II A MENDICANT PILGRIMAGE IN THE EAST

IN LOST JERUSALEM

A TEMPLE MADE WITH HANDS

I The Dwelling-place of Faith, Hope, and Charity

I had walked twelve miles before noon. Then I had eaten four slices of bread and butter on merciful doorsteps. At four-thirty, having completed twenty-one miles, I entered the richest village in the United States, a village that is located in New Jersey. I was so weary I was ready to sleep in the gutter, and did not care if the wagons ran over me. I should have walked through to the green fields before I looked for hospitality. I knew that the well-meant deeds of the city cannot equal the kindness of the most commonplace farm-hand. Yet I lingered.

I purchased a feast of beefsteak and onions at an obscure Jewish restaurant and felt myself once more a man. But it was now too late to leave town. The rule of the country is—one must ask for his night’s lodging before five o’clock. After that, things are growing dark, and people may be afraid of you.

After paying for beefsteak and onions, I had twenty-five cents. This twenty-five cents was all that remained after a winter’s lecturing on art and poetry in Manhattan. I am satisfied that the extra money, over and above all paid debts, brought me some of the ill-luck of the night. As I have before observed, money is a hoodoo on the road. Until a man is penniless he is not stripped for action.

A sign at the lunch-counter advertised: “Furnished rooms, fifty cents.”

I asked the proprietor to cut the price. He dodged the issue. “Say, why don’t you go up there to the mission? They will sell you a good bed cheap.”

“For a quarter?”

“Something like that.”

“Show me the place.”

As of old the Jew pointed out the way of salvation. The Gentile followed it and reached the dwelling-place of Faith, Hope, and Charity.

“What do you want?” The questioner, evidently in charge of the place, was accoutred in stage laboring-man style. Maybe his paraphernalia was intended to put him on a level with wayfarers. He wore a slouch hat, a soft shirt, and no necktie. His clothes had the store freshness still. They looked rather presumptuous in that neat, well-stocked reading room.

“I want a cheap bed.”

“We do not sell beds.”

“I was told you did.”

“We give them away.”

“All right.”

“But you have to work.”

“Very well.”

“Do you want to leave early in the morning?” (The place was evidently a half-way house for tramps.)

“Yes. I want to leave early in the morning.”

“Then you will have to split kindling two hours to-night.”

“Show me the kindling.”

II Splitting Kindling

In the basement I throned myself on one block while I chopped kindling on another. Before me, piled to the first story, was a cellarful of wood, the record of my predecessors in toil. I gathered that the corporal’s guard of the unemployed who stayed at the mission that night, and had been there two or three days, had finished their day’s assignment of splitting. They completely surrounded me, questioned me with the greatest curiosity, and put me down as a terrific liar, for I answered every question with simple truth.

As soon as the melodramatic workingman-boss went up stairs, one of them said, “Don’t work so fast. It’s only a matter of form this late at night. They want to see if you are willing, that’s all.”

I chopped a little faster for this advice. Not that I was out of humor with the advisers,—though I should have been, for they were box-car tramps.

One of them, having an evil and a witty eye, said, “If I was goin’ west like you, I’d start about ten o’clock to-night and be near Buffalo before morning.”

Another, a mild nobody, professed himself a miller. He told what a wonderful trick it was to say, “Leddy, I’m too tired to work till I eat,” and after eating, to walk away.

The next, a carriage painter of battered gentility, told endless stories of the sprees that had destroyed him. Another, a white frog with a bald head and gray mustache, quite won my heart. He said, “Wait till you get a nice warm bath after service. Then you’ll sleep good.”

To my weary and addled brain the mission was like one of those beautiful resting-places in Pilgrim’s Progress. It became my religion, just to split kindling. I failed to apprehend what infinitesimal nobodies these fellows around me were. I should have disliked them more.

The modern tramp is not a tramp, he is a speed-maniac. Being unable to afford luxuries, he must still be near something mechanical and hasty, so he uses a dirty box-car to whirl from one railroad-yard to another. He has no destination but the cinder-pile by the water-tank. The landscape hurrying by in one indistinguishable mass and the roaring of the car-wheels in his ears are the ends of life to him. He is no back-to-nature crank. He is a most highly specialized modern man. All to keep going, he risks disease from these religious missions, from foul box-cars, and foul comrades. He risks accident every hour. He is always liable to the cruelty of conductor or brakeman and to murder by companions.

He runs fewer risks in the country, yet his aversion to the country is profound. He knows all that I know about country hospitality, that it can be purchased by the merest grain of courtesy. Yet most of the farm-people that entertained me had not seen a tramp for months.

To account for some of the happenings of this tale I will only add that a speed-maniac at either end of the social scale is not necessarily a hustler, personally. But in one way or another he is sure to be shallow and artificial, the grotesque, nervous victim of machinery. And a “Mission,” an institution built by speed-maniacs who use automobiles for speed-maniacs who use box-cars, is bound to be absurd beyond words to tell it.

III The Sermon on the Mount

I loved all men that night, even the fellow in melodramatic laboring-man costume, who appeared after two hours to drive us animals up stairs into one corner of the chapel, where a dozen of our kind had already assembled from somewhere.

On the far side of that chapel sat the money-fed. The aisle was a great gulf between them and us. I smiled across the gulf indulgently, imagining by what exhortations to “Come and help us in our problem” those uncomfortable persons had been assembled. An unmitigated clergyman rose to read a text.

I presume this clergyman imagined Christ wore a white tie and was on a salary promptly paid by some of our oldest families. But I share with the followers of St. Francis the vision of Christ as a man of the open road, improvident as the sparrow. I share with the followers of Tolstoi the opinion that when Christ proclaimed those uncomfortable social doctrines, he meant what he said.

The clergyman read: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

“Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”

He read much more than I will quote. Here is the final passage:—

“Ye have heard how it hath been said: ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say unto you that you resist not evil. But whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and to him that would borrow of thee, turn not thou away.”

This Pharisee smugly assumed that he was authorized by the Deity to explain away this scripture. And he did it, as the reader has heard it done many a time.

The Pharisee was followed by a fat Scribe who tried to smile away what the other fellow had tried to argue away. The fat one then called on the assembly to bow, and exhorted the repentant to hold up their hands to be prayed for.

I held up my hand. Was I not eating the bread of the mission? And then I felt like a sinner anyway.

“Thank God,” said the fat one.

After a hymn, testimonies were called for. I felt the spirit move me, but some one had the floor. Across the gulf she stood, an exceedingly well-dressed and blindly devout sister. She glanced with a terrified shrinking at the animals she hoped to benefit. She said:—

“There has been one great difficulty in my Christian life. It came with seeking for the Spirit. Sometimes we think it has come with power, when we are simply stirred by our own selfish desires. Our works will show whether we are moved by the Spirit.”

I wanted to preach them a sermon on St. Francis. But how could I? There was still a quarter in my own pocket. Meanwhile there rose a saint with a pompadour and blocky jaws. He was distinctly inferior in social position to a great part of the saints. It was probable he had given that testimony many times. But he did not want the meeting to drag. He spake in a loud voice: “I was saved from a drunkard’s life, in this mission, eighteen years ago, and ever since, not by my own power, but by the grace of God, I have been leading a God-fearing and money-making life in this town.” That was his exact phrase, “a money-making life.” His intention was good, but he should have been more tactful. The Pharisee looked annoyed.

IV A Screaming Farce

I advise all self-respecting citizens to skip this section. It is nothing but over-strained, shabby farce.

The throng melted. Scribe and Pharisee, Dives, Mrs. Dives, and their satellites went home to their comfortable beds. Many of the roughs on our side of the house found somewhere else to stay. The fellow dressed like a workingman in a melodrama sought the consolations of his own home. Had the last authority departed? Were we to have anarchy? The Frog, in his gentlest manner, sidled up to make friends again.

“Now you can have your nice warm bath, you two.” I looked around. There were two of us then. Beside me, fresh from a box-car was a battered scalawag. The Frog must have let him in at the last moment.

We three climbed to the bath-room.

“Wait a minute,” said the Amphibian. He disappeared. I opened my eyes, for this creature spake with a voice of authority. The box-car scalawag grinned sheepishly.

There was a scuffling overhead, a scratch and a rumble. We two looked up just in time to dodge the astonishing vision of a clothes-horse descending through a trap-door by a rope. At the upper end of the rope was the absurd bald head of our newly achieved superintendent.

“Hello, Santy Claus,” said the box-car tramp. “Whose Christmas present is this?”

The Frog shouted: “Put your shoes and hats in the corner. If you have any tobacco, put it in your shoes. Hang everything else on the clothes-horse.”

I obeyed, except that I had no tobacco. The rascal by my side had a plenty, and sawdusted the bath-room floor with some of it, and the remainder went into his foot-gear. Then we two, companions in nakedness, watched the Frog haul up our clothes out of sight. He closed the trap-door with many grunts.

