U.S.A.

A.

The 42nd parallel

B.

Nineteen Nineteen

C.

The Big Money

BY JOHN DOS PASSOS

THE MODERN LIBRARY

NEW YORK

-i-

COPYRIGHT, 1930, 1932, 1933, 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937,

BY JOHN DOS PASSOS

THE MODERN LIBRARY

IS PUBLISHED BY

RANDOM HOUSE, INC.

BENNETT A. CERF · DONALD S. KLOPFER · ROBERT K. HAAS

Manufactured in the United States of America

Printed by Parkway Printing Company Paper by Richard Bauer & Co.

Bound by H. Wolff

-ii-

JOHN DOS PASSOS

(1896- )

A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR OF

"U.S.A."

By far the most ambitious undertaking of John Dos Passos'

career as a writer is the trilogy, U.S.A. The three novels, The

42nd Parallel, Nineteen Nineteen and The Big Money, are

brought together in one volume, thus fulfilling the author's

original intention of making these three panels an integrated lit-

erary pattern of contemporary American life.

Born in Chicago, John Dos Passos received his early education

there and was graduated from Harvard University cum laude in

1916. Immediately afterward he served with the Harjes, the

Red Cross and the U.S.A. Ambulance Services during the World

War. His novel, Three Soldiers, issued in 1921 (Modern Li-

brary No. 205), remains today one of the few war books to

survive as living literature. Since its appearance, each new work

of fiction has advanced John Dos Passos' development, and today

he is acknowledgedly one of the world's foremost novelists. As a

participant in the American social struggle, notably as a cham-

pion of Sacco and Vanzetti, Dos Passos' record is quite as distin-

guished as is his achievement in the role of social commentator

and novelist.

-iii-

U. S. A.

The young man walks fast by himself through the

crowd that thins into the night streets; feet are tired

from hours of walking; eyes greedy for warm curve of

faces, answering flicker of eyes, the set of a head, the

lift of a shoulder, the way hands spread and clench;

blood tingles with wants; mind is a beehive of hopes

buzzing and stinging; muscles ache for the knowledge

of jobs, for the roadmender's pick and shovel work, the

fisherman's knack with a hook when he hauls on the

slithery net from the rail of the lurching trawler, the

swing of the bridgeman's arm as he slings down the

whitehot rivet, the engineer's slow grip wise on the

throttle, the dirtfarmer's use of his whole body when,

whoaing the mules, he yanks the plow from the fur-

row. The young man walks by himself searching

through the crowd with greedy eyes, greedy ears taut

to hear, by himself, alone.

The streets are empty. People have packed into

subways, climbed into streetcars and buses i in the sta-

tions they've scampered for suburban trains; they've

filtered into lodgings and tenements, gone up in eleva-

tors into apartmenthouses. In a showwindow two sal-

low windowdressers in their shirtsleeves are bringing

out a dummy girl in a red evening dress, at a corner

welders in masks lean into sheets of blue flame repair-

ing a cartrack, a few drunk bums shamble along, a sad

streetwalker fidgets under an arclight. From the river

comes the deep rumbling whistle of a steamboat leav-

ing dock. A tug hoots far away.

The young man walks by himself, fast but not

fast enough, far but not far enough (faces slide out of

sight, talk trails into tattered scraps, footsteps tap

-v-

fainter in alleys); he must catch the last subway, the

streetcar, the bus, run up the gangplanks of all the

steamboats, register at all the hotels, work in the cities,

answer the wantads, learn the trades, take up the jobs,

live in all the boardinghouses, sleep in all the beds.

One bed is not enough, one job is not enough, one life

is not enough. At night, head swimming with wants,

he walks by himself alone.

No job, no woman, no house, no city.

Only the ears busy to catch the speech are not

alone; the ears are caught tight, linked tight by the

tendrils of phrased words, the turn of a joke, the sing-

song fade of a story, the gruff fall of a sentence; link-

ing tendrils of speech twine through the city blocks,

spread over pavements, grow out along broad parked

avenues, speed with the trucks leaving on their long

night runs over roaring highways, whisper down sandy

byroads past wornout farms, joining up cities and fill-

ingstations, roundhouses, steamboats, planes groping

along airways; words call out on mountain pastures,

drift slow down rivers widening to the sea and the

hushed beaches.

It was not in the long walks through jostling

crowds at night that he was less alone, or in the train-

ing camp at Allentown, or in the day on the docks at

Seattle, or in the empty reek of Washington City hot

boyhood summer nights, or in the meal on Market

Street, or in the swim off the red rocks at San Diego,

or in the bed full of fleas in New Orleans, or in the

cold razorwind off the lake, or in the gray faces trem-

bling in the grind of gears in the street under Michigan

Avenue, or in the smokers of limited expresstrains, or

walking across country, or riding up the dry mountain

canyons, or the night without a sleepingbag among

frozen beartracks in the Yellowstone, or canoeing Sun-

days on the Quinnipiac;

-vi-

but in his mother's words telling about longago,

in his father's telling about when I was a boy, in the

kidding stories of uncles, in the lies the kids told at

school, the hired man's yarns, the tall tales the dough-

boys told after taps; it was the speech that clung to the ears, the link

that tingled in the blood; U. S. A.

U. S. A. is the slice of a continent. U. S. A. is a

group of holding companies, some aggregations of trade

unions, a set of laws bound in calf, a radio network, a

chain of moving picture theatres, a column of stock-

quotations rubbed out and written in by a Western

Union boy on a blackboard, a publiclibrary full of old

newspapers and dogeared historybooks with protests

scrawled on the margins in pencil. U. S. A. is the

world's greatest rivervalley fringed with mountains

and hills, U. S. A. is a set of bigmouthed officials with

too many bankaccounts. U. S. A. is a lot of men buried

in their uniforms in Arlington Cemetery. U. S. A. is

the letters at the end of an address when you are away

from home. But mostly U. S. A. is the speech of the

people.

-vii-

THE 42nd PARALLEL

-iii-

CONTENTS

NEWSREEL I It was that emancipated race

3

The Camera Eye (1) when you walk along

the street you have to step carefully always

5

MAC

6

The Camera Eye (2) we hurry wallowing

like in a boat

13

MAC

14

NEWSREEL II Come on and hear

23

The Camera Eye (3) O qu'il a des beaux yeux

said the lady

24

LOVER OF MANKIND

26

The Camera Eye (4) riding backwards through

the rain

28

MAC

29

NEWSREEL III "It takes nerve to live in this

world"

54

The Camera Eye (5) and we played the battle

of Port Arthur

55

NEWSREEL IV I met my love in the Alamo

56

The Camera Eye (6) Go it go it said Mr.

Linwood

57

NEWSREEL V BUGS DRIVE OUT BIOLOGIST

58

MAC

58

NEWSREEL VI Paris Shocked At Last

80

-v-

The Camera Eye (7) skating on the pond next

the silver company's mills

81

THE PLANT WIZARD

82

NEWSREEL VII SAYS THIS IS CENTURY WHERE

BILLIONS AND BRAINS ARE TO RULE

84

The Camera Eye (8) you sat on the bed un-

lacing your shoes

85

MAC

86

The Camera Eye (9) all day the fertilizer-

factories smelt something awful

92

BIG BILL

93

The Camera Eye (10) the old major who

used to take me to the Capitol

96

MAC

98

NEWSREEL VIII Prof Ferrer, former director of

the Modern School

107

The Camera Eye (11) the Pennypackers went

to the Presbyterian church

108

NEWSREEL IX FORFEIT STARS BY DRINKING

109

MAC

110

The Camera Eye (12) when everybody went

away for a trip

129

NEWSREEL X MOON'S PATENT IS FIZZLE

130

The Camera Eye (13) he was a towboat cap-

tain and he knew the river

131

JANEY

133

The Camera Eye (14) Sunday nights when

we had fishballs and baked beans

147

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NEWSREEL XI the government of the United

States must insist

148

JANEY

150

The Camera Eye (15) in the mouth of the

Schuylkill

166

NEWSREEL XII Greeks in battle flee before cops

167

THE BOY ORATOR OF THE

PLATTE

169

The Camera Eye (16) it was hot as a bake-

oven going through the canal

173

J. WARD MOOREHOUSE

174

The Camera Eye (17) the spring you could

see Halley's Comet

206

NEWSREEL XIII I was in front of the national

palace

208

ELEANOR STODDARD

209

The Camera Eye (18) she was a very fashion-

able lady

223

ELEANOR STODDARD

224

The Camera Eye (19) the methodist min-

ister's wife was a tall thin woman

238

NEWSREEL XIV BOMBARDIER STOPS AUSTRALIAN

239

EMPEROR OF THE CARIBBEAN

241

The Camera Eye (20) when the streetcarmen

went out on strike

245

J. WARD MOOREHOUSE

246

The Camera Eye (21) that August it never

rained a drop

260

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NEWSREEL XV lights go out as Home Sweet

Home

262

PRINCE OF PEACE

264

The Camera Eye (22) all week the fog clung

to the sea

265

J. WARD MOOREHOUSE

267

NEWSREEL XVI the Philadelphian had com-

pleted the thirteenth lap

274

The Camera Eye (23) this friend of mother's

was a very lovely

275

ELEANOR STODDARD

276

The Camera Eye (24) raining in historic

Quebec it was raining

283

JANEY

285

THE ELECTRICAL WIZARD

297

The Camera Eye (25) those spring nights the

streetcarwheels screech

301

NEWSREEL XVII an attack by a number of hos-

tile airships

303

MAC

304

PROTEUS

325

JANEY

328

The Camera Eye (26) the garden was crowded

and outside

349

NEWSREEL XVIII Goodby Piccadilly, farewell

Leicester Square

350

-viii-

ELEANOR STODDARD

351

NEWSREEL XIX U. S. AT WAR

361

The Camera Eye (27) there were priests and

nuns on the Espagne

362

FIGHTING BOB

365

CHARLEY ANDERSON

369

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NEWSREEL I

It was that emancipated race

That was chargin up the hill

Up to where them insurrectos

Was afightin fit to kill

CAPITAL CITY'S CENTURY CLOSED

General Miles with his gaudy uniform and spirited

charger was the center for all eyes especially as his steed was

extremely restless. Just as the band passed the Commanding

General his horse stood upon his hind legs and was almost

erect. General Miles instantly reined in the frightened animal

and dug in his spurs in an endeavor to control the horse which

to the horror of the spectators, fell over backwards and landed

squarely on the Commanding General. Much to the gratifi-

cation of the people General Miles was not injured but con-

siderable skin was scraped off the flank of the horse. Almost

every inch of General Miles's overcoat was covered with the

dust of the street and between the shoulders a hole about an

inch in diameter was punctured. Without waiting for anyone

to brush the dust from his garments General Miles remounted

his horse and reviewed the parade as if it were an everyday

occurrence.

The incident naturally attracted the attention of the

crowd, and this brought to notice the fact that the Command-

ing General never permits a flag to be carried past him with-

out uncovering and remaining so until the colors have past

And the Captain bold of Company B

Was a fightin in the lead

Just like a trueborn soldier he

Of them bullets took no heed

OFFICIALS KNOW NOTHING OF VICE

Sanitary trustees turn water of Chicago River into drain-

age canal LAKE MICHIGAN SHAKES HANDS WITH

THE FATHER OF THE WATERS German zuchter-

-3-

verein singing contest for canary-birds opens the fight for

bimetallism at the ratio of 16 to 1 has not been lost says Bryan

BRITISH BEATEN AT MAFEKING

For there's many a man been murdered in Luzon CLAIMS ISLANDS FOR ALL TIME

Hamilton Club Listens to Oratory by Ex-Congressman

Posey of Indiana

NOISE GREETS NEW CENTURY

LABOR GREETS NEW CENTURY

CHURCHES GREET NEW CENTURY

Mr. McKinley is hard at work in his office when the new

year begins.

NATION GREETS CENTURY'S DAWN

Responding to a toast, Hail Columbia! at the Columbia

Club banquet in Indianapolis, Ind., ex-PresidentBenjamin

Harrison said in part: I have no argument to make here or

anywhere against territorial expansion; but I do not, as some

do, look upon territorial expansion as the safest and most attrac-

tive avenue of national development. By the advantages of

abundant and cheap coal and iron, of an enormous over-

production of food products and of invention and economy in

production, we are now leading by the nose the original and

the greatest of the colonizing nations.

Society Girls Shocked: Danced with Detectives

For there's many a man been murdered in Luzon

and Mindanao

GAIETY GIRLS MOBBED IN NEW JERSEY

One of the lithographs of the leading lady represented her

in less than Atlantic City bathing costume, sitting on a red-hot

stove; in one hand she held a brimming glass of wine, in the

other ribbons drawn over a pair of rampant lobsters.

-4-

For there's many a man been murdered in Luzon

and Mindanao

and in Samar

In responding to the toast, "The Twentieth Century",

Senator Albert J. Beveridge said in part: The twentieth cen-

tury will be American. American thought will dominate it.

American progress will give it color and direction. American

deeds will make it illustrious.

Civilization will never lose its hold on Shanghai. Civiliza-

tion will never depart from Hongkong. The gates of Peking

will never again be closed to the methods of modern man.

The regeneration of the world, physical as well as moral, has

begun, and revolutions never move backwards.

There's been many a good man murdered in the Philippines

Lies sleeping in some lonesome grave.

THE CAMERA EYE (I)

when you walk along the street you have to step

carefully always on the cobbles so as not to step on the

bright anxious grassblades easier if you hold Mother's

hand and hang on it that way you can kick up your toes

but walking fast you have to tread on too many grass-

blades the poor hurt green tongues shrink under your

feet maybe thats why those people are so angry and

follow us shaking their fists they're throwing stones

grownup people throwing stones She's walking fast and

we)re running her pointed toes sticking out sharp among

the poor trodden grassblades under the shaking folds of

-5-

the brown cloth dress Englander a pebble tinkles

along the cobbles

Quick darling quick in the postcard shop its quiet the

angry people are outside and cant come in non nein

nicht englander amerikanisch americain Hoch Amerika

Vive l'Amerique She laughs My dear they had me right

frightened

war on the veldt Kruger Bloemfontein Ladysmith

and Queen Victoria an old lady in a pointed lace cap sent

chocolate to the soldiers at Christmas

under the counter it's dark and the lady the nice

Dutch lady who loves Americans and has relations in

Trenton shows you postcards that shine in the dark

pretty hotels and palaces O que c'est beau schon

prittie prittie and the moonlight ripple ripple under a

bridge and the little reverbères are alight in the dark

under the counter and the little windows of hotels around

the harbor O que c'est beau la lune

and the big moon

MAC

When the wind set from the silver factories across the

river the air of the gray fourfamily frame house where

Fainy McCreary was born was choking all day with the

smell of whaleoil soap. Other days it smelt of cabbage

and babies and Mrs. McCreary's washboilers. Fainy could

-6-

never play at home because Pop, a lame cavechested man

with a whispy blondegray mustache, was nightwatchman

at the Chadwick Mills and slept all day. It was only round

five o'clock that a curling whiff of tobacco smoke would

seep through from the front room into the kitchen. That

was a sign that Pop was up and in good spirits, and would

soon be wanting his supper.

Then Fainy would be sent running out to one of two

corners of the short muddy street of identical frame

houses where they lived.

To the right it was half a block to Finley's where he

would have to wait at the bar in a forest of mudsplattered

trouserlegs until all the rank brawling mouths of grown-

ups had been stopped with beers and whiskeys. Then he

would walk home, making each step very carefully, with

the handle of the pail of suds cutting into his hand.

To the left it was half a block to Maginnis's Fancy

Groceries, Home and Imported Products. Fainy liked the

cardboard Cream of Wheat darkey in the window, the

glass case with different kinds of salami in it, the barrels

of potatoes and cabbages, the brown smell of sugar, saw-

dust, ginger, kippered herring, ham, vinegar, bread, pep-

per, lard.

"A loaf of bread, please, mister, a half pound of butter

and a box of ginger snaps."

Some evenings, when Mom felt poorly, Fainy had to

go further; round the corner past Maginnis's, down Riv-

erside Avenue where the trolley ran, and across the red

bridge over the little river that flowed black between icy

undercut snowbanks in winter, yellow and spuming in the

spring thaws, brown and oily in summer. Across the river

all the way to the corner of Riverside and Main, where

the drugstore was, lived Bohunks and Polaks. Their kids

were always fighting with the kids"of the Murphys and

O'Haras and O'Flanagans who lived on Orchard Street.

Fainy would walk along with his knees quaking, the

-7-

medicine bottle in its white paper tight in one mittened

hand. At the corner of Quince was a group of boys he'd

have to pass. Passing wasn't so bad; it was when he was

about twenty yards from them that the first snowball

would hum by his ear. There was no comeback. If he

broke into a run, they'd chase him. If he dropped the

medicine bottle he'd be beaten up when he got home. A

soft one would plunk on the back of his head and the snow

began to trickle down his neck. When he was a half a

block from the bridge he'd take a chance and run for it.

"Scared cat . . . Shanty Irish . . . Bowlegged Mur-

phy . . . Running home to tell the cop" . . . would

yell the Polak and Bohunk kids between snowballs. They

made their snowballs hard by pouring water on them and

leaving them to freeze overnight; if one of those hit him

it drew blood.

The backyard was the only place you could really feel

safe to play in. There were brokendown fences, dented

garbage cans, old pots and pans too nearly sieves to mend,

a vacant chickencoop that still had feathers and droppings

on the floor, hogweed in summer, mud in winter; but the

glory of the McCrearys' backyard was Tony Harriman's

rabbit hutch, where he kept Belgian hares. Tony Harri-

man was a consumptive and lived with his mother on the

ground floor left. He wanted to raise all sorts of other

small animals too, raccoons, otter, even silver fox, he'd get

rich that way. The day he died nobody could find the key

to the big padlock on the door of the rabbit hutch. Fainy

fed the hares for several days by pushing in cabbage and

lettuce leaves through the double thickness of chickenwire.

Then came a week of sleet and rain when he didn't go out

in the yard. The first fine day, when he went to look, one

of the hares was dead. Fainy turned white; he tried to tell

himself the hare was asleep, but it lay gawkily stiff, not

asleep. The other hares were huddled in a corner looking

-8-

about with twitching noses, their big ears flopping helpless

over their backs. Poor hares; Fainy wanted to cry. He ran

upstairs to his mother's kitchen, ducked under the ironing

board and got the hammer out of the drawer in the

kitchen table. The first time he tried he mashed his finger,

but the second time he managed to jump the padlock. In-

side the cage there was a funny, sour smell. Fainy picked

the dead hare up by its ears. Its soft white belly was be-

ginning to puff up, one dead eye was scaringly open.

Something suddenly got hold of Fainy and made him

drop the hare in the nearest garbage can and run upstairs.

Still cold and trembling, he tiptoed out onto the back

porch and looked down. Breathlessly he watched the other

hares. By cautious hops they were getting near the door

of the hutch into the yard. One of them was out. It sat

up on its hind legs, limp ears suddenly stiff. Mom called

him to bring her a flatiron from the stove. When he got

back to the porch the hares were all gone.

That winter there was a strike in the Chadwick Mills

and Pop lost his job. He would sit all day in the front

room smoking and cursing:

"Ablebodied man by Jesus, if I couldn't lick any one

of those damn Polaks with my crutch tied behind my

back . . . I says so to Mr. Barry; I ain't goin' to join no

strike. Mr. Barry, a sensible quiet man, a bit of an invalid,

with a wife an' kiddies to think for. Eight years I've been

watchman, an' now you give me the sack to take on a bunch

of thugs from a detective agency. The dirty pugnosed

son of a bitch."

"If those damn lousy furreners hadn't a walked out,"

somebody would answer soothingly.

The strike was not popular on Orchard Street. It meant

that Mom had to work harder and harder, doing bigger

and bigger boilersful of wash, and that Fainy and his

older sister Milly had to help when they came home

from school. And then one day Mom got sick and had to

-9-

go back to bed instead of starting in on the ironing, and

lay with her round white creased face whiter than the pil-

low and her watercreased hands in a knot under her chin.

The doctor came and the district nurse, and all three

rooms of the flat smelt of doctors and nurses and drugs,

and the only place Fainy and Milly could find to sit was

on the stairs. There they sat and cried quietly together.

Then Mom's face on the pillow shrank into a little creased

white thing like a rumpled up handkerchief and they said

that she was dead and took her away.

The funeral was from the undertaking parlors on River-

side Avenue on the next block. Fainy felt very proud and

important because everybody kissed him and patted his

head and said he was behaving like a little man. He had

a new black suit on, too, like a grownup suit with pockets

and everything, except that it had short pants. There were

all sorts of people at the undertaking parlors he had never

been close to before, Mr. Russell, the butcher and Father

O'Donnell and Uncle Tim O'Hara who'd come on from

Chicago, and it smelt of whisky and beer like at Finley's.

Uncle Tim was a skinny man with a knobbed red face and

blurry blue eyes. He wore a loose black silk tie that wor-

ried Fainy, and kept leaning down suddenly, bending

from the waist as if he was going to close up like a jack-

knife, and whispering in a thick voice in Fainy's ear.

"Don't you mind 'em, old sport, they're a bunch o'

bums and hypocrytes, stewed to the ears most of 'em

already. Look at Father O'Donnell the fat swine already

figurin' up the burial fees. But don't you mind 'em, re-

member you're an O'Hara on your mother's side. I don't

mind em, old sport, and she was my own sister by birth

and blood."

When they got home he was terribly sleepy and his feet

were cold and wet. Nobody paid any attention to him. He

sat whimpering on the edge of the bed in the dark. In

the front room there were voices and a sound of knives

-10-

and forks, but he didn't dare go in there. He curled up

against the wall and went to sleep. Light in his eyes woke

him up. Uncle Tim and Pop were standing over him talk-

ing loud. They looked funny and didn't seem to be stand-

ing very steady. Uncle Tim held the lamp.

Well, Fainy, old sport, said Uncle Tim giving the

lamp a perilous wave over Fainy's head. Fenian O'Hara

McCreary, sit up and take notice and tell us what you

think of our proposed removal to the great and growing

city of Chicago. Middletown's a terrible bitch of a dump

if you ask me . . . Meanin' no offense, John . . . But

Chicago . . . Jesus God, man, when you get there you'll

think you've been dead and nailed up in a coffin all these

years."

Fainy was scared. He drew his knees up to his chin and

looked tremblingly at the two big swaying figures of men

lit by the swaying lamp. He tried to speak but the words

dried up on his lips.

The kid's asleep, Tim, for all your speechifyin' . . .

Take your clothes off, Fainy, and get into bed and get a

good night's sleep. We're leavin' in the mornin'."

And late on a rainy morning, without any breakfast,

with a big old swelltop trunk tied up with rope joggling

perilously on the roof of the cab that Fainy had been sent

to order from Hodgeson's Livery Stable, they set out.

Milly was crying. Pop didn't say a word but sucked on

an unlit pipe. Uncle Tim handled everything, making

little jokes all the time that nobody laughed at, pulling

a roll of bills out of his pocket at every juncture, or taking

great gurgling sips out of the flask he had in his pocket.

Milly cried and cried. Fainy looked out with big dry eyes

at the familiar streets, all suddenly odd and lopsided, that

rolled past the cab; the red bridge, the scabshingled

houses where the Polaks lived, Smith's and Smith's cor-

ner drugstore . . . there was Billy Hogan just coming

-11-

out with a package of chewing gum in his hand. Playing

hockey again. Fainy had an impulse to yell at him, but

something froze it . . . Main with its elms and street

cars, blocks of stores round the corner of Church, and

then the fire department. Fainy looked for the last time

into the dark cave where shone entrancingly the brass and

copper curves of the engine, then past the cardboard fronts

of the First Congregational Church, The Carmel Baptist

Church, St. Andrew's Episcopal Church built of brick and

set catercornered on its lot instead of straight with a stern

face to the street like the other churches, then the three

castiron stags on the lawn in front of the Commercial

House, and the residences, each with its lawn, each with

its scrollsaw porch, each with it hydrangea bush. Then

the houses got smaller, and the lawns disappeared; the

cab trundled round past Simpson's Grain and Feed Ware-

house, along a row of barbershops, saloons and lunch-

rooms, and they were all getting out at the station.

At the station lunchcounter Uncle Tim set everybody

up to breakfast. He dried Milly's tears and blew Fainy's

nose in a big new pockethandkerchief that still had the tag

on the corner and set them to work on bacon and eggs and

coffee. Fainy hadn't had coffee before, so. the idea of sit-

ting up like a man and drinking coffee made him feel

pretty good. Milly didn't like hers, said it was bitter.

They were left all alone in the lunchroom for sometime

with the empty plates and empty coffee cups under the

beady eyes of a woman with the long neck and pointed

face of a hen who looked at them disapprovingly from

behind the counter. Then with an enormous, shattering

rumble, sludgepuff sludge . . . puff, the train came into

the station. They were scooped up and dragged across

the platform and through a pipesmoky car and before

they knew it the train was moving and the wintry russet

Connecticut landscape was clattering by.

-12-

THE CAMERA EYE (2)

we hurry wallowing like in a boat in the musty

stablysmelling herdic cab He kept saying What would

you do Lucy if I were to invite one of them to my table?

They're very lovely people Lucy the colored people and

He had cloves in a little silver box and a rye whisky smell

on his breath hurrying to catch the cars to New York

and She was saying Oh dolly I hope we wont be

late and Scott was waiting with the tickets and we had to

run up the platform of the Seventh Street Depot and all

the little cannons kept falling out of the Olympia and

everybody stooped to pick them up and the conductor

Allaboard lady quick lady

they were little brass cannons and were bright in the

sun on the platform of the Seventh Street Depot and Scott

hoisted us all up and the train was moving and the engine

bell was ringing and Scott put in your hand a little handful

of brass tiny cannons just big enough to hold the smallest

size red firecracker at the battle of Manila Bay and said

Here's the artillery Jack

and He was holding forth in the parlor car Why

Lucy if it were necessary for the cause of humanity I

would walk out and be shot any day you would Jack

wouldn't you? wouldn't you porter? who was bringing

appolinaris and He had a flask in the brown grip where

-13-

the silk initialed handkerchiefs always smelt of bay rum

and when we got to Havre de Grace He said Re-

member Lucy we used to have to ferry across the Susque-

hanna before the bridge was built

and across Gunpowder Creek too

MAC

Russet hills, patches of woods, farmhouses, cows, a red

colt kicking up its heels in a pasture, rail fences, streaks

of marsh.

Well, Tim, I feel like a whipped cur . . . So long as

I've lived, Tim, I've tried to do the right thing, Pop

kept repeating in a rattling voice. And now what can they

be asayin' about me?

"Jesus God, man, there was nothin' else you could do,

was there? What the devil can you do if you haven't any

money and haven't any job and a lot o' doctors and under-

takers and landlords come round with their bills and you

with two children to support?"

"But I've been a quiet and respectable man, steady and

misfortunate ever since I married and settled down. And

now what'll they be thinkin' of me sneakin' out like a

whipped cur?"

" John, take it from me that I'd be the last one to want

to bring disrespect on the dead that was my own sister by

birth and blood . . . But it ain't your fault and it ain't

my fault . . . it's the fault of poverty, and poverty's the

fault of the system . . . Fenian, you listen to Tim

O'Hara for a minute and Milly you listen too, cause a

girl ought to know these things just as well as a man and

-14-

for once in his life Tim O'Hara's tellin' the truth . . .

It's the fault of the system that don't give a man the fruit

of his labor . . . The only man that gets anything out of

capitalism is a crook, an' he gets to be a millionaire in

short order . . . But an honest workin' man like John or

muself we can work a hundred years and not leave enough

to bury us decent with."

Smoke rolled white in front of the window shaking out

of its folds trees and telegraph poles and little square

shingleroofed houses and towns and trolleycars, and long

rows of buggies with steaming horses standing in line.

"And who gets the fruit of our labor, the goddam busi-

ness men, agents, middlemen who never did a productive

piece of work in their life."

Fainy's eyes are following the telegraph wires that sag

and soar.

Now, Chicago ain't no paradise, I can promise you

that, John, but it's a better market for a workin' man's

muscle and brains at present than the East is . . . And

why, did you ask me why . . . ? Supply and demand,

they need workers in Chicago.

Tim, I tellyer I feel like a whipped cur.

It's the system, John, it's the goddam lousy system.

A great bustle in the car woke Fainy up. It was dark.

Milly was crying again. He didn't know where he was.

Well, gentlemen, Uncle Tim was saying, we're

about to arrive in little old New York.

In the station it was light; that surprised Fainy, who

thought it was already night. He and Milly were left a

long time sitting on a suitcase in the waitingroom. The

waitingroom was huge, full of unfamiliarlooking people,

scary like people in picturebooks. Milly kept crying.

Hey, Milly, I'll biff you one if you don't stop crying.

Why? whined Milly, crying all the more.

Fainy stood as far away from her as possible so that

people wouldn't think they were together. When he was

-15-

about ready to cry himself Pop and Uncle Tim came and

took them and the suitcase into the restaurant. A strong

smell of fresh whisky came from their breaths, and they

seemed very bright around the eyes. They all sat at a table

with a white cloth and a sympathetic colored man in a

white coat handed them a large card full of printing.

Let's eat a good supper, said Uncle Tim, if it's the

last thing we do on this earth.

Damn the expense, said Pop, it's the system that's

to blame.

To hell with the pope, said Uncle Tim. We'll make

a social-democrat out of you yet.

They gave Fainy fried oysters and chicken and ice-

cream and cake, and when they all had to run for the train

he had a terrible stitch in his side. They got into a day-

coach that smelt of coalgas and armpits. When are we

going to bed? Milly began to whine. We're not going

to bed, said Uncle Tim airily. We're going to sleep

right here like little mice . . . like little mice in a

cheese. I doan like mice, yelled Milly with a new

flood of tears as the train started.

Fainy's eyes smarted; in his ears was the continuous

roar, the clatter clatter over crossings, the sudden snarl

under bridges. It was a tunnel, all the way to Chicago it

was a tunnel. Opposite him Pop's and Uncle Tim's faces

looked red and snarling, he didn't like the way they

looked, and the light was smoky and jiggly and outside

it was all a tunnel and his eyes hurt and wheels and rails

roared in his ears and he fell asleep.

When he woke up it was a town and the train was run-

ning right through the main street. It was a sunny morn-

ing. He could see people going about their business, stores,

buggies and spring-wagons standing at the curb, newsboys

selling newspapers, wooden Indians outside of cigarstores.

At first he thought he was dreaming, but then he remem-

bered and decided it must be Chicago. Pop and Uncle Tim

-16-

were asleep on the seat opposite. Their mouths were open,

their faces were splotched and he didn't like the way they

looked. Milly was curled up with a wooly shawl all over

her. The train was slowing down, it was a station. If it was

Chicago they ought to get off. At that moment the con-

ductor passed, an old man who looked a little like Father

O'Donnell.

Please, mister, is this Chicago? Chicago's a long way

off yet, son, said the conductor without smiling. This is

Syracuse.

And they all woke up, and for hours and hours the

telephone poles went by, and towns, frame houses, brick

factories with ranks and ranks of glittering windows,

dumping grounds, trainyards, plowed land, pasture, and

cows, and Milly got trainsick and Fainy's legs felt like

they would drop off from sitting in the seat so long; some

places it was snowing and some places it was sunny, and

Milly kept getting sick and smelt dismally of vomit, and

it got dark and they all slept; and light again, and then

the towns and the framehouses and the factories all started

drawing together, humping into warehouses and elevators,

and the trainyards spread out as far as you could see and

it was Chicago.

But it was so cold and the wind blew the dust so hard

in his face and his eyes were so stuck together by dust and

tiredness that he couldn't look at anything. After they had

waited round a long while, Milly and Fainy huddled to-

gether in the cold, they got on a streetcar and rode and

rode. They were so sleepy they never knew exactly where

the train ended and the streetcar began. Uncle Tim's voice

went on talking proudly excitedly, Chicago, Chicago, Chi-

cago. Pop sat with his chin on his crutch. "Tim, I feel like

a whipped cur."

Fainy lived ten years in Chicago.

At first he went to school and played baseball on back

lots on Saturday afternoons, but then came his last com-

-17-

mencement, and all the children sang My Country, 'Tis

Of Thee, and school was over and he had to go to work.

Uncle Tim at that time had his own jobprinting shop on

a dusty side street off North Clark in the ground floor of

a cranky old brick building. It only occupied a small sec-

tion of the building that was mostly used as a ware-

house and was famous for its rats. It had a single wide

plateglass window made resplendent by gold Old English

lettering: TIMOTHY O'HARA, JOB PRINTER.

Now, Fainy, old sport, said Uncle Tim, you'll have

a chance to learn the profession from the ground up. So

he ran errands, delivered packages of circulars, throw-

aways, posters, was always dodging trolleycars, ducking

from under the foamy bits of big truckhorses, bumming

rides on deliverywagons. When there were no errands to

run he swept out under the presses, cleaned type, emptied

the office wastepaper basket, or, during rush times, ran

round the corner for coffee and sandwiches for the type-

setter, or for a small flask of bourbon for Uncle Tim.

Pop puttered round on his crutch for several years,

always looking for a job. Evenings he smoked his pipe

and cursed his luck on the back stoop of Uncle Tim's

house and occasionally threatened to go back to Middle-

town. Then one day he got pneumonia and died quietly

at the Sacred Heart Hospital. It was about the same time

that Uncle Tim bought a linotype machine.

Uncle Tim was so excited he didn't take a drink for

three days. The floorboards were so rotten they had to

build a brick base for the linotype all the way up from

the cellar. Well, when we get another one we'll concrete

the whole place, Uncle Tim told everybody. For a whole

day there was no work done. Everybody stood around

looking at the tall black intricate machine that stood there

like an organ in a church. When the machine was work-

ing and the printshop filled with the hot smell of molten

metal, everybody's eyes followed the quivering inquisitive

-18-

arm that darted and flexed above the keyboard. When

they handed round the warm shiny slugs of type the old

German typesetter who for some reason they called Mike

pushed back his glasses on his forehead and cried. Fifty-

five years a printer, and now when I'm old I'll have to

carry hods to make a living.

The first print Uncle Tim set up on the new machine

was the phrase: Workers of the world unite; you have

nothing to lose but your chains.

When Fainy was seventeen and just beginning to worry

about skirts and ankles and girls' underwear when he

walked home from work in the evening and saw the lights

of the city bright against the bright heady western sky,

there was a strike in the Chicago printing trades. Tim

O'Hara had always run a union shop and did all the union

printing at cost. He even got up a handbill signed, A Citi-

zen, entitled An Ernest Protest, which Fainy was allowed

to set up on the linotype one evening after the operator

had gone home. One phrase stuck in Fainy's mind, and

he repeated it to himself after he had gone to bed that

night: It is time for all honest men to band together to

resist the ravages of greedy privilege.

The next day was Sunday, and Fainy went along

Michigan Avenue with a package of the handbills to dis-

tributd. It was a day of premature spring. Across the rot-

ting yellow ice on the lake came little breezes that smelt

unexpectedly of flowers. The girls looked terribly pretty

and their skirts blew in the wind and Fainy felt the spring

blood pumping hot in him, he wanted to kiss and to roll

on the ground and to run out across the icecakes and to

make speeches from the tops of telegraph poles and to

vault over trolleycars; but instead he distributed hand-

bills and worried about his pants being frayed and wished

he had a swell looking suit and a swell looking girl to

walk with.

Hey, young feller, where's your permit to distribute

-19-

them handbills? It was a cop's voice growling in his ear.

Fainy gave the cop one took over his shoulder, dropped

the handbills and ran. He ducked through between the

shiny black cabs and carriages, ran down a side street and

walked and walked and didn't look back until he managed

to get across a bridge just before the draw opened. The

cop wasn't following him anyway.

He stood on the curb a long time with the whistle of

a peanutstand shrilling derisively in his ear.

That night at supper his uncle asked him about the

handbills.

Sure I gave 'em out all along the lakeshore . . . A

cop tried to stop me but I told him right where to get

off. Fainy turned burning red when a hoot went up from

everybody at the table. He filled up his mouth with

mashed potato and wouldn't say any more. His aunt and

his uncle and their three daughters all laughed and

laughed. Well, it's a good thing you ran faster than the

cop, said Uncle Tim, else I should have had to bail you

out and that would have cost money.

The next morning early Fainy was sweeping out the

office, when a man with a face like a raw steak walked up

the steps; he was smoking a thin black stogy of a sort

Fainy had never seen before. He knocked on the ground

glass door.

I want to speak to Mr. O'Hara, Timothy O'Hara.

He's not here yet, be here any minute now, sir. Will

you wait?

You bet I'll wait. The man sat on the edge of a

chair and spat, first taking the chewed end of the stogy

out of his mouth and looking at it meditatively for a long

time. When Tim O'Hara came the office door closed with

a bang. Fainy hovered nervously around, a little bit afraid

the man might be a detective following up the affair of

the handbills. Voices rose and fell, the stranger's voice in

short rattling tirades, O'Hara's voice in long expostulating

-20-

clauses, now and then Fainy caught the word foreclose,

until suddenly the door flew open and the stranger shot

out, his face purpler than ever. On the iron stoop he

turned and pulling a new stogy from his pocket, lit it from

the old onei growling the words through the stogy and

the blue puff of smoke, he said, Mr. O'Hara, you have

twenty-four hours to think it over . . . A word from you

and proceedings stop immediately." Then he went off

down the street leaving behind him a long trail of rancid

smoke.

A minute later, Uncle Tim came out of the office, his

face white as paper. Fenian, old sport, he said, you

go get yourself a job. I'm going out of business . . .

Keep a weather eye open. I'm going to have a drink.

And he was drunk for six days. By the end of that time

a number of meeklooking men appeared with summonses,

and Uncle Tim had to sober up enough to go down to the

court and put in a plea of bankruptcy.

Mrs. O'Hara scolded and stormed, Didn't I tell you,

Tim O'Hara, no good'll ever come with your fiddlin'

round with these godless labor unions and social-democrats

and knights of labor, all of 'em drunk and loafin' bums

like yourself, Tim O'Hara. Of course the master printers

ud have to get together and buy up your outstandin'

paper and squash you, and serve you right too, Tim

O'Hara, you and your godless socialistic boosin' ways only

they might have thought of your poor wife and her help-

less wee babes, and now we'll starve all of us together, us

and the dependents and hangers on you've brought into

the house.

Well, I declare, cried Fainy's sister Milly. If I

haven't slaved and worked my fingers to the bone for

every piece of bread I've eaten in this house, and she

got up from the breakfast table and flounced out of the

room. Fainy sat there while the storm raged above his

head; then he got up, slipping a corn muffin into his

-21-

pocket as he went. In the hall he found the "help wanted"

section of the Chicago Tribune, took his cap and went out

into a raw Sunday morning full of churchbells jangling

in his ears. He boarded a streetcar and went out to Lin-

coln Park. There he sat on a bench for a long time munch-

ing the muffin and looking down the columns of adver-

tisements: Boy Wanted. But they none of them looked

very inviting. One thing he was bound, he wouldn't get

another job in a printing shop until the strike was over.

Then his eye struck

Bright boy wanted with amb. and lit. taste, knowledge

of print. and pub. business. Conf. sales and distrib. propo-

sition $15 a week apply by letter P.O. Box 1256b

Fainy's head suddenly got very light. Bright boy, that's

me, ambition and literary taste . . . Gee, I must finish

Looking Backward . . . and jez, I like reading fine,

an' I could run a linotype or set up print if anybody'd let

me. Fifteen bucks a week . . . pretty soft, ten dollars'

raise. And he began to write a letter in his head, apply-

ing for the job.

DEAR SIR (MY DEAR SIR)

or maybe GENTLEMEN,

In applying for the position you offer in today's

Sunday Tribune I want to apply, (allow me to state) that

I'm seventeen years old, no, nineteen, with several years'

experience in the printing and publishing trades, ambitious

and with excellent knowledge and taste in the printing and

publishing trades,

no, I can't say that twice . . . And I'm very anxious

for the job . . . As he went along it got more and more

muddled in his head.

He found he was stanaing beside a peanut wagon. It

was cold as blazes, a razor wind was shrieking across the

broken ice and the black patches of water of the lake. He

-22-

tore out the ad and let the rest of the paper go with the

wind. Then he bought himself a warm package of peanuts.

NEWSREEL II

Come on and hear

Come on and hear

Come on and hear

In his address to the Michigan state Legislature the retir-

ing governor, Hazen S. Pingree, said in part: I make the pre-

diction that unless those in charge and in whose hands legisla-

tion is reposed do not change the present system of inequality,

there will be a bloody revolution in less than a quarter of a

century in this great country of ours.

CARNEGIE TALKS OF HIS EPITAPH

Alexander's Ragtime Band

It is the best

It is the best

the luncheon which was served in the physical laboratory

was replete with novel features. A* miniature blastfurnace four

feet high was on the banquet table and a narrow gauge rail-

road forty feet long ran round the edge of the table. Instead

of molten metal the blastfurnace poured hot punch into small

cars on the railroad. Icecream was served in the shape of rail-

road tics and bread took the shape of locomotives.

Mr. Carnegie, while extolling the advantages of higher

education in every branch of learning, came at last to this con-

clusion: Manual labor has been found to be the best foundation

for the greatest work of the brain.

VICE PRESIDENT EMPTIES A BANK

Come on and hear

Alexander's Ragtime Band

-23-

It is the best

It is the best

brother of Jesse James declares play picturing him as

bandit trainrobber and outlaw is demoralizing district battle

ends with polygamy, according to an investigation by Salt Lake

ministers, still practiced by Mormons clubwomen gasp

It is the best band in the land

say circus animals only cat Chicago horsemeat Taxsale of

Indiana lots marks finale of World's Fair boom uses flag as

ragbag killed on cannibal isle keeper falls into water and sea-

lions attack him.

The launch then came alongside the half deflated balloon

of the aerostat which threatened at any moment to smother

Santos Dumont. The latter was half pulled and half clam-

bered over the gunwale into the boat.

The prince of Monaco urged him to allow himself to be

taken on board the yacht to dry himself and change his clothes.

Santos Dumont would not leave the launch until everything

that could be saved had been taken ashore, then, wet but

smiling and unconcerned, he landed amid the frenzied cheers

of the crowd.

THE CAMERA EYE (3)

0 qu'il a des beaux yeux said the lady in the seat

opposite but She said that was no way to talk to children

and the little boy felt all hot and sticky but it was dusk

and the lamp shaped like half a melon was coming on

dim red and the train rumbled and suddenly I've been

asleep and it's black dark and the blue tassel bobs on the

edge of the dark shade shaped like a melon and every-

-24-

where there are pointed curved shadows (the first time

He came He brought a melon and the sun was coming in

through the tall lace windowcurtains and when we cut it

the smell of melons filled the whole room) No don't eat

the seeds deary they give you appendicitis

but you're peeking out of the window into the black

rumbling dark suddenly ranked with squat chimneys and

you're scared of the black smoke and the puffs of flame

that flare and fade out of the squat chimneys Potteries

dearie. they work there all night Who works there all

night? Workingmen and people like that laborers travail-

leurs greasers

you were scared

but now the dark was all black again the lamp in the

train and the sky and everything had a blueblack shade

on it and She was telling a story about

Longago Beforetheworldsfair Beforeyouwereborn and

they went to Mexico on a private car on the new interna-

tional line and the men shot antelope off the back of the

train and big rabbits jackasses they called them and once

one night Longago Beforetheworldsfair Beforeyouwereborn

one night Mother was so frightened on account of all the

rifleshots but it was allright turned out to be nothing but

a little shooting they'd been only shooting a greaser that

was all

that was in the early days

-25-

LOVER OF MANKIND

Debs was a railroad man, born in a weather-

boarded shack at Terre Haute.

He was one of ten children.

His father had come to America in a sailingship

in '49,

an Alsatian from Colmar; not much of a money-

maker, fond of music and reading,

he gave his children a chance to finish public

school and that was about all he could do.

At fifteen Gene Debs was already working as a

machinist on the Indianapolis and Terre Haute Rail-

way.

He worked as locomotive fireman,

clerked in a store

joined the local of the Brotherhood of Locomo-

tive Firemen, was elected secretary, traveled all over

the' country as organizer.

He was a tall shamblefooted man, had a sort of

gusty rhetoric that set on fire the railroad workers in

their pineboarded halls

made them want the world he wanted,

a world brothers might own

where everybody would split even:

I am not a labor leader. I don't want you to fol-

low me or anyone else. If you are looking for a Moses

to lead you out of the capitalist wilderness you will stay

right where you are. I would not lead you into this

promised land if I could, because if I could lead you

in, someone else would lead you out.

That was how he talked to freighthandlers and

gandywalkers, to firemen and switchmen and engi-

neers, telling them it wasn't enough to organize the

railroadmen, that all workers must be organized, that

-26-

all workers must be organized in the workers' coopera-

tive commonwealth.

Locomotive fireman on many a long night's run,

under the smoke a fire burned him up, burned in

gusty words that beat in pineboarded halls; he wanted

his brothers to be free men.

That was what he saw in the crowd that met him

at the Old Wells Street Depot when he came out of

jail after the Pullman strike,

those were the men that chalked up nine hundred

thousand votes for him in nineteen twelve and scared

the frockcoats and the tophats and diamonded hostesses

at Saratoga Springs, Bar Harbor, Lake Geneva with

the bogy of a socialist president.

But where were Gene Debs' brothers in nineteen

eighteen when Woodrow Wilson had him locked up

in Atlanta for speaking against war,

where were the big men fond of whisky and fond

of each other, gentle rambling tellers of stories over

bars in small towns in the Middle West,

quiet men who wanted a house with a porch to

putter around and a fat wife to cook for them, a few

drinks and cigars, a garden to dig in, cronies to chew

the rag with

and wanted to work for it

and others to work for it;

where were the locomotive firemen and engineers

when they hustled him off to Atlanta Penitentiary?

And they brought him back to die in Terre Haute

to sit on his porch in a rocker with a cigar in his

mouth,

-27-

beside him American Beauty roses his wife fixed

in a bowl;

and thepeople of Terre Haute and the people in

Indiana and the people of the Middle West were fond

of him and afraid of him and thought of him as an old

kindly uncle who loved them, and wanted to be with

him and to have him give them candy,

but they were afraid of him as if he had contracted

a social disease, syphilis or leprosy, and thought it was

too bad,

but on account of the flag

and prosperity

and making the world safe for democracy,

they were afraid to be with him,

or to think much about him for fear they might

believe him;

for he said:

While there is a lower class I am of it, while there

is a criminal class I am of it, while there is a soul in

prison I am not free.

THE CAMERA EYE (4.)

riding backwards through the rain in the rumbly cab

looking at their two faces in the jiggly light of the four-

wheeled cab and Her big trunks thumping on the roof

and He reciting Othello in his lawyer's voice

Her father loved me, oft invited me

Still questioned me the story of my life

From year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes

-28-

That I have past.

I ran it through, even from my boyish days,

To th' very moment that he bade me tell it

Wherein I spoke of the most disastrous chances

Of moving accidents by flood and field

Of hairbreadth' scapes i' th' imminent deadly breach

why that's the Schuylkill the horse's hoofs rattle

sharp on smooth wet asphalt after cobbles through the

gray streaks of rain the river shimmers ruddy with winter

mud When I was your age Jack I dove off this bridge

through the rail of the bridge we can look way down

into the cold rainyshimmery water Did you have any

clothes on? Just my shirt

MAC

Fainy stood near the door in the crowded elevated

train; against the back of the fat man who held on to the

strap in front of him, he kept rereading a letter on crisp

watermarked stationery:

The Truthseeker Literary Distributing Co., Inc.

General Offices 1104 S. Hamlin Avenue

Chicago, Ill. April 14, 1904

Fenian O'H. McCreary

456 N. Wood Street

Chicago, I11.

DEAR SIR:

We take the pleasure to acknowledge yours of the

10th inst.

-29-

In reference to the matter in hand we feel that much

could be gained by a personal interview. If you will be so

good as to step around to the above address on Monday

April 16th at nine o'clock, we feel that the matter of your

adaptability for the position for which you have applied

can be thoroughly thrashed out.

Yours in search for Truth,

The last one was a grimy door in the back beside the

toilet. The goldleaf had come off the letters, but he was

able to spell out from the outlines:

THE GENERAL OUTFITTING AND MER-

CHANTIZING CORPORATION

Then he saw a card on the wall beside the door with

a hand holding a torch drawn out on it and under it the

words "Truthseeker Inc." He tapped gingerly on the

glass. No answer. He tapped again.

Come in . . . Don't knock, called out a deep voice.

Fainy found himself stuttering as he opened the door and

stepped into a dark, narrow room completely filled up by

two huge rolltop desks:

Please, I called to see Mr. Bingham, sir.

At the further desk, in front of the single window sat

a big man with a big drooping jaw that gave him a little

of the expression of a setter dog. His black hair was long

and curled a little over each ear, on the back of his head

was a broad black felt hat. He leaned back in his chair and

looked Fainy up and down.

How do you do, young man? What kind of books are

you inclined to purchase this morning? What can I do for

you this morning? he boomed.

Are you Mr. Bingham, sir, please?

This is Doc Bingham right here before you.

Please, sir, I . . . I came about that job.

Doc Bingham's expression changed. He twisted his

mouth as if he'd just tasted something sour. He spun

round in his swivelchair and spat into a brass spittoon in

the corner of the room. Then he turned to Fainy again

and leveled a fat finger at him, Young man, how do you

spell experience?

E . . . x . . . p . . . er . . . er . . . er . . . i

a . . . n . . .

That'll do . . . No education . . . I thought as

-31-

EMMANUEL R. BINGHAM, D.D.

Fainy was scared. The train got to his station too soon.

He had fifteen minutes to walk two blocks in. He loafed

along the street, looking in store windows. There was a

golden pheasant, stuffed, in a taxidermist's; above it hung

a big flat greenish fish with a sawtoothed bill from which

dangled a label:

SAWFISH (pristis perrotetti)

Habitat Gulf and Florida waters. Frequents shallow

bays and inlets.

Maybe he wouldn't go at all. In the back of the window

was a lynx and on the other side a bobtailed cat, each on

its limb of a tree. Suddenly he caught his breath. Held be

late. He went tearing off down the block.

He was breathless and his heart was pounding to beat

the cars when he reached the top of the fourth flight of

stairs. He studied the groundglass doors on the landing;

THE UNIVERSAL CONTACT COMPANY

F. W. Perkins

Assurance

THE WINDY CITY MAGIC AND NOVELTY

COMPANY

Dr. Noble

Hospital and Sickroom Supplies

-30-

The last one was a grimy door in the back beside the

toilet. The goldleaf had come off the letters, but he was

able to spell out from the outlines:

THE GENERAL OUTFITTING AND MER-

CHANTIZING CORPORATION

Then he saw a card on the wall beside the door with

a hand holding a torch drawn out on it and under it the

words "Truthseeker Inc." He tapped gingerly on the

glass. No answer. He tapped again.

Come in . . . Don't knock, called out a deep voice.

Fainy found himself stuttering as he opened the door and

stepped into a dark, narrow room completely filled up by

two huge rolltop desks:

Please, I called to see Mr. Bingham, sir.

At the further desk, in front of the single window sat

a big man with a big drooping jaw that gave him a little

of the expression of a setter dog. His black hair was long

and curled a little over each ear, on the back of his head

was a broad black felt hat. He leaned back in his chair and

looked Fainy up and down.

How do you do, young man? What kind of books are

you inclined to purchase this morning? What can I do for

you this morning? he boomed.

Are you Mr. Bingham, sir, please?

This is Doc Bingham right here before you.

Please, sir, I . . . I came about that job.

Doc Bingham's expression changed. He twisted his

mouth as if he'd just tasted something sour. He spun

round in his swivelchair and spat into a brass spittoon in

the corner of the room. Then he turned to Fainy again

and leveled a fat finger at him, Young man, how do you

spell experience?

E . . . x . . . p . . . er . . . er . . . er . . . i

a . . . n . . .

That'll do . . . No education . . . I thought as

-31-

much . . . No culture, none of those finer feelings that

distinguish the civilized man from the savage aborigines

of the wilds . . . No enthusiasm for truth, for bringing

light into dark places . . . Do you realize, young man,

that it is not a job I'm offering you, it is a great oppor-

tunity . . . a splendid opportunity for service and self-

improvement. I'm offering you an education gratis.

Fainy shuffled his feet. He had a husk in his throat.

If it's in the printin' line I guess I could do it.

Well, young man, during the brief interrogatory

through which I'm going to put you, remember that you

stand on the threshold of opportunity.

Doc Bingham ferreted in the pigeonholes of his desk

for a long time, found himself a cigar, bit off the end, lit

it, and then turned again to Fainy, who was standing first

on one foot and then on the other

Well, if you'll tell me your name.

Fenian O'Hara McCreary . . .

Hum . . . Scotch and Irish . . . that's pretty good

stock . . . that's the stock I come from.

Religion?

Fainy squirmed. Pop was a Catholic but . . . He

turned red.

Dr. Bingham laughed, and rubbed his hands.

Oh, religion, what crimes are committed in thy name.

I'm an agnostic myself . . . caring nothing for class or

creed when among friends, though sometimes, my boy,

you have to bow with the wind . . . No, sir, my God is

the truth, that rising ever higher in the hands of honest

men will dispel the mists of ignorance and greed, and

bring freedom and knowledge to mankind . . . Do you

agree with me?

I've been working for my uncle. He's a social-

democrat.

Ah, hotheaded youth . . . Can you drive a horse?

Why, yessir, I guess I could.

-32-

"Well, I don't see why I shouldn't hire you."

"The advertisement in the Tribune said fifteen dollars

a week."

Doc Bingham's voice assumed a particularly velvety

tone.

"Why, Fenian my boy, fifteen dollars a week will be

the minimum you will make . . . Have you ever heard

of the cooperative system? That is how I'm going to hire

you . . . As sole owner and representative of the Truth-

seeker Corporation, I have here a magnificent line of

small books and pamphlets covering every phase of human

knowledge and endeavor . . . I am embarking immedi-

ately on a sales campaign to cover the whole country.

You will be one of my distributors. The books sell at

from ten to fifty cents. On each ten-cent book you make

a cent, on the fifty-cent books you make five cents . . ."

"And don't I get anything every week?" stammered

Fainy.

"Would you be penny-wise and pound-foolish? Throw-

ing away the most magnificent opportunity of a lifetime

for the assurance of a paltry pittance. No, I can see by

your flaming eye, by your rebellious name out of old Ire-

land's history, that you are a young man of spirit and

determination . . . Are we on? Shake hands on it then

and by gad, Fenian, you shall never regret it."

Doc Bingham jumped to his feet and seized Fainy's

hand and shook it.

"Now, Fenian, come with me; we have an important

preliminary errand to perform." Doc Bingham pulled his

hat forward on his head and they walked down the stairs

to the front door; he was a big man and the fat hung

loosely on him as he walked. Anyway, it's a job, Fainy

told himself.

First they went to a tailorshop where a longnosed yel-

low man whom Doc Bingham addressed as Lee shuffled

out to meet them. The tailorshop smelt of steamed cloth

-33-

and cleansing fluid. Lee talked as if he had no palate to

his mouth.

"'M pretty sick man," he said. "Spen' mor'n thou'an'

dollarm on doctor, no get well."

"Well, I'll stand by you; you know that, Lee."

"Hure, Mannie, hure, only you owe me too much

money."

Dr. Emmanuel Bingham glanced at Fainy out of the

corner of his eye.

"I can assure you that the entire financial situation will

be clarified within sixty days . . . But what I want you

to do now is to lend me two of your big cartons, those

cardboard boxes you send suits home in."

"What you wan' to do?"

"My young friend and I have a little project."

"Don't you do nothin' crooked with them cartons; my

name)s on them."

Doc Bingham laughed heartily as they walked out the

door, carrying under each arm one of the big flat cartons

that had Levy and Goldstein, Reliable Tailoring, written

on them in florid lettering.

"He's a great joker, Fenian," he said. "But let that

man's lamentable condition be a lesson to you . . . The

poor unfortunate is suffering from the consequences of a

horrible social disease, contracted through some youthful

folly."

They were passing the taxidermist's store again. There

were the wildcats and the golden pheasant and the big

sawfish . . . Frequents shallow bays and inlets. Fainy

had a temptation to drop the tailor's cartons and run for

it. But anyhow, it was a job.

" Fenian," said Doc Bingham, confidentially, "do you

know the Mohawk House?"

"Yessir, we used to do their printing for them."

"They don't know you there, do they?"

-34-

"Naw, they wouldn't know me from Adam . . . I just

delivered some writin' paper there once."

"That's superb . . . Now get this right; my room is

303. You wait and come in about five minutes. You're the

boy from the tailor's, see, getting some suits to be cleaned.

Then you come up to my room and get the suits and take

'em round to my office. If anybody asks you where you're

going with 'em, you're goin' to Levy and Goldstein, see?"

Fainy drew a deep breath.

"Sure, I get you."

When he reached the small room in the top of the

Mohawk House, Doc Bingham was pacing the floor.

" Levy and Goldstein, sir," said Fainy, keeping his face

straight.

"My boy," said Doc Bingham, "you'll be an able assist-

ant; I'm glad I picked you out. I'll give you a dollar in

advance on your wages." While he talked he was taking

clothes, papers, old books, out of a big trunk that stood

in the middle of the floor. He packed them carefully in

one of the cartons. In the other he put a furlined over-

coat. "That coat cost two hundred dollars, Fenian, a rem-

nant of former splendors . . . Ah, the autumn leaves at

Vallombrosa. . . . Et tu in Arcadia vixisti . . . That's

Latin, a language of scholars."

"My Uncle Tim who ran the printing shop where I

worked knew Latin fine."

"Do you think you can carry these, Fenian . . . they're

not too heavy?"

"Sure I can carry 'em." Fainy wanted to ask about the

dollar.

"All right, you'd better run along . . . Wait for me

at the office."

In the office Fainy found a man sitting at the second

rolltop desk. "Well, what's your business?" he yelled out

in a rasping voice. He was a sharpnosed waxyskinned

young man with straight black hair standing straight up.

-35-

Fainy was winded from running up the stairs. His arms

were stiff from carrying the heavy cartons. "I suppose

this is some more of Mannie's tomfoolishness. Tell him

he's got to clear out of here; I've rented the other desk."

"But Dr. Bingham has just hired me to work for the

Truthseeker Literary Distributing Company."

"The hell he has."

"He'll be here in a minute."

"Well, sit down and shut up; can't you see I'm busy?"

Fainy sat down glumly in the swivelchair by the win-

dow, the only chair in the office not piled high with small

papercovered books. Outside the window he could see a

few dusty roofs and fire escapes. Through grimy windows

he could see other offices, other rolltop desks. On the desk

in front of him were paperwrapped packages of books.

Between them were masses of loose booklets. His eye

caught a title:

THE QUEEN OF THE WHITE SLAVES

Scandalous revelations of Milly Meecham stolen from

her parents at the age of sixteen, tricked by her vile

seducer into a life of infamy and shame.

He started reading the book. His tongue got dry and

he felt sticky all over.

"Nobody said anything to you, eh?" Doc Bingham's

booming voice broke in on his reading. Before he could

answer the voice of the man at the other desk snarled out:

"Look here, Mannie, you've got to clear out of here . . .

I've rented the desk."

"Shake not thy gory locks at me, Samuel Epstein. My

young friend and I are just preparing an expedition

among the aborigines of darkest Michigan. We are leav-

ing for Saginaw tonight. Within sixty days I'll come back

and take the office off your hands. This young man is

coming with me to learn the business."

-36-

"Business, hell," growled the other man, and shoved

his face back down among his papers again.

"Procrastination, Fenian, is the thief of time," said Doc

Bingham, putting one fat hand Napoleonfashion into his

doublebreasted vest. "There is a tide in the affairs of men

that taken at its full . . ." And for two hours Fainy

sweated under his direction, packing booklets into brown

paper packages, tying them and addressing them to Truth-

seeker Inc., Saginaw, Mich.

He begged off for an hour to go home to see his folks.

Milly kissed him on the forehead with thin tight lips.

Then she burst out crying. "You're lucky; oh, I wish I

was a boy," she spluttered and ran upstairs. Mrs. O'Hara

said to be a good boy and always live at the Y.M.C.A. --

that kept a boy out of temptation, and to let his Uncle

Tim be a lesson to him, with his boozin' ways.

His throat was pretty tight when he went to look for

his Uncle Tim. He found him in the back room at

O'Grady's. His eyes were a flat bright blue and his lower

lip trembled when he spoke, "Have one drink with me,

son, you're on your own now." Fainy drank down a beer

without tasting it.

" Fainy, you're a bright boy . . . I wish I could have

helped you more; you're an O'Hara every inch of you.

You read Marx . . . study all you can, remember that

you're a rebel by birth and blood . . . Don't blame peo-

ple for things . . . Look at that terrible forktongued

virago I'm married to; do I blame her? No, I blame the

system. And don't ever sell out to the sons of bitches, son;

it's women'll make you sell out every time. You know

what I mean. All right, go on . . . better cut along or

you'll miss your train." "I'll write you from Saginaw,

Uncle Tim, honest I will."

Uncle Tim's lanky red face in the empty cigarsmoky

room, the bar and its glint of brass and the pinkarmed

barkeep leaning across it, the bottles and the mirrors and

-37-

the portrait of Lincoln gave a misty half turn in his head

and he was out in the shiny rainy street under the shiny

clouds, hurrying for the Elevated station with his suitcase

in his hand.

At the Illinois Central station he found Doc Bingham

waiting for him, in the middle of a ring of brown paper

parcels. Fen felt a little funny inside when he saw him,

the greasy sallow jowls, the doublebreasted vest, the

baggy black ministerial coat, the dusty black felt hat that

made the hair stick out in a sudden fuzzycurl over the

beefy ears. Anyway, it was a job.

"It must be admitted, Fenian," began Doc Bingham as

soon as Fainy had come up to him, "that confident as I

am of my knowledge of human nature I was a little afraid

you wouldn't turn up. Where is it that the poet says that

difficult is the first fluttering course of the fledgeling from

the nest. Put these packages on the train while I go pur-

chase tickets, and be sure it's a smoker."

After the train had started and the conductor had

punched the tickets Doc Bingham leaned over and tapped

Fainy on the knee with a chubby forefinger. "I'm glad

you're a neat dresser, my boy; you must never forget the

importance of putting up a fine front to the world.

Though the heart be as dust and ashes, yet must the outer

man be sprightly and of good cheer. We will go sit for

a while in the pullman smoker up ahead to get away from

the yokels."

It was raining hard and the windows of the train were

striped with transverse beaded streaks against the dark-

ness. Fainy felt uneasy as he followed Doc Bingham

lurching through the greenplush parlor car to the small

leather upholstered smokingcompartment at the end.

There Doc Bingham drew a large cigar from his pocket

and began blowing a magnificent series of smoke rings.

Fainy sat beside him with his feet under the seat trying

to take up as little room as possible.

-38-

Gradually the compartment filled up with silent men

and crinkly spiralling cigarsmoke. Outside the rain beat

against the windows with a gravelly sound. For a long

time nobody said anything. Occasionally a man cleared his

throat and let fly towards the cuspidor with a big gob of

phlegm or a jet of tobacco juice.

"Well, sir," a voice began, coming from nowhere in-

particular, addressed to nowhere in particular, "it was a

great old inauguration even if we did freeze to death."

"Were you in Washington?"

"Yessir, I was in Washington."

"Most of the trains didn't get in till the next day."

"I know it; I was lucky, there was some of them

snowed up for forty-eight hours."

"Some blizzard all right."

All day the gusty northwind bore

The lessening drift its breath before

Low circling through its southern zone

The sun through dazzling snowmist shone,

recited Doc Bingham coyly, with downcast eyes.

"You must have a good memory to be able to recite

verses right off the reel like that."

"Yessir, I have a memory that may I think, without

undue violation of modesty, be called compendious. Were

it a natural gift I should be forced to blush and remain

silent, but since it is the result of forty years of study of

what is best in the world's epic lyric and dramatic litera-

tures, I feel that to call attention to it may sometimes

encourage some other whose feet are also bound on the

paths of enlightenment and selfeducation." He turned

suddenly to Fainy. "Young man, would you like to hear

Othello's address to the Venetian senate?"

"Sure I would," said Fainy, blushing.

"Well, at last Teddy has a chance to carry out his word

about fighting the trusts." "I'm telling you the insurgent

-39-

farmer vote of the great Northwest . . ." "Terrible thing

the wreck of those inauguration specials."

But Doc Bingham was off:

Most potent grave and reverend signiors,

My very noble and approved good masters,

That I have ta'en away this old man's daughter

It is most true; true, I have married her . . .

"They won't get away with those antitrust laws, be-

lieve me they won't. You can't curtail the liberty of the

individual liberty in that way." "It's the liberty of the

individual business man that the progressive wing of the

Republican party is trying to protect."

But Doc Bingham was on his feet, one hand was tucked

into his doublebreasted vest, with the other he was mak-

ing broad circular gestures:

Rude am I in speech

And little blessed with the soft phrase of peace,

For since these arms of mine had seven years' pith

Till now some nine moons wasted they have used

Their dearest action in the tented field.

"The farmer vote," the other man began shrilly, but

nobody was listening. Doc Bingham had the floor.

And little of the great world can I speak

More than pertains to broils and battle

And therefore little shall I grace my cause

In speaking for myself.

The train began to slacken speed. Doc Bingham's voice

sounded oddly loud in the lessened noise. Fainy felt his

back pushing into the back of the seat and then suddenly

there was stillness and the sound of an engine bell in the

distance and Doc Bingham's voice in a queasy whisper:

"Gentlemen, I have here in pamphlet form a complete

and unexpurgated edition of one of the world's classics, the

-40-

famous Decameron of Boccaccio, that for four centuries has

been a byword for spicy wit and ribald humor . . ." He

took a bundle of little books out of one of his sagging

pockets and began dandling them in his hand. "Just as an

act of friendship I would be willing to part with some if

any of you gentlemen care for them . . . Here, Fenian,

take these and see if anybody wants one; they're two dol-

lars apiece. My young friend here will attend to distribu-

tion . . . Goodnight, gentlemen." And he went off and

the train had started again and Fainy found himself stand-

ing with the little books in his hand in the middle of the

lurching car with the suspicious eyes of all the smokers

boring into him like so many gimlets.

"Let's see one," said a little man with protruding ears

who sat in the corner. He opened the book and started

reading greedily. Fainy stood in the center of the car,

feeling pins and needles all over. He caught a white glint

in the corner of an eyeball as the little man looked down

the line of cigars through the crinkly smoke. A touch of

pink came into the protruding ears.

"Hot stuff," said the little man, "but two dollars is too

much."

Fainy found himself stuttering: "They're nnnot

mmmine, sir; I don't know . . ."

"Oh, well, what the hell . . ." The little man dropped

two dollar bills in Fainy's hand and went back to his read-

ing. Fainy had six dollars in his pocket and two books left

when he started back to the daycoach. Half way down the

car he met the conductor. His heart almost stopped beat-

ing. The conductor looked at him sharply but said noth-

ing.

Doc Bingham was sitting in his seat with his head in his

hand and his eyes closed as if he were dozing. Fainy

slipped into the seat beside him.

"How many did they take?" asked Doc Bingham talk-

-41-

ing out of the corner of his mouth without opening his

eyes.

"I got six bucks . . . Golly, the conductor scared me,

the way he looked at me."

"You leave the conductor to me, and remember that it's

never a crime in the face of humanity and enlightenment

to distribute the works of the great humanists among the

merchants and moneychangers of this godforsaken coun-

try . . . You better slip me the dough."

Fainy wanted to ask about the dollar he'd been prom-

ised, but Doc Bingham was off on Othello again:

If after every tempest there come such calms as this

Then may the laboring bark climb hills of seas

Olympus high.

They slept late at the Commercial House in Saginaw,

and ate a large breakfast, during which Doc Bingham

discoursed on the theory and practice of book salesman-

ship. "I am very much afraid that through the hinterland

to which we are about to penetrate," he said as he cut up

three fried eggs and stuffed his mouth with bakingpowder

biscuit, "that we will find the yokels still hankering after

Maria Monk."

Fainy didn't know who Maria Monk was, but he didn't

like to ask. He went with Doc Bingham round to Hum-

mer's livery stable to hire a horse and wagon. There fol-

lowed a long wrangle between the firm of Truthseeker

Inc., and the management of Hummer's Livery Stable

as to the rent of a springwagon and an elderly piebald

horse with cruppers you could hang a hat on, so that it

was late afternoon before they drove out of Saginaw with

their packages of books piled behind them, bound for the

road.

It was a chilly spring day. Sagging clouds moved in a

gray blur over a bluish silvery sky. The piebald kept

slackening to a walk; Fainy clacked the reins continually

-42-

on his caving rump and clucked with his tongue until his

mouth was dry. At the first whack the piebald would go

into a lope that would immediately degenerate into an

irregular jogtrot and then into a walk. Fainy cursed and

clucked, but he couldn't get the horse to stay in the lope

or the jogtrot. Meanwhile Doc Bingham sat beside him

with his broad hat on the back of his head, smoking a

cigar and discoursing: "Let me say right now, Fenian, that

the attitude of a man of enlightened ideas, is, A plague

on both your houses. . . I myself am a pantheist . . .

but even a pantheist . . . must eat, hence Maria Monk."

A few drops of rain, icy and stinging as hail, had begun

to drive in their faces. "I'll get pneumonia at this rate,

and it'll be your fault, too; I thought you said you could

drive a horse . . . Here, drive into that farmhouse on

the left. Maybe they'll let us put the horse and wagon in

their barn."

As they drove up the lane towards the gray house and

the big gray barn that stood under a clump of pines a little

off from the road, the piebald slowed to a walk and began

reaching for the bright green clumps of grass at the edge

of the ditch. Fainy beat at him with the ends of the reins,

and even stuck his foot over the dashboard and kicked

him, but he wouldn't budge.

"Goddam it, give me the reins."

Doc Bingham gave the horse's head a terrible yank, but

all that happened was that he turned his head and looked

at them, a green foam of partly chewed grass between his

long yellow teeth. To Fainy it looked as if he were laugh-

ing. The rain had come on hard. They put their coat col-

lars up. Fainy soon had a little icy trickle down the back

of his neck.

"Get out and walk; goddam it to hell, lead it if you

can't drive it," sputtered Doc Bingham. Fainy jumped

out and led the horse up to the back door of the farm-

-43-

house; the rain ran down his sleeve from the hand he

held the horse by.

"Good afternoon, ma'am." Doc Bingham was on his

feet bowing to a little old woman who had come out of

the door. He stood beside her on the stoop out of the

rain. "Do you mind if I put my horse and wagon in your

barn for a few moments? I have valuable perishable ma-

terials in the wagon and no waterproof covering . . ."

The old woman nodded a stringy white head. "Well,

that's very kind of you, I must say . . . All right,

Fenian, put the horse in the barn and come here and

bring in that little package under the seat . . . I was

just saying to my young friend here that I was sure that

some good samaritan lived in this house who would take

in two weary wayfarers." "Come inside, mister . . .

maybe you'd like to set beside the stove and dry your-

self. Come inside, mister-er?" "Doc Bingham's the name

. . . the Reverend Doctor Bingham," Fainy, heard him

say as he went in the house.

He was soaked and shivering when he went into the

house himself, carrying a package of books under his arm.

Doc Bingham was sitting large as life in a rocking chair

in front of the kitchen stove. Beside him on the well-

scrubbed deal table was a piece of pie and a cup of coffee.

The kitchen had a warm cosy smell of apples and bacon

grease and lamps. The old woman was leaning over the

kitchen table listening intently to what Doc Bingham was

saying. Another woman, a big scrawny woman with her

scant sandy hair done up in a screw on top of her head,

stood in the background with her redknuckled hands on

her hips. A black and white cat, back arched and tail in

the air, was rubbing against Doc Bingham's legs.

"Ah, Fenian, just in time," he began in a voice that

purred like the cat, "I was just telling . . . relating to

your kind hostesses the contents of our very interesting

and educational library, the prime of the world's devo-

-44-

tional and inspirational literature. They have been so

kind to us during our little misfortune with the weather

that I thought it would be only fair to let them see a few

of our titles."

The big woman was twisting her apron. "I like a mite

o' readin' fine," she said, shyly, "but I don't git much

chanct for it, not till wintertime."

Benignly smiling, Doc Bingham untied the string and

pulled the package open on his knees. A booklet dropped

to the floor. Fainy saw that it was The Queen of the

White Slaves. A shade of sourness went over Doc Bing-

ham's face. He put his foot on the dropped book,

"These are Gospel Talks, my boy," he said. "I wanted

Doctor Spikenard's Short Sermons for All Occasions."

He handed the halfopen package to Fainy, who snatched

it to him. Then he stooped and picked the book up from

under his foot with a slow sweeping gesture of the hand

and slipped it in his pocket. "I suppose I'll have to go

find them myself," he went on in his purringest voice.

When the kitchen door closed behind them he snarled in

Fainy's ear, "Under the seat, you little rat . . . If you

play a trick like that again I'll break every goddam

bone in your body." And he brought his knee up so hard

into the seat of Fainy's pants that his teeth clacked to-

gether and he shot out into the rain towards the barn.

"Honest, I didn't do it on purpose," Fainy whined. But

Doc Bingham was already back in the house and his voice

was burbling comfortably out into the rainy dusk with

the first streak of lamplight.

This time Fainy was careful to open the package before

he brought it in. Doc Bingham took the books out of his

hand without looking at him and Fainy went round be-

hind the stovepipe. He stood there in the soggy steam of

his clothes listening to Doc Bingham boom. He was

hungry, but nobody seemed to think of offering him a

piece of pie.

-45-

"Ah, my dear friends, how can I tell you with what

gratitude to the Great Giver a lonely minister of the

gospel of light, wandering among the tares and troubles

of this world, finds ready listeners. I'm sure that these

little books will be consoling, interesting and inspirational

to all that undertake the slight effort of perusal. I feel

this so strongly that I always carry a few extra copies with

me to dispose of for a moderate sum. It breaks my heart

that I can't yet give them away free gratis."

"How much are they?" asked the old woman, a sud-

den sharpness coming over her features. The scrawny

woman let her arms drop to her side and shook her head.

"Do you remember, Fenian," asked Doc Bingham,

leaning genially back in his chair, "what the cost price of

these little booklets was?" Fainy was sore. He didn't

answer. "Come here, Fenian," said Doc Bingham in

honied tones, "allow me to remind you of the words of

the immortal bard:

Lowliness is your ambition's ladder

Whereto the climber upward turns his face

But when he once attains the topmost round

He then unto the ladder turns his back

"You must be hungry. You can eat my pie."

"I reckon we can find the boy a piece of pie," said the

old woman.

"Ain't they ten cents?" said Fainy, coming forward.

"Oh, if they're only ten cents I think I'd like one,"

said the old woman quickly. The scrawny woman started

to say something, but it was too late.

The pie had hardly disappeared into Fainy's gullet and

the bright dime out of the old tobaccobox in the cup-

board into Doc Bingham's vest pocket when there was a

sound of clinking harness and the glint of a buggylamp

through the rainy dark outside the window. The old

woman got to her feet and looked nervously at the door,

-46-

which immediately opened. A heavyset giayhaired man.

with a small goatee sprouting out of a round red face

came in, shaking the rain off the flaps of his coat. After

him came a skinny lad about Fainy's age.

"How do you do, sir; how do you do, son?" boomed

Doc Bingham through the last of his pie and coffee.

"They asked if they could put their horse in the barn

until it should stop rainin'. It's all right, ain't it, James?"

asked the old woman nervously. "I reckon so," said the

older man, sitting down heavily in the free chair. The old

woman had hidden the pamphlet in the drawer of the

kitchen table. "Travelin' in books, I gather." He stared

hard at the open package of pamphlets. "Well, we don't

need any of that trash here, but you're welcome to stay

the night in the barn. This is no night to throw a human

being out inter."

So they unhitched the horse and made beds for them-

selves in the hay over the cowstable. Before they left the

house the older man made them give up their matches.

"Where there's matches there's danger of fire," he said.

Doc Bingham's face was black as thunder as he wrapped

himself in a horseblanket, muttering about "indignity to

a wearer of the cloth." Fainy was excited and happy. He

lay on his back listening to the beat of the rain on the

roof and its gurgle in the gutters, and the muffled stirring

and chomping of the cattle and horse, under them; his

nose was full of the smell of the hay and the warm

meadowsweetness of the cows. He wasn't sleepy. He

wished he had someone his own age to talk to. Anyway,

it was a job and he was on the road.

He had barely got to sleep when a light woke him.

The boy he'd seen in the kitchen was standing over him

with a lantern. His shadow hovered over them enormous

against the rafters.

"Say, I wanner buy a book."

"What kind of a book?"

Fainy yawned and sat up.

-47-

"You know . . . one o' them books about chorus girls

an' white slaves an' stuff like that."

"How much do you want to pay, son? " came Doc

Bingham's voice from under the horseblanket. "We have

a number of very interesting books stating the facts of

life frankly and freely, describing the deplorable licen-

tiousness of life in the big cities, ranging from a dollar to

five dollars. The Complete Sexology of Dr. Burnside,

is six fifty."

"I couldn't go higher'n a dollar . . . Say, you won't

tell the ole man on me?" the young man said, turning

from one to another. "Seth Hardwick, he lives down the

road, he went into Saginaw onct an' got a book from a

man at the hotel. Gosh, it was a pippin." He tittered un-

easily.

" Fenian, go down and get him The Queen of the White

Slaves for a dollar," said Doc Bingham, and settled back

to sleep.

Fainy and the farmer's boy went down the rickety

ladder.

"Say, is she pretty spicy? . . . Gosh, if pop finds it

he'll give me a whalin' . . . Gosh, I bet you've read all

them books."

"Me?" said Fainy haughtily. "I don't need to read

books. I kin see life if I wanter. Here it is . . . it's about

fallen women."

"Ain't that pretty short for a dollar? I thought you

could get a big book for a dollar."

"This one's pretty spicy."

"Well, I guess I'll take it before dad ketches me

snoopin' around . . . Goodnight." Fainy went back to

his bed in the hay and fell fast asleep. He was dreaming

that he was going up a rickety stair in a barn with his

sister Milly who kept getting all the time bigger and

whiter and fatter, and had on a big hat with ostrich

plumes all round it and her dress began to split from the

-48-

neck and lower and lower and Doc Bingham's voice was

saying, She's Maria Monk, the queen of the white slaves,

and just as he was going to grab her, sunlight opened his

eyes. Doc Bingham stood in front of him, his feet wide

apart, combing his hair with a pocketcomb and reciting:

"Let as depart, the universal sun

Confines not to one land his blessed beams

Nor is man rooted like a tree . . .

"Come, Fenian," he boomed, when he saw that Fainy

was awake, "let us shake the dust of this inhospitable farm,

latcheting our shoes with a curse like philosophers of old

. . . Hitch up the horse; we'll get breakfast down the

road."

This went on for several weeks, until one evening they

found themselves driving up to a neat yellow house in

a grove of feathery dark tamaracks. Fainy waited in the

wagon while Doc Bingham interviewed the people in the

house. After a while Doc Bingham appeared in the door,

a broad smile creasing his cheeks. "We're going to bev'ery

handsomely treated, Fenian, as befits a wearer of the cloth

and all that . . . You be careful how you talk, will you?

Take the horse to the barn and unhitch."

"Say, Mr. Bingham, how about my money? It's three

weeks now." Fainy jumped down and went to the horse's

head.

An expression of gloom. passed over Doc Bingham's

face. "Oh, lucre, lucre . . .

"Examine well

His milkwhite hand, the palm is hardly clean

But here and there an ugly smutch appears,

Foh, 'twas a bribe that left it. . . .

"I had great plans for a cooperative enterprise that

you are spoiling by your youthful haste and greed . . .

but if you must I'll hand over to you this very night

-49-

everything due you and more. All right, unhitch the horse

and bring me that little package with Maria Monk, and

The Popish Plot."

It was a warm day. There were robins singing round

the barn. Everything smelt of sweetgrass and flowers.

