 hind me " in the service of the state," you'll be 
 justified in inferring that it was for something 
 pretty crooked. I am twenty-three ; so you may 
 be sure my lawyer played up my extreme youth 
 to the best of his ability. Also, I got the bene- 
 fit of the usual sentimentalism about neglected 
 childhood, the force of circumstances, and social 
 responsibility. When the judge slapped four 
 years on me, I felt I was getting off rather easy. 
 I'd been a bad egg, and for all you know I may 
 still be a bad egg. I never was a liar, though, 
 or a romancer. And so you can take my account 
 of Thompsonville as something just as near the 
 truth as I can make it. 
 
 105
 
 io6 After the Penitentiary 
 
 When you first strike Thompsonville, you 
 think it is the sweetest place in the world. It is 
 at the end of a branch line, and there is one ac- 
 commodation train every day except Sunday. 
 For the rest of the time the old town can sleep, 
 for all anybody cares, in the bend of its little 
 river, with deep pools where you catch the cat- 
 fish with your hands, when the water is low. 
 The streets are roofed over with the branches 
 of maple and sycamore trees, and the houses, 
 mostly one story, with bay windows and kitchen 
 ells, stand in a green twilight. The sun doesn't 
 get into the town at all except on Main Street, 
 where the farm horses have gnawed the bark 
 off the trees in front of the grocery stores and 
 the blacksmith shop. The elms and sycamores 
 follow the highways out into the country and 
 down the lanes to the farm-houses and barns, 
 which they smother with their branches. All 
 the people here, except those who have to work 
 in the fields, look pale and pudgy, like the boys 
 in the penitentiary in the days of the cell system. 
 There's a lot of sickness here, too. A man from 
 a well-run penitentiary wouldn't dare to live in 
 one of those dark, musty houses on River Street, 
 or even in one of the older farm-houses. For-
 
 After the Penitentiary 107 
 
 tunately for me, my friend the philanthropist 
 who planted me here to be redeemed, got me a 
 job on a rather new farm near the village, where 
 the shade trees haven't had time to grow very 
 large. The sun gets into my windows in the 
 morning. It might be there all day if the farm- 
 er's wife didn't come in as soon as I'm out at 
 work, and close the blinds and draw the shades. 
 Thompsonville hates the sun. 
 
 My employer, Mr. Harding, is one of the best- 
 hearted men you ever saw, and I don't believe 
 there is a kinder woman in the world than his 
 wife. They are both about fifty and never had 
 any children. They promised the philanthropist 
 to treat me like a son, and that is exactly how 
 they have treated me. They never refer to my 
 past, and do their best to discourage me from 
 referring to it. They had intended to keep it 
 entirely dark, and were unhappy when they 
 found that I had let it out. They run a mixed 
 farm, and try to raise almost everything, a little 
 corn, a few potatoes, a little garden stuff, some 
 cows, pigs and chickens. It is a fussy, fritter- 
 ing kind of business. On Mr. Harding's farm 
 you get up before the sun and wake up the cows 
 to milk them. Then you go around and wake up
 
 io8 After the Penitentiary 
 
 the horses and the pigs to feed them. You eat 
 breakfast before you are entirely awake your- 
 self, and then go out into the field and work a 
 little while at one thing and a little while at 
 another. In that way you fill up a very long 
 day, never doing any real work. At the peni- 
 tentiary they tried to teach us to work hard 
 while we were at it. Our boss made us see that 
 work isn't very tiresome if you make real prog- 
 ress with what you are doing. Mr. Harding has 
 just the opposite view. Whenever he catches me 
 swinging my hoe or ax as if I wanted to get the 
 work done, he gives me a little sermon about 
 haste making waste. I've discovered that he 
 thinks of work as something made chiefly to fill 
 up the time. So we keep going from five in 
 the morning until nine at night, spinning out 
 work we could easily do in eight hours. The 
 other farmers around Thompsonville do just the 
 same thing, and so do the better families down 
 in the village. They think it keeps them out of 
 mischief. 
 
 When Mr. Harding and I work side by side, 
 hoeing corn or milking cows, we hardly ever 
 find a word to say. Mr. Harding never heard 
 of sociology and doesn't want to hear of it. He
 
 After the Penitentiary 109 
 
 won't talk religion because he thinks everybody 
 has a right to his own religion, and he won't 
 talk politics because he thinks nobody knows 
 anything about it except what the newspapers 
 say, and they are full of lies. He won't even 
 gossip ; it's against his principles. Mrs. Harding 
 is the same way, and at meals we never say any- 
 thing but " Pass the molasses, please," or " How 
 do you like this coffee? It's two cents cheaper." 
 For a man who has been through a modern peni- 
 tentiary, this is living like the dumb brutes. In 
 the penitentiary we were always talking about 
 something interesting. We had theories about 
 personal responsibility for crime, about the in- 
 fluence of environment, what the state ought 
 to do to keep young fellows out of crime, and 
 what it could do with us after we had served our 
 time. Of course there were some fellows with 
 funny ideas, like Reddy McMahon, who thought 
 the federal government ought to regulate the 
 locksmith's trade, so there wouldn't be so many 
 easy locks to tempt poor boys, and Shorty 
 Higgs, who argued that they ought to hang a 
 few pickpockets on the main street, as an ex- 
 ample to beginners. But there were lots of good 
 ideas floating round the penitentiary. We knew
 
 1 10 After the Penitentiary 
 
 pretty well what they do with our likes in Eng- 
 land and Sweden and Siberia, and how the courts 
 manage things in France and Italy, and how the 
 military settle their crooks. 
 
 Not that there isn't talking enough going on 
 down in the village. There is all the gossip you 
 care to hear, but it's dreadfully uninteresting if 
 you haven't known the people all their lives. 
 The farmers come in every Saturday and argue 
 by the hour as to which are better, Holstein or 
 Shorthorn cattle, yellow-dent corn or Great 
 Southern White. They never get anywhere 
 with their arguments. Nobody listens to any 
 one but himself. Mr. Harding is just as much 
 set in his ways as any of them. I've sometimes 
 offered suggestions as to how we could improve 
 our farming, but Mr. Harding always freezes me 
 out. It was very different at the penitentiary. 
 There they were ready to listen to suggestions 
 for improving the work. Even if the suggestions 
 weren't practical, they showed that the boys 
 were thinking, progressive. 
 
 When my friend the philanthropist told me 
 about the place he had found for me down here 
 in Thompsonville he warned me that things 
 would seem dull and slow, at first. " But you'll
 
 After the Penitentiary in 
 
 find the tone of the place sweet, pure, whole- 
 some." That was the way it looked to me at 
 first, and I was afraid I might corrupt the town, 
 with my penitentiary-made ideas. But now I'm 
 not so sure that the moral tone of the penitenti- 
 ary wasn't higher, on the whole. We had lived 
 pretty rough lives, but we knew what wrong is, 
 and were taking our punishment for it. We 
 knew when we were shirking and lying, and gen- 
 erally we were ashamed of it. Some of us ex- 
 pected to take up the old life when we got out, 
 but we were ready to accept the consequences. 
 The young fellows I meet here, around town or 
 under the willows by the fishing pools, have a 
 lot of talk that would surprise you. To listen 
 to it, you'd say there isn't anything they would- 
 n't do if they could get away without penalties. 
 They have the imagination of horrible crooks; 
 all they lack is the nerve. At the penitentiary 
 we made a big difference between the persons we 
 respected and those we didn't. We could tell an 
 honest man as soon as we laid eyes on him, and 
 whether he liked us or not, we never had any- 
 thing to say about him he wouldn't have been 
 willing to hear. And as for women, if any of 
 the fellows had dared to say a word against one
 
 H2 After the Penitentiary 
 
 we respected, like the superintendent's wife, 
 we'd have knocked his head off. These Thomp- 
 sonville boys don't respect anybody, least of all 
 women. Maybe you think I've got .a grudge 
 against these boys because they don't take to 
 me. But they do take to me. Some one of them 
 is always running in to get me to come out to 
 some party or fishing trip. Mr. Harding doesn't 
 like it; he's actually afraid they will corrupt me. 
 He considers them a terribly bad lot. The 
 Thompsonville young men used to be all right, 
 he says, but after the railway came in, every 
 boy who was good for anything went down 
 to the city to make his fortune. The boys who 
 have stayed here are just leavings, without 
 brains or ambition, and having nobody better 
 than themselves to associate with, they get 
 worse and worse. 
 
 There are about twice as many girls as boys 
 in Thompsonville, and they look to me like a 
 different race. They are quiet and sweet and 
 seem rather sad. Mr. Harding says there aren't 
 finer girls anywhere, and I believe him. Of 
 course I don't know them; I feel that they 
 wouldn't want to be acquainted with a man of 
 a record like mine. It might spoil their chances
 
 After the Penitentiary 113 
 
 though God knows what their chances are 
 here. . . . There is one I know pretty well. I 
 deliver vegetables at her house, and I spend a 
 good deal more time talking to her than is nec- 
 essary. She is very nice to me; she thinks I 
 would never have got into trouble if I had had 
 a good woman's influence. Maybe so; I cer- 
 tainly don't feel very set up over my past life 
 when I'm talking to her. She is a favorite with 
 Mr. and Mrs. Harding. They have hinted that 
 if I marry and settle down here, I'd get their 
 farm after they die. When it dawned on me 
 they might be driving at something, I got rather 
 scared. Me married and settled down? With 
 my record, I'm not good enough. And besides, 
 after a while I might come to look on Thomp- 
 sonville as a kind of life-term. 
 
 I'm still for prison reform, but it seems to me 
 now that there is more need for reforming the 
 Thompsonvilles. Somebody like Tom Osborne 
 ought to make his home in each of these little 
 old villages, let in the sun and systematize the 
 work, and let loose a few ideas for the young 
 fellows to try their minds on. You can never 
 make very much out of a penitentiary. At best, 
 the boys who come out will be rather a bad lot.
 
 114 After the Penitentiary 
 
 But a place like Thompsonville, where every- 
 body could have all the food and air and sun he 
 needs, could be made into a kind of little Heaven, 
 under its swaying treetops in the bend of the 
 shining river.
 
 VIII 
 
 Short Change 
 
 SQUARE white tents in twelve double rows 
 on a sparsely wooded hilltop; soldiers in 
 blue uniforms at attention while the bugle sounds 
 the retreat, repeated in an instant from across 
 a little valley where another regiment stands at 
 attention among its white tents, repeated again 
 and again in notes fainter and yet fainter from 
 over the hills on all sides : a military encamp- 
 ment, as you would surmise, of twenty years 
 ago, when nobody knew anything about visi- 
 bility or sanitation or morale, when arms and 
 the manual and the regimental organization 
 were other than they are now, and nothing the 
 same but human nature. 
 
 We had fallen out and were lounging before 
 our tents when a strange soldier from another 
 regiment passed rapidly down the company 
 street. 
 
 " There'll be some fun at the sutler's shack, 
 just before taps," he remarked, to no one in par- 
 
 "5
 
 n6 Short Change 
 
 ticular. Twenty paces further on he repeated 
 his statement, mechanically, and we heard him 
 repeat it once more as he passed by the mess 
 tent on his way to another company. 
 
 "Say, did you hear what that fellow said?" 
 cried the cook, thrusting out his head from be- 
 tween the flaps of the mess tent. 
 
 " Oh, shut up ! " said the first sergeant. " You 
 fellows have got to stay right here. Mind, I'm 
 watchin' ye. The first fellow that leaves the 
 company street '11 get reported." 
 
 "What do you think?" murmured my tent- 
 mate Buck, an eager boy, enlisted under age. 
 " They've been talking of running the sutler 
 out." 
 
 " Nothing to it," I asserted. " They wouldn't 
 dare. Anyway, you and I are going to keep out 
 of it." 
 
 " Well, all right. But damn the sutler." 
 
 " Amen," I agreed. It was two weeks beyond 
 pay day, and not a soul in the company had any 
 money left. The sutler had garnered it all. 
 What could you expect? After two hours' drill 
 on a sweating morning, one had to drink, but 
 not, if he could help it, the tepid water in the 
 company barrel, tasting of vegetable mold and
 
 Short Change 117 
 
 vinegar soaked wood. At the sutler's were to be 
 had lemonade, passably cool and refreshing even 
 if it was made without lemons, bottled soft 
 drinks and a marvelous beverage known as 
 blackberry bounce which made a total abstainer 
 grotesquely gay. Until the pay ran out the sut- 
 ler was confronted from morning till night with 
 thirsty and hungry soldiers, sometimes in ranks 
 ten deep. And from morning till night an ugly 
 quarrel was going on over his counter. 
 
 " Here, you damn dago, I gave you a dollar. 
 Where's my change?" 
 
 " No, no, you gave me fi' cents." 
 
 "You're lying. Give me my change or I'll 
 knock your damn head off." 
 
 The sutler would shrug his shoulders and 
 serve another row of customers. If the trouble 
 maker was very persistent, the sutler would 
 shell out change with a poisonous gesture. He 
 was an Armenian, and no doubt had learned in 
 the trade with the Kurds how far one may defy, 
 how far one must compromise with violence. 
 Current report was that the sutler made a regu- 
 lar practice of short change, but there was a 
 strong minority opinion that this report was 
 eight-tenths pure fabrication and one-tenth
 
 1 1 8 Short Change 
 
 founded on mistake. Several men in my com- 
 pany boasted of their success in getting drinks 
 for nothing and bullying the sutler out of change 
 besides. Probably someone else suffered for 
 it. Anyway, the sutler was bound to win out 
 in the end; if his customers occasionally cheated 
 him, he nevertheless got the money back in 
 trade. Inevitably he was cordially detested. 
 
 The sutler's shack stood in a clearing about 
 equidistant from the four regimental camps on 
 which he preyed. It was a long, half-gable shed, 
 solidly backed with oak planks set vertically 
 and equipped with iron braced shutters to let 
 down over the counter at night. In a tree be- 
 fore the shack the sutler kept a gasoline torch 
 flaring all night, and he was so apprehensive that 
 one could hardly step within the flickering circle 
 of its light without the sutler appearing in the 
 doorway, his right hand behind his back. 
 
 The dusk was growing heavy. I was prepar- 
 ing to turn in, when Buck, who had been mak- 
 ing a call on a neighboring company, thrust his 
 head into the tent. 
 
 " Say," he whispered. " There aren't ten men 
 in D company's tents. Our boys are all gone, 
 too. Let's get out before the officers catch on."
 
 Short Change 119 
 
 "They're all crazy," I grumbled. " They*!! 
 drill us to death to-morrow, for this." 
 
 " Come on ! " cried Buck, tugging at my belt. 
 
 I blew out my light and stepped out of the 
 tent. Men from other companies were stealthily 
 slipping through between the tents, headed for 
 the sutler's. I caught some of Buck's eagerness 
 and in a moment we too were slipping between 
 tents in the darkness. Beyond the camp we 
 issued upon a trail, now quite packed with dark 
 figures. 
 
 " Hullo," sounded a strange voice in my ear. 
 " Did he short change you? " 
 
 " No," I replied. " I never trusted him to 
 make change." 
 
 " You were smart. I don't know another man 
 he hasn't skinned, You're Peters, M company, 
 aren't you? " 
 
 " No. C company. 
 
 "Oh, I mistook you. Gosh! Hear 'em?" 
 
 I caught a confused wave of sound, shouting 
 interspersed with shrill whistles. We began to 
 run. 
 
 In the clearing, under the flickering gasoline 
 torch, hundreds of men were packed about the 
 front of the sutler's shack. The Armenian stood
 
 I2O Short Change 
 
 in his doorway, pale but imperturbable, his eyes 
 glaring fiercely, his thick lips curving in a nerv- 
 ous smile. The crowd was keeping its distance, 
 as word had passed back from the front that the 
 sutler had his finger on the trigger of a six- 
 shooter. We were after fun, not shooting, and 
 it was enough to hurl imprecations at him. 
 When Buck and I arrived, the spirit of the crowd 
 was good humored, for the most part, but oc- 
 casionally one could perceive a note of real ha- 
 tred. What seemed like a deliberate competi- 
 tion in imprecations got in motion, and the more 
 violent curses gained rapidly over the milder 
 ones. The character of the voices, too, began 
 to change : the original miscellaneous clamor 
 split into two well defined currents of deep notes 
 and high that would occasionally reinforce each 
 other and make one thrill unaccountably. The 
 crowd was pressing closer. The Armenian still 
 kept his nerve, but the movements of his head 
 were becoming spasmodic. It was still fun with 
 us, but the idea that it was serious was visibly 
 gaining on the Armenian. 
 
 " Poor devil," I thought, " this has been car- 
 ried about far enough." And then a new baying 
 note rose from the mob, a note I had not sup-
 
 Short Change 121 
 
 posed to be within the range of the human voice. 
 I shivered, and as I glanced again at the Ar- 
 menian, darting his eyes from one quarter to 
 another in suppressed panic, I felt my pity slip 
 from me. I began to exult, like a hunter who 
 has found a wild animal in a trap, to finish at 
 leisure. "Kill the damn thief! Kill the damn 
 dago!" the crowd was yelling. It thrilled! 
 
 There was a lull : something was going on that 
 we in the center could only divine. Above the 
 fnutterings, subdued for the moment, we heard 
 a sound like the splitting of a timber. Word 
 passed from the flanks of the crowd, " They've 
 pried out a plank behind." The Armenian 
 turned to look back into his shack; his jaw 
 dropped; his thin acquisitive profile quivered; 
 the white of his eye seemed to glaze. A sharp 
 pebble hurled from behind him struck him just 
 below the cheekbone : it clung for a second, 
 like a hideous black growth, then dropped, 
 thrust out by a jet of blood. A mantle of frenzy 
 fell upon the mob. An atrocious roar arose, car- 
 rying on its waves all the obscenities and blas- 
 phemies known to young America. 
 
 "Kill the damn Jew! Kill the God damn 
 Nigger!"
 
 122 Short Change 
 
 The mob surged forward : all around me men 
 wedged between converging lines of force were 
 crying out that they were being crushed. The 
 Armenian darted into his shack, snapping the 
 door to in the face of a dozen men springing for 
 him. They beat and pushed at the door while 
 a hundred others thrust their weight against 
 the counter shutters. The shack was rocking 
 on its foundations; another thrust, and over 
 she'd go. Suddenly I became conscious of a 
 weakening of the pressure from behind me; of 
 a subsidence of the volume of yells, of a subtle 
 change in the quality of the sound. Did I merely 
 imagine that I had heard a sharp "Halt!" at 
 my left? I stood on tiptoe, to look over the 
 heads of the men about me. Through an open- 
 ing produced by an accidental grouping of 
 shorter men, I caught a glimpse of a long line 
 of men in khaki, springing from the darkness to 
 the rear, passing across the lighted circle, and 
 into the darkness beyond, within which by strain- 
 ing one seemed to distinguish the dull gleam of 
 rifle barrels and belt buckles, extending inter- 
 minably. 
 
 " Fix bayonets ! " sounded the command, dis- 
 tinctly.
 
 Short Change 123 
 
 " The regulars ! " murmured voices all around 
 me. In an instant we were rushing across the 
 lighted space, in a panic as infectious and as 
 blind and overpowering as our rage of a moment 
 past. Everywhere the woods resounded with 
 the steps of running men. I lost Buck, and ran 
 wildly, without sense of direction, until my 
 breath was gone. Over the comb of a little hill 
 I paused to gather my wits, only to be run down 
 by a group of men who had clung together in 
 their abject panic. I picked myself up, bruised 
 and still more dazed, and began to run away at 
 right angles to my previous course. I burst into 
 a little clearing and stopped short: before me in 
 the darkness was something upright; a sentry? 
 It remained perfectly immobile. Cautiously I 
 approached : it was a granite slab, one of the 
 many erected to commemorate a battle of the 
 Civil War fought on this terrain. I seated my- 
 self with my back to the stone, for protection 
 against any galloping figures that might chance 
 my way. Through my shirt, clinging with per- 
 spiration, I could feel the cold, sharp cut char- 
 acters of the inscription: the names of Ameri- 
 cans of my father's generation who had fallen 
 here in defense of a race of alien blood. Had
 
 124 Short Change 
 
 that atrocious, non-human cry of race hatred 
 and blood thirst, sharply cut into my memory 
 like these letters on granite, actually issued from 
 my own lips? Or had I just heard it and made 
 it my own, in the moment of the collective 
 frenzy and the fused emotions and will of the 
 mob?
 