Then this Amphibian, this boss, descended and entered the bath-room. He was a dry-land Amphibian. He had never taken a bath himself, but was there to superintend. He seemed to feel himself the accredited representative of all the good people behind the mission, and no doubt he was.

“Can it be possible,” I asked myself, “that they have chosen this creature to apply their Christianity?”

The Frog said to my companion: “Git in the tub.”

Then he turned on the water, regulated the temperature, and watched as though he expected one of us to steal the faucets from the wash-bowl. He threw a gruesome rag at the tramp, and allowed him to scrub himself. The creature bathing seemed well-disposed toward the idea, and had put soap on about one-third of his person when the Frog shouted: “I’ve got to get up at four-thirty.”

The scalawag took the hint and rose like Venus from the foam. He splashed off part of it, and rubbed off the rest with a towel that was a fallen sister of the wash-rag.

The Frog was evidently trying to enforce, in a literal way, regulations he did not understand. He wiped out the bath-tub most carefully with the unclean wash-rag. Then he provided the scalawag with a shirt for night-wear. The creature put it on and said:—

“Ain’t I a peach?”

He was.

The nightie was an old, heavily-starched dress-shirt, once white. Maybe it had once been worn by the Scribe or the Pharisee. But it had not been washed since. The rascal cut quite a figure as he took long steps down the corridor to bed, piloted by the hurrying Amphibian. He was a long-legged rascal, and the slivered remainders of that ancient shirt flapped about him gloriously.

I was hustled into the tub after the rascal. I was supervised after the same manner. “Now wash,” boomed the Amphibian. He threw at me the sloppy rag of my predecessor.

I threw it promptly on the floor.

“I don’t use a wash-rag,” I said.

“Hurry,” croaked the Frog. And he let the water out of the tub. He handed me the towel the scalawag had used. I had not, as a matter of fact, had a bath, and I was quite foot-sore.

“I do not want that towel,” I said.

“You’re awful fancy, aren’t you?” sneered the Frog.

Wherever I was damp, I rubbed myself dry with my bare hands, being skilled in the matter, meanwhile reflecting that there is nothing worse than a Pharisee except a creature like this. I wondered if it was too late to rouse a mob among the better element of the town, neither saints nor sinners, but just plain malefactors of great wealth, and have this person lynched. There were probably multi-millionnaires in this town giving ten-dollar bills to this mission, who were imagining they were giving a free bath to somebody.

I wanted to appeal to some man with manicured hands who had grown decently rich robbing the widow and the orphan and who now had the leisure to surround himself with the appurtenances of civility and the manners of a Chesterfield.

“I am through with the poor but honest submerged tenth. Rich worldlings for mine,” I muttered.

“Put these on,” squeaked the Frog. His manner said, “See how good we are to you.” He held out the treasure of the establishment, a night-garment retained for fastidious new-arrivals, newly-bathed. Of course, no one else was supposed to bathe.

Was the garment he held out a slivered shirt? Nay, nay. It was a sort of pajama combination. Hundreds of men had found shelter, taken a luxurious bath, and put them on. They were companions in crime of the towel and the wash-rag. Let us suppose that three hundred and sixty-five men wore them a year. In ten years there would have been about three thousand six hundred and fifty bathed men in them. That did not account for their appearance.

“What makes them so dirty?” I asked.

No answer.

“Can’t I wear my underclothes to bed instead of these?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Sulphur.”

“What do you mean by sulphur?”

“Your clothes are up stairs being fumigated.”

“Can’t I get my socks to-night? I always wash them before I go to bed.”

“No. It’s against the law of the state. And you would dirty up these bowls. I have just scrubbed them out.”

“I will wash them out afterward.”

“I haven’t time to wait. I must get up at four-thirty.”

“But why fumigate my clean underwear, and give me dirty pajamas?”

The Frog was getting flabbergasted. “I tell you it’s the law of New Jersey. You are getting awful fancy. If I had had my way, you would never have been let in here.”

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,” I said to myself, and put on the pajamas.

This insanitary director showed me my bed. It was in a long low room with all the windows closed, where half a score were asleep. The sheets had never, never, never been washed. Why was it that in a mission so shiny in its reading room, and so devout in its chapel, so melodramatic with its clean workman-boss, in the daytime, these things were so?

The lights went out. I kicked off the pajamas and slept. I awoke at midnight and reflected on all these matters. I quoted another scripture to myself: “I was naked, and ye clothed me.”

V The Highway of Our God

At six o’clock I was called for breakfast. My sulphur-smelling clothes were on my bed. I put them on with a light heart, for after all I had slept well, and my feet were not stiff. The quarter was still in my trousers’ pocket. I presume that hoodoo quarter had something to do with the bad breakfast.

The Amphibian was now cook. He gave each man a soup-plate heaped with oat-meal. If it had been oats, it would have been food for so many horses. Had the Frog been up since four-thirty preparing this?

The price of part of that horse-feed might have gone into something to eat. There was a salty blue sauce on it that was called milk. And there was dry bread to be had, without butter, and as much bad coffee as a man could drink.

A person called the bookkeeper arrived with the janitor. I made my formal farewells to those representatives of the law, before whom the Amphibian melted with humility. The scalawag who had bathed with me tipped me a wink, and tried to escape in my company. But I bade him good-by so firmly that the authorities noticed, and the brash creature remained glued to his chair. He probably had to do his full share of kindling before he escaped.

I went forth from that place into the highway of our God, who dwelleth not in temples made with hands, neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, seeing He giveth to all men life and breath and all things.

I said in my heart: “I shall walk on and on and find a better, a far holier shrine than this at the ends of the infinite earth.”

THE TOWN OF AMERICAN VISIONS (Springfield, Illinois)

ON BEING ENTERTAINED ONE EVENING BY COLLEGE BOYS

I walked across the bridge from New Jersey into Easton, Pennsylvania, one afternoon. I discovered there was a college atop of the hill. In exchange for a lecture on twenty-six great men[4] based on a poem on the same theme, that I carried with me, the boys entertained me that night. They did not pay much attention to the lecture. Immediately before and after was a yell carnival. There was to be a game next day. They were cheering the team and the coach with elaborate reiteration. All was astir.

But for all this the boys spoke to me gently, gave me the privileges of the table, the bath-room, the dormitory. The president of the Y. M. C. A. lent me a clean suit of pajamas. He and two other young fellows delighted my vain soul, by keeping me up late reciting all the poems I knew.

I record these things for the sake of recording one thing more, the extraordinary impression of buoyancy that came from that school. It was inspiring to a degree, a draught of the gods. Coming into that place not far from the centre of hard-faced Easton-town I realized for the first time what sheltered, nurtured boy-America was like, and what wonders may lie beneath the roofs of our cities.

THAT WHICH MEN HAIL AS KING

NEAR SHICKSHINNY

I

Leaving New Jersey I kept from all contact with money, and was consequently turning over in memory many delicious adventures among the Pennsylvania-German farmers. After crossing that lovely, lonely plateau called Pocono Mountain, I descended abruptly to Wilkesbarre by a length of steep automobile road called Giant Despair.

It was a Sunday noon in May. Wilkesbarre was a mixture of Sabbath calm and the smoke of torment that ascendeth forever. One passed pious faces too clean, sooty faces too restless. I hurried through, hoping for more German farmers beyond. But King Coal had conspired against the traveller, and would not let him go. The further west I walked, the thicker the squalor and slag heaps, and the presence of St. Francis seemed withdrawn from me, though I had been faithful in my fashion.

King Coal is a boaster. He says he furnishes food for all the engines of the earth. He says he is the maker of steam. He says steam is the twentieth century. He holds that an infinite number of black holes in the ground is a blessing.

He may say what he likes, but he has not excused himself to me. He blasts the landscape. Never do human beings drink so hard to forget their sorrow as in the courtyards of this monarch. To dig in a mine makes men reckless, to own one makes them tormentors.

I had a double reason for hurrying on. My rules as a mendicant afoot were against cities and railroads. I flattered myself I was called and sent to the agricultural laborer.

When the land grew less black and less inhabited, I mistakenly rejoiced, assuming I should soon strike the valleys where grain is sown and garnered. Yet the King was following me still, like a great mole underground. There was no coal on the surface. The land was rusty-red and ashen-gray,—as though blasted by the torch of a Cyclops and only yesterday cooled by the rain. The best grain that could have been scattered among such rocks with the hope of a crop was a seed of dragons’ teeth.

How long the desolation continued! Toward the end of the day in the midst of the nothingness, I came upon a saloon full of human creatures roaring drunk. Otherwise there was not so much as a shed in sight.

Four vilely dirty little girls came down the steps carrying beer. One of them, too intoxicated for her errand, entrusted her can to her companions. They preceded me toward the smoke-veiled sun by a highway growing black again with the foot-prints of the King.