The barn was red and the yard was full of white leg-

horns. After he had unhitched the spring wagon and put

the horse in a stall, Fainy sat on a rail of the fence look-

ing out over the silvergreen field of oats out back, and

smoked a cigarette. He wished there was a girl there he

could put his arm round or a fellow to talk to.

A hand dropped onto his shoulder. Doc Bingham was

standing beside him.

" Fenian, my young friend, we are in clover," he said.

"She is alone in the house, and her husband has gone to

town for two days with the hired man. There'll be nobody

there but her two little children, sweet bairns. Perhaps I

shall play Romeo. You've never seen me in love. It's

my noblest role. Ah, some day I'll tell you about my

headstrong youth. Come and meet the sweet charmer."

When they went in the kitchen door a dimplefaced

pudgy woman in a lavender housecap greeted them coyly.

"This is my young assistant, ma'am," said Doc Bing-

ham, with a noble gesture. "Fenian, this is Mrs. Kovach."

"You must be hungry. We're having supper right

away."

The last of the sun lit up a kitchen range that was

crowded with saucepans and stewpots. Fragrant steam rose

in little jets from round wellpolished lids. As she spoke

Mrs. Kovach leaned over so that her big blue behind with

starched apronstrings tied in a bow above it stood up

straight in the air, opened the oven door and pulled out

a great pan of cornmuffins that she dumped into a dish

on the dining table already set next the window. Their

warm toasted smoke filled the kitchen. Fainy felt his

mouth watering. Doc Bingham was rubbing his hands and

-50-

rolling his eyes. They sat down, and the two blue-eyed

smearyfaced children were sat down and started gobbling

silently, and Mrs. Kovach heaped their plates with stewed

tomatoes, mashed potatoes, beef stew and limabeans with

pork. She poured them out coffee and then said with

moist eyes, as she sat down herself:

"I love to see men eat."

Her face took on a crushed pansy look that made Fainy

turn away his eyes when he found himself looking at it.

After supper she sat listening with a pleased, frightened

expression while Doc Bingham talked and talked, now

and then stopping to lean back and blow a smoke ring

at the lamp.

"While not myself a Lutheran as you might say, ma'am,

I myself have always admired, nay, revered, the great

figure of Martin Luther as one of the lightbringers of

mankind. Were it not for him we would be still groveling

under the dread domination of the Pope of Rome."

"They'll never get into this country; land sakes, it gives

me the creeps to think of it."

"Not while there's a drop of red blood in the veins of

freeborn Protestants . . . but the way to fight darkness,

ma'am, is with light. Light comes from education, reading

of books and studies . . ."

"Land sakes, it gives me a headache to read most books,

an' I don't get much time, to tell the truth. My husband,

he reads books he gets from the Department of Agricul-

ture. He tried to make me read one once, on raisin' poul-

try, but I couldn't make much sense out of it. His folks

they come from the old country . . . I guess people feels

different over there."

"It must be difficult being married to a foreigner like

that."

"Sometimes I don't know how I stand it; course he

was awful goodlookin' when I married him . . . I never

could resist a goodlookin' man."

-51-

Doc Bingham leaned further across the table. His eyes

rolled as if they were going to drop out.

"I never could resist a goodlooking lady."

Mrs. Kovach sighed deeply.

Fainy got up and went out. He'd been trying to get in

a word about getting paid, but what was the use? Outside

it was chilly; the stars were bright above the roofs of the

barns and outhouses. From the chickencoop came an occa-

sional sleepy cluck or the rustle of feathers as a hen lost

her balance on her perch. He walked up and down the

barnyard cursing Doc Bingham and kicking at an occa-

sional clod of manure.

Later he looked into the lamplit kitchen. Doc Bingham

had his arm around Mrs. Kovach's waist and was declaim-

ing verses, making big gestures with his free hand:

. . . These things to hear

Would Desdemona seriously incline

But still the house affairs would draw her hence

Which ever as she could with haste dispatch

She'd come again and with a greedy ear . . .

Fainy shook his fist at the window. "Goddam your

hide, I want my money," he said aloud. Then he went for

a walk down the road. When he came back he was sleepy

and chilly. The kitchen was empty and the lamp was

turned down low. He didn't know where to go to sleep,

so he settled down to warm himself in a chair beside the

fire. His head began to nod and he fell asleep.

A tremendous thump on the floor above and a woman's

shrieks woke him. His first thought was that Doc Bing-

ham was robbing and murdering the woman. But im-

mediately he heard another voice cursing and shouting

in broken English. He had half gotten up from the chair,

when Doc Bingham dashed past him. He had on only

his flannel unionsuit. In one hand were his shoes, in the

-52-

other his clothes. His trousers floated after him at the

end of his suspenders like the tail of a kite.

"Hey, what are we going to do?" Fainy called after

him, but got no answer. Instead he found himself face to

face with a tall dark man with a scraggly black beard who

was coolly fitting shells into a doublebarrelled shotgun.

"Buckshot. I shoot the sonabitch."

"Hey, you can't do that," began Fainy. He got the butt

of the shotgun in the chest and went crashing down into

the chair again. The man strode out the door with a long

elastic stride, and there followed two shots that went

rattling among the farm buildings. Then the woman's

shrieks started up again, punctuating a longdrawnout

hysterical tittering and sobbing.

Fainy sat in the chair by the stove as if glued to it.

He noticed a fiftycent piece on the kitchen floor that

must have dropped out of Doc Bingham's pants as he

ran. He grabbed it and had just gotten it in his pocket

when the tall man with the shotgun came back.

"No more shells," he said thickly. Then he sat down

on the kitchen table among the uncleared supper dishes

and began to cry like a child, the tears trickling through

the knobbed fingers of his big dark hands. Fainy stole out

of the door and went to the barn. " Doc Bingham," he

called gently. The harness lay in a heap between the

shafts of the wagon, but there was no trace of Doc Bing-

ham or of the piebald horse. The frightened clucking of

the hens disturbed in the hencoop mixed with the woman's

shrieks that still came from upstairs in the farmhouse.

"What the hell shall I do?" Fainy was asking himself

when he caught sight of a tall figure outlined in the

bright kitchen door and pointing the shotgun at him.

Just as the shotgun blazed away he ducked into the barn

and out through the back door. Buckshot whined over his

head. "Gosh, he found shells." Fainy was off as fast as

-53-

his legs could carry him across the oatfield. At last, with-

out any breath in his body, he scrambled over a railfence

full of briars that tore his face and hands and lay flat in

a dry ditch to rest. There was nobody following him.

NEWSREEL III

"IT TAKES NERVE TO LIVE IN THIS

WORLD" LAST WORDS OF GEORGE SMITH

HANGED WITH HIS BROTHER BY MOB IN

KANSAS MARQUIS OF QUEENSBERRY DEAD

FLAMES WRECK SPICE PLANT COURT SETS

ZOLA FREE

a few years ago the anarchists of New Jersey, wearing the

McKinley button and the red badge of anarchy on their coats

and supplied with beer by the republicans, plotted the death of

one of the crowned heads of Europe and it is likely that the

plan to assassinate the president was hatched at the same time

or soon afterward

It's moonlight fair tonight upon the Wabash

From the fields there comes the breath of newmown hay

Through the sycamores the candlelight is gleaming

On the banks of the Wabash for away

OUT FOR BULLY GOOD TIME

Six Thousand Workmen at Smolensk Parade With Plac-

ards Saying Death To Czar Assassin.

riots and streetblockades mark opening of teamster's strike

WORLD'S GREATEST SEA BATTLE NEAR

Madrid police clash with 5000 workmen carrying black

flag

spectators become dizzy while dancer eats orange break-

ing record that made man insane

-54-

THE CAMERA EYE (5)

and we played the battle of Port Arthur in the bath-

tub and the water leaked down through the drawing-

room ceiling and it was altogether too bad but in Kew

Gardens old Mr. Garnet who was still hale and hearty

although so very old came to tea and we saw him first

through the window with his red face and John Bull

whiskers and aunty said it was a sailor's rolling gait and he

was carrying a box under his arm and Vickie and Pompom

barked and here was Mr. Garnet come to tea and he

took a gramophone out of a black box and put a cylinder

on the gramophone and they pushed back the tea-things

off the corner of the table Be careful not to drop it

now they scratch rather heasy Why a hordinary

sewin' needle would do maam but I ave special needles

and we got to talking about Hadmiral Togo and

the Banyan and how the Roosians drank so much vodka

and killed all those poor fisherlads in the North Sea and

he wound it up very carefully so as not to break the spring

and the needle went rasp rasp Yes I was a bluejacket

miself miboy from the time I was a little shayver not

much bigger'n you rose to be bosun's mite on the first

British hironclad the Warrior and I can dance a ornpipe

yet maam and he had a mariner's compass in red and

blue on the back of his hand and his nails looked black

-55-

and thick as he fumbled with the needle and the needle

went rasp rasp and far away a band played and out of a

grindy noise in the little black horn came God Save the

King and the little dogs howled

NEWSREEL IV

I met my love in the Alamo

When the moon was on the rise

Her beauty quite bedimmed its light

So radiant were her eyes

during the forenoon union pickets turned back a wagon

loaded with 50 campchairs on its way to the fire engine house

at Michigan Avenue and Washington street. The chairs it is

reported, were ordered for the convenience of policemen de-

tailed on strike duty

FLEETS MAY MEET IN BATTLE TODAY

WEST OF LUZON

three big wolves were killed before the dinner.

A grand parade is proposed here in which President

Roosevelt shall ride so that he can be seen by citizens. At the

head will be a caged bear recently captured after killing a

dozen dogs and injuring several men. The bear will be given

an hour's start for the hills then the packs will be set on the

trail and President Roosevelt and the guides will follow in

pursuit

three Columbia students start auto trip to Chicago on

wager

GENERAL STRIKE NOW THREATENS

It's moonlight fair tonight upon the Wa-abash

-56-

OIL KING'S HAPPYEST DAY

one cherub every five minutes market for all classes of

real estate continues to be healthy with good demand for fac-

tory sites residence and business properties court bills break

labor

BLOODY SUNDAY IN MOSCOW

lady angels are smashed troops guard oilfields America

tends to become empire like in the days of the Caesars $5 poem

gets rich husband eat less says Edison rich poker player falls

dead when he draws royal flush charges graft in Cicero

STRIKE MAY MEAN REVOLT IN RUSSIA

lake romance of two yachts murder ends labor feud Michi-

gan runs all over Albion red flags in St. Petersburg

CZAR YIELDS TO PEOPLE

holds dead baby forty hours families evicted by bursting

watermain

CZAR GRANTS CONSTITUTION

From the fields there comes the breath of newmown hay

Through the sycamores the candlelight is gleaming

THE CAMERA EYE (6)

Go it go it said Mr. Linwood the headmaster when

one was running up the field kicking the round ball footer

they called it in Hampstead and afterwards it was time

to walk home and one felt good because Mr. Linwood

had said Go it

Taylor said There's another American come and he

had teeth like Teddy in the newspapers and a turnedup

-57-

nose and a Rough Rider suit and he said Who are you

going to vote for? and one said I dunno and he stuck his

chest out and said I mean who your folks for Roosevelt

or Parker? and one said Judge Parker

the other American's hair was very black and he

stuck his fists up and his nose turned up and he said I'm for

Roosevelt wanto fight? all trembly one said I'm for Judge

Parker but Taylor said Who's got tuppence for ginger

beer? and there wasn't any fight that time

NEWSREEL V

BUGS DRIVE OUT BIOLOGIST

elopers bind and gag; is released by dog

EMPEROR NICHOLAS II FACING REVOLT OF

EMPIRE GRANTS SUBJECTS LIBERTY

paralysis stops surgeon's knife by the stroke of a pen the

last absolute monarchy of Europe passes into history miner of

Death Valley and freak advertiser of Santa Fe Road may die

sent to bridewell for stealing plaster angel

On the banks of the Wabash far away.

MAC

Next morning soon after daylight Fainy limped out of

a heavy shower into the railroad station at Gaylord. There

-58-

was a big swagbellied stove burning in the station waiting

room. The ticket agent's window was closed. There was

nobody in sight. Fainy took off first one drenched shoe

and then the other and toasted his feet till his socks were

dry. A blister had formed and broken on each heel and

the socks stuck to them in a grimy scab. He put on his

shoes again and stretched out on the bench. Immediately

he was asleep.

Somebody tall in blue was speaking to him. He tried to

raise his head but he was too sleepy.

"Hey, bo, you better not let the station agent find

you," said a voice he'd been hearing before through his

sleep. Fainy opened his eyes and sat up. "Jeez, I thought

you were a cop."

A squareshouldered young man in blue denim shirt and

overalls was standing over him. "I thought I'd better

wake you up, station agent's so friggin' tough in this

dump."

"Thanks." Fainy stretched his legs. His feet were so

swollen he could hardly stand on them. "Golly, I'm stiff."

"Say, if we each had a quarter I know a dump where

we could get a bully breakfast."

"I gotta dollar an' a half," said Fainy slowly. He stood

with his hands in his pockets, his back to the warm stove

looking carefully at the other boy's square bulljawed face

and blue eyes.

"Where are you from?"

"I'm from Duluth . . . I'm on the bum more or less.

Where are you from?"

"Golly, I wish I knew. I had a job till last night."

"Resigned?"

"Say, suppose we go eat that breakfast."

"That's slick. I didn't eat yesterday. . . . My name's

George Hall . . . The fellers call me Ike. I ain't exactly

on the bum, you know. I want to see the world."

"I guess I'm going to have to see the world now," said

-59-

Fainy. "My name's McCreary. I'm from Chi. But I was

born back east in Middletown, Connecticut."

As they opened the screen door of the railroad men's

boarding house down the road they were met by a smell

of ham and coffee and roachpowder. A horsetoothed

blonde woman with a rusty voice set places for them.

"Where do you boys work? I don't remember seein'

you before."

"I worked down to the sawmill," said Ike.

"Sawmill shet down two weeks ago because the super-

intendent blew out his brains."

"Don't I know it?"

"Maybe you boys better pay in advance."

"I got the money," said Fainy, waving a dollar bill in

her face.

"Well, if you got the money I guess you'll pay all

right," said the waitress, showing her long yellow teeth

in a smile.

"Sure, peaches and cream, we'll pay like millionaires,"

said Ike.

They filled up on coffee and hominy and ham and eggs

and big heavy white bakingpowder biscuits, and by the

end of breakfast they had gotten to laughing so hard over

Fainy's stories of Doc Bingham's life and loves that the

waitress asked them if they'd been drinking. Ike kidded

her into bringing them each another cup of coffee with-

out extra charge. Then he fished up two mashed ciga-

rettes from the pocket of his overalls. "Have a coffin

nail, Mac?"

"You can't smoke here," said the waitress. "The missus

won't'stand for smokin'."

"All right, bright eyes, we'll skidoo."

"How far are you goin'?"

"Well, I'm headed for Duluth myself. That's where

my folks are . . ." "So you're from Duluth, are you?"

-60-

"Well, what's the big joke about Duluth?" "It's no joke,

it's a misfortune."

"You don't think you can kid me, do you?" " 'Tain't

worth my while, sweetheart." The waitress tittered as she

cleared off the table. She had big red hands and thick

nails white from kitchenwork.

"Hey, got any noospapers? I want somethin' to read

waitin' for the train." "I'll get you some. The missus

takes the American from Chicago." "Gee, I ain't seen a

paper in three weeks." "I like to read the paper, too,"

said Mac. "I like to know what's goin' on in the world."

"A lot of lies most of it . . . all owned by the in-

terests."

"Hearst's on the side of the people."

"I don't trust him any more'n the rest of 'em."

"Ever read The Appeal to Reason?"

"Say, are you a Socialist?"

"Sure; I had a job in my uncle's printin' shop till the

big interests put him outa business because he took the

side of the strikers."

"Gee, that's swell . . . put it there . . . me, too. . . .

Say, Mac, this is a big day for me . . . I don't often

meet a guy thinks like I do."

They went out with a roll of newspapers and sat under

a big pine a little way out of town. The sun had come

out warm; big white marble clouds sailed through the

sky. They lay on their backs with their heads on a piece

of pinkish root with bark like an alligator. In spite of

last night's rain the pine needles were warm and dry

under them. In front of them stretched the singletrack

line through thickets and clearings of wrecked woodland

where fireweed was beginning to thrust up here and there

a palegreen spike of leaves. They read sheets of the week-

old paper turn and turn about and talked.

"Maybe in Russia it'll start; that's the most backward

country where the people are oppressed worst . . .

-61-

There was a Russian feller workin' down to the sawmill,

an educated feller who's fled from Siberia . . . I used

to talk to him a lot . . . That's what he thought. He

said the social revolution would start in Russia an' spread

all over the world. He was a swell guy. I bet he was some-

body."

"Uncle Tim thought it would start in Germany."

"Oughter start right here in America . . . We got

free institutions here already . . . All we have to do is

get out from under the interests." "Uncle Tim says we)re

too well off in America . . . we don't know what op-

pression or poverty is. Him an' my other uncles was

Fenians back in Ireland before they came to this country.

That's what they named me Fenian . . . Pop didn't like

it, I guess . . . he didn't have much spunk, I guess."

"Ever read Marx?"

"No . . . golly, I'd like to though." "Me neither,

I read Bellamy Looking Backward, though; that's what

made me a Socialist." "Tell me about it; I'd just started

readin' it when I left home." "It's about a galoot that

goes to sleep an' wakes up in the year two thousand and

the social revolution's all happened and everything's so-

cialistic an' there's no jails or poverty and nobody works

for themselves an' there's no way anybody can get to be

a rich bondholder or capitalist and life's pretty slick for

the working class." "That's what I always thought . . .

It's the workers who create wealth and they ought to

have it instead of a lot of drones." "If you could do away

with the capitalist system and the big trusts and Wall

Street things 'ud be like that."

"Gee."

"All you'd need would be a general strike and have

the workers refuse to work for a boss any longer . . .

God damn it, if people only realized how friggin' easy

it would be. The interests own all the press and keep

knowledge and education from the workin'men."

-62-

"I know printin', pretty good, an' linotypin'. . . .

Golly, maybe some day I could do somethin'."

Mac got to his feet. He was tingling all over. A cloud

had covered the sun, but down the railroad track the

scrawny woods were full of the goldgreen blare of young

birch leaves in the sun. His blood was like fire. He stood

with his feet apart looking down the railroad track. Round

the bend in the far distance a handcar appeared with a

section gang on it, a tiny cluster of brown and dark blue.

He watched it come nearer. A speck of red flag fluttered

in the front of the handcar; it grew bigger, ducking into

patches of shadow, larger and more distinct each time it

came out into a patch of sun.

"Say, Mac, we better keep out of sight if we want to

hop that freight. There's some friaggin' mean yard detec-

tives on this road.""All right." They walked off a hun-

dred yards into the young growth of scrub pine and birch.

Beside a big greenlichened stump Mac stopped to make

water. His urine flowed bright yellow in the sun, disap-

pearing at once into the porous loam of rotten leaves and

wood. He was very happy. He gave the stump a kick.

It was rotten. His foot went through it and a little powder

like smoke went up from it as it crashed over into the

alderbushes behind.

Ike had sat down on a log and was picking his teeth

with a little birchtwig.

"Say, ever been to the coast, Mac?"

"No."

"Like to?"

"Sure."

"Well, let's you an' me beat our way out to Duluth

. . . I want to stop by and say hello to the old woman,

see. Haven't seen her in three months. Then we'll take

in the wheat harvest and make Frisco or Seattle by fall.

Tell me they have good free night-schools in Seattle. I

-63-

want to do some studyin', see? I dunno a friggin' thing

yet."

"That's slick."

"Ever hopped a freight or ridden blind baggage, Mac?"

"Well, not exactly."

"You just follow me and do what I do. You'll be all

right."

Down the track they heard the hoot of a locomotive

whistle.

"There is number three comin' round the bend now

. . . We'll hop her right after she starts outa the station.

She'll take us into Mackinaw City this afternoon."

Late that afternoon, stiff and cold, they went into a

little shed on the steamboat wharf at Mackinaw City to

get shelter. Everything was hidden in a driving rain-

streaked mist off the lake. They had bought a ten-cent

package of Sweet Caps, so that they only had ninety cents

left between them. They were arguing about how much

they ought to spend for supper when the steamboat agent,

a thin man wearing a green eyeshade and a slicker came

out of his office. "You boys lookin' for a job?" he asked.

"Cause there's a guy here from the Lakeview House

lookin' for a coupla pearldivers. Agency didn't send 'em

enough help I guess. They're openin' up tomorrer."

"How much do they pay ye?" asked Ike. "I don't reckon

it's much, but the grub's pretty good.""How about it,

Mac? We'll save up our fare an' then we'll go to Duluth

like a coupla dudes on the boat."

So they went over that night on the steamboat to

Mackinac Island. It was pretty dull on Mackinac Island.

There was a lot of small scenery with signs on it reading

"Devil's Cauldron,""Sugar Loaf,""Lover's Leap," and

wives and children of mediumpriced business men from

Detroit, Saginaw and Chicago. The grayfaced woman who

ran the hotel, known as The Management, kept them

working from six in the morning till way after sundown.

-64-

It wasn't only dishwashing, it was sawing wood, running

errands, cleaning toilets, scrubbing floors, smashing bag-

gage and a lot of odd chores. The waitresses were all old

maids or else brokendown farmers' wives whose husbands

drank. The only other male in the place was the cook, a

hypochondriac French Canadian halfbreed who insisted

on being called Mr. Chef. Evenings he sat in his little

log shack back of the hotel drinking paregoric and mum-

bling about God.

When they got their first month's pay they packed up

their few belongings in a newspaper and sneaked on board

the Juniata for Duluth. The fare took all their capital,

but they were happy as they stood in the stern watching

the spruce and balsamcovered hill of Mackinac disappear

into the lake.

Duluth; girderwork along the waterfront, and the

shack-covered hills and the tall thin chimneys and the

huddle of hunch-shouldered grain elevators under the

smoke from the mills scrolled out dark against a huge

salmon-colored sunset. Ike hated to leave the boat on

account of a pretty dark-haired girl he'd meant all the

time to speak to. "Hell, she wouldn't pay attention to

you, Ike, she's too swank for you," Mac kept saying. "The

old woman'll be glad to see us anyway," said Ike as they

hurried off the gangplank. "I half expected to see her at

the dock, though I didn't write we was coming. Boy, I bet

she'll give us a swell feed."

"Where does she live?"

"Not far. I'll show you. Say, don't ask anythin' about

my ole man, will ye; he don't amount to much. He's in

jail, I guess. Ole woman's had pretty tough sleddin'

bringin' up us kids . . . I got two brothers in Buffalo

. . . I don't get along with 'em. She does fancy needle-

work and preservin' an' bakes cakes an' stuff like that.

She used to work in a bakery but she's got the lumbago

-65-

too bad now. She'd 'a' been a real bright woman if we

hadn't always been so friggin' poor."

They turned up a muddy street on a hill. At the top

of the hill was a little prim house like a schoolhouse.

"That's where we live . . . Gee, I wonder why there's

no light."

They went in by a gate in the picket fence. There was

sweetwilliam in bloom in the flowerbed in front of the

house. They could smell it though they could hardly see,

it was so dark. Ike knocked.

"Damn it, I wonder what's the matter." He knocked

again. Then he struck a match. On the door was nailed a

card "FOR SALE" and the name of a realestate agent.

"Jesus Christ, that's funny, she musta moved. Now I think

of it, I haven't had a letter in a couple of months. I hope

she ain't sick . . . I'll ask at Bud Walker's next door."

Mac sat down on the wooden step and waited. Over-

head in a gash in the clouds that still had the faintest

stain of red from the afterglow his eye dropped into

empty black full of stars. The smell of the sweetwilliams

tickled his nose. He felt hungry.

A low whistle from Ike roused him. "Come along," he

said gruffly and started walking fast down the hill with

his head sunk between his shoulders.

"Hey, what's the matter?"

"Nothin'. The old woman's gone to Buffalo to live with

my brothers. The lousy bums got her to sell out so's they

could spend the dough, I reckon."

"Jesus, that's hell, Ike."

Ike didn't answer. They walked till they came to the

corner of a street with lighted stores and trolleycars. A

tune from a mechanical piano was tumbling out from a

saloon. Ike turned and slapped Mac on the back. "Let's

go have a drink, kid . . . What the hell."

There was only one other man at the long bar. He

was a very drunken tall elderly man in lumbermen's boots

-66-

with a sou'wester on his head who kept yelling in an in-

audible voice, 'Whoop her up, boys,' and making a pass

at the air with a long grimy hand. Mac and Ike drank

down two whiskies each, so strong and raw that it pretty

near knocked the wind out of them. Ike put the change

from a dollar in his pocket and said:

"What the hell, let's get out of here." In the cool air

of the street they began to feel lit. "Jesus, Mac, let's get

outa here tonight . . . It's terrible to come back to a

town where you was a kid . . . I'll be meetin' all the

crazy galoots I ever knew and girls I had crushes on . . .

I guess I always get the dirty end of the stick, all right."

In a lunchroom down by the freight depot they got

hamburger and potatoes and bread and butter and coffee

for fifteen cents each. When they'd bought some ciga-

rettes they still had eight seventyfive between them.

"Golly, we're rich," said Mac. "Well, where do we go?"

"Wait a minute. I'll go scout round the freight depot.

Used to be a guy I knowed worked there."

Mac loafed round under a lamp post at the street-

corner and smoked a cigarette and waited. It was warmer

since the wind had gone down. From a puddle somewhere

in the freight yards came the peep peep peep of toads.

Up on the hill an accordion was playing. From the yards

came the heavy chugging of a freight locomotive and the

clank of shunted freightcars and the singing rattle of the

wheels.

After a while he heard Ike's whistle from the dark

side of the street. He ran over. "Say, Mac, we gotta hurry.

I found the guy. He's goin' to open up a boxcar for us

on the westbound freight. He says it'll carry us clear out

to the coast if we stick to it."

"How the hell will we eat if we're locked up in a

freightcar?"

"We'll eat fine. You leave the eatin' to me."

"But, Ike . . ."

-67-

"Keep your trap shut, can't you . . . Do you want

everybody in the friggin' town to know what we're tryin'

to do?"

They walked along tiptoe in the dark between two

tracks of boxcars. Then Ike found a door half open and

darted in. Mac followed and they shut the sliding door

very gently after them.

"Now all we got to do is go to sleep," whispered Ike,

his lips touching Mac's ear. "This here galoot, see, said

there wasn't any yard dicks on duty tonight."

In the end of the car they found hay from a broken

bale. The whole car smelt of hay. "Ain't this hunky

dory?" whispered Ike.

"It's the cat's nuts, Ike."

Pretty soon the train started, and they lay down to

sleep side by side in the sparse hay. The cold night wind

streamed in through the cracks in the floor. They slept

fitfully. The train started and stopped and started and

shunted back and forth on sidings and the wheels rattled

and rumbled in their ears and slambanged over crossings.

Towards morning they fell into a warm sleep and the thin

layer of hay on the boards was suddenly soft and warm.

Neither of them had a watch and the day was overcast

so they didn't know what time it was when they woke

up. Ike slid open the door a little so that they could peek

out; the train was running through a broad valley brim-

full-like with floodwater, with the green ripple of full-

grown wheat. Now and then in the distance a clump of

woodland stood up like an island. At each station was

the hunched blind bulk of an elevator. "Gee, this must be

the Red River, but I wonder which way we're goin',"

said Ike. "Golly, I could drink a cup of coffee," said Mac.

"We'll have swell coffee in Seattle, damned if we won't,

Mac."

They went to sleep again, and when they woke up they

were thirsty and stiff. The train had stopped. There was

-68-

no sound at all. They lay on their backs stretching and

listening. "Gee, I wonder where in hell we are." After a

long while they heard the cinders crunching down the

track and someone trying the fastenings of the boxcar

doors down the train. They lay so still they could hear

both their hearts beating. The steps on the cinders

crunched nearer and nearer. The sliding door slammed

open, and their car was suddenly full of sunlight. They

lay still. Mac felt the rap of a stick on his chest and sat

up blinking. A Scotch voice was burring in his ears:

"I thought I'd find some Pullman passengerrs . . .

All right, byes, stand and deliver, or else you'll go to the

constabulary."

"Aw hell," said Ike, crawling forward.

"Currsin' and swearin' won't help ye . . . If you got

a couple o' quid you can ride on to Winnipeg an' take your

chances there . . . If not you'll be doin' a tidy bit on

the roads before you can say Jack Robinson."

The brakeman was a small blackhaired man with a

mean quiet manner.

"Where are we, guv'ner?" asked Ike, trying to talk

like an Englishman.

"Gretna . . . You're in the Dominion of Canada. You

can be had up, too, for illegally crossin' Her Majesty's

frontier as well as for bein' vags."

"Well, I guess we'd better shell out . . . You see

we're a couple of noblemen's sons out for a bit of a-bloody

lark, guv'ner."

"No use currsin' and prevarricatin'. How much have

you?"

" Coupla dollars."

"Let's see it quick."

Ike pulled first one dollar, then another, out of his

pocket; folded in the second dollar was a five. The Scotch-

man swept the three bills up with one gesture and

slammed the sliding door to. They heard him slip down

-69-

the catch on the outside. For a long time they sat there

quiet in the dark. Finally Ike said, "Hey, Mac, gimme a

sock in the jaw. That was a damn fool thing to do . . .

Never oughta had that in my jeans anyway . . . oughta

had it inside my belt. That leaves us with about seventy-

five cents. We're up shit creek now for fair . . . He'll

probably wire ahead to take us outa here at the next big

town.""Do they have mounted police on the railroad,

too?" asked Mac in a hollow whisper. "Jez, I don't know

any more about it than you do."

The train started again and Ike rolled over on his face

and went glumly to sleep. Mac lay on his back behind him

looking at the slit of sunlight that made its way in through

the crack in the door and wondered what the inside of a

Canadian jail would be like.

That night, after the train had lain still for some time

in the middle of the hissing and clatter of a big freight-

yard, they heard the catch slipped off the door. After a

while Ike got up his nerve to slide the door open and they

dropped, stiff and terribly hungry, down to the cinders.

There was another freight on the next track, so all they

could see was a bright path of stars overhead. They got

out of the freightyards without any trouble and found

themselves walking through the deserted streets of a large

widescattered city.

" Winnipeg's a pretty friggin' lonelylookin' place, take

it from me," said Ike.

"It must be after midnight."

They tramped and tramped and at last found a little

lunchroom kept by a Chink who was just closing up.

They spent forty cents on some stew and potatoes and

coffee. They asked the Chink if he'd let them sleep on

the floor behind the counter, but he threw them out and

they found themselves dogtired tramping through the

broad deserted streets of Winnipeg again. It was too cold

to sit down anywhere, and they couldn't find anyplace

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that looked as if it would give them a flop for thirtyfive

cents, so they walked and walked, and anyway the sky

was beginning to pale into a slow northern summer dawn.

When it was fully day they went back to the Chink's and

spent the thirtyfive cents on oatmeal and coffee. Then they

went to the Canadian Pacific employment office and signed

up for work in a construction camp at Banff. The hours

they had to wait till traintime they spent in the public

library. Mac read part of Bellamy Looking Backward

and Ike, not being able to find a volume of Karl Marx,

read an instalment of "When the Sleeper Wakes" in

the Strand Magazine. So when they got on the train they

were full of the coming Socialist revolution and started

talking it up to two lanky redfaced lumberjacks who sat

opposite them. One of them chewed tobacco silently all

the while, but the other spat his quid out of the window

and said, "You blokes 'll keep quiet with that kinder talk

if you knows what's 'ealthy for ye.""Hell, this is a free

country, ain't it? A guy's free to talk, ain't he?" said Ike.

"A bloke kin talk so long as his betters don't tell him to

keep his mouth shut.""Hell, I'm not tryin' to pick a

fight," said Ike. "Better not," said the other man, and

didn't speak again.

They worked for the C. P. R. all summer and by the

first of October they were in Vancouver. They had new

suitcases and new suits. Ike had forty-nine dollars and

fifty cents and Mac had eighty-three fifteen in a brand

new pigskin wallet. Mac had more because he didn't play

poker. They took a dollar and a half room between them

and lay in bed like princes their first free morning. They

were tanned and toughened and their hands were horny.

After the smell of rank pipes and unwashed feet and the

bedbugs in the railroad bunkhouses the small cleanboarded

hotel room with its clean beds seemed like a palace.

When he was fully awake Mac sat up and reached for

his Ingersoll. Eleven o'clock. The sunlight on the win-

-71-

dowledge was ruddy from the smoke of forestfires up the

coast. He got up and washed in cold water at the wash-

basin. He walked up and down the room wiping his face

and arms in the towel. It made him feel good to follow

the contours of his neck and the hollow between his

shoulderblades and the muscles of his arms as he dried

himself with the fresh coarse towel.

"Say, Ike, what do you think we oughta do? I think we

oughta go down on the boat to Seattle, Wash., like a

coupla dude passengers. I wanta settle down an' get a

printin' job; there's good money in that. I'm goin' to

study to beat hell this winter. What do you think, Ike?

I want to get out of this limejuicy hole an' get back to

God's country. What do you think, Ike?"

Ike groaned and rolled over in bed.

"Say, wake up, Ike, for crissake. We want to take a

look at this burg an' then twentythree."

Ike sat up in bed. "God damn it, I need a woman."

"I've heard tell there's swell broads in Seattle, honest,

Ike."

Ike jumped out of bed and began splattering himself

from head to foot with cold water. Then he dashed into

his clothes and stood looking out the window combing

the water out of his hair.

"When does the friggin' boat go? Jez, I had two wet

dreams last night, did you?"

Mac blushed. He nodded his head.

"Jez, we got to get us women. Wet dreams weakens a

guy."

"I wouldn't want to get sick."

"Aw, hell, a man's not a man until he's had his three

doses."

"Aw, come ahead, let's go see the town."

"Well, ain't I been waitin' for ye this halfhour?"

They ran down the stairs and out into the street. They

walked round Vancouver, sniffing the winey smell of

-72-

lumbermills along the waterfront, loafing under the big

trees in the park. Then they got their tickets at the steam-

boat office and went to a haberdashery store and bought

themselves striped neckties, colored socks and four-dollar

silk shirts. They felt like millionaires when they walked

up the gangplank of the boat for Victoria and Seattle,

with their new suits and their new suitcases and their silk

shirts. They strolled round the deck smoking cigarettes

and looking at the girls. "Gee, there's a couple looks

kinda easy . . . I bet they're hookers at that," Ike

whispered in Mac's ear and gave him a dig in the ribs with

his elbow as they passed two girls in Spring Maid hats

who were walking round the deck the other way. "Shit,

let's try pick 'em up."

They had a couple of beers at the bar, then they went

back on deck. The girls had gone. Mac and Ike walked

disconsolately round the deck for a while, then they found

the girls leaning over the rail in the stern. It was a cloudy

moonlight night. The sea and the dark islands covered

with spiring evergreens shone light and dark in a mottling

silvery sheen. Both girls had frizzy hair and dark circles

under their eyes. Mac thought they looked too old, but

as Ike had gone sailing ahead it was too late to say any-

thing. The girl he talked to was named Gladys. He liked

the looks of the other one, whose name was Olive, better,

but Ike got next to her first. They stayed on deck kidding

and giggling until the girls said they were cold, then they

went in the saloon and sat on a sofa and Ike went and

bought a box of candy.

"We ate onions for dinner today," said Olive. "Hope

you fellers don't mind. Gladys, I told you we oughtn't

to of eaten them onions, not before comin' on the boat."

"Gimme a kiss an' I'll tell ye if I mind or not," said

Ike.

"Kiddo, you can't talk fresh like that to us, not on this

-73-

boat," snapped Olive, two mean lines appearing on either

side of her mouth.

"We have to be awful careful what we do on the boat,"

explained Gladys. "They're terrible suspicious of two

girls travelin' alone nowadays. Ain't it a crime?"

"It sure is." Ike moved up a little closer on the seat.

"Quit that . . . Make a noise like a hoop an' roll away.

I mean it." Olive went and sat on the opposite bench.

Ike followed her.

"In the old days it was liberty hall on these boats, but

not so any more," Gladys said, talking to Mac in a low

intimate voice. "You fellers been workin' up in the

canneries?"

"No, we been workin' for the C.P.R. all summer."

"You must have made big money." As she talked to

him, Mac noticed that she kept looking out of the corner

of her eye at her friend.

"Yare . . . not so big . . . I saved up pretty near a

century."

"An' now you're going to Seattle."

"I want to get a job linotypist."

"That's where we live, Seattle. Olive an' I've got an

apartment . . . Let's go out on deck, it's too hot in

here."

As they passed Olive and Ike, Gladys leaned over and

whispered something in Olive's ear. Then she turned to

Mac with a melting smile. The deck was deserted. She

let him put his arm round her waist. His fingers felt the

bones of some sort of corset. He squeezed. "Oh, don't

be too rough, kiddo," she whined in a funny little voice.

He laughed. As he took his hand away he felt the con-

tour of her breast. Walking, his leg brushed against her

leg. It was the first time he'd been so close to a girl.

After a while she said she had to go to bed. "How

about me goin' down with ye?" She shook her head. "Not

on this boat. See you tomorrow; maybe you and your

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pal 'll come and see us at our apartment. We'll show you

the town.""Sure," said Mac. He walked on round the

deck, his heart beating hard. He could feel the pound of

the steamboat's engines and the arrowshaped surge of

broken water from the bow and he felt like that. He

met Ike.

"My girl said she had to go to bed.""So did mine."

"Get anywheres, Mac?""They got an apartment in

Seattle.""I got a kiss off mine. She's awful hot. Jez, I

thought she was going to feel me up.""We'll get it to-

morrow all right."

The next day was sunny; the Seattle waterfront was

sparkling, smelt of lumberyards, was noisy with rattle

of carts and yells of drivers when they got off the boat.

They went to the Y.M.C.A. for a room. They were

through with being laborers and hobos. They were going

to get clean jobs, live decently and go to school nights.

They walked round the city all day, and in the evening

met Olive and Gladys in front of the totempole on Pioneer

Square.

Things happened fast. They went to a restaurant and

had wine with a big feed and afterwards they went to a

beergarden where there was a band, and drank whiskey-

sours. When they went to the girls' apartment they took

a quart of whiskey with them and Mac almost dropped

it on the steps and the girls said, "For crissake don't make

so much noise or you'll have the cops on us," and the

apartment smelt of musk and facepowder and there was

women's underwear around on all the chairs and the girls

got fifteen bucks out of each of them first thing. Mac was

in the bathroom with his girl and she smeared liprouge

on his nose and they laughed and laughed until he got

rough and she slapped his face. Then they all sat together

round the table and drank some more and Ike danced a

Solomeydance in his bare feet. Mac laughed, it was so

very funny, but he was sitting on the floor and when he

-75-

tried to get up he fell on his face and all of a sudden he

was being sick in the bathtub and Gladys was cursing hell

out of him. She got him dressed, only he couldn't find

his necktie, and everybody said he was too drunk and

pushed him out and he was walking down the street sing-

ing Make a Noise Like a Hoop and Just Roll Away,

Roll Away, and he asked a cop where the Y.M.C.A. was

and the cop pushed him into a cell at the stationhouse and

locked him up.

He woke up with his head like a big split millstone.

There was vomit on his shirt and a rip in his pants. He

went over all his pockets and couldn't find his pocketbook.

A cop opened the cell door and told him to make himself

scarce and he walked out into the dazzling sun that cut

into his eyes like a knife. The man at the desk at the Y

looked at him queerly when he went in, but he got up to

his room and fell into bed without anybody saying any-

thing to him. Ike wasn't back yet. He dozed off feeling

his headache all through his sleep. When he woke up

Ike was sitting on the bed. Ike's eyes were bright and his

cheeks were red. He was still a little drunk. "Say, Mac,

did they roll yer? I can't find my pocketbook an' I tried

to go back but I couldn't find the apartment. God, I'd

have beat up the goddam floosies . . . Shit, I'm drunk

as a pissant still. Say, the galoot at the desk said we'd

have to clear out. Can't have no drunks in the Y.M.C.A."

"But jez, we paid for a week.""He'll give us part of it

back . . . Aw, what the hell, Mac . . . We're flat, but

I feel swell . . . Say, I had a rough time with your Jane

after they'd thrown you out."

"Hell, I feel sick as a dog."

"I'm afraid to go to sleep for fear of getting a hang-

over. Come on out, it'll do you good."

It was three in the afternoon. They went into a little

Chinese restaurant on the waterfront and drank coffee.

They had two dollars they got from hocking their suit-

-76-

cases. The pawnbroker wouldn't take the silk shirts be-

cause they were dirty. Outside it was raining pitchforks.

"Jesus, why the hell didn't we have the sense to keep

sober? God, we're a coupla big stiffs, Ike."

"We had a good party . . . Jez, you looked funny

with that liprouge all over your face."

"I feel like hell . . . I wanta study an' work for

things; you know what I mean, not to get to be a god-

dam slavedriver but for socialism and the revolution an'

like that, not work an' go on a bat an' work an' go on a

bat like those damn yaps on the railroad."

"Hell, another time we'll have more sense an' leave

our wads somewhere safe . . . Gee, I'm beginning to

sink by the bows myself."

"If the damn house caught fire I wouldn't have the

strength to walk out."

They sat in the Chink place as long as they could and

then they went out in the rain to find a thirtycent flop-

house where they spent the night, and the bedbugs ate

them up. In the morning they went round looking for

jobs, Mac in the printing trades and Ike at the shipping

agencies. They met in the evening without having had

any luck and slept in the park as it was a fine night.

Eventually they both signed up to go to a lumbercamp

up the Snake River. They were sent up by the agency on

a car full of Swedes and Finns. Mac and Ike were the

only ones who spoke English. When they got there they

found the foreman so hardboiled and the grub so rotten

and the bunkhouse so filthy that they lit out at the end

of a couple of days, on the bum again. It was already cold

in the Blue Mountains and they would have starved to

death if they hadn't been able to beg food in the cook-

houses of lumbercamps along the way. They hit the rail-

road at Baker City, managed to beat their way back to

Portland on freights. In Portland they couldn't find jobs

because their clothes were so dirty, so they hiked south-

-77-

ward along a big endless Oregon valley full of fruit-

ranches, sleeping in barns and getting an occasional meal

by cutting wood or doing chores around a ranch house.

In Salem, Ike found that he had a dose and Mac

couldn't sleep nights worrying for fear he might have it

too. They tried to go to a doctor in Salem. He was a big

roundfaced man with a hearty laugh. When they said

they didn't have any money he guessed it was all right

and that they could do some chores to pay for the con-

sultation, but when he heard it was a venereal disease he

threw them out with a hot lecture on the wages of sin.

They trudged along the road, hungry and footsore;

Ike had fever and it hurt him to walk. Neither of them

said anything. Finally they got to a small fruitshipping

station where there were watertanks, on the main line of

the Southern Pacific. There Ike said he couldn't walk

any further, that they'd have to wait for a freight. "Jesus

Christ, jail 'ud be better than this."

"When you're outa luck in this man's country, you

certainly are outa luck," said Mac and for some reason

they both laughed.

Among the bushes back of the station they found an

old tramp boiling coffee in a tin can. He gave them some

coffee and bread and baconrind and they told him their

troubles. He said he was headed south for the winter and

that the thing to cure it up was tea made out of cherry

pits and stems. "But where the hell am I going to get

cherry pits and stems?" Anyway he said not to worry,

it was no worse than a bad cold. He was a cheerful old

man with a face so grimed with dirt it looked like a brown

leather mask. He was going to take a chance on a freight

that stopped there to water a little after sundown. Mac

dozed off to sleep while Ike and the old man talked.

When he woke up Ike was yelling at him and they were

all running for the freight that had already started. In

the dark Mac missed his footing and fell flat on the ties.

-78-

He wrenched his knee and ground cinders into his nose

and by the time he had got to his feet all he could see

were the two lights on the end of the train fading into

the November haze.

That was the last he saw of Ike Hall.

He got himself back on the road and limped along until

he came to a ranch house. A dog barked at him and

worried his ankles but he was too down and out to care.

Finally a stout woman came to the door and gave him

some cold biscuits and applesauce and told him he could

sleep in the barn if he gave her all his matches. He limped

to the barn and snuggled into a pile of dry sweetgrass

and went to sleep.

In the morning the rancher, a tall ruddy man named

Thomas, with a resonant voice, went over to the barn and

offered him work for a few days at the price of his board

and lodging. They were kind to him, and had a pretty

daughter named Mona that he kinder fell in love with.

She was a plump rosycheeked girl, strong as a boy and

afraid of nothing. She punched him and wrestled with

him; and, particularly after he'd gotten fattened up a

little and rested, he could hardly sleep nights for think-

ing of her. He lay in his bed of sweetgrass telling over

the touch of her bare arm that rubbed along his when

she handed him back the nozzle of the sprayer for the

fruittrees, or was helping him pile up the pruned twigs to

burn, and the roundness of her breasts and her breath

sweet as a cow's on his neck when they romped and played

tricks on each other evenings after supper. But the

Thomases had other ideas for their daughter and told

Mac that they didn't need him any more. They sent him

off kindly with a lot of good advice, some old clothes and

a cold lunch done up in newspaper, but no money. Mona

ran after him as he walked off down the dustyrutted

wagonroad and kissed him right in front of her parents.

"I'm stuck on you," she said. "You make a lot of money

-79-

and come back and marry me.""By gum, I'll do that,"

said Mac, and he walked off with tears in his eyes and

feeling very good. He was particularly glad he hadn't

got the clap off that girl in Seattle.

NEWSREEL VI

Paris Shocked At Last

HARRIMAN SHOWN AS RAIL COLOSSUS

noted swindler run to earth

TEDDY WIELDS BIG STICK

straphangers demand relief.

We were sailing along

On moonlight bay

You can hear the voices ringing

They seem to say

You have stolen my heart, now don't go away

Just as we sang

love's

old

sweet

songs

On moonlight bay

MOB LYNCHES AFTER PRAYER

when the metal poured out of the furnace I saw the men

running to a place of safety. To the right of the furnace I

saw a party of ten men all of them running wildly and their

clothes a mass of flames. Apparently some of them had been

injured when the explosion occurred and several of them

tripped and fell. The hot metal ran over the poor men in a

moment.

PRAISE MONOPOLY AS BOON TO ALL

-80-

industrial foes work for peace at Mrs. Potter Palmer's

love's

old

sweet

song

We were sailing along song

on moonlight bay

THE CAMERA EYE (7)

skating on the pond next the silver company's mills

where there was a funny fuzzy smell from the dump

whaleoil soap somebody said it was that they used in

cleaning the silver knives and spoons and forks putting

shine on them for sale there was shine on the ice early

black ice that rang like a sawblade just scratched white by

the first skaters I couldn't learn to skate and kept fall-

ing down look out for the muckers everybody said

bohunk and polak kids put stones in their snowballs write

dirty words up on walls do dirty things up alleys their

folks work in the mills

we clean young American Rover Boys handy with

tools Deerslayers played hockey Boy Scouts and cut figure

eights on the ice Achilles Ajax Agamemnon I couldn't

learn to skate and kept falling down

-81-

THE PLANT WIZARD

Luther Burbank was born in a brick farmhouse in

Lancaster Mass,

he walked round the woods one winter

crunching through the shinycrusted snow

stumbled into a little dell where a warm spring

was

and found the grass green and weeds sprouting

and skunk cabbage pushing up a potent thumb,

He went home and sat by the stove and read

Darwin

Struggle for Existence Origin of Species Natural

Selection that wasn't what they taught in church,

so Luther Burbank ceased to believe moved to

Lunenburg,

found a seedball in a potato plant

sowed the seed and cashed in on Mr. Darwin's

Natural

Selection

on Spencer and Huxley

with the Burbank Potato.

Young man go west;

Luther Burbank went to Santa Rosa

full of his dream of green grass in winter ever-

blooming flowers ever-

bearing berries; Luther Burbank

could cash in on Natural Selection Luther Bur-

bank

carried his apocalyptic dream of green grass in

winter

and seedless berries and stoneless plums and

thornless roses brambles cactus --

-82-

winters were bleak in that bleak

brick farmhouse in bleak Massachusetts --

out to sunny Santa Rosa;

and he was a sunny old man

where roses bloomed all year

everblooming everbearing

hybrids.

America was hybrid

America should cash in on Natural Selection.

He was an infidel he believed in Darwin and

Natural

Selection and the influence of the mighty dead

and a good firm shipper's fruit

suitable for canning.

He was one of the grand old men until the

churches

and the congregations

got wind that he was an infidel and believed

in Darwin.

Luther Burbank had never a thought of evil,

selecting improved hybrids for America

those sunny years in Santa Rosa.

But he brushed down a wasp's nest that time

he wouldn't give up Darwin and Natural Selection

and they stung him and he died

puzzled.

They buried him under a cedartree.

His favorite photograph

was of a little tot

standing beside a bed of hybrid

everblooming double Shasta daisies

with never a thought of evil

And Mount Shasta

-83-

in the background, used to be a volcano

but they don't have volcanos

any more.

NEWSREEL VII

SAYS THIS IS CENTURY WHERE BILLIONS AND BRAINS ARE

TO RULE

infant born in Minneapolis comes here in incubator

Cheyenne Cheyenne

Hop on my pony

says Jim Hill hits oil trust on 939 counts

BIG FOUR TRAIN BLOWN TO PIECES

woman and children blotted out admits he saw floggings

and even mutilations but no frightful outrages

TRUTH ABOUT THE CONGO FREE STATE

Find Bad Fault In Dreadnaught Santos Dumont tells of

rival of bird of prey wives prime aim of Congo natives ex-

traordinary letter ordering away U.S. marines

WHITES IN CONGO LOSE MORAL SENSE

WOMAN HELD A CAPTIVE BY AMBULANCE CHASERS

Thaw Faces Judge in Fateful Fight

LABOR MENACE IN POLITICS

last of Salome seen in New York heroism of mother un-

availing

There's room here for two, dear,

But after the ceremony

Two, dear, as one, dear, will ride back on my pony

From old Cheyenne3

-84-

THE CAMERA EYE (8)

you sat on the bed unlacing your shoes Hey

Frenchie yelled Tylor in the door you've got to fight

the Kid doan wanna fight him gotto fight him

hasn't he got to fight him fellers? Freddie pushed his

face through the crack in the door and made a long nose

Gotta fight him umpyaya and all the fellows on the top

floor were there if not you 're a girlboy and I had on

my pyjamas and they pushed in the Kid and the Kid

hit Frenchie and Frenchie hit the Kid and your mouth

tasted bloody and everybody yelled Go it Kid except

Gummer and he yelled Bust his jaw Jack and Frenchie

had the Kid down on the bed and everybody pulled him

off and they all had Frenchie against the door and he

was slamming right an' left and he couldn't see who was

hitting him and everybody started to yell the Kid licked

him and Tylor and Freddy held his arms and told the

Kid to come and hit him but the Kid wouldn't and the

Kid was crying

the bloody sweet puky taste and then the bell rang

for lights and everybody ran to their rooms and you got

into bed with your head throbbing and you were crying

when Gummer tiptoed in an' said you had him licked

Jack it was a fucking shame it was Freddy hit you that

-85-

time, but Hoppy was tiptoeing round the hall and caught

Gummer trying to get back to his room and he got his

MAC

By Thanksgiving Mac had beaten his way to Sacra-

mento, where he got a job smashing crates in a dried

fruit warehouse. By the first of the year he'd saved up

enough to buy a suit of dark clothes and take the steam-

boat down the river to San Francisco.

It was around eight in the evening when he got in.

With his suitcase in his hand, he walked up Market Street

from the dock. The streets were full of lights. Young

men and pretty girls in brightcolored dresses were walk-

ing fast through a big yanking wind that fluttered dresses

and scarfs, slapped color into cheeks, blew grit and papers

into the air. There were Chinamen, Wops, Portuguese,

Japs in the streets. People were hustling to shows and

restaurants. Music came out of the doors of bars, frying,

buttery foodsmells from restaurants, smells of winecasks

and beer. Mac wanted to go on a party but he only had

four dollars so he went and got a room at the Y and ate

some soggy pie and coffee in the deserted cafeteria down-

stairs.

When he got up in the bare bedroom like something in

a hospital he opened the window, but it only gave on an

airshaft. The room smelt of some sort of cleaning fluid

and when he lay down on the bed the blanket smelt of

formaldehyde. He felt too well. He could feel the pranc-

ing blood steam all through him. He wanted to talk to

somebody, to go to a dance or have a drink with a fellow

he knew or kid a girl somewhere. The smell of rouge and

-86-

musky facepowder in the room of those girls in Seattle

came back to him. He got up and sat on the edge of the

bed swinging his legs. Then he decided to go out, but

before he went he put his money in his suitcase and locked

it up. Lonely as a ghost he walked up and down the

streets until he was deadtired; he walked fast not looking

to the right or left, brushing past painted girls at street-

corners, touts that tried to put addresscards into his hand,

drunks that tried to pick fights with him, panhandlers

whining for a handout. Then, bitter and cold and tired,

he went back to his room and fell into bed.

Next day he went out and got a job in a small print-

shop run and owned by a baldheaded Italian with big

whiskers and a flowing black tie, named Bonello. Bonello

told him he had been a redshirt with Garibaldi and was

now an anarchist. Ferrer was his great hero; he hired

Mac because he thought he might make a convert out of

him. All that winter Mac worked at Bonello's, ate

spaghetti and drank red wine and talked revolution with

him and his friends in the evening, went to Socialist pic-

nics or libertarian meetings on Sundays. Saturday nights

he went round to whorehouses with a fellow named

Miller whom he'd met at the Y. Miller was studying to

be a dentist. He got to be friends with a girl named

Maisie Spencer who worked in the millinery department

at the Emporium. Sundays she used to try to get him

to go to church. She was a quiet girl with big blue eyes

that she turned up to him with an unbelieving smile when

he talked revolution to her. She had tiny regular pearly

teeth and dressed prettily. After a while she got so that

she did not bother him so much about church. She liked

to have him take her to hear the band play at the Presidio

or to look at the statuary in Sutro Park.

The morning of the earthquake Mac's first thought,

when he got over his own terrible scare, was for Maisie.

The house where her folks lived on Mariposa Street was

-87-

still standing when he got there, but everyone had cleared

out. It was not till the third day, three days of smoke

and crashing timbers and dynamiting he spent working in

a firefighting squad, that he found her in a provision line

at the entrance to Golden Gate Park. The Spencers were

living in a tent near the shattered greenhouses.

She didn't recognise him because his hair and eye-

brows were singed and his clothes were in tatters and he

was soot from head to foot. He'd never kissed her be-

fore, but he took her in his arms before everybody and

kissed her. When he let her go her face was all sooty

from his. Some of the people in the line laughed and

clapped, but the old woman right behind, who had her

hair done in a pompadour askew so that the rat showed

through and who wore two padded pink silk dressing

gowns one above the other said spitefully, "Now you'll

have to go and wash your face."

After that they considered themselves engaged, but

they couldn't get married, because Bonello's printshop

had been gutted with the rest of the block it stood in, and

Mac was out of a job. Maisie used to let him kiss her and

hug her in dark doorways when he took her home at

night, but further than that he gave up trying to go.

In the fall he got a job on the Bulletin. That was night

work and he hardly ever saw Maisie except Sundays, but

they began to talk about getting married after Christmas.

When he was away from her he felt somehow sore at

Maisie most of the time, but when he was with her he

melted absolutely. He tried to get her to read pamphlets

on socialism, but she laughed and looked up at him with

her big intimate blue eyes and said it was too deep for

her. She liked to go to the theater and eat in restaurants

where the linen was starched and there were waiters in

dress suits.

About that time he went one night to hear Upton Sin-

clair speak about the Chicago stockyards. Next to him was

-88-

a young man in dungarees. He had a nose like a hawk and

gray eyes and deep creases under his cheekbones and

talked in a slow drawl. His name was Fred Hoff. After

the lecture they went and had a beer together and talked.

Fred Hoff belonged to the new revolutionary organiza-

tion called The Industrial Workers of the World. He

read Mac the preamble over a second glass of beer. Fred

Hoff had just hit town as donkeyengine man on a

freighter. He was sick of the bum grub and hard life on

the sea. He still had his pay in his pocket and he was

bound he wouldn't blow it in on a bust. He'd heard that

there was a miners' strike in Goldfield and he thought

he'd go up there and see what he could do. He made Mac

feel that he was leading a pretty stodgy life helping print

lies against the working class. "Godalmighty, man, you're

just the kind o' stuff we need out there. We're goin' to

publish a paper in Goldfield, Nevada."

That night Mac went round to the local and filled out

a card, and went home to his boarding house with his

head swimming. I was just on the point of selling out to

the sons of bitches, he said to himself.

The next Sunday he and Maisie had been planning to

go up the Scenic Railway to the top of Mount Tamalpais.

Mac was terribly sleepy when his alarmclock got him out

of bed. They had to start early because he had to be on

the job again that night. As he walked to the ferrystation

where he was going to meet her at nine the clank of the

presses was still in his head, and the sour smell of ink and

paper bruised under the presses, and on top of that the

smell of the hall of the house he'd been in with a couple

of the fellows, the smell of moldy rooms and sloppails

and the small of armpits and the dressingtable of the

frizzyhaired girl he'd had on the clammy bed and the

taste of the stale beer they'd drunk and the cooing me-

chanical voice, "Goodnight, dearie, come round soon."

"God, I'm a swine," he said to himself.

-89-

For once it was a clear morning, all the colors in the

street shone like bits of glass. God, he was sick of whor-

ing round. If Maisie would only be a sport, if Maisie was

only a rebel you could talk to like you could to a friend.

And how the hell was he going to tell her he was throw-

ing up his job?

She was waiting for him at the ferry looking like a

Gibson girl with her neat sallorblue dress and picture hat.

They didn't have time to say anything as they had to run

for the ferry. Once on the ferryboat she lifted up her face

to be kissed. Her lips were cool and her gloved hand

rested so lightly on his. At Sausalito they took the trolley-

car and changed and she kept smiling at him when they

ran to get good places in the scenic car and they felt so

alone in the roaring immensity of tawny mountain and

blue sky and sea. They'd never been so happy together.

She ran ahead of him all the way to the top. At the ob-

servatory they were both breathless. They stood against a

wall out of sight of the other people and she let him kiss

her all over her face, all over her face and neck.

Scraps of mist flew past cutting patches out of their

view of the bay and the valleys and the shadowed moun-

tains. When they went round to the seaward side an icy

wind was shrilling through everything. A churning mass

of fog was welling up from the sea like a tidal wave. She

gripped his arm. "Oh, this scares me, Fainy!" Then sud-

denly he told her that he'd given up his job. She looked

up at him frightened and shivering in the cold wind and

little and helpless; tears began to run down either side of

her nose. "But I thought you loved me, Fenian . . . Do

you think it's been easy for me waitin' for you all this

time, wantin' you and lovin' you? Oh, I thought you

loved me!"

He put his arm round her. He couldn't say anything.

They started walking towards the gravity car.

-90-

"I don't want all those people to see I've been crying.

We were so happy before. Let's walk down to Muir

Woods.""It's pretty far, Maisie.""I don't care; I want

to.""Gee, you're a good sport, Maisie." They started

down the footpath and the mist blotted out everything.

After a couple of hours they stopped to rest. They left

the path and found a patch of grass in the middle of a big

thicket of cistus. The mist was all around but it was bright

overhead and they could feel the warmth of the sun

through it. "Ouch, I've got blisters," she said and made

a funny face that made him laugh. "It can't be so awful

far now," he said; "honest, Maisie." He wanted to explain

to her about the strike and the wobblies and why he was

going to Goldfield, but he couldn't. All he could do was

kiss her. Her mouth clung to his lips and her arms were

tight round his neck.

"Honest, it won't make any difference about our gettin'

married; honest, it won't . . . Maisie, I'm crazy about

you . . . Maisie, do let me You must let me . . .

Honest, you don't know how terrible it is for me, lovin'

you like this and you never lettin' me."

He got up and smoothed down her dress. She lay there

with her eyes closed and her face white; he was afraid she

had fainted. He kneeled down and kissed her gently on

the cheek. She smiled ever so little and pulled his head

down and ruffled his hair. "Little husband," she said.

After a while they got to their feet and walked through

the redwood grove, without seeing it, to the trolleystation.

Going home on the ferry they decided they'd get married

inside of the week. Mac promised not to go to Nevada.

Next morning he got up feeling depressed. He was

selling out. When he was shaving in the bathroom he

looked at himself in the mirror and said, half aloud: "You

bastard, you're selling out to the sons of bitches."

He went back to his room and wrote Maisie a letter.

-91-

DEAR MAISIE:

Honestly you mustn't think for one minute I don't

love you ever so much, but I promised to go to Goldfield

to help the gang run that paper and I've got to do it. I'll

send you my address as soon as I get there and if you

really need me on account of anything, I'll come right

back, honestly I will.

A whole lot of kisses and love

FAINY

He went down to the Bulletin office and drew his pay,

packed his bag and went down to the station to see when

he could get a train for Goldfield, Nevada.

THE CAMERA EYE (9)

all day the fertilizerfactories smelt something awful

and at night the cabin was full of mosquitoes fit to carry

you away but it was Crisfield on the Eastern Shore and if

we had a gasoline boat to carry them across the bay here we

could ship our tomatoes and corn and early peaches ship

'em clear to New York instead of being jipped by the

commissionmerchants in Baltimore we'd run a truck farm

ship early vegetables irrigate fertilize enrich the tobacco

exhausted land of the Northern Neck if we had a gasoline

boat we'd run oysters in her in winter raise terrapin for

the market

but up on the freight siding I got talking to a young

guy couldn't have been much older 'n me was asleep in

-92-

one of the boxcars asleep right there in the sun and the

smell of cornstalks and the reek of rotting menhaden

from the fertilizer factories he had curly hair and

wisps of hay in it and through his open shirt you could see

his body was burned brown to the waist I guess he wasn't

much account but he'd bummed all way from Minnesota

he was going south and when I told him about Chesa-

peake Bay he wasn't surprised but said I guess it's too fur

to swim it I'll git a job in a menhaden boat

BIG BILL

Big Bill Haywood was born in sixty nine in a

boardinghouse in Salt Lake City.

He was raised in Utah, got his schooling in Ophir

a mining camp with shooting scrapes, faro Saturday

nights, whisky spilled on pokertables piled with new

silver dollars.

When he was eleven his mother bound him out

to a farmer, he ran away because the farmer lashed

him with a whip. That was his first strike.

He lost an eye whittling a slingshot out of scrub-

oak.

He worked for storekeepers, ran a fruitstand,

ushered in the Salt Lake Theatre, was a messengerboy,

bellhop at the Continental Hotel.

When he was fifteen

he went out to the mines in Humboldt County,

Nevada,

-93-

his outfit was overalls, a jumper, a blue shirt,

mining boots, two pair of blankets, a set of chessmen,

boxinggloves and a big lunch of plum pudding his

mother fixed for him.

When he married he went to live in Fort Mc-

Dermitt built in the old days against the Indians,

abandoned now that there was no more frontier;

there his wife bore their first baby without doctor

or midwife. Bill cut the navelstring, Bill buried the

afterbirth;

the child lived. Bill earned money as he could

surveying, haying in Paradise Valley, breaking colts,

riding a wide rangy country.

One night at Thompson's Mill, he was one of five

men who met by chance and stopped the night in the

abandoned ranch. Each of them had lost an eye, they

were the only oneeyed men in the county.

They lost the homestead, things went to pieces,

his wife was sick, he had children to support. He went

to work as a miher at Silver City.

At Silver City, Idaho, he joined the W.F.M.,

there he held his first union office; he was delegate of

the Silver City miners to the convention of the West-

ern Federation of Miners held in. Salt Lake City in '98.

From then on he was an organizer, a speaker, an

exhorter, the wants of all the miners were his wants;

he fought Coeur D'Alenes, Telluride, Cripple Creek,

joined the Socialist Party, wrote and spoke

through Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Montana, Colorado to

miners striking for an eight hour day, better living, a

share of the wealth they hacked out of the hills.

In Chicago in January 1905 a conference was

called that met at the same hall in Lake Street where

-94-

the Chicago anarchists had addressed meetings twenty

years before.

William D. Haywood was permanent chairman.

It was this conference that wrote the manifesto that

brought into being the I.W.W.

When he got back to Denver he was kidnapped

to Idaho and tried with Moyer and Pettibone for the

murder of the sheepherder Steuenberg, exgovernor of

Idaho, blown up by a bomb in his own home.

When they were acquitted at Boise ( Darrow was

their lawyer) Big Bill Haywood was known as a

workingclass leader from coast to coast.

Now the wants of all the workers were his wants,

he was the spokesman of the West, of the cowboys and

the lumberjacks and the harvesthands and the miners.

(The steamdrill had thrown thousands of miners

out of work; the steamdrill had thrown a scare into all

the miners of the West.)

The W.F.M. was going conservative. Haywood

worked with the I.W.W. building a new society in the

shell of the old, campaigned for Debs for President in

1908 on the Red Special. He was in on all the big

strikes in the East where revolutionary spirit was grow-

ing, Lawrence, Paterson, the strike of the Minnesota

ironworkers.

They went over with the A.E.F. to save the Mor-

gan loans, to save Wilsonian Democracy, they stood at

Napoleon's tomb and dreamed empire, they had cham-

pagne cocktails at the Ritz bar and slept with Russian

countesses in Montmartre and dreamed empire, all

over the country at American legion posts and business

men's luncheons it was worth money to make the eagle

scream;

they lynched the pacifists and the proGermans

and the wobblies and the reds and the bolsheviks.

-95-

Bill Haywood stood trial with the hundred and

one at Chicago where Judge Landis the baseball czar

with the lack of formality of a traffic court

handed out his twenty year sentences and thirty-

thousand dollar fines.

After two years in Leavenworth they let them

bail out Big Bill (he was fifty years old a heavy broken

man), the war was over but they'd learned empire in

the Hall of the Mirrors at Versailles;

the courts refused a new trial.

It was up to Haywood to jump his bail or to go

back to prison for twenty years.

He was sick with diabetes, he had had a rough

life, prison had broken down his health. Russia was

a workers' republic; he went to Russia and was in

Moscow a couple of years but he wasn't happy there,

that world was too strange for him. He died there

and they burned his big broken hulk of a body and

buried the ashes under the Kremlin wall.

THE CAMERA EYE (10)

the old major who used to take me to the Capitol

when the Senate and the House of Representatives were

in session had been in the commissary of the Confederate

Army and had very beautiful manners so the attendants

bowed to the old major except for the pages who were

little boys not much older than your brother was a page

in the Senate once and occasionally a Representative or a

Senator would look at him with slit eyes may be some-

body and bow or shake hearty or raise a hand

-96-

the old major dressed very well in a morningcoat

and had muttonchop whiskers and we would walk very

slowly through the flat sunlight in the Botanical Gardens

and look at the little labels on the trees and shrubs and

see the fat robins and the starlings hop across the grass

and walk up the steps and through the flat air of the

rotunda with the dead statues of different sizes and the

Senate Chamber flat red and the committee room and the

House flat green and the committee rooms and the Su-

preme Court I've forgotten what color the Supreme Court

was and the committee rooms

and whispering behind the door of the visitors' gal-

lery and the dead air and a voice rattling under the glass

skylights and desks slammed and the long corridors full

of the dead air and our legs would get very tired and I

thought of the starlings on the grass and the long streets

full of dead air and my legs were tired and I had a pain

between the eyes and the old men bowing with quick slit

eyes

may be somebody and big slit unkind mouths and

the dusty black felt and the smell of coatclosets and dead

air and I wonder what the old major thought about and

what I thought about maybe about that big picture at the

Corcoran Art Gallery full of columns and steps and con-

spirators and Caesar in purple fallen flat called Caesar

dead

-97-

MAC

Mac had hardly gotten off the train at Goldfield when

a lanky man in skhaki shirt and breeches, wearing canvas

army leggins, went up to him. "If you don't mind, what's

your business in this town, brother?""I'm travelin' in

books.""What kinda books?""Schoolbooks and the like,

for Truthseeker, Inc. of Chicago." Mac rattled it off very

fast, and the man seemed impressed. "I guess you're all

right," he said. "Going up to the Eagle?" Mac nodded.

"Plug'll take ye up, the feller with the team . . . You

see we're looking out for these goddam agitators, the I

Won't Work outfit."

Outside the Golden Eagle Hotel there were two sol-

diers on guard, toughlooking sawedoff men with their hats

over their eyes. When Mac went in everybody at the bar

turned and looked at him. He said "Good evening,

gents," as snappily as possible and went up to the pro-

prietor to ask for a room. All the while he was wondering

who the hell he dared ask where the office of the Nevada

Workman was. "I guess I can fix you up with a bed.

Travelin' man?""Yes," said Mac. "In books." Down at

the end a big man with walrus whiskers was standing at

the bar talking fast in a drunken whining voice, "If they'd

only give me my head I'd run the bastards outa town soon

enough. Too goddam many lawyers mixed up in this. Run

the sonsobitches out. If they resists shoot 'em, that's what

I says to the Governor, but they're all these sonsobitches

a lawyers fussin' everythin' up all the time with warrants

and habeas corpus and longwinded rigmarole. My ass to

habeas corpus.""All right, Joe, you tell 'em," said the

proprietor soothingly. Mac bought a cigar and sauntered

out. As the door closed behind him the big man was yell-

ing out again, "I said, My ass to habeas corpus."

It was nearly dark. An icy wind blew through the ram-

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shackle clapboard streets. His feet stumbling in the mud

of the deep ruts, Mac walked round several blocks look-

ing up at dark windows. He walked all over the town

but no sign of a newspaper office. When he found himself

passing the same Chink hash joint for the third time, he

slackened his steps and stood irresolutely on the curb. At

the end of the street the great jagged shank of a hill hung

over the town. Across the street a young man, his head

and ears huddled into the collar of a mackinaw, was loaf-

ing against the dark window of a hardware store. Mac

decided he was a squarelooking stiff and went over to

speak to him.

"Say, bo, where's the office of the Nevada Workman?"

"What the hell d'you wanter know for?" Mac and the

other man looked at each other. "I want to see Fred

Hoff . . . I came on from San Fran to help in the

printin'.""Got a red card?" Mac pulled out his I.W.W.

membership card. "I've got my union card, too, if you

want to see that."

"Hell, no . . . I guess you're all right, but, as the

feller said, suppose I'd been a dick, you'd be in the bull-

pen now, bo."

"I told 'em I was a friggin' bookagent to get into the

damn town. Spent my last quarter on a cigar to keep up

the burjwa look."

The other man laughed. "All right, fellowworker. I'll

take you round."

"What they got here, martial law?" asked Mac as he

followed the man down an alley between two overgrown

shanties.

"Every sonofabitchin' yellerleg in the State of Nevada

right here in town . . . Lucky if you don't get run outa

town with a bayonet in yer crotch, as the feller said."

At the end of the alley was a small house like a shoebox

with brightly lit windows. Young fellows in miners'

clothes or overalls filled up the end of the alley and sat

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three deep on the rickety steps. "What's this, a pool-

room?" asked Mac. "This is the Nevada Workman . . .

Say, my name's Ben Evans; I'll introjuce you to the

gang . . . Say, yous guys, this is fellowworker Mc-

Creary . . . he's come on from Frisco to set up type."

"Put it there, Mac," said a sixfooter who looked like a

Swede lumberman, and gave Mac's hand a wrench that

made the bones crack.

Fred Hoff had on a green eyeshade and sat behind a

desk piled with galleys. He got up and shook hands. "Oh,

boy, you're just in time. There's hell to pay. They got the

printer in the bullpen and we've got to get this sheet out."

Mac took off his coat and went back to look over the

press. He was leaning over the typesetter's "stone" when

Fred Hoff came back and beckoned him into a corner.

"Say, Mac, I want to explain the layout here . . . It's

kind of a funny situation . . . The W.F.M.'s goin' yel-

low on us . . . It's a hell of a scrap. The Saint was here

the other day and that bastard Mullany shot him through

both arms and he's in hospital now . . . They're sore as

a boil because we're instillin' ideas of revolutionary soli-

darity, see? We got the restaurant workers out and we got

some of the minin' stiffs. Now the A.F. of L.'s gettin' wise

and they've got a bonehead scab organizer in hobnobbin'

with the mineowners at the Montezuma Club."

"Hey, Fred, let me take this on gradually," said Mac.

"Then there was a little shootin' the other day out in

front of a restaurant down the line an' the stiff that owned

the joint got plugged an' now they've got a couple of the

boys in jail for that.""The hell you say.""And Big Bill

Haywood's comin' to speak next week . . . That's about

the way the situation is, Mac. I've got to tear off an

article . . . You're boss printer an' we'll pay you seven-

teen fifty like we all get. Ever written any?"

"No."

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"It's a time like this a feller regrets he didn't work

harder in school. Gosh, I wish I could write decent."

"I'll take a swing at an article if I get a chance."

"Big Bill'll write us some stuff. He writes swell."

They set up a cot for Mac back of the press. It was a

week before he could get time to go round to the Eagle

to get his suitcase. Over the office and the presses was a

long attic, with a stove in it, where most of the boys slept.

Those that had blankets rolled up in their blankets, those

that hadn't put their jackets over their heads, those that

didn't have jackets slept as best they could. At the end of

the room was a long sheet of paper where someone had

printed out the Preamble in shaded block letters. On the

plaster wall of the office someone had drawn a cartoon of

a workingstiff labelled "I.W.W." giving a fat man in a

stovepipe hat labelled "mineowner" a kick in the seat of

the pants. Above it they had started to letter "solidarity"

but had only gotten as far as "SOLIDA."

One November night Big Bill Haywood spoke at the

miners' union. Mac and Fred Hoff went to report the

speech for the paper. The town looked lonely as an old

trashdump in the huge valley full of shrill wind and driv-

ing snow. The hall was hot and steamy with the steam of

big bodies and plug tobacco and thick mountaineer clothes

that gave off the shanty smell of oil lamps and charred

firewood and greasy fryingpans and raw whisky. At the

beginning of the meeting men moved round uneasily,

shuffling their feet and clearing the phlegm out of their

throats. Mac was uncomfortable himself. In his pocket

was a letter from Maisie. He knew it by heart:

DEAREST FAINY:

Everything has happened just as I was afraid of. You

know what I mean, dearest little husband. It's two months

already and I'm so frightened and there's nobody I can

tell. Darling, you must come right back. I'll die if you

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don't. Honestly I'll die and I'm so lonely for you any-

ways and so afraid somebody'll notice. As it is we'll have

to go away somewheres when we're married and not come

back until plenty of time has elapsed. If I thought I could

get work there I'd come to you to Goldfield. I think it

would be nice if we went to San Diego. I have friends

there and they say it's lovely and there we could tell peo-

ple we'd been married a long time. Please come sweetest

little husband. I'm so lonely for you and it's so terrible to

stand this all alone. The crosses are kisses. Your loving

wife,

MAISIE

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Big Bill talked about solidarity and sticking together in

the face of the masterclass and Mac kept wondering what

Big Bill would do if he'd got a girl in trouble like that.

Big Bill was saying the day had come to start building a

new society in the shell of the old and for the workers to

get ready to assume control of the industries they'd created

out of their sweat and blood. When he said, "We stand

for the one big union," there was a burst of cheering and

clapping from all the wobblies in the hall. Fred Hoff

nudged Mac as he clapped. "Let's raise the roof, Mac."

The exploiting classes would be helpless against the soli-

darity of the whole working class. The militia and the

yellowlegs were workingstiffs too. Once they realized the

historic mission of solidarity the masterclass couldn't use

them to shoot down their brothers anymore. The workers

must realize that every small fight, for higher wages, for

freespeech, for decent living conditions, was only signifi-

cant as part of the big fight for the revolution and the

coöperative commonwealth. Mac forgot about Maisie. By

the time Big Bill had finished speaking his mind had run

ahead of the speech so that he'd forgotten just what he

said, but Mac was in a glow all over and was cheering to

beat hell. He and Fred Hoff were cheering and the stocky

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Bohemian miner that smelt so bad next them was clapping

and the oneeyed Pole on the other side was clapping and

the bunch of Wops were clapping and the little Jap who

was waiter at the Montezuma Club was clapping and the

sixfoot ranchman who'd come in in hopes of seeing a fight

was clapping. "Ain't the sonofabitch some orator," he was

saying again and again. "I tellyer, Utah's the state for

mansized men. I'm from Ogden myself."

After the meeting Big Bill was round at the office and

he joked everybody and sat down and wrote an article

right there for the paper. He pulled out a flask and every-

body had a drink, except Fred Hoff who didn't like Big

Bill's drinking, or any drinking, and they all went to bed

with the next issue on the press, feeling tired and flushed

and fine.

Next morning when Mac woke up he suddenly thought

of Maisie and reread her letter, and tears came to his eyes

sitting on the edge of the cot before anybody was up yet.

He stuck his head in a pail of icy water from the pump,

that was frozen so hard he had to pour a kettleful of hot

water off the stove into it to thaw it, but he couldn't get

the worried stiff feeling out of his forehead. When he

went over with Fred Hoff to the Chink joint for break-

fast he tried to tell him he was going back to San Fran-

cisco to get married.

" Mac, you can't do it; we need you here.""But I'll

come back, honest I will, Fred.""A man's first duty's to

the workin' class," said Fred Hoff.

"As soon as the kid's born an' she can go back to work

I'll come back. But you know how it is, Fred. I can't pay

the hospital expenses on seventeenfifty a week."

"You oughta been more careful."

"But hell, Fred, I'm made of flesh and blood like

everybody else. For crissake, what do you want us to be,

tin saints?"

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"A wobbly oughtn't to have any wife or children, not

till after the revolution."

"I'm not giving up the fight, Fred . . . I'm not sellin'

out; I swear to God I'm not."

Fred Hoff had gotten very pale. Sucking his lips in be-

tween his teeth he got up from the table and left the res-

taurant. Mac sat there a long time feeling gloomy as hell.

Then he went back to the office of the Workman. Fred

Hoff was at the desk writing hard. "Say, Fred," said Mac,

"I'll stay another month. I'll write Maisie right now."

"I knew you'd stay, Mac; you're no quitter.""But Jesus

God, man, you expect too much of a feller.""Too much

is too damn little," said Fred Hoff. Mac started running

the paper through the press.

For the next few weeks, when Maisie's letters came he

put them in his pocket without reading them. He wrote

her as reassuringly as he could, that he'd come as soon as

the boys could get someone to take his place.

Then Christmas night he read all Maisie's letters. They

were all the same; they made him cry. He didn't want to

get married, but it was hell living up here in Nevada all

winter without a girl, and he was sick of whoring around.

He didn't want the boys to see him looking so glum, so

he went down to have a drink at the saloon the restaurant

workers went to. A great roaring steam of drunken sing-

ing came out of the saloon. Going in the door he met Ben

Evans. "Hello, Ben, where are you goin'?""I'm goin' to

have a drink as the feller said.""Well, so am I.""What's

the matter?""I'm blue as hell." Ben Evans laughed.

"Jesus, so am I . . . and it's Christmas, ain't it?"

They had three drinks each but the bar was crowded

and they didn't feel like celebrating; so they took a pint

flask, which was all they could afford, up to Ben Evans'

room. Ben Evans was a dark thickset young man with

very black eyes and hair. He hailed from Louisville, Ken-

tucky. He'd had oonsiderable schooling and was an auto-

-104-

mobile mechanic. The room was icy cold. They sat on the

bed, each of them wrapped in one of his blankets.

"Well, ain't this a way to spend Christmas?" said Mac.

"Holy Jesus, it's a good thing Fred Hoff didn't ketch us,"

Mac snickered. "Fred's a hell of a good guy, honest as the

day an' all that, but he won't let a feller live.""I guess

if the rest of us were more like Fred we'd get somewheres

sooner.""We would at that . . . Say, Mac, I'm blue as

hell about all this business, this shootin' an' these fellers

from the W.F.M. goin' up to the Montezuma Club and

playin' round with that damn scab delegate from Wash-

ington.""Well, none of the wobbly crowd's done any-

thing like that.""No, but there's not enough of us . . ."

