TWELVE MEN

BY

Theodore Dreiser

1919

Contents

 I _Peter_ II _A Doer of the Word_ III _My Brother Paul_ IV _The Country Doctor_ V _Culhane, the Solid Man_ VI _A True Patriarch_ VII _De Maupassant, Jr. _VIII _The Village Feudists_ IX _Vanity, Vanity_ X _The Mighty Rourke_ XI _A Mayor and His People_ XII _W. L. S. _

_Peter_

In any group of men I have ever known, speaking from the point of viewof character and not that of physical appearance, Peter would stand outas deliciously and irrefutably different. In the great waste of Americanintellectual dreariness he was an oasis, a veritable spring in thedesert. He understood life. He knew men. He was free--spiritually, morally, in a thousand ways, it seemed to me. 

As one drags along through this inexplicable existence one realizes howsuch qualities stand out; not the pseudo freedom of strong men, financially or physically, but the real, internal, spiritual freedom, where the mind, as it were, stands up and looks at itself, faces Natureunafraid, is aware of its own weaknesses, its strengths; examines itsown and the creative impulses of the universe and of men with a kindlyand non-dogmatic eye, in fact kicks dogma out of doors, and yetdeliberately and of choice holds fast to many, many simple and humanthings, and rounds out life, or would, in a natural, normal, courageous, healthy way. 

The first time I ever saw Peter was in St. Louis in 1892; I had comedown from Chicago to work on the St. Louis _Globe-Democrat_, and he wasa part of the art department force of that paper. At that time--and henever seemed to change later even so much as a hair's worth until hedied in 1908--he was short, stocky and yet quick and even jerky in hismanner, with a bushy, tramp-like "get-up" of hair and beard, mostswiftly and astonishingly disposed of at times only to be regrown atothers, and always, and intentionally, I am sure, most amusing tocontemplate. In addition to all this he had an air of well-being, forceand alertness which belied the other surface characteristics as anythingmore than a genial pose or bit of idle gayety. 

Plainly he took himself seriously and yet lightly, usually with an airof suppressed gayety, as though saying, "This whole business of livingis a great joke. " He always wore good and yet exceedingly mussy clothes, at times bespattered with ink or, worse yet, even soup--an amazinggrotesquery that was the dismay of all who knew him, friends andrelatives especially. In addition he was nearly always liberallybesprinkled with tobacco dust, the source of which he used in all forms:in pipe, cigar and plug, even cigarettes when he could obtain nothingmore substantial. One of the things about him which most impressed me atthat time and later was this love of the ridiculous or the grotesque, inhimself or others, which would not let him take anything in a dull orconventional mood, would not even permit him to appear normal at timesbut urged him on to all sorts of nonsense, in an effort, I suppose, toentertain himself and make life seem less commonplace. 

And yet he loved life, in all its multiform and multiplex aspects andwith no desire or tendency to sniff, reform or improve anything. It wasgood just as he found it, excellent. Life to Peter was indeed sosplendid that he was always very much wrought up about it, eager tolive, to study, to do a thousand things. For him it was a workshop forthe artist, the thinker, as well as the mere grubber, and without reallycriticizing any one he was "for" the individual who is able tounderstand, to portray or to create life, either feelingly andartistically or with accuracy and discrimination. To him, as I saw thenand see even more clearly now, there was no high and no low. All thingswere only relatively so. A thief was a thief, but he had his place. Ditto the murderer. Ditto the saint. Not man but Nature was planning, orat least doing, something which man could not understand, of which verylikely he was a mere tool. Peter was as much thrilled and entendered bythe brawling strumpet in the street or the bagnio as by the virgin withher starry crown. The rich were rich and the poor poor, but all were inthe grip of imperial forces whose ruthless purposes or lack of them madeall men ridiculous, pathetic or magnificent, as you choose. He pitiedignorance and necessity, and despised vanity and cruelty for cruelty'ssake, and the miserly hoarding of anything. He was liberal, material, sensual and yet spiritual; and although he never had more than a littlemoney, out of the richness and fullness of his own temperament he seemedable to generate a kind of atmosphere and texture in his daily lifewhich was rich and warm, splendid really in thought (the true reality)if not in fact, and most grateful to all. Yet also, as I have said, always he wished to _seem_ the clown, the scapegrace, the wanton andthe loon even, mouthing idle impossibilities at times and declaring hisprofoundest faith in the most fantastic things. 

Do I seem to rave? I am dealing with a most significant person. 

In so far as I knew he was born into a mid-Western family of Irishextraction whose habitat was southwest Missouri. In the town in which hewas reared there was not even a railroad until he was fairly wellgrown--a fact which amused but never impressed him very much. Apropos ofthis he once told me of a yokel who, never having seen a railroad, entered the station with his wife and children long before train time, bought his ticket and waited a while, looking out of the variouswindows, then finally returned to the ticket-seller and asked, "Whendoes this thing start?" He meant the station building itself. At thetime Peter had entered upon art work he had scarcely prosecuted hisstudies beyond, if so far as, the conventional high or grammar school, and yet he was most amazingly informed and but little interested in whatany school or college had to offer. His father, curiously enough, was aneducated Irish-American, a lawyer by profession, and a Catholic. Hismother was an American Catholic, rather strict and narrow. His brothersand sisters, of whom there were four, were, as I learned later, astonishingly virile and interesting Americans of a rather wild, unsettled type. They were all, in so far as I could judge from chancemeetings, agnostic, tense, quick-moving--so vital that they weighed onone a little, as very intense temperaments are apt to do. One of thebrothers, K----, who seemed to seek me out ever so often for Peter'ssake, was so intense, nervous, rapid-talking, rapid-living, that hefrightened me a little. He loved noisy, garish places. He liked to playthe piano, stay up very late; he was a high liver, a "good dresser, " asthe denizens of the Tenderloin would say, an excellent example of theflashy, clever promoter. He was always representing a new company, introducing something--a table or laxative water, a shaving soap, achewing gum, a safety razor, a bicycle, an automobile tire or themachine itself. He was here, there, everywhere--in Waukesha, Wisconsin;San Francisco; New York; New Orleans. "My, my! This is certainlyinteresting!" he would exclaim, with an air which would have done creditto a comedian and extending both hands. "Peter's pet friend, Dreiser!Well, well, well! Let's have a drink. Let's have something to eat. I'monly in town for a day. Maybe you'd like to go to a show--or hit thehigh places? Would you? Well, well, well! Let's make a night of it! Whatdo you say?" and he would fix me with a glistening, nervous and what wasintended no doubt to be a reassuring eye, but which unsettled me asthoroughly as the imminence of an earthquake. But I was talking ofPeter. 

The day I first saw him he was bent over a drawing-board illustrating asnake story for one of the Sunday issues of the _Globe-Democrat_, whichapparently delighted in regaling its readers with most astoundingconcoctions of this kind, and the snake he was drawing was mostdisturbingly vital and reptilian, beady-eyed, with distended jaws, extended tongue, most fatefully coiled. 

"My, " I commented in passing, for I was in to see him about anothermatter, "what a glorious snake!"

"Yes, you can't make 'em too snaky for the snake-editor up front, " hereturned, rising and dusting tobacco from his lap and shirtfront, for hewas in his shirt-sleeves. Then he expectorated not in but to one side ofa handsome polished brass cuspidor which contained not the leastevidence of use, the rubber mat upon which it stood being instead mostdisturbingly "decorated. " I was most impressed by this latter factalthough at the time I said nothing, being too new. Later, I may as wellsay here, I discovered why. This was a bit of his clowning humor, apurely manufactured and as it were mechanical joke or ebullience ofsoul. If any one inadvertently or through unfamiliarity attempted toexpectorate in his "golden cuspidor, " as he described it, he was alwaysquick to rise and interpose in the most solemn, almost sepulchralmanner, at the same time raising a hand. "Hold! Out--not in--to oneside, on the mat! That cost me seven dollars!" Then he would solemnlyseat himself and begin to draw again. I saw him do this to all but thechiefest of the authorities of the paper. And all, even the dullest, seemed to be amused, quite fascinated by the utter trumpery folly of it. 

But I am getting ahead of my tale. In so far as the snake wasconcerned, he was referring to the assistant who had these snake storiesin charge. "The fatter and more venomous and more scaly they are, " hewent on, "the better. I'd like it if we could use a little color in thispaper--red for eyes and tongue, and blue and green for scales. Thefarmers upstate would love that. They like good but poisonous snakes. "Then he grinned, stood back and, cocking his head to one side in a mostexamining and yet approving manner, ran his hand through his hair andbeard and added, "A snake can't be too vital, you know, for this paper. We have to draw 'em strong, plenty of vitality, plenty of go. " Hegrinned most engagingly. 

I could not help laughing, of course. The impertinent air! The grand, almost condescending manner!

We soon became fast friends. 

In the same office in close contact with him was another person, oneD---- W----, also a newspaper artist, who, while being exceedinglyinteresting and special in himself, still as a character never seems tohave served any greater purpose in my own mind than to have illustratedhow emphatic and important Peter was. He had a thin, pale, Dantesqueface, coal black, almost Indian-like hair most carefully parted in themiddle and oiled and slicked down at the sides and back until it lookedas though it had been glued. His eyes were small and black and querulousbut not mean--petted eyes they were--and the mouth had little lines ateach corner which seemed to say he had endured much, much pain, which ofcourse he had not, but which nevertheless seemed to ask for, and Isuppose earned him some, sympathy. Dick in his way was an actor, atragedian of sorts, but with an element of humor, cynicism and insightwhich saved him from being utterly ridiculous. Like most actors, he wasa great poseur. He invariably affected the long, loose flowing tie witha soft white or blue or green or brown linen shirt (would any Americanimitation of the "Quartier Latin" denizen have been without one at thatdate?), yellow or black gloves, a round, soft crush hat, very soft andlimp and very _different_, patent leather pumps, betimes a capecoat, aslender cane, a boutonnière--all this in hard, smoky, noisy, commercialSt. Louis, full of middle-West business men and farmers!

I would not mention this particular person save that for a time he, Peter and myself were most intimately associated. We temporarilyconstituted in our way a "soldiers three" of the newspaper world. Forsome years after we were more or less definitely in touch as a group, although later Peter and myself having drifted Eastward and hob-nobbingas a pair had been finding more and more in common and had more and morecome to view Dick for what he was: a character of Dickensian, or perhapsstill better, Cruikshankian, proportions and qualities. But in thosedays the three of us were all but inseparable; eating, working, playing, all but sleeping together. I had a studio of sorts in a more or lessdilapidated factory section of St. Louis (Tenth near Market; now Isuppose briskly commercial), Dick had one at Broadway and Locust, directly opposite the then famous Southern Hotel. Peter lived with hisfamily on the South Side, a most respectable and homey-homeneighborhood. 

It has been one of my commonest experiences, and one of the mostinteresting to me, to note that nearly all of my keenest experiencesintellectually, my most gorgeous _rapprochements_ and swiftestdevelopments mentally, have been by, to, and through men, not women, although there have been several exceptions to this. Nearly everyturning point in my career has been signalized by my meeting some man ofgreat force, to whom I owe some of the most ecstatic intellectual hoursof my life, hours in which life seemed to bloom forth into new aspects, glowed as with the radiance of a gorgeous tropic day. 

Peter was one such. About my own age at this time, he was blessed with anatural understanding which was simply Godlike. Although, like myself, he was raised a Catholic and still pretending in a boisterous, Rabelaisian way to have some reverence for that faith, he was amusinglysympathetic to everything good, bad, indifferent--"in case there mightbe something in it; you never can tell. " Still he hadn't the leastinterest in conforming to the tenets of the church and laughed at itspretensions, preferring his own theories to any other. Apparentlynothing amused him so much as the thought of confession and communion, of being shrived by some stout, healthy priest as worldly as himself, and preferably Irish, like himself. At the same time he had a heartyadmiration for the Germans, all their ways, conservatisms, theirbreweries, food and such things, and finally wound up by marrying aGerman girl. 

As far as I could make out, Peter had no faith in anything except Natureitself, and very little in that except in those aspects of beauty andaccident and reward and terrors with which it is filled and for which hehad an awe if not a reverence and in every manifestation of which hetook the greatest delight. Life was a delicious, brilliant mystery tohim, horrible in some respects, beautiful in others; a great adventure. Unlike myself at the time, he had not the slightest trace of anylingering Puritanism, and wished to live in a lush, vigorous, healthy, free, at times almost barbaric, way. The negroes, the ancient Romans, the Egyptians, tales of the Orient and the grotesque Dark Ages, our ownvile slums and evil quarters--how he reveled in these! He was for nightsof wandering, endless investigation, reading, singing, dancing, playing!

Apropos of this I should like to relate here that one of his seeminglygross but really innocent diversions was occasionally visiting a certainblack house of prostitution, of which there were many in St. Louis. Herewhile he played a flute and some one else a tambourine or small drum, hewould have two or three of the inmates dance in some weird savage waythat took one instanter to the wilds of Central Africa. There was, sofar as I know, no payment of any kind made in connection with this. Hewas a friend, in some crude, artistic or barbaric way. He satisfied, Iam positive, some love of color, sound and the dance in these queerrevels. 

Nor do I know how he achieved these friendships, such as they were. Iwas never with him when he did. But aside from the satiation theyafforded his taste for the strange and picturesque, I am sure theyreflected no gross or sensual appetite. But I wish to attest in passingthat the mere witnessing of these free scenes had a tonic as well astoxic effect on me. As I view myself now, I was a poor, spindling, prying fish, anxious to know life, and yet because of my very narrowtraining very fearsome of it, of what it might do to me, what dreadfulcontagion of thought or deed it might open me to! Peter was not so. Tohim all, positively _all_, life was good. It was a fascinatingspectacle, to be studied or observed and rejoiced in as a spectacle. When I look back now on the shabby, poorly-lighted, low-ceiled room towhich he led me "for fun, " the absolutely black or brown girls withtheir white teeth and shiny eyes, the unexplainable, unintelligible loveof rhythm and the dance displayed, the beating of a drum, the sinuous, winding motions of the body, I am grateful to him. He released my mind, broadened my view, lengthened my perspective. For as I sat with him, watching him beat his drum or play his flute, noted the gayety, his loveof color and effect, and feeling myself _low_, a criminal, disgraced, the while I was staring with all my sight and enjoying it intensely, Irealized that I was dealing with a man who was "bigger" than I was inmany respects, saner, really more wholesome. I was a moral coward, andhe was not losing his life and desires through fear--which the majorityof us do. He was strong, vital, unafraid, and he made me so. 

But, lest I seem to make him low or impossible to those whoinstinctively cannot accept life beyond the range of their own littleroutine world, let me hasten to his other aspects. He was not low butsimple, brilliant and varied in his tastes. America and its point ofview, religious and otherwise, was simply amusing to him, not to betaken seriously. He loved to contemplate man at his mysteries, rituals, secret schools. He loved better yet ancient history, medieval inanitiesand atrocities--a most singular, curious and wonderful mind. Already atthis age he knew many historians and scientists (their work), a mostastonishing and illuminating list to me--Maspero, Froude, Huxley, Darwin, Wallace, Rawlinson, Froissart, Hallam, Taine, Avebury! The listof painters, sculptors and architects with whose work he was familiarand books about whom or illustrated by whom he knew, is too long to begiven here. His chief interest, in so far as I could make out, in theseopening days, was Egyptology and the study of things natural andprimeval--all the wonders of a natural, groping, savage world. 

"Dreiser, " he exclaimed once with gusto, his bright beady eyes gleamingwith an immense human warmth, "you haven't the slightest idea of thefascination of some of the old beliefs. Do you know the significance ofa scarab in Egyptian religious worship, for instance?"

"A scarab? What's a scarab? I never heard of one, " I answered. 

"A beetle, of course. An Egyptian beetle. You know what a beetle is, don't you? Well, those things burrowed in the earth, the mud of theNile, at a certain period of their season to lay their eggs, and thenext spring, or whenever it was, the eggs would hatch and the beetleswould come up. Then the Egyptians imagined that the beetle hadn't diedat all, or if it had that it also had the power of restoring itself tolife, possessed immortality. So they thought it must be a god and beganto worship it, " and he would pause and survey me with those amazingeyes, bright as glass beads, to see if I were properly impressed. 

"You don't say!"

"Sure. That's where the worship came from, " and then he might go on andadd a bit about monkey-worship, the Zoroastrians and the Parsees, thesacred bull of Egypt, its sex power as a reason for its religiouselevation, and of sex worship in general; the fantastic orgies at Sidonand Tyre, where enormous images of the male and female sex organs werecarried aloft before the multitude. 

Being totally ignorant of these matters at the time, not a rumor of themhaving reached me as yet in my meagre reading, I knew that it must beso. It fired me with a keen desire to read--not the old orthodoxemasculated histories of the schools but those other books and pamphletsto which I fancied he must have access. Eagerly I inquired of him where, how. He told me that in some cases they were outlawed, banned or nottranslated wholly or fully, owing to the puritanism and religiosity ofthe day, but he gave me titles and authors to whom I might have access, and the address of an old book-dealer or two who could get them for me. 

In addition he was interested in ethnology and geology, as well asastronomy (the outstanding phases at least), and many, many phases ofapplied art: pottery, rugs, pictures, engraving, wood-carving, jewel-cutting and designing, and I know not what else, yet there wasalways room even in his most serious studies for humor of the bizarreand eccentric type, amounting to all but an obsession. He wanted tolaugh, and he found occasion for doing so under the most serious, or atleast semi-serious, circumstances. Thus I recall that one of the buttsof his extreme humor was this same Dick, whom he studied with thegreatest care for points worthy his humorous appreciation. Dick, inaddition to his genuinely lively mental interests, was a most romanticperson on one side, a most puling and complaining soul on the other. Asa newspaper artist I believe he was only a fairly respectable craftsman, if so much, whereas Peter was much better, although he deferred to Dickin the most persuasive manner and seemed to believe at times, though Iknew he did not, that Dick represented all there was to know in mattersartistic. 

Among other things at this time, the latter was, or pretended to be, immensely interested in all things pertaining to the Chinese and to knownot only something of their language, which he had studied a littlesomewhere, but also their history--a vague matter, as we all know--andthe spirit and significance of their art and customs. He sometimescondescended to take us about with him to one or two Chinese restaurantsof the most beggarly description, and--as he wished to believe, becauseof the romantic titillation involved--the hang-outs of crooks andthieves and disreputable Tenderloin characters generally. (Of such wasthe beginning of the Chinese restaurant in America. ) He would introduceus to a few of his Celestial friends, whose acquaintance apparently hehad been most assiduously cultivating for some time past and with whomhe was now on the best of terms. He had, as Peter pointed out to me, thehappy knack of persuading himself that there was something vastlymysterious and superior about the whole Chinese race, that there wassome Chinese organization known as the Six Companions, which, so far asI could make out from him, was ruling very nearly (and secretly, ofcourse) the entire habitable globe. For one thing it had some governingconnection with great constructive ventures of one kind and another inall parts of the world, supplying, as he said, thousands of Chineselaborers to any one who desired them, anywhere, and although they wereemployed by others, ruling them with a rod of iron, cutting theirthroats when they failed to perform their bounden duties and buryingthem head down in a basket of rice, then transferring their remainsquietly to China in coffins made in China and brought for that purposeto the country in which they were. The Chinese who had worked for thebuilders of the Union Pacific had been supplied by this company, as Iunderstood from Dick. In regard to all this Peter used to analyze anddispose of Dick's self-generated romance with the greatest gusto, laughing the while and yet pretending to accept it all. 

But there was one phase of all this which interested Peter immensely. Were there on sale in St. Louis any bits of jade, silks, needlework, porcelains, basketry or figurines of true Chinese origin? He was farmore interested in this than in the social and economic sides of thelives of the Chinese, and was constantly urging Dick to take him here, there and everywhere in order that he might see for himself what ofthese amazing wonders were locally extant, leading Dick in the process amerry chase and a dog's life. Dick was compelled to persuade nearly allof his boasted friends to produce all they had to show. Once, I recall, a collection of rare Chinese porcelains being shown at the local museumof art, there was nothing for it but that Dick must get one or more ofhis Oriental friends to interpret this, that and the other symbol inconnection with this, that and the other vase--things which put him tono end of trouble and which led to nothing, for among all the localChinese there was not one who knew anything about it, although they, Dick included, were not honest enough to admit it. 

"You know, Dreiser, " Peter said to me one day with the most deliciousgleam of semi-malicious, semi-tender humor, "I am really doing all thisjust to torture Dick. He doesn't know a damned thing about it andneither do these Chinese, but it's fun to haul 'em out there and make'em sweat. The museum sells an illustrated monograph covering all this, you know, with pictures of the genuinely historic pieces andexplanations of the various symbols in so far as they are known, butDick doesn't know that, and he's lying awake nights trying to find outwhat they're all about. I like to see his expression and that of thosechinks when they examine those things. " He subsided with a low chuckleall the more disturbing because it was so obviously the product ofwell-grounded knowledge. 

Another phase of this same humor related to the grand artistic, socialand other forms of life to which Dick was hoping to ascend via marriageand which led him, because of a kind of anticipatory eagerness, into allsorts of exaggerations of dress, manners, speech, style in writing ordrawing, and I know not what else. He had, as I have said, a "studio" inBroadway, an ordinary large, square upper chamber of an old residenceturned commercial but which Dick had decorated in the most, to him, recherché or _different_ manner possible. In Dick's gilding imaginationit was packed with the rarest and most carefully selected things, oddbits of furniture, objects of art, pictures, books--things which theordinary antique shop provides in plenty but which to Dick, having beenreared in Bloomington, Illinois, were of the utmost artistic import. Hehad vaulting ambitions and pretensions, literary and otherwise, havingby now composed various rondeaus, triolets, quatrains, sonnets, inaddition to a number of short stories over which he had literally slavedand which, being rejected by many editors, were kept lying idly andinconsequentially and seemingly inconspicuously about his place--themore to astonish the poor unsophisticated "outsider. " Besides it gavehim the opportunity of posing as misunderstood, neglected, depressed, asbecomes all great artists, poets, and thinkers. 

His great scheme or dream, however, was that of marriage to an heiress, one of those very material and bovine daughters of the new rich in theWest end, and to this end he was bending all his artistic thought, writing, dressing, dreaming the thing he wished. I myself had a markedtendency in this direction, although from another point of view, andspeaking from mine purely, there was this difference between us: Dickbeing an artist, rather remote and disdainful in manner and decidedlyhandsome as well as poetic and better positioned than I, as I fancied, was certain to achieve this gilded and crystal state, whereas I, notbeing handsome nor an artist nor sufficiently poetic perhaps, couldscarcely aspire to so gorgeous a goal. Often, as around dinnertime heambled from the office arrayed in the latest mode--dark blue suit, patent leather boots, a dark, round soft felt hat, loose tie blowingidly about his neck, a thin cane in his hand--I was already almostconvinced that the anticipated end was at hand, this very eveningperhaps, and that I should never see him more except as the husband of avery rich girl, never be permitted even to speak to him save as analmost forgotten friend, and in passing! Even now perhaps he was on hisway to her, whereas I, poor oaf that I was, was moiling here over sometrucky work. Would my ship never come in? my great day never arrive? myturn? Unkind heaven!

As for Peter he was the sort of person who could swiftly detect, understand and even sympathize with a point of view of this kind thewhile he must laugh at it and his mind be busy with some plan of makinga fol-de-rol use of it. One day he came into the city-room where I wasworking and bending over my desk fairly bursting with suppressed humorannounced, "Gee, Dreiser, I've just thought of a delicious trick to playon Dick! Oh, Lord!" and he stopped and surveyed me with beady eyes thewhile his round little body seemed to fairly swell with pent-uplaughter. "It's too rich! Oh, if it just works out Dick'll be sore!Wait'll I tell you, " he went on. "You know how crazy he is about richyoung heiresses? You know how he's always 'dressing up' and talking andwriting about marrying one of those girls in the West end?" (Dick wasforever composing a short story in which some lorn but perfect and greatartist was thus being received via love, the story being read to usnights in his studio. ) "That's all bluff, that talk of his of visitingin those big houses out there. All he does is to dress up every night asthough he were going to a ball, and walk out that way and moon around. Well, listen. Here's the idea. We'll go over to Mermod & Jaccardsto-morrow and get a few sheets of their best monogrammed paper, samplesheets. Then we'll get up a letter and sign it with the most romanticname we can think of--Juanita or Cyrene or Doris--and explain who sheis, the daughter of a millionaire living out there, and that she's beenstrictly brought up but that in spite of all that she's seen his name inthe paper at the bottom of his pictures and wants to meet him, see? Thenwe'll have her suggest that he come out to the west gate of, say, Portland Place at seven o'clock and meet her. We'll have her describeherself, see, young and beautiful, and some attractive costume she's towear, and we'll kill him. He'll fall hard. Then we'll happen by there atthe exact time when he's waiting, and detain him, urge him to come intothe park with us or to dinner. We'll look our worst so he'll be ashamedof us. He'll squirm and get wild, but we'll hang on and spoil the datefor him, see? We'll insist in the letter that he must be alone, see, because she's timid and afraid of being recognized. My God, he'll becrazy! He'll think we've ruined his life--oh, ho, ho!" and he fairlywrithed with inward joy. 

The thing worked. It was cruel in its way, but when has man ever grievedover the humorous ills of others? The paper was secured, the letterwritten by a friend of Peter's in a nearby real estate office, after themost careful deliberation as to wording on our part. Extreme youth, beauty and a great mansion were all hinted at. The fascination of Dickas a romantic figure was touched upon. He would know her by a green silkscarf about her waist, for it was spring, the ideal season. Seveno'clock was the hour. She could give him only a moment or two then--butlater--and she gave no address!

The letter was mailed in the West end, as was meet and proper, and indue season arrived at the office. Peter, working at the next easel, observed him, as he told me, out of the corner of his eye. 

"You should have seen him, Dreiser, " he exclaimed, hunting me up aboutan hour after the letter arrived. "Oh, ho! Say, you know I believe hethinks it's the real thing. It seemed to make him a little sick. Hetried to appear nonchalant, but a little later he got his hat and wentout, over to Deck's, " a nearby saloon, "for a drink, for I followed him. He's all fussed up. Wait'll we heave into view that night! I'm going toget myself up like a joke, a hobo. I'll disgrace him. Oh, Lord, he'll becrazy! He'll think we've ruined his life, scared her off. There's noaddress. He can't do a thing. Oh, ho, ho, ho!"

On the appointed day--and it was a delicious afternoon and evening, aflame with sun and in May--Dick left off his work at three p. M. , asPeter came and told me, and departed, and then we went to make ourtoilets. At six we met, took a car and stepped down not more than ashort block from the point of meeting. I shall never forget thesweetness of the air, the something of sadness in the thought of love, even in this form. The sun was singing its evensong, as were the birds. But Peter--blessings or curses upon him!--was arrayed as only he couldarray himself when he wished to look absolutely disconcerting--more likean unwashed, uncombed tramp who had been sleeping out for weeks, thananything else. His hair was over his eyes and ears, his face and handsdirty, his shoes ditto. He had even blackened one tooth slightly. He hadon a collarless shirt, and yet he was jaunty withal and carried a cane, if you please, assuming, as he always could and in the most aggravatingway, to be totally unconscious of the figure he cut. At one angle of hismultiplex character the man must have been a born actor. 

We waited a block away, concealed by a few trees, and at the exact hourDick appeared, hopeful and eager no doubt, and walking and lookingalmost all that he hoped--delicate, pale, artistic. The new straw hat!The pale green "artists'" shirt! His black, wide-buckled belt! The cane!The dark-brown low shoes! The boutonnière! He was plainly ready for anyfate, his great moment. 

And then, before he could get the feeling that his admirer might not becoming, we descended upon him in all our wretched nonchalance andunworthiness--out of hell, as it were. We were most brisk, familiar, affectionate. It was so fortunate to meet him so, so accidentally andperadventure. The night was so fine. We were out for a stroll in thepark, to eat afterward. He must come along. 

I saw him look at Peter in that hat and no collar, and wilt. It was toomuch. Such a friend--such friends (for on Peter's advice I was lookingas ill as I might, an easy matter)! No, he couldn't come. He was waitingfor some friends. We must excuse him. 

But Peter was not to be so easily shaken off. He launched into the mostbrisk and serious conversation. He began his badger game by asking aboutsome work upon which Dick had been engaged before he left the office, some order, how he was getting along with it, when it would be done;and, when Dick evaded and then attempted to dismiss the subject, tookup another and began to expatiate on it, some work he himself was doing, something that had developed in connection with it. He asked inanequestions, complimented Dick on his looks, began to tease him about somegirl. And poor Dick--his nervousness, his despair almost, the sense ofthe waning of his opportunity! It was cruel. He was becoming more andmore restless, looking about more and more wearily and anxiously andwishing to go or for us to go. He was horribly unhappy. Finally, afterten or fifteen minutes had gone and various girls had crossed the plazain various directions, as well as carriages and saddle-horses--each onecarrying his heiress, no doubt!--he seemed to summon all his courage anddid his best to dispose of us. "You two'll have to excuse me, " heexclaimed almost wildly. "I can't wait. " Those golden moments! She couldnot approach! "My people aren't coming, I guess. I'll have to be goingon. "

He smiled weakly and made off, Peter half following and urging him tocome back. Then, since he would not, we stood there on the exact spot ofthe rendezvous gazing smirkily after him. Then we went into the park afew paces and sat on a bench in full view, talking--or Peter was--mostvolubly. He was really choking with laughter. A little later, atseven-thirty, we went cackling into the park, only to return in fiveminutes as though we had changed our minds and were coming out--and sawDick bustling off at our approach. It was sad really. There was anelement of the tragic in it. But not to Peter. He was all laughter, allbut apoplectic gayety. "Oh, by George!" he choked. "This is too much!Oh, ho! This is great! his poor heiress! And he came back! Har! Har!Har!"

"Peter, you dog, " I said, "aren't you ashamed of yourself, to rub it inthis way?"

"Not a bit, not a bit!" he insisted most enthusiastically. "Do him good. Why shouldn't he suffer? He'll get over it. He's always bluffing abouthis heiresses. Now he's lost a real one. Har! Har! Har!" and he fairlychoked, and for days and weeks and months he laughed, but he never told. He merely chortled at his desk, and if any one asked him what he waslaughing about, even Dick, he would reply, "Oh, something--a joke Iplayed on a fellow once. "

If Dick ever guessed he never indicated as much. But that lost romance!That faded dream!

Not so long after this, the following winter, I left St. Louis and didnot see Peter for several years, during which time I drifted throughvarious cities to New York. We kept up a more or less desultorycorrespondence which resulted eventually in his contributing to a paperof which I had charge in New York, and later, in part at least I amsure, in his coming there. I noticed one thing, that although Peter hadno fixed idea as to what he wished to be--being able to draw, write, engrave, carve and what not--he was in no way troubled about it. "Idon't see just what it is that I am to do best, " he said to me once. "Itmay be that I will wind up as a painter or writer or collector--I can'ttell yet. I want to study, and meantime I'm making a living--that's allI want now. I want to live, and I am living, in my way. "

Some men are masters of cities, or perhaps better, of all the elementswhich enter into the making of them, and Peter was one. I thinksometimes that he was born a writer of great force and charm, only asyet he had not found himself. I have known many writers, many geniuseseven, but not one his superior in intellect and romantic response tolife. He was a poet, thinker, artist, philosopher and master of prose, as a posthumous volume ("Wolf, the Autobiography of a Cave Dweller")amply proves, but he was not ready then to fully express himself, and ittroubled him not at all. He loved life's every facet, was gay andhelpful to himself and others, and yet always with an eye for theundercurrent of human misery, error and tragedy as well as comedy. Immediately upon coming to New York he began to examine and grasp it ina large way, its museums, public buildings, geography, politics, butafter a very little while decided suddenly that he did not belong thereand without a by-your-leave, although once more we had fallen into eachother's ways, he departed without a word, and I did not hear from himfor months. Temporarily at least he felt that he had to obtain moreexperience in a lesser field, and lost no time in so doing. The next Iknew he was connected, at a comfortable salary, with the then dominantpaper of Philadelphia. 

It was after he had established himself very firmly in Philadelphia thatwe two finally began to understand each other fully, to sympathizereally with each other's point of view as opposed to the more or lessgay and casual nature of our earlier friendship. Also here perhaps, morethan before, we felt the binding influence of having worked together inthe West. It was here that I first noticed the ease with which he tookhold of a city, the many-sidedness of his peculiar character which ledhim to reflect so many angles of it, which a less varied temperamentwould never have touched upon. For, first of all, wherever he happenedto be, he was intensely interested in the age and history of his city, its buildings and graveyards and tombstones which pointed to its pastlife, then its present physical appearance, the chief characteristics ofthe region in which it lay, its rivers, lakes, parks and adjacent placesand spots of interest (what rambles we took!), as well as its newest andfinest things architecturally. Nor did any one ever take a keenerinterest in the current intellectual resources of a city--any city inwhich he happened to be--its museums, libraries, old bookstores, newspapers, magazines, and I know not what else. It was he who firsttook me into Leary's bookstore in Philadelphia, descanting with hisusual gusto on its merits. Then and lastly he was keenly and wiselyinterested in various currents of local politics, society and finance, although he always considered the first a low mess, an arrangement oradjustment of many necessary things among the lower orders. He seemed toknow or sense in some occult way everything that was going on in thosevarious realms. His mind was so full and rich that merely to be with himwas a delight. He gushed like a fountain, and yet not polemically, ofall he knew, heard, felt, suspected. His thoughts were so rich at timesthat to me they were more like a mosaic of variegated and richly coloredstones and jewels. I felt always as though I were in the presence of agreat personage, not one who was reserved or pompous but a loosebubbling temperament, wise beyond his years or day, and so truly greatthat perhaps because of the intensity and immense variety of hisinterests he would never shine in a world in which the most intensivespecialization, and that of a purely commercial character, was the grandrôle. 

And yet I always felt that perhaps he might. He attracted people of allgrades so easily and warmly. His mind leaped from one interest toanother almost too swiftly, and yet the average man understood and likedhim. While in a way he contemned their mental states as limited orbigoted, he enjoyed the conditions under which they lived, seemed towish to immerse himself in them. And yet nearly all his thoughts were, from their point of view perhaps, dangerous. Among his friends he wasalways talking freely, honestly, of things which the average man couldnot or would not discuss, dismissing as trash illusion, lies or thecunning work of self-seeking propagandists, most of the things currentlyaccepted as true. 

He was constantly commenting on the amazing dullness of man, hisprejudices, the astonishing manner in which he seized upon and clungsavagely or pathetically to the most ridiculous interpretations of life. He was also forever noting that crass chance which wrecks so many of ourdreams and lives, --its fierce brutalities, its seemingly inaneindifference to wondrous things, --but never in a depressed or morbidspirit; merely as a matter of the curious, as it were. But if any onechanced to contradict him he was likely to prove liquid fire. At thesame time he was forever reading, reading, reading--history, archæology, ethnology, geology, travel, medicine, biography, and descanting on thewonders and idiosyncrasies of man and nature which they revealed. He wasnever tired of talking of the intellectual and social conditions thatruled in Greece and Rome from 600 B. C. On, the philosophies, thetravels, the art, the simple, natural pagan view of things, andregretting that they were no more. He grieved at times, I think, that hehad not been of that world, might not have seen it, or, failing that, might not see all the shards of those extinct civilizations. There wassomething loving and sad in the manner in which at times, in one museumand another, he would examine ancient art designs, those of theEgyptians, Greeks and Romans, their public and private house plans, their statues, book rolls, inscriptions, flambeaux, boats, swords, chariots. Carthage, Rome, Greece, Phoenicia--their colonies, art andtrade stuffs, their foods, pleasures and worships--how he raved! A booklike Thaïs, Salammbo, Sonica, Quo Vadis, touched him to the quick. 

At the same time, and odd as it may seem, he was seemingly in intimatecontact with a circle of friends that rather astonished me by itscatholicity. It included, for instance, and quite naïvely, real estatedealers, clerks, a bank cashier or two, some man who had a leather shopor cigar factory in the downtown section, a drummer, a printer, two orthree newspaper artists and reporters--a list too long to catalogue hereand seemingly not interesting, at least not inspiring to look at or livein contact with. Yet his relations with all of these were of a warm, genial, helpful, homely character, quite intimate. He used them as onemight a mulch in which to grow things, or in other words he took them ontheir own ground; a thing which I could never quite understand, beingmore or less aloof myself and yet wishing always to be able so to do, totake life, as he did. 

For he desired, and secured, their good will and drew them to him. Hetook a simple, natural pleasure in the kinds of things they were able todo, as well as the kinds of things he could do. With these, then, and atype of girl who might not be classed above the clerk or manicure class, he and they managed to eke out a social life, the outstanding phases ofwhich were dances, "parties, " dinners at one simple home and another, flirting, boating, and fishing expeditions in season, evenings out atrestaurants or the theater, and I know not what else. He could sing (avery fair baritone), play the piano, cornet, flute, banjo, mandolin andguitar, but always insisted that his favorite instruments were thejews'-harp, the French harp (mouth organ) and a comb with a piece ofpaper over it, against which he would blow with fierce energy, makingthe most outrageous sounds, until stopped. At any "party" he was alwaystalking, jumping about, dancing, cooking something--fudge, taffy, ararebit, and insisting in the most mock-serious manner that all thedetails be left strictly to him. "Now just cut out of this, all of you, and leave this to your Uncle Dudley. Who's doing this? All I want issugar, chocolate, a pot, a big spoon, and I'll show you the best fudgeyou ever ate. " Then he would don an apron or towel and go to work in amanner which would rob any gathering of a sense of stiffness and inducea naturalness most intriguing, calculated to enhance the generalpleasure an hundredfold. 

Yes, Peter woke people up. He could convey or spread a sense of ease andgood nature and give and take among all. Wise as he was and not sogood-looking, he was still attractive to girls, very much so, and by nomeans unconscious of their beauty. He could always, and easily, breakdown their reserve, and was soon apparently on terms of absolutefriendship, exchanging all sorts of small gossip and news with themabout this, that and the other person about whom they knew. Indeed hewas such a general favorite and so seemingly impartial that it was hardto say how he came close to any, and yet he did. At odd tête-à-têtemoments he was always making confessions as to "nights" or "afternoons. ""My God, Dreiser, I've found a peach! I can't tell you--but oh, wonderful! Just what I need. This world's a healthy old place, eh? Let'shave another drink, what?" and he would order a stein or a half-schoppenof light German beer and pour it down, grinning like a gargoyle. 

It was while he was in Philadelphia that he told me the beginnings ofthe love affair which eventually ended in his marrying and settling downinto the homiest of home men I have ever seen and which for sheernaïveté and charm is one of the best love stories I know anything about. It appears that he was walking in some out-of-the-way factory realm ofNorth Philadelphia one Saturday afternoon about the first or second yearof his stay there, when, playing in the street with some other children, he saw a girl of not more than thirteen or fourteen who, as he expressedit to me, "came damned near being the prettiest thing I ever saw. Shehad yellow hair and a short blue dress and pink bows in her hair--andsay, Dreiser, when I saw her I stopped flat and said 'me for that' if Ihave to wait fifteen years! Dutchy--you never saw the beat! And poor!Her shoes were clogs. She couldn't even talk English yet. Neither couldthe other kids. They were all sausage--a regular German neighborhood. 

"But, say, I watched her a while and then I went over and said, 'Comehere, kid. Where do you live?' She didn't understand, and one of theother kids translated for her, and then she said, 'Ich sprech nichtEnglish, '" and he mocked her. "That fixed her for me. One of the othersfinally told me who she was and where she lived--and, say, I went righthome and began studying German. In three months I could make myselfunderstood, but before that, in two weeks, I hunted up her old man andmade him understand that I wanted to be friends with the family, tolearn German. I went out Sundays when they were all at home. There aresix children and I made friends with 'em all. For a long time I couldn'tmake Madchen (that's what they call her) understand what it was allabout, but finally I did, and she knows now all right. And I'm crazyabout her and I'm going to marry her as soon as she's old enough. "

"How do you know that she'll have you?" I inquired. 

"Oh, she'll have me. I always tell her I'm going to marry her when she'seighteen, and she says all right. And I really believe she does like me. I'm crazy about her. "

Five years later, if I may anticipate a bit, after he had moved toNewark and placed himself rather well in the journalistic field and wasable to carry out his plans in regard to himself, he suddenly returnedto Philadelphia and married, preparing beforehand an apartment which hefancied would please her. It was a fortunate marriage in so far as loveand home pleasures were concerned. I never encountered a more delightfulatmosphere. 

All along in writing this I feel as though I were giving but thethinnest portrait of Peter; he was so full and varied in his moods andinterests. To me he illustrated the joy that exists, on the one hand, inthe common, the so-called homely and what some might think ugly side oflife, certainly the very simple and ordinarily human aspect of things;on the other, in the sheer comfort and satisfaction that might be takenin things truly intellectual and artistic, but to which no great expenseattached--old books, prints, things connected with history and sciencein their various forms, skill in matters relating to the applied artsand what not, such as the coloring and firing of pottery and glass, themaking of baskets, hammocks and rugs, the carving of wood, thecollection and imitation of Japanese and Chinese prints, the art ofembalming as applied by the Egyptians (which, in connection with anundertaker to whom he had attached himself, he attempted to revive or atleast play with, testing his skill for instance by embalming a dead cator two after the Egyptian manner). In all of these lines he trainedhimself after a fashion and worked with skill, although invariably heinsisted that he was little more than a bungler, a poor follower afterthe art of some one else. But most of all, at this time and later, hewas interested in collecting things Japanese and Chinese: netsukes, inros, censors, images of jade and porcelain, teajars, vases, prints;and it was while he was in Philadelphia and seemingly trifling aboutwith the group I have mentioned and making love to his little Germangirl that he was running here and there to this museum and that andlaying the foundations of some of those interesting collections whichlater he was fond of showing his friends or interested collectors. Bythe time he had reached Newark, as chief cartoonist of the leading paperthere, he was in possession of a complete Tokaido (the forty views onthe road between Tokio and Kyoto), various prints by Hokusai, Sesshiu, Sojo; a collection of one hundred inros, all of fifty netsukes, all ofthirty censers, lacquered boxes and teajars, and various otherexceedingly beautiful and valuable things--Mandarin skirts and coats, among other things--which subsequently he sold or traded around amongone collector friend and another for things which they had. I recall hisselling his completed Tokaido, a labor which had extended over fouryears, for over a thousand dollars. Just before he died he was tradingnetsukes for inros and getting ready to sell all these latter to a man, who in turn was going to sell his collection to a museum. 

But in between was this other, this ultra-human side, which ran to suchcommonplaces as bowling, tennis-playing, golf, billiards, cards andgambling with the dice--a thing which always struck me as having an oddturn to it in connection with Peter, since he could be interested in somany other things, and yet he pursued these commonplaces with as muchgusto at times as one possessed of a mania. At others he seemed not tomiss or think of them. Indeed, you could be sure of him and all hisinterests, whatever they were, feeling that he had himself well in hand, knew exactly how far he was going, and that when the time came he couldand would stop. Yet during the process of his momentary relaxation orsatiation, in whatever field it might be, he would give you a sense ofabandon, even ungovernable appetite, which to one who had not known himlong might have indicated a mania. 

Thus I remember once running over to Philadelphia to spend a Saturdayand Sunday with him, visits of this kind, in either direction, being ofthe commonest occurrence. At that time he was living in somequiet-looking boarding-house in South Fourth Street, but in which dweltor visited the group above-mentioned, and whenever I came there, atleast, there was always an atmosphere of intense gaming or playing insome form, which conveyed to me nothing so much as a glorious sense oflife and pleasure. A dozen or more men might be seated at or standingabout a poker or dice table, in summer (often in winter) with theircoats off, their sleeves rolled up, Peter always conspicuous among them. On the table or to one side would be money, a pitcher or a tin pail ofbeer, boxes of cigarettes or cigars, and there would be Peter among theplayers, flushed with excitement, his collar off, his hair awry, hislittle figure stirring about here and there or gesticulating or lightinga cigar or pouring down a glass of beer, shouting at the top of hisvoice, his eyes aglow, "That's mine!" "I say it's not!" "Two on thesixes!" "Three!" "Four!" "Ah, roll the bones! Roll the bones!" "Get off!Get off! Come on now, Spikes--cough up! You've got the money now. Payback. No more loans if you don't. " "Once on the fours--the fives--theaces!" "Roll the bones! Roll the bones! Come on!" Or, if he saw me, softening and saying, "Gee, Dreiser, I'm ahead twenty-eight so far!" or"I've lost thirty all told. I'll stick this out, though, to win or losefive more, and then I'll quit. I give notice, you fellows, five more, one way or the other, and then I'm through. See? Say, these damnedsharks are always trying to turn a trick. And when they lose they don'twant to pay. I'm offa this for life unless I get a better deal. "

In the room there might be three or four girls--sisters, sweethearts, pals of one or other of the players--some dancing, some playing thepiano or singing, and in addition the landlord and his wife, a slatternpair usually, about whose past and present lives Peter seemed always toknow much. He had seduced them all apparently into a kind of rakishcamaraderie which was literally amazing to behold. It thrilled, fascinated, at times frightened me, so thin and inadequate andinefficient seemed my own point of view and appetite for life. He wasvigorous, charitable, pagan, gay, full of health and strength. He wouldplay at something, anything, indoors or out as occasion offered, untilhe was fairly perspiring, when, throwing down whatever implement he hadin hand--be it cards, a tennis-racket, a golf club--would declare, "That's enough! That's enough! I'm done now. I've licked-cha, " or "I'mlicked. No more. Not another round. Come on, Dreiser, I know just theplace for us--" and then descanting on a steak or fish planked, or somenew method of serving corn or sweet potatoes or tomatoes, he would leadthe way somewhere to a favorite "rat's killer, " as he used to say, orgrill or Chinese den, and order enough for four or five, unless stopped. As he walked, and he always preferred to walk, the latest political rowor scandal, the latest discovery, tragedy or art topic would get hiskeen attention. In his presence the whole world used to look differentto me, more colorful, more hopeful, more gay. Doors seemed to open; inimagination I saw the interiors of a thousand realms--homes, factories, laboratories, dens, resorts of pleasure. During his day such figures asMcKinley, Roosevelt, Hanna, Rockefeller, Rogers, Morgan, Peary, Harrimanwere abroad and active, and their mental states and points of view andinterests--and sincerities and insincerities--were the subject of hiswholly brilliant analysis. He rather admired the clever opportunist, Ithink, so long as he was not mean in view or petty, yet he scorned andeven despised the commercial viewpoint or trade reactions of a man likeMcKinley. Rulers ought to be above mere commercialism. Once when I askedhim why he disliked McKinley so much he replied laconically, "The voiceis the voice of McKinley, but the hands--are the hands of Hanna. "Roosevelt seemed to amuse him always, to be a delightful if ridiculousand self-interested "grandstander, " as he always said, "always lookingout for Teddy, you bet, " but good for the country, inspiring it withvisions. Rockefeller was wholly admirable as a force driving the countryon to autocracy, oligarchy, possibly revolution. Ditto Hanna, dittoMorgan, ditto Harriman, ditto Rogers, unless checked. Peary might have, and again might not have, discovered the North Pole. He refused tojudge. Old "Doc" Cook, the pseudo discoverer, who appeared very shortlybefore he died, only drew forth chuckles of delight. "My God, the gall, the nerve! And that wreath of roses the Danes put around his neck! It'scolossal, Dreiser. It's grand. Munchausen, Cook, Gulliver, MarcoPolo--they'll live forever, or ought to!"

Some Saturday afternoons or Sundays, if he came to me or I to him intime, we indulged in long idle rambles, anywhere, either going first bystreetcar, boat or train somewhere and then walking, or, if the mood wasnot so, just walking on and on somewhere and talking. On such occasionsPeter was at his best and I could have listened forever, quite as thedisciples of Plato and Aristotle must have to them, to his discourses onlife, his broad and broadening conceptions of Nature--her cruelty, beauty, mystery. Once, far out somewhere beyond Camden, we were idlingabout an inlet where were boats and some fishermen and a trestle whichcrossed it. Just as we were crossing it some men in a boat belowdiscovered the body of a possible suicide, in the water, days old anddiscolored, but still intact and with the clothes of a man of at leastmiddle-class means. I was for leaving, being made a little sick by themere sight. Not so Peter. He was for joining in the effort which broughtthe body to shore, and in a moment was back with the small group ofwatermen, speculating and arguing as to the condition and character ofthe dead man, making himself really one of the group. Finally he wasurging the men to search the pockets while some one went for the police. But more than anything, with a hard and yet in its way humane realismwhich put any courage of mine in that direction to the blush, he was allfor meditating on the state and nature of man, his chemicalcomponents--chlorine, sulphuric acid, phosphoric acid, potassium, sodium, calcium, magnesium, oxygen--and speculating as to whichparticular chemicals in combination gave the strange metallic blues, greens, yellows and browns to the decaying flesh! He had a great stomachfor life. The fact that insects were at work shocked him not at all. Hespeculated as to _these_, their duties and functions! He assertedboldly that man was merely a chemical formula at best, that somethingmuch wiser than he had prepared him, for some not very brilliant purposeof his or its own perhaps, and that he or it, whoever or whatever he orit was, was neither good nor bad, as we imagined such things, but both. He at once went off into the mysteries--where, when with me at least, heseemed to prefer to dwell--talked of the divinations of the Chaldeans, how they studied the positions of the stars and the entrails of deadanimals before going to war, talked of the horrible fetiches of theAfricans, the tricks and speculations of the priests of Greek and Romantemples, finally telling me the story of the ambitious eel-seller whoanchored the dead horse in the stream in order to have plenty of eelsevery morning for market. I revolted. I declared he was sickening. 

"My boy, " he assured me, "you are too thin-skinned. You can't take lifethat way. It's all good to me, whatever happens. We're here. We're notrunning it. Why be afraid to look at it? The chemistry of a man's bodyisn't any worse than the chemistry of anything else, and we're eatingthe dead things we've killed all the time. A little more or a littleless in any direction--what difference?"

Apropos of this same a little later--to shock me, of course, as he wellknew he could--he assured me that in eating a dish of chop suey in aChinese restaurant, a very low one, he had found and eaten a part of thelittle finger of a child, and that "it was very good--very good, indeed. "

"Dog!" I protested. "Swine! Thou ghoula!" but he merely chuckledheartily and stuck to his tale!

But if I paint this side of him it is to round out his wonderful, to mealmost incredible, figure. Insisting on such things, he was still andalways warm and human, sympathetic, diplomatic and cautious, accordingto his company, so that he was really acceptable anywhere. Peter wouldnever shock those who did not want to be shocked. A minute or two orfive after such a discourse as the above he might be describing somemarvelously beautiful process of pollination among the flowers, thehistory of some medieval trade guild or gazing at a beautiful scene andconveying to one by his very attitude his unspoken emotion. 

After spending about two or three years in Philadelphia--which citycame to reflect for me the color of Peter's interests and mood--hesuddenly removed to Newark, having been nursing an arrangement with itsprincipal paper for some time. Some quarrel or dissatisfaction with thedirector of his department caused him, without other notice, to pastesome crisp quotation from one of the poets on his desk and depart! InNewark, a city to which before this I had paid not the slightestattention, he found himself most happy; and I, living in New York closeat hand, felt that I possessed in it and him an earthly paradise. Although it contained no more than 300, 000 people and seemed, or had, adrear factory realm only, he soon revealed it to me in quite anotherlight, because he was there. Very swiftly he found a wondrous canalrunning right through it, under its market even, and we went walkingalong its banks, out into the woods and fields. He found or created outof an existing boardinghouse in a back street so colorful and gay athing that after a time it seemed to me to outdo that one ofPhiladelphia. He joined a country club near Passaic, on the river ofthat name, on the veranda of which we often dined. He found a Chinesequarter with a restaurant or two; an amazing Italian section with arestaurant; a man who had a $40, 000 collection of rare Japanese andChinese curios, all in his rooms at the Essex County Insane Asylum, forhe was the chemist there; a man who was a playwright and manager in NewYork; another who owned a newspaper syndicate; another who directed asinging society; another who was president of a gun club; another whoowned and made or rather fired pottery for others. Peter was so restlessand vital that he was always branching out in a new direction. To myastonishment he now took up the making and firing of pottery forhimself, being interested in reproducing various Chinese dishes andvases of great beauty, the originals of which were in the MetropolitanMuseum of Art. His plan was first to copy the design, then buy, shape orbake the clay at some pottery, then paint or decorate with liquidporcelain at his own home, and fire. In the course of six or eightmonths, working in his rooms Saturdays and Sundays and some morningsbefore going to the office, he managed to produce three or four whichsatisfied him and which he kept plates of real beauty. The others hegave away. 

A little later, if you please, it was Turkish rug-making on a smallscale, the frame and materials for which he slowly accumulated, and thenproviding himself with a pillow, Turkish-fashion, he crossed his legsbefore it and began slowly but surely to produce a rug, the colors anddesign of which were entirely satisfactory to me. As may be imagined, itwas slow and tedious work, undertaken at odd moments and when there wasnothing else for him to do, always when the light was good and never atnight, for he maintained that the coloring required the best of light. Before this odd, homely, wooden machine, a combination of unpainted rodsand cords, he would sit, cross-legged or on a bench at times, and poundand pick and tie and unravel--a most wearisome-looking task to me. 

"For heaven's sake, " I once observed, "couldn't you think of anythingmore interestingly insane to do than this? It's the slowest, mostpainstaking work I ever saw. "

"That's just it, and that's just why I like it, " he replied, neverlooking at me but proceeding with his weaving in the most industriousfashion. "You have just one outstanding fault, Dreiser. You don't knowhow to make anything out of the little things of life. You want toremember that this is an art, not a job. I'm discovering whether I canmake a Turkish carpet or not, and it gives me pleasure. If I can get somuch as one good spot of color worked out, one small portion of thedesign, I'll be satisfied. I'll know then that I can do it, the wholething, don't you see? Some of these things have been the work of alifetime of one man. You call that a small thing? I don't. The pleasureis in doing it, proving that you can, not in the rug itself. " He clackedand tied, congratulating himself vastly. In due course of time three orfour inches were finished, a soft and yet firm silky fabric, and he wasin great glee over it, showing it to all and insisting that in time (howlong? I often wondered) he would complete it and would then own asplendid carpet. 

It was at this time that he built about him in Newark a structure offriendships and interests which, it seemed to me, promised to be forlife. He interested himself intensely in the paper with which he wasconnected and although he was only the cartoonist, still it was not longbefore various departments and elements in connection with it seemed toreflect his presence and to be alive with his own good will andenthusiasm. Publisher, editor, art director, managing editor andbusiness manager, were all in friendly contact with him. He took outlife insurance for the benefit of the wife and children he was later tohave! With the manager of the engraving department he was working outproblems in connection with copperplate engraving and printing; with theofficial photographer, art photography; with the art director, somescheme for enlarging the local museum in some way. With his enduringlove of the fantastic and ridiculous it was not long before he hadsuccessfully planned and executed a hoax of the most ridiculouscharacter, a piece of idle drollery almost too foolish to think of, andyet which eventually succeeded in exciting the natives of at least fourStates and was telegraphed to and talked about in a Sunday feature way, by newspapers all over the country, and finally involved Peter as anactor and stage manager of the most vivid type imaginable. And yet itwas all done really to amuse himself, to see if he could do it, as heoften told me. 

This particular hoax related to that silly old bugaboo of our boyhooddays, the escaped and wandering wild man, ferocious, blood-loving, terrible. I knew nothing of it until Peter, one Sunday afternoon when wewere off for a walk a year or two after he had arrived in Newark, suddenly announced apropos of nothing at all, "Dreiser, I've just hitupon a great idea which I am working out with some of the boys down onour paper. It's a dusty old fake, but it will do as well as any other, better than if it were a really decent idea. I'm inventing a wild man. You know how crazy the average dub is over anything strange, different, 'terrible. ' Barnum was right, you know. There's one born everyminute. Well, I'm just getting this thing up now. It's as good as thesacred white elephant or the blood-sweating hippopotamus. And what'smore, I'm going to stage it right here in little old Newark--and they'llall fall for it, and don't you think they won't, " and he chuckled mostecstatically. 

"For heaven's sake, what's coming now?" I sighed. 

"Oh, very well. But I have it all worked out just the same. We'rebeginning to run the preliminary telegrams every three or four days--onefrom Ramblersville, South Jersey, let us say, another from Hohokus, twenty-five miles farther on, four or five days later. By degrees asspring comes on I'll bring him north--right up here into Essex County--agenuine wild man, see, something fierce and terrible. We're giving himlong hair like a bison, red eyes, fangs, big hands and feet. He'sentirely naked--or will be when he gets here. He's eight feet tall. Hekills and eats horses, dogs, cattle, pigs, chickens. He frightens menand women and children. I'm having him bound across lonely roads, lookin windows at night, stampede cattle and drive tramps and peddlers outof the country. But say, wait and see. As summer comes on we'll make aregular headliner of it. We'll give it pages on Sunday. We'll get therubes to looking for him in posses, offer rewards. Maybe some one willactually capture and bring in some poor lunatic, a real wild man. Youcan do anything if you just stir up the natives enough. "

I laughed. "You're crazy, " I said. "What a low comedian you really are, Peter!"

Well, the weeks passed, and to mark progress he occasionally sent meclippings of telegrams, cut not from his pages, if you please, but fromsuch austere journals as the _Sun_ and _World_ of New York, the _NorthAmerican_ of Philadelphia, the _Courant_ of Hartford, recording theantics of his imaginary thing of the woods. Longish articles actuallybegan to appear here and there, in Eastern papers especially, describingthe exploits of this very elusive and moving demon. He had been seen ina dozen fairly widely distributed places within the month, but alwayscoming northward. In one place he had killed three cows at once, inanother two, and eaten portions of them raw! Old Mrs. Gorswitch ofDutchers Run, Pennsylvania, returning from a visit to herdaughter-in-law, Annie A. Gorswitch, and ambling along a lonely road inOsgoroola County, was suddenly descended upon by a most horrific figure, half man, half beast, very tall and with long hair and red, all butbloody eyes who, looking at her with avid glance, made as if to seizeher, but a wagon approaching along the road from another direction, hehad desisted and fled, leaving old Mrs. Gorswitch in a faint upon theground. Barns and haystacks had been fired here and there, lonely widowsin distant cotes been made to abandon their homes through fear. . . . Imarveled at the assiduity and patience of the man. 

One day in June or July following, being in Newark and asking Peterquite idly about his wild man, he replied, "Oh, it's great, great!Couldn't be better! He'll soon be here now. We've got the whole thingarranged now for next Sunday or Saturday--depends on which day I can getoff. We're going to photograph him. Wanto come over?"

"What rot!" I said. "Who's going to pose? Where?"

"Well, " he chuckled, "come along and see. You'll find out fast enough. We've got an actual wild man. I got him. I'll have him out here in thewoods. If you don't believe it, come over. You wouldn't believe me whenI said I could get the natives worked up. Well, they are. Look atthese, " and he produced clippings from rival papers. The wild man wasactually being seen in Essex County, not twenty-five miles from Newark. He had ravaged the property of people in five different States. It wasassumed that he was a lunatic turned savage, or that he had escaped froma circus or trading-ship wrecked on the Jersey coast (suggestions madeby Peter himself). His depredations, all told, had by now run intothousands, speaking financially. Staid residents were excited. Rewardsfor his capture were being offered in different places. Posses of iratecitizens were, and would continue to be, after him, armed to the teeth, until he was captured. Quite remarkable developments might be expectedat any time . . . I stared. It seemed too ridiculous, and it was, and backof it all was smirking, chuckling Peter, the center and fountain of it!

"You dog!" I protested. "You clown!" He merely grinned. 

Not to miss so interesting a dénouement as the actual capture of thisprodigy of the wilds, I was up early and off the following Sunday toNewark, where in Peter's apartment in due time I found him, his rooms ina turmoil, he himself busy stuffing things into a bag, outside anautomobile waiting and within it the staff photographer as well asseveral others, all grinning, and all of whom, as he informed me, wereto assist in the great work of tracking, ambushing and, if possible, photographing the dread peril. 

"Yes, well, who's going to be him?" I insisted. 

"Never mind! Never mind! Don't be so inquisitive, " chortled Peter. "Awild man has his rights and privileges, as well as any other. Remember, I caution all of you to be respectful in his presence. He's verysensitive, and he doesn't like newspapermen anyhow. He'll bephotographed, and he'll be wild. That's all you need to know. "

In due time we arrived at as comfortable an abode for a wild man as wellmight be. It was near the old Essex and Morris Canal, not far fromBoonton. A charming clump of brush and rock was selected, and here asnapshot of a posse hunting, men peering cautiously from behind trees ingroups and looking as though they were most eager to discover something, was made. Then Peter, slipping away--I suddenly saw him ambling towardus, hair upstanding, body smeared with black muck, daubs of white aboutthe eyes, little tufts of wool about wrists and ankles and loins--asgood a figure of a wild man as one might wish, only not eight feet tall. 

"Peter!" I said. "How ridiculous! You loon!"

"Have a care how you address me, " he replied with solemn dignity. "Awild man is a wild man. Our punctilio is not to be trifled with. I am ofthe oldest, the most famous line of wild men extant. Touch me not. " Hestrode the grass with the air of a popular movie star, while hediscussed with the art director and photographer the most terrifying andconvincing attitudes of a wild man seen by accident and unconscious ofhis pursuers. 

"But you're not eight feet tall!" I interjected at one point. 

"A small matter. A small matter, " he replied airily. "I will be in thepicture. Nothing easier. We wild men, you know--"

Some of the views were excellent, most striking. He leered most terriblyfrom arras of leaves or indicated fright or cunning. The man was a goodactor. For years I retained and may still have somewhere a full set ofthe pictures as well as the double-page spread which followed the nextweek. 

Well, the thing was appropriately discussed, as it should have been, but the wild man got away, as was feared. He went into the nearby canaland washed away all his terror, or rather he vanished into the dimrecesses of Peter's memory. He was only heard of a few times more in thepapers, his supposed body being found in some town in northeastPennsylvania--or in the small item that was "telegraphed" from there. Asfor Peter, he emerged from the canal, or from its banks, a cleaner ifnot a better man. He was grinning, combing his hair, adjusting his tie. 

"What a scamp!" I insisted lovingly. "What an incorrigible trickster!"

"Dreiser, Dreiser, " he chortled, "there's nothing like it. You shouldnot scoff. I am a public benefactor. I am really a creator. I havecreated a being as distinct as any that ever lived. He is in manyminds--mine, yours. You know that you believe in him really. There hewas peeking out from between those bushes only fifteen minutes ago. Andhe has made, and will make, thousands of people happy, thrill them, givethem a new interest. If Stevenson can create a Jekyll and Hyde, whycan't I create a wild man? I have. We have his picture to prove it. Whatmore do you wish?"

I acquiesced. All told, it was a delightful bit of foolery and art, andPeter was what he was first and foremost, an artist in the grotesque andthe ridiculous. 

For some time thereafter peace seemed to reign in his mind, only now itwas that the marriage and home and children idea began to grow. Frommuch of the foregoing it may have been assumed that Peter was out ofsympathy with the ordinary routine of life, despised the commonplace, the purely practical. As a matter of fact it was just the other wayabout. I never knew a man so radical in some of his viewpoints, soversatile and yet so wholly, intentionally and cravingly, immersed inthe usual as Peter. He was all for creating, developing, brighteninglife along simple rather than outré lines, in so far as he himself wasconcerned. Nearly all of his arts and pleasures were decorative andhomey. A good grocer, a good barber, a good saloon-keeper, a goodtailor, a shoe maker, was just as interesting in his way to Peter as anyone or anything else, if not a little more so. He respected their lines, their arts, their professions, and above all, where they had it, theirindustry, sobriety and desire for fair dealing. He believed thatmillions of men, especially those about him were doing the best theycould under the very severe conditions which life offered. He objectedto the idle, the too dull the swindlers and thieves as well as theofficiously puritanic or dogmatic. He resented, for himself at least, solemn pomp and show. Little houses, little gardens, little porches, simple cleanly neighborhoods with their air of routine, industry, convention and order, fascinated him as apparently nothing else could. He insisted that they were enough. A man did not need a great houseunless he was a public character with official duties. 

"Dreiser, " he would say in Philadelphia and Newark, if not before, "it'sin just such a neighborhood as this that some day I'm going to live. I'mgoing to have my little _frau_, my seven children, my chickens, dog, cat, canary, best German style, my garden, my birdbox, my pipe; andSundays, by God, I'll march 'em all off to church, wife and seven kids, as regular as clockwork, shined shoes, pigtails and all, and I'll leadthe procession. "

"Yes, yes, " I said. "You talk. "

"Well, wait and see. Nothing in this world means so much to me as thegood old orderly home stuff. One ought to live and die in a family. It'sthe right way. I'm cutting up now, sowing my wild oats, but that'snothing. I'm just getting ready to eventually settle down and live, justas I tell you, and be an ideal orderly citizen. It's the only way. It'sthe way nature intends us to do. All this early kid stuff is passing, asorting-out process. We get over it. Every fellow does, or ought to beable to, if he's worth anything, find some one woman that he can livewith and stick by her. That makes the world that you and I like to livein, and you know it. There's a psychic call in all of us to it, I think. It's the genius of our civilization, to marry one woman and settle down. And when I do, no more of this all-night stuff with this, that and theother lady. I'll be a model husband and father, sure as you're standingthere. Don't you think I won't. Smile if you want to--it's so. I'll havemy garden. I'll be friendly with my neighbors. You can come over thenand help us put the kids to bed. "

"Oh, Lord! This is a new bug now! We'll have the vine-covered cot ideafor a while, anyhow. "

"Oh, all right. Scoff if you want to. You'll see. "

Time went by. He was doing all the things I have indicated, living in akind of whirl of life. At the same time, from time to time, he wouldcome back to this thought. Once, it is true, I thought it was all overwith the little yellow-haired girl in Philadelphia. He talked of heroccasionally, but less and less. Out on the golf links near Passaic hemet another girl, one of a group that flourished there. I met her. Shewas not unpleasing, a bit sensuous, rather attractive in dress andmanners, not very well informed, but gay, clever, up-to-date; such agirl as would pass among other women as fairly satisfactory. 

For a time Peter seemed greatly attracted to her. She danced, played alittle, was fair at golf and tennis, and she was, or pretended to be, intensely interested in him. He confessed at last that he believed hewas in love with her. 

"So it's all day with Philadelphia, is it?" I asked. 

"It's a shame, " he replied, "but I'm afraid so. I'm having a hell of atime with myself, my alleged conscience, I tell you. "

I heard little more about it. He had a fad for collecting rings at thistime, a whole casket full, like a Hindu prince, and he told me once hewas giving her her choice of them. 

