I VAGRANT ADVENTURES IN THE SOUTH

COLUMBUS

THE MAN UNDER THE YOKE

It was Sunday morning in the middle of March. I was stranded in Jacksonville, Florida. After breakfast I had five cents left. Joyously I purchased a sack of peanuts, then started northwest on the railway ties straight toward that part of Georgia marked “Swamp” on the map.

Sunset found me in a pine forest. I decided to ask for a meal and lodging at the white house looming half a mile ahead just by the track. I prepared a speech to this effect:—

“I am the peddler of dreams. I am the sole active member of the ancient brotherhood of the troubadours. It is against the rules of our order to receive money. We have the habit of asking a night’s lodging in exchange for repeating verses and fairy-tales.”

As I approached the house I forgot the speech. All the turkeys gobbled at me fiercely. The two dogs almost tore down the fence trying to get a taste of me. I went to the side gate to appeal to the proud old lady crowned with a lace cap and enthroned in the porch rocker. Her son, the proprietor, appeared. He shall ever be named the dog-man. His tone of voice was such, that, to speak in metaphor, he bit me in the throat. He refused me a place in his white kennel. He would not share his dog-biscuit. The being on the porch assured me in a whanging yelp that they did not take “nobody in under no circumstances.” Then the dog-man, mollified by my serene grin, pointed with his thumb into the woods, saying: “There is a man in there who will take you in sure.” He said it as though it were a reflection on his neighbor’s dignity. That I might not seem to be hurrying, I asked if his friend kept watch-dogs. He assured me the neighbor could not afford them.

The night with the man around the corner was like a chapter from that curious document, “The Gospel according to St. John.” He “could not afford to turn a man away” because once he slept three nights in the rain when he walked here from west Georgia. No one would give him shelter. After that he decided that when he had a roof he would go shares with whoever asked. Some strangers were good, some bad, but he would risk them all. Imagine this amplified in the drawling wheeze of the cracker sucking his corn-cob pipe for emphasis.

His real name and address are of no consequence. I found later that there were thousands like him. But let us call him “The Man Under the Yoke.” He was lean as an old opium-smoker. He was sooty as a pair of tongs. His Egyptian-mummy jaws had a two-weeks’ beard. His shirt had not been washed since the flood. His ankles were innocent of socks. His hat had no band. I verily believe his pipe was hereditary, smoked first by a bond-slave in Jamestown, Virginia.

He could not read. I presume his wife could not. They were much embarrassed when I wanted them to show me Lakeland on the map. They had warned me against that village as a place where itinerant strangers were shot full of holes. Well, I found that town pretty soon on the map, and made the brief, snappy memorandum in my note-book: “Avoid Lakeland.”

There were three uncertain chairs on the porch, one a broken rocker. Therefore the company sat on the railing, loafing against the pillars. The plump wife was frozen with diffidence. The genial, stubby neighbor, a man from away back in the woods, after telling me how to hop freight-cars, departed through an aperture in the wandering fence.

The two babies on the floor, squealing like shoats, succeeded in being good without being clean. They wrestled with the puppies who emerged from somewhere to the number of four. I wondered if the Man Under the Yoke would turn to a dog-man when the puppies grew up and learned to bark.

Supper was announced with the admonition, “Bring the chairs.” The rocking chair would not fit the kitchen table. Therefore the two babies occupied one, and the lord of the house another, and the kitchen chair was allotted to your servant. The mother hastened to explain that she was “not hungry.” After snuffing the smoking lamp that had no chimney, she paced at regular intervals between the stove and her lord, piling hot biscuits before him.

I could not offer my chair, and make it plain that some one must stand. I expressed my regrets at her lack of appetite and fell to. Their hospitality did not fade in my eyes when I considered that they ate such provisions every day. There was a dish of salt pork that tasted like a salt mine. We had one deep plate in common containing a soup of luke-warm water, tallow, half-raw fat pork and wilted greens. This dish was innocent of any enhancing condiment. I turned to the biscuit pile.

They were raw in the middle. I kept up courage by watching the children consume the tallow soup with zest. After taking one biscuit for meat, and one for vegetables, I ate a third for good-fellowship. The mother was anxious that her children should be a credit, and shook them too sternly and energetically I thought, when they buried their hands in the main dish.

Meanwhile the Man Under the Yoke told me how his bosses in the lumber-camp kept his wages down to the point where the grocery bill took all his pay; how he was forced to trade at the “company” store, there in the heart of the pine woods. He had cut himself in the saw-pit, had been laid up for a month, and “like a fool” had gone back to the same business. Last year he had saved a little money, expecting to get things “fixed up nice,” but the whole family was sick from June till October. He liked his fellow-workmen. They had to stand all he did. They loved the woods, and because of this love would not move to happier fortunes. Few had gone farther than Jacksonville. They did not understand travelling. They did not understand the traveller and were “likely to be mean to him.” Then he asked me whether I thought “niggers” had souls. I answered “Yes.” He agreed reluctantly. “They have a soul, of course, but it’s a mighty small one.” We adjourned to the front room, carrying our chairs down a corridor, where the open doorways we passed displayed uncarpeted floors and no furniture. The echo of the slow steps of the Man Under the Yoke reverberated through the wide house like muffled drums at a giant’s funeral. Yet the largeness of the empty house was wealth. I have been entertained since in many a poorer castle; for instance, in Tennessee, where a deaf old man, a crone, and her sister, a lame man, a slug of a girl, and a little unexplained boy ate, cooked, and slept by an open fire. They had neither stove, lamp, nor candle. I was made sacredly welcome for the night, though it was a one-room cabin with a low roof and a narrow door.

Thanks to the Giver of every good and perfect gift, pine-knots cost nothing in a pine forest. New York has no such fireplaces as that in the front room of the Man Under the Yoke. I thought of an essay by a New England sage on compensation. There were many old scriptures rising in my heart as I looked into that blaze. The one I remembered most was “I was a stranger, and ye took me in.” But though it was Sunday night, I did not quote Scripture to my host.

It was seven o’clock. The wife had put her babies to bed. She sat on the opposite side of the fire from us. Eight o’clock was bedtime, the host had to go to work so early. But our three hearts were bright as the burning pine for an hour.

You have enjoyed the golden embossed brocades of Hokusai. You have felt the charm of Maeterlinck’s “The Blind.” Think of these, then think of the shoulders of the Man Under the Yoke, embossed by the flame. Think of his voice as an occult instrument, while he burned a bit of crackling brush, and spoke of the love he bore that fireplace, the memory of evenings his neighbors had spent there with him, the stories told, the pipes smoked, the good silent times with wife and children. It was said by hints, and repetitions, and broken syllables, but it was said. We ate and drank in the land of heart’s desire. This man and his wife sighed at the fitting times, and smiled, when to smile was to understand, while I recited a few of the rhymes of the dear singers of yesterday and to-day: Yeats and Lanier, Burns and even Milton. This fire was the treasure at the end of the rainbow. I had not been rainbow-chasing in vain.

As my host rose and knocked out his pipe, he told how interesting lumbering with oxen could be made, if a man once understood how they were driven. He assured me that the most striking thing in all these woods was a team of ten oxen. He directed me to a road whereby I would be sure to see half a dozen to-morrow. He said if ever I met a literary man, to have him write them into verses. Therefore the next day I took the route and observed: and be sure, if ever I meet the proper minstrel, I shall exhort him with all my strength to write the poem of the yoke.

As to that night, I slept in that room in the corner away from the fireplace. One comfort was over me, one comfort and pillow between me and the dark floor. The pillow was laundered at the same time as the shirt of my host. There was every reason to infer that the pillow and comfort came from his bed.

They slept far away, in some mysterious part of the empty house. I hoped they were not cold. I looked into the rejoicing fire. I said: “This is what I came out into the wilderness to see. This man had nothing, and gave me half of it, and we both had abundance.”

THE MAN WITH THE APPLE-GREEN EYES

Remember, if you go a-wandering, the road will break your heart. It is sometimes like a woman, caressing and stabbing at once. It is a mystery, this quality of the road. I write, not to explain, but to warn, and to give the treatment. Comradeship and hospitality are opiates most often at hand.

I remember when I encountered the out-poured welcome of an Old Testament Patriarch, a praying section boss in a gray log village, one Monday evening in north Florida. He looked at me long. He sensed my depression. He made me his seventh son.

He sent his family about to announce my lecture in the schoolhouse on “The Value of Poetry.” Enough apple-cheeked maidens, sad mothers, and wriggling, large-eyed urchins assembled to give an unconscious demonstration of the theme.

The little lamp spluttered. The windows rattled. Two babies cried. Everybody assumed that lectures were delightful, miserable, and important. The woman on the back seat nursed her baby, reducing the noise one-third. When I was through shouting, they passed the hat. I felt sure I had carried my point. Poetry was eighty-three cents valuable, a good deal for that place. And the sons of the Patriarch were the main contributors, for before the event he had thunderously exhorted them to be generous. I should not have taken the money? But that was before I had a good grip on my rule.