"What you need's a drink, Ben.""It's just like this god-

dam pint, as the feller said, if we had enough of 'em we'd

get fried, but we haven't. If we had enough boys like

Fred Hoff we'd have a revolution, but we haven't."

They each had a drink from the pint and then Mac

said: "Say, Ben, did you ever get a girl in trouble, a girl

you liked a hellova lot?"

"Sure, hundreds of 'em."

"Didn't it worry you?"

"For crissake, Mac, if a girl wasn't a goddam whore

she wouldn't let you, would she?"

"Jeez, I don't see it like that, Ben . . . But hell, I

don't know what to do about it . . . She's a good kid,

anyways, gee . . ."

"I don't trust none of 'em . . . I know a guy onct

married a girl like that, carried on and bawled an' made

out he'd knocked her up. He married her all right an' she

turned out to be a goddam whore and he got the siph

off'n her . . . You take it from me, boy. . . . Love 'em

and leave 'em, that's the only way for stiffs like us."

They finished up the pint. Mac went back to the Work-

man office and went to sleep with the whisky burning in

his stomach. He dreamed he was walking across a field

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with a girl on a warm day. The whisky was hotsweet in

his mouth, buzzed like bees in his ears. He wasn't sure if

the girl was Maisie or just a goddam whore, but he felt

very warm and tender, and she was saying in a little hot-

sweet voice, "Love me up, kid," and he could see her body

through her thingauze dress as he leaned over her and

she kept crooning, "Love me up, kid," in a hotsweet buz-

zing.

"Hey, Mac, ain't you ever goin' to get waked up?"

Fred Hoff, scrubbing his face and neck with a towel, was

standing over him. "I want to get this place cleaned up

before the gang gets here." Mac sat up on the cot. "Yare,

what's the matter?" He didn't have a hangover but he

felt depressed, he could tell that at once.

"Say, you certainly were stinkin' last night."

"The hell I was, Fred . . . I had a coupla drinks but,

Jesus . . ."

"I heard you staggerin' round here goin' to bed like

any goddam scissorbill."

"Look here, Fred, you're not anybody's nursemaid. I

can take care of myself."

"You guys need nursemaids . . . You can't even wait

till we won the strike before you start your boozin' and

whorin' around." Mac was sitting on the edge of the bed

lacing his boots. "What in God's name do you think we're

all hangin' round here for . . . our health?""I don't

know what the hell most of you are hangin' round for,"

said Fred Hoff and went out slamming the door.

A couple of days later it turned out that there was

another fellow around who could run a linotype and Mac

left town. He sold his suitcase and his good clothes for

five dollars and hopped a train of flatcars loaded with ore

that took him down to Ludlow. In Ludlow he washed

the alkali dust out of his mouth, got a meal and got

cleaned up a little. He was in a terrible hurry to get to

Frisco, all the time he kept thinking that Maisie might

kill herself. He was crazy to see her, to sit beside her, to

-106-

have her pat his hand gently while they were sitting side

by side talking the way she used to do. After those bleak

dusty months up in Goldfield he needed a woman. The

fare to Frisco was $11.15 and he only had four dollars and

some pennies left. He tried risking a dollar in a crapgame

in the back of a saloon, but he lost it right away and got

cold feet and left.

NEWSREEL VIII

Prof Ferrer, former director of the Modern School in

Barcelona who has been on trial there on the charge of having

been the principal instigator of the recent revolutionary move-

ment has been sentenced to death and will be shot Wednesday

unless

Cook still pins faith on esquimaux says interior of the

Island of Luzon most beautiful place on earth

align="center"QUIZZES WARM UP POLE TALK

Oh bury me not on the lone prairie

Where the wild kiyotes will howl over me

Where the rattlesnakes hiss and the wind blowsd free

GYPSY'S MARCHERS STORM SIN'S FORT

Nation's Big Men Await River Trip Englewood Club-

women Move To Uplift Drama Evangelist's Host Thousands

Strong Pierces Heart of Crowded Hushed Levee Has $3,018

and Is Arrested

GIVES MILLION IN HOOKWORM WAR

Gypsy Smith's Spectral Parade Through South Side Red

Light Region

with a bravery that brought tears to the eyes of the squad

of twelve men who were detailed to shoot him Francisco

Ferrer marched this morning to the trench that had been

prepared to receive his body after the fatal volley

PLUNGE BY AUTO; DEATH IN RIVER

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THE CAMERA EYE (11)

the Pennypackers went to the Presbyterian church

and the Pennypacker girls sang chilly shrill soprano in

the choir and everybody was greeted when they went into

church and outside the summer leaves on the trees wig-

wagged greenblueyellow through the windows and we all

filed into the pew and I'd asked Mr. Pennypacker he was

a deacon in the church who were the Molly Maguires?

a squirrel was scolding in the whiteoak but the Penny-

packer girls all the young ladies in their best hats singing

the anthem who were the Molly Maguires? thoughts,

bulletholes in an old barn abandoned mine pits black

skeleton tipples weedgrown dumps who were the Molly

Maguires? but it was too late you couldn't talk in church

and all the young ladies best hats and pretty pink green

blue yellow dresses and the squirrel scolding who were

the Molly Maguires?

and before I knew it it was communion and I wanted

to say I hadn't been baptized but all eyes looked shut up

when I started to whisper to Con

communion was grape juice in little glasses and

little squares of stale bread and you had to gulp the bread

and put your handkerchief over your mouth and look

holy and the little glasses made a funny sucking noise and

all the quiet church in the middle of the sunny brightblue

-108-

sunday in the middle of whiteoaks wigwagging and the

smell of fries from the white house and the blue quiet

sunday smoke of chimneys from stoves where fried

chicken sizzled and fritters and brown gravy set back to

keep hot

in the middle of squirrels and minetipples in the

middle of the blue Pennsylvania summer sunday the

little glasses sucking to get the last drop of communion

and I felt itchy in the back of my neck would I be

struck by lightning eating the bread drinking the com-

munion me not believing or baptized or Presbyterian and

who were the Molly Maguires? masked men riding at

night shooting bullets into barns at night what were they

after in the oldtime night?

church was over and everybody was filing out and

being greeted as they went out and everybody had a good

appetite after communion but I couldn't eat much itchy

in the back of the neck scary with masked men riding

Molly Maguires

NEWSREEL IX

FORFEIT STARS BY DRINKING

"Oh bury me not

on the lone prairie"

They heeded not his dying prayer

They buried him there on the lone prairie

-109-

COLLEGE HEAD DENIES KISSES

then our courage returned for we knew that rescue was

near at hand, we shouted and yelled again but did not know

whether we were heard. Then came the unsealing and I lost

consciousness. All the days and nights fell back and I dropped

into a sleep

VOTE AT MIDNIGHT ON ALTMAN'S FATE

This is the fourth day we have been down here. That is

what I think but our watches stopped. I have been waiting

in the dark because we have been eating the wax from our

safety lamps. I have also eaten a plug of tobacco, some bark

and some of my shoe. I could only chew it. I hope you

can read this. I am not afraid to die. O holy Virgin have

mercy on me. I think my time has come. You know what

my property is. We worked for it together and it is all yours.

This is my will and you must keep it. You have been a good

Wife. May the holy virgin guard you. I hope this reaches

you sometime and you can read it. It has been very quiet

down here and I wonder what has become of our comrades.

Goodby until heaven shall bring us together.

Girls Annoyer Lashed in Public

COVETS OSTRICHES

In a little box just six by three

And his bones now rot on the lone prairie.

MAC

Mac went down to the watertank beyond the yards to

wait for a chance to hop a freight. The old man's hat and

his ruptured shoes were ashen gray with dust; he was sit-

ting all hunched up with his head between his knees and

didn't make a move until Mac was right up to him. Mac

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sat down beside him. A rank smell of feverish sweat came

from the old man. "What's the trouble, daddy?"

"I'm through, that's all . . . I been a lunger all my

life an' I guess it's got me now." His mouth twisted in

a spasm of pain. He let his head droop between his knees.

After a minute he raised his head again, making little

feeble gasps with his mouth like a dying fish. When he

got his breath he said, "It's a razor a' slicin' off my lungs

every time. Stand by, will you, kid?""Sure I will," said

Mac.

"Listen, kid, I wanna go West to where there's trees

an' stuff . . . You got to help me into one o' them cars.

I'm too weak for the rods . . . Don't let me lay down

. . . I'll start bleedin' if I lay down, see." He choked

again.

"I got a coupla bucks. I'll square it with the brakeman

maybe."

"You don't talk like no vag."

"I'm a printer. I wanta make San Francisco soon as I

can."

"A workin' man; I'll be a son of a bitch. Listen here,

kid . . . I ain't worked in seventeen years."

The train came in and the engine stood hissing by the

watertank.

Mac helped the old man to his feet and got him

propped in the corner of a flatcar that was loaded with

machine parts covered with a tarpaulin. He saw the fire-

man and the engineer looking at them out of the cab, but

they didn't say anything.

When the train started the wind was cold. Mac took

off his coat and put it behind the old man's head to keep

it from jiggling with the rattling of the car. The old man

sat with his eyes closed and his head thrown back. Mac

didn't know whether he was dead or not. It got to be

night. Mac was terribly cold and huddled shivering in a

fold of tarpaulin in the other end of the car.

-111-

In the gray of dawn Mac woke up from a doze with

his teeth chattering. The train had stopped on a siding.

His legs were so numb it was some time before he could

stand on them. He went to look at the old man, but he

couldn't tell whether he was dead or not. It got a little

lighter and the east began to glow like the edge of a piece

of iron in a forge. Mac jumped to the ground and walked

back along the train to the caboose.

The brakeman was drowsing beside his lantern. Mac

told him that an old tramp was dying in one of the flat-

cars. The brakeman had a small flask of whisky in his

good coat that hung on a nail in the caboose. They walked

together up the track again. When they got to the flatcar

it was almost day. The old man had flopped over on his

side. His face looked white and grave like the face of a

statue of a Civil War general. Mac opened his coat and

the filthy torn shirts and underclothes and put his hand on

the old man's chest. It was cold and lifeless as a board.

When he took his hand away there was sticky blood on it.

"Hemorrhage," said the brakeman, making a perfunc-

tory clucking noise in his mouth.

The brakeman said they'd have to get the body off the

train. They laid him down flat in the ditch beside the bal-

last with his hat over his face. Mac asked the brakeman

if he had a spade so that they could bury him, so that the

buzzards wouldn't get him, but he said no, the gandy-

walkers would find him and bury him. He took Mac back

to the caboose and gave him a drink and asked him all

about how the old man had died.

Mac beat his way to San Francisco.

Maisie was cold and bitter at first, but after they'd

talked a little while she said he looked thin and ragged as

a bum and burst into tears and kissed him. They went to

get her savings out of the bank and bought Mac a suit and

went down to City Hall and got married without saying

anything to her folks. They were both very happy going

-112-

down on the train to San Diego, and they got a furnished

room there with kitchen privileges and told the landlady

they'd been married a year. They wired Maisie's folks

that they were down there on their honeymoon and would

be back soon.

Mac got work there at a job printer's and they started

payments on a bungalow at Pacific Beach. The work wasn't

bad and he was pretty happy in his quiet life with Maisie.

After all, he'd had enough bumming for a while. When

Maisie went to the hospital to have the baby, Mac had to

beg a two months' advance of pay from Ed Balderston,

his boss. Even at that they had to take out a second mort-

gage on the bungalow to pay the doctor's bill. The baby

was a girl and had blue eyes and they named her Rose.

Life in San Diego was sunny and quiet. Mac went to

work mornings on the steamcar and came back evenings

on the steamcar and Sundays he puttered round the house

or sometimes sat on one of the beaches with Maisie and

the kid. It was understood between them now that he had

to do everything that Maise wanted because he'd given

her such a tough time before they were married. The next

year they had another kid and Maisie was sick and in hos-

pital a long time after, so that now all that he could do

with his pay each week was cover the interest on his debts,

and he was always having to kid the grocerystore along

and the milkman and the bakery to keep their charge-

accounts going from week to week. Maisie read a lot of

magazines and always wanted new things for the house, a

pianola, or a new icebox, or a fireless cooker. Her brothers

were making good money in the real estate business in Los

Angeles and her folks were coming up in the world.

Whenever she got a letter from them she'd worry Mac

about striking his boss for more pay or moving to a better

job.

When there was anybody of the wobbly crowd in town

down on his uppers or when they were raising money for

-113-

strike funds or anything like that he'd help them out with

a couple of dollars, but he never could do much for fear

Maisie would find out about it. Whenever she found The

Appeal to Reason or any other radical paper round the

house she'd burn it up, and then they'd quarrel and be

sulky and make each other's lives miserable for a few

days, until Mac decided what was the use, and never spoke

to her about it. But it kept them apart almost as if she

thought he was going out with some other woman.

One Saturday afternoon Mac and Maisie had managed

to get a neighbor to take care of the kids and were going

into a vaudeville theater when they noticed a crowd at

the corner in front of Marshall's drugstore. Mac elbowed

his way through. A thin young man in blue denim was

standing close to the corner lamppost where the firealarm

was, reading the Declaration of Independence: When in

the course of human events . . . A cop came up and told

him to move on . . . inalienable right life, liberty

and the pursuit of happiness.

Now there were two cops. One of them had the young

man by the shoulders and was trying to pull him loose

from the lamppost.

"Come on, Fainy, we'll be late for the show," Maisie

kept saying.

"Hey, get a file; the bastard's locked himself to the

post," he heard one cop say to the other. By that time

Maisie had managed to hustle him to the theater box-

office. After all, he'd promised to take her to the show

and she hadn't been out all winter. The last thing he saw

the cop had hauled off and hit the young guy in the

corner of the jaw.

Mac sat there in the dark stuffy theater all afternoon.

He didn't see the acts or the pictures between the acts.

He didn't speak to Maisie. He sat there feeling sick in

the pit of his stomach. The boys must be staging a free-

speech fight right here in town. Now and then he glanced

-114-

at Maisie's face in the dim glow from the stage. It had

puffed out a little in wellsatisfied curves like a cat sitting

by a warm stove, but she was still a good looker. She'd

already forgotten everything and was completely happy

looking at the show, her lips parted, her eyes bright, like

a little girl at a party. "I guess I've sold out to the

sonsobitches allright, allright," he kept saying to him-

self.

The last number on the programme was Eva Tanguay.

The nasal voice singing I'm Eva Tanguay, I don't care

brought Mac out of his sullen trance. Everything sud-

denly looked bright and clear to him, the proscenium with

its heavy gold fluting, the people's faces in the boxes, the

heads in front of him, the tawdry powdery mingling of

amber and blue lights on the stage, the scrawny woman

flinging herself around inside the rainbow hoop of the

spotlight.

The papers say that I'm insane

But . . . I . . . don't . . . care.

Mac got up. "Maisie, I'll meet you at the house. You

see the rest of the show. I feel kind of bum." Before she

could answer, he'd slipped out past the other people in

the row, down the aisle and out. On the street there was

nothing but the ordinary Saturday afternoon crowd. Mac

walked round and round the downtown district. He didn't

even know where I.W.W. headquarters was. He had to

talk to somebody. As he passed the Hotel Brewster he

caught a whiff of beer. What he needed was a drink. This

way he was going nuts.

At the next corner he went into a saloon and drank four

rye whiskies straight. The bar was lined with men drink-

ing, treating each other, talking loud about baseball, prize-

fights,

Eva Tanguay

and her Salome dance.

Beside Mac was a big redfaced man with a wide-

brimmed felt hat on the back of his head. When Mac

-115-

reached for his fifth drink this man put his hand on his

arm and said, "Pard, have that on me if you don't mind

. . . I'm celebratin' today.""Thanks; here's lookin' at

you," said Mac. "Pard, if you don't mind my sayin' so,

you're drinkin' like you wanted to drink the whole barrel

up at once and not leave any for the rest of us . . . Have

a chaser.""All right, bo," said Mac. "Make it a beer

chaser."

"My name's McCreary," said the big man. "I just sold

my fruit crop. I'm from up San Jacinto way."

"So's my name McCreary, too," said Mac.

They shook hands heartily.

"By the living jumbo, that's a coincidence . . . We

must be kin or pretty near it . . . Where you from,

pard?"

"I'm from Chicago, but my folks was Irish."

"Mine was from the East, Delaware . . . but it's the

good old Scotch-Irish stock."

They had more drinks on that. Then they went to

another saloon where they sat in a corner at a table and

talked. The big man talked about his ranch and his apricot

crop and how his wife was bedridden since his last child

had come. "I'm awful fond of the old gal, but what can

a feller do? Can't get gelded just to be true to your

wife.""I like my wife swell," said Mac, "and I've got

swell kids. Rose is four and she's beginning to read already

and Ed's about learnin' to walk. . . . But hell, before I

was married I used to think I might amount to somethin'

in the world . . . I don't mean I thought I was anythin'

in particular . . . You know how it is.""Sure, pard, I

used to feel that way when I was a young feller."

" Maisie's a fine girl, too, and I like her better all the

time," said Mac, feeling a warm tearing wave of affection

go over him, like sometimes a Saturday evening when

he'd helped her bathe the kids and put them to bed and

the room was still steamy from their baths and his eyes

-116-

suddenly met Maisie's eyes and there was nowhere they

had to go and they were just both of them there together.

The man from up San Jacinto way began to sing:

O my wife has gone to the country,

Hooray, hooray.

I love my wife, but oh you kid,

My wife's gone away.

"But God damn it to hell," said Mac, "a man's got to

work for more than himself and his kids to feel right."

"I agree with you absholootely, pard; every man for

himself, and the devil take the hindmost.""Oh, hell,"

said Mac, "I wish I was on the bum again or up at Gold-

field with the bunch."

They drank and drank and ate free lunch and drank

some more, all the time rye with beer chasers, and the

man from up San Jacinto way had a telephone number

and called up some girls and they bought a bottle of

whisky and went out to their apartment, and the rancher

from up San Jacinto way sat with a girl on each knee sing-

ing My wife has gone to the country. Mac just sat belch-

ing in a corner with his head dangling over his chest; then

suddenly he felt bitterly angry and got to his feet upset-

ting a table with a glass vase on it.

" McCreary," he said, "this is no place for a class-

conscious rebel . . . I'm a wobbly, damn you . . . I'm

goin' out and get in this free-speech fight."

The other McCreary went on singing and paid no atten-

tion. Mac went out and slammed the door. One of the

girls followed him out jabbering about the broken vase,

but he pushed her in the face and went out into the quiet

street. It was moonlight. He'd lost the last steamcar and

would have to walk home.

When he got to the house he found Maisie sitting on

the porch in her kimono. She was crying. "And I had such

a nice supper for you," she kept saying, and her eyes

-117-

looked into him cold and bitter the way they'd been when

he'd gotten back from Goldfield before they were mar-

ried.

The next day he had a hammering headache and his

stomach was upset. He figured up he'd spent fifteen dol-

lars that he couldn't afford to waste. Maisie wouldn't

speak to him. He stayed on in bed, rolling round, feeling

miserable, wishing he could go to sleep and stay asleep

forever. That Sunday evening Maisie's brother Bill came

to supper. As soon as he got into the house Maisie started

talking to Mac as if nothing had happened. It made him

sore to feel that this was just in order to keep Bill from

knowing they had quarrelled.

Bill was a powerfullybuilt towhaired man with a red

neck, just beginning to go to fat. He sat at the table, eat-

ing the potroast and cornbread Maisie had made, talking

big about the real estate boom up in Los Angeles. He'd

been a locomotive engineer and had been hurt in a wreck

and had had the lucky breaks with a couple of options on

lots he'd bought with his compensation money. He tried

to argue Mac into giving up his job in San Diego and

coming in with him. "I'll get you in on the ground floor,

just for Maisie's sake," he said over and over again. "And

in ten years you'll be a rich man, like I'm goin' to be in

less time than that . . . Now's the time, Maisie, for you

folks to make a break, while you're young, or it'll be too

late and Mac'll just be a workingman all his life."

Maisie's eyes shone. She brought out a chocolate layer

cake and a bottle of sweet wine. Her cheeks flushed and

she kept laughing showing all her little pearly teeth. She

hadn't looked so pretty since she'd had her first baby.

Bill's talk about money made her drunk.

"Suppose a feller didn't want to get rich . . . you

know what Gene Debs said, 'I want to rise with the

ranks, not from the ranks,' " said Mac.

Maisie and Bill laughed. "When a guy talks like that

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he's ripe for the nuthouse, take it from me," said Bill.

Mac flushed and said nothing.

Bill pushed back his chair and cleared his throat in a

serious tone: "Look here, Mac . . . I'm goin' to be

around this town for a few days lookin' over the situa-

tion, but looks to me like things was pretty dead. Now

what I propose is this . . . You know what I think of

Maisie . . . I think she's about the sweetest little girl in

the world. I wish my wife had half what Maisie's got . . .

Well, anyway, here's my proposition: Out on Ocean View

Avenue I've got several magnificent missionstyle bunga-

lows I haven't disposed of yet, twentyfivefoot frontage on

a refined residential street by a hundredfoot depth. Why,

I've gotten as high as five grand in cold cash for 'em. In

a year of two none of us fellers'll be able to stick our

noses in there. It'll be millionaires' row . . . Now if

you're willing to have the house in Maisie's name I'll tell

you what I'll do . . . I'll swop properties with you, pay-

ing all the expenses of searching title and transfer and

balance up the mortgages, that I'll hold so's to keep 'em

in the family, so that you won't have to make substantially

bigger payments than you do here, and will be launched

on the road to success."

"Oh, Bill, you darling!" cried Maisie. She ran over and

kissed him on the top of the head and sat swinging her

legs on the arm of his chair. "Gee, I'll have to sleep on

that," said Mac; "it's mighty white of you to make the

offer.""Fainie, I'd think you'd be more grateful to Bill,"

snapped Maisie. "Of course we'll do it."

"No, you're quite right," said Bill. "A man's got to

think a proposition like that over. But don't forget the

advantages offered, better schools for the kids, more re-

fined surroundings, an upandcoming boom town instead

of a dead one, chance to get ahead in the world instead

of being a goddam wageslave."

So a month later the McCrearys moved up to Los An-

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geles. The expenses of moving and getting the furniture

installed put Mac five hundred dollars in debt. On top of

that little Rose caught the measles and the doctor's bill

started mounting. Mac couldn't get a job on any of the

papers. Up at the union local that he transferred to they

had ten men out of work as it was.

He spent a lot of time walking about town worrying.

He didn't like to be at home any more. He and Maisie

never got on now. Maisie was always thinking about what

went on at brother Bill's house, what kind of clothes

Mary Virginia, his wife, wore, how they brought up their

children, the fine new victrola they'd bought. Mac sat on

benches in parks round town, reading The Appeal to

Reason and The Industrial Worker and the local papers.

One day he noticed The Industrial Worker sticking out

of the pocket of the man beside him. They had both sat

on the bench a long time when something made him turn

to look at the man. "Say, aren't you Ben Evans?""Well,

Mac, I'll be goddamned . . . What's the matter, boy,

you're lookin' thin?""Aw, nothin', I'm lookin' for a

master, that's all."

They talked for a long time. Then they went to have

a cup of coffee in a Mexican restaurant where some of the

boys hung out. A young blonde fellow with blue eyes

joined them there who talked English with an accent.

Mac was surprised to find out that he was a Mexican.

Everybody talked Mexico. Madero had started his revo-

lution. The fall of Diaz was expected any day. All over

the peons were taking to the hills, driving the rich cien-

tificos off their ranches. Anarchist propaganda was spread-

ing among the town workers. The restaurant had a warm

smell of chiles and overroasted coffee. On each table there

were niggerpink and vermilion paper flowers, an occa-

sional flash of white teeth in bronze and brown faces talk-

ing low. Some of the Mexicans there belonged to the

I.W.W., but most of them were anarchists. The talk of

-120-

revolution and foreign places made him feel happy and

adventurous again, as if he had a purpose in life, like

when he'd been on the bum with Ike Hall.

"Say, Mac, let's go to Mexico and see if there's any-

thing in this revoloossione talk," Ben kept saying.

"If it wasn't for the kids . . . Hell, Fred Hoff was

right when he bawled me out and said a revolutionist

oughtn't to marry."

Eventually Mac got a job as linotype operator on The

Times, and things at the house were a little better, but he

never had any spare money, as everything had to go into

paying debts and interest on mortgages. It was night work

again, and he hardly ever saw Maisie and the kids any

more. Sundays Maisie would take little Ed to brother

Bill's and he and Rose would go for walks or take trolley-

trips. That was the best part of the week. Saturday nights

he'd sometimes get to a lecture or go down to chat with

the boys at the I.W.W. local, but he was scared to be seen

round in radical company too much for fear of losing his

job. The boys thought he was pretty yellow but put up

with him because they thought of him as an old timer.

He got occasional letters from Milly telling him about

Uncle Tim's health. She had married a man named Cohen

who was a registered accountant and worked in one of the

offices at the stockyards. Uncle Tim lived with them. Mac

would have liked to bring him down to live with him in

Los Angeles, but he knew that it would only mean squab-

bling with Maisie. Milly's letters were pretty depressing.

She felt funny, she said, to be married to a Jew. Uncle

Tim was always poorly. The doctor said it was the drink,

but whenever they gave him any money he drank it right

up. She wished she could have children: Fainie was lucky,

she thought, to have such nice children. She was afraid

that poor Uncle Tim wasn't long for this world.

The same day that the papers carried the murder of

Madero in Mexico City, Mac got a wire from Milly that

-121-

Uncle Tim was dead and please to wire money for the

funeral. Mac went to the savingsbank and drew out $53.75

he had in an account for the children's schooling and took

it down to the Western Union and wired fifty to her.

Maisie didn't find out until the baby's birthday came

round, when she went down to deposit five dollars birth-

day money from brother Bill.

That night when Mac let himself in by the latchkey he

was surprised to find the light on in the hall. Maisie was

sitting half asleep on the hall settee with a blanket

wrapped round her waiting for him. He was pleased to

see her and went up to kiss her. "What's the matter,

baby?" he said. She pushed him away from her and

jumped to her feet.

"You thief, " she said. "I couldn't sleep till I told you

what I thought of you. I suppose you've been spending

it on drink or on some other woman. That's why I never

see you any more."

" Maisie, calm down, old girl . . . What's the matter;

let's talk about it quietly."

"I'll get a divorce, that's what I'll do. Stealing money

from your own children to make yourself a bum with . . .

your own poor little . . ."

Mac drew himself up and clenched his fists. He spoke

very quietly, although his lips were trembling.

"Maisie, I had an absolute right to take out that money.

I'll deposit some more in a week or two, and it's none

of your damn business."

"A fat chance you saving up fifty dollars; you aren't

man enough to make a decent living for your wife and

children so you have to take it out of your poor little inno-

cent children's bank account," Maisie broke out into dry

sobbing.

"Maisie, that's enough of that . . . I'm about through."

"I'm the one that's through with you and your ungodly

socialistic talk. That never got nobody anywheres, and the

-122-

lowdown bums you go around with . . . I wish to God

I'd never married you. I never would have, you can be

damn well sure of that if I hadn't got caught the way I

did."

" Maisie, don't talk like that."

Maisie walked straight up to him, her eyes wide and

feverish.

"This house is in my name; don't forget that."

"All right, I'm through."

Before he knew it he had slammed the door behind him

and was walking down the block. It began to rain. Each

raindrop made a splatter the size of a silver dollar in the

dust of the street. It looked like stage rain round the

arclight. Mac couldn't think where to go. Drenched, he

walked and walked. At one corner there was a clump of

palms in a yard that gave a certain amount of shelter. He

stood there a long time shivering. He was almost crying

thinking of the warm gentleness of Maisie when he used

to pull the cover a little way back and slip into bed beside

her asleep when he got home from work in the clanking

sour printing plant, her breasts, the feel of the nipples

through the thin nightgown; the kids in their cots out on

the sleepingporch, him leaning over to kiss each of the

little warm foreheads. "Well, I'm through," he said

aloud as if he were speaking to somebody else. Then only

did the thought come to him, "I'm free to see the country

now, to work for the movement, to go on the bum again."

Finally he went to Ben Evans' boarding house. It was

a long time before he could get anybody to come to the

door. When he finally got in Ben sat up in bed and looked

at him stupid with sleep. "What the hell?""Say, Ben,

I've just broken up housekeepin' . . . I'm goin' to Mex-

ico.""Are the cops after you? For crissake, this wasn't any

place to come.""No, it's just my wife." Ben laughed.

"Oh, for the love of Mike!""Say, Ben, do you want to

come to Mexico and see the revolution?""What the hell

-123-

could you do in Mexico? . . . Anyway, the boys elected

me secretary of local 257 . . . I got to stay here an' earn

my seventeenfifty. Say, you're soaked; take your clothes

off and put on my workclothes hangin' on the back of the

door . . . You better get some sleep. I'll move over."

Mac stayed in town two weeks until they could get a

man to take his place at the linotype. He wrote Maisie

that he was going away and that he'd send her money to

help support the kids as soon as he was in a position to.

Then one morning he got on the train with twentyfive

dollars in his pocket and a ticket to Yuma, Arizona. Yuma

turned out to be hotter'n the hinges of hell. A guy at the

railroad men's boarding house told him he'd sure die of

thirst if he tried going into Mexico there, and nobody

knew anything about the revolution, anyway. So he beat

his way along the Southern Pacific to El Paso. Hell had

broken loose across the border, everybody said. The ban-

dits were likely to take Juarez at any moment. They shot

Americans on sight. The bars of El Paso were full of

ranchers and mining men bemoaning the good old days

when Porfirio Diaz was in power and a white man could

make money in Mexico. So it was with beating heart that

Mac walked across the international bridge into the dusty-

bustling adobe streets of Juarez.

Mac walked around looking at the small trolleycars and

the mules and the walls daubed with seablue and the peon

women squatting behind piles of fruit in the marketplace

and the crumbling scrollface churches and the deep bars

open to the street. Everything was strange and the air was

peppery to his nostrils and he was wondering what he was

going to do next. It was late afternoon of an April day.

Mac was sweating in his blue flannel shirt. His body felt

gritty and itchy and he wanted a bath. "Gettin' too old

for this kinda stuff," he told himself. At last he found the

house of a man named Ricardo Perez whom one of the

Mexican anarchists in Los Angeles had told him to look

-124-

up. He had trouble finding him in the big house with an

untidy courtyard, on the edge of town. None of the

women hanging out clothes seemed to understand Mac's

lingo. At last Mac heard a voice from above in carefully

modulated English. "Come up if you are looking for

Ricardo Perez . . . please . . . I am Ricardo Perez."

Mac looked up and saw a tall bronzecolored grayhaired

man in an old tan duster leaning from the top gallery of

the courtyard. He went up the iron steps. The tall man

shook hands with him.

"Fellowworker McCreary . . . My comrades wrote

me you were coming.""That's me, allright . . . I'm

glad you talk English.""I lived in Santa Fe many years

and in Brockton, Massachusetts. Sit down . . . please

I am very happy to welcome an American revolu-

tionary worker . . . Though our ideas probably do not

entirely agree we have much in common. We are com-

rades in the big battle." He patted Mac on the shoulder

and pressed him into a chair. "Please." There were sev-

eral little yellow children in torn shirts running round

barefoot. Ricardo Perez sat down and took the smallest

on his knee, a little girl with kinky pigtails and a smudged

face. The place smelt of chile and scorched olive oil and

children and washing. "What are you going to do in

Mexico, fellowworker?"

Mac blushed. "Oh, I want to kinda get into things, into

the revolution."

"The situation is very confusing here . . . Our town-

workers are organizing and are classconscious but the

peons, the peasants, are easily misled by unscrupulous

leaders."

"I want to see some action, Perez I was living in

Los Angeles an' gettin' to be a goddam booster like the

rest of 'em. I can earn my keep in the printin' line, I

guess."

-125-

"I must introduce you to the comrades . . . Please

. . . We will go now."

Blue dusk was swooping down on the streets when they

went out. Lights were coming out yellow. Mechanical

pianos jinglejangled in bars. In a gateway a little outof-

tune orchestra was playing. The market was all lit up by

flares, all kinds of shiny brightcolored stuff was for sale

at booths. At a corner an old Indian and an old broad-

faced woman, both of them blind and heavily pockmarked,

were singing a shrill endless song in the middle of a dense

group of short thickset country people, the women with

black shawls over their heads, the men in white cotton

suits like pajamas.

"They sing about the murder of Madero . . . It is

very good for the education of the people . . . You see

they cannot read the papers so they get their news in

songs . . . It was your ambassador murdered Madero.

He was a bourgeois idealist but a great man . . . Please

. . . Here is the hall. . . . You see that sign says "Viva

the Revindicating Revolution prelude to the Social Revo-

lution." This is the hall of' the Anarchist Union of In-

dustry and Agriculture. Huerta has a few federales here

but they are so weak they dare not attack us. Ciudad

Juarez is heart and soul with the revolution . . . Please

. . . you will greet the comrades with a few words."

The smoky hall and the platform were filled with

swarthy men in blue denim workclothes; in the back were

a few peons in white. Many hands shook Mac's, black

eyes looked sharp into his, several men hugged him. He

was given a campchair in the front row on the platform.

Evidently Ricardo Perez was chairman. Applause fol-

lowed in every pause in his speech. A feeling of big events

hovered in the hall. When Mac got on his feet, somebody

yelled "Solidarity forever" in English. Mac stammered a

few words about how he wasn't an official representative

of the I.W.W. but that all the same classconscious Ameri-

-126-

can workers were watching the Mexican revolution with

big hopes, and ended up with the wobbly catchword about

building the new society in the shell of the old. The

speech went big when Perez translated it and Mac felt

pretty good. Then the meeting went on and on, more and

more speeches and occasional songs. Mac found himself

nodding several times. The sound of the strange language

made him sleepy. He barely managed to keep awake until

a small band in the open door of the hall broke into a tune

and everybody sang and the meeting broke up.

"That's Cuatro Milpas. . . that means four corn-

fields . . . that's a song of the peons everybody's singing

now," said Perez.

"I'm pretty hungry I'd like to get a little some-

thing to eat somewheres," said Mac. "I haven't eaten since

morning when I had a cup of coffee and a doughnut in

El Paso."

"We will eat at the house of our comrade," said Perez.

"Please . . . this way."

They went in off the street, now black and empty,

through a tall door hung with a bead curtain, into a white-

washed room brightly lit by an acetylene flare that smelt

strong of carbide. They sat down at the end of a long

table with a spotted cloth on it. The table gradually filled

with people from the meeting, mostly young men in blue

workclothes, with thin sharp faces. At the other end sat

an old dark man with the big nose and broad flat cheek-

bones of an Indian. Perez poured Mac out two glasses of

a funnytasting white drink that made his head spin. The

food was very hot with pepper and chile and he choked

on it a little bit. The Mexicans petted Mac like a child

at his birthday party. He had to drink many glasses of

beer and cognac. Perez went home early and left him in

charge of a young fellow named Pablo. Pablo had a Colt

automatic on a shoulder strap that he was very proud of.

-127-

He spoke a little pidginenglish and sat with one hand

round Mac's neck and the other on the buckle of his

holster. "Gringo bad . . . Kill him quick . . . Fellow-

worker good . . . internacional . . . hurray," he kept

saying. They sang the International several times and

then the Marseillaise and the Carmagnole. Mac was car-

ried along in a peppery haze. He sang and drank and ate

and everything began to lose outline.

"Fellowworker marry nice girl," said Pablo. They were

standing at a bar somewhere. He made a gesture of sleep-

ing with his two hands against his face. "Come."

They went to a dancehall. At the entrance everybody

had to leave his gun on a table guarded by a soldier in a

visored cap. Mac noticed that the men and girls drew

away from him a little. Pablo laughed. "They think you

gringo . . . I tell them revolucionario internacional.

There she, nice girl . . . Not goddam whore not

pay, she nice working girl . . . comrade."

Mac found himself being introduced to a brown broad-

faced girl named Encarnacion. She was neatly dressed

and her hair was very shinyblack. She gave him a bright

flash of a smile. He patted her on the cheek. They drank

some beer at the bar and left. Pablo had a girl with him

too. The others stayed on at the dancehall. Pablo and his

girl walked round to Encarnacion's house with them. It

was a room in a little courtyard. Beyond it was a great

expanse of lightcolored desert land stretching as far as you

could see under a waning moon. In the distance were some

tiny specks of fires. Pablo pointed at them with his full

hand and whispered, "Revolucion."

Then they said good night at the door of Encarnacion's

little room that had a; bed, a picture of the Virgin and a

new photograph of Madero stuck up by a pin. Encarna-

cion closed the door, bolted it and sat down on the bed

looking up at Mac with a smile.

-128-

THE CAMERA EYE (12)

when everybody went away for a trip Jeanne took

us out to play every day in Farragut Square and told you

about how in the Jura in winter the wolves come down

and howl through the streets of the villages

and sometimes we'd see President Roosevelt ride by

all alone on a bay horse and once we were very proud

because when we took off our hats we were very proud

because he smiled and showed his teeth like in the news-

paper and touched his hat and we were very proud and

he had an aide de camp

but we had a cloth duck that we used to play with

on the steps until it began to get dark and the wolves

howled ran with little children's blood dripping from

their snout through the streets of the villages only it was

summer and between dog and wolf we'd be put to bed

and Jeanne was a young French girl from the Jura where

the wolves howled ran through the streets and when

everybody had gone to bed she would take you into her

bed

and it was a very long scary story and the worst of

the wolves howled through the streets gloaming to freeze

little children's blood was the Loup Garou howling in

the Jura and we were scared and she had breasts under

her nightgown and the Loup Garou was terrible scary

-129-

and black hair and rub against her and outside the wolves

howled in the streets and it was wet there and she said it

was nothing she had just washed herself

but the Loup Garou was really a man hold me close

cheri a man howled through streets with a bloody snout

that tore up the bellies of girls and little children Loup

Garou

and afterwards you knew what girls were made like

and she was very silly and made you promise not to tell

but you wouldn't have anyway

NEWSREEL X

MOON'S PATENT IS FIZZLE

insurgents win at Kansas polls Oak Park soulmates part

8000 to take autoride says girl begged for her husband

PIT SENTIMENT FAVORS UPTURN

Oh you be-eautiful doll

You great big beautiful doll

the world cannot understand all that is involved in this,

she said. It appears like an ordinary worldly affair with the

trappings of what is low and vulgar but there is nothing of

the sort. He is honest and sincere. I know him. I have

fought side by side with him. My heart is with him now.

Let me throw my arms around you

Honey ain't I glad I found you

Almost Motionless In Midsummer Languor On Business

Seas One Million See Drunkards Bounced

-130-

JURORS AT GATES OF BEEF BARONS

compare love with Vesuvius emblazoned streets await

tramp of paladins

Honey ain't I glad I found you

Oh you beautiful doll

You great big beautiful doll

TRADES WHITE HORSE FOR RED

Madero's troops defeat rebels in Battle at Parral Roose-

velt carries Illinois oratory closes eyelids Chicago pleads for

more water

CONFESSED ANARCHISTS ON BENDED KNEES KISS U. S. FLAG

The Sunbeam Movement is Spreading

BOMB NO. 4 IN LEVEE WAR SPLINTERS

WEST SIDE SALOON

a report printed Wednesday that a patient in a private

pavilion in St. Luke's Hospital undergoing an operation for

the extirpation of a cancerous growth at the base of the tongue

was General Grant was denied by both the hospital authorities

and Lieut. Howze who characterized the story as a deliberate

fabrication

THE CAMERA EYE (13)

he was a towboat captain and he knew the river

blindfold from Indian Head to the Virginia Capes and

the bay and the Eastan Shoa up to Baltima' for that

matter and he lived in a redbrick house in Alexandria

the pilothouse smelt of a hundred burntout pipes

that's the Mayflower the president's yacht and that

there's the Dolphin and that's the ole monitor Tippe-

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canoe and that there's the revenoo cutter and we're just

passin' the po-lice boat

when Cap'n Keen reaches up to pull the whistle on

the ceiling of the pilothouse you can see the red and

green bracelet tattooed under the black hairs on his wrist

Ma soul an' body ole Cap'n Gifford used ter be a

frien' o' mahne many's the time we been oysterin' together

on the Eastan Shoa an' oysterpirates used to shanghai

young fellers in those days an' make 'em work all winter

you couldn' git away less you swam ashoa and the water

was too damnation cole an' the ole man used to take the

fellers' clothes away so's they couldn't git ashoa when

they was anchored up in a crik or near a house or some-

thin' boy they was mean customers the oysterpirates ma

soul and body onct there was a young feller they worked

till he dropped and then they'd just sling him overboard

tongin' for oysters or dredgin' like them oysterpirates

did's the meanest kinda work in winter with the spray

freezin' on the lines an' cuttin' your hands to shreds an'

the dredge foulin' every minute an' us havin' to haul it

up an' fix it with our hands in the icy water hauled up a

stiff onct What's a stiff? Ma soul an' body a stiff's a

dead man ma boy a young feller it was too without a stitch

on him an' the body looked like it had been beat with a

belayin' pin somethin' terrible or an' oar mebbe reckon he

wouldn't work or was sick or somethin' an' the ole man

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jus' beat him till he died sure couldn't a been nothin' but

an oysterpirate

JANEY

When Janey was little she lived in an old flatface brick

house a couple of doors up the hill from M Street in

Georgetown. The front part of the house was always

dark because Mommer kept the heavy lace curtains drawn

to and the yellow linen shades with lace inset bands down.

Sunday afternoons Janey and Joe and Ellen and Francie

had to sit in the front room and look at pictures or read

books. Janey and Joe read the funnypaper together be-

cause they were the oldest and the other two were just

babies and not old enough to know what was funny any-

way. They couldn't laugh outloud because Popper sat

with the rest of The Sunday Star on his lap and usually

went to sleep after dinner with the editorial section crum-

pled in one big blueveined hand. Tiny curds of sunlight

flickering through the lace insets in the window shade

would lie on his bald head and on one big red flange of

his nose and on the droop of one mustache and on his

speckled sundayvest and on the white starched shirt-

sleeves with shiny cuffs, held up above the elbow by a

rubber band. Janey and Joe'would sit on the same chair

feeling each other's ribs jiggle when they laughed about

the Katzenjammer kids setting off a cannoncracker under

the captain's stool. The little ones would see them laugh-

ing and start laughing too, "Shut up, can't you," Joe

would hiss at them out of the corner of his mouth. "You

don't know what we're laughing at." Once in a while,

if there was no sound from Mommer who was taking her

Sunday afternoon nap upstairs stretched out in the back

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bedroom in a faded lilac sack with frills on it, after they'd

listened for a long time to the drawnout snort that ended

in a little hiss of Popper's snores, Joe would slip off his

chair and Janey would follow him without breathing into

the front hall and out the front door. Once they'd closed

it very carefully so that the knocker wouldn't bang, Joe

would give her a slap, yell "You're it" and run off down

the hill towards M Street, and she'd have to run after

him, her heart pounding, her hands cold for fear he'd

run away and leave her.

Winters the brick sidewalks were icy and there were

colored women out spreading cinders outside their doors

when the children went to school mornings. Joe never

would walk with the rest of them because they were girls,

he lagged behind or ran ahead. Janey wished she could

walk with him but she couldn't leave her little sisters

who held tight onto her hands. One winter they got in

the habit of walking up the hill with a little yaller girl

who lived directly across the street and whose name was

Pearl. Afternoons Janey and Pearl walked home together.

Pearl usually had a couple of pennies to buy bullseyes

or candy bananas with at a little store on Wisconsin

Avenue, and she always gave Janey half so Janey was

very fond of her. One afternoon she asked Pearl to come

in and they played dolls together under the big rose of

sharon bush in the back yard. When Pearl had gone

Mommer's voice called from the kitchen. Mommer had

her sleeves rolled up on her faded pale arms and a checked

apron on and was rolling piecrust for supper so that her

hands were covered with flour.

" Janey, come here," she said. Janey knew from the

cold quaver in her voice that something was wrong.

"Yes, Mommer." Janey stood in front of her mother

shaking her head about so that the two stiff sandy pig-

tails lashed from side to side. "Stand still, child, for

gracious sake . . . Jane, I want to talk to you about some-

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thing. That little colored girl you brought in this after-

noon . . ." Janey's heart was dropping. She had a sick

feeling and felt herself blushing, she hardly knew why.

"Now, don't misunderstand me; I like and respect the

colored people; some of them are fine selfrespecting peo-

ple in their place . . . But you mustn't bring that little

colored girl in the house again. Treating colored people

kindly and with respect is one of the signs of good breed-

ing . . . You mustn't forget that your mother's people

were wellborn every inch of them . . . Georgetown was

very different in those days. We lived in a big house with

most lovely lawns . . . but you must never associate with

colored people on an equal basis. Living in this neighbor-

hood it's all the more important to be careful about those

things . . . Neither the whites nor the blacks respect

those who do . . . That's all, Janey, you understand;

now run out and play, it'll soon be time for your supper."

Janey tried to speak but she couldn't. She stood stiff in

the middle of the yard on the grating that covered the

drainpipe, staring at the back fence. "Niggerlover," yelled

Joe in her ear. "Niggerlover ump-mya-mya . . . Nig-

gerlover niggerlover ump-mya-mya." Janey began to cry.

Joe was an untalkative sandyhaired boy who could pitch

a mean outcurve when he was still little. He learned to

swim and dive in Rock Creek and used to say he wanted

to be motorman on a streetcar when he grew up. For

several years his best friend was Alec McPherson whose

father was a locomotive engineer on the B. and O. After

that Joe wanted to be a locomotive engineer. Janey used

to tag around after the two boys whenever they'd let her,

to the carbarns at the head of Pennsylvania Avenue where

they made friends with some of the conductors and motor-

men who used to let them ride on the platform a couple

of blocks sometimes if there wasn't any inspector around,

down along the canal or up Rock Creek where they caught

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tadpoles and fell in the water and splashed each other

with mud.

Summer evenings when the twilight was long after

supper they played lions and tigers with other kids from

the neighborhood in the long grass of some empty lots

near Oak Hill Cemetery. There were long periods when

there was measles or scarlet fever around and Mommer

wouldn't let them out. Then Alec would come down and

they'd play three-o-cat in the back yard. Those were the

times Janey liked best. Then the boys treated her as one

of them. Summer dusk would come down on them sultry

and full of lightningbugs. If Popper was feeling in a good

mood he'd send them up the hill to the drugstore on N

Street to buy icecream, there'd be young men in their

shirtsleeves and straw hats strolling with girls who wore

a stick of punk in their hair to keep off the mosquitoes,

a rankness and a smell of cheap perfume from the colored

families crowded on their doorsteps, laughing, talking

softly with an occasional flash of teeth, rolling of a white

eyeball. The dense sweaty night was scary, hummed,

rumbled with distant thunder, with junebugs, with the

clatter of traffic from M Street, the air of the street dense

and breathless under the thick trees; but when she was

with Alec and Joe she wasn't scared, not even of drunks

or big shamblefooted coloredmen. When they got back

Popper would smoke a cigar and they'd sit out in the back

yard and the mosquitoes 'ud eat them up and Mommer

and Aunt Francine and the kids 'ud eat the icecream and

Popper would just smoke a cigar and tell them stories of

when he'd been a towboat captain down on the Chesapeake

in his younger days and he'd saved the barkentine Nancy

Q in distress on the Kettlebottoms in a sou'west gale.

Then it'd get time to go to bed and Alec 'ud be sent home

and Janey'd have to go to bed in the stuffy little back

room on the top floor with her two little sisters in their

cribs against the opposite wall. Maybe a thunderstorm

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would come up and she'd lie awake staring up at the ceil-

ing cold with fright, listening to her little sisters whimper

as they slept until she heard the reassuring sound of

Mommer scurrying about the house closing windows, the

slam of a door, the whine of wind and rattle of rain and

the thunder rolling terribly loud and near overhead like

a thousand beertrucks roaring over the bridge. Times like

that she thought of going down to Joe's room and crawl-

ing into bed with him, but for some reason she was afraid

to, though sometimes she got as far as the landing. He'd

laugh at her and call her a softie.

About once a week Joe would get spanked. Popper

would come home from the Patent Office where he

worked, angry and out of sorts, and the girls would be

scared of him and go about the house quiet as mice; but

Joe seemed to like to provoke him, he'd run whistling

through the back hall or clatter up and down stairs making

a tremendous racket with his stubtoed ironplated shoes.

Then Popper would start scolding him and Joe would

stand in front of him without saying a word glaring at

the floor with bitter blue eyes. Janey's insides knotted up

and froze when Popper would start up the stairs to the

bathroom pushing Joe in front of him. She knew what

would happen. He'd take down the razorstrop from be-

hind the door and put the boy's head and shoulders under

his arm and beat him. Joe would clench his teeth and flush

and not say a word and when Popper was tired of beating

him they'd look at each other and Joe would be sent up

to his room and Popper would come down stairs trembling

all over and pretend nothing had happened, and Janey

would slip out into the yard with her fists clenched whis-

pering to herself, "I hate him . . . I hate him . . . I

hate him."

Once a drizzly Saturday night she stood against the

fence in the dark looking up at the lighted window. She

could hear Popper's voice and Joe's in an argument. She

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thought maybe she'd fall down dead at the first thwack

of the razorstrop. She couldn't hear what they were say-

ing. Then suddenly it came, the leather sound of blows

and Joe stifling a gasp. She was eleven years old. Some-

thing broke loose. She rushed into the kitchen with her

hair all wet from the rain, " Mommer, he's killing Joe.

Stop it." Her mother turned up a withered helpless

drooping face from a pan she was scouring. "Oh, you can't

do anything." Janey ran upstairs and started beating on

the bathroom door. "Stop it, stop it," her voice kept yell-

ing. She was scared but something stronger than she was

had hold of her. The door opened; there was Joe looking

sheepish and Popper with his face all flushed and the

razorstrop in his hand.

"Beat me . . . it's me that's bad . . . I won't have

you beating Joe like that." She was scared. She didn't

know what to do, tears stung in her eyes.

Popper's voice was unexpectedly kind:

"You go straight up to bed without any supper and

remember that you have enough to do to fight your own

battles, Janey." She ran up to her room and lay on the

bed shaking. When she'd gone to sleep Joe's voice woke

her up with a start.

He was standing in his nightgown in the door. "Say,

Janey," he whispered. "Don't you do that again, see. I

can take care of myself, see. A girl can't butt in between

men like that. When I get a job and make enough dough

I'll get me a gun and if Popper tries to beat me up I'll

shoot him dead." Janey began to sniffle. "What you

wanna cry for; this ain't no Johnstown flood."

She could hear him tiptoe down the stairs again in his

bare feet.

At highschool she took the commercial course and

learned stenography and typewriting. She was a plain

thinfaced sandyhaired girl, quiet and popular with the

teachers. Her fingers were quick and she picked up typing

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and shorthand easily. She liked to read and used to get

books like The Inside of the Cup, The Battle of the

Strong, The Winning of Barbara Worth out of the li-

brary. Her mother kept telling her that she'd spoil her

eyes if she read so much. When she read she used to

imagine she was the heroine, that the weak brother who

went to the bad but was a gentleman at core and capable

of every sacrifice, like Sidney Carton in A Tale of Two

Cities was Joe and that the hero was Alec.

She thought Alec was the bestlooking boy in George-

town and the strongest. He had black closecropped hair

and a very white skin with a few freckles and a strong

squareshouldered way of walking. After him Joe was the

bestlooking and strongest and the best baseball player

anyway. Everybody said he ought to go on through high-

school on account of being such a good baseball player,

but at the end of his first year Popper said he had three

girls to support and that Joe would have to get to work;

so he got a job as a Western Union messenger. Janey was

pretty proud of him in his uniform until the girls at high-

school kidded her about it. Alec's folks had promised to

put him through college if he made good in highschool,

so Alec worked hard. He wasn't tough and dirtytalking

like most of the boys Joe knew. He was always nice to

Janey though he never seemed to want to be left alone

with her. She pretty well admitted to herself that she

had a terrible crush on Alec.

The best day of her life was the sweltering summer

Sunday they all went canoeing up to Great Falls. She had

put up the lunch the night before. In the morning she

added a steak she found in the icebox. There was blue

haze at the end of every street of brick houses and dark

summergreen trees when before anybody else was awake

she and Joe crept out of the house round seven that morn-

ing.

They met Alec at the corner in front of the depot. He

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stood waiting for them with his feet wide apart and a

skillet in his hand.

They all ran and caught the car that was just leaving

for Cabin John's Bridge. They had the car all to them-

selves like it was a private car. The car hummed over the

rails past whitewashed shanties and nigger cabins along

the canal, skirting hillsides where the sixfoot tall waving

corn marched in ranks like soldiers. The sunlight glanced

in bluewhite glare on the wavingdrooping leaves of the

tassling corn; glare, and a whirring and tinkling of grass-

hoppers and dryflies rose in hot smoke into the pale sky

round the clattering shaking electric car. They ate sweet

summerapples Joe had bought off a colored woman in

the station and chased each other round the car and flopped

down on top of each other in the cornerseats; and they

laughed and giggled till they were weak. Then the car

was running through woods; they could see the trestle-

work of the rollercoasters of Glen Echo through the trees

and they piled off the car at Cabin John's having more

fun than a barrel of monkeys.

They ran down to the bridge to look up and down the

river brown and dark in the white glary morning between

foliagesodden banks; then they found the canoe that be-

longed to a friend of Alec's in a house by the canal, bought

some cream soda and rootbeer and some packages of

neccos and started out. Alec and Joe paddled and Janey

sat in the bottom with her sweater rolled round a thwart

for a pillow. Alec was paddling in the bow. It was swelter-

ing hot. The sweat made the shirt cling to the hollow of

his chunky back that curved with every stroke of the

paddle. After a while the boys stripped to their bathing-

suits that they wore under their clothes. It made Janey's

throat tremble to watch Alec's back and the bulging

muscles of his arm as he paddled, made her feel happy

and scared. She sat there in her white dimity dress, trail-

ing her hand in the weedy browngreen water. They

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stopped to pick waterlilies and the white flowers of arrow-

head that glistened like ice and everything smelt wet rank

of the muddy roots of waterlilies. The cream soda got

warm and they drank it that way and kidded each other

back and forth and Alec caught a crab and covered Janey's

dress with greenslimy splashes and Janey didn't care a

bit and they called Joe skipper and he loosened up and

said he was going to join the navy and Alec said he'd be a

civil engineer and build a motorboat and take them all

cruising and Janey was happy because they included her

when they talked just like she was a boy too. At a place

below the Falls where there were locks in the canal they

had a long portage down to the river. Janey carried the

grub and the paddles and the frying pan and the boys

sweated and cussed under the canoe. Then they paddled

across to the Virginia side and made a fire in a little hollow

among gray rusty bowlders. Joe cooked the steak and

Janey unpacked the sandwiches and cookies she'd made

and nursed some murphies baking in the ashes. They

roasted ears of corn too that they had swiped out of a

field beside the canal. Everything turned out fine except

that they hadn't brought enough butter. Afterwards they

sat eating cookies and drinking rootbeer quietly talking

round the embers. Alec and Joe brought out pipes and

she felt pretty good sitting there at the Great Falls of the

Potomac with two men smoking pipes.

" Geewhiz, Janey, Joe cooked that steak fine."

"When we was kids we used to ketch frogs and broil

'em up in Rock Creek . . . Remember, Alec?"

"Damned if I don't, and Janey she was along once;

geewhiz, the fuss you kicked up then, Janey."

"I don't like seeing you skin them."

"We thought we was regular wildwest hunters then.

We had packs of fun then."

"I like this better, Alec," said Janey hesitatingly.

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"So do I . . ." said Alec. "Dod gast it, I wisht we

had a watermelon."

"Maybe we'll see some along the riverbank somewhere

goin' home."

" Jiminy crickets, what I couldn't do to a watermelon,

Joe."

" Mommer had a watermelon on ice," said Janey;

"maybe there'll be some yet when we get home."

"I don't never want to go home," said Joe, suddenly

bitter serious.

" Joe, you oughtn't to talk like that." She felt girlish

and frightened.

"I'll talk how I goddam please . . . Kerist, I hate the

scrimpy dump."

" Joe, you oughtn't to talk like that." Janey felt she

was going to cry.

"Dod gast it," said Alec. "It's time we shoved . . .

What you say, ho . . . ? We'll take one more dip and

then make tracks for home."

When the boys were through swimming they all went

up to look at the Falls and then they started off. They

went along fast in the swift stream under the steep tree-

hung bank. The afternoon was very sultry, they went

through layers of hot steamy air. Big cloudheads were

piling up in the north. It wasn't fun any more for Janey.

She was afraid it was going to rain. Inside she felt sick

and drained out. She was afraid her period was coming

on. She'd only had the curse a few times yet and the

thought of it scared her and took all the strength out of

her, made her want to crawl away out of sight like an

old sick mangy cat. She didn't want Joe and Alec to

notice how she felt. She thought how would it be if she

turned the canoe over. The boys could swim ashore all

right, and she'd drown and they'd drag the river for

her body and everybody'd cry and feel so sorry about it.

Purplegray murk rose steadily and drowned the white

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summits of the cloudheads. Everything got to be livid

white and purple. The boys paddled as hard as they

could. They could hear the advancing rumble of thunder.

The bridge was well in sight when the wind hit them, a

hot stormwind full of dust and dead leaves and bits of

chaff and straw, churning the riverwater.

They made the shore just in time. "Dod gast it, this

is goin' to be some storm," said Alec; " Janey, get under

the boat." They turned the canoe over on the pebbly

shore in the lee of a big bowlder and huddled up under

it. Janey sat in the middle with the waterlilies they had

picked that morning all shriveled and clammy from the

heat in her hand. The boys lay in their damp bathing-

suits on either side of her. Alec's towsled black hair was

against her cheek. The other side of her Joe lay with his

head in the end of the canoe and his lean brown feet and

legs in their rolledup pants tucked under her dress. The

smell of sweat and riverwater and the warm boysmell of

Alec's hair and shoulders made her dizzy. When the rain

came drumming on the bottom of the canoe curtaining

them in with lashing white spray, she slipped her arm

round Alec's neck and let her hand rest timidly on his

bare shoulder. He didn't move.

The rain passed after a while. "Gee, that wasn't as bad

as I thought it would be," said Alec. They were pretty

wet and chilly but they felt good in the fresh rainwashed

air. They put the canoe back in the water and went on

down as far as the bridge. Then they carried it back to

the house they'd gotten it from, and went to the little

shelter to wait for the electric car. They were tired and

sunburned and sticky. The car was packed with a damp

Sunday afternoon crowd, picnickers caught by the shower

at Great Falls and Glen Echo. Janey thought she'd never

stand it till she got home. Her belly was all knotted up

with a cramp. When they got to Georgetown the boys still

had fifty cents between them and wanted to go to a movie,

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but Janey ran off and left them. Her only thought was to

get to bed so that she could put her face into the pillow

and cry.

After that Janey never cried much; things upset her

but she got a cold hard feeling all over instead. High-

school went by fast, with hot thunderstormy Washing-

ton summers in between terms, punctuated by an occa-

sional picnic at Marshall Hall or a party at some house in

the neighborhood. Joe got a job at the Adams Express.

She didn't see him much as he didn't eat home any more.

Alec had bought a motorcycle and although he was still

in highschool Janey heard little about him. Sometimes

she sat up to get a word with Joe when he came home at

night. He smelt of tobacco and liquor though he never

seemed to be drunk. He went to his job at seven and

when he got out in the evenings he went out with the

bunch hanging round poolrooms on 4 ½ Street or playing

craps or bowling. Sundays he played baseball in Mary-

land. Janey would sit up for him, but when he came she'd

ask him how things were going where he worked and

he'd say "Fine" and he'd ask her how things were going

at school and she'd say "Fine" and then they'd both go

off to bed. Once in a while she'd ask if he'd seen Alec

and he'd say "Yes" with a scrap of a smile and she'd ask

how Alec was and he'd say "Fine."

She had one friend, Alice Dick, a dark stubby girl with

glasses who took all the same classes with her at high-

school. Saturday afternoons they'd dress up in their best

and go window-shopping down F Street way. They'd buy

a few little things, stop in for a soda and come home on

the streetcar feeling they'd had a busy afternoon. Once

in a very long while they went to a matinee at Poli's and

Janey would take Alice Dick home to supper. Alice Dick

liked the Williamses and they liked her. She said it made

her feel freer to spend a few hours with broadminded

people. Her own folks were Southern Methodists and

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very narrow. Her father was a clerk in the Government

Printing Office and was in daily dread that his job would

come under the civil service regulations. He was a stout

shortwinded man, fond of playing practical jokes on his

wife and daughter, and suffered from chronic dyspepsia.

Alice Dick and Janey planned that as soon as they

got through highschool they'd get jobs and leave home.

They even picked out the house where they'd board, a

greenstone house near Thomas Circle, run by a Mrs.

Jenks, widow of a naval officer, who was very refined and

had southern cooking and charged moderately for table-

board.

One Sunday night during the spring of her last term

in highschool Janey was in her room getting undressed.

Francie and Ellen were still playing in the backyard.

Their voices came in through the open window with a

spicy waft of lilacs from the lilacbushes in the next yard.

She had just let down her hair and was looking in the

mirror imagining how she'd look if she was a peach and

had auburn hair, when there was a knock at the door and

Joe's voice outside. There was something funny about

his voice.

"Come in," she called. "I'm just fixin' my hair."

She first saw his face in the mirror. It was very white

and the skin was drawn back tight over the cheekbones

and round the mouth.

"Why, what's the matter, Joe?" She jumped up and

faced him.

"It's like this, Janey," said Joe, drawling his words out

painfully. "Alec was killed. He smashed up on his motor-

bike. I just come from the hospital. He's dead, all right."

Janey seemed to be writing the words on a white pad

in her mind. She couldn't say anything.

"He smashed up comin' home from Chevy Chase . . .

He'd gone out to the ballgame to see me pitch. You

oughter seen him all smashed to hell."

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Janey kept trying to say something.

"He was your best . . ."

"He was the best guy I'll ever know," Joe went on

gently. "Well, that's that, Janey . . . But I wanted to

tell you I don't want to hang round this lousy dump now

that Alec's gone. I'm goin' to enlist in the navy. You tell

the folks, see . . . I don't wanna talk to 'em. That's it;

I'll join the navy and see the world."

"But, Joe . . ."

"I'll write you, Janey; honest, I will . . . I'll write

you a hell of a lot. You an' me . . . Well, goodby,

Janey." He grabbed her by the shoulders and kissed her

awkwardly on the nose and cheek. All she could do was

whisper. "Do be careful, Joe," and stand there in front

of the bureau in the gust of lilacs and the yelling of the

kids that came through the open window. She heard Joe's

steps light quick down the stairs and heard the frontdoor

shut.

She turned out the light, took off her clothes in the

dark, and got into bed. She lay there without crying.

Graduation came and commencement and she and Alice

went out to parties and even once with a big crowd on one

of the moonlight trips down the river to Indian Head on

the steamboat Charles McAlister. The crowd was rougher

than Janey and Alice liked. Some of the boys were drink-

ing a good deal and there were couples kissing and hug-

ging in every shadow; still the moonlight was beautiful

rippling on the river and she and Janey put two chairs

together and talked. There was a band and dancing, but

they didn't dance on account of the rough men who stood

round the dancefloor making remarks. They talked and

on the way home up the river, Janey, talking very low

and standing by the rail very close to Alice, told her

about Alec. Alice had read about it in the paper but hadn't

dreamed that Janey had known him so well or felt that

way about him. She began to cry and Janey felt very

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strong comforting her and they felt that they'd be very

close friends after that. Janey whispered that she'd never

be able to love anybody else and Alice said she didn't

think she could ever love a man anyway, they all drank

and smoked and talked dirty among themselves and had

only one idea.

In July Alice and Janey got jobs in the office of Mrs.

Robinson, public stenographer in the Riggs Building, to

replace girls away on their vacations. Mrs. Robinson was

a small grayhaired pigeonbreasted woman with a Ken-

tucky shriek in her voice, that made Janey think of a

parrot's. She was very precise and all the proprieties were

observed in her office. "Miss Williams," she would chirp,

leaning back from her desk, "that em ess of Judge Rob-

erts's has absolutely got to be finished today . . . My

dear, we've given our word and we'll deliver if we have

to stay till midnight. Noblesse oblige, my dear," and the

typewriters would trill and jingle and all the girls' fingers

would go like mad typing briefs, manuscripts of unde-

livered speeches by lobbyists, occasional overflow from

a newspaperman or a scientist, or prospectuses from real-

estate offices or patent promoters, dunning letters for

dentists and doctors.

THE CAMERA EYE (14)

Sunday nights when we had fishballs and baked beans

and Mr. Garfield read to us in a very beautiful reading

voice and everybody was so quiet you could have heard

a pin drop because he was reading The Man Without a

Country and it was a very terrible story and Aaron Burr

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had been a very dangerous man and this poor young man

had said "Damn the United States; I never hope to hear

her name again" and it was a very terrible thing to say

and the grayhaired judge was so kind and good

and the judge sentenced me and they took me far

away to foreign lands on a frigate and the officers were

kind and good and spoke in kind grave very sorry read-

ing voices like Mr. Garfield and everything was very

kind and grave and very sorry and frigates and the blue

Mediterranean and islands and when I was dead I began

to cry and I was afraid the other boys would see I had

tears in my eyes

American shouldn't cry he should look kind and

grave and very sorry when they wrapped me in the stars

and stripes and brought me home on a frigate to be buried

I was so sorry I never remembered whether they brought

me home or buried me at sea but anyway I was wrapped

in Old Glory

NEWSREEL XI

the government of the United States must insist and

demand that American citizens who may be taken prisoner

whether by one party or the other as participants in the present

insurrectionary disturbances shall be dealt with in accordance

with the broad principles of international law

SOLDIERS GUARD CONVENTION

-148-

the Titanic left Southampton on April 10th on its maiden

operation is to be performed against the wishes of the New

York Life according to " Kimmel" Why they know I'm

Kimmel in Niles I'm George to everyone even mother and

sister when we meet on the streets

I'm going to Maxim's

Where fun and frolic beams

With all the girls I'll chatter

I'll laugh and kiss and flatter

Lolo, Dodo, Joujou.

Cloclo, Margot, Froufrou

TITANIC LARGEST SHIP IN THE WORLD

SINKING

personally I am not sure that the twelvehour day is bad

for employees especially when they insist on working that long

in order to make more money

Still all my song shall be

Nearer My God to thee

Nearer to thee

it was now about one AM, a beautiful starlight night

with no moon. The sea was as calm as a pond, just a gentle

heave as the boat dipped up and down in the swell, an ideal

night except for the bitter cold. In the distance the Titanic

looked an enormous length, its great hulk outlined in black

against the starry sky, every porthole and saloon blazing with

light

ASK METHODISM TO OUST TRINITY

the bride's gown is of charmeuse satin with a chiffon

veiled lace waist. The veil is of crepe lisse edged with point

de venise a departure from the conventional bridal veil and

the bouquet is to be lilies of the valley and gardenias

Lolo, Dodo, Joujou,

Cloclo, Margot, Froufrou

I'm going to Maxim's

And you can go to . . .

-149-

the Titanic slowly tilted straight on end with the stern

vertically upward and as it did so the lights in the cabins and

saloons which had not flickered for a moment since we left,

died out, came on again for a single flash and finally went out

altogether. Meanwhile the machinery rattled through the

vessel with a rattle and a groaning that could be heard for

miles. Then with a quiet slanting dive

JANEY

"But it's so interesting, mommer," Janey would say

when her mother bewailed the fact that she had to work.

"In my day it wasn't considered ladylike, it was thought

to be demeaning.""But it isn't now," Janey would say

getting into a temper. Then it would be a great relief to

get out of the stuffy house and the stuffy treeshaded

streets of Georgetown and to stop by for Alice Dick and

go down town to the moving pictures and to see the pic-

tures of foreign countries, and the crowds on F Street

and to stop in at a drugstore for a soda afterwards, before

getting on the Georgetown car, and to sit up at the foun-

tain talking about the picture they'd seen and Olive

Thomas and Charley Chaplin and John Bunny. She began

to read the paper every day and to take an interest in

politics. She began to feel that there was a great throb-

bing arclighted world somewhere outside and that only

living in Georgetown where everything was so poky and

oldfashiohed, and Mommer and Popper were so poky and

oldfashioned, kept her from breaking into it.

Postcards from Joe made her feel like that too. He

was a sailor on the battleship Connecticut. There'd be a

picture of the waterfront at Havana or the harbor of

Marseille or Villefranche or a photograph of a girl in

peasant costume inside a tinsel horseshoe and a few lines

-150-

hoping she was well and liked her job, never a word about

himself. She wrote him long letters full of questions about

himself and foreign countries but he never answered them.

Still it gave her a sort of feeling of adventure to get the

postcards. Whenever she saw a navy man on the street or

marines from Quantico she thought of Joe and wondered

how he was getting on. The sight of a gob lurching along

in blue with his cap on one side took a funny twist at her

heart.

Sundays Alice almost always came out to Georgetown.

The house was different now, Joe gone, her mother and

father older and quieter, Francie and Ellen blooming out

into pretty giggly highschool girls, popular with the boys

in the neighborhood, going out to parties, all the time

complaining because they didn't have any money to spend.

Sitting at the table with them, helping Mommer with

the gravy, bringing in the potatoes or the Brussels sprouts

for Sunday dinner, Janey felt grownup, almost an old

maid. She was on the side of her father and mother now

against the sisters. Popper began to look old and shrunk-

up. He talked often about retiring, and was looking for-

ward to his pension.

When she'd been eight months with Mrs. Robinson

she got an offer from Dreyfus and Carroll, the patent

lawyers up on the top floor of the Riggs Building to work

for them for seventeen a week, which was five dollars

more than she was getting from Mrs. Robinson. It made

her feel fine. She realized now that she was good at her

work and that she could support herself whatever hap-

pened. On the strength of it she went down to Wood-

ward and Lothrop's with Alice Dick to buy a dress. She

wanted a silk grownup dress with embroidery on it. She

was twentyone and was going to make seventeen dollars

a week and thought she had a right to one nice dress.

Alice said it ought to be a bronzy gold color to match her

hair. They went in all the stores down F Street, but they

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couldn't find anything that suited that wasn't too expen-

sive, so all they could do was buy some materials and

some fashion magazines and take it home to Janey's

mother to make up. It galled Janey still being dependent

on her mother this way, but there was nothing for it; so

Mrs. Williams had to make up Janey's new dress the

way she had made all her children's dresses since they

were born. Janey had never had the patience to learn to

sew the way Mommer could. They bought enough ma-

terial so that Alice could have one too, so Mrs. Williams

had to make up two dresses.

Working at Dreyfus and Carroll's was quite different

from working at Mrs. Robinson's. There were mostly

men in the office. Mr. Dreyfus was a small thinfaced man

with a small black moustache and small black twinkly

eyes and a touch of accent that gave him a distinguished

foreign diplomat manner. He carried yellow wash gloves

and a yellow cane and had a great variety of very much

tailored overcoats. He was the brains of the firm, Jerry

Burnham said. Mr. Carroll was a stout redfaced man

who smoked many cigars and cleared his throat a great

deal and had a very oldtimey Southern Godblessmysoul

way of talking. Jerry Burnham said he was the firm's

bay window. Jerry Burnham was a wrinklefaced young

man with dissipated eyes who was the firm's adviser in

technical and engineering matters. He laughed a great

deal, always got into the office late, and for some reason

took a fancy to Janey and used to joke about things to her

while he was dictating. She liked him, though the dis-

sipated look under his eyes scared her off a little. She'd

have liked to have talked to him like a sister, and gotten

him to stop burning the candle at both ends. Then there

was an elderly accountant, Mr. Sills, a shriveled man who

lived in Anacostia and never said a word to anybody.

At noon he didn't go out for lunch, but sat at his desk

eating a sandwich and an apple wrapped in waxed paper

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which he carefully folded afterwards and put back in

his pocket. Then there were two fresh errandboys and a

little plainfaced typist named Miss Simonds who only

got twelve a week. All sorts of people in every sort of

seedyrespectable or Peacock Alley clothes came in during

the day and stood round in the outer office listening to

Mr. Carroll's rich boom from behind the groundglass

door. Mr. Dreyfus slipped in and out without a word,

smiling faintly at his acquaintances, always in a great

mysterious hurry. At lunch in the little cafeteria or at a

sodafountain Janey 'ud tell Alice all about it and Alice

would look up at her admiringly. Alice always waited for

her in the vestibule at one. They'd arranged to go out then

because there was less of a crowd. Neither of them ever

spent more than twenty cents, so lunch didn't take them

very long and they'd have time to take a turn round

Lafayette Square or sometimes round the White House

grounds before going back to the office.

There was one Saturday night when she had to work

late to finish up typing the description of an outboard

motor that had to be in at the Patent Office first thing

Monday morning. Everybody else had left the office. She

was making out the complicated technical wording as best

she could, but her mind was on a postcard showing the

Christ of the Andes she'd gotten from Joe that day. All

it said was:

"To hell with Uncle Sam's tin ships. Coming home

soon."

It wasn't signed but she knew the writing. It worried

her. Jerry Burnham sat at the telephone switchboard going

over the pages as she finished them. Now and then he

went out to the washroom; when he came back each

time a hot breath of whisky wafted across the office. Janey

was nervous. She typed till the little black letters squirmed

before her eyes. She was worried about Joe. How could

he be coming home before his enlistment was up? Some-

-153-

thing must be the matter. And Jerry Burnham moving

restlessly round on the telephone girl's seat made her

uncomfortable. She and Alice had talked about the danger

of staying in an office alone with a man like this. Late like

this and drinking, a man had just one idea.

When she handed him the next to the last sheet his eye,

bright and moist, caught hers. "I bet you're tired, Miss

Williams," he said. "It's a darned shame to keep you in

like this and Saturday night too.""It's quite all right, Mr.

Burnham," she said icily and her fingers chirruped. "It's

the damned old baywindow's fault. He chewed the rag

so much about politics all day, nobody could get any work

done.""Well, it doesn't matter now," said Janey. "Noth-

ing matters any more. . . . It's almost eight o'clock. I

had to pass up a date with my best girl . . . or there-

abouts. I bet you passed up a date too, Miss Williams."

"I was going to meet another girl, that's all.""Now I'll

tell one . . ." He laughed so easily that she found her-

self laughing too.

When the last page was done and in the envelope,

Janey got up to get her hat. "Look, Miss Williams, we'll

drop this in the mail and then you'd better come and have

a bite with me."

Going down in the elevator Janey intended to excuse

herself and go home but somehow she didn't and found

herself, everything aflutter inside of her, sitting coolly

down with him in a French restaurant on H Street.

"Well, what do you think of the New Freedom, Miss

Williams?" asked Jerry Burnham with a laugh after he'd

sat down. He handed her the menu. "Here's the score-

card . . . Let your conscience be your guide."

"Why, I hardly know, Mr. Burnham."

"Well, I'm for it, frankly. I think Wilson's a big man

. . . Nothing like change anyway, the best thing in the

world, don't you think so? Bryan's a big bellowing

blatherskite but even he represents something and even

-154-

Josephus Daniels filling the navy with grapejuice. I think

there's a chance we may get back to being a democracy

. . . Maybe there won't have to be a revolution; what

do you think?"

He never waited for her to answer a question, he just

talked and laughed all by himself.

When Janey tried to tell Alice about it afterwards the

things Jerry Burnham said didn't seem so funny, nor the

food so good nor everything so jolly. Alice was pretty

bitter about it. "Oh, Janey, how could you go out late at

night with a drunken man and to a place like that and

here I was crazy anxious . . . You know a man like that

has only one idea . . . I declare I think it was heartless

and light . . . I wouldn't have thought you capable of

such a thing.""But, Alice, it wasn't like that at all,"

Janey kept saying, but Alice cried and went round looking

hurt for a whole week; so that after that Janey kept off

the subject of Jerry Burnham. It was the first disagree-

ment she'd ever had with Alice and it made her feel bad.

Still she got to be friends with Jerry Burnham. He

seemed to like taking her out and having her listen to him

talk. Even after he'd thrown up his job at Dreyfus and

Carroll, he sometimes called for her Saturday afternoons

to take her to Keith's. Janey arranged a meeting with

Alice out in Rock Creek Park but it wasn't much of a

success. Jerry set the girls up to tea at the old stone mill.

He was working for an engineering paper and writing a

weekly letter for The New York Sun. He upset Alice by

calling Washington a cesspool and a sink of boredom and

saying he was rotting there and that most of the inhabit-

ants were dead from the neck up anyway. When he put

them on the car to go back to Georgetown Alice said em-

phatically that young Burnham was not the sort of boy

a respectable girl ought to know. Janey sat back happily

in the seat of the open car, looking out at trees, girls in

summer dresses, men in straw hats, mailboxes, storefronts

-155-

sliding by and said, "But, Alice, he's smart as a whip. . . .

Gosh, I like brainy people, don't you?" Alice looked at

her and shook her head sadly and said nothing.

That same afternoon they went to the Georgetown

hospital to see Popper. It was pretty horrible. Mommer

and Janey and the doctor and the wardnurse knew that

he had cancer of the bladder and couldn't live very long

but they didn't admit it even to themselves. They had

just moved him into a private room where he would be

more comfortable. It was costing lots of money and they'd

had to put a second mortgage on the house. They'd al-

ready spent all Janey's savings that she had in a bank-

account of her own against a rainy day. That afternoon

they had to wait quite a while. When the nurse came out

with a glass urinal under a towel Janey went in alone.

"Hello, Popper," she said with a forced smile. The smell

of disinfectant in the room sickened her. Through the

open window came warm air of sunwilted trees, drowsy

Sundayafternoon noises, the caw of a crow, a distant sound

of traffic. Popper's face was drawn in and twisted to one

side. His big moustaches looked pathetically silky and

white. Janey knew that she loved him better than any-

body else in the world . . . His voice was feeble but

fairly firm. " Janey, I'm in drydock, girl, and I guess I'll

never . . . you know better'n I do, the sonsobitches won't

tell me . . . Say, tell me about Joe. You hear from him,

don't you? I wish he hadn't joined the navy; no future

for a boy there without pull higher up; but I'm. glad he

went to sea, takes after me . . . I'd been three times

round the Horn in the old days before I was twenty.

That was before I settled down in the towboat business,

you understand . . . But I been thinkin' here lyin' in

bed that Joe done just what I'd 'a' done, a chip of the

old block, and I'm glad of it. I don't worry about him,

but I wish you girls was married an' off my hands. I'd

feel easier. I don't trust girls nowadays with these here

-156-

monopoly. You boys are working for a bunch of thieves,

but I know it ain't your fault. Here's lookin' at you."

Before they knew it Larry and Joe were singing. The

old man was talking about cotton spinning machinery and

canecrushers and pouring out drinks from a rumbottle.

They were pretty goddam drunk. They didn't know how

they got aboard. Joe remembered the dark focastle and

the sound of snoring from the bunks spinning around,

then sleep hitting him like a sandbag and the sweet, sicky

taste of rum in his mouth.

A couple of days later Joe came down with a fever

and horrible pains in his joints. He was out of his head

when they put him ashore at St. Thomas's. It was dengue

and he was sick for two months before he had the strength

even to write Del to tell her where he was. The hos-

pital orderly told him he'd been out of his head five days

and they'd given him up for a goner. The doctors had

been sore as hell about it because this was post hospital;

after all he was a white man and unconscious and they

couldn't very well feed him to the sharks.

It was July before Joe was well enough to walk around

the steep little coraldust streets of the town. He had to

leave the hospital and would have been in a bad way if one

of the cooks at the marine barracks hadn't looked out for

him and found him a flop in an unused section of the

building. It was hot and there was never a cloud in the

sky and he got pretty sick of looking at the niggers and

the bare hills and the blue shutin harbor. He spent a lot

of time sitting out on the old coalwharf in the shade of a

piece of corrugated iron roof looking through the plank-

ing at the clear deep bluegreen water, watching shoals of

snappers feeding around the piles. He got to thinking*

about Del and that French girl in Bordeaux and the war

and how the United Fruit was a bunch of thieves and then

the thoughts would go round and round in his head like

the little silver and blue and yellow fish round the swaying

-157-

weeds on the piles and he'd find held dropped off to

sleep.