 IX 
 
 Phyllis the Feminist 
 
 OF theories she has enough to bow down a 
 far sturdier frame. So 'it is no wonder 
 she stands slightly stooped, or walks with rather 
 uncertain, if swift and eager steps. Nor is it 
 a wonder that there are furrows forming in her 
 brow, broad and white under masses and masses 
 of black hair, disposed with a sole view to utility 
 but rebelliously attaining beauty nevertheless. 
 Her eyes are often weary, too. Gray eyes were 
 made to betray the weariness one had intended 
 to conceal. And now I've got so far with her 
 portrait, let me add a nose just a trifle too in- 
 curved and a millimeter too short, and lips too 
 full to accord perfectly with the canons of white 
 stone, mobile lips always curving in smiles or 
 quivering with sympathy. Not a beautiful 
 woman, you say. No, not unless you know her. 
 One who knows not the real Phyllis, as only 
 those who wait can know, finds far more beauty 
 in her sister Clio, faultlessly composed of coun- 
 ts
 
 126 Phyllis the Feminist 
 
 tenance, with not a feature sinning against any 
 high canon. Perfect bows of love are Clio's 
 lips, and how can you, O stranger, know what 
 a tongue they sheathe? It, too, might have the 
 beauty of quick darting flame between white 
 teeth, if you were deaf. But you hear, and so 
 you know it as a barbed dart for your breast, 
 a cat o' nine tails for your back. If there is any 
 homogeneity in human blood, Clio is surely a 
 changeling. She no more resembles Phyllis 
 than the serpent in an Indian cave resembles the 
 jewel it guards. For years now I've been brav- 
 ing the serpent, and her hiss grows no less ter- 
 rifying. But the jewel grows constantly more 
 precious. 
 
 When Clio's lightnings are unloosed upon the 
 male sex, and specifically upon you, in conster- 
 nation you behold yourself a mere shred of 
 water-logged wreckage tossing upon a sea of 
 fathomless iniquity. All the crimes of male man 
 are dragged before the bar of judgment out of 
 your shrinking being. You are the primordial 
 brute and bully from whom the shrieking chil- 
 dren and trembling women used to flee to the 
 dark recesses in the cave where you were lord, 
 ages and ages ago. You are Bluebeard himself,
 
 Phyllis the Feminist 127 
 
 tiring of wives and slaying them; you are the 
 abominable trafficker in white slaves. Or if you 
 are not, this is only by the grace of God and 
 the terrors of the criminal law. Phyllis knows 
 as well the catalogue of masculine misdoings. 
 She is equally alive to the disabilities still rest- 
 ing upon woman by virtue of man-made laws, 
 man-invented customs. She too is sworn enemy 
 of man, as an institution. But for man in the 
 concrete, aspiring or cynical, crank or dilettante, 
 brute or dandy, the charity of Phyllis is un- 
 stinted. He is what he is through circumstance; 
 and all things considered, says Phyllis, it is re- 
 markable how much there is in him still worth 
 salvaging. 
 
 What the world needs, according to Phyllis, is 
 not the extirpation of man, but the elevation of 
 woman from her sad state of dependence, mate- 
 rial and moral. And since the key to modern 
 life is economics so many professors have said 
 this that it must be true Phyllis is vowed to a 
 crusade for the economic independence of 
 woman. She would dearly love to conduct a 
 far-flung lecture campaign, but before even the 
 smallest audience she falters and all but faints. 
 So she has chosen what she considers the hum-
 
 128 Phyllis the Feminist 
 
 bier lot of mere work. She has organized a trade 
 school where the daughters of the poor and 
 the daughters of the rich, if they like may gain 
 industrial proficiency and economic independ- 
 ence, and with these that sense of personal 
 freedom and individual responsibility that are 
 supposed to characterize industrial man. It is 
 a good school, too, and it thrives. This is ad- 
 mitted even by me who have watched it through 
 ten years in the pose of a scoffer, and indeed 
 hoping in my secret heart that it would fall 
 through. 
 
 Phyllis is an incomparable administrator; there 
 is not one of the problems infesting the volun- 
 teer educator's life for which she does not find 
 a satisfactory solution. But she is entirely un- 
 conscious of her competence. And she is for- 
 ever surrounding herself with advisers, prevail- 
 ingly men of imposing bulk and dreadnaught 
 mien, professors, responsible journalists, public- 
 spirited citizens. Ask yourself, how much 
 thought have these formidable fronts ever given 
 to the problem of industrially educating pink, 
 chattering little city misses, hovering in the 
 limbo between the public schools and matri- 
 mony? No thought at all, and the canny ones
 
 Phyllis the Feminist 129 
 
 among them pluck their beards and bide their 
 time until Phyllis has set forth the problem and 
 her solution of it. Then they restate her solu- 
 tion in polysyllabic terms that Phyllis must labor 
 painfully to comprehend. She always does com- 
 prehend, and a celestial smile sweeps the per- 
 plexity from her face. " Oh Mr. Vished, you 
 have helped me so much! Now I can see just 
 where I have been making my mistakes." 
 
 Poor child, she really thinks they have given 
 her something. Those of her advisers who 
 aren't canny emit clouds of advice, each cloud- 
 let sufficient in itself to wreck her undertaking. 
 From these, too, she says she gets great help, 
 and believes it. If all those busy men had not 
 been so generous with their counsel, what in the 
 world would have become of her school, she de- 
 mands passionately whenever I venture a word 
 of truth about those hollow drums. Why is it 
 that a woman should be so bent on thrusting the 
 credit for what she alone has done upon other 
 persons, utterly undeserving? Why, even I, 
 who openly avow my mortal hostility to the 
 great work, am regularly enumerated among its 
 saviors. 
 
 Well, thanks to the advisers, as Phyllis main-
 
 130 Phyllis the Feminist 
 
 tains, or in spite of them, as I maintain, the 
 school is a great success, and if you are a femi- 
 nist from Sweden or Montenegro or Los An- 
 geles, you visit it as a matter of course when 
 you are in New York. Here, as you can see for 
 yourself, girls are gaining a command of the in- 
 dustrial system so that the factory will be an 
 instrument pliable to their hands, not a mill in- 
 exorably to crush out their lives. Here they are 
 learning how art can shoot from the industrial 
 stem, otherwise so dry and dead, and how joy 
 may conclude peace with labor. Even I, in- 
 grained scoffer, grow dithyrambic as a sociolo- 
 gist from Helsingfors as I survey this feminist 
 Eden of hopeful striving. How can it be that 
 Phyllis sighs and her kind eyes look so weary? 
 See this demure little maid with shiny wax 
 curls drawn over her pink ears, listening with 
 clear, steady eyes while Phyllis explains with 
 infinite patience some complicated and fascinat- 
 ing process? Why does the maiden reply so ab- 
 sently, so ineptly? What is she thinking of, be- 
 hind her expression of serene attention? A 
 "date." Don't think I'm divining this: I am a 
 man and take our little maid at her face value, 
 something by no means negligible. Phyllis told
 
 Phyllis the Feminist 131 
 
 me. And this, too, she told me, though not in 
 these bald terms: Taken by and large, there 
 are no items in the instruction of the school one- 
 tenth so interesting to its pupils, or valued one- 
 tenth so high, as the formulas for " dates " smug- 
 gled into the school in hastily scrawled notes, or 
 transmitted by a few hurried words at a street- 
 corner. 
 
 Let me not give the impression that Phyllis 
 is in revolt against the fated renewal of the gen- 
 erations. That would be to confuse her way 
 of thought with that of Clio, who looks upon 
 human nature as something obnoxious, immoral, 
 man-made. No, Phyllis expects her girls to fall 
 in love, and to wed, unless, in the rare instance, 
 they have a vocation for life-long independence. 
 But love should be disinterested, heroic. Now 
 what are the qualities in their lovers these little 
 daughters of Eve most celebrate? "He's got a 
 dad who's awfully rich." " He's got just a fine 
 job, and after we're married I'll never have to 
 do a bit of work in all my life." Can it be, asks 
 Phyllis, that economic independence for woman 
 is just a leisure-class dream, vain, like other 
 leisure-class dreams? This sounds more like 
 one of my ideas than like Phyllis's, does it not?
 
 132 Phyllis the Feminist 
 
 Well, between you and me, I planted it, long 
 ago. Phyllis doesn't remember, nor do I re- 
 mind her. But the idea grows. 
 
 Phyllis has her despairs: it is none the less a 
 great work she is accomplishing. Yet Phyllis 
 is so human and there are so many others who 
 are not. Therefore I maintain, it is a great waste 
 that she should be immolated even to such a 
 noble ideal. " Well," you demand tartly, " why 
 don't you tell her so?" O perspicuous one, I 
 have, again and again, for ten years, almost. It 
 was at first a mobile campaign, with short, sharp 
 conflicts in which I was always routed. But 
 years ago I settled down to a war of attrition. 
 And now a great change is coming over Phyllis's 
 affairs. Clio is to be married. She has yielded 
 her heart to a millionaire, blameless, bloodless 
 scion of a fierce old rum-drinking, slave-dealing 
 New England house. Thus are the sins of the 
 fathers visited upon the sons even unto the third 
 generation, and nowadays still farther down the 
 line. But I reck not of the millionaire: Phyllis 
 will be lonely.
 
 X 
 
 The Molting of Alcibiades 
 
 O> nothing at all serious just Dame Na- 
 ture. She's leaving you, confound her, 
 but you're not the first she's forsaken." The 
 doctor threw back his head and laughed. Hor- 
 rible beast, thought Alcibiades. A man of any 
 fineness of nature couldn't have had teeth set 
 at such wide intervals. Wideness was the char- 
 acter of this doctor: eyes, big, cold, bulging, 
 with what seemed half an ell between them; 
 shoulders inhumanly far apart; wide hands, wide 
 thumbs. Surely the doctor couldn't have been 
 like that when he was a young man : he must 
 just have spread, under the weight of his own 
 coarse brutality. 
 
 " Thank you, doctor. I'm much reassured." 
 Alcibiades rose. 
 
 " Don't go." The doctor rolled his eyes and 
 seemed almost to smack his lips. " Now we're 
 on the subject of advancing age, I just want to 
 show you what nature does to our poor bodies, 
 anyway. Come into my museum." 
 
 133
 
 134 The Molting of Alcibiades 
 
 " I mustn't take any more of your time," pro- 
 tested Alcibiades. 
 
 Anybody else would have perceived that Al- 
 cibiades was suffering and would have let him 
 go in peace. But the doctor laid his wide hand 
 on Alcibiades's arm and half thrust him through 
 the office door, down a dim corridor and into a 
 large room overencumbered with glass cases. A 
 faint odor of stale chemicals made Alcibiades's 
 nostrils quiver. 
 
 "Lord, what a lot of bones!" Alcibiades 
 shuddered. 
 
 " Yes, they are my pet extravagance. I flatter 
 myself I have the best private collection in town. 
 Some day when we have lots of time I want to 
 show you all of it. But we were speaking of 
 advancing age. We'll just look at what I have 
 in Case L." The doctor pushed back the glass 
 doors of the case and took down the upper half 
 of a skull, neatly sawed as if to make a heathen 
 drinking cup. 
 
 " You see how thin it is at the temples? " The 
 doctor tapped the bone with his pencil, produc- 
 ing a distressing, papery sound. " You ask me, 
 what became of the bony tissue. Here is the 
 answer." The doctor drew from a lower shelf
 
 The Molting of Alcibiades 135 
 
 the bones of an arm and forearm, soldered, as it 
 were, into one piece by a rough bony deposit 
 encasing the elbow. 
 
 " Lord ! " exclaimed Alcibiades in horror. 
 " How could he use his arm? " 
 
 " He couldn't. Rheumatism he called it and 
 the C. O. S. thought he was just malingering. 
 But here is something still more interesting. 
 See how the bony tissue of the head of this thigh 
 bone is worn away? Feel it: smooth as glass, 
 isn't it? What does this mean? Why, it means, 
 while he was still walking, the cartilage was en- 
 tirely worn away, and much bone besides." 
 
 " Must have squeaked," said Alcibiades feebly. 
 " Awfully interesting, Doctor, but I'm afraid I'm 
 missing an appointment. Good-by." 
 
 "Going down?" inquired the doctor. 
 
 " No. I'm going up to the Grand Central." 
 
 " Good, so am I." Alcibiades shuddered again. 
 But there was no help for it. 
 
 " It isn't merely a man's body that changes 
 when he reaches your stage in life," lectured 
 the doctor, as Alcibiades vainly strove to walk 
 him out of breath. " Your eyes change from 
 near-sightedness to far-sightedness; your waist 
 line grows heavier, your breath short. But these
 
 136 The Molting of Alcibiades 
 
 are little things. The big thing is the change in 
 mind. You're going to grow conservative, but 
 for a few months you'll find yourself inclined 
 to be a wild radical. You're going to grow com- 
 placent, but for a while you'll have fits of deep 
 pessimism. You're going to become material- 
 istic, but now you have vain, spiritualistic, mys- 
 tic yearnings. Most of the time you feel droopy, 
 downhearted. For all the world like a bird 
 molting, isn't it?" The doctor's laughter rose 
 above the din of the streets like the sound of a 
 gunmetal gong. 
 
 " And as for your attitude toward the fair 
 
 " Oh, come, Doctor, don't talk nonsense. 
 You're going to threaten me with approaching 
 indifference." 
 
 " No, not that at all. I don't know myself 
 just when that sets in. But you'll undergo a 
 change nevertheless in that regard. You'll be- 
 gin to be mysteriously attracted to extreme 
 youth. You, an intellectual man, will begin to 
 find yourself dull in the presence of a mature 
 woman. But a silly little miss of eighteen, chew- 
 ing gum, talking slang, saucy eyes, pink cheeks 
 and all that she'll make your blood dance."
 
 The Molting of Alcibiades 137 
 
 " Pooh, you're all off there," said Alcibiades 
 contemptuously. 
 
 " I don't say you've reached that point yet, 
 but you'll soon reach it. Hang it all ! I should 
 have been a psychologist. That's what really 
 interests me. I thought you said you were go- 
 ing to the Grand Central? No? Well, good- 
 by." 
 
 " What a brute ! Who recommended him to 
 me, anyway?" thought Alcibiades, heading for 
 Fifth Avenue. He knew that his day had been 
 spoiled. He was rid of the doctor's physical 
 presence, to be sure, but it was not so easy to 
 emerge from the aura of his detestable person- 
 ality. Something of the doctor seemed to per- 
 vade the whole atmosphere, dimming the sun- 
 light on the shop fronts, subtracting a shade or 
 two of blue from the sky overhead. It was warm, 
 but Alcibiades felt chilly. 
 
 " Hot Scotch might help, but of course I can't 
 get it at this season." Alcibiades turned into his 
 club. The library was deserted except for a 
 bald, petulant faced member who sat at a win- 
 dow mechanically turning the leaves of a mag- 
 azine. 
 
 " I know what ails him," said Alcibiades to
 
 138 The Molting of Alcibiades 
 
 himself. " Nature is dissolving the bone away 
 from where it belongs and depositing it where 
 it doesn't belong. Soon he'll squeak when he 
 moves." Alcibiades flexed his arm. What! 
 Did he perceive a slight twinge, a scarcely per- 
 ceptible stiffness? Alcibiades seated himself in 
 the far corner of the library, turning his face to 
 the wall. 
 
 Of course he hadn't actually been christened 
 Alcibiades. His official signature was Luther 
 Baldwin, Jr. But at college he had run with a 
 very wild and dashing set of gilded youth, and 
 had played politics in the utterly shameless man- 
 ner of the classical ancients. Besides, he had 
 cultivated the friendship of a very original dis- 
 frocked professor who conducted a tavern, ab- 
 horred of the faculty, just off the college campus. 
 Somebody in spite had dubbed him the young 
 Alcibiades, and the name stuck. He liked it, 
 and did his best to live the part. While the rest 
 of his set were squaring themselves with the 
 existing order of serious business, the young 
 Alcibiades was playing at art, dabbling in phi- 
 losophy, mixing in politics and greatly admiring 
 his own many-sidedness. He was really worth 
 admiring, too. Wherever you saw his handsome
 
 The Molting of Alcibiades 139 
 
 head shining out from the midst of a group of 
 his fellows you were sure to find him talking 
 and the rest listening. He was always to be 
 found in any new movement to oust the consti- 
 tuted authorities from their places, and he al- 
 ways appeared as the leader, so long as the hope 
 remained forlorn. His own circle was very re- 
 spectable, rather aristocratic; yet somehow they 
 forgave him for consorting with anarchists and 
 longshoremen, waiters and tramps. And the 
 outcasts forgave him his blue-blooded ante- 
 cedents and relations. So brilliant a creature 
 could not be expected to conform to the social 
 rules imposed upon the ordinary man. 
 
 Nobody doubted at first that the young Al- 
 cibiades would finally achieve something re- 
 markable. He was preeminently a coming man. 
 He might squander his present, but he had a 
 future. Envious old friends did indeed abandon 
 this opinion as year after year slipped by with- 
 out tangible realization of the promise of Alci- 
 biades. But there were always new friends to 
 believe in him. And Alcibiades himself had 
 never lost faith in his future. Or more precisely, 
 he had never lost faith until he had fallen into the 
 clutches of Dr. Bradshaw.
 
 140 The Molting of Alcibiades 
 
 In late weeks the young Alcibiades had been 
 occasionally oppressed by a vague malaise, by 
 momentary fits of faintness and dizziness, by 
 sudden blurrings of vision. " It's nothing," he 
 said to his friends. " You'd expect such a life 
 as mine to produce physical consequences. I 
 suppose it's my heart." 
 
 At last he yielded to his friends' entreaties and 
 submitted himself to Dr. Bradshaw to be over- 
 hauled. Well, it wasn't his heart. It was es- 
 sentially nothing but a change in his eyes, as 
 the doctor promptly discovered. 
 
 " Yes, you're getting far-sighted. Quite nat- 
 urally. You see, your youth is done. You've 
 been going up hill, now you're going down. 
 You'll soon get adjusted to the new process, and 
 not notice it at all, just as you were formerly 
 adjusted to the process of growth." 
 
 " I was afraid it might be my heart," said Al- 
 cibiades bravely. One can get along, you know, 
 with almost any kind of heart, if it hangs to- 
 gether at all. But going downhill? The proc- 
 ess of aging succeeding upon that of growth 
 while one still looks upon himself as essentially 
 a coming man? Everybody, I suppose, expe- 
 riences a twinge or two when he first acknowl-
 
 The Molting of Alcibiades 141 
 
 edges that he has passed his meridian. But Al- 
 cibiades had staked everything upon his up- 
 ward trend. He had no standing grain, only 
 new sowings, and the autumn frosts were in 
 the air. 
 
 Gradually the library filled with men who had 
 drifted in to drink tea or better; men of middle 
 age or older, for the most part corpulent and 
 contented. 
 
 " That's a banker," commented Alcibiades. 
 " That's the head of a construction company. 
 That's a college president. They're going down- 
 hill, too, but they don't know it. Why? I see. 
 The bank, the construction company, the college 
 keep growing and their presidents confuse the 
 process with their personal growth. 
 
 " That's the secret. Have some kind of work 
 that will serve you as a sort of carapace which 
 will stand up before you in the glass, stiff and 
 formidable, even if you quite shrivel away in- 
 side. Oh, thunder. I'll go down and see if 
 Robert is in his office." 
 