Suddenly he announced that it was "all off" and that he was going tomarry the maid of Philadelphia. He had thrown the solitaire engagementring he had given her down a sewer! At first he would confess nothing asto the reason or the details, but being so close to me it eventuallycame out. Apparently, to the others as to myself, he had talked much ofhis simple home plans, his future children--the good citizen idea. Hehad talked it to his new love also, and she had sympathized and agreed. Yet one day, after he had endowed her with the engagement ring, someone, a member of the golf club, came and revealed a tale. The girl wasnot "straight. " She had been, mayhap was even then, "intimate" withother men--one anyhow. She was in love with Peter well enough, as sheinsisted afterward, and willing to undertake the life he suggested, butshe had not broken with the old atmosphere completely, or if she had itwas still not believed that she had. There were those who could notonly charge, but prove. A compromising note of some kind sent to someone was involved, turned over to Peter. 

"Dreiser, " he growled as he related the case to me, "it serves me right. I ought to know better. I know the kind of woman I need. This one hashanded me a damned good wallop, and I deserve it. I might have guessedthat she wasn't suited to me. She was really too free--a life-lover morethan a wife. That home stuff! She was just stringing me because sheliked me. She isn't really my sort, not simple enough. "

"But you loved her, I thought?"

"I did, or thought I did. Still, I used to wonder too. There were manyways about her that troubled me. You think I'm kidding about this homeand family idea, but I'm not. It suits me, however flat it looks to you. I want to do that, live that way, go through the normal routineexperience, and I'm going to do it. "

"But how did you break it off with her so swiftly?" I asked curiously. 

"Well, when I heard this I went direct to her and put it up to her. Ifyou'll believe me she never even denied it. Said it was all true, butthat she was in love with me all right, and would change and be all thatI wanted her to be. "

"Well, that's fair enough, " I said, "if she loves you. You're no saintyourself, you know. If you'd encourage her, maybe she'd make good. "

"Well, maybe, but I don't think so really, " he returned, shaking hishead. "She likes me, but not enough, I'm afraid. She wouldn't runstraight, now that she's had this other. She'd mean to maybe, but shewouldn't. I feel it about her. And anyhow I don't want to take anychances. I like her--I'm crazy about her really, but I'm through. I'mgoing to marry little Dutchy if she'll have me, and cut out thisold-line stuff. You'll have to stand up with me when I do. "

In three months more the new arrangement was consummated and littleDutchy--or Zuleika, as he subsequently named her--was duly brought toNewark and installed, at first in a charming apartment in aconventionally respectable and cleanly neighborhood, later in a smallhouse with a "yard, " lawn front and back, in one of the homiest of homeneighborhoods in Newark. It was positively entertaining to observePeter not only attempting to assume but assuming the rôle of theconventional husband, and exactly nine months after he had been married, to the hour, a father in this humble and yet, in so far as hisparticular home was concerned, comfortable world. I have no space herefor more than the barest outline. I have already indicated his views, most emphatically expressed and forecasted. He fulfilled them all to theletter, up to the day of his death. In so far as I could make out, hemade about as satisfactory a husband and father and citizen as I haveever seen. He did it deliberately, in cold reason, and yet with a warmthand flare which puzzled me all the more since it _was_ based on reasonand forethought. I misdoubted. I was not quite willing to believe thatit would work out, and yet if ever a home was delightful, with acharming and genuinely "happy" atmosphere, it was Peter's. 

"Here she is, " he observed the day he married her, "me _frau_--Zuleika. Isn't she a peach? Ever see any nicer hair than that? And these here, now, pink cheeks? What? Look at 'em! And her little Dutchy nose! Isn'tit cute? Oh, Dutchy! And right here in me vest pocket is the golden bandwherewith I am to be chained to the floor, the domestic hearth. Andright there on her finger is my badge of prospective serfdom. " Then, ina loud aside to me, "In six months I'll be beating her. Come now, Zuleika. We have to go through with this. You have to swear to be myslave. "

And so they were married. 

And in the home afterward he was as busy and helpful and noisy as anyman about the house could ever hope to be. He was always fussing aboutafter hours "putting up" something or arranging his collections orhelping Zuleika wash and dry the dishes, or showing her how to cooksomething if she didn't know how. He was running to the store orbringing home things from the downtown market. Months before the firstchild was born he was declaring most shamelessly, "In a few months now, Dreiser, Zuleika and I are going to have our first calf. The bones rollfor a boy, but you never can tell. I'm offering up prayers andoblations--both of us are. I make Zuleika pray every night. And say, when it comes, no spoiling-the-kid stuff. No bawling or rocking it tosleep nights permitted. Here's one kid that's going to be raised right. I've worked out all the rules. No trashy baby-foods. Good old speciallybrewed Culmbacher for the mother, and the kid afterwards if it wants it. This is one family in which law and order are going to prevail--good old'dichtig, wichtig' law and order. "

I used to chuckle the while I verbally denounced him for his coarse, plebeian point of view and tastes. 

In a little while the child came, and to his immense satisfaction it wasa boy. I never saw a man "carry on" so, make over it, take such awhole-souled interest in all those little things which supposedly madefor its health and well-being. For the first few weeks he still talkedof not having it petted or spoiled, but at the same time he was surelyand swiftly changing, and by the end of that time had become the mostdoting, almost ridiculously fond papa that I ever saw. Always the childmust be in his lap at the most unseemly hours, when his wife wouldpermit it. When he went anywhere, or they, although they kept a maid thechild must be carried along by him on his shoulder. He liked nothingbetter than to sit and hold it close, rocking in a rocking-chairAmerican style and singing, or come tramping into my home in New York, the child looking like a woolen ball. At night if it stirred orwhimpered he was up and looking. And the baby-clothes!--and thecradle!--and the toys!--colored rubber balls and soldiers the first orsecond or third week!

"What about that stern discipline that was to be put in force here--norocking, no getting up at night to coddle a weeping infant?"

"Yes, I know. That's all good stuff before you get one. I've got one ofmy own now, and I've got a new light on this. Say, Dreiser, take myadvice. Go through the routine. Don't try to escape. Have a kid or twoor three. There's a psychic punch to it you can't get any other way. It's nature's way. It's a great scheme. You and your girl and your kid. "

As he talked he rocked, holding the baby boy to his breast. It waswonderful. 

And Mrs. Peter--how happy she seemed. There was light in that house, flowers, laughter, good fellowship. As in his old rooms so in this newhome he gathered a few of his old friends around him and some new ones, friends of this region. In the course of a year or two he was on thevery best terms of friendship with his barber around the corner, hisgrocer, some man who had a saloon and bowling alley in the neighborhood, his tailor, and then just neighbors. The milkman, the coal man, thedruggist and cigar man at the next corner--all could tell you wherePeter lived. His little front "yard" had two beds of flowers all summerlong, his lot in the back was a garden--lettuce, onions, peas, beans. Peter was always happiest when he could be home working, playing withthe baby, pushing him about in a go-cart, working in his garden, orlying on the floor making something--an engraving or print or a boxwhich he was carving, the infant in some simple gingham romper crawlingabout. He was always busy, but never too much so for a glance or amock-threatening, "Now say, not so much industry there. You leave mythings alone, " to the child. Of a Sunday he sat out on the front porchsmoking, reading the Sunday paper, congratulating himself on his happymarried life, and most of the time holding the infant. Afternoons hewould carry it somewhere, anywhere, in his arms to his friends, thePark, New York, to see me. At breakfast, dinner, supper the heirpresumptive was in a high-chair beside him. 

"Ah, now, here's a rubber spoon. Beat with that. It's less destructiveand less painful physically. "

"How about a nice prust" (crust) "dipped in bravery" (gravy) "--heh? Doyou suppose that would cut any of your teeth?"

"Zuleika, this son of yours seems to think a spoonful of beer or twomight not hurt him. What do you say?"

Occasionally, especially of a Saturday evening, he wanted to go bowlingand yet he wanted his heir. The problem was solved by fitting the latterinto a tight little sweater and cap and carrying him along on hisshoulder, into the bar for a beer, thence to the bowling alley, whereyoung hopeful was fastened into a chair on the side lines while Peterand myself or some of his friends bowled. At ten or ten-thirty oreleven, as the case might be, he was ready to leave, but before thathour les ongfong might be sound asleep, hanging against Peter's scarf, his interest in his toes or thumbs having given out. 

"Peter, look at that, " I observed once. "Don't you think we'd bettertake him home?"

"Home nothing! Let him sleep. He can sleep here as well as anywhere, andbesides I like to look at him. " And in the room would be a great crowd, cigars, beers, laughter, and Peter's various friends as used to thechild's presence and as charmed by it as he was. He was just the man whocould do such things. His manner and point of view carried conviction. He believed in doing all that he wanted to do simply and naturally, andmore and more as he went along people not only respected, I think theyadored him, especially the simple homely souls among whom he chose tomove and have his being. 

About this time there developed among those in his immediateneighborhood a desire to elect him to some political position, that ofcouncilman, or State assemblyman, in the hope or thought that he wouldrise to something higher. But he would none of it--not then anyhow. Instead, about this time or a very little later, after the birth of hissecond child (a girl), he devoted himself to the composition of abrilliant piece of prose poetry ("Wolf"), which, coming from him, didnot surprise me in the least. If he had designed or constructed a greatbuilding, painted a great picture, entered politics and been electedgovernor or senator, I would have taken it all as a matter of course. Hecould have. The material from which anything may rise was there. I askedhim to let me offer it to the publishing house with which I wasconnected, and I recall with interest the comment of the oldest and mostexperienced of the bookmen and salesmen among us. "You'll never makemuch, if anything, on this book. It's too good, too poetic. But whetherit pays or not, I vote yes. I'd rather lose money on something like thisthan make it on some of the trash we do make it on. "

Amen. I agreed then, and I agree now. 

The last phase of Peter was as interesting and dramatic as any of theothers. His married life was going forward about as he had planned. Hisdevotion to his home and children, his loving wife, his multiplexinterests, his various friends, was always a curiosity to me, especially in view of his olden days. One day he was over in New Yorkvisiting one of his favorite Chinese importing companies, through whichhe had secured and was still securing occasional objects of art. He hadcome down to me in my office at the Butterick Building to see if I wouldnot come over the following Saturday as usual and stay until Monday. Hehad secured something, was planning something. I should see. At theelevator he waved me a gay "so long--see you Saturday!"

But on Friday, as I was talking with some one at my desk, a telegram washanded me. It was from Mrs. Peter and read: "Peter died today at two ofpneumonia. Please come. "

I could scarcely believe it. I did not know that he had even been sick. His little yellow-haired wife! The two children! His future! Hisinterests! I dropped everything and hurried to the nearest station. Enroute I speculated on the mysteries on which he had so oftenspeculated--death, dissolution, uncertainty, the crude indifference orcruelty of Nature. What would become of Mrs. Peter? His children?

I arrived only to find a home atmosphere destroyed as by a wind thatputs out a light. There was Peter, stiff and cold, and in the otherrooms his babies, quite unconscious of what had happened, prattling asusual, and Mrs. Peter practically numb and speechless. It had come sosuddenly, so out of a clear sky, that she could not realize, could noteven tell me at first. The doctor was there--also a friend of his, thenearest barber! Also two or three representatives from his paper, theowner of the bowling alley, the man who had the $40, 000 collection ofcurios. All were stunned, as I was. As his closest friend, I tookcharge: wired his relatives, went to an undertaker who knew him toarrange for his burial, in Newark or Philadelphia, as his wife shouldwish, she having no connection with Newark other than Peter. 

It was most distressing, the sense of dull despair and unwarranteddisaster which hung over the place. It was as though impish and paganforces, or malign ones outside life, had committed a crime of theugliest character. On Monday, the day he saw me, he was well. On Tuesdaymorning he had a slight cold but insisted on running out somewherewithout his overcoat, against which his wife protested. Tuesday nighthe had a fever and took quinine and aspirin and a hot whiskey. Wednesday morning he was worse and a doctor was called, but it was notdeemed serious. Wednesday night he was still worse and pneumonia had setin. Thursday he was lower still, and by noon a metal syphon of oxygenwas sent for, to relieve the sense of suffocation setting in. Thursdaynight he was weak and sinking, but expected to come round--and still, sounexpected was the attack, so uncertain the probability of anythingfatal, that no word was sent, even to me. Friday morning he was no worseand no better. "If he was no worse by night he might pull through. " Atnoon he was seized with a sudden sinking spell. Oxygen was applied byhis wife and a nurse, and the doctor sent for. By one-thirty he waslower still, very low. "His face was blue, his lips ashen, " his wifetold me. "We put the oxygen tube to his mouth and I said 'Can you speak, Peter?' I was so nervous and frightened. He moved his head a little toindicate 'no. ' 'Peter, ' I said, 'you mustn't let go! You must fight!Think of me! Think of the babies!' I was a little crazy, I think, withfear. He looked at me very fixedly. He stiffened and gritted his teethin a great effort. Then suddenly he collapsed and lay still. He wasdead. "

I could not help thinking of the force and energy--able at the lastminute, when he could not speak--to "grit his teeth" and "fight, " aminute before his death. What is the human spirit, or mind, that it canfight so, to the very last? I felt as though some one, something, hadruthlessly killed him, committed plain, unpunished murder--nothing moreand nothing less. 

And there were his cases of curios, his rug, his prints, his dishes, hismany, many schemes, his book to come out soon. I gazed and marveled. Ilooked at his wife and babies, but could say nothing. It spelled, whatsuch things always spell, in the face of all our dreams, crass chance orthe willful, brutal indifference of Nature to all that relates to man. If he is to prosper he must do so without her aid. 

That same night, sleeping in the room adjoining that in which was thebody, a pale candle burning near it, I felt as though Peter were walkingto and fro, to and fro, past me and into the room of his wife beyond, thinking and grieving. His imagined wraith seemed horribly depressedand distressed. Once he came over and moved his hand (something) over myface. I felt him walking into the room where were his wife and kiddies, but he could make no one see, hear, understand. I got up and looked athis _cadaver_ a long time, then went to bed again. 

The next day and the next and the next were filled with many things. Hismother and sister came on from the West as well as the mother andbrother of his wife. I had to look after his affairs, adjusting thematter of insurance which he left, his art objects, the burial of hisbody "in consecrated ground" in Philadelphia, with the consent and aidof the local Catholic parish rector, else no burial. His mother desiredit, but he had never been a good Catholic and there was trouble. Thelocal parish assistant refused me, even the rector. Finally I threatenedthe good father with an appeal to the diocesan bishop on the ground ofplain common sense and courtesy to a Catholic family, if not charity toa tortured mother and wife--and obtained consent. All along I felt as ifa great crime had been committed by some one, foul murder. I could notget it out of my mind, and it made me angry, not sad. 

Two, three, five, seven years later, I visited the little family inPhiladelphia. The wife was with her mother and father in a simple littlehome street in a factory district, secretary and stenographer to anarchitect. She was little changed--a little stouter, not so carefree, industrious, patient. His boy, the petted F----, could not even recallhis father, the girl not at all of course. And in the place were a fewof his prints, two or three Chinese dishes, pottered by himself, hisloom with the unfinished rug. I remained for dinner and dreamed olddreams, but I was uncomfortable and left early. And Mrs. Peter, accompanying me to the steps, looked after me as though I, alone, wasall that was left of the old life. 

_A Doer of the Word_

Noank is a little played-out fishing town on the southeastern coast ofConnecticut, lying half-way between New London and Stonington. Once itwas a profitable port for mackerel and cod fishing. Today its wharvesare deserted of all save a few lobster smacks. There is a shipyard, employing three hundred and fifty men, a yacht-building establishment, with two or three hired hands; a sail-loft, and some dozen or so shopsor sheds, where the odds and ends of fishing life are made and sold. Everything is peaceful. The sound of the shipyard axes and hammers canbe heard for miles over the quiet waters of the bay. In the sunny lanewhich follows the line of the shore, and along which a few shopsstruggle in happy-go-lucky disorder, may be heard the voices and noisesof the workers at their work. Water gurgling about the stanchions of thedocks, the whistle of some fisherman as he dawdles over his nets, orputs his fish ashore, the whirr of the single high-power sewing machinein the sail-loft, often mingle in a pleasant harmony, and invite themind to repose and speculation. 

I was in a most examining and critical mood that summer, looking intothe nature and significance of many things, and was sitting one day inthe shed of the maker of sailboats, where a half-dozen characters of thevillage were gathered, when some turn in the conversation brought up thenature of man. He is queer, he is restless; life is not so very muchwhen you come to look upon many phases of it. 

"Did any of you ever know a contented man?" I inquired idly, merely forthe sake of something to say. 

There was silence for a moment, and one after another met my rovingglance with a thoughtful, self-involved and retrospective eye. 

Old Mr. Main was the first to answer. 

"Yes, I did. One. "

"So did I, " put in the sailboat maker, as he stopped in his work tothink about it. 

"Yes, and I did, " said a dark, squat, sunny, little old fisherman, whosold cunners for bait in a little hut next door. 

"Maybe you and me are thinking of the same one, Jacob, " said old Mr. Main, looking inquisitively at the boat-builder. 

"I think we've all got the same man in mind, likely, " returned thebuilder. 

"Who is he?" I asked. 

"Charlie Potter, " said the builder. 

"That's the man!" exclaimed Mr. Main. 

"Yes, I reckon Charlie Potter is contented, if anybody be, " said an oldfisherman who had hitherto been silent. 

Such unanimity of opinion struck me forcibly. Charlie Potter--what ahumble name; not very remarkable, to say the least. And to hear him sospoken of in this restless, religious, quibbling community made it allthe more interesting. 

"So you really think he is contented, do you?" I asked. 

"Yes, sir! Charlie Potter is a contented man, " replied Mr. Main, withconvincing emphasis. 

"Well, " I returned, "that's rather interesting. What sort of a man ishe?"

"Oh, he's just an ordinary man, not much of anybody. Fishes and buildsboats occasionally, " put in the boat-builder. 

"Is that all? Nothing else?"

"He preaches now and then--not regularly, " said Mr. Main. 

A-ha! I thought. A religionist!

"A preacher is expected to set a good example, " I said. 

"He ain't a regular preacher, " said Mr. Main, rather quickly. "He's justkind of around in religious work. "

"What do you mean?" I asked curiously, not quite catching the import ofthis "around. "

"Well, " answered the boat builder, "he don't take any money for what hedoes. He ain't got anything. "

"What does he live on then?" I persisted, still wondering at thesignificance of "around in religious work. "

"I don't know. He used to fish for a living. Fishes yet once in a while, I believe. "

"He makes models of yachts, " put in one of the bystanders. "He sold theNew Haven Road one for two hundred dollars here not long ago. "

A vision of a happy-go-lucky Jack-of-all-trades arose before me. Avisionary--a theorist. 

"What else?" I asked, hoping to draw them out. "What makes you allthink he is contented? What does he do that makes him so contented?"

"Well, " said Mr. Main, after a considerable pause and with much ofsympathetic emphasis in his voice, "Charlie Potter is just a good man, that's all. That's why he's contented. He does as near as he can what hethinks he ought to by other people--poor people. "

"You won't find anybody with a kinder heart than Charlie Potter, " put inthe boat-builder. "That's the trouble with him, really. He's too good. He don't look after himself right, I say. A fellow has to look out forhimself some in this world. If he don't, no one else will. "

"Right you are, Henry, " echoed a truculent sea voice from somewhere. 

I was becoming both amused and interested, intensely so. 

"If he wasn't that way, he'd be a darned sight better off than he is, "said a thirty-year-old helper, from a far corner of the room. 

"What makes you say that?" I queried. "Isn't it better to bekind-hearted and generous than not?"

"It's all right to be kind-hearted and generous, but that ain't sayin'that you've got to give your last cent away and let your family gohungry. "

"Is that what Charlie Potter does?"

"Well, no, maybe he don't, but he comes mighty near to it at times. Heand his wife and his adopted children have been pretty close to it attimes. "

You see, this was the center, nearly, for all village gossip andphilosophic speculation, and many of the most important local problems, morally and intellectually speaking, were here thrashed put. 

"There's no doubt but that's where Charlie is wrong, " put in old Mr. Main a little later. "He don't always stop to think of his family. "

"What did he ever do that struck you as being over-generous?" I asked ofthe young man who had spoken from the corner. 

"That's all right, " he replied in a rather irritated and peevish tone;"I ain't going to go into details now, but there's people around herethat hang on him, and that he's give to, that he hadn't orter. "

"I believe in lookin' out for Number One, that's what I believe in, "interrupted the boat-maker, laying down his rule and line. "This givin'up everything and goin' without yourself may be all right, but I don'tbelieve it. A man's first duty is to his wife and children, that's whatI say. "

"That's the way it looks to me, " put in Mr. Main. 

"Well, does Potter give up everything and go without things?" I askedthe boat-maker. 

"Purty blamed near it at times, " he returned definitely, then addressingthe company in general he added, "Look at the time he worked over thereon Fisher's Island, at the Ellersbie farm--the time they were packingthe ice there. You remember that, Henry, don't you?"

Mr. Main nodded. 

"What about it?"

"What about it! Why, he give his rubber boots away, like a darned fool, to old drunken Jimmy Harper, and him loafin' around half the year drunk, and worked around on the ice without any shoes himself. He might 'a'took cold and died. "

"Why did he do it?" I queried, very much interested by now. 

"Oh, Charlie's naturally big-hearted, " put in the little old man whosold cunners. "He believes in the Lord and the Bible. Stands rightsquare on it, only he don't belong to no church like. He's got thebiggest heart I ever saw in a livin' being. "

"Course the other fellow didn't have any shoes for to wear, " put in theboat-maker explanatorily, "but he never would work, anyhow. "

They lapsed into silence while the latter returned to his measuring, andthen out of the drift of thought came this from the helper in thecorner:

"Yes, and look at the way Bailey used to sponge on him. Get his moneySaturday night and drink it all up, and then Sunday morning, when hiswife and children were hungry, go cryin' around Potter. Dinged if I'd'a' helped him. But Potter'd take the food right off his breakfast tableand give it to him. I saw him do it! I don't think that's right. Notwhen he's got four or five orphans of his own to care for. "

"His own children?" I interrupted, trying to get the thing straight. 

"No, sir; just children he picked up around, here and there. "

Here is a curious character, sure enough, I thought--one well worthlooking into. 

Another lull, and then as I was leaving the room to give the matter alittle quiet attention, I remarked to the boat-maker:

"Outside of his foolish giving, you haven't anything against CharliePotter, have you?"

"Not a thing, " he replied, in apparent astonishment. "Charlie Potter'sone of the best men that ever lived. He's a good man. "

I smiled at the inconsistency and went my way. 

A day or two later the loft of the sail-maker, instead of the shed ofthe boat-builder, happened to be my lounging place, and thinking of thistheme, now uppermost in my mind, I said to him:

"Do you know a man around here by the name of Charlie Potter?"

"Well, I might say that I do. He lived here for over fifteen years. "

"What sort of a man is he?"

He stopped in his stitching a moment to look at me, and then said:

"How d'ye mean? By trade, so to speak, or religious-like?"

"What is it he has done, " I said, "that makes him so popular with allyou people? Everybody says he's a good man. Just what do you mean bythat?"

"Well, " he said, ceasing his work as though the subject were one ofextreme importance to him, "he's a peculiar man, Charlie is. He believesin giving nearly everything he has away, if any one else needs it. He'dgive the coat off his back if you asked him for it. Some folks condemnhim for this, and for not giving everything to his wife and them orphanshe has, but I always thought the man was nearer right than most of us. I've got a family myself--but, then, so's he, now, for that matter. It'spretty hard to live up to your light always. "

He looked away as if he expected some objection to be made to this, buthearing none, he went on. "I always liked him personally very much. Heain't around here now any more--lives up in Norwich, I think. He's a manof his word, though, as truthful as kin be. He ain't never done nothin'for me, I not bein' a takin' kind, but that's neither here nor there. "

He paused, in doubt apparently, as to what else to say. 

"You say he's so good, " I said. "Tell me one thing that he ever did thatstruck you as being preëminently good. "

"Well, now, I can't say as I kin, exactly, offhand, " he replied, "therebein' so many of them from time to time. He was always doin' things oneway and another. He give to everybody around here that asked him, and toa good many that didn't. I remember once"--and a smile gave evidence ofa genial memory--"he give away a lot of pork that he'd put up for thewinter to some colored people back here--two or three barrels, maybe. His wife didn't object, exactly, but my, how his mother-in-law did go onabout it. She was livin' with him then. She went and railed against himall around. "

"She didn't like to give it to them, eh?"

"Well, I should say not. She didn't set with his views, exactly--neverdid. He took the pork, though--it was right in the coldest weather wehad that winter--and hauled it back about seven miles here to where theylived, and handed it all out himself. Course they were awful hard up, but then they might 'a' got along without it. They do now, sometimes. Charlie's too good that way. It's his one fault, if you might so speakof it. "

I smiled as the evidence accumulated. Houseless wayfarers, stopping tofind food and shelter under his roof, an orphan child carried sevenmiles on foot from the bedside of a dead mother and cared for allwinter, three children, besides two of his own, being raised out of asense of affection and care for the fatherless. 

One day in the local post office I was idling a half hour with thepostmaster, when I again inquired:

"Do you know Charlie Potter?"

"I should think I did. Charlie Potter and I sailed together forsomething over eleven years. "

"How do you mean sailed together?"

"We were on the same schooner. This used to be a great port for mackereland cod. We were wrecked once together"

"How was that?"

"Oh, we went on rocks. "

"Any lives lost?"

"No, but there came mighty near being. We helped each other in the boat. I remember Charlie was the last one in that time. Wouldn't get in untilall the rest were safe. "

A sudden resolution came to me. 

"Do you know where he is now?"

"Yes, he's up in Norwich, preaching or doing missionary work. He's kindof busy all the time among the poor people, and so on. Never makes muchof anything out of it for himself, but just likes to do it, I guess. "

"Do you know how he manages to live?"

"No, I don't, exactly. He believes in trusting to Providence for what heneeds. He works though, too, at one job and another. He's a carpenterfor one thing. Got an idea the Lord will send 'im whatever he needs. "

"Well, and does He?"

"Well, he lives. " A little later he added:

"Oh, yes. There's nothing lazy about Charlie. He's a good worker. Whenhe was in the fishing line here there wasn't a man worked harder than hedid. They can't anybody lay anything like that against him. "

"Is he very difficult to talk to?" I asked, meditating on seeking himout. I had so little to do at the time, the very idlest of summers, andthe reports of this man's deeds were haunting me. I wanted to discoverfor myself whether he was real or not--whether the reports were true. The Samaritan in people is so easily exaggerated at times. 

"Oh, no. He's one of the finest men that way I ever knew. You could seehim, well enough, if you went up to Norwich, providing he's up there. Heusually is, though, I think. He lives there with his wife and mother, you know. "

I caught an afternoon boat for New London and Norwich at one-thirty, andarrived in Norwich at five. The narrow streets of the thriving littlemill city were alive with people. I had no address, could not obtainone, but through the open door of a news-stall near the boat landing Icalled to the proprietor:

"Do you know any one in Norwich by the name of Charlie Potter?"

"The man who works around among the poor people here?"

"That's the man. "

"Yes, I know him. He lives out on Summer Street, Number Twelve, I think. You'll find it in the city directory. "

The ready reply was rather astonishing. Norwich has something likethirty thousand people. 

I walked out in search of Summer Street and finally found a beautifullane of that name climbing upward over gentle slopes, arched completelywith elms. Some of the pretty porches of the cottages extended nearly tothe sidewalk. Hammocks, rocking-chairs on verandas, benches under thetrees--all attested the love of idleness and shade in summer. Only theglimpse of mills and factories in the valley below evidenced the grimmerlife which gave rise mayhap to the need of a man to work among the poor. 

"Is this Summer Street?" I inquired of an old darky who was strollingcityward in the cool of the evening. An umbrella was under his arm andan evening paper under his spectacled nose. 

"Bress de Lord!" he said, looking vaguely around. "Ah couldn't say. Ahknows dat street--been on it fifty times--but Ah never did know de name. Ha, ha, ha!"

The hills about echoed his hearty laugh. 

"You don't happen to know Charlie Potter?"

"Oh, yas, sah. Ah knows Charlie Potter. Dat's his house right ovah dar. "

The house in which Charlie Potter lived was a two-story frame, overhanging a sharp slope, which descended directly to the waters of thepretty river below. For a mile or more, the valley of the river could beseen, its slopes dotted with houses, the valley itself lined with mills. Two little girls were upon the sloping lawn to the right of the house. Astout, comfortable-looking man was sitting by a window on the left sideof the house, gazing out over the valley. 

"Is this where Charlie Potter lives?" I inquired of one of the children. 

"Yes, sir. "

"Did he live in Noank?"

"Yes, sir. "

Just then a pleasant-faced woman of forty-five or fifty issued from avine-covered door. 

"Mr. Potter?" she replied to my inquiry. "He'll be right out. "

She went about some little work at the side of the house, and in amoment Charlie Potter appeared. He was short, thick-set, and weighed noless than two hundred pounds. His face and hands were sunburned andbrown like those of every fisherman of Noank. An old wrinkled coat and abaggy pair of gray trousers clothed his form loosely. Two inches of aspotted, soft-brimmed hat were pulled carelessly over his eyes. His facewas round and full, but slightly seamed. His hands were large, his walkuneven, and rather inclined to a side swing, or the sailor's roll. Heseemed an odd, pudgy person for so large a fame. 

"Is this Mr. Potter?"

"I'm the man. "

"I live on a little hummock at the east of Mystic Island, off Noank. "

"You do?"

"I came up to have a talk with you. "

"Will you come inside, or shall we sit out here?"

"Let's sit on the step. "

"All right, let's sit on the step. "

He waddled out of the gate and sank comfortably on the little lowdoorstep, with his feet on the cool bricks below. I dropped into thespace beside him, and was greeted by as sweet and kind a look as I haveever seen in a man's eyes. It was one of perfect courtesy and goodnature--void of all suspicion. 

"We were sitting down in the sailboat maker's place at Noank the otherday, and I asked a half dozen of the old fellows whether they had everknown a contented man. They all thought a while, and then they said theyhad. Old Mr. Main and the rest of them agreed that Charlie Potter was acontented man. What I want to know is, are you?"

I looked quizzically into his eyes to see what effect this would have, and if there was no evidence of a mist of pleasure and affection beingvigorously restrained I was very much mistaken. Something seemed to holdthe man in helpless silence as he gazed vacantly at nothing. He breathedheavily, then drew himself together and lifted one of his big hands, asif to touch me, but refrained. 

"Yes, brother, " he said after a time, "I _am_. "

"Well, that's good, " I replied, taking a slight mental exception to theuse of the word brother. "What makes you contented?"

"I don't know, unless it is that I've found out what I ought to do. Yousee, I need so very little for myself that I couldn't be very unhappy. "

"What ought you to do?"

"I ought to love my fellowmen. "

"And do you?"

"Say, brother, but I do, " he insisted quite simply and with no evidenceof chicane or make-believe--a simple, natural enthusiasm. "I loveeverybody. There isn't anybody so low or so mean but I love him. I loveyou, yes, I do. I love you. "

He reached out and touched me with his hand, and while I was inclined totake exception to this very moral enthusiasm, I thrilled just the sameas I have not over the touch of any man in years. There was somethingeffective and electric about him, so very warm and foolishly human. Theglance which accompanied it spoke, it seemed, as truthfully as hiswords. He probably did love me--or thought he did. What difference?

We lapsed into silence. The scene below was so charming that I couldeasily gaze at it in silence. This little house was very simple, notpoor, by no means prosperous, but well-ordered--such a home as such aman might have. After a while I said:

"It is very evident that you think the condition of some of yourfellowmen isn't what it ought to be. Tell me what you are trying to do. What method have you for improving their condition?"

"The way I reason is this-a-way, " he began. "All that some people haveis their feelings, nothing else. Take a tramp, for instance, as I oftenhave. When you begin to sum up to see where to begin, you find that allhe has in the world, besides his pipe and a little tobacco, is hisfeelings. It's all most people have, rich or poor, though a good manythink they have more than that. I try not to injure anybody's feelings. "

He looked at me as though he had expressed the solution of thedifficulties of the world, and the wonderful, kindly eyes beamed in richromance upon the scene. 

"Very good, " I said, "but what do you do? How do you go about it to aidyour fellowmen?"

"Well, " he answered, unconsciously overlooking his own personal actionsin the matter, "I try to bring them the salvation which the Bibleteaches. You know I stand on the Bible, from cover to cover. "

"Yes, I know you stand on the Bible, but what do you do? You don'tmerely preach the Bible to them. What do you do?"

"No, sir, I don't preach the Bible at all. I stand on it myself. I tryas near as I can to do what it says. I go wherever I can be useful. Ifanybody is sick or in trouble, I'm ready to go. I'll be a nurse. I'llwork and earn them food. I'll give them anything I can--that's what Ido. "

"How can you give when you haven't anything? They told me in Noank thatyou never worked for money. "

"Not for myself alone. I never take any money for myself alone. Thatwould be self-seeking. Anything I earn or take is for the Lord, not me. I never keep it. The Lord doesn't allow a man to be self-seeking. "

"Well, then, when you get money what do you do with it? You can't do andlive without money. "

He had been looking away across the river and the bridge to the citybelow, but now he brought his eyes back and fixed them on me. 

"I've been working now for twenty years or more, and, although I'venever had more money than would last me a few days at a time, I've neverwanted for anything and I've been able to help others. I've run prettyclose sometimes. Time and time again I've been compelled to say, 'Lord, I'm all out of coal, ' or 'Lord, I'm going to have to ask you to get memy fare to New Haven tomorrow, ' but in the moment of my need He hasnever forgotten me. Why, I've gone down to the depot time and timeagain, when it was necessary for me to go, without five cents in mypocket, and He's been there to meet me. Why, He wouldn't keep youwaiting when you're about His work. He wouldn't forget you--not for aminute. "

I looked at the man in open-eyed amazement. 

"Do you mean to say that you would go down to a depot without money andwait for money to come to you?"

"Oh, brother, " he said, with the softest light in his eyes, "if you onlyknew what it is to have faith!"

He laid his hand softly on mine. 

"What is car-fare to New Haven or to anywhere, to Him?"

"But, " I replied materially, "you haven't any car-fare when you gothere--how do you actually get it? Who gives it to you? Give me oneinstance. "

"Why, it was only last week, brother, that a woman wrote me from Maiden, Massachusetts, wanting me to come and see her. She's very sick withconsumption, and she thought she was going to die. I used to know her inNoank, and she thought if she could get to see me she would feel better. 

"I didn't have any money at the time, but that didn't make anydifference. 

"'Lord, ' I said, 'here's a woman sick in Maiden, and she wants me tocome to her. I haven't got any money, but I'll go right down to thedepot, in time to catch a certain train, ' and I went. And while I wasstanding there a man came up to me and said, 'Brother, I'm told to giveyou this, ' and he handed me ten dollars. "

"Did you know the man?" I exclaimed. 

"Never saw him before in my life, " he replied, smiling genially. 

"And didn't he say anything more than that?"

"No. "

I stared at him, and he added, as if to take the edge off myastonishment:

"Why, bless your heart, I knew he was from the Lord, just the moment Isaw him coming. "

"You mean to say you were standing there without a cent, expecting theLord to help you, and He did?"

"'He shall call upon me, and I shall answer him, '" he answered simply, quoting the Ninety-first Psalm. 

This incident was still the subject of my inquiry when a little coloredgirl came out of the yard and paused a moment before us. 

"May I go down across the bridge, papa?" she asked. 

"Yes, " he answered, and then as she tripped away, said:

"She's one of my adopted children. " He gazed between his knees at thesidewalk. 

"Have you many others?"

"Three. "

"Raising them, are you?"

"Yes. "

"They seem to think, down in Noank, that living as you do and givingeverything away is satisfactory to you but rather hard on your wife andchildren. "

"Well, it is true that she did feel a little uncertain in the beginning, but she's never wanted for anything. She'll tell you herself that she'snever been without a thing that she really needed, and she's beenhappy. "

He paused to meditate, I presume, over the opinion of his former fellowtownsmen, and then added:

"It's true, there have been times when we have been right where we hadto have certain things pretty badly, before they came, but they neverfailed to come. "

While he was still talking, Mrs. Potter came around the corner of thehouse and out upon the sidewalk. She was going to the Saturday eveningmarket in the city below. 

"Here she is, " he said. "Now you can ask her. "

"What is it?" she inquired, turning a serene and smiling face to me. 

"They still think, down in Noank, that you're not very happy with me, "he said. "They're afraid you want for something once in a while. "

She took this piece of neighborly interference in better fashion thanmost would, I fancy. 

"I have never wanted for anything since I have been married to myhusband, " she said. "I am thoroughly contented. "

She looked at him and he at her, and there passed between them anaffectionate glance. 

"Yes, " he said, when she had passed after a pleasing littleconversation, "my wife has been a great help to me. She has nevercomplained. "

"People are inclined to talk a little, " I said. 

"Well, you see, she never complained, but she did feel a little bitworried in the beginning. "

"Have you a mission or a church here in Norwich?"

"No, I don't believe in churches. "

"Not in churches?"

"No. The sight of a minister preaching the word of God for so much ayear is all a mockery to me. "

"What do you believe in?"

"Personal service. Churches and charitable institutions and societiesare all valueless. You can't reach your fellowman that way. They buildup buildings and pay salaries--but there's a better way. " (I wasthinking of St. Francis and his original dream, before they threw himout and established monasteries and a costume or uniform--the thing heso much objected to. ) "This giving of a few old clothes that the mothswill get anyhow, that won't do. You've got to give something ofyourself, and that's affection. Love is the only thing you can reallygive in all this world. When you give love, you give everything. Everything comes with it in some way or other. "

"How do you say?" I queried. "Money certainly comes handy sometimes. "

"Yes, when you give it with your own hand and heart--in no other way. Itcomes to nothing just contributed to some thing. Ah!" he added, withsudden animation, "the tangles men can get themselves into, the snarls, the wretchedness! Troubles with women, with men whom they owe, with evilthings they say and think, until they can't walk down the street anymore without peeping about to see if they are followed. They can't lookyou in die face; can't walk a straight course, but have got to sneakaround corners. Poor, miserable, unhappy--they're worrying and cryingand dodging one another!"

He paused, lost in contemplation of the picture he had conjured up. 

"Yes, " I went on catechistically, determined, if I could, to rout outthis matter of giving, this actual example of the modus operandi ofChristian charity. "What do you do? How do you get along without givingthem money?"

"I don't get along without giving them some money. There are cases, lotsof them, where a little money is necessary. But, brother, it is solittle necessary at times. It isn't always money they want. You can'treach them with old clothes and charity societies, " he insisted. "You'vegot to love them, brother. You've got to go to them and love them, justas they are, scarred and miserable and bad-hearted. "

"Yes, " I replied doubtfully, deciding to follow this up later. "But justwhat is it you do in a needy case? One instance?"

"Why, one night I was passing a little house in this town, " he went on, "and I heard a woman crying. I went right to the door and opened it, andwhen I got inside she just stopped and looked at me. 

"'Madam, ' I said, 'I have come to help you, if I can. Now you tell mewhat you're crying for. '

"Well, sir, you know she sat there and told me how her husband drank andhow she didn't have anything in the house to eat, and so I just gave herall I had and told her I would see her husband for her, and the next dayI went and hunted him up and said to him, 'Oh, brother, I wish you wouldopen your eyes and see what you are doing. I wish you wouldn't do thatany more. It's only misery you are creating. ' And, you know, I got totelling about how badly his wife felt about it, and how I intended towork and try and help her, and bless me if he didn't up and promise mebefore I got through that he wouldn't do that any more. And he didn't. He's working today, and it's been two years since I went to him, nearly. "

His eyes were alight with his appreciation of personal service. 

"Yes, that's one instance, " I said. 

"Oh, there are plenty of them, " he replied. "It's the only way. Downhere in New London a couple of winters ago we had a terrible time of it. That was the winter of the panic, you know. Cold--my, but that was acold winter, and thousands of people out of work--just thousands. It wasawful. I tried to do what I could here and there all along, but finallythings got so bad there that I went to the mayor. I saw they wereraising some kind of a fund to help the poor, so I told him that if he'dgive me a little of the money they were talking of spending that I'dfeed the hungry for a cent-and-a-half a meal. "

"A cent-and-a-half a meal!"

"Yes, sir. They all thought it was rather curious, not possible atfirst, but they gave me the money and I fed 'em. "

"Good meals?"

"Yes, as good as I ever eat myself, " he replied. 

"How did you do it?" I asked. 

"Oh, I can cook. I just went around to the markets, and told themarket-men what I wanted--heads of mackerel, and the part of the halibutthat's left after the rich man cuts off his steak--it's the poorest partthat he pays for, you know. And I went fishing myself two or threetimes--borrowed a big boat and got men to help me--oh, I'm a goodfisherman, you know. And then I got the loan of an old covered brickyardthat no one was using any more, a great big thing that I could close upand build fires in, and I put my kettle in there and rigged up tablesout of borrowed boards, and got people to loan me plates and spoons andknives and forks and cups. I made fish chowder, and fish dinners, andreally I set a very fine table, I did, that winter. "

"For a cent-and-a-half a meal!"

"Yes, sir, a cent-and-a-half a meal. Ask any one in New London. That'sall it cost me. The mayor said he was surprised at the way I did it. "

"Well, but there wasn't any particular personal service in the moneythey gave you?" I asked, catching him up on that point. "They didn'tpersonally serve--those who gave you the money?"

"No, sir, they didn't, " he replied dreamily, with unconscioussimplicity. "But they gave through me, you see. That's the way it was. Igave the personal service. Don't you see? That's the way. "

"Yes, that's the way, " I smiled, avoiding as far as possible a furtherdiscussion of this contradiction, so unconscious on his part, and in thedrag of his thought he took up another idea. 

"I clothed 'em that winter, too--went around and got barrels and boxesof old clothing. Some of them felt a little ashamed to put on thethings, but I got over that, all right. I was wearing them myself, and Ijust told them, 'Don't feel badly, brother. I'm wearing them out of thesame barrel with you--I'm wearing them out of the same barrel. ' Got myclothes entirely free for that winter. "

"Can you always get all the aid you need for such enterprises?"

"Usually, and then I can earn a good deal of money when I work steadily. I can get a hundred and fifty dollars for a little yacht, you know, every time I find time to make one; and I can make a good deal of moneyout of fishing. I went out fishing here on the Fourth of July and caughttwo hundred blackfish--four and five pounds, almost, every one of them. "

"That ought to be profitable, " I said. 

"Well, it was, " he replied. 

"How much did you get for them?"

"Oh, I didn't sell them, " he said. "I never take money for my work thatway. I gave them all away. "

"What did you do?" I asked, laughing--"advertise for people to come forthem?"

"No. My wife took some, and my daughters, and I took the rest and wecarried them around to people that we thought would like to have them. "

"Well, that wasn't so profitable, was it?" I commented amusedly. 

"Yes, they were fine fish, " he replied, not seeming to have heard me. 

We dropped the subject of personal service at this point, and Iexpressed the opinion that his service was only a temporary expedient. Times changed, and with them, people. They forgot. Perhaps those heaided were none the better for accepting his charity. 

"I know what you mean, " he said. "But that don't make any difference. You just have to keep on giving, that's all, see? Not all of 'em turnback. It helps a lot. Money is the only dangerous thing to give--but Inever give money--not very often. I give myself, rather, as much aspossible. I give food and clothing, too, but I try to show 'em a newway--that's not money, you know. So many people need a new way. They'relooking for it often, only they don't seem to know how. But God, dearbrother, however poor or mean they are--He knows. You've got to reachthe heart, you know, and I let Him help me. You've got to make a manover in his soul, if you want to help him, and money won't help you todo that, you know. No, it won't. "

He looked up at me in clear-eyed faith. It was remarkable. 

"Make them over?" I queried, still curious, for it was all like aromance, and rather fantastic to me. "What do you mean? How do you makethem over?"

"Oh, in their attitude, that's how. You've got to change a man and bringhim out of self-seeking if you really want to make him good. Most menare so tangled up in their own errors and bad ways, and so worried overtheir seekings, that unless you can set them to giving it's no use. They're always seeking, and they don't know what they want half thetime. Money isn't the thing. Why, half of them wouldn't understand howto use it if they had it. Their minds are not bright enough. Theirperceptions are not clear enough. All you can do is to make them contentwith themselves. And that, giving to others will do. I never saw the manor the woman yet who couldn't be happy if you could make them feel theneed of living for others, of doing something for somebody besidesthemselves. It's a fact. Selfish people are never happy. "

He rubbed his hands as if he saw the solution of the world'sdifficulties very clearly, and I said to him:

"Well, now, you've got a man out of the mire, and 'saved, ' as you callit, and then what? What comes next?"

"Well, then he's saved, " he replied. "Happiness comes next--content. "

"I know. But must he go to church, or conform to certain rules?"

"No, no, no!" he replied sweetly. "Nothing to do except to be good toothers. 'True religion and undefiled before our God and Father isthis, '" he quoted, "'to visit the widow and the orphan in theiraffliction and to keep unspotted from the world. Charity is kind, ' youknow. 'Charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, seeketh not itsown. '"

"Well, " I said, rather aimlessly, I will admit, for this high faithstaggered me. (How high! How high!) "And then what?"

"Well, then the world would come about. It would be so much better. Allthe misery is in the lack of sympathy one with another. When we get thatstraightened out we can work in peace. There are lots of things to do, you know. "

Yes, I thought, looking down on the mills and the driving force ofself-interest--on greed, lust, love of pleasure, all their fantastic andyet moving dreams. 

"I'm an ignorant man myself, and I don't know all, " he went on, "and I'dlike to study. My, but I'd like to look into all things, but I can't doit now. We can't stop until this thing is straightened out. Some time, maybe, " and he looked peacefully away. 

"By the way, " I said, "whatever became of the man to whom you gave yourrubber boots over on Fisher's Island?"

His face lit up as if it were the most natural thing that I should knowabout it. 

"Say, " he exclaimed, in the most pleased and confidential way, as if wewere talking about a mutual friend, "I saw him not long ago. And, do youknow, he's a good man now--really, he is. Sober and hard-working. And, say, would you believe it, he told me that I was the cause of it--justthat miserable old pair of rubber boots--what do you think of that?"

I shook his hand at parting, and as we stood looking at each other inthe shadow of the evening I asked him:

"Are you afraid to die?"

"Say, brother, but I'm not, " he returned. "It hasn't any terror for meat all. I'm just as willing. My, but I'm willing. "

He smiled and gripped me heartily again, and, as I was starting to go, said:

"If I die tonight, it'll be all right. He'll use me just as long as Heneeds me. That I know. Good-by. "

"Good-by, " I called back. 

He hung by his fence, looking down upon the city. As I turned the nextcorner I saw him awakening from his reflection and waddling stolidlyback into the house. 

_My Brother Paul_

I like best to think of him as he was at the height of his all-too-briefreputation and success, when, as the author and composer of variousAmerican popular successes ("On the Banks of the Wabash, " "Just TellThem That You Saw Me, " and various others), as a third owner of one ofthe most successful popular music publishing houses in the city and asan actor and playwright of some small repute, he was wont to spin like amoth in the white light of Broadway. By reason of a little luck and sometalent he had come so far, done so much for himself. In his day he hadbeen by turn a novitiate in a Western seminary which trained aspirantsfor the Catholic priesthood; a singer and entertainer with aperambulating cure-all oil troupe or wagon ("Hamlin's Wizard Oil")traveling throughout Ohio, Indiana and Illinois; both end- and middle-manwith one, two or three different minstrel companies of repute; theeditor or originator and author of a "funny column" in a Western smallcity paper; the author of the songs mentioned and a hundred others; ablack-face monologue artist; a white-face ditto, at Tony Pastor's, Miner's and Niblo's of the old days; a comic lead; co-star and star insuch melodramas and farces as "The Danger Signal, " "The Two Johns, " "ATin Soldier, " "The Midnight Bell, " "A Green Goods Man" (a farce which hehimself wrote, by the way), and others. The man had a genius for thekind of gayety, poetry and romance which may, and no doubt must be, looked upon as exceedingly middle-class but which nonetheless had asmuch charm as anything in this world can well have. He had at this timeabsolutely no cares or financial worries of any kind, and this plus hishealth, self-amusing disposition and talent for entertaining, made him amost fascinating figure to contemplate. 

My first recollection of him is of myself as a boy often and he a man oftwenty-five (my oldest brother). He had come back to the town in whichwe were then living solely to find his mother and help her. Six or sevenyears before he had left without any explanation as to where he wasgoing, tired of or irritated by the routine of a home which for anygenuine opportunity it offered him might as well never have existed. Itwas run dominantly by my father in the interest of religious and moraltheories, with which this boy had little sympathy. He was probably notunderstood by any one save my mother, who understood or at leastsympathized with us all. Placed in a school which was to turn him out apriest, he had decamped, and now seven years later was here in thissmall town, with fur coat and silk hat, a smart cane--a gentleman of thetheatrical profession. He had joined a minstrel show somewhere and hadbecome an "end-man. " He had suspected that we were not as fortunate inthis world's goods as might be and so had returned. His really greatheart had called him. 

But the thing which haunts me, and which was typical of him then asthroughout life, was the spirit which he then possessed and conveyed. Itwas one of an agile geniality, unmarred by thought of a seriouscharacter but warm and genuinely tender and with a taste for simplebeauty which was most impressive. He was already the author of a cheapsongbook, "_The Paul Dresser Songster_" ("All the Songs Sung in theShow"), and some copies of this he had with him, one of which he gaveme. But we having no musical instrument of any kind, he taught me someof the melodies "by ear. " The home in which by force of poverty we werecompelled to live was most unprepossessing and inconvenient, and theresult of his coming could but be our request for, or at least theobvious need of, assistance. Still he was as much an enthusiastic partof it as though he belonged to it. He was happy in it, and the cause ofhis happiness was my mother, of whom he was intensely fond. I recall howhe hung about her in the kitchen or wherever she happened to be, howenthusiastically he related all his plans for the future, his amusingdifficulties in the past. He was very grand and youthfullyself-important, or so we all thought, and still he patted her on theshoulder or put his arm about her and kissed her. Until she died yearslater she was truly his uppermost thought, crying with her at times overher troubles and his. He contributed regularly to her support and senthome all his cast-off clothing to be made over for the younger ones. (Bless her tired hands!)

As I look back now on my life, I realize quite clearly that of all themembers of my family, subsequent to my mother's death, the only one whotruly understood me, or, better yet, sympathized with my intellectualand artistic point of view, was, strange as it may seem, this same Paul, my dearest brother. Not that he was in any way fitted intellectually orotherwise to enjoy high forms of art and learning and so guide me, orthat he understood, even in later years (long after I had written"Sister Carrie, " for instance), what it was that I was attempting to do;he never did. His world was that of the popular song, the middle-classactor or comedian, the middle-class comedy, and such humorous æsthetesof the writing world as Bill Nye, Petroleum V. Nasby, the authors of theSpoopendyke Papers, and "Samantha at Saratoga. " As far as I could makeout--and I say this in no lofty, condescending spirit, by any means--hewas entirely full of simple, middle-class romance, middle-class humor, middle-class tenderness and middle-class grossness, all of which I amvery free to say early disarmed and won me completely and kept me somuch his debtor that I should hesitate to try to acknowledge or explainall that he did for or meant to me. 

Imagine, if you can, a man weighing all of three hundred pounds, notmore than five feet ten-and-one-half inches in height and yet of solithesome a build that he gave not the least sense of either undueweight or lethargy. His temperament, always ebullient and radiant, presented him as a clever, eager, cheerful, emotional and always highlyillusioned person with so collie-like a warmth that one found himcompelling interest and even admiration. Easily cast down at times bythe most trivial matters, at others, and for the most part, he was sospirited and bubbly and emotional and sentimental that your fiercest ormost gloomy intellectual rages or moods could scarcely withstand hissmile. This tenderness or sympathy of his, a very human appreciation ofthe weaknesses and errors as well as the toils and tribulations of mostof us, was by far his outstanding and most engaging quality, and gavehim a very definite force and charm. Admitting, as I freely do, that hewas very sensuous (gross, some people might have called him), that hehad an intense, possibly an undue fondness for women, a frivolous, childish, horse-playish sense of humor at times, still he had otherqualities which were absolutely adorable. Life seemed positively tospring up fountain-like in him. One felt in him a capacity to do (inhis possibly limited field); an ability to achieve, whether he was doingso at the moment or not, and a supreme willingness to share and radiatehis success--qualities exceedingly rare, I believe. Some people are sosuccessful, and yet you know their success is purely selfish--exclusive, not inclusive; they never permit you to share in their lives. Not so mygood brother. He was generous to the point of self-destruction, and thatis literally true. He was the mark if not the prey of all those whodesired much or little for nothing, those who previously might not haverendered him a service of any kind. He was all life and color, andthousands (I use the word with care) noted and commented on it. 

When I first came to New York he was easily the foremost popularsong-writer of the day and was the cause of my coming, so soon at least, having established himself in the publishing field and being socomfortably settled as to offer me a kind of anchorage in so troubled acommercial sea. I was very much afraid of New York, but with him here itseemed not so bad. The firm of which he was a part had a floor or two inan old residence turned office building, as so many are in New York, inTwentieth Street very close to Broadway, and here, during the summermonths (1894-7) when the various theatrical road-companies, one of whichhe was always a part, had returned for the closed season, he was to befound aiding his concern in the reception and care of possibleapplicants for songs and attracting by his personality such virtuosi ofthe vaudeville and comedy stage as were likely to make the instrumentalpublications of his firm a success. 

I may as well say here that he had no more business skill than a fly. Atthe same time, he was in no wise sycophantic where either wealth, poweror fame was concerned. He considered himself a personage of sorts, andwas. The minister, the moralist, the religionist, the narrow, dogmaticand self-centered in any field were likely to be the butt of his humor, and he could imitate so many phases of character so cleverly that he wasthe life of any idle pleasure-seeking party anywhere. To this day Irecall his characterization of an old Irish washerwoman arguing; astout, truculent German laying down the law; lean, gloomy, out-at-elbowsactors of the Hamlet or classic school complaining of their fate; thestingy skinflint haggling over a dollar, and always with a skill fortitillating the risibilities which is vivid to me even to this day. Other butts of his humor were the actor, the Irish day-laborer, thenegro and the Hebrew. And how he could imitate them! It is useless totry to indicate such things in writing, the facial expression, theintonation, the gestures; these are not things of words. Perhaps I canbest indicate the direction of his mind, if not his manner, by thefollowing:

One night as we were on our way to a theater there stood on a nearbycorner in the cold a blind man singing and at the same time holding outa little tin cup into which the coins of the charitably inclined weresupposed to be dropped. At once my brother noticed him, for he had aneye for this sort of thing, the pathos of poverty as opposed to so gay ascene, the street with its hurrying theater crowds. At the same time, soinherently mischievous was his nature that although his sympathy for thesuffering or the ill-used of fate was overwhelming, he could not resistcombining his intended charity with a touch of the ridiculous. 

"Got any pennies?" he demanded. 

"Three or four. "

Going over to an outdoor candystand he exchanged a quarter for pennies, then came back and waited until the singer, who had ceased singing, should begin a new melody. A custom of the singer's, since the song wasof no import save as a means of attracting attention to him, was tointerpolate a "Thank you" after each coin dropped in his cup and betweenthe words of the song, regardless. It was this little idiosyncrasy whichevidently had attracted my brother's attention, although it had notmine. Standing quite close, his pennies in his hand, he waited until thesinger had resumed, then began dropping pennies, waiting each time forthe "Thank you, " which caused the song to go about as follows:

"Da-a-'ling" (Clink!--"Thank you!") "I am--" (Clink!--"Thank you!")"growing o-o-o-ld" (Clink!--"Thank you!"), "Silve-e-r--" (Clink!--"Thankyou!") "threads among the--" (Clink!--"Thank you!") "go-o-o-ld--"(Clink! "Thank you!"). "Shine upon my-y" (Clink!--"Thank you!")"bro-o-ow toda-a-y" (Clink!--"Thank you!"), "Life is--" (Clink!--"Thankyou!") "fading fast a-a-wa-a-ay" (Clink!--"Thank you!")--and so on adinfinitum, until finally the beggar himself seemed to hesitate a littleand waver, only so solemn was his rôle of want and despair that ofcourse he dared not but had to go on until the last penny was in, anduntil he was saying more "Thank yous" than words of the song. Apasser-by noticing it had begun to "Haw-haw!", at which others joinedin, myself included. The beggar himself, a rather sniveling specimen, finally realizing what a figure he was cutting with his song and thanks, emptied the coins into his hand and with an indescribably wryexpression, half-uncertainty and half smile, exclaimed, "I'll have tothank you as long as you keep putting pennies in, I suppose. God blessyou!"

My brother came away smiling and content. 

However, it is not as a humorist or song-writer or publisher that I wishto portray him, but as an odd, lovable personality, possessed of so manyinteresting and peculiar and almost indescribable traits. Of allcharacters in fiction he perhaps most suggests Jack Falstaff, with hislove of women, his bravado and bluster and his innate good nature andsympathy. Sympathy was really his outstanding characteristic, even morethan humor, although the latter was always present. One might recite athousand incidents of his generosity and out-of-hand charity, whichcontained no least thought of return or reward. I recall that once therewas a boy who had been reared in one of the towns in which we had oncelived who had never had a chance in his youth, educationally or in anyother way, and, having turned out "bad" and sunk to the level of a bankrobber, had been detected in connection with three other men in the actof robbing a bank, the watchman of which was subsequently killed in themêlée and escape. Of all four criminals only this one had been caught. Somewhere in prison he had heard sung one of my brother's sentimentalballads, "The Convict and the Bird, " and recollecting that he had knownPaul wrote him, setting forth his life history and that now he had nomoney or friends. 

At once my good brother was alive to the pathos of it. He showed theletter to me and wanted to know what could be done. I suggested alawyer, of course, one of those brilliant legal friends of his--alwayshe had enthusiastic admirers in all walks--who might take the case forlittle or nothing. There was the leader of Tammany Hall, Richard Croker, who could be reached, he being a friend of Paul's. There was theGovernor himself to whom a plain recitation of the boy's unfortunatelife might be addressed, and with some hope of profit. 

All of these things he did, and more. He went to the prison (Sing Sing), saw the warden and told him the story of the boy's life, then went tothe boy, or man, himself and gave him some money. He was introduced tothe Governor through influential friends and permitted to tell the tale. There was much delay, a reprieve, a commutation of the death penalty tolife imprisonment--the best that could be done. But he was so gratefulfor that, so pleased. You would have thought at the time that it was hisown life that had been spared. 

"Good heavens!" I jested. "You'd think you'd done the man an inestimableservice, getting him in the penitentiary for life!"

"That's right, " he grinned--an unbelievably provoking smile. "He'dbetter be dead, wouldn't he? Well, I'll write and ask him which he'drather have. "

I recall again taking him to task for going to the rescue of a "down andout" actor who had been highly successful and apparently not verysympathetic in his day, one of that more or less gaudy clan that wastesits substance, or so it seemed to me then, in riotous living. But nowbeing old and entirely discarded and forgotten, he was in need ofsympathy and aid. By some chance he knew Paul, or Paul had known him, and now because of the former's obvious prosperity--he was much in thepapers at the time--he had appealed to him. The man lived with a sisterin a wretched little town far out on Long Island. On receiving hisappeal Paul seemed to wish to investigate for himself, possibly toindulge in a little lofty romance or sentiment. At any rate he wanted meto go along for the sake of companionship, so one dreary Novemberafternoon we went, saw the pantaloon, who did not impress me very mucheven in his age and misery for he still had a few of his theatricalmanners and insincerities, and as we were coming away I said, "Paul, whyshould you be the goat in every case?" for I had noted ever since I hadbeen in New York, which was several years then, that he was a victim ofmany such importunities. If it was not the widow of a deceased friendwho needed a ton of coal or a sack of flour, or the reckless, headstrongboy of parents too poor to save him from a term in jail or thereformatory and who asked for fine-money or an appeal to higher powersfor clemency, or a wastrel actor or actress "down and out" and unable to"get back to New York" and requiring his or her railroad fare wiredprepaid, it was the dead wastrel actor or actress who needed a coffinand a decent form of burial. 

"Well, you know how it is, Thee" (he nearly always addressed me thus), "when you're old and sick. As long as you're up and around and havemoney, everybody's your friend. But once you're down and out no onewants to see you any more--see?" Almost amusingly he was always sad overthose who had once been prosperous but who were now old and forgotten. Some of his silliest tender songs conveyed as much. 

"Quite so, " I complained, rather brashly, I suppose, "but why didn't hesave a little money when he had it? He made as much as you'll evermake. " The man had been a star. "He had plenty of it, didn't he? Whyshould he come to you?"

"Well, you know how it is, Thee, " he explained in the kindliest and mostapologetic way. "When you're young and healthy like that you don'tthink. I know how it is; I'm that way myself. We all have a little of itin us. I have; you have. And anyhow youth's the time to spend money ifyou're to get any good of it, isn't it? Of course when you're old youcan't expect much, but still I always feel as though I'd like to helpsome of these old people. " His eyes at such times always seemed morelike those of a mother contemplating a sick or injured child than thoseof a man contemplating life. 

"But, Paul, " I insisted on another occasion when he had just wiredtwenty-five dollars somewhere to help bury some one. (My spirit was notso niggardly as fearsome. I was constantly terrified in those days bythe thought of a poverty-stricken old age for myself and him--why, Idon't know. I was by no means incompetent. ) "Why don't you save yourmoney? Why should you give it to every Tom, Dick and Harry that asksyou? You're not a charity organization, and you're not called upon tofeed and clothe and bury all the wasters who happen to cross your path. If you were down and out how many do you suppose would help you?"

"Well, you know, " and his voice and manner were largely those of mother, the same wonder, the same wistfulness and sweetness, the same bubblingcharity and tenderness of heart, "I can't say I haven't got it, can I?"He was at the height of his success at the time. "And anyhow, what's theuse being so hard on people? We're all likely to get that way. You don'tknow what pulls people down sometimes--not wasting always. It'sthoughtlessness, or trying to be happy. Remember how poor we were andhow mamma and papa used to worry. " Often these references to mother orfather or their difficulties would bring tears to his eyes. "I can'tstand to see people suffer, that's all, not if I have anything, " and hiseyes glowed sweetly. "And, after all, " he added apologetically, "thelittle I give isn't much. They don't get so much out of me. They don'tcome to me every day. "

Another time--one Christmas Eve it was, when I was comparatively new toNew York (my second or third year), I was a little uncertain what to do, having no connections outside of Paul and two sisters, one of whom wasthen out of the city. The other, owing to various difficulties of herown and a temporary estrangement from us--more our fault than hers--wastherefore not available. The rather drab state into which she hadallowed her marital affections to lead her was the main reason that keptus apart. At any rate I felt that I could not, or rather would not, gothere. At the same time, owing to some difficulty or irritation with thepublishing house of which my brother was then part owner (it waspublishing the magazine which I was editing), we twain were alsoestranged, nothing very deep really--a temporary feeling of distance andindifference. 

So I had no place to go except to my room, which was in a poor part ofthe town, or out to dine where best I might--some moderate-priced hotel, was my thought. I had not seen my brother in three or four days, butafter I had strolled a block or two up Broadway I encountered him. Ihave always thought that he had kept an eye on me and had reallyfollowed me; was looking, in short, to see what I would do As usual hewas most smartly and comfortably dressed. 

"Where you going, Thee?" he called cheerfully. 

"Oh, no place in particular, " I replied rather suavely, I presume. "Justgoing up the street. "

"Now, see here, sport, " he began--a favorite expression of his, "sport"--with his face abeam, "what's the use you and me quarreling?It's Christmas Eve, ain't it? It's a shame! Come on, let's have a drinkand then go out to dinner. "

"Well, " I said, rather uncompromisingly, for at times his seeminglyextreme success and well-being irritated me, "I'll have a drink, but asfor dinner I have another engagement. "

"Aw, don't say that. What's the use being sore? You know I always feelthe same even if we do quarrel at times. Cut it out. Come on. You knowI'm your brother, and you're mine. It's all right with me, Thee. Let'smake it up, will you? Put 'er there! Come on, now. We'll go and have adrink, see, something hot--it's Christmas Eve, sport. The old homestuff. "

He smiled winsomely, coaxingly, really tenderly, as only he could smile. I "gave in. " But now as we entered the nearest shining bar, a Christmascrowd buzzing within and without (it was the old Fifth Avenue Hotel), anew thought seemed to strike him. 

"Seen E---- lately?" he inquired, mentioning the name of the troubledsister who was having a very hard time indeed. Her husband had left herand she was struggling over the care of two children. 

"No, " I replied, rather shamefacedly, "not in a week or two--maybemore. "

He clicked his tongue. He himself had not been near her in a month ormore. His face fell, and he looked very depressed. 

"It's too bad--a shame really. We oughtn't to do this way, you know, sport. It ain't right. What do you say to our going around there, " itwas in the upper thirties, "and see how she's making out?--take her afew things, eh? Whaddya say?"

I hadn't a spare dollar myself, but I knew well enough what he meant by"take a few things" and who would pay for them. 

"Well, we'll have to hurry if we want to get anything now, " I urged, falling in with the idea since it promised peace, plenty and good willall around, and we rushed the drink and departed. Near at hand was abranch of one of the greatest grocery companies of the city, and nearit, too, his then favorite hotel, the Continental. En route we meditatedon the impossibility of delivery, the fact that we would have to carrythe things ourselves, but he at last solved that by declaring that hecould commandeer negro porters or bootblacks from the Continental. Weentered, and by sheer smiles on his part and some blarney heaped upon afloor-manager, secured a turkey, sweet potatoes, peas, beans, a salad, astrip of bacon, a ham, plum pudding, a basket of luscious fruit and Iknow not what else--provender, I am sure, for a dozen meals. While itwas being wrapped and packed in borrowed baskets, soon to be returned, he went across the way to the hotel and came back with three grinningdarkies who for the tip they knew they would receive preceded us upBroadway, the nearest path to our destination. On the way a fewadditional things were picked up: holly wreaths, toys, candy, nuts--andthen, really not knowing whether our plan might not mis-carry, we madeour way through the side street and to the particular apartment, or, rather, flat-house, door, a most amusing Christmas procession, I fancy, wondering and worrying now whether she would be there. 

But the door clicked in answer to our ring, and up we marched, the threedarkies first, instructed to inquire for her and then insist on leavingthe goods, while we lagged behind to see how she would take it. 

The stage arrangement worked as planned. My sister opened the door andfrom the steps below we could hear her protesting that she had orderednothing, but the door being open the negroes walked in and a moment ortwo afterwards ourselves. The packages were being piled on table andfloor, while my sister, unable quite to grasp this sudden visitation andchange of heart, stared. 

"Just thought we'd come around and have supper with you, E----, andmaybe dinner tomorrow if you'll let us, " my brother chortled. "MerryChristmas, you know. Christmas Eve. The good old home stuff--see? Oldsport here and I thought we couldn't stay away--tonight, anyhow. "

He beamed on her in his most affectionate way, but she, sufferingregret over the recent estrangement as well as the difficulties of lifeitself and the joy of this reunion, burst into tears, while the twolittle ones danced about, and he and I put our arms about her. 