The Patriarch was kept away by a neighbor who had been seized with fits on Sunday, while fishing. The neighbor though mending physically, was in a state of apprehension. He demanded, with strong crying and tears, that the Patriarch pray with him. Late in the evening, as we were about the hearth, recovering from the lecture, my host returned from the sinner’s bed, the pride of priesthood in his step. He had established a contrite heart in his brother, though all the while frank with him about the doubtful efficacy of prayer in healing a body visited with just wrath.

Who would not have loved the six sons, when, at the Patriarch’s command, they drew into a circle around the family altar, with their small sister, and the gentle mother with her babe at her breast? It was an achievement to put the look of prayer into such flushed, wilful faces as those boys displayed. They followed their father with the devotion of an Ironside regiment as he lifted up his voice singing “The Son of God goes forth to War.” They rolled out other strenuous hymns. I thought they would sing through the book. I looked at the mother. I thanked God for her. She was the only woman in Florida who could cook. And her voice was honey. Her breast was ivory. The child was a pearl. Her whole aspect had the age and the youth of one of De Forest Brush’s austere American madonnas. The scripture lesson, selected not by chance, covered the adventures of Jacob at Bethel.

We afterwards knelt on the pine floor, our heads in the seats of the chairs. I peeped and observed the Patriarch with his chair almost in the fireplace. He ignored the heat. He shouted the name of the smallest boy, who answered the roll-call by praying: “Now I lay me down to sleep.” The father megaphoned for the next, and the next, with a like response. He called the girl’s name, but in a still small voice she lisped the Lord’s Prayer. As the older boys were reached, the prayers became individual, but containing fragments of “Now I lay me.” The mother petitioned for the soul of the youngest boy, not yet in a state of grace, for a sick cousin, and many a neighborhood cause. The father prayed twenty minutes, while the chair smoked. I forgot the chair at last when he voiced the petition that the stranger in the gates might have visitations on his lonely road, like Jacob at Bethel. Then a great appeal went up the chimney that the whole assembly might bear abundantly the fruits of the spirit. The fire leaped for joy. I knew that when the prayer appeared before the throne, it was still a tongue of flame.

Next morning I spent about seventy cents lecture money on a railway ticket, and tried to sleep past my destination, but the conductor woke me. He put me off in the Okefenokee swamp, just inside the Georgia line. The waters had more brass-bespangled ooze than in mid-Florida; the marsh weeds beneath were lustrous red. I crossed an interminable trestle over the Suwannee River. A fidgety bird was scolding from tie to tie. If the sky had been turned over and the azure boiled to a spoonful, you would have had the intense blue with which he was painted. If the caldron had been filled with sad clouds, and boiled to a black lump, you would have had my heart. Ungrateful, I had forgotten the Patriarch. I was lonely for I knew not what; maybe for my friend Edward Broderick, who had walked with me through central Florida, and had been called to New York by the industrial tyranny which the steel rails represented even here.

We two had taken the path beside the railway in the regions of Sanford and Tampa, walking in loose sand white as salt. An orange grove in twilight had been a sky of little moons. We had eaten not many oranges. They are expensive there. But we had stolen the souls of all we passed, and so had spoiled them for their owners. It had been an exquisite revenge.

We had seen swamps of parched palmettos set afire by wood-burning locomotives whose volcanic smoke-stacks are squat and wide, like those on the engines in grandmother’s third reader.

We had met Mr. Terrapin, Mr. Owl, Mrs. Cow, and Master Calf, all of them carved by the train-wheels, Mr. Buzzard sighing beside them. We had met Mr. Pig again at the cracker’s table, cooked by last year’s forest-fire, run over by last year’s train. But what had it mattered? For we together had had ears for the mocking-bird, and eyes for the moss-hung live oaks that mourn above the brown swamp waters.

We had met few men afoot, only two professional tramps, yet the path by the railway was clearly marked. Some Florida poet must celebrate the Roman directness of the railways embanked six feet above the swamp, going everywhere in regions that have no wagon-roads.

But wherever in our land there is a railway, there is a little path clinging to the embankment holding the United States in a network as real as that of the rolled steel,—a path wrought by the foot of the unsubdued. This path wanders back through history till it encounters Tramp Columbus, Tramp Dante, Tramp St. Francis, Tramp Buddha, and the rest of our masters.

All this we talked of nobly, even grandiloquently, but now I walked alone, ignoring the beautiful turpentine forests of Georgia and the sometime accepted merits of a quest for the Grail, the Gleam, or the Dark Tower. Reaching Fargo about one o’clock I attempted to telegraph for money to take me home, beaten. It was not a money-order office, and thirteen cents would not have covered the necessary business details. Forced to make the best of things, I spent all upon ginger-snaps at the combination grocery-store and railway-station. I shared them with a drummer waiting for the freight, who had the figure of Falstaff, and the mustaches of Napoleon third. I did not realize at that time, that by getting myself penniless I was inviting good luck.

After a dreary while, the local freight going to Valdosta came in. Napoleon advanced to capture a ride. A conductor and an inspector were on the platform. He attacked them with cigars. He indulged freely in friendly swearing and slapping on the back. He showed credentials, printed and written. He did not want to wait three hours for the passenger train in that much-to-be-condemned town. His cigars were refused, his papers returned. He took the path to the lumberman’s hotel. His defeat appeared to be the inspector’s doing.

That obstinate inspector wore a gray stubble beard and a collar chewed by many laundries. He was encompassed in a black garment of state that can be described as a temperance overcoat. He needed only a bulging umbrella and a nose like a pump-spout to resemble the caricatures of the Prohibition Party that appeared in Puck when St. John ran for President.

I showed him all my baggage carried in an oil-cloth wrapper in my breast pocket: a blue bandanna, a comb, a little shaving mirror, a tooth-brush, a razor, and a piece of soap. “These,” I said, “are my credentials.”

Also I showed a little package of tracts in rhyme I was distributing to the best people: The Wings of the Morning, or The Tree of Laughing Bells.[1] I hinted he might become the possessor of one. I drew his attention to the fact that there was no purse in the exhibit. I divided my last four ginger-snaps with him. I showed him a letter commending me to all pious souls from a leading religious worker in New York, Charles F. Powlison.

Soon we were thundering away to Valdosta! Mr. Temperance climbed to the observation chair in the little box at the top of the caboose, alternately puzzling over my Wings of the Morning,[2] and looking out. The caboose bumped like a farm-wagon on a frozen road. The pine-burning stove roared. The negro Adonis on the wood-pile had gold in his teeth. He had eyes like dark jewels set in white marble, and he polished lanterns as black as himself.

“By Jove,” I said. “That’s the handsomest bit of lacquer this side of the Metropolitan Museum.”

“’Sh,” said Conductor Roundface, sobering himself. “You will queer yourself with the old man. He wouldn’t let that drummer on because he swore.”

The old man came down. I bridled my profane tongue while he lectured the conductor on the necessity for more interest in the Georgia public schools, and the beauty of total abstinence, and, at last, the Japanese situation. This is a condensed translation of his speech: “I was on the side of the Russians all through the Russo-Japanese war. My friends said, ‘Hooray for Japan.’ But I say a Japanese is a nigger. I have never seen one, but I have seen their pictures. The Lord intended people to stay where they were put. We ought to have trade, but no immigration. Chinese belong to China. They are adapted to the Chinese climate. Niggers belong to Africa. They are adapted to the African climate. Americans belong to America. They are adapted to the American climate. Why, the mixing that is going on is something scandalous. I had a nigger working for me once that was half-Spaniard and half-Indian. There are just a few white people, and more mulattoes every day. The white people ought to keep their blood pure. Russians are white people. Germans, English, and Americans are white people. French people are niggers. Dagoes are niggers. Jews are niggers. All people are niggers but just these four. There is going to be a big war in two or three years between all the white people and all the niggers. The niggers are going to combine and force a fight, Japan in the lead.”

We reached Valdosta after dark. Conductor and inspector exchanged with me most civil good-bys. Their hospitality had been nepenthe for my poor broken heart. I reconciled myself to sitting in front of the station fireplace all night. I thought my nearest friend was at Macon, one hundred and fifty miles north; a gay cavalier who had read Omar Khayyam with me in college.

Just then an immense, angular, red-haired man sat down in front of the fire. He might have been the prodigal son of some Yankee farmer-statesman. He threw his arms around me, and though I had never seen him before, the Brotherhood of Man was established at once. He cast an empty bottle into the wood-box. He produced another. I would not drink. He poured down one-half of it. It snorted like dish-water going into the sink. He said: “That’s right. Don’t drink. This is the first time I ever drank. I have been on a soak two weeks. You see I was in Texas a long time, and went broke. I don’t know how I got here.” “Well,” I said, “we have this fire till they run us out. Enjoy yourself.”