 Robert Baldwin, Alcibiades's elder brother, 
 maintained a law office downtown. Law bored 
 Alcibiades, and so did Robert. In fact, the law 
 had eaten out Robert's personality as an oyster
 
 142 The Molting of Alcibiades 
 
 crab eats out an oyster. But since he had begun 
 to feel out of sorts, Alcibiades had haunted his 
 brother's office. It was the call of the blood in 
 distress, perhaps, he had explained to himself. 
 
 As was usually the case near the close of busi- 
 ness hours, Robert was not to be seen. And, as 
 usual, Alcibiades seated himself to wait vainly 
 a half hour or more. It was a martyrdom. 
 Three typewriters were clattering away des- 
 perately as if it made the least difference when 
 legal documents are finished. At the desk near- 
 est Alcibiades a very young girl was struggling 
 with her shorthand notes. She'd never be effi- 
 cient, but she'd always be cheap, and Robert 
 doted on cheapness. Beyond that, she was beau- 
 tiful, but what was that to Robert, desiccated 
 by the law? She was the daughter of Sardinian 
 immigrants, over-Americanized by the public 
 schools and the business college. 
 
 Thank Heaven, Americanization doesn't work 
 such havoc with looks as with manners. Grazia's 
 hair, in spite of her efforts to pull it over her ears, 
 retained its character of rebellious, living tresses 
 of jet. Grazia's brows preserved their air of 
 mystical brooding, whatever trivial East Side 
 scheming might be taking place behind them.
 
 The Molting of Alcibiades 143 
 
 Grazia's eyes, blacker than their entrancing 
 lashes, seemed to burn with meaning. Of course 
 the meaning wasn't there, but what did that 
 matter? If you glanced at Grazia and then 
 closed your eyes her face stood out in the dark- 
 ness of your imagination as does the face of an 
 Italian Madonna in the dark canvas of an old 
 master. Only, the lips on the canvas of your 
 imagination would suddenly curve in a challeng- 
 ing, dazzling smile, and the olive cheeks would 
 glow with dusky red. Alcibiades glanced at 
 Grazia and the feeling of tedium and melan- 
 choly dropped from him. 
 
 Grazia rose from her desk and approached 
 him, as if to consult him about the rendering of 
 certain puzzling notes. 
 
 " Say," she said in a low, discordant voice. 
 "Can't we make it a little later? I've got an 
 awful lot of letters to get off, and I'm 'fraid I 
 can't be there at six." 
 
 The doctor's brutal voice seemed to ring in 
 Alcibiades's ear. "A silly little miss of eight- 
 een " His feeling of exhilaration was gone. 
 
 " See here, Grazia," he said, rising. " Let's 
 cut all this out. There's nothing in it for you, 
 and nothing in it for me."
 
 144 The Molting of Alcibiades 
 
 "What you throwing me down for?" de- 
 manded Grazia indignantly. " Just because I 
 can't be there at six. Oh, well!" She tossed 
 her head melodramatically and retired to her 
 desk. 
 
 " I'm a fool. She was good fun. That old 
 brute of a doctor is right. I'm molting," re- 
 flected Alcibiades as he signaled a taxi. 
 
 " Oh, drive me anywhere," he replied to the 
 chauffeur's unspoken inquiry. " Drive me 
 through the park if you can't think of anything 
 better." 
 
 Long shadows from the west lay across the 
 park. They were brownish, dingy, dead. Only 
 yesterday the shadows fell from the east, black 
 and clear cut, and between them lay strips of 
 bright green glistening with dew.
 
 XI 
 The Meed of a Brute 
 
 ANTELOPE CREEK, under the red-painted 
 iron bridge at the station, looks like an 
 abandoned Eastern canal, good for nothing but 
 green scum and pond lilies. But at the time of 
 the June rains, when the overfed Missouri groans 
 in its bed, Antelope Creek becomes a river of 
 black water, flush with its banks and flowing, 
 apparently, uphill toward the bluffs, where alone 
 you can set foot on solid ground in this muddy 
 season. To get there you embark in a flat-bot- 
 tomed boat, which will nose its own way among 
 the drowned willows while you sit at ease, sur- 
 veying comfortable farm-houses nestling among 
 barns and full corncribs and haystacks a pleth- 
 ora carried over from the last year's harvest. 
 These are the homes of the enthusiasts who 
 rushed west to defend the right in " bleeding 
 Kansas." There is no enthusiasm now, only 
 prosperity, waiting for the roads to harden so 
 that the Ford cars may come out and earn their 
 
 145
 
 146 The Meed of a Brute 
 
 keep. Soon the banks of the stream become 
 higher and you see nothing but the dense fringe 
 of ragweed on its edges, a little above you. At 
 length your boat begins to turn in circles; you 
 have reached the head of navigation. The real 
 Antelope Creek is before you, a thin stream, 
 trickling down in many strands over a shelf of 
 greasy clay. You may disembark, for the mud 
 is never deep on the upland. 
 
 The road rises abruptly for a hundred yards, 
 and then keeps a fairly consistent level, follow- 
 ing the sinuosities of a long hill just above the 
 margin of profitable cultivation. Below you lies 
 the Antelope valley, broad enough for a suc- 
 cession of good farms that pretend to match the 
 bottom land in fertility, at least on their choicest 
 acres near the stream. These are the home- 
 steads of Civil War veterans, contented old men 
 enjoying a twofold prosperity from the rising 
 price of corn and meat and the increasing liber- 
 ality of pension legislation. Gradually the valley 
 grows narrower and the cornfields tilt toward 
 the sky-line. Germans live here and other im- 
 migrant homesteaders, thriftily trading their 
 lives for minute improvements in the thin soil. 
 At last the road finds the valley no longer worth
 
 The Meed of a Brute 147 
 
 following; it turns resolutely to the left and 
 mounts a saddleback hill, from which the way- 
 farer gains a profitless vista of hill above hill, 
 to the faint horizon. These are the estates of 
 the men yet to come. In the autumn fire sweeps 
 over the slopes, offering a few hours of splendor 
 and smoke in recompense for the blackness that 
 is to reign until May save when the snow flies. 
 In summer thin blades of grass clothe the hills 
 scantily, and the compass plant puts forth its 
 pronged leaves, pointing futilely to the true 
 north. 
 
 Just before you leave the valley you observe 
 at the bank of the dwindling stream a little hut 
 almost weathered into the landscape. The 
 walls are of prairie sod, with an unsymmetrical 
 opening for a door and another for a window; 
 the poles supporting the sod roof protrude and 
 slant upward as if giving way in the middle. 
 This was the home of Rasmus Keiser and his 
 faithful wife Trina, the last ripple of immigra- 
 tion into the Antelope valley. Trina was one 
 of those woman you don't really see if 
 you deliberately look at them, which you feel 
 you have no right to do. Effaced, weathered, 
 protectively colored, I'm not sure which, she
 
 The Meed of a Brute 
 
 was very thin and frail, and breathed her 
 words instead of voicing them. I think her 
 eyes were blue and her hair yellow under 
 gray. 
 
 Rasmus you couldn't help seeing. He was 
 enormous, with offensively prominent milk-blue 
 eyes, and a disorderly beard, garishly red but 
 trimmed at the temples with white. There was 
 no remark so unimportant but he would put the 
 full force of his cavernous lungs behind it. He 
 was a brute and a bully, and prided himself that 
 through all his life he had whipped every boy 
 or man who had dared to show fight. Every 
 Saturday he walked four miles to town to spend 
 the night in the saloon, where he held an arm- 
 chair as his fort, drinking hugely and glaring 
 about for a possible enemy. Sometimes when 
 the room was full of rowdies and one appeared 
 to be egging another on, Rasmus would rise and 
 reel heavily about the room, by way of temp- 
 tation. A newcomer, encouraged by thought of 
 easy victory, would jolt against him and lively 
 moments would follow. If his victim succumbed 
 too easily, Rasmus was likely to make out a 
 charge of conspiracy against the whole crowd. 
 Some would make good their exit, but for the
 
 The Meed of a Brute 149 
 
 rest Rasmus would " cord them up," to use his 
 own woodman's phrase. 
 
 With the rising of the sun Rasmus would 
 stow a pint bottle in his pocket and set out with 
 long strides for home. Not a sign would be in 
 his gait of the raw alcohol in his veins. But 
 once he reached the point in the road above his 
 house he would put his hands to his mouth and 
 roar: " Trina! 3 eg er fuld!" Then he would lie 
 down in the middle of the road. 
 
 Trina would run panting up the slope, and 
 after supreme efforts would get him on his feet. 
 Then followed a slow progress down the path, 
 Rasmus swaying from side to side like a top- 
 heavy ship, Trina exerting all her strength and 
 agility and practised art to prevent an overturn. 
 Sometimes she failed, and both went down 
 heavily among the sandburs, Rasmus roaring 
 reproaches and Trina breathing apologies. Oc- 
 casionally a passing neighbor volunteered assist- 
 ance. I did so once. But I got a glance from 
 Rasmus, and remembering the " cording-up " 
 process, desisted. 
 
 Rasmus was a public scandal, and we discussed 
 him thoroughly whenever we met. " It's a pity 
 somebody doesn't kill him," was our usual con-
 
 150 The Meed of a Brute 
 
 elusion. And that is just what in the end some- 
 body did. Rasmus attacked one newcomer too 
 many and got pistol bullets in exchange for 
 blows. The rowdies carried him home. And 
 Trina went mad. We tried to get her away 
 from the wretched hut, but she wouldn't leave 
 it. All summer she sat in her doorway moaning, 
 or on the prickly turf of the hill above, where 
 Rasmus had been buried. 
 
 It was my privilege one September morning 
 to convey Mrs. Barton, the president of the Wil- 
 liams County Equal Suffrage League, over the 
 Antelope Creek road to an upland village meet- 
 ing. As the event was still fresh, I narrated the 
 tale of Rasmus and Trina. 
 
 " I want to see her," said Mrs. Barton. 
 
 " There she is now," I said, pointing to a mo- 
 tionless seated figure at the point of the hill. 
 
 As we approached Trina looked up vacantly, 
 as though we were part of the procession of 
 cloud shadows pursuing one another over the 
 face of the field. Mrs. Barton offered her hand, 
 but Trina made a deprecating gesture. Her 
 hands were yellow with the soil. 
 
 " It is too cold for you here on this hill," said 
 Mrs. Barton.
 
 The Meed of a Brute 151 
 
 "Forme? No," breathed Trina. " It is too 
 cold for Rasmus. This is a dreadful country, so 
 black, so cold. It is dreadful to live in, but to 
 die in, it is terrible. Over there it is not hard 
 to die. The ground is full of them, since old 
 time young men and girls, parents and little 
 children, noble ladies, princes, kings. They have 
 gone the road, and it is not so lonely." 
 
 Trina's consciousness no longer included us. 
 She had returned to her work of crushing the 
 little hard clods to a fine powder. 
 
 " That is the way women used to be," I said 
 apologetically as we descended the hill. 
 
 " Used to be ! " exclaimed Mrs. Barton indig- 
 nantly. " They are now and always will be." 
 
 " But I told you he was a brute and beat her." 
 
 " You men of to-day don't beat your wives, it 
 is true," said Mrs. Barton. " A woman has to 
 matter a lot to a man before he will beat her."
 
 XII 
 
 On Land and Sea 
 
 THE express was pulling out of the station. 
 I had run through the headlines of the 
 Evening Post, and had decided that the text 
 promised nothing worth poring over in the dim 
 light of the smoking car. And so I fell to study- 
 ing the shoulders and heads of the two young 
 men in the next seat. One was in uniform with 
 sleeve adorned with jolly red chevrons and a 
 wreath and an eagle in white. His well-shaped 
 head, close clipped, crowned with handsome cap, 
 turned incessantly in little quick movements of 
 general awareness and curiosity. The other 
 young man sat quite motionless, rather slouched 
 and inanimate, but there was something about 
 the contour of his hat and the fit of his coat 
 collar that suggested a consciousness of personal 
 superiority. 
 
 As the conductor took up the tickets the sailor 
 spoke. 
 
 " I see you get out at Baintree. Live there? " 
 152
 
 On Land and Sea 153 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " So do I. That is, I did before I went into 
 the navy." 
 
 The civilian remained silent. 
 
 "Are you in business at Baintree?" persisted 
 the sailor. 
 
 " No. I'm attending college." 
 
 "In the city?" 
 
 " No, up state. I'm a junior at Cornell. I'll 
 graduate next year, if the draft doesn't take 
 me." 
 
 "What do they study there?" 
 
 " Oh, it all depends on your couise. I am 
 studying mostly economics." 
 
 "What is that?" 
 
 " Well, it's about the tariff, and prices and 
 such things." 
 
 " Oh. Do you like it there? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "Do you have any fun?" 
 
 " I should say we do. You see, we have to 
 attend classes in the morning most of the time, 
 but in the afternoon we can study or do any- 
 thing we like work in the gym or play hockey 
 or go on the toboggan slide. Say! that's some 
 fun ! And in the spring we do a lot of canoeing
 
 154 On Land and Sea 
 
 on the lake. Fine lake, but pretty dangerous. 
 Every spring some students get drowned there. 
 One year there were six some of the bodies 
 weren't recovered for weeks. You wouldn't 
 think that lake was so dangerous." 
 
 " Oh," said the sailor respectfully. 
 
 " How long have you been in the navy? " 
 
 " Six years." 
 
 "Like it?" 
 
 " I liked it at first, when I had a regular ship. 
 I don't care for it now. It's what you might 
 call a dog's life. You're put on a ship, say for 
 Archangel. When you get there you report to 
 the American consul and he gives you passage 
 on a ship bound for Bristol or Brest. Maybe 
 she doesn't sail for two or three weeks, and all 
 you can do is hang around. Archangel that's 
 a rotten town for you ! Well, when you get 
 down to England or France you look up another 
 American consul, and he puts you on a ship 
 bound for home, and when you get here you 
 find orders to go out on a ship bound for Italy. 
 I got in this morning. As like as not I'll get 
 orders to sail to-morrow." 
 
 The collegian eyed the sailor with awakening 
 curiosity.
 
 On Land and Sea 155 
 
 "What do you do? What kind of work do 
 they give you? " 
 
 " I don't do any work," said the sailor. " I 
 just command the gun crew." 
 
 "Did you ever get any submarines?" 
 
 " No. But they damn near got me. First, 
 when we were coming home on the H . I 
 was below, and Lord, we got a bump : the ship 
 just stood still and shook. I ran up to the bridge, 
 but she wasn't even listing. There was a hole 
 in her side seventeen feet across, about all of it 
 above water line. We sent out an S.O.S. and 
 decided to stay by the ship, but the civilians just 
 went wild. They were Spaniards, most of them. 
 A dozen of them got away in a boat and capsized 
 all drowned. Pretty soon another ship came 
 along and we got off all right. One man went 
 crazy; locked himself in his room so we had to 
 break in with an ax. He fought us off with a 
 stool but finally we got him under control." 
 
 "Gee! What did he think?" 
 
 " Lord knows. But the other time it was a 
 close shave. It was just getting daylight. I 
 was on the bridge, talking to the mate, and I 
 saw the torpedo coming. It was mighty rough, 
 and you'd have said that torpedo would jump
 
 156 On Land and Sea 
 
 right out of the water. I thought she'd miss us, 
 but she didn't. Now you know we had signals; 
 at that time six whistles meant ' Submarine in 
 sight,' and four whistles meant * All hands leave 
 ship.' When the torpedo struck it keeled me 
 over and I was so rattled I didn't know what I 
 was doing. I gave four whistles and then three 
 and then another three and then four. And the 
 mate said, * I guess that'll do ; nobody knows 
 what in hell your signals mean, but they'll know 
 pretty damn soon.' I ran down to the captain's 
 cabin to wake him up. He was sitting on the 
 edge of his berth stretching. ' Better get dressed, 
 Cap'n,' I said. 'Heigh-ho ' he said and stretched 
 some more. ' Guess I better.' ' They got us 
 this time, Cap'n.' ' Heigh-ho. So they did.' 
 
 " Then I ran down to my berth to get my 
 life preserver and my automatic. You know the 
 petty officers are supposed to carry pistols and 
 I didn't want to lose it. But I couldn't get the 
 door open. Everything in the whole ship was 
 jammed by the explosion. And while I was 
 pulling at the door the lights went out and I 
 thought, I'd better get to hell out of this. So 
 I ran up to the bridge, and passed the captain, 
 who was still stretching, he was that sleepy, and
 
 On Land and Sea 157 
 
 I said, ' Cap'n, we'd better get off,' and he said, 
 ' You better go, I won't yet awhile.' I found 
 they had a boat swinging clear with thirteen men 
 in it and I jumped in and the mate ordered them 
 to pay out the ropes. 
 
 " The ship was listing fast to the other side, 
 and we dropped down in a hurry and as we went 
 down we hit the head of a poor devil caught in 
 his room and trying to get out by a port hole. 
 Busted it right off. When we'd got about to 
 the water the painter stuck and the ship's list 
 was lifting us. ' Bust it with the ax,' said the 
 mate, and I hit the painter and busted her off 
 and we dropped into the water and nearly cap- 
 sized. Now, the cook had overslept himself, 
 and was coming down the painter hand over 
 hand, and when I busted it off he let go and 
 dropped right down on us broke a piece off the 
 edge of the boat. We thought we were going 
 over that time, but she righted herself and we 
 fished the cook out of the water. 
 
 " ' We'll shove off,' said the mate. ' Nobody 
 else is coming down this side : you can damn 
 near see her keel.' So we pulled away from her 
 and when we were about two hundred yards 
 out, down she went. The mate pulled out his
 
 158 On Land and Sea 
 
 watch. ' Four minutes and eight seconds,' he 
 said. About noon a French ship came along and 
 picked us up." 
 
 "How many were lost?" asked the student. 
 
 " Sixty-eight. There was another boat got 
 off, but she capsized. The water was mighty 
 rough, you see." 
 
 The student looked out of the window, visibly 
 overcome by a sense of the incomprehensible. 
 The sailor's head resumed its quick movements 
 of awareness and curiosity. 
 
 " Say," he said, " in that school where you go, 
 are there any girls?" 
 
 " Oh yes," said the student languidly. " There 
 are some. But most of the fellows don't have 
 anything to do with them." 
 
 "Why not?" demanded the sailor, turning 
 his handsome, astonished face full upon the 
 student. 
 
 " Well, you see, it isn't exactly the best form," 
 said the student gropingly. 
 
 "Not the best form?" repeated the sailor, a 
 veil of bewilderment rapidly shading into dis- 
 gust shrouding his eyes. " Oh! " 
 
 The student again turned to the window, in 
 ostensible indifference, but soon his cheek began
 
 On Land and Sea 159 
 
 to flush as the realization of the sailor's con- 
 tempt penetrated his consciousness. At the first 
 stop, where the passengers thinned out, the 
 student betook himself to another seat.
 
 B 
 
 XIII 
 
 The Lynching in Bass County 
 
 ASS COUNTY is mostly rough land. At 
 one corner it dips down into the river bot- 
 tom, and here you see a few good farms, owned 
 by the merchants and doctors and lawyers of 
 Coxville and worked by Bohemian tenants. 
 Coxville is the county seat and the only railway 
 station in the county. It is just at the edge of 
 the bottom, where a half dozen narrow valleys 
 spread out like fingers into the upland. Motor 
 parties from way across the state sometimes 
 come chugging up the winding valley roads. 
 The scenery is fine, the ladies say: we're lucky 
 to live in so lovely a spot. But scenery is mighty 
 hard to work. It doesn't even make good pas- 
 ture, and we've got to live somehow. 
 