"There, there! It's all over now, " he declared, tears welling in hiseyes. "It's all off. We'll can this scrapping stuff. Thee and I are acouple of bums and we know it, but you can forgive us, can't you? Weought to be ashamed of ourselves, all of us, and that's the truth. We'vebeen quarreling, too, haven't spoken for a week. Ain't that so, sport?But it's all right now, eh?"

There were tears in my eyes, too. One couldn't resist him. He had thepower of achieving the tenderest results in the simplest ways. We thenhad supper, and breakfast the next morning, all staying and helping, even to the washing and drying of the dishes, and thereafter for I don'tknow how long we were all on the most affectionate terms, and heeventually died in this sister's home, ministered to with absolutelyrestless devotion by her for weeks before the end finally came. 

But, as I have said, I always prefer to think of him at this, the veryapex or tower window of his life. For most of this period he was gay andcarefree. The music company of which he was a third owner was at thevery top of its success. Its songs, as well as his, were everywhere. Hehad in turn at this time a suite at the Gilsey House, the Marlborough, the Normandie--always on Broadway, you see. The limelight district washis home. He rose in the morning to the clang of the cars and the honkof the automobiles outside; he retired at night as a gang of repair menunder flaring torches might be repairing a track, or the milk truckswere rumbling to and from the ferries. He was in his way a publicrestaurant and hotel favorite, a shining light in the theater managers'offices, hotel bars and lobbies and wherever those flies of theTenderloin, those passing lords and celebrities of the sporting, theatrical, newspaper and other worlds, are wont to gather. One of hisintimates, as I now recall, was "Bat" Masterson, the Western and nowretired (to Broadway!) bad man; Muldoon, the famous wrestler; Tod Sloan, the jockey; "Battling" Nelson; James J. Corbett; Kid McCoy; TerryMcGovern--prize-fighters all. Such Tammany district leaders as JamesMurphy, "The" McManus, Chrystie and Timothy Sullivan, Richard Carroll, and even Richard Croker, the then reigning Tammany boss, were all on hisvisiting list. He went to their meetings, rallies and district doingsgenerally to sing and play, and they came to his "office" occasionally. Various high and mighties of the Roman Church, "fathers" with fineparishes and good wine cellars, and judges of various municipal courts, were also of his peculiar world. He was always running to one or theother "to get somebody out, " or they to him to get him to contributesomething to something, or to sing and play or act, and betimes theywere meeting each other in hotel grills or elsewhere and having a drinkand telling "funny stories. "

Apropos of this sense of humor of his, this love of horse-play almost, Iremember that once he had a new story to tell--a vulgar one ofcourse--and with it he had been making me and a dozen others laugh untilthe tears coursed down our cheeks. It seemed new to everybody and, trueto his rather fantastic moods, he was determined to be the first to tellit along Broadway. For some reason he was anxious to have me go alongwith him, possibly because he found me at that time an unvaryingfountain of approval and laughter, possibly because he liked to show meoff as his rising brother, as he insisted that I was. At between six andseven of a spring or summer evening, therefore, we issued from his suiteat the Gilsey House, whither he had returned to dress, and invading thebar below were at once centered among a group who knew him. A whiskey, acigar, the story told to one, two, three, five, ten to roars oflaughter, and we were off, over the way to Weber & Fields (the MusicalBurlesque House Supreme of those days) in the same block, where to theticket seller and house manager, both of whom he knew, it was told. Morelaughter, a cigar perhaps. Then we were off again, this time to theticket seller of Palmer's Theater at Thirtieth Street, thence to the barof the Grand Hotel at Thirty-first, the Imperial at Thirty-second, theMartinique at Thirty-third, a famous drug-store at the southwest cornerof Thirty-fourth and Broadway, now gone of course, the manager of whichwas a friend of his. It was a warm, moony night, and he took a glass ofvichy "for looks' sake, " as he said. 

Then to the quondam Hotel Aulic at Thirty-fifth and Broadway--the centerand home of the then much-berated "Hotel Aulic or Actors' School ofPhilosophy, " and a most impressive actors' rendezvous where might havebeen seen in the course of an evening all the "second leads" and "lightcomedians" and "heavies" of this, that and the other road company, allblazing with startling clothes and all explaining how they "knocked 'em"here and there: in Peoria, Pasadena, Walla-Walla and where not. Mybrother shone like a star when only one is in the sky. 

Over the way then to the Herald Building, its owls' eyes glowing in thenight, its presses thundering, the elevated thundering beside it. Herewas a business manager whom he knew. Then to the Herald Square Theateron the opposite side of the street, ablaze with a small electricsign--among the newest in the city. In this, as in the business officeof the _Herald_ was another manager, and he knew them all. Thence to theMarlborough bar and lobby at Thirty-sixth, the manager's office of theKnickerbocker Theater at Thirty-eighth, stopping at the bar and lobby ofthe Normandie, where some blazing professional beauty of the stagewaylaid him and exchanged theatrical witticisms with him--and what else?Thence to the manager's office of the Casino at Thirty-ninth, some barwhich was across the street, another in Thirty-ninth west of Broadway, an Italian restaurant on the ground floor of the Metropolitan atFortieth and Broadway, and at last but by no means least and by suchslow stages to the very door of the then Mecca of Meccas of alltheater- and sportdom, the sanctum sanctorum of all those sportively aufait, "wise, " the "real thing"--the Hotel Metropole at Broadway andForty-second Street, the then extreme northern limit of the white-lightdistrict. And what a realm! Rounders and what not were here ensconced atround tables, their backs against the leather-cushioned wall seats, theadjoining windows open to all Broadway and the then all but somberForty-second Street. 

It was wonderful, the loud clothes, the bright straw hats, the canes, the diamonds, the "hot" socks, the air of security and well-being, soeasily assumed by those who gain an all too brief hour in this pretty, petty world of make-believe and pleasure and pseudo-fame. Among them mydearest brother was at his best. It was "Paul" here and "Paul"there--"Why, hello, Dresser, you're just in time! Come on in. What'llyou have? Let me tell you something, Paul, a good one--". More drinks, cigars, tales--magnificent tales of successes made, "great shows" given, fights, deaths, marvelous winnings at cards, trickeries in racing, prize-fighting; the "dogs" that some people were, the magnificent, magnanimous "God's own salt" that others were. The oaths, stories ofwomen, what low, vice-besmeared, crime-soaked ghoulas certain reigningbeauties of the town or stage were--and so on and so on ad infinitum. 

But his story?--ah, yes. I had all but forgotten. It was told in everyplace, not once but seven, eight, nine, ten times. We did not eat untilwe reached the Metropole, and it was ten-thirty when we reached it! Thehandshakes, the road stories--"This is my brother Theodore. He writes;he's a newspaper man. " The roars of laughter, the drinks! "Ah, my boy, that's good, but let me tell you one--one that I heard out in Louisvillethe other day. " A seedy, shabby ne'er-do-well of a song-writer maybestopping the successful author in the midst of a tale to borrow adollar. Another actor, shabby and distrait, reciting the sad tale of ayear's misfortunes. Everywhere my dear brother was called to, slapped onthe back, chuckled with. He was successful. One of his best songs wasthe rage, he had an interest in a going musical concern, he could conferbenefits, favors. 

Ah, me! Ah, me! That one could be so great, and that it should not lastfor ever and for ever!

Another of his outstanding characteristics was his love of women, areally amusing and at times ridiculous quality. He was always sighingover the beauty, innocence, sweetness, this and that, of youngmaidenhood in his songs, but in real life he seemed to desire andattract quite a different type--the young and beautiful, it is true, butalso the old, the homely and the somewhat savage--a catholicity of tasteI could never quite stomach. It was "Paul dearest" here and "Pauldearest" there, especially in his work in connection with themusic-house and the stage. In the former, popular ballad singers ofboth sexes, some of the women most attractive and willful, were mostnumerous, coming in daily from all parts of the world apparently to findsongs which they could sing on the American or even the English stage. And it was a part of his duty, as a member of the firm and the one whoprincipally "handled" the so-called professional inquirers, to meet themand see that they were shown what the catalogue contained. Occasionallythere was an aspiring female song-writer, often mere women visitors. 

Regardless, however, of whether they were young, old, attractive orrepulsive, male or female, I never knew any one whose manner was moreuniformly winsome or who seemed so easily to disarm or relax anindifferent or irritated mood. He was positive sunshine, the same inquality as that of a bright spring morning. His blue eyes focusedmellowly, his lips were tendrilled with smiles. He had a brisk, quickmanner, always somehow suggestive of my mother, who was never brisk. 

And how he fascinated them, the women! Their quite shameless daringwhere he was concerned! Positively, in the face of it I used to wonderwhat had become of all the vaunted and so-called "stabilizing morality"of the world. None of it seemed to be in the possession of these women, especially the young and beautiful. They were distant and freezingenough to all who did not interest them, but let a personality such ashis come into view and they were all wiles, bending and alluring graces. It was so obvious, this fascination he had for them and they for him, that at times it took on a comic look. 

"Get onto the hit he's making, " one would nudge another and remark. 

"Say, some tenderness, that!" This in reference to a smile or a meltingglance on the part of a female. 

"Nothing like a way with the ladies. Some baby, eh, boys?"--thisfollowing the flick of a skirt and a backward-tossed glance perhaps, assome noticeable beauty passed out. 

"No wonder he's cheerful, " a sour and yet philosophic vaudevillian, whowas mostly out of a job and hung about the place for what free meals hecould obtain, once remarked to me in a heavy and morose undertone. "IfI had that many women crazy about me I'd be too. "

And the results of these encounters with beauty! Always he had somethingmost important to attend to, morning, noon or night, and whenever Iencountered him after some such statement "the important thing" was, ofcourse, a woman. As time went on and he began to look upon me assomething more than a thin, spindling, dyspeptic and disgruntled youth, he began to wish to introduce me to some of his marvelous followers, andthen I could see how completely dependent upon beauty in the flesh hewas, how it made his life and world. 

One day as we were all sitting in the office, a large group ofvaudevillians, song-writers, singers, a chance remark gave rise to asubsequent practical joke at Paul's expense. "I'll bet, " observed someone, "that if a strange man were to rush in here with a revolver andsay, 'Where's the man that seduced my wife?' Paul would be the first toduck. He wouldn't wait to find out whether he was the one meant or not. "

Much laughter followed, and some thought. The subject of this banterwas, of course, not present at the time. There was one actor who hungabout there who was decidedly skillful in make-up. On more than oneoccasion he had disguised himself there in the office for our benefit. Coöperating with us, he disguised himself now as a very severe and evensavage-looking person of about thirty-five--side-burns, mustachios andgoatee. Then, with our aid, timing his arrival to an hour when Paul wascertain to be at his desk, he entered briskly and vigorously and, looking about with a savage air, demanded, "Where is Paul Dresser?"

The latter turned almost apprehensively, I thought, and at once seemedby no means captivated by the man's looks. 

"That's Mr. Dresser there, " explained one of the confederates mostwillingly. 

The stranger turned and glared at him. "So you're the scoundrel that'sbeen running around with my wife, are you?" he demanded, approaching himand placing one hand on his right hip. 

Paul made no effort to explain. It did not occur to him to deny theallegation, although he had never seen the man before. With a risingand backward movement he fell against the rail behind him, lifting bothhands in fright and exclaiming, "Why--why--Don't shoot!" His expressionwas one of guilt, astonishment, perplexity. As some one afterwards said, "As puzzled as if he was trying to discover which injured husband itmight be. " The shout that went up--for it was agreed beforehand that thejoke must not be carried far--convinced him that a hoax had beenperpetrated, and the removal by the actor of his hat, sideburns andmustache revealed the true character of the injured husband. At firstinclined to be angry and sulky, later on he saw the humor of his ownindefinite position in the matter and laughed as heartily as any. But Ifancy it developed a strain of uncertainty in him also in regard toinjured husbands, for he was never afterwards inclined to interesthimself in the much-married, and gave such wives a wide berth. 

But his great forte was of course his song-writing, and of this, beforeI speak of anything else, I wish to have my say. It was a gift, quite acompelling one, out of which, before he died, he had made thousands, allspent in the manner described. Never having the least power to interpretanything in a fine musical way, still he was always full of music of atender, sometimes sad, sometimes gay, kind--that of the ballad-maker ofa nation. He was constantly attempting to work them out of himself, notquickly but slowly, brooding as it were over the piano wherever he mightfind one and could have a little solitude, at times on the organ (hisfavorite instrument), improvising various sad or wistful strains, someof which he jotted down, others of which, having mastered, he strove tofit words to. At such times he preferred to be alone or with some onewhose temperament in no way clashed but rather harmonized with his own. Living with one of my sisters for a period of years, he had a roomspecially fitted up for his composing work, a very small room for sovery large a man, within which he would shut himself and thrum a melodyby the hour, especially toward evening or at night. He seemed to have apeculiar fondness for the twilight hour, and at this time might thrumover one strain and another until over some particular one, a new songusually, he would be in tears!

And what pale little things they were really, mere bits and scraps ofsentiment and melodrama in story form, most asinine sighings over homeand mother and lost sweethearts and dead heroes such as never were inreal life, and yet with something about them, in the music at least, which always appealed to me intensely and must have appealed to others, since they attained so wide a circulation. They bespoke, as I alwaysfelt, a wistful, seeking, uncertain temperament, tender and illusioned, with no practical knowledge of any side of life, but full of a truepoetic feeling for the mystery and pathos of life and death, the wonderof the waters, the stars, the flowers, accidents of life, success, failure. Beginning with a song called "Wide Wings" (published by a smallretail music-house in Evansville, Indiana), and followed by suchnational successes as "The Letter That Never Came, " "I Believe It, ForMy Mother Told Me So" (!), "The Convict and the Bird, " "The Pardon CameToo Late, " "Just Tell Them That You Saw Me, " "The Blue and the Grey, ""On the Bowery, " "On the Banks of the Wabash, " and a number of others, he was never content to rest and never really happy, I think, save whencomposing. During this time, however, he was at different periods allthe things I have described--a black-face monologue artist, an end- andat times a middle-man, a publisher, and so on. 

I recall being with him at the time he composed two of his most famoussuccesses: "Just Tell Them That You Saw Me, " and "On the Banks of theWabash, " and noting his peculiar mood, almost amounting to a deepdepression which ended a little later in marked elation or satisfaction, once he had succeeded in evoking something which really pleased him. 

The first of these songs must have followed an actual encounter withsome woman or girl whose life had seemingly if not actually gone towreck on the shore of love or passion. At any rate he came into theoffice of his publishing house one gray November Sunday afternoon--itwas our custom to go there occasionally, a dozen or more congenialsouls, about as one might go to a club--and going into a small roomwhich was fitted up with a piano as a "try-out" room (professionalsdesiring a song were frequently taught it in the office), he beganimprovising, or rather repeating over and over, a certain strain whichwas evidently in his mind. A little while later he came out and said, "Listen to this, will you, Thee?"

He played and sang the first verse and chorus. In the middle of thelatter, so moved was he by the sentiment of it, his voice broke and hehad to stop. Tears stood in his eyes and he wiped them away. A moment ortwo later he was able to go through it without wavering and I thought itcharming for the type of thing it was intended to be. Later on (thefollowing spring) I was literally astonished to see how, after thosevarious efforts usually made by popular music publishers to make a song"go"--advertising it in the _Clipper_ and _Mirror_, getting variousvaudeville singers to sing it, and so forth--it suddenly began to sell, thousands upon thousands of copies being wrapped in great bundles undermy very eyes and shipped express or freight to various parts of thecountry. Letters and telegrams, even, from all parts of the nation beganto pour in--"Forward express today ---- copies of Dresser's 'Tell ThemThat You Saw Me. '" The firm was at once as busy as a bee-hive, on "easystreet" again, as the expression went, "in clover. " Just before thisthere had been a slight slump in its business and in my brother'sfinances, but now once more he was his most engaging self. Every one inthat layer of life which understands or takes an interest in popularsongs and their creators knew of him and his song, his latest success. He was, as it were, a revivified figure on Broadway. His barbers, barkeepers, hotel clerks, theatrical box-office clerks, hotel managersand the stars and singers of the street knew of it and him. Someenterprising button firm got out a button on which the phrase wasprinted. Comedians on the stage, newspaper paragraphers, his bank telleror his tailor, even staid business men wishing to appear "up-to-date, "used it as a parting salute. The hand-organs, the bands and the theaterorchestras everywhere were using it. One could scarcely turn a corner orgo into a cheap music hall or variety house without hearing a parody ofit. It was wonderful, the enormous furore that it seemed to create, andof course my dear brother was privileged to walk about smiling andsecure, his bank account large, his friends numerous, in the pink ofhealth, and gloating over the fact that he was a success, well known, agenuine creator of popular songs. 

It was the same with "On the Banks of the Wabash, " possibly an evengreater success, for it came eventually to be adopted by his nativeState as its State song, and in that region streets and a town werenamed after him. In an almost unintentional and unthinking way I had ahand in that, and it has always cheered me to think that I had, althoughI have never had the least talent for musical composition or songversification. It was one of those delightful summer Sunday mornings(1896, I believe), when I was still connected with his firm as editor ofthe little monthly they were issuing, and he and myself, living with mysister E----, that we had gone over to this office to do a little work. I had a number of current magazines I wished to examine; he was alwayswishing to compose something, to express that ebullient and emotionalsoul of his in some way. 

"What do you suppose would make a good song these days?" he asked in anidle, meditative mood, sitting at the piano and thrumming while I at anearby table was looking over my papers. "Why don't you give me an ideafor one once in a while, sport? You ought to be able to suggestsomething. "

"Me?" I queried, almost contemptuously, I suppose. I could be very loftyat times in regard to his work, much as I admired him--vain and yet moreor less dependent snip that I was. "I can't write those things. Whydon't you write something about a State or a river? Look at 'My OldKentucky Home, ' 'Dixie, ' 'Old Black Joe'--why don't you do somethinglike that, something that suggests a part of America? People like that. Take Indiana--what's the matter with it--the Wabash River? It's as goodas any other river, and you were 'raised' beside it. "

I have to smile even now as I recall the apparent zest or feeling withwhich all at once he seized on this. It seemed to appeal to himimmensely. "That's not a bad idea, " he agreed, "but how would you goabout it? Why don't you write the words and let me put the music tothem? We'll do it together!"

"But I can't, " I replied. "I don't know how to do those things. Youwrite it. I'll help--maybe. "

After a little urging--I think the fineness of the morning had as muchto do with it as anything--I took a piece of paper and after meditatinga while scribbled in the most tentative manner imaginable the firstverse and chorus of that song almost as it was published. I think one ortwo lines were too long or didn't rhyme, but eventually either he or Ihammered them into shape, but before that I rather shamefacedly turnedthem over to him, for somehow I was convinced that this work was not forme and that I was rather loftily and cynically attempting what my goodbrother would do in all faith and feeling. 

He read it, insisted that it was fine and that I should do a secondverse, something with a story in it, a girl perhaps--a task which Isolemnly rejected. 

"No, you put it in. It's yours. I'm through. "

Some time later, disagreeing with the firm as to the conduct of themagazine, I left--really was forced out--which raised a little feelingon my part; not on his, I am sure, for I was very difficult to dealwith. 

Time passed and I heard nothing. I had been able to succeed in asomewhat different realm, that of the magazine contributor, and althoughI thought a great deal of my brother I paid very little attention to himor his affairs, being much more concerned with my own. One spring night, however, the following year, as I was lying in my bed trying to sleep, Iheard a quartette of boys in the distance approaching along the streetin which I had my room. I could not make out the words at first but themelody at once attracted my attention. It was plaintive and compelling. I listened, attracted, satisfied that it was some new popular successthat had "caught on. " As they drew near my window I heard the words "Onthe Banks of the Wabash" most mellifluously harmonized. 

I jumped up. They were my words! It was Paul's song! He had another"hit" then--"On the Banks of the Wabash, " and they were singing it inthe streets already! I leaned out of the window and listened as theyapproached and passed on, their arms about each other's shoulders, thewhole song being sung in the still street, as it were, for my benefit. The night was so warm, delicious. A full moon was overhead. I was young, lonely, wistful. It brought back so much of my already spent youth thatI was ready to cry--for joy principally. In three more months it waseverywhere, in the papers, on the stage, on the street-organs, played byorchestras, bands, whistled and sung in the streets. One day on Broadwaynear the Marlborough I met my brother, gold-headed cane, silk shirt, asmart summer suit, a gay straw hat. 

"Ah, " I said, rather sarcastically, for I still felt peeved that he hadshown so little interest in my affairs at the time I was leaving. "Onthe banks, I see. "

"On the banks, " he replied cordially. "You turned the trick for me, Thee, that time. What are you doing now? Why don't you ever come and seeme? I'm still your brother, you know. A part of that is really yours. "

"Cut that!" I replied most savagely. "I couldn't write a song like thatin a million years. You know I couldn't. The words are nothing. "

"Oh, all right. It's true, though, you know. Where do you keep yourself?Why don't you come and see me? Why be down on me? I live here, youknow. " He looked up at the then brisk and successful hotel. 

"Well, maybe I will some time, " I said distantly, but with no particulardesire to mend matters, and we parted. 

There was, however, several years later, a sequel to all this and one socharacteristic of him that it has always remained in my mind as one ofthe really beautiful things of life, and I might as well tell it hereand now. About five years later I had become so disappointed inconnection with my work and the unfriendly pressure of life that I hadsuffered what subsequently appeared to have been a purely psychicbreakdown or relapse, not physical, but one which left me in no mood orcondition to go on with my work, or any work indeed in any form. Hopehad disappeared in a sad haze. I could apparently succeed in nothing, donothing mentally that was worth while. At the same time I had all butretired from the world, living on less and less until finally I haddescended into those depths where I was in the grip of actual want, withno place to which my pride would let me turn. I had always been too vainand self-centered. Apparently there was but one door, and I was veryclose to it. To match my purse I had retired to a still sorrierneighborhood in B----, one of the poorest. I desired most of all to belet alone, to be to myself. Still I could not be, for occasionally Imet people, and certain prospects and necessities drove me to variouspublishing houses. One day as I was walking in some street near Broadway(not on it) in New York, I ran into my brother quite by accident, he asprosperous and comfortable as ever. I think I resented him more thanever. He was of course astonished, shocked, as I could plainly see, bymy appearance and desire not to be seen. He demanded to know where I wasliving, wanted me to come then and there and stay with him, wanted me totell him what the trouble was--all of which I rather stubbornly refusedto do and finally got away--not however without giving him my address, though with the caution that I wanted nothing. 

The next morning he was there bright and early in a cab. He was the mostvehement, the most tender, the most disturbed creature I have ever seen. He was like a distrait mother with a sick child more than anything else. 

"For God's sake, " he commented when he saw me, "living in a place likethis--and at this number, too!" (130 it was, and he was superstitious asto the thirteen. ) "I knew there'd be a damned thirteen in it!" heejaculated. "And me over in New York! Jesus Christ! And you sick and rundown this way! I might have known. It's just like you. I haven't heard athing about you in I don't know when. Well, I'm not going back withoutyou, that's all. You've got to come with me now, see? Get your clothes, that's all. The cabby'll take your trunk. I know just the place for you, and you're going there tomorrow or next day or next week, but you'recoming with me now. My God, I should think you'd be ashamed of yourself, and me feeling the way I do about you!" His eyes all but brimmed. 

I was so morose and despondent that, grateful as I felt, I couldscarcely take his mood at its value. I resented it, resented myself, mystate, life. 

"I can't, " I said finally, or so I thought. "I won't. I don't need yourhelp. You don't owe me anything. You've done enough already. "

"Owe, hell!" he retorted. "Who's talking about 'owe'? And you mybrother--my own flesh and blood! Why, Thee, for that matter, I owe youhalf of 'On the Banks, ' and you know it. You can't go on living likethis. You're sick and discouraged. You can't fool me. Why, Thee, you'rea big man. You've just got to come out of this! Damn it--don't yousee--don't make me"--and he took out his handkerchief and wiped hiseyes. "You can't help yourself now, but you can later, don't you see?Come on. Get your things. I'd never forgive myself if I didn't. You'vegot to come, that's all. I won't go without you, " and he began lookingabout for my bag and trunk. 

I still protested weakly, but in vain. His affection was so overwhelmingand tender that it made me weak. I allowed him to help me get my thingstogether. Then he paid the bill, a small one, and on the way to thehotel insisted on forcing a roll of bills on me, all that he had withhim. I was compelled at once, that same day or the next, to indulge in asuit, hat, shoes, underwear, all that I needed. A bedroom adjoining hissuite at the hotel was taken, and for two days I lived there, lateraccompanying him in his car to a famous sanitarium in Westchester, onein charge of an old friend of his, a well-known ex-wrestler whose famefor this sort of work was great. Here I was booked for six weeks, allexpenses paid, until I should "be on my feet again, " as he expressed it. Then he left, only to visit and revisit me until I returned to the city, fairly well restored in nerves if not in health. 

But could one ever forget the mingled sadness and fervor of his originalappeal, the actual distress written in his face, the unlimited generosityof his mood and deed as well as his unmerited self-denunciation? Onepictures such tenderness and concern as existing between parents andchildren, but rarely between brothers. Here he was evincing the samething, as soft as love itself, and he a man of years and some affairsand I an irritable, distrait and peevish soul. 

Take note, ye men of satire and spleen. All men are not selfish or hard. 

The final phase of course related to his untimely end. He was not quitefifty-five when he died, and with a slightly more rugged quality of mindhe might have lasted to seventy. It was due really to the failure of hisfirm (internal dissensions and rivalries, in no way due to him, however, as I have been told) and what he foolishly deemed to be the end of hisfinancial and social glory. His was one of those simple, confiding, non-hardy dispositions, warm and colorful but intensely sensitive, easily and even fatally chilled by the icy blasts of human difficulty, however slight. You have no doubt seen some animals, cats, dogs, birds, of an especially affectionate nature, which when translated to a strangeor unfriendly climate soon droop and die. They have no spiritualresources wherewith to contemplate what they do not understand or know. Now his friends would leave him. Now that bright world of which he hadbeen a part would know him no more. It was pathetic, really. He emanateda kind of fear. Depression and even despair seemed to hang about himlike a cloak. He could not shake it off. And yet, literally, in his casethere was nothing to fear, if he had only known. 

And yet two years before he did die, I knew he would. Fantastic as itmay seem, to be shut out from that bright world of which he deemedhimself an essential figure was all but unendurable. He had no readymoney now--not the same amount anyhow. He could not greet his old-timefriends so gayly, entertain so freely. Meeting him on Broadway shortlyafter the failure and asking after his affairs, he talked of going intobusiness for himself as a publisher, but I realized that he could not. He had neither the ability nor the talent for that, nor the heart. Hewas not a business man but a song-writer and actor, had never beenanything but that. He tried in this new situation to write songs, but hecould not. They were too morbid. What he needed was some one to buoy himup, a manager, a strong confidant of some kind, some one who would havetaken his affairs in hand and shown him what to do. As it was he had noone. His friends, like winter-frightened birds, had already departed. Personally, I was in no position to do anything at the time, being moreor less depressed myself and but slowly emerging from difficulties whichhad held me for a number of years. 

About a year or so after he failed my sister E---- announced that Paulhad been there and that he was coming to live with her. He could not payso much then, being involved with all sorts of examinations of one kindand another, but neither did he have to. Her memory was not short; shegave him the fullness of her home. A few months later he was ostensiblyconnected with another publishing house, but by then he was feeling sopoorly physically and was finding consolation probably in some drinkingand the caresses of those feminine friends who have, alas, only caressesto offer. A little later I met a doctor who said, "Paul cannot live. Hehas pernicious anæmia. He is breaking down inside and doesn't know it. He can't last long. He's too depressed. " I knew it was so and what theremedy was--money and success once more, the petty pettings and flatteryof that little world of which he had been a part but which now was nomore for him. Of all those who had been so lavish in their greetings andcompanionship earlier in his life, scarcely one, so far as I could makeout, found him in that retired world to which he was forced. One or twopegged-out actors sought him and borrowed a little of the little that hehad; a few others came when he had nothing at all. His partners, quarreling among themselves and feeling that they had done him aninjustice, remained religiously away. He found, as he often told mysister, broken horse-shoes (a "bad sign"), met cross-eyed women, another"bad sign, " was pursued apparently by the inimical number thirteen--andall these little straws depressed him horribly. Finally, being no longerstrong enough to be about, he took to his bed and remained there days ata time, feeling well while in bed but weak when up. For a little whilehe would go "downtown" to see this, that and the other person, but wouldsoon return. One day on coming back home he found one of his hats lyingon his bed, accidentally put there by one of the children, and accordingto my sister, who was present at the time, he was all but petrified bythe sight of it. To him it was the death-sign. Some one had told him sonot long before!!!

Then, not incuriously, seeing the affectional tie that had always heldus, he wanted to see me every day. He had a desire to talk to me abouthis early life, the romance of it--maybe I could write a story sometime, tell something about him! (Best of brothers, here it is, a thinlittle flower to lay at your feet!) To please him I made notes, althoughI knew most of it. On these occasions he was always his old self, fullof ridiculous stories, quips and slight _mots_, all in his old and bestvein. He would soon be himself, he now insisted. 

Then one evening in late November, before I had time to call upon him(I lived about a mile away), a hurry-call came from E----. He hadsuddenly died at five in the afternoon; a blood-vessel had burst in thehead. When I arrived he was already cold in death, his soft hands foldedover his chest, his face turned to one side on the pillow, thatindescribable sweetness of expression about the eyes and mouth--theempty shell of the beetle. There were tears, a band of reporters fromthe papers, the next day obituary news articles, and after that a hostof friends and flowers, flowers, flowers. It is amazing whatsatisfaction the average mind takes in standardized floral forms--brokencolumns and gates ajar!

Being ostensibly a Catholic, a Catholic sister-in-law and otherrelatives insistently arranged for a solemn high requiem mass at thechurch of one of his favorite rectors. All Broadway was there, moreflowers, his latest song read from the altar. Then there was a carriageprocession to a distant Catholic graveyard somewhere, his friend, therector of the church, officiating at the grave. It was so cold anddreary there, horrible. Later on he was removed to Chicago. 

But still I think of him as not there or anywhere in the realm of space, but on Broadway between Twenty-ninth and Forty-second Streets, thespring and summer time at hand, the doors of the grills and bars of thehotels open, the rout of actors and actresses ambling to and fro, hisown delicious presence dressed in his best, his "funny" stories, hissongs being ground out by the hand organs, his friends extending theirhands, clapping him on the shoulder, cackling over the latest idle yarn. 

Ah, Broadway! Broadway! And you, my good brother! Here is the story thatyou wanted me to write, this little testimony to your memory, a pale, pale symbol of all I think and feel. Where are the thousand yarns I havelaughed over, the music, the lights, the song?

Peace, peace. So shall it soon be with all of us. It was a dream. It is. I am. You are. And shall we grieve over or hark back to dreams?

_The County Doctor_

How well I remember him--the tall, grave, slightly bent figure, the headlike Plato's or that of Diogenes, the mild, kindly, brown-gray eyespeering, all too kindly, into the faces of dishonest men. In addition, he wore long, full, brown-gray whiskers, a long gray overcoat (soiledand patched toward the last) in winter, a soft black hat that hungdarkeningly over his eyes. But what a doctor! And how simple and oftennon-drug-storey were so many of his remedies!

"My son, your father is very sick. Now, I'll tell you what you can dofor me. You go out here along the Cheevertown road about a mile or twoand ask any farmer this side of the creek to let you have a good bighandful of peach sprigs--about so many, see? Say that Doctor Gridleysaid he was to give them to you for him. Then, Mrs. ----, when he bringsthem, you take a few, not more than seven or eight, and break them upand steep them in hot water until you have an amber-colored tea. GiveMr. ---- about three or four tea-spoonfuls of that every three or fourhours, and I hope we'll find he'll do better. This kidney case issevere, I know, but he'll come around all right. "

And he did. My father had been very ill with gall stones, so weak atlast that we thought he was sure to die. The house was so somber at thetime. Over it hung an atmosphere of depression and fear, with pity forthe sufferer, and groans of distress on his part. And then there werethe solemn visits of the doctor, made pleasant by his wise, kindly humorand his hopeful predictions and ending in this seemingly mildprescription, which resulted, in this case, in a cure. He was seeminglyso remote at times, in reality so near, and wholly thoughtful. 

On this occasion I went out along the long, cold, country road of aMarch evening. I was full of thoughts of his importance as a doctor. Heseemed so necessary to us, as he did to everybody. I knew nothing aboutmedicine, or how lives were saved, but I felt sure that he did and thathe would save my father in spite of his always conservative, speculative, doubtful manner. What a wonderful man he must be to knowall these things--that peach sprouts, for instance, were an antidote tothe agony of gall stones!

As I walked along, the simplicity of country life and its needs anddeprivations were impressed upon me, even though I was so young. So fewhere could afford to pay for expensive prescriptions--ourselvesespecially--and Dr. Gridley knew that and took it into consideration, sorarely did he order anything from a drug-store. Most often, what heprescribed he took out of a case, compounded, as it were, in ourpresence. 

A brisk wind had fluttered snow in the morning, and now the ground waswhite, with a sinking red sun shining across it, a sense of spring inthe air. Being unknown to these farmers, I wondered if any one of themwould really cut me a double handful of fresh young peach sprigs orsuckers from their young trees, as the doctor had said. Did they reallyknow him? Some one along the road--a home-driving farmer--told me of anold Mr. Mills who had a five-acre orchard farther on. In a little whileI came to his door and was confronted by a thin, gaunt, bespectacledwoman, who called back to a man inside:

"Henry, here's a little boy says Dr. Gridley said you were to cut him adouble handful of peach sprigs. "

Henry now came forward--a tall, bony farmer in high boots and an oldwool-lined leather coat, and a cap of wool. 

"Dr. Gridley sent cha, did he?" he observed, eyeing me most critically. 

"Yes, sir. "

"What's the matter? What does he want with 'em? Do ya know?"

"Yes, sir. My father's sick with kidney trouble, and Dr. Gridley said Iwas to come out here. "

"Oh, all right. Wait'll I git my big knife, " and back he went, returninglater with a large horn-handled knife, which he opened. He preceded meout through the barn lot and into the orchard beyond. 

"Dr. Gridley sent cha, did he, huh?" he asked as he went. "Well, I guesswe all have ter comply with whatever the doctor orders. We're all aptter git sick now an' ag'in, " and talking trivialities of a likecharacter, he cut me an armful, saying: "I might as well give ya toomany as too few. Peach sprigs! Now, I never heered o' them bein' goodfer anythin', but I reckon the doctor knows what he's talkin' about. Heusually does--or that's what we think around here, anyhow. "

In the dusk I trudged home with my armful, my fingers cold. The nextmorning, the tea having been brewed and taken, my father was better. Ina week or two he was up and around, as well as ever, and during thistime he commented on the efficacy of this tea, which was something newto him, a strange remedy, and which caused the whole incident to beimpressed upon my mind. The doctor had told him that at any time in thefuture if he was so troubled and could get fresh young peach sprigs fora tea, he would find that it would help him. And the drug expense wasexactly nothing. 

In later years I came to know him better--this thoughtful, crusty, kindly soul, always so ready to come at all hours when his casespermitted, so anxious to see that his patients were not taxed beyondtheir financial resources. 

I remember once, one of my sisters being very ill, so ill that we werebeginning to fear death, one and another of us had to take turn sittingup with her at night to help and to give her her medicine regularly. During one of the nights when I was sitting up, dozing, reading andlistening to the wind in the pines outside, she seemed persistently toget worse. Her fever rose, and she complained of such aches and painsthat finally I had to go and call my mother. A consultation with herfinally resulted in my being sent for Dr. Gridley--no telephones inthose days--to tell him, although she hesitated so to do, how sister wasand ask him if he would not come. 

I was only fourteen. The street along which I had to go was quite dark, the town lights being put out at two a. M. , for reasons of thriftperhaps. There was a high wind that cried in the trees. My shoes on theboard walks, here and there, sounded like the thuds of a giant. I recallprogressing in a shivery ghost-like sort of way, expecting at any stepto encounter goblins of the most approved form, until finally thewell-known outlines of the house of the doctor on the mainstreet--yellow, many-roomed, a wide porch in front--came, because of avery small lamp in a very large glass case to one side of the door, intoview. 

Here I knocked, and then knocked more. No reply. I then made a stillmore forceful effort. Finally, through one of the red glass panels whichgraced either side of the door I saw the lengthy figure of the doctor, arrayed in a long white nightshirt, and carrying a small glasshand-lamp, come into view at the head of the stairs. His feet were ingray flannel slippers, and his whiskers stuck out most grotesquely. 

"Wait! Wait!" I heard him call. "I'll be there! I'm coming! Don't makesuch a fuss! It seems as though I never get a real good night's rest anymore. "

He came on, opened the door, and looked out. 

"Well, " he demanded, a little fussily for him, "what's the matter now?"

"Doctor, " I began, and proceeded to explain all my sister's aches andpains, winding up by saying that my mother said "wouldn't he please comeat once?"

"Your mother!" he grumbled. "What can I do if I do come down? Not athing. Feel her pulse and tell her she's all right! That's every bit Ican do. Your mother knows that as well as I do. That disease has to runits course. " He looked at me as though I were to blame, then added, "Calling me up this way at three in the morning!"

"But she's in such pain, Doctor, " I complained. 

"All right--everybody has to have a little pain! You can't be sickwithout it. "

"I know, " I replied disconsolately, believing sincerely that my sistermight die, "but she's in such awful pain, Doctor. "

"Well, go on, " he replied, turning up the light. "I know it's allfoolishness, but I'll come. You go back and tell your mother that I'llbe there in a little bit, but it's all nonsense, nonsense. She isn't abit sicker than I am right this minute, not a bit--" and he closed thedoor and went upstairs. 

To me this seemed just the least bit harsh for the doctor, although, asI reasoned afterwards, he was probably half-asleep and tired--draggedout of his bed, possibly, once or twice before in the same night. As Ireturned home I felt even more fearful, for once, as I was passing awoodshed which I could not see, a rooster suddenly flapped his wings andcrowed--a sound which caused me to leap all of nineteen feet Fahrenheit, sidewise. Then, as I walked along a fence which later by day I saw hada comfortable resting board on top, two lambent golden eyes surveyed meout of inky darkness! Great Hamlet's father, how my heart sank! Oncemore I leaped to the cloddy roadway and seizing a cobblestone or hunk ofmud hurled it with all my might, and quite involuntarily. Then I ranuntil I fell into a crossing ditch. It was an amazing--almost atragic--experience, then. 

In due time the doctor came--and I never quite forgave him for notmaking me wait and go back with him. He was too sleepy, though, I amsure. The seizure was apparently nothing which could not have waiteduntil morning. However, he left some new cure, possibly clear water in abottle, and left again. But the night trials of doctors and theirpatients, especially in the country, was fixed in my mind then. 

One of the next interesting impressions I gained of the doctor was thatof seeing him hobbling about our town on crutches, his medicine caseheld in one hand along with a crutch, visiting his patients, when hehimself appeared to be so ill as to require medical attention. He wassuffering from some severe form of rheumatism at the time, but this, apparently, was not sufficient to keep him from those who in hisjudgment probably needed his services more than he did his rest. 

One of the truly interesting things about Dr. Gridley, as I early beganto note, was his profound indifference to what might be called hismaterial welfare. Why, I have often asked myself, should a man of somuch genuine ability choose to ignore the gauds and plaudits andpleasures of the gayer, smarter world outside, in which he might readilyhave shone, to thus devote himself and all his talents to a simple ruralcommunity? That he was an extremely able physician there was not theslightest doubt. Other physicians from other towns about, and even sofar away as Chicago, were repeatedly calling him into consultation. Thathe knew life--much of it--as only a priest or a doctor of true wisdomcan know it, was evident from many incidents, of which I subsequentlylearned, and yet here he was, hidden away in this simple rural world, surrounded probably by his Rabelais, his Burton, his Frazer, and hisMontaigne, and dreaming what dreams--thinking what thoughts?

"Say, " an old patient, friend and neighbor of his once remarked to meyears later, when we had both moved to another city, "one of thesweetest recollections of my life is to picture old Dr. Gridley, EdBoulder who used to run the hotel over at Sleichertown, CongressmanBarr, and Judge Morgan, sitting out in front of Boulder's hotel overthere of a summer's evening and haw-hawing over the funny stories whichBoulder was always telling while they were waiting for the Piercetonbus. Dr. Gridley's laugh, so soft to begin with, but growing in forceand volume until it was a jolly shout. And the green fields all around. And Mrs. Calder's drove of geese over the way honking, too, as geesewill whenever people begin to talk or laugh. It was delicious. "

One of the most significant traits of his character, as may be inferred, was his absolute indifference to actual money, the very cash, one wouldthink, with which he needed to buy his own supplies. During his life, his wife, who was a thrifty, hard-working woman, used frequently, as Ilearned after, to comment on this, but to no result. He could not bemade to charge where he did not need to, nor collect where he knew thatthe people were poor. 

"Once he became angry at my uncle, " his daughter once told me, "becausehe offered to collect for him for three per cent, dunning his patientsfor their debts, and another time he dissolved a partnership with alocal physician who insisted that he ought to be more careful to chargeand collect. "

This generosity on his part frequently led to some very interestingresults. On one occasion, for instance, when he was sitting out on hisfront lawn in Warsaw, smoking, his chair tilted back against a tree andhis legs crossed in the fashion known as "jack-knife, " a poorly dressedfarmer without a coat came up and after saluting the doctor began toexplain that his wife was sick and that he had come to get the doctor'sadvice. He seemed quite disturbed, and every now and then wiped hisbrow, while the doctor listened with an occasional question or gentlyaccented "uh-huh, uh-huh, " until the story was all told and the adviceready to be received. When this was given in a low, reassuring tone, hetook from his pocket his little book of blanks and wrote out aprescription, which he gave to the man and began talking again. Thelatter took out a silver dollar and handed it to the doctor, who turnedit idly between his fingers for a few seconds, then searched in hispocket for a mate to it, and playing with them a while as he talked, finally handed back the dollar to the farmer. 

"You take that, " he said pleasantly, "and go down to the drug-store andhave the prescription filled. I think your wife will be all right. "

When he had gone the doctor sat there a long time, meditatively puffingthe smoke from his cob pipe, and turning his own dollar in his hand. After a time he looked up at his daughter, who was present, and said:

"I was just thinking what a short time it took me to write thatprescription, and what a long time it took him to earn that dollar. Iguess he needs the dollar more than I do. "

In the same spirit of this generosity he was once sitting in his yard ofa summer day, sunning himself and smoking, a favorite pleasure of his, when two men rode up to his gate from opposite directions andsimultaneously hailed him. He arose and went out to meet them. His wife, who was sewing just inside the hall as she usually was when her husbandwas outside, leaned forward in her chair to see through the door, andtook note of who they were. Both were men in whose families the doctorhad practiced for years. One was a prosperous farmer who always paid his"doctor's bills, " and the other was a miller, a "ne'er-do-well, " with adelicate wife and a family of sickly children, who never asked for astatement and never had one sent him, and who only occasionally and atgreat intervals handed the doctor a dollar in payment for his manyservices. Both men talked to him a little while and then rode away, after which he returned to the house, calling to Enoch, his old negroservant, to bring his horse, and then went into his study to prepare hismedicine case. Mrs. Gridley, who was naturally interested in hisfinancial welfare, and who at times had to plead with him not to let hisgenerosity stand wholly in the way of his judgment, inquired of him ashe came out:

"Now, Doctor, which of those two men are you going with?"

"Why, Miss Susan, " he replied--a favorite manner of addressing his wife, of whom he was very fond--the note of apology in his voice showing thathe knew very well what she was thinking about, "I'm going with W----. "

"I don't think that is right, " she replied with mild emphasis. "Mr. N---- is as good a friend of yours as W----, and he always pays you. "

"Now, Miss Susan, " he returned coaxingly, "N---- can go to Pierceton andget Doctor Bodine, and W---- can't get any one but me. You surelywouldn't have him left without any one?"

What the effect of such an attitude was may be judged when it is relatedthat there was scarcely a man, woman or child in the entire county whohad not at some time or other been directly or indirectly benefited bythe kindly wisdom of this Samaritan. He was nearly everybody's doctor, in the last extremity, either as consultant or otherwise. Everywhere hewent, by every lane and hollow that he fared, he was constantly beingcalled into service by some one--the well-to-do as well as by those whohad nothing; and in both cases he was equally keen to give the samedegree of painstaking skill, finding something in the very poor--ahumanness possibly--which detained and fascinated him and made him alittle more prone to linger at their bedsides than anywhere else. 

"He was always doing it, " said his daughter, "and my mother used toworry over it. She declared that of all things earthly, papa loved anunfortunate person; the greater the misfortune, the greater his care. "

In illustration of his easy and practically controlling attitude towardthe very well-to-do, who were his patients also, let me narrate this:

In our town was an old and very distinguished colonel, comparativelyrich and very crotchety, who had won considerable honors for himselfduring the Civil War. He was a figure, and very much looked up to byall. People were, in the main, overawed by and highly respectful of him. A remote, stern soul, yet to Dr. Gridley he was little more than a childor schoolboy--one to be bossed on occasion and made to behave. Plainly, the doctor had the conviction that all of us, great and small, were verymuch in need of sympathy and care, and that he, the doctor, was the oneto provide it. At any rate, he had known the colonel long and well, andin a public place--at the principal street corner, for instance, or inthe postoffice where we school children were wont to congregate--it wasnot at all surprising to hear him take the old colonel, who was quitefrail now, to task for not taking better care of himself--coming out, for instance, without his rubbers, or his overcoat, in wet or chillyweather, and in other ways misbehaving himself. 

"There you go again!" I once heard him call to the colonel, as thelatter was leaving the postoffice and he was entering (there was norural free delivery in those days) "--walking around without yourrubbers, and no overcoat! You want to get me up in the night again, doyou?"

"It didn't seem so damp when I started out, Doctor. "

"And of course it was too much trouble to go back! You wouldn't feelthat way if you couldn't come out at all, perhaps!"

"I'll put 'em on! I'll put 'em on! Only, please don't fuss, Doctor. I'llgo back to the house and put 'em on. "

The doctor merely stared after him quizzically, like an oldschoolmaster, as the rather stately colonel marched off to his home. 

Another of his patients was an old Mr. Pegram, a large, kind, big-hearted man, who was very fond of the doctor, but who had anexceedingly irascible temper. He was the victim of some obscure maladywhich medicine apparently failed at times to relieve. This seemed toincrease his irritability a great deal, so much so that the doctor hadat last discovered that if he could get Mr. Pegram angry enough themalady would occasionally disappear. This seemed at times as good aremedy as any, and in consequence he was occasionally inclined to tryit. 

Among other things, this old gentleman was the possessor of a handsomebuffalo robe, which, according to a story that long went the roundslocally, he once promised to leave to the doctor when he died. At thesame time all reference to death both pained and irritated himgreatly--a fact which the doctor knew. Finding the old gentleman in amost complaining and hopeless mood one night, not to be dealt with, indeed, in any reasoning way, the doctor returned to his home, and earlythe next day, without any other word, sent old Enoch, his negroservant, around to get, as he said, the buffalo robe--a request whichwould indicate, of course that the doctor had concluded that old Mr. Pegram had died, or was about to--a hopeless case. When ushered into thelatter's presence, Enoch began innocently enough:

"De doctah say dat now dat Mr. Peg'am hab subspired, he was to hab datba--ba--buffalo robe. "

"What!" shouted the old irascible, rising and clambering out of his bed. "What's that? Buffalo robe! By God! You go back and tell old Doc Gridleythat I ain't dead yet by a damned sight! No, sir!" and forthwith hedressed himself and was out and around the same day. 

Persons who met the doctor, as I heard years later from his daughter andfrom others who had known him, were frequently asking him, just in asocial way, what to do for certain ailments, and he would as often replyin a humorous and half-vagrom manner that if he were in their place hewould do or take so-and-so, not meaning really that they should do sobut merely to get rid of them, and indicating of course any one of ahundred harmless things--never one that could really have provedinjurious to any one. Once, according to his daughter, as he was drivinginto town from somewhere, he met a man on a lumber wagon whom hescarcely knew but who knew him well enough, who stopped and showed him asore on the upper tip of his ear, asking him what he would do for it. 

"Oh, " said the doctor, idly and jestingly, "I think I'd cut it off. "

"Yes, " said the man, very much pleased with this free advice, "withwhat, Doctor?"

"Oh, I think I'd use a pair of scissors, " he replied amusedly, scarcelyassuming that his jesting would be taken seriously. 

The driver jogged on and the doctor did not see or hear of him againuntil some two months later when, meeting him in the street, the driversmilingly approached him and enthusiastically exclaimed:

"Well, Doc, you see I cut 'er off, and she got well!"

"Yes, " replied the doctor solemnly, not remembering anything about thecase but willing to appear interested, "--what was it you cut off?"

"Why, that sore on my ear up here, you know. You told me to cut it off, and I did. "

"Yes, " said the doctor, becoming curious and a little amazed, "withwhat?"

"Why, with a pair of scissors, Doc, just like you said. "

The doctor stared at him, the whole thing coming gradually back to him. 

"But didn't you have some trouble in cutting it off?" he inquired, indisturbed astonishment. 

"No, no, " said the driver, "I made 'em sharp, all right. I spent twodays whettin' 'em up, and Bob Hart cut 'er off fer me. They cut, allright, but I tell you she hurt when she went through the gristle. "

He smiled in pleased remembrance of his surgical operation, and thedoctor smiled also, but, according to his daughter, he decided to giveno more idle advice of that kind. 

In the school which I attended for a period were two of his sons, Fredand Walter. Both were very fond of birds, and kept a number of one kindor another about their home--not in cages, as some might, but inveigledand trained as pets, and living in the various open bird-houses fixedabout the yard on poles. The doctor himself was intensely fond of theseand all other birds, and, according to his daughter and his sons, alwaysanticipated the spring return of many of diem--black-birds, blue jays, wrens and robins--with a hopeful, "Well, now, they'll soon be hereagain. " During the summer, according to her, he was always an interestedspectator of their gyrations in the air, and when evening would come wasnever so happy as when standing and staring at them gathering from alldirections to their roosts in the trees or the birdhouses. Similarly, when the fall approached and they would begin their long flightSouthward, he would sometimes stand and scan the sky and trees in vainfor a final glimpse of his feathered friends, and when in the gatheringdarkness they were no longer to be seen would turn away toward thehouse, saying sadly to his daughter:

"Well, Dollie, the blackbirds are all gone. I am sorry. I like to seethem, and I am always sorry to lose them, and sorry to know that winteris coming. "

"Usually about the 25th or 26th of December, " his daughter oncequaintly added to me, "he would note that the days were beginning to getlonger, and cheer up, as spring was certain to follow soon and bringthem all back again. "

One of the most interesting of his bird friendships was that whichexisted between him and a pair of crows he and his sons had raised, "Jim" and "Zip" by name. These crows came to know him well, and werefinally so humanly attached to him that, according to his family, theywould often fly two or three miles out of town to meet him and wouldthen accompany him, lighting on fences and trees by the way, and cawingto him as he drove along! Both of them were great thieves, and wouldsteal anything from a bit of thread up to a sewing machine, if theycould have carried it. They were always walking about the house, cheerfully looking for what they might devour, and on one occasioncarried off a set of spoons, which they hid about the eaves of thehouse. On another occasion they stole a half dozen tin-handled pocketknives, which the doctor had bought for the children and which the crowsseemed to like for the brightness of the metal. They were recovered onceby the children, stolen again by the crows, recovered once more, and soon, until at last it was a question as to which were the rightfulowners. 

The doctor was sitting in front of a store one day in the business-heartof town, where also he liked to linger in fair weather, when suddenly hesaw one of his crows flying high overhead and bearing something in itsbeak, which it dropped into the road scarcely a hundred feet away. Interested to see what it was the bird had been carrying, he went to thespot where he saw it fall and found one of the tin-handled knives, whichthe crow had been carrying to a safe hiding-place. He picked it up andwhen he returned home that night asked one of his boys if he could lendhim a knife. 

"No, " said his son. "Our knives are all lost. The crows took them. "

"I knew that, " said the doctor sweetly, "and so, when I met Zip uptownjust now, I asked her to lend me one, and she did. Here it is. "

He pulled out the knife and handed it to the boy and, when the latterexpressed doubt and wonder, insisted that the crow had loaned it to him;a joke which ended in his always asking one of the children to run andask Zip if she would lend him a knife, whenever he chanced to need one. 

Although a sad man at times, as I understood, the doctor was not apessimist, and in many ways, both by practical jokes and the humoring ofodd characters, sought relief from the intense emotional strain whichthe large practice of his profession put upon him. One of his greatestreliefs was the carrying out of these little practical jokes, and he hadbeen known to go to much trouble at times to work up a good laugh. 

One of the, to him, richest jokes, and one which he always enjoyedtelling, related to a country singing school which was located in theneighborhood of Pierceton, in which reading (the alphabet, at least), spelling, geography, arithmetic, rules of grammar, and so forth, werestill taught by a process of singing. The method adopted in this form ofeducation was to have the scholar memorize all knowledge by singing it. Thus in the case of geography the students would sing the name of thecountry, then its mountains, then the highest peaks, cities, rivers, principal points of interest, and so on, until all information aboutthat particular country had been duly memorized in song or rhyme. Occasionally they would have a school-day on which the local dignitarieswould be invited, and on a number of these occasions the doctor was, foramusement's sake merely, a grave and reverent listener. On one occasion, however, he was merely passing the school, when hearing "Africa-a, Africa-a, mountains of the moo-oo-oon" drawled out of the windows, hedecided to stop in and listen a while. Having tethered his horse outsidehe knocked at the door and was received by the little English singingteacher who, after showing him to a seat, immediately called upon theclass for an exhibition of their finest wisdom. When they had finishedthis the teacher turned to him and inquired if there was anything hewould especially like them to sing. 

"No, " said the doctor gravely, and no doubt with an amused twinkle inhis eye, "I had thought of asking you to sing the Rocky Mountains, butas the mountains are so high, and the amount of time I have so limited, I have decided that perhaps it will be asking too much. "

"Oh, not at all, not at all" airily replied the teacher, and turning tohis class, he exclaimed with a very superior smile: "Now, ladies andgentlemen, 'ere is a scientific gentleman who thinks it is 'arder tosing of _'igh_ mountings than it is to sing of _low_ mountings, " andforthwith the class began to demonstrate that in respect to vocalizationthere was no difference at all. 

Only those, however, who knew Dr. Gridley in the sickroom, and knew himwell, ever discovered the really finest trait of his character: a keen, unshielded sensibility to and sympathy for all human suffering, thatcould not bear to inflict the slightest additional pain. He was really, in the main, a man of soft tones and unctuous laughter, of gentle touchand gentle step, and a devotion to duty that carried him far beyond hisinterests or his personal well-being. One of his chiefest oppositions, according to his daughter, was to telling the friends or relatives ofany stricken person that there was no hope. Instead, he would use everydelicate shade of phrasing and tone in imparting the fateful words, inorder if possible to give less pain. "I remember in the case of myfather, " said one of his friends, "when the last day came. Knowing theend was near, he was compelled to make some preliminary discouragingremark, and I bent over with my ear against my father's chest and said, 'Doctor Gridley, the disease is under control, I think. I can hear therespiration to the bottom of the lungs. '

"'Yes, yes, ' he answered me sadly, but now with an implication whichcould by no means be misunderstood, 'it is nearly always so. The failureis in the recuperative energy. Vitality runs too low. ' It meant from thefirst, 'Your father will not live. '"

In the case of a little child with meningitis, the same person was sentto him to ask what of the child--better or worse. His answer was: "He ispassing as free from pain as ever I knew a case of this kind. "

In yet another case of a dying woman, one of her relatives inquired:"Doctor, is this case dangerous?" "Not in the nature of the malady, madam, " was his sad and sympathetic reply, "but fatal in the conditionit meets. Hope is broken. There is nothing to resist the damage. "

One of his patients was a farmer who lived in an old-time log house afew miles out from Silver Lake, who while working about his barn metwith a very serious accident which involved a possible injury to thegall bladder. The main accident was not in itself fatal, but thepossible injury to the gall bladder was, and this, if it existed, wouldshow as a yellow tint in the eyeball on the tenth day. Fearing thedanger of this, he communicated the possibility to the relatives, sayingthat he could do little after that time but that he would come just thesame and make the patient as comfortable as possible. For nine days hecame, sitting by the bedside and whiling away many a weary hour for thesufferer, until the tenth morning. On this day, according to hisdaughter, who had it from the sick man's relatives, his face but illconcealed the anxiety he felt. Coming up to the door, he entered justfar enough to pretend to reach for a water bucket. With this in his handhe turned and gave one long keen look in the eye of the sick man, thenwalked down the yard to a chair under a tree some distance from thehouse, where he sat, drooping and apparently grieved, the certainty ofthe death of the patient affecting him as much as if he were his ownchild. 

"There was no need for words, " said one of them. "Every curve and droopof his figure, as he walked slowly and with bent head, told all of uswho saw him that hope was gone and that death had won the victory. "

One of his perpetual charges, as I learned later, was a poor oldunfortunate by the name of Id Logan, who had a little cabin and an acreof ground a half dozen miles west of Warsaw, and who existed from yearto year heaven only knows how. 

Id never had any money, friends or relatives, and was always troubledwith illness or hunger in some form or other, and yet the doctor alwaysspoke of him sympathetically as "Poor old Id Logan" and would often callout there on his rounds to see how he was getting along. One snowywinter's evening as he was traveling homeward after a long day's ride, he chanced to recollect the fact that he was in the neighborhood of hisworthless old charge, and fancying that he might be in need of somethingturned his horse into the lane which led up to the door. When he reachedthe house he noticed that no smoke was coming from the chimney and thatthe windows were slightly rimmed with frost, as if there were no heatwithin. Rapping at the door and receiving no response, he opened it andwent in. There he found his old charge, sick and wandering in his mind, lying upon a broken-down bed and moaning in pain. There was no fire inthe fireplace. The coverings with which the bed was fitted were but twoor three old worn and faded quilts, and the snow was sifting in badlythrough the cracks where the chinking had fallen out between the logs, and under the doors and windows. 

Going up to the sufferer and finding that some one of his old, and tothe doctor well-known, maladies had at last secured a fatal grip uponhim, he first administered a tonic which he knew would give him as muchstrength as possible, and then went out into the yard, where, afterputting up his horse, he gathered chips and wood from under the snow andbuilt a roaring fire. Having done this, he put on the kettle, trimmedthe lamp, and after preparing such stimulants as the patient couldstand, took his place at the bedside, where he remained the whole nightlong, keeping the fire going and the patient as comfortable as possible. Toward morning the sufferer died and when the sun was well up he finallyreturned to his family, who anxiously solicited him as to hiswhereabouts. 

"I was with Id Logan, " he said. 

"What's ailing him now?" his daughter inquired. 

"Nothing now, " he returned. "It was only last night, " and for yearsafterward he commented on the death of "poor old Id, " saying always atthe conclusion of his remarks that it must be a dreadful thing to besick and die without friends. 

His love for his old friends and familiar objects was striking, and hecould no more bear to see an old friend move away than he could to loseone of his patients. One of his oldest friends was a fine old Christianlady by the name of Weeks, who lived down in Louter Creek bottoms and inwhose household he had practiced for nearly fifty years. During thelatter part of his life, however, this family began to break up, andfinally when there was no one left but the mother she decided to moveover into Whitley County, where she could stay with her daughter. Justbefore going, however, she expressed a wish to see Doctor Gridley, andhe called in upon her. A little dinner had been prepared in honor ofhis coming. After it was over and the old times were fully discussed hewas about to take his leave when Mrs. Weeks disappeared from the roomand then returned, bearing upon her arm a beautiful yarn spread whichshe held out before her and, in her nervous, feeble way getting theattention of the little audience, said:

"Doctor, I am going up to Whitley now to live with my daughter, and Idon't suppose I will get to see you very often any more. Like myself, you are getting old, and it will be too far for you to come. But I wantto give you this spread that I have woven with my own hands since I havebeen sixty years of age. It isn't very much, but it is meant for a tokenof the love and esteem I bear you, and in remembrance of all that youhave done for me and mine. "

Her eyes were wet and her voice quivering as she brought it forward. Thedoctor, who had been wholly taken by surprise by this kindlymanifestation of regard, had arisen during her impromptu address and nowstood before her, dignified and emotionally grave, his own eyes wet withtears of appreciation. 

Balancing the homely gift upon his extended hands, he waited until theforce of his own sentiment had slightly subsided, when he replied:

"Madam, I appreciate this gift with which you have chosen to remember meas much as I honor the sentiment which has produced it. There are, Iknow, threads of feeling woven into it stronger than any cords of wool, and more enduring than all the fabrics of this world. I have been yourphysician now for fifty years, and have been a witness of your joys andsorrows. But, as much as I esteem you, and as highly as I prize thistoken of your regard, I can accept it but upon one condition, and thatis, Mrs. Weeks, that you promise me that no matter how dark the night, how stormy the sky, or how deep the waters that intervene, you will notfail to send for me in your hour of need. It is both my privilege and mypleasure, and I should not rest content unless I knew it were so. "

When the old lady had promised, he took his spread and going out to hishorse, rode away to his own home, where he related this incident, andended with, "Now I want this put on my bed. "

His daughter, who lovingly humored his every whim, immediately compliedwith his wish, and from that day to the hour of his death the spread wasnever out of his service. 

One of the most pleasing incidents to me was one which related to hislast illness and death. Always, during his later years, when he felt theleast bit ill, he refused to prescribe for himself, saying that adoctor, if he knew anything at all, was never such a fool as to take anyof his own medicine. Instead, and in sequence to this humorous attitude, he would always send for one of the younger men of the vicinity who werebeginning to practice here, one, for instance, who having other meritsneeded some assurance and a bit of superior recognition occasionally tohelp him along. On this occasion he called in a very sober young doctor, one who was greatly admired but had very little practice as yet, andsaying, "Doctor, I'm sick today, " lay back on his bed and waited forfurther developments. 

The latter, owing to Dr. Gridley's great repute and knowledge, was verymuch flustered, so much so that he scarcely knew what to do. 

"Well, Doctor, " he finally said, after looking at his tongue, taking hispulse and feeling his forehead, "you're really a better judge of yourown condition than I am, I'm sure. What do you think I ought to giveyou?"

"Now, Doctor, " replied Gridley sweetly, "I'm your patient, and you're mydoctor. I wouldn't prescribe for myself for anything in the world, andI'm going to take whatever you give me. That's why I called you in. Now, you just give me what you think my condition requires, and I'll takeit. "

The young doctor, meditating on all that was new or faddistic, decidedat last that just for variation's sake he would give the doctorsomething of which he had only recently heard, a sample of which he hadwith him and which had been acclaimed in the medical papers as veryeffective. Without asking the doctor whether he had ever heard of it, orwhat he thought, he merely prescribed it. 

"Well, now, I like that, " commented Gridley solemnly. "I never heard ofthat before in my life, but it sounds plausible. I'll take it, and we'llsee. What's more, I like a young doctor like yourself who thinks up waysof his own--" and, according to his daughter, he did take it, and washelped, saying always that what young doctors needed to do was to keepabreast of the latest medical developments, that medicine was changing, and perhaps it was just as well that old doctors died! He was so old andfeeble, however, that he did not long survive, and when the time camewas really glad to go. 

One of the sweetest and most interesting of all his mental phases was, as I have reason to know, his attitude toward the problem of sufferingand death, an attitude so full of the human qualities of wonder, sympathy, tenderness, and trust, that he could scarcely view themwithout exhibiting the emotion he felt. He was a constant student of thephenomena of dissolution, and in one instance calmly declared it as hisbelief that when a man was dead he was dead and that was the end of him, consciously. At other times he modified his view to one of an almostprayerful hope, and in reading Emily Brontë's somewhat morbid story of"Wuthering Heights, " his copy of which I long had in my possession, Inoted that he had annotated numerous passages relative to death and afuture life with interesting comments of his own. To one of thesepassages, which reads:

 "I don't know if it be a peculiarity with me, but I am seldom otherwise than happy while watching in the chamber of death, provided no frenzied or despairing mourner shares the duty with me. I see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break, and I feel an assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafter--the eternity they have entered--where life is boundless in its duration, and love in its sympathy, and joy in its fullness, "

he had added on the margin:

 "How often I have felt this very emotion. How natural I know it to be. And what a consolation in the thought!"

Writing a final prescription for a young clergyman who was dying, andfor whom he had been most tenderly solicitous, he added to the list ofdrugs he had written in Latin, the lines:

 "In life's closing hour, when the trembling soul flies And death stills the heart's last emotion, Oh, then may the angel of mercy arise Like a star on eternity's ocean!"

When he himself was upon his death-bed he greeted his old friend ColonelDyer--he of the absent overcoat and over-shoes--with:

"Dyer, I'm almost gone. I am in the shadow of death. I am standing uponthe very brink. I cannot see clearly, I cannot speak coherently, thefilm of death obstructs my sight. I know what this means. It is the end, but all is well with me. I have no fear. I have said and done thingsthat would have been better left unsaid and undone, but I have neverwillfully wronged a man in my life. I have no concern for myself. I amconcerned only for those I leave behind. I never saved money, and I dieas poor as when I was born. We do not know what there is in the futurenow shut out from our view by a very thin veil. It seems to me there isa hand somewhere that will lead us safely across, but I cannot tell. Noone can tell. "

This interesting speech, made scarcely a day before he closed his eyesin death, was typical of his whole generous, trustful, philosophicalpoint of view. 

"If there be green fields and placid waters beyond the river that he socalmly crossed, " so ran an editorial in the local county paper edited byone of his most ardent admirers, "reserved for those who believe in andpractice upon the principle of 'Do unto others as you would have them dounto you, ' then this Samaritan of the medical profession is safe fromall harm. If there be no consciousness, but only a mingling of thatwhich was gentleness and tenderness here with the earth and the waters, then the greenness of the one and the sparkling limpidity of the otherare richer for that he lived, and wrought, and returned unto them sotrustingly again. "

_Culhane, the Solid Man_

I met him in connection with a psychic depression which only partiallyreflected itself in my physical condition. I might almost say that I wassick spiritually. At the same time I was rather strongly imbued with acontempt for him and his cure. I had heard of him for years. To beginwith, he was a wrestler of repute, or rather ex-wrestler, retiredundefeated champion of the world. As a boy I had known that he hadtoured America with Modjeska as Charles, the wrestler, in "As You LikeIt. " Before or after that he had trained John L. Sullivan, the world'schampion prize fighter of his day, for one of his most successfulfights, and that at a time when Sullivan was unfitted to fight any one. Before that, in succession, from youth up, he had been a peasantfarmer's son in Ireland, a scullion in a ship's kitchen earning his wayto America, a "beef slinger" for a packing company, a cooks' assistantand waiter in a Bowery restaurant, a bouncer in a saloon, a rubber downat prize fights, a policeman, a private in the army during the CivilWar, a ticket-taker, exhibition wrestler, "short-change man" with aminstrel company, later a circus, until having attained his greatestfame as champion wrestler of the world, and as trainer of John L. Sullivan, he finally opened a sporting sanitarium in some county inupper New York State which later evolved into the great and nowdecidedly fashionable institution in Westchester, near New York. 