He wept. “I don’t deserve to enjoy anything. Anybody that’s made a fool of himself as I have done. I wish I were in Vermont where my wife and babies are buried. Somebody wrote me they were dead and buried just when I went broke.”

Thereafter he was merry. “There was a man in Vermont I didn’t like who kept a fire like this. I went to see him every evening because I liked his fire. He would study and I would smoke.”

He took out two dimes. “Say, that’s my last money. Let’s buy two tickets to the next station and get off and shoot up the town.”

A hollow-eyed little man of middle age, grimy like a coal-miner, sat down on the other side of Mr. Vermont. He said he had been flagging trains for so long he could not tell when he began. He said he must wait three hours for a friend. He declined the bottle. He listened to Mr. Vermont’s story, told with variations. He put his chin into his hands, his elbows on his knees, and slept. Vermont threw himself on top of the bent back, his face wrapped in his arms, like a school-boy asleep on his desk-lid. Mr. Flagman slowly awoke, and cast off his brother, and slept again. Cautiously Vermont waited, to resume his pillow in a quarter of an hour, and be again cast off.

Mr. Flagman sat up. I asked him if there was a train for Macon going soon. He said: “The through freight is making up now.” He gave me the conductor’s name. I asked if there was any one about who could write me a pass to Macon. He said, “The pay car has just come in, and Mr. Grady can give you a pass if he wants to.” I went out to the tracks.

From a little window at the end of the car Mr. Grady was paying the interminable sons of Ham, who emerged from the African night, climbed the steps, received their envelopes, and slunk down the steps into the African night.

At last I showed Mr. Grady my letter from Charles F. Powlison. Mr. Grady did not appear to be of a religious turn. I asked him permission to ride to Macon in the caboose of the freight, going out at one o’clock. I assured him it was beneath my dignity to crawl into the box-car, or patronize the blind baggage, and I was tired of walking in swamp. Mr. Grady asked, “Are you an official of the road?”

“No, sir.”

“Then what you ask is impossible, sir.”

“Oh, my dear Mr. Grady, it is not impossible—”

“I am glad to have met you, sir. Good-night, sir,” and Mr. Grady had shut the window.

There was the smash, clang, and thud of making up a train. A negro guided me to the lantern of a freight conductor. The conductor had the lean frame, the tight jaw, the fox nose, the Chinese skin of a card-shark. He would have made a name for himself on the Spanish Main, some centuries since, by the cool way he would have snatched jewels from ladies’ ears and smiled when they bled. He did not smile now. He gripped his lantern like a cutlass, and the cars groaned. They were gentlemen in armor compelled to walk the plank by this pirate with the apple-green eyes. We will call him Mr. Shark.

I put my pious letter into my pocket. “Mr. Shark, I would like to ride to Macon in the caboose.” Mr. Shark thrust his lantern under my hat-brim. I had no collar, but was not ashamed of that. He said, “I have met men like you before.” He turned down the track shouting orders. I jumped in front of him. I said, “You are mistaken. You have not met a man like me before. I am the goods. I am the wise boy from New York. I have been walking in every swamp in Florida, eating dead pig for breakfast, water-moccasins for lunch, alligators for dinner. I would like to tell you my adventures.”

Mr. Shark ignored me, and went on persecuting the train.

Valdosta was a depot in the midst of darkness. I hated the darkness. I went into the depot. Vermont was offering Flagman the bottle. He drank.

Flagman asked me: “Can’t you make it?”

“No. Grady turned me down. And the conductor turned me down.”

Mr. Flagman said, “The sure way to ride in a caboose like a gentleman is to ask the conductor like he is a gentleman, and everybody else is a gentleman, and when he turns you down, ask him again like a gentleman.” And much more with that refrain. It was wisdom lightly given, profounder than it seemed. Let us remember the tired flagman, and engrave the substance of his saying on our souls.

I sought the pirate again. I took off my hat. I bowed like Don Cæsar De Bazan, but gravely. “I ask you, just as one gentleman to another, to take me to Macon. I have friends in Macon.”

Mr. Shark showed a pale streak of smile. “Come around at one o’clock.”

My “Thank you” was drowned by a late passenger. It came from Fargo, for Napoleon III dismounted. He said: “Hello. Where are you going, boy?”

“I am just taking the caboose of the through freight for Macon. But I have a few minutes.”

“How the devil did you get here, sir?” I told him the story in brief. We were in front of the fire now. “How are you going to make this next train? I would like to go with you.”

I could not tell whether he meant it or not. Right beside us Mr. Flagman was asleep for all night, with his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands. Stretched above Flagman’s back was Mr. Vermont, like a school-boy asleep on his desk. I said, “Do you see the gentleman on the bottom of the pile? He is the Grand Lama of Cabooseville. You have to ask him for the password. The man on top is the sublime sub-Lama.”

Napoleon looked dubiously at them, and the two bottles in the wood-box. He gave me good words of farewell, finishing with mock-gravity: “Of course I respect you, sir, in not giving the password without orders from your superior, sir.”

And now I boarded the caboose, hurrying to surprise the Macon cavalier. He expected me in three weeks, walking. But the caboose did one hundred and fifty miles in thirteen hours, and all the way my heart spun like a glorified musical top. Alas, this is a tale of drink. I filled the coffee-pot and drained it an infinite number of times, all because my poor broken heart was healed. The stove was the only person in the world out of humor. He was mad because his feet were nailed to the floor. He tried to spill the coffee, and screamed, “Now you’ve done it” every time we rounded a curve. The caboose-door slammed open every seven minutes, Shark and his white man and his negro rushing in from their all-night work for refreshment.

The manner of serving coffee in a caboose is this: there are three tin cups for the white men. The negro can chew sugar-cane, or steal a drink when we do not look. There is a tin box of sugar. If one is serving Mr. Shark, one shakes a great deal of sugar into the cup, and more down one’s sleeve, and into one’s shoes and about the rocking floor. One becomes sprinkled like a doughnut, newly-fried, and fragrant with splashed coffee. The cinders that come in on the breath of the shrieking night cling to the person. But if you are serving Mr. Shark you do not mind these things. You pour his drink, you eat his bread and cheese, thanking him from the bottom of your stomach, not having eaten anything since the ginger-snaps of long ago. You solemnly touch your cup to his, as you sit with him on the red disembowelled car cushions, with the moss gushing out. You wish him the treasure-heaps of Aladdin or a racing stable in Ireland, whichever he pleases.

Let all the readers of this tale who hope to become Gentlemen of the Road take off collars and cuffs, throw their purses into the ditch, break their china, and drink their coffee from tinware to the health of Mr. Shark, our friend with the apple-green eyes. Yea, my wanderers, the cure for the broken heart is gratitude to the gentleman you would hate, if you had your collar on or your purse in your pocket when you met him. Though there was heavy betting against him, he becomes the Hero in a whirlwind finish. Patriarch and Flagman disputing for second, decision for Flagman.

THE WOULD-BE MERMAN

MACON

The languid town of Macon, Georgia, will ever remain in my mind as my first island of respite after vagrancy. My friend C. D. Russell lent me his clothes, took me to his eating-place, introduced his circle. We settled the destiny of the universe several different ways in peripatetic discourse.

After one has ventured one hundred and fifty miles through everglades and spent twenty-four sleepless hours riding in freight-cabooses the marrow of his bones is marsh, his hair and clothes are moss, cinders and bark, his immortal soul is engine-smoke. Feeling just so, I had entered Russell’s law office. He was at court. I sent word by his partner that I had gone to school with him in Ohio, that I had mailed a postal last Sunday from Florida telling him I would arrive afoot in three weeks,—but here I was, already. The word was carried with Southern precision.

“There is a person in the office who went to school with you in Indiana.”

“I did not go to school in Indiana.”

“He has been walking in Mississippi and Alabama. He wrote you a postal six weeks ago.”

“How does he look?”

“Like the devil. He is principally pants and shirt.”

The cavalier knew who that was. He found me, took me to his castle, introduced civilization. Civilization is whiter than the clouds, and full of clear water. One enters it with a plunge. Culture is a fuzzy fabric with which one rubs in Civilization. After I had been intimate with these, I was admitted to Society: a suit of the cavalier’s clothes. I looked like him then, all but head and hands. I regarded myself with awe, as a gorilla would if he found himself fading into a Gibson picture.

A chair is a sturdy creature. I wonder who captured the first one? Who put out its eyes and taught it to stand still? A table-cloth is ritualistic. How nobly the napkin defends the vest, while those glistening birds, the knife, the fork, the spoon, bring one food.

How did these things to eat get here among these hundreds of houses? One would think that if anything to eat were brought among so many men, there would be enough hungry ones to kill each other and spoil it with blood.