 Coxville, the tourists say, is one of the pret- 
 tiest towns in the state. It is certainly pretty, 
 with its shady streets on the flat and big brick 
 houses planted on the spurs of the hills above. 
 But Coxville is a den of thieves. There are five 
 
 160
 
 The Lynching in Bass County 161 
 
 general stores all working in cahoots. Every 
 one of them has two sets of scales, one weighing 
 small for your butter and chickens, the other 
 weighing big for the merchant's sugar and coffee 
 and dried fruit. After they've skinned you on 
 the weight, they skin you on the price. They've 
 divided us farmers up among them. My trade, 
 for instance, belongs to Miller's store. If I get 
 mad and go to another store, I get even worse 
 treatment than Miller was giving me. That's 
 what they call a gentleman's agreement in Cox- 
 ville. There are three stock buyers mighty 
 good friends they are, though they make a great 
 noise about competition. They pay the same 
 prices, about a dollar a hundred too low, if you 
 figure out the Chicago market reports. There 
 is a bank in Coxville, but it doesn't do business 
 with farmers. It lends money at seven per cent 
 to old Peter Hammond, who lets us have it for 
 two per cent a month, and makes us pay a bonus 
 for getting it. 
 
 Oh yes, Coxville is a pretty village. They 
 live well down there, and we half starve up on 
 our hill farms. If they have a job of hard work, 
 they hire some of our boys to do it and pay back 
 a little of the money they sweat out of us. They
 
 1 62 The Lynching in Bass County 
 
 take our girls for housework and make servants 
 out of them girls of real American stock, not 
 Bohunks but we're so poor we have to stand 
 it. And they don't take too good care of them. 
 Every now and then a girl comes crying home 
 and some young blood from Coxville goes off 
 for a tour around the world. More than once 
 I've been at secret meetings at Lon Baker's 
 shack, where we figured on going down and 
 cleaning out the whole nest. But we never did 
 anything. 
 
 " We're serfs, that's what we are ! " Lon al- 
 ways declared. " They take our crops, they take 
 our work, they take our girls. And we just sit 
 around and jaw." 
 
 Lon was a mighty good speaker, and well read. 
 He took the Appeal to Reason, and about knew 
 by heart everything that was in it. But no- 
 body took much stock in Lon. When we came 
 away from his secret meeting somebody was 
 sure to say : " Hell of a place, Coxville. They'll 
 even take Lon's crops, Lon's work, and Lon's 
 girls." Then everybody would laugh and side 
 with Coxville. You see, Lon never had any 
 crops to speak of, and scarcely ever did a lick of 
 work. And you ought to see Lon's girls! Of
 
 The Lynching in Bass County 163 
 
 all the skinny, freckle-faced, red-haired, shriek- 
 ing cross-patches But poor things, they 
 didn't pick the father they were to take after. 
 
 We grumbled and ranted, but that was all, 
 until we got track of what was going on down 
 at the courthouse. The county offices, of course, 
 had always belonged to Coxville. There was a 
 Republican clique and a Democratic clique, and 
 every four or six years, we'd put one clique out 
 and the other in, and precious little good it did. 
 Taxes kept going higher, and we got to wonder- 
 ing what in thunder became of the money. 
 There never was any to repair the bridges, and 
 finally we had to ford the streams when we drove 
 to town. The county was always years behind 
 in its school money, and when we served on 
 juries we were paid in warrants we had to dis- 
 count with Pete Hammond at sixty cents on the 
 dollar. Lon Baker went all over the county get- 
 ting information about the taxes collected he 
 never paid his and calculated that thousands 
 and thousands of dollars just disappeared. At 
 elections the clique that was out would yell for 
 an investigation, but if they got in they never 
 found anything. Finally we made up an inde- 
 pendent party and elected a farmer treasurer,
 
 164 The Lynching in Bass County 
 
 and got an expert accountant to go over the 
 books. 
 
 The expert worked for six weeks and found 
 the retiring treasurer, Dr. Williams, about a 
 thousand dollars short. The doctor shelled out 
 and moved to have his bond released, but we 
 weren't satisfied. The doctor had a good salary, 
 eighteen hundred a year, but Lon did some fig- 
 uring and just about proved that the doctor 
 spent a lot more than that. After he was elected 
 treasurer, the doctor, who was nearly sixty, had 
 married a young wife. She was a great beauty, 
 and Lord, she knew how to make money fly! 
 She kept her house furnished like a palace and 
 always full of company. I knew something 
 about what was going on there because my 
 sweetheart worked for her. Lucy had to wear 
 a black dress and a foolish little lace cap that 
 made me mad whenever I thought of it. But 
 Lucy adored Mrs. Williams, and Lucy's got a 
 lot of good sense. 
 
 Well, we made up our minds that the expert 
 had been bought off, so we got a new one, and 
 Lon stood at his shoulder for a month. There 
 wasn't any whitewashing this time. The doc- 
 tor's accounts were over forty thousand dollars
 
 The Lynching in Bass County 165 
 
 short. Of course he demanded a new investi- 
 gation, but we got him indicted for embezzle- 
 ment. The superior judge was an old friend 
 of the doctor's and quashed the indictment: we 
 had to start over again. Finally we got him to 
 trial, but somehow they managed to hang the 
 jury. We started a new prosecution, but every- 
 thing went against us. Our lawyers gave our 
 case away, the judge ruled against us, our wit- 
 nesses went back on their testimony. It was 
 plain, the doctor still had some of that forty 
 thousand, and we'd never get him till it was all 
 spent. Down in Coxville everybody was talking 
 compromise. If we'd let the doctor off, his 
 friends would pay back ten or fifteen thousand, 
 and the county would be saved the cost of years 
 of litigation. 
 
 This was more than we could stand. All over 
 the county the farmers were holding meetings: 
 what they talked of doing to Coxville I wouldn't 
 dare to say. Lon Baker spoke at every meet- 
 ing: what he said sounded like mighty good 
 sense, too. What was at stake, now, Lon ar- 
 gued, was not just money, but the Law itself, 
 the Law that was there before courts were cre- 
 ated and that would remain after the courts had
 
 166 The Lynching in Bass County 
 
 rotted away. The Law, he said, didn't need the 
 courts: any body of freemen had the right and 
 duty to take the Law into their own hands when 
 the courts had failed. Our court had failed and 
 it was time to act. 
 
 One day the word passed around to be at 
 Ashton's mill about a mile above Coxville, at ten 
 o'clock at night. Lucy had been getting sus- 
 picious and insisted on my passing the evening 
 at her house, but I managed to get away. There 
 were already fifty or sixty men at the mill when 
 I got there. Lon Baker had a bunch of pine 
 knots for torches: popular justice, he said, had 
 been executed in old days by torch light. Most 
 of the other men carried lanterns. 
 
 Nothing had been said about what we were 
 going to do, but there were a lot of guns in the 
 crowd and several men had brought ropes. Lon 
 had a rope and seemed rather put out that there 
 were others. They might arouse suspicion, he 
 said, as if the whole county hadn't been in the 
 secret. We waited until there were about a hun- 
 dred of us and then struck out over the hill, to 
 get to the doctor's house without passing 
 through the village. We walked fast and talked 
 mighty little. Lon was in his glory, leading a
 
 The Lynching in Bass County 167 
 
 body of Anglo-Saxon freemen to the defense 
 of the Law. So he put it. But the rest of us 
 felt rather sick of our job. Every man shaded 
 his face as well as he could with his hat; if the 
 light of a lantern flashed on him he seemed to 
 dodge. You see, the doctor was a pleasant old 
 fellow we had all chatted with. The Law had 
 to be vindicated but we'd rather have vindicated 
 it on someone else. 
 
 We put out our lights, except Lon's torch, 
 and scattered in groups among the blooming 
 lilacs on the doctor's lawn. My post was near 
 the parlor window. It was wide open and I 
 could see the doctor sitting in an armchair. To 
 see him for the first time, you'd say he was 
 about forty : anyway he was straight and quick, 
 smooth-shaven and hardly gray. He was rather 
 pale this night, and looked tired. Mrs. Williams 
 was at the piano, very fine and aristocratic. She 
 certainly was a beauty ! She seemed to be happy ; 
 anyway the music she was playing was very 
 sweet and gay. At that moment most of us 
 were for backing out, I believe. But Lon went 
 up to the door and gave it a terrible thump. 
 Mrs. Williams sprang from her music stool: the 
 doctor rose slowly and stepped to the door. As
 
 1 68 The Lynching in Bass County 
 
 he opened it everybody got out of the path of 
 white light everybody but Lon, who waved 
 his sputtering torch. 
 
 " Good evening, Lon," the doctor said quietly. 
 He looked around rather sharply and he must 
 have got glimpses of the men among the lilac 
 bushes. If he was uneasy though, he didn't 
 show it. "What can I do for you?" 
 
 " We represent the Law," said Lon, making 
 his voice as deep as a drum. " You can bribe 
 the courts, but you can't beat the Law." 
 
 "Oh dear, what is the matter?" Mrs. Wil- 
 liams appeared beside the doctor in the door- 
 way and clutched his arm anxiously. 
 
 "You can't beat the Law," said Lon again. 
 " You have stolen the people's money. You 
 have suborned witnesses and bribed the courts. 
 You thought the Law was dead. But it has 
 raised us up, Anglo-Saxon freemen, to execute 
 its decrees." 
 
 " One moment, gentlemen, and we can ar- 
 range our business to your satisfaction. My 
 dear, will you please go inside? This is politics, 
 and we may get a little rough." 
 
 " Yes, get her out of sight," said Lon. " She 
 was the cause of it all. You stole our money
 
 The Lynching in Bass County 169 
 
 to make her better than our wives and daugh- 
 ters." 
 
 "I won't go," said Mrs. Williams, "I can't 
 understand what this is all about." 
 
 " Oh, you can't? " said Lon. " You can't un- 
 derstand that we're sore about the forty thou- 
 sand you made him steal?" 
 
 Mrs. Williams first went white and then red. 
 " I made him steal? " Nobody had ever spoken 
 to her like that in all her life. 
 
 " Suppose we leave the women out of this," 
 said the doctor. " It's true. I took the county's 
 money. I'm ready to take the consequences." 
 
 "You took the county's money?" Mrs. Wil- 
 liams exclaimed. " But you said it wasn't true. 
 You said it was all politics." 
 
 " Yes," said the doctor. 
 
 "But why?" Mrs. Williams seemed be- 
 wildered. Lon laughed, but the rest of us just 
 felt sorry for her. That kind of a woman never 
 thinks where the money comes from, I sup- 
 pose. 
 
 "Why?" the doctor repeated. "You knew 
 we weren't living on my salary." 
 
 " But I thought I thought you had " 
 
 " You thought he had money," said Lon.
 
 170 The Lynching in Bass County 
 
 " You married him for his money and he didn't 
 have any. So he had to steal some." 
 
 " It isn't true," Mrs. Williams took her hand 
 from the doctor's arm. " You know it isn't 
 true." 
 
 " Of course," said the doctor, " but if it were 
 I'm an old man, my dear, and it's precious 
 little I had to give you." 
 
 Mrs. Williams looked down at her white 
 breast with the twinkling necklace, her pink 
 dress and heavy lace. You could see what she 
 was thinking. For all her beauty, she'd been 
 bought, bought with stolen money. She knew 
 that was what we were all thinking. She put 
 up her chin, turned round and walked swiftly 
 back into the house. She seemed to feel so in- 
 sulted and ashamed that there wasn't any room 
 left in her mind for the doctor's troubles. She 
 was deserting the doctor, and deserting him for 
 good; there wasn't a man of us who couldn't 
 see that. The doctor saw it all right, too. Poor 
 old devil, all his smart youthfulness dropped 
 from him. All at once you noticed how wrin- 
 kled, how gray he was. So that's what it means 
 to be old ! I'd never realized that before. Maybe 
 my Lucy's arms aren't so white and smooth and
 
 The Lynching in Bass County 171 
 
 tapering as those I just saw, but they come free, 
 if I do pick a crow's living out of my hill farm. 
 And I'd bet my life, if I were caught stealing, 
 Lucy would stand by me. That's what it means 
 to be young. 
 
 " Well, gentlemen," said the doctor wearily, 
 " why don't you go ahead? " 
 
 " Yes, why don't we? " cried Lon, waving his 
 torch. 
 
 But a huge, husky voiced farmer I didn't 
 know pushed himself in front of Lon. 
 
 " Doctor, we're tired of bein' robbed. I don't 
 know as I blame you. I reckon we'd all steal 
 for a .woman, leastwise such a pretty one. But 
 it's got to stop. Next man we catch stealing 
 from this county gets the rope." 
 
 " Next man ! " yelled Lon. But it was plain 
 that everybody wanted to compromise on the 
 " next man." We felt the doctor had got about 
 what was coming to him, anyway. Already 
 numbers of men were moving toward the gate 
 or leaping the picket fence. 
 
 I got away as quickly as I could, wanting to 
 avoid Lon, who lives above me on the same 
 road. But Lon was walking fast too in his rage, 
 and overtook me half a mile out of town.
 
 172 The Lynching in Bass County 
 
 " There's no Law left in this country ! " he ex- 
 claimed bitterly. " The Law is dead. We're 
 only serfs. Not a drop of free Anglo-Saxon 
 blood in us." 
 
 There was something in what Lon was saying. 
 The Law was dead, but I wasn't mourning. Up 
 a hillside to the right there was a light burning. 
 It was late, but Lucy'd like to know everything 
 was all right; no doubt she was worried. So I 
 let Lon get a little ahead of me in the darkness 
 and slipped away on a side path, glad to hear 
 the last of his ranting: "The Law is dead. 
 We're serfs, plain serfs."
 
 XIV 
 Ivan the Terrible 
 
 IVAN he was christened because he was born 
 in the days of universal enthusiasm when 
 the Russian Ivan rose in his might and crushed 
 to atoms the maleficent throne of the Romanoffs. 
 " The Terrible " means only that his parents are 
 young and ultra-modern and malign their off- 
 spring where the parents of old time bragged 
 about them. Maligning is more piquant; and 
 then too but this is psychology of the uncon- 
 scious it wards off the evil eye. For himself, 
 Ivan is just a wee mite of pink flesh and blue 
 eyes and turned-up nose, sparse blond hair and 
 a rather pathetic desire to please, as you can tell 
 from the soft glow with which his eyes meet 
 yours, if you know babies. His mother doesn't, 
 and that Ivan seems to understand, for all the 
 brevity of his tale of days. I have often ob- 
 served on his face a thin veil of infantile despair, 
 as one after another of his devices for pleasing 
 fall flat. 
 
 173
 
 174 Ivan the Terrible 
 
 "Ivan, Ivan, don't do that!" I've been 
 tempted to cry out when I've observed him try- 
 ing on his mother the art of rolling up his eyes 
 to show all white. Doubtless that has worked 
 on the Negro maid at the day nursery. But the 
 effect on his mother is to produce a little shiver. 
 That trick doesn't go well with a pink turned-up 
 nose. His mother might take the will for the 
 deed, you say. Yes: but she doesn't know 
 babies. 
 
 " How preposterous ! " I hear you murmur. 
 " She has a baby : ergo, she knows babies." 
 That, I admit, is the orthodox lore. With the 
 birth of her first child, a vast volume of knowl- 
 edge that she never before had a chance of 
 acquiring is supposed to descend upon the 
 mother. But in the face of universal opinion I 
 deny that there is any evidence whatever in sup- 
 port of the theory of the miraculous afflatus of 
 knowledge. The first baby and any baby, for 
 the matter of that is a little stranger, under ob- 
 ligation to win his mother's heart if he would 
 be happy, as the wandering youth of folk tales 
 is under the obligation to win the heart of his 
 princess. It is hard to say which has the more 
 difficult task, but there is no doubt that the baby
 
 Ivan the Terrible 175 
 
 has the advantage of a better technique, the 
 more effective because it is erroneously assumed 
 to be unconscious. The wandering youth usually 
 failed; the baby usually succeeds. But not al- 
 ways, and Ivan had not succeeded. Of course 
 his mother liked him, but she had retained her 
 liberty. And from Ivan's point of view, that was 
 failure. 
 
 . Let it not be rashly assumed that Ivan is 
 a stupid and incompetent baby. What has 
 thwarted his enterprise is a mighty social force, 
 the Economic Independence of Woman. Theo- 
 dosia Garnett, Ivan's mother, is convinced that 
 there is no majesty and no might save in the 
 Independent Pay Envelope. Therefore for al- 
 most a year now, ever since Ivan was a month 
 old, Theodosia has gone forth with her husband 
 every morning on the 8:14 from the suburban 
 village where I also live. Ivan spends his days in 
 the efficient nursery conducted by Mrs. Hols- 
 worthy. The day nursery charges are twenty 
 dollars a week, and Theodosia earns twenty-five. 
 Her commutation is $9.67 monthly and her 
 lunches must cost fifteen dollars. Calculate for 
 yourself the net economic gain due to Economic 
 Independence. One day on the train in I started
 
 176 Ivan the Terrible 
 
 gleefully to make the calculation for Theodosia's 
 benefit. But Mr. Garnett trod on my foot. Usu- 
 ally when I debate with Theodosia about Ivan 
 Mr. Garnett observes strict neutrality. The ad- 
 vantage lies with her, for she is a mother and 
 what am I that I should presume to know any- 
 thing about babies? But I have succeeded in 
 creating the impression that I know economics; 
 therefore Mr. Garnett will not permit the debate 
 to enter the economic field where it might be 
 dangerous. 
 
 " Of course it figures out absurdly," he ad- 
 mitted to me over the 'phone after we had ar- 
 rived at our several offices. " But she makes 
 herself think it pays. It's a principle with her 
 to believe that. So I have to believe it, and you 
 will, too, if you're going to ride in the same car 
 with us." 
 
 Theodosia works in a department store. 
 That, too, is principle. Economic Independence 
 of Woman will get nowhere, she says, if it is 
 confined to the fine arts and the higher profes- 
 sions. It must make its way among the masses 
 of women who can't expect to do anything but 
 take their places in trade and industry. In idle 
 hours I sometimes go through the department
 
 Ivan the Terrible 177 
 
 store aisles just to see what function in the con- 
 crete Theodosia is performing. The last time I 
 was there I found her presiding over a sale of 
 cretonnes the most terrible cretonnes that can 
 be found even in this day of designs originating 
 for the most part in padded cells. I saw her 
 calmly measure out an infinity of horror for a 
 wan husband, by fatal error intrusted with dis- 
 cretion in the selection of household dra- 
 peries. That cretonne haunts me still. Black 
 ground; interlacing japonica stems; leaves of 
 Paris green ; flowers of London purple ; pea- 
 cocks outlined in white, with plumes of vitriol 
 blue. 
 
 " So this is economic independence," I re- 
 marked to Theodosia in the interval of custom- 
 ers. " Your firm took that poor citizen's money 
 away from him and slipped a curse on him be- 
 sides. Your economic independence comes out 
 of the booty." 
 
 " I'm so glad I got rid of that cretonne," re- 
 plied Theodosia calmly. " There's only a rem- 
 nant left and somebody else will have to handle 
 it." 
 
 " You admit, then, that it was robbery," I said 
 severely.
 
 178 Ivan the Terrible 
 
 Theodosia laughed. " It had been manufac- 
 tured, so it had to be sold. I sold it. That's all 
 there is to it." 
 
 On Labor Day I was sauntering about my 
 yard, fretting over the ravages of the scale on 
 my neglected pear tree when Theodosia and her 
 husband stopped at my gate. 
 
 " Come along," called Theodosia. " We're go- 
 ing over to the day nursery to call on Ivan. 
 Maybe when you see it you'll change your mind 
 about it." 
 
 The day nursery is a quaint old colonial house, 
 deep in the shade of ancient elms, just the kind 
 of place that is supposed to appeal to babies. 
 The door was opened by a harassed Czecho- 
 slovak or Jugo-Slav maid. She stared at us in 
 bewilderment; plainly she did not recognize the 
 Garnetts. 
 
 " New maid," I remarked as we seated our- 
 selves in the " tastefully decorated " parlor, try- 
 ing to ignore the shrill chorus of waitings from 
 the rear of the house. 
 
 " Yes," said Theodosia, " Mrs. Holsworthy has 
 no end of trouble keeping her maids." 
 