It has always been interesting to me to see in what awe men of this typeor profession are held by many in the more intellectual walks of life aswell as by those whose respectful worship is less surprising, --those whorevere strength, agility, physical courage, so-called, brute orotherwise. There is a kind of retiring worshipfulness, especially in menand children of the lower walks, for this type, which must be flatteringin the extreme. 

However, in so far as Culhane was concerned at this time, the case wasdifferent. Whatever he had been in his youth he was not that now, or atleast his earlier rawness had long since been glazed over by otherexperiences. Self-education, an acquired politeness among strangers anda knowledge of the manners and customs of the better-to-do, permittedhim to associate with them and to accept if not copy their manners andto a certain extent their customs in his relations with them. Literally, he owned hundreds of the best acres of the land about him, in one of themost fashionable residence sections of the East. He had already givenaway to some Sisters of Mercy a great estate in northern New York. Hisstables contained every type of fashionable vehicle and stalled and fedsixty or seventy of the worst horses, purposely so chosen, for the useof his "guests. " Men of all professions visited his place, paid himgladly the six hundred dollars in advance which he asked for the courseof six weeks' training, and brought, or attempted to, their own cars andretinues, which they lodged in the vicinity but could not use. I myselfwas introduced or rather foisted upon him by my dear brother, whosefriend if not crony--if such a thing could have been said to exist inhis life--he was. I was taken to him in a very somber and depressed moodand left; he rarely if ever received guests in person or at once. On theway, and before I had been introduced, I was instructed by my goodbrother as to his moods, methods, airs and tricks, supposed or rumoredto be so beneficial in so many cases. They were very rough--purposelyso. 

The day I arrived, and before I saw him, I was very much impressed withthe simplicity yet distinction of the inn or sanitarium or "repairshop, " as subsequently I learned he was accustomed to refer to it, perched upon a rise of ground and commanding a quite wonderful panorama. It was spring and quite warm and bright. The cropped enclosure whichsurrounded it, a great square of green fenced with high, well-trimmedprivet, was good to look upon, level and smooth. The house, standing inthe center of this, was large and oblong and gray, with very simpleFrench windows reaching to the floor and great wide balustradedbalconies reaching out from the second floor, shaded with awnings andset with rockers. The land on which this inn stood sloped very graduallyto the Sound, miles away to the southeast, and the spires of churchesand the gables of villages rising in between, as well as varioustoy-like sails upon the water, were no small portion of its charm. Tothe west for a score of miles the green-covered earth rose and fell inundulating beauty, and here again the roofs and spires of nearbyvillages might in fair weather be seen nestling peacefully among thetrees. Due south there was a suggestion of water and some peculiarconfiguration, which by day seemed to have no significance other thanthat which attached to the vague outlines of a distant landscape. Bynight, however, the soft glow emanating from myriads of lightsidentified it as the body and length of the merry, night-reveling NewYork. Northward the green waves repeated themselves unendingly untilthey passed into a dim green-blue haze. 

Interiorly, as I learned later, this place was most cleverly andsensibly arranged for the purpose for which it was intended. It was airyand well-appointed, with, on the ground floor, a great gymnasiumcontaining, outside of an alcove at one end where hung four or fivepunching bags, only medicine balls. At the other end was an office orreceiving-room, baggage or store-room, and locker and dining-room. Tothe east at the center extended a wing containing a number ofshower-baths, a lounging room and sun parlor. On the second floor, oneither side of a wide airy hall which ran from an immense library, billiard and smoking-room at one end to Culhane's private suite at theother, were two rows of bedrooms, perhaps a hundred all told, which gavein turn, each one, upon either side, on to the balconies previouslymentioned. These rooms were arranged somewhat like the rooms of apassenger steamer, with its center aisle and its outer decks and doorsopening upon it. In another wing on the ground floor were kitchens, servants' quarters, and what not else! Across the immense lawn or campusto the east, four-square to the sanitarium, stood a rather grandiosestable, almost as impressive as the main building. About the place, andalways more or less in evidence, were servants, ostlers, waiting-maidsand always a decidedly large company of men of practically allprofessions, ages, and one might almost say nationalities. That is asnationalities are represented in America, by first and secondgenerations. 

The day I arrived I did not see my prospective host or manager ortrainer for an hour or two after I came, being allowed to wait aboutuntil the very peculiar temperament which he possessed would permit himto come and see me. When he did show up, a more savage and yetgentlemanly-looking animal in clothes _de rigueur_ I have never seen. Hewas really very princely in build and manner, shapely and grand, likethose portraits that have come down to us of Richelieu and the Duc deGuise--fawn-colored riding trousers, bright red waistcoat, black-and-white check riding coat, brown leather riding boots andleggings with the essential spurs, and a riding quirt. And yet really, at that moment he reminded me not so much of a man, in his supremelywell-tailored riding costume, as of a tiger or a very ferocious and yetat times purring cat, beautifully dressed, as in our children'sstorybooks, a kind of tiger in collar and boots. He was so lithe, silent, cat-like in his tread. In his hard, clear, gray animal eyes wasthat swift, incisive, restless, searching glance which sometimestroubles us in the presence of animals. It was hard to believe that hewas all of sixty, as I had been told. He looked the very well-preservedman of fifty or less. The short trimmed mustache and goatee which hewore were gray and added to his grand air. His hair, cut a closepompadour, the ends of his heavy eyebrow hairs turned upward, gave him astill more distinguished air. He looked very virile, very intelligent, very indifferent, intolerant and even threatening. 

"Well, " he exclaimed on sight, "you wish to see me?"

I gave him my name. 

"Yes, that's so. Your brother spoke to me about you. Well, take a seat. You will be looked after. "

He walked off, and after an hour or so I was still waiting, for what Iscarcely knew--a room, something to eat possibly, some one to speak afriendly word to me, but no one did. 

While I was waiting in this rather nondescript antechamber, hung withhats, caps, riding whips and gauntlets, I had an opportunity to studysome of the men with whom presumably I was to live for a number ofweeks. It was between two and three in the afternoon, and many of themwere idling about in pairs or threes, talking, reading, all in rathercommonplace athletic costumes--soft woolen shirts, knee trousers, stockings and running or walking shoes. They were in the main evidentlyof the so-called learned professions or the arts--doctors, lawyers, preachers, actors, writers, with a goodly sprinkling of merchants, manufacturers and young and middle-aged society men, as well aspoliticians and monied idlers, generally a little the worse for theirpleasures or weaknesses. A distinguished judge of one of the superiorcourts of New York and an actor known everywhere in the English-speakingworld were instantly recognized by me. Others, as I was subsequentlyinformed, were related by birth or achievement to some one fact oranother of public significance. The reason for the presence of so manypeople rather above than under the average in intellect lay, as I cameto believe later, in their ability or that of some one connected withthem to sincerely appreciate or to at least be amused and benefited bythe somewhat different theory of physical repair which the lord of themanor had invented, or for which at least he had become famous. 

I have remarked that I was not inclined to be impressed. Sanitariumswith their isms and theories did not appeal to me. However, as I waswaiting here an incident occurred which stuck in my mind. A smartconveyance drove up, occupied by a singularly lean and haughty-lookingindividual, who, after looking about him, expecting some one to come outto him no doubt, clambered cautiously out, and after seeing that hisvarious grips and one trunk were properly deposited on the gravel squareoutside, paid and feed his driver, then walked in and remarked:

"Ah--where is Mr. Culhane?"

"I don't know, sir, " I replied, being the only one present. "He washere, but he's gone. I presume some one will show up presently. "

He walked up and down a little while, and then added: "Um--ratherpeculiar method of receiving one, isn't it? I wired him I'd be here. " Hewalked restlessly and almost waspishly to and fro, looking out of thewindow at times, at others commenting on the rather casual character ofit all. I agreed. 

Thus, some fifteen minutes having gone by without any one approachingus, and occasional servants or "guests" passing through the room orbeing seen in the offing without even so much as vouchsafing a word orappearing to be interested in us, the new arrival grew excited. 

"This is very unusual, " he fumed, walking up and down. "I wired himonly three hours ago. I've been here now fully three-quarters of anhour! A most unheard-of method of doing business, I should say!"

Presently our stern, steely-eyed host returned. He seemed to be goingsomewhere, to be nowise interested in us. Yet into our presence, probably into the consciousness of this new "guest, " he carried that airof savage strength and indifference, eyeing the stranger quite sharplyand making no effort to apologize for our long wait. 

"You wish to see me?" he inquired brusquely once more. 

Like a wasp, the stranger was vibrant with rage. Plainly he felt himselfinsulted or terribly underrated. 

"Are you Mr. Culhane?" he asked crisply. 

"Yes. "

"I am Mr. Squiers, " he exclaimed. "I wired you from Buffalo and ordereda room, " this last with an irritated wave of the hand. 

"Oh, no, you didn't order any room, " replied the host sourly and with anobvious desire to show his indifference and contempt even. "You wired toknow if you _could engage_ a room. "

He paused. The temperature seemed to drop perceptibly. The prospectiveguest seemed to realize that he had made a mistake somewhere, had beenmisinformed as to conditions here. 

"Oh! Um--ah! Yes! Well, have you a room?"

"I don't know. I doubt it. We don't take every one. " His eyes seemed tobore into the interior of his would-be guest. 

"Well, but I was told--my friend, Mr. X----, " the stranger began arapid, semi-irritated, semi-apologetic explanation of how he came to behere. 

"I don't know anything about your friend or what he told you. If he toldyou you could order a room by telegraph, he's mistaken. Anyhow, you'renot dealing with him, but with me. Now that you're here, though, if youwant to sit down and rest yourself a little I'll see what I can do foryou. I can't decide now whether I can let you stay. You'll have to waita while. " He turned and walked off. 

The other stared. "Well, " he commented to me after a time, walking andtwisting, "if a man wants to come here I suppose he has to put up withsuch things, but it's certainly unusual, isn't it?" He sat down, wilted, and waited. 

Later a clerk in charge of the registry book took us in hand, and then Iheard him explaining that his lungs were not in good shape. He had comea long way--Denver, I believe. He had heard that all one needed to dowas to wire, especially one in his circumstances. 

"Some people think that way, " solemnly commented the clerk, "but theydon't know Mr. Culhane. He does about as he pleases in these matters. Hedoesn't do this any more to make money but rather to amuse himself, Ithink. He always has more applicants than he accepts. "

I began to see a light. Perhaps there was something to this place afterall. I did not even partially sense the drift of the situation, though, until bedtime when, after having been served a very frugal meal andshown to my very simple room, a kind of cell, promptly at nine o'clocklights were turned off. I lit a small candle and was looking over somethings which I had placed in a grip, when I heard a voice in the halloutside: "Candles out, please! Candles out! All guests in bed!" Then itcame to me that a very rigorous régime was being enforced here. 

The next morning as I was still soundly sleeping at five-thirty a loudrap sounded at my door. The night before I had noticed above my bed aframed sign which read: "Guests must be dressed in running trunks, shoesand sweater, and appear in the gymnasium by six sharp. " "Gymnasium atsix! Gymnasium at six!" a voice echoed down the hall. I bounced out ofbed. Something about the very air of the place made me feel that it wasdangerous to attempt to trifle with the routine here. The tiger-likeeyes of my host did not appeal to me as retaining any softer ray in themfor me than for others. I had paid my six hundred . . . I had better earnit. I was down in the great room in my trunks, sweater, dressing-gown, running shoes in less than five minutes. 

And that room! By that time as odd a company of people as I have everseen in a gymnasium had already begun to assemble. The leanness! theosseosity! the grandiloquent whiskers parted in the middle! themustachios! the goatees! the fat, Hoti-like stomachs! the protuberantknees! the thin arms! the bald or semi-bald pates! the spectacles orhorn glasses or pince-nezes!--laid aside a few moments later, as theexercises began. Youth and strength in the pink of condition, when cladonly in trunks, a sweater and running shoes, are none tooacceptable--but middle age! And out in the world, I reflected rathersadly, they all wore the best of clothes, had their cars, servants, cityand country houses perhaps, their factories, employees, institutions. Ridiculous! Pitiful! As lymphatic and flabby as oysters without theirshells, myself included. It was really painful. 

Even as I meditated, however, I was advised, by many who saw that I wasa stranger, to choose a partner, any partner, for medicine ballpractice, for it might save me being taken or called by _him_. Ihastened so to do. Even as we were assembling or beginning to practice, keeping two or three light medicine balls going between each pair, ourhost entered--that iron man, that mount of brawn. In his cowleddressing-gown he looked more like some great monk or fighting abbot ofthe medieval years than a trainer. He walked to the center, hung up hiscowl and revealed himself lithe and lion-like and costumed likeourselves. But how much more attractive as he strode about, his legslean and sturdy, his chest full, his arms powerful and graceful! At oncehe seized a large leather-covered medicine ball, as had all the others, and calling a name to which responded a lean whiskerando with asemi-bald pate, thin legs and arms, and very much caricatured, Ipresume, by the wearing of trunks and sweater. Taking his place oppositethe host, he was immediately made the recipient of a volley of balls andbrow-beating epithets. 

"Hurry up now! Faster! Ah, come on! Put the ball back to me! Put theball back! Do you want to keep it all day? Great God! What are youstanding there for? What are you standing there for? What do you thinkyou're doing--drinking tea? Come on! I haven't all morning for youalone. Move! Move, you ham! You call yourself an editor! Why, youcouldn't edit a handbill! You can't even throw a ball straight! Throw itstraight! Throw it straight! For Christ's sake where do you think Iam--out in the office? Throw it straight! Hell!" and all the time oneand another ball, grabbed from anywhere, for the floor was alwayslittered with them, would be thrown in the victim's direction, andbefore he could well appreciate what was happening to him he was beingstruck, once in the neck and again on the chest by the rapidly deliveredsix ounce air-filled balls, two of which at least he and the host weresupposed to keep in constant motion between them. Later, a ball strikinghim in the stomach, he emitted a weak "Ooph!" and laying his hands overthe affected part ceased all effort. At this the master of the situationonly smirked on him leoninely and holding up a ball as if to throw itcontinued, "What's the matter with you now? Come on! What do you want tostop for? What do you want to stand there for? You're not hurt. How doyou expect to get anywhere if you can't keep two silly little balls likethese going between us?" (There had probably been six or eight. ) "Here Iam sixty and you're forty, and you can't even keep up with me. And youpretend to give the general public advice on life! Well, go on; God pitythe public, is all I say, " and he dismissed him, calling out anothername. 

Now came a fat, bald soul, with dewlaps and a protruding stomach, wholater I learned was a manufacturer of clothing--six hundred employeesunder him--down in health and nerves, really all "shot to pieces"physically. Plainly nervous at the sound of his name, he puffed quicklyinto position, grabbing wildly after the purposely eccentric throwswhich his host made and which kept him running to left and right in anall but panicky mood. 

"Move! Move!" insisted our host as before, and, if anything, moreirritably. "Say, you work like a crab! What a motion! If you had morehead and less guts you could do this better. A fine specimen you are!This is what comes of riding about in taxis and eating midnight suppersinstead of exercising. Wake up! Wake up! A belt would have kept yourstomach in long ago. A little less food and less sleep, and you wouldn'thave any fat cheeks. Even your hair might stay on! Wake up! Wake up!What do you want to do--die?" and as he talked he pitched the balls soquickly that his victim looked at times as though he were about to weep. His physical deficiencies were all too plain in every way. He wasgenerally obese and looked as though he might drop, his face a flamingred, his hands trembling and missing, when a "Well, go on, " sounded anda third victim was called. This time it was a well-known actor whoresponded, a star, rather spry and well set up, but still nervous, forhe realized quite well what was before him. He had been here for weeksand was in pretty fair trim, but still he was plainly on edge. He ranand began receiving and tossing as swiftly as he could, but as with theothers so it was his turn now to be given such a grilling andtongue-lashing as falls to few of us in this world, let alone among thesuccessful in the realm of the footlights. "Say, you're not anactor--you're a woman! You're a stewed onion! Move! Move! Come on! Comeon! Look at those motions now, will you? Look at that one arm up! Wheredo you suppose the ball is? On the ceiling? It's not a lamp! Come on!Come on! It's a wonder when you're killed as Hamlet that you don't staydead. You are. You're really dead now, you know. Move! Move!" and so itwould go until finally the poor thespian, no match for his master andbeset by flying balls, landing upon his neck, ear, stomach, finally gaveup and cried:

"Well, I can't go any faster than I can, can I? I can't do any more thanI can!"

"Ah, go on! Go back into the chorus!" called his host, who now abandonedhim. "Get somebody from the baby class to play marbles with you, " and hecalled another. 

By now, as may well be imagined, I was fairly stirred up as to theprobabilities of the situation. He might call me! The man who wasplaying opposite me--a small, decayed person who chose me, I think, because he knew I was new, innocuous and probably awkward--seemed torealize my thoughts as well as his own. By lively exercise with me hewas doing his utmost to create an impression of great and valuableeffort here. "Come on, let's play fast so he won't notice us, " he saidmost pathetically at one point. You would have thought I had known himall my life. 

But he didn't call us--not this morning at any rate. Whether owing toour efforts or the fact that I at least was too insignificant, tooobscure, we escaped. He did reach me, however, on the fourth or fifthday, and no spindling failure could have done worse. I was struck andtripped and pounded until I all but fell prone upon the floor, halfconvinced that I was being killed, but I was not. I was merely sentstumbling and drooping back to the sidelines to recover while hetortured some one else. But the names he called me! The comments on mynone too smoothly articulated bones--and my alleged mind! As in myschooldays when, a laggard in the fierce and seemingly malevolentatmosphere in which I was taught my ABC's, I crept shamefacedly andbeaten from the scene. 

It was in the adjoining bathroom, where the host daily personallysuperintended the ablutions of his guests, that even more of hisremarkable method was revealed. Here a goodly portion of the force ofhis method was his skill in removing any sense of ability, agility, authority or worth from those with whom he dealt. Apparently to him, inhis strength and energy, they were all children, weaklings, failures, numbskulls, no matter what they might be in the world outside. They hadno understanding of the most important of their possessions, theirbodies. And here again, even more than in the gymnasium, they were atthe disadvantage of feeling themselves spectacles, for here they werenaked. However grand an osseous, leathery lawyer or judge or doctor orpolitician or society man may look out in the world addressing a jury ora crowd or walking in some favorite place, glistening in his raiment, here, whiskered, thin of legs, arms and neck, with bulging brow andstripped not only of his gown but everything else this side of hisskin--well, draw your own conclusion. For after performing certainadditional exercises--one hundred times up on your toes, one hundredtimes (if you could) squatting to your knees, one hundred times throwingyour arms out straight before you from your chest or up from yourshoulders or out at right angles, right and left from your body and backto your hips until your fingers touched and the sweat once more ran--youwere then ready to be told (for once in your life) how to swiftly andagilely take a bath. 

"Well, now, you're ready, are you?" this to a noble jurist who, likemyself perhaps, had arrived only the day before. "Come on, now. Now youhave just ten seconds in which to jump under the water and get yourselfwet all over, twenty seconds in which to jump out and soap yourselfthoroughly, ten seconds in which to get back in again and rinse off allthe soap, and twenty seconds in which to rub and dry your skinthoroughly--now start!"

The distinguished jurist began, but instead of following the advicegiven him for rapid action huddled himself in a shivering position underthe water and stood all but inert despite the previous explanation ofthe host that the sole method of escaping the weakening influence ofcold water was by counteracting it with activity, when it would provebeneficial. 

He was such a noble, stalky, bony affair, his gold eyeglasses laid asidefor the time being, his tweeds and carefully laundered linen alldispensed with during his stay here. As he came, meticulously andgingerly and quite undone by his efforts, from under the water, where hehad been most roughly urged by Culhane, I hoped that he and not I wouldcontinue to be seized upon by this savage who seemed to take infinitedelight in disturbing the social and intellectual poise of us all. 

"Soap yourself!" exclaimed the latter most harshly now that the batherwas out in the room once more. "Soap your chest! Soap your stomach! Soapyour arms, damn it! Soap your arms! And don't rub them all day either!Now soap your legs, damn it! Soap your legs! Don't you know how to soapyour legs! Don't stand there all day! Soap your legs! Now turn round andsoap your back--soap your back! For Christ's sake, soap your back! Do itquick--quick! Now come back under the water again and see if you can getit off. Don't act as though you were cold molasses! Move! Move! Lord, you act as though you had all day--as though you had never taken a bathin your life! I never saw such an old poke. You come up here and expectme to do some things for you, and then you stand around as though youwere made of bone! Quick now, move!"

The noble jurist did as demanded--that is, as quickly as he could--onlythe mental inadequacy and feebleness which he displayed before all theothers, of course, was the worst of his cruel treatment here, and inthis as in many instances it cut deep. So often it was the shock toone's dignity more than anything else which hurt so, to be called an oldpoke when one was perhaps a grave and reverent senior, or to be toldthat one was made of bone when one was a famous doctor or merchant. Once under the water this particular specimen had begun by nervouslyrubbing his hands and face in order to get the soap off, and whenshouted at and abused for that had then turned his attention to oneother spot--the back of his left forearm. 

Mine host seemed enraged. "Well, well!" he exclaimed irascibly, watchinghim as might a hawk. "Are you going to spend all day rubbing that onespot? For God's sake, don't you know enough to rub your whole body andget out from under the water? Move! Move! Rub your chest! Rub yourbelly! Hell, rub your back! Rub your toes and get out!"

When routed from the ludicrous effort of vigorously rubbing one spot hewas continually being driven on to some other, as though his body weresome vast complex machine which he had never rightly understood before. He was very much flustered of course and seemed wholly unable to grasphow it was done, let alone please his exacting host. 

"Come on!" insisted the latter finally and wearily. "Get out from underthe water. A lot you know about washing yourself! For a man who has beenon the bench for fifteen years you're the dullest person I ever met. Ifyou bathe like that at home, how do you keep clean? Come on out and dryyourself!"

The distinguished victim, drying himself rather ruefully on anexceedingly rough towel, looked a little weary and disgusted. "Suchlanguage!" some one afterwards said he said to some one else. "He's notused to dealing with gentlemen, that's plain. The man talks like ablackguard. And to think we pay for such things! Well, well! I'll notstand it, I'm afraid. I've had about enough. It's positively revolting, positively revolting!" But he stayed on, just the same--second thoughts, a good breakfast, his own physical needs. At any rate weeks later he wasstill there and in much better shape physically if not mentally. 

About the second or third day I witnessed another such spectacle, whichmade me laugh--only not in my host's presence--nay, verily! For intothis same chamber had come another distinguished personage, a lawyer orsociety man, I couldn't tell which, who was washing himself ratherleisurely, as was _not_ the prescribed way, when suddenly he was spiedby mine host, who was invariably instructing some one in this swiftone-minute or less system. Now he eyed the operation narrowly for a fewseconds, then came over and exclaimed:

"Wash your toes, can't you? Wash your toes! Can't you wash your toes?"

The skilled gentleman, realizing that he was now living under verydifferent conditions from those to which presumably he was accustomed, reached down and began to rub the tops of his toes but without anydesire apparently to widen the operation. 

"Here!" called the host, this time much more sharply, "I said wash yourtoes, not the outside of them! Soap them! Don't you know how to washyour toes yet? You're old enough, God knows! Wash between 'em! Washunder 'em!"

"Certainly I know how to wash my toes, " replied the other irritably andstraightening up, "and what's more, I'd like you to know that I am agentleman. "

"Well, then, if you're a gentleman, " retorted the other, "you ought toknow how to wash your toes. Wash 'em--and don't talk back!"

"Pah!" exclaimed the bather now, looking twice as ridiculous as before. "I'm not used to having such language addressed to me. "

"I can't help that, " said Culhane. "If you knew how to wash your toesperhaps you wouldn't have to have such language addressed to you. "

"Oh, hell!" fumed the other. "This is positively outrageous! I'll leavethe place, by George!"

"Very well, " rejoined the other, "only before you go you'll have to washyour toes!"

And he did, the host standing by and calmly watching the performanceuntil it was finally completed. 

It was just this atmosphere which made the place the most astonishing inwhich I have ever been. It seemed to be drawing the celebrated and thesuccessful as a magnet might iron, and yet it offered conditions whichone might presume they would be most opposed to. No one here was reallyany one, however much he might be outside. Our host was all. He had agreat blazing personality which dominated everybody, and he did nothesitate to show before one and all that he did so do. 

Breakfast here consisted of a cereal, a chop and coffee--plentiful butvery plain, I thought. After breakfast, between eight-thirty and eleven, we were free to do as we chose: write letters, pack our bags if we wereleaving, do up our laundry to be sent out, read, or merely sit about. Ateleven, or ten-thirty, according to the nature of the exercise, one hadto join a group, either one that was to do the long or short block, asthey were known here, or one that was to ride horseback, all exercisesbeing so timed that by proper execution one would arrive at the bathroomdoor in time to bathe, dress and take ten minutes' rest before luncheon. These exercises were simple enough in themselves, consisting, as theydid in the case of the long and the short blocks (the long block seven, the short four miles in length), of our walking, or walking and runningbetimes, about or over courses laid up hill and down dale, over orthrough unpaved mudroads in many instances, along dry or wet beds ofbrooks or streams, and across stony or weedy fields, often still dampwith dew or the spring rains. But in most cases, when people had nottaken any regular exercise for a long time, this was by no means easy. The first day I thought I should never make it, and I was by no means apoor walker. Others, the new ones especially, often gave out and had tobe sent for, or came in an hour late to be most severely andirritatingly ragged by the host. He seemed to all but despise weaknessand had apparently a thousand disagreeable ways of showing it. 

"If you want to see what poor bags of mush some people can become, " heonce said in regard to some poor specimen who had seemingly had greatdifficulty in doing the short block, "look at this. Here comes a mansent out to do four measly country miles in fifty minutes, and look athim. You'd think he was going to die. He probably thinks so himself. InNew York he'd do seventeen miles in a night running from barroom tobarroom or one lobster palace to another--that's a good name for them, by the way--and never say a word. But out here in the country, withplenty of fresh air and a night's rest and a good breakfast, he can'teven do four miles in fifty minutes! Think of it! And he probablythinks of himself as a man--boasts before his friends, or his wife, anyhow. Lord!"

A day or two later there arrived here a certain major of the UnitedStates Army, a large, broad-chested, rather pompous person of aboutforty-eight or -nine, who from taking his ease in one sinecure andanother had finally reached the place where he was unable to endurecertain tests (or he thought so) which were about to be made with a viewto retiring certain officers grown fat in the service. As he explainedto Culhane, and the latter was always open and ribald afterward in hiscomments on those who offered explanations of any kind, his plan was totake the course here in order to be able to make the difficult testslater. 

Culhane resented this, I think. He resented people using him or hismethods to get anywhere, do anything more in life than he could do, andyet he received them. He felt, and I think in the main that he wasright, that they looked down on him because of his lowly birth andpurely material and mechanical career, and yet having attained somedistinction by it he could not forego this work which raised him, in away, to a position of dominance over these people. Now the sight ofpresumably so efficient a person in need of aid or exercise, to be builtup, was all that was required to spur him on to the most waspish orwolfish attitude imaginable. In part at least he argued, I think (for inthe last analysis he was really too wise and experienced to take anysuch petty view, although there is a subconscious "past-lack" motivatingimpulse in all our views), that here he was, an ex-policeman, ex-wrestler, ex-prize fighter, ex-private, ex-waiter, beef-carrier, bouncer, trainer; and here was this grand major, trained at West Point, who actually didn't know any more about life or how to take care of hisbody than to be compelled to come here, broken down at forty-eight, whereas he, because of his stamina and Spartan energy, had been able tosurvive in perfect condition until sixty and was now in a position torebuild all these men and wastrels and to control this greatinstitution. And to a certain extent he was right, although he seemed toforget or not to know that he was not the creator of his own greatstrength, by any means, impulses and tendencies over which he had nocontrol having arranged for that. 

However that may be, here was the major a suppliant for his services, and here was he, Culhane, and although the major was paying well for hisminute room and his probably greatly decreased diet, still Culhane couldnot resist the temptation to make a show of him, to picture him as themore or less pathetic example that he was, in order perhaps that he, Culhane, might shine by contrast. Thus on the first day, having sent himaround the short block with the others, it was found at twelve, when the"joggers" were expected to return, and again at twelve-thirty when theywere supposed to take their places at the luncheon table, that the heavymajor had not arrived. He had been seen and passed by all, of course. After the first mile or two probably he had given out and was making hisway as best he might up hill and down dale, or along some more directroad, to the "shop, " or maybe he had dropped out entirely, as some did, via a kindly truck or farmer's wagon, and was on his way to the nearestrailway station. 

At any rate, as Culhane sat down at his very small private table, whichstood in the center of the dining-room and far apart from the others (avantage point, as it were), he looked about and, not seeing the newguest, inquired, "Has any one seen that alleged army officer who arrivedhere this morning?"

No one could say anything more than that they had left him two or threemiles back. 

"I thought so, " he said tersely. "There you have a fine example of thedesk general and major--we had 'em in the army--men who sit in a swivelchair all day, wear a braided uniform and issue orders to other people. You'd think a man like that who had been trained at West Point and seenservice in the Philippines would have sense enough to keep himself incondition. Not at all. As soon as they get a little way up in theirprofession they want to sit around hotel grills or society ballrooms andshow off, tell how wonderful they are. Here's a man, an army officer, insuch rotten shape that if I sent a good horse after him now it's ten toone he couldn't get on him. I'll have to send a truck or some suchthing. "

He subsided. About an hour later the major did appear, much the worsefor wear. A groom with a horse had been sent out after him, and, as thelatter confided to some one afterward, he "had to help the major on. "From that time on, on the short block and the long, as well as on thosehorseback tours which every second or third morning we were supposed totake, the major was his especial target. He loved to pick on him, totell him that he was "nearly all guts"--a phrase which literallysickened me at that time--to ask him how he expected to stay in the armyif he couldn't do this or that, what good was he to the army, how couldany soldier respect a thing like him, and so on _ad infinitum_ until, while at first I pitied the major, later on I admired his pluck. Culhanefoisted upon him his sorriest and boniest nag, the meanest animal hecould find, yet he never complained; and although he forced on him allthe foods he knew the major could not like, still there was nocomplaint; he insisted that he should be out and around of an afternoonwhen most of us lay about, allowed him no drinks whatever, although hewas accustomed to them. The major, as I learned afterwards, stayed notsix but twelve weeks and passed the tests which permitted him to remainin the army. 

But to return to Culhane himself. The latter's method always containedthis element of nag and pester which, along with his brazen reliance onand pride in his brute strength at sixty, made all these others look sopuny and ineffectual. They might have brains and skill but here theywere in his institution, more or less undone nervously and physically, and here he was, cold, contemptuous, not caring much whether they came, stayed or went, and laughing at them even as they raged. Now and then itwas rumored that he found some single individual in whom he would takean interest, but not often. In the main I think he despised them one andall for the puny machines they were. He even despised life and thepleasures and dissipations or swinish indolence which, in his judgment, characterized most men. I recall once, for instance, his telling us howas a private in the United States Army when the division of which he wasa unit was shut up in winter quarters, huddled about stoves, smoking (ashe characterized them) "filthy pipes" or chewing tobacco and spitting, actually lousy, and never changing their clothes for weeks on end--howhe, revolting at all this and the disease and fevers ensuing, had keptout of doors as much as possible, even in the coldest weather, andfinding no other way of keeping clean the single shift of underwear andthe one uniform he possessed he had, every other day or so, washed all, uniform and underwear, with or without soap as conditions might compel, in a nearby stream, often breaking the ice to get to the water, anddancing about naked in the cold, running and jumping, while they driedon bushes or the branch of a tree. 

"Those poor rats, " he added most contemptuously, "used to sit inside andwonder at me or laugh and jeer, hovering over their stoves, but a lot ofthem died that very winter, and here I am today. "

And well we knew it. I used to study the faces of many of the puffy, gelatinous souls, so long confined to their comfortable offices, restaurants and homes that two hours on horseback all but wore them out, and wonder how this appealed to them. I think that in the main they tookit as an illustration of either one of two things: insanity, or giantand therefore not-to-be-imitated strength. 

But in regard to them Culhane was by no means so tolerant. One day, as Irecall, there arrived at the sanitarium a stout and mushy-lookingHebrew, with a semi-bald pate, protruding paunch and fat arms and legs, who applied to Culhane for admission. And, as much to irritate his otherguests, I think, as to torture this particular specimen into somesemblance of vitality, he admitted him. And thereafter, from the hour heentered until he left about the time I did, Culhane seemed to follow himwith a wolfish and savage idea. He gave him a most damnable and savagehorse, one that kicked and bit, and at mounting time would place Mr. Itzky (I think his name was) up near the front of the procession wherehe could watch him. Always at mount-time, when we were permitted toride, there was inside the great stable a kind of preliminary militaryinspection of all our accouterments, seeing that we had to saddle andbridle and bring forth our own steeds. This particular person could notsaddle a horse very well nor put on his bit and bridle. The animal wasinclined to rear and plunge when he came near, to fix him with an evileye and bite at him. 

And above all things Culhane seemed to value strain of this kind. If hecould just make his guests feel the pressure of necessity in connectionwith their work he was happy. To this end he would employ the mostcontemptuous and grilling comment. Thus to Mr. Itzky he was most unkind. He would look over all most cynically, examining the saddles andbridles, and then say, "Oh, I see you haven't learned how to tighten abelly-band yet, " or "I do believe you have your saddle hind-side to. Youwould if you could, that's one thing sure. How do you expect a horse tobe sensible or quiet when he knows that he isn't saddled right? Anyhorse knows that much, and whether he has an ass for a rider. I'd kickand bite too if I were some of these horses, having a lot of damnedfools and wasters to pack all over the country. Loosen that belt andfasten it right" (there might be nothing wrong with it) "and move yoursaddle up. Do you want to sit over the horse's rump?"

Then would come the fateful moment of mounting. There was of course theaccepted and perfect way--his way: left foot in stirrup, an easybalanced spring and light descent into the seat. One should be able toslip the right foot into the right stirrup with the same motion ofmounting. But imagine fifty, sixty, seventy men, all sizes, weights anddiffering conditions of health and mood. A number of these people hadnever ridden a horse before coming here and were as nervous andfrightened as children. Such mounts! Such fumbling around, once theywere in their saddles, for the right stirrup! And all the while Culhanewould be sitting out front like an army captain on the only decent steedin the place, eyeing us with a look of infinite and weary contempt thatserved to increase our troubles a thousandfold. 

"Well, you're all on, are you? You all do it so gracefully I like to sithere and admire you. Hulbert there throws his leg over his horse's backso artistically that he almost kicks his teeth out. And Effingham doeshis best to fall off on the other side. And where's Itzky? I don't evensee him. Oh, yes, there he is. Well" (this to Itzky, franticallyendeavoring to get one fat foot in a stirrup and pull himself up), "whatabout you? Can't you get your leg that high? Here's a man who fortwenty-five years has been running a cloak-and-suit business andemploying five hundred people, but he can't get on a horse! Imagine!Five hundred people dependent on that for their living!" (At this point, say, Itzky succeeds in mounting. ) "Well, he's actually on! Now see ifyou can stick while we ride a block or two. You'll find the rightstirrup, Itzky, just a little forward of your horse's belly on the rightside--see? A fine bunch this is to lead out through a gentleman'scountry! Hell, no wonder I've got a bad reputation throughout thissection! Well, forward, and see if you can keep from falling off. "

Then we were out through the stable-door and the privet gate at a smarttrot, only to burst into a headlong gallop a little farther on down theroad. To the seasoned riders it was all well enough, but to beginners, those nervous about horses, fearful about themselves! The first day, nothaving ridden in years and being uncertain as to my skill, I couldscarcely stay on. Several days later, I by then having become areasonably seasoned rider, it was Mr. Itzky who appeared on the scene, and after him various others. On this particular trip I am thinking of, Mr. Itzky fell or rolled off and could not again mount. He was milesfrom the repair shop and Culhane, discovering his plight, was by nomeans sympathetic. We had a short ride back to where he sat lamely bythe roadside viewing disconsolately the cavalcade and the country ingeneral. 

"Well, what's the matter with you now?" It was Culhane, eyeing him mostseverely. 

"I hef hurt my foot. I kent stay on. "

"You mean you'd rather walk, do you, and lead your horse?"

"Vell, I kent ride. "

"All right, then, you lead your horse back to the stable if you want anylunch, and hereafter you run with the baby-class on the short blockuntil you think you can ride without falling off. What's the good of mykeeping a stable of first-class horses at the service of a lot ofmush-heads who don't even know how to use 'em? All they do is ruin 'em. In a week or two, after a good horse is put in the stable, he's not fitfor a gentleman to ride. They pull and haul and kick and beat, when asa matter of fact the horse has a damned sight more sense than theyhave. "

We rode off, leaving Itzky alone. The men on either side of me--we wereriding three abreast--scoffed under their breath at the statement thatwe were furnished decent horses. "The nerve! This nag!" "This bag ofbones!" "To think a thing like this should be called a horse!" But therewere no outward murmurs and no particular sympathy for Mr. Itzky. He wasa fat stuff, a sweat-shop manufacturer, they would bet; let him walk andsweat. 

So much for sympathy in this gay realm where all were seeking to restoretheir own little bodies, whatever happened. 

So many of these men varied so greatly in their looks, capacities andtroubles that they were always amusing. Thus I recall one lean ironmanufacturer, the millionaire president of a great "frog and switch"company, who had come on from Kansas City, troubled with anæmia, neurasthenia, "nervous derangement of the heart" and various otherthings. He was over fifty, very much concerned about himself, hisfamily, his business, his friends; anxious to obtain the benefits ofthis celebrated course of which he had heard so much. Walking or runningnear me on his first day, he took occasion to make inquiries in regardto Culhane, the life here, and later on confidences as to his owncondition. It appeared that his chief trouble was his heart, a kind ofphantom disturbance which made him fear that he was about to drop deadand which came and went, leaving him uncertain as to whether he had itor not. On entering he had confided to Culhane the mysteries of hiscase, and the latter had examined him, pronouncing him ("Ratherroughly, " as he explained to me), quite fit to do "all the silly work hewould have to do here. "

Nevertheless while we were out on the short block his heart was hurtinghim. At the same time it had been made rather clear to him that if hewished to stay here he would have to fulfill all the obligationsimposed. After a mile or two or three of quick walking and jogging hewas saying to me, "You know, I'm not really sure that I can do this. It's very severe, more so than I thought. My heart is not doing verywell. It feels very fluttery. "

"But, " I said, "if he told you you could stand it, you can, I'm sure. It's not very likely he'd say you could if you couldn't. He examinedyou, didn't he? I don't believe he'd deliberately put a strain on anyone who couldn't stand it. "

"Yes, " he admitted doubtfully, "that's true perhaps. "

Still he continued to complain and complain and to grow more and moreworried, until finally he slowed up and was lost in the background. 

Reaching the gymnasium at the proper time I bathed and dressed myselfquickly and waited on the balcony over the bathroom to see what wouldhappen in this case. As a rule Culhane stood in or near the door at thistime, having just returned from some route or "block" himself, to seehow the others were faring. And he was there when the iron manufacturercame limping up, fifteen minutes late, one hand over his heart, theother to his mouth, and exclaiming as he drew near, "I do believe, Mr. Culhane, that I can't stand this. I'm afraid there is something thematter with my heart. It's fluttering so. "

"To hell with your heart! Didn't I tell you there was nothing the matterwith it? Get into the bath!"

The troubled manufacturer, overawed or reassured as the case might be, entered the bath and ten minutes later might have been seen entering thedining-room, as comfortable apparently as any one. Afterwards heconfessed to me on one of our jogs that there was something aboutCulhane which _gave him confidence_ and made him believe that therewasn't anything wrong with his heart--which there wasn't, I presume. 

The intensely interesting thing about Culhane was this different, veryoriginal and forthright if at times brutal point of view. It was ablazing material world of which he was the center, the sun, and yetalways I had the sense of very great life. With no knowledge of orinterest in the superior mental sciences or arts or philosophies, stillhe seemed to suggest and even live them. He was in his way anexemplification of that ancient Greek regimen and stark thought whichbrought back the ten thousand from Cunaxa. He seemed even to suggest inhis rough way historical perspective and balance. He knew men, andapparently he sensed how at best and at bottom life was to be lived, with not too much emotional or appetitive swaying in any one direction, and not too little either. 

Yet in "trapseing" about this particular realm each day with ministers, lawyers, doctors, actors, manufacturers, papa's or mamma's younghopefuls and petted heirs, young scapegraces and so-called "society men"of the extreme "upper crust, " stuffed and plethoric with money and asinnocent of sound knowledge or necessary energy in some instances as anyone might well be, one could not help speculating as to how it was thatsuch a man, as indifferent and all but discourteous as this one, couldattract them (and so many) to him. They came from all parts ofAmerica--the Pacific, the Gulf, the Atlantic and Canada--and yet, although they did not relish, him or his treatment of them, once herethey stayed. Walking or running or idling about with them one couldalways hear from one or another that Culhane was too harsh, a "bounder, "an "upstart, " a "cheap pugilist" or "wrestler" at best (I myself thoughtso at times when I was angry), yet here they were, and here I was, andstaying. He was low, vulgar--yet here we were. And yet, meditating onhim, I began to think that he was really one of the most remarkable menI had ever known, for these people he dealt with were of all the mostdifficult to deal with. In the main they were of that order or conditionof mind which springs from (1), too much wealth too easily acquired orinherited; or (2), from a blazing material success, the cause of whichwas their own savage self-interested viewpoint. Hence a colder and insome respects a more critical group of men I have never known. Most ofthem had already seen so much of life in a libertine way that there waslittle left to enjoy. They sniffed at almost everything, Culhaneincluded, and yet they were obviously drawn to him. I tried to explainthis to myself on the ground that there is some iron power in somepeople which literally compels this, whether one will or no; or thatthey were in the main so tired of life and so truly selfish andegotistic that it required some such different iron or caviar mood plussuch a threatening regimen to make them really take an interest. Sick asthey were, he was about the only thing left on which they could sharpentheir teeth with any result. 

As I have said, a part of Culhane's general scheme was to arrange thestarting time for the walks and jogs about the long and short blocks sothat if one moved along briskly he reached the sanitarium attwelve-thirty and had a few minutes in which to bathe and cool off andchange his clothes before entering the dining-room, where, if not at thebathroom door beforehand, Culhane would be waiting, seated at his littletable, ready to keep watch on the time and condition of all those due. Thus one day, a group of us having done the long block in less time thanwe should have devoted to it, came in panting and rejoicing that we hadcut the record by seven minutes. We did not know that he was around. Butin the dining-room as we entered he scoffed at our achievement. 

"You think you're smart, don't you?" he said sourly and without anypreliminary statement as to how he knew we had done it in less time. "You come out here and pay me one hundred a week and then you want to becute and play tricks with your own money and health. I want you toremember just one thing: my reputation is just as much involved with theresults here as your money. I don't need anybody's money, and I do needmy orders obeyed. Now you all have watches. You just time yourselves anddo that block in the time required. If you can't do it, that's onething; I can forgive a man too weak or sick to do it. But I haven't anyuse for a mere smart aleck, and I don't want any more of it, see?"

That luncheon was very sad. 

Another thing in connection with these luncheons and dinners, which weresharply timed to the minute, were these crisp table speeches, often made_in re_ some particular offender or his offense, at other times meresarcastic comments on life in general and the innate cussedness of humannature, which amused at the same time that they were certain to irritatesome. For who is it that is not interested in hearing the peccadilloesof his neighbor aired?

Thus while I was there, there was a New York society man by the name ofBlake, who unfortunately was given to severe periods of alcoholism, theresults of which were, after a time, nervous disorders which sent himhere. In many ways he was as amiable and courteous and considerate asoul as one could meet anywhere. He had that smooth, gracious somethingabout him--good nature, for one thing, a kind of understanding andsympathy for various forms of life--which left him highly noncensorious, if genially examining at times. But his love of drink, or rather hismild attempts here to arrange some method by which in this droughtyworld he could obtain a little, aroused in Culhane not so muchopposition as an amused contempt, for at bottom I think he really likedthe man. Blake was so orderly, so sincere in his attempts to fulfillconditions, only about once every week or so he would suggest that he beallowed to go to White Plains or Rye, or even New York, on some errandor other--most of which requests were promptly and nearly alwayspublicly refused. For although Culhane had his private suite at one endof the great building, where one might suppose one might go to make aprivate plea, still one could never find him there. He refused toreceive complaints or requests or visits of any kind there. If youwanted to speak to him you had to do it when he was with the group inits entirety--a commonsense enough policy. But just the same there werethose who had reasonable requests or complaints, and these, by a fineintuition as to who was who in this institution and what might beexpected of each one, he managed to hear very softly, withdrawing slowlyas they talked or inviting them into the office. In the main however therequests were very much like those of Blake--men who wanted to get offsomewhere for a day or two, feeling, as they did after a week or two orthree, especially fit and beginning to think no doubt of the variouscomforts and pleasures which the city offered. 

But to all these he was more or less adamant. By hook or by crook, byspecial arrangements with friends or agents in nearby towns and theprincipal showy resorts of New York, he managed to know, providing theydid leave the grounds, either with or without his consent, about wherethey were and what they had done, and in case any of his rules or theiragreements were broken their privileges were thereafter cut off or theywere promptly ejected, their trunks being set out on the roadway infront of the estate and they being left to make their way to shelterelsewhere as best they might. 

On one occasion, however, Blake had been allowed to go to New York overSaturday and Sunday to attend to some urgent business, as he said, he onhis honor having promised to avoid the white lights. Nevertheless he didnot manage so to do but instead, in some comfortable section of thatregion, was seen drinking enough to last him until perhaps he shouldhave another opportunity to return to the city. 

On his return to the "shop" on Monday morning or late Sunday night, Culhane pretended not to see him until noonday lunch, when, his jog overthe long block done with and his bath taken, he came dapperly into thedining-room, wishing to look as innocent and fit as possible. ButCulhane was there before him at his little table in the center of theroom, and patting the head of one of the two pure-blooded collies thatalways followed him about on the grounds or in the house, began asfollows:

"A dog, " he said very distinctly and in his most cynical tone andapparently apropos of nothing, which usually augured that the lightningof his criticism was about to strike somewhere, "is so much better thanthe average man that it's an insult to the dog to compare them. Thedog's really decent. He has no sloppy vices. You set a plate of foodbefore a regularly-fed, blooded dog, and he won't think of gorginghimself sick or silly. He eats what he needs, and then stops. So does acat" (which is of course by no means true, but still--). "A dog doesn'tget a red nose from drinking too much. " By now all eyes were turning inthe direction of Blake, whose nose was faintly tinged. "He doesn't getgonorrhea or syphilis. " The united glances veered in the direction ofthree or four young scapegraces of wealth, all of whom were suspected ofthese diseases. "He doesn't hang around hotel bars and swill and get histongue thick and talk about how rich he is or how old his family is. "(This augured that Blake did such things, which I doubt, but once moreall eyes were shifted to him. ) "He doesn't break his word. Within thelimits of his poor little brain he's faithful. He does what he thinkshe's called upon to do. 

"But you take a man--more especially a gentleman--one of these fellowswho is always very pointed in emphasizing that he is a gentleman" (whichBlake never did). "Let him inherit eight or ten millions, give him acollege education, let him be socially well connected, and what does hedo? Not a damned thing if he can help it except contract vices--run fromone saloon to another, one gambling house to another, one girl toanother, one meal to another. He doesn't need to know anythingnecessarily. He may be the lowest dog physically and in every other way, and still he's a gentleman--because he has money, wears spats and a highhat. Why I've seen fifty poor boob prize fighters in my time who couldput it all over most of the so-called gentlemen I have ever seen. Theykept their word. They tried to be physically fit. They tried to stand upin the world and earn their own living and be somebody. " (He wasprobably thinking of himself. ) "But a gentleman wants to boast of hispast and his family, to tell you that he must go to the city onbusiness--his lawyers or some directors want to see him. Then he swillsaround at hotel bars, stays with some of his lady whores, and then comesback here and expects me to pull him into shape again, to make his nosea little less red. He thinks he can use my place to fall back on when hecan't go any longer, to fix him up to do some more swilling later on. 

"Well, I want to serve notice on all so-called gentlemen here, and _onegentleman_ in particular" (and he heavily and sardonically emphasizedthe words), "that it won't do. This isn't a hospital attached to awhorehouse or a saloon. And as for the trashy little six hundred paidhere, I don't need it. I've turned away more men who have been here onceor twice and have shown me that they were just using this place and meas something to help them go on with their lousy drinking and carousing, than would fill this building. Sensible men know it. They don't try touse me. It's only the wastrels, or their mothers or fathers who bringtheir boys and husbands and cry, who try to use me, and I take 'em onceor twice, but not oftener. When a man goes out of here cured, I know heis cured. I never want to see him again. I want him to go out in theworld and stand up. I don't want him to come back here in six monthssniveling to be put in shape again. He disgusts me. He makes me sick. Ifeel like ordering him off the place, and I do, and that's the end ofhim. Let him go and bamboozle somebody else. I've shown him all I know. There's no mystery. He can do as much for himself, once he's been here, as I can. If he won't, well and good. And I'm saying one thing more:There's one man here to whom this particularly applies today. This ishis last call. He's been here twice. When he goes out this time he can'tcome back. Now see if some of you can remember some of the things I'vebeen telling you. "

He subsided and opened his little pint of wine. 

Another day while I was there he began as follows:

"If there's one class of men that needs to be improved in this country, it's lawyers. I don't know why it is, but there's something in the verynature of the work of a lawyer which appears to make him cynical and towant to wear a know-it-all look. Most lawyers are little more thansharper crooks than the crooks they have to deal with. They're alwaystrying to get in on some case or other where they have to outwit thelaw, save some one from getting what he justly deserves, and then theyare supposed to be honest and high-minded! Think of it! To judge by someof the specimens I get up here, " and then some lawyer in the place wouldturn a shrewd inquiring glance in his direction or steadfastly gaze athis plate or out the window, while the others stared at him, "you wouldthink they were the salt of the earth or that they were following areally noble profession or that they were above or better than other menin their abilities. Well, if being conniving and tricky are fine traits, I suppose they are, but personally I can't see it. Generally speaking, they're physically the poorest fish I get here. They're slow andmeditative and sallow, mostly because they get too little exercise, Ipresume. And they're never direct and enthusiastic in an argument. Alawyer always wants to stick in an 'if' or a 'but, ' to get around you insome way. He's never willing to answer you quickly or directly. I'vewatched 'em now for nearly fifteen years, and they're all more or lessalike. They think they're very individual and different, but they'renot. Most of them don't know nearly as much about life as a good, all-around business or society man, " this in the absence of any desireto discuss these two breeds for the time being. "For the life of me Icould never see why a really attractive woman would ever want to marry alawyer"--and so he would talk on, revealing one little unsatisfactorytrait after another in connection with the tribe, sand-papering theirraw places as it were, until you would about conclude, supposing you hadnever heard him talk concerning any other profession, that lawyers werethe most ignoble, the pettiest, the most inefficient physically andmentally, of all the men he had ever encountered; and in his noblesavage state there would not be one to disagree with him, for he hadsuch an animal, tiger-like mien that you had the feeling that instead ofan argument you would get a physical rip which would leave you bleedingfor days. 

The next day, or a day or two or four or six later--according to hismood--it would be doctors or merchants or society men or politicians hewould discourse about--and, kind heaven, what a drubbing they would get!He seemed always to be meditating on the vulnerable points of hisvictims, anxious (and yet presumably not) to show them what poor, fallible, shabby, petty and all but drooling creatures they were. Thusin regard to merchants:

"The average man who has a little business of some kind, a factory or awholesale or brokerage house or a hotel or a restaurant, usually has adistinctly middle-class mind. " At this all the merchants andmanufacturers were likely to give a very sharp ear. "As a rule, you'llfind that they know just the one little line with which they'reconnected, and nothing more. One man knows all about cloaks and suits"(this may have been a slap at poor Itzky) "or he knows a littlesomething about leather goods or shoes or lamps or furniture, and that'sall he knows. If he's an American he'll buckle down to that littlebusiness and work night and day, sweat blood and make every one elseconnected with him sweat it, underpay his employees, swindle hisfriends, half-starve himself and his family, in order to get a fewthousand dollars and seem as good as some one else who has a fewthousand. And yet he doesn't want to be different from--he wants to bejust like--the other fellow. If some one in his line has a house up onthe Hudson or on Riverside Drive, when he gets his money he wants to gothere and live. If the fellow in his line, or some other that he knowssomething about, belongs to a certain club, he has to belong to it evenif the club doesn't want him or he wouldn't look well in it. He wants tohave the same tailor, the same grocer, smoke the same brand of cigarsand go to the same summer resort as the other fellow. They even want tolook alike. God! And then when they're just like every one else, theythink they're somebody. They haven't a single idea outside their line, and yet because they've made money they want to tell other people howto live and think. Imagine a rich butcher or cloak-maker, or any oneelse, presuming to tell me how to think or live!"

He stared about him as though he saw many exemplifications of hispicture present. And it was always interesting to see how those whom hisdescription really did fit look as though he could not possibly bereferring to them. 

Of all types or professions that came here, I think he disliked doctorsmost. The reason was of course that the work they did or were about todo in the world bordered on that which he was trying to accomplish, andthe chances were that they sniffed at or at least critically examinedwhat he was doing with an eye to finding its weak spots. In many casesno doubt he fancied that they were there to study and copy his methodsand ideas, without having the decency later on to attribute theirknowledge to him. It was short shrift for any one of them with ideas or"notions" unfriendly to him advanced in his presence. For a little whileduring my stay there was a smooth-faced, rather solid physically anddecidedly self-opinionated mentally, doctor who ate at the same smalltable as I and who was never tired of airing his views, medical andotherwise. He confided to me rather loftily that there was, to be sure, something to Culhane's views and methods but that they were"over-emphasized here, over-emphasized. " Still, one could over-emphasizethe value of drugs too. As for himself he had decided to achieve a happymedium if possible, and for this reason (for one) he had come here tostudy Culhane. 

As for Culhane, in spite of the young doctor's condescension andunderstanding, or perhaps better yet because of it, he thoroughlydisliked, barely tolerated, him, and was never tired of commenting onlittle dancing medics with their "pill cases" and easily acquired bookknowledge, boasting of their supposed learning "which somebody else hadpaid for, " as he once said--their fathers, of course. And when they weresick, some of them at least, they had to come out here to him, or theycame to steal his theory and start a shabby grafting sanitarium of theirown. He knew them. 

One noon we were at lunch. Occasionally before seating himself at hissmall central table he would walk or glance about and, having good eyes, would spy some little defect or delinquency somewhere and of courseimmediately act upon it. One of the rules of the repair shop was thatyou were to eat what was put before you, especially when it differedfrom what your table companion received. Thus a fat man at a table witha lean one might receive a small portion of lean meat, no potatoes andno bread or one little roll, whereas his lean acquaintance oppositewould be receiving a large portion of fat meat, a baked or boiledpotato, plenty of bread and butter, and possibly a side dish of somekind. Now it might well be, as indeed was often the case, that eachwould be dissatisfied with his apportionment and would attempt to changeplates. 

But this was the one thing that Culhane would not endure. So upon oneoccasion, passing near the table at which sat myself and theabove-mentioned doctor, table-mates for the time being, he noticed thathe was not eating his carrots, a dish which had been especially preparedfor him, I imagine--for if one unconsciously ignored certain things thefirst day or two of his stay, those very things would be all but rammeddown his throat during the remainder of his stay; a thing concerningwhich one guest and another occasionally cautioned newcomers. Howeverthis may have been in this particular case, he noticed the uneatencarrots and, pausing a moment, observed:

"What's the matter? Aren't you eating your carrots?" We had almostfinished eating. 

"Who, me?" replied the medic, looking up. "Oh, no, I never eat carrots, you know. I don't like them. "

"Oh, don't you?" said Culhane sweetly. "You don't like them, and so youdon't eat them! Well, suppose you eat them here. They may do you alittle good just as a change. "

"But I never eat carrots, " retorted the medic tersely and with a slightshow of resentment or opposition, scenting perhaps a new order. 

"No, not outside perhaps, but here you do. You eat carrots here, see?"

"Yes, but why should I eat them if I don't like them? They don't agreewith me. Must I eat something that doesn't agree with me just becauseit's a rule or to please you?"

"To please me, or the carrots, or any damned thing you please--but eat'em. "

The doctor subsided. For a day or two he went about commenting on what afarce the whole thing was, how ridiculous to make any one eat what wasnot suited to him, but just the same while he was there he ate them. 

As for myself, I was very fond of large boiled potatoes and substantialorders of fat and lean meat, and in consequence, having been so foolishas to show this preference, I received but the weakest, mostcontemptible and puling little spuds and pale orders of meat--with, itis true, plenty of other "side dishes"; whereas a later table-mate ofmine, a distressed and neurasthenic society man, was receiving--I soonlearned he especially abhorred them--potatoes as big as my two fists. 

"Now look at that! Now look at that!" he often said peevishly and with akind of sickly whine in his voice when he saw one being put before him. "He knows I don't like potatoes, and see what I get! And look at thelittle bit of a thing he gives you! It's a shame, the way he nagspeople, especially over this food question. I don't think there's athing to it. I don't think eating a big potato does me a bit of good, oryou the little one, and yet I have to eat the blank-blank things or getout. And I need to get on my feet just now. "

"Well, cheer up, " I said sympathetically and with an eye on the largepotato perhaps. "He isn't always looking, and we can fix it. You mash upyour big potato and put butter and salt on it, and I'll do the same withmy little one. Then when he's not looking we'll shift. "

"Oh, that's all right, " he commented, "but we'd better look out. If hesees us he'll be as sore as the devil. "

This system worked well enough for a time, and for days I was gettingall the potato I wanted and congratulating myself on my skill, when oneday as I was slyly forking potatoes out of his dish, moved helpfully inmy direction, I saw Culhane approaching and feared that our trick hadbeen discovered. It had. Perhaps some snaky waitress has told on us, orhe had seen us, even from his table. 

"Now I know what's going on here at this table, " he growled savagely, "and I want you two to cut it out. This big boob here" (he was referringto my esteemed self) "who hasn't strength of will or character enough tokeep himself in good health and has to be brought up here by hisbrother, hasn't brains enough to see that when I plan a thing for hisbenefit it is for his benefit, and not mine. Like most of the otherdamned fools that come up here and waste their money and my time, hethinks I'm playing some cute game with him--tag or something that willlet him show how much cuter he is than I am. And he's supposed to be awriter and have a little horse-sense! His brother claims it, anyhow. Andas for this other simp here, " and now he was addressing the assembleddiners while nodding toward my friend, "it hasn't been three weeks sincehe was begging to know what I could do for him. And now look athim--entering into a petty little game of potato-cheating!

"I swear, " he went on savagely, talking to the room in general, "sometimes I don't know what to do with such damned fools. The rightthing would be to set these two, and about fifty others in this place, out on the main road with their trunks and let them go to hell. Theydon't deserve the attention of a conscientious man. I prohibitgambling--what happens? A lot of nincompoops and mental lightweightswith more money than brains sneak off into a field of an afternoon onthe excuse that they are going for a walk, and then sit down and lose orwin a bucket of money just to show off what hells of fellows they are, what sports, what big 'I ams. ' I prohibit cigarette-smoking, not becauseI think it's literally going to kill anybody but because I think itlooks bad here, sets a bad example to a lot of young wasters who comehere and who ought to be broken of the vice, and besides, because Idon't like cigarette-smoking here--don't want it and won't have it. Whathappens? A lot of sissies and mamma's boys and pet heirs, whose fathershaven't got enough brains to cut 'em off and make 'em get out and work, come up here, sneak in cigarettes or get the servants to, and then hideout behind the barn or a tree down in the lot and sneak and smoke likea lot of cheap schoolboys. God, it makes me sick! What's the use of aman working out a fact during a lifetime and letting other people havethe benefit of it--not because he needs their money, but that they needhis help--if all the time he is going to have such cattle to deal with?Not one out of twenty or forty men that come here really wants me tohelp him or to help himself. What he wants is to have some one drive himin the way he ought to go, kick him into it, instead of his bucklingdown and helping himself. What's the good of bothering with such damnedfools? A man ought to take the whole pack and run 'em off the place witha dog-whip. " He waved his hand in the air. "It's sickening. It'simpossible. 

"As for you two, " he added, turning to us, but suddenly stopped. "Hell, what's the use! Why should I bother with you? Do as you damned wellplease, and stay sick or die!"

He turned on his heel and walked out of the dining-room, leaving us tosit there. I was so dumbfounded by the harangue our pseudo-clevernesshad released that I could scarcely speak. My appetite was gone and Ifelt wretched. To think of having been the cause of this unnecessarytongue-lashing to the others! And I felt that we were, and justly, thetarget for their rather censorious eyes. 

"My God!" moaned my companion most dolefully. "That's always the waywith me. Nothing that I ever do comes out right. All my life I've beenunlucky. My mother died when I was seven, and my father's never had anyuse for me. I started in three or four businesses four or five yearsago, but none of them ever came out right. My yacht burned last summer, and I've had neurasthenia for two years. " He catalogued a list of illsthat would have done honor to Job himself, and he was worth ninemillions, so I heard!

Two or three additional and amusing incidents, and I am done. 

One of the most outré things in connection with our rides about thecountryside was Culhane's attitude toward life and the natives andpassing strangers as representing life. Thus one day, as I recall verywell, we were riding along a backwoods country road, very shadowy andbranch-covered, a great company of us four abreast, when suddenly andafter his very military fashion there came a "Halt! Right by fours!Right dress! Face!" and presently we were all lined up in a row facing agreensward which had suddenly been revealed to the left and on which, and before a small plumber's stove standing outside some gentleman'sstable, was stretched a plumber and his helper. The former, a man ofperhaps thirty-five, the latter a lad of, say, fourteen or fifteen, wereboth very grimy and dirty, but taking their ease in the morning sun, alittle pot of lead on the stove being waited for, I presume, that itmight boil. 

Culhane, leaving his place at the head of the column, returned to thecenter nearest the plumber and his helper and pointing at them andaddressing us in a very clear voice, said:

"There you have it. There's American labor for you, at its best--unionlabor, the poor, downtrodden workingman. Look at him. " We all looked. "This poor hard-working plumber here, " and at that the latter stirredand sat up, scarcely even now grasping what it was all about, sosuddenly had we descended upon him, "earns or demands sixty cents anhour, and this poor sweating little helper here has to have forty. They're working now. They're waiting for that little bit of lead toboil, at a dollar an hour between them. They can't do a thing, either of'em, until it does, and lead has to be well done, you know, before itcan be used. 

"Well, now, these two here, " he continued, suddenly shifting his tonefrom one of light sarcasm to a kind of savage contempt, "imagine theyare getting along, making life a lot better for themselves, when theylie about this way and swindle another man out of his honest due inconnection with the work he is paying for. He can't help himself. Hecan't know everything. If he did he'd probably find what's wrong inthere and fix it himself in three minutes. But if he did that and theunion heard of it they'd boycott him. They'd come around and blackmailhim, blow up his barn, or make him pay for the work he did himself. Iknow 'em. I have to deal with 'em. They fix my pipes in the same waythat these two are fixing his--lying on the grass at a dollar an hour. And they want five dollars a pound for every bit of lead they use. Ifthey forget anything and have to go back to town for it, you pay forit, at a dollar an hour. They get on the job at nine and quit at four, in the country. If you say anything, they quit altogether--they're_union_ laborers--and they won't let any one else do it, either. Oncethey're on the job they have to rest every few minutes, like these two. Something has to boil, or they have to wait for something. Isn't itwonderful! Isn't it beautiful! And all of us of course are made free andequal! They're just as good as we are! If you work and make money andhave any plumbing to do you have to support 'em--Right by fours! Guideright! Forward!" and off we trotted, breaking into a headlong gallop alittle farther on as if he wished to outrun the mood which was holdinghim at the moment. 

The plumber and his assistant, fully awake now to the import of what hadoccurred, stared after us. The journeyman plumber, who was short andfat, sat and blinked. At last he recovered his wits sufficiently to cry, "Aw, go to hell, you ---- ---- ----!" but by that time we were well alongthe road and I am not sure that Culhane even heard. 

Another day as we were riding along a road which led into a nearby cityof, say, twenty thousand, we encountered a beer truck of great size andon its seat so large and ruddy and obese a German as one might go a longway and still not see. It was very hot. The German was drowsy and takinghis time in the matter of driving. As we drew near, Culhane suddenlycalled a halt and, lining us up as was his rule, called to the horses ofthe brewery wagon, who also obeyed his lusty "Whoa!" The driver, fromhis high perch above, stared down on us with mingled curiosity andwonder. 

"Now, here's an illustration of what I mean, " Culhane began, apropos ofnothing at all, "when I say that the word man ought to be modified orchanged in some way so that when we use it we would mean something moredefinite than we mean now. That thing you see sitting up on thatwagon-seat there--call that a man? And then call me one? Or a man likeCharles A. Dana? Or a man like General Grant? Hell! Look at him! Look athis shape! Look at that stomach! You think a thing like that--call it aman if you want to--has any brains or that he's really any better than apig in a sty? If you turn a horse out to shift for himself he'll eatjust enough to keep in condition; same way with a dog, a cat or a bird. But let one of these things, that some people call a _man_, come along, give him a job and enough money or a chance to stuff himself, and seewhat happens. A thing like that connects himself with one end of a beerhose and then he thinks he's all right. He gets enough guts to start asausage factory, and then he blows up, I suppose, or rots. Think of it!And we call him a man--or some do!"

During this amazing and wholly unexpected harangue (I never saw him stopany one before), the heavy driver, who did not understand English verywell, first gazed and then strained with his eyebrows, not being ablequite to make out what it was all about. From the chuckling and laughterthat finally set up in one place and another he began dimly tocomprehend that he was being made fun of, used as an unsatisfactory jestof some kind. Finally his face clouded for a storm and his eyes blazed, the while his fat red cheeks grew redder. "_Donnervetter!_" he begangutturally to roar. "_Schweine hunde! Hunds knoche! Nach der polizeisoll man reufen!_"

I for one pulled my horse cautiously back, as he cracked a great whip, and, charging savagely through us, drove on. Culhane, having made hisunkind comments, gave orders for our orderly formation once more andcalmly led us away. 