Now there was a deafening explosion. I sat down on a rock examining myself to see if I was still alive. The children pattered on. My start seemed to amuse them immensely. I followed toward the new civil war, or whatever it was.

Just over the crest and around the corner I encountered the King’s never-varying insignia, the double-row of “company houses.”

Every dwelling was as eternally and uniformly damned as its neighbor, making the eyes ache, standing foursquare in the presence of the insulted daylight. Every porch and railing was jig-sawed in the same ruthless way. Every front yard was grassless. Everything was made of wood, yet seemed made of iron, so black it was, so long had it stood in the wasting weather, so steadily had it resisted the dynamite now shaking the earth.

There they stood, thirty houses to the left, thirty to the right, with what you might call a street between, whose ruts were seemingly cut by the treasure-chariots of the brimstone princes of the nether world.

Two-thirds of the way through, several young miners were exploding giant powder. As I approached I saw another was loading his pistol with ball-cartridges and shooting over the hills at the sun. He did not put it out.

The group of children with the beer served these knights of dynamite, holding up the cans for them to drink. The little cup-bearers were then given pennies. They scurried home.

By their eyes and queer speech I guessed that these children were Poles, or of some other race from Eastern Europe. I guessed the same about the men celebrating. Every porch on both sides of that street held some heavy headed creatures from presumably the same foreign parts. They were, no doubt, good citizens after their peculiar fashion, but with countenances that I could not read. Though the next explosion seemed to jolt the earth out of its orbit, they merely blinked.

I said to myself, “This is not the fourth of July. Therefore it must be the anniversary of the day when ‘Freedom shrieked’ and ‘Kosciuszko fell.’”

I reached the end of the street; nothing beyond but a hollow of hills and a dubious river, enclosing a new Tophet, that I learned afterwards was Shickshinny. It was late. I wanted to get beyond to the green fields.

I zigzagged across that end of the street to folk on the front porches that I thought were Americans. Each time I vainly attempted conversation with some dumb John Sobieski in Sunday clothes. I wondered what were the Polish words for bread, shelter, and dead broke.

II The Son of King Coal

Some spick and span people came out on the porch of the last house. Possibly they could understand English. I went closer. They were out and out Americans.

So I looked them in the eye and said: “I would like to have you entertain me to-night. I am a sort of begging preacher. I do not take money, only food and lodging.”

“A beggin’ preacher?”

“My sermon is in poetry. I can read it to you after supper, if that will suit.”

“What sort of poetry?” asked the man.

“I can only say it is my own.”

“Why I just LOVE poetry,” said the woman. “Come in.”

“Come up,” said the man, and hustled out a chair.

“I’ll go right in and get supper,” said the wife. She was a breezy creature with a loud musical voice. She doubtless developed it by trying to talk against giant powder.

I told the man my story, in brief.

After quite a smoke, he said, “So you’ve walked from Wilkesbarre this afternoon. Why, man, that’s seventeen miles.”

I do not believe it was over fourteen.

He continued, “I’m awful glad to see a white man. This place is full of Bohunks, and Slavs, and Rooshians, and Poles and Lickerishes (Lithuanians?). They’re not bad to have around, but they ain’t Cawcasians. They all talk Eyetalian.”

The fellow’s manner breathed not only race-fraternity, but industrial fraternity. It had no suggestion of sheltered agricultural caution. It was sophisticated and anti-capitalistic. It said, “You and I are against the system. That’s enough for brotherhood.”

Now that he stood and refilled his pipe from a tobacco box nailed just inside the door, I saw him as in a picture-frame. He had powerful but slanting shoulders. He was so tall he must needs stoop to avoid the lintel. With his bent neck, he looked as though he could hold up a mine caving in. His general outlines seemed to be hewn from fence-rails, then hung with grotesque muscles of loose leather. His eyebrows were grown together. From looking down long passageways his eyes were marvellously owl-like. He was cadaverous. He had a beak nose. He had a retreating chin but, breaking the rules of phrenology, he managed to convey the impression of a driving personality. He looked like an enormous pick-axe.

He calmly commented: “Them Polacks waste powder awful. Not only on Sunday, for fun, but down in the mine they use twice too much. And they can’t blast the hardest coal, either.... And they’re always gettin’ careless and blowin’ themselves to hell and everybody else. It’s awful, it’s awful,” he said, but in a most philosophic tone.

He lowered his voice and pointed with his pipe stem: “Them people that live in the next house are supposed to be Cawcasians, but they haven’t a marriage license. They let their little girl go for beer this afternoon, for them fellows explodin’ powder over there. ’Taint no way to raise a child. That child’s mother was a well-behaved Methodist till she married a Polack, and had four children, and he died, and they died, and some say she poisoned them all. Now she’s got this child by this no-account white man. They live without a license, like birds. Yet they eat off weddin’s.”

“Eat off weddings?”

“Yes,” he said. “These Bohunks and Lickerishes all have one kind of a wedding. It lasts three days and everybody comes. The best man is king. He bosses the plates.”

“Bosses the plates?”

“Yes. They buy a lot of cheap plates. Every man that comes must break a plate with a dollar. The plate is put in the middle of the floor. He stands over it and bangs the dollar down. If he breaks the plate he gets to kiss and hug the bride. If he doesn’t break it, the young couple get that dollar. He must keep on givin’ them dollars in this way till he breaks the plate. Eats and plates and beer cost about fifty dollars. The young folks clear about two hundred dollars to start life on.”

“And,” he continued, “the folks next door make a practice of eatin’ round at weddin’s without puttin’ down their dollars.”

I began to feel guilty.

“It’s a good deal like my begging supper and breakfast of you.” He hadn’t meant it that way. “No,” he said, “you’re takin’ the only way to see the country. Why, man, I used to travel like you, before I was married, except I didn’t take no book nor poetry nor nothin’, and wasn’t afeered of box-cars the way you are.... I been in every state in the Union but Maine. I don’t know how I kept out of there.... I’ve been nine years in this house. I don’t know but what I see as much as when I was on the go....

“That fellow Gallic over there that was shootin’ that pistol at the sky killed a man named Bothweinis last year and got off free. It was Gallic’s wedding and Bothweinis brought fifty dollars and said he was goin’ to break all the plates in the house. He used up twelve dollars. He broke seven plates and kissed the bride seven times. Then the bride got drunk. She was only fifteen years old. She hunted up Bothweinis and kissed him and cried, and Gallic chased him down towards Shickshinny and tripped him up, and shot him in the mouth and in the eye.... The bride didn’t know no better.... He was an awful sight when they brought him in. The bride was only a kid. These Bohunk women never learn no sense anyway. They’re not smart like Cawcasian women, and they fade in the face quick.”

He reflected: “My wife’s a wonderful woman. I have been with her nine years, and she learns me something every day, and she still looks good in her Sunday clothes.”

He became lighter in tone again. “What these Bohunks need is a priest and a church to make them behave. They mind a priest some, if he is a good priest. They’re all Catholics, or no church....”

“Seems though sometimes a man’s got to shoot. Some of them devils over there used to throw rocks at my door, but one Sunday I filled ’em full of buckshot and they quit. The justice upheld me. I didn’t have to pay no fine. They’ve been pretty good neighbors since, pretty good neighbors.”

There was a sound as though the flagstones of eternity had been ripped up. He saw I didn’t like it and said consolingly, “They’ll stop and go to supper pretty soon. They eat too much to do anything but set, afterwards. They don’t have nothin’ to eat in the old country but raw turnips. Here they stuff themselves like toads. I don’t see how they save money the way they do. The mine owners squeeze the very life out of ’em and they wallow in beer. I’ve always made big money, but somehow never kept it. Me and my wife are spenders. But I ain’t afraid, for I am the only man on the street that can dig the hardest coal. I could dig my way out of hell with my pick, and by G—— once I did it, too.”

The wife came to the door newly decked in an elaborate lace waist, torn, alas, at the shoulder. Husband was right. She looked good. She announced radiantly: “Come to supper.”

Then she rushed down between the houses and shouted: “Jimmy and Frank, come here! What you doin’? Get down off that roof. What you doin’, associatin’ with them Polack children? What you doin’ with them switches?” Then she swore heartily, as unto the Lord, and continued, “They’re helpin’ them Polack kids switch that poor little drunk American child. Come down off that coal shed!”

They slunk into sight. She snatched their switches from them.

“Who started it?”

Jimmy admitted he started it. He looked capable of starting most anything, good or bad. He had eyes like black diamonds, a stocky frame, and the tiny beginnings of his mother’s voice.

“I don’t know whether to lick you or not,” she said judicially. Finally: “Go up to bed without supper.”

Jimmy went.

She addressed us in perfect good humor, as a musical volcano might: “Come and eat.”

III The Daughter of the King

Never did I see beefsteak so thick. There was a garnish of fried onions. There was a separate sea of gravy. There was a hill of butter, a hill of thickly sliced bread. There was a delectable mountain of potatoes. That was all. These people were living the simple life, living it in chunks.