When a northbound fruitsteamer came into the harbor

he got hold of one of the officers on the wharf and told

him his sad story. They gave him passage up to New

York. First thing he did was try to get hold of Janey;

maybe if she thought he ought to, he'd give up this dog's

life and take a steady job ashore. He called up the J.

Ward Moorehouse advertising office where she worked

but the girl at the other end of the line told him she was

the boss's secretary and was out west on business.

He went over and got a flop at Mrs. Olsen's in Red-

hook. Everybody over there was talking about the draft

and how they rounded you up for a slacker if they picked

you up on the street without a registration card. And sure

enough, just as Joe was stepping out of the subway at

Wall Street one morning a cop came up to him and asked

him for his card. Joe said he was a merchant seaman and

had just got back from a trip and hadn't had time to regis-

ter yet and that he was exempt, but the cop said he'd have

to tell that to the judge. They were quite a bunch being

marched down Broadway; smart guys in the crowd of

clerks and counterjumpers along the sidewalks yelled

"Slackers" at them and the girls hissed and booed.

In the Custom House they were herded into some of

the basement rooms. It was a hot August day. Joe elbowed

his way through the sweating, grumbling crowd towards

the window. Most of them were foreigners, there were

longshoremen and waterfront loafers; a lot of the group

were talking big but Joe remembered the navy and kept

his mouth shut and listened. He was in there all day. The

cops wouldn't let anybody telephone and there was only

one toilet and they had to go to that under guard. Joe

felt pretty weak on his pins, he hadn't gotten over the

effect of that dengue yet. He was about ready to pass out

-158-

when he saw a face he knew. Damned if it wasn't Glen

Hardwick.

Glen had been picked up by a Britisher' and taken into

Halifax. He'd signed as second on the Chemang, taking

out mules to Bordeaux and a general cargo to Genoa, going

to be armed with a threeinch gun and navy gunners, Joe

ought to come along. "Jesus, do you think I could get

aboard her?" Joe asked. "Sure, they're crazy for naviga-

tion officers; they'd take you on even without a ticket."

Bordeaux sounded pretty good, remember the girlfriends

there? They doped out that when Glen got out he'd phone

Mrs. Olsen to bring over Joe's license that was in a cigar-

box at the head of his bed. When they finally were taken

up to the desk to be questioned the guy let Glen go right

away and said Joe could go as soon as they got his license

over but that they must register at once even if they were

exempt from the draft. "After all, you boys ought to re-

member that there's a war on," said the inspector at the

desk. "Well, we sure ought to know," said Joe.

Mrs. Olsen came over all in a flurry with Joe's papers

and Joe hustled over to the office in East New York and

they took him on as bosun. The skipper was Ben Tarbell

who'd been first mate on the Higginbotham. Joe wanted

to go down to Norfolk to see Del, but hell this was no

time to stay ashore. What he did was to send her fifty

bucks he borrowed from Glen. He didn't have time to

worry about it anyway because they sailed the next day

with sealed orders as to where to meet the convoy.

It wasn't so bad steaming in convoy. The navy officers

on the destroyers and the Salem that was in command

gave the orders, but the merchant captains kidded back

and forth with wigwag signals. It was some sight to see

the Atlantic Ocean full of long strings of freighters all

blotched up with gray and white watermarkings like bar-

berpoles by the camouflage artists. There were old tubs

in that convoy that a man wouldn't have trusted himself

-159-

in to cross to Staten Island in peacetime and one of the

new wooden Shipping Board boats leaked so bad, jerry-

built out of new wood -- somebody musta been making

money -- that she had to be abandoned and scuttled half

way across.

Joe and Glen smoked their pipes together in Glen's

cabin and chewed the fat a good deal. They decided that

everything ashore was the bunk and the only place for

them was blue water. Joe got damn fed up with bawling

out the bunch of scum he had for a crew. Once they got

in the zone, all the ships started steering a zigzag course

and everybody began to get white around the gills. Joe

never cussed so much in his life. There was a false alarm

of submarines every few hours and seaplanes dropping

depth bombs and excited gun crews firing at old barrels,

bunches of seaweed, dazzle in the water. Steaming into

the Gironde at night with the searchlights crisscrossing

and the blinker signals and the patrolboats scooting.

around, they sure felt good.

It was a relief to get the dirty trampling mules off the

ship and their stench out of everything, and to get rid of

the yelling and cussing of the hostlers. Glen and Joe only

got ashore for a few hours and couldn't find Marceline

and Loulou. The Garonne was beginning to look like the

Delaware with all the new Americanbuilt steel and con-

crete piers. Going out they had to anchor several hours to

repair a leaky steampipe and saw a patrol boat go by tow-

ing five ships' boats crowded to the gunnels, so they

guessed the fritzes must be pretty busy outside.

No convoy this time. They slipped out in the middle of

a foggy night. When one of the deckhands came up out

of the focastle with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth,

the mate knocked him flat and said he'd have him arrested

when he got back home for a damn German spy. They

coasted Spain as far as Finisterre. The skipper had just

changed the course to southerly when they saw a sure

-160-

enough periscope astern. The skipper grabbed the wheel

himself and yelled down the tube to the engine room to

give him everything they'd got, that wasn't much to be

sure, and the gun crew started blazing away.

The periscope disappeared but a couple of hours later

they overhauled a tubby kind of ketch, must be a Spanish

fishingboat, that was heading for the shore, for Vigo prob-

ably, scudding along wing and wing in the half a gale

that was blowing up west northwest. They'd no sooner

crossed the wake of the ketch than there was a thud that

shook the ship and a column of water shot up that

drenched them all on the bridge. Everything worked like

clockwork. No. I was the only compartment flooded. As

luck would have it, the crew was all out of the focastle

standing on deck amidships in their life preservers. The

Chemang settled a little by the bow, that was all. The

gunners were certain it was a mine dropped by the old

black ketch that had crossed their bow and let them have

a couple of shots, but the ship was rolling so in the heavy

sea that the shots went wild. Anyway, the ketch went out

of sight behind the island that blocks the mouth of the

roadstead of Vigo. The Chemang crawled on in under one

bell.

By the time they got into the channel opposite the

town of Vigo, the water was gaining on the pumps in No.

2, and there was four feet of water in the engineroom.

They had to beach her on the banks of hard sand to the

right of the town.

So they were ashore again with their bundles standing

around outside the consul's office, waiting for him to find

them somewhere to flop. The consul was a Spaniard and

didn't speak as much English as he might have but he

treated them fine. The Liberal Party of Vigo invited offi-

cers and crew to go to a bullfight there was going to be

that afternoon. More monkeydoodle business, the skipper

got a cable to turn the ship over to the agents of Gomez

-161-

and Ca. of Bilboa who had bought her as she stood and

were changing her registry.

When they got to the bullring half the crowd cheered

them and yelled, "Viva los Aliados," and the rest hissed

and shouted, "Viva Maura." They thought there was

going to be a fight right there but the bull came out and

everybody quieted down. The bullfight was darn bloody,

but the boys with the spangles were some steppers and

the people sitting around made them drink wine all the

time out of little black skins and passed around bottles of

cognac so that the crew got pretty cockeyed and Joe spent

most of his time keeping the boys in order. Then the

officers were tendered a banquet by the local pro-allied

society and a lot of bozos with mustachlos made fiery

speeches that nobody could understand and the Ameri-

cans cheered and sang, The Yanks are Coming and Keep

the Home Fires Burning and We're Bound for the Ham-

burg Show. The chief, an old fellow named McGillicudy,

did some card tricks, and the evening was a big success.

Joe and Glen bunked together at the hotel. The maid

there was awful pretty but wouldn't let 'em get away with

any foolishness. "Well, Joe," said Glen, before they went

to sleep, "it's a great war." "Well, I guess that's strike

three," said Joe. "That was no strike, that was a ball,"

said Glen.

They waited two weeks in Vigo while the officials quar-

reled about their status and they got pretty fed up with

it. Then they were all loaded on a train to take them to

Gibraltar where they were to be taken on board a Ship-

ping Board boat. They were three days on the train with

nothing to sleep on but hard benches. Spain was just one

set of great dusty mountains after another. They changed

cars in Madrid and in Seville and a guy turned up each

time from the consulate to take care of them. When they

got to Seville they found it was Algeciras they were going

to instead of Gib.

-162-

When they got to Algeciras they found that nobody

had ever heard of them. They camped out in the con-

sulate while the consul telegraphed all over the place and

finally chartered two trucks and sent them over to Cadiz.

Spain was some country, all rocks and wine and busty

black eyed women and olive trees. When they got to

Cadiz the consular agent was there to meet them with a.

telegram in his hand. The tanker Gold Shell was waiting

in Algeciras to take them on board there, so it was back

again cooped up on the trucks, bouncing on the hard

benches with their faces powdered with dust and their

mouths full of it and not a cent in anybody's jeans left

to buy a drink with. When they got on board the Gold

Shell around three in the morning a bright moonlight

night some of the boys were so tired they fell down and

went to sleep right on the deck with their heads on their

seabags.

The Gold Shell landed 'em in Perth Amboy in late

October. Joe drew his back pay and took the first train

connections he could get for Norfolk. He was fed up

with bawling out that bunch of pimps in the focastle.

Damn it, he was through with the sea; he was going to

settle down and have a little married life.

He felt swell coming over on the ferry from Cape

Charles, passing the Ripraps, out of the bay full of white-

caps into the smooth brown water of Hampton Roads

crowded with shipping; four great battlewaggons at an-

chor, subchasers speeding in and out and a white revenue

cutter, camouflaged freighters and colliers, a bunch of red

munitions barges anchored off by themselves. It was a

sparkling fall day. He felt good; he had three hundred

and fifty dollars in his pocket. He had a good suit on and

he felt sunburned and he'd just had a good meal. God

-163-

damn it, he wanted a little love now. Maybe they'd have

a kid.

Things sure were different in Norfolk. Everybody in

new uniforms, twominute speakers at the corner of Main

and Granby, liberty loan posters, bands playing. He

hardly knew the town walking up from the ferry. He'd

written Del that he was coming but he was worried about

seeing her, hadn't had any letters lately. He still had a

latch key to the apartment but he knocked before open-

ing the door. There was nobody there.

He'd always pictured her running to the door to meet

him. Still it was only four o'clock, she must be at her

work. Must have another girl with her, don't keep the

house so tidy. . . . Underwear hung to dry on a line, bits

of clothing on all the chairs, a box of candy with half-

eaten pieces in it on the table. . . . Jez, they must have

had a party last night. There was a half a cake, glasses

that had had liquor in them, a plate full of cigarette butts

and even a cigar butt. Oh, well, she'd probably had some

friends in. He went to the bathroom and shaved and

cleaned up a little. Sure Del was always popular, she

probably had a lot of friends in all the time, playing

cards and that. In the bathroom there was a pot of rouge

and lipsticks, and facepowder spilt over the faucets. It

made Joe feel funny shaving among all these women's

things.

He heard her voice laughing on the stairs and a man's

voice; the key clicked in the lock. Joe closed his suitcase

and stood up. Del had bobbed her hair. She flew up to

him and threw her arms around his neck. "Why, I declare

it's my hubby." Joe could taste rouge on her lips. "My,

you look thin, Joe. Poor Boy, you musta been awful

sick. . . . If I'd had any money at all I'd have jumped

on a boat and come on down. . . . This is Wilmer Tay-

loe . . . I mean Lieutenant Tayloe, he just got his com-

mission yesterday."

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Joe hesitated a moment and then held out his hand.

The other fellow had red hair clipped close and a freckled

face. He was all dressed up in a whipcord uniform, shiny

Sam Browne belt and puttees. He had a silver bar on each

shoulder and spurs on his feet.

"He's just going overseas tomorrow. He was coming

by to take me out to dinner. Oh, Joe, I've got so much to

tell you, honey."

Joe and Lieutenant Tayloe stood around eyeing each

other uncomfortably while Del bustled around tidying

the place up, talking to Joe all the time. "It's terrible I

never get any chance to do anything and neither does

Hilda . . . You remember Hilda Thompson, Joe? Well,

she's been livin' with me to help make up the rent but

we're both of us doin' war work down at the Red Cross

canteen every evening and then I sell Liberty bonds. . . .

Don't you hate the huns, Joe. Oh, I just hate them, and

so does Hilda. . . . She's thinking of changing her name

on account of its being German. I promised to call her

Gloria but I always forget. . . . You know, Wilmer, Joe's

been torpedoed twice."

"Well, I suppose the first six times is the hardest,"

stammered Lieutenant Tayloe. Joe grunted.

Del disappeared into the bathroom and closed the

door. "You boys make yourselves comfortable. I'll be

dressed in a minute."

Neither of them said anything. Lieutenant Tayloe's

shoes creaked as he shifted his weight from one foot to

the other. At last he pulled a flask out of his hip pocket.

"Have a drink," he said. "Ma outfit's goin' overseas any

time after midnight.""I guess I'd better," said Joe,

without smiling. When Della came out of the bathroom

all dressed up she certainly looked snappy. She was much

prettier than last time Joe had seen her. He was all the

time wondering if he ought to go up and hit that damn

-165-

shavetail until at last he left, Del telling him to come by

and get her at the Red Cross canteen.

When he'd left she came and sat on Joe's knee and

asked him about everything and whether he'd got his sec-

ond mate's ticket yet and whether he'd missed her and

how she wished he could make a little more money be-

cause she hated to have another girl in with her this

way but it was the only way she could pay the rent. She

drank a little of the whiskey that the lieutenant had for-

gotten on the table and ruffled his hair and loved him up.

Joe asked her if Hilda was coming in soon and she said

no she had a date and she was going to meet her at the

canteen. But Joe went and bolted the door anyway and

for the first time they were really happy hugged in each

other's arms on the bed.

Joe didn't know what to do with himself around Nor-

folk. Del was at the office all day and at the Red Cross

canteen all the evening. He'd usually be in bed when she

came home. Usually there'd be some damn army officer

or other bringing her home, and he'd hear them talking

and kidding outside the door and lie there in bed imag-

ining that the guy was kissing her or loving her up. He'd

be about ready to hit her when she'd come in and bawl

her out and they'd quarrel and yell at each other and

she'd always end by saying that he didn't understand

her and she thought he was unpatriotic to be interfering

with her war work and sometimes they'd make up and

he'd feel crazy in love with her and she'd make herself

little and cute in his arms and give him little tiny kisses

that made him almost cry they made him feel so happy.

She was getting better looking every day and she sure

was a snappy dresser.

Sunday mornings she'd be too tired to get up and he'd

cook breakfast for her and they'd sit up in bed together

and eat breakfast like he had with Marceline that time in

Bordeaux. Then she'd tell him she was crazy about him

-166-

and what a smart guy he was and how she wanted him

to get a good shore job and make a lot of money so that

she wouldn't have to work any more and how Captain

Barnes whose folks were worth a million had wanted her

to get a divorce from Joe and marry him and Mr. Can-

field in the Dupont office who made a cool 50,000 a year

had wanted to give her a pearl necklace but she hadn't

taken it because she didn't think it was right. Talk like

that made Joe feel pretty rotten. Sometimes he'd start to

talk about what they'd do if they had some kids, but Del

ud always make a funny face and tell him not to talk like

that.

Joe went around looking for work and almost landed

the job of foreman in one of the repairshops over at the

shipyard in Newport News, but at the last minute another

berry horned in ahead of him and got it. A couple of

times he went out on parties with Del and Hilda Thomp-

son, and some army officers and a midshipman off a de-

stroyer, but they all high-hatted him and Del let any

boy who wanted to kiss her and would disappear into a

phone booth with anything she could pick up so long as

it had a uniform on and he had a hell of a time. He found

a poolroom where some boys he knew hung out and

where he could get corn liquor and started tanking up a

good deal. It made Del awful sore to come home and

find him drunk but he didn't care any more.

Then one night when Joe had been to a fight with some

guys and had gotten an edge on afterward, he met Del and

another damn shavetail walking on the street. It was

pretty dark and there weren't many people around and

they stopped in every dark doorway and the shavetail was

kissing and hugging her. When he got them under a street

light so's he made sure it was Del he went up to them

and asked them what the hell they meant. Del must have

had some drinks because she started tittering in a shrill

little voice that drove him crazy and he hauled off and let

-167-

the shavetail have a perfect left right on the button. The

spurs tinkled and the shavetail went to sleep right flat on

the little grass patch under the streetlight. It began to hit

Joe kinder funny but Del was sore as the devil and said

she'd have him arrested for insult to the uniform and

assault and battery and that he was nothing but a yellow

snivelling slacker and what was he doing hanging around

home when all the boys were at the front fighting the

huns. Joe sobered up and pulled the guy up to his feet

and told them both they could go straight to hell. He

walked off before the shavetail, who musta been pretty

tight, had time to do anything but splutter, and went

straight home and packed his suitcase and pulled out.

Will Stirp was in town so Joe went over to his house

and got him up out of bed and said he'd busted up house-

keeping and would Will lend him twentyfive bucks to

go up to New York with. Will said it was a damn good

thing and that love 'em and leave 'em was the only

thing for guys like them. They talked till about day about

one thing and another. Then Joe went to sleep and slept

till late afternoon. He got up in time to catch the Wash-

ington boat. He didn't take a room but roamed around

on deck all night. He got to cracking with one of the offi-

cers and went and sat in the pilot house that smelt com-

fortably of old last year's pipes. Listening to the sludge

of water from the bow and watching the wabbly white

finger of the searchlight pick up buoys and lighthouses he

began to pull himself together. He said he was going up

to New York to see his sister and try for a second mate's

ticket with the Shipping Board. His stories about being

torpedoed went big because none of them on the Dominion

City had even been across the pond.

It felt like old times standing in the bow in the sharp

November morning, sniffing the old brackish smell of the

Potomac water, passing redbrick Alexandria and Anacostia

and the Arsenal and the Navy Yard, seeing the MonuU00AD

-168-

ment stick up pink through the mist in the early light.

The wharves looked about the same, the yachts and power

boats anchored opposite, the Baltimore boat just coming

in, the ramshackle excursion steamers, the oystershells

underfoot on the wharf, the nigger roustabouts standing

around. Then he was hopping the Georgetown car and

too soon he was walking up the redbrick street. While he

rang the bell he was wondering why he'd come home.

Mommer looked older but she was in pretty good

shape and all taken up with her boarders and how the

girls were both engaged. They said that Janey was doing

so well in her work, but that living in New York had

changed her. Joe said he was going down to New York

to try to get his second mate's ticket and that he sure

would look her up. When they asked him about the war

and the submarines and all that he didn't know what to

tell 'em so he kinder kidded them along. He was glad

when it was time to go over to Washington to get his

train, though they were darn nice to him and seemed to

think that he was making a big success getting to be a

second mate so young. He didn't tell 'em about being

married.

Going down on the train to New York Joe sat in the

smoker looking out of the window at farms and stations

and billboards and the grimy streets of factory towns

through Jersey under a driving rain and everything he

saw seemed to remind him of Del and places outside of

Norfolk and good times he'd had when he was a kid.

When he got to the Penn Station in New York first thing

he did was check his bag, then he walked down Eighth

Avenue all shiny with rain to the corner of the street

where Janey lived. He guessed he'd better phone her

first and called from a cigarstore. Her voice sounded

-169-

kinder stiff; she said she was busy and couldn't see him

till tomorrow. He came out of the phonebooth and

walked down the street not knowing where to go. He had

a package under his arm with a couple of Spanish shawls

he'd bought for her and Del on the last trip. He felt so

blue he wanted to drop the shawls and everything down

a drain, but he thought better of it and went back to the

checkroom at the station and left them in his suitcase.

Then he went and smoked a pipe for a while in the wait-

ingroom.

God damn it to hell he needed a drink. He went over

to Broadway and walked down to Union Square, stopping

in every place he could find that looked like a saloon but

they wouldn't serve him anywhere. Union Square was

all lit up and full of navy recruiting posters. A big wooden

model of a battleship filled up one side of it. There was

a crowd standing around and a young girl dressed like a

sailor was making a speech about patriotism. The cold rain

came on again and the crowd scattered. Joe went down a

street and into a ginmill called The Old Farm. He must

have looked like somebody the barkeep knew because he

said hello and poured him out a shot of rye.

Joe got to talking with two guys from Chicago who

were drinking whiskey with beer chasers. They said this

wartalk was a lot of bushwa propaganda and that if work-

ing stiffs stopped working in munition factories making

shells to knock other working stiffs' blocks off with, there

wouldn't be no goddam war. Joe said they were goddam

right but look at the big money you made. The guys from

Chicago said they'd been working in a munitions factory

themselves but they were through, goddam it, and that if

the working stiffs made a few easy dollars it meant that

the war profiteers were making easy millions. They said

the Russians had the right idea, make a revolution and

shoot the goddam profiteers and that ud happen in this

-170-

country if they didn't watch out and a damn good thing

too. The barkeep leaned across the bar and said they'd

oughtn't to talk thataway, folks ud take 'em for German

spies.

"Why, you're a German yourself, George," said one

of the guys.

The barkeep flushed and said, "Names don't mean

nothin' . . . I'm a patriotic American. I vas talking yust

for your good. If you vant to land in de hoosgow it's not

my funeral." But he set them up to drinks on the house

and it seemed to Joe that he agreed with 'em.

They drank another round and Joe said it was all true

but what the hell could you do about it? The guys said

what you could do about it was join the I.W.W. and

carry a red card and be a classconscious worker. Joe said

that stuff was only for foreigners, but if somebody started

a white man's party to fight the profiteers and the goddam

bankers he'd be with 'em. The guys from Chicago began

to get sore and said the wobblies were just as much white

men as he was and that political parties were the bunk

and that all southerners were scabs. Joe backed off and

was looking at the guys to see which one of 'em he'd hit

first when the barkeep stepped around from the end of

the bar and came between them. He was fat but he had

shoulders and a meanlooking pair of blue eyes.

"Look here, you bums," he said, "you listen to me,

sure I'm a Cherman but am I for de Kaiser? No, he's a

schweinhunt, I am sokialist unt I live toity years in Union

City unt own my home unt pay taxes unt I'm a good

American, but dot don't mean dot I vill foight for

Banker Morgan, not vonce. I know American vorkman

in de sokialist party toity years unt all dey do is foight

among each oder. Every sonofabitch denk him better den

de next sonofabitch. You loafers geroutahere . . . closin'

time . . . I'm goin' to close up an' go home."

-171-

One of the guys from Chicagothe

lee of the recruiting tent. Joe felt lousy. He went down

into the subway and waited for the Brooklyn train.

At Mrs. Olsen's everything was dark. Joe rang and in

a little while she came down in a padded pink dressing

gown and opened the door. She was sore at being waked

up and bawled him out for drinking, but she gave him a

flop and next morning lent him fifteen bucks to tide him

over till he got work on a Shipping Board boat. Mrs.

Olsen looked tired and a lot older, she said she had pains

in her back and couldn't get through her work any more.

Next morning Joe put up some shelves in the pantry

for her and carried out a lot of litter before he went over

to the Shipping Board recruiting office to put his name

down for the officer's school. The little kike behind the

desk had never been to sea and asked him a lot of dam-

fool questions and told him to come around next week

to find out what action would be taken on his application.

Joe got sore and told him to f -- k himself and walked out.

He took Janey out to supper and to a show, but she

talked just like everybody else did and bawled him out

for cussing and he didn't have a very good time. She liked

the shawls though and he was glad she was making out

-172-

so well in New York. He never did get around to talking

to her about Della.

After taking her home he didn't know what the hell

to do with himself. He wanted a drink, but taking Janey

out and everything had cleaned up the fifteen bucks he'd

borrowed from Mrs. Olsen. He walked west to a saloon

he knew on Tenth Avenue, but the place was closed:

wartime prohibition. Then he walked back towards Union

Square, maybe that feller Tex he'd seen when he was

walking across the square with Janey would still be sit-

ting there and he could chew the rag a while with him.

He sat down on a bench opposite the cardboard battle-

ship and began sizing it up: not such a bad job. Hell, I

wisht I'd never seen the inside of a real battleship, he was

thinking, when Tex slipped into the seat beside him and

put his hand on his knee. The minute he touched him Joe

knew he'd never liked the guy, eyes too close together:

"What you lookin' so blue about, Joe? Tell me you're

gettin' your ticket."

Joe nodded and leaned over and spat carefully between

his feet.

"What do you think of that for a model battleship,

pretty nifty, ain't it? Jez, us guys is lucky not to be over-

seas.fightin' the fritzes in the trenches."

"Oh, I'd just as soon," growled Joe. "I wouldn't give

a damn."

"Say, Joe, I got a job lined up. Guess I oughtn't to

blab around about it, but you're regular. I know you

won't say nothin'. I been on the bum for two weeks,

somethin' wrong with my stomach. Man, I'm sick, I'm

tellin' you. I can't do no heavy work no more. A punk I

know works in a whitefront been slippin' me my grub,

see. Well, I was sittin' on a bench right here on the square,

a feller kinda well dressed sits down an' starts to chum up.

Looked to me like one of these here sissies lookin' for

rough trade, see, thought I'd roll him for some jack,

-173-

what the hell, what can you do if you're sick an' can't

work?"

Joe sat leaning back with his legs stuck out, his hands in

his pockets staring hard at the outline of the battleship

against the buildings. Tex was talking fast, poking his face

into Joe's: "Turns out the sonofabitch was a dick. S -- t I

was scared pissless. A secret service agent. Burns is his

big boss . . . but what he's lookin' for's reds, slackers,

German spies, guys that can't keep their traps shut . . .

an' he turns around and hands me out a job, twentyfive

smackers a week if little Willy makes good. All I got to

do's bum around and listen to guys talk, see? If I hears

anything that ain't 100 per cent I slips the word to the

boss and he investigates. Twentyfive a week and servin'

my country besides, and if I gets in any kind of jam,

Burns gets me out. . . . What do you think of that for

the gravy, Joe?"

Joe got to his feet. "Guess I'll go back to Brooklyn."

"Stick around . . . look here, you've always treated me

white . . . you belong, I know that Joe . . . I'll put

you next to this guy if you want. He's a good scout, edu-

cated feller an' all that and he knows where you can get

plenty liquor an' women if you want 'em." "Hell, I'm

goin' to sea and get out of all this s -- t," said Joe, turning

his back and walking towards the subway station.

THE CAMERA EYE (34)

his voice was three thousand miles away all the

time he kept wanting to get up outa bed his cheeks were

bright pink and the choky breathing No kid you better

lay there quiet we dont want you catching more cold

-174-

that's why they sent me down to stay with you to keep

you from getting up outa bed,

the barrelvaulted room all smells fever and white-

wash carbolic sick wops outside the airraid siren's got a

nightmare

( Mestre's a railhead and its moonlight over the

Brenta and the basehospital and the ammunition dump

carbolic blue moonlight)

all the time he kept trying to get up outa bed Kiddo

you better lay there quiet his voice was in Minnesota

but dontjaunerstandafellersgottogetup I got a date anim-

portantengagementtoseeabout those lots ought never-

tohavestayedinbedsolate I'll lose my deposit For

chrissake dont you think I'm broke enough as it is?

Kiddo you gotto lay there quiet we're in the hos-

pital in Mestre you got a little fever makes things seem

funny

Cant you letafellerbe? You're in cahoots withem

thaswhassematteris I know theyreouttorookme they

think Imagoddamsucker tomadethatdeposit I'll showem

Illknockyergoddamblockoff

my shadow on the vault bulkyclumsily staggering and

swaying from the one candle spluttering red in the raw

winterhospital carbolic night above the shadow on the cot

gotto keep his shoulders down to the cot Curley's husky

inspite of

(you can hear their motors now the antiaircraft bat-

-175-

teries are letting loose must be great up there in the moon-

light out of the smell of carbolic and latrines and sick

wops)

sit back and light a macedonia by the candle he

seems to be asleep his breathing's so tough pneumonia

breathing can hear myself breathe and the water tick

in the faucet doctors and orderlies all down in the bomb-

proof cant even hear a sick wop groan

Jesus is the guy dying?

they've cut off their motors the little drums in my

ears sure that's why they call em drums (up there in the

blue moonlight the Austrian observer's reaching for the

string that dumps the applecart) the candleflame stands

up still

not that time but wham in the side of the head woke

Curley and the glass tinkling in the upstairs windows the

candle staggered but didnt go out the vault sways with

my shadow and Curley's shadow dammit he's strong

head's full of the fever reek Kiddo you gotto stay in

bed (they dumped the applecart allright) shellfragments

hailing around outside Kiddo you gotto get back to bed

But I gotadate oh christohsweetiesus cant you tell me

how to get back to the outfit haveaheart dad I didntmean-

noharm itsnonlyaboutthose lots

the voice dwindles into a whine I'm pulling the

covers up to his chin again light the candle again smoke a

-176-

macedonia again look at my watch again must be near day

ten o'clock they dont relieve me till eight

way off a voice goes up and up and swoops like the

airraid siren ayayoooTO

NEWSREEL XXV

General Pershing's forces today occupied Belle Joyeuse

Farm and the southern edges of the Bois des Loges. The

Americans encountered but little machinegun opposition. The

advance was in the nature of a linestraightening operation.

Otherwise the activity along the front today consisted prin-

cipally of artillery firing and bombing. Patrols are operating

around Belluno having preceded the flood of allies pouring

through the Quero pass in the Grappa region

REBEL SAILORS DEFY ALLIES

Bonjour ma cherie

Comment allez vous?

Bonjour ma cherie

how do you do?

after a long conference with a secretary of war and the

secretary of state President Wilson returned to the White

House this afternoon apparently highly pleased that events are

steadily pursuing the course which he had felt they would take

Avez vous fiancé cela ne fait rien

Voulez vous couchez avec moi ce soir?

Wee, wee, combien?

HELP THE FOOD ADMINISTRATION BY

REPORTING WAR PROFITEERS

Lord Robert, who is foreign minister Balfour's right

hand man added, "When victory comes the responsibility for

America and Great Britain will rest not on statesmen but on

the people." The display of the red flag in our thoroughfares

-177-

seems to be emblematic of unbridled licence and an insignia

for lawhating and anarchy, like the black flag it represents

everything that is repulsive

LENINE FLEES TO FINLAND

here I am snug as a bug in a rug on this third day of

October. It was Sunday I went over and got hit in the left

leg with a machinegun bullet above the knee. I am in a base

hospital and very comfortable. I am writing with my left

hand as my right one is under my head

STOCK MARKET STRONG BUT NARROW

Some day I'm going to murder the bugler

Some day they're going to find him dead

I'll dislocate his reveille

And step upon it heavily

And spend

the rest of my life in bed

A HOOSIER QUIXOTE

Hibben, Paxton, journalist, Indiandpolis, Ind.,

Dec. 5, 1880, s. Thomas Entrekin and Jeannie Merrill

(Ketcham) H.; A.B. Princeton 1903, A.M. Harvard

1904

Thinking men were worried in the middle west in

the years Hibben was growing up there, something was

wrong with the American Republic, was it the Gold

Standard, Privilege, The Interests, Wall Street?

The rich were getting richer, the poor were getting

poorer, small farmers were being squeezed out, work-

ingmen were working twelve hours a day for a bare

living; profits were for the rich, the law was for the

rich, the cops were for the rich;

was it for that the pilgrims had bent their heads

-178-

into the storm, filled the fleeing Indians with slugs out

of their blunderbusses

and worked the stony farms of New England;

was it for that the pioneers had crossed the Appa-

lachians,

long squirrelauns slung across lean backs,

a fistful of corn in the pocket of the buckskin vest,

was it for that the Indiana farmboys had turned out

to shoot down Johnny Reb and make the black man

free?

Paxton Hibben was a small cantankerous boy, son

of one of the best families (the Hibbens had a whole-

sale dry goods business in Indianapolis); in school the

rich kids didn't like him because he went around with

the poor kids and the poor kids didn't like him because

his folks were rich,

but he was the star pupil of Short Ridge High

ran the paper,

won all the debates.

At Princeton he was the young collegian, editor

of the Tiger, drank a lot, didn't deny that he ran around

after girls, made a brilliant scholastic record and was

a thorn in the flesh of the godly. The natural course

for a bright young man of his class and position was to

study law, but Hibben wanted

travel and romance á la Byron and de Musset,

wellgroomed adventures in foreign lands,

so

as his family was one of the best in Indiana and

friendly with Senator Beveridge he was gotten a post in

the diplomatic service:

3rd see and 2nd see American Embassy St. Peters-

burg and Mexico City 1905-6, see Legation and Chargé

d'affaires, Bogotá, Colombia, 1908-9; Then Hague and

-179-

Luxemburg 1909-12, Santiago de Chile 1912 (re-

tired).

Pushkin for de Musset; St. Petersburg was a young

dude's romance:

goldencrusted spires under a platinum sky,

the icegrey Neva flowing swift and deep under

bridges that jingled with sleighbells;

riding home from the Islands with the Grand

Duke's mistress, the most beautiful most amorous singer

of Neapolitan streetsongs;

staking a pile of rubles in a tall room glittering

with chandeliers, monocles, diamonds dripped on white

shoulders;

white snow, white tableclothes, white sheets,

Kakhetian wine, vodka fresh as newmown hay,

Astrakhan caviar, sturgeon, Finnish salmon, Lapland

ptarmigan, and the most beautiful women in the world;

but it was 1905, Hibben left the embassy one night

and saw a flare of red against the trampled snow of the

Nevsky

and red flags,

blood frozen in the ruts, blood trickling down the

cartracks;

he saw the machineguns on the balconies of the

Winter Palace, the cossacks charging the unarmed

crowds that wanted peace and food and a little freedom,

heard the throaty roar of the Russian Marseillaise;

some stubborn streak in the old American blood

flared in revolt, he walked the streets all night with

the revolutionists, got in wrong at the embassy

and was transferred to Mexico City where there

was no revolution yet, only peons and priests and the

stillness of the great volcanos.

The Cientificos made him a member of the jockey

Club

-180-

where in the magnificent building of blue Puebla

tile he lost all his money at roulette and helped them

drink up the last few cases of champagne left over from

the plunder of Cortez.

Chargé d'Affaires in Colombia (he never forgot

he owed his career to Beveridge; he believed passion-

ately in Roosevelt, and righteousness and reform, and

the antitrust laws, the Big Stick that was going to scare

away the grafters and malefactors of great wealth and

get the common man his due) he helped wangle the

revolution that stole the canal zone from the bishop of

Bogotá later he stuck up for Roosevelt in the Pulitzer

libel suit; he was a progressive, believed in the Canal

and T.R.

He was shunted to the Hague where he went to

sleep during the vague deliberations of the Interna-

tional Tribunal.

In 1912 he resigned from the Diplomatic Service

and went home to campaign for Roosevelt,

got to Chicago in time to hear them singing On-

ward Christian Soldiers at the convention in the Colos-

seum; in the closepacked voices and the cheers, he

heard the trample of the Russian Marseillaise, the

sullen silence of Mexican peons, Colombian Indians

waiting for a deliverer, in the reverberance of the hymn

he heard the measured cadences of the Declaration of

Independence.

The talk of social justice petered out; T.R. was

a windbag like the rest of 'em, the Bull Moose was

stuffed with the same sawdust as the G.O.P.

Paxton Hibben ran for Congress as a progressive

in Indiana but the European war had already taken

people's minds off social justice.

-181-

War Corr Collier's Weekly 1914-15, staff corr

Associated Press in Europe, 1915-17; war corr Leslie's

Weekly in Near East and sec Russian commn for Near

East Relief, June-Dec 1921

In those years he forgot all about the diplomat's

mauve silk bathrobe and the ivory toilet sets and the

little tête-à-têtes with grandduchesses,

he went to Germany as Beveridge's secretary, saw

the German troops goosestepping through Brussels,

saw Poincaré visiting the long doomed galleries

of Verdun between ranks of bitter halfmutinous sol-

diers in blue,

saw the gangrened wounds, the cholera, the typhus,

the little children with their bellies swollen with famine,

the maggoty corpses of the Serbian retreat, drunk Allied

officers chasing sick naked girls upstairs in the brothels

in Saloniki, soldiers looting stores and churches, French

and British sailors fighting with beerbottles in the bars;

walked up and down the terrace with King Con-

stantine during the bombardment of Athens, fought a

duel with a French commission agent who got up and

left when a German sat down to eat in the diningroom

at the Grande Bretagne; Hibben thought the duel was a

joke until all his friends began putting on silk hats; he

stood up and let the Frenchman take two shots at him

and then fired into the ground; in Athens as every-

where he was always in hot water, a slightly built

truculent man, always standing up for his friends, for

people out of luck, for some idea, too reckless ever to

lay down the careful steppingstones of a respectable

career.

Commd 1st lieut F.A. Nov 27-1917; capt May

31-1919; served at war coll camp Grant; in France with

332nd E.A.; Finance Bureau S.O.S.; at G.H.Q. in

-182-

office of Insp Gen of A.E.F.; discharged Aug. 21-

1919; capt O.R.C. Feb 7th 1920; recommd Feb 7-

1925

The war in Europe was bloody and dirty and dull,

but the war in New York revealed such slimy depths

of vileness and hypocrisy that no man who saw it can

ever feel the same again; in the army training camps

it was different, the boys believed in a world safe for

Democracy; Hibben believed in the Fourteen Points,

he believed in The War To End War.

With mil Mission to Armenia, Aug-Dec 1919; staff

corr in Europe for the Chicago Tribune; with the Near

East Relief 1920-22; sec Russian Red Cross commn in

America 1922; v dir for U.S. Nansen Relief Mission

1923; sec AM Commn Relief Russian Children Apr

1922

In the famineyear the cholera year the typhusyear

Paxton Hibben went to Moscow with a relief commis-

sion.

In Paris they were still haggling over the price

of blood, squabbling over toy flags, the riverfrontiers

on reliefmaps, the historical destiny of peoples, while

behind the scenes the good contractplayers, the Deterd-

ings, the Zahkaroffs, the Stinnesses sat quiet and pos-

sessed themselves of the raw materials.

In Moscow there was order,

in Moscow there was work,

in Moscow there was hope;

the Marseillaise of 1905, Onward Christian Sol-

diers of 1912, the sullen passiveness of American In-

dians, of infantrymen waiting for death at the front

was part of the tremendous roar of the Marxian Inter-

nationale.

Hibben believed in the new world.

-183-

Back in America

somebody got hold of a photograph of Captain

Paxton Hibben laying a wreath on Jack Reed's gravei

they tried to throw him out of the O.R.C.;

at Princeton at the twentieth reunion of his col-

lege class his classmates started to lynch him; they were

drunk and perhaps it was just a collegeboy prank twenty

years too late but they had a noose around his neck,

lynch the goddam red,

no more place in America for change, no more

place for the old gags: social justice, progressivism, re-

volt against oppression, democracy; put the reds on the

skids,

no money for them,

no jobs for them.

Mem Authors League of America, Soc of Colonial

Wars, Vets Foreign Wars, Am Legion, fellow Royal

and Am Geog Socs. Decorated chevalier Order of St.

Stanislas (Russian), Officer Order of the Redeemer

(Greek), Order of the Sacred Treasure ( Japan). Clubs

Princeton, Newspaper, Civic ( New York)

Author: Constantine and the Greek People 1920,

The Famine in Russia 1922, Henry Ward Beecher an

American Portrait 1927.

d. 1929.

NEWSREEL XXVI

EUROPE ON KNIFE EDGE

Tout le long de la Thamise

Nous sommes allés tout les deux

Gouter l'heure exquise.

-184-

in such conditions is it surprising that the Department of

Justice looks with positive affection upon those who refused

service in the draft, with leniency upon convicted anarchists

and with something like indifference upon the overwhelming

majority of them still out of jail or undeported for years after

the organization of the U. S. Steel Corporation Wall Street

was busy on the problem of measuring the cubic yards of water

injected into the property

FINISHED STEEL MOVES RATHER MORE FREELY

Where do we go from here boys

Where do we go from here?

WILD DUCKS FLY OVER PARIS

FERTILIZER INDUSTRY STIMULATED BY WAR

Anywhere from Harlem

To a Jersey City pier

the winning of the war is just as much dependent upon

the industrial workers as it is upon the soldiers. Our wonder-

ful record of launching one hundred ships on independence

day shows what can be done when we put our shoulders to the

wheel under the spur of patriotism

SAMARITAINE BATHS SINK IN SWOLLEN

SEINE

I may not know

What the war's about

But you bet by gosh

I'll soon find out

And so my sweetheart

Don't you fear

I'll bring you a king

For a souvenir

And I'll get you a Turk

And the Kaiser too

And that's about all

One feller can do

-185-

AFTER-WAR PLANS OF AETNA EXPLOSIVES

ANCIENT CITY IN GLOOM EVEN THE CHURCH

BELLS ON SUNDAY BEING STILLED

Where do we go from here boys

Where do we go from here?

RICHARD ELLSWORTH SAVAGE

It was at Fontainebleau lined up in the square in front

of Francis I's palace they first saw the big grey Fiat ambu-

lances they were to drive. Schuyler came back from talking

with the French drivers who were turning them over with

the news that they were sore as hell because it meant they

had to go back into the front line. They asked why the

devil the Americans couldn't stay home and mind their

own business instead of coming over here and filling up

all the good embusqué jobs. That night the section went

into cantonment in tarpaper barracks that stank of carbolic,

in a little town in Champagne. It turned out to be the

Fourth of July, so the maréchale-de-logis served out

champagne with supper and a general with white walrus

whiskers came and made a speech about how with the help

of Amérique héroique la victoire was certain, and proposed

a toast to le président Veelson. The chef of the section,

Bill Knickerbocker, got up a little nervously and toasted

la France héroique, l'héroique Cinquième Armée and la

victoire by Christmas. Fireworks were furnished by the

Boches who sent over an airraid that made everybody

scuttle for the bombproof dugout.

Once they got down there Fred Summers said it smelt

too bad and anyway he wanted a drink and he and Dick

went out to find an estaminet, keeping close under the eaves

-186-

of the houses to escape the occasional shrapnel fragments

from the antiaircraft guns. They found a little bar all full

of tobacco smoke and French poilus singing la Madelon.

Everybody cheered when they came in and a dozen glasses

were handed to them. They smoked their first caporal

ordinaire and everybody set them up to drinks so that at

closing time, when the bugles blew the French equivalent

of taps, they found themselves walking a little unsteadily

along the pitchblack streets arm in arm with two poilus

who'd promised to find them their cantonment. The poilus

said la guerre was une saloperie and la victorie was une

sale blague and asked eagerly if les americains knew any-

thing about la revolution en Russie. Dick said he was a

pacifist and was for anything that would stop the war and

they all shook hands very significantly and talked about

la revolution mondiale. When they were turning in on

their folding cots, Fred Summers suddenly sat bolt up-

right with his blanket around him and said in a solemn

funny way he had, "Fellers, this ain't a war, it's a goddam

madhouse."

There were two other fellows in the section who liked

to drink wine and chatter bad French; Steve Warner,

who'd been a special student at Harvard, and Ripley who

was a freshman at Columbia. The five of them went

around together, finding places to get omelettes and pom-

mes frites in the villages within walking distance, making

the rounds of the estaminets every night; they got to be

known as the grenadine guards. When the section moved

up onto the Voie Sacrée back of Verdun and was quartered

for three rainy weeks in a little ruined village called Erize

la Petite, they set up their cots together in the same corner

of the old brokendown barn they were given for a canton-

ment. It rained all day and all night; all day and all night

camions ground past through the deep liquid putty of the

roads carrying men and munitions to Verdun. Dick used

to sit on his cot looking out through the door at the jiggling

-187-

mudspattered faces of the young French soldiers going up

for the attack, drunk and desperate and yelling à bas la

guerre, mort au vachea, à bas la guerre. Once Steve came in

suddenly, his face pale above the dripping poncho, his eyes

snapping, and said in a low voice, "Now I know what the

tumbrils were like in the Terror, that's what they are,

tumbrils."

Dick was relieved to find out, when they finally moved

up within range of the guns, that he wasn't any more

scared than anybody else. The first time they went on post

he and Fred lost their way in the shellshredded woods and

were trying to turn the car around on a little rise naked as

the face of the moon when three shells from an Austrian

eightyeight went past them like three cracks of a whip.

They never knew how they got out of the car and into

the ditch, but when the sparse blue almondsmelling smoke

cleared they were both lying flat in the mud. Fred went

to pieces and Dick had to put his arm around him and

keep whispering in his ear, "Come on, boy, we got to make

it. Come on, Fred, we'll fool 'em." It all hit him funny

and he kept laughing all the way back along the road

into the quieter section of the woods where the dressing

station had been cleverly located right in front of a bat-

tery of 405s so that the concussion almost bounced the

wounded out of their stretchers every time a gun was fired.

When they got back to the section after taking a load to

the triage they were able to show three jagged holes from

shellfragments in the side of the car.

Next day the attack began and continual barrages and

counterbarrages and heavy gasbombardmentsi the section

was on twentyfour hour duty for three days, at the end of

it everybody had dysentery and bad nerves. One fellow

got shellshock, although he'd been too scared to go on

post, and had to be sent back to Paris. A couple of men

had to be evacuated for dysentery. The grenadine guards

came through the attack pretty well, except that Steve

-188-

and Ripley had gotten a little extra sniff of mustard gas

up at P2 one night and vomited whenever they ate any-

thing.

In their twentyfour hour periods off duty they'd meet

in a little garden at Récicourt that was the section's base.

No one else seemed to know about it. The garden had

been attached to a pink villa but the villa had been mashed

to dust as if a great foot had stepped on it. The garden

was untouched, only a little weedy from neglect, roses

were in bloom there and butterflies and bees droned around

the flowers on sunny afternoons. At first they took the bees

for distant arrivés and went flat on their bellies when they

heard them. There had been a cement fountain in the mid-

dle of the garden and there they used to sit when the

Germans got it into their heads to shell the road and the

nearby bridge. There was regular shelling three times a

day and a little scattering between times. Somebody would

be detailed to stand in line at the Copé and buy south of

France melons and four franc fifty champagne. Then

they'd take off their shirts to toast their backs and shoulders

if it was sunny and sit in the dry fountain eating the melons

and drinking the warm cidery champagne and talk about

how they'd go back to the States and start an underground

newspaper like La Libre Belgique to tell people what the

war was really like.

What Dick liked best in the garden was the little back-

house, like the backhouse in a New England farm, with a

clean scrubbed seat and a half moon in the door, through

which on sunny days the wasps who had a nest in the ceiling

hummed busily in and out. He'd sit there with his belly

aching listening to the low voices of his friends talking

in the driedup fountain. Their voices made him feel happy

and at home while he stood wiping himself on a few old

yellowed squares of a 1914 Petit Journal that still hung

on the nail. Once he came back buckling his belt and say-

ing, "Do you know? I was thinking how fine it would be

-189-

if you could reorganize the cells of your body into some

other kind of life . . . it's too damn lousy being a human

. . . I'd like to be a cat, a nice comfortable housecat sit-

ting by the fire."

"It's a hell of a note," said Steve, reaching for his shirt

and putting it on. A cloud had gone over the sun and it

was suddenly chilly. The guns sounded quiet and distant.

Dick felt suddenly chilly and lonely. "It's a hell of a note

when you have to be ashamed of belonging to your own

race. But I swear I am, I swear I'm ashamed of being a

man . . . it will take some huge wave of hope like a

revolution to make me feel any selfrespect ever again. . . .

God, we're a lousy cruel vicious dumb type of tailless ape."

"Well, if you want to earn your selfrespect, Steve, and

the respect of us other apes, why don't you go down, now

that they're not shelling, and buy us a bottle of champagny

water?" said Ripley.

After the attack on hill 304 the division went en repos

back of Bar-le-Duc for a couple of weeks and then up

into a quiet section of the Argonne called le Four de Paris

where the French played chess with the Boches in the front

line and where one side always warned the other before

setting off a mine under a piece of trench. When they were

off duty they could go into the inhabited and undestroyed

town of Sainte Ménéhoulde and eat fresh pastry and

pumpkin soup and roast chicken. When the section was

disbanded and everybody sent back to Paris Dick hated to

leave the mellow autumn woods of the Argonne. The

U. S. army was to take over the ambulance service at-

tached to the French. Everybody got a copy of the section's

citation; Dick Norton made them a speech under shell-

fire, never dropping the monocle out of his eye, dismissing

them as gentlemen volunteers and that was the end of the

section.

Except for an occasional shell from the Bertha, Paris

-190-

was quiet and pleasant that November. It was too foggy

for airraids. Dick and Steve Warner got a very cheap

room back of the Pantheon; in the daytime they read

French and in the evenings roamed round cafés and drink-

ing places. Fred Summers got himself a job with the Red

Cross at twentyfive dollars a week and a steady girl the

second day they hit Paris. Ripley and Ed Schuyler took

lodgings in considerable style over Henry's bar. They all

ate dinner together every night and argued themselves sick

about what they ought to do. Steve said he was going

home and C.O. and to hell with it; Ripley and Schuyler

said they didn't care what they did as long as they kept out

of the American army, and talked about joining the For-

eign Legion or the Lafayette Escadrille.

Fred Summers said, "Fellers, this war's the most gigan-

tic cockeyed graft of the century and me for it and the

cross red nurses." At the end of first week he was holding

down two Red Cross jobs, each at twentyfive a week, and

being kept by a middleaged French marraine who owned

a big house in Neuilly. When Dick's money gave out Fred

borrowed some for him from his marraine, but he never

would let any of the others see her. "Don't want you

fellers to know what I'm in for," he'd say.

At lunchtime one day Fred Summers came round to

say that everything was fixed up and that he had jobs for

them all. The wops, he explained, were pretty well shot

after Caporetto and couldn't get out of the habit of re-

treating. It was thought that sending an American Red

Cross ambulance section down would help their morale.

He was in charge of recruiting for the time being and had

put all their names down. Dick immediately said he spoke

Italian and felt he'd be a great help to the morale of the

Italians, so the next morning they were all at the Red Cross

office when it opened and were duly enrolled in Section 1

of the American Red Cross for Italy. There followed a

couple more weeks waiting around during which Fred

-191-

Summers took on a mysterious Serbian lady he picked up

in a café back of the Place St. Michel who wanted to teach

them to take hashish, and. Dick became friends with a

drunken Montenegran who'd been a barkeep in New York

and who promised to get them all decorated by King

Nicholas of Montenegro. But the day they were going

to be received at Neuilly to have the decorations pinned

on, the section left.

The convoy of twelve Fiats and eight Fords ran along

the smooth macadam roads south through the Forest of

Fontainebleau and wound east through the winecolored

hills of central France. Dick was driving a Ford alone and

was so busy trying to remember what to do with his feet

he could hardly notice the scenery. Next day they went

over the mountains and down into the valley of the Rhone,

into a rich wine country with planetrees and cypresses,

smelling of the vintage and late fall roses and the south.

By Montélimar, the war, the worry about jail and protest

and sedition all seemed a nightmare out of another century.

They had a magnificent supper in the quiet pink and

white town with cêpes and garlic and strong red wine.

"Fellers," Fred Summers kept saying, "this ain't a war,

it's a goddam Cook's tour." They slept in style in the big

brocadehung beds at the hotel, and when they left in the

morning a little schoolboy ran after Dick's car shouting

Vive l'Amerique and handed him a box of nougat, the local

specialty; it was the land of Cockaigne.

That day the convoy fell to pieces running into Mar-

seilles; discipline melted away; drivers stopped at all the

wineshops along the sunny roads to drink and play craps.

The Red Cross publicity man and the Saturday Evening

Post correspondent who was the famous writer, Mont-

gomery Ellis, got hideously boiled and could be heard

whooping and yelling in the back of the staffcar, while the

little fat lieutenant ran up and down the line of cars at

every stop red and hysterically puffing. Eventually they

-192-

were all rounded up and entered Marseilles in formation.

They'd just finished parking in a row in the main square

and the boys were settling back into the bars and cafés

round about, when a man named Ford got the bright idea

of looking into his gasoline tank with a match and blew his

car up. The local firedepartment came out in style and

when car No. 8 was properly incinerated turned their high-

pressure hose on the others, and Schuyler, who spoke the

best French in the section, had to be dragged away from a

conversation with the cigarette girl at the corner café to

beg the firechief for chrissake to lay off.

With the addition of a fellow named Sheldrake who was

an expert on folkdancing and had been in the famous sec-

tion 7, the grenadine guards dined in state at the Bristol.

They continued the evening at the promenoire at the

Apollo, that was so full of all the petite femmes in the

world, they never saw the show. Everything was cock-

eyed and full of women, the shrill bright main streets with

their cafés and cabarets, and the black sweaty tunnels of

streets back of the harbor full of rumpled beds and sailors

and black skin and brown skin, wriggling bellies, flopping

purplewhite breasts, grinding thighs.

Very late Steve and Dick found themselves alone in a

little restaurant eating ham and eggs and coffee. They were

drunk and sleepy and quarrelling drowsily. When they

paid, the middleaged waitress told them to put the tip on

the corner of the table and blew them out of their chairs

by calmly hoisting her skirts and picking up the coins

between her legs.

"It's a hoax, a goddam hoax. . . . Sex is a slotmachine,"

Steve kept saying and it seemed gigantically funny, so

funny that they went into an early morning bar and tried

to tell the man behind the counter about it, but he didn't

understand them and wrote out on a piece of paper the

name of an establishment where they could faire rigajig,

une maison, propre, convenable, et de haute moralité.

-193-

Hooting with laughter they found themselves reeling and

stumbling as they climbed endless stairways. The wind was

cold as hell. They were in front of a crazylooking cathe-

dral looking down on the harbor, steamboats, great ex-

panses of platinum sea hemmed in by ashen mountains.

"By God, that's the Mediterranean."

They sobered up in the cold jostling wind and the wide

metallic flare of dawn and got back to their hotel in time

to shake the others out of their drunken slumbers and be

the first to report for duty at the parked cars. Dick was

so sleepy he forgot what he ought to do with his feet and

ran his Ford into the car ahead and smashed his headlights.

The fat lieutenant bawled him out shrilly and took the car

away from him and put him on a Fiat with Sheldrake, so

he had nothing to do all day but look out of his drowse at

the Corniche and the Mediterranean and the redroofed

towns and the long lines of steamboats bound east hugging

the shore for fear of Uboats, convoyed by an occasional

French destroyer with its smokestacks in all the wrong

places.

Crossing the Italian border they were greeted by crowds

of schoolchildren with palmleaves and baskets of oranges,

and a movie operator. Sheldrake kept stroking his beard

and bowing and saluting at the cheers of evviva gli

americani, until zowie, he got an orange between the eyes

that pretty near gave him a nosebleed. Another man down

the line came within an inch of having his eye put out by

a palmbranch thrown by a delirious inhabitant of Vinti-

miglia. It was a great reception. That night in San Remo

enthusiastic wops kept running up to the boys on the street,

shaking their hands and congratulating them on il Presi-

dente Veelson; somebody stole all the spare tires out of

the camionette and the Red Cross Publicity Man's suitcase

that had been left in the staffcar. They were greeted

effusively and shortchanged in the bars. Evviva gli aleati.

Everybody in the section began to curse out Italy and

-194-

the rubber spaghetti and the vinegary wine, except. Dick

and Steve, who suddenly became woplovers and bought

themselves grammars to learn the language. Dick already

gave a pretty good imitation of talking Italian, especially

before the Red Cross officers, by putting an o on the end of

all the French words he knew. He didn't give a damn

about anything any more. It was sunny, vermouth was a

great drink, the towns and the toy churches on the tops of

hills and the vineyards and the cypresses and the blue sea

were like a succession of backdrops for an oldfashioned

opera. The buildings were stagy and ridiculously mag-

nificent; on every blank wall the damn wops had painted

windows and colonnades and balconies with fat Titian-

haired beauties leaning over them and clouds and covies of

dimpletummied cupids.

That night they parked the convoy in the main square of

a godforsaken little burg on the outskirts of Genoa. They

went with Sheldrake to have a drink in a bar and found

themselves drinking with the Saturday Evening Post

correspondent who soon began to get tight and to say how

he envied them their good looks and their sanguine youth

and idealism. Steve picked him up about everything and

argued bitterly that youth was the lousiest time in your

life, and that he ought to be goddam glad he was forty

years old and able to write about the war instead of fight-

ing in it. Ellis goodnaturedly pointed out that they weren't

fighting either. Steve made Sheldrake sore by snapping

out, "No, of course not, we're goddamned embusqués."

He and Steve left the bar and ran like deer to get out of

sight before Sheldrake could follow them. Around the

corner they saw a streetcar marked Genoa and Steve hopped

it without saying a word. Dick didn't have anything to

do but follow.

The car rounded a block of houses and came out on the

waterfront. "Judas Priest, Dick," said Steve, "the goddam

town's on fire." Beyond the black hulks of boats drawn up

-195-

on the shore a rosy flame like a gigantic lampflame sent a

broad shimmer towards them across the water. "Gracious,

Steve, do you suppose the Austrians are in there?"

The car went whanging along; the conductor who came

and got their fare looked calm enough. "Inglese?" he

asked. "Americani," said Steve. He smiled and clapped

them on the back and said something about the Presidente

Veelson that they couldn't understand.

They got off the car in a big square surrounded by huge

arcades that a raw bittersweet wind blew hugely through.

Dressedup people in overcoats were walking up and down

on the clean mosaic pavement. The town was all marble.

Every façade that faced the sea was pink with the glow

of the fire. "Here the tenors and the baritones and the

sopranos all ready for the show to begin," said Dick. Steve

grunted, "Chorus'll probably be the goddam Austrians."

They were cold and went into one of the shiny nickel

and plateglass cafés to have a grog. The waiter told them

in broken English that the fire was on an American tanker

that had hit a mine and that she'd been burning for three

days. A longfaced English officer came over from the bar

and started to tell them how he was on a secret mission;

it was all bloody awful about the retreat; it hadn't stopped

yet; in Milan they were talking about falling back on the

Po; the only reason the bloody Austrians hadn't overrun

all bloody Lombardy was they'd been so disorganized by

their rapid advance they were in almost as bad shape as the

bloody Italians were. Damned Italian officers kept talking

about the quadrilateral, and if it wasn't for the French and

British troops behind the Italian lines they'd have sold out

long ago. French morale was pretty shaky, at that. Dick

told him about how the tools got swiped every time they

took their eyes off their cars. The Englishman said the

thievery in these parts was extraordinary; that was what

his secret mission was about; he was trying to trace an

entire carload of boots that had vanished between Vinti

-196-

miglia and San Raphael, "Whole bloody luggage van turns

into thin air overnight . . . extraordinary. . . . See those

blighters over there at that table, they're bloody Austrian

spies every mother's son of them . . . but try as I can I

can't get them arrested . . . extraordinary. It's a bloody

melodrama that's what it is, just like Drury Lane. A jolly

good thing you Americans have come in. If you hadn't

you'd see the bloody German flag flying over Genoa at

this minute." He suddenly looked at his wristwatch, ad-

vised them to buy a bottle of whiskey at the bar if they

wanted another bit of drink, because it was closing time,

said cheeryoh, and hustled out.

They plunged out again into the empty marble town,

down dark lanes and streets of stone steps with always the

glare on some jutting wall overhead brighter and redder

as they neared the waterfront. Time and again they got

lost; at last they came out on wharves and bristle of masts

of crowded feluccas and beyond the little crimsontipped

waves of the harbor, the breakwater, and outside the break-

water the mass of flame of the burning tanker. Excited and

drunk they walked on and on through the town: "By God,

these towns are older than the world," Dick kept saying.

While they were looking at a marble lion, shaped like a

dog, that stood polished to glassy smoothness by centuries

of hands at the bottom of a flight of steps, an American

voice hailed them, wanting to know if they knew their way

around this goddam town. It was a young fellow who was

a sailor on an American boat that had come over with a

carload of mules. They said sure they knew their way and

gave him a drink out of the bottle of cognac they'd bought.

They sat there on the stone balustrade beside the lion that

looked like a dog and swigged cognac out of the bottle and

talked. The sailor showed them some silk stockings he'd

salvaged off the burning oilship and told them about how

he'd been jazzing an Eyetalian girl only she'd gone to

sleep and he'd gotten disgusted and walked out on her.

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"This war's hell ain't it de truth?" he said; they all got to

laughing.

"You guys seem to be a couple of pretty good guys," the

sailor said. They handed him the bottle and he took a gulp.

"You fellers are princes," he added spluttering, "and I'm

goin' to tell you what I think, see. . . . This whole god-

dam war's a gold brick, it ain't on the level, its crooked

from A to Z. No matter how it comes out fellers like us

gets the's-y end of the stick, see? Well, what I say is all

bets is off . . . every man go to hell in his own way . . .

and three strikes is out, see?" They finished up the cognac.

Singing out savagely, "To hell wid 'em I say," the

sailor threw the bottle with all his might against the head

of the stone lion. The Genoese lion went on staring ahead

with glassy doglike eyes.

Sourlooking loafers started gathering around to see

what the trouble was so they moved on, the sailor waving

his silk stockings as he walked. They found him his steamer

tied up to the dock and shook hands again and again at the

gangplank.

Then it was up to Dick and Steve to get themselves back

across the ten miles to Ponte Decimo. Chilly and sleepy

they walked until their feet were sore, then hopped a wop

truck the rest of the way. The cobbles of the square and

the roofs of the cars were covered with hoarfrost when

they got there. Dick made a noise getting into the stretcher

beside Sheldrake's and Sheldrake woke up, "What the

hell?" he said. "Shut up," said Dick, "don't you see you're

waking people up?"

Next day they got to Milan, huge wintry city with its

overgrown pincushion cathedral and its Galleria jammed

with people and restaurants and newspapers and whores

and Cinzano and Campari Bitters. There followed another

period of waiting during which most of the section settled

down to an endless crapgame in the back room at Cova's;

then they moved out to a place called Dolo on a frozen

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canal somewhere in the Venetian plain. To get to the ele-

gant carved and painted villa where they were quartered

they had to cross the Brenta. A company of British sappers

had the bridge all mined and ready to blow up when the

retreat began again.They promised to wait till Section 1

had crossed before blowing the bridge up. In Dolo there

was very little to do; it was raw wintry weather; while

most of the section sat around the stove and swapped their

jack at poker, the grenadine guards made themselves hot

rum punches over a gasoline burner, read Boccaccio in

Italian and argued with Steve about anarchism.

Dick spent a great deal of his time wondering how he

was going to get to Venice. It turned out that the fat

lieutenant was worried by the fact that the section had

no cocoa and that the Red Cross commissary in Milan

hadn't sent the section any breakfast foods. Dick suggested

that Venice was one of the world's great cocoamarkets, and

that somebody who knew Italian ought to be sent over

there to buy cocoa; so one frosty morning Dick found

himself properly equipped with papers and seals boarding

the little steamboat at Mestre.

There was a thin skim of ice on the lagoon that tore with

a sound of silk on either side of the narrow bow where Dick

stood leaning forward over the rail, tears in his eyes from

the raw wind, staring at the long rows of stakes and the

light red buildings rising palely out of the green water to

bubblelike domes and square pointedtipped towers that

etched themselves sharper and sharper against the zinc

sky. The hunchback bridges, the greenslimy steps, the

palaces, the marble quays were all empty. The only life

was in a group of torpecloboats anchored in the Grand

Canal. Dick forgot all about the cocoa walking through

sculptured squares and the narrow streets and quays along

the icefilled canals of the great dead city that lay there on

the lagoon frail and empty as a cast snakeskin. To the

north he could hear the tomtomming of the guns fifteen

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miles away on the Piave. On the way back it began to

snow.

A few days later they moved up to Bassano behind

Monte Grappa into a late renaissance villa all painted up

with cupids and angels and elaborate draperies. Back of

the villa the Brenta roared day and night under a covered

bridge. There they spent their time evacuating cases of

frozen feet, drinking hot rum punches at Citadella where

the base hospital and the whorehouses were, and singing

The Foggy Foggy Dew and The Little Black Bull Came

Down From the Mountain over the rubber spaghetti at

chow. Ripley and Steve decided they wanted to learn to

draw and spent their days off drawing architectural details

or the covered bridge. Schuyler practiced his Italian talking

about Nietzsche with the Italian Lieut. Fred Summers

had gotten a dose off a Milanese lady who he said must

have belonged to one of the best families because she was

riding in a carriage and picked him up, not he her, and

spent most of his spare time brewing himself home reme-

dies like cherry stems in hot water. Dick got to feeling

lonely and blue, and in need of privacy, and wrote a great

many letters home. The letters he got back made him feel

worse than not getting any.

"You must understand how it is," he wrote the Thur-

lows, answering an enthusiastic screed of Hilda's about the

"war to end war," "I don't believe in Christianity any

more and can't argue from that standpoint, but you do, or

at least Edwin does, and he ought to realize that in urging

young men to go into this cockeyed lunatic asylum of war

he's doing everything he can to undermine all the principles

and ideals he most believes in. As the young fellow we had

that talk with in Genoa that night said, it's not on the level,

it's a dirty goldbrick game put over by governments and

politicians for their own selfish interests, it's crooked from

A to Z. If it wasn't for the censorship I could tell you

things that would make you vomit."

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Then he'd suddenly snap out of his argumentative

mood and all the phrases about liberty and civilization

steaming up out of his head would seem damn silly too,

and he'd light the gasoline burner and make a rum punch

and cheer up chewing the rag with Steve about books or

painting or architecture. Moonlight nights the Austrians

made things lively by sending bombing planes over. Some

nights Dick found that staying out of the dugout and

giving them a chance at him gave him a sort of bitter

pleasure, and the dugout wasn't any protection against a

direct hit anyway.

Sometime in February Steve read in the paper that the

Empress Taitu of Abyssinia had died. They held a wake.

They drank all the rum they had and keened until the

rest of the section thought they'd gone crazy. They sat

in the dark round the open moonlit window wrapped in

blankets and drinking warm zabaglione. Some Austrian

planes that had been droning overhead suddenly cut off

their motors and dumped a load of bombs right in front

of them. The antiaircraft guns had been barking for some

time and shrapnel sparkling in the moonhazy sky over-

head but they'd been too drunk to notice. One bomb fell

geflump into the Brenta and the others filled the space in

front of the window with red leaping glare and shook the

villa with three roaring snorts. Plaster fell from the ceiling.

They could hear the tiles skuttering down off the roof

overhead.

"Jesus, that was almost good night," said Summers.

Steve started singing, Come away from that window, my

light and my life, but the rest of them drowned it out with

an out of tune Deutschland Deutschland Uber Alles. They

suddenly all felt crazy drunk.

Ed Schuyler was standing on a chair giving a recitation

of the Erlkönig when Feldmann, the Swiss hotel-

keeper's son who was now head of the section, stuck his

head in the door and asked what in the devil they thought

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they were doing. "You'd better go down in the abris, one

of the Italian mechanics was killed and a soldier walking

up the road had his legs blown off . . . no time for

monkeyshines." They offered him a drink and he went off

in a rage. After that they drank marsala. Sometime in the

early dawn greyness Dick got up and staggered to the

window to vomit; it was raining pitchforks, the foaming

r'ds of the Brenta looked very white through the shim-

mering rain.

Next day it was Dick's and Steve's turn to go on post

to Rova. They drove out of the yard at six with their

heads like fireballoons, damn glad to be away from the big

scandal there'd be at the section. At Rova the lines were

quiet, only a few pneumonia or venereal cases to evacuate,

and a couple of poor devils who'd shot themselves in the

foot and were to be sent to the hospital under guard; but

at the officers' mess where they ate things were very agi-

tated indeed. Tenente Sardinaglia was under arrest in his

quarters for saucing the Coronele and had been up there

for two days making up a little march on his mandolin

that he called the march of the medical colonels. Serrati

told them about it giggling behind his hand while they

were waiting for the other officers to come to mess. It was

all on account of the macchina for coffee. There were only

three macchine for the whole mess, one for the colonel,

one for the major, and the other went around to the

junior officers in rotation; well, one day last week they'd

been kidding that bella ragazza, the niece of the farmer

on whom they were quartered; she hadn't let any of the

officers kiss her and had carried on like a crazy woman

when they pinched her behind, and the colonel had been

angry about it, and angrier yet when Sardinaglia had bet

him five lira that he could kiss her and he'd whispered

something in her ear and she'd let him and that had made

the colonel get purple in the face and he'd told the ordi-

nanza not to give the macchina to the tenente when his

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turn came round; and Sardinaglia had slapped the ordi-

nanza's face and there'd been a row and as a result Sardi-

naglia was confined to his quarters and the Americans

would see what a circus it was. They all had to straighten

their faces in a hurry because the colonel and the major

and the two captains came jingling in at that moment.

The ordinanza came and saluted, and said pronto

spaghetti in a cheerful tone, and everybody sat down. For

a while the officers were quiet sucking in the long oily

tomatocoated strings of spaghetti, the wine was passed

around and the colonel had just cleared his throat to begin

one of his funny stories that everybody had to laugh at,

when from up above there came the tinkle of a mandolin.

The colonel's face got red and he put a forkful of spaghetti

in his mouth instead of saying anything. As it was Sunday

the meal was unusually long: at dessert the coffee macchina

was awarded to Dick as a courtesy to gli americani and

somebody produced a bottle of strega. The colonel told the

ordinanza to tell the bella ragazza to come and have a

glass of strega with him; he looked pretty sour at the idea,

Dick thought; but he went and got her. She turned out

to be a handsome stout oliveskinned countrygirl. Her

cheeks burning she went timidly up to the colonel and

said, thank you very much but please she never drank

strong drinks. The colonel grabbed her and made her sit

on his knee and tried to make her drink his glass of strega,

but she kept her handsome set of ivory teeth clenched and

wouldn't drink it. It ended by several of the officers hold-

ing her and tickling her and the colonel pouring the strega

over her chin. Everybody roared with laughter except the

ordinanza, who turned white as chalk, and Steve and Dick

who didn't know where to look. While the senior officers

were teasing and tickling her and running their hands into

her blouse, the junior officers were holding her feet and

running their hands up her legs. Finally the colonel got

control of his laughter enough to say, "Basta, now she

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must give me a kiss." But the girl broke loose and ran out

of the room.

"Go and bring her back," the colonel said to the ordi-

nanza. After a moment the ordinanza came back and stood

at attention and said he couldn't find her. "Good for him,"

whispered Steve to Dick. Dick noticed that the ordinanza's

legs were trembling. "You can't can't you?" roared the

colonel, and gave the ordinanza a push; one of the lieu-

tenants stuck his foot out and the ordinanza tripped over

it and fell. Everybody laughed and the colonel gave him a

kick; he had gotten to his hands and knees when the

colonel gave him a kick in the seat of his pants that sent

him flat to the floor again. The officers all roared, the

Ordinanza crawled to the door with the colonel running

after him giving him little kicks first on one side and then

on the other, like a soccerplayer with a football. That put

everybody in a good humor and they had another drink of

strega all around. When they got outside Serrati, who'd

been laughing with the rest, grabbed Dick's arm and hissed

in his ear, "Bestie, . . . sono tutti bestie."

When the other officers had gone, Serrati took them up

to see Sardinaglia who was a tall longfaced young man who

liked to call himself a futurista. Serrati told him what had

happened and said he was afraid the Americans had been

disgusted. "A futurist must be disgusted at nothing except

weakness and stupidity," said Sardinaglia sententiously.

Then he told them he'd found out who the bella ragazza

was really sleeping with . . . with the ordinanza. That he

said disgusted him; it showed that women were all pigs.

Then he said to sit down on his cot while he played them

the march of the medical colonels. They declared it was

fine. "A futurist must be strong and disgusted with noth-

ing," he said, still trilling on the mandolin, "that's why I

admire the Germans and American millionaires." They

all laughed.

Dick and Steve went out to pick up some feriti to evacu-

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ate to the hospital. Behind the barn where they parked the

cars, they found the ordinanza sitting on a stone with his

head in his hands, tears had made long streaks on the dirt

of his face. Steve went up to him and patted him on the

back and gave him a package of Mecca cigarettes, that had

been distributed to them by the Y.M.C.A. The ordinanza

squeezed Steve's hand, looked as if he was going to kiss it.

He said after the war he was going to America where

people were civilized, not bestie like here. Dick asked him

where the girl had gone. "Gone away," he said. "Andata

via."

When they got back to the section they found there was

hell to pay. Orders had come for Savage, Warner, Ripley

and Schuyler to report to the head office in Rome in order

to be sent back to the States. Feldmann wouldn't tell them

what the trouble was. They noticed at once that the other

men in the section were looking at them suspiciously and

were nervous about speaking to them, except for Fred

Summers who said he didn't understand it, the whole frig-

ging business was a madhouse anyway. Sheldrake, who'd

moved his dufflebag and cot into another room in the villa,

came around with an I told you so air and said he'd heard

the words seditious utterances and that an Italian intelli-

gence officer had been around asking about them. He

wished them good luck and said it was too bad. They left

the section without saying goodby to anybody. Feldmann

drove them and their dufflebags and bedrolls down to

Vicenza in the camionette. At the railroad station he handed

them their orders of movement to Rome, said it was too

bad, wished them good luck, and went off in a hurry

without shaking hands.

"The sons of bitches," growled Steve, "you might think

we had leprosy." Ed Schuyler was reading the military

passes, his face beaming. "Men and brethren," he said, "I

am moved to make a speech . . . this is the greatest graft

yet . . . do you gentlemen realize that what's happening

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is that the Red Cross, otherwise known as the goose that

lays the golden egg, is presenting us with a free tour of

Italy? We don't have to get to Rome for a year.""Keep

out of Rome till the revolution," suggested Dick. "Enter

Rome with the Austrians," said Ripley.

A train came into the station. They piled into a first

class compartment; when the conductor came and tried

to explain that their orders read for second class trans-

portation, they couldn't understand Italian, so finally he

left them there. At Verona they piled off to check their

dufflebags and cots to Rome. It was suppertime so they

decided to walk around the town and spend the night. In

the morning they went to see the ancient theatre and the

great peachcolored marble church of San Zeno. Then they

sat around the café at the station until a train came by for

Rome. The train was jampacked with officers in pale blue

and pale green cloaks; by Bologna they'd gotten tired of

sitting on the floor of the vestibule and decided they must

see the leaning towers. Then they went to Pistoa, Lucca,

Pisa and back to the main line at Florence. When the con-

ductors shook their heads over the orders of movement

they explained that they'd been misinformed and due to

ignorance of the language had taken the wrong train. At

Florence, where it was rainy and cold and the buildings all

looked like the replicas of them they'd seen at home, the

station master put them forcibly on the express for Rome,

but they sneaked out the other side after it had started

and got into the local for Assisi. From there they got to

Siena by way of San Gimignano, as full of towers as New

York, in a hack they hired for the day, and ended up one

fine spring morning full up to the neck with painting and

architecture and oil and garlic and scenery, looking at

the Signorelli frescoes in the cathedral at Orvieto. They

stayed there all day looking at the great fresco of the Last

Judgment, drinking the magnificent wine and basking in

the sunny square outside. When they got to Rome, to the

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station next to the baths of Diocletian, they felt pretty bad

at the prospect of giving up their passes; they were amazed

when the employee merely stamped them and gave them

back, saying, "Per il ritorno."

They went to a hotel and cleaned up, and then pooling

the last of their money went on a big bust with a high-

class meal, Frascati wine and asti for dessert, a vaudeville

show and a cabaret on the Via Roma where they met an

American girl they called the baroness who promised to

show them the town. By the end of the evening nobody

had enough money left to go home with the baroness or

any of her charming ladyfriends, so they hired a cab with

their last ten lire to take them out to see the Colosseum by

moonlight. The great masses of ruins, the engraved stones,

the names, the stately Roman names, the old cabdriver

with his oilcloth stovepipe hat and his green soupstrainers

recommending whorehouses under the last quarter of the

ruined moon, the great masses of masonry full of arches

and columns piled up everywhere into the night, the boom

of the word Rome dying away in pompous chords into the

past, sent them to bed with their heads whirling, Rome

throbbing in their ears so that they could not sleep.

Next morning Dick got up while the others were still

dead to the world and went round to the Red Cross; he

was suddenly nervous and worried so that he couldn't eat

his breakfast. At the office he saw a stoutish Bostonian

Major who seemed to be running things, and asked him

straight out what the devil the trouble was. The Major

hemmed and hawed and kept the conversation in an agree-

able tone, as one Harvard man to another. He talked

about indiscretions and the oversensitiveness of the Italians.

As a matter of fact the censor didn't like the tone of certain

letters, etcetera, etcetera. Dick said he felt he ought to ex-

plain his position, and that if the Red Cross felt he hadn't

done his duty they ought to give him a courtmartial, he

said he felt there were many men in his position who had

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pacifist views but now that the country was at war were

willing to do any kind of work they could to help, but that

didn't mean he believed in the war, he felt he ought to be

allowed to explain his position. The major said Ah well he

quite understood, etcetera, etcetera, but that the young

should realize the importance of discretion, etcetera, et-

cetera, and that the whole thing had been satisfactorily

explained as an indiscretion; as a matter of fact the inci-

dent was closed. Dick kept saying, he ought to be allowed

to explain his position, and the major kept saying the inci-

dent was closed, etcetera, etcetera, until it all seemed a little

silly and he left the office. The major promised him trans-

portation to Paris if he wanted to take it up with the office

there. Dick went back to the hotel feeling baffled and sore.

The other two had gone out, so he and Steve walked

around the town, looking at the sunny streets, that smelt of

frying oliveoil and wine and old stones, and the domed

baroque churches and the columns and the Pantheon and

the Tiber. They didn't have a cent in their pockets to buy

lunch or a drink with. They spent the afternoon hungry,

napping glumly on the warm sod of the Pincian, and got

back to the room famished and depressed to find Schuyler

and Ripley drinking vermouth and soda and in high spirits.

Schuyler had run into an old friend of his father's, Colonel

Anderson, who was on a mission investigating the Red

Cross, and had poured out his woes and given him dope

about small graft at the office in Milan. Major Anderson

had set him up to lunch and highballs at the Hotel de

Russie, lent him a hundred dollars and fixed him up with

a job in the publicity department. "So men and brethren,

evviva Italia and the goddamned Alleati, we're all set."

"What about the dossier?" Steve asked savagely. "Aw

forget it, siamo tutti Italiani . . . who's a defeatist now?"

Schuyler set them all up to meals, took them out to

Tivoli and the Lake of Nemi in a staff car, and finally put

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them on the train to Paris with the rating of captain on

their transport orders.

The first day in Paris Steve went off to the Red Cross

office to get shipped home. "To hell with it, I'm going to

C.O.," was all he'd say. Ripley enlisted in the French

artillery school at Fontainebleau. Dick got himself a cheap

room in a little hotel on the Ile St. Louis and spent his

days interviewing first one higher up and then another in

the Red Cross; Hiram Halsey Cooper had suggested the

names in a very guarded reply to a cable Dick sent him

from Rome. The higherups sent him from one to the

other. "Young man," said one baldheaded official in a

luxurious office at the Hotel Crillon, "your opinions, while

showing a senseless and cowardly turn of mind, don't

matter. The American people is out to get the kaiser. We

are bending every nerve and every energy towards that

end; anybody who gets in the way of the great machine

the energy and devotion of a hundred million patriots is

building towards the stainless purpose of saving civiliza-

tion from the Huns will be mashed like a fly. I'm surprised

that a collegebred man like you hasn't more sense. Don't

monkey with the buzzsaw."

Finally he was sent to the army intelligence service

where he found a young fellow named Spaulding he'd

known in college who greeted him with a' queazy smile.

"Old man," he said, "in a time like this we can't give in

to our personal feelings can we . . .? I think it's per-

fectly criminal to allow yourself the luxury of private

opinions, perfectly criminal. It's war time and we've all got

to do our duty, it's people like you that are encouraging

the Germans to keep up the fight, people like you and the

Russians." Spaulding's boss was a captain and wore spurs

and magnificently polished puttees; he was a sternlooking

young man with a delicate profile. He strode up to Dick,

put his face close to his and yelled, "What would you do

if two Huns attacked your sister? You'd fight, wouldn't

-209-

you? . . . if you're not a dirty yellow dawg. . . ." Dick

tried to point out that he was anxious to keep on doing the

work he had been doing, he was trying to get back to the

front with the Red Cross, he wanted an opportunity to ex-

plain his position. The captain strode up and down, bawling

him out, yelling that any man who was still a pacifist after

the President's declaration of war was a moron or what

was worse a degenerate and that they didn't want people

like that in the A.E.F. and that he was going to see to

it that Dick would be sent back to the States and that he

would not be allowed to come back in any capacity what-

soever. "The A.E.F. is no place for a slacker."