Why do people stop eating when they have had just a bit? Why not go on forever?

We were in another room. The cavalier showed on the table what he called his Bible: the letters of Lord Chesterfield. To one who has not slept in all his life, who has lived a thousand years on freight trains, books do not count much. But how ingenious is a white iron bed, how subtle are pillows, how overwhelming is sleep!

THE FALLS OF TALLULAH (North Georgia)

I The Call of the Water

The dust of many miles was upon me. I felt uncouth in the presence of the sun-dried stones. Here was a natural bathing-place. Who could resist it?

I climbed further down the cañon, holding to the bushes. The cliff along which the water rushed to the fall’s foot was smooth and seemed artificially made, though it had been so hewn by the fury of the cataclysm in ages past.

I took off my clothes and put my shoulders against the granite, being obliged to lean back a little to conform to its angle. I was standing with my left shoulder almost touching the perilous main column of water. A little fall that hurried along by itself a bit nearer the bank flowed over me. It came with headway. Though it looked so innocent, I could scarcely hold up against its power.

But it gave me delight to maintain myself. The touch of the stone was balm to my walk-worn body and dust-fevered feet. Like a sacerdotal robe the water flowed over my shoulders and I thought myself priest of the solitude.

I stepped out into the air. With unwonted energy I was able to throw off the coldness of my wet frame. The water there at the fall’s foot was like a thousand elves singing. “Joy to all creatures!” cried the birds. “Joy to all creatures! Glory, glory, glory to the wild falls!”

II The Piping of Pan

I was getting myself sunburned, stretched out on the warm dry rocks. Down over the steep edge, somewhere near the foot of the next descent I heard the pipes of Pan. Why should I dress and go?

I made my shoes and clothes into a bundle, and threw them down the cliff and climbed over, clinging to the steep by mere twigs. I seemed to hear the piping as I approached the terrace at the fall’s base. Then the sound of music blended with the stream’s strange voice and I turned to merge myself again with its waters.

Against the leaning wall of the cliff I placed my shoulders. The descending current smote me, wrestling with wildwood laughter, threatening to crush me and hurl me to the base of the mountain. But just as before my feet were well set in a notch of the cliff that went across the stream, cut there a million years ago.

It was a curious combination to discover, this stream-wide notch, and above it this wall with the water spread like a crystal robe over it. In the centre of the fall a Cyclops could have stood to bathe, and on the edge was the same provision in miniature for feeble man. And it was the more curious to find this plan repeated in detail by successive cataracts of the cañon, unmistakably wrought by the slow hand of geologic ages. And to see the water of the deep central stream undisturbed in the midst of the fall and still crystalline, and to see it slide down the steep incline and strike each notch at the foot with sudden music and appalling foam, was more wonderful than the simple telling can explain.

Each sheet of crystal that came over my shoulders seemed now to pour into them rather than over them. I lifted my mouth and drank as a desert bird drinks rain. My downstretched arms and extended fingers and the spreading spray seemed one. My heart with its exultant blood seemed but the curve of a cataract over the cliff of my soul.

III Peril, Vanity, and Adoration

Led by the pipes of Pan, I again descended. Once more that sound, almost overtaken, interwove itself with the water’s cry, and I merged body and soul with the stream and the music. The margin of another cataract crashed upon me. In the recklessness of pleasure, one arm swung into the main current. Then the water threatened my life. To save myself, I was kneeling on one knee. I reached out blindly and found a hold at last in a slippery cleft, and later, it seemed an age, with the other hand I was able to reach one leaf. The leaf did not break. At last its bough was in my grasp and I crawled frightened into the sun. I sat long on a warm patch of grass.

But the cliffs and the water were not really my enemies. They sent a wind to give me delight. Never was the taste of the air so sweet as then. The touch of it was on my lips like fruit. There was a flattery in the tree-limbs bending near my shoulders. They said, “There is brotherhood in your footfall on our roots and the touch of your hand on our boughs.”

The spray of the splashed foam was wine. I was the unchallenged possessor of all of nature my body and soul could lay hold upon. It was the fair season between spring and summer when no one came to this place. Like Selkirk, I was monarch of all I surveyed. In my folly I seemed to feel strange powers creeping into my veins from the sod. I forgot my near-disaster. I said in my heart, “O Mother Earth majestical, the touch of your creatures has comforted me, and I feel the strength of the soil creeping up into my dust. From this patch of soft grass, power and courage come up into me from your bosom, from the foundation of your continents. I feel within me the soul of iron from your iron mines, and the soul of lava from your deepest fires.”

IV The Blood Unquenchable

The satyrs in the bushes were laughing at me and daring me to try the water again.

I stood on the edge of the rapids where were many stones coming up out of the foam. I threw logs across. The rocks held them in place. I lay down between the logs in the liquid ice. I defied it heartily. And my brother the river had mercy upon me, and slew me not.

Amid the shout of the stream the birds were singing: “Joy, joy, joy to all creatures, and happiness to the whole earth. Glory, glory, glory to the wild falls.”

I struggled out from between the logs and threw my bundle over the cliff, and again descended, for I heard the pipes of Pan, just below me there, too plainly for delay. They seemed to say “Look! Here is a more exquisite place.”

The sun beat down upon me. I felt myself twin brother to the sun. My body was lit with an all-conquering fever. I had walked through tropical wildernesses for many a mile, gathering sunshine. And now in an afternoon I was gambling my golden heat against the icy silver of the river and winning my wager, while all the leaves were laughing on all the trees.

And again I stood in a Heaven-prepared place, and the water poured in glory upon my shoulders.

Why was it so dark? Was a storm coming? I was dazed as a child in the theatre beholding the crowd go out after the sudden end of a solemn play. My clothes, it appeared, were half on. I was kneeling, looking up. I counted the falls to the top of the cañon. It was night, and I had wrestled with them all. My spirit was beyond all reason happy. This was a day for which I had not planned. I felt like one crowned. My blood was glowing like the blood of the crocus, the blood of the tiger-lily. And so I meditated, and then at last the chill of weariness began to touch me and in my heart I said, “Oh Mother Earth, for all my vanity, I know I am but a perishable flower in a cleft of the rock. I give thanks to you who have fed me the wild milk of this river, who have upheld me like a child of the gods throughout this day.”

Around a curve in the cañon, down stream, growing each moment sweeter, I heard the pipes of Pan.

V The Gift of Tallulah

Go, you my brothers, whose hearts are in sore need of delight, and bathe in the falls of Tallulah. That experience will be for the foot-sore a balm, for the languid a lash, for the dry-throated pedant the very cup of nature. To those crushed by the inventions of cities, wounded by evil men, it will be a washing away of tears and of blood. Yea, it will be to them all, what it was to my heart that day, the sweet, sweet blowing of the reckless pipes of Pan.

THE GNOME

Let us now recall a certain adventure among the moonshiners.

When I walked north from Atlanta Easter morning, on Peachtree road, orchards were flowering everywhere. Resurrection songs flew across the road from humble blunt steeples.

Stony Mountain, miles to the east, Kenesaw on the western edge of things, and all the rest of the rolling land made the beginning of a gradual ascent by which I was to climb the Blue Ridge. The road mounted the watershed between the Atlantic and the gulf.

An old man took me into his wagon for a mile. I asked what sort of people I would meet on the Blue Ridge. He answered, “They make blockade whisky up there. But if you don’t go around hunting stills by the creeks, or in the woods away from the road, they’ll be awful glad to see you. They are all moonshiners, but if they likes a man they loves him, and they’re as likely to get to lovin’ you as not.”

When I was truly in the mountains, six days north of Atlanta, a day’s journey from the last struggling railway, the road wound into a certain high, uninhabited valley. Two days back, at a village I entered just after I had enjoyed the falls of Tallulah, I had found a letter from my new friend John Collier whom I had met in Macon and Atlanta. It contained a little money, which he insisted I should take, to make easier my way. I was inconsistent enough to spend some of it, instead of returning it or giving it “to the poor.”

I invested seventy-five cents in brogans made of the thickest leather. I had thought they were conquered the first day. But now one of them bit a piece out of my heel. John Collier has done noble things since. On my behalf, for instance, he climbed Mount Mitchell with me, and showed me half the glory of the South. Then and after, he has helped my soul with counsel and teaching. But he should not have corrupted a near-Franciscan with money for hoodoo brogans. Though it was fairly warm weather, if ever I rested five minutes, the heavy things stiffened like cooling metal.

The little streams I crossed scarcely afforded me a drink. Their dried borders had the foot-prints of swine on them.

Lameness affects one’s vision. The thick woods were the dregs of the landscape, fit haunt for the acorn-grubbing sow. The road following the ridges was a monster’s spine.

Those wicked brogans led me where they should not. Or maybe it was just my destiny to find what I found.