Perhaps the most amusing phase of him was his opposition to and contemptfor inefficiency of any kind. If he asked you to do anything, no matterwhat, and you didn't at once leap to the task ready and willing and ableso to do, he scarcely had words enough with which to express himself. Onone occasion, as I recall all too well, he took us for a drive in histally-ho--one or two or three that he possessed--a great lumbering, highly lacquered, yellow-wheeled vehicle, to which he attached seven oreight or nine horses, I forget which. This tally-ho ride was a regularSunday morning or afternoon affair unless it was raining, a callsuddenly sounding from about the grounds somewhere at eleven or at twoin the afternoon, "Tally-ho at eleven-thirty" (or two-thirty, as thecase might be). "All aboard!" Gathering all the reins in his hands andperching himself in the high seat above, with perhaps one of his guestsbeside him, all the rest crowded willy-nilly on the seats within and ontop, he would carry us off, careening about the countryside most madly, several of his hostlers acting as liveried footmen or outriders and oneof them perched up behind on the little seat, the technical name ofwhich I have forgotten, waving and blowing the long silver trumpet, theregulation blasts on which had to be exactly as made and provided forsuch occasions. Often, having been given no warning as to just when itwas to be, there would be a mad scramble to get into our _de rigueur_Sunday clothes, for Culhane would not endure any flaws in ourappearance, and if we were not ready and waiting when one of hisstablemen swung the vehicle up to the door at the appointed time he wasabsolutely furious. 

On the particular occasion I have in mind we all clambered on in goodtime, all spick and span and in our very best, shaved, powdered, handsappropriately gloved, our whiskers curled and parted, our shoes shined, our hats brushed; and up in front was Culhane, gentleman de luxe for theoccasion, his long-tailed whip looped exactly as it should be, no doubt, ready to be flicked out over the farthest horse's head, and up behindwas the trumpeter--high hat, yellow-topped boots, a uniform of somegrand color, I forget which. 

But, as it turned out on this occasion, there had been a hitch at thelast minute. The regular hostler or stableman who acted as footmanextraordinary and trumpeter plenipotentiary, the one who could truly andably blow this magnificent horn, was sick or his mother was dead. At anyrate, there he wasn't. And in order not to irritate Culhane, a secondhostler had been dressed and given his seat and horn--only he couldn'tblow it. As we began to clamber in I heard him asking, "Can any of yougentleman blow the trumpet? Do any of you gentleman know the regulartrumpet call?"

No one responded, although there was much discussion in a low key. Somecould, or thought they could, but hesitated to assume so frightful arisk. At the same time Culhane, hearing the fuss and knowing perhapsthat his substitute could not trumpet, turned grimly around and said, "Say, do you mean to say there isn't any one back there who knows how toblow that thing? What's the matter with you, Caswell?" he called toone, and getting only mumbled explanations from that quarter, called toanother, "How about you, Drewberry? Or you, Crashaw?"

All three apologized briskly. They were terrified by the mere thought oftrying. Indeed no one seemed eager to assume the responsibility, untilfinally he became so threatening and assured us so volubly that unlesssome immediate and cheerful response were made he would never againwaste one blank minute on a lot of blank-blank this and thats, that oneyouth, a rash young society somebody from Rochester, volunteered more orless feebly that he "thought" that "maybe he could manage it. " He took aseat directly under the pompously placed trumpeter, and we were off. 

"Heigh-ho!" Out the gate and down the road and up a nearby slope at asmart clip, all of us gazing cheerfully and possibly vainly about, forit was a bright day and a gay country. Now the trumpeter, as is providedfor on all such occasions, lifted the trumpet to his lips and began onthe grandiose "ta-ra-ta-ta, " but to our grief and pain, although he gotthrough fairly successfully on his first attempt, there was one placewhere there was a slight hitch, a "false crack, " as some one rowdyishlyremarked. Culhane, although tucking up his lines and stiffening his backirritably at this flaw, said nothing. For after all a poor trumpeter wasbetter than none at all. A little later, however, the trumpeter havinghesitated to begin again, he called back, "Well, what about the horn?What about the horn? Can't you do something with it? Have you quit forthe day?"

Up went the horn once more, and a most noble and encouraging"Ta-ra-ta-ta" was begun, but just at the critical point, and when wewere all most prayerfully hoping against hope, as it were, that thistime he would round the dangerous curves of it gracefully and come to agrand finish, there was a most disconcerting and disheartening squeak. It was pathetic, ghastly. As one man we wilted. What would Culhane sayto that? We were not long in doubt. "Great Christ!" he shouted, lookingback and showing a countenance so black that it was positivelyterrifying. "Who did that? Throw him off! What do you think--that I wantthe whole country to know I'm airing a lot of lunatics? Somebody whocan blow that thing, take it and blow it, for God's sake! I'm not goingto drive around here without a trumpeter!"

For a few moments there was more or less painful gabbling in all therows, pathetic whisperings and "go ons" or eager urgings of one andanother to sacrifice himself upon the altar of necessity, insistences bythe ex-trumpeter that he had blown trumpets in his day as good as anyone--what the deuce had got into him anyhow? It must be the horn!

"Well, " shouted Culhane finally, as a stop-gap to all this, "isn't anyone going to blow that thing? Do you mean to tell me that I'm haulingall of you around, with not a man among you able to blow a dinky littlehorn? What's the use of my keeping a lot of fancy vehicles in my barnwhen all I have to deal with is a lot of shoe salesmen and floorwalkers?Hell! Any child can blow it. It's as easy as a fish-horn. If I hadn'tthese horses to attend to I'd blow it myself. Come on--come on!Kerrigan, what's the matter with you blowing it?"

"The truth is, Mr. Culhane, " explained Mr. Kerrigan, the very dapper andpolite heir of a Philadelphia starch millionaire, "I haven't had anychance to practice with one of those for several years. I'll try it ifyou want me to, but I can't guarantee--"

"Try!" insisted Culhane violently. "You can't do any worse than thatother mutt, if you blow for a million years. Blow it! Blow it!"

Mr. Kerrigan turned back and being very cheerfully tendered the horn bythe last failure, wetted and adjusted his lips, lifted it upward andbackward--and--

It was pathetic. It was positively dreadful, the wheezing, grindingsounds that were emitted. 

"God!" shouted Culhane, pulling up the coach to a dead stop. "Stop that!Whoa! Whoa!!! Do you mean to say that that's the best you can do? Well, this finishes me! Whoa! What kind of a bunch of cattle have I got uphere, anyhow? Whoa! And out in this country too where I'm known andwhere they know all about such things! God! Whoa! Here I spend thousandsof dollars to get together an equipment that will make a pleasantafternoon for a crowd of gentlemen, and this is what I draw--hams! A lotof barflies who never saw a tally-ho! Well, I'm done! I'm through! I'llsplit the damned thing up for firewood before I ever take it out again!Get down! Get out, all of you! I'll not haul one of you back a step!Walk back or anywhere you please--to hell, for all I care! I'm through!Get out! I'm going to turn around and get back to the barn as quick as Ican--up some alley if I can find one. To think of having such a bunch ofhacks to deal with!"

Humbly and wearily we climbed down and, while he drove savagely on tosome turning-place, stood about first in small groups, then by twos andthrees began making our way--rather gingerly, I must confess, in ourfine clothes--along the winding road back to the place on the hill. Butsuch swearing! Such un-Sabbath-like comments! The number of times hissturdy Irish soul was wished into innermost and almost sacrosanctportions of Sheol! He was cursed from more angles and in moreartistically and architecturally nobly constructed phrases and evenparagraphs than any human being that I have ever heard of before orsince, phrases so livid and glistening that they smoked. 

Talk about the carved ivories of speech! The mosaics of verbal preciousstones!

You should have heard us on our way back!

And still we stayed. 

 * * * * *

Some two years later I was passing this place in company with somefriends, when I asked my host, who also knew of the place, to turn in. During my stay it had been the privilege and custom among those who knewmuch of this institution to drive through the grounds and past the verydoors of the "repair shop, " even to stop if Culhane chanced to bevisible and talking to or at least greeting him, in some cases. A customof Culhane's was, in the summer time, to have erected on the lawn alarge green-and-white striped marquee tent, a very handsome thingindeed, in which was placed a field-officer's table and several campchairs, and some books and papers. Here of a hot day, when he was notbusy with us, he would sit and read. And when he was in here orsomewhere about, a little pennant was run up, possibly as guide tovisiting guests or friends. At any rate, it was the presence of thispennant which caused me to know that he was about and to wish that Imight have a look at him once more, great lion that he was. As "guests, "none of us were ever allowed to come within more than ten feet of it, let alone in it. As passing visitors, however, we might, and many did, stop, remind him that we had once been his humble slaves, and ask leaveto congratulate him on his health and sturdy years. At such times, ifthe visitors looked interesting enough, or he remembered them well, hewould deign to come to the tent-fly and, standing there à la Napoleon atLodi or Grant in the Wilderness, be for the first time in his relationswith them a bit civil. 

Anyway, on this occasion, urged on by curiosity to see my liege oncemore and also to learn whether he would remember me at all, I had mypresent host roll his car up to the tent door, where Culhane wasreading. Feeling that by this venturesome deed I had "let myself in forit" and had to "make a showing, " I climbed briskly out and, approaching, recalled myself to him. With a semi-wry expression, half smile, halfcontemptuous curl of the corners of his mouth, he recalled me and tookmy extended hand; then seeing that possibly my friends if not myselflooked interesting, he arose and came to the door. I introducedthem--one a naval officer of distinction, the other the owner of a greatestate some miles farther on. For the first time in my relations withhim I had an opportunity to note how grandly gracious he could be. Heaccepted my friends' congratulations as to the view with a princely nodand suggested that on other days it was even better. He was soon to bebusy now or he would have some one show my friends through the shop. Some Saturday afternoon, if they would telephone or stop in passing, hewould oblige. 

I noted at once that he had not aged in the least. He was sixty-twoor -three now and as vigorous and trim as ever. And now he treated me ascourteously and formally as though he had never browbeaten me in theleast. "Good heavens, " I said, "how much better to be a visitor than aguest!" After a moment or two we offered many thanks and sped on, butnot without many a backward glance on my part, for the place fascinatedme. That simply furnished institution! That severe regimen! Thislatter-day Stoic and Spartan in his tent! And, above all things, and themost astounding to me, so little could one know him, the book he hadbeen reading and which he had laid upon his little table as I entered--Icould not help noting the title for he laid it back up, open facedown--was Lecky's "History of European Morals"!

Now!

Well!

IN RETROSPECT

Two years after this visit, in a serious attempt to set down what Ireally did think of him, I arranged the following thoughts with which Iclosed my sketch then and which I now append for what they may be worth. They represented my best thought concerning him then:

"Thomas Culhane belongs to that class of society which the preachers andthe world's army of conventional merchants, lawyers, judges andreputable citizens generally are presumably, if one may judge by themoral and religious literature of the day, trying to reach and reform. Yet here at his sanitarium are gathered representatives of those sameorders, the so-called better element. And here we see them suddenlydominated, mind and soul, by this being whom they, theoretically atleast, look upon as a brand to be snatched from the burning. 

"As the Church and society view Culhane, so they view all life outsidetheir own immediate circles. Culhane is in fact a conspicuous figureamong the semi-taboo. He has been referred to in many an argument andplatform and pulpit and in the press as a type of man whose influence issupposed to be vitiating. Now a minister enters the sanitarium, brokendown by his habits of life, and this same Culhane is able to penetratehim, to see that his dogmatic and dictatorial mental habits are thecause of his ailment, and he has the moral courage to shock him, to draghim by apparently brutal processes out of his rut. He reads the manaccurately, he knows him better than he knows himself, and he effects acure. 

"This astonishing condition is certainly a new light for those seekingto labor among men. Those who are successful gamblers, pugilists, pickpockets, saloon-keepers, book-makers, jockeys and the like are soby reason of their intelligence, their innate mental acumen andperception. It is a fact that in the sporting world and among theunconventional men-about-town you will often find as good if not betterjudges of human nature than elsewhere. Contact with a rough and readyand all-too-revealing world teaches them much. The world's customarypretensions and delusions are in the main ripped away. They are bruisedby rough facts. Often the men gathered in some such café and whompreachers and moralists are most ready to condemn have a clearerperception of preachers, church organizations and reformers and theirrelative importance in the multitudinous life of the world than thepreachers, church congregations and reformers have of those in the caféor the world outside to which they belong. 

"This is why, in my humble judgment, the Church and those associatedwith its aims make no more progress than they do. While they areconsciously eager to better the world, they are so wrapped up inthemselves and their theories, so hampered by their arbitrary andlimited conceptions of good and evil, that the great majority of menmove about them unseen, except in a far-away and superficial manner. Menare not influenced at arm's length. It would be interesting to know ifsome day a preacher or judge, who, offended by Mr. Culhane's profanityand brutality, will be able to reach the gladiator and convert him tohis views as readily as the gladiator is able to rid him of hisailment. "

In justice to the preachers, moralists, et cetera, I should now like toadd that it is probably not any of the virtues or perfectionsrepresented by a man like Culhane with which they are quarreling, butthe vices of many who are in no wise like him and do not stand for thethings he stands for. At the same time, the so-called "sports" mightwell reply that it is not with any of the really admirable qualities ofthe "unco guid" that they quarrel, but their too narrow interpretationsof virtue and duty and their groundless generalization as to types andclasses. 

Be it so. 

Here is meat for a thousand controversies. 

_A True Patriarch_

In the streets of a certain moderate-sized county seat in Missouri notmany years ago might have been seen a true patriarch. Tall, white-haired, stout in body and mind, he roamed among his neighbors, dispensing sympathy and a curiously genial human interest through theleisure of his day. One might have taken him to be Walt Whitman, of whomhe was the living counterpart; or, in the clear eye, high forehead andthick, appealing white hair, have seen a marked similarity to Bryant ashe appeared in his later years. Already at this time he had seen man'sallotted term on earth, and yet he was still strong in the councils ofhis people and rich in the accumulated interests of a lifetime. 

At the particular time in question he was most interesting for theeccentricities which years of stalwart independence had developed, butthese were lovable peculiarities and only severed from remarkableactions by the compelling power of time and his increasing infirmities. The loud, though pleasant, voice, and strong, often fiery, declamatorymanner, were remnants of the days when his fellow-citizens were whollyswayed by the magnificence of his orations. Charmingly simple in manner, he still represented with it that old courtesy which made every strangerhis guest. When moved by righteous indignation, there cropped out thedaring and domineering insistence of one who had always followed what heconsidered to be the right, and who knew its power. 

Even then, old as he was, if there were any topic worthy of discussion, and his fellow-citizens were in danger of going wrong, he became anharanguing prophet, as it were, a local Isaiah or Jeremiah. Every gateheard him, for he stopped on his rounds in front of each, and callingout the inhabitant poured forth such a volume of fact and argument astended to remove all doubt of what he, at least, considered right. Allof this he invariably accompanied by a magnificence of gesture worthy ofa great orator. 

At such times his mind, apparently, was almost wholly engrossed withthese matters, and I have it from one of his daughters, who, besidesbeing his daughter, was a sincere admirer of his, that often he mighthave been seen coming down his private lawn, and even the public streetswhen there was no one near to hear him, shaking his head, gesticulating, sometimes sweeping upward with his arms, as if addressing hisfellow-citizens in assemblage. 

"He used to push his big hat well back upon his forehead, " she said onone occasion, "and often in winter, forgetful of the bitter cold, wouldtake off his overcoat and carry it on his arm. Occasionally he wouldstop quite still, as if he were addressing a companion, and withsweeping gestures illustrate some idea or other, although, of course, there was no one present. Then, planting his big cane forcibly with eachstep, as though still emphasizing his recently stated ideas, he wouldcome forward and enter the house. "

The same suggestion of mental concentration might have been seen ineverything that he did, and I personally have seen him leading a petJersey cow home for milking with the same dignity of bearing andforcefulness of manner that characterized him when he stood before hisfellow-citizens at a public meeting addressing them on some importanttopic. He never appeared to have a sense of difference from orsuperiority over his fellowmen, but only the keenest sympathy with allthings human. Every man was his brother, every human being honest. A cowor a horse was as much to be treated with sympathy and charity as a manor a woman. If a purse was lost, forty-nine out of every fifty men wouldreturn it without thought of reward, if you were to believe him. 

In the little town where he had lived so many years, and where hefinally died, he knew every living creature from cattle upwards, andcould call each by name. The sick, the poor, the widows, the orphans, the insane, and dependents of all kinds, were his especial care. EverySunday afternoon for years, it was his custom to go the rounds of theindigent, frequently carrying a basket of his good wife's dinner. Thishe distributed, along with consolation and advice. Occasionally he wouldreturn home of a winter's day very much engrossed with the discovery ofsome condition of distress hitherto unseen. 

"Mother, " he would say to his wife in that same oratorical mannerpreviously noted, as he entered the house, "I've found such a poorfamily. They have moved into the old saloon below Solmson's. You knowhow open that is. " This was delivered in the most dramatic style afterhe had indicated something important by throwing his overcoat on the bedand standing his cane in the corner. "There's a man and several childrenthere. The mother is dead. They were on their way to Kansas, but it gotso cold they've had to stop here until the winter is broken. They'rewithout food; almost no clothing. Can't we find something for them?"

"On these occasions, " said his daughter to me once, "he would, as henearly always did, talk to himself on the way, as if he were discussingpolitics. But you could never tell what he was coming for. "

Then with his own labor he would help his wife seek out the odds andends that could be spared, and so armed, would return, arguing by theway as if an errand of mercy were the last thing he contemplated. Nearlyalways the subject of these orations was some public wrong or errorwhich should receive, although in all likelihood it did not, immediateattention. 

Always of a reverent, although not exactly religious, turn of mind, hetook considerable interest in religious ministration, though he steadilyand persistently refused, in his later years, to go to church. He hadSt. James's formula to quote in self-defense, which insists that "Purereligion and undefiled before our God and Father is this, To visit thefatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspottedfrom the world. " Often, when pressed too close, he would deliver thiswith kindly violence. One of the most touching anecdotes representativeof this was related to me by his daughter, who said:

"Mr. Kent, a poor man of our town, was sick for months previous to hisdeath, and my father used to go often, sometimes daily, to visit him. Hewould spend perhaps a few minutes, perhaps an hour, with him, singing, praying, and ministering to his spiritual wants. The pastor of thechurch living so far away and coming only once a month, this dutydevolved upon some one, and my father did his share, and always feltmore than repaid for the time spent by the gratitude shown by the manypoor people he aided in this way. 

"Mr. Kent's favorite song, for instance, was 'On Jordan's Stormy BanksI Stand. ' This he would have my father sing, and his clear voice couldoften be heard in the latter's small house, and seemed to impartstrength to the sick man. 

"Upon one occasion, I remember, Mr. Kent expressed a desire to hear acertain song. My father was not very familiar with it but, anxious togrant his request, came home and asked me if I would get a friend ofmine and go and sing the song for him. 

"We entered the sick-room, he leading us by the hand, for we werechildren at the time. Mr. Kent's face at once brightened, and fathersaid to him:

"'Mr. Kent, I told you this morning that I couldn't sing the song youasked for, but these girls know it, and have come to sing it for you. '

"Then, waving his hand gently toward us, he said:

"'Sing, children. '

"We did so, and when we had finished he knelt and offered a prayer, notfor the poor man's recovery but that he might put his trust in the Lordand meet death without fear. I have never been more deeply impressed norfelt more confident in the presence of death, for the man died soonafter, soothed into perfect peace. "

On another occasion he was sitting with some friends in front of thecourthouse in his town, talking and sunning himself, when a neighborcame running up in great excitement, calling:

"Mr. White, Mr. White, come, right quick. Mrs. Sadler wants you. "

He explained that the woman in question was dying, and, being afraid shewould strangle in her last moments, had asked the bystanders to run forhim, her old acquaintance, in the efficacy of whose prayers she hadgreat faith. The old patriarch was without a coat at the time, but, unmindful of that, hastened after. 

"Mr. White, " exclaimed the sick woman excitedly upon seeing him, "I wantyou to pray that I won't strangle. I'm not afraid to die, but I don'twant to die that way. I want you to offer a prayer for me that I may besaved from that. I'm so afraid. "

Seeing by the woman's manner that she was very much overwrought, heused all his art to soothe her. 

"Have no fear, Mrs. Sadler, now, " he exclaimed solemnly. "You won'tstrangle. I will ask the Lord for you, and this evil will not come uponyou. You need not have any fear. "

"Kneel down, you, " he commanded, turning upon the assembled neighborsand relatives who had followed or had been there before him, while hepushed back his white hair from his forehead. "Let us now pray that thisgood woman here be allowed to pass away in peace. " And even with therustle of kneeling that accompanied his words he lifted up his coatlessarms and began to pray. 

Through his magnificent phraseology, no doubt, as well as his profoundfaith, he succeeded in inducing a feeling of peace and quiet in all hishearers, the sick woman included, who, listening, sank into a restfulstupor, from which all agony of mind had apparently disappeared. Thenwhen the physical atmosphere of the room had been thus reorganized, heceased and retired to the yard in front of the house, where on a benchunder a shade tree he seated himself to wipe his moist brow and recoverhis composure. In a few moments a slight commotion in the sick-roomdenoted that the end had come. Several neighbors came out, and one said, "Well, it is all over, Mr. White. She is dead. "

"Yes, " he replied with great assurance. "She didn't strangle, did she?"

"No, " said the other, "the Lord granted her request. "

"I knew He would, " he replied in his customary loud and confident tone. "Prayer is always answered. "

Then, after viewing the dead woman and making additional comments, hewas off, as placid as though nothing had occurred. 

I happened to hear of this some time after, and one day, while sittingwith him on his front porch, said, "Mr. White, do you really believethat the Lord directly answered your prayer in that instance?"

"Answered!" he almost shouted defiantly and yet with a kind of humantenderness that one could never mistake. "Of course He answered! Whywouldn't He--a faithful old servant like that? To be sure, He answered. "

"Might it not have been merely the change of atmosphere which yourvoice and strength introduced? The quality of your own thoughts goes forsomething in such matters. Mind acts on mind. "

"Certainly, " he said, in a manner as agreeable as if it had always beena doctrine with him. "I know that. But, after all, what is _that_--mymind, your mind, the sound of voices? It's all the Lord anyhow, whateveryou think. "

How could one gainsay such a religionist as that?

The poor, the blind, the insane, and sufferers of all sorts, as I havesaid before, were always objects of his keenest sympathies. Evidence ofit flashed out at the most unexpected moments--loud, rough exclamations, which, however, always contained a note so tender and suggestive as todefy translation. Thus, while we were sitting on his front porch one dayand hotly discussing politics to while away a dull afternoon, there camedown the street, past his home, a queer, ragged, half-dementedindividual, who gazed about in an aimless sort of way, peering queerlyover fences, looking idly down the road, staring strangely overhead intothe blue. It was apparent, in a moment, that the man was crazy, somedemented creature, harmless enough, however, to be allowed abroad and sosave the county the expense of caring for him. The old man broke asentence short in order to point and shake his head emotionally. 

"Look at that, " he said to me, with a pathetic sweep of the arm, "nowjust look at that! There's a poor, demented soul, with no one to lookafter him. His brother is a hard-working saddler. His sister is dead. Nomoney to speak of, any of them. " He paused a moment, and then added, "Idon't know what we're to do in such cases. The state and the countydon't always do their duty. Most people here are too poor to help, thereare so many to be taken care of. It seems almost at times as if youcan't do anything but leave them to the mercy of God, and yet you can'tdo that either, quite, " and he once more shook his head sadly. 

I was for denouncing the county, but he explained very charitably thatit was already very heavily taxed by such cases. He did not seem to knowexactly what should be done at the time, but he was very sorry, very, and for the time being the warm argument in which he had been indulgingwas completely forgotten. Now he lapsed into silence and allcommunication was suspended, while he rocked silently in his great chairand thought. 

One day in passing the local poor-farm (and this is of my ownknowledge), he came upon a man beating a poor idiot with a whip. Thelatter was incapable of reasoning and therefore of understanding why itwas that he was being beaten. The two were beside a wood-pile and thedemented one was crying. In a moment the old patriarch had jumped out ofhis conveyance, leaped over the fence, and confronted the amazedattendant with an uplifted arm. 

"Not another lick!" he fairly shouted. "What do you mean by striking anidiot?"

"Why, " explained the attendant, "I want him to carry in the wood, and hewon't do it. "

"It is not his place to bring in the wood. He isn't put here for that, and in the next place he can't understand what you mean. He's put hereto be taken care of. Don't you dare strike him again. I'll see aboutthis, and you. "

Knowing his interrupter well, his position and power in the community, the man endeavored to explain that some work must be done by theinmates, and that this one was refractory. The only way he had of makinghim understand was by whipping him. 

"Not another word, " the old man blustered, overawing the countyhireling. "You've done a wrong, and you know it. I'll see to this, " andoff he bustled to the county courthouse, leaving the transgressor sobadly frightened that whips thereafter were carefully concealed, in thisinstitution at least. The court, which was held in his home town, wasnot in session at the time, and only the clerk was present when he cametramping down the aisle and stood before the latter with his right handuplifted in the position of one about to make oath. 

"Swear me, " he called solemnly, and without further explanation, as thelatter stared at him. "I want you to take this testimony under oath. "

The clerk knew well enough the remarkable characteristics of his guest, whose actions were only too often inexplicable from the ground point ofpolicy and convention. Without ado, after swearing him, he got out inkand paper, and the patriarch began. 

"I saw, " he said, "in the yard of the county farm of this county, notover an hour ago, a poor helpless idiot, too weak-minded to understandwhat was required of him, and put in that institution by the people ofthis county to be cared for, being beaten with a cowhide by MarkSheffels, who is an attendant there, because the idiot did notunderstand enough to carry in wood, which the people have hired MarkSheffels to carry in. Think of it, " he added, quite forgetting thenature of his testimony and that he was now speaking for dictation andnot for an audience to hear, and going off into a most scorching andbrilliant arraignment of the entire system in which such brutality couldoccur, "a poor helpless idiot, unable to frame in his own disorderedmind a single clear sentence, being beaten by a sensible, healthy brutetoo lazy and trifling to perform the duties for which he was hired andwhich he personally is supposed to perform. "

There was more to the effect, for instance, that the American people andthe people of this county should be ashamed to think that such crimesshould be permitted and go unpunished, and that this was a fair sample. The clerk, realizing the importance of Mr. White in the community, andthe likelihood of his following up his charges very vigorously, quietlyfollowed his address in a very deferential way, jotting down suchsalient features as he had time to write. When he was through, however, he ventured to lift his voice in protest. 

"You know, Mr. White, " he said, "Sheffels is a member of our party, andwas appointed by us. Of course, now, it's too bad that this thing shouldhave happened, and he ought to be dropped, but if you are going to makea public matter of it in this way it may hurt us in the election nextmonth. "

The old patriarch threw back his head and gazed at him in the mostblazing way, almost without comprehension, apparently, of so petty aview. 

"What!" he exclaimed. "What's that got to do with it? Do you want theDemocratic Party to starve the poor and beat the insane?"

The opposition was rather flattened by the reply, and left the oldgentleman to storm out. For once, at least, in this particular instance, anyhow, he had purified the political atmosphere, as if by lightning, and within the month following the offending attendant was dropped. 

Politics, however, had long known his influence in a similar way. Therewas a time when he was the chief political figure in the county, andpossessed the gift of oratory, apparently, beyond that of any of hisfellow-citizens. Men came miles to hear him, and he took occasion tovoice his views on every important issue. It was his custom in thosedays, for instance, when he had anything of special importance to say, to have printed at his own expense a few placards announcing his coming, which he would then carry to the town selected for his address andpersonally nail up. When the hour came, a crowd, as I am told, was neverwanting. Citizens and farmers of both parties for miles about usuallycame to hear him. 

Personally I never knew how towering his figure had been in the past, orhow truly he had been admired, until one day I drifted in upon a lonebachelor who occupied a hut some fifteen miles from the patriarch's homeand who was rather noted in the community at the time that I was therefor his love of seclusion and indifference to current events. He had notvisited the nearest neighboring village in something like five years, and had not been to the moderate-sized county seat in ten. Naturally hetreasured memories of his younger days and more varied activity. 

"I don't know, " he said to me one day, in discussing modern statesmenand political fame in general, "but getting up in politics is a queergame. I can't understand it. Men that you'd think ought to get up don'tseem to. It doesn't seem to be real greatness that helps 'em along. "

"What makes you say that?" I asked. 

"Well, there used to be a man over here at Danville that I alwaysthought would get up, and yet he didn't. He was the finest orator I everheard. "

"Who was he?" I asked. 

"Arch White, " he said quietly. "He was really a great man. He was a goodman. Why, many's the time I've driven fifteen miles to hear him. I usedto like to go into Danville just for that reason. He used to be aroundthere, and sometimes he'd talk a little. He could stir a fellow up. "

"Oratory alone won't make a statesman, " I ventured, more to draw him outthan to object. 

"Oh, I know, " he answered, "but White was a good man. Theplainest-spoken fellow I ever heard. He seemed to be able to tell usjust what was the matter with us, or at least I thought so. He alwaysseemed a wonderful speaker to me. I've seen as many as two thousandpeople up at High Hill hollerin' over what he was saying until you couldhear them for miles. "

"Why didn't he get up, then, do you suppose?" I now asked on my part. 

"I dunno, " he answered. "Guess he was too honest, maybe. It's sometimesthat way in politics, you know. He was a mighty determined man, and onethat would talk out in convention, whatever happened. Whenever they gotto twisting things too much and doing what wasn't just honest, I supposehe'd kick out. Anyhow, he didn't get up, and I've always wondered atit. "

In Danville one might hear other stories wholly bearing out this latteropinion, and always interesting--delightful, really. Thus, a long, enduring political quarrel was once generated by an incident of no greatimportance, save that it revealed an odd streak in the old patriarch'scharacter and his interpretation of charity and duty. 

A certain young man, well known to the people of this county and to thepatriarch, came to Danville one day and either drank up or gambled awaya certain sum of money intrusted to him by his aunt for disposition inan entirely different manner. When the day was all over, however, he wasnot too drunk to realize that he was in a rather serious predicament, and so, riding out of town, traveled a little way and then tearing hisclothes and marking his skin, returned, complaining that he had been setupon by the wayside, beaten, and finally robbed. His clothes were in afine state of dilapidation after his efforts, and even his body boremarks which amply seconded his protestation. In the slush and rain ofthe dark village street he was finally picked up by the county treasurerseemingly in a wretched state, and the latter, knowing the generosityof White and the fact that his door was always open to those indistress, took the young man by the arm and led him to the patriarch'sdoor, where he personally applied for him. The old patriarch, holding alamp over his head, finally appeared and peered outward into thedarkness. 

"Yes, " he exclaimed, as he always did, eyeing the victim; "what is ityou want of me?"

"Mr. White, " said the treasurer, "it's me. I've got young Squiers here, who needs your sympathy and aid tonight. He's been beaten and robbed outhere on the road while he was on his way to his mother's home. "

"Who?" inquired the patriarch, stepping out on the porch and eyeing thenewcomer, the while he held the lamp down so as to get a good look. "Billy Squiers!" he exclaimed when he saw who it was. "Mr. Morton, I'llnot take this man into my house. I know him. He's a drunkard and a liar. No man has robbed him. This is all a pretense, and I want you to takehim away from here. Put him in the hotel. I'll pay his expenses for thenight, but he can't come into my home, " and he retired, closing the doorafter him. 

The treasurer fell back amazed at this onslaught, but recoveredsufficiently to knock at the door once more and declare to his friendthat he deemed him no Christian in taking such a stand and that truereligion commanded otherwise, even though he suspected the worst. Theman was injured and penniless. He even went so far as to quote theparable of the good Samaritan who passed down by way of Jericho andrescued him who had fallen among thieves. The argument had longcontinued into the night and rain before the old patriarch finally wavedthem both away. 

"Don't you quote Scripture to me, " he finally shouted defiantly, stillholding the light and flourishing it in an oratorical sweep. "I know myBible. There's nothing in it requiring me to shield liars and drunkards, not a bit of it, " and once more he went in and closed the door. 

Nevertheless the youth was housed and fed at his expense and no chargeof any kind made against him, although many believed, as did Mr. White, that he was guilty of theft, whereas others of the opposing politicalcamp believed not. However, considerable opposition, based on old Mr. White's lack of humanity in this instance, was generated by thisargument, and for years he was taunted with it although he alwaysmaintained that he was justified and that the Lord did not require anysuch service of him. 

The crowning quality of nearly all of his mercies, as one may easilysee, was their humor. Even he was not unaware, in retrospect, of thefigure he made at times, and would smilingly tell, under provocation, ofhis peculiar attitude on one occasion or another. Partially fromhimself, from those who saw it, and the judge presiding in the case, wasthe following characteristic anecdote gathered. 

In the same community with him at one time lived a certain man by thename of Moore, who in his day had been an expert tobacco picker, but wholater had come by an injury to his hand and so turned cobbler, and arather helpless, although not hopeless, one at that. Mr. White had knownthis man from boyhood up, and had been a witness at various times to themany changes in his fortunes, from the time, for instance, when he hadearned as much as several dollars a day--good pay in that region--to thehour when he took a cobbler's kit upon his back and began to eke out abare livelihood for his old age by traveling about the countrysidemending shoes. At the time under consideration, this ex-tobacco pickerhad degenerated into so humble a thing as Uncle Bobby Moore, a poor, half-remembered cobbler, whose earlier state but few knew, and who atthis time had only a few charitably inclined friends, with some of whomhe spent the more pleasant portion of the year from spring to fall. Thus, it was his custom to begin his annual pilgrimage with a visit often days to Mr. White, where he would sit and cobble shoes for all themembers of the household. From here he would go to another acquaintancesome ten miles farther on, where he could enjoy the early fruit whichwas then ripening in delicious quantity. Then he would visit a friendlyfarmer whose home was upon the Missouri River still farther away, wherehe did his annual fishing, and so on by slow degrees, until at last hewould reach a neighborhood rich in cider presses, where he would wind upthe fall, and so end his travel for the winter, beginning his peculiarround once more the following spring at the home of Mr. White. Naturally the old patriarch knew him and liked him passing well. 

As he grew older, however, Uncle Bobby reached the place where even bythis method and his best efforts he could scarcely make enough tosustain him in comfort during the winter season, which was one of nearlysix months, free as his food and lodging occasionally were. He was toofeeble. Not desiring to put himself upon any friend for more than ashort visit, he finally applied to the patriarch. 

"I come to you, Mr. White, " he said, "because I don't think I can do formyself any longer in the winter season. My hand hurts a good deal and Iget tired so easily. I want to know if you'd won't help me to get intothe county farm during the winter months, anyhow. In summer I can stilllook out for myself, I think. "

In short, he made it clear that in summer he preferred to be out so thathe might visit his friends and still enjoy his declining years. 

The old patriarch was visibly moved by this appeal, and seizing him bythe arm and leading off toward the courthouse where the judge governingsuch cases was then sitting he exclaimed, "Come right down here, UncleBobby. I'll see what can be done about this. Your old age shouldn't betroubled in this fashion--not after all the efforts you have made tomaintain yourself, " and bursting in on the court a few moments later, where a trial was holding at the time, he deliberately led his chargedown the aisle, disturbing the court proceedings by so doing, andcalling as he came:

"Your Honor, I want you to hear this case especially. It's a veryimportant and a very sad case, indeed. "

Agape, the spectators paused to listen. The judge, an old andappreciative friend of his, turned a solemn eye upon this latestevidence of eccentricity. 

"What is it, Mr. White?" he inquired. 

"Your Honor, " returned the latter in his most earnest and oratoricalmanner, "this man here, as you may or may not know, is an old andhonorable citizen of this county. He has been here nearly all the daysof his life, and every day of that time he has earned an honest living. These people here, " he said, gazing about upon the interestedspectators, "can witness whether or not he was one of the best tobaccopickers this county ever saw. Mayhew, " he interrupted himself to call toa spectator on one of the benches, "you know whether Uncle Bobby alwaysearned an honest living. Speak up. Tell the Court, did he?"

"Yes, Mr. White, " said Mayhew quickly, "he did. "

"Morrison, " he called, turning in another direction, where an agedfarmer sat, "what do you know of this man?"

Mr. Morrison was about to reply, when the Court interfered. 

"The Court knows, Mr. White, that he is an honest man. Now what wouldyou have it do?"

"Well, your Honor, " resumed the speaker, indifferently following his ownoratorical bent, the while the company surveyed him, amused and smiling, "this man has always earned an honest living until he injured his handhere in some way a number of years ago, and since then it has beendifficult for him to make his way and he has been cobbling for a living. However, he is getting so old now that he can't even earn much at that, except in the spring and summer, and so I brought him here to have himassigned a place in the county infirmary. I want you to make out anorder admitting him to that institution, so that I can take it and gowith him and see that he is comfortably placed. "

"All right, Mr. White, " replied the judge, surveying the two figures inmid-aisle, "I so order. "

"But, your Honor, " he went on, "there's an exception I want made in thiscase. Mr. Moore has a few friends that he likes to visit in the summer, and who like to have him visit them. I want him to have the privilege ofcoming out in the summer to see these people and to see me. "

"All right, Mr. White, " said the judge, "he shall have that privilege. Now, what else?"

Satisfied in these particulars, the aged citizen led his charge away, and then went with him to the infirmary, where he presented the order ofthe Court and then left him. 

Things went very well with his humble client for a certain time, andUncle Bobby was thought to be well disposed of, when one day he came tohis friend again. It appeared that only recently he had been changedabout in his quarters at the infirmary and put into a room with aslightly demented individual, whose nocturnal wanderings greatlydisturbed his very necessary sleep. 

"I want to know if you won't have them put me by myself, Mr. White, " heconcluded. "I need my sleep. But they say they can't do it without anorder. "

Once more the old patriarch led his charge before the Court, thensitting, as it happened, and breaking in upon the general proceedings asbefore, began:

"Your Honor, this man here, Mr. Moore, whom I brought before you sometime ago, has been comfortably housed by your order, and he's deeplygrateful for it, as he will tell you, and as I can, but he's an old man, your Honor, and, above all things, needs his rest. Now, of late they'vebeen quartering him with a poor, demented sufferer down there who walksa good deal in his sleep, and it wears upon him. I've come here with himto ask you to allow him to have a room by himself, where he will bealone and rest undisturbed. "

"Very well, Mr. White, " said the Court, "it shall be as you request. "

Without replying, the old gentleman turned and led the supplicant away. 

Everything went peacefully now for a number of years, until finallyUncle Bobby, having grown so feeble with age that he feared he was soonto die, came to his friend and asked him to promise him one thing. 

"What is it?" asked the latter. 

By way of replying, the supplicant described an old oak tree which grewin the yard of the Baptist Church some miles from Danville, and said:

"I want you to promise that when I am dead, wherever I happen to be atthe time, that you will see that I am buried under that tree. " He gaveno particular reason save that he had always liked the tree and the viewit commanded, but made his request a very secret matter and begged to beassured that Mr. White would come and get his body and carry it to theold oak. 

The latter, always a respecter of the peculiarities and crotchets of hisfriends, promised. After a few years went by, suddenly one day helearned that Uncle Bobby was not only dead but buried, a thing whichastonished him greatly. No one locally being supposed to know that hewas to have had any special form of burial, the old patriarch at oncerecalled his promise. 

"Where is his body?" he asked. 

"Why, they buried it under the old white oak over at Mt. Horeb Church, "was the answer. 

"What!" he exclaimed, too astonished to think of anything save his lostprivilege of mercy, "who told them to bury him there?"

"Why, _he_ did, " said the friend. "It was his last wish, I believe. "

"The confounded villain, " he shouted, amusingly enough. "He led me tobelieve that I was the only one he told. I alone was to have lookedafter his burial, and now look at him--going and having himself buriedwithout a word. The scoundrel! Would you believe that an old friend likeUncle Bobby would do anything like that? However, " he added after atime, "I think I know how it was. He got so old and feeble here of latethat he must have lost his mind--otherwise he would never have doneanything like that to me. "

And with this he was satisfied to rest and let bygones be bygones. 

_De Maupassant, Junior_

He dawned on me in the spring of 1906, a stocky, sturdy, penetrativetemperament of not more than twenty-four or -five years of age, steady ofeye, rather aloof and yet pervasive and bristling; a devouring type. Without saying much, and seeming to take anything I had to say with agrain of salt, he managed to impress himself on me at once. Frankly, Iliked him very much, although I could see at a glance that he was not sovery much impressed with me. I was an older man than he by, say, tenyears, an editor of an unimportant magazine, newly brought in (which hedid not know) to turn it into something better. In order to earn a fewdollars he had undertaken to prepare for the previous editor a mostridiculous article, some silly thing about newspaper writing as a careerfor women. It had been ordered or encouraged, and I felt that it was butjust that it should be paid for. 

"Why do you waste your time on a thing like that?" I inquired, smilingand trying to criticize and yet encourage him at one and the same time, for I had been annoyed by many similar assignments given out by the oldmanagement which could not now be used. "You look to me to have too muchforce and sense for that. Why not undertake something worth your time?"

"My time, hell!" he bristled, like a fighting sledge-dog, of which bythe way he reminded me. "You show me a magazine in this town that wouldbuy anything that I thought worthy of my time! You're like all the restof them: you talk big, but you really don't want anything veryimportant. You want little things probably, written to a theory or downto 'our policy. ' I know. Give me the stuff. You don't have to take it. It was ordered, but I'll throw it in the waste basket. "

"Not so fast! Not so fast!" I replied, admiring his courage and moved byhis contempt of the editorial and book publishing conditions in America. He was so young and raw and savage in his way, quite animal, and yet howinteresting! There was something as fresh and clean about him as a newlyplowed field or the virgin prairies. He typified for me all the youngunsophisticated strength of my country, but with more "punch" than itusually manifests, in matters intellectual at least. "Now, don't getexcited, and don't snarl, " I cooed. "I know what you say is true. Theydon't really want much of what you have to offer. I don't. Working forsome one else, as most of us do, for the dear circulation department, it's not possible for us to get very far above crowd needs and tastes. I've been in your position exactly. I am now. Where do you come from?"

He told me--Missouri--and some very few years before from its stateuniversity. 

"And what is it you want to do?"

"What's that to you?" he replied irritatingly, with an ingrowing andobvious self-conviction of superiority and withdrawing as though hehighly resented my question as condescending and intrusive. "Youprobably wouldn't understand if I told you. Just now I want to writeenough magazine stuff to make a living, that's all. "

"Dear, dear!" I said, laughing at the slap. "What a bravo we are!Really, you're interesting. But suppose now you and I get down to brasstacks. You want to do something interesting, if you can, and get paidfor it. I rather like you, and anyhow you look to me as though you mightdo the things I want, or some of them. Now, you want to do the leastsilly thing you can--something better than this. I want the least sillystuff I can get away with in this magazine--genuine color out of thelife of New York, if such a thing can be published in an ordinarymagazine. Roughly, here's the kind of thing I want, " and I outlined tohim the probable policy of the magazine under my direction. I had takenan anæmic "white-light" monthly known as _The Broadway_ (!) and wasattempting to recast it into a national or international metropolitanpicture. He thawed slightly. 

"Well, maybe with that sort of idea behind it, it might come tosomething. I don't know. It's _possible_ that you may be the one to doit. " He emphasized the "possible. " "At any rate, it's worth trying. Judging by the snide editors and publications in this town, no one inAmerica wants anything decent. " His lip curled. "I have ambitions of myown, but I don't expect to work them out through the magazines of thistown; maybe not of this country. I didn't know that any change wasunder way here. "

"Well, it is, " I said. "Still, you can't expect much from this either, remember. After all, it seeks to be a popular magazine. We'll see howfar we can go with really interesting material. And now if you know ofany others like yourself, bring them in here. I need them. I'll pay youfor that article, only I'll include it in a better price I'll give youfor something else later, see?"

I smiled and he smiled. His was a warmth which was infectious when hechose to yield, but it was always a repressed warmth, cynical, a bithard; heat chained to a purpose, I thought. He went away and I saw himno more until about a week later when he brought me his first attempt togive me what I wanted. 

In the meantime I was busy organizing a staff which should if possible, I decided after seeing him, include him. I could probably use him as asalaried "special" writer, provided he could be trained to write"specials. " He looked so intelligent and ambitious that he promisedmuch. Besides, the little article which he had left when he came again, while not well organized or arranged as to its ideas or best points, wasexceedingly well written from the point of mere expression. 

And the next thing I had given him to attempt was even better. It was, if I recall correctly, a stirring picture of the East Side, intended toappeal to readers elsewhere than in the city, but while in the matter ofcolor and definiteness of expression as well as choice of words it wasexceptional, it was lacking in, quite as the first one had been, thearrangement of its best points. This I explained to him, and also madeit clear to him that I could show him how if he would let me. He seemedwilling enough, quite anxious, although always with an air of reserve, as if he were accommodating himself to me in this much but no more. Hegrasped the idea of order swiftly, and in a little while, having workedat a table in an outer room, brought me the rearranged material, almostif not quite satisfactory. During a number of weeks and monthsthereafter, working on one "special" and another in this way with me, heseemed finally to grasp the theory I had, or at least to develop amethod of his own which was quite as satisfactory to me, and I was verymuch pleased. A little later I employed him at a regular salary. 

It was pathetic, as I look at it now, the things we were trying to doand the conditions under which we were trying to do them--the rawcommercial force and theory which underlay the whole thing, thenecessity of explaining and fighting for so much that one should not, asI saw it then, have to argue over at all. We were in new rooms, in a newbuilding, filled with lumber not yet placed and awaiting the completionof partitions which, as some one remarked, "would divide us up. " Ourpublisher and owner was a small, energetic, vibrant and colorful soul, all egotism and middle-class conviction as to the need of "push, "ambition, "closeness to life, " "punch, " and what not else, American tothe core, and descending on us, or me rather, hourly as it were, demanding the "hows" and the "whyfors" of the dream which the littlegroup I was swiftly gathering about me was seeking to make real. 

It was essential to me, therefore, that something different should bedone, some new fresh note concerning metropolitan life and action bestruck; the old, slow and somewhat grandiose methods of reporting anddescribing things dispensed with, at least in this instance, and herewas a youth who seemed able to help me do it. He was so vigorous, soavid of life, so anxious to picture the very atmosphere which thismagazine was now seeking to portray. I felt stronger, better for havinghim around. The growth of the city, the character and atmosphere of agiven neighborhood, the facts concerning some great social fortune, event, condition, crime interested him intensely; on the other hand hewas so very easy to teach, quick to sense what was wanted and the orderin which it must be presented. A few brief technical explanations fromme, and he had the art of writing a "special" at his fingertips, andthereafter gave me no real difficulty. 

But what was more interesting to me than his success in grasping mytheory of "special" writing was his own character, as it was revealed tome from day to day in intimate working contact with him under theseconditions. Here, as I soon learned, and was glad to learn, was nonamby-pamby scribbler of the old happy-ending, pretty-nothing school ofliterary composition. On the contrary he sounded, for the first time inmy dealings with literary aspirants of every kind, that sure, sane, penetrating, non-sentimental note so common to the best writers of theContinent, a note entirely free from mush, bravado and cant. He had astyle as clear as water, as simple as rain; color, romance, humor; andif a little too much of vanity and self-importance, still one couldforgive him for they were rather well-based. Already used to dealingwith literary and artistic aspirants of different kinds in connectionwith the publications of which I had been a part, this one appealed tome as being the best of them all and a very refreshing change. 

One day, only a few weeks after I had met him, seeing that I was alertfor fiction, poetry and short essays or prose phantasies, allillustrative of the spirit of New York, he brought me a little poementitled "Neuvain, " which interested me greatly. It was so brief andforceful and yet so delicate, a double triolet of the old French order, but with the modernity and flavor of the streets outside, the conduitcars, hand-organs and dancing children of the pavements. The titleseemed affected, seeing that the English word "Spring" would have doneas well, but it was typical of his mood at the time, his literaryadorations. He was in leash to the French school of which de Maupassantwas the outstanding luminary, only I did not know it at the time. 

"Charming, " I exclaimed quite enthusiastically. "I like this. Let me seeanything else you have. Do you write short stories?"

For answer he merely stared at me for a little while in the mostexamining and arrogant and contemptuous way, as much as to say, "Let mesee if you are really worth my time and trouble in this matter, " or"This sad specimen of alleged mentality is just beginning to suspectthat I might write a short story. " Seeing that I merely smiled mostgenially in return, he finally deigned to say, "Sure, I write shortstories. What do you think I'm in the writing game for?"

"But you might be interested in novels only or plays, or poetry. "

"No, " he returned after a pause and with that same air of unrelievedcondescension, "the short story is what I want to specialize in. "

"Well, " I said to myself, "here is a young cub who certainly has talent, is crowded with it, and yet owing to the kind of thing he is startingout to do and the fact that life will give him slaps and to spare beforehe is many years older, he needs to be encouraged. I was like thatmyself not so long ago. And besides, if I do not encourage this type ofwork financially (which is the best way of all), who will?"

About a week later I was given another and still more gratifyingsurprise, for one day, in his usual condescending manner, he brought tome two short pieces of fiction and laid them most gingerly on my deskwith scarcely a word--"Here was something I might read if I chose, " Ibelieve. The reading of these two stories gave me as much of a start asthough I had discovered a fully developed genius. They were so truly newor different in their point of view, so very clear, incisive, brief, with so much point in them (_The Second Motive_; _The Right Man_). Forby then having been struggling with the short-story problem in othermagazine offices before this, I had become not a little pessimistic asto the trend of American short fiction, as well as long--theimpossibility of finding any, even supposing it publishable once we hadit. My own experience with "Sister Carrie" as well as the fierceopposition or chilling indifference which, as I saw, overtook all thosewho attempted anything even partially serious in America, was enough tomake me believe that the world took anything even slightly approximatingthe truth as one of the rankest and most criminal offenses possible. Onedared not "talk out loud, " one dared not report life as it was, as onelived it. And one of the primary warnings I had received from thepresident of this very organization--a most eager and ambitious anddistressing example of that American pseudo-morality which combines apirate-like acquisitiveness with an inward and absolute conviction ofrighteousness--was that while he wanted something new in fiction, something more virile and life-like than that "mush, " as hecharacterized it, to be found in the current magazines, still (1), itmust have a strong appeal for the general reader (!); and (2), be verycompelling in fact and _clean_, as the dear general reader would ofcourse understand that word--a solid little pair of millstones whichwould unquestionably end in macerating everything vital out of any goodstory. 

Still I did not despair; something might be done. And though I sighed, Ihoped to be able to make my superior stretch a point in favor of theexceptional thing, or, as the slang phrase went, "slip a few over onhim, " but that of course meant nothing or something, as you choose. Mydream was really to find one or many like this youth, or a pungent kindof realism that would be true and yet within such limits as would makeit usable. Imagine, then, my satisfaction in finding these two things, tales that I could not only admire genuinely but that I could publish, things that ought to have an interest for all who knew even a littleabout life. True, they were ironic, cruel, but still with humor andcolor, so deftly and cleanly told that they were smile-provoking. Icalled him and said as much, or nearly so--a mistake, as I sometimesthink now, for art should be long--and bought them forthwith, hoping, almost against hope, to find many more such like them. 

By this time, by the way, and as I should have said before, I had stillfurther enlarged my staff by one art director of the most flamboyant anderratic character, a genius of sorts, volatile, restless, emotional, colorful, a veritable Verlaine-Baudelaire-Rops soul, who, not content toarrange and decorate the magazine each month, must needs wish to write, paint, compose verse and music and stage plays, as well as move in anupper social world, _entrée_ to which was his by birth. Again, there wasby now an Irish-Catholic makeup editor, a graduate of some distinguishedsectarian school, who was more interested in St. Jerome and his_Vulgate_, as an embodiment of classic Latin, than he was in getting outthe magazine. Still he had the advantage of being interesting--"and Ilearned about Horace from him. " Again, there was a most interesting andyouthful and pretty, if severe, example of the Wellesley-Mt. Holyoke-Bryn Mawr school of literary art and criticism, a mostengagingly interesting intellectual maiden, who functioned as assistanteditor and reader in an adjoining room, along with the art-director, themakeup editor and an office boy. This very valuable and in somerespects remarkable young woman, who while holding me in propercontempt, I fear, for my rather loose and unliterary ways, was still, asI had suspected before employing her, as keen for something new andvital in fiction and every other phase of the scriptic art as any onewell could be. She was ever for culling, sorting, eliminating--repressioncarried to the N-th power. At first L---- cordially hated her, callingher a "simp, " a "bluff, " a "la-de-da, " and what not. In addition tothese there was a constantly swelling band of writers, artists, poets, critics, dreamers of reforms social, and I know not what else, who, holding the hope of achieving their ends or aims through some reallyforceful magazine, were by now beginning to make our place a center. Itfairly swarmed for a time with aspirants; an amusing, vivid, stridentworld. 

As for L----, all this being new to him, he was as interested, fascinated even, as any one well might be. He responded to it almostgayly at times, wondering whether something wonderful, international, enduring might not be made to come of it. He rapidly developed into oneof the most pertinacious and even disconcerting youths I have ever met. At times he seemed to have a positive genius for saying and doingirritable and disagreeable things, not only to me but to others. Neverhaving heard of me before he met me here, he was convinced, I think, that I was a mere nothing, with some slight possibilities as an editormaybe, certainly with none as a writer or as one who could even suggestanything to writers. I had helped him, but that was as it should be. Asfor my art-director, he was at first a fool, later a genius; ditto mymakeup man. 

As for Miss E----, the Wellesley-Bryn Mawr-Mt. Holyoke assistant, whofrom the first had agreed with me that here indeed was a writer ofpromise, a genius really, he, as I have said, at first despised her. Later, by dint of exulting in his force, sincerity of purpose, his keeninsight and all but braggart strength, she managed, probably on accountof her looks and physical graces, to install herself in his confidenceand to convince him that she was not only an honest admirer of his skillbut one who had taste and judgment of no mean caliber. Thereafter hewas about as agreeable as a semi-caged wild animal would be about anyoffice. 

But above all he was affronted by M----, the publisher of the paper, concerning whom he could find no words equal to his contemptuousthoughts of him. The publisher, as L---- made quite bold to say to me, was little more than a "dodging, rat-like financial ferret, " a"financial stool-pigeon for some trust or other, " a "shrewd, materiallittle shopkeeper. " This because M---- was accustomed to enter and forcea conversation here and there, anxious of course to gather the fullimport of all these various energies and enthusiasms. One of the thingswhich L---- most resented in him at the time was his air of supremematerial well-being, his obvious attempt and wish not to convey it, hiscarefully-cut clothes, his car, his numerous assistants and secretariesfollowing him here and there from various other organizations with whichhe was connected. 

M----'s idea, as he always said, was to spend and to live, only itwasn't. He merely induced others so to do. One of his customs (and itmust have impressed L---- very much, innocent newcomer that he was) wasto have one or another of his hirelings announce his passing from one"important" meeting to another, within or without his own building, telephone messages being "thrown in" on his line or barred out, whereverhe happened to be at the moment and when, presumably, he was deep in oneof those literary conferences or confidences with one employee oranother or with a group, for which he rapidly developed a passion. Another of his vanities was to have his automobile announced and he bealmost forced into it by impetuous secretaries, who, because of orderspreviously given, insisted that he must be made to keep certainimportant engagements. Or he would send for one of his hirelings, wherever he chanced to be--club, restaurant, his home--midnight ifnecessary, to confer with him on some subject of great moment, and thehireling was supposed to call a taxi and come post haste in order thathe might not be kept waiting. 

"God!" L---- once remarked in my presence. "To think that a thinkingbeing has to be beholden to a thing like that for his weekly income!Somebody ought to tap him with a feather-duster and kill him!"

But the manner in which L---- developed in this atmosphere! It wasinteresting. At first, before the magazine became so significant orwell-organized, it was a great pleasure for me to associate with himoutside office hours, and a curious and vivid companion he made. He wasso intensely avid of life, so intolerant of the old, of anythingdifferent to that which he personally desired or saw, that at times itwas most difficult to say anything at all for fear of meeting a rebuffor at least a caustic objection. As I was very pleased to note, he had apassion for seeing, as all youth should have when it first comes to thegreat city--the great bridges, the new tunnels just then being completedor dug, the harbor and bay, Coney Island, the two new and great railwayterminals, then under construction. Most, though, he reveled indifferent and even depressing neighborhoods--Eighth Avenue, forinstance, about which he later wrote a story, and a very good one ("AQuiet Duet"); Hell's Kitchen, that neighborhood that lies (or did), onthe West Side of Manhattan, between Eighth and Tenth Avenues, Thirty-sixth and Forty-first Streets; Little Italy, the region belowDelancey and north of Worth Street on the East Side; Chinatown;Washington Street (Syria in America); the Greeks in Twenty-seventh and-eighth Streets, West Side. All these and many more phases of New York'smultiplex life took his full and restless attention. Once he said to mequite excitedly, walking up Eighth Avenue at two in the morning--I wasshowing him some rear tenement slums in the summertime--"God, how I hateto go to bed in this town! I'm afraid something will happen while I'masleep and I won't see it!" That was exactly how he felt all the time, Iam sure. 

And in those days he was most simple, a very Spartan of a boy. He hadn'tthe least taste for drink, lived in a small hall-bedroomsomewhere--Eighth Avenue, I believe--and took his meals in those shabbylittle quick-lunch rooms where the characters were more important to himthan the food. (My hat--my hat is in my hand!) Intellectually he was sostern and ambitious that I all but stood in awe of and reverence beforehim. Here, I said to myself, is one who will really do; let him be assavage as he pleases. In America he probably needs to be. 

And during this short time, what scraps of his early life he revealed!By degrees I picked up bits of his early deprivations and difficulties, if such they might be called. He had been a newspaper reporter, or hadtried to be, in Kansas City, had worked in the college restaurant andlaundry of the middle-West State university from which he had graduated, to help pay his way. Afterward he had assisted the janitor of some greatskyscraper somewhere--Kansas City, I believe--and, what was mostpleasing to me, he in nowise emphasized these as youthful difficultiesor made any comment as to their being "hard. " Neither did he try toboastingly minimize them as nothing at all--another wretched pose. Fromhim I learned that throughout his youth he had been carried here andthere by the iron woman who was his mother and whom he seemed to adorein some grim contentious way, smothering his comments as though hedisliked to say anything at all, and yet describing her at times ascoarse and vulgar, but a mother to him "all right, " someone who had mademarked sacrifices for him. 

She had once "run" a restaurant in a Western mining camp, had then orlater carried him as a puling baby under her shawl or cloak across theMojave Desert, on foot a part of the way. Apparently he did not know whohis father was, and he was not very much concerned to know whether shedid or not. His father had died, he said, when he was a baby. Later hismother, then a cook in some railroad hotel in Texas, had sent him toschool there. Later still she had been a "bawler out, " if you know whatthat means, an employee of a loan shark and used by him to compeldelinquent, albeit petty and pathetic, creditors to pay their dues orthen and there, before all their fellow-workers, be screamed at fortheir delinquency about the shop in which they worked! Later she becamea private detective! an insurance agent--God knows what--a kind of roughman-woman, as she turned out to be, but all the while clinging to thisboy, her pet, no doubt her dream of perfection. She had by turns senthim to common and high school and to college, remitting him such sums ofmoney as she might to pay his way. Later still (at that very time infact) she was seeking to come to New York to keep house for him, onlyhe would not have that, perhaps sensing the need of greater freedom. Buthe wrote her regularly, as he confessed to me, and in later years Ibelieve sent her a part of his earnings, which were to be saved by herfor him against a rainy day. Among his posthumous writings later I founda very lovely story ("His Mother"), describing her and himself inunsparing and yet loving terms, a compound of the tender and the brutalin his own soul. 

The thing that always made me hope for the best was that at that time hewas not at all concerned with the petty little _moralic_ and economicdefinitions and distinctions which were floating about his Americanworld in one form and another. Indeed he seemed to be entirely free ofand even alien to them. What he had heard about the indwelling andabiding perfections of the human soul had gone, and rightly so, in oneear and out the other. He respected the virtues, but he knew of andreckoned with die antipathetic vices which gave them their reason forbeing. To him the thief was almost as important as the saint, the reasonfor the saint's being. And, better still, he had not the least interestin American politics or society--a wonderful sign. The American dream of"getting ahead" financially and socially was not part of him--anothermark royal. All life was fascinating, acceptable, to be interpreted ifone had the skill; it was a great distinction to have the skill--worthendless pains to acquire it. 

But how unwilling would the average American of his day have been, stuffed as he was and still is with book and picture drivel aboutartists and art, to accept L---- as anything more than a raw, callowyokel, presuming to assail the outer portals of the temple with hismuddy feet! A romping, stamping, irritable soul, with more the air of ayoung railroad brakeman or "hand, " than an artist, and with so muchcoarse language at times and such brutality of thought as to bar himcompletely, one might say, from having anything to do with greatfiction, great artistic conceptions, or the temple of art. What, sitwith the mighty!--that coarse youth, with darkish-brown hair parted atone side and combed over one ear, in the manner of a grandiose barber;with those thick-soled and none too shapely brown shoes, that none toowell-made store suit of clothes, that little round brown hat, moreoften a cap, pulled rather savagely and vulgarly, even insultingly, overone eye; that coarse frieze overcoat, still worn on cold spring days, its "corners" back and front turned up by the damp and from beingindifferently sat on; that brash corn-cob pipe and bag of cheap tobacco, extracted and lit at odd moments; what, that youth with the aggressive, irritating vibrant manner--almost the young tough with a chip on hisshoulder looking for one to even so much as indicate that he is not allhe should be! Positively, there was something brutal and yet cosmic (notcomic) about him, his intellectual and art pretensions considered. Attimes his waspishness and bravado palled even on me. He was tooaggressive, too forceful, too intolerant, I said. He should be softer. At other times I felt that he needed to be all that and more to "getby, " as he would have said. I wanted to modify him a little--and yet Ididn't--and I remained drawn to him in spite of many irritating littlecircumstances, all but infuriating at times, and actually calculated, itseemed, with a kind of savage skill to reduce what he conceived to be mylofty superiority. At times I thought he ought to be killed--like afather meditating on an unruly son--but the mood soon passed and hisliterary ability made amends for everything. 

In so far as the magazine was concerned, once it began to grow andattract attention he was for me its most important asset; not that hedid so much directly as that he provided a definite standard towardwhich we all had to work. Not incuriously, he was swiftly recognized forwhat he was by all who came in touch with the magazine. In the firstplace, interested in his progress, I had seen to it that he was properlyintroduced wherever that was possible and of benefit to him, and lateron, by sheer force of his mental capacity and integrity, his dreams andhis critical skill, he managed to center about him an entire band ofseeking young writers, artists, poets, playwrights, aspiring musicians;an amusing and as interesting a group as I have ever seen. Their pointsof rendezvous appeared to be those same shabby quick-lunches in backstreets or even on the principal thoroughfares about Times Square, orthey met in each other's rooms or my office at night after I had gone, giving me as an excuse that they had work to do. And during all thistime the air fairly hummed with rumors of new singers, dancers, plays, stories being begun or under way, articles and essays contemplated;avid, if none too well financed frolics or bohemian midnight suppershere and there. Money was by no means plentiful, and in consequencethere was endless borrowing and "paying up" among them. Among the mostenthusiastic members of this circle, as I had begun to note, and finallyrather nervously, were my art-director, a valiant knight in Bohemia ifever there was one, and she of Bryn Mawr-Wellesley standards. My makeupeditor, as well as various contributors who had since become more orless closely identified with the magazine, were also following him upall the time. 

If not directly profitable it was enlivening, and I was fairly wellconvinced by now that from the point of view of being "aware, " "in touchwith, " "in sympathy with" many of the principal tendencies andundercurrents which make for a magazine's success and precedence, thisgroup was as valuable to me as any might well be. It constituted a"kitchen cabinet" of sorts and brought hundreds of interesting ideas tothe surface, and from all directions. Now it would be a new and hithertounheard-of tenor who was to be brought from abroad and introduced withgreat noise to repute-loving Americans; a new sculptor or painter whohad never been heard of in America; a great actor, perhaps, or poet orwriter. I listened to any quantity of gossip in regard to new movementsthat were ready to burst upon the world, in sculpture, painting, thescriptic art. About the whole group there was much that was exceedinglywarm, youthful, full of dreams. They were intensely informative and fullof hope, and I used to look at them and wonder which one, if any, wasdestined to have his dreams realized. 

Of L---- however I never had the least doubt. He began, it is true, toadopt rather more liberal tendencies, to wish always to be part andparcel of this gayety, this rushing here and there; and he drank attimes--due principally, as I thought, to my wildling art-director, whohad no sense or reserve in matters material or artistic and who was allfor a bacchanalian career, cost what it might. On more than one occasionI heard L---- declaring roundly, apropos of some group scheme ofpilgrimage, "No, no! I will not. I am going _home_ now!" He had a storyhe wanted to work on, an article to finish. At the same time he wouldoften agree that if by a certain time, when he was through, they werestill at a certain place, or a second or third, he would look them up. Never, apparently, did his work suffer in the least. 

And it was about this time that I began to gather the true source andimport of his literary predisposition. He was literally obsessed, as Inow discovered, with Continental and more especially the Frenchconception of art in writing. He had studied the works as well as thetemperaments and experiences (more especially the latter, I fear) ofsuch writers as de Maupassant, Flaubert, Baudelaire, Balzac, de Musset, Sand, Daudet, Dumas junior, and Zola, as well as a number of the morerecent writers: Hervieu, Bourget, Louys and their contemporaries. Mostof all, though, he was impressed, and deeply, by the life and art of deMaupassant, his method of approach, his unbiased outlook on life, hisfreedom from moral and religious and even sentimental predisposition. Inthe beginning of his literary career I really believe he slaved toimitate him exactly, although he could not very well escape the Americantemperament and rearing by which he was hopelessly conditioned. Acertain Western critic and editor, to whom he had first addressed hishopes and scribblings before coming to me, writing me after L----'sdeath in reference to a period antedating that in which I had known him, observed, "He was crazy about the _fin de siècle_ stuff that then heldthe boards and from which (I hope the recording angel will put it to mycredit) I steered him clear. " I think so; but he was still very muchinterested in it. He admired Aubrey Beardsley, the poster artists ofFrance, Verlaine, Baudelaire, Rops, the Yellow Book, even Oscar Wilde, although his was a far more substantial and plebeian and even radicalpoint of view. 

Unfortunately for L----, I have always thought, there now thrust himselfforward the publisher and owner of the magazine, who from previouslyhaving been content to see that the mercantile affairs of the magazinewere in good order, had decided that since it was attracting attentionhe should be allowed to share in its literary and artistic prestige, should indeed be closely identified with it and recognized as its truesource and inspiration--a thing which in no fashion had beencontemplated by me when I went there. From having agreed very distinctlywith me that no such interference would at any time be indulged in, henow came forward with a plan for an advisory council which was toconsist of himself and the very members of the staff which I hadcreated. 