At table, as everywhere, the husband solemnly deferred to the wife. She was to him a druid priestess. And so she was radiant, as woman enthroned is apt to be. Of course, no young lady from finishing school would have liked the way we tunnelled and blasted our way through the provender. We were gloriously hungry and our manners were a hearty confession of the fact.

My passion for the joys of the table partially sated, I began to realize the room. There were hardly any of the comforts of home. There was a big onyx time-piece, chipped, and not running. Beside it was a dollar alarm-clock in good trim.

There were in the next room, among other things, two frail gilt parlor chairs, almost black. The curtains were streaked with soot and poorly ironed. She said she had washed them yesterday. But, she continued, “I just keep cheerful, I don’t keep house. Doesn’t seem like I can, this street is so awful dirty and noisy and foreign.”

“Yet you like it,” said the husband.

“Yes,” she said, “that’s because I’m half Irish. The Irish were born for excitement.”

“What’s your ancestry?” I asked the husband.

“My father was a mountain white. Moved here from North Carolina, and dug coal and married a Pennsylvania Dutch lady.”

“It’s your turn,” she said to me. “You are a preacher?”

“That’s a kind of an excuse I make.”

“You can’t be any worse than the preacher we had here,” continued the wife. “He lived down toward Shickshinny. He preached in an old chapel. He wouldn’t start a Sunday school. We needed one bad enough. He just married folks. He hardly ever buried them. They say he was afraid. And,” she continued, with a growing tone of condemnation, “it’s a preacher’s BUSINESS to face death.

“Just about the time two of our children died of diphtheria, was when he came to these parts. He was a Presbyterian, and I was raised a Presbyterian, and he wouldn’t preach the funeral of my two babies. He promised to come, and we waited two hours. So I just read the Bible at the grave.”

This she recounted with a bitter sense of insult.

“And the same day he locked up his mother, too.”

“Locked up his mother?”

“Yes. Some said he wanted to visit a woman he didn’t want her to know about. They said he was afraid she would follow him and spy. He locked up the old lady, and she about yelled the roof off, and the neighbors let her out.

“And then,” continued my hostess, “when he was dying, he sent for a Wilkesbarre priest.”

“Sent for a priest?” I exclaimed, completely mystified.

“Yes,” she whispered. “He must have been a Catholic all the time. And the priest wouldn’t come either. That’s what that old preacher got for being so mean.”

She continued: “That preacher wasn’t much meaner than the man is in the company store.”

She was bristling again.

“He won’t deliver goods up here unless you run a big bill. If I want anything much while big Frank here is at work, I have to take Jimmy’s little play express-wagon and haul it up.”

And now she was telling me of her terrible fright three days ago, down at the company store, when there was a rumor of an accident in one of the far tunnels of the mine.

“All the foreign women came running down the hill, half-crazy. I am used to false alarms, but I could hardly get up to this house with my goods. I was expecting to see big Frank brought in, just like he was before little Frank was born, eight years ago.”

Little Frank lifted his face from its business of eating to listen.

“The first thing that boy ever saw was his father on the floor there, covered with blood.”

“You don’t remember it, Frank?” asked his father, grinning.

“Nope.”

The wife continued: “There was only one doctor came. We had a time between us. The other doctor was tendin’ the men husband had dug out. The coal fell on them and mashed them flat. It couldn’t quite mash husband. He’s too tough,” she said, lovingly. “He grabbed his pick and he tunnelled his way through, with the blood squirting out of him.”

Husband grinned like a petted child. He said: “It wasn’t quite as bad as that, but I was bloody, all right.”

She continued with a gesture of impatience: “This is cheerful Sunday night talk. Let’s try something else. What kind of a poem are you goin’ to read?”

“It tells boys how to be great men, but it’s for fellows of from fifteen to twenty. You’ll have to save it for your sons till they grow a bit.”

She was at the foot of the stairway like a flash.

“Son, dress and come down to supper.”

Son was down almost as soon as she was in her chair, pulling on a stocking as he came. And he was hungry. He ate while we talked on and on.

IV The Grandsons of the King

After the supper the dishes waited. The wife said: “Now we will have the poetry.” I said in my heart, “Maybe this is the one house in a hundred where the seed of these verses will be sown upon good ground.”

We went into the parlor, distinguished as such by the battered organ. The mother had Frank and Jimmy sit in semicircle with her and big Frank, while I plunged into my rhymed appeal. After the dynamite of the day I did not hesitate to let loose the thunders. I did not hesitate to pause and expound:—the poem being, as I have before described, many stanzas on heroes of history, with the refrain, ever and anon: God help us to be brave. No, kind and flattering reader, it was not above their heads. Earnestness is earnestness everywhere. The whole circle grasped that I really expected something unusual of those boys with the black-diamond eyes, no matter what kind of perversity was in them at present.

I said, in so many words, as a beginning, that nitro-glycerine was not the only force in the world, that there is also that dynamite called the power of the soul, and that detonation called fame.

But I did not dwell long upon my special saints, Francis of Assisi and Buddha, nor those other favorites who some folk think contradict them: Phidias and Michael Angelo. I dwelt on the strong: Alexander, Cæsar, Mohammed, Cromwell, Napoleon, and especially upon the lawgivers, Confucius, Moses, Justinian; and dreamed that this ungoverned strength before me, that had sprung from the loins of King Coal, might some day climb high, that these little wriggling, dirty-fisted grandsons of that monarch might yet make the world some princely reparation for his crimes.

After the reading the mother and father said solemnly, “it is a good book.”

Then the wife showed the other two pieces of printed matter in the household, a volume of sermons, and a copy of The House of a Thousand Candles. You have read that work about the candles. The sermons were by the Reverend Wood M. Smithers. You do not know the Reverend Mister Smithers? He has collected in one fair volume all the sermons that ever put you to sleep, an anthology of all those discourses that are just alike.

She said she had read them over and over again to the family. I believed it. There was butter on the page. I said in my heart: “She is not to be baffled by any phraseology. If she can get a kernel out of Wood M. Smithers, she will also derive strength from my rhyme.”

She promised she would have each of the boys pick out one of the twenty-six great men for a model, as soon as they were schooled enough to choose. She put the poem in the kitchen table drawer, where she kept some photographs of close relatives, and I had the final evidence that I had become an integral part of the family tradition.

V On to Shickshinny

They sent me up to bed. I put out the lamp at once, lest I should see too much. I went to sleep quickly. I was as quickly awakened. Being a man of strategies and divertisements, I reached through the blackness to the lamp that was covered with leaked oil. I rubbed this on my hands, and thence, thinly over my whole body. Coal oil too thick makes blisters; thin enough, brings peace.

I remember breakfast as a thing apart. Although the table held only what we had for supper, warmed over, although the morning light was grey, and the room the worse for the grey light, the thing I cannot help remembering was the stillness and tenderness of that time. Father and mother spoke in subdued human voices. They had not yet had occasion to shout against the alarums and excursions of the day. And the sensitive faces of the boys, and the half-demon, half-angel light of their eyes stirred me with marvelling and reverence for the curious, protean ways of God.

And now I was walking down the steeps of Avernus into Shickshinny, toward the smoke of torment that ascends forever. Underfoot was spread the same dark leprosy that yesterday had stunted flower and fruit and grass-blade.

I hated King Coal still, but not so much as of yore.

WHAT THE SEXTON SAID

DEATH, THE DEVIL, AND HUMAN KINDNESS The Shred of an Allegory

I The Undertaker

Curious are the agencies that throw the true believer into the occult state. Convalescence may do it. Acts of piety may do it. Self-mortification may do it.

After reading my evening sermon in rhyme in the house of the stranger, I had slept on the lounge in the parlor. The lounge had lost some of its excelsior, and the springs wound their way upwards like steel serpents. So strenuous had been the day I could have slumbered peacefully on a Hindu bed of spikes.

I awoke refreshed, despite several honorable scars. What is more important I left that house with faculties of discernment.

I did not realize at first that I was particularly spiritualized. I was merely walking west, hoping to take in Oil City on my route. Yet I saw straight through the bark of a big maple, and beheld the loveliest ... but I have not time to tell.

Then I heard a fluttering in a patch of tall weeds and discovered what the people in fairyland call ... but no matter. We must hurry on.

At noon your servant was on the front step of a store near a cross-roads called Cranberry, Pennsylvania. The store was on the south side of the way by which I had come. I sat looking along wagon tracks leading north, little suspecting I should take that route soon.

On one side overhead was the sign: “Fred James, Undertaker.” On the other: “Fred James, Grocer.”

“And so,” I thought, “I am going to meet, face to face, one of the eternal powers. He may call himself Fred James all he pleases. His real name is Death.”

I met the lady Life, once upon a time, long ago. She had innocent blue eyes. Alone in the field I felt free to kiss the palm of her little hand, under the shadow of the corn.