About four o’clock in the afternoon, after exploring many roads that led to futile nothing, I was on what seemed the main highway, and dragged myself into the sight of the first mortal since daybreak. He seemed like a gnome as he watched me across the furrows. And so he was, despite his red-ripe cheeks. The virginal mountain apple-tree, blossoming overhead, half covering the toad-like cabin, was out of place. It should have been some fabulous, man-devouring devil-bush from the tropics, some monstrous work of the enemies of God.

The child, just in her teens, helping the Gnome to plant sweet potatoes, had in her life planted many, and eaten few. Or so it appeared. She was a crouching lump of earth. Her father dug the furrow. She did the planting, shovelling the dirt with her hands. Her face was sodden as any in the slums of Chicago. She ran to the house a ragged girl, and came back a homespun girl, a quick change. It must not be counted against her that she did not wash her face.

The Gnome talked to me meanwhile. He had made up his mind about me. “I guess you want to stay all night?”

“Yes.”

“The next house is fifteen miles away. You are welcome if what we have is good enough for you. My wife is sick, but she will not let you be any bother.”

I wanted to be noble and walk on. But I persuaded myself my feet were as sick as the woman. I accepted the Gnome’s invitation.

Let the readers with a detective instinct note that his hoe-handle was two feet short, and had been whittled a little around the top to make it usable. It was at best an awkward instrument. (The mystery will soon be solved.)

We were met at the door by one my host called Brother Joseph—a towering shape with an upper lip like a walrus, for it was armed with tusk-like mustaches. He was silent as King Log.

But the Gnome said, “I have saved up a month of talk since the last stranger came through.” With ease, with simplicity of word, with I know not how much of guile, he gave fragments of his life: how he had lived in this log house always, how his first wife died, how her children were raised by this second wife and married off, how they now enjoyed this second family.

He showed me the other fragment of the hoe-handle. “I broke that over a horse’s head the last time I was drunk. I always get crazy. When I come to, I do not remember anything about it. The last time I fought with my cousin. When I knocked down his horse he drew his knife. I drew this knife. My wife said I fought like a wild hog. I sliced my cousin pretty bad. He skipped the country, for he cut out one of my lungs and two of my ribs. I lost two buckets of blood. It took the doctor a long time to put my insides back.”

From this hour forward he struggled between the luxury of being even more confidential, and the luxury of being cautious like a lynx. I squirmed. Despite his abandon, he was watching me.

I put one hand in my pocket. I found a diversion, a pair of eyeglasses. I had chanced on them in the bushes at Tallulah. The droop of his eyelids as he put them on was exquisite. He paced the floor. I had a review of his appearance. He was like a thin twist of tobacco. He had been burned out by too-sharp whisky. The babies clapped their hands as he strutted. He was like a third-rate Sunday-school teacher in a frock coat in the presence of the infant class. He was glad to keep the glasses, yet asked questions with a double meaning, implying I had stolen them in Atlanta, and fled these one hundred miles. We were gay rogues, and we knew it.

“Get up! Make some coffee and supper!” he shouted to the figure on the bed in the black corner of the cabin. He kept his jaw tight on his pipe, speaking to her in the gnome language. She replied in kind, snorting and muffling her words, without moving lips or tongue, and keeping her teeth on her snuff-stick. She stumbled up, groaning, with both hands on her head. She had once been a woman. She had lived with this thing too long. All the trappings that make for home had grown stale and weird about her. The scraps of rag-carpet on the floor were rat eaten. The red calico window curtains were vilely dirty from the years of dust and the leak of many rains. The benches were battered, unsteady. The door-latch was gone. The door was held in place by a stone. She stood before me, her hair hanging straight across her face or down her collar, or flying about or tied behind in a dreadful knot. She stood before me, but as long as I was in that house she did not look at me, she did not speak to me.

There was no stove. The Gnome said: “Wife don’t like a stove. She had rather cook the way she learned.” We rolled in the back-log for her and coaxed up the embers. We sat at one side of the hearth. We exchanged boastful adventures. She crawled into the fireplace to nurse the corn-bread and coffee and pork to perfection and place the Dutch oven right.

Have you heard your grandmother speak of the Dutch oven? It is a squat kettle which is set in the embers. When it is hot, the biscuit dough is put in and the lid replaced. Slowly the biscuits become ambrosia. Slowly the watching cook is baked.

The Devil was in my host. By his coaxing hospitality he made it seem natural that a woman deadly sick should serve us. The rest of the family could wait. It did not matter if the tiny one cried and pulled the mother’s skirt. She smote it into silence and fear, then carried it to the black corner where the potato planter herded the rest of the babies, helped by King Log, the walrus-headed.

The Gnome said, “I quit drinking ever since I had that fight I told you about. I don’t dare drink. So I take coffee.”

You should have seen him flooding himself with black coffee, drinking from a yellow bowl. I said to myself: “He will surely turn to the consolation of liquor anon. He will beat his wife again. He will drive his children into the woods. This woman must fight the battle for her offspring till her black-snake hair is white. Or maybe that insane knife will go suddenly into her throat. She may die soon with her hair black,—and red.”

We ate with manly leisure. We were sated. The mother prepared the second meal, and called the group from the black corner. She made ready her own supper. I see her by the fire, the heavy arm shielding her face, the hunched figure a knot of roots,—a palpable mystery about her, making her worthy of a portrait by some new Rembrandt. It is the tragic mystery born of the isolation of the Blue Ridge and the juice of the Indian corn. Let us not forget the weapon with which she fights the flame, the quaint long shovel.

Let us watch her at the table, breaking her corn-bread alone, her puffy eyelids closed, her cheek-bones seeming to cut through the skin. There is something of the eagle in her aspect because of her Roman nose, and her hands moving like talons. It is not corn-bread that she tears and devours. She is consuming her enemies, which are Weariness, Squalor, Flat and Unprofitable Memory, Spiritual Death. She is seeking to forget that the light of the hearthstone that falls on her dirty but beautiful babies is kindled in hell.

The Gnome spoke of his hogs. A Middle West farmer can talk hogs, and the world will admire him the more. But a mediæval swine-herd dare not. It is self-betrayal.

My host grew affectionate, grandfatherly. He told of a solid acre of mica on top of a mountain. He speculated that it was a mile deep. He put a chunk into my pocket for me to carry to Asheville to interest great capitalists. He offered me fifty per cent on the profits. I took out a copy of the Tree of Laughing Bells from my pocket. I reviewed the tale contained in the book, in words I thought the Gnome would understand. Then he read it for himself with the “specs.” He was proud of having learned to read out of the Bible, with no schooling.

He seemed particularly impressed with the length of the journey of the hero of the poem, who flew “to the farthest star of all.” He looked at me with conceited shrewdness. “I played hookey myself, when I was a kid. I rode and walked forty-five miles that day. I was mighty glad to get back to my mammy the day after. I never wanted to run away again.” He shook his pipe at me. “You are just a runaway boy, that’s what you are.”

He said something favorable about me to his wife, in the gnome language. She stood up. She shrilled back a caution. She showed her dirty teeth at him. But there was something he was bursting to tell me. He was essentially too reckless to conceal a secret long, even a life-and-death secret. He began: “I still raise a little corn.”

The Walrus gave a sort of watch-dog bark. The Gnome reluctantly accepted the caution. He pointed sharply to the bed farthest from the black corner of the room.

“That’s for you.”

“Isn’t there a shed or a corn-crib where I can sleep?”

“No, you don’t get out of this house to-night. There aren’t any sheds or cribs.”

I looked helplessly around that single-roomed cabin. Not fear, but modesty, overcame me. I was expected to retire first. But King Log, the Walrus, perceiving my diffidence, set me an example. He rapidly hauled a couch off the porch and tumbled into it, first undressing as far as his underwear. With a quilt almost to his chin, and covering his pretty pink feet, he was a decent spectacle.

Happily I also wore underwear, and was soon under my quilt. I stole a look at the potato planter. I realized that she was the maiden present. Be pleased, O brothers, to observe that she has been aware of her age and state. She has huddled up to the fire, with her back to us; she has hidden her face on her knees. At last she piles ashes on the embers and finds a place in the black corner in the cot full of children. Her father and mother take the cot between.

Next morning was Sunday, a week since Easter. Only when a man has sadly mangled feet, and blood heated by many weeks of adventure, can he find luxury such as I found in the icy stream next morning. The divine rivulet on the far side of the field had been misnamed “Mud Creek.” It was clear as a diamond.

Always carrying a piece of soap in my hip pocket, I was able to take a complete scour. Not content with this (pardon me), I did scrub shirt, socks, underwear, and bandanna. I hung them on the bushes, thanking God for the wind. Taking my before-mentioned credentials from my pocket, I made myself into a gentleman. When I dressed at last, my clothes were a little damp, but I knew that an hour’s walking would put all to rights. As I held the bushes aside I saw a crib-like structure that made me shake more than the damp clothes. Was it a still, or was it not a still?