Dick gave up and went to the Red Cross office to get his

transportation; they gave him an order for the Touraine

sailing from Bordeaux in two weeks. His last two weeks in

Paris he spent working as a volunteer stretcherbearer at

the American hospital on the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne.

It was June. There were airraids every clear night and

when the wind was right you could hear the guns on the

front. The German offensive was on, the lines were so

near Paris the ambulances were evacuating wounded

directly on the basehospitals. All night the stretcher cases

would spread along the broad pavements under the trees

in fresh leaf in front of the hospital; Dick would help carry

them up the marble stairs into the reception room. One

night they put him on duty outside the operating room and

for twelve hours he had the job of carrying out buckets of

blood and gauze from which protruded occasionally a

shattered bone or a piece of an arm or a leg. When he went

off duty he'd walk home achingly tired through the straw-

berryscented early Parisian morning, thinking of the faces

and the eyes and the sweatdrenched hair and the clenched

fingers clotted with blood and dirt and the fellows kidding

and pleading for cigarettes and the bubbling groans of the

lung cases.

One day he saw a pocket compass in a jeweller's win-

-210-

dow on the Rue de Rivoli. He went in and bought it;

there was suddenly a fullformed plan in his head to buy a

civilian suit, leave his uniform in a heap on the wharf at

Bordeaux and make for the Spanish border. With luck and

all the old transport orders he had in his inside pocket he

was sure he could make it; hop across the border and then,

once in a country free from nightmare, decide what to do.

He even got ready a letter to send his mother.

All the time he was packing his books and other junk

in his dufflebag and carrying it on his back up the quais to

the Gare d'Orleans, Swinburne Song in Time of Order

kept going through his head:

While three men hold together

The kingdoms are less by three.

By gum, he must write some verse: what people needed

was stirring poems to nerve them for revolt against their

cannibal governments. Sitting in the secondclass compart-

ment he was so busy building a daydream of himself living

in a sunscorched Spanish town, sending out flaming poems

and manifestoes, calling young men to revolt against their

butchers, poems that would be published by secret presses

all over the world, that he hardly saw the suburbs of Paris

or the bluegreen summer farmlands sliding by.

Let our flag run out straight in the wind

The old red shall be floated again

When the ranks that are thin shall be thinned

When the names that were twenty are ten

Even the rumblebump rumblebump of the French rail-

road train seemed to be chanting as if the words were mut-

tered low in unison by a marching crowd:

While three men hold together

The kingdoms are less by three.

-211-

At noon Dick got hungry and went to the diner to

eat a last deluxe meal. He sat down at a table opposite a

goodlooking young man in a French officer's uniform.

"Good God, Ned, is that you?" Blake Wigglesworth

threw back his head in the funny way he had and laughed.

"Garçon," he shouted, "un verre pour le monsieur."

"But how long were you in the Lafayette Escadrille?"

stammered Dick.

"Not long . . . they wouldn't have me."

"And how about the Navy?"

"Threw me out too, the damn fools think I've got T.B.

. . . garçon, une bouteille de champagne. . . . Where

are you going?"

"I'll explain."

"Well, I'm going home on the Touraine." Ned threw

back his head laughing again and his lips formed the syl-

lables blahblahblahblah. Dick noticed that although his

face was very pale and thin his skin under his eyes and up

onto the temples was flushed and his eyes looked a little

too bright. "Well, so am I," he heard himself say.

"I got into hot water," said Ned.

"Me too," said Dick. "Very."

They lifted their glasses and looked into each other's

eyes and laughed. They sat in the diner all afternoon talk-

ing and drinking and got to Bordeaux boiled as owls. Ned

had spent all his money in Paris and Dick had very little

left, so they had to sell their bedrolls and equipment to a

couple of American lieutenants just arrived they met in

the Café de Bordeaux. It was almost like old days in

Boston going around from bar to bar and looking for

places to get drinks after closing. They spent most of the

night in an elegant maison publique all upholstered in

pink satin, talking to the madam, a driedup woman with

a long upper lip like a llama's wearing a black spangled

evening dress, who took a fancy to them and made them

stay and eat onion soup with her. They were so busy

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talking they forgot about the girls. She'd been in the

Transvaal during the Boer War and spoke a curious

brand of South African English. "Vous comprennez ve

had very fine clientele, every man jack officers, very much

elegance, decorum. These johnnies off the veldt . . . get

the hell outen here . . . bloody select don't you know. Ve

had two salons, one salon English officers, one salon Boer

officers, very select, never in all the war make any bloody

row, no fight. . . . Vos compatriotes les Americains ce

n'est pas comme ça, mes amis. Beaucoup sonofabeetch,

make drunk, make bloody row, make sick, naturellement

il y a aussi des gentils garçons comme vous, mes mignons,

des veritables gentlemens," and she patted them both on

the cheeks with her horny ringed hands. When they left

she wanted to kiss them and went with them to the door

saying, "Bonsoir mes jolis petits gentlemens."

All the crossing they were never sober after eleven in

the morning; it was calm misty weather; they were very

happy. One night when he was standing alone in the stern

beside the small gun, Dick was searching his pocket for a

cigarette when his fingers felt something hard in the lining

of his coat. It was the little compass he had bought to

help him across the Spanish border. Guiltily, he fished it

out and dropped it overboard.

NEWSREEL XXVII

HER WOUNDED HERO OF WAR A FRAUD

SAYS WIFE IN SUIT

Mid the wars great coise

Stands the red cross noise

She's the rose of no man's land

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according to the thousands who had assembled to see the

launching and were eyewitnesses of the disaster the scaffold

simply seemed to turn over like a gigantic turtle precipitating

its occupants into twentyfive feet of water. This was exactly

four minutes before the launching was scheduled

Oh that battle of Paree

It's making a bum out of me

BRITISH BEGIN OPERATION ON AFGHAN

FRONTIER

the leading part in world trade which the U.S. is now

confidently expected to take, will depend to a very great extent

upon the intelligence and success with which its harbors are

utilized and developed

I wanta go home I wanta go home

The bullets they whistle the cannons they roar

I dont want to go to the trenches no more

Oh ship me over the sea

Where the Allemand cant get at me

you have begun a crusade against toys, but if all the

German toys were commandeered and destroyed the end of

German importations would not yet have been reached

HOLDS UP 20 DINERS IN CAFE

LAWHATING GATHERINGS NOT TO BE ALLOWED IN

CRITICAL TIME THREATENING SOCIAL UPHEAVAL

Oh my I'm too young to die

I wanta go home

Nancy Enjoys Nightlife Despite Raids

TATTOOED WOMAN SOUGHT BY POLICE IN

TRUNK MURDER

ARMY WIFE SLASHED BY ADMIRER

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Young Man Alleged to Have Taken Money to Aid in

Promotion of a Reserve Officer. It appears that these men

were Chinese merchants from Irkutsk, Chita and elsewhere

who were proceeding homeward to Harbin carrying their

profits for investment in new stocks

Oh that battle of Paree

Its making a bum out of me

Toujours la femme et combien

300,000 RUSSIAN NOBLES SLAIN BY

BOLSHEVIKI

Bankers of This Country, Britain and France to

Safeguard Foreign Investors

these three girls came to France thirteen months ago and

were the first concertparty to entertain at the front. They

staged a show for the American troops from a flatcar base of

a large naval gun three kilometers behind the line on the day

of the evening of the drive at Chateau Thierry. After that

they were assigned to the Aix-les-Bains leave area where they

acted during the day as canteen girls and entertained and

danced at night

You never knew a place that was so short of men

Beaucoup rum beaucoup fun

Mother'd never know her loving son

Oh if you want to see that statue of Libertee

Keep away from that battle of Paree

THE CAMERA EYE (35)

there were always two cats the color of hot milk with

a little coffee in it with aquamarine eyes and sootblack

faces in the window of the laundry opposite the little

creamery where we ate breakfast on the Montagne St.

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Geneviève huddled between the old squeezedup slate-

grey houses of the Latin Quarter leaning over steep small

streets cosy under the fog minute streets lit with dif-

ferentcolored chalks cluttered with infinitesimal bars res-

taurants paintshops and old prints beds bidets faded per-

fumery microscopic sizzle of frying butter

the Bertha made a snapping noise no louder than a

cannoncracker near the hotel where Oscar Wilde died we

all ran up stairs to see if the house was on fire but the old

woman whose lard was burning was sore as a crutch

all the big new quarters near the Arc de Triomphe

were deserted but in the dogeared yellowbacked Paris of

the Carmagnole the Faubourg St Antoine the Commune

we were singing

'suis dans l'axe

'suis dans l'axe

'suis dans l'axe du gros canon

when the Bertha dropped in the Seine there was a

concours de pêche in the little brightgreen skiffs among all

the old whiskery fishermen scooping up in nets the minnows

the concussion had stunned

EVELINE HUTCHINS

Eveline went to live with Eleanor in a fine apartment

Eleanor had gotten hold of somehow on the quai de la

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Tournelle. It was the mansard floor of a grey peeling-

faced house built at the time of Richelieu and done over

under Louis Quinze. Eveline never tired of looking out the

window, through the delicate tracing of the wroughtiron

balcony, at the Seine where toy steamboats bucked the cur-

rent, towing shinyvarnished barges that had lace curtains

and geraniums in the windows of their deckhouses painted

green and red, and at the island opposite where the rock-

eting curves of the flying buttresses shoved the apse of

Nôtre Dâme dizzily upwards out of the trees of a little

park. They had tea at a small Buhl table in the window

almost every evening when they got home from the office

on the Rue de Rivoli, after spending the day pasting pic-

tures of ruined French farms and orphaned children and

starving warbabies into scrapbooks to be sent home for use

in Red Cross drives.

After tea she'd go out in the kitchen and watch Yvonne

cook. With the groceries and sugar they drew at the Red

Cross commissary, Yvonne operated a system of barter so

that their food hardly cost them anything. At first Eveline

tried to stop her but she'd answer with a torrent of argu-

ment: did Mademoiselle think that President Poincaré or

the generals or the cabinet ministers, ces salots de prof-

iteurs, ces salots d'embusqués, went without their brioches?

It was the systeme D, ils s'en fichent des particuliers, des

pauvres gens . . . very well her ladies would eat as well

as any old camels of generals, if she had her way she'd

have all the generals line up before a firingsquad and the

embusqué ministers and the ronds de cuir too. Eleanor said

her sufferings had made the old woman a little cracked but

Jerry Burnham said it was the rest of the world that was

cracked.

Jerry Burnham was the little redfaced man who'd been

such a help with the colonel the first night Eveline got to

Paris. They often laughed about it afterwards. He was

working for the U.P. and appeared every few days in her

-217-

office on his rounds covering Red Cross activities. He knew

all the Paris restaurants and would take Eveline out to

dinner at the Tour d'Argent or to lunch at the Taverne

Nicholas Flamel and they'd walk around the old streets of

the Marais afternoons and get late to their work together.

When they'd settle in the evening at a good quiet table in

a café where they couldn't be overheard (all the waiters

were spies he said), he'd drink a lot of cognac and soda and

pour out his feelings, how his work disgusted him, how a

correspondent couldn't get to see anything anymore, how

he had three or four censorships on his neck all the time

and had to send out prepared stuff that was all a pack of

dirty lies every word of it, how a man lost his self-

respect doing things like that year after year, how a news-

paperman had been little better than a skunk before the

war, but that now there wasn't anything low enough you

could call him. Eveline would try to cheer him up telling

him that when the war was over he ought to write a book

like Le Feu and really tell the truth about it. "But the

war won't ever be over . . . too damn profitable, do you

get me? Back home they're coining money, the British are

coining money; even the French, look at Bordeaux and

Toulouse and Marseilles coining money and the goddam

politicians, all of 'em got bank accounts in Amsterdam or

Barcelona, the sons of bitches." Then he'd take her hand

and get a crying jag and promise that if it did end he'd

get back his selfrespect and write the great novel he felt he

had in him.

Late that fall Eveline came home one evening tramp-

ing through the mud and the foggy dusk to find that

Eleanor had a French soldier to tea. She was glad to see

him, because she was always complaining that she wasn't

getting to know any French people, nothing but profes-

sional relievers and Red Cross women who were just too

tiresome; but it was some moments before she realized it

was Maurice Millet. She wondered how she could have

-218-

fallen for him even when she was a kid, he looked so

middleaged and pasty and oldmaidish in his stained blue

uniform. His large eyes with their girlish long lashes had

heavy violet rings under them. Eleanor evidently thought

he was wonderful still, and drank up his talk about l'élan

suprème du sacrifice and l'harmonie mysterieuse de la

mort. He was a stretcherbearer in a basehospital at Nancy,

had become very religious and had almost forgotten his

English. When they asked him about his painting he

shrugged his shoulders and wouldn't answer. At supper

he ate very little and drank only water. He stayed till late

in the evening telling them about miraculous conversions

of unbelievers, extreme unction on the firing line, a vision

of the young Christ he'd seen walking among the wounded

in a dressingstation during a gasattack. Après la guerre he

was going into a monastery. Trappist perhaps. After he

left Eleanor said it had been the most inspiring evening

she'd ever had in her life; Eveline didn't argue with her.

Maurice came back one other afternoon before his perme

expired bringing a young writer who was working at the

Quai d'Orsay, a tall young Frenchman with pink cheeks

who looked like an English publicschool boy, whose name

was Raoul Lemonnier. He seemed to prefer to speak

English than French. He'd been at the front for two years

in the Chasseurs Alpins and had been reformé on account

of his lungs or his uncle who was a minister he couldn't

say which. It was all very boring, he said. He thought

tennis was ripping, though, and went out to St. Cloud to

row every afternoon. Eleanor discovered that what she'd

been wanting all fall had been a game of tennis. He said

he liked English and American women because they liked

sport. Here every woman thought you wanted to go to

bed with her right away; "Love is very boring," he said.

He and Eveline stood in the window talking about cock-

tails (he adored American drinks) and looked out at the

last purple shreds of dusk settling over Nôtre Dâme and

-219-

the Seine, while Eleanor and Maurice sat in the dark in

the little salon talking about St. Francis of Assisi. She asked

him to dinner.

The next morning Eleanor said she thought she was

going to become a Catholic. On their way to the office she

made Eveline stop into Nôtre Dâme with her to hear

mass and they both lit candles for Maurice's safety at the

front before what Eveline thought was a just too tiresome-

looking virgin near the main door. But it was impressive

all the same, the priests moaning and the lights and the

smell of chilled incense. She certainly hoped poor Maurice

wouldn't be killed.

For dinner that night Eveline invited Jerry Burnham,

Miss Felton who was back from Amiens and Major

Appleton who was in Paris doing something about tanks.

It was a fine dinner, duck roasted with oranges, although

Jerry, who was sore about how much Eveline talked to

Lemonnier, had to get drunk and use a lot of bad language

and tell about the retreat at Caporetto and say that the

Allies were in a bad way. Major Appleton said he

oughtn't to say it even if it was true and got quite red in

the face. Eleanor was pretty indignant and said he ought

to be arrested for making such a statement, and after

everybody had left she and Eveline had quite a quarrel.

"What will that young Frenchman be thinking of us?

You're a darling, Eveline dear, but you have the vulgarest

friends. I don't know where you pick them up, and that

Felton woman drank four cocktails, a quart of beaujolais

and three cognacs, I kept tabs on her myself;" Eveline

started to laugh and they both got to laughing. But

Eleanor said that their life was getting much too bohe-

mian and that it wasn't right with the war on and things

going so dreadfully in Italy and Russia and the poor boys

in the trenches and all that.

That winter Paris gradually filled up with Americans

in uniform, and staffcars, and groceries from the Red

-220-

Cross supply store; and Major Moorehouse who, it turned

out, was an old friend of Eleanor's, arrived straight from

Washington to take charge of the Red Cross publicity.

Everybody was talking about him before he came because

he'd been one of the best known publicity experts in New

York before the war. There was no one who hadn't heard

of J. Ward Moorehouse. There was a lot of scurry around

the office when word came around that he'd actually

landed in Brest and everybody was nervous worrying

where the axe was going to fall.

The morning he arrived the first thing Eveline noticed

was that Eleanor had had her hair curled. Then just be-

fore noon the whole publicity department was asked into

Major Wood's office to meet Major Moorehouse. He was

a biggish man with blue eyes and hair so light it was

almost white. His uniform fitted well and his Sam Browne

belt and his puttees shone like glass. Eveline thought at

once that there was something sincere and appealing about

him, like about her father, that she liked. He looked

young too, in spite of the thick jowl, and he had a slight

southern accent when he talked. He made a little speech

about the importance of the work the Red Cross was

doing to keep up the morale of civilians and combatants,

and that their publicity ought to have two aims, to stimu-

late giving among the folks back home and to keep people

informed of the progress of the work. The trouble now

was that people didn't know enough about what a valuable

effort the Red Cross workers were making and were too

prone to listen to the criticisms of proGermans working

under the mask of pacifism and knockers and slackers

always ready to carp and criticize; and that the American

people and the warwracked populations of the Allied coun-

tries must be made to know the splendid sacrifice the Red

Cross workers were making, as splendid in its way as the

sacrifice of the dear boys in the trenches.

"Even at this moment, my friends, we are under fire,ready to make the supreme sacrifice that civilization shall

not perish from the earth."

-221-

ready to make the supreme sacrifice that civilization shall

not perish from the earth." Major Wood leaned back in

his swivelchair and it let out a squeak that made everybody

look up with a start and several people looked out of the

window as if they expected to see a shell from big Bertha

hurtling right in on them. "You see," said Major Moore-

house eagerly, his blue eyes snapping, "that is what we

must make people feel . . . the catch in the throat, the

wrench to steady the nerves, the determination to carry

on."

Eveline felt stirred in spite of herself. She looked a

quick sideways look at Eleanor, who looked cool and lily-

like as she had when she was listening to Maurice tell

about the young Christ of the gasattack. Can't ever tell

what she's thinking, though, said Eveline to herself.

That afternoon when J. W., as Eleanor called Major

Moorehouse, came down to have a cup of tea with them,

Eveline felt that she was being narrowly watched and

minded her P's and Q's as well as she could; it is the

financial adviser; she was giggling about it inside. He

looked a little haggard and didn't say much, and winced

noticeably when they talked about airraids moonlight

nights, and how President Poincaré went around in per-

son every morning to visit the ruins and condole with the

survivors. He didn't stay long and went off someplace in

a staffcar to confer with some high official or other.

Eveline thought he looked nervous and uneasy and would

rather have stayed with them. Eleanor went out on the

landing of the stairs with him and was gone some time.

Eveline watched her narrowly when she came back into

the room but her face had its accustomed look of finely

chiselled calm. It was on the tip of Eveline's tongue to

ask her if Major Moorehouse was her . . . her . . . but

she couldn't think of a way of putting it.

Eleanor didn't say anything for some time; then she

shook her head and said, "Poor Gertrude.""Who's that?"

-222-

Eleanor's voice was just a shade tinny, "J. W.'s wife . . .

she's in a sanitarium with a nervous breakdown . . . the

strain, darling, this terrible war."

Major Moorehouse went down to Italy to reorganize

the publicity of the American Red Cross there, and a

couple of weeks later Eleanor got orders from Washing-

ton to join the Rome office. That left Eveline alone with

Yvonne in the apartment.

It was a chilly, lonely winter and working with all these

relievers was just too tiresome, but Eveline managed to

hold her job and to have some fun sometimes in the eve-

ning with Raoul, who would come around and take her

out to some petite boite or other that he'd always say was

very boring. He took her to the Noctambules where you

could sometimes get drinks after the legal hour; or up to

a little restaurant on the Butte of Montmartre where one

cold moonlit January night they stood on the porch of

the Sacré Coeur and saw the Zeppelins come over. Paris

stretched out cold and dead as if all the tiers of roofs

and domes were carved out of snow and the shrapnel

sparkled frostily overhead and the searchlights were an-

tennae of great insects moving through the milky dark-

ness. At intervals came red snorting flares of the incen-

diary bombs. Just once they caught sight of two tiny

silver cigars overhead. They looked higher than the moon.

Eveline found that Raoul's arm that had been around

her waist had slipped up and that he had his hand over

her breast. "C'est fou tu sais . . . c'est fou tu sais," he

was saying in a singsong voice, he seemed to have forgot-

ten his English. After that they talked French and Eveline

thought she loved him terribly much. After the breloque

had gone through the streets they walked home across

dark silent Paris. At one corner a gendarme came up and

asked Lemonnier for his papers. He read them through

painfully in the faint blue glow of a corner light, while

Eveline stood by breathless, feeling her heart pound. The

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gendarme handed back the papers, saluted, apologized

profusely and walked off. Neither of them said anything

about it, but Raoul seemed to be taking it for granted he

was going to sleep with her at her apartment. They walked

home briskly through the cold black streets, their foot-

steps clacking sharply on the cobbles. She hung on his

arm; there was something tight and electric and uncom-

fortable in the way their hips occasionally touched as they

walked.

Her house was one of the few in Paris that didn't have

a concièrge. She unlocked the door and they climbed shiv-

ering together up the cold stone stairs. She whispered to

him to be quiet, because of her maid. "It is very boring,"

he whispered; his lips brushed warm against her ear. "I

hope you won't think it's too boring."

While he was combing his hair at her dressingtable,

taking little connoisseur's sniffs at her bottles of perfume,

preening himself in the mirror without haste and embar-

rassment, he said, " Charmante Eveline, would you like

to be my wife? It could be arranged, don't you know. My

uncle who is the head of the family is very fond of Ameri-

cans. Of course it would be very boring, the contract and

all that.""Oh, no, that wouldn't be my idea at all," she

whispered giggling and shivering from the bed. Raoul

gave her a furious offended look, said good night very

formally and left.

When the trees, began to bud outside her window and

the flowerwomen in the markets began to sell narcissuses

and daffodils, the feeling that it was spring made her long

months alone in Paris seem drearier than ever. Jerry

Burnham had gone to Palestine; Raoul Lemonnier had

never come to see her again; whenever he was in town

Major Appleton came around and paid her rather elab-

orate attentions, but he was just too tiresome. Eliza Felton

was driving an ambulance attached to a U. S. basehospital

on the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne and would come

-224-

around those Sundays when she was off duty and make

Eveline's life miserable with her complaints that Eveline

was not the free pagan soul she'd thought at first. She said

that nobody loved her and that she was praying for the

Bertha with her number on it that would end it all. It

got so bad that Eveline wasn't able to stay in the house at

all on Sunday and often spent the afternoon in her office

reading Anatole France.

Then Yvonne's crotchets were pretty trying; she tried

to run Eveline's life with her tightlipped comments.

When Don Stevens turned up for a leave, looking more

haggard than ever in the grey uniform of the Quaker out-

fit, it was a godsend, and Eveline decided maybe she'd

been in love with him after all. She told Yvonne he was

her cousin and that they'd been brought up like brother

and sister and put him up in Eleanor's room.

Don was in a tremendous state of excitement about the

success of the Bolsheviki in Russia, ate enormously, drank

all the wine in the house, and was full of mysterious ref-

erences to underground forces he was in touch with. He

said all the armies were mutinous and that what had hap-

pened at Caporetto would happen on the whole front, the

German soldiers were ready for revolt too and that would

be the beginning of the world revolution. He told her

about the mutinies at Verdun, about long trainloads of sol-

diers he'd seen going up to an attack crying, "A bas la

guerre," and shooting at the gendarmes as they went.

" Eveline, we're on the edge of gigantic events. . . .

The working classes of the world won't stand for this

nonsense any longer . . . damn it, the war will have

been almost worth while if we get a new socialist civiliza-

tion out of it." He leaned across the table and kissed her

right under the thin nose of Yvonne who was bringing in

pancakes with burning brandy on them. He wagged his

finger at Yvonne and almost got a smile out of her by the

way he said, "Après la guerre finie."

-225-

That spring and summer things certainly did seem

shaky, almost as if Don were right. At night she could

hear the gigantic surf of the guns in continuous barrage on

the crumpling front. The office was full of crazy rumors:

the British Fifth army had turned and run, the Canadians

had mutinied and seized Amiens, spies were disabling all

the American planes, the Austrians were breaking through

in Italy again. Three times the Red Cross office had or-

ders to pack up their records and be ready to move out of

Paris. In the face of all that it was hard for the publicity

department to keep up the proper cheerful attitude in

their releases, but Paris kept on filling up reassuringly

with American faces, American M.P.s, Sam Browne belts

and canned goods; and in July Major Moorehouse, who

had just arrived back from the States, came into the office

with a firsthand account of Château Thierry and announced

that the war would be over in a year.

The same evening he asked Eveline to dine with him at

the Café de la Paix and to do it she broke a date she

had with Jerry Burnham who had gotten back from the

Near East and the Balkans and was full of stories of

cholera and calamity. J.W. ordered a magnificent dinner,

he said Eleanor had told him to see if Eveline didn't need

a little cheering up. He talked about the gigantic era of

expansion that would dawn for America after the war.

America the good samaritan healing the wounds of war-

torn Europe. It was as if he was rehearsing a speech, when

he got to the end of it he looked at Eveline with a funny

deprecatory smile and said, "And the joke of it is, it's

true," and Eveline laughed and suddenly found that she

liked J.W. very much indeed.

She had on a new dress she'd bought at Paquin's with

some money her father had sent her for her birthday,

and it was a relief after the uniform. They were through

eating before they had really gotten started talking.

Eveline wanted to try to get him to talk about himself.

-226-

After dinner they went to Maxim's, but that was full up

with brawling drunken aviators, and the rumpus seemed

to scare J.W. so that Eveline suggested to him that they

go down to her place and have a glass of wine. When they

got to the quai de la Tournelle, just as they were stepping

out of J.W.'s staffcar she caught sight of Don Stevens

walking down the street. For a second she hoped he

wouldn't see them, but he turned around and ran back.

He had a young fellow with him in a private's uniform

whose name was Johnson. They all went up and sat

around glumly in her parlor. She and J.W. couldn't seem

to talk about anything but Eleanor, and the other two sat

glumly in their chairs looking embarrassed until J.W.

got to his feet, went down to his staffcar, and left.

"God damn it, if there's anything I hate it's a Cross

Red Major," broke out Don as soon as the door closed

behind J.W.

Eveline was angry. "Well, it's no worse than being a

fake Quaker," she said icily.

"You must forgive our intruding, Miss Hutchins,"

mumbled the doughboy who had a blonde Swedish look.

"We wanted to get you to come out to a café or some-

thing, but it's too late now," started Don crossly. The

doughboy interrupted him, "I hope, Miss Hutchins, you

don't mind our intruding, I mean my intruding . . . I

begged Don to bring me along. He's talked so much

about you and it's a year since I've seen a real nice Amer-

ican girl."

He had a deferential way of talking and a whiny Min-

nesota accent that Eveline hated at first, but by the time

he excused himself and left she liked him and stood up

for him when Don said, "He's an awful sweet guy but

there's something sappy about him. I was afraid you

wouldn't like him." She wouldn't let Don spend the night

with her as he'd expected and he went away looking very

sullen.

-227-

In October Eleanor came back with a lot of antique

Italian painted panels she'd picked up for a song. In the

Red Cross office there were more people than were needed

for the work and she and Eleanor and J.W. took a tour of

the Red Cross canteens in the east of France in a staffcar.

It was a wonderful trip, the weather was good for a won-

der, almost like American October, they had lunch and

dinner at regimental headquarters and army corps head-

quarters and divisional headquarters everywhere, and all

the young officers were so nice to them, and J.W. was in

such a good humor and kept them laughing all the time,

and they saw field batteries firing and an airplane duel

and sausage balloons and heard the shriek of an arrivé.

It was during that trip that Eveline began to notice for

the first time something cool in Eleanor's manner that

hurt her; they'd been such' good friends the first week

Eleanor had gotten back from Rome.

Back in Paris it suddenly got very exciting, so many

people they knew turned up, Eveline's brother George

who was an interpreter at the headquarters of the S.O.S.

and a Mr. Robbins, a friend of J.W.'s who was always

drunk and had a very funny way of talking and Jerry

Burnham and a lot of newspaper men and Major Apple-

ton who was now a Colonel. They had little dinners and

parties and the main difficulty was sorting out ranks and

getting hold of people who mixed properly. Fortunately

their friends were all officers or correspondents who ranked

as officers. Only once Don Stevens turned up just before

they were having Colonel Appleton and Brigadier Gen-

eral Byng to dinner, and Eveline's asking him to stay

made things very awkward because the General thought

Quakers were slackers of the worst kind, and Don flared

up and said a pacifist could be a better patriot than a staff

officer in a soft job and that patriotism was a crime against

humanity anyway. It would have been very disagreeable

if Colonel Appleton who had drunk a great many cock-

-228-

tails hadn't broken through the little gilt chair he was sit-

ting on and the General had laughed and kidded the

Colonel with a bad pun about avoir du poise that took

everybody's mind off the argument. Eleanor was very

sore about Don, and after the guests had left she and

Eveline had a standup quarrel. Next morning Eleanor

wouldn't speak to her; Eveline went out to look for an-

other apartment.

NEWSREEL XXVIII

Oh the eagles they fly high

In Mobile, in Mobile

Americans swim broad river and scale steep banks of canal

in brilliant capture of Dun. It is a remarkable fact that the

Compagnie Generale Transatlantique, more familiarly known

as the French Line, has not lost a single vessel in its regular

passenger service during the entire period of the war

RED FLAG FLIES ON BALTIC

"I went through Egypt to join Allenby;" he said, "I flew

in an aeroplane making the journey in two hours that it took

the children of Israel forty years to make. That is something

to set people thinking of the progress of modern science."

Lucky cows don't fly

In Mobile, in Mobile

PERSHING FORCES FOE FURTHER BACK

SINGS FOR WOUNDED SOLDIERS; NOT SHOT AS SPY

Je donnerais Versailles

Paris et Saint Denis

Le tours de Nôtre Dâme

Les clochers de mon pays

-229-

HELP THE FOOD ADMINISTRATION BY

REPORTING WAR PROFITEERS

the completeness of the accord reached on most points by

the conferees caused satisfaction and even some surprise among

participants

REDS FORCE MERCHANT VESSELS TO FLEE

HUNS ON RUN

Auprès de ma blonde

Qu'il fait bon fait bon fait bon

Auprès de ma blonde

Qu'il fait bon dormir

CHEZ LES SOCIALISTES LES AVEUGLES

SONT ROI

The German government requests the President of the

United States of America to take steps for the restoration of

peace, to notify all the belligerents of this request and to invite

them to delegate plenipotentiaries for the purpose of taking

up negotiations. The German Government accepts, as a basis

for the peace negotiations, the programme laid down by the

President of the United States in his message to Congress of

January 8th, 1918, and in his subsequent pronouncements, par-

ticularly in his address of September 27th, 1918. In order to

avoid further bloodshed the German government requests the

President of the United States to bring about the immediate

conclusion of a general armistice on land, on the water, and in

the air.

JOE WILLIAMS

Joe had been hanging around New York and Brooklyn

for a while, borrowing money from Mrs. Olsen and get-

ting tanked up all the time. One day she went to work

and threw him out. It was damned cold and he had to go

-230-

to a mission a couple of nights. He was afraid of getting

arrested for the draft and he was fed up with every

goddam thing; it ended by his going out as ordinary sea-

man on the Appalachian, a big new freighter bound for

Bordeaux and Genoa. It kinder went with the way he felt

being treated like a jailbird again and swobbing decks and

chipping paint. In the focastle there was mostly country

kids who'd never seen the sea and a few old bums who

weren't good for anything. They got into a dirty blow

four days out and shipped a small tidal wave that stove

in two of the starboard lifeboats and the convoy got scat-

tered and they found that the deck hadn't been properly

caulked and the water kept coming down into the focastle.

It turned out that Joe was the only man they had on board

the mate could trust at the wheel, so they took him off

scrubbing paint and in his four hour tricks he had plenty

of time to think about how lousy everything was. In Bor-

deaux he'd have liked to look up Marceline, but none of

the crew got to go ashore.

The bosun went and got cockeyed with a couple of

doughboys and came back with a bottle of cognac for Joe,

whom he'd taken a shine to, and a lot of latrine talk about

how the frogs were licked and the limeys and the wops

were licked something terrible and how if it hadn't been

for us the Kaiser ud be riding into gay Paree any day

and as it was it was nip and tuck. It was cold as hell.

Joe and the bosun went and drank the cognac in the galley

with the cook who was an old timer who'd been in the

Klondike gold rush. They had the ship to themselves be-

cause the officers were all ashore taking a look at the ma-

demosels and everybody else was asleep. The bosun said it

was the end of civilization and the cook said he didn't give

a f -- k and Joe said he didn't give a f -- k and the bosun

said they were a couple of goddam bolshevikis and passed

out cold.

It was a funny trip round Spain and through the

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Straits and up the French coast to Genoa. All the way

there was a single file of camouflaged freighters, Greeks

and Britishers and Norwegians and Americans, all hug-

ging the coast and creeping along with lifepreservers piled

on deck and boats swung out on the davits. Passing 'em

was another line coming back light, transports and colliers

from Italy and Saloniki, white hospital ships, every kind

of old tub out of the seven seas, rusty freighters with their

screws so far out of the water you could hear 'em thrash-

ing a couple of hours after they were hull down and out

of sight. Once they got into the Mediterranean there were

French and British battleships to seaward all the time

and sillylooking destroyers with their long smokesmudges

that would hail you and come aboard to see the ship's

papers. Ashore it didn't look like the war a bit. The

weather was sunny after they passed Gibraltar. The Span-

ish coast was green with bare pink and yellow mountains

back of the shore and all scattered with little white houses

like lumps of sugar that bunched up here and there into

towns. Crossing the Gulf of Lyons in a drizzling rain and

driving fog and nasty choppy sea they came within an

aceof running down a big felucca loaded with barrels of

wine. Then they were bowling along the French Riviera

in a howling northwest wind, with the redroofed towns

all bright and shiny and the dry hills rising rocky behind

them, and snowmountains standing out clear up above.

After they passed Monte Carlo it was a circus, the houses

were all pink and blue and yellow and there were tall

poplars and tall pointed churchsteeples in all the valleys.

That night they were on the lookout for the big light

marked on the chart for Genoa when they saw a red glare

ahead. Rumor went around that the heinies had captured

the town and were burning it. The second mate put up to

the skipper right on the bridge that they'd all be captured

if they went any further and they'd better go back and

put into Marseilles but the skipper told him it was none of

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his goddam business and to keep his mouth shut till his

opinion was asked. The glare got brighter as they got

nearer. It turned out to be a tanker on fire outside the

breakwater. She was a big new Standard Oil tanker, set-

tled a little in the bows with fire pouring out of her and

spreading out over the water. You could see the break-

water and the lighthouses and the town piling up the hills

behind with red glitter in all the windows and the crowded

ships in the harbor all lit up with the red flare.

After they'd anchored, the bosun took Joe and a couple

of the youngsters in the dingy and they went over to see

what they could do aboard the tanker. The stern was way

up out of water. So far as they could see there was no one

on the ship. Some wops in a motorboat came up and jab-

bered at them but they pretended not to understand what

they meant. There was a fireboat standing by too, but

there wasn't anything they could do. "Why the hell don't

they scuttle her?" the bosun kept saying.

Joe caught sight of a ropeladder hanging into the

water and pulled the dingy over to it. Before the others

had started yelling at him to come back he was half way

up it. When he jumped down onto the deck from the rail

he wondered what the hell he was doing up there. God

damn it, I hope she does blow up, he said aloud to him-

self. It was bright as day up there. The forward part of

the ship and the sea around it was burning like a lamp.

He reckoned the boat had hit a mine or been torpedoed.

The crew had evidently left in a hurry as there were all

sorts of bits of clothing and a couple of seabags by the

davits aft where the lifeboats had been. Joe picked him-

self out a nice new sweater and then went down into the

cabin. On a table he found a box of Havana cigars. He

took out a cigar and lit one. It made him feel good to

stand there and light a cigar with the goddam tanks ready

to blow him to Halifax any minute. It was a good cigar,

too. In a tissuepaper package on the table were seven

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pairs of ladies' silk stockings. Swell to take home to Del,

was his first thought. But then he remembered that he was

through with all that. He stuffed the silk stockings into

his pants pockets anyway, and went back on deck.

The bosun was yelling at him from the boat for chris-

sake to come along or he'd get left. He just had time to

pick up a wallet on the companion way. "It ain't gasoline,

it's crude oil. She might burn for a week," he yelled at

the guys in the boat as he came slowly down the ladder

pulling at the cigar as he came and looking out over the

harbor packed with masts and stacks and derricks at the

big marble houses and the old towers and porticos and the

hills behind all lit up in red. "Where the hell's the crew?"

"Probably all cockeyed ashore by this time, where I'd

like to be," said the bosun. Joe divvied up the cigars but

he kept the silk stockings for himself. There wasn't any-

thing in the wallet. "Hellofa note," grumbled the bosun,

"haven't they got any chemicals?""These goddam wops

wouldn't know what to do with 'em if they did have,"

said one of the youngsters.

They rowed back to the Appalachian and reported to the

skipper that the tanker had been abandoned and it was up

to the port authorities to get rid of her.

All next day the tanker burned outside the breakwater.

About nightfall another of her tanks went off like a roman

candle and the fire began spreading more and more over

the water. The Appalachian heaved her anchor and went

up to the wharf.

That night Joe and the bosun went out to look at the

town. The streets were narrow and had steps in them

leading up the hill to broad avenues, with cafés and little

tables out under the colonnades, where the pavements were

all polished marble set in patterns. It was pretty chilly

and they went into a bar and drank pink hot drinks with

rum in them.

There they ran into a wop named Charley who'd been

-234-

twelve years in Brooklyn and he took them to a dump

where they ate a lot of spaghetti and fried veal and drank

white wine. Charley told about how they treated you like

a dog in the Eyetalian army and the pay was five cents a

day and you didn't even get that and Charley was all for

il Presidente Veelson and the fourteen points and said soon

they'd make peace without victory and bigga revoluzione

in Italia and make bigga war on the Francese and the

Inglese treata Eyetalian lika dirt. Charley brought in two

girls he said were his cousins, Nedda and Dora, and one

of 'em sat on Joe's knees and, boy, how she could eat

spaghetti, and they all drank wine. It cost 'em all the

money Joe had to pay for supper.

When he was taking Nedda up to bed up an outside

staircase in the courtyard he could see the flare of the tanker

burning outside of the harbor on the blank walls and tiled

roofs of the houses.

Nedda wouldn't get undressed but wanted to see Joe's

money. Joe didn't have any money so he brought out the

silk stockings. She looked worried and shook her head

but she was darn pretty and had big black eyes and Joe

wanted it bad and yelled for Charley and Charley came

up the stairs and talked wop to the girl and said sure

she'd take the silk stockings and wasn't America the great-

est country in the world and tutti aleati and Presidente

Veelson big man for Italia. But the girl wouldn't go ahead

until they'd gotten hold of an old woman who was in the

kitchen, who came wheezing up the stairs and felt the

stockings, and musta said they were real silk and worth

money, because the girl put her arm around Joe's neck

and Charley said, "Sure, pard, she sleepa with you all

night, maka love good."

But about midnight when the girl had gone to sleep

Joe got tired of lying there. He could smell the closets

down in the court and a rooster kept crowing loud as the

dickens like it was right under his ear. He got up and put

-235-

on his clothes and tiptoed out. The silk stockings were

hanging on a chair. He picked 'em up and shoved them in

his pockets again. His shoes creaked like hell. The street

door was all bolted and barred and he had a devil of a

time getting it open. Just as he got out in the street a dog

began to bark somewhere and he ran for it. He got lost

in a million little narrow stone streets, but he figured that

if he kept on going down hill he'd get to the harbor some-

time. Then he began to see the pink glow from the burn-

ing tanker again on some of the housewalls and steered

by that.

On some steep steps he ran into a couple of Americans

in khaki uniforms and asked them the way and they gave

him a drink out of a bottle of cognac and said they were

on their way to the Eyetalian front and that there'd been

a big retreat and that everything was cockeyed and they

didn't know where the cockeyed front was and they were

going to wait right there till the cockeyed front came

right to them. He told 'em about the silk stockings and

they thought it was goddam funny, and showed him the

way to the wharf where the Appalachian was and they

shook hands a great many times when they said goodnight

and they said the wops were swine and he said they were

princes to have shown him the way and they said he was

a prince and they finished up the cognac and he went on

board and tumbled into his bunk.

When the Appalachian cleared for home the tanker was

still burning outside the harbor. Joe came down with dose

on the trip home and he couldn't drink anything for sev-

eral months and kinda steadied down when he got to

Brooklyn. He went to the shoreschool run by the Shipping

Board in Platt Institute and got his second mate's license

and made trips back and forth between New York and St.

Nazaire all through that year on a new wooden boat built

in Seattle called the Owanda, and a lot of trouble they

had with her.

-236-

He and Janey wrote each other often. She was over-

seas with the Red Cross and very patriotic. Joe began to

think that maybe she was right. Anyway if you believed

the papers the heinies were getting licked, and it was a

big opportunity for a young guy if you didn't get in wrong

by being taken for a proGerman or a Bolshevik or some

goddam thing. After all as Janey kept writing civilization

had to be saved and it was up to us to do it. Joe started

a savings account and bought him a Liberty bond.

Armistice night Joe was in St. Nazaire. The town was

wild. Everybody ashore, all the doughboys out of their

camps, all the frog soldiers out of their barracks, every-

body clapping everybody else on the back, pulling corks,

giving each other drinks, popping champagne bottles, kiss-

ing every pretty girl, being kissed by old women, kissed

on both cheeks by French veterans with whiskers. The

mates and the skipper and the chief and a couple of naval

officers they'd never seen before all started to have a big

feed in a café but they never got further than soup be-

cause everybody was dancing in the kitchen and they

poured the cook so many drinks he passed out cold and

they all sat there singing and drinking champagne out of

tumblers and cheering the allied flags that girls kept

carrying through.

Joe went cruising looking for Jeanette who was a girl

he'd kinder taken up with whenever he was in St. Nazaire.

He wanted to find her before he got too zigzag. She'd

promised to couchay with him that night before it turned

out to be Armistice Day. She said she never couchayed with

anybody else all the time the Owanda was in port and he

treated her right and brought her beaucoup presents from

L'Amerique, and du sucer and du cafay. Joe felt good,

he had quite a wad in his pocket and, god damn it, American

money was worth something these days; and a couple of

pounds of sugar he'd brought in the pockets of his raincoat

was better than money with the mademosels.

-237-

He went in back where there was a cabaret all red

plush with mirrors and the music was playing The Star

Spangled Banner and everybody cried Vive L'Amerique

and pushed drinks in his face as he came in and then he

was dancing with a fat girl and the music was playing

some damn foxtrot or other. He pulled away from the

fat girl because he'd seen Jeanette. She had an American

flag draped over her dress. She was dancing with a big six-

foot black Senegalese. Joe saw red. He pulled her away

from the nigger who was a frog officer all full of gold

braid and she said, "Wazamatta cherie," and Joe hauled

off and hit the damn nigger as hard as he could right on

the button but the nigger didn't budge. The nigger's face

had a black puzzled smiling look like he was just going

to ask a question. A waiter and a coupla frog soldiers came

up and tried to pull Joe away. Everybody was yelling

and jabbering. Jeanette was trying to get between Joe

and the waiter and got a sock in the jaw that knocked her

flat. Joe laid out a couple of frogs and was backing off

towards the door, when he saw in the mirror that a big

guy in a blouse was bringing down a bottle on his head

held with both hands. He tried to swing around but he

didn't have time. The bottle crashed his skull and he was

out.

NEWSREEL XXIX

the arrival of the news caused the swamping of the city's

telephone lines

Y fallait pas

Y fallait pas

Y fallait pas-a-a-a-a-yallez

BIG GUNS USED IN HAMBURG

-238-

at the Custom House the crowd sang The Star Spangled

Banner under the direction of Byron R. Newton the Collector

of the Port

MORGAN ON WINDOWLEDGE

KICKS HEELS AS HE SHOWERS

CROWD WITH TICKERTAPE

down at the battery the siren of the fireboat New York

let out a shriek when the news reached there and in less time

than it takes to say boo pandemonium broke loose all along the

waterfront

Oh say can you see by the dawn's early light

WOMEN MOB CROWN PRINCE FOR

KISSING MODISTE

Allons enfants de la patrie

Le jour de gloire est arrivé

It's the wrong way to tickle Mary

It's the wrong place to go

"We've been at war with the devil and it was worth all

the suffering it entailed," said William Howard Taft at a vic-

tory celebration here last night

Kakakatee, beautiful Katee

She's the only gugugirl that I adore

And when the moon shines

Unipress, N. Y.

Paris urgent Brest Admiral Wilson who announced

16:00 (4P.M.) Brest newspaper armistice been signed later

notified unconfirmable meanwhile Brest riotously celebrating

TWO TROLLIES HELD UP BY GUNMEN IN

QUEENS

Over the cowshed

I'll be waiting at the kakakitchen door

-239-

SPECIAL GRAND JURY ASKED TO INDICT

BOLSHEVISTS

the soldiers and sailors gave the only touch of color to

the celebration. They went in wholeheartedly for having a

good time, getting plenty to drink despite the fact that they

were in uniform. Some of these returned fighters nearly

caused a riot when they took an armful of stones and attempted

to break an electric sign at Broadway and Forty-second Street

reading:

WELCOME HOME TO OUR HEROES

Oh say can you see by the dawn's early light

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming

When the rocket's red glare the bombs bursting in air

Was proof to our eyes that the flag was still there

THE CAMERA EYE (36)

when we emptied the rosies to leeward over the side

every night after the last inspection we'd stop for a

moment's gulp of the November gale the lash of spray

in back of your ears for a look at the spume splintered

off the leaping waves shipwreckers drowners of men (in

their great purple floating mines rose and fell gently sub-

marines travelled under them on an even keel) to glance

at the sky veiled with scud to take our hands off the greasy

handles of the cans full of slum they couldnt eat (nine

meals nine dumpings of the leftover grub nine cussing-

matches with the cockney steward who tried to hold out

-240-

on the stewed apricots inspections AttenSHUN click

clack At Ease shoot the flashlight in everycorner of

the tin pans nine lineups along the heaving airless cor-

ridor of seasick seascared doughboys with their messkits

in their hands)

Hay sojer tell me they've signed an armístice tell

me the wars over they're takin us home latrine talk

the hell you say now I'll tell one we were already

leading the empty rosies down three flights of iron ladders

into the heaving retching hold starting up with the full

whenever the ship rolled a little slum would trickle out

the side

MEESTER VEELSON

The year that Buchanan was elected president

Thomas Woodrow Wilson

was born to a presbyterian minister's daughter

in the manse at Staunton in the valley of Virginia;

it was the old Scotch-Irish stock; the father was a pres-

byterian minister too and a teacher of rhetoric in theo-

logical seminaries; the Wilsons lived in a universe of

words linked into an incontrovertible firmament by two

centuries of calvinist divines,

God was the Word

and the Word was God.

Dr. Wilson was a man of standing who loved his

home and his children and good books and his wife and

correct syntax and talked to God every day at family

prayers;

-241-

he brought his sons up

between the bible and the dictionary.

The years of the Civil War the years of fife and drum and platoonfire and

proclamations

the Wilsons lived in Augusta, Georgia; Tommy

was a backward child, didn't learn his letters till he

was nine, but when he learned to read his favorite read-

ing was Parson Weems'

Life of Washington.

In 1870 Dr. Wilson was called to the Theological

Seminary at Columbia, South Carolina; Tommy at-

tended Davidson college,

where he developed a good tenor voice;

then he went to Princeton and became a debater

and editor of the Princetonian. His first published ar-

ticle in the Nassau Literary Magazine was an apprecia-

tion of Bismarck.

Afterwards he studied law at the University of Vir-

ginia; young Wilson wanted to be a Great Man, like

Gladstone and the eighteenth century English parlia-

mentarians; he wanted to hold the packed benches spell-

bound in the cause of Truth; but lawpractice irked him;

he was more at home in the booky air of libraries, lec-

turerooms, college chapel, it was a relief to leave his

lawpractice at Atlanta and take a Historical Fellowship

at Johns Hopkins; there he wrote Congressional Gov-

ernment.

At twentynine he married a girl with a taste for

painting (while he was courting her he coached her in

how to use the broad "a") and got a job at Bryn Mawr

teaching the girls History and Political Economy.

When he got his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins he moved

-242-

to a professorship at Wesleyan, wrote articles, started

a History of the United States,

spoke out for Truth Reform Responsible Govern-

ment Democracy from the lecture platform, climbed

all the steps of a brilliant university careeri in 1901

the trustees of Princeton offered him the presidency;

he plunged into reforming the university, made

violent friends and enemies, set the campus by the ears,

and the American people began to find on the

front pages

the name of Woodrow Wilson.

In 1909 he made addresses on Lincoln and Robert

E. Lee

and in 1910

the democratic bosses of New Jersey, hardpressed

by muckrakers and reformers, got the bright idea of

offering the nomination for governor to the stainless

college president who attracted such large audiences

by publicly championing Right.

When Mr. Wilson addressed the Trenton conven-

tion that nominated him for governor he confessed his

belief in the common man, (the smalltown bosses and

the wardheelers looked at each other and scratched

their heads); he went on, his voice growing firmer:

that is the man by whose judgment I for one wish

to be guided, so that as the tasks multiply, and as the

days come when all will feel confusion and dismay, we

may lift up our eyes to the hills out of these dark

valleys where the crags of special privilege overshadow

and darken our path, to where the sun gleams through

the great passage in the broken cliffs, the sun of God,

the sun meant to regenerate men,

the sun meant to liberate them from their passion

and despair and lift us to those uplands which are the

-243-

promised land of every man who desires liberty and

achievement.

The smalltown bosses and the wardheelers looked

at each other and scratched their heads; then they

cheered; Wilson fooled the wiseacres and double-

crossed the bosses, was elected by a huge plurality;

so he left Princeton only half reformed to be

Governor of New Jersey,

and became reconciled with Bryan

at the Jackson Day dinner: when Bryan remarked,

"I of course knew that you were not with me in my

position on the currency," Mr. Wilson replied, "All I

can say, Mr. Bryan, is that you are a great big man."

He was introduced to Colonel House,

that amateur Merlin of politics who was spinning

his webs at the Hotel Gotham

and at the convention in Baltimore the next July

the upshot of the puppetshow staged for sweating dele-

gates by Hearst and House behind the scenes, and

Bryan booming in the corridors with a handkerchief

over his wilted collar, was that Woodrow Wilson was

nominated for the presidency.

The bolt of the Progressives in Chicago from Taft

to T.R. made his election sure;

so he left the State of New Jersey halreformed

(pitiless publicity was the slogan of the Shadow

Lawn Campaign)

and went to the White House

our twentyeighth president.

While Woodrow Wilson drove up Pennsylvania

Avenue beside Taft the great buttertub, who as presi-

dent had been genially undoing T.R.'s reactionary ef-

forts to put business under the control of the govern-

ment,

J. Pierpont Morgan sat playing solitaire in his

-244-

back office on Wall Street, smoking twenty black cigars

a day, cursing the follies of democracy.

Wilson flayed the interests and branded privilege

refused to recognize Huerta and sent the militia to the

Rio Grande

to assume a policy of watchful waiting. He pub-

lished The New Freedom and delivered his messages

to Congress in person, like a college president address-

ing the faculty and students. At Mobile he said:

I wish to take this occasion to say that the United

States will never again seek one additional foot of terri-

tory by conquest;

and he landed the marines at Vera Cruz.

We are witnessing a renaissance of public spirit, a

reawakening of sober public opinion, a revival of the

power of the people the beginning of an age of thought-

ful reconstruction . . .

but the world had started spinning round Sarajevo.

First it was neutrality in thought and deed, then

too proud to fight when the Lusitania sinking and the

danger to the Morgan loans and the stories of the Brit-

ish and French propagandists set all the financial centers

in the East bawling for war, but the suction of the

drumbeat and the guns was too strong; the best people

took their fashions from Paris and their broad "a's"

from London, and T.R. and the House of Morgan.

Five months after his reelection on the slogan He

kept us out of war, Wilson pushed the Armed Ship

Bill through congress and declared that a state of war

existed between the United States and the Central

Powers:

Force without stint or limit, force to the utmost.

Wilson became the state (war is the health of the

state), Washington his Versailles, manned the socialized

-245-

government with dollar a year men out of the great

corporations and ran the big parade

of men munitions groceries mules and trucks to

France. Five million men stood at attention outside of

their tarpaper barracks every sundown while they

played The Star Spangled Banner.

War brought the, eight hour day, women's votes,

prohibition, compulsory arbitration, high wages, high

rates of interest' cost plus contracts and the luxury of

being a Gold Star Mother.

If you objected to making the world safe for cost

plus democracy you went to jail with Debs.

Almost too soon the show was over, Prince Max

of Baden was pleading for the Fourteen Points, Foch

was occupying the bridgeheads on the Rhine and the

Kaiser out of breath ran for the train down the platform

at Potsdam wearing a silk hat and some say false

whiskers.

With the help of Almighty God, Right, Truth,

Justice, Freedom, Democracy, the Selfdetermination of

Nations, No indemnities no annexations,

and Cuban sugar and Caucasian manganese and

Northwestern wheat and Dixie cotton, the British

blockade, General Pershing, the taxicabs of Paris and

the seventyfive gun

we won the war.

On December 4th, 1918, Woodrow Wilson, the

first president to leave the territory of the United States

during his presidency, sailed for France on board the

George Washington,

the most powerful man in the world.

In Europe they knew what gas smelt like and the

sweet sick stench of bodies buried too shallow and the

grey look of the skin of starved children; they read in

-246-

the papers that Meester Veelson was for peace and free-

dom and canned goods and butter and sugar;

he landed at Brest with his staff of experts and

publicists after a rough trip on the George Washington.

La France héroïque was there with the speeches,

the singing schoolchildren, the mayors in their red

sashes. (Did Meester Veelson see the gendarmes at

Brest beating back the demonstration of dockyard

workers who came to meet him with red flags?)

At the station in Paris he stepped from the train

onto a wide red carpet that lead him, between rows of

potted palms, silk hats, legions of honor, decorated

busts of uniforms, irockcoats, rosettes, boutonnières, to

a Rolls Royce. (Did Meester Veelson see the women

in black, the cripples in their little carts, the pale anxious

faces along the streets, did he hear the terrible anguish

of the cheers as they hurried him and his new wife to

the hôtel de Mrat, where in rooms full of brocade,

gilt clocks, Buhl cabinets and ormolu cupids the presi-

dential suite had been prepared?)

While the experts were organizing the procedure

of the peace conference, spreading green baize on the

tables, arranging the protocols,

the Wilsons took a tour to see for themselves: the

day after Christmas they were entertained at Bucking-

ham Palace; at Newyears they called on the pope and

on the microscopic Italian king at the Quirinal. (Did

Meester Veelson know that in the peasants' wargrimed

houses along the Brenta and the Piave they were burn-

ing candles in front of his picture cut out of the illus-

trated papers?) (Did Meester Veelson know that the

people of Europe spelled a challenge to oppression out

of the Fourteen Points as centuries before they had

spelled a challenge to oppression out of the ninetyfive

articles Martin Luther nailed to the churchdoor in

Wittenberg?)

-247-

January 18, 1919, in the midst of serried uniforms,248

cocked hats and gold braid, decorations, epaulettes, or-

ders of merit and knighthood, the High Contracting

Parties, the allied and associated powers met in the

Salon de I'Horloge at the quai d'Orsay to dictate the

peace,

but the grand assembly of the peace conference

was too public a place to make peace in

so the High Contracting Parties

formed the Council of Ten, went into the Gobelin

Room and, surrounded by Rubens's History of Manie

de Medici,

began to dictate the peace.

But the Council of Ten was too public a place to

make peace in

so they formed the Council of Four.

Orlando went home in a huff

and then there were three:

Clemenceau,

Lloyd George,

Woodrow Wilson.

Three old men shuffling the pack,

dealing out the cards:

the Rhineland, Danzig, the Polish corridor, the

Ruhr, self determination of small nations, the Saar,

League of Nations, mandates, the Mespot, Freedom of

the Seas, Transjordania, Shantung, Fiume and the

Island of Yap:

machine gun fire and arson

starvation, lice, cholera, typhusi

oil was trumps.

Woodrow Wilson believed in his father's God

so he told the parishioners in the little Lowther

Street Congregational church where his grandfather

had preached in Carlisle in Scotland, a day so chilly that

-248-

the newspaper men sitting in the old pews all had to

keep their overcoats on.

On April 7th he ordered the George Washington

to be held at Brest with steam up ready to take the

American delegation home;

but he didn't go.

On April 19 sharper Clemenceau. and sharper

Lloyd George got him into their little cosy threecard-

game they called the Council of Four.

On June 28th the Treaty of Versailles was ready

and Wilson had to go back home to explain to the

politicians who'd been ganging up on him meanwhile

in the Senate and House and to sober public opinion

and to his father's God how he'd let himself be trimmed

and how far he'd made the world safe

for democracy and the New Freedom.

From the day he landed in Hoboken he had his

back to the wall of the White House, talking to save

his faith in words, talking to save his faith in the

League of Nations, talking to save his faith in himself,

in his father's God.

He strained every nerve of his body and brain,

every agency of the government he had under his

control; (if anybody disagreed he was a crook or a red;

no pardon for Debs).

In Seattle the wobblies whose leaders were in

jail, in Seattle the wobblies whose leaders had been

lynched, who'd been shot down like dogs, in Seattle

the wobblies lined four blocks as Wilson passed, stood

silent with their arms folded staring at the great liberal

as he was hurried past in his car, huddled in his over-

coat, haggard with fatigue, one side of his face twitch-

ing. The men in overalls, the workingstiffs let him

-249-

pass in silence after all the other blocks of handclapping

and patriotic cheers.

In Pueblo, Colorado, he was a grey man hardly

able to stand, one side of his face twitching:

Now that the mists of this great question have

cleared away, I believe that men will see the Truth,

eye for eye and face to face. There is one thing the

American People always rise to and extend their hand

to, that is, the truth of justice and of liberty and of peace.

We have accepted that truth and we are going to be

led by it, and it is going to lead us, and through us the

world, out into pastures of quietness and peace such as

the world never dreamed of before.

That was his last speech;

on the train to Wichita he had a stroke. He gave

up the speaking tour that was to sweep the country for

the League of Nations. After that he was a ruined

paralysed man barely able to speak;

the day he gave up the presidency to Harding the

joint committee of the Senate and House appointed

Henry Cabot Lodge, his lifelong enemy, to make the

formal call at the executive office in the Capitol and

ask the formal question whether the president had any

message for the congress assembled in joint session;

Wilson managed to get to his feet, lifting himself

painfully by the two arms of the chair. "Senator

Lodge, I have no further communication to make,

thank you . . . Good morning," he said.

In 1924 on February 3rd he died.

-250-

NEWSREEL XXX

MONSTER GUNS REMOVED?

Longhaired preachers come out every night

Try to tell you what's wrong and what's right

But when asked about something to eat

They will answer in accents so sweet

PRESIDENT HAS SLIGHT COLD AT SEA

Special Chef and Staff of Waiters and Kitchen Helpers

Drafted from the Biltmore

Every Comfort Provided

Orchestra to Play During Meals and Navy Yard Band

to Play for Deck Music

You will eat bye and bye

In that glorious land above the sky

the city presents a picture of the wildest destruction espe-

cially around the General Post Office which had been totally

destroyed by fire, nothing but ruins remaining

Work and pray

Live on hay

Three Truckloads of Records Gathered Here

eleven men were killed and twentythree injured, some

of them seriously as the result of an explosion of fulminate of

mercury in the priming unit of one of the cap works of the

E. I. duPont de Nemours Powder Company; in the evening

Mrs. Wilson released carrier pigeons . . . and through it all

how fine the spirit of the nation was, what unity of purpose

what untiring zeal what elevation of purpose ran through all

its splendid display of strength, its untiring accomplishment.

I have said that those of us who stayed at home to do the work

of organization and supply would always wish we had been

with the men we sustained by our labor, but we can never be

ashamed . . . in the dining room music was furnished by a

quartet of sailors

-251-

You'll get pie

In the sky

When you die

GORGAS WOULD PUT SOLDIERS IN HUTS

800 FIGHTING MEN CHEER BOLSHEVIKI

All the arrangements were well ordered but the crowd

was kept at a distance. The people gathered on the hills near

the pier raised a great shout when the president's launch

steamed up. A detour was made from the Champs Elysees to

cross the Seine over the Alexander III bridge which recalled

another historic pageant when Paris outdid herself to honor

an absolute ruler in the person of the czar.

ADDRESSED 1400 MAYORS FROM PALACE BALCONY

BRITISH NAVY TO BE SUPREME DECLARES

CHURCHILL

THE CAMERA EYE (37)

alphabetically according to rank tapped out with two

cold index fingers on the company Corona Allots Class

A & B Ins prem C & D

Atten -- SHUN snap to the hooks and eyes at my

throat constricting the adamsapple bringing together the

US and the Caduceus

At Ease

outside they're, drilling in the purple drizzle of a

winter afternoon in Ferrièes en Gatinais, Abbaye founded

by Clovis over the skeletons of three disciples of nôtre

-252-

seigneur Jésus-Christ 3rd Lib Loan Sec of Treas Altian

Politian and Hermatian 4th Lib Loan Sec of Treas must

be on CL E or other form Q.M.C. 3^8 now it's raining

hard and the gutters gurgle there's tinkling from all the

little glassgreen streams Alcuin was prior once and mill-

wheels grind behind the mossed stone walls and Clodhilde

and Clodomir were buried here

promotions only marked under gains drowsily clacked

out on the rusteaten Corona in the cantonment of O'Riel-

ly's Travelling Circus alone except for the undertaker sol-

diering in his bunk and the dry hack of the guy that has

TB that the MO was never sober enough to examine

Iodine will make you happy

Iodine will make you well

fourthirty the pass comes alive among the CC pills in

my pocket

the acting QM Sarge and the Topkicker go out

through the gate of USAAS base camp in their slickers in

the lamplit rain and make their way without a cent in their

OD to the Cheval Blanc where by chevrons and parleyvoo-

ing they bum drinks and omelettes avec pornmes frites and

kid applecheeked Madeleine may wee

in the dark hallway to the back room the boys are

lined up waiting to get in to the girl in black from out of

town to drop ten francs and hurry to the propho station

sol viol sk not L D viol Go 41/14 rd sent S C M

-253-

outside it's raining on the cobbled town inside we

drink vin rouge parlezvous froglegs may wee couchez avec

and the old territorial at the next table drinks illegal

pernod and remarks Toute est bien fait dans la nature à

la votre aux Americains

Après la guerre finee

Back to the States for me

Dans la mort il n'y a rien de terrible Quant on va

mourir on pense à tout mais vite

the first day in the year dismissed after rollcall I went

walking with a fellow from Philadelphia along the purple

wintryrutted roads under the purple embroidery of the

pleached trees full of rooks cackling overhead over the

ruddier hills to a village we're going to walk a long way

get good wine full of Merovingian names millwheels

glassgreen streams where the water gurgles out of old

stone gargoyles Madeleine's red apples the smell of beech

leaves we're going to drink wine the boy from Philadel-

phia's got beaucoup jack wintry purpler wine the sun

breaks out through the clouds on the first day in the year

in the first village

we stop in our tracks

to look at a waxwork

the old man has shot the pretty peasant girl who looks

like Madeleine but younger she lies there shot in the left

breast in the blood in the ruts of the road pretty and plump

as a little quail

-254-

The old man then took off one shoe and put the

shotgun under his chin pulled the trigger with his toe and

blew the top of his head off we stand looking at the bare

foot and the shoe and the foot in the shoe and the shot

girl and the old man with a gunnysack over his head and

the dirty bare toe he pulled the trigger with Faut pas

toucher until the commissaire comes proce's verbale

on this first day

of the year the sun

is shining

NEWSREEL XXXI

washing and dressing hastily they came to the ground

floor at the brusque call of the commissaries, being assembled

in one of the rear rooms in the basement of the house. Here

they were lined up in a semicircle along the wall, the young

grandduchesses trembling at the unusual nature of the orders

given and at the gloomy hour. They more than suspected the

errand upon which the commissaries had come. Addressing

the czar, Yarodsky, without the least attempt to soften his

announcement, stated that they must all die and at once. The

revolution was in danger, he stated, and the fact that there

were still the members of the reigning house living added to

that danger. Therefore to remove them was the duty of all

Russian patriots. "Thus your life is ended," he said in con,

clusion.

"I am ready," was the simple announcement of the czar,

while the czarina, clinging to him, loosed her hold long

enough to make the sign of the cross, an example followed by

the grandducbess Olga and by Dr. Botkin.

The czarevitch, paralyzed with fear, stood in stupefac-

tion beside his mother, uttering no sound either in supplication

-255-

or protest, while his three sisters and the other grandduchesses

sank to the floor trembling.

Yarodsky drew his revolver and fired the first shot. A

volley followed and the prisoners reeled to the ground. Where

the bullets failed to find their mark the bayonet put the finish-

ing touches. The mingled blood of the victims not only cov-

ered the floor of the room where the execution took place but

ran in streams along the hallway

DAUGHTER

The Trents lived in a house on Pleasant avenue that was

the finest street in Dallas that was the biggest and fastest

growing town in Texas that was the biggest state in the

Union and had the blackest soil and the whitest people and

America was the greatest country in the world and Daugh-

ter was Dad's onlyest sweetest little girl. Her real name

was Anne Elizabeth Trent after poor dear mother who

had died when she was a little tiny girl but Dad and the

boys called her Daughter. Buddy's real name was William

Delaney Trent like Dad who was a prominent attorney,

and Buster's real name was Spencer Anderson Trent.

Winters they went to school and summers they ran wild

on the ranch that grandfather had taken up as a pioneer.

When they'd been very little there hadn't been any fences

yet and still a few maverick steers out along the creekbot-

toms, but by the time Daughter was in highschool every-

thing was fenced and they were building a macadam road

out from Dallas and Dad went everywhere in the Ford in-

stead of on his fine Arab stallion Mullah he'd been given

by a stockman at the Fat Stock Show in Waco when the

stockman had gone broke and hadn't been able to pay his

lawyer's fee. Daughter had a creamcolored pony named

Coffee who'd nod his head and paw with his hoof when he

wanted a lump of sugar, but some of the girls she knew

-256-

had cars and Daughter and the boys kept after Dad to buy

a car, a real car instead of that miserable old flivver he

drove around the ranch.

When Dad bought a Pierce Arrow touring car the spring

Daughter graduated from highschool, she was the happiest

girl in the world. Sitting at the wheel in a fluffy white

dress the morning of Commencement outside the house

waiting for Dad, who had just come out from the office and

was changing his clothes, she had thought how much she'd

like to be able to see herself sitting there in the not too hot

June morning in the lustrous black shiny car among the

shiny brass and nickel fixtures under the shiny paleblue big

Texas sky in the middle of the big flat rich Texas country

that ran for two hundred miles in every direction. She

could see half her face in the little oval mirror on the mud-

guard. It looked red and sunburned under her sandybrown

hair. If she only had red hair and a skin white like butter-

milk like Susan Gillespie had, she was wishing when she

saw Joe Washburn coming along the street dark and seri-

ouslooking under his panama hat. She fixed her face in a

shy kind of smile just in time to have him say, "How

lovely you look, Daughter, you must excuse ma sayin' so."

"I'm just waiting for Dad and the boys to go to the exer-

cises. O Joe, we're late and I'm so excited. . . . I feel like

a sight."

"Well, have a good time." He walked on unhurriedly

putting his hat back on his head as he went. Something

hotter than the June sunshine had come out of Joe's very

dark eyes and run in a blush over her face and down the

back of her neck under her thin dress and down the middle

of her bosom, where the little breasts that she tried never

to think of were just beginning to be noticeable. At last

Dad and the boys came out all looking blonde and dressed

up and sunburned. Dad made her sit in the back seat with

Bud who sat up stiff as a poker.

The big wind that had come up drove grit in their faces.

-257-

After she caught sight of the brick buildings of the high-

school and the crowd and the light dresses and the stands

and the big flag with the stripes all wiggling against the

sky she got so excited she never remembered anything that

happened.

That night, wearing her first evening dress at the dance

she came to in the feeling of tulle and powder and crowds,

boys all stiff and scared in their dark coats, girls pack-

ing into the dressing room to look at each other's dresses.

She never said a word while she was dancing, just smiled

and held her head a little to one side and hoped some-

body would cut in. Half the time she didn't know who

she was dancing with, just moved smiling in a cloud of

pink tulle and colored lights; boys' faces bobbed in front

of her, tried to say smarty ladykillerish things or else were

shy and tonguetied, different colored faces on top of the

same stiff bodies. Honestly she was surprised when Susan

Gillespie came up to her when they were getting their

wraps to go home and giggled, "My dear, you were the

belle of the ball." When Bud and Buster said so next

morning and old black Emma who'd'brought them all up

after mother died came in from the kitchen and said,

"Lawsy, Miss Annie, folks is talkin' all over town about

how you was the belle of the ball last night," she felt her-

self blushing happily all over. Emma said she'd heard-it

from, that noaccount yaller man on the milk route whose

aunt worked at Mrs. Washburn's, then she set down the

popovers and went out with a grin as wide as a piano.

"Well, Daughter," said Dad in his deep quiet voice, tap-

ping the top of her hand, "I thought so myself but I

thought maybe I was prejudiced."

During the summer Joe Washburn, who'd just gradu-

ated from law school at Austin and who was going into

Dad's office in the fall, came and spent two weeks with

them on the ranch. Daughter was just horrid to him, made

old Hildreth give him a mean little old oneeyed pony to

-258-

ride, put homed toads in his cot, would hand him hot

chile sauce instead of catsup at table or try to get him to

put salt instead of sugar in his coffee. The boys got so off

her they wouldn't speak to her and Dad said she was get-

ting to be a regular tomboy, but she couldn't seem to stop

acting like she did.

Then one day they all rode over to eat supper on Clear

Creek and went swimming by moonlight in the deep

hole there was under the bluff. Daughter got a crazy

streak in her after a while and ran up and said she was

going to dive from the edge of the bluff. The water looked

so good and the moon floated shivering on top. They all

yelled at her not to do it but she made a dandy dive right

from the edge. But something was the matter. She'd hit

her head, it hurt terribly. She was swallowing water, she

was fighting a great weight that was pressing down on her,

that was Joe. The moonlight flowed out in a swirl leaving

it all black, only she had her arms around Joe's neck, her

fingers were tightening around the ribbed muscles of his

arms. She came to with his face looking into hers and the

moon up in the sky again and warm stuff pouring over her

forehead. She was trying to say, "Joe, I wanto, Joe, I

wanto," but it all drained away into warm sticky black

again, only she caught his voice deep, deep . . . "pretty

near had me drowned too . . ." and Dad sharp and angry

like in court, "I told her she oughtn't to dive off there."

She came to herself again in bed with her head hurting

horribly and Dr. Winslow there, and the first thing she

thought was where was Joe and had she acted like a little

silly telling him she was crazy about him? But nobody said

anything about it and they were all awful nice to her ex-

cept that Dad came, still talking with his angry courtroom

voice, and lectured her for being foolhardy and a tomboy

and having almost cost Joe his life by the stranglehold she

had on him when they'd pulled them both out of the

water. She had a fractured skull and had 'to be in bed all

-259-

summer and Joe was awful nice though he looked at her

kinder funny out of his sharp black eyes the first time he

came in her room. As long as he stayed on the ranch he

came to read to her after lunch. He read her all of Lorna

Doone and half of Nicholas Nickleby and she lay there in

bed, hot and cosy in her fever, feeling the rumble of his

deep voice through the pain in her head and fighting all

the time inside not to cry out like a little silly that she was

crazy about him and why didn't he like her just a little bit.

When he'd gone it wasn't any fun being sick any more.

Dad or Bud came and read to her sometimes but most of

the time she liked better reading to herself. She read all

of Dickens, Lorna Doone twice, and Poole The Harbor;

that made her want to go to New York.

Next fall Dad took her north for a year in a finishing

school in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She was excited on the

trip up on the train and loved every minute of it, but Miss

Tynge's was horrid and the girls were all northern girls

and so mean and made fun of her clothes and talked about

nothing but Newport, and Southampton, and matinée idols

she'd never seen; she hated it. She cried every night,after

she'd gone to bed thinking how she hated the school and

how Joe Washburn would never like her now. When

Christmas vacation came and she had to stay on with the

two Miss Tynges and some of the teachers who lived too

far away to go home either, she just decided she wouldn't

stand it any longer and one morning before anybody was

up she got out of the house, walked down to the station,

bought herself a ticket to Washington, and got on the first

westbound train with nothing but a toothbrush and a night-

gown in her handbag. She was scared all alone on the train

at first but such a nice young Virginian who was a West

Point Cadet got on at Havre de Grace where she had to

change; they had the time of their lives together laughing

and talking. In Washington he asked permission to be her

escort in the nicest way and took her all around, to see the

-260-

Capitol and the White House and the Smithsonian Insti-

tute and set her up to lunch at the New Willard and put

her on the train for St. Louis that night. His name was

Paul English. She promised she'd write him every day

of her life. She was so excited she couldn't sleep lying in

her berth looking out of the window of the pullman at the

trees and the circling hills all in the faint glow of snow

and now and then lights speeding by; she could remember

exactly how he looked and how his hair was parted and

the long confident grip of his hand when they said goodby.

She'd been a little nervous at first, but they'd been like old

friends right from the beginning and held been so cour-

teous and gentlemanly. He'd been her first pickup.

When she walked in on Dad and the boys at breakfast

a sunny winter morning two days later, my, weren't they

surprised; Dad tried to scold her, but Daughter could see

that he was as pleased as she was. Anyway, she didn't care,

it was so good to be home.

After Christmas she and Dad and the boys went for a

week's hunting down near Corpus Christi and had the time

of their lives and Daughter shot her first deer. When they

got back to Dallas Daughter said she wasn't going back to

be finished but that what she would like to do was go up

to New York to stay with Ada Washburn, who was study-

ing at Columbia, and to take courses where she'd really

learn something. Ada was Joe Washburn's sister, an old

maid but bright as a dollar and was working for her Ph.D

in Education. It took a lot of arguing because Dad had set

his heart on having Daughter go to a finishing school but

she finally convinced him and was off again to New York.

She was reading Les Misérables all the way up on the

train and looking out at the greyishbrownish winter land-

scape that didn't seem to have any life to it after she left

the broad hills of Texas, pale green with winter wheat and

alfalfa, feeling more and more excited and scared as hour

by hour she got nearer New York. There was a stout

-261-

motherly woman who'd lost her husband who got on the

train at Little Rock and wouldn't stop talking about the

dangers and pitfalls that beset a young woman's path in

big cities. She kept such a strict watch on Daughter that

she never got a chance to talk to the interesting looking

young man with the intense black eyes who boarded the

train at St. Louis and kept going over papers of some kind

he had in a brown briefcase. She thought he looked a little

like Joe Washburn. At last when they were crossing New

Jersey and there got to be more and more factories and

grimy industrial towns, Daughter's heart got to beating so

fast she couldn't sit still but kept having to go out and

stamp around in the cold raw air of the vestibule. The fat

greyheaded conductor asked her with a teasing laugh if

her beau was going to be down at the station to meet her,

she seemed so anxious to get in. They were going through

Newark then. Only one more stop. The sky was lead color

over wet streets full of automobiles and a drizzly rain was

pitting the patches of snow with grey. The train began to

cross wide desolate saltmarshes, here and there broken by

an uneven group of factory structures or a black river with

steamboats on it. There didn't seem to be any people; it

looked so cold over those marshes Daughter felt scared

and lonely just looking at them and wished she was home.

Then suddenly the train was in a tunnel, and the porter

was piling all the bags in the front end of the car. She got

into the fur coat Dad had bought her as a Christmas pres-

ent and pulled her gloves on over her hands cold with

excitement for fear that maybe Ada Washburn hadn't got-

ten her telegram or hadn't been able to come down to meet

her.

But there she was on the platform in noseglasses and

raincoat looking as oldmaidish as ever and a slightly

younger girl with her who turned out to be from Waco

and studying art. They had a long ride in a taxi up crowded

streets full of slush with yellow and grey snowpiles along

-262-

the sidewalks. "If, you'd have been here a week ago, Anne

Elizabeth, I declare you'd have seen a real blizzard."

"I used to think snow was like on Christmas cards," said

Esther Wilson who was an interestinglooking girl with

black eyes and a long face and a deep kind of tragicsound-

ing voice. "But it was just an illusion like a lot of things."

" New York's no place for illusions," said Ada sharply. "It

all looks kinder like a illusion to me," said Daughter, look-

ing out of the window of the taxicab.

Ada and Esther had a lovely big apartment on Univer-

sity Heights where they had fixed up the dining room as

a bedroom for Daughter. She didn't like New York but it

was exciting; everything was grey and grimy and the

people all seemed to be foreigners and nobody paid any

attention to you except now and then a man tried to pick

you up on the street or brushed up against you in the sub-

way which was disgusting. She was signed up as a special

student and went to lectures about Economics and English

Literature and Art and talked a little occasionally with

some boy who happened to be sitting next to her, but she

was so much younger than anybody she met and she didn't

seem to have the right line of talk to interest them. It was

fun going to matinées with Ada sometimes or riding down

all bundled up on top of the bus to go to the art-museum

with Esther on Sunday afternoons, but they were both of

them so staid and grown up and all the time getting

shocked by things she said and did.

hen Paul English called up and asked her to go to a

matiné with him one Saturday, she was very thrilled.

They'd written a few letters back and forth but they hadn't

seen each other since Washington. She was all morning

putting on first one dress and then the other, trying out

different ways of doing her hair and was still taking a hot

bath when he called for her so that Ada had to entertain

him for the longest time. When she saw him all her thrill

dribbled away, he looked so stiff and stuckup in his dress

-263-

uniform. First thing she knew she was kidding him, and

acting silly going downtown in the subway so that by the

time they got to the Astor where he took her to lunch, he

looked sore as a pup. She left him at the table and went

to the ladies' room to see if she couldn't get her hair to look

a little better than it did and got to talking with an elderly

Jewish lady in diamonds who'd lost her pocketbook, and

when she got back the lunch was standing cold on the

table and Paul English was looking at his wristwatch un-

easily. She didn't like the play and he tried to get fresh in

the taxicab driving up Riverside Drive although it was still

broad daylight, and she slapped his face. He said she was

the meanest girl he'd ever met and she said she liked

being mean and if he didn't like it he knew what he could

do. Before that she'd made up her mind that she'd crossed

him off her list.

She went in her room and cried and wouldn't take any

supper. She felt real miserable having Paul English turn

out a pill like that. It was lonely not having anybody to

take her out and no chance of meeting anybody because she

had to go everywhere with those old maids. She lay on

her back on the floor looking at the furniture from under-

neath like when she'd been little and thinking of , Joe

Washburn. Ada came in and found her in the silliest posi-

tion lying on the floor with her legs in the air; she jumped

up and kissed her all over her face and hugged her and

said she'd been a little idiot but it was all over now and

was there anything to eat in the icebox.

When she met Edwin Vinal at one of Ada's Sunday eve-

ning parties that she didn't usually come out to on account

of people sitting around so prim and talking so solemn and

deep over their cocoa and cupcakes, it made everything dif-

ferent and she began to like New York. He was a scrawny

kind of young fellow who was taking courses in sociology.