I could not object and it did not disturb me so much personally. Forsome time I had been sensing that the thing was for me no end in itself, but an incident. This same I felt to be true for L----, who had beentaking more and more interest in the magazine's technical composition. At the same time I saw no immediate way of arranging my affairs anddeparting, which left me, for a very little while, more or less of aspectator. During this time I had the dissatisfaction of noting thegrowth of an influence with L---- which could, as I saw, prove onlyharmful. M---- was no suitable guide for him. He was a brilliant butsuperficial and very material type who was convinced that in the havingand holding of many things material--houses, lands, corporation stocks, a place in the clubs and circles of those who were materiallyprosperous--was really to achieve all that was significant in the now orthe hereafter. Knowing comparatively nothing of either art or letters, or that subtle thing which makes for personality and atmosphere in amagazine or in writing (and especially the latter), that gratefulsomething which attracts and detains one, he was nevertheless convincedthat he did. And what was more, he was determined not only to makefriends with and hold all those whom I might have attracted, providingthey could prove useful to him, but also a number of a much moresuccessful group in these fields, those who had already achieved reputein a more commonplace and popular way and were therefore presumablypossessed of a following and with the power to exact a high return fortheir product, and for the magazine, regardless of intrinsic merit. Hisconstant talk was of money, its power to attract and buy, thesignificance of all things material. He now wanted the magazine to berepresentative of this glowing element, and at the same time, paradoxical as it might seem, the best that might be in literary andartistic thought. 

Naturally the thing was impossible, but he had a facile and speciousmethod of arguing, a most gay and in some respects magnetic personality, far from stodgy or gross, which for a time attracted many to him. Verybriskly then indeed he proceeded to make friends with all those withwhom I had surrounded myself, to enter into long and even privatediscussions with them as to the proper conduct of the magazine, to hintquite broadly at a glorious future in which all, each one particularlyto whom he talked, was to share. Curiously, this new and (as I wouldhave thought) inimical personality of M---- seemed to appeal to L----very much. 

I do not claim that the result was fatal. It may even, or at leastmight, have had value, combined with an older or slightly more balancedtemperament. But it seemed to me that it offered too quickly what shouldhave come, if at all, as the result of much effort. For in regard to thevery things L---- should have most guarded against--show and the shallowpleasures of social and night and material life in New York--M---- wasmost specious. I never knew a more intriguing and fascinating man inthis respect nor one who cared less for those he used to obtain hisunimportant ends. He had positive genius for making the gaudy and theunworthy seem worthy and even perfect. During his earlier days there, L---- had more than once "cursed him out" (in his absence, of course), to use his own expressive phrase, for his middle-West trade views, as hedescribed them, his shabby social and material ideals, and yet, as Icould plainly see, even at that time the virus of his theories wasworking. For it must be remembered that L---- was very new to New York, very young, and never having had much of anything he was no doubtslightly envious of the man's material facility, the sense ofall-sufficiency, exclusiveness and even a kind of petty trade grandeurwith which he tried to surround himself. 

Well, that might not have proved fatal either, only L---- needed some oneto keep him true to himself, his individual capabilities, to constantlycaution and if possible sober him to his very severe taste, and as itwas he was all but surrounded by acolytes and servitors. 

A little later, having left M----'s and assumed another editorialposition, and being compelled to follow the various current magazinesmore or less professionally, I was disturbed to note that there began toappear in various publications--especially M----'s, which wasflourishing greatly for the moment--stories which while exhibiting muchof the deftness and repression as well as an avidity for the true colorof things, still showed what I had at first feared they might: a decidedcompromise. That curse of all American fiction, the necessarily happyending, had been impressed on him--by whom? To my sinceredissatisfaction, he began writing stories, some at least, whichconcerned (1), a young woman who successfully abandoned art dreams foradvertising; (2), a middle-aged charmer, female, who attempted_libertinage_ and was defeated, American style; (3), a Christmas picturewith sweetness and light reigning on every hand (Dickens at hissentimentalest could have done no worse); (4), a Broadway press agentwho, attempting to bring patronage to a great hotel via chic vice, accidentally and unintentionally mates an all-too-good young society manturned hotel manager to a grand heiress. And so on and so on, not adinfinitum but for a period at least--the ten years in which he managedto live and work. 

And, what was more, during this new period I heard and occasionally sawdiscouraging things in connection with him from time to time. True tohis great promise, for I sincerely think M---- had a genuine fondnessfor his young protégé, as much of a fondness as he could well have foranything, he guaranteed him perhaps as much as three thousand a year;sent him to Stockholm at the age of twenty-four or -five to meet andgreet the famous false pole discoverer, Doctor Cook; allowed him to goto Paris in connection with various articles; to Rome; sent him into themiddle and far West; to Broadway for dramatic and social studies. Welland good, only he wanted always in what was done for him the "uplift"note, the happy ending--or at least one not vulgar or low--whereas myidea in connection with L----, gifted as he was, was that he shouldconfine himself to fiction as an art and without any regard to theoriesor types of ending, believing, as I did, that he would definitelyestablish himself in that way in the long run. I had no objection ofcourse to experiences of various kinds, his taking up with any line ofwork which might seem at the moment far removed from realistic writing, providing always that the star of his ideal was in sight. Whenever hewrote, be it early or late, it must be in the clear, incisive, uncompromising vein of these first stories and with that passion forrevelation which characterized him at first, that same unbiased andunfettered non-moral viewpoint. 

But after meeting with and working for M---- under this new arrangementand being apparently fascinated for the moment by his personality, heseemed to me to gradually lose sight of his ideal, to be actually takenin by the plausible arguments which the latter could spin with the easethat a spider spins gossamer. In that respect I insist that M---- was abad influence. Under his tutelage L---- gradually became, for instance, an habitué of a well-known and pseudo-bohemian chop-house, a mostmawkish and naïvely imitative affair, intended frankly to be a copy oreven the original, forsooth, of an old English inn, done, in so far asits woodwork was concerned, in smoked or dark-stained oak to representan old English interior, its walls covered with long-stemmed pipes andpictures of English hunting and drinking scenes, its black-stained butunvarnished tables littered with riding, driving and country-lifesociety papers, to give it that air of _sans ceremonie_ with an upperworld of which its habitués probably possessed no least inkling but mosteagerly craved. Here, along with a goodly group of his latter-dayfriends, far different from those by whom he had first beensurrounded--a pretentious society poet of no great merit butconsiderable self-emphasis, a Wall Street broker, posing as a club man, _raconteur_, "first-nighter" and what not, and several young andambitious playwrights, all seeking the heaven of a Broadway success--hebegan to pose as one of the intimates of the great city, its bosom childas it were, the cynosure and favorite of its most glitteringprecincts--a most M-----like proceeding. His clothes by now, for I sawhim on occasion, had taken on a more lustrous if less convincing aspectthan those he had worn when I first knew him. The small round hat orrakish cap, typical of his Western dreams, had now given way to a mostpretentious square-topped derby, beloved, I believe, of undertakers anda certain severe type of banker as well as some clergymen, only it was alight brown. His suit and waistcoat were of a bright English tweed, reddish-brown or herring-bone gray by turns, his shoes box-toedperfections of the button type. He carried a heavy cane, often a brightleather manuscript case, and seemed intensely absorbed in the great anddramatic business of living and writing. "One must, " so I read him atthis time, "take the pleasures as well as the labors of this world withthe utmost severity. " Here, with a grand manner, he patronized themanager and the waiters, sent word to his friend the cook, who probablydid not know him at all, that his chop or steak was to be done just so. These friends of his, or at least one of them (the poet) he met everyday at five for an all-essential game of chess, after which an eveningpaper was read and the chop ordered. Ale--not beer--in a pewter mug was_comme il faut_, the only thing for a gentleman of letters, worthy ofthe name, to drink. 

I am sorry to write so, for after all youth must have its fling. Still, I had expected better of L----, and I was a little disappointed to seethat earlier dream of simplicity and privation giving way to anabsolutely worthless show. Besides, twenty or thirty such stories as"The Right Man, " "Sweet Dreams, " "The Man With the Broken Fingers, " "TheSecond Motive, " would outweigh a thousand of the things he was gettingpublished and the profits of which permitted him these airs. 

Again, during the early days of his success with M----, he hadmarried--a young nurse who had previously been a clerk in a store, aserious, earnest and from one point of view helpful person, seeing thatshe could keep his domestic affairs in order and bear him children, which she did, but she had no understanding of, or flair for, the typeof thing he was called upon to do. She had no instinct for literature orthe arts, and aside from her domestic capacities little skill or tastefor "socializing. " And, naturally, he was neglecting her. His head wasprobably surging with great ideas of art and hence a social supremacywhich might well carry him anywhere. He had bought a farm some distancefrom New York, where in a community supposedly inhabited by successfuland superior men of letters he posed as a farmer at times, mowing andcocking hay as became a Western plow-boy; and also, as the mood movedhim, and as became a great and secluded writer, working in a denentirely surrounded by books in fine leather bindings (!) and beingvisited by those odd satellites of the scriptic art who see in genius ofthis type the _summum bonum_ of life. It was the thing to do at thattime, for a writer to own a farm and work it. Horace had. One individualin particular, a man of genuine literary and critical ability and greattaste in the matter of all the arts but with no least interest in ortolerance for the simplicities of effort, came here occasionally, as Iheard, to help him pile hay, and this in a silk shirt and a monocle; asecond--and a most fascinating intellectual _flaneur_, who, however, hadno vision or the gift of dreams--came to eat, drink, talk of many thingsto be done, to steal a few ideas, borrow a little money perhaps orconsume a little morphine, and depart; a third came to spout of hissuccess in connection with plays, or his proposed successes; a fourth topaint a picture, urged on by L----; a fifth to compose rural verse; asixth, a broker or race-track tout or city bar-tender (for color, thislast), to marvel that one of L----'s sense, or any one indeed, shouldlive in the country at all. There were drinking bouts, absolutedrunkenness, in which, according to the Johnsonian tradition and that ofMessieurs Rabelais and Molière, the weary intellect and one's guidinggenius were immersed in a comforting Lethe of rye. 

Such things cost money, however. In addition, my young friend, due to adesire no doubt to share in the material splendors of his age (adoctrine M---- was ever fond of spouting--and as a duty, if you please), had saddled himself, for a time at least, with an apartment in anexclusive square on the East Side, the rent of which was a severe drain. Before this there had been, and after it were still, others, obligationstoo much for him to bear financially, all in the main taken for show, that he might be considered a literary success. Now and again (so I wastold by several of his intimates), confronted by a sudden exhaustion ofhis bank balance, he would leave some excellent apartment house orneighborhood, where for a few months he had been living in grand style, extracting his furniture as best he might, or leaving it and variousdebts beside, and would take refuge in some shabby tenement, or rearrooms even, and where, touched by remorse or encouraged by the greatliterary and art traditions (Balzac, Baudelaire, Johnson, Goldsmith, Verlaine) he would toil unendingly at definite money-yieldingmanuscripts, the results of which carried to some well-paying_successful magazine_ would yield him sufficient to return to the whitelights--often even to take a better apartment than that which last hadbeen his. By now, however, one of the two children he eventually leftbehind him had been born. His domestic cares were multiplying, themarriage idea dull. Still he did not hesitate to continue those dinnersgiven to his friends, the above-mentioned group or its spiritual kin, either in his apartment or in a bohemian restaurant of great show in NewYork. In short, he was a fairly successful short-story writer and criticin whom still persisted a feeling that he would yet triumph in theadjacent if somewhat more difficult field of popular fiction. 

It was during this period, if I may interpolate an incident, that I waswaiting one night in a Broadway theater lobby for a friend to appear, when who should arrive on the scene but L----, most outlandishly dressedin what I took to be a _reductio ad absurdum_ of his first pose, as Inow half-feared it to be: that of the uncouth and rugged young American, disclaiming style in dress at least, and content to be a clod in looksso long as he was a Shelley in brains. His suit was of that coarseill-fitting character described as Store, and shelf-worn; his shoes allbut dusty brogans, his headgear a long-visored yellowish-and-browncross-barred cap. He had on a short, badly-cut frieze overcoat, hishands stuck defiantly in his trousers pockets, forcing its lapels wideopen. And he appeared to be partially if not entirely drunk, and veryinsolent. I had the idea that the drunkenness and the dress were a pose, or else that he had been in some neighborhood in search of copy whichrequired such an outfit. Charitably let us accept the last. He wasaccompanied by two satellic souls who were doing their best to restrainhim. 

"Come, now! Don't make a scene. We'll see the show all right!"

"Sure we'll see the show!" he returned contentiously. "Where's themanager?"

A smug mannikin whose uniform was a dress suit, the business managerhimself, eyed him in no friendly spirit from a nearby corner. 

"This is Mr. L----, " one of the satellites now approached and explainedto the manager. "He's connected with M----'s Magazine. He does shortstories and dramatics occasionally. "

The manager bowed. After all, M----'s Magazine had come to have somesignificance on Broadway. It was as well to be civil. Courtesy wasextended for three, and they went in. 

As for myself, I resented the mood and the change. It was in no way myaffair--his life was his own--and still I resented it. I did not believethat he was as bad as he seemed. He had too much genuine sense. It wasjust boyish swagger and show, and still it was time that he was gettingover that and settling down. I really hoped that time would modify allthis. 

One thing that made me hope for the best was that very shortly afterthis M----'s Magazine blew completely up, leaving him without thatsemi-financial protection which I felt was doing him so much harm. Thenext favorable sign that I observed was that a small volume of shortstories, some sixteen in number, and containing the cream of his work upto that time, was brought to a publishing house with which I wasfinancially identified at the time, and although no word was said to me(I really think he took great care not to see me), still it was left andon my advice eventually published (it sold, I believe, a little underfive hundred copies). But the thing that cheered me was that itcontained not one story which could be looked upon as a compromise withhis first views. And better, it had been brought to the concern withwhich I was connected--intentionally, I am sure. I was glad to have hada hand in its publication. "At least, " I said, "he has not lost sight ofhis first ideal. He may go on now. "

And thereafter, in one magazine and another, excellent enough to havebut a small circulation, I saw something of his which had genuine merit. A Western critical journal began to publish a series of essays by him, for which I am sure he received nothing at all. Again, three or fouryears later, a second volume of stories, almost if not quite as good ashis first, was issued by this same Western paper. He was trying to doserious work; but he still sought and apparently craved those grandscenes on the farm or in some New York restaurant or an expensiveapartment, and when he could no longer afford it. He still wrotehappy-ending, or compromise, stories for any such magazine as wouldreceive him, and was apparently building up a reasonably secure marketfor them. In the meantime the moving-picture scenario market haddeveloped, and he wrote for it. His eyes were also turning toward thestage, as one completed manuscript and several "starts" turned over tome after his death proved. One day some one who knew him and me quitewell assured me that L----, having sent out many excellent stories onlyto have them returned, had one day cried and then raged, cursing Americafor its attitude toward serious letters--an excellent sign, I thought, good medicine for one who must eventually forsake his hope of materialgrandeur and find himself. "In time, in time, " I said, "he will eatthrough the husks of these other things, the 'M---- complex, ' and dosomething splendid. He can't help it. But this fantastic dream ofgrandeur, of being a popular success, will have to be lived down. "

For a time now I heard but little more save once that he was connectedwith a moving-picture concern, suggesting plots and making some money. Then I saw a second series of essays in the same Western criticalpaper--that of the editor who had published his book--and some of themwere excellent, very searching and sincere. I felt that he was movingalong the right line, although they earned him nothing. Then one week, very much to my surprise, there was a very glowing and extendedcommentary on myself, concerning which for the time being I decided tomake no comment; and a little later, perhaps three weeks, a telephonecall. Did I recall him? (!) Could he come and see me? (!) I invited himto dinner, and he came, carrying, of all things--and for him, theex-railroad boy--a great armful of red roses. This touched me. 

"What's the idea?" I inquired jovially, laughing at him. 

He blushed like a girl, a little irritably too, I thought, for he foundme (as perhaps he had hoped not to) examining and critical, and he mayhave felt that I was laughing at him, which I wasn't. "I wished to givethem to you, and I brought 'em. Why shouldn't I?"

"You know you should bring them if you want me to have them, and I'monly too glad to get them, anyway. Don't think I'm criticizing. "

He smiled and began at once on the "old days, " as he now called them, asad commentary on our drifting days. Indeed he seemed able to talk oflittle else or fast enough or with too much enthusiasm. He went overmany things and people--M----; K----, the wonderful art-director, nowinsane and a wreck; the group of which he and I had once been a part;his youthful and unsophisticated viewpoint at the time. "You know, " heconfessed quite frankly finally, "my mother always told me then andafterwards that I made a mistake in leaving you. You were the betterinfluence for me. She was right. I know it now. Still, a life's a life, and we have to work through it and ourselves somehow. "

I agreed heartily. 

He told me of his wife, children, farm, his health and his difficulties. It appeared that he was making a bare living at times, at others doingvery well. His great bane was the popular magazine, the difficulty ofselling a good thing. It was true, I said, and at midnight he left, promising to come again, inviting me to come to his place in the countryat my convenience. I promised. 

But one thing and another interfered. I went South. One day six monthslater, after I had returned, he called up once more, saying he wished tosee me. Of course I asked him down and he came and spoke of his health. Some doctor, an old college pal of his, was assuring him that he hadBright's disease and that he might die at any time. He wanted to know, in case anything happened to him, would I look after his many mss. , mostof which, the most serious efforts at least, had never been published. Iagreed. Then he went away and I never saw him again. A year later I wasone day informed that he had died three days before of kidney trouble. He had been West to see a moving-picture director; on his way East hehad been taken ill and had stopped off with friends somewhere to betreated, or operated upon. A few weeks later he had returned to NewYork, but refusing to rest and believing that he could not die, so soon, had kept out of doors and in the city, until suddenly he did collapse. Or, rather, he met his favorite doctor, an intellectual savage likehimself, who with some weird desire to appear forceful, definite, unsentimental perhaps--a mental condition L---- most fancied--had toldhim to go home and to bed, for he would be dead in forty-eight hours!--afine bit of assurance which perhaps as much as anything else assistedL---- to die. At any rate and in spite of the ministrations of his wife, who wished to defy the doctor and who in her hope for herself and herchildren as well as him strove to contend against this gloom, he did sogo to bed and did die. On the last day, realizing no doubt how utterlyindifferent his life had been, how his main aspirations or great dreamshad been in the main nullified by passions, necessities, crass chance(how well he was fitted to understand that!) he broke down and cried forhours. Then he died. 

A friend who had known much of this last period, said to me rathersatirically, "He was dealing with death in the shape of a medic. Haveyou ever seen him?" The doctor, he meant. "He looks like anadvertisement for an undertaker. I do believe he was trying to discoverwhether he could kill somebody by the power of suggestion, and he metL---- in the nick of time. You know how really sensitive he was. Well, that medic killed him, the same as you would kill a bird with a bullet. He said 'You're already dead, ' and he was. "

And--oh yes--M----, his former patron. At the time of L----'s sicknessand death he was still owing him $1100 for services rendered during thelast days of that unfortunate magazine. He had never been called upon topay his debts, for he had sunk through one easy trapdoor of bankruptcyonly to rise out of another, smiling and with the means to continue. Yes, he was rich again, rated A No. 1, the president of a greatcorporation, and with L----'s $1100 still unpaid and now not legally"collectible. " His bank balance, established by a friend at the time, was exactly one hundred thousand. 

But Mrs. L----, anxious to find some way out of her difficulty since herhusband was lying cold, and knowing of no one else to whom to turn, hadwritten to him. There was no food in the house, no medicine, no way tofeed the children at the moment. That matter of $1100 now--could hespare a little? L---- had thought--

A letter in answer was not long in arriving, and a most moving M----ydocument it was. M---- had been stunned by the dreadful news, stunned. Could it really be? Could it? His young brilliant friend? Impossible! Atthe dread, pathetic news he had cried--yes he had--cried--and cried--andcried--and then he had even cried some more. Life was so sad, so grim. As for him, his own affairs were never in so wretched a condition. Itwas unfortunate. Debts there were on every hand. They haunted him, robbed him of his sleep. He himself scarcely knew which way to turn. They stood in serried ranks, his debts. A slight push on the part of anyone, and he would be crushed--crushed--go down in ruin. And so, as muchas he was torn, and as much as he cried, even now, he could do nothing, nothing, nothing. He was agonized, beaten to earth, but still--. Then, having signed it, there was a P. S. Or an N. B. This stated that inlooking over his affairs he had just discovered that by stinting himselfin another direction he _could_ manage to scrape together twenty-fivedollars, and this he was enclosing. Would that God had designed that heshould be better placed at this sad hour!

 * * * * *

However that may be, I at once sent for the mss. And they came, ajumbled mass in two suitcases and a portfolio; and a third suitcase, soI was informed, containing all of a hundred mss. , mostly stories, hadbeen lost somewhere! There had been much financial trouble of late andmore than one enforced move. Mrs. L---- had been compelled--but I willnot tell all. Suffice it to say that he had such an end as his ownrealistic pen might have satirically craved. 

The mss. , finally sorted, tabulated and read, yielded two small volumesof excellent tales, all unpublished, the published material being allbut uniformly worthless. There was also the attempt at a popular comedy, previously mentioned, a sad affair, and a volume of essays, as well as avery, very slender but charming volume of verse, in case a publishercould ever be found for them--a most agreeable little group, showing apleasing sense of form and color and emotion. I arranged them as best Icould and finally--

But they are still unpublished. 

 * * * * *

P. S. As for the sum total of the work left by L----, its very best, itmight be said that although he was not a great psychologist, still, owing to a certain pretentiousness of assertion at times, one mightunthinkingly suppose he was. Neither had he, as yet, any fixed theoriesof art or definite style of his own, imitating as he was now deMaupassant, now O. Henry, now Poe; but also it must be said that slowlyand surely he was approximating one, original and forceful andwater-clear in expression and naturalness. At times he veered to arather showy technique, at others to a cold and even harsh simplicity. Yet always in the main he had color, beauty, emotion, poignance whennecessary. Like his idol, de Maupassant, he had no moral or strongsocial prejudices, no really great or disturbing imagination, no wealthof perplexing ideas. He saw America and life as something to be paintedas all masters see life and paint it. Gifted with a true vein of satire, he had not, at the time of his death, quite mastered its possibilities. He still retained prejudice of one type or another, which he permittedto interfere with the very smooth arrangement of his colors. At the sametime, had he not been disturbed by so many of the things which inAmerica, as elsewhere, ordinarily assail an ambitious and earnestwriter--the prejudice against naturalness and sincerity in matters ofthe intellect and the facts of life, and the consequent difficulty ofany one so gifted in obtaining funds at any time--he might have donemuch better sooner. He was certain to come into his own eventually hadhe lived. His very accurate and sensitive powers of observation, hisliterary taste, his energy and pride in his work, were destined to carryhim there. It could not have been otherwise. Ten years more, judging bythe rate at which he worked, his annual product and that which he didleave, one might say that in the pantheon of American letters it iscertain that he would have proved a durable if not one of its greatfigures, and he might well have been that. As it stands, it is notimpossible that he will be so recognized, if for no more than the surepromise of his genius. 

_The Village Feudists_

In a certain Connecticut fishing-town sometime since, where, besideslobstering, a shipyard and some sail-boat-building there existed theseveral shops and stores which catered to the wants of those who laboredin those lines, there dwelt a groceryman by the name of Elihu Burridge, whose life and methods strongly point the moral and social successes andfailures of the rural man. 

Sixty years of age, with the vanities and desires of the average man'slife behind rather than before him, he was at the time not unlike theconventional drawings of Parson Thirdly, which graced the humorouspapers of that day. Two moon-shaped eyes, a long upper lip, a mouth likethe sickle moon turned downward, prominent ears, a rather long face anda mutton-chop-shaped whisker on either cheek, served to give him thatclerical appearance which the humorous artists so religiously seek todepict. Add to this that he was middle-sized, clerically spare in form, reserved and quiet in demeanor, and one can see how he might veryreadily give the impression of being a minister. His clothes, however, were old, his trousers torn but neatly mended, his little blue ginghamjumper which he wore about the store greasy and aged. Everything abouthim and his store was so still and dark that one might have beeninclined on first sight to consider him crusty and morose. 

Even more remarkable than himself, however, was his store. I have seenmany in my time that were striking because of their neatness; I neversaw one before that struck me as more remarkable for its disorder. Inthe first place it was filled neck-deep with barrels and boxes in theutmost confusion. Dark, greasy, provision-lined alleys led off intodingy sections which the eye could not penetrate. Old signs hung about, advertising things which had long since ceased to sell and wereforgotten by the public. There were pictures in once gilt but nowtime-blackened frames, wherein queerly depicted children andpompous-looking grocers offered one commodity and another, all nowalmost obliterated by fly-specks. Shelves were marked on the walls bysigns now nearly illegible. Cobwebs hung thickly from corners andpillars. There were oil, lard, and a dust-laden scum of some sort onthree of the numerous scales with which he occasionally weighed thingsand on many exteriors of once salable articles. Pork, lard, molasses, and nails were packed in different corners of the place in barrels. Lying about were household utensils, ship-rigging, furniture and ahundred other things which had nothing to do with the grocery business. 

As I entered the store the first afternoon I noticed a Bible open atJudges and a number of slips of paper on which questions had beenwritten. On my second visit for oil and vinegar, two strangers from offa vagrant yacht which had entered the little harbor nudged one anotherand demanded to know whether either had ever seen anything like it. Onthe third, my companion protested that it was not clean, and seeing thatthere were other stores we decided to buy our things elsewhere. This wasnot so easily accomplished. 

"Where can I get a flatiron?" I inquired at the Postoffice when I firstentered the village. 

"Most likely at Burridge's, " was the reply. 

"Do you know where I can get a pair of row-locks?" I asked of a boy whowas lounging about the town dock. 

"At Burridge's, " he replied. 

When we wanted oars, pickles of a certain variety, golden syrup, and adozen other things which were essential at times, we were compelled togo to Burridge's, so that at last he obtained a very fair portion of ourtrade despite the condition of his store. 

During all these earlier dealings there cropped up something curt anddry in his conversation. One day we lost a fruit jar which he hadloaned, and I took one very much like it back in its place. When I beganto apologize he interrupted me with, "A jar's a jar, isn't it?"

Another time, when I remarked in a conciliatory tone that he owed meeight cents for a can of potted ham which had proved stale, heexclaimed, "Well, I won't owe you long, " and forthwith pulled the moneyout of the loose jacket of his jumper and paid me. 

I inquired one day if a certain thing were good. "If it isn't, " hereplied, with a peculiar elevation of the eyebrows, "your money is. Youcan have that back. "

"That's the way you do business, is it?"

"Yes, sir, " he replied, and his long upper lip thinned out along theline of the lower one like a vise. 

I was in search of a rocking-chair one day and was directed toBurridge's as the only place likely to have any!

"Do you keep furniture?" I inquired. 

"Some, " he said. 

"Have you a rocking-chair?"

"No, sir. "

A day or two later I was in search of a table and on going to Burridge'sfound that he had gone to a neighboring city. 

"Have you got a table?" I inquired of the clerk. 

"I don't know, " he replied. "There's some furniture in the back room, but I don't know as I dare to sell any of it while he's away. "

"Why?"

"Well, he don't like me to sell any of it. He's kind of queer that way. I dunno what he intends to do with it. Gar!" he added in a strangelyelectric way, "he's a queer man! He's got a lot of things backthere--chairs and tables and everything. He's got a lot more in a loftup the street here. He never seems to want to sell any of 'em. Heard himtell people he didn't have any. "

I shook my head in puzzled desperation. 

"Come on, let's go back and look anyway. There's no harm in seeing if hehas one. "

We went back and there amid pork and molasses barrels, old papers, boxesand signs, was furniture in considerable quantity--tables, rocking-chairs, washstands, bureaus--all cornered and tumbled about. 

"Why, here are rocking-chairs, lots of them, " I exclaimed. "Just thekind I want! He said he didn't have any. "

"Gar! I dunno, " replied the clerk. "Here's a table, but I wouldn't daresell it to you. "

"Why should he say he didn't have a rocking-chair?"

"Gar! I dunno. He's goin' out of the furniture business. He don't wantto sell any. I don't know what he intends to do with it. "

"Well, " I said in despair, "what about the table? You can sell that, can't you?"

"I couldn't--not till he comes back. I don't know what he'd want to doabout it. "

"What's the price of it?"

"I dunno. He could tell you. "

I went out of the thick-aired stuffy backroom with its unwashed windows, and when I got opposite the Bible near the door I said:

"What's the matter with him anyhow? Why doesn't he straighten things outhere?"

Again the clerk awoke. "Huh!" he exclaimed. "Straighten it out! Gar! I'dlike to see anybody try it. "

"It could be, " I said encouragingly. 

"Gar!" he chuckled. "One man did try to straighten it out once when Mr. Burridge was away. Got about a third of it cleaned up when he come back. Gar! You oughta seen him! Gar!"

"What did he do?"

"What did he do! What didn't he do! Gar! Just took things an' threw themabout again. Said he couldn't find anything. "

"You don't say!"

"Gar! I should say so! Man come in an' asked for a hammer. Said hecouldn't find any hammer, things was so mixed up. Did it with screws, water-buckets an' everything just the same. Took 'em right off theshelves, where they was all in groups, an' scattered 'em all over theroom. Gar! 'Now I guess I can find something when I want it, ' he said. "The clerk paused to squint and add, "There ain't anybody tried anystraightenin' out around here since then, you bet. Gar!"

"How long ago has that been?"

"About fourteen years now. "

Surprised by this sharp variation from the ordinary standards of trade, I began thinking of possible conditions which had produced it, when oneevening I happened in on the local barber. He was a lean, inquisitiveindividual with a shock of sandy hair and a conspicuous desire to appeara well-rounded social factor. 

"What sort of person is this Burridge over here? He keeps such apeculiar store. "

"Elihu is a bit peculiar, " he replied, his smile betraying a desire toappear conservative. "The fault with Elihu, if he has one, is that he'sterribly strong on religion. Can't seem to agree with anybody aroundhere. "

"What's the trouble?" I asked. 

"It's more'n I could ever make out, what is the matter with him. They'reall a little bit cracked on the subject around here. Nothing butrevivals and meetin's, year in and year out. They're stronger on itwinters than they are in summer. "

"How do you mean?"

"Well, they'll be more against yachtin' and Sunday pleasures when theycan't go than when they can. "

"What about Elihu?" I asked. 

"Well, he can't seem to get along, somehow. He used to belong to theBaptist Church, but he got out o' that. Then he went to a church up inGraylock, but he had a fallin' out up there. Then he went to Northfieldand Eustis. He's been all around, even over on Long Island. He goes tochurch up at Amherst now, I believe. "

"What seems to be the trouble?"

"Oh, he's just strong-headed, I guess. " He paused, and ideas laggeduntil finally I observed:

"It's a very interesting store he keeps. "

"It's just as Billy Drumgold told him once: 'Burridge, ' he says, 'you'vegot everything in this store that belongs to a full-rigged ship 'ceptone thing. ' 'What's that?' Burridge asks. 'A second-hand pulpit. ' 'Gotthat too, ' he answered, and takes him upstairs, and there he had onesure enough. "

"Well, " I said, "what was he doing with it?"

"Danged if I know. He had it all right. Has it yet, so they say. "

Days passed and as the summer waned the evidences of a peculiar lifeaccumulated. Noank, apparently, was at outs with Burridge on the subjectof religion, and he with it. There were instances of genuine hardfeeling against him. 

Writing a letter in the Postoffice one day I ventured to take up thismatter with the postmaster. 

"You know Mr. Burridge, don't you--the grocer?"

"Well, I should guess I did, " he replied with a flare. 

"Anything wrong with him?"

"Oh, about everything that's just plain cussed--the most wrangling manalive. I never saw such a man. He don't get his mail here no morebecause he's mad at me, I guess. Took it away because I had Mr. Palmer'shelp in my fight, I suppose. Wrote me that I should send all his mail upto Mystic, and he goes there three or four miles out of his way everyday, just to spite me. It's against the law. I hadn't ought to be doingit, re-addressing his envelopes three or four times a day, but I do doit. He's a strong-headed man, that's the trouble with Elihu. "

I had no time to follow this up then, but a little later, sitting in theshop of the principal sailboat maker, which was situated in the quietlittle lane which follows the line of the village, I was one daysurprised by the sudden warm feeling which the name of Elihu generated. Something had brought up the subject of religion, and I said thatBurridge seemed rather religious. 

"Yes, " said the sailboat maker quickly, "he's religious, all right, onlyhe reads the Bible for others, not for himself. "

"What do you mean by that?"

"Why, he wants to run things, that's what. As long as you agree withElihu, why, everything's all right. When you don't, the Bible's againstyou. That's the way he is. "

"Did he ever disagree with you?" I asked, suspecting some personalanimus in the matter. 

"Me and Elihu was always good friends as long as I agreed with him, " hewent on bitterly. "We've been raised together, man and boy, for prettynear sixty years. We never had a word of any kind but what was friendly, as long as I agreed with him, but just as soon as I didn't he took a setagainst me, and we ain't never spoke a word since. "

"What was the trouble?" I inquired sweetly, anxious to come at thekernel of this queer situation. 

"Well, " he said, dropping his work and looking up to impress me, "I'm aman that'll sometimes say what I don't believe; that is, I'll agree withwhat I hadn't ought to, just to be friendly like. I did that way a loto' times with Elihu till one day he came to me with something aboutparticular salvation. I'm a little more liberal myself. I believe inuniversal redemption by faith alone. Well, Elihu came to me and begantelling me what he believed. Finally he asked me something aboutparticular salvation and wanted to know whether I didn't agree with him. I didn't, and told him so. From that day on he took a set against me, and he ain't never spoke a word to me since. "

I was unaware that there was anything besides a religious disagreementin this local situation until one day I happened to come into a secondfriendly contact with the postmaster. We were speaking of thecharacteristics of certain individuals, and I mentioned Burridge. 

"He's all right when you take him the way he wants to be taken. When youdon't you'll find him quite a different man. "

"He seems to be straightforward and honest, " I said. 

"There ain't anything you can tell me about Elihu Burridge that I don'tknow, " he replied feelingly. "Not a thing. I've lived with him, as youmight say, all my life. Been raised right here in town with him, and wewent to school together. Man and boy, there ain't ever been a thing thatElihu has agreed with, without he could have the running of it. Youcan't tell me anything about him that I don't know. "

I could not help smiling at the warmth of feeling, although somethingabout the man's manner bespoke a touch of heart-ache, as if he wereprivately grieving. 

"What was the trouble between you two?" I asked. 

"It's more'n I could ever find out, " he replied in a voice that wasreally mournful, so difficult and non-understandable was the subject tohim. "Before I started to work for this office there wasn't a day that Ididn't meet and speak friendly with Elihu. He used to have a good manydeeds and papers to sign, and he never failed to call me in when I waspassing. When I started to work for this office I noticed he took on acold manner toward me, and I tried to think of something I might havedone, but I couldn't. Finally I wrote and asked him if there wasanything between us if he wouldn't set a time and place so's we mighttalk it over and come to an understanding. " He paused and then added, "Iwish you could see the letter he wrote me. Comin' from a Christianman--from him to me--I wish you could see it. "

"Why don't you show it to me?" I asked inquisitively. 

He went back into the office and returned with an ancient-lookingdocument, four years old it proved to be, which he had been treasuring. He handed me the thumbed and already yellowed page, and I read:

 "MATTHEW HOLCOMB, ESQUIRE, "DEAR SIR:--In reply to your letter asking me to set a time and place in which we might talk over the trouble between us, would say that the time be Eternity and the place where God shall call us to judgment. 

 "Very truly, "ELIHU BURRIDGE. "

His eyes rested on me while I read, and the moment I finished he beganwith:

"I never said one word against that man, not one word. I never did athing he could take offense at, not one thing. I don't know how a mancan justify himself writing like that. "

"Perhaps it's political, " I said. "You don't belong to the same party, do you?"

"Yes, we do, " he said. "Sometimes I've thought that maybe it was becauseI had the support of the shipyard when I first tried to get this office, but then that wasn't anything between him and me, " and he looked away asif the mystery were inexplicable. 

This shipyard was conducted by a most forceful man but one as narrow andreligionistic as this region in which it had had its rise. Old Mr. Palmer, the aged founder of it, had long been a notable figure in thestreets and private chambers of the village. The principal grocerystore, coal-yard, sail-loft, hotel and other institutions were conductedin its interests. His opinion was always foremost in the decision of thelocal authorities. He was still, reticent, unobtrusive. Once I saw himmost considerately helping a cripple up the lane to the local BaptistChurch. 

"What's the trouble between Burridge and Palmer?" I asked of thesail-maker finally, coming to think that here, if anywhere, lay thesolution of the difficulty. 

"Two big fish in too small a basket, " he responded laconically. 

"Can't agree, eh?"

"They both want to lead, or did, " he said. "Elihu's a beaten man, though, now. " He paused and then added, "I'm sorry for Elihu. He's agood man at heart, one of the kindest men you ever saw, when you let himfollow his natural way. He's good to the poor, and he's carried moreslow-pay people than any man in this country, I do believe. He won'tcollect an old debt by law. Don't believe in it. No, sir. Just akind-hearted man, but he loves to rule. "

"How about Palmer?" I inquired. 

"Just the same way exactly. He loves to rule, too. Got a good heart, too, but he's got a lot more money than Elihu and so people pay moreattention to him, that's all. When Elihu was getting the attention hewas just the finest man you ever saw, kind, generous, good-natured. People love to be petted, at least some people do--you know they do. When you don't pet 'em they get kind o' sour and crabbed like. Nowthat's all that's the matter with Elihu, every bit of it. He's sour, now, and a little lonely, I expect. He's drove away every one from him, or nearly all, 'cept his wife and some of his kin. Anybody can do a goodgrocery business here, with the strangers off the boats"--the harbor wasa lively one--"all you have to do is carry a good stock. That's why hegets along so well. But he's drove nearly all the local folks away fromhim. "

I listened to this comfortable sail-loft sage, and going back to thegrocery store one afternoon took another look at the long, grim-facedsilent figure. He was sitting in the shadow of one of his moldy corners, and if there had ever been any light of merriment in his face it was notthere now. He looked as fixed and solemn as an ancient puritan, and yetthere was something so melancholy in the man's eye, so sad anddisappointed, that it seemed anything but hard. Two or three littlechildren were playing about the door and when he came forward to wait onme one of them sidled forward and put her chubby hand in his. 

"Your children?" I asked, by way of reaching some friendlyunderstanding. 

"No, " he replied, looking fondly down, "she belongs to a French lady upthe street here. She often comes down to see me, don't you?" and hereached over and took the fat little cheek between his thumb andforefinger. 

The little one rubbed her face against his worn baggy trousers' leg andput her arm about his knee. Quietly he stood there in a simple way untilshe loosened her hold upon him, when he went about his labor. 

I was sitting one day in the loft of the comfortable sail-maker, who, bythe way, was brother-in-law to Burridge, when I said to him:

"I wish you'd tell me the details about Elihu. How did he come to bewhat he is? You ought to know; you've lived here all your life. "

"So I do know, " he replied genially. "What do you want me to tell you?"

"The whole story of the trouble between him and Palmer; how he comes tobe at outs with all these people. "

"Well, " he began, and here followed with many interruptions and sideelucidations, which for want of space have been eliminated, thefollowing details:

Twenty-five years before Elihu had been the leading citizen of Noank. From operating a small grocery at the close of the Civil War he branchedout until he sold everything from ship-rigging to hardware. Noank wasthen in the height of its career as a fishing town and as a port fromwhich expeditions of all sorts were wont to sail. Whaling was still inforce, and vessels for whaling expeditions were equipped here. Wealthysea-captains frequently loaded fine three-masted schooners here forvarious trading expeditions to all parts of the world; the fishers formackerel, cod and herring were making three hundred and fifty dollars aday in season, and thousands of dollars' worth of supplies were annuallypurchased here. 

Burridge was then the only tradesman of any importance and, being of aliberal, strong-minded and yet religious turn, attracted the majority ofthis business to him. He had houses and lands, was a deacon in the localBaptist Church and a counselor in matters political, social andreligious, whose advice was seldom rejected. Every Fourth of July duringthese years it was his custom to collect all the children of the town infront of his store and treat them to ice-cream. Every Christmas Eve hetraveled about the streets in a wagon, which carried half a dozenbarrels of candy and nuts, which he would ladle out to the merryshouting throng of pursuing youngsters, until all were satisfied. Forthe skating season he prepared a pond, spending several thousand dollarsdamming up a small stream, in order that the children might have a placeto skate. He created a library where all might obtain suitable reading, particularly the young. 

On New Year's morning it was his custom to visit all the poor andbereaved and lonely in Noank, taking a great dray full of presents andleaving a little something with his greetings and a pleasant handshakeat every door. The lonely rich as well as the lonely poor were included, for he was certain, as he frequently declared, that the rich could belonely too. 

He once told his brother-in-law that one New Year's Day a voice calledto him in church: "Elihu Burridge, how about the lonely rich and poor ofNoank?" "Up I got, " he concluded, "and from that day to this I havenever neglected them. "

When any one died who had a little estate to be looked after for thebenefit of widows or orphans, Burridge was the one to take charge of it. People on their deathbeds sent for him, and he always responded, takingenergetic charge of everything and refusing to take a penny for hisservices. After a number of years the old judge to whom he alwaysrepaired with these matters of probate, knowing his generosity in thisrespect, also refused to accept any fee. When he saw him coming he wouldexclaim:

"Well, Elihu, what is it this time? Another widow or orphan that we'vegot to look after?"

After Elihu had explained what it was, he would add:

"Well, Elihu, I do hope that some day some rich man will call you tostraighten out his affairs. I'd like to see _you_ get a littlesomething, so that _I_ might get a little something. Eh, Elihu?" Then hewould jocularly poke his companion in charity in the ribs. 

These general benefactions were continuous and coeval with his localprosperity and dominance, and their modification as well as the man'sgeneral decline the result of the rise of this other individual--RobertPalmer, --"operating" to take the color of power and preëminence fromhim. 

Palmer was the owner of a small shipyard here at the time, a thing whichwas not much at first but which grew swiftly. He was born in Noankalso, a few years before Burridge, and as a builder of vessels had beenslowly forging his way to a moderate competence when Elihu was alreadysuccessful. He was a keen, fine-featured, energetic individual, withexcellent commercial and strong religious instincts, and by dint of hardlabor and a saving disposition he obtained, soon after the Civil War, apowerful foothold. Many vessels were ordered here from other cities. Eventually he began to build barges in large numbers for a greatrailroad company. 

Early becoming a larger employer of labor than any one else in thevicinity he soon began to branch out, possessed himself of the alliedindustries of ship-rigging, chandlering, and finally established agrocery store for his employees, and opened a hotel. Now the localcitizens began to look upon him as their leading citizen. They werealways talking of his rise, frequently in the presence of Burridge. Hesaid nothing at first, pretending to believe that his quondam leadershipwas unimpaired. Again, there were those who, having followed the variousbranches of labor which Palmer eventually consolidated, viewed thisgrowth with sullen and angry eyes. They still sided with Burridge, orpretended still to believe that he was the more important citizen of thetwo. In the course of time, however--a period of thirty years ormore--some of them failed; others died; still others were driven awayfor want of a livelihood. Only Burridge's position and businessremained, but in a sadly weakened state. He was no longer a man of anygreat importance. 

Not unnaturally, this question of local supremacy was first tested inthe one place in which local supremacy is usually tested--the churchwhere they both worshiped. Although only one of five trustees, Burridgehad been the will of the body. Always, whatever he thought, the othershad almost immediately agreed to it. But now that Palmer had become apower, many of those ardent in the church and beholden to him for profitbecame his humble followers. They elected him trustee and did what hewished, or what they thought he wished. To Burridge this made themsycophants, slaves. 

Now followed the kind of trivialities by which most human feuds arefurthered. The first test of strength came when a vagrant evangelistfrom Alabama arrived and desired to use the church for a series ofevening lectures. The question had to be decided at once. Palmer wasabsent at the time. 

"Here is a request for the use of the church, " said one of the trustees, explaining its nature. 

"Well, " said Burridge, "you'd better let him have it. "

"Do you think we ought to do anything about it, " the trustee replied, "until Mr. Palmer returns?"

Although Burridge saw no reason for waiting, the other trustees did, andupon that the board rested. Burridge was furious. By one fell stroke hewas put in second place, a man who had to await the return ofPalmer--and that in his own church, so to speak. 

"Why, " he told some one, "the rest of us are nothing. This man is aking. "

From that time on differences of opinion within the church and elsewherewere common. Although no personal animosity was ever admitted, localissues almost invariably found these two men opposed to each other. There was the question of whether the village should be made into aborough--a most trivial matter; another, that of creating public worksfor the manufacture of gas and distribution of water; a third, that ofnaming a State representative. Naturally, while these things might be tothe advantage of Palmer or not, they were of no great import toBurridge, but yet he managed to see in them an attempt or attempts tosaddle a large public debt upon widows and orphans, those who could notafford or did not need these things, and he proceeded to so expresshimself at various public meetings. Slowly the breach widened. Burridgebecame little more than a malcontent in many people's eyes. He was a"knocker, " a man who wanted to hold the community back. 

Although defeated in many instances he won in others, and this did nothelp matters any. At this point, among other things the decay of thefishing industry helped to fix definitely the position of the two men asthat of victor and vanquished. Whaling died out, then mackerel and codwere caught only at farther and farther distances from the town, andfinally three- and even two-masted schooners ceased entirely to buy theiroutfits here, and Burridge was left dependent upon local patronage orsmaller harbor trade for his support. Coextensively, he had thedissatisfaction of seeing Palmer's industries grow until eventuallythree hundred and fifty men were upon his payrolls and even his foremenand superintendents were considered influential townspeople. Palmer'sson and two daughters grew up and married, branched out and becameowners of industries which had formerly belonged to men who had tradedwith Burridge. He saw his grocery trade dwindle and sink, while with agehis religiosity grew, and he began to be little more than a pettydisputant, one constantly arguing as to whether the interpretation ofthe Bible as handed down from the pulpit of what he now considered _his_recalcitrant church was sound or not. When those who years before hadfollowed him obediently now pricked him with theological pins andventured to disagree with him, he was quick and sometimes foolish in hisreplies. Thus, once a former friend and fellow-church-member who hadgone over to the opposition came into his store one morning and said:

"Elihu, for a man that's as strong on religion as you are, I see you doone thing that can't quite be justified by the Book. "

"What's that?" inquired Burridge, looking up. 

"I see you sell tobacco. "

"I see you chew it, " returned the host grimly. 

"I know I do, " returned his visitor, "but I'll tell you what I'll do, Elihu. If you'll quit selling, I'll quit chewing it, " and he looked asif he had set a fancy trap for his straw-balancing brother, as he heldhim to be. 

"It's a bargain, " said Burridge on the instant. "It's a bargain!"

And from that day on tobacco was not offered for sale in that store, although there was a large local demand for it. 

Again, in the pride of his original leadership, he had accepted theconduct of the local cemetery, a thing which was more a burden than asource of profit. With his customary liberality in all things reflectingcredit upon himself he had spent his own money in improving it, muchmore than ever the wardens of the church would have thought of returningto him. In one instance, when a new receiving vault was desired, he hadadded seven hundred dollars of his own to three hundred gathered by thechurch trustees for the purpose, and the vault was immediatelyconstructed. Frequently also, in his pride of place, he had been givento asserting he was tired of conducting the cemetery and wished he couldresign. 

In these later evil days, therefore, the trustees, following the star ofthe newer power, saw fit to intimate that perhaps some one else would beglad to look after it if he was tired of it. Instantly the fact that hecould no longer boast as formerly came home to him. He was not essentialany longer in anything. The church did not want him to have a hand inany of its affairs! The thought of this so weighed on him thateventually he resigned from this particular task, but thereafter alsoevery man who had concurred in accepting his resignation was his bitterenemy. He spoke acidly of the seven hundred he had spent, and jibed atthe decisions of the trustees in other matters. Soon he became adisturbing element in the church, taking a solemn vow never to enter thegraveyard again, and not long after resigned all his other officialduties--passing the plate, et cetera--although he still attendedservices there. 

Decoration Day rolled around, the G. A. R. Post of which he was an ardentmember prepared for the annual memorial services over the graves of itsdead comrades. Early on the morning of the thirtieth of May theygathered before their lodge hall, Burridge among them, and afterarranging the details marched conspicuously to the cemetery where theplacing of the wreaths and the firing of the salute were to take place. No one thought of Burridge until the gate was reached, when, gun overshoulder and uniform in perfect trim, he fell conspicuously out of lineand marched away home alone. It was the cemetery he had vowed not toenter, his old pet and protégé. 

Men now looked askance at him. He was becoming queer, no doubt of it, not really sensible--or was he? Up in Northfield, a nearby town, dwelt acolonel of the Civil War who had led the very regiment of which Burridgewas a member but who during the war had come into serious difficultythrough a tangle of orders, and had been dishonorably discharged. Although wounded in one of the engagements in which the regiment haddistinguished itself, he had been allowed to languish almost forgottenfor years and finally, failing to get a pension, had died in poverty. On his deathbed he had sent for Burridge, and reminding him of thebattle in which he had led him asked that after he was gone, for thesake of his family, he would take up the matter of a pension and ifpossible have his record purged of the stigma and the pension awarded. 

Burridge agreed most enthusiastically. Going to the local congressman, he at once began a campaign, but because of the feeling against him twoyears passed without anything being done. Later he took up the matter inhis own G. A. R. Post, but there also failing to find the measure of hisown enthusiasm, he went finally direct to one of the senators of theState and laying the matter before him had the records examined byCongress and the dead colonel honorably discharged. 

One day thereafter in the local G. A. R. He commented unfavorably upon theindifference which he deemed had been shown. 

"There wouldn't have been half so much delay if the man hadn't been adeserter, " said one of his enemies--one who was a foreman in Palmer'sshipyard. 

Instantly Burridge was upon his feet, his eyes aflame with feeling. Always an orator, with a strangely declamatory style he launched into adetailed account of the late colonel's life and services, his wounds, his long sufferings and final death in poverty, winding up with a vividword picture of a battle (Antietam), in which the colonel had gallantlycaptured a rebel flag and come by his injury. 

When he was through there was great excitement in the Post and muchfeeling in his favor, but he rather weakened the effect by at oncedemanding that the traitorous words be withdrawn, and failing to compelthis, preferred charges against the man who had uttered them andattempted to have him court-martialed. 

So great was the bitterness engendered by this that the Post was nowpractically divided, and being unable to compel what he consideredjustice he finally resigned. Subsequently he took issue with his formerfellow-soldiers in various ways, commenting satirically on their churchregularity and professed Christianity, as opposed to their indifferenceto the late colonel, and denouncing in various public conversations thedouble-mindedness and sharp dealings of the "little gods, " as he termedthose who ran the G. A. R. Post, the church, and the shipyards. 

Not long after his religious affairs reached a climax when the minister, once a good friend of his, following the lead of the dominant star, Mr. Palmer, publicly denounced him from the pulpit one Sunday as an enemy ofthe church and of true Christianity!

"There is a man in this congregation, " he exclaimed in a burst ofimpassioned oratory, "who poses as a Christian and a Baptist, who is inhis heart's depth the church's worst enemy. Hell and all its devilscould have no worse feelings of evil against the faith than he, and hedoesn't sell tobacco, either!"

The last reference at once fixed the identity of the person, and causedBurridge to get up and leave the church. He pondered over this for atime, severed his connections with the body, and having visited Graylockone Sunday drove there every Sabbath thereafter, each time going to adifferent church. After enduring this for six months he generated alonging for a more convenient meeting-place, and finally allied himselfwith the Baptist Church of Eustis. Here his anchor might possibly haveremained fast had it not been that subtle broodings over his wrongs, acalm faith in the righteousness of his own attitude, and disgust withthose whom he saw calmly expatiating upon the doctrines and dogmas ofreligion in his own town finally caused him to suspect a universalmisreading of the Bible. This doubt, together with his own desire forjustification according to the Word, finally put the idea in his mind tomake a study of the Bible himself. He would read it, he said. He wouldstudy Hebrew and Greek, and refer all questionable readings of words andpassages back to the original tongue in which it had been written. 

With this end in view he began a study of these languages, theimportance of the subject so growing upon him that he neglected hisbusiness. Day after day he labored, putting a Bible and a Concordanceupon a pile of soap-boxes near the door of his store and poring overthem between customers, the store meantime taking care of itself. Hefinally mastered Greek and Hebrew after a fashion, and finding the word"repent" frequently used, and that God had made man in the image ofHimself, with a full knowledge of right and wrong, he gravitated towardthe belief that therefore his traducers in Noank knew what they weredoing, and that before he needed to forgive them--though his love mightcover all--they must repent. 

He read the Bible from beginning to end with this one feelingsubconsciously dominant, and all its loving commands about loving oneanother, forgiving your brother seventy times seven, loving those thathate you, returning good for evil, selling all that you have and givingit to the poor, were made to wait upon the duty of others to repent. Hebegan to give this interpretation at Eustis, where he was allowed tohave a Sunday-school, until the minister came and told him once, "to hisface, " as the local report ran: "We don't want you here. "

Meekly he went forth and, joining a church across the Sound on LongIsland, sailed over every Sunday and there advanced the same views untilhe was personally snubbed by the minister and attacked by the localpapers. Leaving there he went to Amherst, always announcing now that heheld distinctive views about some things in the Bible and asking theprivilege of explaining. In this congregation he was still comfortablyat rest when I knew him. 

"All sensitiveness, " the sail-maker had concluded after his longaccount. "There ain't anything the matter with Elihu, except that he'spiqued and grieved. He wanted to be the big man, and he wasn't. "

I was thinking of this and of his tender relationship with children as Ihad noticed it, and of his service to the late colonel when one daybeing in the store, I said:

"Do you stand on the Bible completely, Mr. Burridge?"

"Yes, sir, " he replied, "I do. "

"Believe every word of it to be true?"

"Yes, sir. "

"If your brother has offended you, how many times must you forgive him?"

"Seventy times seven. "

"Do you forgive your brothers?"

"Yes, sir--if they repent. "

"If they repent?"

"Yes, sir, if they repent. That's the interpretation. In Matthew youwill find, 'If he repent, forgive him. '"

"But if you don't forgive them, even before they repent, " I said, "aren't you harboring enmity?"

"No, sir, I'm not treasuring up enmity. I only refuse to forgive them. "

I looked at the man, a little astonished, but he looked so sincere andearnest that I could not help smiling. 

"How do you reconcile that with the command, 'Love one another?' Yousurely can't love and refuse to forgive them at the same time?"

"I don't refuse to forgive them, " he repeated. "If John there, "indicating an old man in a sun-tanned coat who happened to be passingthrough the store at the time, "should do me a wrong--I don't care whatit was, how great or how vile--if he should come to me and say, 'Burridge, I'm sorry, '" he executed a flashing oratorical move inemphasis, and throwing back his head, exclaimed: "It's gone! It's gone!There ain't any more of it! All gone!"

I stood there quite dumbfounded by his virility, as the air vibratedwith his force and feeling. So manifestly was his reading of the Biblecolored by the grief of his own heart that it was almost painful totangle him with it. Goodness and mercy colored all his ideas, except inrelation to his one-time followers, those who had formerly been hisfriends and now left him to himself. 

"Do you still visit the poor and the afflicted, as you once did?" Iasked him once. 

"I'd rather not say anything about that, " he replied sternly. 

"But do you?"

"Yes, sir. "

"Still make your annual New Year round?"

"Yes, sir. "

"Well, you'll get your reward for that, whatever you believe. "

"I've had my reward, " he said slowly. 

"Had it?"

"Yes, sir, had it. Every hand that's been lifted to receive the littleI had to offer has been my reward. "

He smiled, and then said in seemingly the most untimely way:

"I remember once going to a lonely woman here on New Year's Day andtaking her a little something--basket of grapes or fruit of some kind itwas. I was stopping a minute--never stay long, you know; just run in andsay 'Happy New Year!' leave what I have and get out--and so said, 'Goodmorning, Aunt Mary!'

"'Good morning, Elihu, ' says she. 

"'Can't stay long, Aunt Mary, ' I said. 'Just want to leave you these. Happy New Year!'

"Well, sir, you know I was just turning around and starting when shecaught hold of my sleeve and says:

"'Elihu Burridge, ' she says, 'give me that hand!' and do you know, before I knew what she was about she took it up to her lips and kissedit! Yes, she did--kissed my hand!

"Now, " he said, drawing himself up, with eyes bright with intensefeeling, "you know whether I've had my reward or not, don't you?"

_"Vanity, Vanity, " Saith the Preacher_

Sometimes a single life will clearly and effectively illustrate aperiod. Hence, to me, the importance of this one. 

I first met X---- at a time when American financial methods and Americanfinances were at their apex of daring and splendor, and when the worldwas in a more or less tolerant mood toward their grandiose manners andachievements. It was the golden day of Mr. Morgan, Senior, Mr. Belmont, Mr. Harriman, Mr. Sage, Mr. Gates, Mr. Brady, and many, many others whowere still extant and ruling distinctly and drastically, as was provedby the panic of 1907. In opposition to them and yet imitating theirmethods, now an old story to those who have read "Frenzied Finance, ""Lawless Wealth, " and other such exposures of the methods which producedour enormous American fortunes, were such younger men as Charles W. Morse (the victim of the 1907 panic), F. Augustus Heinze (another ifless conspicuous victim of the same "panic"), E. R. Thomas, an ambitiousyoung millionaire, himself born to money, David A. Sullivan, and X----. I refuse to mention his name because he is still alive although nolonger conspicuous, and anxious perhaps to avoid the uncomfortable glareof publicity when all the honors and comforts which made it endurable inthe first place are absent. 

The person who made X---- essentially interesting to me long before Imet him was one Lucien de Shay, a ne'er-do-well pianist and voiceculturist, who was also a connoisseur in the matters of rugs, hangings, paintings and furniture, things in which X---- was just then mostintensely interested, erecting, as he was, a great house on Long Islandand but newly blossoming into the world of art or fashion or culture orshow--those various things which the American multi-millionaire alwayswants to blossom or bloom into and which he does not always succeed indoing. De Shay was one of those odd natures so common to themetropolis--half artist and half man of fashion who attach themselves soreadily to men of strength and wealth, often as advisors and counselorsin all matters of taste, social form and social progress. How thisparticular person was rewarded I never quite knew, whether in cash orsomething else. He was also a semi-confidant of mine, furnishing me"tips" and material of one sort and another in connection with thevarious publications I was then managing. As it turned out later, X----was not exactly a multi-millionaire as yet, merely a fledgling, althoughthe possibilities were there and his aims and ambitions were fastnearing a practical triumph the end of which of course was to be, as inthe case of nearly all American multi-millionaires of the newer andquicker order, bohemian or exotic and fleshly rather than cultural oræsthetic pleasure, although the latter were never really exactlyignored. 

But even so. He was a typical multi-millionaire in the showy and evengaudy sense of the time. For if the staid and conservative and sociallywell-placed rich have the great houses and the ease and the luxury ofparaphernalia, the bohemian rich of the X---- type have the flare, recklessness and imagination which lend to their spendings andflutterings a sparkle and a shine which the others can never hope tomatch. 

Said this friend of mine to me one day: "Listen, I want you to meet thisman X----. You will like him. He is fine. You haven't any idea what afascinating person he really is. He looks like a Russian Grand Duke. Hehas the manners and the tastes of a Medici or a Borgia. He is building agreat house down on Long Island that once it is done will have cost himfive or six hundred thousand. It's worth seeing already. His studio herein the C---- studio building is a dream. It's thick with the loveliestkinds of things. I've helped buy them myself. And he isn't dull. Hewrote a book at twenty, 'Icarus, ' which is not bad either and which hesays is something like himself. He has read your book ("Sister Carrie")and he sympathizes with that man Hurstwood. Says parts of it remind himof his own struggles. That's why he wants to meet you. He once worked onthe newspapers too. God knows how he is making his money, but I know howhe is spending it. He's decided to live, and he's doing it splendidly. It's wonderful. "

I took notice, although I had never even heard of the man. There were sovery, very many rich men in America. Later I heard much more concerninghim from this same de Shay. Once he had been so far down in the scalethat he had to shine shoes for a living. Once he had walked the streetsof New York in the snow, his shoes cracked and broken, no overcoat, noteven a warm suit. He had come here a penniless emigrant from Russia. Nowhe controlled four banks, one trust company, an insurance company, afire insurance company, a great real estate venture somewhere, and whatnot. Naturally all of this interested me greatly. When are weindifferent to a rise from nothing to something?

At de Shay's invitation I journeyed up to X----'s studio one Wednesdayafternoon at four, my friend having telephoned me that if I could I mustcome at once, that there was an especially interesting crowd alreadyassembled in the rooms, that I would meet a long list of celebrities. Two or three opera singers of repute were already there, among them anItalian singer and sorceress of great beauty, a veritable queen of thegenus adventuress, who was setting the town by the ears not only by herloveliness but her voice. Her beauty was so remarkable that the Sundaypapers were giving full pages to her face and torso alone. There were tobe several light opera and stage beauties there also, a basso profundoto sing, writers, artists, poets. 

I went. The place and the crowd literally enthralled me. It was so gay, colorful, thrillful. The host and the guests were really interesting--tome. Not that it was so marvelous as a studio or that it was sogorgeously decorated and furnished--it was impressive enough in thatway--but that it was so gracefully and interestingly representative of akind of comfort disguised as elegance. The man had everything, or nearlyso--friends, advisors, servants, followers. A somewhat savage andsybaritic nature, as I saw at once, was here disporting itself invelvets and silks. The iron hand of power, if it was power, was beingmost gracefully and agreeably disguised as the more or less flaccid oneof pleasure and friendship. 

My host was not visible at first, but I met a score of people whom Iknew by reputation, and listened to clatter and chatter of the mostapproved metropolitan bohemian character. The Italian sorceress wasthere, her gorgeous chain earrings tinkling mellifluously as she noddedand gesticulated. De Shay at once whispered in my ear that she wasX----'s very latest flame and an expensive one too. "You should see whathe buys her!" he exclaimed in a whisper. "God!" Actresses and societywomen floated here and there in dreams of afternoon dresses. Theautomobiles outside were making a perfect uproar. The poets and writersfascinated me with their praises of the host's munificence and taste. Ata glance it was plain to me that he had managed to gather about him thevery element it would be most interesting to gather, supposing onedesired to be idle, carefree and socially and intellectually gay. IfAmerica ever presented a smarter drawing-room I never saw it. 

My friend de Shay, being the fidus Achates of the host, had the power toreveal the inner mysteries of this place to me, and on one or twooccasions when there were not so many present and while the others werechattering in the various rooms--music-, dining-, ball-, library and soforth--I was being shown the kitchen, pantry, wine cellar, and alsovarious secret doors and passages whereby mine host by pressing a floweron a wall or a spring behind a picture could cause a door to fly open orclose which gave entrance to or from a room or passage in no wayconnected with the others save by another secret door and leading alwaysto a private exit. I wondered at once at the character of the person whocould need, desire or value this. A secret bedroom, for instance; alounging-room! In one of these was a rather severe if handsome desk anda steel safe and two chairs--no more; a very bare room. I wondered atthis silent and rather commercial sanctum in the center of thisfrou-frou of gayety, no trace of the sound of which seemed to penetratehere. What I also gained was a sense of an exotic, sybaritic and purelypagan mind, one which knew little of the conventions of the world andcared less. 

On my first visit, as I was leaving, I was introduced to the host justwithin his picture gallery, hung with many fine examples of the Dutchand Spanish schools. I found him to be as described: picturesque andhandsome, even though somewhat plump, phlegmatic and lethargic--yetactive enough. He was above the average in height, well built, florid, with a huge, round handsome head, curly black hair, keen black eyes, heavy overhanging eyebrows, full red lips, a marked chin ornamented by agoatee. In any costume ball he would have made an excellent Bacchus orPan. He appeared to have the free, easy and gracious manner of those whohave known much of life and have achieved, in part at least, theirdesires. He smiled, wished to know if I had met all the guests, hopedthat the sideboard had not escaped me, that I had enjoyed the singing. Would I come some evening when there was no crowd--or, better yet, dinewith him and my friend de Shay, whose personality appeared to be aboutas agreeable to him as his own. He was sorry he could not give me moreattention now. 

Interestingly enough, and from the first, I was impressed with this man;not because of his wealth (I knew richer men) but because of a somethingabout him which suggested dreams, romance, a kind of sense or love ofsplendor and grandeur which one does not often encounter among thereally wealthy. Those cracked shoes were in my mind, I suppose. Heseemed to live among great things, but in no niggardly, parsimonious orcare-taking way. Here was ease, largess, a kind of lavishness which wasnot ostentation but which seemed rather to say, "What are the minuteexpenses of living and pleasuring as contrasted with the profits ofskill in the world outside?" He suggested the huge and Aladdin-likeadventures with which so many of the great financiers of the day, thetrue tigers of Wall Street, were connected. 

It was not long thereafter that I was once more invited, this time to amuch more lavish affair and something much more sybaritic in its tone, although I was really not conscious of what it was to be like when Iwent there. It began at twelve midnight, and to this day it glitters inmy mind as among the few really barbaric and exotic things that I haveever witnessed. Not that the trappings or hangings or setting were sooutré or amazing as that the atmosphere of the thing itself was relaxed, bubbling, pagan. There were so many daring and seeking people there. Thething sang and was talked of for months after--in whispers! The gayety!The abandon! The sheer intoxication, mental and physical! I never sawmore daring costumes, so many really beautiful women (glitteringly so)in one place at one time, wonderful specimens of exotic and in the mainfleshy or sensuous femininity. There was, among other things, as Irecall, a large nickeled ice-tray on wheels packed with unopened bottlesof champagne, and you had but to lift a hand or wink an eye to haveanother opened for you alone, ever over and over. And the tray wasalways full. One wall of the dining-room farther on was laden withdelicate novelties in the way of food. A string quartette played for thedancers in the music-room. There were a dozen corners in different roomsscreened with banks of flowers and concealing divans. The dancing andsinging were superb, individual, often abandoned in character, as wasthe conversation. As the morning wore on (for it did not begin untilafter midnight) the moods of all were either so mellowed or inflamed asto make intentions, hopes, dreams, the most secret and sybaritic, theorder of expression. One was permitted to see human nature stripped ofmuch of its repression and daylight reserve or cant. At about four inthe morning came the engaged dancers, quite the pièce derésistance--with wreaths about heads, waists and arms for clothing andwell, really nothing more beyond their beautiful figures--scatteringrose leaves or favors. These dancers the company itself finally joined, single file at first, pellmell afterwards--artists, writers, poets--dancing from room to room in crude Bacchic imitation of theirleaders--the women too--until all were singing, parading, swaying anddancing in and out of the dozen rooms. And finally, liquor and foodaffecting them, I suppose, many fell flat, unable to do anythingthereafter but lie upon divans or in corners until friends assisted themelsewhere--to taxis finally. But mine host, as I recall him, was alwayspresent, serene, sober, smiling, unaffected, bland and gracious anduntiring in his attention. He was there to keep order where otherwisethere would have been none. 