It has nothing to do with the tale, but let us here reflect how the corn-stalk is a proud thing, how it flourishes its dangerous blades, guarding the young ear. It will cut you on the forehead if the wind is high. Above the blades is the sacred tassel like a flame.

Once, under that tassel, under those dangerous blades, I met Life, and for good reason, bade her good-by. After her solemn words of parting, she called me back, and mischievously fed me, from the pocket of her gingham apron, crab apples and cranberries. Ever since that time those fruits have been bitter delights to my superstitious fancy.

And here I was at Cranberry cross-roads, with a funeral director’s sign over my head. A long five minutes I meditated on the mystery of Life and Death and cranberries. A fat chicken, apparently meditating on the same mystery, kept walking up and down, catching gnats.

At length it was revealed to me that when things have their proper rhythm Life and Death are interwoven, like willows plaited for a basket. Somewhat later in the afternoon I speculated that when times are out of joint, it is because Death reigns without Life for a partner, with the assistance of the Devil rather. But do not remember this. It anticipates the plot.

One does not hasten into the presence of the undertaker. One rather waits. He was coming. I did not look round. Even at noon he cast a considerable shadow.

The shadow dwindled as he sat on the same step and asked: “What road have you come?” His non-partisan drawl was the result, we will suppose, of not knowing which side of the store the new customer approached.

“I came from over there. I have been walking since sunrise.”

He had some account of my adventures, and my point of view as a religious mendicant. I knew I would have to ask the further road of him, but disliked the necessity. He waited patiently while I watched my friend, the fat chicken, explore an empty, dirty, bottomless basket for flies.

“I want to go west by way of Oil City,” I finally said.

He answered: “Oil City is reached by the north road, straight in front of you as you sit. It is about an hour’s walk to the edge of it. It is a sort of trap in the mountains. When you get in sight of it, keep on going down.” This he said very solemnly.

He put his hand on my shoulder: “Come in and rest and eat first. It won’t cost you a cent.”

I was hungry enough to eat a coffin handle, and so I looked at him and extended my hand. He was a handsome chap, with a grey mustache. His black coat was buttoned high. He was extra neat for a country merchant, and chewed his tobacco surreptitiously. His face was not so bony and stern as you might think.

I gave him an odd copy of the Tree of Laughing Bells, still remaining by me. He looked at the outside long, doing the cover more than justice. Then he opened it, with a certain air of delicate appreciation. I urged him to postpone reading the thing till I was gone.

His store was high and long and narrow and cool. There was a counter to the west, a counter to the east. Behind the western one were tall coffin cupboards. As he proudly opened and shut them, one could not but notice the length of his fingers and their dexterity. He showed plain coffins and splendid coffins. He unscrewed the lid of one, that I might see the silky cushions within. They looked easier than last night’s lounge.

As he stepped across what might be called the international date line of the store, and entered the hemisphere of groceries, he began to look as though he would indulge in a merry quip. A faint flush came to his white countenance, that shone among the multi-colored packages.

Before us were the supplies of a rural general store, from the kitchen mop to the blue parlor vase. Hanging from the ceiling was an array of the flamboyant varnished posters of the seedsmen, with pictures of cut watermelons, blood-red, and portraits of beets, cabbages, pumpkins.

I read his home-made sign aloud: “I guarantee every seed in the store. Pansy seeds a specialty.”

“Not that they all grow,” he explained. “But the guarantee keeps up the confidence of the customers. I have made more off of vegetable and flower seeds this year than caskets.”

He pulled out a chip plate and fed me with dried beef, sliced thin.

He smiled broadly, and set down a jar. The merry quip had arrived.

“Why,” he asked, “is a stick of candy like a race-horse?”

I remained silent, but looked anxious to know. Delighted with himself, he gave the ancient answer, and with it several sticks of candy. Kind reader, if you do not know the answer to the riddle, ask your neighbor.

There was no end of sweets. He skilfully sliced fresh bread, and spread it with butter and thick honey-comb. With much self-approval he insisted on crowding my pockets with supper.

“Nobody knows how they will treat you around Oil City. I go often, but never for pleasure. Only on funeral business.”

He gave me pocketfuls of the little animal crackers, so daintily cut out, that used to delight all of us as children. Since he insisted I take something more, I took figs and dates.

He held up an animal cracker, shaped like a cow, and asked: “When was beefsteak the highest?” I ventured to give the answer.

Death is not a bad fellow. Let no man cross his grey front stoop with misgiving. The honey he serves is made by noble bees. Yet do not go seeking him out. No doubt his acquaintance is most worth while when it is casual, unexpected, one of the natural accidents. And he does not always ask such simple riddles.

II The Trap without the Bait

It was about two o’clock when the north road left the cornfields and reached the hill crests above the city. How the highway descended over cliffs and retraced itself on ridges and wound into hollows to get to the streets! At the foot of the first incline I met a lame cat creeping, panic-stricken, out of town.

Oil City is an ugly, confused kind of place. There are thousands like it in the United States.

I reached the post-office at last. There was no letter for me at the general delivery. I was expecting a missive. And now my blistered heels, and my breaking the rule to avoid the towns, and my detour of half a day were all in vain.

Oil City, in her better suburbs, as a collection of worthy families in comfortable homes, may have much to say for herself. But as a corporate soul she has no excuse. The dominant, shoddy architecture is as eloquent as the red nose of a drunkard. I do not need to take pains to work her into my allegory. The name she has chosen makes her a symbol. No doubt others reach the very heart of her only to find it empty as the post-office was to me. Baffling as this may be, there is another risk. Escape is not easy.

Almost out of town at last, I sat down by the fence, determined not to stir till morning. I said, “I can sleep with my back against this post.”

I had just overtaken the lame cat, and she now moved past me over the ridge to the cornfields. She seemed most unhappy. I looked back to that oil metropolis. I wondered how many had lived and died there when they would have preferred some other place.

III A Mysterious Driver

A fat Italian came by in a heavily-tired wagon. The wagon was loaded with green bananas. The fruit-vendor stopped and looked me over. He most demonstratively offered me a seat beside him. He had a Benvenuto Cellini leer. He wore one gold earring. He looked like the social secretary of the Black Hand.

He was apparently driving on into the country. Therefore I suffered myself to be pulled up on to the seat. Around the corner we came to green fields and bushes, and I thanked the good St. Francis and all his holy company.

I said to my charioteer: “As soon as you get a mile out, let me down. I do not want to get near any more towns for awhile.”

“Allaright,” he said. On his wrist was tattooed a blue dagger. The first thing he did was unmerciful. He went a yard out of his way to drive over the lame cat which had stopped in despair, just ahead of us. Pussy died without a shriek. Then the cruel one, gathering by my manner that I was not pleased with this incident, created a diversion. He reproved his horse for not hurrying. It was not so much a curse as an Italian oration. The poor animal tried to respond, but hobbled so, his master surprised me by checking the gait to a walk. Then he cooed to the horse like a two hundred pound turtledove.

In a previous incarnation this driver must have been one of the lower animals, he had so many dealings with such. Some rocks half the size of base-balls were piled at his feet. A ferocious dog shot out from a cottage doorway. With lightning action he hurled the ammunition at the offender. The beast retreated weeping aloud from pain. And Mr. Cellini showed his teeth with delight.

And now, after passing several pleasant farm-houses, where I ran a chance for a free lodging for the asking, I was vexed to be suddenly driven into a town. We hobbled, rattled on, into a wilderness thicker every minute with fire-spouting smoke-stacks.

“This ees Franklin,” said my charioteer. “Nice-a-town. MY town,” he added earnestly. “I getta reech (rich) to-morrow.”

He began to cross-examine the writer of this tale. I counselled myself not to give my name and address, lest I be held for ransom.

After many harmless inquiries, he asked in a would-be ingratiating manner, “Poppa reech?”

“No. Poor.”

“Poppa verra reech?”

“No. Awfully poor. But happy and contented.”

“Where your Poppa leeve?”

“My father is the Man in the Moon.”

That answer changed him completely. I seemed to have given the password. I had joined whatever it was he belonged to. He gave me three oranges as a sign.

I had hoped we would drive past the smoke and fire. But he turned at right angles, into the midst of it, and drove into a big black barn. He waved me good-by in the courtliest manner, as though he were somebody important, and I were somebody important.

Pretty soon I asked a passer-by the nearest way to the suburbs. I had to walk on the edges of my feet they were so tired. The street he pointed out to me was nothing but a continuation of tar-black, coughing, out-of-door ovens, side by side, shoulder to shoulder, on to the crack of doom. I presume, in the language of this vain world, they were coke ovens.

I opened my eyes as little as possible and breathed hardly at all. Then, by way of diversion, I nibbled animal crackers, first a dog, then a giraffe, then a hippopotamus, then an elephant.

Those ovens looked queerer as the street led on. There were subtle essences abroad when the smoke cleared away, and when the great roar ceased there were vague sounds that struck awe into the heart. I may be mistaken, but I think I know the odor of a burning ghost on the late afternoon wind, and the puffing noise he makes.