He sat on a stiff chair with his cocoacup balanced uncom-

fortably in his hand and didn't seem to know where to put

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his legs. He didn't say anything all evening but just as he

was going, he picked up something Ada said about values

and began to talk a blue streak, quoting all the time from

a man named Veblen. Daughter felt kind of attracted to

him and asked who Veblen was, and he began to talk to

her. She wasn't up on what he was talking about but it

made her feel lively inside to have him talking right to her

like that. He had light hair and black eyebrows and lashes

around very pale grey eyes with little gold specks in them.

She liked his awkward lanky way of moving around. Next

evening he came to see her and brought her a volume of

the Theory of the Leisure Class and asked her if she didn't

want to go skating with him at the St. Nicholas rink. She

went in her room to get ready and began to dawdle around

powdering her face and looking at herself in the glass.

"Hey, Anne, for gosh sakes, we haven't got all night," he

yelled through the door. She had never had iceskates on

her feet before, but she knew how to rollerskate, so with

Edwin holding her arm she was able to get around the big

hall with its band playing and all the tiers of lights and

faces around the balcony. She had more fun than she'd had

any time since she left home.

Edwin Vinal had been a social worker and lived in a

settlement house and now he had a scholarship at Columbia

but he said the profs were too theoretical and never seemed

to realize it was real people like you and me they were

dealing with. Daughter had done churchwork and taken

around baskets to poorwhite families at Christmas time and

said she'd like to do some socialservicework right here in

New York. As they were taking off their skates he asked

her if she really meant it and she smiled up at him and

said, "Hope I may die if I don't."

So the next evening he took her downtown threequar-

ters of an hour's ride in the subway and then a long stretch

on a crosstown car to a settlement house on Grand Street

where she had to wait while he gave an English lesson to

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a class of greasylooking young Lithuanians or Polaks or

something like that. Then they walked around the streets

and Edwin pointed out the conditions. It was like the Mex-

ican part of San Antonio or Houston only there were all

kinds of foreigners. None of them looked as if they ever

bathed and the streets smelt of garbage. There was laun-

dry hanging out everywhere and signs in all kinds of funny

languages. Edwin showed her some in Russian and Yid-

dish, one in Armenian and two in Arabic. The streets were

awful crowded and there were pushcarts along the curb

and peddlers everywhere and funny smells of cooking

coming out of restaurants, and outlandish phonograph

music. Edwin pointed out two tiredlooking painted girls

who he said were streetwalkers, drunks stumbling out of

a saloon, a young man in a checked cap he said was a cadet

drumming up trade for a disorderly house, some sallow-

faced boys he said were gunmen and dope peddlers. It was

a relief when they came up again out of the subway way

uptown where a springy wind was blowing down the broad

empty streets that smelt of the Hudson River. "Well,

Anne, how did you like your little trip to the underworld?"

"Allright," she said after a pause. "Another time I think

I'll take a gun in my handbag. . . . But all those people,

Edwin, how on earth can you make citizens out of them?

We oughtn't to let all these foreigners come over and mess

up our country."

"You're entirely wrong," Edwin snapped at her.

"They'd all be decent if they had a chance. We'd be just

like them if we hadn't been lucky enough to be born of

decent families in small prosperous American towns."

"Oh, how can you talk so silly, Edwin, they're not white

people and they never will be. They're just like Mexicans

or somethin', or niggers." She caught herself up and swal-,

lowed the last word. The colored elevator boy was drows-

ing on a bench right behind her.

If you're not the benightedest little heathen I ever

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saw," said Edwin teasingly. "You're a Christian, aren'

you, well, have you ever thought that Christ was a Jew?"

"Well, I'm fallin' down with sleep and can't argue with

you but I know you're wrong." She went into the elevator

and the colored elevator boy got up yawning and stretch:'

ing. The last she saw of Edwin in the rapidly decreasing

patch of light between the floor of the elevator and the

ceiling of the vestibule he was shaking his fist at her. She

threw him a kiss without meaning to.

When she got in the apartment, Ada, who was reading

in the livingroom, scolded her a little for being so late,

but she pleaded that she was too tired and sleepy to be

scolded. "What do you think of Edwin Vinal, Ada?"

"Why, my dear, I think he's a splendid young fellow, a

little restless maybe, but he'll settle down. . . . Why?"

"Oh, I dunno," said Daughter, yawning, "Good night,

Ada darlin'."

he took a hot bath and put a lot of perfume on and

went to bed, but she couldn't go to sleep. Her legs ached

from the greasy pavements and she could feel the walls

of the tenements sweating lust and filth and the smell of

crowded bodies closing in on her, in spite of the perfume

she still had the rank garbagy smell in her nose, and the

dazzle of street lights and faces pricked her eyes. When

she went to sleep she dreamed she had rouged her lips and

was walking up and down, up and down with a gun in her

handbag; Joe Washburn walked by and she kept catching

at his arm to try to make him stop but he kept walking by

without looking at her and so did Dad and they wouldn't

look when a big Jew with a beard kept getting closer to

her and he smelt horrid of the East Side and garlic and

waterclosets and she tried to get the gun out of her bag

to shoot him and he had his arms around her and was pull-

ing her face close to his. She couldn't get the gun out of

the handbag and behind the roaring clatter of the subway

in her ears was Edwin Vinal's voice saying, "You're a

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Christian, aren't you? You're entirely wrong . . . a Chris-

tian, aren't you? Have you ever thought that Christ would

have been just like them if he hadn't been lucky enough

to have been born of decent people . . . a Christian, aren't

you. . . ."

Ada, standing over her in a nightgown, woke her up,

"What can be the matter, child?" "I was having a night-

mare . . . isn't that silly?" said Daughter and sat bolt-

upright in bed. "Did I yell bloody murder?" "I bet you

children were out eating Welsh Rabbit, that's why you

were so late," said Ada, and went back to her room

laughing.

That spring Daughter coached a girls' basketball team

at a Y.W.C.A. in the Bronx, and got engaged to Edwin

Vinal. She told him she didn't want to marry anybody for

a couple of years yet, and he said he didn't care about car-

nal marriage but that the important thing was for them to

plan a life of service together. Sunday evenings, when the

weather got good, they would go and cook a steak together

in Palisades Park and sit there looking through the trees

at the lights coming on in the great toothed rockrim of the

city and talk about what was good and evil and what real

love was. Coming back they'd stand hand in hand in the

bow of the ferry boat among the crowd of boyscouts and

hikers and picnickers and look at the great sweep of

lighted buildings fading away into the ruddy haze down

the North River and talk about all the terrible conditions

in the city. Edwin would kiss her on the forehead when

he said Goodnight and she'd go up in the elevator feeling

that the kiss was a dedication.

At the end of June she went home to spend three months

on the ranch, but she was very unhappy there that summer.

Somehow she couldn't get around to telling Dad about her

engagement. When Joe Washburn came out to spend a

week the boys made her furious teasing her about him and

telling her that he was engaged to a girl in Oklahoma City,

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and she got so mad she wouldn't speak to them and was

barely civil to Joe. She insisted on riding a mean little

pinto that bucked and threw her once or twice. She drove

the car right through a gate one night and busted both

lamps to smithereens. When Dad scolded her about her

recklessness she'd tell him he oughtn't to care because she

was going back east to earn her own living and he'd be rid

of her. Joe Washburn treated her with the same grave

kindness as always, and sometimes when she was acting

crazy she'd catch a funny understanding kidding gleam in

his keen eyes that would make her feel suddenly all weak

and silly inside. The night before he left the boys cornered

a rattler on the rockpile behind the corral and Daughter

dared Joe to pick it up and snap its head off. Joe ran for

a forked stick and caught the snake with a jab behind the

head and threw it with all his might against the wall of

the little smokehouse. As it lay wriggling on the grass

with a broken back Bud took its head off with a hoe. It

had six rattles and a button. "Daughter," Joe drawled,

looking her in the face with his steady smiling stare,

"sometimes you talk like you didn't have good sense."

"You're yaller, that's what's the matter with you," she

said.

"Daughter, you're crazy . . . you apologize to Joe,"

yelled Bud, running up red in the face with the dead snake

in his hand. She turned and went into the ranchhouse and

threw herself on her bed. She didn't come out of her room.

till after Joe had left in the morning.

he week before she left to go back to Columbia she

was good as gold and tried to make it up to Dad and the

boys by baking cakes for them and attending to the house-

keeping for having acted so mean and crazy all summer.

She met Ada in Dallas and they engaged a section to-

gether. She'd been hoping that Joe would come down to

the station to see them off, but he was in Oklahoma City

on oil business. On her way north she wrote him a long

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letter saying she didn't know what had gotten into her that

day with the rattler and wouldn't he please forgive her.

Daughter worked hard that autumn. She'd gotten her-

self admitted to the School of Journalism, in spite of Ed-

win's disapproval. He wanted her to study to be a teacher

or social worker, but she said journalism offered more op-

portunity. They more or less broke off over it; although

they saw each other a good deal, they didn't talk so much

about being engaged. There was a boy named Webb Cruth-

ers studying journalism that Daughter got to be good

friends with although Ada said he was no good and

wouldn't let her bring him to the house. He was shorter

than she, had dark hair and looked about fifteen although

he said he was twentyone. He had a creamy white skin

that made people call him Babyface, and a funny confiden-

tial way of talking as if he didn't take what he was saying

altogether seriously himself. He said he was an anarchist

and talked all the time about politics and the war. He used

to take her down to the East Side, too, but it was more fun

than going with Edwin. Webb always wanted to go in

somewhere to get a drink and talk to people. He took her

to saloons and to Roumanian rathskellers and Arabian res-

taurants and more places than she'd ever imagined. He

knew everybody everywhere and seemed to manage to

make people trust him for the check, because he hardly

ever had any money, and when they'd spent whatever she

-had with her Webb would have to charge the rest. Daugh-

ter didn't drink more than an occasional glass of wine, and

if he began to get too obstreperous, she'd make him take

her to the nearest subway and go on home. Then next day

he'd be a little weak and trembly and tell her about his

hangover and funny stories about adventures held had

when he was tight. He always had pamphlets in his pock-

ets about socialism and syndicalism and copies of Mother

Earth or The Masses.

After Christmas Webb got all wrapped up in a strike of

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textile workers that was going on in a town over in New

Jersey. One Sunday they went over to see what it was like.

They got off the train at a grimy brick station in the mid-

dle of the empty business section, a few people standing

around in front of lunchcounters, empty stores closed for

Sunday; there seemed nothing special about the town until

they walked out to the long low square brick buildings of

the mills. There were knots of policemen in blue standing

about in the wide muddy roadway outside and inside the

wiremesh gates huskylooking young men in khaki. "Those

are special deputies, the sons of bitches," muttered Webb

between his teeth. They went to Strike Headquarters to see

a girl Webb knew who was doing publicity for them. At

the head of a grimy stairway crowded with greyfaced for-

eign men and women in faded greylooking clothes, they

found an office noisy with talk and click of typewriters. The

hallway was piled with stacks of handbills that a tiredlook-

ing young man was giving out in packages to boys in

ragged sweaters. Webb found Sylvia Dalhart, a longnosed

girl with glasses who was typing madly at a desk piled

with newspapers and clippings. She waved a hand and said,

"Webb, wait for me outside. I'm going to show some news-

paper guys around and you'd better come."

ut in the hall they ran into a fellow Webb knew, Ben

Compton, a tall young man with a long thin nose and red-

rimmed eyes, who said he was going to speak at the meet-

ing and asked Webb if he wouldn't speak. "Jeez, what

could I say to those fellers? I'm just a bum of a college

stoodjent, like you, Ben." "Tell 'em the workers have got

to win the world, tell 'em this fight is part of a great his-

toric battle. Talking's the easiest part of the movement.

The truth's simple enough." He had an explosive way of

talking with a pause between each sentence, as if the sen-

tence took sometime to come up from someplace way down

inside. Daughter sized up that he was attractive, even

though he was probably a Jew. "Well, I’ll try to stammer

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out something about democracy in industry," said Webb.

Sylvia Dalhart was already pushing them down the

stairs. She had with her a pale young man in a raincoat

and black felt hat who was chewing the. end of a half of

a cigar that had gone out. "Fellowworkers, this is Joe Big-

low from the Globe, "she had a western burr in her voice

that made Daughter feel at home. "We're going to show

him around."

They went all over town, to strikers' houses where tired-

looking women in sweaters out at the elbows were cooking

up lean Sunday dinners of corned beef and cabbage or

stewed meat and potatoes, or in some houses they just had

cabbage and bread or just potatoes. Then they went to a

lunchroom near the station and ate some lunch. Daughter

paid the check as nobody seemed to have any money, and

it was time to go to the meeting.

The trolleycar was crowded with strikers and their wives

and children. The meeting was to be held in the next town

because in that town the Mills owned everything and there

was no way of hiring a hall. It had started to sleet, and

they got their feet wet wading through the slush to the

mean frame building where the meeting was going to be

held. When they got to the door there were mounted po-

lice out in front. "Hall full," a cop told them at the street-

corner, "no more allowed inside."

They stood around in the sleet waiting for somebody

with authority. There were thousands of strikers, men and

women and boys and girls, the older people talking among

themselves in low voices in foreign languages. Webb kept

saying, "Jesus, this is outrageous. Somebody ought to do

something." Daughter's feet were cold and she wanted to

go home.

Then Ben Compton came around from the back of the

building. People began to gather around him, "There's

Ben . . . there's Compton, good boy, Benny," she heard

people saying. Young men moved around through the

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crowd whispering, "Overflow meeting . . . stand your

ground, folks."

He began to speak hanging by one arm from a lamp-

post. "Comrades, this is another insult flung in the face of

the working class. There are not more than forty people in

the hall and they close the doors and tell us it's full . . ."

The crowd began swaying back and forth, hats, umbrellas

bobbing in the sleety rain. Then she saw the two cops were

dragging Compton off and heard the jangle of the patrol-

wagon. "Shame, shame," people yelled. They began to

back off from the cops; the flow was away from the hall.

People were moving quietly and dejectedly down the street

toward the trolley tracks with the cordon of mounted po-

lice pressing them on. Suddenly Webb whispered in her

ear, "Let me lean on your shoulder," and jumped on a

hydrant.

"This is outrageous," he shouted, "you people had a per-

mit to use the hall and had hired it and no power on earth

has a right to keep you out of it. To hell with the cossacks."

Two mounted police were loping towards him, opening

a lane through the crowd as they came. Webb was off the

hydrant and had grabbed Daughter's hand, "Let's run like

hell," he whispered and was off doubling back and forth

among the scurrying people. She followed him laughing

and out of breath. A trolley car was coming down the main

street. Webb caught it on the move but she couldn't make

it and had to wait for the next. Meanwhile the cops were

riding slowly back and forth among the crowd breaking

it up.

Daughter's feet ached from paddling in slush all after-

noon and she was thinking that she ought to get home be-

fore she caught her death of cold. At the station waiting

for the train she saw Webb. He looked scared to death.

He'd pulled his cap down over his eyes and his muffler up

over his ch0000nd pretended not to know Daughter when

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she went up to him. Once they got on the overheated train

he sneaked up the aisle and sat down next to her.

"I was afraid some dick ud recognize me at the station,"

he whispered. "Well, what do you think of it?"

"I thought it was terrible . . . they're all so yaller

. . . the only people looked good to me were those boys

guardin' the mills, they looked like white men. . . . And

as for you, Webb Cruthers, you ran like a deer."

"Don't talk so loud. . . . Do you think I ought to have

waited and gotten arrested like Ben."

"Of course it's none of my business."

"You don't understand revolutionary tactics, Anne.'

Going over on the ferry they were both of them cold

and hungry. Webb said he had the key to a room a friend

of his had down on Eighth Street and that they'd better

go there and warm their feet and make some tea before

they went uptown. They had a long sullen walk, neither of

them saying anything, from the ferry landing to the house.

The room, that smelt of turpentine and was untidy, turned

out to be a big studio heated by a gasburner. It was cold

as Greenland, so they wrapped themselves in blankets and

took off their shoes and stockings and toasted their feet in

front of the gas. Daughter took her skirt off under the

blanket and hung it up over the heater. "Well, I declare,"

she said, "if your friend comes in we sure will be compro-

mised."

"He won't," said Webb, "he's up at Cold Spring for

the weekend." Webb was moving around in his bare feet,

putting on water to boil and making toast. "You'd better

take your trousers off, Webb, I can see the water dripping

off them from here." Webb blushed and pulled them off,

draping the blanket around himself like a Roman senator.

For a long time they didn't say anything and all they

could hear above the distant hum of traffic was the hiss of

the gasflame and the intermittent purr of the kettle just

beginning to boil. Then Webb suddenly began to talk in

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a nervous spluttering way. "So you think I'm yellow, do

you? Well, you may be right, Anne . . . not that I give

a damn . . . I mean, you see, there's times when a fellow

ought to be a coward and times when he ought to do the

he-man stuff. Now don't talk for a minute, let me say

something. . . . I'm hellishly attracted to you . . . and

it's been yellow of me not to tell you about it before, see?

I don't believe in love or anything like that, all bourgeois

nonsensei but I think when people are attracted to each

other I think it's yellow of them not to . . . you know

what I mean."

"No, I doan', Webb," said Daughter after a pause.

Webb looked at her in a puzzled way as he brought her

a cup of tea and some buttered toast with a piece of cheese

on it. They ate in silence for a while; it was so quiet they

could hear each other gulping little swallows of tea. "Now,

what in Jesus Christ's name did you mean by that?" Webb

suddenly shouted out.

Daughter felt warm and drowsy in her blanket, with the

hot tea in her and the dry gasheat licking the soles of her

feet. "Well, what does anybody mean by anything," she

mumbled dreamily.

Webb put down his teacup and began to walk up and

down the room trailing the blanket after him. "S -- t," he

suddenly said, as he stepped on a thumbtack. He stood on

one leg looking at the sole of his foot that was black from

the grime of the floor. "But, Jesus Christ, Anne . . . peo-

ple ought to be free and happy about sex . . . come ahead

let's." His cheeks were pink and his black hair that needed

cutting was every which way. He kept on standing on one

leg and looking at the sole of his foot. Daughter began to

laugh. "You look awful funny like that, Webb." She felt

a warm glow all over her. "Give me another cup of tea

and make me some more toast."

After she'd had the tea and toast she said, "Well isn't

it about time we ought to be going uptown?" "But Christ,

-275-

Anne, I'm making indecent proposals to you," he said

shrilly, half laughing and half in tears. "For God's sake

pay attention . . . Damn it, I'll make you pay attention,

you little bitch." He dropped his blanket and ran at her.

She could see he was fighting mad. He pulled her up out

of her chair and kissed her on the mouth. She had quite a

tussle with him, as he was wiry and strong, but she man-

aged to get her forearm under his chin and to push his

face away far enough to give him a punch on the nose.

His nose began to bleed. "Don't be silly, Webb," she said,

breathing hard, "I don't want that sort of thing, not yet,

anyway . . . go and wash your face."

He went to the sink and began dabbling his face with

water. Daughter hurried into her skirt and shoes and stock-

ings and went over to the sink where he was washing his

face, "That was mean of me, Webb, I'm terribly sorry.

There's something always makes me be mean to people I

like." Webb wouldn't say anything for a long time. His

nose was still bleeding.

"Go along home," he said, "I'm going to stay here. . . .

It's all right . . . my mistake."

She put on her dripping raincoat and went out into the

shiny evening streets. All the way home on the express in

the subway she was feeling warm and tender towards

Webb, like towards Dad or the boys.

She didn't see him for several days, then one evening

he called and asked her if she wanted to go out on the

picket line next morning. It was still dark when she met

him at the ferry station. They were both cold and sleepy

and didn't say much going out on the train. From the train

they had to run through the slippery streets to get to the

mills in time to join the picket line. Faces looked cold and

pinched in the blue early light. Women had shawls over

their heads, few of the men or boys had overcoats. The

young girls were all shivering in their cheap fancy topcoats

that had no warmth to them. The cops had already begun

-276-

to break up the head of the line. Some of the strikers were

singing Solidarity Forever, others were yelling Scabs, Scabs

and making funny long jeering hoots. Daughter was con-

fused and excited.

Suddenly everybody around her broke and ran and left

her in a stretch of empty street in front of the wire fencing

of the mills. Ten feet in front of her a young woman

slipped and fell. Daughter caught the scared look in her

eyes that were round and black. Daughter stepped for-

ward to help her up but two policemen were ahead of her

swinging their nightsticks. Daughter thought they were

going to help the girl up. She stood still for a second,

frozen in her tracks when she saw one of the policemen's

feet shoot out. He'd kicked the girl full in the face. Daugh-

ter never remembered what happened except that she was

wanting a gun and punching into the policeman's big red

face and against the buttons and the thick heavy cloth of

his overcoat. Something crashed down on her head from

behind; dizzy and sick she was being pushed into the po-

licewagon. In front of her was the girl's face all caved in

and bleeding. In the darkness inside were other men and

women cursing and laughing. But Daughter and the

woman opposite looked at each other dazedly and said

nothing. Then the door closed behind them and they were

in the dark.

When they were committed she was charged with riot-

ing, felonious assault, obstructing an officer and inciting to

sedition. It wasn't so bad in the county jail. The women's

section was crowded with strikers, all the cells were full of

girls laughing and talking, singing songs and telling each

other how they'd been arrested, how long they'd been in,

how they were going to win the strike. In Daughter's cell

the girls all clustered around her and wanted to know how

she'd gotten there. She began to feel she was quite a hero.

Towards evening her name was called and she found Webb

and Ada and a lawyer clustered around the policesergeant's

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desk. Ada was mad, "Read that, young woman, and see

how that'll sound back home," she said, poking an after-

noon paper under her nose.

TEXAS BELLE ASSAULTS Cop said one headline. Then

followed an account of her knocking down a policeman

with a left on the jaw. She was released on a thousand dol-

lars bail; outside the jail, Ben Compton broke away from

the group of reporters around him and rushed up to her.

"Congratulations, Miss Trent," he said, "that was a darn

nervy thing to do . . . made a very good impression in

the press." Sylvia Dalhart was with him. She threw her

arms around her and kissed her: "That was a mighty

spunky thing to do. Say, we're sending a delegation to

Washington to see President Wilson and present a peti-

tion and we want you on it. The President will refuse to

see the delegation and you'll have a chance to picket the

White House and get arrested again."

"Well, I declare," said Ada when they were safely on

the train for New York. "I think you've lost your mind."

"You'd have done the same thing, Ada darlin', if you'd

seen what I saw . . . when I tell Dad and the boys about

it they'll see red. It's the most outrageous thing I ever

heard of." Then she burst out crying.

When they got back to Ada's apartment they found a

telegram from Dad saying Coming at once. Make no state-

ment until I arrive. Late that night another telegram

came; it read: Dad seriously ill come on home at once

have Ada retain best lawyer obtainable. In the morning

Daughter scared and trembling was on the first train

south. At St. Louis she got a telegram saying Don't worry

condition fair double pneumonia. Upset as she was it cer-

tainly did her good to see the wide Texas country, the

spring crops beginning, a few bluebonnets in bloom. Buster

was there to meet her at the depot, "Well, Daughter," he

said after he had taken her bag, "you've almost killed

Dad."

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Buster was sixteen and captain of the highschool ball

team. Driving her up to the house in the new Stutz he

told her how things were. Bud had been tearing things

up at the University and was on the edge of getting fired

and had gotten balled up with a girl in Galveston who was

trying to blackmail him. Dad had been very much worried

because he'd gotten in too deep in the oil game and seeing

Daughter spread all over the front page for knocking down

a cop had about finished him; old Emma was getting too

old to run the house for them anymore and it was up to

Daughter to give up her crazy ideas and stay home and

keep house for them. "See this car? A dandy ain't it. . . .

I bought it myself. . . . Did a little tradin' in options up

near Amarillo on my own, jus' for the hell of it, and I

made five thousand bucks." "Why, you smart kid. I tell

you, Bud, it's good to be home. But about that policeman

you'd have done the same yourself or you're not my

brother. I'll tell you all about it sometime. Believe me it

does me good to see Texas faces after those mean weasel-

faced Easterners." Dr. Winslow was in the hall when they

came in. He shook hands warmly and told her how well

she was looking and not to worry because he'd pull her

Dad through if it was the last thing he did on earth. The

sickroom and Dad's restless flushed face made her feel

awful, and she didn't like finding a trained nurse running

the house.

After Dad began to get around a little they both went

down to Port Arthur for a couple of weeks for a change to

stay with an old friend of Dad's. Dad said he'd give her

a car if she'd stay on, and that he'd get her out of this silly

mess she'd gotten into up north.

She began to play a lot of tennis and golf again and

to go out a good deal socially. Joe Washburn had married

and was living in Oklahoma getting rich on oil. She felt

easier in Dallas when he wasn't there; seeing him upset

her so. The next fall Daughter went down to Austin to

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finish her journalism course, mostly because she thought

her being there would keep Bud in the straight and nar-

row. Friday afternoons they drove back home together in

her Buick sedan for the weekend. Dad had bought a new

Tudor style house way out and all her spare time was

taken up picking out furniture and hanging curtains and

arranging the rooms. She had a great many beaux always

coming around to take her out and had to start keeping an

engagement book. Especially after the declaration of war

social life became very hectic. She was going every minute

and never got any sleep. Everybody was getting commis-

sions or leaving for officers training camps. Daughter went

in for Red Cross work and organized a canteen, but that

wasn't enough and she kept applying to be sent abroad.

Bud went down to San Antonio to learn to fly and Buster,

who'd been in the militia, lied about his age and joined up

as a private and was sent to Jefferson Barracks. At the can-

teen she lived in a whirl and had one or two proposals of

marriage a week, but she always told them that she hadn't

any intention of being a war bride.

Then one morning a War Department telegram came.

Dad was in Austin on business so she opened it. Bud had

crashed, killed. First thing Daughter thought was how

hard it would hit Dad. The phone rang; it was a long

distance call from San Antonio, sounded like Joe Wash-

burn's voice. "Is that you, Joe?" she said weakly. "Daugh-

ter, I want to speak to your father," came his grave drawl.

"I know . . . O Joe."

"It was his first solo flight. He was a great boy. Nobody

seems to know how it happened. Must have been defect in

structure. I'll call Austin. I know where to get hold of him.

. . . I've got the number . . . see you soon, Daughter."

Joe rang off. Daughter went into her room and burrowed

face down into the bed that hadn't been made up. For a

minute she tried to imagine that she hadn't gotten up yet,

that she dreamed the phone ringing and Joe's voice. Then

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she thought of Bud so sharply it was as if he'd come into

the room, the way he laughed, the hard pressure of his

long thin hand over her hands when he'd suddenly

grabbed the wheel when they'd skidded going around a

corner into San Antonio the last time she'd driven him

down after a leave, the clean anxious lean look of his face

above the tight khaki collar of the uniform. Then she

heard Joe's voice again: Must have been some defect in

structure.

She went down and jumped into her car. At the filling-

station where she filled up with gas and oil the garageman

asked her how the boys liked it in the army. She couldn't

stop to tell him about it now. "Bully, they like it fine,"

she said, with a grin that hurt her like a slap in the face.

She wired Dad at his lawpartner's office that she was com-

ing and pulled out of town for Austin. The roads were in

bad shape, it made her feel better to feel the car plough

through the muddy ruts and the water spraying out in a

wave on either side when she went through a puddle at

fifty.

She averaged fortyfive all the way and got to Austin

before dark. Dad had already gone down to San Antonio

on the train. Dead tired, she started off. She had a blow-

out and it took her a long time to get it fixed; it was mid-

night before she drew up at the Menger. Automatically

she looked at herself in the little mirror before going in.

There were streaks of mud on her face and her eyes were

red.

In the lobby she found Dad and Joe Washburn sitting

side by side with burntout cigars in their mouths. Their

faces looked a little alike. Must have been the grey drawn

look that made them look alike. She kissed them both.

"Dad, you ought to go to bed," she said briskly. "You

look all in." "I suppose I might as well . . . There's

nothing left to do," he said.

"Wait for me, Joe, until I get Dad fixed up," she said

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in a low voice as she passed him. She went up to the room

with Dad, got herself a room adjoining, ruffled his hair and

kissed him very gently and left him to go to bed.

When she got back down to the lobby Joe was sitting

in the same place with the same expression on his face. It

made her mad to see him like that.

Her sharp brisk voice surprised her. "Come outside a

minute, Joe, I want to walk around a little." The rain had

cleared the air. It was a transparent early summer night.

"Look here, Joe, who's responsible for the condition of

the planes? I've got to know." "Daughter, how funny you

talk . . . what you ought to do is get some sleep, you're

all overwrought." "Joe, you answer my question." "But

Daughter, don't you see nobody's responsible. The army's

a big institution. Mistakes are inevitable. There's a lot of

money being made by contractors of one kind or another.

Whatever you say aviation is in its infancy we all

knew the risks before we joined up."

"If Bud had been killed in France I wouldn't have felt

like this . . . but here . . . Joe, somebody's directly re-

sponsible for my brother's death. I want to go and talk to

him, that's all. I won't do anything silly. You all think I'm

a lunatic I know, but I'm thinking of all the other girls

who have brothers training to be aviators. The man who

inspected those planes is a traitor to his country and ought

to be shot down like a dog." "Look here, Daughter," Joe

said as he brought her back to the hotel, "we're fightin' a

war now. Individual lives don't matter, this isn't the time

for lettin' your personal feelin's get away with you or em-

barrassin' the authorities with criticism. When we've licked

the huns'll be plenty of time for gettin' the incompetents

and the crooks . . . that's how I feel about it."

"Well, good night, Joe . . . you be mighty careful

yourself. When do you expect to get your wings?" "Oh, in

a couple of weeks." "How's Gladys and Bunny?" "Oh,

they're all right," said Joe; a funny constraint came into

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his voice and he blushed. "They're in Tulsa with Mrs.

Higgins."

She went to bed and lay there without moving, feeling

desperately quiet and cool; she was too tired to sleep.

When morning came she went around to the garage to get

her car. She felt in the pocket on the door to see if her

handbag was there that always had her little pearlhandled

revolver in it, and drove out to the aviation camp. At the

gate the sentry wouldn't let her by, so she sent a note to

Colonel Morrissey who was a friend of Dad's, saying that

she must see him at once. The corporal was very nice and

got her a chair in the little office at the gate and a few min-

utes later said he had Colonel Morrissey on the wire. She

started to talk to him but she couldn't think what to say.

The desk and the office and the corporal began swaying

giddily and she fainted.

She came to in a staffcar with Joe Washburn who was

taking her back to the hotel. He was patting her hand

saying, "That's all right, Daughter." She was clinging to

him and crying like a little tiny girl. They put her to bed

at the hotel and gave her bromides and the doctor wouldn't

let her get up until after the funeral was over.

She got a reputation for being a little crazy after that.

She stayed on in San Antonio. Everything was very gay

and tense. All day she worked in a canteen and evenings

she went out, supper and dancing, every night with a dif-

ferent aviation officer. Everybody had taken to drinking a

great deal. It was like when she used to go to highschool

dances, she felt herself moving in a brilliantly lighted daze

of suppers and lights and dancing and champagne and dif-

ferent colored faces and stiff identical bodies of men danc-

ing with her, only now she had a kidding line and let them

hug her and kiss her in taxicabs, in phonebooths, in people's

backyards.

One night she met Joe Washburn at a party Ida Olsen

was giving for some boys who were leaving for overseas.

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It was the first time she'd ever seen Joe drink. He wasn't

drunk but she could see that he'd been drinking a great

deal. They went and sat side by side on the back steps of

the kitchen in the dark. It was a clear hot night full of

dryflies with a hard hot wind rustling the dry twigs of the

trees. Suddenly she took Joe's hand: "Oh, Joe, this is

awful."

Joe began to talk about how unhappy he was with his

wife, how he was making big money through his oil leases

and didn't give a damn about it, how sick he was of the

army. They'd made him an instructor and wouldn't let

him go overseas and he was almost crazy out there in

camp. "Oh, Joe, I want to go overseas too. I'm leading

such a silly life here." "You have been actin' kinder wild,

Daughter, since Bud died," came Joe's soft deep drawling

voice. "Oh, Joe, I wisht I was dead," she said and put her

head on his knee and began to cry. "Don't cry, Daughter,

don't cry," he began to say, then suddenly he was kissing

her. His kisses were hard and crazy and made her go all

limp against him.

"I don't love anybody but you, Joe," she suddenly said

quietly. But he already had control of himself; "Daughter,

forgive me," he said in a quiet lawyer's voice, "I don't

know what I was thinking of, I must be crazy . . . this

war is making us all crazy . . . Good night . . . Say

. . . er . . . erase this all from the record, will you?"

That night she couldn't sleep a wink. At six in the morn-

ing she got into her car, filled up with gas and oil and

started for Dallas. It was a bright fall morning with blue

mist in the hollows. Dry cornstalks rustled on the long

hills red and yellow with fall. It was late when she got

home. Dad was sitting up reading the war news in pyjamas

and bathrobe. "Well, it won't be long now, Daughter," he

said. "The Hindenburg line is crumpling up. I knew our

boys could do it once they got started." Dad's face was

more lined and his hair whiter than she'd remembered it.

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She heated up a can of Campbell's soup as she hadn't taken

any time to eat. They had a cosy little supper together and

read a funny letter of Buster's from Camp Merritt where

his outfit was waiting to go overseas. When she went to

bed in her own room it was like being a little girl again,

she'd always loved times when she got a chance to have a

cosy chat with Dad all alone; she went to sleep the minute

her head hit the pillow.

She stayed on in Dallas taking care of Dad; it was only

sometimes when she thought of Joe Washburn that she

felt she couldn't stand it another minute. The fake armi-

stice came and then the real armistice, everybody was crazy

for a week like a New Orleans mardigras. Daughter de-

cided that she was going to be an old maid and keep house

for Dad. Buster came home looking very Anned and full

of army slang. She started attending lectures at Southern

Methodist, doing church work, getting books out of the

circulating library, baking angelcake; when young girl-

friends of Buster's came to the house she acted as a chap-

eron.

Thanksgiving Joe Washburn and his wife came to din-

ner with them. Old Emma was sick so Daughter cooked

the turkey herself. It was only when they'd all sat down

to table, with the yellow candles lighted in the silver can-

dlesticks and the salted nuts set out in the little silver trays

and the decoration of pink and purple mapleleaves, that

she remembered Bud. She suddenly began to feel faint and

ran into her room. She lay face down on the bed listening

to their grave voices. Joe came to the door to see what was

the matter. She jumped up laughing, and almost scared

Joe to death by kissing him square on the mouth. "I'm all

right, Joe," she said. "How's yourself?"

Then she ran to the table and started cheering every-

body up, so that they all enjoyed their dinner. When they

were drinking their coffee in the other room she told them

that she'd signed up to go overseas for six months with the

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Near East Relief, that had been recruiting at Southern

Methodist. Dad was furious and Buster said she ought to

stay home now the war was over, but Daughter said, others

had given their lives to save the world from the Germans

and that she certainly could give up six months to relief

work. When she said that they all thought of Bud and

were quiet.

It wasn't actually true that she'd signed up, but she did

the next morning and got around Miss Frazier, a returned

missionary from China who was arranging it, so that they

sent her up to New York that week, with orders to sail

immediately with the office in Rome as her first destina-

tion. She was so wildly excited all the time she was get-

ting her passport and having her uniform fitted, she hardly

noticed how glum Dad and Buster looked. She only had a

day in New York. When the boat backed out of the dock

with its siren screaming and started steaming down the

North River, she stood on the front deck with her hair

blowing in the wind, sniffing the funny steamboat harbor

overseas smell and feeling like a twoyearold.

NEWSREEL XXXII

GOLDEN VOICE OF CARUSO SWELLS IN

VICTORY SONG TO CROWDS ON STREETS

Oh Oh Oh, it's a lovely war

Oo wouldn't be a sodger, ay

from Pic Umbral to the north of the Stelvio it will follow

the crest of the Rhetian alps up to the sources of the Adige and

the Eisah passing thence by mounts Reschen and Brenner and

the heights of Oetz and Boaller; thence south crossing Mount

Toblach

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As soon as reveille has gone

We feel just as 'eavy as lead

But we never git up till the sergeant

Brings us a cup of tea in bed

HYPNOTIZED BY COMMON LAW WIFE

army casualties soar to 64,305 with 318 today; 11,760

have paid the supreme sacrifice in action and 6,193 are severely

wounded

Oh Oh Oh. it's a lovely war

Oo wouldn't be a sodger ay

Oh, it's a shayme to tayke the pay

in the villages in peasant houses the Americans are

treated as guests living in the best rooms and courteously

offered the best shining samovars or teaurns by the housewives

Le chef de gare il est cocu

in the largely populated districts a spectacular touch was

given the festivities by groups of aliens appearing in costume

and a carnival spirit prevailed

BRITISH SUPPRESS SOVIETS

Le chef de gare il est cocu

Qui est cocu? Le chef de gare

Sa femme elle l'a voulut

there can be no reason to believe these officers of an estab-

lished news organization serving newspapers all over the coun-

try failed to realize their responsibilities at a moment of supreme

significance to the people of this country. Even to anticipate

the event in a matter of such moment would be a grave im-

position for which those responsible must be called to account

Any complaynts this morning?

Do we complayn? Not we

Wats the matter with lumps of onion

Floatin' around in the tea?

PEACE DOVE IN JEWELS GIVEN

MRS. WILSON

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and the watershed of the Cols di Polberdo, Podlaniscam

and Idria. From this point the line turns southeast towards

the Schneeberg, excludes the whole basin of the Saave and its

tributaries. From Schneeberg it goes down to the coast in

such a way as to include Castna, Mattuglia and Volusca

THE CAMERA EYE (38)

sealed signed and delivered all over Tours you

can smell lindens in bloom it's hot my uniform sticks the

OD chafes me under the chin

only four days ago AWOL crawling under the

freight cars at the station of St. Pierre-des-Corps waiting

in the buvette for the MP on guard to look away from

the door so's I could slink out with a cigarette (and my

heart) in my mouth then in a tiny box of a hotel room

changing the date on that old movement order

but today

my discharge sealed signed and delivered sends off

sparks in my pocket like a romancandle

I walk past the headquarters of the SOS Hay sojer

your tunic's unbuttoned (f -- k you buddy) and down

the lindenshaded street to the bathhouse that has a court

with flowers in the middle of it the hot water gushes

green out of brass swanheads into the whitemetal tub

I strip myself naked soap myself all over with the sour

pink soap slide into the warm deepgreen tub through

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the white curtain in the window a finger of afternoon sun-

light lengthens on the ceiling towel's dry and warm

smells of steam in the suitcase I've got a suit of civvies

I borrowed from a fellow I know the buck private in

the rear rank of Uncle Sam's Medical Corps (serial

number . . . never could remember the number anyway

I dropped it in the Loire) goes down the drain with a

gurgle and hiss and

having amply tipped and gotten the eye from the

fat woman who swept up the towels

I step out into the lindensmell of a July afternoon

and stroll up to the café where at the little tables outside

only officers may set their whipcord behinds and order

a drink of cognac unservable to those in uniform while

waiting for the train to Paris and sit down firmly in long

pants in the iron chair

an anonymous civilian

NEWSREEL XXXIII

CAN'T RECALL KILLING SISTER; CLAIMS

I've got the blues

I've got the blues

I've got the alcohoholic blues

SOAP CRISIS THREATENED

with the gay sunlight and the resumption of racing Paris

has resumed its normal life. The thousands and thousands of

-289-

flags of all nations hang on dozens of lines stretching from

mast to mast making a fairylike effect that is positively aston-

ishing

THREAT LETTERS REVEALED

I love my country indeed I do

But this war is making me blue

I like fightin' fightin's my name

But fightin is the least about this fightin game

the police found an anteroom full of mysteriouslooking

packages which when opened were found full of pamphlets in

Yiddish Russian and English and of membership cards for

the Industrial Workers of the World

HIGH WIND INCREASES DANGER OF MEN

WHILE PEACE IS TALKED OF WORLDWIDE WAR RAGES

the agents said the arrests were ordered from the State

Department. The detention was so sudden neither of the

men had time to obtain his baggage from the vessel. Then

came a plaintive message from two business men at Lure;

the consignment had arrived, the sacks had been opened and

their contents was ordinary building plaster. The huge car

remained suspended in some trees upside down while the pas-

sengers were thrown into the torrent twenty feet below

Lordy, lordy, war is hell

Since he amputated my booze

OUTRAGE PERPETRATED IN SEOUL

I've got the alcohohoholic blues

The Department of Justice Has the Goods on the Pack-

ers According to Attorney General Palmer

L'Ecole du Malheur Nous Rend Optimistes

Unity of Free Peoples Will Prevent any Inequitable

Outcome of Peace of Paris

it is only too clear that the league of nations lies in pieces

on the floor of the Hotel Crillon and the modest alliance that

might with advantage occupy its place is but a vague sketch

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HOW TO DEAL WITH BOLSHEVISTS? SHOOT

THEM! POLES' WAY! Hamburg Crowds Flock to

See Ford

HINTS AT BIG POOL TO DEVELOP ASIA

When Mr. Hoover said to cut our eatin down

I did it and I didn't ever raise a frown

Then when he said to cut out coal,

But now he's cut right into my soul

Allons-nous Assister h la Painique des Sots?

stones were clattering on the roof and crashing through

the windows and wild men were shrieking through the key-

hole while enormous issues depended on them that required

calm and deliberation at any rate the President did not speak

to the leaders of the democratic movements

LIEBKNECHT KILLED ON WAY TO PRISON

EVELINE HUTCHINS

Eveline had moved to a little place on the rue de Bussy

where there was a street market every day. Eleanor to show

that there was no hard feeling had given her a couple of

her Italian painted panels to decorate the dark parlor

with. In early November rumors of an armistice began to

fly around and then suddenly one afternoon Major Wood

ran into the office that Eleanor and Eveline shared and

dragged them both away from their desks and kissed them

both and shouted, "At last it's come." Before she knew

it Eveline found herself kissing Major Moorehouse right

on the mouth. The Red Cross office turned into a college

dormitory the night of a football victory: it was the Armi-

stice.

Everybody seemed suddenly to have bottles of cognac

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and to be singing, There's a long long trail awinding or

La Madel-lon pour nous n'est pas sévère.

She and Eleanor and J.W. and Major Wood were in

a taxicab going to the Café de la Paix.

For some reason they kept getting out of taxicabs and

other people kept getting in. They had to get to the Café

de la Paix but whenever they got into a taxicab it was

stopped by the crowd and the driver disappeared. But

when they got there they found every table filled and files

of people singing and dancing streaming in and out all

the doors. They were Greeks, Polish legionaires, Russians,

Serbs, Albanians in white kilts, a Highlander with bag-

pipes and a lot of girls in Alsatian costume. It was annoy-

ing not being able to find a table. Eleanor said maybe

they ought to go somewhere else. J.W. was preoccupied

and wanted to get to a telephone.

Only Major Wood seemed to be enjoying himself. He

was a greyhaired man with a little grizzled mustache and

kept saying, "Ah, the lid's off today." He and Eveline

went upstairs to see if they could find room there and ran

into two Anzacs seated on a billiard table surrounded by a

dozen bottles of champagne. Soon they were all drinking

champagne with the Anzacs. They couldn't get anything

to eat although Eleanor said she was starving and when

J.W. tried to get into the phone booth he' found an Italian

officer and a girl tightly wedged together in it. The Anzacs

were pretty drunk, and one of them was saying that the

Armistice was probably just another bloody piece of lying

propaganda; so Eleanor suggested they try to go back to

her place to have something to eat. J.W. said yes, they

could stop at the Bourse so that he could send some cables.

He must get in touch with his broker. The Anzacs didn't

like it when they left and were rather rude.

They stood around for a long time in front of the opera

in the middle of swirling crowds. The streetlights were on;

the grey outlines of the opera were edged along the cor-

-292-

nices with shimmering gas flames. They were jostled and

pushed about. There were no busses, no automobiles; occa-

sionally they passed a taxicab stranded in the crowd like

a rock in a stream. At last on a side street they found them-

selves alongside a Red Cross staffcar that had nobody in it.

The driver, who wasn't too sober, said he was trying to

get the car back to the garage and said he'd take them

down to the quai de la Tournelle first.

Eveline was just climbing in when somehow she felt

it was just too tiresome and she couldn't. The next minute

she was marching arm in arm with a little French sailor

in a group of people mostly in Polish uniform who were

following a Greek flag and singing la Brabançonne.

A minute later she realized she'd lost the car and her

friends and was scared. She couldn't recognize the streets

even, in this new Paris full of arclights and flags and bands

and drunken people. She found herself dancing with the

little sailor in the asphalt square in front of a church with

two towers, then with a French colonial officer in a red

cloak, then with a Polish legionaire who spoke a little

English and had lived in Newark, New Jersey, and then

suddenly some young French soldiers were dancing in a

ring around her holding hands. The game was you had

to kiss one of them to break the ring. When she caught

on she kissed one of them and everybody clapped and

cheered and cried Vive l'Amerique. Another bunch came

and kept on and on dancing around her until she began to

feel scared. Her head was beginning to whirl around when

she caught sight of an American uniform on the outskirts

of the crowd. She broke through the ring bowling over a

little fat Frenchman and fell on the doughboy's neck and

kissed him, and everybody laughed and cheered and cried

encore. He looked embarrassed; the man with him was

Paul Johnson, Don Stevens' friend. "You see I had to

kiss somebody," Eveline said blushing. The doughboy

laughed and looked pleased.

-293-

"Oh, I hope you didn't mind, Miss Hutchins, I hope

you don't mind this crowd and everything," apologized

Paul Johnson.

People spun around them dancing and shouting and she

had to kiss Paul Johnson too before they'd let them go.

He apologized solemnly again and said, "Isn't it wonder-

ful to be in Paris to see the armistice and everything, if

you don't mind the crowd and everything . . . but hon-

estly, Miss Hutchins, they're awful goodnatured. No fights

or nothin' . . . Say, Don's in this car."

Don was behind a little zinc bar in the entrance to the

café shaking up cocktails for a big crowd of Canadian and

Anzac officers all very drunk. "I can't get him out of

there," whispered Paul. "He's had more than he ought."

They got Don out from behind the bar. There seemed

to be nobody there to pay for the drinks. In the door he

pulled off his grey cap and cried, "Vive les quakers . . .

à bas la guerre," and everybody cheered. They roamed

around aimlessly for a while, now and then they'd be

stopped by a ring of people dancing around her and Don

would kiss her. He was noisy drunk and she didn't like

the way he acted as if she was his girl. She began to feel

tired by the time they got to the place de la Concorde

and suggested that they cross the river and try to get to

her apartment where she had some cold veal and salad.

Paul was embarrassedly saying perhaps he'd better not

come, when Don ran off after a group of Alsatian girls

who were hopping and skipping up the Champs Elysées.

"Now you've got to come," she said. "To keep me from

being kissed too much by strange men."

"But Miss Hutchins, you mustn't think Don meant any-

thing running off like that. He's very excitable, especially

when he drinks." She laughed and they walked on with-

out saying anything more.

When they got to her apartment the old concièrge

hobbled out from her box and shook hands with both of

-294-

them. "Ah, madame, c'est la victoire," she said, "but it

won't make my dead son come back to life, will it?" For

some reason Eveline could not think of anything to do but

give her five francs and she went back muttering a sing-

song, "Merci, m'sieur, madame."

Up in Eveline's tiny rooms Paul seemed terribly em-

barrassed. They ate everything there was to the last crumb

of stale bread and talked a little vaguely. Paul sat on the

edge of his chair and told her about his travels back and

forth with despatches. He said how wonderful it had been

for him coming abroad and seeing the army and European

cities and meeting people like her and Don Stevens and

that he hoped she didn't mind his not knowing much about

all the things she and Don talked about. "If this really is

the beginning of peace I wonder what we'll all do, Miss

Hutchins." "Oh, do call me Eveline, Paul." "I really do

think it is the peace, Eveline, according to Wilson's Four-

teen Points. I think Wilson's a great man myself in spite

of all Don says, I know he's a darn sight cleverer than I

am, but still . . . maybe this is the last war there'll ever

be. Gosh, think of that . . ." She hoped he'd kiss her when

he left but all he did was shake hands awkwardly and say

all in a breath, "I hope you won't mind if I come to see

you next time I can get to Paris."

For the Peace Conference, J.W. had a suite at the

Crillon, with his blonde secretary Miss Williams at a desk

in a little anteroom, and Morton his English valet serving

tea in the late afternoon. Eveline liked dropping into the

Crillon late in the afternoon after walking up the arcades

of the rue de Rivoli from her office. The antiquated cor-

ridors of the hotel were crowded with Americans coming

and going. In J.W.'s big salon there'd be Morton stealthily

handing around tea, and people in uniform and in frock

-295-

coats and the cigarettesmoky air would be full of halftold

anecdotes. J.W. fascinated her, dressed in grey Scotch

tweeds that always had a crease on the trousers (he'd

given up wearing his Red Cross major's uniform), with

such an aloof agreeable m Anner, tempered by the pre-

occupied look of a very busy man always being called up

on the phone, receiving telegrams or notes from his secre-

tary, disappearing into the embrasure of one of the win-

dows that looked out on the place de la Concorde with

someone for a whispered conversation, or being asked to

step in to see Colonel House for a moment; and still

when he handed her a champagne cocktail just before they

all went out to dinner on nights he didn't have to go to

some official function, or asked if she wanted another cup

of tea, she'd feel for a second in her eyes the direct glance

of two boyish blue eyes with a funny candid partly hu-

morous look that teased her. She wanted to know him

better; Eleanor, she felt, watched them like a cat watching

a mouse. After all, Eveline kept saying to herself, she

hadn't any right. It wasn't as if there was anything really

between them.

When J.W. was busy they often went out with Edgar

Robbins who seemed to be a sort of assistant of J.W.'s.

Eleanor couldn't abide him, said there was something in-

sulting in his cynicism, but Eveline liked to hear him talk.

He said the peace was going to be ghastlier than the war,

said it was a good thing nobody ever asked his opinion

about anything because he'd certainly land in jail if he

gave it. Robbins' favorite hangout was Freddy's up back

of Montmartre. They'd sit there all evening in the small

smokycrowded rooms while Freddy, who had a big white

beard like Walt Whitman, would play on the guitar and

sing. Sometimes he'd get drunk and set the company up

to drinks on the house. Then his wife, a cross woman who

looked like a gypsy, would come out of the back room

and curse and scream at him. People at the tables would

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get up and recite long poems about La Grand' route, La

Misère, L'Assassinat or sing old French songs like Les

Filles de Nantes. If it went over everybody present would

clap hands in unison. They called that giving a bon.

Freddy got to know them and would make a great fuss

when they arrived, "Ah, les belles Amèricaines." Robbins

would sit there moodily drinking calvados after calvados,

now and then letting out a crack about the day's happen-

ings at the peace conference. He said that the place was a

fake that the calvados was wretched and that Freddy was

a dirty old bum, but for some reason he always wanted

to go back.

J.W. went there a couple of times, and occasionally

they'd take some delegate from the peace conference who'd

be mightily impressed by their knowledge of the inner

life of Paris. J.W. was enchanted by the old French songs,

but he said the place made him feel itchy and that he

thought there were fleas there. Eveline liked to watch him

when he was listening to a song with his eyes half closed

and his head thrown back. She felt that Robbins didn't

appreciate the rich potentialities of his nature and always

shut him up when he started to say something sarcastic

about the big cheese, as he called him. She thought it was

disagreeable of Eleanor to laugh at things like that, espe-

cially when J.W. seemed so devoted to her.

When Jerry Burnham came back from Armenia and

found that Eveline was going around with J. Ward

Moorehouse all the time he was terribly upset. He took

her out to lunch at the Medicis Grill on the left bank

and talked and talked about it.

"Why, Eveline, I thought of you as a person who

wouldn't be taken in by a big bluff like that. The guy's

nothing but a goddam megaphone. . . . Honestly, Eve-

line, it's not that I expect you to fall for me, I know very

well you don't give a damn about me and why should

you? . . . But Christ, a damn publicity agent."

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"Now, Jerry," said Eveline with her mouth full of hors

d'oeuvres, "you know very well I'm fond of you . . . It's

just too tiresome of you to talk like that."

"You don't like me the way I'd like you to but

to hell with that . . . Have wine or beer?"

"You pick out a nice Burgundy, Jerry, to warm us up

a little. . . . But you wrote an article about J.W. your-

self . . . I saw it reprinted in that column in the Herald."

"Go ahead, rub it in . . . Christ, I swear, Eveline, I'm

going to get out of this lousy trade and . . . that was all

plain oldfashioned bushwa and I thought you'd have had

the sense to see it. Gee, this is good sole."

"Delicious . . . but, Jerry, you're the one ought to

have more sense."

"I dunno I thought you were different from other

upperclass women, made your own living and all that."

"Let's not wrangle, Jerry, let's have some fun, here

we are in Paris and the war's over and it's a fine wintry

day and everybody's here. . . ."

"War over, my eye," said Jerry rudely. Eveline thought

he was just too tiresome, and looked out the window at

the ruddy winter sunlight and the old Medici fountain and

the delicate violet lacework of the bare trees behind the

high iron fence of the Luxemburg Garden. Then she

looked at Jerry's red intense face with the turnedup nose

and the crisp boyishly curly hair that was beginning to turn

a little grey; she leaned over and gave the back of his

hand a couple of little pats.

"I understand, Jerry, you've seen things that I haven't

imagined . . . I guess it's the corrupting influence of the

Red Cross."

He smiled and poured her out some more wine and said

with a sigh:

"You're the most damnably attractive woman I ever

met, Eveline . . . but like all women what you worship

is power, when money's the main thing it's money, when

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it's fame it's fame, when it's art, you're a goddamned art-

lover . . . I guess I'm the same, only I kid myself more."

Eveline pressed her lips together and didn't say any-

thing. She suddenly felt cold and frightened and lonely

and couldn't think of anything to say. Jerry gulped down

a glass of wine and started talking about throwing up his

job and going to Spain to write a book. He said he didn't

pretend to have any selfrespect, but that being a news-

paper correspondent was too damn much nowadays. Eve-

line said she never wanted to go back to America, she felt

life would be just too tiresome there after the war.

When they'd had their coffee they walked through the

gardens. Near the senate chamber some old gentlemen

were playing croquet in the last purplish patch of after-

noon sunlight. "Oh, I think the French are wonderful,"

said Eveline. "Second childhood," growled Jerry. They

rambled aimlessly round the streets, reading palegreen

yellow and pink theatre notices on kiosks, looking into

windows of antiqueshops. "We ought both to be at our

offices," said Jerry. "I'm not going back," said Eveline,

"I'll call up and say I have a cold and have gone home to

bed . . . I think I'll do that anyway." "Don't do that,

let's play hookey and have a swell time." They went to

the café opposite St. Germain-des-Prés. When Eveline

came back from phoning, Jerry had bought her a bunch of

violets and ordered cognac and seltzer. "Eveline, let's

celebrate," he said, "I think I'll cable the sonsobitches and

tell 'em I've resigned.""Do you think you ought to do

that, Jerry? After all it's a wonderful opportunity to see

the peace conference and everything."

After a few minutes she left him and walked home.

She wouldn't let him come with her. As she passed the

window where they'd been sitting she looked in; he was

ordering another drink.

On the rue de Bussy the market was very jolly under the

gaslights. It all smelt of fresh greens, and butter and

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cheese. She bought some rolls for breakfast and a'few little

cakes in case somebody came in to tea. It was cosy in her

little pink and white salon with the fire of brickettes going

in the grate. Eveline wrapped herself up in a steamerrug

and lay down on the couch.

She was asleep when her bell jingled. It was Eleanor

and J.W. come to inquire how she was. J.W. was free

tonight and wanted them to come to the opera with him

to see Castor and Pollux. Eveline said she was feeling

terrible but she thought she'd go just the same. She put

on some tea for them and ran into her bedroom to dress.

She felt so happy she couldn't help humming as she sat

at her dressingtable looking at herself in the glass. Her

skin looked very white and her face had a quiet mysterious

look she liked. She carefully put on very little lipstick and

drew her hair back to a knot behind; her hair worried her,

it wasn't curly and didn't have any particular color; for

a moment she thought she wouldn't go. Then Eleanor

came in with a cup of tea in her hand telling her to hurry

because they had to go down and wait while she dressed

herself and that the opera started early. Eveline didn't

have any real evening wrap so she had to wear an old

rabbitfur coat over her eveningdress. At Eleanor's they

found Robbins waiting; he wore a tuxedo that looked a

little the worse for wear. J.W. was in the uniform of a

Red Cross major. Eveline thought he must have been

exercising, because his jowl didn't curve out from the tight

high collar as much as it had formerly.

They ate in a hurry at Poccardi's and drank a lot of

badly made Martinis. Robbins and J.W. were in fine

feather, and kept them laughing all the time. Eveline

understood now why they worked together so well. At

the opera, where they arrived late, it was wonderful,

glittering with chandeliers and uniforms. Miss Williams,

J.W.'s secretary, was already in the box. Eveline thought

how nice he must be to work for, and for a moment bit-

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terly envied Miss Williams, even to her peroxide hair and

her brisk chilly manner of talking. Miss Williams leaned

back and said they'd missed it, that President and Mrs.

Wilson had just come in and had been received with a

great ovation, and Marshal Foch was there and she thought

President Poincaré.

Between the acts they worked their way as best they

could into the crowded lobby. Eveline found herself

walking up and down with Robbins, every now and then

she'd catch sight of Eleanor with J.W. and feel a little

envious.

"They put on a better show out here than they do on

the stage," said Robbins.

"Don't you like the production. . . . I think it's a

magnificent production."

"Well, I suppose looked at from the professional point

of view. . . ."

Eveline was watching Eleanor, she was being introduced

to a French general in red pants; she looked handsome this

evening in her hard chilly way. Robbins tried to pilot

them in through the crowd to the little bar, but they gave

it up, there were too many people ahead of them. Robbins

started all at once to talk about Baku and the oil business.

"It's funny as a crutch," he kept saying, "while we sit

here wrangling under schoolmaster Wilson, John Bull's

putting his hands on all the world's future supplies of

oil . . . just to keep it from the bolos. They've got Persia

and the messpot and now I'll be damned if they don't

want Baku." Eveline was bored and thinking to herself

that Robbins had been in his cups too much again, when

the bell rang.

When they got back to their box a leanfaced man who

wasn't in evening clothes was sitting in the back talking to

J.W. in a low voice. Eleanor leaned over to Eveline and

whispered in her car, "That was General Gouraud." The

lights went out; Eveline found she was forgetting herself

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in the deep stateliness of the music. At the next intermis-

sion she leaned over to J.W. and asked him how he liked

it. "Magnificent," he said, and she saw to her surprise

that he had tears in his eyes. She found herself talking

about the music with J.W. and the man without a dress

suit, whose name was Rasmussen.

It was hot and crowded in the tall overdecorated lobby.

Mr. Rasmussen managed to get a window open and they

went out on the balcony that opened on the serried lights

that dimmed down the avenue into a reddish glow of fog.

"That's the time I'd liked to have lived," said J.W.

dreamily. "The court of the sun king?" asked Mr. Ras-

mussen. "No, it must have been too chilly in the winter

months and I bet the plumbing was terrible." "Ah, it was

a glorious time," said J.W. as if he hadn't heard. Then he

turned to Eveline, "You're sure you're not catching cold

. . . you ought to have a wrap, you know."

"But as I was saying, Moorehouse," said Rasmussen in

a different tone of voice, "I have positive information that

they can't hold Baku without heavy reinforcements and

there's no one they can get them from except from us."

The bell rang again and they hurried to their box.

After the opera they went to the Café de la Paix to

drink a glass of champagne, except for Robbins who went

off to take Miss Williams back to her hotel. Eveline and

Eleanor sat on the cushioned bench on either side of J.W.

and Mr. Rasmussen sat on a chair opposite them. He did

most of the talking, taking nervous gulps of champagne

between sentences or else running his fingers through his

spiky black hair. He was an engineer with Standard Oil.

He kept talking about Baku and Mohommarah and Mosul,

how the Anglo-Persian and the Royal Dutch were getting

ahead of the U.S. in the Near East and trying to foist

off Armenia on us for a mandate, which the Turks had

pillaged to the last blade of grass, leaving nothing but a

lot of starving people to feed. "We'll probably have to

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feed 'em anyway," said J.W. "But my gosh, man, some-

thing can be done about it, even if the president has so

far forgotten American interests to let himself be bull-

dozed by the British in everything, public opinion can be

aroused. We stand to lose our primacy in world oil pro-

duction." "Oh, well, the matter of mandates isn't settled

yet." "What's going to happen is that the British are going

to present a fait accompli to the Conference . . . findings

keepings . . . why it would be better for us for the French

to have Baku." "How about the Russians?" asked Eveline.

"According to selfdetermination the Russians have no right

to it. The population is mostly Turkish and Armenian,"

said Rasmussen. "But, by gorry, I'd rather have the reds

have it than the British, of course I don't suppose they'll

last long."

"No, I have reliable information that Lenine and

Trotsky have split and the monarchy will be restored in

Russia inside of three months." When they finished the

first bottle of champagne, Mr. Rasmussen ordered an-

other. By the time the café closed Eveline's ears were ring-

ing. "Let's make a night of it," Mr. Rasmussen was saying.

They went in a taxicab up to Montmartre to L'Abbaye

where there was dancing and singing and uniforms every-

where and everything was hung with the flags of the Allies.

J.W. asked Eveline to dance with him first and Eleanor

looked a little sour when she had to go off in the arms of

Mr. Rasmussen who danced very badly indeed. Eveline

and J.W. talked about the music of Rameau and J.W.

said again that he would have liked to have lived in the

times of the court at Versailles. But Eveline said what

could be more exciting than to be in Paris right now with

all the map of Europe being remade right under their

noses, and J.W. said perhaps she was right. They agreed

that the orchestra was too bad to dance to.

Next dance Eveline danced with Mr. Rasmussen who

told her how handsome she was and said he needed a good

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woman in his life; that he'd spent all his life out in the

bush grubbing around for gold or testing specimens of shale

and that he was sick of it, and if Wilson now was going

to let the British bulldoze him into giving them the world's

future supply of oil when we'd won the war for them,

he was through. "But can't you do something about it,

can't you put your ideas before the public, Mr. Ras-

mussen?" said Eveline, leaning a little against him; Eve-

line had a crazy champagneglass spinning in her head.

"That's Moorehouse's job not mine, and there isn't any

public since the war. The public'll damn well do what it's

told, and besides like God Almighty it's far away . . .

what we've got to do is make a few key men understand

the situation. Moorehouse is the key to the key men."

"And who's the key to Moorehouse?" asked Eveline reck-

lessly. The music had stopped. "Wish to heaven I knew,"

said Rasmussen soberly in a low voice. "You're not, are

you?" Eveline shook her head with a tightlipped smile

like Eleanor's.

When they'd eaten onion soup and some cold meat

J.W. said, "Let's go up to the top of the hill and make

Freddy play us some songs." "I thought you didn't like

it up there," said Eleanor. "I don't, my dear," said J.W.,

"but I like those old French songs." Eleanor looked cross

and sleepy. Eveline wished she and Mr. Rasmussen would

go home; she felt if she could only talk to J.W. alone,

he'd be so interesting.

Freddy's was almost empty; it was chilly in there. They

didn't have any champagne and nobody drank the liqueurs

they ordered. Mr. Rasmussen said Freddy looked like an

old prospector he'd known out in the Sangre de Cristo

mountains and began to tell a long story about Death

Valley that nobody listened to. They were all chilly and

sleepy and silent, going back across Paris in the old

mouldysmelling twocylinder taxi. J.W. wanted a cup of

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coffee, but there didn't seem to be anywhere open where

he could get it.

Next day Mr. Rasmussen called Eveline up at her.

office to ask her to eat lunch with him and she was hard

put to it to find an excuse not to go. After that Mr. Ras-

mussen seemed to be everywhere she went, sending her

flowers and theatre tickets, coming around with automobiles

to take her riding, sending her little blue pneumatiques

full of tender messages. Eleanor teased her about her new

Romeo.

Then Paul Johnson turned up in Paris, having gotten

himself into the Sorbonne detachment, and used to come

around to her place on the rue de Bussy in the late after-

noons and sit watching her silently and lugubriously. He

and Mr. Rasmussen would sit there talking about wheat

and the stockyards, while Eveline dressed to go out with

somebody else, usually Eleanor and J.W. Eveline could

see that J.W. always liked to have her along as well as

Eleanor when they went out in the evenings; it was just

that welldressed American girls were rare in Paris at that

time, she told herself, and that J.W. liked to be seen with

them and to have them along when he took important

people out to dinner. She and Eleanor treated each other

with a stiff nervous sarcasm now, except occasionally when

they were alone together, they talked like in the old days,

laughing at people and happenings together. Eleanor

would never let a chance pass to poke fun at her Romeos.

Her brother George turned up at the office one day

with a captain's two silver bars on his shoulders. His whip-

cord uniform fitted like a glove, his puttees shone and he

wore spurs. He'd been in the intelligence service attached

to the British and had just come down from Germany

where he'd been an interpreter on General McAndrews'

staff. He was going to Cambridge for the spring term and

called everybody blighters or rotters and said the food at

the restaurant where Eveline took him for lunch was

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simply ripping. After he'd left her, saying her ideas were

not cricket, she burst out crying. When she was leaving

the office that afternoon, thinking gloomily about how

George had grown up to be a horrid little prig of a brass-

hat, she met Mr. Rasmussen under the arcades of the

rue de Rivoli; he was carrying a mechanical canarybird.

It was a stuffed canary and you wound it up underneath

the cage. Then it fluttered its wings and sang. He made.

her stop on the corner while he made it sing. "I'm going

to send that back home to the kids," he said. "My wife

and I are separated but I'm fond of the kids; they live in

Pasadena . . . I've had a very unhappy life." Then he

invited Eveline to step into the Ritz bar and have a cock-

tail with him. Robbins was there with a redheaded news-

paper woman from San Francisco. They sat at a wicker

table together and drank Alexanders. The bar was

crowded. "What's the use of a league of nations if it's to

be dominated by Great Britain and her colonies?" said Mr.

Rasmussen sourly. "But don't you think any kind of a

league's better than nothing?" said Eveline. "It's not the

name you give things, it's who's getting theirs underneath

that counts," said Robbins.

"That's a very cynical remark," said the California

woman. "This isn't any time to be cynical."

"This is a time," said Robbins, "when if we weren't

cynical we'd shoot ourselves."

In March Eveline's two week leave came around.

Eleanor was going to make a trip to Rome to help wind

up the affairs of the office there, so they decided they'd go

down on the train together and spend a few days in Nice.

They needed to get the damp cold of Paris out of their

bones. Eveline felt as excited as a child the afternoon when

they were all packed and ready to go and had bought

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wagon lit reservations and gotten their transport orders

signed.

Mr. Rasmussen insisted on seeing her off and ordered

up a big dinner in the restaurant at the Gare de Lyon that

Eveline was too excited to eat, what with the smell of

the coalsmoke and the thought of waking up where it

would be sunny and warm. Paul Johnson appeared when

they were about half through, saying he'd come to help

them with their bags. He'd lost one of the buttons off his

uniform and he looked gloomy and mussed up. He said

he wouldn't eat anything but nervously drank down sev-

eral glasses of wine. Both he and Mr. Rasmussen looked

like thunderclouds when Jerry Burnham appeared drunk

as a lord carrying a large bouquet of roses. "Won't that

be taking coals to Newcastle, Jerry?" said Eveline. "You

don't know Nice . . . you'll probably have skating down

there . . . beautiful figure eights on the ice." "Jerry,"

said Eleanor in her chilly little voice, "you're thinking of

St. Moritz." "You'll be thinking of it too," said Jerry,

"when you feel that cold wind."

Meanwhile Paul and Mr. Rasmussen had picked up

their bags. "Honestly, we'd better make tracks," said

Paul, nervously jiggling Eveline's suitcase. "It's about

traintime." They all scampered through the station. Jerry

Burnham had forgotten to buy a ticket and couldn't go

out on the platform; they left him arguing with the officials

and searching his pockets for his presscard. Paul put the

bags in the compartment and shook hands hurriedly with

Eleanor. Eveline found his eyes in hers serious and hurt

like a dog's eyes.

"You won't stay too long, will you? There's not much

time left," he said. Eveline felt she'd like to kiss him,

but the train was starting. Paul scrambled off. All Mr.

Rasmussen could do was hand some papers and Jerry's

roses through the window and wave his hat mournfully

from the platform. It was a relief the train had started.

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Eleanor was leaning back against the cushions laughing

and laughing.

"I declare, Eveline. You're too funny with your

Romeos." Eveline couldn't help laughing herself. She

leaned over and patted Eleanor on the shoulder. "Let's

just have a wonderful time," she said.

Next morning early when Eveline woke up and looked

out they were in the station at Marseilles. It gave her a

funny feeling because she'd wanted to stop off there and

see the town, but Eleanor had insisted on going straight

to Nice, she hated the sordidness of seaports she'd said.

But later when they had their coffee in the diner, looking

out at the pines and the dry hills and headlands cutting out

blue patches of the Mediterranean, Eveline felt excited and

happy again.

They got a good room in a hotel and walked through

the streets in the cool sunshine among the wounded sol-

diers and officers of all the allied armies and strolled along

the Promenade des Anglais under the grey palmtrees and

gradually Eveline began to feel a chilly feeling of dis-

appointment coming over her. Here was her two weeks

leave and she was going to waste it at Nice. Eleanor kept

on being crisp and cheerful and suggested they sit down

in the big café on the square where a brass band was play-

ing and have a little dubonnet before lunch. After they'd

sat there for some time, looking at the uniforms and the

quantities of overdressed women who were no better than

they should be, Eveline leaned back in her chair and said,

"And now that we're here, darling, what on earth shall

we do?"

The next morning Eveline woke late; she almost hated

to get up as she couldn't imagine how she was going to

pass the time all day. As she lay there looking at the stripes

of sunlight on the wall that came through the shutters,

she heard a man's voice in the adjoining room, that was

Eleanor's. Eveline stiffened and listened. It was J.W.'s

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voice. When she got up and dressed she found her heart

was pounding. She was pulling on her best pair of trans-

parent black silk stockings when Eleanor came in, "Who

do you think's turned up? J.W. just motored down to see

me off to Italy . . . He said it was getting too stuffy for

him around the Peace Conference and he had to get a

change of air . . . Come on in, Eveline, dear, and have

some coffee with us."

She can't keep the triumph out of her voice, aren't

women silly, thought Eveline. "That's lovely, I'll be

right in, darling," she said in her most musical tones.

J.W. had on a light grey flannel suit and a bright blue

necktie and his face was pink from the long ride. He was

in fine spirits. He'd driven down from Paris in fifteen

hours with only four hours sleep after dinner in Lyons.

They all drank a great deal of bitter coffee with hot milk

and planned out a ride.

It Was a fine day. The big Packard car rolled them

smoothly along the Corniche. They lunched at Monte

Carlo, took a look at the casino in the afternoon and went

on and had tea in an English tearoom in Mentone. Next

day they went up to Grasse and saw the perfume factories,

and the day after they put Eleanor on the rapide for

Rome. J.W. was to leave immediately afterwards to go

back to Paris. Eleanor's thin white face looked a little

forlorn Eveline thought, looking out at them through the

window of the wagonlit. When the train pulled out Eveline

and J.W. stood on the platform in the empty station with

the smoke swirling milky with sunlight under the glass

roof overhead and looked at each other with a certain

amount of constraint. "She's a great little girl," said J.W.

"I'm very fond of her," said Eveline. Her voice rang

false in her ears. "I wish we were going with her."

They walked back out to the car. "Where can I take

you, Eveline, before I pull out, back to the hotel?" Eve-

line's heart was pounding again. "Suppose we have a little

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lunch before you go, let me invite you to lunch." "That's

very nice of you . . . well, I suppose I might as well,

I've got to lunch somewhere. And there's no place fit for

a white man between here and Lyons."

They lunched at the casino over the water. The sea

was very blue. Outside there were three sailboats with

lateen sails making for the entrance to the port. It was

warm and jolly, smelt of wine and food sizzled in butter

in the glassedin restaurant. Eveline began to like it in

Nice.

J.W. drank more wine than he usually did. He began

to talk about his boyhood in Wilmington and even

hummed a little of a song he'd written in the old days.

Eveline was thrilled. Then he began to tell her about

Pittsburgh and his ideas about capital and labor. For des-

sert they had peaches flambé with rum; Eveline recklessly

ordered a bottle of champagne. They were getting along

famously.

They began to talk about Eleanor. Eveline told about

how she'd met Eleanor in the Art Institute and how

Eleanor had meant everything to her in Chicago, the only

girl she'd ever met who was really interested in the things

she was interested in, and how much talent Eleanor had,

and how much business ability. J.W. told about how much

she'd meant to him during the trying years with his second

wife Gertrude in New York, and how people had mis-

understood their beautiful friendship that had been always

free from the sensual and the degrading.

"Really," said Eveline, looking J.W. suddenly straight

in the eye, "I'd always thought you and Eleanor were

lovers." J.W. blushed. For a second Eveline was afraid

she'd shocked him. He wrinkled up the skin around his

eyes in a comical boyish way. "No, honestly not . . . I've

been too busy working all my life ever to develop that

side of my nature . . . People think differently about

those things than they did." Eveline nodded. The deep

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flush on his face seemed to have set her cheeks on fire.

"And now," J.W. went on, shaking his head gloomily,

"I'm in my forties and it's too late."

"Why too late?"

Eveline sat looking at him with her lips a little apart,

her cheeks blazing. "Maybe it's taken the war to teach

us how to live," he said. "We've been too much interested

in money and material things, it's taken the French to show

us how to live. Where back home in the States could you

find a beautiful atmosphere like this?" J.W. waved his

arm to include in a sweeping gesture the sea, the tables

crowded with women dressed in bright colors and men in

their best uniforms, the bright glint of blue light on glasses

and cutlery. The waiter mistook his gesture and slyly sub-

stituted a full bottle for the empty bottle in the cham-

pagnepail.

"By golly, Eveline, you've been so charming, you've

made me forget the time and going back to Paris and

everything. This is the sort of thing I've missed all my

life until I met you and Eleanor . . . of course with

Eleanor it's been all on the higher plane . . . Let's take

a drink to Eleanor . . . beautiful talented Eleanor . . .

Eveline, women have been a great inspiration to me all

my life, lovely charming delicate women. Many of my

best ideas have come from women, not directly, you

understand, but through the mental stimulation . . .

People don't understand me, Eveline, some of the news-

paper boys particularly have written some very hard things

about me . . . why, I'm an old newspaper man myself

. . . Eveline, permit me to say that you look so charming

and understanding . . . this illness of my wife . . . poor

Gertrude . . . I'm afraid she'll never be herself again.

. . . You see, it's put me in a most disagreeable position,

if some member of her family is appointed guardian it

might mean that the considerable sum of money invested

by the Staple family in my business, would be withdrawn

-311-

make the customers dance and then using the place for a

shooting gallery. "The shooting gallery, that's what they

call congress here," said Mac. Barrow said he was going

to a meeting of the Union Nacional de Trabajadores that

afternoon and would they mind going with him to inter-

pret for him. It was Mac's day off so they said, "All

right." He said he'd been instructed to try to make con-

tacts with stable labor elements in Mexico with the hope

of joining them up with the Pan-American Federation of

Labor. Gompers would come down himself if something

could be lined up. He said he'd been a shipping clerk and

a Pullman conductor and had been in the office of the

Railroad Brotherhood, but now he was working for the

A. F. of L. He wished American workers had more ideas

about the art of life. He'd been at the Second International

meetings at Amsterdam and felt the European workers

understood the art of life. When Mac asked him why the

hell the Second International hadn't done something to

stop the World War, he said the time wasn't ripe yet and

spoke about German atrocities.

"The German atrocities are a Sundayschool picnic to

what goes on every day in Mexico," said Ben. Then Bar-

row went to ask whether Mexicans were as immoral as it

was made out. The beer they were drinking with their

lunch was pretty strong and they all loosened up a little.

Barrow wanted to know whether it wasn't pretty risky

going out with girls here on account of the high percent-

age of syphilis. Mac said yes, but that he and Ben could

show him some places that were all right if he wanted to

look 'em over. Barrow tittered and looked embarrassed

and said he'd just as soon look 'em over. "A man ought to

see every side of things when he's investigating condi-

tions." Ben Stowell slapped his hand on the edge of the

table and said that Mac was just the man to show him

the backside of Mexico.

They went to the meeting that was crowded with

-312-

slender dark men in blue denim. At first they couldn't

get in on account of the crowd packed in the aisles and

in the back of the hall, but Mac found an official he knew

who gave them seats in a box. The hall was very stuffy

and the band played and there was singing and the

speeches were very long. Barrow said listening to a for-

eign language made him sleepy, and suggested that they

walk around town; he'd heard that the red light district

was . . . he was interested in conditions.

Outside the hall they ran across Enrique Salvador, a

newspaperman that Ben knew. He had a car and a chauf-

feur. He shook hands and laughed and said the car be-

longed to the chief of police who was a friend of his and

wouldn't they like to ride out to San Angel? They, went

out the long avenue past Chapultepec, the Champs Elysées

of Mexico, Salvador called it. Near Tacubaya Salvador

pointed out the spot where Carranza's troops had had a

skirmish with the Zapatistas the week before and a corner

where a rich clothing merchant had been murdered by

bandits, and G. H. Barrow kept asking was it quite safe

to go so far out in the country, and Salvador said, "I am

a newspaperman. I am everybody's friend."

Out at San Angel they had some drinks and when they

got back to the city they drove round the Pajaritos district.

G. H. Barrow got very quiet and his eyes got a watery

look when he saw the little lighted cribhouses, each one

with a bed and some paperflowers and a crucifix that you

could see through the open door, past a red or blue cur-

tain, and the dark quiet Indian girls in short chemises

standing outside their doors or sitting on the sill.

"You see," said Ben Stowell, "it's easy as rolling off

a log . . . But I don't advise you to get too careless

round here . . . Salvador'll show us a good joint after

supper. He ought to know because he's a friend of the

chief of police and he runs most of them."

But Barrow wanted to go into one of the cribs so they

-313-

got out and talked to one of the girls and Salvador sent

the chauffeur to get a couple of bottles of beer. The girl

received them very politely and Barrow tried to get Mac

to ask her questions, but Mac didn't like asking her ques-

tions so he let Salvador do it. When G. H. Barrow put

his hand on her bare shoulder and tried to pull her chemise

off and asked how much did she want to let him see her

all naked, the girl didn't understand and tore herself

away from him and yelled and cursed at him and Salvador

wouldn't translate what she said. "Let's get this bastard

outa here," said Ben in a low voice to Mac, "before we

have to get in a fight or somethin'."

They had a tequila each before dinner at a little bar

where nothing was sold but tequila out of varnished kegs.

Salvador showed G. H. Barrow how to drink it, first

putting salt on the hollow between his thumb and fore-

finger and then gulping the little glass of tequila, licking

up the salt and swallowing some chile sauce to finish up

with, but he got it down the wrong way and choked.

At supper they were pretty drunk and G. H. Barrow

kept saying that Mexicans understood the art of life and

that was meat for Salvador who talked about the Indian

genius and the Latin genius and said that Mac and Ben

were the only gringos he ever met he could get along

with, and insisted on their not paying for their meal. He'd

charge it to his friend the chief of police. Next they went

to a cantina beside a theater where there were said to be

French girls, but the French girls weren't there. There

were three old men in the cantina playing a cello, a violin

and a piccolo. Salvador made them play La Adelita and

everybody sang it and then La Cucaracha. There was an

old man in a broadbrimmed hat with a huge shiny pistol-

holster on his back, who drank up his drink quickly when

they came in and left the bar. Salvador whispered to Mac

that he was General Gonzales and had left in order not

to be seen drinking with gringos.

-314-

Ben and Barrow sat with their heads together at a

table in the corner talking about the oil business. Barrow

was saying that there was an investigator for certain oil

interests coming down; he'd be at the Regis almost any

day now and Ben was saying he wanted to meet him and

Barrow put his arm around his shoulder and said he was

sure Ben was just the man this investigator would want

to meet to get an actual working knowledge of conditions.