I mention this merely to indicate the character of a long series of suchevents which covered the years 19-- to 19--. During that time, for thereason that I have first given (his curious pleasure in my company), Iwas part and parcel of a dozen such more or less vivid affairs andpleasurings, which stamped on my mind not only X---- but life itself, the possibilities and resources of luxury where taste and appetite areinvolved, the dreams of grandeur and happiness which float in somemen's minds and which work out to a wild fruition--dreams so outré andso splendid that only the tyrant of an obedient empire, with all theresources of an enslaved and obedient people, could indulge with safety. Thus once, I remember, that a dozen of us--writers and artists--beingassembled in his studio in New York one Friday afternoon for the merepurpose of idling and drinking, he seeming to have nothing better to dofor the time being, he suddenly suggested, and as though it had but nowoccurred to him, that we all adjourn to his country house on LongIsland, which was not yet quite finished (or, rather, furnished), butwhich was in a sufficient state of completion to permit of appropriateentertainment providing the necessaries were carried out there with us. 

As I came to think of this afterward, I decided that after all it wasnot perhaps so unpremeditated as it seemed and that unconsciously weserved a very useful purpose. There was work to do, suggestions to beobtained, an overseer, decorator and landscape gardener with whomconsultations were absolutely necessary; and nothing that X---- ever didwas without its element of calculation. Why not make a gala affair of arather dreary November task--

Hence--

At any rate the majority of us forthwith agreed, since plainly it meantan outing of the most lavish and pleasing nature. At once fourautomobiles were pressed into service, three from his own garage and onespecially engaged elsewhere. There was some telephoning _in re_ culinarysupplies to a chef in charge of the famous restaurant below who was _enrapport_ with our host, and soon some baskets of food were produced andsubsequently the four cars made their appearance at the entryway below. At dusk of a gray, cold, smoky day we were all bundled intothese--poets, playwrights, novelists, editors (he professed a greatcontempt for actors), and forthwith we were off, to do forty-five milesbetween five-thirty and seven p. M. 

I often think of that ride, the atmosphere of it, and what it told ofour host's point of view. He was always so grave, serene, watchful yetpleasant and decidedly agreeable, gay even, without seeming so to be. There was something so amazingly warm and exotic about him and his, andyet at the same time something so cold and calculated, as if after allhe were saying to himself, "I am the master of all this, amstage-managing it for my own pleasure. " I felt that he looked upon usall not so much as intimates or friends as rather fine birds orspecimens of one kind and another, well qualified to help him with artand social ideas if nothing more--hence his interest in us. Also, in hisestimation no doubt, we reflected some slight color or light into hislife, which he craved. We had done things too. Nevertheless, in his ownestimation, he was the master, the Can Grande. He could at will, "takeus up or leave us out, " or so he thought. We were mere toys, finefeathers, cap-and-bell artists. It was nice to, "take us around, " haveus with him. Smothered in a great richly braided fur coat and fur cap, he looked as much the Grand Duke as one might wish. 

But I liked him, truly. And what a delicious evening and holiday, alltold, he made of it for us. By leaving a trail of frightened horses, menand women, and tearing through the gloom as though streets were hisprivate race-track--I myself as much frightened as any at the roaringspeed of the cars and the possibilities of the road--we arrived atseven, and by eight were seated to a course dinner of the mostgratifying character. There was no heat in the house as yet, but fromsomewhere great logs had been obtained and now blazed in the largefireplaces. There was no electricity as yet--a private plant was beinginstalled--but candles and lamps blazed in lovely groups, casting a softglow over the great rooms. One room lacked a door, but an immense rugtook its place. There were rugs, hangings and paintings in profusion, many of them as yet unhung. Some of the most interesting importations offurniture and statuary were still in the cases in which they hadarrived, with marks of ships and the names of foreign cities upon thecases. Scattered about the great living-room, dining-room, music-roomand library were enough rugs, divans and chairs as well as musicalinstruments--a piano among others--to give the place an air ofcompleteness and luxury. The walls and ceilings had already beendecorated--in a most florid manner, I must say. Outside were greatbalconies and verandahs commanding, as the following morning proved, avery splendid view of a very bleak sea. The sand dunes! The distantfloor of the sea! The ships! Upstairs were nine suites of one- andtwo-rooms and bath. The basement was an intricate world of kitchen, pantry, engine-room, furnace, wine cellars and what not. Outside was atawny waste of sand held together in places in the form of hummocks andeven concealing hills by sand-binding grasses. 

That night, because it was windy and dull and bleak, we stayed inside, Ifor one going outside only long enough to discover that there were greatwide verandahs of concrete about the house, fit for great entertainmentsin themselves, and near at hand, hummocks of sand. Inside all was warmand flaring enough. The wine cellar seemed to contain all that one mightreasonably desire. Our host once out here was most gay in his mood. Hewas most pleasantly interested in the progress of his new home, althoughnot intensely so. He seemed to have lived a great deal and to be makingthe best of everything as though it were something to go through with. With much talking on the part of us all, the evening passed swiftlyenough. Some of the men could play and sing. One poet recited enchantingbits of verse. For our inspection certain pieces of furniture andstatuary were unpacked and displayed--a bronze faun some three feet inheight, for one thing. All the time I was sensible of being in contactwith some one who was really in touch with life in a very large way, financially and otherwise. His mind seemed to be busy with all sorts ofthings. There were two Syrians in Paris, he said, who owned a largecollection of rugs suitable for an exhibition. He had an agent who wastrying to secure the best of them for his new home. De Shay had recentlyintroduced him to a certain Italian count who had a great house in Italybut could not afford its upkeep. He was going to take over a portion ofits furnishings, after due verification, of course. Did I know thepaintings of Monticelli and Mancini? He had just secured excellentexamples of both. Some time when his new home was further along I mustcome out. Then the pictures would be hung, the statuary and furniture inplace. He would get up a week-end party for a select group. 

The talk drifted to music and the stage. At once I saw that because ofhis taste, wealth and skill, women formed a large and yet rathertoy-like portion of his life, holding about as much relation to hisinner life as do the concubines of an Asiatic sultan. Madame of theearrings, as I learned from De Shay, was a source of great expense tohim, but at that she was elusive, not easily to be come at. The stageand Broadway were full of many beauties in various walks of life, manyof whom he knew or to whom he could obtain access. Did I know thus, andso--such-and-such, and one?

"I'll tell you, " he said after a time and when the wine glasses had beenrefilled a number of times, "we must give a party out here some time, something extraordinary, a real one. De Shay and Bielow" (naming anotherartist) "and myself must think it out. I know three differentdancers"--and he began to enumerate their qualities. I saw plainly thateven though women played a minor part in his life, they were the fringeand embroidery to his success and power. At one a. M. We went to ourrooms, having touched upon most of the themes dear to metropolitanlovers of life and art. 

The next morning was wonderful--glittering, if windy. The sea sparkledbeyond the waste of sand. I noted anew the richness of the furnishings, the greatness of the house. Set down in so much sand and facing thegreat sea, it was wonderful. There was no order for breakfast; we camedown as we chose. A samovar and a coffee urn were alight on the table. Rolls, chops, anything, were brought on order. Possibly because I wasone of the first about, my host singled me out--he was up and dressedwhen I came down--and we strolled over the estate to see what we shouldsee. 

Curiously, although I had seen many country homes of pretension and evenluxury, I never saw one that appealed to me more on the ground ofpromise and, after a fashion, of partial fulfillment. It was sounpretentiously pretentious, so really grand in a limited and yet poeticway. Exteriorly its placement, on a rise of ground commanding that vastsweep of sea and sand, its verandahs, so very wide--great smooth floorsof red concrete--bordered with stone boxes for flowers and handsomelydesigned stone benches, its long walks and drives but newly begun, itsstretch of beach, say a half mile away and possibly a mile and a halflong, to be left, as he remarked, "au naturel, " driftwood, stones andall, struck me most favorably. Only one long pier for visiting yachtswas to be built, and a certain stretch of beach, not over three hundredfeet, cleared for bath houses and a smooth beach. On one spot of land, ahigh hummock reaching out into the sea, had already been erected a smallvantage tower, open at the bottom for shade and rest, benches turning ina circle upon a concrete floor, above it, a top looking more like asmall bleak lighthouse than anything else. In this upper portion was aroom reached by small spiral concrete stairs!

I could not help noting the reserve and _savoir faire_ with which myhost took all this. He was so healthy, assured, interested and, I amglad to say, not exactly self-satisfied; at least he did not impress mein that way--a most irritating condition. Plainly he was building a verysplendid thing. His life was nearing its apex. He must not only have hadmillions, but great taste to have undertaken, let alone accomplished, asmuch as was already visible here. Pointing to a bleak waste of sandbetween the house and the sea--and it looked like a huge red and yellowbird perched upon a waste of sand--he observed, "When you come again inthe spring, that will contain a garden of 40, 000 roses. The wind isnearly always off the sea here. I want the perfume to blow over theverandahs. I can rotate the roses so that a big percentage of them willalways be in bloom. "

We visited the stables, the garage, an artesian well newly driven, adrive that was to skirt the sea, a sunken garden some distance from thehouse and away from the sea. 

Next spring I came once more--several times, in fact. The rose gardenwas then in bloom, the drives finished, the pictures hung. Although thiswas not a world in which society as yet deigned to move, it was entirelyconceivable that at a later period it might, and betimes it was crowdedwith people smart enough and more agreeable in the main than the hardy, strident members of the so-called really inner circles. There wereartists, writers, playwrights, singers, actresses, and some nondescriptfigures of the ultra-social world--young men principally who seemed tocome here in connection with beautiful young women, models and othergirls whose beauty was their only recommendation to consideration. 

The scene was not without brilliance. A butler and numerous flunkeysfluttered to and fro. Guests were received at the door by a footman. Ahousekeeper and various severe-looking maids governed in the matter ofcleaning. One could play golf, tennis, bridge, motor, fish, swim, drinkin a free and even disconcerting manner or read quietly in one angle oranother of the grounds. There were affairs, much flirting and giggling, suspicious wanderings to and fro at night--no questions asked as to whocame or whether one was married, so long as a reasonable amount ofdecorum was maintained. It was the same on other occasions, only thehouse and grounds were full to overflowing with guests and passingfriends, whose machines barked in the drives. I saw as many gay andfascinating costumes and heard as much clever and at times informativetalk here as anywhere I have been. 

During this fall and winter I was engaged in work which kept me verymuch to myself. During the period I read much of X----, banks he wascombining, new ventures he was undertaking. Yet all at once one winter'sday, and out of a clear sky, the papers were full of an enormousfinancial crash of which he was the center. According to the newspapers, the first and foremost of a chain of banks of which he was the head, tosay nothing of a bonding and realty company and some street-railwayproject on Long Island, were all involved in the crash. Curiously, although no derogatory mention had previously been made of him, thearticles and editorials were now most vituperative. Their venom wasespecially noticeable. He was a get-rich-quick villain of the vileststripe; he had been juggling a bank, a trust company, an insurancecompany and a land and street-railway speculative scheme as one wouldglass balls. The money wherewith he gambled was not his. He had robbedthe poor, deceived them. Yet among all this and in the huge articleswhich appeared the very first day, I noted one paragraph which stuck inmy mind, for I was naturally interested in all this and in him. It read:

 "Wall Street heard yesterday that Superintendent H---- got his first information concerning the state in which X----'s affairs were from quarters where resentment may have been cherished because of his activity in the Long Island Traction field. This is one of the Street's 'clover patches' and the success which the newcomer seemed to be meeting did not provoke great pleasure. "

Another item read:

 "A hitch in a deal that was to have transferred the South Shore to the New York and Queens County System, owned by the Long Island Railroad, at a profit of almost $2, 000, 000 to X----, was the cause of all the trouble. Very active displeasure on the part of certain powers in Wall Street blocked, it is said, the closing of the deal for the railroad. They did not want him in this field, and were powerful enough to prevent it. At the same time pressure from other directions was brought to bear on him. The clearing-house refused to clear for his banks. X---- was in need of cash, but still insisting on a high rate of remuneration for the road which he had developed to an important point. Their sinister influences entered and blocked the transfer until it was no longer possible for him to hold out. "

Along with these two items was a vast mass of data, really pages, showing how, when, where he had done thus and so, "juggled accounts"between one bank and another, all of which he controlled however, andmost of which he owned, drew out large sums and put in their placemortgages on, or securities in, new companies which he wasorganizing--tricks which were the ordinary routine of Wall Street andhence rather ridiculous as the sub-stone of so vast a hue and cry. 

I was puzzled and, more than that, moved by the drama of the man'ssudden end, for I understood a little of finance and its ways, also ofwhat place and power had plainly come to mean to him. It must bedreadful. Yet how could it be, I asked myself, if he really ownedfifty-one per cent or more in so many companies that he could be such adark villain? After all, ownership is ownership, and control, control. On the face of the reports themselves his schemes did not look so black. I read everything in connection with him with care. 

As the days passed various other things happened. For one thing, hetried to commit suicide by jumping out of a window of his studio in NewYork; for another, he tried to take poison. Now of a sudden a bachelorsister, of whom I had never heard in all the time I had known him, putin an appearance as his nearest of kin--a woman whose name was not hisown but a variation of it, an "-ovitch" having suddenly been tacked ontoit. She took him to a sanitarium, from which he was eventually turnedout as a criminal, then to a hospital, until finally he surrenderedhimself to the police. The names of great lawyers and other bankersbegan to enter the case. Alienists of repute, those fine chameleons ofthe legal world, were employed who swore first that he was insane, thenthat he was not. His sister, who was a physician and scientist ofrepute, asked the transfer of all his property to her on the ground thathe was incompetent and that she was his next of kin. To this she swore, giving as her reasons for believing him insane that he had "illusions ofgrandeur" and that he believed himself "persecuted by eminentfinanciers, " things which smacked more of sanity than anything else tome. At the same time he and she, as time rather indicated, had arrangedthis in part in the hope of saving something out of the great wreck. There were other curious features: Certain eminent men in politics andfinance who from revelations made by the books of the various banks werein close financial if not personal relations with X---- denied thiscompletely. Curiously, the great cry on the part of these was that hewas insane, must be, and that he was all alone in his schemes. His lifeon Broadway, on Long Island, in his studio in New York, were ransackedfor details. Enough could not be made of his gay, shameful, spendthriftlife. No one else, of course, had ever been either gay or shamefulbefore--especially not the eminent and hounding financiers. 

Then from somewhere appeared a new element. In a staggeringly lowtenement region in Brooklyn was discovered somehow or other a very oldman and woman, most unsatisfactory as relatives of such imposing people, who insisted that they were his parents, that years before because heand his sister were exceedingly restless and ambitious, they had leftthem and had only returned occasionally to borrow money, finally ceasingto come at all. In proof of this, letters, witnesses, old photos, wereproduced. It really did appear as if he and his sister, although theyhad long vigorously denied it, really were the son and daughter of thetwo who had been petty bakers in Brooklyn, laying up a littlecompetence of their own. I never knew who "dug" them up, but the reasonwhy was plain enough. The sister was laying claim to the property as thenext of kin. If this could be offset, even though X---- were insane, theproperty would at once be thrown into the hands of the various creditorsand sold under a forced sale, of course--in other words, for a song--fortheir benefit. Naturally it was of interest to those who wished to havehis affairs wound up to have the old people produced. But the greatfinancier had been spreading the report all along that he was fromRussia, that his parents, or pseudo-parents, were still there, but thatreally he was the illegitimate son of the Czar of Russia, boarded outoriginally with a poor family. Now, however, the old people were broughtfrom Brooklyn and compelled to confront him. It was never really provedthat he and his sister had neglected them utterly or had done anythingto seriously injure them, but rather that as they had grown in place andstation they had become more or less estranged and so ignored them, having changed their names and soared in a world little dreamed of bytheir parents. Also a perjury charge was made against the sister whicheffectually prevented her from controlling his estate, a lease longenough to give the financiers time for their work. Naturally there was agreat hue and cry over her, the scandal, the shame, that they shouldthus publicly refuse to recognize their parents as they did or had whenconfronted by them. Horrible! There were most heavily illustrated andtearful Sunday articles, all blazoned forth with pictures of his houseand studio, his banks, cars, yacht, groups of guests, while the motivesof those who produced the parents were overlooked. The pictures of theparents confronting X---- and his sister portrayed very old and feeblepeople, and were rather moving. They insisted that they were his parentsand wept brokenly in their hands. But why? And he denying it! Hissister, who resented all this bitterly and who stood by him valiantly, repudiated, for his sake of course, his and her so-called parents andfriends. 

I never saw such a running to cover of "friends" in all my life. Of allthose I had seen about his place and in his company, scores on scores ofpeople reasonably well known in the arts, the stage, the worlds offinance and music, all eating his dinners, riding in his cars, drinkinghis wines, there was scarcely any one now who knew him anything morethan "casually" or "slightly"--oh, so slightly! When rumors as to themidnight suppers, the Bacchic dancing, the automobile parties to hisgreat country place and the spirited frolics which occurred there beganto get abroad, there was no one whom I knew who had ever been there orknew anything about him or them. For instance, of all the people who hadbeen close or closest and might therefore have been expected to befriendly and deeply concerned was de Shay, his fidus Achates andliterally his pensioner--yet de Shay was almost the loudest in hisdenunciation or at least deprecation of X----, his habits and methods!Although it was he who had told me of Mme. ---- and her relation toX----, who urged me to come here, there and the other place, especiallywhere X---- was the host, always assuring me that it would be sowonderful and that X---- was really such a great man, so generous, soworth-while, he was now really the loudest or at least the moststand-offish in his comments, pretending never to have been very closeto X----, and lifting his eyebrows in astonishment as though he had noteven guessed what he had actually engineered. His "Did-you-hears, ""Did-you-knows" and "Wouldn't-have-dreamed" would have done credit to atea-party. He was so shocked, especially at X----'s robbing poorchildren and orphans, although in so far as my reading of the paperswent I could find nothing that went to prove that he had any intentionof robbing anybody--that is, directly. In the usual Wall Street highfinance style he was robbing Peter to pay Paul, that is, he was usingthe monies of one corporation which he controlled to bolster up any ofthe others which he controlled, and was "washing one hand with theother, " a proceeding so common in finance that to really radically andtruly oppose it, or do away with it, would mean to bring down the wholefabric of finance in one grand crash. 

Be that as it may. In swift succession there now followed the so-called"legal" seizure and confiscation of all his properties. In the firstplace, by alienists representing the District Attorney and the Statebanking department, he was declared sane and placed on trial forembezzlement. Secondly, his sister's plea that his property be put intoher hands as trustee or administrator was thrown out of court and sheherself arrested and confined for perjury on the ground that she hadperjured herself in swearing that she was his next of kin when inreality his real parents, or so they swore, were alive and in America. Next, his banks, trust companies and various concerns, including hisgreat country estate, were swiftly thrown into the hands of receivers(what an appropriate name!) and wound up "for the benefit of creditors. "All the while X---- was in prison, protesting that he was really notguilty, that he was solvent, or had been until he was attacked by theState bank examiner or the department back of him, and that he was thevictim of a cold-blooded conspiracy which was using the State bankingdepartment and other means to drive him out of financial life, and thatsolely because of his desire to grow and because by chance he had beenimpinging upon one of the choicest and most closely guarded fields ofthe ultra-rich of Wall Street--the street railway area in New York andBrooklyn. 

One day, so he publicly swore to the grand jury, by which he was beingexamined, as he was sitting in his great offices, in one of the greatsky-scrapers of New York, which occupied an entire floor and commandedvast panoramas in every direction (another evidence of the man's insane"delusion of grandeur, " I presume), he was called to answer thetelephone. One Mr. Y----, so his assistant said, one of the eminentfinanciers of Wall Street and America, was on the wire. Without anypreliminary and merely asking was this Mr. X---- on the wire, the latterproceeded, "This is Mr. Y----. Listen closely to what I am going to say. I want you to get out of the street railway business in New York orsomething is going to happen to you. I am giving you a reasonablewarning. Take it. " Then the phone clicked most savagely and ominouslyand superiorly at the other end. 

"I knew at the time, " went on X----, addressing the grand jury, "that Iwas really listening to the man who was most powerful in such affairs inNew York and elsewhere and that he meant what he said. At the same timeI was in no position to get out without closing up the one deal whichstood to net me two million dollars clear if I closed it. At the sametime I wanted to enter this field and didn't see why I shouldn't. If Ididn't it spelled not ruin by any means but a considerable loss, a verygreat loss, to me, in more ways than one. Oddly enough, just at thistime I was being pressed by those with whom I was associated to wind upthis particular venture and turn my attention to other things. I haveoften wondered, in the light of their subsequent actions, why theyshould have become so pressing just at this time. At the same time, perhaps I was a little vain and self-sufficient. I had once got thebetter of some agents of another great financier in a Western Powerdeal, and I felt that I could put this thing through too. Hence Irefused to heed the warning. However, I found that all those who werepreviously interested to buy or at least develop the property were nowsuddenly grown cold, and a little later when, having entered on severalother matters, I needed considerable cash, the State banking departmentdescended on me and, crying fraud and insolvency, closed all my banks. 

"You know how it is when they do this to you. Cry 'Fire!' and you cannearly wreck a perfectly good theater building. Depositors withdraw, securities tumble, investigation and legal expenses begin, yourfinancial associates get frightened or ashamed and desert you. Nothingis so squeamish or so retiring and nervous as money. Time will show thatI was not insolvent at the time. The books will show a few technicallyillegal things, but so would the books or the affairs of any great bank, especially at this time, if quickly examined. I was doing no more thanall were doing, but they wanted to get me out--and they did. "

Regardless of proceedings of various kinds--legal, technical and thelike--X---- was finally sent to the penitentiary, and spent some timethere. At the same time his confession finally wrecked about nine othereminent men, financiers all. A dispassionate examination of all theevidence eight years later caused me to conclude without hesitation thatthe man had been a victim of a cold-blooded conspiracy, the object ofwhich was to oust him from opportunities and to forestall him in methodswhich would certainly have led to enormous wealth. He was apparently ina position and with the brains to do many of the things which the ablestand coldest financiers of his day had been and were doing, and they didnot want to be bothered with, would not brook, in short, hisapproaching rivalry. Like the various usurpers of regal powers inancient days, they thought it best to kill a possible claimant to thethrone in his infancy. 

But that youth of his! The long and devious path by which he had come!Among the papers relating to the case and to a time when he could nothave been more than eighteen, and when he was beginning his career as abook agent, was a letter written to his mother (August, 1892), whichread:

 "MY DEAR PARENTS: Please answer me at once if I can have anything of you, or something of you or nothing. Remember this is the first and the last time in my life that I beg of you anything. You have given to the other child not $15 but hundreds, and now when I, the very youngest, ask of you, my parents, $15, are you going to be so hard-hearted as to refuse me? Without these $15 it is left to me to be without income for two or three weeks. 

 "For God's sake, remember what I ask of you, and send me at once so that I should cease thinking of it. Leon, as I have told you, will give me $10, $15 he has already paid for the contract, and your $15 will make $25. Out of this I need $10 for a ticket and $15 for two or three weeks' board and lodging. 

 "Please answer at once. Don't wait for a minute, and send me the money or write me one word 'not. ' Remember this only that if you refuse me I will have nothing in common with you. 

 "Your son, "----"

There was another bit of testimony on the part of one Henry Dom, abaker, who for some strange reason came forward to identify him as someone he had known years before in Williamsburgh, which read:

 "I easily recognize them" (X---- and his sister) "from their pictures in the newspapers. I worked for X----'s father, who was a baker in Williamsburgh, and frequently addressed letters that were written by X---- Senior and his wife to Dr. Louise X---- who was then studying medicine in Philadelphia. X---- was then a boy going to school, but working in his father's bakery mornings and evenings. He did not want to do that, moaned a great deal, and his parents humored him in his attitude. He was very vain, liked to appear intellectual. They kept saying to their friends that he should have a fine future. Five years later, after I had left them once, I met the mother and she told me that X---- was studying banking and getting along fine. "

Some seven years after the failure and trial by which he had sosummarily been disposed of and after he had been released from prison, Iwas standing at a certain unimportant street corner in New York waitingfor a car when I saw him. He was passing in the opposite direction, notvery briskly, and, as I saw, plainly meditatively. He was not so welldressed. The clothes he wore while good were somehow different, lackingin that exquisite something which had characterized him years before. His hat--well, it was a hat, not a Romanoff shako nor a handsome panamasuch as he had affected in the old days. He looked tired, a little wornand dusty, I thought. 

My first impulse was of course to hail him, my second not, since he hadnot seen me. It might have been embarrassing, and at any rate he mightnot have even remembered me. But as he walked I thought of the greathouse by the sea, the studio, the cars, the 40, 000 roses, the crowds athis summer place, the receptions in town and out, Madame of the earrings(afterward married to a French nobleman), and then of the letter to hismother as a boy, the broken shoes in the winter time, his denial of hisparents, the telephone message from the financial tiger. "Vanity, vanity, " saith the preacher. The shores of our social seas are strewnwith pathetic wrecks, the whitening bone of half-sand-buried ships. 

At the next corner he paused, a little uncertain apparently as to whichway to go, then turned to the left and was lost. I have never seen norheard of him since. 

_The Mighty Rourke_

When I first met him he was laying the foundation for a small dynamo inthe engine-room of the repair shop at Spike, and he was most unusuallyloud in his protestations and demands. He had with him a dozen Italians, all short, swarthy fellows of from twenty-five to fifty years of age, who were busy bringing material from a car that had been pushed in onthe side-track next to the building. This was loaded with crushed stone, cement, old boards, wheelbarrows, tools, and the like, all of which wereto be used in the labor that he was about to undertake. He himself wasstanding in the doorway of the shop where the work was to be conducted, coat off, sleeves rolled up, and shouting with true Irish insistence, "Come, Matt! Come, Jimmie! Get the shovels, now! Get the picks! Bringsome sand here! Bring some stone! Where's the cement, now? Where's thecement? Jasus Christ! I must have some cement! What arre ye all doin'?What do ye think ye're up here fer? Hurry, now, hurry! Bring thecement!" and then, having concluded this amazing fanfare, calmly turningto gaze about as if he were the only one in the world who had the rightto stand still. 

More or less oppressed with life myself at the time, I was against allbosses, and particularly against so seemingly a vicious one as this. "What a slave driver!" I thought. "What a brute!" And yet I rememberthinking that he was not exactly unpleasant to look at, either--quitethe contrary. He was medium in height, thick of body and neck, withshort gray hair and mustache, and bright, clear, twinkling Irish grayeyes, and he carried himself with an air of unquestionable authority. Itwas much as if he had said, "I am the boss here"; and, indeed, he was. Is it this that sends the Irish to rule as captains of hundreds theworld over?

The job he was bossing was not very intricate or important, but it wasinteresting. It consisted of digging a trench ten by twelve feet, andshaping it up with boards into a "form, " after which concrete was to bemixed and poured in, and some iron rods set to fasten the engine to--anengine bed, no less. It was not so urgent but that it might have beenconducted with far less excitement, but what are you to do when you arenaturally excitable, love to make a great noise, and feel that thingsare going forward whether they are or not? Plainly this particularindividual loved noise and a great stir. So eager was he to have donewith it, no matter what it was or where, that he was constantly trottingto and fro, shouting, "Come, Matt! Come, Jimmie! Hurry, now, bring theshovels! Bring the picks!" and occasionally bursting forth with aperfect avalanche of orders. "Up with it! Down with it! Front with it!Back with it! In with it! Out with it!" all coupled with his favoriteexpletive, "Jasus Christ, " which was as innocent of evil, I subsequentlycame to know, as a prayer. In short, he was simply wild Irish, and thatwas all there was to him--a delightful specimen, like Namgay Doola. 

But, as I say, at the time he seemed positively appalling to me, avirulent specimen, and I thought, "The Irish brute! To think of humanbeings having to work for a brute like that! To think of his driving menlike that!" However, I soon began to discover that he was not so bad ashe seemed, and then I began to like him. 

The thing that brought about this swift change of feeling in me was theattitude of his men toward him. Although he was so insistent with hiscommands, they did not seem to mind nor to strain themselves working. They were not killing themselves, by any means. He would stand overthem, crying, "Up with it! Up with it! Up with it! Up with it!" or "Downwith it! Down with it! Down with it!" until you would have imaginedtheir nerves would be worn to a frazzle. As it was, however, they didnot seem to care any more than you would for the ticking of a clock;rather, they appeared to take it as a matter of course, something thathad to be, and that one was prepared for. Their steps were in the mainas leisurely as those of idlers on Fifth Avenue or Broadway. Theycarried boards or stone as one would objects of great value. One couldnot help smiling at the incongruity of it; it was farcical. Finallygathering the full import of it all, I ventured to laugh, and he turnedon me with a sharp and yet not unkindly retort. 

"Ha! ha! ha!" he mocked. "If ye had to work as hard as these min, yewouldn't laugh. "

I wanted to say, "Hard work, indeed!" but instead I replied, "Is thatso? Well, I don't see that they're killing themselves, or you either. You're not as fierce as you sound. "

Then I explained that I was not laughing at them but at him, and he tookit all in good part. Since I was only a nominal laborer here, not a realone--permitted to work for my health, for twelve cents an hour--we fellto conversing upon railroad matters, and in this way our period offriendship began. 

As I learned that morning, Rourke was the foreman-mason for minor tasksfor all that part of the railroad that lay between New York and fiftymiles out, on three divisions. He had a dozen or so men under him andwas in possession of one car, which was shunted back and forth betweenthe places in which he happened to be working. He was a builder ofconcrete platforms, culverts, coal-bins, sidewalks, bridge and buildingpiers, and, in fact, anything that could be made out of crushed stoneand cement, or bricks and stone, and he was sent here and there, asnecessity required. As he explained to me at the time, he sometimes roseas early as four a. M. In order to get to his place of labor by seven. The great railroad company for which he toiled was no gentle master, anddid not look upon his ease, or that of his men, as important. At thesame time, as he himself confessed, he did not mind hard work--liked it, in short. He had been working now for the company for all of twenty-twoyears, "rain or shine. " Darkness or storm made no difference to him. "Shewer, I have to be there, " he observed once with his quizzical, elusive Irish grin. "They're not payin' me wages fer lyin' in bed. If yewas to get up that way yerself every day fer a year, me b'y, " he added, eyeing my spare and none too well articulated frame, "it'd make a man avye. "

"Yes?" I said tolerantly. "And how much do you get, Rourke?"

"Two an' a half a day. "

"You don't say!" I replied, pretending admiration. 

The munificence of the corporation that paid him two and a half dollarsa day for ten hours' work, as well as for superintending andconstructing things of such importance, struck me forcibly. Perhaps, aswe say in America, he "had a right" to be happy, only I could not seeit. At the same time, I could not help thinking that he was bettersituated than myself at the time. I had been ill, and was now earningonly twelve cents an hour for ten hours' work, and the sight of theforeman for whom I was working was a torture to my soul. He was such aloud-mouthed, blustering, red-headed ignoramus, and I wanted to get outfrom under him. At the same time, I was not without sufficient influenceso to do, providing I could find a foreman who could make use of me. Thegreat thing was to do this, and the more I eyed this particular specimenof foreman the better I liked him. He was genial, really kindly, amazingly simple and sincere. I decided to appeal to him to take me onhis staff. 

"How would you like to take me, Mr. Rourke, and let me work for you?" Iasked hopefully, after explaining to him why I was here. 

"Shewer, " he replied. "Ye'd do fine. "

"Would I have to work with the Italians?" I asked, wondering how I wouldmake out with a pick and shovel. My frame was so spare at the time thatthe question must have amused him, considering the type of physiquerequired for day labor. 

"There'll be plenty av work fer ye to do without ever yer layin' a handto a pick er shovel, " he replied comfortingly. "Shewer, that's no workfer white min. Let the nagurs do it. Look at their backs an' arrms, an'then look at yers. "

I was ready to blush for shame. These poor Italians whom I was so readyto contemn were immeasurably my physical superiors. 

"But why do you call them negroes, Rourke?" I asked after a time. "They're not black. "

"Well, bedad, they're not white, that's waan thing shewer, " he added. "Aany man can tell that be lookin' at thim. "

I had to smile. It was so dogmatic and unreasoning. 

"Very well, then, they're black, " I said, and we left the matter. 

Not long after I put in a plea to be transferred to him, at his request, and it was granted. The day that I joined his flock, or gang, as hecalled it, he was at Williamsbridge, a little station north on theHarlem, building a concrete coal-bin. It was a pretty place, surroundedby trees and a grass-plot, a vast improvement upon a dark indoor shop, and seemed to me a veritable haven of rest. Ah, the smiling morning sun, the green leaves, the gentle fresh winds of heaven!

Rourke was down in an earthen excavation under the depot platform when Iarrived, measuring and calculating with his plumb-bob and level, andwhen I looked in on him hopefully he looked up and smiled. 

"So here ye arre at last, " he said with a grin. 

"Yes, " I laughed. 

"Well, ye're jist in time; I waant ye to go down to the ahffice. "

"Certainly, " I replied, but before I could say more he climbed out ofhis hole, his white jeans odorous of the new-turned earth, and fished inthe pocket of an old gray coat which lay beside him for a soiled andcrumpled letter, which he finally unfolded with his thick, clumsyfingers. Then he held it up and looked at it defiantly. 

"I waant ye to go to Woodlawn, " he continued, "an' look after some boltsthat arre up there--there's a keg av thim--an' sign the bill fer thim, an' ship thim down to me. An' thin I waant ye to go down to the ahfficean' take thim this o. K. " Here again he fished around and producedanother crumpled slip, this time of a yellow color (how well I came toknow them!), which I soon learned was an o. K. Blank, a form which had tobe filled in and signed for everything received, if no more than a stickof wood or a nail or a bolt. The company demanded these of all foremen, in order to keep its records straight. Its accounting department wasuseless without them. At the same time, Rourke kept talking of the"nonsinse av it, " and the "onraisonableness" of demanding o. K. S foreverything. "Ye'd think some one was goin' to sthale thim from thim, " hedeclared irritably and defiantly. 

I saw at once that some infraction of the railroad rules had occurredand that he had been "called down, " or "jacked up" about it, as therailroad men expressed it. He was in a high state of dudgeon, and asdefiant and pugnacious as his royal Irish temper would allow. At thesame time he was pleased to think that I or some one had arrived whowould relieve him of this damnable "nonsinse, " or so he hoped. He wasnot so inexperienced as not to imagine that I could help him with allthis. In fact, as time proved, this was my sole reason for being here. 

He flung a parting shot at his superior as I departed. 

"Tell him that I'll sign fer thim when I get thim, an' not before, " hedeclared. 

I went on my way, knowing full well that no such message was fordelivery, and that he did not intend that it should be. It was just theIrish of it. I went off to Woodlawn and secured the bolts, after which Iwent down to the "ahffice" and reported. There I found the chief clerk, a mere slip of a dancing master in a high collar and attractive officesuit, who was also in a high state of dudgeon because Rourke, as he nowexplained, had failed to render an o. K. For this and other things, anddid not seem to understand that he, the chief clerk, must have them tomake up his reports. Sometimes o. K. S did not come in for a month ormore, the goods lying around somewhere until Rourke could use them. Hewanted to know what explanation Rourke had to offer, and when Isuggested that the latter thought, apparently, that he could leave allconsignments of goods in one station or another until such time as heneeded them before he o. K. Ed for them, he fairly foamed. 

"Say, " he almost shouted, at the same time shoving his handsdistractedly through his hair, "what does he think I am? How does hethink I'm going to make up my books? He'll leave them there until heneeds them, will he? Well, he's a damned fool, and you go back and tellhim I said so. He's been long enough on the road to know better. You goback and tell him I said that I want a signed form for everythingconsigned to him the moment he learns that it's waiting for him, and Iwant it right away, without fail, whether it's a single nut or a car ofsand. I want it. He's got to come to time about this now, or something'sgoing to drop. I'm not going to stand it any longer. How does he thinkI'm going to make up my books? I wish he'd let you attend to thesematters while you're up there. It will save an awful lot of trouble inthis office and it may save him his job. There's one thing sure: he'sgot to come to time from now on, or either he quits or I do. "

These same o. K. S plus about twenty-five long-drawn-out reports orcalculations, retroactive and prospective, covering every possibledetail of his work from the acknowledgment of all material received upto and including the expenditure of even so much as one mill's worth ofpaper, were the bane of my good foreman's life. As I learned afterward, he had nearly his whole family, at least a boy and two girls, assistinghim nights on this part of the work. In addition, while they wereabsolutely of no import in so far as the actual work of construction wasconcerned--and that was really all that interested Rourke--they were anessential part of the system which made it possible for him to do thework at all--a point which he did not seem to be able to get clear. Atthe same time, there was an unsatisfactory side to this officetechnicalia, and it was this: If a man could only sit down and reel offa graphic account of all that he was doing, accompanied by facts andfigures, he was in excellent standing with his superiors, no matter whathis mechanical defects might be; whereas, if his reports were not clear, or were insufficient, the efficiency of his work might well beoverlooked. In a vague way, Rourke sensed this and resented it. He knewthat his work was as good as could be done, and yet here were theseconstant reports and o. K. S to irritate and delay him. Apparently theyaided actual construction no whit--but, of course, they did. Although hewas a better foreman than most, still, because of his lack of skill inthis matter of accounting, he was looked upon as more or less a failure, especially by the chief clerk. Naturally, I explained that I would do mybest, and came away. 

When I returned, however, I decided to be politic. I could not very wellwork with a pick and shovel, and this was about all that was leftoutside of that. I therefore explained as best I could the sad plight ofthe chief clerk, who stood in danger of losing his job unless thesethings came in promptly. 

"You see how it is, Rourke, don't you?" I pleaded. 

He seemed to see, but he was still angry. 

"An o. K. Blank! An o. K. Blank!" he echoed contentiously, but in asomewhat more conciliatory spirit. "He wants an o. K. Blank, does he?Well, I expect ye might as well give thim to him, thin. I think the manlives on thim things, the way he's aalways caallin' fer thim. Ye'd thinkI was a bookkeeper an' foreman at the same time; it's somethin' aaful. An o. K. Blank! An o. K. Blank!" and he sputtered to silence. 

A little while later he humorously explained that he had "clane forgotthim, anyhow. "

The ensuing month was a busy one for us. We had a platform to lay atMorrisania, a chimney to build at Tarrytown, a sidewalk to lay at WhitePlains, and a large cistern to dig and wall in at Tuckahoe. Besidesthese, there were platforms to build at Van Cortlandt and Mount Kisco, water-towers at Highbridge and Ardsley, a sidewalk and drain at Caryl, aculvert and an ash-pit at Bronx Park, and some forty concrete piers fora building at Melrose--all of which required any amount of running andfiguring, to say nothing of the actual work of superintending andconstructing, which Rourke alone could look after. It seemed ridiculousto me at the time that any one doing all this hard practical laborshould not be provided with a clerk or an accountant to take at leastsome of this endless figuring off his hands. At the same time, if he hadbeen the least bit clever, he could have provided himself with onepermanently by turning one of his so-called laborers into aclerk--carrying a clerk as a laborer--but plainly it had never occurredto him. He depended on his family. The preliminary labor alone ofordering and seeing that the material was duly shipped and unloaded wasone man's work; and yet Rourke was expected to do it all. 

In spite of all this, however, he displayed himself a masterful worker. I have never seen a better. He preferred to superintend, of course, toget down into the pit or up on the wall, and measure and direct. At thesame time, when necessary to expedite a difficult task, he would toilfor hours at a stretch with his trowel and his line and his level andhis plumb-bob, getting the work into shape, and you would never hear apersonal complaint from him concerning the weariness of labor. On thecontrary, he would whistle and sing until something went wrong, whensuddenly you would hear the most terrific uproar of words: "Come out avthat! Come out, now! Jasus Christ, man, have ye no sinse at aall? Put itdown! Put it down! What arre ye doin'? What did I tell ye? Have ye noraison in ye, no sinse, ye h'athen nagur?"

"Great heavens!" I used to think, "what has happened now?"

You would have imagined the most terrible calamity; and yet, all told, it might be nothing of any great import--a little error of some kind, more threatening than real, and soon adjusted. It might last for a fewmoments, during which time the Italians would be seen hurrying excitedlyto and fro; and then there would come a lull, and Rourke would be heardto raise his voice in tuneful melody, singing or humming or whistlingsome old-fashioned Irish "Come-all-ye. "

But the thing in Rourke that would have pleased any one was his readygrasp for the actualities of life--his full-fledged knowledge that workis the thing, not argument, or reports, or plans, but the directaccomplishment of something tangible, the thing itself. Thus, while Iwas working with him, at least nothing that might concern the clericalend of the labor could disturb him, but, if the sky fell, and eightthousand chief clerks threatened to march upon him in a body demandingreports and o. K. S, he would imperturbably make you wait until the workwas done. Once, when I interrupted him to question him concerning someof these same wretched, pestering aftermaths of labor, concerning whichhe alone could answer, he shut me off with: "The reports! The reports!What good arre the reports! Ye make me sick. What have the reports to dowith the work? If it wasn't fer the work, where would the reports be?"And I heartily echoed "Where?"

Another thing was his charming attitude toward his men, kindly and sweetfor all his storming, that innate sense of something intimate andfatherly. He had a way of saying kindly things in a joking manner whichtouched them. When he arrived in the morning, for instance, it wasalways in the cheeriest way that he began. "Come, now, b'ys, ye have agood day's work before ye today. Get the shovels, Jimmie. Bring theline, Matt!" and then he would go below himself, if below it was, andthere would be joy and peace until some obstacle to progress interfered. I might say in passing that Matt and Jimmie, his faithful henchmen, wereeach between forty and fifty, if they were a day--poor, gnarled, dusty, storm-tossed Italians who had come from heaven knows where, had enduredGod knows what, and were now rounding out a work-a-day existence underthe sheltering wing of this same Rourke, a great and protecting power tothem. 

This same Matt was a funny little Italian, soft of voice and gentle ofmanner, whom Rourke liked very much, but with whom he loved to quarrel. He would go down in any hole where the latter was working, and almostinvariably shortly after you would hear the most amazing uproar issuingtherefrom, shouts of: "Put it here, I say! Put it here! Down with it!Here! Here! Jasus Christ, have ye no sinse at aall?"--coupled, ofcourse, with occasional guttural growls from Matt, who was by no meansin awe of his master and who feared no personal blows. The latter hadbeen with Rourke for so long that he was not in the least overawed byhis yelling and could afford to take such liberties. Occasionally, notalways, Rourke would come climbing out of the hole, his face and neckfairly scarlet with heat, raging and shouting, "I'll get shut av ye!I'll have no more thruck with ye, ye blitherin', crazy loon! What goodarre ye? What work can ye do? Naathin'! Naathin'! I'll be shut av yenow, an' thin maybe I'll have a little p'ace. " Then he would dancearound and threaten and growl until something else would take hisattention, when he would quiet down and be as peaceful as ever. Somehow, I always felt that in spite of all the difficulties involved, he enjoyedthese rows--must fight, in short, to be happy. Sometimes he would gohome without saying a word to Matt, a conclusion which at first Iimagined portended the end of the latter, but soon I came to knowbetter. For the next morning Matt would reappear as unconcernedly asthough nothing had happened, and Rourke would appear not to notice orremember. 

Once, anent all this, I said to him, "Rourke, how many times have youthreatened to discharge Matt in the last three years?"

"Shewer, " he replied, with his ingratiating grin, "a man don't mane aallhe says aall the time. "

The most humorous of all his collection of workingmen, however, was theaforementioned Jimmie, a dark, mild-eyed, soft-spoken Calabrian, who hadthe shrewdness of a Machiavelli and the pertness of a crow. He lived inthe same neighborhood as Rourke, far out in one of those small towns onthe Harlem, sheltering so many Italians, for, like a hen with a broodof chicks, Rourke kept all his Italians gathered close about him. Jimmie, curiously, was the one who was always selected to run his familyerrands for him, a kind of valet to Rourke, as it were--selected forsome merit I could never discover, certainly not one of speed. He wasnevertheless constantly running here and there like an errand boy, hisworn, dusty, baggy clothes making him look like a dilapidated banditfresh from a sewer. On the job, however, no matter what it might be, Jimmie could never be induced to do real, hard work. He was always aboveit, or busy with something else. But as he was an expert cement-mixerand knew just how to load and unload the tool-car, two sinecures ofsorts, nothing was ever said to him. If any one dared to reprove him, myself for instance (a mere interloper to Jimmie), he would reply: "Yeh!Yeh! I know-a my biz. I been now with Misha Rook fifteen year. I know-amy biz. " If you made any complaint to Rourke, he would merely grin andsay, "Ha! Jimmie's the sharp one, " or perhaps, "I'll get ye yet, yefox, " but more than that nothing was ever done. 

One day, however, Jimmie failed to comply with an extraordinary order ofRourke's, which, while it resulted in no real damage, produced a mostlaughable and yet characteristic scene. A strict rule of the company wasthat no opening of any kind into which a person might possibly step orfall should be left uncovered at any station during the approach, stay, or departure of any train scheduled to stop at that station. Rourke waswell aware of this rule. He had a copy of it on file in his collectionof circulars. In addition, he had especially delegated Jimmie to attendto this matter, a task which just suited the Italian as it gave himample time to idle about and pretend to be watching. This it was whichmade the crime all the greater. 

On this particular occasion Jimmie had failed to attend to this matter. We had been working on the platform at Williamsbridge, digging a pit fora coal-bin, when a train bearing the general foreman came along. Thelatter got off at the station especially to examine the work that hadbeen done so far. When the train arrived there was the hole wide openwith Rourke below shouting and gesticulating about something, andtotally unconscious, of course, that his order had been neglected. Thegeneral foreman, who was, by the way, I believe, an admirer of Rourke, came forward, looked down, and said quietly: "This won't do, Rourke. You'll have to keep the work covered when a train is approaching. I'vetold you that before, you know. "

Rourke looked up, so astonished and ashamed that he should have been putin such a position before his superior that he hardly knew what to say. I doubt if any one ever had a greater capacity for respecting hissuperiors, anyhow. Instead of trying to answer, he merely choked andbegan to shout for Jimmie, who came running, crying, as he always did, "What's da mat'? What's da mat'?"

"What's da mat'? What's da mat'?" mocked Rourke, fairly seething with amarvelous Irish fury. "What the devil do ye suppose is the mat'? What doye mane be waalkin' away an' l'avin' the hole uncovered? Didn't I tellye niver to l'ave a hole when a train's comin'? Didn't I tell ye toattind to that an' naathin' else? An' now what have ye been doin'? Beall the powers, what d'ye mane be l'avin' it? What else arre ye goodfer? What d'ye mane be lettin' a thing like that happen, an' Mr. Wilsoncomin' along here, an' the hole open?"

He was as red as a beet, purple almost, perspiring, apoplectic. Duringall this tirade Mr. Wilson, a sad, dark, anæmic-looking person, troubledwith acute indigestion, I fancy, stood by with an amused, kindly, andyet mock severe expression on his face. I am sure he did not wish to besevere. 

Jimmie, dumbfounded, scarcely knew what to say. In the face of Rourke'srage and the foreman's presence, he did his best to remedy his error bycovering the hole, at the same time stuttering something about going fora trowel. 

"A trowel!" cried Rourke, glaring at him. "A trowel, ye h'athen ginny!What'd ye be doin' lookin' fer a trowel, an' a train comin' that closeon ye it could 'a' knocked ye off the thrack? An' the hole open, an' Mr. Wilson right here! Is that what I told ye? Is that what I pay ye fer? Beall the saints! A trowel, is it? I'll trowel ye! I'll break yer h'athenEyetalian skull, I will. Get thim boards on, an' don't let me ketch yel'avin' such a place as that open again. I'll get shut av ye, yeblitherin' lunatic. "

When it was all over and the train bearing the general foreman hadgone, Rourke quieted down, but not without many fulgurous flashes thatkept the poor Italian on tenterhooks. 

About an hour later, however, another train arrived, and, by reason ofsome intervening necessity and the idle, wandering mood of the Italian, the hole was open again. Jimmie was away behind the depot somewhere, smoking perhaps, and Rourke was, as usual, down in the hole. This timemisfortune trebled itself, however, by bringing, not the generalforeman, but the supervisor himself, a grave, quiet man, of whom Rourkestood in the greatest awe. He was so solid, so profound, so severe. Idon't believe I ever saw him smile. He walked up to the hole, andlooking reproachfully down, said: "Is this the way you leave yourexcavations, Rourke, when a train is coming? Don't you know better thanto do a thing like that?"

"Jimmie!" shouted Rourke, leaping to the surface of the earth with abound, "Jimmie! Now, be Jasus, where is that bla'guard Eyetalian? Didn'tI tell him not to l'ave this place open!" and he began shoving theplanks into place himself. 

Jimmie, suddenly made aware of this new catastrophe, came running asfast as his short legs would carry him, scared almost out of his wits. He was as pale as a very dark and dirty Italian could be, and so wroughtup that his facial expression changed involuntarily from moment tomoment. Rourke was in a fairly murderous mood, only he was so excitedand ashamed that he could not speak. Here was the supervisor, and herewas himself, and conditions--necessity for order, etc. --would not permithim to kill the Italian in the former's presence. He could only chokeand wait. To think that he should be made a mark of like this, and thatin the face of his great supervisor! His face and neck were a beet-red, and his eyes flashed with anger. He merely glared at his recalcitranthenchman, as much as to say, "Wait!" When this train had departed andthe dignified supervisor had been carried safely out of hearing heturned on Jimmie with all the fury of a masterful and excitable temper. 

"So ye'll naht cover the hole, after me tellin' ye naht fifteen minutesago, will ye?" he shouted. "Ye'll naht cover the hole! An' what'll ye betellin' me ye was doin' now?"

"I carry da waut (water) for da concrete, " pleaded Jimmie weakly. 

"Waut fer the concrete, " almost moaned Rourke, so great was his fury, his angry face shoved close to the Italian's own. "Waut fer theconcrete, is it? It's a pity ye didn't fall into yer waut fer theconcrete, ye damned nagur, an' drown! Waut fer the concrete, is it, an'me here, an' Mr. Mills steppin' off an' lookin' in on me, yeblack-hearted son of a Eyetalian, ye! I'll waut fer the concrete ye!I'll crack yer blitherin' Eyetalian skull with a pick, I will! I'llchuck ye in yer waut fer the concrete till ye choke, ye flat-footed, leather-headed lunatic! I'll tache ye to waalk aaf an' l'ave the holeopen, an' me in it. Now, be Jasus, get yer coat an' get out av this. Get--I'm tellin' ye! I'll have no more thruck with ye! I'll throuble nomore with ye. Ye're no damned good. Out with ye! An' niver show me yerface again!" And he made a motion as if he would grab him and rend himlimb from limb. 

Jimmie, well aware of his dire position, was too clever, however, to letRourke seize him. During all this conversation he had been slowlybacking away, always safely beyond Rourke's reach, and now ran--anamazing feat for him. He had evidently been through many such scenesbefore. He retreated first behind the depot, and then when Rourke hadgone to work once more down in his hole, came back and took a safeposition on guard over the hitherto sadly neglected opening. When thenext train came he was there to shove the boards over before it nearedthe station, and nothing more was said about the matter. Rourke did notappear to notice him. He did not even seem to see that he was there. Thenext morning, however, when the latter came to work as usual, it was, "Come, Matt! Come, Jimmie!" just as if nothing had happened. I was nevermore astonished in my life. 

An incident, even more ridiculous, but illustrative of the atmosphere inwhich Rourke dwelt, occurred at Highbridge one frosty October Sundaymorning, where because of seepage from a hill which threatened toundermine some tracks, Rourke was ordered to hurry and build a drain--athing which, because the order came on Saturday afternoon, requiredSunday labor, a most unusual thing in his case. But in spite of theorder, Rourke, who was a good Catholic, felt impelled before coming togo to at least early mass, and in addition--a regular Sunday practicewith him, I presume--to put on a long-skirted Prince Albert coat, whichI had never seen before and which lent to his stocky figure some amusinglines. It was really too tight, having been worn, I presume, everySunday regularly since his wedding day. In addition, he had donned abrown derby hat which, to me at least, gave him a most unfamiliar look. 

I, being curious more than anything else and wishing to be out of doorsas much as possible, also went up, arriving on the scene about nine. Rourke did not arrive until ten. In the meantime, I proceeded to buildmyself a fire on the dock, for we were alongside the Harlem River and abrisk wind was blowing. Then Rourke came, fresh from church, smiling andgenial, in the most cheerful Sunday-go-to-meeting frame of mind, butplainly a little conscious of his grand garb. 

"My, " I said, surveying him, "you look fine. I never saw you dressed upbefore. "

"L'ave aaf with yer taalk, " he replied. "I know well enough how Ilook--good enough. "

Then he bestirred himself about the task of examining what had been doneso far. But I could see, in spite of all the busy assurance with whichhe worked, that he was still highly conscious of his clothes and alittle disturbed by what I or others might think. His every-day garbplainly suited his mood much better. 

Everything went smoothly until noon, not a cloud in the sky, when, looking across the tracks at that hour, I beheld coming toward us withmore or less uncertain step another individual, stocky of figure andevidently bent on seeing Rourke--an Irishman as large as Rourke, younger, and, if anything, considerably coarser in fiber. He was veryred-faced, smooth shaven, with a black derby hat pulled down over hiseyes and wearing a somewhat faded tight-fitting brown suit. He wasdrunk, or nearly so, that was plain from the first. From the momentRourke beheld him he seemed beside himself with anger or irritation. Hisexpression changed completely and he began to swell, as was customarywith him when he was angry, as though suffering from an internaleruption of some kind. 

"The bla'guard!" I heard him mutter. "Now, be gob, what'll that fellybe waantin'?" and then as the stranger drew nearer, "Who was it touldhim I was here? Maybe some waan at the ahffice. "

Regardless of his speculations on this score, the stranger picked hisway across the tracks and came directly to him, his face and mannerindicating no particularly friendly frame of mind. 

"Maybe ye'll be lettin' me have that money now, " he began instanter, andwhen Rourke made no reply, merely staring at him, he added, "I'll bewaantin' to know now, when it is ye're goin' to give me the rest av metime fer that Scarborough job. I've been waitin' long enough. "

Rourke stirred irritably and aggressively before he spoke. He seemedgreatly put out, shamed, to think that the man should come here so, especially on this peaceful Sabbath morning. 

"I've tould ye before, " he replied defiantly after a time, "that ye'vehad aall ye earned, an' more. Ye left me without finishin' yer work, an'ye'll get no more time from me. If ye waant more, go down to the ahfficean' see if they'll give it to ye. I have no money fer ye here, " and heresumed a comfortable position before the fire, his hands behind hisback. 

"It's siven dollars ye still owe me, " returned the other, ignoringRourke's reply, "an' I waant it now. "

"Well, ye'll naht get it, " replied my boss. "I've naathin' fer ye, I'mtellin' ye. I owe ye naathin'. "

"Is that so?" returned the other. "Well, we'll see about that. Ye'll beafter givin' it to me, er I'll get it out of ye somehow. It's naht goin'to be ch'ated out av me money I am. "

"I'm owin' ye naathin', " insisted Rourke. "Ye may as well go away fromhere. Ye'll get naathin'. If ye waant anything more, go an' see theahffice, " and now he strode away to where the Italians were, ignoringthe stranger completely and muttering something about his being drunk. The latter followed him, however, over to where he stood, and continuedthe dispute. Rourke ignored him as much as possible, only exclaimingonce, "L'ave me be, man. Ye're drunk. "

"I'm naht drunk, " returned the other. "Once an' fer all now, I'm askin'ye, arre ye goin' to give me that money?"

"No, " replied Rourke, "I'm naht. "

"Belave me, " said the stranger, "I'll get it out av ye somehow, " but forthe moment he made no move, merely hanging about in an uncertain way. Heseemed to have no definite plan for collecting the money, or if he hadhe had by now abandoned it. 

Without paying any more attention to him, Rourke, still very irritatedand defiant, returned to the fire. He tried to appear calm andindifferent, but the ex-workman, a non-union mason, I judged, followedafter, standing before him and staring in the defiant, irritating way adrunken man will, not quite able to make up his mind what else to do. Presently Rourke, more to relieve the tedium of an embarrassingsituation than anything else (a number of accusatory remarks having beenpassed), turned and began poking at the blaze, finally bending over tolay on a stick of wood. On the instant, and as if seized by suddeninspiration, whether because the tails of Rourke's long coat hung out ina most provoking fashion and suggested the thing that followed or not, Idon't know, but now the red-faced intruder jumped forward, and seizingthem in a most nimble and yet vigorous clutch, gave an amazing yank, which severed them straight up the back, from seat to nape, at the sametime exclaiming:

"Ye'll naht pay me, will ye? Ye'll naht, will ye?"

On the instant a tremendous change came over the scene. It was as swiftas stage play. Instantly Rourke was upright and faced about, shouting, "Now, be gob, ye've torn me coat, have ye! Now I'll tache ye! Now I'llshow ye! Wait! Get ready, now. Now I'll fix ye, ye drunken, thavin'loafer, " and at the same time he began to move upon the enemy in a kindof rhythmic, cryptic circle (some law governing anger and emotion, Ipresume), the while his hands opened and shut and his eyes looked asthough they would be veiled completely by his narrowing lids. At thesame time the stranger, apparently seeing his danger, began backing andcircling in the same way around Rourke, as well as around the fire, until it looked as though they were performing a war dance. Round andround they went like two Hopi bucks or Zulu warriors, their facesdisplaying the most murderous cunning and intention to slay--only, instead of feathers and beads, they had on their negligible best. Allthe while Rourke was calling, "Come on, now! Get ready, now! I'll showye, now! I'll fix ye, now! It's me coat ye'll rip, is it? Come on, now!Get ready! Make yerself ready! I'm goin' to give ye the lickin' av yerlife! Come on, now! Come on, now! Come on, now!"

It was as though each had been secreted from the other and had to besought out in some mysterious manner and in a circle. In spite of thefeeling of distress that an impending struggle of this kind gives one, Icould not help noting the comic condition of Rourke's back--the longcoat beautifully ripped straight up the back, its ends fluttering in thewind like fans, and exposing his waistcoat and Sunday boiled whiteshirt--and laying up a laugh for the future. It was too ridiculous. Thestranger had a most impressive and yet absurd air of drunken sternnesswritten in his face, a do-or-die look. 

Whether anything serious would really have happened I was neverpermitted to learn, for now, in addition to myself and the Italians, allof them excited and ready to defend their lord and master, somepassengers from the nearby station and the street above as well as aforeman of a section gang helping at this same task, a great hulkingbrute of a man who looked quite able to handle both Rourke and hisopponent at one and the same time, came forward and joined in thisexcited circle. Considerable effort was made on the part of the latterto learn just what the trouble was, after which the big foremaninterposed with:

"What's the trouble here? Come, now! What's all this row, Rourke? Yewouldn't fight here, would ye? Have him arristed, er go to his home--yesay ye know him--but don't be fightin' here. Supposin' waan av thebosses should be comin' along now?" and at the same time he interposedhis great bulk between the two. 

Rourke, quieted some by this interruption but still sputtering with rageand disgrace, shouted, "Lookit me coat! Lookit what he done to me coat!See what he done to me coat! Man alive, d'ye think I'm goin' to standfer the likes av that? It's naht me that can be waalked on by a loaferlike that--an' me payin' him more than ever he was worth, an' himwaalkin' aaf an' l'avin' the job half done. I'll fix him this time. I'llshow him. I'll tache him to be comin' around an' disturbin' a man whenhe's at his work. I'll fix him now, " and once more he began to move. Butthe great foreman was not so easily to be disposed of. 

"Well then, let's caall the police, " he argued in a highly conciliatorymood. "Ye can't be fightin' him here. Sure, ye don't waant to do that. What'll the chafe think? What is it ye'll think av yerself?"

At the same time he turned to find the intruder and demand to know whathe meant by it, but the latter had already decamped. Seeing the crowdthat had and was gathering, and that he was likely to encounter moreforms of trouble than he had anticipated, he had started down the tracktoward Mott Haven. 

"I'll fix ye!" Rourke shouted when he saw him going. "Ye'll pay ferthis. I'll have ye arristed. Wait! Ye'll naht get aaf so aisy thistime. "

But just the same the storm was over for the present, anyhow, the mangone, and in a little while Rourke left for his home at Mount Vernon torepair his tattered condition. I never saw a man so crestfallen, nor onemore determined to "have the laa on him" in my life. Afterwards, when Iinquired very cautiously what he had done about it--this was a week ortwo later--he replied, "Shewer, what can ye do with a loafer like that?He has no money, an' lockin' him up won't help his wife an' childrenany. "

Thus ended a perfect scene out of Kilkenny. 

It was not so very long after I arrived that Rourke began to tell me ofa building which the company was going to erect in Mott Haven Yard, oneof its great switching centers. It was to be an important affair, according to him, sixty by two hundred feet in breadth and length, ofbrick and stone, and was to be built under a time limit of three months, an arrangement by which the company hoped to find out how satisfactorilyit could do work for itself rather than by outside contract, which itwas always hoping to avoid. From his manner and conversation, I judgedthat Rourke was eager to get this job, for he had been a contractor ofsome ability in his day before he ever went to work for the company, andfelt, I am sure, that fate had done him an injustice in not allowing himto remain one. In addition, he felt a little above the odds and ends ofmasonry that he was now called on to do, where formerly he had done somuch more important work. He was eager to be a real foreman once more, abig one, and to show the company that he could erect this building andthus make a little place for himself in the latter's good graces, although to what end I could not quite make out. He would never havemade a suitable general foreman. At the same time, he was a littleafraid of the clerical details, those terrible nightmares of reports, o. K. S and the like. 

"How arre ye feelin', Teddy, b'y?" he often inquired of me during thisperiod, with a greater show of interest in my troublesome health thanever before. I talked of leaving, I suppose, from time to time becausesheer financial necessity was about to compel it. 

"Fine, Rourke, " I would say, "never better. I'm feeling better everyday. "

"That's good. Ye're the right man in the right place now. If ye was tosthay a year er two at this work it would be the makin' av ye. Ye're toothin. Ye need more chist, " and he would tap my bony chest in a kindlymanner. "I niver have a sick day, meself. "

"That's right, Rourke, " I replied pleasantly, feeling keenly the need ofstaying by so wonderful a lamp of health. "I intend to stick at it aslong as I can. "

"Ye ought to; it'll do ye good. If we get the new buildin' to build, it'll be better yet for ye. Ye'll have plenty to do there to relave yermind. "

"Relieve, indeed!" I thought, but I did not say so. On the contrary Ifelt so much sympathy for this lusty Irishman and his reasonableambitions that I desired to help him, and urged him to get it. Isuggested indirectly that I would see him through, which touched himgreatly. He was a grateful creature in his way, but so excitable and sohelplessly self-reliant that there was no way of aiding him withoutdoing it in a secret or rather self-effacing manner. He would have muchpreferred to struggle along alone and fail, though I doubt whether realfailure could have come to Rourke so essentially capable was he. 

In another three weeks the work was really given him to do, and thenbegan one of the finest exhibitions of Irish domination andself-sufficiency that I have ever witnessed. We moved to Mott HavenYard, a great network of tracks and buildings, in the center of whichthis new building was to be erected. Rourke was given a large force ofmen, whom he fairly gloried in bossing. He had as many as fortyItalians, to say nothing of a number of pseudo-carpenters and masons(not those shrewd hawks clever enough to belong to the union, butwasters and failures of another type) who did the preliminary work ofdigging for the foundation, etc. Handling these, Rourke was in hiselement. He loved to see so much brisk work going on. He would trot toand fro about the place, beaming in the most angelic fashion, andshouting orders that could be heard all over the neighborhood. It wasdelicious to watch him. At times he would stand by the long trencheswhere the men were digging for the foundation, a great line of them, their backs bent over their work, and rub his hands in pleasingly humansatisfaction, saying, "We're goin' along fine, Teddy. I can jist see meway to the top av the buildin', " and then he would proceed to harass andannoy his men out of pure exuberance of spirits. 

"Ye waant to dig it so, man, " or, "Ye don't handle yer pick right; can'tye see that? Hold it this way. " Sometimes he would get down in thetrench and demonstrate just how it was to be done, a thing which greatlyamused some of the workmen. Frequently he would exhibit to me littletricks or knacks of his trade, such as throwing a trowel ten feet sothat it would stick in a piece of wood; turning a shovel over with alump of dirt on it and not dropping the lump, and similar simple acts, always adding, "Ye'll niver be a mason till ye can do that. "

When he was tired of fussing with the men outside he would come aroundto the little wooden shed, where I was keeping the mass of orders andreports in shape and getting his material ready for him, and look overthe papers in the most knowing manner. When he had satisfied himselfthat everything was going right, he would exclaim, "Ye're jist the b'yfer the place, Teddy. Ye'd made a good bookkeeper. If ever I get to bePrisident, I'll make ye me Sicretary av State. "

But the thing which really interested and enthralled Rourke was thecoming of the masons--those hardy buccaneers of the laboring world whocome and go as they please, asking no favors and brooking nointerference. Plainly he envied them their reckless independence at thesame time that he desired to control their labor in his favor--a taskworthy of the shrewdest diplomat. Never in my life have I seen such agay, ruthless, inconsiderate point of view as these same union masonsrepresented, a most astounding lot. They were--are, I suppose I shouldsay--our modern buccaneers and Captain Kidds of the laboring world, demanding, if you please, their six a day, starting and stopping almostwhen they please, doing just as little as they dare and yet face theirown decaying conscience, dropping any task at the most critical anddangerous point, and in other ways rejoicing in and disportingthemselves in such a way as to annoy the representatives of anycorporation great or small that suffered the sad compulsion of employingthem. Seriously, I am not against union laborers. I like them. Theyspell rude, blazing life. But when you have to deal with them!

Plainly, Rourke anticipated endless rows. Their coming promised him theopportunity he inmostly desired, I suppose, of once more fussing andfuming with real, strong, determined and pugnacious men like himself, who would not take his onslaughts tamely but would fight him back, as hewished strong men to do. He was never weary of talking of them. 

"Wait till we have thirty er forty av thim on the line, " he onceobserved to me in connection with them, "every man layin' his sixhundred bricks a day, er takin' aaf his apron! Thim's the times ye'llsee what excitement manes, me b'y. Thim's the times. "

"What'll I see, Rourke?" I asked interestedly. 

"Throuble enough. Shewer, they're no crapin' Eyetalians, that'll let yetaalk to thim as ye pl'ase. Indade not. Ye'll have to fight with themfellies. "

"Well, that's a queer state of affairs, " I remarked, and then added, "Doyou think you can handle them, Rourke?"