As the cinders crunched, crunched, underfoot, the conviction deepened: “These ovens are not mere works of man. Dying sinners snared and corrupted by Oil City are carried here when the city has done its work—carried in the wagon of Apollyon, under bunches of green bananas. Body and soul they are disintegrated by the venomous oil; they crumble away in the town of oil, and here in the town of ovens, the fragments are burned with unquenchable fire.”

Now it was seven o’clock. The street led south past the aristocratic suburbs of Franklin, and on to the fields and dandelion-starred roadside.

IV The Allegory Breaks Down. My Friend Humankindness with the Green Galluses

I hoped for a farm-hand’s house. Only in that sort will they give free lodging so near town. And, friends, I found it, there on the edge of the second cornfield. The welcome was unhesitating.

I looked at my host aghast. To satisfy my sense of the formal, he should have had the dignity to make him Father Adam, and lord of Paradise. How could one round out a day that began loftily with Death, and continued gloriously with some one mighty like the Devil, with this inglorious type now before me? He wrecked my allegory. There is no climax in Stupidity.

Just as the colorless, one-room house had stove, chimney, cupboard, adequate roof, floor, and walls, so the owner had the simplified, anatomical, and phrenological make-up of a man. He had a luke-warm hand-clasp. He smoked a Pittsburg stogy. He had thick vague features and a shock of drab hair. The nearest to a symbol about him was his new green galluses. I suppose they indicated I was out in the fields again.

If his name was not Stupidity, it was Awkwardness. He kept a sick geranium in an old tomato can in the window. He had not cut off the bent-back cover of the can. Just after he gave me a seat he scratched his hand, as he was watering the flower, and swore softly.

Yet one must not abuse his host. I hasten to acknowledge his generous hospitality. If it be not indelicate to mention it, he boiled much water, and properly diluted it with cold, that the traveller might bathe. The bath was accomplished out of doors beneath the shades of evening.

Later he was making preparations for supper, with dull eyes that looked nowhere. He made sure I fitted my chair. He put an old comfort over it. It was well. The chair was not naturally comfortable; it was partly a box.

After much fumbling about, he brought some baked potatoes from the oven. The plate was so hot he dropped it, but so thick it would not break.

He picked up the potatoes, as good as ever, and broke some open for me, spreading them with tolerable butter, and handing them across the table. Then I started to eat.

“Wait a minute,” he said. He bowed his head, closed his dull eyes, and uttered these words: “The Lord make us truly thankful for what we are about to receive. Amen.”

I have been reproved by some of the judicious for putting so much food in these narratives. Nevertheless the first warm potato tasted like peacocks’ tongues, the next like venison, and the next like ambrosia, and the next like a good warm potato with butter on it. One might as well leave Juliet out of Verona as food like this out of a road-story. As we ate we hinted to each other of our many ups and downs. He mumbled along, telling his tale. He did not care whether he heard mine or not.

He had been born nearby. In early manhood he had been taken with the oil fever. It happened in this wise:—He had cut his foot splitting kindling. Meditating ambition as he slowly recovered, he resolved to go to town. He sold his small farm and wasted his substance in speculation. At the same time his young wife and only child died of typhoid fever. He was a laborer awhile in the two cities to the northeast. Then he came back here to plough corn.

He had been saving for two years, had made money enough to go back “pretty soon” and enter what he considered a sure-thing scheme, that I gathered had a close relation to the oil business. He said that he had learned from experience to sift the good from the bad in that realm of commerce.

He put brakes on the slow freight train of his narrative. “I was about to explain, when you ast to come in, that I don’t afford dessert to my meals often.”

“If you will excuse me,” I said, emptying my pockets, “these figs, these dates, these oranges, these animal crackers were given me by Death, and the Devil. Eat hearty.”

“Death and the Devil. What kind are they?”

“They’re not a bad sort. Death gave me honey for dinner, and the Devil did no worse than drive me a little out of my way.”

He smiled vaguely. He thought it was a joke, and was too interested in the food itself to ask any more questions.

The balmy smokeless wind from the south was whistling, whistling past the window, and through the field. How much one can understand by mere whispers! The wind cried, “Life, life, life!” Some of the young corn was brushing the walls of the cottage, and armies on armies of young corn were bivouacing further down the road, lifting their sacred tassels toward the stars.

There was no change in the expression of the countenance of my host, eating, talking, or sitting still in the presence of the night. I may have had too poor an estimate of his powers, but I preached no sermon that evening.

But, like many a primitive man I have met, he preached me a sermon. He had no bed. He gave the traveller a place to sleep in one corner and himself slept in the opposite corner. The floor was smooth and clean and white, and the many scraps of rag-carpet and the clean comfort over me were a part of the sermon. Another part was in his question before he slept: “Does the air from that open window bother you?”

I assured him I wanted all there was, though from the edge of the world.

He had awkwardly folded his new overcoat, and put it under my head.... And so I was beginning to change his name from Stupidity and Awkwardness to Humankindness.

Though in five minutes he was snoring like Sousa’s band, I could not but sleep. When I awoke the sun was in my eyes. It shone through the open door. Mr. Humankindness was up. The smell of baked potatoes was in the air. Outside, rustled the com. The wind cried, “Life, life, life.”

LIFE TRANSCENDENT This being the name of praise given to a fair lady.

IN THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION CHURCH

THE OLD GENTLEMAN WITH THE LANTERN (AND THE PEOPLE OF HIS HOUSEHOLD)

I The Savage Necklace

The reader need not expect this book to contain any nicely adjusted plot with a villain, hero, lawyer, papers, surprise, and happy ending. The highway is irrelevant. The highway is slipshod. The highway is as the necklace of a gipsy or an Indian, a savage string of pebbles and precious stones, no two alike, with an occasional trumpery suspender button or peach seed. Every diamond is in the rough.

I was walking between rugged farms on the edge of the oil country in western Pennsylvania.

The road, almost dry after several days of rain, was gay with butterfly-haunted puddles. The grotesque swain who gave me a lift in his automobile for a mile is worth a page, but we will only say that his photograph would have contributed to the gaiety of nations—that he was the carved peach-stone on the necklace of the day.

There was a complacent cat in a doorway, that should have been named “scrambled eggs and milk,” so mongrel was his overcoat. There was a philosophic grasshopper reading inscriptions in a lonely cemetery, with whom I had a long and silent interchange of spirit. Even the graveyard was full of sun.

On and on led the merry morning. At length came noon, and a meal given with heartiness, as easily plucked as a red apple. For half an hour after dinner in that big farm-house we sat and talked religion.

O pagan in the cities, the brand of one’s belief is still important in the hayfield. I was delighted to discover this household held by conviction to the brotherhood of which I was still a nominal member. Their lingo was a taste of home. “Our People,” “Our Plea,” “The pious unimmersed.” Thus did they lead themselves into paths of solemnity.

Then, in the last five minutes of my stay, I gave them my poem-sermon. The pamphlet made them stare, if it did not make them think.

Splendor after splendor rolled in upon the highway from the four corners at heaven. Why then should I complain, if about four o’clock the prosy old world emerged again?

The wagon-track now followed a section of the Pennsylvania railroad, and railroads are anathema in my eyes when I am afoot. There appeared no promising way of escape. And now the steel rails led into a region where there had been rain, even this morning. More than once I had to take to the ties to go on. When the mud was at all passable I walked in it by preference, fortifying myself with these philosophizings:—

“Cinders are sterile. They blast man and nature, but the black earth renews all. Mud upon the shoes is not a contamination but a sign of progress, eloquent as sweat upon the brow. Who knows but the feet are the roots of a man? Who knows but rain on the road may help him to grow? Maybe the stature and breadth of farmers is due to their walking behind the plough in the damp soil. Only an aviator or a bird has a right to spurn the ground. All the rest of us must furrow our way. Thus will our cores be enriched, thus will we give fruit after our kind.”

Whistling pretty hard, I made my way. And now I had to choose between my rule to flee from the railroad, and my rule to ask for hospitality before dark.

At length I said to myself: “I want to get into a big unsophisticated house, the kind that is removed from this railroad. I want to find an unprejudiced host who will listen with an open mind, and let me talk him to death.”

To keep this resolve I had to hang on till near eight o’clock. The cloudy night made the way dim. At length I came to a road that had been so often graded and dragged it shed water like a turtle’s shell. It crossed the railway at right angles and ploughed north. I followed it a mile, shaking the heaviest mud from my shoes. Led by the light of a lantern, I approached a dim grey farm-house and what would have been in the daytime a red barn.

II By the Light of the Lantern

The lantern was carried, as I finally discovered, by an old man getting a basket of chips near the barn gate. He had his eye on me as I leaned over the fence. He swung the lantern closer.

“My name is Nicholas,” I said. “I am a professional tramp.”