 " Labor turnover one thousand per cent," I 
 translated. " Poor Ivan. No sooner does he
 
 Ivan the Terrible 179 
 
 learn how to win one of them than she leaves. 
 That accounts for his uncertain technique." 
 
 " Technique, technique," exclaimed Theo- 
 dosia impatiently. " Will you never get over 
 your fantastic theory of babies? But here comes 
 Mrs. Holsworthy." 
 
 " Good-morning, dear parents," sounded a 
 voice of clover honey. Theodosia presented me. 
 Mrs. Holsworthy offered me a smooth, limp 
 hand. She is a large woman with a brow noth- 
 ing could ruffle, eyes vacuously serene, brown 
 hair done most sedately, brown and most sedate 
 dress. Just the type of woman that bachelor 
 men and economically independent young 
 women describe, God knows why, as a 
 " motherly woman." 
 
 " I hear music in the nursery," said Mrs. Hols- 
 worthy sweetly. " Precious little souls, it's good 
 for their lungs." She held up a plump forefinger. 
 " If you will be very still, dear parents, you may 
 come in and see them." She smiled winningly 
 upon me. " You may come too, if a mere man 
 knows how to be good." 
 
 The nursery was a long room with white 
 enameled walls, white linoleum floors, blue cur- 
 tains, blue shades, half drawn. Very aseptic, evi-
 
 180 Ivan the Terrible 
 
 dently. There were eight white enamel cribs, 
 each with its baby howling itself to a ruddy hue. 
 In the act of crying all babies look much alike. 
 Left to myself I could not have told which was 
 Ivan. For guidance I glanced surreptitiously at 
 Theodosia : mother instinct and all that. No, 
 Theodosia was just as uncertain as I was. But 
 Mrs. Holsworthy came to our relief. 
 
 " Here we have our dear little Ivan. Wonder- 
 ful little man. What a splendid voice he has! " 
 
 Maybe it was a splendid voice, but it was 
 growing hoarse. Whatever the occasion of his 
 woe, it was plain that he had had enough of it. 
 All he wanted was the slightest excuse for laugh- 
 ing. Just a word, just a pat on his little cheek 
 would have sufficed. I glanced narrowly at the 
 motherly Mrs. Holsworthy. Not the least indi- 
 cation that she had any perception of Ivan's 
 state of mind. It was as clear as day that she 
 never came among her charges except when 
 there were visitors. For she moved serenely 
 among the despairing babies like a Homeric god- 
 dess above the desperate slaughters of men. 
 
 "Isn't she wonderful? " cried Theodosia ec- 
 statically as we issued from the gates of the day 
 nursery.
 
 Ivan the Terrible 
 
 " She is an alligator in disguise," I replied sav- 
 agely. , 
 
 Mr. Garnett coughed warningly but my opin- 
 ions would out. 
 
 " She ought to be put in charge of baby rab- 
 bits. If you spoil one batch, there's another be- 
 fore you can begin to regret." 
 
 " Tell me, please," said Theodosia in a tense, 
 even tone. " Do you like to be disagreeable? Or 
 do you come by it through heredity? " 
 
 A fortnight later Mr. Garnett called at my 
 office. 
 
 " I've missed you on the train the last few 
 days. Well, Theodosia has thrown up her 
 job." 
 
 "What?" I exclaimed. "How did it hap- 
 pen?" 
 
 " To put it in your terms, Ivan won her, at 
 last." 
 
 "Does she consider it her duty?" I inquired 
 cautiously. 
 
 " No. She considers it a vice. But she just 
 can't help it." 
 
 " It looks as if it would last, then," I reflected. 
 
 " Of course it will last. You can't drag her 
 away." Mr. Garnett rose to go. " Come and
 
 1 82 Ivan the Terrible 
 
 see us. She will expect you to know it. But not 
 to notice it." 
 
 The next Sunday afternoon I called on the 
 Garnetts. Theodosia was busy teasing smiles 
 out of Ivan. I talked about the probable length 
 of the war, about reconstruction and whatever 
 else there was that might not indicate that I 
 noticed. 
 
 " I suppose you know I threw up my job," 
 said Theodosia suddenly. 
 
 " Yes," I said. " It was a great blow to 
 me." 
 
 "Did you see what this darling did?" cried 
 Theodosia. " He understood what you said." 
 
 "Understood? " I repeated, mystified. 
 
 " Yes. You said blow and he blew." 
 
 " No ! " I exclaimed. " That was a coinci- 
 dence." 
 
 "Blow, darling!" 
 
 Ivan puckered up his smiling lips. " Whew! " 
 he breathed manfully. 
 
 "I see," I remarked bitterly. "To all my 
 grave philosophy on babies and the Economic 
 Independence of Woman you turned a deaf ear. 
 But this terrible little Ivan had only to acquire 
 the art of blowing, and you were converted."
 
 Ivan the Terrible 183 
 
 " All that grave philosophizing was nothing 
 but words," said Theodosia vindictively. " But 
 when Ivan the Terrible blows " 
 
 " Whew," blew Ivan triumphantly.
 
 w 
 
 XV 
 Carnegied 
 
 HEN Hannis University was first ad- 
 mitted to the benefits of the Carnegie 
 pension fund, there was not a member of the 
 faculty who rejoiced more extravagantly than 
 Professor Bowen. Ten years more of harness, 
 and then liberty! For weeks the professor 
 walked and read and lectured absently, in a 
 dream, a dream of the Seven Hills of Rome and 
 a quiet apartment near the Vatican library. He 
 could already feel the marbly chill of the long 
 corridors, and the quickening of his blood as, late 
 in the afternoon, he would step out into the red 
 Roman sunshine. How rapidly he would trans- 
 form into finished tomes of clean, weighty text 
 and multifarious footnotes all those literary 
 projects, sketched in or just outlined, that had 
 lain dormant for so many years in the drawers of 
 his office desk. But that was ten years ago, and 
 now, as he stood on the threshold of liberty, he 
 hesitated. Retirement he felt sure would be op- 
 
 184
 
 Carnegied 18$ 
 
 tional with him. The university would certainly 
 prefer to keep him in active service. Should he, 
 then, exercise his option? He still wanted his 
 liberty. He still wanted to write his books. But 
 a new problem had arisen to vex him, the prob- 
 lem of his successor. It is one thing to abandon 
 your shoes. That may be very pleasant. It is a 
 quite different thing to behold another standing 
 in them. That is very disagreeable, unless your 
 successor is worthy. 
 
 Now, a worthy successor is dreadfully hard 
 for any man to find. In the last year Professor 
 Bowen had again and again reviewed the quali- 
 fications of the three men holding rank under 
 him. The oldest one was plainly disqualified; he 
 had a mad wife, poor fellow, and his sorrows had 
 played havoc with his scholarship. The next in 
 rank was also disqualified. He had received his 
 training in Germany and had got sundry articles 
 into German Zeitschriften, an honor that had 
 gone to his head and had made him a devoted 
 partisan of the Kaiser. But the third assistant, 
 Professor Jores, was politically correct and do- 
 mestically neutral, being a bachelor, like Pro- 
 fessor Bowen himself. 
 
 Jores was an alumnus of the university, an im-
 
 1 86 Cam eg ted 
 
 portant point in his favor. He had been one of 
 Professor Bowen's first and most brilliant stu- 
 dents, and when he became instructor, he had 
 made it his chief ambition to expound, eluci- 
 date and defend Professor Bowen's system of 
 thought. It must be understood that forty years 
 ago Professor Bowen was a brilliant radical in 
 his branch of learning. In those days the pre- 
 vailing school had striven to make out of this 
 branch a religion of things as they are. The 
 radicals had put all their faith in science, declar- 
 ing their readiness to follow wherever science 
 might lead. The fight between conservatives 
 and radicals was bitter, and Professor Bowen 
 and his disciple Jores kept it up long after all 
 the conservatives had been exterminated. A 
 new battle was now on, between the mechanists 
 and the humanists, but of this conflict Bowen 
 and Jores refused to take cognizance. They 
 were still holding their old entrenchments. 
 
 All this should have made Professor Bowen 
 favor Jores's candidacy for the headship. But 
 Jores was too obviously eager to have the matter 
 settled. He was taking it too much for granted 
 that his chief would retire. He did not even 
 maintain a decent attitude of regret over the
 
 Carnegie J 187 
 
 breaking of the old relation of master and dis- 
 ciple. Plainly Jores thought he could manage 
 the department as well as it had been managed. 
 Doubts naturally arose in Bowen's mind. 
 
 " Jores is a splendid fellow," Professor Bowen 
 began to say to his confidants. " But is he the 
 man to head a department in a great university? 
 I fear not. He is an excellent teacher. In his 
 thirty years of service I have never heard a 
 single word of complaint from the students. 
 But he is utterly devoid of originality. Every 
 idea he has ever had can be traced to its source 
 in other men's thinking." "Other men's?" 
 Professor Bowen put it in the plural out of mod- 
 esty. All his confidants were expected to know 
 very well that Jores had traded exclusively on 
 Bowen's intellectual capital. 
 
 " Vile old ingrate ! " cried Jores, when the 
 charge of lack of originality filtered through to 
 him, as such charges do filter through even the 
 tightest academic septa. And he reflected bit- 
 terly upon the ignominy of the position he had 
 occupied. Had he not fought fiercely for 
 Bowen's doctrines in the home faculty group 
 and at association meetings abroad? Had he 
 not exerted superhuman ingenuity to give con-
 
 1 88 Carnegie d 
 
 tent to Bowen's dogmas even when he knew 
 them to be empty, to make them plausible even 
 when they were clearly wrong? Genial critics 
 had called him Bowen's fidus Achates, and brutal 
 critics had likened the pair of Hannis professors 
 to a bantam hen with a Shanghai chick that re- 
 fuses to be manumitted. The edge of the com- 
 parison was sharpened by the facts of physical 
 appearance, for Bowen was short and stocky, 
 while Jores was tall, lank, and, as the stock 
 breeders say, " growthy." 
 
 At first relations between the two professors 
 remained outwardly cordial, but each seized 
 every opportunity to shoot a poisoned shaft at 
 the other through the fog of faculty gossip. 
 Soon the students began to suspect that there 
 was trouble in the department. Bowen's fa- 
 vorite pupils found themselves receiving harsh 
 treatment and bad grades in Jores's classes. 
 They complained to Bowen, who retaliated by 
 failing two men who were too dear to the heart 
 of Jores. "Either the hen or the chick; never 
 both," was a registration formula that began to 
 circulate among the more canny students. In 
 the end Bowen could not resist the temptation 
 to comment superciliously in his lectures on the
 
 Cam eg led 189 
 
 inelasticity of mind of a certain teacher, whom 
 the students found no difficulty in identifying as 
 Jores. Jores made occasion to warn his stu- 
 dents against sundry terrible fallacies, exploded 
 thirty years ago, but still cherished by certain 
 scholars who had failed to keep abreast of the 
 times. The students were delighted. Men who 
 had never before attended a lecture out of their 
 regular course began to flock to Bowen's and 
 Jores's lecture rooms. The faculty was scandal- 
 ized, but the president's office remained deaf and 
 blind. After something of a scene at Mrs. Har- 
 wood's dinner party, campus hostesses found it 
 wise to adopt the formula, " Either the hen or 
 the chick; never both." The president not only 
 failed to observe this rule, but at a dinner given 
 in honor of Dr. McAndrew, a visiting professor, 
 the president actually seated the enemies side by 
 side. 
 
 The visiting professor was a budding author- 
 ity in the same field in which Bowen and Jores 
 were fighting. He was, as he explained with 
 great vivacity, a champion of the humanistic 
 tendency. Almost the two enemies nudged each 
 other in sympathy. On one thing they were in 
 accord : the humanistic tendency was just one of
 
 190 Cam eg led 
 
 those pathetic fads that arise every generation 
 to suck the chaff of phrase makers away from the 
 wheat of sound scholarship. The visiting pro- 
 fessor babbled on and on, the president smiling 
 charitably upon him. Professor Bowen made a 
 measured remark, calculated to prick some bub- 
 ble of the visitor's invention. Dr. McAndrew 
 disposed of it with an epigram, quick and shal- 
 low, that made Jores's comb swell with indig- 
 nation. He struck heavily at the interloper 
 with an " It is an accepted fact." But Dr. Mc- 
 Andrew parried with a lightness and flippancy 
 that outraged all Professor Bowen's sense of 
 scholarly decency. 
 
 Bowen and Jores were closer together in spirit 
 than they had been for two years. Almost with 
 alacrity they accepted the president's request to 
 go with him to his study to look at the new 
 books. 
 
 " You will be pleased with some news I have 
 to communicate," said the president. " Dr. Mc- 
 Andrew will be with us next year. He has ac- 
 cepted the post that will be vacated by Professor 
 Bowen's retirement." 
 
 "But Mr. President!" gasped Professor 
 Bowen. " Of course I had intended to retire.
 
 Carnegie d 191 
 
 But hadn't I a right to be consulted? Besides, 
 the men on the ground should have had some- 
 thing to say. We have all favored Jores as my 
 successor." 
 
 " No," said Jores bitterly. " After my long 
 occupancy of a subordinate position I should not 
 be well qualified for the executive work of a 
 department head." 
 
 " Exactly," said the president quickly. " No, 
 that isn't the reason. You see, my dear Jores, 
 you are an alumnus of the institution. And 
 while we love our alumni, still, there is much 
 criticism, among our students and in the town, 
 of our tendency to inbreed, as it were. What 
 we need, everybody says, is a little new blood. 
 I'm sorry, but you understand, don't you?" 
 
 " Yes," said Jores. " But you will understand 
 that, in the circumstances, it is impossible for me 
 to remain." 
 
 " I feared you might feel that way," said the 
 president, in a tone of regret. " Still, I'm not 
 sure it's not better for your career to go out into 
 the world. They say a rolling stone gathers no 
 moss, but I think there is something to be said 
 on the other side. And if you do make up your 
 mind to seek opportunity elsewhere, it will re-
 
 192 Carnegie d 
 
 lieve the university of some embarrassment. 
 Professor McAndrew made it a condition of his 
 acceptance that we should find a place for his 
 friend Dr. Nott, who collaborated with him on 
 his great work." 
 
 " I see," said Jores, " you have in anticipation 
 accepted my resignation, and you have in fact 
 filled my place. I thank you for a pleasant eve- 
 ning. Good-night." 
 
 " I thank you too," cried Bowen. " And let 
 me tell you, Mr. President, that it's a damned 
 shame." 
 
 " You are forgetting yourself, Professor 
 Bowen," said the president severely. " You are 
 forgetting where you are." 
 
 " I don't care. It is a damned shame. That's 
 just what it is." 
 
 A dozen student bands, prowling about at vari- 
 ous hours of the night, gave testimony to the 
 portent Bowen and Jores, wandering about the 
 campus arm in arm, apparently sentimentalizing 
 over the landmarks. Bits of their conversation 
 were overheard; they were recalling old memo- 
 ries. The next morning's bulletin reported 
 Bowen Carnegied, Jores resigned. They are 
 living together in a dim apartment in the Campus
 
 Carnegied 193 
 
 Martius, engaged in composing a monumental 
 work that will sweep away the humanistic school 
 like feathers before an honest gale. They are 
 living on a single Carnegie pension, which suf- 
 fices for happiness in spite of high prices, under 
 the red Roman sun.
 
 XVI 
 Suh-Ho in Praise of Footbinding 
 
 A BARBAROUS custom, you call it. Bar- 
 barous it cannot be, since it has never 
 prevailed among barbarians and only became 
 established in the oldest and maturest civiliza- 
 tion in the world. What you mean is that foot- 
 binding is painful, unnatural. It is indeed pain- 
 ful, exquisitely painful. But one of the measures 
 of civilization is pain. Central Africa has no 
 tortures so intense as those endured in New 
 York or London. Footbinding is unnatural, 
 true; but how much of civilization is natural? 
 When the medical missionaries first exhibited by 
 X-ray photographs the inside of a bound foot I 
 was shocked, I admit. All those little bones dis- 
 torted, twisted, run together in spongy masses 
 ugh! You would be shocked, too, if you could 
 see X-ray photographs of the inside of some of 
 your own women's minds. Soon, however, you 
 would recover from the shock as I did. Civiliza- 
 tion cares nothing for the inside, so the externals 
 
 194
 
 Suh-Ho in Praise of Footbinding 195 
 
 are fair. My lady's lily foot, your lady's lily 
 mind: these are altogether lovely, so far as you 
 and I can see. We shall leave it to the specialist 
 to fret over what lies within. 
 
 A barbarous custom? Let us look to the real 
 ways of the barbarians as they are recorded in 
 the venerable Ghin texts, over two thousand 
 years old. In those ancient days the wild Cho-su 
 tribes roamed over the slopes of Altai. It is 
 written that the Cho-su thought it sacrilege to 
 add to the disabilities that God had imposed 
 upon the female sex. Therefore men and women 
 dressed alike, fared alike, joined equally in the 
 chase, went side by side into battle, shared 
 equally in deliberations and decisions even of 
 greatest import. And sometimes the wife 
 proved more skilful in the chase or more valiant 
 in war than her husband, and often and often 
 a woman's voice prevailed in the tribal councils. 
 These were true barbarians. 
 
 Two thousand years ago your own ancestors 
 were barbarians, very like the Cho-su. They too 
 were content with the disabilities imposed upon 
 women by God. But little by little you have be- 
 come more civilized and have added steadily to 
 the disabilities of woman. She may no longer
 
 196 Suh-Ho in Praise of Footbinding 
 
 dress like you, exercise freely like you. You do 
 not let her say and hear many of the things you 
 say and hear; many things you desire to know 
 you seek to prevent her from knowing. From 
 the chase, from war, from tribal councils, you 
 exclude her altogether. You do not bind her 
 feet; not yet. But you are new to civilization 
 and inexpert in the science of means and ends. 
 By your clumsy methods you have succeeded in 
 improving a small fraction of your women in 
 the degree appropriate to a high civilization. 
 Bind their feet and you will succeed with all of 
 them. 
 
 You shrink from the cruelty of footbinding. 
 It is not cruel since it is for the good of all, 
 women as well as men. It is painful for child 
 and parents. You suppose that we in China do 
 not love our daughters, but only our sons? It 
 is not true. We are a tender-hearted people, and 
 after the first chill of disappointment our hearts 
 grow very warm to the wee pale sprites that 
 have come to share our lives. I have a little 
 daughter of my own, and, while I write this at 
 my ease, somewhere in China my little girl sits 
 mournfully on a mat, gripping her knees with 
 her tiny hands as if this would stop the aching.
 
 Suh-Ho in Praise of Footbinding 197 
 
 The twinges reach me here, through ten thou- 
 sand miles of space. " A barrel of tears for 
 each pair of bound feet," says the proverb. 
 That is an exaggeration. My little girl wept at 
 first, bitterly, but soon she dropped into silent 
 despair. It was an unusually difficult case be- 
 cause we began late. In my family we had 
 always begun to bind at three. But my wife 
 would plead, " A few days more for the little 
 twinkling feet." " It will be all the harder," I 
 would grumble. " This hopping about makes the 
 feet big and sensitive." But she was such a 
 merry bird-like little thing, and at our first at- 
 tempts to put on the tight bandages she made 
 such piteous gestures with her chubby arms, as 
 if despairing of the world since we could be so 
 cruel, that we put it off far too long. But the 
 worst is over now. There has been little sleep 
 under my roof for the last year. A barrel of 
 tears? Yes, but they were the mother's. 
 
 Footbinding is a harsher duty now than it 
 was a generation ago, for then it was never 
 questioned. But now we have a great number 
 of irresponsible young men of good family who 
 have been abroad, or have read foreign books. 
 They are like your parlor revolutionaries; their
 
 198 Suh-Ho in Praise of Footbinding 
 
 constant song is, "All this must go; require- 
 ment of offspring, reverence for parents, sound 
 education, footbinding, all must go." No man 
 of sense pays any attention to their paradoxes. 
 Except when you have lain awake night after 
 night listening to a sobbing child. Then the 
 demon of doubt prompts you to ask yourself, 
 "What if it is unnecessary? What if footbind- 
 ing must go? " These new ideas are but a pest 
 to afflicted parents in the performance of their 
 difficult duties. Footbinding cannot go. " The 
 natural foot " that the reformers prate about, 
 what is it but a fad? It will work its transitory 
 mischief and disappear. 
 