In my innocence I could not tell. But I remembered the warning, “Don’t go pokin’ round huntin’ stills by the creeks.”

As I hurried to the house my host carelessly appeared from the region of my bathing-place. He was whittling with his historic knife. I suppose he had noted my actions enough to restore his confidence. Anyway, the shame of being unwashed was his only visible emotion. He said, “I always bathe in hot water.”

“So do I, when I am not on the road.”

Still he was abashed. He took an enormous chew of tobacco to vindicate himself.

After breakfast the wife helped the Walrus to drag the cot out of doors. When she was alone on the porch I told her how sorry I was she had been obliged to cook for me. I thanked her for her toil. But she hurried away, without a pause or a glance. She kissed one of those miry faced babies. She walked into the house, leaving me smirking at the hills. She growled something at the host. He came forth. He pointed out the road, over the mountains and far away. He broke off a blossoming apple-sprig and whittled it.

“So you’ve been to Atlanta?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“I was there once. What hotel did you use?”

“The Salvation Army.”

“I was in the United States Hotel.”

Still I was stupid. He continued:

“I was there two years.”

He put on his glasses. He threw down the apple-sprig, and, looking over the glasses, he made unhappy each blossom in his own peculiar way. He continued: “I was in the United States Hotel, for making blockade whisky. I don’t make it any more.” He spat again. “I don’t even go fishin’ on Sunday unless—”

He had made up his mind that I was a customer, not a detective.

“Unless what?”

“Unless a visitor wants a mess of fish.”

But I did not want a mess of fish. Repeatedly I offered money for my night’s lodging. This he declined with real pride. He maintained his one virtue intact. And so I thought of him, just as I left, as a man who kept his code.

The John Collier brogans were easier that morning, partly because I had something new on my mind, no doubt.

I thought of the Gnome a long time. I thought of the wife, and wondered at her as a unique illustration of the tragic mysteries of the human race. If she screams when seven devils enter into the Gnome, no one outside the house will hear but the apple-tree. If she weeps, only the wind in the chimney will understand. If she seeks justice and the law, King Log, the Walrus, is her uncertain refuge. If she desires mercy, the emperor of that valley, the king above King Log, is a venomous serpent, even the Worm of the Still.

But now the road unwound in glory. I walked away from those serpent-bitten dominions for that time. I was one with the air of the sweet heavens, the light of the ever-enduring sun, the abounding stillness of the forest, and the inscrutable Majesty, brooding on the mountains, the Majesty whom ignorantly we worship.

THE TRAMP’S REFUSAL On Being Asked by a Beautiful Gipsy to Join her Group of Strolling Players.

THE HOUSE OF THE LOOM A Story of Seven Aristocrats and a Soap-Kettle.

With no sorrow in my heart, with no money in my pocket, with no baggage but a lunch, the most dazzling feature of which was a piece of gingerbread, I walked away from a wind-swept North Carolina village, one afternoon, over the mountain ridges toward Lake Toxaway. I turned to the right once too often, and climbed Mount Whiteside. There was a drop of millions of miles, and a Lilliputian valley below like a landscape by Charlotte B. Coman. I heard some days later that once a man tied a dog to an umbrella and threw him over. Dog landed safely, barking still. Dog was able to eat, walk, and wag as before. But the fate of the master was horrible. Dog never spoke to him again.

Having no umbrella, I retraced my way. I stepped into the highway that circumscribes the tremendous amphitheatre of Cashier’s Valley. I met not a soul till eight o’clock that night. The mountain laurel, the sardis bloom, the violet, and the apple blossom made glad the margins of the splendidly built road; and, as long as the gingerbread lasted, I looked upon these things in a sort of sophisticated wonder.

This was because the gingerbread was given me by a civilized man, to whom John Collier had written for me a letter of introduction: Mr. Thomas G. Harbison, Botanical Collector; American tree seeds a specialty.

Back there by the village he was improving the breed of mountain apples by running a nursery. He was improving the children with a school he taught without salary, and was using the most modern pedagogy. Something in his manner made me say, “You are like a doctor out of one of Ibsen’s plays, only you are optimistic.” Then we talked of Ibsen. He debated art versus science, he being a science-fanatic, I an art-fanatic. He concluded the argument with these words: “You are bound to be wrong. I am bound to be wrong. What is the use of either of us judging the other?” That is not the mountain way of ending a discussion.

For the purposes of the tale, as well as for his own merits, we must praise this civilized man who entertained me a day and a half so well. His mountain cottage was a permanent civilized camp. Without intruding on his privacy, we can show what that means. Cross a few states to the west with me.

Have you watched the camps of the up-to-date visitors, in the oldest parts of Colorado? They begin with tent, axe, blanket, bacon, and frying-pan, as miners do. In ten summers, though they climb as much as the miners, wear uglier boots, and rougher clothes, their tents are highly organized. They are convenient and free from clutter as the best New York flat. The axe has multiplied rustic benches, bridges, shelters. It has made a refrigerator in the stream. The frying-pan has changed into a camp-stove and a box of white granite dishes. The blanket flowers and Mariposa lilies that made the aspen groves celestial have been gathered in jardinières.

Meanwhile, in the big houses of the veteran miners of the villages are the axe, the blanket, and the frying-pan, though their lords have been through half a dozen fortunes since pioneer days. Those houses have the single great advantage of a rich tradition. They seem to grow up out of the ground.

Musing these matters, I munched my gingerbread, walking past sweet waterfalls, groves of enormous cedars, many springs, and one deserted cabin. I was homesick for that great civilized camp, New York, and the sober-minded pursuit of knowledge there.

But civilization lost her battle at twilight, when I swallowed my last gingerbread crumb. Immediately I was in the land beyond the nowhere place, willing to sleep twelve hours by a waterfall, or let the fairies wake me before day. The road went deeper into savagery. I blundered on, rejoicing in the fever of weariness. In the piercing light of the young stars, the house that came at last before me seemed even more deeply rooted in the ground than the oaks around it. What new revelation lies here? Knock, knock, knock, O my soul, and may Heaven open a mystery that will give the traveller a contrite heart.

Let us tell a secret, even before we enter. If, with the proper magic in our minds, we were guests here, a year or a day, we might write the world’s one unwritten epic. All day, in one of these tiny rooms, amid appointments that fill the spirit with the elation of simple things, we would write. At evening we would dream the next event by the fire. The epic would begin with the opening of the door.

There appeared a military figure, with a face like Henry Irving’s in contour, like Whistler’s in sharpness, fantasy, and pride.

“May I have a night’s lodging? I have no money.”

“Come in.... We never turn a man away.”

We were inside. He asked: “What might be your name?” I gave it. He gave his. The circle by the fire did not turn their heads, but presumably I was introduced. One child ran into the kitchen. My host gave me her chair. All looked silently into the great soap-kettle in the midst of the snapping logs.

I have a high opinion of the fine people of the South, and gratefully remember the scattering of gentlefolk so good as to entertain me in their mansions. But in this cottage, with one glance at those fixed, flushed faces, I said: “This is the best blood I have met in this United States.” The five children were night-blooming flowers. There were hints of Doré in the shadow of the father, cast against the log walls of the cabin. He sat on the little stairway. He was a better Don Quixote than Doré ever drew.

I said, “Every middle-aged man I have met in Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina has been a soldier, and I suppose you were.”

He looked at me long, as though the obligation of hospitality did not involve conversation. He spoke at last: “I fought, but I could not help it. It was for home, or against home. I fought for this cabin.”

“It is a beautiful cabin.”

He relented a bit. “We have kept it just so, ever since my great-grandfather came here with his pack-mule and made his own trail. I—I hated the war. We did not care anything about the cotton and niggers of the fire-eaters. The niggers never climbed this high.”

I changed the subject. “This is the largest fireplace I have seen in the South. A man could stand up in it.”

He stiffened again. “This is not the South. This is the Blue Ridge.”

An inner door opened. It was plain the woman who stood there was his wife. She had the austere mouth a wife’s passion gives. She had the sweet white throat of her youth, that made even the candle-flame rejoice. She looked straight at me, with ink-black eyes. She was dumb, like some one struggling to awake.

“Everything is ready,” she said at length to her husband.

He turned to me: “Your supper is now in the kitchen, ‘if what we have is good enough.’” It was the usual formula for hospitality.

I turned to the wife. “My dear woman, I did not know that this was going on. It is not right for you to set a new supper at this hour. I had enough on the road.”

“But you have walked a long way.” Then she uttered the ancient proverb of the Blue Ridge. “‘A stranger needs takin’ care of.’”

In the kitchen there was a cook-stove. Otherwise there was nothing to remind one of the world this side of Beowulf. I felt myself in a stronghold of barbarian royalty.