Meanwhile Mac and Salvador were dancing the Cuban

danzon with the girls. Then Barrow got to his feet a little

unsteadily and said he didn't want to wait for the French

girls but why not go to that place where they'd been and

try some of the dark meat, but Salvador insisted on taking

them to the house of Remedios near the American em-

bassy. "Quelquecosa de chic," he'd say in bad French. It

was a big house with a marble stairway and crystal chande-

liers and salmonbrocaded draperies and lace curtains and

mirrors everywhere. "Personne que les henerales vieng

aqui," he said when he'd introduced them to the madam,

who was a darkeyed grayhaired woman in black with a

black shawl who looked rather like a nun. There was only

one girl left unoccupied so they fixed up Barrow with

her and arranged about the price and left him. "Whew,

that's a relief" said Ben when they came out. The air

was cold and the sky was all stars.

Salvador had made the three old men with their instru-

ments get into the back of the car and said he felt romantic

and wanted to serenade his novia and they went out to-

wards Guadalupe speeding like mad along the broad cause-

way. Mac and the chauffeur and Ben and Salvador and

the three old men singing La Adelita and the instruments

chirping all off key. In Guadalupe they stopped under

some buttonball trees against the wall of a house with big

grated windows and sang Cielito lindo and La Adelita

and Cuatro mil pas, and Ben and Mac sang Just to keep

her from the foggy foggy dew and were just starting Oh, -bury me not on the lone prairie

-315-

bury me not on the lone prairie when a girl came to the

window and talked a long time in low Spanish to Sal-

vador.

Salvador said, "Ella dit que nous make escandalo and

must go away. Très chic."

By that time a patrol of soldiers had come up and were

about to arrest them all when the officer arrived and rec-

ognized the car and Salvador and took them to have a

drink with him at his billet. When they all got home to

Mac's place they were very drunk. Concha, whose face

was drawn from waiting up, made up a mattress for Ben

in the diningroom and as they were all going to turn in

Ben said, "By heavens, Concha, you're a swell girl. When

I make my pile I'll buy you the handsomest pair of dia-

mond earrings in the Federal District." The last they saw

of Salvador he was standing up in the front seat of the car

as it went round the corner on two wheels conducting the

three old men in La Adelita with big gestures like an

orchestra leader.

Before Christmas Ben Stowell came back from a trip

to Tamaulipas feeling fine. Things were looking up for

him. He'd made an arrangement with a local general near

Tampico to run an oil well on a fifty-fifty basis. Through

Salvador he'd made friends with some members of Car-

ranza's cabinet and was hoping to be able to turn over a

deal with some of the big claimholders up in the States.

He had plenty of cash and took a room at the Regis. One

day he went round to the printing plant and asked Mac

to step out in the alley with him for a minute.

"Look here, Mac," he said, "I've got an offer for you

. . . You know old Worthington's bookstore? Well, I

got drunk last night and bought him out for two thousand

pesos . . . He's pulling up stakes and going home to

blighty, he says."

"The hell you did!"

"Well, I'm just as glad to have him out of the way."

-316-

"Why, you old whoremaster, you're after Lisa."

"Well, maybe she's just as glad to have him out of the

way too."

"She's certainly a goodlooker."

"I got a lot a news I'll tell you later . . . Ain't goin'

to be so healthy round The Mexican Herald maybe . . .

I've got a proposition for you, Mac . . . Christ knows I

owe you a hellova lot . . . You know that load of office

furniture you have out back Concha made you buy that

time?" Mac nodded. "Well, I'll take it off your hands and

give you a half interest in that bookstore. I'm opening an

office. You know the book business . . . you told me

yourself you did . . . the profits for the first year are

yours and after that we split two ways, see? You certainly

ought to make it pay. That old fool Worthington did,

and kept Lisa into the bargain . . . Are you on?"

"Jez, lemme think it over, Ben . . . but I got to go

back to the daily bunksheet."

So Mac found himself running a bookstore on the Calle

Independencia with a line of stationery and a few type-

writers. It felt good to be his own boss for the first time

in his life. Concha, who was a storekeeper's daughter, was

delighted. She kept the books and talked to the customers

so that Mac didn't have much to do but sit in the back and

read and talk to his friends. That Christmas Ben and Lisa,

who was a tall Spanish girl said to have been a dancer in

Malaga, with a white skin like a camellia and ebony hair,

gave all sorts of parties in an apartment with American-

style bath and kitchen that Ben rented out in the new

quarter towards Chapultepec. The day the Asociacion de

Publicistas had its annual banquet, Ben stopped into the

bookstore feeling fine and told Mac he wanted him and

Concha to come up after supper and wouldn't Concha

bring a couple of friends, nice wellbehaved girls not too

choosy, like she knew. He was giving a party for G. H.

Barrow who was back from Vera Cruz and a big contact

-317-

man from New York who was wangling something, Ben

didn't know just what. He'd seen Carranza yesterday and

at the banquet everybody'd kowtowed to him.

"Jez, Mac, you oughta been at that banquet; they took

one of the streetcars and had a table the whole length of

it and an orchestra and rode us out to San Angel and back

and then all round town."

"I saw 'em starting out," said Mac, "looked too much

like a funeral to me."

"Jez, it was swell though. Salvador an' everybody was

there and this guy Moorehouse, the big hombre from New

York, jez, he looked like he didn't know if he was comin'

or goin'. Looked like he expected a bomb to go off under

the seat any minute . . . hellova good thing for Mexico

if one had, when you come to think of it. All the worst

crooks in town were there."

The party at Ben's didn't come off so well. J. Ward

Moorehouse didn't make up to the girls as Ben had hoped.

He brought his secretary, a tired blond girl, and they

both looked scared to death. They had a dinner Mexican

style and champagne and a great deal of cognac and a

victrola played records by Victor Herbert and Irving

Berlin and a little itinerant band attracted by the crowd

played Mexican airs on the street outside. After dinner

things were getting a little noisy inside so Ben and Moore-

house took chairs out on the balcony and had a long talk

about the oil situation over their cigars. J. Ward Moore-

house explained that he had come down in a purely un-

official capacity you understand to make contacts, to find

out what the situation was and just what there was behind

Carranza's stubborn opposition to American investors and

that the big businessmen he was in touch with in the States

desired only fair play and that he felt that if their point

of view could be thoroughly understood through some

information bureau or the friendly coöperation of Mexi-

can newspapermen.

-318-

Ben went back in the diningroom and brought out

Enrique Salvador and Mac. They all talked over the

situation and J. Ward Moorehouse said that speaking as

an old newspaperman himself he thoroughly understood

the situation of the press, probably not so different in

Mexico City from that in Chicago or Pittsburgh and that

all the newspaperman wanted was to give each fresh angle

of the situation its proper significance in a spirit of fair

play and friendly coöperation, but that he felt that the

Mexican papers had been misinformed about the aims of

American business in Mexico just as the American press

was misinformed about the aims of Mexican politics. If

Mr. Enrique would call by the Regis he'd be delighted to

talk to him more fully, or to any one of you gentlemen

and if he wasn't in, due to the great press of appointments

and the very few days he had to spend in the Mexican

capital, his secretary, Miss Williams, would be only too

willing to give them any information they wanted and a

few specially prepared strictly confidential notes on the

attitude of the big American corporations with which he

was purely informally in touch.

After that he said he was sorry but he had telegrams

waiting for him at the Regis and Salvador took him, and

Miss Williams, his secretary, home in the chief of police's

automobile.

"Jez, Ben, that's a smooth bastard," said Mac to Ben

after J. Ward Moorehouse had gone.

" Mac," said Ben, "that baby's got a slick cream of mil-

lions all over him. By gum, I'd like to make some of

these contacts he talks about . . . By gorry, I may do it

yet . . . You just watch your Uncle Dudley, Mac. I'm

goin' to associate with the big hombres after this."

After that the party was not so refined. Ben brought

out a lot more cognac and the men started taking the girls

into the bedrooms and hallways and even into the pantry

and kitchen. Barrow cottoned onto a blonde named Nadia

-319-

who was half English and talked to her all evening about

the art of life. After everybody had gone Ben found them

locked up in his bedroom.

Mac got to like the life of a storekeeper. He got up

when he wanted to and walked up the sunny streets past

the cathedral and the façade of the national palace and

up Independencia where the sidewalks had been freshly

sprinkled with water and a morning wind was blowing

through, sweet with the smell of flowers and roasting

coffee. Concha's little brother Antonio would have the

shutters down and be sweeping out the store by the time

he got there. Mac would sit in the back reading or

would roam about the store chatting with people in Eng-

lish and Spanish. He didn't sell many books, but he kept

all the American and European papers and magazines and

they sold well, especially The Police Gazette and La Vie

Parisienne. He started a bank account and was planning to

take on some typewriter agencies. Salvador kept telling

him he'd get him a contract to supply stationery to some

government department and make him a rich man.

One morning he noticed a big crowd in the square in

front of the National Palace. He went into one of the

cantinas under the arcade and ordered a glass of beer. The

waiter told him that Carranza's troops had lost Torreón-

and that Villa and Zapata were closing in on the Federal

District. When he got to the bookstore news was going

down the street that Carranza's government had fled and

that the revolutionists would be in the city before night.

The storekeepers began to put up their shutters. Concha

and her mother came in crying saying that it would be

worse than the terrible week when Madero fell and that

the revolutionists had sworn to burn and loot the city. An-

tonio ran in saying that the Zapatistas were bombarding

Tacuba. Mac got a cab and went over to the Chamber of

Deputies to see if he could find anybody he knew. All the

doors were open to the street and there were papers lit-

-320-

tered along the corridors. There was nobody in the theater

but an old Indian and his wife who were walking round

hand in hand looking reverently at the gilded ceiling and

the paintings and the tables covered with green plush. The

old man carried his hat in his hand as if he were in

church.

Mac told the cabman to drive to the paper where Sal-

vador worked, but the janitor there told him with a wink

that Salvador had gone to Vera Cruz with the chief of

police. Then he went to the Embassy where he couldn't

get a word with anybody. All the anterooms were full of

Americans who had come in from ranches and concessions

and who were cursing out President Wilson and giving

each other the horrors with stories of the revolutionists.

At the consulate Mac met a Syrian who offered to buy his

stock of books. "No, you don't," said Mac and went back

down Independencia.

When he got back to the store newsboys were already

running through the street crying, "Viva la revolucion

revindicadora." Concha and her mother were in a panic

and said they must get on the train to Vera Cruz or they'd

all be murdered. The revolutionists were sacking convents

and murdering priests and nuns. The old woman dropped

on her knees in the corner of the room and began chant-

ing "Ave Marias."

"Aw, hell!" said Mac, "let's sell out and go back to

the States. Want to go to the States, Concha?" Concha

nodded vigorously and began to smile through her tears.

"But what the devil can we do with your mother and

Antonio?" Concha said she had a married sister in Vera

Cruz. They could leave them there if they could ever get

to Vera Cruz.

Mac, the sweat pouring off him, hurried back to the

consulate to find the Syrian. They couldn't decide on the

price. Mac was desperate because the banks were all closed

and there was no way of getting any money. The Syrian

-321-

said that he was from the Lebanon and an American

citizen and a Christian and that he'd lend Mac a hundred

dollars if Mac would give him a sixtyday note hypothecat-

ing his share in the bookstore for two hundred dollars. He

said that he was an American citizen and a Christian and

was risking his life to save Mac's wife and children. Mac

was so flustered he noticed just in time that the Syrian

was giving him a hundred dollars mex and that the note

was made out in American dollars. The Syrian called upon

God to protect them both and said it was an error and

Mac went off with two hundred pesos in gold.

He found Concha all packed. She had closed up the

store and was standing on the pavement outside with some

bundles, the two cats in a basket, and Antonio and her

mother, each wrapped in a blanket.

They found the station so packed full of people and

baggage they couldn't get in the door. Mac went round

to the yards and found a man named McGrath he knew

who worked for the railroad. McGrath said he could fix

them up but that they must hurry. He put them into a

secondclass coach out in the yards and said he'd buy their

tickets but would probably have to pay double for them.

Sweat was pouring from under Mac's hatband when he

finally got the two women seated and the basket of cats

and the bundles and Antonio stowed away. The train was

already full, although it hadn't backed into the station yet.

After several hours the train pulled out, a line of dusty

soldiers fighting back the people on the platform who

tried to rush the train as it left. Every seat was taken, the

aisles were full of priests and nuns, there were welldressed

people hanging onto the platforms.

Mac didn't have much to say sitting next to Concha in

the dense heat of the slowmoving train. Concha sighed a

great deal and her mother sighed, "Ay de mi dios," and

they gnawed on chickenwings and ate almond paste. The

train was often stopped by groups of soldiers patrolling

-322-

the line. On sidings were many boxcars loaded with troops,

but nobody seemed to know what side they were on. Mac

looked out at the endless crisscross ranks of centuryplants

and the crumbling churches and watched the two huge

snowy volcanos, Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihatl, change places

on the horizon; then there was another goldenbrown cone

of an extinct volcano slowly turning before the train; then

it was the bluewhite peak of Orizaba in the distance grow-

ing up taller and taller into the cloudless sky.

After Huamantla they ran down through clouds. The

rails rang under the merry clatter of the wheels curving

down steep grades in the misty winding valley through

moist forestgrowth. They began to feel easier. With every

loop of the train the air became warmer and damper.

They began to see orange and lemontrees. The windows

were all open. At stations women came through selling

beer and pulque and chicken and tortillas.

At Orizaba it was sunny again. The train stopped a long

time. Mac sat drinking beer by himself in the station res-

taurant. The other passengers were laughing and talking

but Mac felt sore.

When the bell rang he didn't want to go back to

Concha and her mother and their sighs and their greasy

fingers and their chickenwings.

He got on another car. Night was coming on full of the

smells of flowers and warm earth.

It was late the next day when they got into Vera Cruz.

The town was full of flags and big red banners stretched

from wall to wall of the orange and lemon and banana-

colored streets with their green shutters and the palms

waving in the seawind. The banners read: "Viva Obre-

gon," "Viva La Revolucion Revindicadora," "Viva El

Partido Laborista."

In the main square a band was playing and people

were dancing. Scared daws flew cawing among the dark

umbrellashaped trees.

-323-

Mac left Concha and her bundles and the old woman

and Antonio on a bench and went to the Ward Line office

to see about passage to the States. There everybody was

talking about submarine warfare and America entering the

Great War and German atrocities and Mac found that

there was no boat for a week and that he didn't have

enough cash even for two steerage passages. He bought

himself a single steerage passage. He'd begun to suspect

that he was making a damn fool of himself and decided

to go without Concha.

When he got back to where she was sitting she'd bought

custardapples and mangos. The old woman and Antonio

had gone off with the bundles to find her sister's house.

The white cats were out of their basket and were curled

up on the bench beside her. She looked up at Mac with a

quick confident blackeyed smile and said that Porfirio and

Venustiano were happy because they smelt fish. He gave

her both hands to help her to her feet. At that moment

he couldn't tell her he'd decided to go back to the States

without her. Antonio came running up and said that they'd

found his aunt and that she'd put them up and that every-

body in Vera Cruz was for the revolution.

Going through the main square again Concha said she

was thirsty and wanted a drink. They were looking around

for an empty table outside of one of the cafés when they

caught sight of Salvador. He jumped to his feet and em-

braced Mac and cried, "Viva Obregon," and they had a

mint julep American style. Salvador said that Carranza

had been murdered in the mountains by his own staff-

officers and that onearmed Obregon had ridden into Mex-

ico City dressed in white cotton like a peon wearing a big

peon hat at the head of his Yaqui Indians.and that there'd

been no disorder and that the principles of Madero and

Juarez were to be reëstablished and that a new era was

to dawn.

-324-

They drank several mint juleps and Mac didn't say

anything about going back to America.

He asked Salvador where his friend, the chief of police,

was but Salvador didn't hear him. Then Mac said to

Concha suppose he went back to America without her, but

she said he was only joking. She said she liked Vera Cruz

and would like to live there. Salvador said that great days

for Mexico were coming, that he was going back up the

next day. That night they all ate supper at Concha's sis-

ter's house. Mac furnished the cognac. They all drank to

the workers, to the tradeunions, to the partido laborista,

to the social revolution and the agraristas.

Next morning Mac woke up early with a slight head-

ache. He slipped out of the house alone and walked out

along the breakwater. He was beginning to think it was

silly to give up his bookstore like that. He went to the

Ward Line office and took his ticket back. The clerk re-

funded him the money and he got back to Concha's sis-

ter's house in time to have chocolate and pastry with them

for breakfast.

PROTEUS

Steinmetz was a hunchback,

son of a hunchback lithographer.

He was born in Breslau in eighteen sixtyfive,

graduated with highest honors at seventeen from the

Breslau Gymnasium, went to the University of Breslau

to study mathematics;

mathematics to Steinmetz was muscular strength

and long walks over the hills and the kiss of a girl in

love and big evenings spent swilling beer with your

friends;

on his broken back he felt the topheavy weight

-325-

of society the way workingmen felt it on their straight

backs, the way poor students felt it, was a member of

a socialist club, editor of a paper called The People's

Voice.

Bismarck was sitting in Berlin like a big paper-

weight to keep the new Germany feudal, to hold down

the empire for his bosses the Hohenzollerns.

Steinmetz had to run off to Zurich for fear of

going to jail; at Zurich his mathematics woke up all

the professors at the Polytechnic;

but Europe in the eighties was no place for a pen-

niless German student with a broken back and a big

head filled with symbolic calculus and wonder about

electricity that is mathematics made power

and a socialist at that.

With a Danish friend he sailed for America steer-

age on an old French line boat La Champagne,

lived in Brooklyn at first and commuted to Yon-

kers where he had a twelvedollar a week job with

Rudolph Eichemeyer who was a German exile from

fortyeight an inventor and electrician and owner of a

factory where he made hatmaking Machinery and elec-

trical generators.

In Yonkers he worked out the theory of the Third

Harmonics

and the law of hysteresis which states in a formula

the hundredfold relations between the metallic heat,

density, frequency when the poles change places in the

core of a magnet under an alternating current.

It is Steinmetz's law of hysteresis that makes pos-

sible all the transformers that crouch in little boxes and

gableroofed houses in all the hightension lines all over

-326-

everywhere. The mathematical symbols of Stein-

metz's law are the patterns of all transformers every-

where.

In eighteen ninetytwo when Eichemeyer sold out

to the corporation that was to form General Electric

Steinmetz was entered in the contract along with other

valuable apparatus. All his life Steinmetz was a piece

of apparatus belonging to General Electric.

First his laboratory was at Lynn, then it was

moved and the little hunchback with it to Schenectady,

the electric city.

General Electric humored him, let him be a so-

cialist, let him keep a greenhouseful of cactuses lit up

by mercury lights, let him have alligators, talking

crows and a gila monster for pets and the publicity

department talked up the wizard, the medicine man

who knew the symbols that opened up the doors of Ali

Baba's cave.

Steinmetz jotted a formula on his cuff and next

morning a thousand new powerplants had sprung up

and the dynamos sang dollars and the silence of the

transformers was all dollars,

and the publicity department poured oily stories

into the ears of the American public every Sunday and

Steinmetz became the little parlor magician,

who made a toy thunderstorm in his laboratory

and made all the toy trains run on time and the meat

stay cold in the icebox and the lamp in the parlor and

the great lighthouses and the searchlights and the re-

volving beams of light that guide airplanes at night

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towards Chicago, New York, St. Louis, Los Angeles,

and they let him be a socialist and believe that

human society could be improved the way you can

improve a dynamo and they let him be pro-German

and write a letter offering his services to Lenin because

mathematicians are so impractical who make up for-

mulas by which you can build powerplants, factories,

subway systems, light, heat, air, sunshine but not

human relations that affect the stockholders' money

and the directors' salaries.

Steinmetz was a famous magician and he talked to

Edison tapping with the Morse code on Edison's knee

because Edison was so very deaf

and he went out West

to make speeches that nobody understood

and he talked to Bryan about God on a railroad

train

and all the reporters stood round while he and

Einstein

met face to face,

but they couldn't catch what they said

and Steinmetz was the most valuable piece of ap-

paratus General Electric had

until he wore out and died.

JANEY

The trip to Mexico and the private car the Mexican

government put at the disposal of J. Ward Moorehouse

to go back north in was lovely but a little tiresome, and it

was so dusty going across the desert. Janey bought some

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very pretty things so cheap, some turquoise jewelry and

pink onyx to take home to Alice and her mother and

sisters as presents. Going up in the private car J. Ward

kept her busy dictating and there was a big bunch of men

always drinking and smoking cigars and laughing at

smutty stories in the smokingroom or on the observation

platform. One of them was that man c she'd done

some work for in Washington. He always stopped to talk

to her now and she didn't like the way his eyes were when

he stood over her table talking to her, still he was an

interesting man and quite different from what she'd imag-

ined a laborleader would be like, and it amused her to

think that she knew about Queenie and how startled he'd

be if he knew she knew. She kidded him a good deal and

she thought maybe he was getting a crush on her, but he

was the sort of man who'd be like that with any woman.

They didn't have a private car after Laredo and the

trip wasn't so nice. They went straight through to New

York. She had a lower in a different car from J. Ward

and his friends, and in the upper berth there was a young

fellow she took quite a fancy to. His name was Buck

Saunders and he was from the panhandle of Texas and

talked with the funniest drawl. He'd punched cows and

worked in the Oklahoma oilfields and had saved up some

money and was going to see Washington City. He was

tickled to death when she said she was from Washington

and she told him all about what he ought to see, the

Capitol and the White House and the Lincoln Memorial

and the Washington Monument and the Old Soldiers'

Home and Mount Vernon. She said to be sure to go out

to Great Falls and told him about canoeing on the canal

and how she'd been caught in a terrible thunderstorm

once near Cabin John's Bridge. They ate several meals

together in the dining car and he told her she was a dandy

girl and awful easy to talk to and how he had a girl in

Tulsa, Ok., and how he was going to get a job in Vene-

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zuela, down at Maracaibo in the oilfields because she'd

thrown him over to marry a rich dirtfarmer who struck

oil in his cowpasture. G. H. Barrow kidded Janey about

her fine handsome pickup and she said what about him

and the redheaded lady who got off in St. Louis, and they

laughed and she felt quite devilish and that G. H. Barrow

wasn't so bad after all. When Buck got off the train in

Washington he gave her a snapshot of himself taken be-

side an oilderrick and said he'd write her every day and

would come to New York to see her if she'd let him, but

she never heard from him.

She liked Morton, the cockney valet, too, because he

always spoke to her so respectfully. Every morning he'd

come and report on how J. Ward was feeling, " 'E looks

pretty black this mornin', Miss Williams," or, " 'E was

whistlin' while 'e was shavin'. Is 'e feelin' good? Rath-er."

When they got to the Pennsylvania Station, New York,

she had to stay with Morton to see that the box of files

was sent to the office at 100 Fifth Avenue and not out to

Long Island where J. Ward's home was. She saw Morton

off in a Pierce Arrow that had come all the way in from

Great Neck to get the baggage, and went alone to the

office in a taxicab with her typewriter and the papers and

files. She felt scared and excited looking out of the taxicab

window at the tall white buildings and the round water-

tanks against the sky and the puffs of steam way up and

the sidewalks crowded with people and all the taxicabs and

trucks and the shine and jostle and clatter. She wondered

where she'd get a room to live, and how she'd find friends

and where she'd eat. It seemed terribly scary being all

alone in the big city like that and she wondered that she'd

had the nerve to come. She decided she'd try to find Alice

a job and that they'd take an apartment together, but

where would she go tonight?

When she got to the office, everything seemed natural

and reassuring and so handsomely furnished and polished

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so bright and typewriters going so fast and much more stir

and bustle than there'd been in the offices of Dreyfus and

Carroll; but everybody looked Jewish and she was afraid

they wouldn't like her and afraid she wouldn't be able to

hold down the job.

A girl named Gladys Compton showed her her desk,

that she said had been Miss Rosenthal's desk. It was in

a little passage just outside J. Ward's private office oppo-

site the door to Mr. Robbins' office. Gladys Compton was

Jewish and was Mr. Robbins' stenographer and said what

a lovely girl Miss Rosenthal had been and how sorry they

all were in the office about her accident and Janey felt

that she was stepping into a dead man's shoes and would

have a stiff row to hoe. Gladys Compton stared at her with

resentful brown eyes that had a slight squint in them

when she looked hard at anything and said she hoped

she'd be able to get through the work, that sometimes the

work was simply killing, and left her.

When things were closing up at five, J. Ward came out

of his private office. Janey was so pleased to see him stand-

ing by her desk. He said he'd talked to Miss Compton

and asked her to look out for Janey a little at first and

that he knew it was hard for a young girl finding her way

around a new city, finding a suitable place to live and that

sort of thing, but that Miss Compton was a very nice girl

and would help her out and he was sure everything would

work out fine. He gave her a blue-eyed smile and handed

her a closely written packet of notes and said would she

mind coming in the office a little early in the morning and

having them all copied and on his desk by nine o'clock.

He wouldn't usually ask her to do work like that but all

the typists were so stupid and everything was in confusion

owing to his absence. Janey felt only too happy to do it

and warm all over from his smile.

She and Gladys Compton left the office together.

Gladys Compton suggested that seeing as she didn't know

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the city hadn't she better come home with her. She lived

in Flatbush with her father and mother and of course it

wouldn't be what Miss Williams was accustomed to but

they had a spare room that they could let her have until

she could find her way around and that it was clean at

least and that was more than you could say about many

places. They went by the station to get her bag. Janey felt

relieved not to have to find her way alone in all that

crowd. Then they went down into the subway and got on

an expresstrain that was packed to the doors and Janey

didn't think she could stand it being packed in close with

so many people. She thought she'd never get there and

the trains made so much noise in the tunnel she couldn't

hear what the other girl was saying.

At last they got out into a wide street with an elevated

running down it where the buildings were all one or two

stories and the stores were groceries and vegetable and

fruit stores. Gladys Compton said, "We eat kosher, Miss

Williams, on account of the old people. I hope you don't

mind; of course Benny -- Benny's my brudder -- and I

haven't any prejudices." Janey didn't know what kosher

was but she said of course she didn't mind and told the

other girl about how funny the food was down in Mexico,

so peppery you couldn't hardly eat it.

When they got to the house Gladys Compton began to

pronounce her words less precisely and was very kind and

thoughtful. Her father was a little old man with glasses

on the end of his nose and her mother was a fat pear-

shaped woman in a wig. They talked Yiddish among

themselves. They did everything they could to make

Janey comfortable and gave her a nice room and said

they'd give her board and lodging for ten dollars a week

as long as she wanted to stay and when she wanted to

move she could go away and no hard feelings. The house

was a yellow twofamily frame house on a long block of

houses all exactly alike, but it was well heated and the bed

-332-

was comfortable. The old man was a watchmaker and

worked at a Fifth Avenue jeweler's. In the old country

their name had been Kompshchski but they said that in

New York nobody could pronounce it. The old man had

wanted to take the name of Freedman but his wife thought

Campton sounded more refined. They had a good supper

with tea in glasses and soup with dumplings and red caviar

and gefültefisch and Janey thought it was very nice know-

ing people like that. The boy Benny was still in high-

school, a gangling youth with heavy glasses who ate with

his head hung over his plate and had a rude way of con-

tradicting anything anybody said. Gladys said not to mind

him, that he was very good in his studies and was going

to study law. When the strangeness had worn off a little

Janey got to like the s, particularly old Mr.

Compton, who was very kind and treated everything that

happened with gentle heartbroken humor.

The work at the office was so interesting. J. Ward was

beginning to rely on her for things. Janey felt it was going

to be a good year for her.

The worst thing was the threequarters of an hour ride

in the subway to Union Square mornings. Janey would

try to read the paper and to keep herself in a corner away

from the press of bodies. She liked to get to the office

feeling bright and crisp with her dress feeling neat and

her hair in nice order, but the long jolting ride fagged

her out, made her feel as if she wanted to get dressed and

take a bath all over again. She liked walking along Four-

teenth Street all garish and shimmery in the sunny early

morning dust and up Fifth Avenue to the office. She and

Gladys were always among the first to get in. Janey kept

flowers on her desk and would sometimes slip in and put

a couple of roses in a silver vase on J. Ward's broad ma-

hogany desk. Then she'd sort the mail, lay his personal

letters in a neat pile on the corner of the blotter-pad that

was in a sort of frame of red illuminated Italian leather,

-333-

read the other letters, look over his engagement book and

make up a small typewritten list of engagements, inter-

views, copy to be got out, statements to the press. She laid

the list in the middle of the blotter under a rawcopper

paperweight from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan,

checking off with a neat W. the items she could attend to

without consulting him.

By the time she was back at her desk correcting the

spelling in the copy that had emanated from Mr. Rob-

bins' office the day before she began to feel a funny tingle

inside her; soon J. Ward would be coming in. She told

herself it was all nonsense but every time the outer office

door opened she looked up expectantly. She began to

worry a little; he might have had an accident driving in

from Great Neck. Then when she'd given up expecting

him he'd walk hurriedly through with a quick smile all

around and the groundglass door of his private office

would close behind him. Janey would notice whether he

wore a dark or a light suit, what color his necktie was,

whether he had a fresh haircut or not. One day he had a

splatter of mud on the trouserleg of his blue serge suit

and she couldn't keep her mind off it all morning trying

to think of a pretext to go in and tell him about it. Rarely

he'd look at her directly with a flash of blue eyes as he

passed, or stop and ask her a question. Then she'd feel

fine.

The work at the office was so interesting. It put her

right in the midst of headlines like when she used to talk

to Jerry Burnham back at Dreyfus and Carroll's. There

was the Onondaga Salt Products account and literature

about bathsalts and chemicals and the employees' baseball

team and cafeteria and old age pensions, and Marigold

Copper and combating subversive tendencies among the

miners who were mostly foreigners who had to be edu-

cated in the principles of Americanism, and the Citrus

Center Chamber of Commerce's campaign to educate the

-334-

small investors in the North in the stable building quali-

ties of the Florida fruit industry, and the slogan to be

launched, "Put an Alligator Pear on Every Breakfast

Table" for the Avocado Producers Coöperative. That con-

cern occasionally sent up a case so that everybody in the

office had an alligator pear to take home, except Mr. Rob-

bins who wouldn't take his, but said they tasted like soap.

Now the biggest account of all was Southwestern Oil

campaign to counter the insidious anti-American propa-

ganda of the British oilcompanies in Mexico and to op-

pose the intervention lobby of the Hearst interests in

Washington.

In June Janey went to her sister Ellen's wedding. It

was funny being in Washington again. Going on the train

Janey looked forward a whole lot to seeing Alice, but

when she saw her they couldn't seem to find much to talk

about. She felt out of place at her mother's. Ellen was

marrying a law student at Georgetown University who

had been a lodger and the house was full of college boys

and young girls after the wedding. They all laughed and

giggled around and Mrs. Williams and Francie seemed

to enjoy it all right, but Janey was glad when it was time

for her to go down to the station and take the train to

New York again. When she said goodby to Alice she

didn't say anything about her coming down to New York

to get an apartment.

She felt pretty miserable on the train sitting in the

stuffy parlorcar looking out at towns and fields and sign-

boards. Getting back to the office the next morning was

like getting home.

It was exciting in New York. The sinking of the Lusi-

tania had made everybody feel that America's going into

the war was only a question of months. There were many

flags up on Fifth Avenue. Janey thought a great deal

about the war. She had a letter from Joe from Scotland

that held been torpedoed on the steamer Marchioness and

-335-

that they'd been ten hours in an open boat in a snow-

storm off Pentland Firth with the current carrying them

out to sea, but that they'd landed and he was feeling fine

and that the crew had gotten bonuses and that he was

making big money anyway. When she'd read the letter

she went in to see J. Ward with a telegram that had just

come from Colorado and told him about her brother being

torpedoed and he was very much interested. He talked

about being patriotic and saving civilization and the his-

toric beauties of Rheims cathedral. He said he was ready

to do his duty when the time came, and that he thought

America's entering the war was only a question of months.

A very welldressed woman came often to see J. Ward.

Janey looked enviously at her lovely complexion and her

neat dresses, not ostentatious but very chic, and her mani-

cured nails and her tiny feet. One day the door swung

open so that she could hear her and J. Ward talking

familiarly together. "But, J.W., my darling," she was say-

ing, "this office is a fright. It's the way they used to have

their offices in Chicago in the early eighties." He was

laughing. "Well, Eleanor, why don't you redecorate it

for me? Only the work would have to be done without

interfering with business. I can't move, not with the press

of important business just now."

Janey felt quite indignant about it. The office was lovely

the way it was, quite distinctive, everybody said so. She

wondered who this woman was who was putting ideas into

J. Ward's head. Next day when she had to make out a

check for two hundred and fifty dollars on account to

Stoddard and Hutchins, Interior Decorators, she almost

spoke her mind, but after all it was hardly her business.

After that Miss Stoddard seemed to be around the office

all the time. The work was done at night so that every

morning when Janey came in, she found something

changed. It was all being done over in black and white

with curtains and upholstery of a funny claret-color. Janey

-336-

didn't like it at all but Gladys said it was in the modern

style and very interesting. Mr. Robbins refused to have

his private cubbyhole touched and he and J. Ward almost

had words about it, but in the end he had his own way

and the rumor went round that J. Ward had had to in-

crease his salary to keep him from going to another

agency.

Labor Day Janey moved. She was sorry to leave the

s but she'd met a middleaged woman named

Eliza Tingley who worked for a lawyer on the same floor

as J. Ward's office. Eliza Tingley was a Baltimorean, had

passed a bar examination herself and Janey said to herself

that she was a woman of the world. She and her twin

brother, who was a certified accountant, had taken a floor

of a house on West 23rd Street in the Chelsea district and

they asked Janey to come in with them. It meant being

free from the subway and Janey felt that the little walk

over to Fifth Avenue every morning would do her good.

The minute she'd seen Eliza Tingley in the lunchcounter

downstairs she'd taken a fancy to her. Things at the Ting-

leys were free and easy and Janey felt at home there.

Sometimes they had a drink in the evening. Eliza was a

good cook and they'd take a long time over dinner and

play a couple of rubbers of threehanded bridge before

going to bed. Saturday night they'd almost always go to

the theater. Eddy Tingley would get the seats at a cut-

rate agency he knew. They subscribed to The Literary Di-

gest and to The Century and The Ladies' Home Journal

and Sundays they had roast chicken or duck and read the

magazine section of The New York Times.

The Tingleys had a good many friends and they liked

Janey and included her in everything and she felt that

she was living the way she'd like to live. It was exciting

too that winter with rumors of war all the time. They

had a big map of Europe hung up on the livingroom wall

and marked the positions of the Allied armies with little

-337-

flags. They were heart and soul for the Allies and names

like Verdun or Chemin des Dames started little shivers

running down their spines. Eliza wanted to travel and

made Janey tell her over and over again every detail of

her trip to Mexico; they began to plan a trip abroad to-

gether when the war was over and Janey began to save

money for it. When Alice wrote from Washington that

maybe she would pull up stakes in Washington and go

down to New York, Janey wrote saying that it was so

hard for a girl to get a job in New York just at present

and that maybe it wasn't such a good idea.

All that fall J. Ward's face looked white and drawn.

He got in the habit of coming into the office Sunday after-

noons and Janey was only too glad to run around there

after dinner to help him out. They'd talk over the events

of the week in the office and J. Ward would dictate a lot

of private letters to her and tell her she was a treasure

and leave her there typing away happily. Janey was wor-

ried too. Although new accounts came in all the time the

firm wasn't in a very good financial condition. J. Ward

had made some unfortunate plunges in the Street and was

having a hard time holding things together. He was

anxious to buy out the large interest still held by old Mrs.

Staple and talked of notes his wife had gotten hold of and

that he was afraid his wife would use unwisely. Janey

could see that his wife was a disagreeable peevish woman

trying to use her mother's money as a means of keeping

a hold on J. Ward. She never said anything to the

Tingleys about J. Ward personally, but she talked a

great deal about the business and they agreed with her

that the work was so interesting. She was looking forward

to this Christmas because J. Ward had hinted that he

would give her a raise.

A rainy Sunday afternoon she was typing off a confi-

dential letter to Judge Planet inclosing a pamphlet from

a detective agency describing the activities of labor agi-

-338-

tators among the Colorado miners, and J. Ward was

walking up and down in front of the desk staring with

bent brows at the polished toes of his shoes when there

was a knock on the outer office door. "I wonder who that

could be?" said J. Ward. There was something puzzled

and nervous about the way he spoke. "It may be Mr.

Robbins forgotten his key," said Janey. She went to see.

When she opened the door Mrs. Moorehouse brushed

past her. She wore a wet slicker and carried an umbrella,

her face was pale and her nostrils were twitching. Janey

closed the door gently and went to her own desk and sat

down. She was worried. She took up a pencil and started

drawing scrolls round the edge of a piece of typewriter

paper. She couldn't help hearing what was going on in

J. Ward's private office. Mrs. Moorehouse had shot in

slamming the groundglass door behind her. "Ward, I

can't stand it . . . I won't stand it another minute," she

was screaming at the top of her voice. Janey's heart started

beating very fast. She heard J. Ward's voice low and con-

ciliatory, then Mrs. Moorehouse's. "I won't be treated

like that, I tell you. I'm not a child to be treated like

that . . . You're taking advantage of my condition. My

health won't stand being treated like that."

"Now look here, Gertrude, on my honor as a gentle-

man," J. Ward was saying. "There's nothing in it, Ger-

trude. You lie there in bed imagining things and you

shouldn't break in like this. I'm a very busy man. I have

important transactions that demand my complete atten-

tion."

Of course it's outrageous, Janey was saying to herself.

"You'd still be in Pittsburgh working for Bessemer

Products, Ward, if it wasn't for me and you know it . . .

You may despise me but you don't despise dad's money

. . . but I'm through, I tell you. I'm going to start

divorce . . .""But, Gertrude, you know very well there's

no other woman in my life.""How about this woman

-339-

you're seen round with all the time . . . what's her

name . . . Stoddard? You see, I know more than you

think . . . I'm not the kind of woman you think I am,

Ward. You can't make a fool of me, do you hear?"

Mrs. Moorehouse's voice rose into a rasping shriek.

Then she seemed to break down and Janey could hear her

sobbing. "Now, Gertrude," came Ward's voice soothingly,

"you've gotten yourself all wrought up over nothing . . .

Eleanor Stoddard and I have had a few business deal-

ings . . . She's a bright woman and I find her stimulat-

ing . . . intellectually, you understand . . . We've oc-

casionally eaten dinner together, usually with mutual

friends, and that's absolutely . . ." Then his voice sunk

so low that Janey couldn't hear what he was saying. She

began to think she ought to slip out. She didn't know

what to do.

She'd half gotten to her feet when Mrs. Moorehouse's

voice soared to a hysterical shriek again. "Oh, you're cold

as a fish . . . You're just a fish. I'd like you better if it

was true, if you were having an affair with her . . . But

I don't care; I won't be used as a tool to use dad's money."

The door of the private office opened and Mrs. Moore-

house came out, gave Janey a bitter glare as if she sus-

pected her relations with J. Ward too, and went out.

Janey sat down at her desk again trying to look uncon-

cerned. Inside the private office she could hear J. Ward

striding up and down with a heavy step. When he called

her his voice sounded weak:

"Miss Williams."

She got up and went into the private office with her

pencil and pad in one hand. J. Ward started to dictate as

if nothing had happened but half way through a letter to

the president of the Ansonia Carbide Corporation he sud-

denly said, "Oh, hell," and gave the wastebasket a kick

that sent it spinning against the wall.

"Excuse me, Miss Williams; I'm very much worried

-340-

.. Miss Williams, I'm sure I can trust you not to men-

tion it to a soul . . . You understand, my wife is not quite

herself; she's been ill . . . the last baby . . . you know

those things sometimes happen to women."

Janey looked up at him. Tears had started into her eyes.

"Oh, Mr. Moorehouse, how can you think I'd not under-

stand? . . . Oh, it must be dreadful for you, and this is

a great work and so interesting." She couldn't say any

more. Her lips couldn't form any words. "Miss Wil-

liams," J. Ward was saying, "I . . . er . . . appreciate

. . . er." Then he picked up the wastepaper basket. Janey

jumped up and helped him pick up the crumpled papers

and trash that had scattered over the floor. His face was

flushed from stooping. "Grave responsibilities . . . Irre-

sponsible woman may do a hell of a lot of damage, you

understand." Janey nodded and nodded. "Well, where

were we? Let's finish up and get out of here."

They set the wastebasket under the desk and started in

on the letters again.

All the way home to Chelsea, picking her way through

the slush and pools of water on the streets, Janey was

thinking of what she'd liked to have said to J. Ward to

make him understand that everybody in the office would

stand by him whatever happened.

When she got in the apartment, Eliza Tingley said a

man had called her up. "Sounded like a rather rough

type; wouldn't give his name; just said to say Joe had

called up and that he'd call up again." Janey felt Eliza's

eyes on her inquisitively.

"That's my brother Joe, I guess . . . He's a . . . he's

in the merchant marine."

Some friends of the Tingleys came in, they had two

tables of bridge and were having a very jolly evening

when the telephone rang again, and it was Joe. Janey felt

herself blushing as she talked to him. She couldn't ask

him up and still she wanted to see him. The others were

-341-

calling to her to play her hand. He said he had just got

in and that he had some presents for her and he'd been

clear out to Flatbush and that the yids there had told him

she lived in Chelsea now and he was in the cigar store at

the corner of Eighth Avenue. The others were calling to

her to play her hand. She found herself saying that she

was very busy doing some work and wouldn't he meet her

at five tomorrow at the office building where she worked.

She asked him again how he was and he said, "Fine," but

he sounded disappointed. When she went back to her table

they all kidded her about the boyfriend and she laughed

and blushed, but inside she felt mean because she hadn't

asked him to come up.

Next evening it snowed. When she stepped out of the

elevator crowded to the doors at five o'clock she looked

eagerly round the vestibule. Joe wasn't there. As she was

saying goodnight to Gladys she saw him through the

door. He was standing outside with his hands deep in the

pockets of a blue peajacket. Big blobs of snowflakes spun

round his face that looked lined and red and weather-

beaten.

"Hello, Joe," she said.

"Hello, Janey."

"When did you get in?

"A couple a days ago."

"Are you in good shape, Joe? How do you feel?

"I gotta rotten head today . . . Got stinkin' last night."

" Joe, I was so sorry about last night but there were

a lot of people there and I wanted to see you alone so we

could talk."

Joe grunted.

"That's awright, Janey . . . Gee, you're lookin' swell.

If any of the guys saw me with you they'd think I'd

picked up somethin' pretty swell awright."

Janey felt uncomfortable. Joe had on heavy work-

shoes and there were splatters of gray paint on his trouser-

-342-

legs. He had a package wrapped in newspaper under his

arm.

"Let's go eat somewheres . . . Jez, I'm sorry I'm not

rigged up better. We lost all our duffle, see, when we was

torpedoed."

"Were you torpedoed again?"

Joe laughed, "Sure, right off Cape Race. It's a great

life . . . Well, that's strike two . . . I brought along

your shawl though, by God if I didn't . . . I know

where we'll eat; we'll eat at Lüchow's."

"Isn't Fourteenth Street a little . . ."

"Naw, they got a room for ladies . . . Janey, you

don't think I'd take you to a dump wasn't all on the up

an' up?"

Crossing Union Square a seedylooking young man in a

red sweater said, "Hi, Joe." Joe dropped back of Janey

for a minute and he and the young man talked with their

heads together. Then Joe slipped a bill in his hand, said,

"So long, Tex," and ran after Janey who was walking

along feeling a little uncomfortable. She didn't like Four-

teenth Street after dark. "Who was that, Joe?""Some

damn AB or other. I knew him down New Orleans . . .

I call him Tex. I don't know what his name is . . . He's

down on his uppers.""Were you down in New Orleans?"

Joe nodded. "Took a load a molasses out on the Henry

B. Higginbotham. . . Piginbottom we called her. Well,

she's layin' easy now on the bottom awright . . . on the

bottom of the Grand Banks."

When they went in the restaurant the headwaiter

looked at them sharply and put them at a table in the

corner of a little inside room. Joe ordered a big meal and

some beer, but Janey didn't like beer so he had to drink

hers too. After Janey had told him all the news about the

family and how she liked her job and expected a raise

Christmas and was so happy living with the Tingleys who

were so lovely to her, there didn't seem to be much to say.

-343-

Joe had bought tickets to the Hippodrome but they had

plenty of time before that started. They sat silent over

their coffee and Joe puffed at a cigar. Janey finally said

it was a shame the weather was so mean and that it must

be terrible for the poor soldiers in the trenches and she

thought the Huns were just too barbarous and the Lusi-

tania and how silly the Ford peace ship idea was. Joe

laughed in the funny abrupt way he had of laughing now,

and said: "Pity the poor sailors out at sea on a night like

this." He got up to get another cigar.

Janey thought what a shame it was he'd had his neck

shaved when he had a haircut; his neck was red and had

little wrinkles in it and she thought of the rough life he

must be leading and when he came back she asked him

why he didn't get a different job. "You mean in a ship-

yard? They're making big money in shipyards, but hell,

Janey, I'd rather knock around . . . It's all for the expe-

rience, as the feller said when they blew his block off."

"No, but there are boys not half so bright as you are with

nice clean jobs right in my office and a future to look

forward to."

"All my future's behind me," said Joe with a laugh.

"Might go down to Perth Amboy get a job in a munitions

factory, but I rather be blowed up in the open, see?"

Janey went on to talk about the war and how she wished

we were in it to save civilization and poor little helpless

Belgium. "Can that stuff, Janey," said Joe. He made a

cutting gesture with his big red hand above the tablecloth.

"You people don't understand it, see . . . The whole

damn war's crooked from start to finish. Why don't they

torpedo any French Line boats? Because the Frogs have

it all set with the Jerries, see, that if the Jerries leave their

boats alone they won't shell the German factories back of

the front. What we wanta do 's sit back and sell 'em

munitions and let 'em blow 'emselves to hell. An' those

babies are makin' big money in Bordeaux and Toulouse or

-344-

Marseilles while their own kin are shootin' daylight into

each other at the front, and it's the same thing with the

limeys . . . I'm tellin' ye, Janey, this war's crooked, like

every other goddam thing."

Janey started to cry. "Well, you needn't curse and swear

all the time.""I'm sorry, sister," said Joe humbly, "but

I'm just a bum an' that's about the size of it an' not fit

to associate with a nicedressed girl like you.""No, I didn't

mean that," said Janey, wiping her eyes.

"Gee, but I forgot to show you the shawl." He un-

wrapped the paper package. Two Spanish shawls spilled

out on the table, one of black lace and the other green silk

embroidered with big flowers. "Oh, Joe, you oughtn't to

give me both of them . . . You ought to give one to your

best girl.""The kinda girls I go with ain't fit to have

things like that . . . I bought those for you, Janey."

Janey thought the shawls were lovely and decided she'd

give one of them to Eliza Tingley.

They went to the Hippodrome but they didn't have a

very good time. Janey didn't like shows like that much

and Joe kept falling asleep. When they came out of the

theater it was bitterly cold. Gritty snow was driving hard

down Sixth Avenue almost wiping the "L" out of sight.

Joe took her home in a taxi and left her at her door with

an abrupt, "So long, Janey." She stood a moment on the

step with her key in her hand and watched him walking

west towards Tenth Avenue and the wharves, with his

head sunk in his peajacket.

That winter the flags flew every day on Fifth Avenue.

Janey read the paper eagerly at breakfast; at the office

there was talk of German spies and submarines and atroci-

ties and propaganda. One morning a French military mis-

sion came to call on J. Ward, handsome pale officers with

blue uniforms and red trousers and decorations. The

youngest of them was on crutches. They'd all of them

-345-

been severely wounded at the front. When they'd left,

Janey and Gladys almost had words because Gladys said

officers were a lot of lazy loafers and she'd rather see a

mission of private soldiers. Janey wondered if she oughtn't

to tell J. Ward about Gladys's pro-Germanism, whether

it mightn't be her patriotic duty. The s might be

spies; weren't they going under an assumed name? Benny

was a socialist or worse, she knew that. She decided she'd

keep her eyes right open.

The same day G. H. Barrow came in. Janey was in the

private office with them all the time. They talked about

President Wilson and neutrality and the stockmarket and

the delay in transmission in the Lusitania note. G. H.

Barrow had had an interview with the president. He was

a member of a committee endeavoring to mediate between

the railroads and the Brotherhoods that were threatening

a strike. Janey liked him better than she had on the pri-

vate car coming up from Mexico, so that when he met her

in the hall just as he was leaving the office she was quite

glad to talk to him and when he asked her to come out to

dinner with him, she accepted and felt very devilish.

All the time G. H. Barrow was in New York he took

Janey out to dinner and the theater. Janey had a good

time and she could always kid him about Queenie if he

tried to get too friendly going home in a taxi. He couldn't

make out where she'd found out about Queenie and he

told her the whole story and how the woman kept hound-

ing him for money, but he said that now he was divorced

from his wife and there was nothing she could do. After

making Janey swear she'd never tell a soul, he explained

that through a legal technicality he'd been married to two

women at the same time and that Queenie was one of

them and that now he'd divorced them both, and there

was nothing on earth Queenie could do but the news-

papers were always looking for dirt and particularly liked

-346-

to get something on a liberal like himself devoted to the

cause of labor. Then he talked about the art of life and

said American women didn't understand the art of life; at

least women like Queenie didn't. Janey felt very sorry for

him but when he asked her to marry him she laughed and

said she really would have to consult counsel before reply-

ing. He told her all about his life and how poor he'd been

as a boy and then about jobs as stationagent and freight-

agent and conductor and the enthusiasm with which he'd

gone into work for the Brotherhood and how his muck-

raking articles on conditions in the railroads had made hint

a name and money so that all his old associates felt he'd

sold out, but that, so help me, it wasn't true. Janey went

home and told the Tingleys all about the proposal, only

she was careful not to say anything about Queenie or

bigamy, and they all laughed and joked about it and it

made Janey feel good to have been proposed to by such

an important man and she wondered why it was such in-

teresting men always fell for her and regretted they

always had that dissipated look, but she didn't know

whether she wanted to marry G. H. Barrow or not.

At the office next morning, she looked him up in Who's

Who and there he was, Barrow, George Henry, publicist

. . . but she didn't think she could ever love him. At the

office that day J. Ward looked very worried and sick and

Janey felt so sorry for him and quite forgot about G. H.

Barrow. She was called into a private conference J. Ward

was having with Mr. Robbins and an Irish lawyer named

O'Grady, and they said did she mind if they rented a safe

deposit box in her name to keep certain securities in and

started a private account for her at the Bankers Trust.

They were forming a new corporation. There were busi-

ness reasons why something of the sort might become

imperative. Mr. Robbins and J. Ward would own more

than half the stock of a new concern and would work for

-347-

it on a salary basis. Mr. Robbins looked very worried and

a little drunk and kept lighting cigarettes and forgetting

them on the edge of the desk and kept saying, "You know

very well, J. W., that anything you do is O.K. by me."

J. Ward explained to Janey that she'd be an officer of the

new corporation but of course would in no way be per-

sonally liable. It came out that old Mrs. Staple was suing

J. Ward to recover a large sum of money and that his wife

had started divorce proceedings in Pennsylvania and that

she was refusing to let him go home to see the children

and that he was living at the McAlpin.

"Gertrude's lost her mind," said Mr. Robbins genially.

Then he slapped J. Ward on the back. "Looks like the fat

was in the fire now," he roared. "Well, I'm goin' out to

lunch; a man must eat . . . and drink . . . even if he's

a putative bankrupt." J. Ward scowled and said nothing

and Janey thought it was in very bad taste to talk like that

and so loud too.

When she went home that evening she told the Ting-

leys that she was going to be a director of the new cor-

poration and they thought it was wonderful that she was

getting ahead so fast and that she really ought to ask for

a raise even if business was in a depressed state. Janey

smiled, and said, "All in good time." On the way home

she had stopped in the telegraph office on Twentythird

Street and wired G. H. Barrow, who had gone up to

Washington: LET'S JUST BE FRIENDS.

Eddy Tingley brought out a bottle of sherry and at

dinner he and Eliza drank a toast, "To the new execu-

tive," and Janey blushed crimson and was very pleased.

Afterwards they played a rubber of dummy bridge.

-348-

THE CAMERA EYE (26)

the garden was crowded and outside Madison Square

was full of cops that made everybody move on and the

bombsquad all turned out

we couldn't get a seat so we ran up the stairs to the top

gallery and looked down through the blue air at the faces

thick as gravel and above them on the speakers' stand tiny

black figures and a man was speaking and whenever he said

war there were hisses and whenever he said Russia there

was clapping on account of the revolution I didn't know

who was speaking somebody said Max Eastman and some-

body said another guy but we clapped and yelled for the

revolution and hissed for Morgan and the capitalist war

and there was a dick looking into our faces as if he was

trying to remember them

then we went to hear Emma Goldman at the Bronx

Casino but the meeting was forbidden and the streets

around were very crowded and there were moving vans

moving through the crowd and they said the moving vans

were full of cops with machineguns and there were little

policedepartment. Fords with searchlights and they charged

the crowd with the Fords and the searchlights every-

body talked machineguns revolution civil liberty freedom

of speech but occasionally somebody got into the way of

a cop and was beaten up and shoved into a patrol wagon

-349-

and the cops were scared and they said they were calling

out the fire department to disperse the crowd and every-

body said it was an outrage and what about Washington

and Jefferson and Patrick Henry?

afterwards we went to the Brevoort it was much

nicer everybody who was anybody was there and there

was Emma Goldman eating frankfurters and sauerkraut

and everybody looked at Emma Goldman and at every-

body else that was anybody and everybody was for peace

and the coöperative commonwealth and the Russian revo-

lution and we talked about red flags and barricades and

suitable posts for machineguns

and we had several drinks and welsh rabbits and paid

our bill and went home, and opened the door with a

latchkey and put on pajamas and went to bed and it was

comfortable in bed

NEWSREEL XVIII

Goodby Piccadilly, farewell Leicester Square

It's a long long way to Tipperary

WOMAN TRAPS HUSBAND WITH GIRL IN

HOTEL

to such a task we can dedicate our lives

and our fortunes, everything that we are,

and everything that we have, with the pride of those

who know

-350-

that the day has come when America is privileged to

spend her

blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth

and happiness and the peace that she has treasured. God

helping her she can do no other

It's a long way to Tipperary

It's a long way to go

It's a long way to Tipperary

And the sweetest girl I know

TRAITORS BEWARE

four men in Evanston fined for killing birds

WILSON WILL FORCE DRAFT

food gamblers raise price of canned foods move for dry

U S in war files charges when men ignore national air

JOFFRE ASKS TROOPS NOW

Mooney case incentive

Goodby Piccadilly, farewell Leicester Square

It's a long long way to Tipperary

But my heart's right there.

HOUSE REFUSES TO ALLOW T R TO RAISE TROOPS

the American Embassy was threatened today with an

attack by a mob of radical socialists led by Nicolai Lenin an

exile who recently returned from Switzerland via Germany

ALLIES TWINE FLAGS ON TOMB OF WASHINGTON

ELEANOR STODDARD

Eleanor thought that things were very exciting that

winter. She and J.W. went out a great deal together, to

-351-

all the French operas and to first nights. There was a little

French restaurant where they ate hors d'oeuvres way east

in Fiftysixth Street. They went to see French paintings

in the galleries up Madison Avenue. J.W. began to get

interested in art, and Eleanor loved going round with

him because he had such a romantic manner about every-

thing and he used to tell her she was his inspiration and

that he always got good ideas when he'd been talking to

her. They often talked about how silly people were who

said that a man and a woman couldn't have a platonic

friendship. They wrote each other little notes in French

every day. Eleanor often thought it was a shame J.W. had

such a stupid wife who was an invalid too, but she thought

that the children were lovely and it was nice that they

both had lovely blue eyes like their father.

She had an office now all by herself and had two girls

working with her to learn the business and had quite a

lot of work to do. The office was in the first block above

Madison Square on Madison Avenue and she just had her

own name on it. Eveline Hutchins didn't have anything

to do with it any more as Dr. Hutchins had retired and

the Hutchinses had all moved out to Santa Fe. Eveline

sent her an occasional box of Indian curios or pottery and

the watercolors the Indian children did in the schools, and

Eleanor found they sold very well. In the afternoon she'd

ride downtown in a taxi and look up at the Metropolitan

Life tower and the Flatiron Building and the lights

against the steely Manhattan sky and think of crystals and

artificial flowers and gilt patterns on indigo and claret-

colored brocade.

The maid would have tea ready for her and often there

would be friends waiting for her, young architects or

painters. There'd always be flowers, calla lilies with the

texture of icecream or a bowl of freesias. She'd talk a

while and before slipping off to dress for dinner. When

J.W. phoned that he couldn't come she'd feel very bad.

-352-

If there was still anybody there who'd come to tea she'd

ask him to stay and have potluck with her.

The sight of the French flag excited her always or when

a band played Tipperary; and one evening when they

were going to see The Yellow Jacket for the third

time, she had on a new fur coat that she was wondering

how she was going to pay for, and she thought of all the

bills at her office and the house on Sutton Place she was

remodeling on a speculation and wanted to ask J.W.

about a thousand he'd said he'd invested for her and won-

dered if there'd been any turnover yet. They'd been talk-

ing about the air raids and poison gas and the effect of

the war news downtown and the Bowmen of Mons and

the Maid of Orleans and she said she believed in the

supernatural, and J.W. was hinting something about re-

verses on the Street and his face looked drawn and wor-

ried; but they were crossing Times Square through the

eighto'clock crowds and the skysigns flashing on and off.

The fine little triangular men were doing exercises on the

Wrigley sign and suddenly a grindorgah began to play

The Marseillaise and it was too beautiful; she burst into

tears and they talked about Sacrifice and Dedication and

J.W. held her arm tight through the fur coat and gave

the organgrinder man a dollar. When they got to the

theater Eleanor hurried down to the ladies' room to see

if her eyes had got red. But when she looked in the mirror

they weren't red at all and there was a flash of heartfelt

feeling in her eyes, so she just freshened up her face and

went back up to the lobby, where J.W. was waiting for

her with the tickets in his hand; her gray eyes were flash-

ing and had tears in them.

Then one evening J.W. looked very worried indeed

and said when he was taking her home from the opera

where they'd seen Manon that his wife didn't under-

stand their relations and was making scenes and threaten-

ing to divorce him. Eleanor was indignant and said she

-353-

must have a very coarse nature not to understand that

their relations were pure as driven snow. J.W. said she

had and that he was very worried and he explained that

most of the capital invested in his agency was his mother-

in-law's and that she could bankrupt him if she wanted

to, which was much worse than a divorce. At that Eleanor

felt very cold and crisp and said that she would rather

go out of his life entirely than break up his home and

that he owed something to his lovely children. J.W. said

she was his inspiration and he had to have her in his life

and when they got back to Eighth Street they walked

back and forth in Eleanor's white glittering drawing-

room in the heavy smell of lilies wondering what could

be done. They smoked many cigarettes but they couldn't

seem to come to any decision. When J.W. left he said

with a sigh, "She may have detectives shadowing me this

very minute," and he went away very despondent.

After he'd gone Eleanor walked back and forth in front

of the long Venetian mirror between the windows. She

didn't know what to do. The decorating business was

barely breaking even. She had the amortization to pay

off on the house on Sutton Place. The rent of her apart-

ment was two months overdue and there was her fur coat

to pay for. She'd counted on the thousand dollars' worth

of shares J.W. had said would be hers if he made the

killing he expected in that Venezuela Oil stock. Something

must have gone wrong or else he would have spoken of

it. When Eleanor went to bed she didn't sleep. She felt

very miserable and lonely. She'd have to go back to the

drudgery of a department store. She was losing her looks

and her friends and now if she had to give up J.W. it

would be terrible. She thought of her colored maid

Augustine with her unfortunate loves that she always

told Eleanor about and she wished she'd been like that.

Maybe she'd been wrong from the start to want every-

thing so justright and beautiful. She didn't cry but she

-354-

lay all night with her eyes wide and smarting staring at

the flowered molding round the ceiling that she could see

in the light that filtered in from the street through her

lavender tulle curtains.

A couple of days later at the office she was looking at

some antique Spanish chairs an old furniture dealer was

trying to sell her when a telegram came: DISAGREEABLE

DEVELOPMENTS MUST SEE YOU INADVISABLE USE TELE-

PHONE MEET ME TEA FIVE OCLOCK PRINCE GEORGE HOTEL

It wasn't signed. She told the man to leave the chairs and

when he'd gone stood a long time looking down at a pot

of lavender crocuses with yellow pistils she had on her

desk. She was wondering if it would do any good if she

went out to Great Neck and talked to Gertrude Moore-

house. She called Miss Lee who was making up some cur-

tains in the other room and asked her to take charge of

the office and that she'd phone during the afternoon.

She got into a taxi and went up to the Pennsylvania

Station. It was a premature Spring day. People were walk-

ing along the street with their overcoats unbuttoned. The

sky was a soft mauve with frail clouds like milkweed floss.

In the smell of furs and overcoats and exhausts and

bundledup bodies came an unexpected scent of birchbark.

Eleanor sat bolt upright in the back of the taxi driving

her sharp nails into the palms of her graygloved hands.

She hated these treacherous days when winter felt like

Spring. They made the lines come out on her face, made

everything seem to crumble about her, there seemed to

be no firm footing any more. She'd go out and talk to

Gertrude Moorehouse as one woman to another. A scandal

would ruin everything. If she talked to her a while she'd

make her realize that there had never been anything

between her and J.W. A divorce scandal would ruin

everything. She'd lose her clients and have to go into

bankruptcy and the only thing to do would be to go back

to Pullman to live with her uncle and aunt.

-355-

She paid the taximan and went down the stairs to the

Long Island Railroad. Her knees were shaky and she felt

desperately tired as she pushed her way through the

crowd to the information desk. No, she couldn't get a train

to Great Neck till 2:13. She stood in line a long time for

a ticket. A man stepped on her foot. The line of people

moved maddeningly slowly past the ticketwindow. When

she got to the window it was several seconds before she

could remember the name of the place she wanted a ticket

for. The man looked at her through the window, with

peevish shoebutton eyes. He wore a green eyeshade and

his lips were too red for his pale face. The people behind

were getting impatient. A man with a tweed coat and a

heavy suitcase was already trying to brush past her. "Great

Neck and return." As soon as she'd bought the ticket the

thought came to her that she wouldn't have time to get

out there and back by five o'clock. She put the ticket in

her gray silk purse that had a little design in jet on it. She

thought of killing herself. She would take the subway

downtown and go up in the elevator to the top of the

Woolworth Building and throw herself off.

Instead she went out to the taxistation. Russet sunlight

was pouring through the gray colonnade, the blue smoke

of exhausts rose into it crinkled like watered silk. She got

into a taxi and told the driver to take her round Central

Park. Some of the twigs were red and there was a glint

on the long buds of beeches but the grass was still brown

and there were piles of dirty snow in the gutters. A

shivery raw wind blew across the ponds. The taximan

kept talking to her. She couldn't catch what he said and

got tired of making random answers and told him to leave

her at the Metropolitan Art Museum. While she was pay-

ing him a newsboy ran by crying "Extra!" Eleanor bought

a paper for a nickel and the taximan bought a paper. "I'll

be a sonova . . ." she heard the taximan exclaim, but she

ran up the steps fast for fear she'd have to talk to him.

-356-

When she got in the quiet silvery light of the musuem

she opened up the paper. A rancid smell of printer's ink

came from it; the ink was still sticky and came off on

her gloves.

DECLARATION OF WAR

A matter of hours now Washington Observers declare.

German note thoroughly unsatisfactory.

She left the newspaper on a bench and went to look at

the Rodins. After she'd looked at the Rodins she went to

the Chinese wing. By the time she was ready to go down

Fifth Avenue in the bus -- she felt she'd been spending too

much on taxis -- she felt elated. All the way downtown she

kept remembering the Age of Bronze. When she made

out J.W. in the stuffy pinkish light of the hotel lobby she

went towards him with a springy step. His jaw was set

and his blue eyes were on fire. He looked younger than

last time she'd seen him. "Well, it's come at last," he

said. "I just wired Washington offering my services to

the government. I'd like to see 'em try and pull a rail-

road strike now.""It's wonderful and terrible," said

Eleanor. "I'm trembling like a leaf."

They went to a little table in the corner behind some

heavy draperies to have tea. They had hardly sat down

before the orchestra started playing The Star-Spangled

Banner, and they had to get to their feet. There was great

bustle in the hotel. People kept running about with fresh

editions of the papers, laughing and talking loud. Per-

fect strangers borrowed each other's newspapers, chatted

about the war, lit cigarettes for each other.

"I have an idea, J.W.," Eleanor was saying, holding

a piece of cinnamontoast poised in her pointed fingers,

"that if I went out and talked to your wife as one woman

to another, she'd understand the situation better. When

I was decorating the house she was so kind and we got

along famously."

-357-

"I have offered my services to Washington," said Ward.

"There may be a telegram at the office now. I'm sure

that Gertrude will see that it is her simple duty."

"I want to go, J.W.," said Eleanor. "I feel I must go."

"Where?"

"To France."

"Don't do anything hasty, Eleanor."

"No, I feel I must . . . I could be a very good nurse

. . . I'm not afraid of anything; you ought to know

that, J.W."

The orchestra played The Star-Spangled Banner again;

Eleanor sang some of the chorus in a shrill little treble

voice. They were too excited to sit still long and went

over to J.W.'s office in a taxi. The office was in great

excitement. Miss Williams had had a flagpole put up in

the center window and was just raising the flag on it.

Eleanor went over to her and they shook hands warmly.

The cold wind was rustling the papers on the desk and

typewritten pages were sailing across the room but nobody

paid any attention. Down Fifth Avenue a band was com-

ing near playing Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here. All

along office windows were brightly lit, flags were slap-

ping against their poles in the cold wind, clerks and

stenographers were leaning out and cheering, dropping

out papers that sailed and whirled in the bitter eddying

wind.

"It's the Seventh Regiment," somebody said and they

all clapped and yelled. The band was clanging loud under

the window. They could hear the tramp of the militia-

men's feet. All the automobiles in the stalled traffic tooted

their horns. People on the tops of the busses were waving

small flags. Miss Williams leaned over and kissed Eleanor

on the cheek. J.W. stood by looking out over their heads

with a proud smile on his face.

After the band had gone and traffic was running again

they put the window down and Miss Williams went

-358-

around picking up and arranging loose papers. J.W. had

a telegram from Washington accepting his services on

the Public Information Committee that Mr. Wilson was

gathering about him and said he'd leave in the morning.

He called up Great Neck and asked Gertrude if he could

come out to dinner and bring a friend. Gertrude said he

might and that she hoped she'd be able to stay up to see

them. She was excited by the warnews but she said the

thought of all that misery and slaughter gave her horrible

pains in the back of the head.

"I have a hunch that if I take you out to dinner at

Gertrude's everything will be all right," he said to

Eleanor. "I'm rarely wrong in my hunches."

"Oh, I know she'll understand," said Eleanor.

As they were leaving the office they met Mr. Robbins

in the hall. He didn't take his hat off or the cigar out of

his mouth. He looked drunk. "What the hell is this,

Ward?" he said. "Are we at war or not?"

"If we're not we will be before morning," said J.W.

"It's the goddamnedest treason in history," said Mr.

Robbins. "What did we elect Wilson for instead of Old

Fuzzywhiskers except to keep us out of the goddam

mess?"

"Robbins, I don't agree with you for a minute," said

J.W. "I think it's our duty to save . . ." But Mr. Rob-

bins had disappeared through the office door leaving a

strong reek of whisky behind him. "I'd have given him

a piece of my mind," said Eleanor, "if I hadn't seen that

he was in no condition."

Driving out to Great Neck in the Pierce Arrow it was

thrilling. A long red afterglow lingered in the sky. Cross-

ing the Queensboro Bridge with the cold wind back of

them was like flying above lights and blocks of houses

and the purple bulk of Blackwell's Island and the steam-

boats and the tall chimneys and the blue light of power-

plants. They talked of Edith Cavell and airraids and flags

-359-

and searchlights and the rumble of armies advancing and

Joan of Arc. Eleanor drew the fur robe up to her chin

and thought about what she'd say to Gertrude Moore-

house.

When they got to the house she felt a little afraid of

a scene. She stopped in the hall to do up her face with a

pocketmirror she had in her bag.

Gertrude Moorehouse was sitting in a long chair be-

side a crackling fire. Eleanor glanced around the room

and was pleased at how lovely it looked. Gertrude Moore-

house went very pale when she saw her. "I wanted to talk

to you," said Eleanor. Gertrude Moorehouse held out her

hand without getting up. "Excuse me for not getting up,

Miss Stoddard," she said, "but I'm absolutely prostrated

by the terrible news."

"Civilization demands a sacrifice . . . from all of us,"

said Eleanor.

"Of course it is terrible what the Huns have done,

cutting the hands off Belgian children and all that," said

Gertrude Moorehouse.

"Mrs. Moorehouse," said Eleanor. "I want to speak to

you about this unfortunate misunderstanding of my rela-

tions with your husband . . . Do you think I am the sort

of woman who could come out here and face you if there

was anything in these horrible rumors? Our relations are

pure as driven snow."

"Please don't speak of it, Miss Stoddard. I believe

you."

When J.W. came in they were sitting on either side of

the fire talking about Gertrude's operation. Eleanor got

to her feet. "Oh, I think it's wonderful of you, J.W."

J.W. cleared his throat and looked from one to the

other.

"It's little less than my duty," he said.

"What is it?" asked Gertrude.

"I have offered my services to the government to serve

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in whatever capacity they see fit for the duration of the

war.""Not at the front," said Gertrude with a startled

look.

"I'm leaving for Washington tomorrow . . . Of course

I shall serve without pay."

"Ward, that's noble of you," said Gertrude. He walked

over slowly until he stood beside her chair, then he leaned

over and kissed her on the forehead. "We must all make

our sacrifices . . . My dear, I shall trust you and your

mother . . ."

"Of course, Ward, of course . . . It's all been a silly

misunderstanding." Gertrude flushed red. She got to her

feet. "I've been a damn suspicious fool . . . but you

mustn't go to the front, Ward. I'll talk mother around"

. . . She went up to him and put her hands on his shoul-

ders. Eleanor stood back against the wall looking at them.

He wore a smoothfitting tuxedo. Gertrude's salmon-

colored teagown stood out against the black. His light

hair was ashgray in the light from the crystal chandelier

against the tall ivorygray walls of the room. His face was

in shadow and looked very sad. Eleanor thought how little

people understood a man like that, how beautiful the

room was, like a play, like a Whistler, like Sarah Bern-

hardt. Emotion misted her eyes.

"I'll join the Red Cross," she said. "I can't wait to get

to France."

NEWSREEL XIX

U. S. AT WAR

UPHOLD NATION CITY'S CRY

Over there

Over there

-361-

at the annual meeting of the stockholders of the Colt

Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company a $2,500,000

melon was cut. The present capital stock was increased. The

profits for the year were 259 per cent

JOYFUL SURPRISE OF BRITISH

The Yanks are coming

We're coming o-o-o-ver

PLAN LEGISLATION TO KEEP COLORED PEOPLE FROM

WHITE AREAS

many millions paid for golf about Chicago Hindu agi-

tators in nationwide scare Armour Urges U. S. Save Earth

From Famine

ABUSING FLAG TO BE PUNISHED

Labor deputies peril to Russia acts have earmarks of dis-

honorable peace London hears

BILLIONS FOR ALLIES

And we won't come home

Till it's over over there.

THE CAMERA EYE (27)

there were priests and nuns on the Espagne the

Atlantic was glassgreen and stormy covers were

clamped on the portholes and all the decklights were

screened and you couldn't light a match on deck

but the stewards were very brave and said the Boche

wouldn't sink a boat of the Compagnie Generale anyway,

-362-

because of the priests and nuns and the Jesuits and the

Comité des Forges promising not to bombard the Bassin

de la Brieye where the big smelters were and stock in the

company being owned by the Prince de Bourbon and the

Jesuits and the priests and nuns

anyhow everybody was very brave except for Colonel

and Mrs. Knowlton of the American Red Cross who

had waterproof coldproof submarineproof suits like

eskimosuits and they wore them and they sat up on deck

with the suits all blown up and only their faces showing

and there were firstaid kits in the pockets and in the belt

there was a waterproof container with milkchocolate and

crackers and maltedmilk tablets

and in the morning you'd walk round the deck and

there would be Mr. Knowlton blowing up Mrs. Knowlton

or Mrs. Knowlton blowing up Mr. Knowlton

the Roosevelt boys were very brave in stiff visored

new American army caps and sharpshooter medals on the

khaki whipcord and they talked all day about We must

come in We must come in

as if the war were a swimming pool

and the barman was brave and the stewards were

brave they'd all been wounded and they were very glad

that they were stewards and not in the trenches

and the pastry was magnificent

at last it was the zone and a zigzag course we sat

-363-

quiet in the bar and then it was the mouth of the Gironde

and a French torpedoboat circling round the ship in the

early pearl soft morning and the steamers following the

little patrolboat on account of the minefields the sun

was rising red over the ruddy winegrowing land and the

Gironde was full of freighters and airplanes in the sun

and battleships

the Garonne was red it was autumn there were

barrels of new wine and shellcases along the quays in front

of the grayfaced houses and the masts of stocky sailboats

packed in against the great red iron bridge

at the Hotel of the Seven Sisters everybody was in

mourning but business was brisk on account of the war and

every minute they expected the government to come down

from Paris

up north they were dying in the mud and the trenches

but business was good in Bordeaux and the winegrowers

and the shipping agents and the munitionsmakers crowded

into the Chapon Fin and ate ortolans and mushrooms and

truffles and there was a big sign

MEFIEZ-VOUS

les oreilles enemies vous icoutent

red wine twilight and yellowgravelled squares edged

with winebarrels and a smell of chocolate in the park

gray statues and the names of streets

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Street of Lost Hopes, Street of the Spirit of the

Laws, Street of Forgotten Footsteps

and the smell of burning leaves and the grayfaced

Bourbon houses crumbling into red wine twilight

at the Hotel of the Seven Sisters after you were in

bed late at night you suddenly woke up and there was a

secretserviceagent going through your bag

and he frowned over your passport and peeped in

your books and said Monsieur c'est la petite visite

FIGHTING BOB

La Follette was born in the town limits of Prim-

rose; he worked on a farm in Dane County, Wis-

consin, until he was nineteen.

At the university of Wisconsin he worked his way

through. He wanted to be an actor, studied elocution

and Robert Ingersoll and Shakespeare and Burke;

(who will ever explain the influence of Shake-

speare in the last century, Marc Antony over Caesar's

bier, Othello to the Venetian Senate and Polonius,

everywhere Polonius?)

riding home in a buggy after commencement he

was Booth and Wilkes writing the Junius papers and

Daniel Webster and Ingersoll defying God and the

togaed great grave and incorruptible as statues mag-

nificently spouting through the capitoline centuries;

he was the star debater in his class,

-365-

and won an interstate debate with an oration on

the character of Iago.

He went to work in a law office and ran for dis-

trict attorney. His schoolfriends canvassed the county

riding round evenings. He bucked the machine and

won the election.

It was the revolt of the young man against the

state republican machine

and Boss Keyes the postmaster in Madison who

ran the county was so surprised he about fell out of his

chair.

That gave La Follette a salary to marry on. He

was twentyfive years old.

Four years later he ran for congress; the univer-

sity was with him again; he was the youngsters' candi-

date. When he was elected he was the youngest rep-

resentative in the house

He was introduced round Washington by Philetus

Sawyer the Wisconsin lumber king who was used to

stacking and selling politicians the way he stacked and

sold cordwood.

He was a Republican and he'd bucked the ma-

chine. Now they thought they had him. No man

could stay honest in Washington.

Booth played Shakespeare in Baltimore that win-

ter. Booth never would go to Washington on account

of the bitter memory of his brother. Bob La Follette

and his wife went to every performance.

In the parlor of the Plankinton Hotel in Mil-

waukee during the state fair, Boss Sawyer the lumber

king tried to bribe him to influence his brother-in-law

-366-

who was presiding judge over the prosecution of the

Republican state treasurer;

Bob La Follette walked out of the hotel in a white

rage. From that time it was war without quarter with

the Republican machine in Wisconsin until he was

elected governor and wrecked the Republican machine;

this was the tenyears war that left Wisconsin the

model state where the voters, orderloving Germans

and Finns, Scandinavians fond of their own opinion,

learned to use the new leverage, direct primaries, ref-

erendum and recall.

La Follette taxed the railroads

John C. Payne said to a group of politicians in the

lobby of the Ebbitt House in Washington "La Fol-

lette's a damn fool if he thinks he can buck a railroad

with five thousand miles of continuous track, he'll find

he's mistaken . . . We'll take care of him when the

time comes."

But when the time came the farmers of Wisconsin

and the young lawyers and doctors and businessmen

just out of school

took care of him

and elected him governor three times

and then to the United States Senate,

where he worked all his life making long

speeches full of statistics, struggling to save democratic

government, to make a farmers' and small business-

men's commonwealth, lonely with his back to the wall,

fighting corruption and big business and high finance

-367-

and trusts and combinations of combinations and the

miasmic lethargy of Washington.

He was one of "the little group of wilful men

expressing no opinion but their own"

who stood out against Woodrow Wilson's armed

ship bill that made war with Germany certain; they

called it a filibuster but it was six men with nerve

straining to hold back a crazy steamroller with their

bare hands;

the press pumped hatred into its readers against

La Follette,

the traitor,

they burned him in effigy in Illinoisi

in Wheeling they refused to let him speak.

In nineteen twentyfour La Follette ran for presi-

dent and without money or political machine rolled up

four and a half million votes

but he was a sick man, incessant work and the

breathed out air of committee rooms and legislative

chambers choked him

and the dirty smell of politicians,

and he died,

an orator haranguing from the capitol of a lost

republic;

but we will remember

how he sat firm in March nineteen seventeen

while Woodrow Wilson was being inaugurated for the

second time, and for three days held the vast machine

at deadlock. They wouldn't let him speak; the gal-

leries glared hatred at him; the senate was a lynching

party,

a stumpy man with a lined face, one leg stuck out

-368-

in the aisle and his arms folded and a chewed cigar

in the corner of his mouth

and an undelivered speech on his desk,

a wilful man expressing no opinion but his own.

CHARLEY ANDERSON

Charley Anderson's mother kept a railroad boarding-

house near the Northern Pacific station at Fargo, N. D.

It was a gabled frame house with porches all round,

painted mustard yellow with chocolatebrown trim and

out back there was always washing hanging out on

sagging lines that ran from a pole near the kitchen door

to a row of brokendown chickenhouses. Mrs. Anderson

was a quietspoken grayhaired woman with glasses; the

boarders were afraid of her and did their complaining

about the beds, or the food, or that the eggs weren't fresh

to waddling bigarmed Lizzie Green from the north of

Ireland who was the help and cooked and did all the

housework. When any of the boys came home drunk it

was Lizzie with a threadbare man's overcoat pulled over

her nightgown who came out to make them shut up. One

of the brakemen tried to get fresh with Lizzie one night

and got such a sock in the jaw that he fell clear off the

front porch. It was Lizzie who washed and scrubbed

Charley when he was little, who made him get to school

on time and put arnica on his knees when he skinned them

and soft soap on his chilblains and mended the rents in

his clothes. Mrs. Anderson had already raised three chil-

dren who had grown up and left home before Charley

came, so that she couldn't seem to keep her mind on

Charley. Mr. Anderson had also left home about the time

Charley was born; he'd had to go West on account of his

-369-

weak lungs, couldn't stand the hard winters, was how Mrs.

Anderson put it. Mrs. Anderson kept the accounts, pre-

served or canned strawberries, peas, peaches, beans, to-

matoes, pears, plums, applesauce as each season came

round, made Charley read a chapter of the Bible every

day and did a lot of churchwork.