“W-e-l-l,” he said slowly, in question, and then in exclamation.

He flashed the lantern in my face. “Come in,” he said. “Sit down.”

We were together on the chip-pile. He did not ask me to split kindling, or saw wood. Few people ever do.

In appearance he was the old John G. Whittier type of educated laboring-man, only more eagle-like. He spoke to me in a kingly prophetic manner, developed, I have no doubt, by a lifetime of unquestioned predominance at prayer-meeting and at the communion table. It was the sonorous agricultural holy tone that is the particular aversion of a certain pagan type of city radical who does not understand that the meeting-house is the very rock of the agricultural social system. As far as I am concerned, if this manner be worn by a kindly old man, it inspires me with respect and delight. In a slow and gracious way he separated his syllables.

“Young man, you are per-fect-ly wel-come to shel-ter if we are on-ly sure you will not do us an in-ju-ry. My age and ex-per-ience ought to count for a lit-tle, and I assure you that most free travel-ers abuse hos-pi-tal-ity. But wait till my daugh-ter-in-law comes.”

I was shivering with weariness, and my wet feet wanted to get to a stove at once. I did not feel so much like talking some one to death as I had a while back.

By way of passing the time, the Patriarch showed me his cane. “Pre-sen-ted at the last old set-tel-ers’ picnic because I have been the pres-i-dent of the old-settlers’ association for ten years. Young man, why don’t you carry a cane?”

“Why should I?”

“Won’t it help you to keep off dogs?”

I replied, “A housekeeper, if she is in a nervous condition, is apt to be afraid of a walking-stick. It looks like a club. To carry something to keep off dogs is like carrying a lightning-rod to keep off lightning. I encounter a lot of barking and thunder, but have never been bitten or blasted.”

And while I was thus laboring for the respect of the Patriarch, the daughter-in-law stepped into the golden circle of the lantern light. She had just come from the milking. I shall never forget those bashful gleaming eyes, peering out from the sunbonnet. Her sleeves were rolled to the shoulder. Startling indeed were those arms, as white as the foaming milk.

She set down the bucket with a big sigh of relaxation. She pushed back the sunbonnet to get a better look. The old man addressed her in an authoritative and confident way, as though she were a mere adjunct, a part of his hospitality.

“Daugh-ter, here is a good young man—he Looks like a good young man, I think a stew-dent. You see he has books in his pock-et. He wants a night’s lodging. Now, if he is a good young man, I think we can give him the bed in the spare room, and if he is a bad young man, I think there is enough rope in the barn to hang him before daylight.”

“Yes, you can stay,” she said brightly. “Have you had supper?”

It is one of the obligations of the road to tell the whole truth. But in this case I lied. The woman was working too late.

“Oh yes, I’ve had supper,” I said.

And she carried the milk into the darkness.

In the city, among people having the status indicated by the big red barn and the enormous wind-mill and a most substantial fence, this gleaming woman would have languished in shelter. She would have played at many philanthropies, or gone to many study clubs or have had many lovers. She would have been variously adventurous according to her corner of the town. Here her paramour was Work. He still caressed her, but would some day break her on the wheel.

The old man sent me toward the front porch alone. There was a rolling back of the low gray clouds just then, and the coming of the moon. The moon’s moods are so many. To-night she took the forlornness out of the restless sky. She looked domestic as the lantern.

III You Ought to be Ashamed of Yourself

I was on the porch, scraping an acquaintance with the grandmother. She held a baby in her lap. They sat in the crossing of the moonlight and the lamplight.

There was no one to explain me. I explained myself. She eyed me angrily. She did not want me to shake hands with the baby. She asked concerning her daughter-in-law.

“And did she say you could stay?”

“She did.”

The grandmother brought a hard fist down on the arm of the chair: “I’d like to break her neck. She’s no more backbone than a rabbit.”

I do not distinctly remember any bitter old man I have met in my travels. She was the third bitter old woman. Probably with the same general experiences as her husband, she had digested them differently. She was on the shelf, but made for efficiency and she was not run down.

In her youth her hair was probably red. Though she was plainly an old woman, it was the brown of middle age with only a few streaks of gray. Under her roughness there were touches of a truly cultured accent and manner. I would have said that in youth she had had what they call opportunities.

I asked: “Isn’t the moon fine to-night?”

She replied: “Why don’t you go to work?”

I answered: “I asked for work in the big city till I was worn to a thread. And you are the first person who has urged it on me since I took to tramping. I wonder why no one ever thought of it before.”

She smiled grudgingly.

“What kind of work did you try to do in the city?”

“I wanted to paint rainbows and gild sidewalks and blow bubbles for a living. But no one wanted me to. It is about all I am fit for.”

“Don’t talk nonsense to me, young man!”

“Pardon me, leddy—I am a writer of rhymes.”

“The nation’s going to the dogs,” she said. I suppose I was the principal symptom of national decay.

Just then a happy voice called through the house, “Come to supper.”

“That’s for you,” said the grandmother. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

IV Gretchen-Cecilia, Waitress

I went in the direction of the voice, delighted, not ashamed. There, in that most cleanly kitchen, stood the white-armed milkmaid, with cheeks of geranium red. She had spread a table before me in the presence of mine enemy. I said: “I did not ask for supper. I told you I had eaten.”

“Oh, I knew you were hungry. Wait on him, Gretchen-Cecilia.”

My hostess scurried into the other room. She was in a glorious mood over something with which I had nothing to do.

Gretchen-Cecilia came out of the pantry and poured me a glass of warm milk. I looked at her, and my destiny was sealed forevermore—at least for an hour or so. The sight of her brought the tears to my eyes.

I know you are saying: “Beware of the man with tears in his eyes.” Yes, I too have seen weeping exhibitions. I remember a certain pious exhorter. The collection followed soon. And I used to hear an actor brag about the way he wept when he looked upon a certain ladylike actress whom we all adore. He vividly pictured himself with a handkerchief to his devoted cheeks, waiting in the wings for his cue. He had belladonna eyes. At the risk of being classed with such folk, I reaffirm that I was a little weepy. I insist it was not gratitude for a sudden square meal—if truth be told, I have had many such—it was the novel Gretchen-Cecilia.

It took little conversation to show that Gretchen-Cecilia was a privileged character. She had little of the touch of the farm upon her. She was the spoiled pet of the house, and the index of their prosperity—what novelists call the third generation. She had a way of lifting her chin and shoving her fists deep into her apron pockets.

I said: “I have a fairy-tale to read to you after supper.”

And she said: “I like fairy-tales.” And then, redundantly: “I like stories about fairies. Fairy stories are nice.”

It was no little pleasure to eat after nine hours doing without, and to dwell on beauty such as this after so many days of absence from the museums of art and the curio shops. Every time she brought me warm biscuits or refilled my tumbler, she brought me pretty thoughts as well.

She was nine years old, she told me. Her eyes were sometimes brown, sometimes violet. Her mouth was half a cherry, and her chin the quintessence of elegance. Her braids were long and rich, her ribbons wide and crisp.

Maidenhood has distinct stages. The sixteenth year, when unusually ripe, is a tender prophecy. Thirteen is often the climax of astringent childhood, with its especial defiance or charm. But nine years old is my favorite season. It is spring in winter. It is sweet sixteen through walls of impregnable glass. This ripeness dates from prehistoric days, when people lived in the tops of the trees, and almost flew to and from the nests they built there, and mated much earlier than now.

As I finished eating, the mother brought the little brother into the room saying, “Gretchen-Cecilia, watch the baby.” Then she smiled on me and said: “When she washes the dishes, you can hold him.”

She had on a fresh gingham apron, blue, with white trimmings. I judged by the squeak, she had changed her shoes.

“Who’s coming?” I asked, when the mother had left.

“Papa. He goes around the state and digs oil wells, and is back at the end of the week.”

I was washing the dishes when Grandma came in. She frowned me away from the dishpan. She said, “Gretchen-Cecilia, wipe the dishes.”

The baby howled on the floor. I was not to touch him. Gretchen-Cecilia tried to comfort him by saying, “Baby, dear dear baby; baby, dear dear baby.”

“Do you realize, young man,” asked Grandma, “that I, an old woman, am washing your dishes for you?”

I was busy. I was putting my wet stockinged feet on a kindling-board in the oven, and my shoes were curling up on the back of the stove.

“Young man—”

“Yessum—”

“Where’s your wife?”

I replied, “I have no wife, and never did have.” Then I ventured to ask, “May I have the hand of Gretchen? I want some one who can wipe dishes while I wash them.”

“But I’m not grown up,” piped the maiden. It seemed her only objection.

I said: “I will wait and wait till you are seventeen.”

The old lady had no soul for trifles. She intoned, like conscience that will not be slain: “Where’s your wife?”

But I said in my heart: “Madam, you are only a suspender button upon the necklace of the evening.”

V “Papa has Come!”