“Do you do your own spinning and weaving?”

She lifted the candle, lighting a corner. “Here are the cards and the wools.” She held it higher. “There is the spinning wheel.”

“Where is the loom?”

“Up stairs, just by where you will sleep.”

I knew that if there was a loom, it was a magic one, for she was a witch of the better sort, a fine, serious witch, and a princess withal. Her ancestors wore their black hair that simple way when their lords won them by fighting dragons. She was prouder than the pyramids. If the epic is ever written, let it tell how the spinner of the wizard wools did stand to serve the stranger, that being the custom of her house. This was a primitive camp indeed. There was no gingerbread. There was not one thing to remind me of the last table at which I had eaten. But every gesture said, “Good prince, you are far from your court. Therefore, this, our royal trencher, is yours. May you find your way to your own kingdom in peace.” But for a long time her lips were still. She had the spareness of a fertile, toiling mother. And, ah, the motherhood in her voice when she said at last, “My son, you are tired.”

Let the epic tell that, when the stranger returned to the fireplace, a restless, expectant silence settled down upon the circle. There was portent in the hiss of the flames. When I spoke to the children they only stared at me as at a curious shadow. Their lips moved not. The eldest, about seventeen, had inherited, no doubt, his love of strange brewing. He looked sideways into the soap-kettle. I said to myself, “He sees more hippogriffs than steam-engines.” He eyed every move of the circle with restless approval or disapproval. Every chip his little brother threw on the fire seemed to be a symbol of some precious thing sacrificed, every curl of steam seemed to have something to do with the destiny of the house.

He took out of his pocket a monthly magazine. It was the sort that costs ten cents a year. No doubt, had he gone to school to the admirable man who gave me gingerbread, he would have learned to read scientific and technical monthlies. But a magazine of any sort is a terribly intrusive thing at this juncture. The boy, and a sister just a little younger, read in a loud whisper to one another an advertisement they did not want me to hear. At their stage of culture it was impossible to read silently. The advertisement, if I remember, went about this way:—

“Free, free, free! A sewing machine! Send us a two-cent stamp, your name and address, mentioning the name of this magazine. We will tell you how to get an up-to-date sewing machine absolutely free. This offer is good for thirty days.”

They wrote a most unscholarly letter, spelling it aloud. It required their total and united culture to produce it. When the girl returned to the fire, she was provoked by her pride into an astonishing flush. How it set off her temples, with their pattern of azure veins! With her lotus-leaf hands, the hands of Hathor, goddess of love, she cooled her cheeks again and again. There is something of breeding in the very color of blood. Come, brothers of the road, all who travel with me in fancy, will you not join the knighthood of the soap-kettle? Come, ladies in mansions, will you not be one with us? None of you could have gainsaid the maiden-in-chief of the assembly. She wore her homespun as Zenobia, princess of Palmyra, wore her splendors. With her arms around her two gipsy younger sisters she smiled at last into the soap-kettle. When the epic is written, let it use words of marvelling, speaking of her hair, so pale, so electrical, set in a thick, ingenious coronal.

All the little children stood up. “Uncle,” they shouted. Hoofs sounded by the door. A man entered without knocking. When he saw me he became ceremonious as a Mandarin.

“This is a traveller,” said my host.

The messenger indulged in inquiries about my welfare, journey, and destination. My host interrupted.

“How’s mother? We have watched late to know.”

“She is much worse.” And the messenger went on to say that she might not live two days, and the doctor was a careless, indifferent dog, treating her as though she were an ordinary old woman.

“Does he still give her strychnine?”

“He won’t deny it.” The messenger explained that the doctor thought strychnine in small doses was good for old people. The scientist who gave me gingerbread should have been there to champion the doctor. In the eyes of his judges that night he was suspected of poisoning or treating with criminal folly, royalty itself.

The younger doctor was miles away, and might refuse to make the trip. The two loyal sons seemed paralyzed because the time for decision and the time for mourning came together. There were long silences, interrupted by my host repeating in a sort of primitive song, “I can’t think of anything except my dying mother. I can’t think of anything except mother is going to die.”

At last, with his brother’s consent, the messenger galloped and galloped away, to find his only hope, the younger physician. As the wife gave me the candle, sending me up stairs, I looked back at the family circle.

Helpless grief made every face rigid. I looked again at the eldest daughter. The moving shadows embroidered on her breast intricate symbols of the fair years, passing by in the ghost of tapestry, things that happened in the beginning of the world. Let the epic tell that when the stranger slept there was a magic loom by his bed that wove that history again in valiant colors, showing battles without number, and sieges, and interminable sunny love-tales, and lotus-handed ladies whispering over manuscript things too fine to be told, and ruddy warriors sitting at watch-fires on battlements eternal; and let the epic tell how, in the early dawn, the stranger half awoke, yet saw this tapestry hung round the walls. If one could remember every story for which the pictures stood, he might indeed write the world’s unwritten epic. The last tapestry to be hung changed from gold to black warp and woof upon which was written that because of a treacherous prime minister who served a poisoned wine, the Empress of the White Witches was perishing before her time, and the young wizard, with the counter-spell, was riding night and day, but all the palace knew he would arrive too late.

At breakfast the faces were stolid and white as frost. The father answered me only when I said good-by.

He said he hardly knew whether I had had anything to eat, or whether any one had been good to me. “You just had to take care of yourself.” The son, feeling the demand of hospitality in his father’s voice, walked to the road with me. He asked if I was walking to Asheville.

“Yes, by way of Mount Toxaway and Brevard.”

He told me it was good walking all the way, and added, in a difficult burst of confidence, “I am going to Asheville.”

“Why not come along with me?” I asked. I meant it heartily.

He said he had to take horseback, and then the railway. He had to be there to-morrow.

“What’s the hurry?”

“I have to witness in a whisky case, an internal revenue case.”

He said it like a Spanish Protestant called before the inquisition.

I said to my soul: “These were the revelations of a night and a morning. What deeper troubles were in the House of the Loom that you did not know?”

All through the country there had been that night what is called a black frost. By the roadside it was deep and white as the wool on a sheep. But it left things blighted and black, and destroyed the chances of the fruit-bearing trees. All the way to Mount Toxaway I met scattered mourners of the ill-timed visitation.

But the simple folly of spring was in me, and the strange elation of gratitude. My soul said within itself: “A money-claim has definite limits, but when will you ever discharge your obligation to the proud and the fine in the House of the Loom? You intruded on their grief. Yet they held their guest sacred as their grief.”

PHIDIAS

MAN, IN THE CITY OF COLLARS A Not Very Tragic Relapse into the Toils of the World, and of Finance.

Having been properly treated as a bunco man by systematic piety in a certain city further south, I had double-barrelled special recommendations sent to a lofty benevolence in Asheville, from a religious leader of New York, the before-mentioned Charles F. Powlison.

It was with confidence that I bade good-by to the chicken-merchant who drove me into the city. I entered the office of the black-coated, semi-clerical gentleman who had received the Powlison indorsements. My stick pounded his floor. The heels of my brogans made the place resound. But he gave all official privileges. He received me with the fine manly hand-clasp, the glitter of teeth, the pat on the back. He insisted I use the shower bath, writing room, reading table. Then I suggested a conference among a dozen of his devouter workers on the relation of the sense of Beauty to their present notion of Christianity or, if he preferred, a talk on some aspect of art to a larger group.

He took me into his office. He shut the door. He was haughty. He made me haughty. I give the conversation as it struck me. He probably said some smart things I do not recall. But I remember all the smart things I said.

He denounced labor agitators in plain words. I agreed. I belonged to the brotherhood of those who loaf and invite their souls.

He spoke of anarchy. I maintained that I loved the law.

He very clearly, and at length, assaulted Single Tax. I knew nothing then of Single Tax, and thanked him for light. He denounced Socialism. Knowing little about Socialism at that time, I denounced it also, having just been converted to individualism by a man in Highlands.

The religious leader spoke of his long experience with bunco men. I insisted I wanted not a cent from him, I was there to do him good. I had letters of introduction to two men in the city; one of them, an active worker in the organization, had already been in to identify me. A third man was coming to climb Mount Mitchell with me.

He doubted that I was a bona fide worker in his organization. Then came my only long speech. We will omit the speech. But he began to see light. He took a fresh grip on his argument. He said: “There is a man here in Asheville I see snooping around with a tin box and a butterfly net. They call him the state something-ologist. He goes around and—and—hunts bugs. But do you want to know what I think of a crank like that?” I wanted to know. He told me.

“But,” I objected, “I am not a scientist. I am an art student.”

He expressed an interest in art. He gave a pious and proper view of the nude in art. It took some time. It was the sort of chilly, cautious talk that could not possibly bring a blush to the cheek of ignorance. I assured him his decorous concessions were unnecessary. I was not expounding the nude.