 Superficial occidental writers assert that the 
 bound foot is to be explained by a perverted 
 aesthetic sense in the male sex. This is to miss 
 its deep spiritual significance. The bound foot is 
 the condition of a life of dignity for man, of a 
 life of contentment for woman. Let me make 
 this clear. I am a Chinese fairly typical of my 
 class. I pored too much over classic texts in 
 my youth and dimmed my eyes, narrowed my 
 chest, crooked my back. My memory is not 
 strong, and in an old civilization there is a vast 
 deal to learn before you can know anything.
 
 Suh-Ho in Praise of Footbinding 199 
 
 Accordingly among scholars I cut a poor figure. 
 I am timid, and my voice plays me false in gath- 
 erings of men. But to my footbound wife, con- 
 fined for life to her house except when I bear her 
 in my arms to her palanquin, my stride is 
 heroic, my voice is that of a roaring lion, my wis- 
 dom is of the sages. To her I am the world; I 
 am life itself. As you see me I seem little and 
 weak, but as my wife sees me I am colossally 
 great. Therefore life seems good to me. I need 
 not go forth to strive on the battlefield, nor to 
 seek even more difficult glory in the arts of 
 peace. Life seems good to my wife also. All 
 the petty services she undertakes for me are 
 satisfying to her because they are illuminated by 
 my greatness. All her unending labors in car- 
 ing for my children are agreeable to her because 
 these children have the seed of greatness in 
 them. 
 
 Every man in all the world desires to be a 
 hero ; every woman in the world desires to be the 
 wife of a hero. In China, thanks to footbinding, 
 these desires are realized. How is it with you? 
 I have often sought light on this question. How 
 is it possible for Americans and Europeans to 
 seem great men in the eyes of their big, fine,
 
 2OO Suh-Ho in Praise of Footbinding 
 
 active wives? As I find it the custom among 
 you to discuss such subjects freely, I am wont 
 to put the question directly : " Are you a great 
 man in your wife's estimation?" "Of course," 
 you reply, but your eyelids droop and I am puz- 
 zled. If I am questioning a lady I ask, " Does 
 your husband really seem a great man to you? " 
 " Of course," she replies, but she opens her eyes 
 very wide and I am still more puzzled. To be 
 great men to such wives as I have seen in west- 
 ern lands, that is what you call a big contract! 
 It would be different if you were all so robust 
 and eagle-eyed as some of the Rocky Mountain 
 men, who, like the old Cho-su, believe it a sacri- 
 lege to add to the disabilities imposed upon the 
 female sex by God. But you men of the cities 
 look to me very much like Chinese. How are 
 you able to play the superior part proper to the 
 head of a civilized household? 
 
 I surmise that you realize your predicament 
 and are taking active measures to strengthen 
 your position against further weakening. You 
 are beginning to see the necessity of standing for 
 the civilized ideal of woman affected with more 
 disabilities than God had intended. As a repre- 
 sentative of a much riper civilization, I may as-
 
 Suh-Ho in Praise of Footbinding 201 
 
 sure you with authority that you are on the right 
 track. I cannot give similarly unqualified ap- 
 proval to the means you employ. You handicap 
 woman in professional life, discriminate against 
 her in industry, belittle her intellectual achieve- 
 ments, or, if these are too palpably solid, you cry 
 down the value of her personality. So far, good. 
 But the dangerous barbaric spirit of independ- 
 ence among women cannot be held in check 
 merely by throwing barriers across one and an- 
 other avenue of expression. What you need for 
 the civilizing of women is a simple and radical 
 strategy. Bind their feet.
 
 XVII 
 The Chances of Being Married 
 
 BY common consent a woman's matrimonial 
 chances are properly to be treated humor- 
 ously, statistically, or " broadly." I am without 
 sense of humor, I abhor statistics, and I am clean- 
 minded; yet I feel there is something I have a 
 right to say on the subject. Yes, as you infer, 
 I am a woman. And as I am still alive, I have 
 been compelled to take extreme precautions to 
 preserve my anonymity, lest my friends pre- 
 sume to a sympathy over-personal. Who the 
 writer is no other woman knows, and only one 
 man. And he is a sociologist, a living machine, 
 in which mountainous heaps of statistics have 
 been milled statistics of births and deaths, of 
 poverty and riches, of crime, insanity and sui- 
 cide. These last are most to his taste. He gloats 
 upon bleak conclusions, deductions of despair. 
 I call him my friend; and when life runs too 
 utterly gray, I go to him, as the Indian woman 
 bereft of her child went to the medicine man for 
 bitter roots to gnaw. And that no trace of my- 
 
 202
 
 The Chances of Being Married 203 
 
 self may appear in this paper, I have had him 
 revise and rearrange, expand and delete, as 
 seemed good to him, to the profit of the logic, 
 perhaps, and certainly to the prejudice of the 
 meaning. 
 
 I am twenty-nine, and I aver myself to be of 
 sound body and mind. I spring from one of the 
 oldest and best of American families; my for- 
 bears, through several generations, have been 
 cultivated men and women, acquitting them- 
 selves well and resolutely in the world. I was 
 graduated from one of the better women's col- 
 leges, and trained myself for a profession, 
 through which I win a fair income. My pro- 
 fessional standing is good, and in the reunions 
 of my class I am spoken of as a woman who has 
 achieved success. I have been thrown into con- 
 tact with a great number of men, young, middle- 
 aged and old. But my life has yielded not one 
 single proposal of marriage, not one sentimental 
 advance. No, this is not quite the truth, and 
 why should I not be truthful, under the impene- 
 trable veil of my anonymity? There have been 
 advances, with obvious purpose of shallow ad- 
 venture, repelled at first with burning indigna- 
 tion, later with disgust, finally only with weari-
 
 204 The Chances of Being Married 
 
 ness. Here, you suspect, is a clue? Not at all; 
 your own sisters and daughters could recount to 
 you similar experiences of their own. 
 
 " She's probably very homely; she hasn't any 
 magnetism," you say with air of finality. I shall 
 make no extravagant claims to personal charm; 
 you would not be so vehement in my dispraise 
 as I myself often am. Still, I am very like my 
 grandmother; a replica, my grandfather used to 
 assert, when I would invade the family treasure- 
 chest and dress myself in its quaint and cumber- 
 some robes. " My sweetest Nancy, come to life 
 again ! " But two good men fought for my 
 grandmother's hand, and one was killed. 
 Imagine how the event glowed, horribly and 
 entrancingly, in the family memory. It made 
 every boy born to the house feel somewhat more 
 of a man; it made every girl conscious of her- 
 self as worth a man's blood. I grew up to that 
 consciousness myself. But no man has appeared 
 who would prick a drop from his finger for me. 
 
 " It is all a matter of demand and supply," 
 says my friend the sociologist. " In your grand- 
 mother's day there were two eligible men to one 
 eligible woman. Hence the women were all fair 
 and the men were brave. To-day the proportions
 
 The Chances of Being Married 205 
 
 are reversed. Therefore the men have become 
 prigs and dandies, or else brutes, and the women 
 of course they are still fair " do you catch his 
 complacent cackle? " but they're a drug on the 
 market. Content yourselves with the consola- 
 tions of philosophy, my dears." 
 
 Such a disproportion of the sexes seems some- 
 thing improbable, contrary to nature, does it not? 
 But the sociologist offers an interpretation which, 
 stripped of his tedious scientific phraseology, 
 runs about like this : A change has come over the 
 world, ominous for the middle class, to which, 
 the sociologist says, I belong by virtue of the 
 fact that my family has been represented in the 
 pulpit and at the bar, in politics and in business. 
 All girls born into the middle class stay in it; 
 only by desperate measures can a middle-class 
 woman get herself declassee. Of the boys, one- 
 half succeed in keeping their footing, the other 
 half fail to win position and livelihood, and so 
 fall out and disappear. The places of the failures 
 are taken by men rising from the lower classes, 
 but these bring up their women folk with them. 
 Thus there will be at any time two eligible 
 middle-class women to one man. Says the so- 
 ciologist, " Of the hundreds and thousands of
 
 206 The Chances of Being Married 
 
 blooming young women issuing from the schools 
 and colleges, each with her face serenely mask- 
 ing her dream of a prince and domestic felicity, 
 less than one-half will ever be married, scarcely 
 one-half will even be seriously wooed." Inspir- 
 ing thought, fit for a sociologist! But will not 
 most of these young women remain single 
 through choice? Does not each one you know 
 tell you she prefers her " career " to matrimony? 
 To be sure; I myself have told many of you 
 this; and you, O monuments of credulity, have 
 believed it. 
 
 Still, had I not one chance out of two? No. 
 According to my authority, the scanty supply of 
 eligible men is subject to a corner more effica- 
 cious than any existing in the business world. 
 The machinery by which the corner is engined 
 is known as " society." " Let us analyze the 
 conditions existing in almost any middle-class 
 circle," intones the sociologist. " Such a circle 
 may be conceived as a primitive polity, in the 
 matriarchal stage of development. At the head 
 of it stands usually a dowager, whose word, for 
 some good historical reason, is law. Next below 
 her, a small number of women, minor dowagers 
 and middle-aged wives, making up, together with
 
 The Chances of Being Married 207 
 
 the immediate members of their families, ' the ' 
 people. Below this, a number of grades of the 
 * possible,' to be admitted to social functions 
 when mass is desired, to be excluded when the 
 requirement is quality. 
 
 " This organization has absolute power over 
 the eligible middle-class bachelor. It can offer 
 him the pleasures and the prestige of admission 
 to the most select gatherings; it can offer him 
 the advantages of easy social intercourse with 
 his elders, who control the avenues to success in 
 the professions, politics and business. What can 
 he give in return for such privileges? Nothing 
 less than his passive self. He must submit cheer- 
 fully to being thrown accidentally, with miracu- 
 lous frequency, into the society of the selfsame 
 girl, until finally, be she beautiful or only piquante 
 there are no other grades among ' the ' 
 people he succumbs to the forces of propin- 
 quity and the reasonable expectation of every- 
 body who counts. Thus does the dowager ma- 
 chine impound the whole supply of available 
 men, letting none of it escape so long as any 
 of the maidens in favor with the machine re- 
 main unmatched. Was there ever so ironclad a 
 monopoly ? "
 
 208 The Chances of Being Married 
 
 I do not accept the sociologist's doctrine with- 
 out qualification; still less do you. But you 
 won't deny that there is a grain in it. We have 
 all seen the mechanism working, and working 
 with remarkable efficiency. It has never been 
 operated in my behalf. My parents were at no 
 pains to win a place in " society." My father, 
 a country lawyer, immersed himself in his briefs; 
 what time he could afford for social intercourse 
 he devoted to the misfits, the poor young men, 
 working their way through college under handi- 
 caps of ill health or repellent personality; the 
 reformers, whose ethical zeal wrought grievous 
 wrong to their economic status; the writers 
 whose books had nothing to recommend them 
 but their literary merit. A queer lot, I can as- 
 sure you, matrimonially utterly ineligible them- 
 selves, and scarecrows to such eligibles as did 
 occasionally slip through to us in consequence of 
 defects in the dowager machine. 
 
 Let me not seem to be bitter against the 
 dowager machine. If it robbed me of what I 
 may, in my anonymity, brazenly describe as my 
 rightful chance to satisfy the most fundamental 
 of human needs, it increased the chance of some 
 middle-class sister of mine, who would perhaps
 
 The Chances of Being Married 209 
 
 have relished " economic independence " and 
 professional success even less than I do. To 
 quote my sociological authority again, " The 
 machine affects the distribution of eligibles, but 
 it does not affect the supply of them. To smash 
 the machine would leave the problem of the 
 middle-class spinster untouched. The solution 
 lies deeper. 
 
 " The time will come when the women of the 
 middle class will become conscious of the fact 
 that, though unregarded by the men of their 
 own class, to the men of the working class they 
 are princesses. It is every man's secret desire to 
 marry above his station cosmic recognition of 
 the fact that man tends to grow toward his wife's 
 level. You middle-class women can therefore 
 offer a most redoubtable competition to the 
 working-class women, and appropriate to your- 
 selves the choicest men of the class. All that 
 deters you is fear of the talk of others of your 
 class especially the talk of the very dowagers 
 who are fencing you off from men of your own 
 kind. Now, as to your own case. There is 
 Giucciardini " 
 
 I break off the interview with every visible 
 sign of outraged dignity. Giucciardini was origi-
 
 2io The Chances of Being Married 
 
 nally a bootblack, under a padrone; next he set 
 up a chair of his own; soon he branched out into 
 peanuts and fruit; now he owns the best shoe 
 store in town, and is said to have a lot of stock in 
 the bank and the wholesale grocery. He is only 
 thirty, and there cannot be the least doubt that 
 he will become so rich that the future Mrs. Giuc- 
 ciardini will be admitted to the town's elect. I 
 do not need the sociologist's myopic eyes to help 
 me perceive that Giucciardini is handsome; 
 Praxiteles never modeled a more beautiful head 
 and torso. Giucciardini speaks purer English 
 than do Americans, and Tuscan falls from his 
 lips like music and red wine. He has the most 
 exquisite manners, and he fits a shoe with a 
 tingling deftness that makes one muse. I could 
 have pardon the expression Giucciardini. 
 How I know this I cannot divulge even here. 
 I know it, and so does the sociologist. But it 
 is impossible. I am afraid. If it turned well, 
 I should still be declassee; if it turned ill as 
 even equal matings do often enough where 
 should I stand? It may be that the time will 
 come when one woman of the middle class will 
 accept the risk, then another, then whole schools 
 of them, and that finally the men of the class will
 
 The Chances of Being Married 21 1 
 
 wake to find half their sisters and cousins going 
 over to the enemy. But this will not be in 
 my period of life, or at any rate not in my period 
 of youth, which comes to the same thing in the 
 end. 
 
 When I was a child my father once pointed 
 out to me a little cherry-tree, the bark of 
 which had been completely gnawed around by 
 a marauding rabbit. " It will bloom more beau- 
 tifully than ever, and then it will die." Day 
 by day I watched the tree. Its buds came 
 forth in due season, and burst into an efflore- 
 scence beyond my imaginings. Then death fell 
 upon it, and its petals shriveled up like tea 
 leaves; its olive-green bark blackened and 
 cracked in the spring sun. That tree comes 
 vividly to my mind when I survey the groups 
 of young women issuing from the college gates. 
 Did women ever bloom more richly? One-half 
 of them will never marry. We come of infinitely 
 long lines of ancestresses who mated and bore 
 children and reared them in care and joy. And 
 so it is probably in our blood that we feel a bit 
 lonely, at the uttermost edge of the universe, 
 the petals of our lives shriveling and dropping 
 one by one into the abyss.
 
 M 
 
 XVIII 
 My Uncle 
 
 Y uncle only by marriage, he is naturally 
 the less intelligible and the more intrigu- 
 ing to me. I can't say with assurance whether I 
 feel absolutely at home with him or not, but I 
 think I do. Always he has treated me with the 
 utmost kindness. That he regards me exactly 
 as a nephew of the blood, he makes frequent 
 occasion to assure me, especially on his birthday, 
 which we all make much of, since it is about the 
 only day when we are chartered to sentimental- 
 ize quite shamelessly over him. But behind his 
 solemn face and straight, quizzical gaze, I often 
 detect a lurking reservation in his judgment of 
 me. He thinks, I believe, that I have not been 
 altogether weaned of the potentates and powers 
 I abjured when I crossed the water to become a 
 member of his family. Not that he greatly cares. 
 Potentates and powers, emperors, kings, princes, 
 are treasured words in his oratorical vocabulary 
 he could not very well do without them. He 
 
 312
 
 My Uncle 213 
 
 is a democrat, and he declares that in the pres- 
 ence of hereditary majesties, he would most 
 resolutely refuse to bend the knee. No doubt he 
 would, and his instinct is correct aesthetically as 
 well as morally. It's a stiff knee he wears, and 
 you can't help smiling at the thought of the two 
 long members of his leg, tightly cased in striped 
 trousers, arranging themselves in an obsequious 
 right angle. Erect and stiff, chest out, chin 
 whiskers to front, eyes blinking independently, 
 my uncle is superb. Or when he raises his hat 
 with a large, outward gesture of his arm, bow- 
 ing slightly from the shoulders, in affable salu- 
 tation. Or most of all, when his fists clench, his 
 jaws display big nervous knots, his eyes gleam 
 with hard blue light in wrath over some pal- 
 pable iniquity, some base cowardice, some out- 
 rageous act of cruelty or oppression. 
 
 The mood of rage is, to be sure, infrequent 
 with him, and he prides himself in a self-control 
 that forbids him to act upon it. Therefore, cer- 
 tain cocky foreign fellows, upholders of the duty 
 of fighting at the drop of the hat, have charged 
 that our uncle would place peace above honor. 
 And some of us, his nephews, are not exactly 
 easy under the charge. It seems to reflect on
 
 214 My Uncle 
 
 us. But most of us really know better. Our 
 uncle hates trouble, and prefers argument to 
 fists. But nobody had better presume too much 
 upon his distaste for violence. 
 
 Pugnacity, declares my uncle, is a form of 
 sentimentalism, and all sentimentalism is despi- 
 cable. This is a practical world. Determine the 
 value of what you are after and count the cost. 
 And wherever you can, reduce all items to 
 dollars and cents. " Aha ! " cry the hostile critics 
 of our house, "what a gross materialist! " And 
 some, even of the nephews of the blood, repeat 
 the taunt behind our good uncle's back. At first 
 I too thought there might be something in it. 
 But I was forced to a different view by dint of 
 reflection on the notorious fact that my uncle is 
 far readier in a good cause to " shell out " his 
 dollars and cents than any of his idealistic critics. 
 Reduction of a problem to dollars and cents, I 
 have come to see, is just his means of arriving at 
 definiteness. My uncle wants to do a good busi- 
 ness, whether in the gross joys of the flesh or in 
 the benefits of salvation. The Lord's cause, he 
 thinks, ought to be as solvent as the world's. 
 A naive view? To be sure, but not one that 
 argues a base soul.
 
 My Uncle 215 
 
 This insistence of my uncle on definiteness, on 
 the financial solvency of every enterprise, does 
 to be sure get on the nerves of many of us. 
 He'll drop into your studio, dispose his long, 
 bony body in your most comfortable chair and 
 ruminate for hours while you work. You are 
 immersed in a very significant problem. You 
 are at the point, we will say, of discovering how 
 to convey the sound of bells by pure color. 
 " May I ask," he says finally, " what in thunder 
 are you trying to do?" You explain at length, 
 enthusiastically. He hears you through, with 
 visible effort to suspend judgment. You pause 
 and scan his face for a responsive glow. He 
 rises, pats you gently on the shoulder. " My 
 boy, I can put you into a good job down in the 
 stockyards. Fine prospects, and a good salary 
 to begin with. I ran in to see your wife and 
 youngsters yesterday and they're looking rather 
 peaked. Not much of a living for them in this 
 sort of thing, you know. Of course it is mighty 
 interesting. But don't you think you could man- 
 age to do something with it in your free time? " 
 
 It can't be denied, in the matter of the family 
 relation my uncle is hopelessly reactionary. In 
 his view almost the whole duty of man is to
 
 2i6 My Uncle 
 
 keep his wife well housed, well dressed, con- 
 tented, and his children plump and rosy. To 
 abate a tittle from this requirement my uncle 
 regards as pure embezzlement. You try to make 
 him see the counterclaims upon you of science, 
 literature, art. " Yes, yes, those things are all 
 very fine, but will you rob your own wife and 
 children for them? " 
 
 I wonder whether this myopia of my uncle is 
 due to the fact that he is a confirmed old bach- 
 elor, and all women and children are to him 
 pure ideals, as much sweeter than all other ideals 
 as they are more substantial? He poses, to be 
 sure, as a depreciator of woman. "Just like a 
 woman," " women's frivolity," " useless little 
 feminine trinkets," are phrases always on his 
 lips. But watch his caressing expression as he 
 listens to the chatter of Cousin Thisbe, the most 
 empty-headed little creature who ever wore 
 glowing cheeks and bright curls. Let anybody 
 get into trouble with his wife or sweetheart, and 
 my uncle straightway takes up the cudgels for 
 the lady. The merits of the case don't matter: 
 a lady is always right, or if she isn't, it's a 
 mighty mean man who'll insist on it. 
 