There was a scurry and a flutter. Gretchen threw down her dish-rag, leaving Grandma a plate to wipe.

I heard the grandfather say, “Wel-come, son, wel-come indeed!” The young wife gave a smothered shriek, and then in a minute I heard her exclaim, “John, you’re a scamp!”

I put on my hot shoes and went in to see what this looked like. Gretchen-Cecilia was somewhere between them, and then on her father’s shoulder, mussing his hair. And the mother took Gretchen down, as John said in reply to a question:—

“Business is good. Whether there’s oil or not, I dig the hole and get paid.”

This man was now standing his full height for his family to admire. He was one I too could not help admiring. He had an open sunburned face, and I thought that behind it there was a non-scheming mind, that had attained good fortune beyond the lot of most of the simple. He was worth the dressing up the family had done for him, and almost worthy of Gretchen’s extra crisp hair ribbons.

His wife put her arms around his neck and whispered something, evidently about me. He watched me over his shoulder as much as to say:—

“And so it’s a stray dog wants shelter? No objections.”

He unwrapped his package. It was an extraordinary doll, with truly truly hair, and Gretchen-Cecilia had to give him seven kisses and almost cry before he surrendered it.

He pulled off his boots and threw them in the corner, then paddled up stairs and came down in his shoes. For no reason at all Gretchen-Cecilia and her mother chased him around the kitchen table with a broom and a feather duster, and then out on to the back porch.

VI Conferences

The grandfather called me into the front room and handed me a book.

“Yer a schol-ar. What do you think of that?”

It was a history of the county. The frontispiece was a portrait of Judge Somebody. But the book naturally opened at about the tenth page, on an atrocious engraving of this goodly old man and his not ill-looking wife. He breathed easier when I found it. It was plainly a basis of family pride. I read the inscription.

“So you two are the oldest inhabitants?” I asked.

“The oldest per-pet-ual in-habitants. I was born in this coun-ty and have nev-er left it. My wife is some young-er, but she has nev-er left it, since she married me.”

Even the old lady grew civil. She tapped a brooch near her neck. “They gave me this breast-pin at the last old-settlers’ picnic.”

The old man continued: “All the old farm is still here in our hands, but mostly rented. It brings something, something. Our big income is from my son’s well-digging. He never speculates and he makes money.”

It seemed a part of the old man’s pride to have even the passing stranger realize they were well-fixed. In a furtive attempt to do justice to their station in life they had a tall clock in the corner, quite new and beautiful. And, as I discovered later, there was up stairs a handsome bath-room. The rest of that new house was clean and white, but helplessly Spartan.

The old folk were called to the back porch. At the same time I heard the mother say, “Show the man your doll.”

And in came the little daughter like thistledown.

We were in that white room at opposite ends of the long table, and nothing but the immaculate cloth stretching between us. She sat with the doll clutched to her breast, looking straight into my eyes, the doll staring at me also. The girl was such a piece of bewitchment that the poem I brought to her about the magical Tree of Laughing Bells seemed tame to me, and everyday. That foolish rhyme was soon read and put into her hands. It seemed to give her an infinite respect for me. And any human creature loves to be respected.

On the back porch the talking grew louder.

“Papa is telling them he wants to rent the rest of the farm and move us all to town,” explained Gretchen.

It was the soft voice of the young wife we heard: “Of course it will be nice to be nearer my church.”

And then the young father’s voice: “And I don’t want Gretchen to grow up on the farm.”

And the old man’s voice, still nobly intoned: “And as I say, I don’t want to be stub-born, but I don’t want to cross the coun-ty line.”

Gretchen banged the door on them and we crossed the county line indeed. We told each other fairy-tales while the unheeded murmur of debate went on.

When it came Gretchen’s turn, she alternated Grimm, and Hans Andersen and the legends of the Roman Church. I had left the railroad resolved to talk some one to death, and now with all my heart I was listening. She knew the tales I had considered my special discoveries in youth: “The Amber Witch,” “The Enchanted Horse,” “The Two Brothers.” She also knew that most pious narrative, Elsie Dinsmore. She approved when I told her I had found it not only sad but helpful in my spiritual life. She had found it just so in hers.

VII The Spare Room

With her eyes still flashing from argument, the grandmother took me up stairs. She gave me a big bath-towel, and showed me the bath-room, and also my sleeping place. I asked her about the holy pictures hanging near my bed. She explained in a voice that endeavored not to censure: “My daughter-in-law is of German-Catholic descent, and she is still Catholic.”

“What is your denomination?” I asked.

“My husband and son and I are Congregationalists.”

She did not ask it of me, but I said: “I am what is sometimes disrespectfully called a ‘Campbellite.’”

But the old lady was gone.

After a boiling bath I lay musing under those holy pictures. My brother of the road, when they put you in the best room, as they sometimes do, and you look at the white counterpane and the white sheets and the cosey appointments, do you take these brutally, or do you think long upon the intrinsic generosity of God and man?

I have laid hold of hospitality coldly and greedily in my time, but this night at least, I was thankful. And as I turned my head in a new direction I was thankful most of all for the unexpected presence of the Mother of God. There was her silvery statue near the foot of my bed, the moonlight pouring straight in upon it through the wide window. It spoke to me of peace and virginity.

And I thought how many times in Babylon I had gone into the one ever open church to look on the crowned image of the Star of the Sea. Though I am no servitor of Rome I have only adoration for virginity, be it carved in motionless stone, or in marble that breathes and sings.

A long long time I lay awake while the image glimmered and glowed. The clock downstairs would strike its shrill bell, and in my heart a censer swung.

VIII Morning

There was a pounding on the door and a shout. It was the young husband’s voice. “It’s time to feed your face.”

They were at the breakfast table when I came down. My cherished memory of the group is the picture of them with bowed heads, the grandfather, with hand upraised, saying grace. It was ornate, and by no means brief. It was rich with authority. I wanted to call in all the mocking pagans of the nation, to be subdued before that devotion. I wanted to say: “Behold, little people, some great hearts still pray.”

I stood in the door and made shift to bow my head. Yet my head was not so much bowed but I could see Gretchen-Cecilia and her mother timidly cross themselves. In my heart I said “Amen” to the old man’s prayer. But I love every kind of devotion, so I crossed myself in the Virgin’s name.

The tale had as well end here as anywhere. On the road there are endless beginnings and few conclusions. For instance I gathered from the conversation at the breakfast table they were not sure whether they would move to the city or not. They were for the most part silent and serene.

There were pleasant farewells a little later. Gretchen-Cecilia, when the others were not looking, gave me, at my earnest solicitation, a tiny curl from the head of her doll that had truly truly hair.

I walked on and on, toward the ends of the infinite earth, though I had found this noble temple, this shrine not altogether made with hands. I again consecrated my soul to the august and Protean Creator, maker of all religions, dweller in all clean temples, master of the perpetual road.

THAT MEN MIGHT SEE AGAIN THE ANGEL-THRONG

Printed in the United States of America.

VERSE BY THE SAME AUTHOR

The Congo and Other Poems

With a preface by Harriet Monroe, Editor of the Poetry Magazine.

Cloth, 12mo, $1.25; leather, $1.60

In the readings which Vachel Lindsay has given for colleges, universities, etc., throughout the country, he has won the approbation of the critics and of his audiences in general for the new verse-form which he is employing, as well as the manner of his chanting and singing, which is peculiarly his own. He carries in memory all the poems in his books, and recites the program made out for him; the wonderful effect of sound produced by his lines, their relation to the idea which the author seeks to convey, and their marvelous lyrical quality are quite beyond the ordinary, and suggest new possibilities and new meanings in poetry. It is his main object to give his already established friends a deeper sense of the musical intention of his pieces.

The book contains the much discussed “War Poem,” “Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight”; it contains among its familiar pieces: “The Santa Fe Trail,” “The Firemen’s Ball,” “The Dirge for a Righteous Kitten,” “The Griffin’s Egg,” “The Spice Tree,” “Blanche Sweet,” “Mary Pickford,” “The Soul of the City,” etc.

Mr. Lindsay received the Levinson Prize for the best poem contributed to Poetry, a magazine of verse, (Chicago) for 1915.

“We do not know a young man of any more promise than Mr. Vachel Lindsay for the task which he seems to have set himself.”—The Dial.

General William Booth Enters Into Heaven and Other Poems

Price, $1.25; leather, $1.60

This book contains among other verses: “On Reading Omar Khayyam during an Anti-Saloon Campaign in Illinois”; “The Wizard Wind”; “The Eagle Forgotten,” a Memorial to John P. Altgeld; “The Knight in Disguise,” a Memorial to O. Henry; “The Rose and the Lotus”; “Michaelangelo”; “Titian”; “What the Hyena Said”; “What Grandpa Mouse Said”; “A Net to Snare the Moonlight”; “Springfield Magical”; “The Proud Farmer”; “The Illinois Village”; “The Building of Springfield.”