There was an artist here, and Asheville needed no further instruction of the kind, he maintained. The gentleman had won some blue ribbons in Europe. He painted a big picture (dimensions were given) and sold it for thousands (price was given).

“He is holding the next one, two feet longer each way, for double the money.”

I told him if he felt there was enough art in Asheville, we might do something to popularize the poets.

In reply he talked about literary cranks. He spoke of how Thoreau, with his long hair and ugly looks, frightened strangers who suddenly met him in the woods. I thanked him for light on Thoreau.... But he had to admit that my hair was short.

He suspected I was neither artist nor literary man. I assured him my friends were often of the same opinion.

“But,” he said bitterly, “do you know sir, by the tone of letters I received from Mr. Powlison I expected to assemble the wealth and fashion of Asheville to hear you. I expected to see you first in your private car, wearing a dress-suit.”

I answered sternly, “Art, my friend, does not travel in a Pullman.”

He threw off all restraint. “Old shoes,” he said, “old shoes.” He pointed at them.

“I have walked two hundred miles among the moonshiners. They wear brogans like these.” But his manner plainly said that his organization did not need cranks climbing over the mountains to tell them things.

“Your New York letter did not say you were walking. It said you ‘would arrive.’”

He began to point again. “Frayed trousers! And the lining of your coat in rags!”

“I took the lining of the coat for necessary patches.”

“A blue bandanna round your neck!”

“To protect me from sunburn.”

He rose and hit the table. “And no collar!”

“Oh yes, I have a collar.” I drew it from my hip pocket. It had had a two hundred mile ride, and needed a bath.

“I should like to have it laundered, but I haven’t the money.”

“Get the money.”

“No,” I said, “but I will get a collar.”

I entered a furnishing and tailor shop around the corner. I asked for the proprietor. He showed me collars.

“Two for a quarter?”

“Yes.”

“Now I have here a little brochure I sell for twenty-five cents. In fact it is a poem, well worth the money. I will let you have it for half price, that is, one collar.”

“We are selling collars.”

“I am selling the poem.”

I turned my Ancient Mariner eye on him. I recited the most mesmeric rhymes.

He repeated, “We are selling collars.”

Evidently the eye was out of order. I tried argument.

“Don’t you think I need a collar?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t you think this one would fit this shirt?”

“Yes.”

“I renew my offer.”

He sternly put the box away.

So I said, “If I must face my friends in Asheville without this necessary ornament, you shall blush. I have done my duty, and refuse to blush.”

I looked up a scholar from Yale, Yutaka Minakuchi, friend of old friends, student of philosophy, in which he instructed me much, first lending me a collar. He became my host in Asheville. It needs no words of mine to enhance the fame of Japanese hospitality....

And I had a friend in a distant place, whom, for fancy’s sake, we will call the Caliph Haroun-al-Raschid. Let him remain a mystery. We will reveal this much. Had he known the truth, he would have sent Greek slaves riding on elephants, laden with changes of raiment. He discerned, at least, that I was in a barbarous land, for at length a long package containing a sword arrived from the court of the Caliph (to speak in parables). I exchanged the weapon at a pawnshop for money, all in one bill—money—against which I had so many times sworn eternal warfare, which had been my hoodoo in the past, and was destined to be again. But this time, such are the whims of fate, the little while it was with me it brought me only good.

I entered the furnishing store. The proprietor was terribly busy, but my glittering eye was in condition. I persuaded him, by dint of repetition, to show me his collars. I treated him as though we had not met.

“Fifteen cents apiece?”

“Yes.”

“I will take one.” I gave the bill. He had to send a boy out for the change. I put the silver in my pocket, and rattled it. He wrapped up the collar, while I studied his cheeks. He blushed like a maid, bless his tender heart, and in his sweet confusion he knew that I knew it.

The streets of Asheville kept shouting to me: “Let us praise Man, when he builds cities, and grows respectable, and cringes to money, and becomes a tailor, and loves collars with all his heart.”

CONFUCIUS

THE OLD LADY AT THE TOP OF THE HILL

It was a bland afternoon. I had been crossing a green valley in North Carolina. Every man I passed had that languid leanness slanderously attributed to the hookworm by folk who have no temperament. Yet some bee of industry must have stung these fellows into intermittent effort this morning, yesterday, last week or last year.

Here were reasonably good barns. Here were fences, and good fences at that. Here were mysterious crops, neither cotton nor corn. One man was not ploughing with a mule. No, sir. He was ploughing with a sort of horse....

At last I mounted the northern rim of the circle of steep hills that kept the place as separate from the rest of the world as a Chinese wall. I met her on the crest. She advanced slowly, looking on the ground, leaning at the hips as do the very aged, but not grotesquely. Her primly made dress and sunbonnet were dull dark blue. With her walking-stick she meditatively knocked the little stones from her path. The staff had a T-shaped head. It was the cane Old Mother Hubbard carries in the toy book.

And now she looked up and said with a pleasant start, “Why, good evening, young stranger.”

“Good evening, kind lady.”

“Where have you been, my son?”

“Why, I am following my nose to the end of the world. I have just walked through this enterprising valley.”

She looked into the dust and meditated awhile. Then she said: “It’s getting late. No one has let you in?”

“No one.”

“How about that house by the bridge?” She pointed with her cane.

“The lady said she had a sick child.”

“Nonsense, nonsense. Do you see that little Ardella by that corner of the ploughed field near the house? She don’t run like a sick child.... Did you ask at the next place, the one that has a green porch?” She pointed again with her cane.

“The woman said she had no spare bed.”

“But she has. I slept in it last week.... And that last house before you start up this hill?”

“The woman said she had to take care of saw-mill hands.”

“Did she tell you that?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The old lady ruminated again, leaning on her stick. At length she said: “Sit down. I want to tell you something.” There we were, Grandmother and newly adopted grandson, on a big sunlit rock.

I give only the spirit of her words. She discoursed in that precious mountain dialect, so mediæval, so Shakespearean with its surprising phrases that seem at first the slang of a literary clan, till one learns they are the common property of folk that cannot read. It is a manner of speech all too elusive. Would that I had kept a note-book upon it! But somewhat to this intent she spoke, and in a tone gentler than her words:—

“They thought I would never find out about this, or they would not have treated you so. That woman in the last house is my daughter-in-law. She has only two saw-mill hands, and they’re no trouble. That’s my house anyway. It was my mother’s before me. No one dares turn strangers away when I am there. There’s an empty bed up stairs, and another in the hall.”

She turned about and pointed in the direction in which I had been walking. “Just ahead of you, around that clump of trees, is a hospitable family. If they will not take care of you, it is because they have a good excuse. If they cannot take you in, ask no further. Come back to my place, and” (she spoke with a Colonial Dame air) “I will make you welcome.”

“What sort of mountaineer is this?” I asked myself. “The hospitality is the usual thing, but the grandeur is exotic.”

We chatted awhile of the sunset. Then I accompanied her to the edge of the hill.

Under her sacred hair her face retained girl-contours. The wrinkles were not too deep. She seemed not to have changed as mothers often do, when, under decades of inevitable sorrow, the features are recarved into the special mask of middle age, and finally into the very different mask of senility. She had yet the authority of Beauty. She wore her white hair with a Quakerish-feminine skill most admirably adapted to that ancient forehead. I divined she had learned that at sixteen. What a long time to be remembering.

We were spirits that at once met and understood. She said: “My son, I have walked all my life across this valley, or up this hill, or toward that green mountain where you are going. I never walked as far as I wanted to. But walking even so short a path makes for consolation.”

Now she laid aside antique grandeur and took on plain vanity.

“Do you know how old I am?”

“About eighty-five.”

“I’m ninety-two years old, young man, and I’m going to live ten years more.”

It was getting late. I said, “I am glad indeed to have met you.”

She answered, “I am sorry my valley has not been kind.”

I ventured to ask, “So it’s your valley?”

I had touched a raw nerve. I was completely shaken by the suddenness of her answer.

“Mine! Mine! Mine!” she shrieked. Kneeling, she beat up the dust of the road with her cane. And then “Mine! Mine! Mine!” shaking her outstretched arms over that amphitheatre, as though she would drag it all to her breast.

She was out of breath and trembling. At length she smiled, and added so quietly it seemed another person. “And they shall not take it away from me.”

I helped her to her feet. She was once more the Martha Washington sort.... I remember her last sentence. In a royal tone, that was three times an accolade, in a motherly tone that was caressing and slow she half-sung the pretty words:—

“Good evening, young man. I wish you well.”

The man at the next house took me in. In the course of the evening he assured me that the old lady did own the valley, and that she ruled it with a rod of iron. The family graveyard was full of heirs who had grown to old age and died of old age hoping in vain to outlive, and to inherit her authority.

WITH A ROSE, TO BRUNHILDE