 His nephews of the blood are firmly convinced
 
 My Uncle 217 
 
 that the reason why our uncle is such a fool 
 about women in general is because he has never 
 been in love with any woman in particular. 
 Thus do members of a family blind themselves 
 with dogmas about one another. I, being more 
 or less of an outsider, can observe without pre- 
 conceptions. Now I assert, in spite of his con- 
 sistent pose of serene indifference to particular 
 charms, my uncle's temperament is that of a 
 man forever in love with somebody or other. 
 He is strong, he is simple, he is pure, and should 
 he escape the dart? Depend on it, he has fallen 
 in love not once or twice, but often and often. 
 And the probabilities are, he has been loved, 
 though not so often. And this would be an 
 impious speculation if I were nephew of the 
 blood how has he behaved, in the rare latter 
 event? As a man in the presence of a miracle 
 done for his sole benefit. He has exulted, then 
 doubted its reality, then betaken himself to the 
 broad prairie, where he is most at home, to cool 
 his blood in the north wind, and restore him- 
 self to the serenity, the freedom from entangle- 
 ments, befitting an uncle at the head of his tribe. 
 This, you say, is all conjecture, deduced from 
 the behavior of those of his nephews who most
 
 2i 8 My Uncle 
 
 resemble him? No. Do you not recall that 
 early affair of his, with the dark vivacious lady 
 Marianne, I believe, was her name? Do you 
 not recall a later affair with a very young, cold 
 lady from the land of the snows? Do you not 
 recall his maturer devotion to the noble lady of 
 the trident, his cousin? And but I'll not de- 
 scend to idle gossip. 
 
 As you can see, I do not wholly accept my 
 uncle, as he is. I wish he weren't so insistent 
 upon reducing everything to simple, definite 
 terms, whether it will reduce to such terms or 
 not. I wish he would give more thought to mak- 
 ing his conduct correct as well as unimpeacha- 
 ble. I'm for him when his inferiors laugh at 
 him, but I wish he would manage to thwart 
 their malicious desire to laugh. I wish he were 
 less disposed to scoff gently at my attempts to 
 direct his education. Just the same, he is the 
 biggest, kindliest, most honest and honorable 
 tribal head that ever lived. And you won't find 
 a trace of these reservations in the enthusiasm 
 with which I shall wish him many thousands of 
 happy returns, next Fourth of July.
 
 XIX 
 
 The Fear of God 
 
 THAT is what Mr. Harold Cranfield says 
 is pressing upon him. I should myself 
 call it something else. Perhaps social-political 
 jimjams would be as good as any other name 
 for it. 
 
 Mr. Cranfield is one of those prosperous 
 American business men who up to a year ago 
 believed unshakably that the existing economic 
 and social system was just as solid and enduring 
 as the granite hills. Every man for himself; but 
 every man, in seeking his own selfish good, des- 
 tined by unerring economic law to serve to the 
 utmost the interests of his fellow man : that was 
 the essence of the present system as he ex- 
 pounded it. The true nature of the system was 
 first revealed to Mr. Cranfield forty years ago, 
 when he was a student at Yale. Laid up in his 
 room by a broken rib so he tells the story 
 he was driven by boredom to turn the pages of 
 a volume of Adam Smith, foisted upon him by a 
 
 219
 
 22O The Fear of God 
 
 professorial friend who had shrewdly guessed 
 that the student's mind might be receptive to 
 knowledge when his body was broken : it never 
 was when he could be up and about. And then 
 his eyes fell upon the demonstration of the true 
 place of individual selfishness in the Divine 
 scheme of the world. It took hold of him with 
 the force of evidence, and from that day to about 
 a year ago he never doubted it, nor did he doubt 
 that it could be made equally clear to all men 
 who were endowed with the light of reason. 
 That meant at least enough men to control the 
 political destinies of the world. 
 
 Provided that men generally received en- 
 lightenment, Mr. Cranfield used to argue, there 
 could be no question whatever about the stabil- 
 ity of the present order, founded as it was on 
 hard fact and right reason. Therefore Mr. Cran- 
 field was a liberal. He stood for the utmost 
 freedom of thought and speech and of the press, 
 that the truth might have an open field in which 
 to meet and crack the bones of error. To be 
 sure, there were socialists and anarchists at large 
 who challenged everything, and there were so- 
 cial reformers besides who challenged specific 
 parts of the existing system. Sentimentalists,
 
 The Fear of God 221 
 
 all of them; or cheap fellows who had to win 
 personal notoriety, if by no other method, then 
 by standing on a street corner and bawling out 
 that two and two make four only because the 
 capitalist exploiters will have it so. Can't you 
 hear him growing boisterously witty over them, 
 from his seat of authority at the head of his din- 
 ner table? Picture him, erect, robust, his mas- 
 sive head crowned with gray hair, rebellious to 
 the smoothing brush, his clear eyes beaming 
 with good nature, the healthy red of his cheeks 
 glowing through the gray of a well-clipped 
 beard. He was magnificent, in his good spirits, 
 and so was his table, with its gorgeous china 
 and chastely designed silver, its ranks of glasses 
 aspiring to good things at the hands of a butler 
 trained to distribute his gifts as unobtrusively 
 as the fairies move when they distribute dew 
 among the eager flowers. Opposite sat his wife, 
 more beautiful in late middle age than any girl, 
 with eyes brighter than the diamonds glistening 
 upon her breast. There were two white-shoul- 
 dered daughters, one just come out, and all de- 
 mure glances, the other a little more mature, 
 discreetly conscious of the fact that a king had 
 spoken-of her as that impossibly beautiful Amer-
 
 222 The Fear of God 
 
 ican girl. It was not a very great king, to be 
 sure, but a great connoisseur. Other ladies 
 were there too, beautiful, of course, and men, 
 very correct and handsome, real financial leaders 
 and amateurs of art and politics. And very 
 likely so catholic were Mr. Cranfield's tastes 
 there was also a place for some member of the 
 intellectual proletariat, a little uncertain of the 
 ceremonial of the courses and often apparently 
 sunk in deep thought when in fact only waiting 
 for a cue. Woe to him if the lady on his right, 
 addict of subtle malice, gave him the wrong cue. 
 All that was a year ago, but now a vast change 
 has come over Mr. Cranfield. The buoyant op- 
 timism is gone. Bolshevism, hideous conception, 
 has got into Mr. Cranfield's mind, and crashes 
 about destructively like a gun carriage broken 
 loose on the deck of a foundering ship. In dark 
 tenements of New York you may find pale men 
 and hectic cheeked women poring over type- 
 written bulletins which report that things are 
 moving fast in Germany, France, Italy, Eng- 
 land : that social discontent is gathering head 
 in Chicago, St. Louis, Amarillo and Tucson. 
 They read, and believe, sure that if they can live 
 a little longer, they will see with their own eyes
 
 The Fear of God 223 
 
 the Great Revolution, which shall make all 
 things over, descending from Heaven in a char- 
 iot of fire. They believe, but no more vividly 
 than Mr. Cranfield fears. To him there is Bol- 
 shevism in every bush, and his knees knock to- 
 gether as he passes by. 
 
 " The world is going to perdition," he groans. 
 " Did you see that account of how the Bolshe- 
 vists have got hold of Mexico? No, sir: you're 
 wrong: it's not merely an expansionist yarn to 
 work up sentiment for an invasion: it's true, 
 and the sooner we send our armies down there 
 to clean out Carranza and his whole gang, the 
 better. Have you heard how Trotzky has man- 
 aged to send four hundred million rubles into 
 our own country, for propaganda? Paper 
 rubles? No, sir: gold, good red Russian gold: 
 I got it from a secret service agent who has 
 seen it. The sooner we stop monkeying with 
 those propagandists, the better. Shoot them : 
 or better, hang them in Union Square, a dozen 
 of them, every day. That will teach the riff- 
 raff what's what." 
 
 Propaganda: that is the great menace of the 
 age as Mr. Cranfield sees it. It is an infection, 
 that spreads faster and farther than Spanish in-
 
 224 The Fear of God 
 
 fluenza. Our only hope is to localize the infec- 
 tion, destroy its foci. A whiff of grape shot, 
 that is what is needed. Jails and machine guns, 
 there lies our only hope. And suppose they are 
 taken over by the enemy? God help us then, 
 but we will fight, fight till the last man of us is 
 killed. Then the Bolsheviki may have this 
 world, and fight among themselves till the food 
 gives out and they all starve to death. 
 
 " I don't think it's very nice of you, Papa, to 
 talk about dying to the last man and leaving the 
 world to the Bolsheviki. What will become of 
 us women?" Thus speaks Alice, debutante 
 daughter a year ago, but now a very self-pos- 
 sessed, self-determined young woman. She has 
 been engaged in war-work. It was her job to 
 meet incoming boats with an ambulance and 
 carry the sick and wounded to the hospitals. 
 She did it with spirit and nerve, as I can testify, 
 having all but come to my end under the wheels 
 of her drab colored government car, crashing 
 through the crowds as if accidents didn't mat- 
 ter, since an ambulance was at hand. She gave 
 me a nonchalant nod of recognition as I leapt 
 for safety behind an L post. She was exquisite 
 in her khaki uniform, with scarce a yellow curl
 
 The Fear of God 22$ 
 
 escaping the prison of her little cap. Glowing 
 cheeks, shining eyes: how must she have ap- 
 peared to her wounded charges? "They all 
 adore me, and I believe a lot of them are Bol- 
 sheviki at heart." Perhaps they are, but if Bol- 
 sheviki are human beings, of course they adore 
 Alice. 
 
 "What will become of you women?" Mr. 
 Cranfield repeats slowly. " That is why we have 
 got to fight." 
 
 " Until you are all exterminated," says Alice 
 remorselessly. "And then?" 
 
 "And then? It drives me crazy to think of 
 it." 
 
 " Well, Papa, I think we women will manage 
 to take care of ourselves, whatever happens." 
 
 " Take care of yourselves ! " exclaims Mr. 
 Cranfield angrily. " You foolish child, you don't 
 know what you are talking about." It is an 
 especially sore point with him, that neither 
 his wife nor his daughters will share his 
 fears. 
 
 " Girls are queer creatures," he philosophized, 
 after we had retired to his cozy study to smoke 
 and argue out the problem of Bolshevism. 
 " Now look at that girl. Born to luxury, bred
 
 226 The Fear of God 
 
 in luxury, she'd be in despair if she couldn't have 
 everything she wants. When she marries, fifty 
 thousand a year will be the least she can live on. 
 And if her husband can't make it I suppose 
 she'll come home. But tell her that when the 
 Bolsheviki come she'll be glad to share a crust 
 out of a dirty pocket or eat stew out of a com- 
 mon dish with a crew of riff-raff, it doesn't 
 worry her a bit. It will be more interesting, she 
 says. We have a terribly dull time, she says, 
 seeing nobody but stiff bourgeoisie. The pro- 
 letariat are much more intelligent. She learned 
 that in war-work." 
 
 ' That sounds to me as if Bolshevism had 
 taken root in your own house," I ventured. 
 
 " Maybe it has. Of course I don't take her 
 too seriously. But that's just the danger with 
 Bolshevism. It gets hold of the rising genera- 
 tion. It's taking root everywhere. What has 
 come over the world, anyhow? Labor used to 
 be satisfied with what it got, even when it got 
 little." 
 
 "Oh, was it?" I demanded. "You have for- 
 gotten the inscription on this rug." It was a 
 thick-napped Syrian rug of wine-colored ground, 
 bordered with an ominous inscription in broad
 
 The Fear of God 227 
 
 letters of gold. " Think not that palace walls 
 can shield thee from the sword of wrath of a 
 just God." So Dr. Leib had interpreted it, and 
 in the old, secure days we used to make merry 
 over this richly glowing curse wrought by an 
 unknown sweated worker of the Lebanon against 
 the mighty who should tread upon the fruits of 
 his labor. 
 
 " There has always been some discontent," 
 Mr. Cranfield admitted. " But it never grew 
 into a system till now. It never was a real 
 menace. We were sleeping. We should have 
 stopped it at the beginning." 
 
 " Yes," I said, " as you used to say there are 
 reforms long overdue, and a need of more thor- 
 oughgoing education " 
 
 " Reforms ! Education ! Bah ! Haven't we 
 reformed for generations, and have we any se- 
 curity to-day against wholesale robbery and uni- 
 versal murder? Guns and jails, those are what 
 we need. And strong men at the head of affairs 
 who won't temporize." 
 
 " And none of our old liberal talk of the har- 
 mony of class interests," I suggested. 
 
 " No, none of that," Mr. Cranfield assented 
 vigorously. " Harmony of interest, what rot !
 
 228 The Fear of God 
 
 I've got what I've got, and they want it. Well, 
 we'll fight, that's all." 
 
 " No more pretense of democracy, of equality 
 of worth and all that sort of thing," I added. 
 " It just leads to fraternizing." 
 
 " That's exactly it. Look at Alice, now. You 
 can't take her too seriously, of course; but it's 
 weakening to have people express such views, 
 even in fun. All of us who have anything have 
 just got to stand together, and no quarter." 
 
 That is where Mr. Cranfield, ancient liberal 
 of the prosperous class, now takes his stand. 
 Ghost ridden, you say? Yes; but the fear of 
 ghosts is just as real as any other. And just as 
 infectious.
 
 XX 
 
 Evalina 
 
 THEY were celebrating the decennial of 
 their graduation from the engineering 
 college. Technically I did not belong there, 
 but the committee had dug out the fact that 
 I had once been made an honorary member of 
 the class, and accordingly voted to overlook my 
 disqualifications and invited me to the banquet. 
 Those disqualifications were grave, for the ban- 
 quet was to be of the usual college reunion type, 
 challenging a more persevering digestion than 
 mine, and the talk was to be of cantilevers and 
 turbines of types quite transcending my imagi- 
 nation. But there is always food for reflection 
 in a reunion of collegians ten years out in the 
 world. They have changed so unforeseeably, 
 or have so unforeseeably remained the same. 
 Accordingly I accepted the invitation, and, as 
 I had anticipated, had a bad time with the food 
 and the conversation, but much opportunity for 
 sage reflection. Yes, the prevailing effect o 
 
 229
 
 230 Evalina 
 
 practical life is depressing. These men, mostly 
 robust and of prosperous appearance, sounded 
 rather hollow as they thumped one another in 
 the exchange of technical narrative or untech- 
 nical anecdote. Ten years ago spirits mounted 
 higher. So everybody seemed to recognize, 
 disconsolately, until the conversation gave way 
 to the college songs. At least they could roar 
 still. 
 
 " Ten years have gone round and I've not got 
 
 a dollar 
 
 Evalina still waits in that green grassy 
 hollow " 
 
 They sang it with great gusto, as men of whom 
 it couldn't be true. Especially boisterous was 
 the singing of the man on my right, a spare, 
 brisk man, looking rather younger than the rest, 
 rather more conspicuously well-dressed. On 
 close inspection there was something artificial 
 about his youth, and his whole make-up, you 
 concluded, was not chic after all, but just on the 
 margin of the flashy. I racked my memory for 
 the details of his college life. I could not re- 
 member anything definite, except that I used 
 to encounter him rather frequently around the 
 Arts College, in the company of a very attrac-
 
 Evalina 231 
 
 tive and intelligent girl student. Oh yes, an 
 engagement had been announced at Commence- 
 ment time, I recalled. But the man beside me 
 wore no ring. 
 
 "Where is Evalina?" I demanded, as the 
 singing subsided. 
 
 He started slightly. " Why, in the green 
 grassy hollow, of course." He laughed mechan- 
 ically. " That song is about me, you under- 
 stand." Then in a lower voice, " But nobody 
 knows it except you. Here's my card. Presi- 
 dent of the Antares Mining Corporation. 
 Sounds fine, doesn't it?" 
 
 " What do you mine? " I asked. 
 
 " Hopes. Fine big deposit of them, under- 
 ground. My capital is half a million hopes. 
 My salary as president, twenty thousand hopes." 
 
 " Fine ! " I exclaimed. " There is nothing 
 better than hope. But Evalina; is she able to 
 live on them? " 
 
 " I'll tell you about her. Say, this is a good 
 time to slip out. They're going to have speeches. 
 You don't care to stay?" 
 
 " No, I'd rather hear about Evalina and all 
 those hopes." 
 
 We made our escape and crossed the campus,
 
 232 Evalina 
 
 picking our way in the semi-darkness among 
 groups of boys and girls, the current crop of 
 collegians, chattering and laughing with an en- 
 thusiasm that had none of the forced quality of 
 the banqueting table we had just left. We 
 found a bench at the edge of the river, and 
 rested our eyes for a moment on the dark surface 
 gridironed with bright stripes from the boat- 
 house on the other side. 
 
 "Have a cigar?" I asked. 
 
 " No, thank you. I don't smoke. Against my 
 principles. I'm a talking man, by principle. It's 
 this way: you and I meet; you want to tell me 
 your tale and I want to tell you mine. You 
 smoke and I don't; so I win. You may get the 
 start on me, but then you light up and I take 
 the conversation away from you. You may get 
 in again, but soon you'll have to attend to your 
 light, and there I am, rattling away, forty miles 
 an hour." 
 
 " All right. I'll light up and keep out of the 
 competition. But what's the good of it? You 
 want the conversation. Just why do you want 
 it?" 
 
 "Why do I want it? Well, that's me. I 
 guess that's all the explanation there is. I al-
 
 Evalina 233 
 
 ways was that way. Talk, talk, talk. If I could 
 keep my mouth closed once in a while I might 
 have a real job, like our toastmaster. Remem- 
 ber him? Couldn't make a speech; can't make 
 one yet. Draws $50,000 a year. Real money." 
 
 " But men do talk themselves into money," I 
 remonstrated. " Sometimes. Let's not argue 
 that, just now. You were going to tell me about 
 Evalina." 
 
 "You knew her? Well, she's just like that, 
 still. I was there, last week. She still wears 
 brown dresses because I liked them, does her 
 hair in a Psyche knot, because I liked it. She 
 laughs in the same way, has the same little 
 warbling note Lord, that used to catch hold 
 of me!" 
 
 " Used to ! " I repeated severely. 
 
 " Well, it does so yet. But you know how it 
 is. The women you see in the city are chang- 
 ing all the time. They're living up to a new 
 level, every year. Evalina, as you call her, is 
 still living to the level of 1908. That's the way 
 they are, in the villages. In dead villages any- 
 way, like Midvale." 
 
 "As I recall the Evalina of 1908, she'd be 
 worth perpetuating," I reflected.
 
 234 Eivalina 
 
 " Sure. She is worth it. But you know, it 
 ages you, awfully, to live on the same level, year 
 after year. Lines about the eyes, now; you 
 can't prevent them. You can't keep out a few 
 gray hairs. Well, they make no difference if 
 you are living on the right level. Nothing 
 younger than a woman of thirty if she's living 
 up to a woman of thirty. But if she's living 
 down to the level of twenty, she doesn't seem 
 so young. You get me? " 
 
 " Yes," I replied, not easily suppressing my 
 indignation. " You are more analytical than 
 romantic." 
 
 "Analytical? That's just what I am. That's 
 why I've not got a dollar." 
 
 " Reason Number Two," I remarked. " A 
 little while ago, you said it was talk that did it. 
 Next you will say it was drink." 
 