"Handle thim!" he exclaimed, his glorious wrath kindling in anticipationof a possible conflict. "Handle thim, an' the likes av a thousand avthim! I know them aall, every waan av thim, an' their thricks. It's nahtfoolin' me they'll be. But, me b'y, " he added instructively, "it's afine job ye'll have runnin' down to the ahffice gettin' their time. "(This is the railroad man's expression for money due, or wages. ) "Ye'llhave plenty av that to do, I'm tellin' ye. "

"You don't mean to say that you're going to discharge them, Rourke, doyou?" I asked. 

"Shewer!" he exclaimed authoritatively. "Why shouldn't I? They're jistthe same as other min. Why shouldn't I?" Then he added, after a pause, "But it's thim that'll be comin' to me askin' fer their time instid avme givin' it to thim, niver fear. They're not the kind that'll let yetaalk back to thim. If their work don't suit ye, it's 'give me me time. 'Wait till they'll be comin' round half drunk in the mornin', an' notfeelin' just right. Thim's the times ye'll find out what masons arremade av, me b'y. "

I confess this probability did not seem as brilliant to me as it did tohim, but it had its humor. I expressed wonder that he would hire them ifthey were such a bad lot. 

"Where else will ye get min?" he demanded to know. "The unions have thebest, an' the most av thim. Thim outside fellies don't amount to much. They're aall pore, crapin' creatures. If it wasn't fer the railroadbein' against the union I wouldn't have thim at aall, and besides, " headded thoughtfully, and with a keen show of feeling for their point ofview, "they have a right to do as they pl'ase. Shewer, it's no commonworkmen they arre. They can lay their eight hundred bricks a day, ifthey will, an' no advice from any waan. If ye was in their place ye'd dothe same. There's no sinse in allowin' another man to waalk on ye whinye can get another job. I don't blame thim. I was a mason wanst meself. "

"You don't mean to say that you acted as you say these men are going toact?"

"Shewer!"

"Well, I shouldn't think you'd be very proud of it. "

"I have me rights, " he declared, flaring up. "What kind av a man is itthat'll let himself be waalked on? There's no sinse in it. It's nahtnatchral. It's naht intinded that it should be so. "

"Very well, " I said, smoothing the whole thing over, and so that ended. 

Well, the masons came, and a fine lot of pirates they surely were. Suchindependence! Such defiance! Such feverish punctilio in regard to theirrights and what forms and procedures they were entitled to! I stared inamazement. For the most part they were hale, healthy, industriouslooking creatures, but so obstreperously conscious of their own rights, and so proud of their skill as masons, that there was no living withthem. Really, they would have tried the patience of a saint, let alone ahealthy, contentious Irish foreman-mason. "First off, " as the railroadmen used to say, they wanted to know whether there were any non-unionmen on the job, and if so, would they be discharged instanter?--if not, no work--a situation which gave Rourke several splendid opportunitiesfor altercations, which he hastened to improve, although the non-unionmen _went_, of course. Then they wanted to know when, where, and howthey were to get their money, whether on demand at any time they chose, and this led to more trouble, since the railroad paid only once a month. However, this was adjusted by a special arrangement being made wherebythe building department stood ready to pay them instantly on demand, only I had to run down to the division office each time and get theirpay for them at any time that they came to ask for it! Then came anargument (or many of them) as to the number of bricks they were to layan hour; the number of men they were to carry on one line, or wall; thelength of time they were supposed to work, or had worked, or wouldwork--all of which was pure food and drink to Rourke. He was in hiselement at last, shouting, gesticulating, demanding that they leave orgo to ----. After all these things had been adjusted, however, theyfinally consented to go to work, and then of course the work flew. Itwas a grand scene, really inspiring--forty or fifty masons on the line, perhaps half as many helpers or mixers, the Italians carrying bricks, and a score of carpenters now arriving under another foreman to set thebeams and lay the joists as the walls rose upward. 

Rourke was about all the time now, arguing and gesticulating with thisman or that, fighting with this one or the other, and calling always tosome mason or other to "come down" and get his "time. " "Come down! Comedown!" I would hear, and then would see him rushing for the office, adefiant and even threatening mason at his heels; Rourke demanding thatI make out a time-check at once for the latter and go down to the"ahffice" and get the money, the while the mason hung about attemptingto seduce other men to a similar point of view. Once in a while, butonly on rare occasions, Rourke would patch up a truce with a man. As arule, the mason was only too eager to leave and spend the money thus farearned, while Rourke was curiously indifferent as to whether he went orstayed. "'Tis to drink he waants, " he would declare amusedly. To me itwas all like a scene out of comic opera. 

Toward the last, however, a natural calm set in, the result no doubt ofweariness and a sense of surfeit, which sent the building forward apace. During this time Rourke was to be seen walking defiantly up and down theupper scaffolding of the steadily rising walls, or down below on theground in front of his men, his hands behind his back, his face screwedinto a quizzical expression, his whole body bearing a look of bristlingcontent and pugnacity which was too delicious for words. Since thingswere going especially well he could not say much, but still he couldlook his contentiousness, and did. Even now he would occasionally manageto pick a quarrel with some lusty mason or other, which resulted in thecustomary descent to the office, but not often. 

But one cold December day, about three weeks later, when I was justabout to announce that I could no longer delay my departure, seeing thatmy health was now as good, or nearly so, as my purse was lean, and that, whether I would or no, I must arrange to make more money, that a mostdreadful accident occurred. It appeared that Rourke and a number ofItalians, including Matt and Jimmie, were down in the main room of thebuilding, now fast nearing completion, when the boiler of the hoistingengine, which had been placed inside the building and just at thejuncture of three walls, blew up and knocked out this wall and thejoists of the second and third floors loose, thus precipitating all offifteen thousand bricks, which had been placed on the third floor, intothis room below. For a few moments there had been a veritable hurricaneof bricks and falling timber; and then, when it was over, it was foundthat the mighty Rourke and five Italians were embedded in or under them, and all but Jimmie more or less seriously injured or killed. TwoItalians were killed outright. A third died later. Rourke, inparticular, was unfortunately placed and terribly injured. His body fromthe waist down was completely buried by a pile of bricks, and across hisshoulder lay a great joist pressing where it had struck him, and cuttinghis neck and ear. He was a pathetic sight when we entered, bleeding andpain-wrenched yet grim and undaunted, as one might have expected. 

"I'm tight fast, me lad, " he said when he could speak. "It's me legsthat's caught, not me body. But give a hand to the min, there. TheEyetalians are underneath. "

Disregarding his suggestion, however, we began working about him, everyman throwing away bricks like a machine; but he would not have it. 

"'Tind to the min!" he insisted with all of his old firmness. "TheEyetalians are under there--Matt an' Jimmie. Can't ye see that I'll beall right till ye get thim out? Come, look after the min!"

We fell to this end of the work, although by now others had arrived, andsoon there was a great crowd assisting--men coming from the yard and themachine shop. Although embedded in this mass of material and mostseverely injured, there was no gainsaying him, and he still insisted ondirecting us as best he could. But now he was so picturesque, so muchnobler, really, than he had been in his healthier, uninjured days. Afabled giant, he seemed to me, half-god, half-man, composed in part offlesh, in part of brick and stone, gazing down on our earthly effortswith the eye of a demi-god. 

"Come, now--get the j'ists from aaf the end, there. Take the bricks awayfrom that man. Can't ye see? There's where his head is--there. There!Jasus Christ--theyer!"

You would have thought we were Italians ourselves, poor wisps ofnothing, not his rescuers, but slaves, compelled to do his lordlybidding. 

After a time, however, we managed to release him and all his fivehelpers--two dead, as I say, and Matt badly cut about the head andseriously injured, while Jimmie, the imperturbable, was but little theworse for a brick mark on one shoulder. He was more or less frightened, of course, and comic to look at, even in this dread situation. "Big-asmash, " he exclaimed when he recovered himself. "Like-a da worl' fall. Misha Rook! Misha Rook! Where Misha Rook?"

"Here I am, ye Eyetalian scalawag, " exclaimed the unyielding Rourkegenially, who was still partially embedded when Jimmie was released. There was, however, a touch of sorrow in his voice as he added weakly, "Arre ye hurted much?"

"No, Misha Rook. Help Misha Rook, " replied Jimmie, grabbing at brickshimself, and so the rescue work of "Rook" went on. 

Finally he was released, although not without deprecating our effortsthe while (this wonderful and exceptional fuss over him), and exclaimingat one point as we tugged at joists and beams rather frantically, "Takeyer time. Take yer time. I'm naht so bad fixed as aall that. Take yertime. Get that board out o' the way there, Jimmie. "

But he was badly "fixed, " and "hurted" unto death also, as we now found, and as he insisted he was not. His hip was severely crushed by thetimbers and his legs broken, as well as his internal organs disarranged, although we did not know how badly at the time. Only after we hadremoved all the weight did he collapse and perhaps personally realizehow serious was his plight. He was laid on a canvas tarpaulin brought bythe yard-master and spread on the chip-strewn ground, while the doctorsfrom two ambulances worked over him. While they were examining hiswounds he took a critical and quizzical interest in what they weredoing, and offered one or two humorous suggestions. Finally, when theywere ready to move him he asked how he was, and on being told that hewas all right, looked curiously about until he caught my eye. I couldsee that he realized how critical it was with him. 

"I'd like to see a priest, Teddy, " he whispered, "and, if ye don't mind, I'd like ye to go up to Mount Vernon an' tell me wife. They'll be aftertelegraphin' her if ye don't. Break it aisy, if ye will. Don't let 'erthink there's anything serious. There's no need av it. I'm naht hurtedso bad as aall that. "

I promised, and the next moment one of the doctors shot a spray ofcocaine into his hip to relieve what he knew must be his dreadful pain. A few moments later he lost consciousness, after which I left him to thecare of the hospital authorities and hurried away to send the priest andto tell his wife. 

For a week thereafter he lingered in a very serious condition andfinally died, blood-poisoning having set in. I saw him at the hospital aday or two before, and, trying to sympathize with his condition, Ifrequently spoke of what I deemed the dreadful uncertainty of life andthe seeming carelessness of the engineer in charge of the hoistingengine. He, however, had no complaint to make. 

"Ye must expect thim things, " was his only comment. "Ye can't aalwaysexpect to go unhurted. I niver lost a man before, nor had one come tohaarm. 'Tis the way av things, ye see. "

Mighty Rourke! You would have thought the whole Italian population ofMount Vernon knew and loved him, the way they turned out at his funeral. It was a state affair for most of them, and they came in scores, packingthe little brick church at which he was accustomed to worship full tooverflowing. Matt was there, bandaged and sore, but sorrowful; andJimmie, artful and scheming in the past, but now thoroughly subdued. Hewas all sorrow, and sniveled and blubbered and wept hot, blinding tearsthrough the dark, leathery fingers of his hands. 

"Misha Rook! Misha Rook!" I heard him say, as they bore the body in; andwhen they carried it out of the church, he followed, head down. As theylowered it to the grave he was inconsolable. 

"Misha Rook! Misha Rook! I work-a for him fifteen year!"

_A Mayor and His People_

Here is the story of an individual whose political and social example, if such things are ever worth anything (the moralists to the contrarynotwithstanding), should have been, at the time, of the greatestimportance to every citizen of the United States. Only it was not. Orwas it? Who really knows? Anyway, he and his career are entirelyforgotten by now, and have been these many years. 

He was the mayor of one of those dreary New England mill towns innorthern Massachusetts--a bleak, pleasureless realm of about fortythousand, where, from the time he was born until he finally left at theage of thirty-six to seek his fortune elsewhere, he had resided withoutchange. During that time he had worked in various of the local mills, which in one way and another involved nearly all of the population. Hewas a mill shoe-maker by trade, or, in other words, a factory shoe-hand, knowing only a part of all the processes necessary to make a shoe inthat fashion. Still, he was a fair workman, and earned as much asfifteen or eighteen dollars a week at times--rather good pay for thatregion. By temperament a humanitarian, or possibly because of his ownhumble state one who was compelled to take cognizance of thedifficulties of others, he finally expressed his mental unrest byorganizing a club for the study and propagation of socialism, and later, when it became powerful enough to have a candidate and look forpolitical expression of some kind, he was its first, and thereafter fora number of years, its regular candidate for mayor. For a long time, oruntil its membership became sufficient to attract some slight politicalattention, its members (following our regular American, unintellectualcustom) were looked upon by the rest of the people as a body of harmlesskickers, filled with fool notions about a man's duty to his fellowman, some silly dream about an honest and economical administration of publicaffairs--their city's affairs, to be exact. We are so wise in America, so interested in our fellowman, so regardful of his welfare. They wereso small in number, however, that they were little more than an objectof pleasant jest, useful for that purpose alone. 

This club, however, continued to put up its candidate until about 1895, when suddenly it succeeded in polling the very modest number offifty-four votes--double the number it had succeeded in polling anyprevious year. A year later one hundred and thirty-six were registered, and the next year six hundred. Then suddenly the mayor who won thatyear's battle died, and a special election was called. Here the clubpolled six hundred and one, a total and astonishing gain of one. In 1898the perennial candidate was again nominated and received fifteenhundred, and in 1899, when he ran again, twenty-three hundred votes, which elected him. 

If this fact be registered casually here, it was not so regarded in thattypically New England mill town. Ever study New England--its Puritan, self-defensive, but unintellectual and selfish psychology? Although thispoor little snip of a mayor was only elected for one year, men pausedastounded, those who had not voted for him, and several of the olderconventional political and religious order, wedded to their church andall the routine of the average puritanic mill town, actually cried. Noone knew, of course, who the new mayor was, or what he stood for. Therewere open assertions that the club behind him was anarchistic--thatever-ready charge against anything new in America--and that the courtsshould be called upon to prevent his being seated. And this from peoplewho were as poorly "off" commercially and socially as any might well be. It was stated, as proving the worst, that he was, or had been, a millworker!--and, before that a grocery clerk--both at twelve a week, orless!! Immediate division of property, the forcing of all employers topay as much as five a day to every laborer (an unheard-of sum in NewEngland), and general constraint and subversion of individual rights(things then unknown in America, of course), loomed in the minds ofthese conventional Americans as the natural and immediate result of somodest a victory. The old-time politicians and corporations whounderstood much better what the point was, the significance of thisstraw, were more or less disgruntled, but satisfied that it could beundone later. 

An actual conversation which occurred on one of the outlying streetcorners one evening about dusk will best illustrate the entiresituation. 

"Who is the man, anyway?" asked one citizen of a total stranger whom hehad chanced to meet. 

"Oh, no one in particular, I think. A grocery clerk, they say. "

"Astonishing, isn't it? Why, I never thought those people would getanything. Why, they didn't even figure last year. "

"Seems to be considerable doubt as to just what he'll do. "

"That's what I've been wondering. I don't take much stock in all theirtalk about anarchy. A man hasn't so very much power as mayor. "

"No, " said the other. 

"We ought to give him a trial, anyway. He's won a big fight. I shouldlike to see him, see what he looks like. "

"Oh, nothing startling. I know him. "

"Rather young, ain't he?"

"Yes. "

"Where did he come from?"

"Oh, right around here. "

"Was he a mill-hand?"

"Yes. "

The stranger made inquiry as to other facts and then turned off at acorner. 

"Well, " he observed at parting, "I don't know. I'm inclined to believein the man. I should like to see him myself. Good-night. "

"Good-night, " said the other, waving his hand. "When you see me againyou will know that you are looking at the mayor. "

The inquirer stared after him and saw a six-foot citizen, of otherwisemedium proportions, whose long, youthful face and mild gray eyes, withjust a suggestion of washed-out blue in them, were hardly what was to beexpected of a notorious and otherwise astounding political figure. 

"He is too young, " was the earliest comments, when the public oncebecame aware of his personality. 

"Why, he is nothing but a grocery clerk, " was another, the skeptical andcondemnatory possibilities of which need not be dilated upon here. 

And he was, in his way--nothing much of a genius, as such things go inpolitics, but an interesting figure. Without much taste (or itscultivated shadow) or great vision of any kind, he was still a man whosensed the evils of great and often unnecessary social inequalities andthe need of reorganizing influences, which would tend to narrow the vastgulf between the unorganized and ignorant poor, and the hugebeneficiaries of unearned (yes, and not even understood) increment. Forwhat does the economic wisdom of the average capitalist amount to, afterall: the narrow, gourmandizing hunger of the average multi-millionaire?

At any rate, people watched him as he went to and fro between his officeand his home, and reached the general conclusion after the firstexcitement had died down that he did not amount to much. 

When introduced into his office in the small but pleasant city hall, hecame into contact with a "ring, " and a fixed condition, which nobodyimagined a lone young mayor could change. Old-time politicians sat theregiving out contracts for street-cleaning, lighting, improvements andsupplies of all kinds, and a bond of mutual profit bound them closelytogether. 

"I don't think he can do much to hurt us, " these individuals said one toanother. "He don't amount to much. "

The mayor was not of a talkative or confiding turn. Neither was he coldor wanting in good and natural manners. He was, however, of apreoccupied turn of mind, "up in the air, " some called it, and smoked agood many cigars. 

"I think we ought to get together and have some sort of a conferenceabout the letting of contracts, " said the president of the city councilto him one morning shortly after he had been installed. "You will findthese gentlemen ready to meet you half-way in these matters. "

"I'm very glad to hear that, " he replied. "I've something to say in mymessage to the council, which I'll send over in the morning. "

The old-time politician eyed him curiously, and he eyed the old-timepolitician in turn, not aggressively, but as if they might come to avery pleasant understanding if they wanted to, and then went back to hisoffice. 

The next day his message was made public, and this was its key-note:

"All contract work for the city should be let with a proviso, that theworkmen employed receive not less than two dollars a day. "

The dissatisfied roar that followed was not long in making itself heardall over the city. 

"Stuff and nonsense, " yelled the office jobbers in a chorus. "Socialism!" "Anarchy!" "This thing must be put down!" "The city wouldbe bankrupt in a year. " "No contractor could afford to pay his ordinaryday laborers two a day. The city could not afford to pay any contractorenough to do it. "

"The prosperity of the city is not greater than the prosperity of thelargest number of its component individuals, " replied the mayor, in asomewhat altruistic and economically abstruse argument on the floor ofthe council hall. "We must find contractors. "

"We'll see about that, " said the members of the opposition. "Why, theman's crazy. If he thinks he can run this town on a goody-good basis andmake everybody rich and happy, he's going to get badly fooled, that'sall there is to that. "

Fortunately for him three of the eight council members were fellows ofthe mayor's own economic beliefs, individuals elected on the same ticketwith him. These men could not carry a resolution, but they could stopone from being carried over the mayor's veto. Hence it was found that ifthe contracts could not be given to men satisfactory to the mayor theycould not be given at all, and he stood in a fair way to win. 

"What the hell's the use of us sitting here day after day!" were theactual words of the leading members of the opposition in the councilsome weeks later, when the fight became wearisome. "We can't pass thecontracts over his veto. I say let 'em go. "

So the proviso was tacked on, that two a day was the minimum wage to beallowed, and the contracts passed. 

The mayor's followers were exceedingly jubilant at this, more so thanhe, who was of a more cautious and less hopeful temperament. 

"Not out of the woods yet, gentlemen, " he remarked to a group of hisadherents at the reform club. "We have to do a great many thingssensibly if we expect to keep the people's confidence and 'win again. '"

Under the old system of letting contracts, whenever there was a wagerate stipulated, men were paid little or nothing, and the work was notdone. There was no pretense of doing it. Garbage and ashes accumulated, and papers littered the streets. The old contractor who had pocketed theappropriated sum thought to do so again. 

"I hear the citizens are complaining as much as ever, " said the mayor tothis individual one morning. "You will have to keep the streets clean. "

The contractor, a robust, thick-necked, heavy-jawed Irishman, of just somuch refinement as the sudden acquisition of a comfortable fortune wouldallow, looked him quizzically over, wondering whether he was "out" for aportion of the appropriation or whether he was really serious. 

"We can fix that between us, " he said. 

"There's nothing to fix, " replied the mayor. "All I want you to do is toclean the streets. "

The contractor went away and for a few days after the streets werereally clean, but it was only for a few days. 

In his walks about the city the mayor himself found garbage and paperuncollected, and then called upon his new acquaintance again. 

"I'm mentioning this for the last time, Mr. M----, " he said. "You willhave to fulfill your contract, or resign in favor of some one who will. "

"Oh, I'll clean them, well enough, " said this individual, after fiveminutes of rapid fire explanation. "Two dollars a day for men is high, but I'll see that they're clean. "

Again he went away, and again the mayor sauntered about, and then onemorning sought out the contractor in his own office. 

"This is the end, " he said, removing a cigar from his mouth and holdingit before him with his elbow at right angles. "You are discharged fromthis work. I'll notify you officially to-morrow. "

"It can't be done the way you want it, " the contractor exclaimed with anoath. "There's no money in it at two dollars. Hell, anybody can seethat. "

"Very well, " said the mayor in a kindly well-modulated tone. "Letanother man try, then. "

The next day he appointed a new contractor, and with a schedule beforehim showing how many men should be employed and how much profit he mightexpect, the latter succeeded. The garbage was daily removed, and thestreets carefully cleaned. 

Then there was a new manual training school about to be added to thepublic school system at this time, and the contract for building was tobe let, when the mayor threw a bomb into the midst of the old-timejobbers at the city council. A contractor had already been chosen bythem and the members were figuring out their profits, when at one of thepublic discussions of the subject the mayor said:

"Why shouldn't the city build it, gentlemen?"

"How can it?" exclaimed the councilmen. "The city isn't an individual;it can't watch carefully. "

"It can hire its own architect, as well as any contractor. Let's tryit. "

There were sullen tempers in the council chamber after this, but themayor was insistent. He called an architect who made a ridiculously lowestimate. Never had a public building been estimated so cheaply before. 

"See here, " said one of the councilmen when the plans were presented tothe chamber--"This isn't doing this city right, and the gentlemen of thecouncil ought to put their feet down on any such venture as this. You'regoing to waste the city's money on some cheap thing in order to catchvotes. "

"I'll publish the cost of the goods as delivered, " said the mayor. "Thenthe people can look at the building when it's built. We'll see how cheapit looks then. "

To head off political trickery on the part of the enemy he secured billsfor material as delivered, and publicly compared them with prices paidfor similar amounts of the same material used in other buildings. So thepublic was kept aware of what was going on and the cry of cheapness forpolitical purposes set at naught. It was the first public structureerected by the city, and by all means the cheapest and best of all thecity's buildings. 

Excellent as these services were in their way, the mayor realized laterthat a powerful opposition was being generated and that if he were toretain the interest of his constituents he would have to set aboutsomething which would endear him and his cause to the public. 

"I may be honest, " he told one of his friends, "but honesty will play alone hand with these people. The public isn't interested in its ownwelfare very much. It can't be bothered or hasn't the time. What I needis something that will impress it and still be worth while. I can't bereëlected on promises, or on my looks, either. "

When he looked about him, however, he found the possibility ofindependent municipal action pretty well hampered by mandatorylegislation. He had promised, for instance, to do all he could to lowerthe exorbitant gas rate and to abolish grade crossings, but the law saidthat no municipality could do either of these things without firstvoting to do so three years in succession--a little precaution taken bythe corporation representing such things long before he came into power. Each vote must be for such contemplated action, or it could not become alaw. 

"I know well enough that promises are all right, " he said to one of hisfriends, "and that these laws are good enough excuses, but the publicwon't take excuses from me for three years. If I want to be mayor againI want to be doing something, and doing it quick. "

In the city was a gas corporation, originally capitalized at $45, 000, and subsequently increased to $75, 000, which was earning that year theactual sum of $58, 000 over and above all expenses. It was getting readyto inflate the capitalization, as usual, and water its stock to theextent of $500, 000, when it occurred to the mayor that if thecorporation was making such enormous profits out of a $75, 000 investmentas to be able to offer to pay six per cent on $500, 000 to investors, andput the money it would get for such stocks into its pocket, perhaps itcould reduce the price of gas from one dollar and nineteen cents to amore reasonable figure. There was the three years' voting law, however, behind which, as behind an entrenchment, the very luxurious corporationlay comfortable and indifferent. 

The mayor sent for his corporation counsel, and studied gas law forawhile. He found that at the State capital there was a State board, orcommission, which had been created to look after gas companies ingeneral, and to hear the complaints of municipalities which consideredthemselves unjustly treated. 

"This is the thing for me, " he said. 

Lacking the municipal authority himself, he decided to present the factsin the case and appeal to this commission for a reduction of the gasrate. 

When he came to talk about it he found that the opposition he wouldgenerate would be something much more than local. Back of the localreduction idea was the whole system of extortionate gas rates of theState and of the nation; hundreds of fat, luxurious gas corporationswhose dividends would be threatened by any agitation on this question. 

"You mean to proceed with this scheme of yours?" asked a prominentmember of the local bar who called one morning to interview him. "Irepresent the gentlemen who are interested in our local gas company. "

"I certainly do, " replied the mayor. 

"Well, " replied the uncredentialed representative of private interests, after expostulating a long time and offering various "reasons" why itwould be more profitable and politically advantageous for the new mayornot to proceed, "I've said all I can say. Now I want to tell you thatyou are going up against a combination that will be your ruin. You'renot dealing with this town now; you're dealing with the State, the wholenation. These corporations can't afford to let you win, and they won't. You're not the one to do it; you're not big enough. "

The mayor smiled and replied that of course he could not say as to that. 

The lawyer went away, and that next day the mayor had his legal counsellook up the annual reports of the company for the consecutive years ofits existence, as well as a bulletin issued by a firm of brokers, intowhose hands the matter of selling a vast amount of watered stock itproposed to issue had been placed. He also sent for a gas expert and sethim to figuring out a case for the people. 

It was found by this gentleman that since the company was firstorganized it had paid dividends on its capital stock at the rate of tenper cent per annum, for the first thirty years; had made vastimprovements in the last ten, and notwithstanding this fact, had paidtwenty per cent, and even twenty-five per cent per annum in dividends. All the details of cost and expenditure were figured out, and then themayor with his counsel took the train for the State capitol. 

Never was there more excitement in political circles than when thisyoung representative of no important political organization whatsoeverarrived at the State capitol and walked, at the appointed time, into theprivate audience room of the commission. Every gas company, as well asevery newspaper and every other representative of the people, hadcuriously enough become interested in the fight he was making, and therewas a band of reporters at the hotel where he was stopping, as well asin the commission chambers in the State capitol where the hearing was tobe. They wanted to know about him--why he was doing this, whether itwasn't a "strike" or the work of some rival corporation. The fact thathe might foolishly be sincere was hard to believe. 

"Gentlemen, " said the mayor, as he took his stand in front of an augustarray of legal talent which was waiting to pick his argument to piecesin the commission chambers at the capitol, "I miscalculated but onething in this case which I am about to lay before you, and that is theextent of public interest. I came here prepared to make a privateargument, but now I want to ask the privilege of making it public. I seethe public itself is interested, or should be. I will ask leave topostpone my argument until the day after tomorrow. "

There was considerable hemming and hawing over this, since from thepoint of view of the corporation it was most undesirable, but thecommission was practically powerless to do aught but grant his request. And meanwhile the interest created by the newspapers added power to hiscause. Hunting up the several representatives and senators from hisdistrict, he compelled them to take cognizance of the cause for which hewas battling, and when the morning of the public hearing arrived a largeaudience was assembled in the chamber of representatives. 

When the final moment arrived the young mayor came forward, and aftermaking a very simple statement of the cause which led him to request apublic hearing and the local condition which he considered unfair beggedleave to introduce an expert, a national examiner of gas plants andlighting facilities, for whom he had sent, and whose twenty years ofexperience in this line had enabled him to prepare a paper on thecondition of the gas-payers in the mayor's city. 

The commission was not a little surprised by this, but signified itswillingness to hear the expert as counsel for the city, and as hisstatement was read a very clear light was thrown upon the situation. 

Counsel for the various gas corporations interrupted freely. The mayorhimself was constantly drawn into the argument, but his replies were sosimple and convincing that there was not much satisfaction to be had instirring him. Instead, the various counsel took refuge in long-windeddiscussions about the methods of conducting gas plants in other cities, the cost of machinery, labor and the like, which took days and days, andthreatened to extend into weeks. The astounding facts concerning largeprofits and the present intentions of not only this but every othercompany in the State could not be dismissed. In fact the revelation ofhuge corporation profits everywhere became so disturbing that after thecommittee had considered and re-considered, it finally, when threatenedwith political extermination, voted to reduce the price of gas to eightycents. 

It is needless to suggest the local influence of this decision. When themayor came home he received an ovation, and that at the hands of many ofthe people who had once been so fearful of him, but he knew that thisenthusiasm would not last long. Many disgruntled elements were warringagainst him, and others were being more and more stirred up. His homelife was looked into as well as his past, his least childish or privateactions. It was a case of finding other opportunities for publicusefulness, or falling into the innocuous peace which would result inhis defeat. 

In the platform on which he had been elected was a plank which declaredthat it was the intention of this party, if elected, to abolish localgrade crossings, the maintenance of which had been the cause of numerousaccidents and much public complaint. With this plank he now proposed todeal. 

In this of course he was hampered by the law before mentioned, whichdeclared that no city could abolish its grade crossings without havingfirst submitted the matter to the people during three successive yearsand obtained their approval each time. Behind this law was not now, however, as in the case of the gas company, a small $500, 000corporation, but all the railroads which controlled New England, and towhich brains and legislators, courts and juries, were mere adjuncts. Furthermore, the question would have to be voted on at the same time ashis candidacy, and this would have deterred many another more ambitiouspolitician. The mayor was not to be deterred, however. He began hisagitation, and the enemy began theirs, but in the midst of what seemedto be a fair battle the great railway company endeavored to steal amarch. There was suddenly and secretly introduced into the lower houseof the State legislature a bill which in deceptive phraseology declaredthat the law which allowed all cities, by three successive votes, toabolish grade crossings in three years, was, in the case of a particularcity mentioned, hereby abrogated for a term of four years. The questionmight not even be discussed politically. 

When the news of this attempt reached the mayor, he took the first trainfor the State capitol and arrived there just in time to come upon thefloor of the house when the bill was being taken up for discussion. Heasked leave to make a statement. Great excitement was aroused by histimely arrival. Those who secretly favored the bill endeavored to havethe matter referred to a committee, but this was not to be. One membermoved to go on with the consideration of the bill, and after a closevote the motion carried. 

The mayor was then introduced. 

After a few moments, in which the silent self-communing with which heintroduced himself impressed everyone with his sincerity, he said:

"I am accused of objecting to this measure because its enactment willremove, as a political issue, the one cause upon which I base my hopefor reëlection. If there are no elevated crossings to vote for, therewill be no excuse for voting for me. Gentlemen, you mistake the temperand the intellect of the people of our city. It is you who see politicalsignificance in this thing, but let me assure you that it is of a fardifferent kind from that which you conceive. If the passing of thismeasure had any significance to me other than the apparent wrong of it, I would get down on my knees and urge its immediate acceptance. Nothingcould elect me quicker. Nothing could bury the opposition further fromview. If you wish above all things to accomplish my triumph you willonly need to interfere with the rights of our city in this arbitrarymanner, and you will have the thing done. I could absolutely ask nothingmore. "

The gentlemen who had this measure in charge weighed well theseassertions and trifled for weeks with the matter, trying to make uptheir minds. 

Meanwhile election time approached, and amid the growing interest ofpolitics it was thought unwise to deal with it. A great fight wasarranged for locally, in which every conceivable element of oppositionwas beautifully harmonized by forces and conceptions which it is almostimpossible to explain. Democrats, republicans, prohibitionists, saloonmen and religious circles, all were gathered into one harmonious bodyand inspired with a single idea, that of defeating the mayor. From somequarter, not exactly identified, was issued a call for a civic committeeof fifty, which should take into its hands the duty of rescuing the cityfrom what was termed a "throttling policy of commercial oppression andanarchy. " Democrats, republicans, liquor and anti-liquorites, wereinvited to the same central meeting place, and came. Money was notlacking, nor able minds, to prepare campaign literature. It was openlycharged that a blank check was handed in to the chairman of this body bythe railway whose crossings were in danger, to be filled out for anyamount necessary to the destruction of the official upstart who wasseeking to revolutionize old methods and conditions. 

As may be expected, this opposition did not lack daring in makingassertions contrary to facts. Charges were now made that the mayor wasin league with the railroad to foist upon the city a great burden ofexpense, because the law under which cities could compel railroads toelevate their tracks declared that one-fifth of the burden of expensemust be borne by the city and the remaining four-fifths by the railroad. It would saddle a debt of $250, 000 upon the taxpayers, they said, andgive them little in return. All the advantage would be with therailroad. "Postpone this action until the railroad can be forced to bearthe entire expense, as it justly should, " declared handbill writers, whose services were readily rendered to those who could afford to payfor them. 

The mayor and his committee, although poor, answered with handbills andstreet corner speeches, in which he showed that even with theextravagantly estimated debt of $250, 000, the city's tax-rate would notbe increased by quite six cents to the individual. The cry that each manwould have to pay five dollars more each year for ten years was thuswholesomely disposed of, and the campaign proceeded. 

Now came every conceivable sort of charge. If he were not defeated, allreputable merchants would surely leave the city. Capital was certainlybeing scared off. There would be idle factories and empty stomachs. Lookout for hard times. No one but a fool would invest in a city thushampered. 

In reply the mayor preached a fair return by corporations for benefitsreceived. He, or rather his organization, took a door-to-door census ofhis following, and discovered a very considerable increase in the numberof those intending to vote for him. The closest calculations of theenemy were discovered, the actual number they had fixed upon assufficient to defeat him. This proved to the mayor that he must havethree hundred more votes if he wished to be absolutely sure. These hehunted out from among the enemy, and had them pledged before theeventual morning came. 

The night preceding election ended the campaign, for the enemy at least, in a blaze of glory, so to speak. Dozens of speakers for both causeswere about the street corners and in the city meeting room. 

Oratory poured forth in streams, and gasoline-lighted band-wagonsrattled from street to street, emitting song and invective. Even a greatparade was arranged by the anti-mayoral forces, in which horses and mento the number of hundreds were brought in from nearby cities and palmedoff as enthusiastic citizens. 

"Horses don't vote, " a watchword handed out by the mayor, took the edgeoff the extreme ardor of this invading throng, and set to laughing thehundreds of his partisans, who needed such encouragement. 

Next day came the vote, and then for once, anyhow, he was justified. Not only was a much larger vote cast than ever, but he thrashed theenemy with a tail of two hundred votes to spare. It was an inspiringvictory from one point of view, but rather doleful for the enemy. Thelatter had imported a carload of fireworks, which now stood sadly unusedupon the very tracks which, apparently, must in the future be raised. The crowning insult was offered when the successful forces offered totake them off their hands at half price. 

For a year thereafter (a mayor was elected yearly there), less was heardof the commercial destruction of the city. Gas stood, as decided, ateighty cents a thousand. A new manual training school, built at a verynominal cost, a monument to municipal honesty, was also in evidence. Thepublic waterworks had also been enlarged and the rates reduced. Thestreets were clean. 

Then the mayor made another innovation. During his first term of officethere had been a weekly meeting of the reform club, at which he appearedand talked freely of his plans and difficulties. These meetings he nowproposed to make public. 

Every Wednesday evening for a year thereafter a spectacle of municipalself-consciousness was witnessed, which those who saw it felt sure wouldredound to the greater strength and popularity of the mayor. In a largehall, devoted to public gatherings, a municipal meeting was held. Everyone was invited. The mayor was both host and guest, an individual whochose to explain his conduct and his difficulties and to ask advice. There his constituents gathered, not only to hear but to offer counsel. 

"Gentlemen, " so ran the gist of his remarks on various of theseoccasions, "the present week has proved a most trying one. I amconfronted by a number of difficult problems, which I will now try toexplain to you. In the first place, you know my limitations as to powerin the council. But three members now vote for me, and it is only bymutual concessions that we move forward at all. "

Then would follow a detailed statement of the difficulties, and ageneral discussion. The commonest laborer was free to offer his advice. Every question was answered in the broadest spirit of fellowship. Aninquiry as to "what to do" frequently brought the most helpful advice. Weak and impossible solutions were met as such, and shown to be whatthey were. Radicals were assuaged, conservatives urged forward. Thewhole political situation was so detailed and explained that nointelligent person could leave, it was thought, with a false impressionof the mayor's position or intent. 

With five thousand or more such associated citizens abroad each dayexplaining, defending, approving the official conduct of the mayor, because they understood it, no misleading conceptions, it was thought, could arise. Men said that his purpose and current leaning in any matterwas always clear. He was thought to be closer to his constituency thanany other official within the whole range of the Americas and that therecould be nothing but unreasoning partisan opposition to his rule. 

After one year of such service a presidential campaign drew near, andthe mayor's campaign for reëlection had to be contested at the sametime. No gas monopoly evil was now a subject of contention. Streets wereclean, contracts fairly executed; the general municipal interests assatisfactorily attended to as could be expected. Only the grade crossingwar remained as an issue, and that would require still another voteafter this. His record was the only available campaign argument. 

On the other side, however, were the two organizations of the locallydefeated great parties, and the railroad. The latter, insistent in itsbitterness, now organized these two bodies into a powerful opposition. Newspapers were subsidized; the national significance of the campaignmagnified; a large number of railroad-hands colonized. When the finalweeks of the campaign arrived a bitter contest was waged, and moneytriumphed. Five thousand four hundred votes were cast for the mayor. Five thousand four hundred and fifty for the opposing candidate, who wasof the same party as the successful presidential nominee. 

It was a bitter blow, but still one easily borne by the mayor, who wasconsiderable of a philosopher. With simple, undisturbed grace heretired, and three days later applied to one of the principal shoefactories for work at his trade. 

"What? You're not looking for a job, are you?" exclaimed the astonishedforeman. 

"I am, " said the mayor. 

"You can go to work, all right, but I should think you could get intosomething better now. "

"I suppose I can later, " he replied, "when I complete my law studies. Just now I want to do this for a change, to see how things are with therank and file. " And donning the apron he had brought with him he went towork. 

It was not long, however, before he was discharged, largely because ofpartisan influence anxious to drive him out of that region. It was saidthat this move of seeking a job in so simple a way was a bit of "grandstanding"--insincere--that he didn't need to do it, and that he wastrying to pile up political capital against the future. A little later alocal grocery man of his social faith offered him a position as clerk, and for some odd reason--humanitarian and sectarian, possibly--heaccepted this. At any rate, here he labored for a little while. Againmany said he was attempting to make political capital out of this simplelife in order to further his political interests later, and thispossibly, even probably, was true. All men have methods of fighting forthat which they believe. So here he worked for a time, while a largenumber of agencies pro and con continued to denounce or praise him, toridicule or extol his so-called Jeffersonian simplicity. It was at thistime that I encountered him--a tall, spare, capable and interestingindividual, who willingly took me into his confidence and explained allthat had hitherto befallen him. He was most interesting, really, afigure to commemorate in this fashion. 

In one of the rooms of his very humble home--a kind of office or den, ina small house such as any clerk or working-man might occupy--was acollection of clippings, laudatory, inquiring, and abusive, which wouldhave done credit to a candidate for the highest office in the land. Onewould have judged by the scrap-books and envelopes stuffed tooverflowing with long newspaper articles and editorials that had beencut from papers all over the country from Florida to Oregon, that hisevery movement at this time and earlier was all-essential to the people. Plainly, he had been watched, spied upon, and ignored by one class, while being hailed, praised and invited by another. Magazine editors hadcalled upon him for contributions, journalists from the large cities hadsought him out to obtain his actual views, citizens' leagues in variousparts of the nation had invited him to come and speak, and yet he wasstill a very young man in years, not over-intelligent politically orphilosophically, the ex-mayor of a small city, and the representative ofno great organization of any sort. 

In his retirement he was now comforted, if one can be so comforted, bythese memories, still fresh in his mind and by the hope possibly for hisown future, as well as by a droll humor with which he was wont to selectthe sharpest and most willful slur upon his unimpeachable conduct as anoffering to public curiosity. 

"Do you really want to know what people think of me?" he said to me onone occasion. "Well, here's something. Read this. " And then he wouldhand me a bunch of the bitterest attacks possible, attacks whichpictured him as a sly and treacherous enemy of the people--or worse yeta bounding anarchistic ignoramus. Personally I could not help admiringhis stoic mood. It was superior to that of his detractors. Apparentfalsehoods did not anger him. Evident misunderstandings could not, seemingly, disturb him. 

"What do you expect?" he once said to me, after I had made a verycareful study of his career for a current magazine, which, curiously, was never published. I was trying to get him to admit that he believedthat his example might be fruitful of results agreeable to him in thefuture. I could not conclude that he really agreed with me. "People donot remember; they forget. They remember so long as you are directlybefore them with something that interests them. That may be a lowergas-rate, or a band that plays good music. People like strong people, and only strong people, characters of that sort--good, bad orindifferent--I've found that out. If a man or a corporation is strongerthan I am, comes along and denounces me, or spends more money than I do(or can), buys more beers, makes larger promises, it is 'all day' forme. What has happened in my case is that, for the present, anyhow, Ihave come up against a strong corporation, stronger than I am. What Inow need to do is to go out somewhere and get some more strength in someway, it doesn't matter much how. People are not so much interested in meor you, or your or my ideals in their behalf, as they are in strength, an interesting spectacle. And they are easily deceived. These bigfighting corporations with their attorneys and politicians andnewspapers make me look weak--puny. So the people forget me. If I couldget out, raise one million or five hundred thousand dollars and give thecorporations a good drubbing, they would adore me--for awhile. Then Iwould have to go out and get another five hundred thousand somewhere, ordo something else. "

"Quite so, " I replied. "Yet _Vox populi, vox dei_. "

Sitting upon his own doorstep one evening, in a very modest quarter ofthe city, I said:

"Were you very much depressed by your defeat the last time?"

"Not at all, " he replied. "Action, reaction, that's the law. All thesethings right themselves in time, I suppose, or, anyhow, they ought to. Maybe they don't. Some man who can hand the people what they really needor ought to have will triumph, I suppose, some time. I don't know, I'msure. I hope so. I think the world is moving on, all right. "

In his serene and youthful face, the pale blue, philosophical eyes, wasno evidence of dissatisfaction with the strange experiences throughwhich he had passed. 

"You're entirely philosophical, are you?"

"As much as any one can be, I suppose. They seem to think that all mywork was an evidence of my worthlessness, " he said. "Well, maybe it was. Self-interest may be the true law, and the best force. I haven't quitemade up my mind yet. My sympathies of course are all the other way. 'Heought to be sewing shoes in the penitentiary, ' one paper once said ofme. Another advised me to try something that was not above myintelligence, such as breaking rock or shoveling dirt. Most of themagreed, however, " he added with a humorous twitch of his large, expressive mouth, "that I'll do very well if I will only stay where Iam, or, better yet, get out of here. They want me to leave. That's thebest solution for them. "

He seemed to repress a smile that was hovering on his lips. 

"The voice of the enemy, " I commented. 

"Yes, sir, the voice of the enemy, " he added. "But don't think that Ithink I'm done for. Not at all. I have just returned to my old ways inorder to think this thing out. In a year or two I'll have solved myproblem, I hope. I may have to leave here, and I may not. Anyhow, I'llturn up somewhere, with something. "

He did have to leave, however, public opinion never being allowed torevert to him again, and five years later, in a fairly comfortablemanagerial position in New York, he died. He had made a fight, wellenough, but the time, the place, the stars, perhaps, were not quiteright. He had no guiding genius, possibly, to pull him through. Adherents did not flock to him and save him. Possibly he wasn't magneticenough--that pagan, non-moral, non-propagandistic quality, anyhow. Thefates did not fight for him as they do for some, those fates that ignorethe billions and billions of others who fail. Yet are not all lives moreor less failures, however successful they may appear to be at one timeor another, contrasted, let us say, with what they hoped for? Wecompromise so much with everything--our dreams and all. 

As for his reforms, they may be coming fast enough, or they may not. _Inmedias res. _

But as for him. . . ?

_W. L. S. _

Life's little ironies are not always manifest. We hear distant rumblingsounds of its tragedies, but rarely are we permitted to witness thereality. Therefore the real incidents which I am about to relate mayhave some value. 

I first called upon W. L. S----, Jr. , in the winter of 1895. I had knownof him before only by reputation, or, what is nearer the truth, byseeing his name in one of the great Sunday papers attached to severaldrawings of the most lively interest. These drawings depicted nightscenes of the city of New York, and appeared as colored supplements, eleven by eighteen inches. They represented the spectacular scenes whichthe citizen and the stranger most delight in--Madison Square in adrizzle; the Bowery lighted by a thousand lamps and crowded with "L" andsurface cars; Sixth Avenue looking north from Fourteenth Street. 

I was a youthful editor at the time and on the lookout for interestingillustrations of this sort, and when a little later I was in need of acolored supplement for the Christmas number I decided to call uponS----. I knew absolutely nothing about the world of art save what I hadgathered from books and current literary comment of all sorts, and was, therefore, in a mood to behold something exceedingly bizarre in theatmosphere with which I should find my illustrator surrounded. 

I was not disappointed. It was at the time when artists--I mean Americanartists principally--went in very strongly for that sort of thing. Onlya few years before they had all been going to Paris, not so much topaint as to find out and imitate how artists _do_ and live. I wasgreeted by a small, wiry, lean-looking individual arrayed in a bicyclesuit, whose countenance could be best described as wearing a perpetuallook of astonishment. He had one eye which fixed you with a strange, unmoving solemnity, owing to the fact that it was glass. His skin wasanything but fair, and might be termed sallow. He wore a close, sharp-pointed Vandyke beard, and his gold-bridge glasses sat at almostright angles upon his nose. His forehead was high, his good eye alert, his hair sandy-colored and tousled, and his whole manner indicatedthought, feeling, remarkable nervous energy, and, above all, a raspingand jovial sort of egotism which pleased me rather than otherwise. 

I noticed no more than this on my first visit, owing to the fact that Iwas very much overawed and greatly concerned about the price which hewould charge me, not knowing what rate he might wish to exact, and beingdesirous of coming away at least unabashed by his magnificence andindependence. 

"What's it for?" he asked, when I suggested a drawing. 

I informed him. 

"You say you want it for a double-page center?"

"Yes. "

"Well, I'll do it for three hundred dollars. "

I was taken considerably aback, as I had not contemplated paying morethan one hundred. 

"I get that from all the magazines, " he added, seeing my hesitation, "wherever a supplement is intended. "

"I don't think I could pay more than one hundred, " I said, after a fewmoments' consideration. 

"You couldn't?" he said, sharply, as if about to reprove me. 

I shook my head. 

"Well, " he said, "let's see a copy of your publication. "

The chief value of this conversation was that it taught me that theman's manner was no indication of his mood. I had thought he wasimpatient and indifferent, but I saw now that he was not so, ratherbrusque merely. He was simply excitable, somewhat like the French, andmeant only to be businesslike. The upshot of it all was that he agreedto do it for one hundred and fifty, and asked me very solemnly to saynothing about it. 

I may say here that I came upon S---- in the full blush of his fanciesand ambitions, and just when he was verging upon their realization. Hewas not yet successful. A hundred and fifty dollars was a very fairprice indeed. His powers, however, had reached that stage where theywould soon command their full value. 

I could see at once that he was very ambitious. He was bubbling overwith the enthusiasm of youth and an intense desire for recognition. Heknew he had talent. The knowledge of it gave him an air and anindependence of manner which might have been irritating to some. Besides, he was slightly affected, argue to the contrary as he would, and was altogether full of his own hopes and ambitions. 

The matter of painting this picture necessitated my presence on severaloccasions, and during this time I got better acquainted with him. Certain ideas and desires which we held in common drew us toward eachother, and I soon began to see that he was much above the average ininsight and skill. He talked with the greatest ease upon a score ofsubjects--literature, art, politics, music, the drama, and history. Heseemed to have read the latest novels; to have seen many of the currentplays; to have talked with important people. Theodore Roosevelt, previously Police Commissioner but then Governor, often came to hisstudio to talk and play chess with him. A very able architect was hisfriend. He had artist associates galore, many of whom had studios in thesame building or the immediate vicinity. And there were literary andbusiness men as well, all of whom seemed to enjoy his company, and whowere very fond of calling and spending an hour in his studio. 

I had only called the second time, and was going away, when he showed mea steamship he had constructed with his own hands--a fair-sized model, complete in every detail, even to the imitation stokers in theboiler-room, and which would run by the hour if supplied with oil andwater. I soon learned that his skill in mechanical construction wasgreat. He was a member of several engineering societies, and devotedsome part of his carefully organized days to studying and keeping upwith problems in mechanics. 

"Oh, that's nothing, " he observed, when I marveled at the size andperfection of the model. "I'll show you something else, if you have timesome day, which may amuse you. "

He then explained that he had constructed several model warships, andthat it was his pleasure to take them out and fight them on a pondsomewhere out on Long Island. 

"We'll go out some day, " he said when I showed appropriate interest, "and have them fight each other. You'll see how it's done!"

I waited some time for this outing, and finally mentioned it. 

"We'll go tomorrow, " he said. "Can you be around here by ten o'clock?"

Ten the next morning saw me promptly at the studio, and five minuteslater we were off. 

When we arrived at Long Island City we went to the first convenient armof the sea and undid the precious fighters, in which he much delighted. 

After studying the contour of the little inlet for a few moments he tooksome measurements with a tape-line, stuck up two twigs in two places forguide posts, and proceeded to fire and get up steam in his war-ships. Afterwards he set the rudders, and then took them to the water-side andfloated them at the points where he had placed the twigs. 

These few details accomplished, he again studied the situationcarefully, headed the vessels to the fraction of an inch toward acertain point of the opposite shore, and began testing the steam. 

"When I say ready, you push this lever here, " he said, indicating alittle brass handle fastened to the stern-post. "Don't let her move aninch until you do that. You'll see some tall firing. "

He hastened to the other side where his own boat was anchored, and beganan excited examination. He was like a school-boy with a fine toy. 

At a word, I moved the lever as requested, and the two vessels begansteaming out toward one another. Their weight and speed were such thatthe light wind blowing affected them not in the least, and their prowsstruck with an audible crack. This threw them side by side, steaminghead on together. At the same time it operated to set in motion theirguns, which fired broadsides in such rapid succession as to give asuggestion of rapid revolver practice. Quite a smoke rose, and when itrolled away one of the vessels was already nearly under water and theother was keeling with the inflow of water from the port side. S---- lostno time, but throwing off his coat, jumped in and swam to the rescue. 

Throughout this entire incident his manner was that of an enthusiasticboy who had something exceedingly novel. He did not laugh. In all ouracquaintance I never once heard him give a sound, hearty laugh. Insteadhe cackled. His delight apparently could only express itself in thatway. In the main it showed itself in an excess of sharp movements, shortverbal expressions, gleams of the eye. 

I saw from this the man's delight in the science of engineering, andhumored him in it. He was thereafter at the greatest pains to show allthat he had under way in the mechanical line, and schemes he had forenjoying himself in this work in the future. It seemed rather arecreation for him than anything else. Like him, I could not helpdelighting in the perfect toys which he created, but the intricatedetails and slow process of manufacture were brain-racking. For not onlywould he draw the engine in all its parts, but he would buy the rawmaterial and cast and drill and polish each separate part. 

Upon my second visit I was deeply impressed by the sight of a finepassenger engine, a duplicate of the great 999 of the New York Central, of those days. It stood on brass rails laid along an old library shelfthat had probably belonged to the previous occupant of the studio. Thisengine was a splendid object to look upon, strong, heavy, silent-running, with the fineness and grace of a perfect sewing-machine. It was duly trimmed with brass and nickel, after the manner of the great"flyers, " and seemed so sturdy and powerful that one could not restrainthe desire to see it run. 

"How do you like that?" S---- exclaimed when he saw me looking at it. 

"It's splendid, " I said. 

"See how she runs, " he exclaimed, moving it up and down. "No noise aboutthat. "

He fairly caressed the mechanism with his hand, and went off into a mostcareful analysis of its qualities. 

"I could build that engine, " he exclaimed at last, enthusiastically, "ifI were down in the Baldwin Company's place. I could make her break therecord. "

"I haven't the slightest doubt in the world, " I answered. 

This engine was a source of great expense to him, as well as the chiefpoint in a fine scheme. He had made brass rails for it--sufficient toextend about the four sides of the studio--something like seventy feet. He had made most handsome passenger-cars with full equipment of brakes, vestibules, Pintsch gas, and so on, and had painted on their sides "TheGreat Pullman Line. " One day, when we were quite friendly, he broughtfrom his home all the rails, in a carpet-bag, and gave an exhibition ofhis engine's speed, attaching the cars and getting up sufficient steamto cause the engine to race about the room at a rate which was actuallyexciting. He had an arrangement by which it would pick up water and stopautomatically. It was on this occasion that he confided what he calledhis great biograph scheme, the then forerunner of the latter day movingpictures. It was all so new then, almost a rumor, like that of theflying machine before it was invented. 

"I propose to let the people see the photographic representation of anactual wreck--engine, cars, people, all tumbled down together after acollision, and no imitation, either--the actual thing. "

"How do you propose to do it?" I asked. 

"Well, that's the thing, " he said, banteringly. "Now, how do you supposeI'd do it?"

"Hire a railroad to have a wreck and kill a few people, " I suggested. 

"Well, I've got a better thing than that. A railroad couldn't plananything more real than mine will be. "

I was intensely curious because of the novelty of the thing at thattime. The "Biograph" was in its infancy. 

"This is it, " he exclaimed suddenly. "You see how realistic this engineis, don't you?"

I acknowledged that I did. 

"Well, " he confided, "I'm building another just like it. It's costing methree hundred dollars, and the passenger-cars will cost as much more. Now, I'm going to fix up some scenery on my roof--a gorge, a line ofwoods, a river, and a bridge. I'm going to make the water tumble overbig rocks just above the bridge and run underneath it. Then I'm going tolay this track around these rocks, through the woods, across the bridgeand off into the woods again. 

"I'm going to put on the two trains and time them so they'll meet on thebridge. Just when they come into view where they can see each other, apost on the side of the track will strike the cabs in such a way as tothrow the firemen out on the steps just as if they were going to jump. When the engines take the bridge they'll explode caps that will set fireto oil and powder under the cars and burn them up. "

"Then what?" I asked. 

"Well, I've got it planned automatically so that you will see peoplejumping out of the cars and tumbling down on the rocks, the flamesspringing up and taking to the cars, and all that. Don't you believeit?" he added, as I smiled at the idea. "Look here, " and he produced amodel of one of the occupants of the cars. He labored for an hour toshow all the intricate details, until I was compelled to admit thepracticability and novelty of the idea. Then he explained thatinstantaneous photography, as it was then called, was to be applied atsuch close range that the picture would appear life size. The actualityof the occurrence would do the rest. 

Skepticism still lingered with me for a time, but when I saw the secondtrain growing, the figures and apparatus gradually being modeled, andthe correspondence and conferences going on between the artist andseveral companies which wished to gain control of the result, I wasperfectly sure that his idea would some day be realized. 

As I have said, when I first met S---- he had not realized any of hisdreams. It was just at that moment that the tide was about to turn. Hesurprised me by the assurance, born of his wonderful virility, withwhich he went about all things. 

"I've got an order from the _Ladies' Home Journal_, " he said to me oneday. "They came to me. "

"Good, " I said. "What is it?"

"Somebody's writing up the terminal facilities of New York. "

He had before him an Academy board, on which was sketched, in wash, amidnight express striking out across the Jersey meadows with sparksblazing from the smoke stacks and dim lights burning in the sleepers. Itwas a vivid thing, strong with all the strength of an engine, and richin the go and enthusiasm which adhere to such mechanisms. 

"I want to make a good thing of this, " he said. "It may do me somegood. "

A little later he received his first order from Harper's. He could notdisguise that he was pleased, much as he tried to carry it off with anair. It was just before the Spanish war broke out, and the sketches hewas to do related to the navy. 

He labored at this order with the most tireless enthusiasm. Marineconstruction was his delight anyhow, and he spent hours and days makingstudies about the great vessels, getting not only the atmosphere but themechanical detail. When he made the pictures they represented all thathe felt. 

"You know those drawings?" he said the day after he delivered them. 

"Yes. "

"I set a good stiff price on them and demanded my drawings back whenthey were through. "

"Did you get them?"

"Yep. It will give them more respect for what I'm trying to do, " hesaid. 

Not long after he illustrated one of Kipling's stories. 

He was in high feather at this, but grim and repressed withal. One couldsee by the nervous movements of his wiry body that he was delighted overit. 

At this time Kipling came to his studio. It was by special arrangement, but S---- received him as if he were--well, as artists usually receiveauthors. They talked over the galley proofs, and the author went away. 

"It's coming my way now, " he said, when he could no longer conceal hisfeelings. "I want to do something good on this. "

Through all this rise from obscurity to recognition he lived close tohis friends--a crowd of them, apparently, always in his studio jesting, boxing, fencing--and interested himself in the mechanics I havedescribed. His drawing, his engine-building, his literary studies andrecreations were all mixed, jumbled, plunging him pell-mell, as it were, on to distinction. In the first six months of his studio life he hadlearned to fence, and often dropped his brush to put on the mask andassume the foils with one of his companions. 

As our friendship increased I found how many were the man'saccomplishments and how wide his range of sympathies. He was an expertbicyclist, as well as a trick rider, and used a camera in a way to makean amateur envious. He could sing, having a fine tenor voice, which Iheard the very day I learned that he could sing. It so happened that itwas my turn to buy the theater tickets, and I invited him to come withme that especial evening. 

"Can't do it, " he replied. 

"All right, " I said. 

"I'm part of an entertainment tonight, or I would, " he addedapologetically. 

"What do you do?" I inquired. 

"Sing. "

"Get out!" I said. 

"So be it, " he answered. "Come up this evening. "

To this I finally agreed, and was surprised to observe the ease withwhich he rendered his solo. He had an exquisitely clear and powerfulvoice and received a long round of applause, which he refused toacknowledge by singing again. 

The influence of success is easily observable in a man of so volatile anature. It seems to me that I could have told by his manner, day by day, the inwash of the separate ripples of the inrolling tide of success. Hewas all alive, full of plans, and the tale of his coming conquests wastold in his eye. Sometime in the second year of our acquaintance Icalled at his studio in response to a card which he had stuck under myoffice door. It was his habit to draw an outline head of himself, something almost bordering upon a caricature, writing underneath it "Icalled, " together with any word he might have to say. This day he was inhis usual good spirits, and rallied me upon having an office which wasonly a blind. He had a roundabout way of getting me to talk about hispersonal affairs with him, and I soon saw that he had something veryinteresting, to himself, to communicate. At last he said, --

"I'm going to Europe next summer. "

"Is that so?" I replied. "For pleasure?"

"Well, partly. "

"What's up outside of that?" I asked. 

"I'm going to represent the American Architectural League at theinternational convention. "

"I didn't know you were an architect, " I said. 

"Well, I'm not, " he answered, "professionally. I've studied it prettythoroughly. "

"Well, you seem to be coming up, Louis, " I remarked. 

"I'm doing all right, " he answered. 

He went on working at his easel as if his fate depended upon what he wasdoing. He had the fortunate quality of being able to work and conversemost entertainingly at the same time. He seemed to enjoy company undersuch circumstances. 

"You didn't know I was a baron, did you?" he finally observed. 

"No, " I answered, thinking he was exercising his fancy for the moment. "Where do you keep your baronial lands, my lord?"

"In Germany, kind sir, " he replied, banteringly. 

Then in his customary excitable mood he dropped his brushes and stoodup. 

"You don't believe me, do you?" he exclaimed, looking over his droopingglasses. 

"Why, certainly I believe you, if you are serious. Are you truly abaron?"

"It was this way, " he said. "My grandfather was a baron. My father wasthe younger of two brothers. His brother got the title and what was leftof the estate. That he managed to go through with, and then he died. Now, no one has bothered about the title--"

"And you're going back to claim it?"

"Exactly. "

I took it all lightly at first, but in time I began to perceive that itwas a serious ambition. He truly wanted to be Baron S---- and add tohimself the luster of his ancestors. 

With all this, the man was really not so much an aristocrat in his moodas a seeker after life and new experiences. Being a baron was merely anew experience, or promised to be. He had the liveliest sympathies forrepublican theories and institutions--only he considered his life athing apart. He had a fine mind, philosophically and logically poised. He could reason upon all things, from the latest mathematical theorem toChristian Science. Naturally, being so much of an individualist, he wasnot drifting toward any belief in the latter, but was never weary ofdiscussing the power of mind--a universal mind even--its wondrousramifications and influences. Also he was a student of the Englishschool of philosophy, and loved to get up mathematical and mechanicaldemonstrations of certain philosophic truths. Thus he worked out bymeans of a polygon, whose sides were of unequal lengths, a theory offriendship which is too intricate to explain here. 

From now on I watched his career with the liveliest interest. He was acharming and a warm friend, and never neglected for a moment theobligations which such a relationship demands. 

I heard from him frequently in many and various ways, dined with himregularly every second or third week, and rejoiced with him in histriumphs, now more and more frequent. One spring he went to Europe andspent the summer in tracing down his baronial claims, looking up variousartists and scientists and attending several scientific meetings hereand there at the same time. He did the illustrations for one ofKipling's fast express stories which one of the magazines published, andcame back flushed and ready to try hard for a membership in the AmericanWater-Color Society. 

I shall never forget his anxiety to get into that mildly interestingbody. He worked hard and long on several pictures which should not onlybe hung on the line but enlist sufficient interest among the artists togain him a vote of admission. He mentioned it frequently and fixed mewith his eyes to see what I thought of him. 

"Go ahead, " I said; "you have more right to membership perhaps than manyanother I know. Try hard. "

He painted not one, but four, pictures, and sent them all. They werevery interesting after their kind. Two were scenes from the greatrailroad terminal yards; the others, landscapes in mist or rain. Threeof these pictures were passed and two of them hung on the line. Thethird was _skyed_, but he was admitted to membership. 

I was delighted for his sake, for I could see, when he gave me theintelligence, that it was a matter which had keyed up his whole nervoussystem. 

Not long after this we were walking on Broadway, one drizzly autumnevening, on our way to the theater. Life, ambition, and our future werethe _small_ subjects under discussion. The street, as usual, wascrowded. On every hand blazed the fire signs. The yellow lights werebeautifully reflected in the wet sidewalks and gray wet cobblestonesglistening with water. 

When we reached Greeley Square (at that time a brilliant and almostsputtering spectacle of light and merriment), S---- took me by the arm. 

"Come over here, " he said. "I want you to look at it from here. "

He took me to a point where, by the intersection of the lines of theconverging streets, one could not only see Greeley Square but a largepart of Herald Square, with its then huge theatrical sign of fire andits measure of store lights and lamps of vehicles. It was akaleidoscopic and inspiring scene. The broad, converging walks werealive with people. A perfect jam of vehicles marked the spot where thehorse and cable cars intersected. Overhead was the elevated station, itslights augmented every few minutes by long trains of brightly lightedcars filled with changing metropolitan crowds--crowds like shadowsmoving in a dream. 

"Do you see the quality of that? Look at the blend of the lights andshadows in there under the L. "

I looked and gazed in silent admiration. 

"See, right here before us--that pool of water there--do you get that?Now, that isn't silver-colored, as it's usually represented. It's aprism. Don't you see the hundred points of light?"

I acknowledged the variety of color, which I had scarcely observedbefore. 

"You may think one would skip that in viewing a great scene, but theartist mustn't. He must get all, whether you notice it or not. It givesfeeling, even when you don't see it. "

I acknowledged the value of this ideal. 

"It's a great spectacle, " he said. "It's got more flesh and blood in itthan people usually think. It's easy to make it too mechanical andcommonplace. "

"Why don't you paint it?" I asked. 

He turned on me as if he had been waiting for the suggestion. 

"That's something I want to tell you, " he said. "I am. I've sketched ita half-dozen times already. I haven't got it yet. But I'm going to. "

I heard more of these dreams, intensifying all the while, until theSpanish-American war broke out. Then he was off in a great rush of warwork. I scarcely saw him for six weeks, owing to some travels of my own, but I saw his name. One day in Broadway I stopped to see why a largecrowd was gathered about a window in the Hoffman House. It was one ofS----'s drawings of our harbor defenses, done as if the artist had beensitting at the bottom of the sea. The fishes, the green water, the hullof a massive war-ship--all were there--and about, the grim torpedoes. This put it into my head to go and see him. He was as tense andstrenuous as ever. The glittering treasure at the end of the rainbow wasmore than ever in his eye. His body was almost sore from traveling. 

"I am in now, " he said, referring to the war movement. "I am going toTampa. "

"Be gone long?" I asked. 

"Not this first time. I'll only be down there three weeks. "

"I'll see you then. "

"Supposing we make it certain, " he said. "What do you say to diningtogether this coming Sunday three weeks?"

I went away, wishing him a fine trip and feeling that his dreams mustnow soon begin to come true. He was growing in reputation. Some warpictures, such as he could do, would set people talking. Then he wouldpaint his prize pictures, finish his wreck scheme, become a baron, andbe a great man. 

Three weeks later I knocked at his studio door. It was a fine springlikeday, though it was in February. I expected confidently to hear his quickaggressive step inside. Not a sound in reply. I knocked harder, butstill received no answer. Then I went to the other doors about. He mightbe with his friends, but they were not in. I went away thinking that hiswar duties had interfered, that he had not returned. 

Nevertheless there was something depressing about that portion of thebuilding in which his studio was located. I felt as if it should not be, and decided to call again. Monday it was the same, and Tuesday. 

That same evening I was sitting in the library of the Salmagundi Club, when a well-known artist addressed me. 

"You knew S----, didn't you?" he said. 

"Yes; what of it?"

"You knew he was dead, didn't you?"

"What!" I said. 

"Yes, he died of fever, this morning. "

I looked at him without speaking for a moment. 

"Too bad, " he said. "A clever boy, Louis. Awfully clever. I feel sorryfor his father. "

It did not take long to verify his statement. His name was in theperfunctory death lists of the papers the next morning. No other noticeof any sort. Only a half-dozen seemed to know that he had ever lived. 

And yet it seemed _to me_ that a great tragedy had happened--he was soambitious, so full of plans. His dreams were so near fulfillment. 

I saw the little grave afterward and the empty studio. His desksrevealed several inventions and many plans of useful things, but thesecame to nothing. There was no one to continue the work. 

My feeling at the time was as if I had been looking at a beautiful lamp, lighted, warm and irradiating a charming scene, and then suddenly thatit had been puffed out before my eyes, as if a hundred bubbles ofiridescent hues had been shattered by a breath. We toil so much, wedream so richly, we hasten so fast, and, lo! the green door is opened. We are through it, and its grassy surface has sealed us forever from allwhich apparently we so much crave--even as, breathlessly, we are stillrunning. 

[Transcriber's Note: Typos have been corrected in this document, butspelling and punctuation inconsistencies have been retained. ]