 " No, not me. I never did drink anything but 
 water. Drank it and boosted it as if I had it 
 cornered and was selling it for good money. A 
 man like that never can get anywhere, can he? " 
 
 " Reason Number Three. But I'd like to hear 
 the real reason." 
 
 "The real reason? Oh yes, I know it well 
 enough. I'm analytical, you see. Do you re-
 
 Evalina 235 
 
 member my record in your class? Well, I went 
 strong the first four weeks. You thought I was 
 a prize. And then I fizzled. That is always 
 the way with me. I get a new job, I'm all fire 
 and breeze and the boss thinks, now we can go 
 ahead full steam. And we do, for a little while, 
 and then I fizzle" 
 
 "How about the Antares Corporation?" I 
 asked. 
 
 " Oh, I started that gloriously. Got a quarter 
 of the stock subscribed in a week and not a 
 dollar since." 
 
 " Is it a real project?" 
 
 " Yes. Big money in it. At least I thought 
 so four weeks ago. But it's stale now. I want 
 to go on to something else." 
 
 " In that case I prophesy that Evalina will 
 wait another ten years." 
 
 " You're safe there. I know it, and she knows 
 it. But she won't admit it. She's still waiting 
 for me to buck up and make things go, just 
 for once." 
 
 " And don't you think you'd better do it? " I 
 spoke perhaps with undue emphasis. 
 
 "You're getting peeved with me?" He 
 laughed joylessly. " You think that if a man
 
 236 Evalina 
 
 wants to amount to something, he can? If you 
 do, you're dead wrong. It isn't in me. I tell 
 you, it isn't in me. You've never seen my 
 father? If you had, you'd understand. All his 
 life he was just about to make things go. The 
 number of big things he nearly did, it's aston- 
 ishing. But he's all talk, just like me." 
 
 " Pardon me," I said. " I'm old-fashioned, 
 and I'm getting rather more disagreeable im- 
 pressions than I can stand. You have spoken 
 contemptuously of yourself; that is amusing, 
 but I don't like it. You have spoken slightingly 
 of Evalina, whom I remember as an altogether 
 admirable person. And now you are maligning 
 your father." 
 
 "Maligning? Not a bit of it. Positively, 
 there isn't a living man who suits me so well 
 for company as my father. We go fishing to- 
 gether, and talk and talk, till the sun goes down. 
 We don't catch any fish, but, Lord, the fish we 
 nearly catch! We know each other and we 
 don't hold it up against each other. I under- 
 stand why my father never amounted to any- 
 thing and he understands why I don't. But 
 everybody else has expected something more 
 of us. That's the way with you, right now.
 
 Evalina 237 
 
 You'd like to take me by the ears and hold me 
 up against a job until I froze to it. And what 
 I feel is, you are spoiling a pleasant evening for 
 me." 
 
 " God forbid I should spoil it," I replied in- 
 dignantly. " But I'm thinking of Evalina, and 
 the ten years she's wasted, waiting for you to 
 go from talk to solid work." 
 
 " Don't I think of that, too? Let me tell you, 
 there are times I could hate Evalina. She's al- 
 ways expecting, expecting. For ten years, now, 
 I've never had an easy moment. I say to my- 
 self, I've got to succeed this time, Evalina is 
 expecting it, but I know I won't succeed. Talk 
 about slavery ; that is nothing to what I've gone 
 through and shall have to go through until I'm 
 so old nobody can expect anything of me." 
 
 " If that is the way you feel, don't you think 
 you should have released her long ago?" 
 
 "Released?" He laughed sadly. " Who does 
 the releasing, slave or master? Let me tell you, 
 Evalina knows just exactly what I am. Of 
 course she didn't know at first. I went strong 
 and she'd made up her mind to take me before 
 she saw me fizzle. Lord, I was surprised, to get 
 so far. But I thought, she'd have plenty of time
 
 238 Evalina 
 
 to back out. She had, but she wouldn't back 
 out, and she won't. She knew she had made a 
 mistake, but she made it her pride to put in the 
 ' for better or for worse ' where it didn't be- 
 long." 
 
 " At least," I suggested, " you could have per- 
 suaded her to take up some work for herself. 
 There certainly was no reason why she should 
 remain in Midvale waiting for you when you 
 were never going to materialize." 
 
 " You think I didn't try to get her out of 
 there? She wouldn't stir. She knew she had 
 ten times the brains I had, and if she gave her- 
 self a chance to develop, I would be quite out 
 of the question. She didn't dare; it would cut 
 across that for better or for worse idea of hers. 
 And besides, if she got into some kind of work 
 that suited her, or fell in love with another man, 
 it would take the net of her expectations off me. 
 I wouldn't have to amount to anything. I could 
 be free to take a job of looking after the oil cups 
 and tightening up nuts, till I got a few dollars 
 ahead. Then I could run back to the old town 
 and go fishing with my father. There are plenty 
 of jobs like that. They don't lead you anywhere 
 but I don't want to be led anywhere. They are
 
 Evalina 239 
 
 good enough for a man like me, but I can't take 
 them, because of Evalina, waiting, waiting." 
 
 " It seems to me there is just one thing for 
 you to do," I said dogmatically. " Go down to 
 Midvale and put your case before Evalina just 
 as frankly as you have put it before me." 
 
 " That is just what I tried to do, a week ago. 
 I went down there intending to tell her that all 
 this faithful waiting is romantic foolishness. I 
 was going to tell her that it's positively im- 
 moral for a woman to keep herself tied up with 
 a man who can't amount to anything. Well, I 
 wired her when I was coming, and there she 
 was at the station, just as girlish and sweet as 
 ten years ago, her eyes just as serene and trust- 
 ful, and we walked home by the path through 
 the hollow. I climbed the cliffs to pluck colum- 
 bine out of the sunshine, all as bright as if no 
 ten years had gone, and we threw wild rose 
 petals above the tiny cascade at the foot of the 
 hollow and watched them come down like a 
 rainbow. I fizzled. Before I left I had unfolded 
 at least ten projects, all sure to be big money, 
 distinction and independence." 
 
 " Humph ! " I grunted. 
 
 " And say ! " he exclaimed eagerly. " There
 
 240 Evalina 
 
 is just one thing that may pan out. You know 
 why I came to this class reunion? That fat fel- 
 low, our toastmaster, needs a manager for his 
 western branch. I found that out before I came 
 east. I've had two talks with him, and I've 
 actually got the job. But I had to go down on 
 my knees for it." 
 
 " I won't expect you to hold that job, but if 
 you do, it would interest me to know about it." 
 
 " Of course you'll know about it. Do you 
 think I'm the man to hide a light like that under 
 a bushel?" 
 
 That was a year ago. I have heard nothing 
 from him since. But Evalina's address remains 
 Midvale in the last Directory, just out.
 
 XXI 
 Old Scores 
 
 THERE was perhaps nothing mysterious 
 about the turn of chance that brought me 
 into renewed relations with Mr. John Auch- 
 muty. Mr. Auchmuty is one of the few remain- 
 ing staunch Victorian Liberals. For nearly half 
 a century he has fought valiantly for every good 
 cause, domestic or international. Free trade, 
 free competition, free speech, free press are 
 among his dearest gods, and beyond all, what 
 used to be known as plain international justice, 
 but is now denominated national self-determina- 
 tion. And so when the Independence Mission 
 of the Aromunes and Kutzo-Vlachs decided to 
 form an American committee in support of their 
 national aspirations, it was entirely natural that 
 Mr. Auchmuty should have been selected as 
 chairman. My own place on the committee was 
 not entirely fortuitous. The range of choice 
 was not wide, since there is as yet no very great 
 number of Americans with an incorrigible pas- 
 
 241
 
 242 Old Scores 
 
 sion for small nationalities who are really awak- 
 ened to the national needs of the Aromunes and 
 Kutzo-Vlachs. 
 
 But just the same I had a rather uncanny feel- 
 ing of the cosmic humor of chance as I waited 
 in Mr. Auchmuty's library, under the cool stare 
 of his engraved portraits of Mill and Bentham, 
 John Bright and Gladstone, Goldwin Smith and 
 Grover Cleveland. I had encountered Mr. Auch- 
 muty once before, long before, in circumstances 
 in which his candid good faith had been most 
 shamefully abused by a political group in which 
 I had held membership as a precociously po- 
 litical-minded boy. And while I waited in his 
 frigidly-ordered library as usual, I had come 
 ahead of the appointed hour I could not help 
 reviewing in my mind the details of that early 
 encounter. 
 
 We were a prairie farming community of the 
 middle nineties, obsessed with a feeling of farm- 
 ers' grievances: low prices, juggled weights and 
 excessive dockage, railway discriminations, 
 usurious interest rates and ruthless foreclosures. 
 And we had made up our minds, universally, to 
 a sovereign remedy: free and unlimited coinage 
 of silver. We had read Coin's Financial School,
 
 Old Scores 243 
 
 E. B. Andrews on an Honest Dollar and a 
 pamphlet containing extracts from Chevalier, 
 badly translated and therefore the more authen- 
 tically authoritative. We had also read a pamph- 
 let by J. Laurence Laughlin, taking the other 
 side, and there was not one of us who could not 
 refute it with a single well chosen imprecation. 
 The bankers, the professors of political economy 
 and other enemies of the people we knew were 
 against us. They commanded a whole arsenal 
 of super-refined sophisms. But our minds were 
 too thoroughly made up to be penetrable by the 
 guile of the paid advocate or the pedantries of 
 the endowed professor. The people were per- 
 ishing for want of money. The mountains were 
 veined with the good white metal that offered 
 salvation. What more might be said was plainly 
 of the Devil. 
 
 The case, then, as we saw it, was one that 
 did not admit of argument. We did not want 
 to hear argument on it. Indeed the attempt to 
 argue so definitely closed a case appeared to us 
 immoral. And so when the Republican state 
 committee offered to send among us the Hon- 
 orable John Auchmuty to deliver an address on 
 sound money, or, if we preferred, to debate with
 
 244 OM Scores 
 
 any free silver speaker we might name, our first 
 impulse was to reject the offer with scorn. De- 
 bate the Ten Commandments! That was what 
 the proposal amounted to. But it was October, 
 when the air of the prairies is crisp and the ap- 
 petite is good and an irrepressible sense of 
 humor permeates the prairieman's blood. Some- 
 body cried out, " Let him debate Clay Robin- 
 son." It might have been myself; it might have 
 been anyone else, for it was one of those sug- 
 gestions that express exactly the sense of each. 
 Clay Robinson was an occasionally lucid lunatic. 
 He labored under the delusion that he was the 
 greatest living orator and usually succeeded in 
 dispersing with his tongue any assemblage he 
 encountered. Always he had been our bane, but 
 now we had good use for his talents. So we 
 wrote the Republican state committee that the 
 Honorable Clay Robinson would be pleased to 
 meet the Honorable John Auchmuty in debate. 
 We guaranteed a large and enthusiastic aud- 
 ience. 
 
 No one would have supposed that our sparsely 
 settled district could have produced so huge a 
 crowd as packed into Shreve's Lyceum Hall to 
 hear the debate. In the middle of the stage sat
 
 Old Scores 245 
 
 our chairman, tapping his sides to make sure 
 they would hold when the debate got under way. 
 Crouched in a corner was the Honorable Clay 
 Robinson, darting quick, triumphant glances 
 from under his tumbled cataract of red hair. 
 The train from the South was late; but pres- 
 ently a whistle announced its arrival, and in ten 
 minutes the reception committee mounted the 
 stage escorting the Honorable John Auchmuty, 
 spare, erect, with his coat severely buttoned to 
 his throat, his burnsides forming severe angles 
 on his pale cheeks, his prominent blue eyes star- 
 ing before him with the sad, severe expression 
 immortalized in the portraits of Matthew Arn- 
 old. He seemed a bit startled when the Hon- 
 orable Clay Robinson with knees crouched and 
 arms swinging darted up to him and grasped 
 his hand. A gale of laughter swept the room, 
 but we covered it up with tumultuous applause. 
 Mr. Auchmuty bowed and smiled under his joy- 
 less eyes. 
 
 " Ladies and gentlemen," he began, in an even 5 
 conciliatory voice. We held our breath and 
 fixed our attention on Clay Robinson in his cor- 
 ner, preparing to spring. The speaker was get- 
 ting under way. What he was saying, of course
 
 246 Old Scores 
 
 nobody knew. We were not there to listen to 
 argument. Mostly he appeared to be quoting 
 authorities. He paused impressively after the 
 name of Professor J. Laurence Laughlin. 
 
 " Hold on ! " cried Clay Robinson, springing 
 menacingly toward Mr. Auchmuty. " Will you 
 tell this crowd who J. Laurence Laughlin is? " 
 
 " I shall reply to this question later," said Mr. 
 Auchmuty with dignity. 
 
 . "Answer him! Answer him!" roared the 
 audience. 
 
 " Very well." Mr. Auchmuty presented an 
 emphatic biography of Professor Laughlin, and 
 proceeded with his argument. 
 
 " Hold on ! " yelled Clay Robinson, threaten- 
 ing Mr. Auchmuty with his fist. " Will you tell 
 us whether there has been a single movement 
 for the benefit of the common people your Pro- 
 fessor Laughlin has not been against? " 
 
 " Answer him ! " roared the audience again. 
 
 Mr. Auchmuty paused to get his indignation 
 under control. But soon his voice, measured 
 and conciliatory as ever, ran through the roll of 
 Professor Laughlin's good works and hurried 
 on with the argument. 
 
 " You want more money. You think that
 
 Old Scores 247 
 
 free silver will give you more money. But 
 would the gold we now have remain in the 
 country? Impossible. Under Gresham's Law 
 the silver would expel the gold." 
 
 "Hold on!" cried Clay Robinson. "Who 
 passed that law? " 
 
 Mr. Auchmuty drew himself into his extreme 
 of rigidity. 
 
 " That, Mr. Robinson, is an economic law. It 
 is one of the eternal laws of nature. Or, if you 
 care to put it that way " and his voice trembled 
 with suppressed energy "it is a law of God!" 
 
 " Hey ! " shrieked Clay Robinson. " Ladies 
 and gentlemen ! This man puts his own fool no- 
 tions into the mouth of God Almighty! Who 
 does he think he is? " 
 
 For a few seconds the audience sat aghast. 
 We were for the most part swearing men, but 
 this was downright blasphemy. Still, the sin 
 rested on Clay Robinson, not responsible even 
 under the mundane law. And the mien of John 
 Auchmuty! To save our souls we could not 
 have refrained longer from laughing. Spasm 
 pursued spasm over our sides until they were 
 so sore that we could hardly gasp. Mr. Auch- 
 muty seized upon the first approach of calm to
 
 248 Old Scores 
 
 proceed with his speech. He repeated himself, 
 hesitated, stammered, then drew from his pocket 
 the copy prepared for the press and read it, 
 hastily, meaninglessly, pausing only when a re- 
 crudescent wave of laughter broke over the 
 audience. 
 
 At last Mr. Auchmuty made his final bow. 
 Clay Robinson leaped to the edge of the stage. 
 
 " Ladies and gentlemen ! No living man 
 knows what the speaker said or why he said it. 
 But this is what he ought to have said." Then 
 followed an absolutely incredible farrago of non- 
 sense. Mr. Auchmuty's eyes seemed to be 
 starting from his head as he listened. And when 
 the torrent of disjointed phrases came to an end, 
 he looked about him, bewildered, as if seeking 
 an avenue of flight. 
 
 " Answer him ! Answer him ! " roared the 
 audience. Mr. Auchmuty rose, stammered, 
 hesitated. 
 
 " Ladies and gentlemen," he began in a thin, 
 shaken voice. " I don't think you are treating 
 me quite fairly." 
 
 The audience roared. Mr. Auchmuty bowed 
 abruptly to the chairman and fled. 
 
 After I came to know what a sincere and
 
 Old Scores 249 
 
 manly friend of humanity Mr. Auchmuty really 
 was, I often wanted to meet him and make such 
 amends as I could for my part in the outrage. 
 But no occasion had presented itself until I 
 found myself by chance associated with him on 
 the Committee for the Promotion of the National 
 Rights of the Aromunes and Kutzo-Vlachs. It 
 was therefore with much eagerness that I rose 
 when I heard the library door open and the 
 sound of a footstep on the rug. 
 
 Mr. John Auchmuty had remained just as 
 spare, erect, severe and sad of countenance as 
 when he had confronted his prairie audience 
 twenty-three years ago. Only his burnsides had 
 turned white and his eyes had apparently grown 
 dim. 
 
 " I think I have never had the pleasure of 
 meeting you before," he said affably. 
 
 " No. But I heard you speak, a great many 
 years ago." 
 
 "You did?" He smiled benignantly. "May 
 I ask where? " 
 
 " It was in a western state, in free silver times. 
 Do you remember debating the money question 
 with Clay Robinson?" 
 
 A slight flush passed over the old man's face.
 
 250 Old Scores 
 
 " Do you know I never thought that the audience 
 was quite fair to me." 
 
 "No," I replied. "We didn't intend to be 
 fair to you. We had already made up our 
 minds." 
 
 " Now, that Honorable Clay Robinson," con- 
 tinued Mr. Auchmuty, " I really think you 
 might have found a more logical champion, even 
 if you did have your minds made up. Really, 
 his performance wasn't very creditable to you, 
 you know." 
 
 " Good heavens! " I exclaimed. " Didn't you 
 realize that he was our pet lunatic? Didn't you 
 see that it was nothing but a put-up job to have 
 some fun at a gold bug's expense?" 
 
 Mr. Auchmuty's face turned a deep crimson. 
 
 " Oh ! " he said bitterly. " Nice business, 
 wasn't it? To permit a gentleman to come in 
 good faith into that detestable district just to 
 humiliate him! And you men considered your- 
 selves entitled to a voice in American govern- 
 ment." 
 
 I did my best to exculpate myself on the 
 ground that it had not been my personal project 
 and that at the time I had not even attained to 
 my majority. It did no good. I tried to get
 
 Old Scores 251 
 
 over on common ground by taking up the busi- 
 ness of our committee. We could not agree on 
 a single point. Should we describe the nation 
 we wished to befriend as the Aromunes or as 
 the Kutzo-Vlachs? I voted for Aromunes, 
 whereupon Mr. Auchmuty insisted on Kutzo- 
 Vlachs. I yielded the point, whereupon he 
 went over to Aromunes and charged me with 
 trimming besides. Because I was for autonomy, 
 he would hear of nothing but complete national 
 independence, and when I came over to his side 
 he expressed his scorn of the superficiality of a 
 man who would make an independent state out 
 of a people scattered over the flanks of Pindus 
 and the foothills of Olympus, with a long stretch 
 of unfriendly territory between. I cursed my- 
 self for permitting the ghost of an ancient prank 
 to rise up to becloud the solution of a live inter- 
 national problem. All I could now do was to 
 get off the committee. I announced my inten- 
 tion of doing so, and rose. 
 
 "That is just as well," said Mr. Auchmuty 
 acidly. And then an expression of senile craft 
 took possession of his eyes. 
 
 " Please don't go," he said with forced cor- 
 diality. " There is something else I want to talk
 
 252 Old Scores 
 
 with you about. I am a reader of yours. That 
 is, at least an occasional reader." 
 
 " I am much gratified," I replied, rather puz- 
 zled by his veiled manner. " I hope I please 
 you." 
 
 " Yes, on the whole you do. But I have ob- 
 served of late that a great many people are 
 criticizing you as a reactionary, or else as a 
 Bolshevik. And I really think you ought to 
 answer them." 
 
 "Oh, you do?" I had caught his drift. 
 "You really think I ought to answer them?" 
 
 " Yes, indeed, I do," he replied fervently. 
 " Everybody says you ought to answer them." 
 
 " Everybody," I repeated reflectively. " My 
 friends, or those who want me to borrow trou- 
 ble?" 
 
 Mr. Auchmuty looked at me balefully. 
 " Perhaps both ; but it doesn't matter. You said 
 you had to go ? "
 
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