Charley was a chunky little boy with untidy towhair

and gray eyes. He was a pet with the boarders and liked

things allright except Sundays when he'd have to go to

church twice and to sundayschool and then right after

dinner his mother would read him her favorite sections of

Matthew or Esther or Ruth and ask him questions about

the chapters he'd been assigned for the week. This lesson

took place at a table with a red tablecloth next to a window

that Mrs. Anderson kept banked with pots of patience-

plant, wandering jew, begonias and ferns summer and

winter. Charley would have pins and needles in his legs

and the big dinner he'd eaten would have made him

drowsy and he was terribly afraid of committing the sin

against the holy ghost which his mother hinted was in-

attention in church or in sundayschool or when she was

reading him the Bible. Winters the kitchen was absolutely

quiet except for the faint roaring of the stove or Lizzie's

heavy step or puffing breath as she stacked the dinner-

dishes she'd just washed back in the cupboard. Summers

it was much worse. The other kids would have told him

about going swimming down in the Red River or fishing

or playing follow my leader in the lumberyard or on the

coalbunkers back of the roundhouse and the caught flies

would buzz thinly in the festooned tapes of flypaper and

he'd hear the yardengine shunting freightcars or the

through train for Winnipeg whistling for the station and

the bell clanging, and he'd feel sticky and itchy in his

stiff collar and he'd keep looking up at the loudticking

porcelain clock on the wall. It made the time go too slowly

to look up at the clock often, so he wouldn't let himself

-370-

look until he thought fifteen minutes had gone by, but

when he looked again it'd only be five minutes and he'd

feel desperate. Maybe it'd be better to commit the sin

against the holy ghost right there and be damned good

and proper once and for all and run away with a tramp

the way Dolphy Olsen did, but he didn't have the nerve.

By the time he was ready for highschool he began to

find funny things in the Bible, things like the kids talked

about when they got tired playing toad in the hole in

the deep weeds back of the lumberyard fence, the part

about Onan and the Levite and his concubine and the

Song of Solomon, it made him feel funny and made his.

heart pound when he read it, like listening to scraps of

talk among the railroad men in the boardinghouse, and

he knew what hookers were and what was happening when

women got so fat in front and it worried him and he was

careful when he talked to his mother not to let her know

he knew about things like that.

Charley's brother Jim had married the daughter of a

liverystable owner in Minneapolis. The spring Charley

was getting ready to graduate from the eighth grade they

came to visit Mrs. Anderson. Jim smoked cigars right in

the house and jollied his mother and while he was there

there was no talk of biblereading. Jim took Charley fish-

ing one Sunday up the Sheyenne and told him that if

he came down to the Twin Cities when school was over

he'd give him a job helping round the garage he was

starting up in part of his fatherinlaw's liverystable. It

sounded good when he told the other guys in school that

he had a job in the city for the summer. He was glad to

get out as his sister Esther had just come back from taking

a course in nursing and nagged him all the time about

talking slang and not keeping his clothes neat and eating

too much pie.

He felt fine the morning he went over to Moorhead

all alone, carrying a suitcase Esther had lent him, to take

-371-

the train for the Twin Cities. At the station he tried to

buy a package of cigarettes but the man at the newsstand

kidded him and said he was too young. When he started

it was a fine spring day a little too hot. There was sweat

on the flanks of the big horses pulling the long line of

flourwagons that was crossing the bridge. While he was

waiting in the station the air became stifling and a steamy

mist came up. The sunlight shone red on the broad backs

of the grain elevators along the track. He heard one man

say to another, "Looks to me like it might be a tornado,"

and when he got on the train he half leaned out of the

open window watching purple thunderheads building up

in the northwest beyond the brightgreen wheat that

stretched clear to the clouds. He kinda hoped it would be

a tornado because he'd never seen one, but when the

lightning began cracking like a whip out of the clouds he

felt a little scared, though being on the train with the

conductor and the other passengers made it seem safer.

It wasn't a tornado but it was a heavy thundershower and

the wheatfields turned to zinc as great trampling hissing

sheets of rain advanced slowly across them. Afterwards

the sun came out and Charley opened the window and

everything smelt like spring and there were birds singing

in all the birchwoods and in the dark firs round all the

little shining lakes.

Jim was there to meet him at the Union Depot in a

Ford truck. They stopped at the freight station and

Charley had to help load a lot of heavy packages of spare

parts shipped from Detroit and marked "Vogel's Garage."

Charley tried to look as if he'd lived in a big city all his

life, but the clanging trolleycars and the roughshod hoofs

of truckhorses striking sparks out of the cobbles and the

goodlooking blond girls and the stores and the big Ger-

man beersaloons and the hum that came from mills and

machineshops went to his head. Jim looked tall and thin

in his overalls and had a new curt way of talking. "Kid,

-372-

you see you mind yourself a little up to the house; the

old man's an old German, Hedwig's old man, an' a little

pernickety, like all old Germans are," said Jim when

they'd filled the truck and were moving slowly through

the heavy traffic. "Sure, Jim," said Charley and he began

to feel a little uneasy about what it 'ud be like living in

Minneapolis. He wished Jim 'ud smile a little more.

Old man Vogel was a stocky redfaced man with un-

tidy gray hair and a potbelly, fond of dumpling and stews

with plenty of rich sauce on them and beer, and Jim's

wife Hedwig was his only daughter. His wife was dead

but he had a middleaged German woman everybody ad-

dressed as Aunt Hartmann to keep house for him. She

followed the men around all the time with a mop and

between her and Hedwig, whose blue eyes had a peevish

look because she was going to have a baby in the fall, the

house was so spotless that you could have eaten a fried

egg off the linoleum anywhere. They never let the win-

dows be opened for fear of the dust coming in. The house

was right on the street and the livery stable was in the

yard behind, entered through an alley beyond which was

the old saddler's shop that had just been done over as a

garage. When Jim and Charley drove up the signpainters

were on a stepladder out front putting up the new shiny

red and white sign that read " VOGEL'S GARAGE.""The old

bastard," muttered Jim. "He said held call it Vogel and

Anderson's, but what the hell!" Everything smelt of

stables and a colored man was leading a skinny horse

around with a blanket over him.

All that summer Charley washed cars and drained

transmissions and relined brakes. He was always dirty

and greasy in greasy overalls, in the garage by seven

every morning and not through till late in the evening

when he was too tired to do anything but drop into the

cot that had been fixed for him in the attic over the garage.

Jim gave him a dollar a week for pocket money and ex.

-373-

plained that he was mighty generous to do it as it was to

Charley's advantage to learn the business. Saturday nights

he was the last one to get a bath and there usually wasn't

anything but lukewarm water left so that he'd have a

hard time getting cleaned up. Old man Vogel was a

socialist and no churchgoer and spent all day Sunday drink-

ing beer with his cronies. At Sunday dinner everybody

talked German, and Jim and Charley sat at the table

glumly without saying anything, but old Vogel plied them

with beer and made jokes at which Hedwig and Aunt

Hartmann always laughed uproariously, and after dinner

Charley's head would be swimming from the beer that

tasted awful bitter to him, but he felt he had to drink it,

and old man Vogel would tease him to smoke a cigar and

then tell him to go out and see the town. He'd walk out

feeling overfed and a little dizzy and take the streetcar

to St. Paul to see the new state capitol or to Lake Har-

riet or go out to Big Island Park and ride on the roller-

coaster or walk around the Parkway until his feet felt like

they'd drop off. He didn't know any kids his own age at

first, so he took to reading for company. He'd buy every

number of Popular Mechanics and The Scientific Ameri-

can and Adventure and The Wide World Magazine.

He had it all planned to start building a yawlboat from

the plans in The Scientific American and to take a trip

down to the Mississippi River to the Gulf. He'd live

by shooting ducks and fishing for catfish. He started sav-

ing up his dollars to buy himself a shotgun.

He liked it all right at old man Vogel's, though, on

account of not having to read the Bible or go to church,

and he liked tinkering with motors and learned to drive

the Ford truck. After a while he got to know Buck and

Slim Jones, two brothers about his age who lived down

the block. He was a pretty big guy to them on account of

working in a garage. Buck sold newspapers and had a

system of getting into movingpicture shows by the exit

-374-

doors and knew all the best fences to see ballgames from.

Once Charley got to know the Jones boys he'd run round

to their place as soon as he was through dinner Sundays

and they'd have a whale of a time getting hitches all over

the place on graintrucks, riding on the back bumpers of

streetcars and getting chased by cops and going out on

the lumber booms and going swimming and climbing

round above the falls and he'd get back all sweaty and

with his good suit dirty and be bawled out by Hedwig

for being late for supper. Whenever old Vogel found the

Jones boys hanging round the garage he'd chase them out,

but when he and Jim were away, Gus the colored stable-

man would come over smelling of horses and tell them

stories about horseraces and fast women and whiskydrink-

ing down at Louisville and the proper way to take a girl

the first time and how he and his steady girl just did it all

night without stopping not even for a minute.

Labor Day old man Vogel took Jim and his daughter

and Aunt Hartmann out driving in the surrey behind a

fine pair of bays that had been left with him to sell and

Charley was left to take care of the garage in case some-

body came along who wanted gas or oil. Buck and Slim

came round and they all talked about how it was Labor

Day and wasn't it hell to pay that they weren't going out

anywhere. There was a doubleheader out at the Fair

Grounds and lots of other ballgames around. The trouble

started by Charley showing Buck how to drive the truck,

then to show him better he had to crank her up, then

before he knew it he was telling them held take them for

a ride round the block. After they'd ridden round the

block he went back and closed up the garage and they

went joyriding out towards Minnehaha. Charley said to

himself he'd drive very carefully and be home hours

before the folks got back, but somehow he found himself

speeding down an asphalt boulevard and almost ran into

a ponycart full of little girls that turned in suddenly

-375-

from a side road. Then on the way home they were drink-

ing sarsaparilla out of the bottles and having a fine time

when Buck suddenly said there was a cop on a motorcycle

following them. Charley speeded up to get away from the

cop, made a turn too sharp and stopped with a crash

against a telegraph pole. Buck and Slim beat it as fast as

they could run and there was Charley left to face the cop.

The cop was a Swede and cursed and swore and bawled

him out and said he'd take him to the hoosegow for driv-

ing without a license, but Charley found his brother Jim's

license under the seat and said his brother had told him

to take the car back to the garage after they'd delivered

a load of apples out at Minnehaha and the cop let him

off and said to drive more carefully another time. The

car ran all right except one fender was crumpled up and

the steering wheel was a little funny. Charley drove home

so slow that the radiator was boiling over when he got

back and there was the surrey standing in front of the

house and Gus holding the bays by the head and all the

family just getting out.

There was nothing he could say. The first thing they

saw was the crumpled fender. They all lit into him and

Aunt Hartmann yelled the loudest and old Vogel was

purple in the face and they all talked German at him and

Hedwig yanked at his coat and slapped his face and they

all said Jim 'd have to give him a licking. Charley got

sore and said nobody was going to give him a licking and

then Jim said he reckoned he'd better go back to Fargo

anyway, and Charley went up and packed his suitcase and

went off without saying goodby to any of them that eve-

ning with his suitcase in one hand and five back numbers

of The Argosy under his arm. He had just enough jack

saved up to get a ticket to Barnesville. After that he had

to play hide and seek with the conductor until he dropped

off the train at Moorhead. His mother was glad to see

him and said he was a good boy to get back in time to

-376-

visit with her a little before highschool opened and talked

about his being confirmed. Charley didn't say anything

about the Ford truck and decided in his mind he wouldn't

be confirmed in any damned church. He ate a big break-

fast that Lizzie fixed for him and went into his room and

lay down on the bed. He wondered if not wanting to be

confirmed was the sin against the holy ghost but the

thought didn't scare him as much as it used to. He was

sleepy from sitting up on the train all night and fell

asleep right away.

Charley dragged through a couple of years of high-

school, making a little money helping round the Moor-

head Garage evenings, but he didn't like it home any

more after he got back from his trip to the Twin Cities.

His mother wouldn't let him work Sundays and nagged

him about being confirmed and his sister Esther nagged

him about everything and Lizzie treated him as if he

was still a little kid, called him "Pet" before the boarders

and he was sick of schooling, so the spring when he was

seventeen, after commencement, he went down to M in-

neapolis again looking for a job on his own this time. As

he had money to keep him for a few days the first thing

he did was to go down to Big Island Park. He wanted

to ride on the rollercoasters and shoot in the shooting-

galleries and go swimming and pick up girls. He was

through with hick towns like Fargo and Moorhead where

nothing ever happened.

It was almost dark when he got to the lake. As the

little steamboat drew up to the wharf he could hear the

jazzband through the trees, and the rasp and rattle of

the rollercoaster and yells as a car took a dip. There were

a dancing pavilion and colored lights among the trees

and a smell of girls' perfumery and popcorn and molasses

candy and powder from the shooting gallery and the

barkers were at it in front of their booths. As it was

Monday evening there weren't very many people. Charley

-377-

went round the rollercoaster a couple of times and got to

talking with the young guy who ran it about what the

chances were of getting a job round there.

The guy said to stick around, Svenson the manager

would be there when they closed up at eleven, and he

thought he might be looking for a guy. The guy's name

was Ed Walters; he said it wasn't much of a graft but

that Svenson was pretty straight; he let Charley take a

couple of free rides to see how the rollercoaster worked

and handed him out a bottle of cream soda and told him

to keep his shirt on. This was his second year in the amuse-

ment game and he had a sharp foxface and a wise man-

ner.

Charley's heart was thumping when a big hollowfaced

man with. coarse sandy hair came round to collect the

receipts at the ticket booth. That was Svenson. He looked

Charley up and down and said he'd try him out for a

week and to remember that this was a quiet family amuse-

ment park and that he wouldn't stand for any rough stuff

and told him to come round at ten the next morning.

Charley said "So long" to Ed Walters and caught the

last boat and car back to town. When he got out of the

car it was too late to take his bag out of the station parcel-

room; he didn't want to spend money on a room or to

go out to Jim's place so he slept on a bench in front of

the City Hall. It was a warm night and it made him feel

good to be sleeping on a bench like a regular hobo. The

arclights kept getting in his eyes, though, and he was

nervous about the cop; it'd be a hell of a note to get

pinched for a rag and lose the job out at the park. His

teeth were chattering when he woke up in the gray early

morning. The arclights spluttered pink against a pale

lemonyellow sky; the big business blocks with all their

empty windows looked funny and gray and deserted. He

had to walk fast pounding the pavement with his heels

to get the blood going through his veins again.

-378-

He found a stand where he could get a cup of coffee

and a doughnut for five cents and went out to Lake Min-

netonka on the first car. It was a bright summer day with

a little north in the wind. The lake was very blue and the

birchtrunks looked very white and the little leaves danced

in the wind greenyellow against the dark evergreens and

the dark blue of the sky. Charley thought it was the most

beautiful place he'd ever seen. He waited a long time

drowsing in the sun on the end of the wharf for the boat

to start over to the island. When he got there the park

was all locked up, there were shutters on all the booths

and the motionless red and blue cars of the rollercoaster

looked forlorn in the morning light. Charley roamed

round for a while but his eyes smarted and his legs ached

and his suitcase was too heavy, so he found a place

sheltered by the wall of a shack from the wind and lay

down in the warm sun on the pineneedles and went to

sleep with his suitcase beside him.

He woke up with a start. His Ingersoll said eleven. He

had a cold sinking feeling. It'd be lousy to lose the job

by being late. Svenson was there sitting in the ticket

booth at the rollercoaster with a straw hat on the back

of his head. He didn't say anything about the time. He

just told Charley to take his coat off and help MacDonald

the engineer oil up the motor.

Charley worked on that rollercoaster all summer until

the park closed in September. He lived in a little camp

over at Excelsior with Ed Walters and a wop named

Spagnolo who had a candy concession.

In the next camp Svenson lived with his six daughters.

His wife was dead. Anna the eldest was about thirty and

was cashier at the amusement park, two of them were

waitresses at the Tonka Bay Hotel and the others were

in highschool and didn't work. They were all tall and

blond and had nice complexions. Charley fell for the

youngest, Emiscah, who was just about his age. They had

-379-

a float and a springboard and they all went in swimming

together. Charley wore a bathingsuit upper and a pair of

khaki pants all summer and got very sunburned. Ed's

girl was Zona and all four of them used to go out canoe-

ing after the amusement park closed, particularly warm

nights when there was a moon. They didn't drink but

they smoked cigarettes and played the phonograph and

kissed and cuddled up together in the bottom of the canoe.

When they'd got back to the boys' camp, Spagnolo would

be in bed and they'd haze him a little and put junebugs

under his blankets and he'd curse and swear and toss

around. Emiscah was a great hand for making fudge, and

Charley was crazy about her and she seemed to like him.

She taught him how to frenchkiss and would stroke his

hair and rub herself up against him like a cat but she

never let him go too far and he wouldn't have thought it

was right anyway. One night all four of them went out

and built a fire under a pine in a patch of big woods up the

hill back of the camps. They toasted marshmallows and

sat round the fire telling ghoststories. They had blankets

and Ed knew how to make a bed with hemlock twigs

stuck in the ground and they all four of them slept in the

same blankets and tickled each other and roughhoused

around and it took them a long time to get to sleep. Part

of the time Charley lay between the two girls and they

cuddled up close to him, but he got a hard on and couldn't

sleep and was worried for fear the girls would notice.

He learned to dance and to play poker and when labor-

day came he hadn't saved any money but he felt he'd

had a wonderful summer.

He and Ed got a room together in St. Paul. He got

a job as machinist's assistant in the Northern Pacific shops

and made fair money. He learned to run an electric lathe

and started a course in nightschool to prepare for civil

engineering at the Mechanical Arts High. Ed didn't seem

to have much luck about jobs, all he seemed to be able

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to do was pick up a few dollars now and then as attendant

at a bowling alley. Sundays they often ate dinner with the

Svensons. Mr. Svenson was running a small movie house

called the Leif Ericsson on Fourth Street but things

weren't going so well. He took it for granted that the

boys were engaged to two of his daughters and was only

too glad to see them come around. Charley took Emiscah

out every Saturday night and spent a lot on candy and

taking her to vaudeville shows and to a Chink restaurant

where you could dance afterwards. At Christmas he gave

her his seal ring and after that she admitted that she was

engaged to him. They'd go back to the Svensons' and sit

on the sofa in the parlor hugging and kissing.

She seemed to enjoy getting him all wrought up, then

she'd run off and go and fix her hair or put some rouge

on her face and be gone a long time and he'd hear her

upstairs giggling with her sisters. He'd walk up and down

in the parlor, where there was only one light in a flowered

shade, feeling nervous and jumpy. He didn't know what

to do. He didn't want to get married because that 'ud

keep him from traveling round the country and getting

ahead in studying engineering. The other guys at the shop

who weren't married went down the line or picked up

streetwalkers, but Charley was afraid of getting a disease

and he never seemed to have any time what with night-

school and all, and besides it was Emiscah he wanted.

After he'd given her a last rough kiss, feeling her

tongue in his mouth and his nostrils full of her hair and

the taste of her mouth in his mouth he'd walk home with

his ears ringing, feeling sick and weak; when he got to

bed he couldn't sleep but would toss around all night

thinking he was going mad and Ed'd grunt at him from

the other side of the bed for crissake to keep still.

In February Charley got a bad sore throat and the

doctor he went to said it was diphtheria and sent him to

the hospital. He was terribly sick for several days after

-381-

they gave him the antitoxin. When he was getting better

Ed and Emiscah came to see him and sat on the edge of

his bed and made him feel good. Ed was all dressed up

and said he had a new job and was making big money but

he wouldn't tell what it was. Charley got the idea that

Ed and Emiscah were going round together a little since

he'd been sick but he didn't think anything of it.

The man in the next cot, who was also recovering from

diphtheria, was a lean grayhaired man named Michaelson.

He'd been working in a hardware store that winter and

was having a hard time. Up to a couple of years before

held had a farm in Iowa in the cornbelt, but a series of

bad crops had ruined him, the bank had foreclosed and

taken the farm and offered to let him work it as a tenant

but he'd said he'd be damned if he'd work as a tenant

for any man and had pulled up his stakes and come to

the city, and here he was fifty years old with a wife and

three small children to support trying to start from the

ground up again. He was a great admirer of Bob La

Follette and had a theory that the Wall Street bankers

were conspiring to seize the government and run the

country by pauperizing the farmer. He talked all day in

a thin wheezy voice until the nurse made him shut up,

about the Non-Partisan League and the Farmer-Labor

party and the destiny of the great northwest and the

need for workingmen and farmers to stick together to

elect honest men like Bob La Follette. Charley had joined

a local of an A. F. of L. union that fall and Michaelson's

talk, broken by spells of wheezing and coughing, made

him feel excited and curious about politics. He decided

he'd read the papers more and keep up with what was

going on in the world. What with this war and every-

thing you couldn't tell what might happen.

When Michaelson's wife and children came to see him

he introduced them to Charley and said that being laid up

next to a bright young fellow like that made being sick

-382-

a pleasure. It made Charley feel bad to see how miserably

pale and illfed they looked and what poor clothes they had

on in this zero weather. He left the hospital before

Michaelson did and the last thing Michaelson said when

Charley leaned over him to shake his dry bony hand was

"Boy, you read Henry George, do you hear . . . ? He

knows what's the trouble with this country; damme if

he don't."

Charley was so, glad to be walking on his pins down the

snowy street in the dryicecold wind and to get the smell

of iodoform and sick people out of his head that he forgot

all about it.

First thing he did was to go to Svenson's. Emiscah

asked him where Ed Walters was. He said he hadn't been

home and didn't know. She looked worried when he said

that and he wondered about it. "Don't Zona know?" asked

Charley. "No, Zona's got a new felleri that's all she thinks

about." Then she smiled and patted his hand and babied

him a little bit and they sat on the sofa and she brought

out some fudge she'd made and they held hands and

gave each other sticky kisses and Charley felt happy.

When Anna came in she said how thin he looked and

that they'd have to feed him up, and he stayed to supper.

Mr. Svenson said to come and eat supper with them every

night for a while until he was on his feet again. After

supper they all played hearts in the front parlor and had

a fine time.

When Charley got back to his lodging house he met

the landlady in the hall. She said his friend had left with-

out paying the rent and that he'd pay up right here and

now or else she wouldn't let him go up to his room. He

argued with her and said he'd just come out of the hos-

pital and she finally said she'd let him stay another week.

She was a big softlooking woman with puckered cheeks

and a yellow chintz apron full of little pockets. When

Charley got up to the hall bedroom where he'd slept all

-383-

winter with Ed, it was miserably cold and lonely. He

got into the bed between the icy sheets and lay shivering,

feeling weak and kiddish and almost ready to cry, won-

dering why the hell Ed had gone off without leaving him

word and why Emiscah had looked so funny when he

said he didn't know where Ed was.

Next day he went to the shop and got his old job back,

though he was so weak he wasn't much good. The fore-

man was pretty decent about it and told him to go easy

for a few days, but he wouldn't pay him for the time he

was sick because he wasn't an old employee and hadn't

gotten a certificate from the company doctor. That eve-

ning he went to the bowlingalley where Ed used to work.

The barkeep upstairs said Ed had beaten it to Chi on

account of some flimflam about raffling off a watch. "Good

riddance, if you ask me," he said. "That bozo has all the

makin's of a bad egg.

He had a letter from Jim saying that ma had written

from Fargo that she was worried about him and that

Charley had better let Jim take a look at him so he went

over to the Vogels' next Sunday. First thing he did when

he saw Jim was to say that busting up the Ford had been

a damn fool kid's trick and they shook hands on it and

Jim said nobody would say anything about it and that

he'd better stay and eat with them. The meal was fine

and the beer was fine. Jim's kid was darn cute; it was

funny to think that he was an uncle. Even Hedwig didn't

seem so peevish as before. The garage was making good

money and old man Vogel was going to give up the livery-

stable and retire. When Charley said he was studying at

nightschool old Vogel began to pay more attention to

him. Somebody said something about La. Follette and

Charley said he was a big man.

"Vat is the use being a big man if you are wrong?" said

old Vogel with beersuds in his mustache. He took an-

other draft out of his stein and looked at Charley with

-384-

sparkling blue eyes. "But dot's only a beginning . . . ve

vill make a sozialist out of you yet." Charley blushed and

said, "Well, I don't know about that," and Aunt Hart-

mann piled another helping of hasenpfeffer and noodles

and mashed potatoes on his plate.

One raw March evening he took Emiscah to see "The

Birth of a Nation." The battles and the music and the

bugles made them all jelly inside. They both had tears in

their eyes when the two boys met on the battlefield and

died in each other's arms on the battlefield. When the

Ku Klux Klan charged across the screen Charley had his

leg against Emiscah's leg and she dug her fingers into

his knee so hard it hurt. When they came out Charley

said by heck he thought he wanted to go up to Canada

and enlist and go over and see the Great War. Emiscah

said not to be silly and then looked at him kinda funny

and asked him if he was pro-British. He said he didn't

care and that the only fellows that would gain would be

the bankers, whoever won. She said, "Isn't it terrible?

Let's not talk about it any more."

When they got back to the Svensons', Mr. Svenson

was sitting in the parlor in his shirtsleeves reading the

paper. He got up and went to meet Charley with a wor-

ried frown on his face and was just about to say some-

thing when Emiscah shook her head. He shrugged his

shoulders and went out. Charley asked Emiscah what

was eating the old man. She grabbed hold of him and put

her head on his shoulder and burst out crying. "What's

the matter, kittens what's the matter, kitten?" he kept

asking. She just cried and cried until he could feel her

tears on his cheek and neck and said, "For crissake, snap

out of it, kitten; you're wilting my collar."

She let herself drop on the sofa and he could see that

she was working hard to pull herself together. He sat

down beside her and kept patting her hand. Suddenly she

got up and stood in the middle of the floor. He tried to

-385-

put his arms around her to pet her but she pushed him

off. "Charley," she said in a hard strained voice, "lemme

tellye somethin' . . . I think I'm goin' to have a baby."

"But you're crazy. We haven't ever . . ."

"Maybe it's somebody else . . . Oh, God, I'm going

to kill myself."

Charley took her by the arms and made her sit down

on the sofa. "Now pull yourself together, and tell me

what the trouble is."

"I wish you'd beat me up," Emiscah said, laughing

crazily. "Go ahead; hit me with your fist."

Charley went weak all over.

"Tell me what the trouble is," he said. "By Jez, it

couldn't be Ed."

She looked up at him with scared eyes, her face drawn

like an old woman's. "No, no . . . Here's how it is. I'm

a month past my time, see, and I don't know enough about

things like that, so I asks Anna about it and she says I'm

goin' to have a baby sure and that we've got to get married

right away and she told dad, the dirty little sneak, and I

couldn't tell 'em it wasn't you . . . They think it's you,

see, and dad says it's all right, young folks bein' like that

nowadays an' everythin' an' says we'll have to get married

and I thought I wouldn't let on an' you'd never know,

but, kid, I had to tell you."

"Oh, Jez," said Charley. He looked at the flowered

pink shade with a fringe over the lamp on the table be-

side him and the tablecover with a fringe and at his shoes

and the roses on the carpet. "Who was it?"

"It was when you were in the hospital, Charley. We

had a lot of beer to drink an' he took me to a hotel. I

guess I'm just bad, that's all. He was throwin' money

around an' we went in a taxicab and I guess I was crazy.

No, I'm a bad woman through and through, Charley. I

went out with him every night when you were in the

hospital."

-386-

"By God, it was Ed."

She nodded and then hid her face and started to cry

again.

"The lousy little bastard," Charley kept saying. She

crumpled up on the sofa with her face in her hands.

"He's gone to Chicago . . . He's a bad egg allright,"

said Charley.

He felt he had to get out in the air. He picked up his

coat and hat and started to put them on. Then she got to

her feet and threw herself against him. She held him

close and her arms were tight round his neck. "Honestly,

Charley, I loved you all the time . . . I pretended to

myself it was you." She kissed him on the mouth. He

pushed her away, but he felt weak and tired and thought

of the icy streets walking home and his cold hallbedroom

and thought, what the hell did it matter anyway? and

took off his hat and coat again. She kissed him and loved

him up and locked the parlor door and they loved each

other up on the sofa and she let him do everything he

wanted. Then after a while she turned on the light and

straightened her clothes and went over to the mirror to

fix her hair and he tied his necktie again and she smoothed

down his hair as best she could with her fingers and they

unlocked the parlor door very carefully and she went out

in the hall to call dad. Her face was flushed and she

looked very pretty again. Mr. Svenson and Anna and all

the girls were out in the kitchen and Emiscah said, "Dad,

Charley and I are going to get married next month," and

everybody said, "Congratulations," and all the girls kissed

Charley and Mr. Svenson broke out a bottle of whisky

and they had a drink all round and Charley went home

feeling like a whipped dog.

There was a fellow named Hendriks at the shop seemed

a pretty wise guy; Charley asked him next noon whether

he didn't know of anything a girl could take and he said

he had a perscription for some pills and next day he

-387-

brought it and told Charley not to tell the druggist what

he wanted them for. It was payday and Hendriks came

round to Charley's room after he'd gotten cleaned up that

night and asked him if he'd gotten the pills allright.

Charley had the package right in his pocket and was going

to cut nightschool that night and take it to Emiscah. First

he and Hendriks went to have a drink at the corner.

He didn't like whisky straight and Hendriks said to take

it with ginger ale. It tasted great and Charley felt sore

and miserable inside and didn't want to see Emiscah any-

way. They had some more drinks and then went and

bowled for a while. Charley beat him four out of five and

Hendriks said the party was on him from now on.

Hendriks was a squareshouldered redheaded guy with

a freckled face and a twisted nose and he began telling

stories about funny things that had happened with the

ribs and how that was his long suit anyway. He'd been

all over and had had high yallers and sealskin browns

down New Orleans and Chink girls in Seattle, Wash.,

and a fullblooded Indian squaw in Butte, Montana, and

French girls and German Jewish girls in Colon and a

Caribee woman more than ninety years old in Port of

Spain. He said that the Twin Cities was the bunk and

what a guy ought to do was to go down an' get a job in

the oilfields at Tampico or in Oklahoma where you could

make decent money and live like a white man. Charley

said he'd pull out of St. Paul in a minute if it wasn't that

he wanted to finish his course in nightschool and Hendriks

told him he was a damn fool, that book learnin' never

got nobody nowhere and what he wanted was to have a

good time when he had his strength and after that to hell

wid 'em. Charley said he felt like saying to hell wid 'em

anyway.

They went to several bars, and Charley who wasn't used

to drinking anything much except beer began to reel

a little, but it was swell barging round with Hendriks

-388-

from bar to bar. Hendriks sang My Mother Was a Lady

in one place and The Bastard King of England in another

where an old redfaced guy with a cigar set them up to

some drinks. Then they tried to get into a dancehall but

the guy at the door said they were too drunk and threw

them out on their ear and that seemed funny as hell and

they went to a back room of a place Hendriks knew and

there were two girls there Hendriks knew and Hendriks

fixed it up for ten dollars each for all night, then they

had one more drink before going to the girls' place and

Hendriks sang:

Two drummers sat at dinner in a grand hotel one day

While dining they were chatting in a jolly sort of way

And when a pretty waitress brought them a tray of food

They spoke to her familiarly in a manner rather rude

"He's a hot sketch," said one of the girls to the other.

But the other was a little soused and began to get a cry-

ing jag when Hendriks and Charley put their heads to-

gether and sang:

My mother was a lady like yours you will allow

And you may have a sister who needs protection now

I've come to this great city to find a brother dear

And you wouldn't dare insult me, sir, if Jack were only

here.

They cried and the other one kept shoving her and

saying, "Dry your eyes, deary, you're maudlin," and it

was funny as hell.

The next few weeks Charley was uneasy and miserable.

The pills made Emiscah feel awful sick but they finally

brought her around. Charley didn't go there much,

though they still talked about "When we're married," and

the Svensons treated Charley as a soninlaw. Emiscah

nagged a little about Charley's drinking and running

round with this fellow Hendriks. Charley had dropped

-389-

out of nightschool and was looking for a chance to get

a job that would take him away somewhere, he didn't

much care where. Then one day he busted a lathe and the

foreman fired him. When he told Emiscah about it she

got sore and said she thought it was about time he gave

up boozing and running round and he paid little atten-

tion to her and he said it was about time for him to butt

out, and picked up his hat and coat and left. Afterwards

when he was walking down the street he wished he'd

remembered to ask her to give him back his seal ring,

but he didn't go back to ask for it.

That Sunday he went to eat at old man Vogel's, but he

didn't tell them he'd lost his job. It was a sudden hot

spring day. He'd been walking round all morning, with

a headache from getting tanked up with Hendriks the

night before, looking at the crocuses and hyacinths in the

parks and the swelling buds in the dooryards. He didn't

know what to do with himself. He was a week overdue

on his rent and he wasn't getting any schooling and he

hadn't any girl and he felt like saying to hell with every-

thing and joining up in the militia to go down to the

Mexican border. His head ached and he was tired of

dragging his feet over the pavements in the early heat.

Welldressed men and women went by in limousines and

sedans. A boy flashed by on a red motorbike. He wished

he had the jack to buy a motorbike himself and go on a

trip somewhere. Last night he'd tried to argue Hendriks

into going South with him, but Hendriks said he'd picked

up with a skirt that was a warm baby and he was getting

his nookie every night and going to stay right with it.

To hell with all that, thought Charley; I want to see

some country.

He looked so down in the mouth that Jim said, "What's

the trouble, Charley?" when he walked into the garage.

"Aw, nothing," said Charley, and started to help clean

the parts of the carburetor of a Mack truck Jim was

-390-

tinkering with. The truckdriver was a young feller with

closecropped black hair and a tanned face. Charley liked

his looks. He said he was going to take a load of store-

fittings down to Milwaukee next day and was looking for

a guy to go with him. "Would you take me?" said

Charley. The truckdriver looked puzzled. "He's my kid

brother, Fred; he'll be allright . . . But what about your

job?"

Charley colored up. "Aw, I resigned.""Well, come

round with me to see the boss, " said the truckdriver. "And

if it's allright by him it's allright by me."

They left next morning before day. Charley felt bad

about sneaking out on his landlady, but he left a note on

the table saying he'd send her what he owed her as soon

as he got a job. It was fine leaving the city and the mills

and grainelevators behind in the gray chilly early morn-

ing light. The road followed the river and the bluffs and

the truck roared along sloshing through puddles and

muddy ruts. It was chilly although the sun was warm

when it wasn't behind the clouds. He and Fred had to

yell at each other to make their voices heard but they

told stories and chewed the fat about one thing and an-

other. They spent the night in LaCrosse.

They just got into the hash joint in time to order ham-

burger steaks before it closed, and Charley felt he was

making a hit with the waitress who was from Omaha and

whose name was Helen. She was about thirty and had a

tired look under the eyes that made him think maybe she

was kind of easy. He hung round until she closed up and

took her out walking and they walked along the river and

the wind was warm and smelt winey of sawmills and there

was a little moon behind fleecy clouds and they sat down

in the new grass where it was dark behind stacks of fresh-

cut lumber laid out to season. She let her head drop on his

shoulder and called him "baby boy."

Fred was asleep in the truck rolled up in a blanket on

-391-

top of the sacking when he got back. Charley curled up

in his overcoat on the other side of the truck. It was cold

and the packingcases were uncomfortable to lie on but he

was tired and his face felt windburned, and he soon fell

asleep.

They were off before day.

The first thing Fred said was, "Well, did you make

her, kid?" Charley laughed and nodded. He felt good

and thought to himself he was damn lucky to get away

from the Twin Cities and Emiscah and that sonofabitchin'

foreman. The whole world was laid out in front of him

like a map, and the Mack truck roaring down the middle

of it and towns were waiting for him everywhere where

he could pick up jobs and make good money and find

goodlooking girls waiting to call him their baby boy.

He didn't stay long in Milwaukee. They didn't need

any help in any of the garages so he got a job pearl-

diving in a lunchroom. It was a miserable greasy job with

long hours. To save money he didn't get a room but

flopped in a truck in a garage where a friend of Jim's was

working. He was planning to go over on the boat as soon

as he got his first week's pay. One of the stiffs working in

the lunchroom was a wobbly named Monte Davis. He

got everybody to walk out on account of a freespeech fight

the wobblies were running in town, so Charley worked

a whole week and had not a cent to show for it and hadn't

eaten for a day and a half when Fred came back with

another load on his Mack truck and set him up to a feed.

They drank some beer afterwards and had a big argu-

ment about strikes. Fred said all this wobbly agitation was

damn foolishness and he thought the cops would be doing

right if they jailed every last one of them. Charley said

that working stiffs ought to stick together for decent liv-

ing conditions and the time was coming when there'd be a

big revolution like the American revolution only bigger

and after that there wouldn't be any bosses and the work-

-392-

ers would run industry. Fred said he talked like a damn

foreigner and ought to be ashamed of himself and that a

white man ought to believe in individual liberty and if he

got a raw deal on one job he was goddam well able to

find another. They parted sore, but Fred was a good-

hearted guy and lent Charley five bucks to go over to

Chi with.

Next day he went over on the boat. There were still

some yellowish floes of rotting ice on the lake that was a

very pale cold blue with a few whitecaps on it. Charley

had never been out on a big body of water before and

felt a little sick, but it was fine to see the chimneys and

great blocks of buildings, pearly where the sun hit them,

growing up out of the blur of factory smoke, and the

breakwaters and the big oreboats plowing through the

blue seas, and to walk down the wharf with everything

new to him and to plunge into the crowd and the stream

of automobiles and green and yellow buses blocked up by

the drawbridge on Michigan Avenue, and to walk along

in the driving wind looking at the shiny storewindows and

goodlooking girls and windblown dresses.

Jim had told him to go to see a friend of his who

worked in a Ford servicestation on Blue Island Avenue

but is was so far that by the time he got there the guy

had gone. The boss was there though and he told Charley

that if he came round next morning he'd have a job for

him. As he didn't have anywhere to go and didn't like to

tell the boss he was flat he left his suitcase in the garage

and walked around all night. Occasionally he got a few

winks of sleep on a park bench, bat he'd wake up stiff

and chilled to the bone and would have to run around to

warm up. The night seemed never to end and he didn't

have a red to get a cup of coffee with in the morning, and

he was there walking up and down outside an hour be-

fore anybody came to open up the servicestation in the

morning.

-393-

He worked at the Ford servicestation several weeks

until one Sunday he met Monte Davis on North Clark

Street and went to a wobbly meeting with him in front of

the Newberry Library. The cops broke up the meeting

and Charley didn't walk away fast enough and before he

knew what had happened to him he'd been halfstunned

by a riotstick and shoved into the policewagon. He spent

the night in a cell with two bearded men who were blind

drunk and didn't seem to be able to talk English any-

way. Next day he was questioned by a police magistrate

and when he said he was a garage mechanic a dick called

up the servicestation to check up on him; the magistrate

discharged him, but when he got to the garage the boss

said he'd have no goddam I Won't Works in this outfit

and paid him his wages and discharged him too.

He hocked his suitcase and his good suit and made a

little bundle of some socks and a couple of shirts and

went round to see Monte Davis to tell him he was going

to hitchhike to St. Louis. Monte said there was a free-

speech fight in Evansville and he guessed he'd come along

to see what was doing. They went out on the train to

Joliet. When they walked past the prison Monte said the

sight of a prison always made him feel sick and gave him

a kind of a foreboding. He got pretty blue and said he

guessed the bosses'd get him soon, but that there'd be

others. Monte Davis was a sallow thinfaced youth from

Muscatine, Iowa. He had a long crooked nose and stut-

tered and didn't remember a time when he hadn't sold

papers or worked in a buttonfactory. He thought of noth-

ing but the I.W.W. and the revolution. He bawled

Charley out for a scissorbill because he laughed about

how fast the wobblies ran when the cops broke up the

meeting, and told him he ought to be classconscious and

take things serious.

At the citylimits of Joliet they hopped a truck that

carried them to Peoria, where they separated because

-394-

Charley found a truckdriver he'd known in Chicago who

offered him a lift all the way to St. Louis. In St. Louis

things didn't seem to be so good, and he got into a row

with a hooker he picked up on Market Street who tried

to roll him, so as a guy told him there were plenty jobs to

be had in Louisville he began to beat his way East. By

the time he got to New Albany it was hot as the hinges

of hell; he'd had poor luck on hitches and his feet were

swollen and blistered. He stood a long time on the bridge

looking down into the swift brown current of the Ohio,

too tired to go any further. He hated the idea of tramp-

ing round looking for a job. The river was the color of

gingerbread; he started to think about the smell of ginger-

cookies Lizzie Green used to make in his mother's kitchen

and he thought he was a damn fool to be bumming round

like this. He'd go home and plant himself among the

weeds, that's what he'd do.

Just then a brokendown Ford truck came by running

on a flat tire. "Hey, you've got a flat," yelled Charley.

The driver put on the brakes with a bang. He was a big

bulletheaded man in a red sweater. "What the hell is it

to you?""Jez, I just thought you might not a noticed."

"Ah notice everythin', boy . . . ain't had nutten but

trouble all day. Wanta lift?""Sure," said Charley. "Now,

Ah can't park on de bridge nohow . . . Been same god-

dam thing all day. Here Ah gits up early in de mornin'

b'fo' day and goes out to haul foa hawgsheads a tobacca

an de goddam nigger done lost de warehouse key. Ah

swear if Ah'd had a gun Ah'd shot de son of a bitch dead."

At the end of the bridge he stopped and Charley helped

him change the tire. "Where you from, boy?" he said

as he straightened up and brushed the dust off his pants.

"I'm from up in the Northwest,"said Charley. "Ah reckon

you're a Swede, ain't yez?" Charley laughed. "No; I'm

a garage mechanic and lookin' for a job." "Pahl in, boy;

-395-

we'll go an' see ole man Wiggins -- he's ma boss -- an' see

what we can do."

Charley stayed all summer in Louisville working at the

Wiggins Repair Shops. He roomed with an Italian named

Grassi who'd come over to escape military service. Grassi

read the papers every day and was very much afraid the

U. S. would go into the war. Then he said he'd have to

hop across the border to Mexico. He was an anarchist and

a quiet sort of guy who spent the evenings singing low

to himself and playing the accordion on the lodginghouse

steps. He told Charley about the big Fiat factories at

Torino where he'd worked, and taught him to eat

spaghetti and drink red wine and to play Funiculi funicula

on the accordion. His big ambition was to be an airplane

pilot. Charley picked up with a Jewish girl who worked

as sorter in a tobacco warehouse. Her name was Sarah

Cohen but she made him call her Belle. He liked her well

enough but he was careful to make her understand that

he wasn't the marrying kind. She said she was a radical

and believed in free love, but that didn't suit him much

either. He took her to shows and took her out walking

in Cherokee Park and bought her an amethyst brooch

when she said amethyst was her birthstone.

When he thought about himself he felt pretty worried.

Here he was doing the same work day after day, with

no chance of making better money or getting any school-

ing or seeing the country. When winter came on he got

restless. He'd rescued an old Ford roadster that they

were going to tow out to the junkheap and had patched

it up with discarded spare parts.

He talked Grassi into going down to New Orleans

with him. They had a little money saved up and they'd

run down there and get a job and be there for the Mardi

Gras. The first day that he'd felt very good since he left

St. Paul was the sleety January day they pulled out of

Louisville with the engine hitting on all four cylinders

-396-

and a pile of thirdhand spare tires in the back, headed

south.

They got down through Nashville and Birmingham

and Mobile, but the roads were terrible and they had to

remake the car as they went along and they almost froze

to death in a blizzard near Guntersville and had to lay

over for a couple of days, so that by the time they'd

gotten down to Bay St. Louis and were bowling along the

shore road under a blue sky and feeling the warm sun and

seeing palms and bananatrees and Grassi was telling about

Vesuvio and Bella Napoli and his girl in Torino that he'd

never see again on account of the bastardly capitalista

war, their money had run out. They got into New

Orleans with a dollar five between them and not more

than a teacupful of gasoline in the tank, but by a lucky

break Charley managed to sell the car as it stood for

twentyfive dollars to a colored undertaker.

They got a room in a house near the levee for three

dollars a week. The landlady was a yellowfaced woman

from Panama and there was a parrot on the balcony out-

side their room and the sun was warm on their shoulders

walking along the street. Grassi was very happy. "This

is lika the Italia," he kept saying. They walked around

and tried to find out about jobs but they couldn't seem

to find out about anything except that Mardi Gras was

next week. They walked along Canal Street that was

crowded with colored people, Chinamen, pretty girls in

brightcolored dresses, racetrack hangerson, tall elderly

men in palmbeach suits. They stopped to have a beer in

a bar open to the street with tables along the outside

where all kinds of men sat smoking cigars and drinking.

When they came out Grassi bought an afternoon paper.

He turned pale and showed the headline, WAR WITH

GERMANY IMMINENT. "If America go to war with Ger-

many cops will arrest all Italian man to send back to

Italy for fight, see? My friend tell who work in consule'soffice; tell me, see? I will not go fight in capitalista war."

-397-

office; tell me, see? I will not go fight in capitalista war."

Charley tried to kid him along, but a worried set look

came over Grassi's face and as soon as it was dark he left

Charley saying he was going back to the flop and going

to bed.

Charley walked round the streets alone. There was a

warm molasses smell from the sugar refineries, whiffs of

gardens and garlic and pepper and oil cookery. There

seemed to be women everywhere, in bars, standing round

streetcorners, looking out invitingly behind shutters ajar

in all the doors and windows; but he had twenty dollars

on him and was afraid one of them might lift it off him,

so he just walked around until he was tired and then

went back to the room, where he found Grassi already

asleep with the covers over his head.

It was late when he woke up. The parrot was squawking

on the gallery outside the window, hot sunlight filled the

room. Grassi was not there.

Charley had dressed and was combing his hair when

Grassi came in looking very much excited. He had taken a

berth as donkey-engineman on a freighter bound for South

America. "When I get Buenos Aires goodby and no more

war," he said. "If Argentina go to war, goodby again."

He kissed Charley on the mouth, and insisted on giving

him his accordion and there were tears in his eyes when

he went off to join the boat that was leaving at noon.

Charley walked all over town inquiring at garages and

machineshops if there was any chance of a job. The streets

were broad and dusty, bordered by low shuttered frame

houses, and distances were huge. He got tired and dusty

and sweaty. People he talked to were darned agreeable

but nobody seemed to know where he could get a job.

He decided he ought to stay through the Mardi Gras

anyway and then he would go up North again. Men he

talked to told him to go to Florida or Birmingham,

Alabama, or up to Memphis or Little Rock, but every-

-398-

body agreed that unless he wanted to ship as a seaman

there wasn't a job to be had in the city. The days dragged

along warm and slow and sunny and smelling of molasses

from the refineries. He spent a great deal of time reading

in the public library or sprawled on the levee watching

the niggers unload the ships. He had too much time to

think and he worried about what he was going to do with

himself. Nights he couldn't sleep well because he hadn't

done anything all day to tire him.

One night he heard guitarmusic coming out of a joint

called "The Original Tripoli," on Chartres Street. He

went in and sat down at a table and ordered drinks. The

waiter was a Chink. Couples were dancing in a kind of

wrestling hug in the dark end of the room. Charley de-

cided that if he could get a girl for less than five seeds

he'd take one on. Before long he found himself setting

up a girl who said her name was Liz to drinks and a feed.

She said she hadn't had anything to eat all day. He asked

her about Mardi Gras and she said it was a bum time

because the cops closed everything up tight. "They

rounded up all the waterfront hustlers last night, sent

every last one of them up the river.""What they do

with 'em?""Take 'em up to Memphis and turn 'em

loose . . . ain't a jail in the state would hold all the

floosies in this town." They laughed and had another

drink and then they danced. Charley held her tight. She

was a skinny girl with little pointed breasts and big hips.

"Jez, baby, you've got some action," he said after they'd

been dancing a little while. "Ain't it ma business to give

the boys a good time?" He liked the way she looked at

him. "Say, baby, how much do you get?""Five bucks."

"Jez, I ain't no millionaire . . . and didn't I set you up

to some eats?""Awright, sugarpopper; make it three."

They had another drink. Charley noticed that she took

some kind of lemonade each time. "Don't you ever drinkanything, Liz?"

-399-

anything, Liz?" "You can't drink in this game, dearie;

first thing you know I'd be givin' it away."

There was a big drunken guy in a dirty undershirt

looked like a ship's stoker reeling round the room. He

got hold of Liz's hand and made her dance with him.

His big arms tattooed blue and red folded right round

her. Charley could see he was mauling and pulling at her

dress as he danced with her. "Quit that, you son of a

bitch," she was yelling. That made Charley sore and he

went up and pulled the big guy away from her. The big

guy turned and swung on him. Charley ducked and

hopped into the center of the floor with his dukes up.

The big guy was blind drunk, as he let fly another hay-

maker Charley put his foot out and the big guy tripped

and fell on his face upsetting a table and a little dark

man with a black mustache with it. In a second the dark

man was on his feet and had whipped out a machete. The

Chinks ran round mewing like a lot of damn gulls. The

proprietor, a fat Spaniard in an apron, had come out from

behind the bar and was yellin', "Git out, every last one

of you." The man with the machete made a run at

Charley. Liz gave him a yank one side and before Charley

knew what had happened she was pulling him through

the stinking latrines into a passage that led to a back door

out into the street. "Don't you know no better'n to git

in a fight over a goddam whore?" she was saying in his

ear.

Once out in the street Charley wanted to go back to

get his hat and coat. Liz wouldn't let him. "I'll get it

for you in the mornin'," she said. They walked along

the street together. "You're a damn good girl; I like

you," said Charley."Can't you raise ten dollars and make it all night?""Jez, kid, I'm broke.""Well, I'll have to

throw you out and do some more hustlin', I guess . . .

There's only one feller in this world gets it for nothin' and

you ain't him."

-400-

They had a good time together. They sat on the edge

of the bed talking. She looked flushed and pretty in a

fragile sort of way in her pink shimmy shirt. She showed

him a snapshot of her steady who was second engineer on

a tanker. "Ain't he handsome? I don't hustle when he's

in town. He's that strong . . . He can crack a pecan

with his biceps." She showed him the place on his arm

where her steady could crack a pecan.

"Where you from?" asked Charley.

"What's that to you?"

"You're from up North; I can tell by the way you

talk."

"Sure. I'm from Iowa, but I'll never go back there no

more . . . It's a hell of life, bo, and don't you forget

. . . 'Women of pleasure' my foot. I used to think I was

a classy dame up home and then I woke up one morning

and found I was nothing but a goddam whore."

"Ever been to New York?"

She shook her head. "It ain't such a bad life if you keep

away from drink and the pimps," she said thoughtfully.

"I guess I'll shove off for New York right after Mardi

Gras. I can't seem to find me a master in this man's

town."

" Mardi Gras ain't so much if you're broke."

"Well, I came down here to see it and I guess I'd

better see it."

It was dawn when he left her. She came downstairs

with him. He kissed her and told her he'd give her the

ten bucks if she got his hat and coat back for him and

she said to come around to her place that evening about

six, but not to go back to the " Tripoli" because that greaser

was a bad egg and would be laying for him.

The streets of old stucco houses inset with lacy iron

balconies were brimful of blue mist. A few mulatto women

in bandanas were moving around in the courtyards. In

the market old colored men were laying out fruit and

-401-

green vegetables. When he got back to his flop the

Panama woman was out on the gallery outside his room

holding out a banana and calling "Ven, Polly . . . Ven,

Polly," in a little squeaky voice. The parrot sat on the

edge of the tiled roof cocking a glassy eye at her and

chuckling softly. "Me here all night," said the Panama

woman with a tearful smile. "Polly no quiere come."

Charley climbed up by the shutter and tried to grab the

parrot but the parrot hitched away sideways up to the

ridge of the roof and all Charley did was bring a tile

down on his head. "No quiere come," said the Panama

woman sadly. Charley grinned at her and went into his

room, where he dropped on the bed and fell asleep.

During Mardi Gras Charley walked round town till

his feet were sore. There were crowds everywhere and

lights and floats and parades and bands and girls running

round in fancy dress. He picked up plenty of girls but as

soon as they found he was flat they dropped him. He was

spending his money as slowly as he could. When he got

hungry he'd drop into a bar and drink a glass of beer

and eat as much free lunch as he dared.

The day after Mardi Gras the crowds began to thin

out, and Charley didn't have any money for beer. He

walked round feeling hungry and miserable; the smell of

molasses and the absinthe smell from bars in the French

Quarter in the heavy damp air made him feel sick. He

didn't know what to do with himself. He didn't have the

gumption to start off walking or hitchhiking again. He

went to the Western Union and tried to wire Jim collect,

but the guy said they wouldn't take a wire asking for

money collect.

The Panama woman threw him out when he couldn't

pay for another week in advance and there he was walking

down Esplanade Avenue with Grassi's accordion on one

arm and his little newspaper bundle of clothes under the

other. He walked down the levee and sat down in a

-402-

grassy place in the sun and thought for a long time. It

was either throwing himself in the river or enlisting in

the army. Then he suddenly thought of the accordion.

An accordion was worth a lot of money. He left his bundle

of clothes under some planks and walked around to all

the hockshops he could find with the accordion, but they

wouldn't give him more than fifteen bucks for it any-

where. By the time he'd been round to all the hockshops

and musicstores it was dark and everything had closed.

He stumbled along the pavement feeling sick and dopy

from hunger. At the corner of Canal and Rampart he

stopped. Singing was coming out of a saloon. He got the

hunch to go in and play Funiculi funicula on the accordion.

He might get some free lunch and a glass of beer out of it.

He'd hardly started playing and the bouncer had just

vaulted across the bar to give him the bum's rush, when

a tall man sprawled at a table beckoned to him.

"Brother,you come right here an'set down." It was a

big man with a long broken nose and high cheekbones.

"Brother, you set down." The bouncer went back be-

hind the bar. "Brother, you can't play that there accordeen

no mor'n a rabbit. Ah'm nutten but a lowdown cracker

from Okachobee City but if Ah couldn't play no better'n

that . . ." Charley laughed. "I know I can't play it.

That's all right." The Florida guy pulled out a big wad

of bills. "Brother, do you know what you're going to

do? You're going to sell me the goddam thing. . . .

Ah'm nothin' but a lowdown cracker, but, by Jesus

Christ . . ."

"Hey, Doc, be yourself . . . You don't want the damn

thing." His friends tried to make him put his money back.

Doc swept his arm round with a gesture that shot three

glasses onto the floor with a crash. "You turkey-buzzards

talk in your turn . . . Brother, how much do you want

for the accordeen?" The bouncer had come back and was

standing threateningly over the table. "All right, Ben,"

-403-

said Doc. "It's all on your Uncle Henry . . . and let's

have another round a that good rye whisky. Brother, how

much do you want for it?"

"Fifty bucks," said Charley, thinking fast. Doc handed

him out five tens. Charley swallowed a drink, put the

accordion on the table and went off in a hurry. He was

afraid if he hung round the cracker 'ud sober up and try

to get the money back, and besides he wanted to eat.

Next day he got a steerage passage on the steamer

Momus bound for New York. The river was higher than

the city. It was funny standing on the stern of the steam-

boat and looking down on the roofs and streets and trol-

leycars of New Orleans. When the steamer pulled out

from the wharf Charley began to feel good. He found

the colored steward and got him to give him a berth in the

deckhouse. When he put his newspaper package under the

pillow he glanced down into the berth below. There lay

Doc, fast asleep, all dressed up in a light gray suit and a

straw hat with a burntout cigar sticking out of the corner

of his mouth and the accordion beside him.

They were passing between the Eads Jetties and feeling

the seawind in their faces and the first uneasy swell of

the Gulf under their feet when Doc came lurching on

deck. He recognized Charley and went up to him with a

big hand held out. "Well, I'll be a sonofabitch if there

ain't the musicmaker . . . That's a good accordeen, boy.

Ah thought you'd imposed on me bein' only a poa country

lad an' all that, but I'll be a sonofabitch if it ain't worth

the money. Have a snifter on me?"

They went and sat on Doc's bunk and Doc broke out a

bottle of Bacardi and they had some drinks and Charley

told about how he'd been flat broke; if it wasn't for that

fifty bucks he'd still be sitting on the levee and Doc said

that if it wasn't for that fifty bucks he'd be riding first-

class.

Doc said he was going up to New York to sail for

-404-

France in a volunteer ambulance corps; wasn't ever'day

you got a chance to see a big war like that and he wanted

to get in on it before the whole thing went bellyup; still

he didn't like the idea of shooting a lot of whitemen he

didn't have no quarrel with and reckoned this was the

best way; if the Huns was niggers he'd feel different

about it.

Charley said he was going to New York because he

thought there were good chances of schooling in a big

city like that and how he was an automobile mechanic and

wanted to get to be a C.E. or something like that because

there was no future for a working stiff without schooling.

Doc said that was all mahoula and what a boy like him

ought to do was go and sign up as a mechanic in this here

ambulance and they'd pay fifty dollars a month an' maybe

more and that was a lot of seeds on the other side and

he'd ought to see the goddam war before the whole thing

went bellyup.

Doc's name was William H. Rogers and he'd come

from Michigan originally and his old man had been a

grapefruit grower down at Frostproof and Doc had cashed

in on a couple of good crops of vegetables off the Ever-

glades muck and was going over to see the mademosels

before the whole thing went bellyup.

They were pretty drunk by the time night fell and

were sitting in the stern with a seedylooking man in a

derby hat who said he was an Est from the Baltic. The

Est and Doc and Charley got up on the little bridge above

the afterhouse after supper; the wind had gone down and

it was a starlight night with a slight roll and Doc said,

"By God, there's somethin' funny about this here boat

. . . Befoa we went down to supper the Big Dipper was

in the north, and now it's gone right around to the south-

west."

"It is vat you vould expect of a kapitalistichesky so-

ciety," said the Est. When he found that Charley had a

-405-

red card and that Doc didn't believe in shooting anything

but niggers he made a big speech about how revolution

had broken out in Russia and the Czar was being forced

to abdicate and that was the beginning of the regeneration

of mankind from the East. He said the Ests would get

their independence and that soon all Europe would be the

free sozialistitchesky United States of Europe under the

Red flag and Doc said, "What did I tell yez, Charley?

The friggin' business'll go bellyup soon . . . What you

want to do is come with me an' see the war while it lasts."

And Charley said Doc was right and Doc said, "I'll take

you round with me, boy, an' all you need do's show your

driver's license an' tell 'em you're a college student."

The Est got sore at that and said that it was the duty

of every classconscious worker to refuse to fight in this

war and Doc said, "We ain't goin' to fight, Esty, old

man. What we'll do is carry the boys out before they

count out on 'em, see? I'd be a disappointed sonofabitch

if the whole business had gone bellyup befoa we git there,

wouldn't you, Charley?"

Then they argued some more about where the Dipper

was and Doc kept saying it had moved to the south and

when they'd finished the second quart, Doc was saying

he didn't believe in white men shootin' each other up,

only niggers, and started going round the boat lookin' for

that damn shine steward to kill him just to prove it and

the Est was singing The Marseillaise and Charley was

telling everybody that what he wanted to do was to get

in on the big war before it went bellyup. The Est and

Charley had a hard time holding Doc down in his bunk

when they put him to bed. He kept jumping out shout-

ing he wanted to kill a couple of niggers.

They got into New York in a snowstorm. Doc said the

Statue of Liberty looked like she had a white nightgown.

on. The Est looked around and hummed The Marseillaise

and said American cities were not artistical because they

-406-

did not have gables on the houses like in Baltic Europe.

When they got ashore Charley and Doc went to the

Broadway Central Hotel together. Charley had never

been in a big hotel like that and wanted to find a cheaper

flop but Doc insisted that he come along with him and

said he had plenty of jack for both of them and that it

was no use saving money because things would go bellyup

soon. New York was full of grinding gears and clanging

cars and the roar of the "L" and newsboys crying extras.

Doc lent Charley a good suit and took him down to the

enlistment office of the ambulance corps that was in an

important lawyer's office in a big shiny officebuilding

down in the financial district. The gentleman who signed

the boys up was a New York lawyer and he talked about

their being gentleman volunteers and behaving like gen-

tlemen and being a credit to the cause of the Allies and

the American flag and civilization that the brave French

soldiers had been fighting for so many years in the

trenches. When he found out Charley was a mechanic

he signed him up without waiting to write to the principal

of the highschool and the pastor of the Lutheran church

home in Fargo whose names he had given as references.

He told them about getting antityphoid injections and a

physical examination and said to call the next day to find

out the sailing date. When they came out of the elevator

there was a group of men in the shinymarble lobby with

their heads bent over a newspaperi; the U. S. was at war

with Germany. That night Charley wrote his mother that

he was going to the war and please to send him fifty dol-

lars. Then he and Doc went out to look at the town.

There were flags on every building. They walked past

business block after business block looking for Times

Square. Everywhere people were reading newspapers. At

Fourteenth they heard a drumbeat and a band and waited

at the corner to see what regiment it would be but it was

only the Salvation Army. By the time they got to Madison

-407-

Square it was the dinner hour and the streets were de-

serted. It began to drizzle a little and the flags up Broad-

day and Fifth Avenue hung limp from their poles.

They went into the Hofbrau to eat. Charley thought it

looked too expensive but Doc said it was his party. A man

was on a stepladder over the door screwing the bulbs into

an electric sign of an American flag. The restaurant was

draped with American flags inside and the band played

The Star-Spangled Banner every other number, so that

they kept having to get to their feet. "What do they think

this is, settin' up exercises?" grumbled Doc.

There was one group at a round table in the corner that

didn't get up when the band played The Star-Spangled

Banner, but sat there quietly talking and eating as if noth-

ing had happened. People round the restaurant began to

stare at them and pass comments. "I bet they're . . .

Huns . . . German spies . . . Pacifists." There was an

army officer at a table with a girl who got red in the face

whenever he looked at them. Finally a waiter, an elderly

German, went up to them and whispered something.

"I'll be damned if I will," came the voice from the

table in the corner. Then the army officer went over to

them and said something about courtesy to our national

anthem. He came away redder in the face than ever. He

was a little man with bowlegs squeezed into brightly pol-

ished puttees. "Dastardly pro-Germans," he sputtered as

he sat down. Immediately he had to get up because the

band played The Star-Spangled Banner."Why don't you

call the police, Cyril?" the girl who was with him said.

By this time people from all over the restaurant were ad-

vancing on the round table.

Doc pulled Charley's chair around. "Watch this; it's

going to be good."

A big man with a Texas drawl yanked one of the men

out of his chair. "You git up or git out."

"You people have no right to interfere with us," began

-408-

one of the men at the round table. "You express your

approval of the war getting up, we express our disap-

proval by . . ."

There was a big woman with a red hat with a plume

on it at the table who kept saying, "Shut up; don't talk

to 'em." By this time the band had stopped. Everybody

clapped as hard as he could and yelled, "Play it again;

that's right." The waiters were running round nervously

and the proprietor was in the center of the floor mopping

his bald head.

The army officer went over to the orchestra leader

and said, "Please play our national anthem again." At the

first bar he came stiffly to attention. The other men rushed

the round table. Doc and the man with the English accent

were jostling each other. Doc squared off to hit him.

"Come outside if you want to fight," the man with the

English accent was saying.

"Leave 'em be, boys," Doc was shouting. "I'll take 'em

on outside, two at a time."

The table was upset and the party began backing off

towards the door. The woman with the red hat picked up

a bowl of lobster mayonnaise and was holding back the

crowd by chucking handfuls of it in their faces. At that

moment three cops appeared and arrested the damn paci-

fists. Everybody stood around wiping mayonnaise off his

clothes. The band played The Star-Spangled Banner again

and everybody tried to sing but it didn't make much of

an effect because nobody knew the words.

After that Doc and Charley went to a bar to have a

whisky sour. Doc wanted to go to see a legshow and asked

the barkeep. A little fat man with an American flag in the

lapel of his coat overheard him and said the best legshow

in New York was Minsky's on East Houston Street. He

set them up to some drinks when Doc said they were

going to see this here war, and said he'd take them down

to Minsky's himself. His name was Segal and he said

-409-

he'd been a socialist up to the sinking of the Lusitania, but

now he thought they ought to lick the Germans and de-

stroy Berlin. He was in the cloak and suit business and was

happy because he'd as good as landed a contract for army

uniforms. "Ve need the var to make men of us," he'd say

and strike himself on the chest. They went down town

in a taxi but when they got to the burlesque show it was

so full they couldn't get a seat.

"Standin' room, hell . . . Ah want women," Doc was

saying. Mr. Segal thought a little while with his head

cocked to one side. "Ve will go to 'Little Hungary,'" he

said.

Charley felt let down. He'd expected to have a good

time in New York. He wished he was in bed. At "Little

Hungary" there were many German and Jewish and Rus-

sian girls. The wine came in funnylooking bottles upside

down in a stand in the middle of each table. Mr. Segal

said it was his party from now on. The orchestra played

foreign music. Doc was getting pretty drunk. They sat at

a table crowded in among other tables. Charley roamed

round and asked a girl to dance with him but she wouldn't

for some reason.

He got to talking to a young narrowfaced fellow at the

bar who had just been to a peace meeting at Madison

Square Garden. Charley pricked his ears up when the fel-

low said there'd be a revolution in New York if they tried

to force conscription on the country. His name was Benny

Compton and he'd been studying law at New York Uni-

versity. Charley went and sat with him at a table with

another fellow who was from Minnesota and who was a

reporter on The Call. Charley asked them about the

chances of working his way through the engineering

school. He'd about decided to back out of this ambulance

proposition. But they didn't seem to think there was much

chance if you hadn't any money saved up to start on. The

-410-

Minnesota man said New York was no place for a poor

man.

"Aw, hell; I guess I'll go to the war," said Charley.

"It's the duty of every radical to go to jail first," said

Benny Compton. "Anyway, there'll be a revolution. The

working class won't stand for this much longer."

"If you want to make some jack the thing to do is to

go over to Bayonne and get a job in a munitions factory,"

said the man from Minnesota in a tired voice.

"A man who does that is a traitor to his class," said

Benny Compton.

"A working stiff's in a hell of a situation," said Charley.

"Damn it, I don't want to spend all my life patchin' up

tin lizzies at seventyfive a month".

"Didn't Eugene V. Debs say, 'I want to rise with the

ranks, not from them?'"

"After all, Benny, ain't you studyin' night an' day to

get to be a lawyer an' get out of the workin' class?" said

the man from Minnesota.

"That is so I can be of some use in the struggle . . . I

want to be a wellsharpened instrument. We must fight

capitalists with their own weapons."

"I wonder what I'll do when they suppress The Call."

"They won't dare suppress it."

"Sure, they will. We're in this war to defend the Mor-

gan loans . . . They'll use it to clear up opposition at

home, sure as my name's Johnson."

"Talking Of that, I got some dope. My sister, see, she's

a stenographer . . . She works for J. Ward Moorehouse,

the public relations counsel, you know . . . he does

propaganda for the Morgans and the Rockefellers. Well,

she said that all this year he's been working with a French

secret mission. The big interests are scared to death of a

revolution in France. They paid him ten thousand dollars

for his services. He runs pro-war stuff through a feature

syndicate. And they call this a free country."

-411-

"I wouldn't be surprised at anything," said the man

from Minnesota, pouring himself out the last of the bottle

of wine. "Why, any one of us may be a government agent

or a spy right at this minute." The three of them sat there

looking at each other. It gave Charley chills down his

spine.

"That's what I'm tryin' to tell ye . . . My sister, she

knows all about it, see, on 'account of workin' in this guy's

office . . . It's a plot of the big interests, Morgan an'

them, to defeat the workers by sendin' 'em off to the war.

Once they get you in the army you can't howl about civic

liberty or the Bill of Rights . . . They can shoot you

without trial, see?"

"It's an outrage . . . The people of the Northwest

won't stand for it," said the man from Minnesota. "Look

here, you've been out there more recently than I have.

La Follette expresses the opinion of people out there,

don't he?"

"Sure," said Charley.

"Well, what the hell?"

"It's too deep for me," said Charley and started work-

ing his way among the closepacked tables to find Doc.

Doc was pretty drunk, and Charley was afraid the evening

would start running into money, so they said goodby to

Mr. Segal who said please to kill a lot of Germans just

for him, and they went out and started walking west along

Houston Street. There were pushcarts all along the curb

with flares that made the packed faces along the sidewalk

glow red in the rainy darkness.

They came out at the end of a wide avenue crowded

with people pouring out from a theater. In front of the

Cosmopolitan Café a man was speaking on a soapbox. As

the people came out of the theater they surged' around

him. Doc and Charley edged their way through to see

what the trouble was. They could only catch scraps of

what the man was shouting in a hoarse barking voice:

-412-

"A few days ago I was sittin' in the Cooper Institute

listenin' to Eugene Victor Debs, and what was he sayin'?

. . . 'What is this civilization, this democracy that the

bosses are asking you workers to give your lives to

save, what does it mean to you except wageslavery, what

is . . . ?'"

"Hey, shut up, youse . . . If you don't like it go back

where you came from," came voices from the crowd.

"Freedom to work so that the bosses can get rich . . .

Opportunity to starve to death if you get fired from your

job."

Doc and Charley'were shoved from behind. The man

toppled off his box and disappeared. The whole end of the

avenue filled with a milling crowd. Doc was sparring with

a big man in overalls. A cop came between them hitting

right and left with his billy. Doc hauled off to slam the

cop but Charley caught his arm and pulled him out of the

scrimmage.

"Hey, for crissake, Doc, this ain't the war yet," said

Charley. Doc was red in the face. "Ah didn't like that

guy's looks," he said.

Behind the cops two policedepartment cars with big

searchlights were charging the crowd. Arms, heads, hats,

jostling shoulders, riotsticks rising and falling stood out

black against the tremendous white of the searchlights.

Charley pulled Doc against the plateglass window of the

café.

"Say, Doc, we don't want to get in the can and lose the

boat," Charley whispered in his ear. "What's the use?"

said Doc. "It'll all go bellyup before we get there."

"Today the voikers run before the cops, but soon it will

be the cops run before the voikers," someone yelled.

Someone else started singing The Marseillaise. Voices

joined. Doc and Charley were jammed with their shoul-

ders against the plate glass. Behind them the café was full

of faces swimming in blue crinkly tobaccosmoke like fish

-413-

in an aquarium. The plate glass suddenly smashed. People

in the café were hopping to their feet. "Look out for the

Cossacks," a voice yelled.

A cordon of cops was working down the avenue. The

empty pavement behind them widened. The other way

mounted police were coming out of Houston Street. In

the open space a patrolwagon parked. Cops were shoving

men and women into it.

Doc and Charley ducked past a mounted policeman who

was trotting his horse with a great clatter down the inside

of the sidewalk, and shot round the corner. The Bowery

was empty and dark. They walked west toward the hotel.

"My God," said Charley, "you almost got us locked

up that time . . . I'm all set to go to France now, and

I wanter go."

A week later they were on the Chicago of the French

Line steaming out through the Narrows. They had hang-

overs from their farewell party and felt a little sick from

the smell of the boat and still had the music of the jazz-

band on the wharf ringing through their heads. The day

was overcast, with a low lid of leaden clouds, looked like

it was going to snow. The sailors were French and the

stewards were French. They had wine with their first

meal. There was a whole tableful of other guys going over

in the ambulance service.

After dinner Doc went down to the cabin to go to sleep.

Charley roamed around the ship with his hands in his

pockets without knowing what to do with himself. In the

stern they were taking the canvas cover off the seventyfive

gun. He walked round the lowerdeck full of barrels and

packingcases and stumbled across coils of big fuzzy cable

to the bow. In the bow there was a little pinkfaced French

sailor with a red tassel on his cap stationed as a lookout.

The sea was glassy, with dirty undulating patches of

weed and garbage. There were gulls sitting on the water

-414-

or perched on bits of floating wood. Now and then a gull

stretched its wings lazily and flew off crying.

The boat's bluff bow cut two even waves through dense

glassgreen water. Charley tried to talk to the lookout. He

pointed ahead. "East," he said, " France."

The lookout paid no attention. Charley pointed back

towards the smoky west. "West," he said and tapped him-

self on the chest. "My home Fargo, North Dakota."But

the lookout just shook his head and put his finger to his

lips.

" France very far east . . . submarines . . . war," said

Charley. The lookout put his hand over his mouth. At

last he made Charley understand that he wasn't supposed

to talk to him.

-415-

NINETEEN-NINETEEN

-iii

CONTENTS

NEWSREEL XX Oh the infantree the infantree

3

JOE WILLIAMS

4

The Camera Eye (28) when the telegram came that

she was dying

9

PLAYBOY

12

JOE WILLIAMS

17

NEWSREEL XXI Goodby Broadway; Hello France

70

The Camera Eye (29) the raindrops fall one by one

out of the horsechestnut tree

71

RICHARD ELLSWORTH SAVAGE

72

NEWSREEL XXII Coming Year Promises Rebirth of

Railroads

100

The Camera Eye (30) remembering the grey crooked

fingers

101

RANDOLPH BOURNE

103

NEWSREEL XXIII If you dont like your Uncle Sammy

106

EVELINE HUTCHINS

107

The Camera Eye (31) a mattress covered with some-

thing from Vantine's

126

EVELINE HUTCHINS

128

NEWSREEL XXIV it is difficult to realize the colossal

scale

139

The Camera Eye (32) à quatorze heures precisement

140

-v-

THE HAPPY WARRIOR

142

The Camera Eye (33) 11,000 registered harlots

148

JOE WILLIAMS

151

The Camera Eye (34) his voice was three thousand

Miles away

174

NEWSREEL XXV General Pershing's forces today occu-

pied

177

A HOOSIER QUIXOTE

178

NEWSREEL XXVI Europe on Knife Edge

184

RICHARD ELLSWORTH SAVAGE

186

NEWSREEL XXVII Her Wounded Hero of War a Fraud

213

The Camera Eye (35) there were always two cats

215

EVELINE HUTCHINS

216

NEWSREEL XXVIII Oh the eagles they fly high

229

JOE WILLIAMS

230

NEWSREEL XXIX the arrival of the news

238

The Camera Eye (36) when we emptied the rosies

240

MEESTER VEELSON

241

NEWSREEL XXX Monster Guns Removed?

251

The Camera Eye (37) alphabetically according to rank

252

NEWSREEL XXXI Washing and dressing hastily

255

DAUGHTER

256

NEWSREEL XXXII Golden Voice of Caruso Sings to

Crowds in Streets

286

-vi-

The Camera Eye (38) sealed signed and delivered

288

NEWSREEL XXXIII Cant Recall Killing Sister

289

EVELINE HUTCHINS

291

NEWSREEL XXXIV Whole World is Short of Platinum

334

THE HOUSE OF MORGAN

335

NEWSREEL XXXV The Grand Prix de la Victoire

340

The Camera Eye (39) daylight enlarges out of

342

NEWSREEL XXXVI To the Glory of France Eternal

344

RICHARD ELLSWORTH SAVAGE

346

NEWSREEL XXXVII Sovia Guards Displaced

398

The Camera Eye (40) I walked all over town

400

NEWSREEL XXXVIII C'est la lutte finale

402

DAUGHTER

404

NEWSREEL XXXIX spectacle of ruined villages and tor-

tured earth

418

The Camera Eye (41) arent you coming to the an-

archist picnic

419

NEWSREEL XL Criminal in Pyjamas Saws Bars

421

JOE HILL

421

BEN COMPTON

423

NEWSREEL XLI in British Colonial Office quarters

452

The Camera Eye (42) four hours we casuals pile up

scrapiron

453

-vii-

NEWSREEL XLII it was a gala day for Seattle

455

PAUL BUNNYAN

456

RICHARD ELLSWORTH SAVAGE

461

NEWSREEL XLIII the placards borne by the radicals

466

THE BODY OF AN AMERICAN

467

-viii-

NEWSREEL XX

Oh the infantree the infantree

With the dirt behind their ears.

ARMIES CLASH AT VERDUN IN GLOBE'S

GREATEST BATTLE

150,000 MEN AND WOMEN PARADE

but another question and a very important one is raised.

The New York Stock Exchange is today the only free securities

market in the world. If it maintains that position it is sure to

become perhaps the world's greatest center for the marketing of

BRITISH FLEET SENT TO SEIZE

GOLDEN HORN

The cavalree artilleree

And the goddamned engineers

Will never beat the infantree

In eleven thousand years

TURKS FLEE BEFORE TOMMIES AT

GALLIPOLI

when they return home what will our war veterans think

of the American who babbles about some vague new order,

while dabbling in the sand of shoal water? From his weak

folly they who have lived through the spectacle will recall the

vast new No Man's Land of Europe reeking with murder and

the lust of rapine, aflame with the fires of revolution

STRIKING WAITERS ASK AID OF WOMEN

Oh the oak and the ash and the weeping willow tree

And green grows the grass in North Amerikee

coincident with a position of that kind will be the bringing

from abroad of vast quantities of money for the purposes of

maintaining balances in this country

-3-

When I think of the flag which our ships carry, the only

touch of color about them, the only thing that moves as if it

had a settled spirit in their solid structure; it seems to

me I see alternate strips of parchment upon which are written

the rights of liberty and justice and strips of blood spilt to vindi-

cate these, rights, and then, -- in the corner a prediction of the

blue serene' into which every nation may swim which stands

for these things.

Oh we'll nail Old Glory to the top of the pole

And we'll all reenlist in the pig's a -- h --

JOE WILLIAMS

Joe Williams put on the secondhand suit and dropped

his uniform, with a cobblestone wrapped up in it, off the

edge of the dock into the muddy water of the basin. It

was noon. There was nobody around. He felt bad when

he found he didn't have the cigarbox with him. Back in

the shed he found it where he'd left it. It was a box that

had once held Flor de Mayo cigars he'd bought when he

was drunk in Guantanamo. In the box under the gold-

paper lace were Janey's high school graduation picture, a

snapshot of Alec with his motorcycle, a picture with the

signatures of the coach and all the players of the whole

highschool junior team that he was captain of all in base-

ball clothes, an old pink almost faded snapshot of his

Dad's tug, the Mary B. Sullivan, taken, off the Virginia

Capes with a fullrigged ship in tow, an undressed post-

card picture of a girl named Antoinette he'd been with in

Villefranche, some safetyrazor blades, a postcard photo

of himself and two other guys, all gobs in white suits,

taken against the background of a moorish arch in Malaga,

-4-

a bunch of foreign stamps, a package of Merry Widows,

and ten little pink and red shells he'd picked up on the

beach at Santiago. With the box tucked right under his

arm, feeling crummy in the baggy civies, he walked slowly

out to the beacon and watched the fleet in formation

steaming down the River Plate. The day was overcast; the

lean cruisers soon blurred into their trailing smoke-

smudges.

Joe stopped looking at them and watched a rusty tramp

come in. She had a heavy list to port and you could see

the hull below the waterline green and slimy with weed.

There was a blue and white Greek flag on the stern and a

dingy yellow quarantine flag halfway up the fore.

A man who had come up behind him said something

to Joe in Spanish. He was a smiling ruddy man in blue

denims and was smoking a cigar, but for some reason he

made Joe feel panicky. "No savvy," Joe said and walked

away and out between the warehouses into the streets back

of the waterfront.

He had trouble finding Maria's place, all the blocks

looked so much alike. It was by the mechanical violin in

the window that he recognized it. Once he got inside the

stuffy anisesmelling dump he stood a long time at the bar

with one hand round a sticky beerglass looking out at the

street he could see in bright streaks through the bead-

curtain that hung in the door. Any minute he expected

the white uniform and yellow holster of a marine to go

past.

Behind the bar a yellow youth with a crooked nose

leaned against the wall looking at nothing. When Joe

made up his mind he jerked his chin up. The youth came

over and craned confidentially across the bar, leaning on

one hand and swabbing at the oilcloth with the rag he held

in the other. The flies that had been grouped on the

rings left by beerglasses on the oilcloth flew up to join

-5-

the buzzing mass on the ceiling. "Say, bo, tell Maria I

want to see her," Joe said out of the corner of his mouth.

The youth behind the bar held up two fingers. "Dos

pesos," he said. "Hell, no, I only want to talk to her."

Maria beckoned to him from the door in back. She was

a sallow woman with big eyes set far apart in bluish

sacks. Through the crumpled pink dress tight over the

bulge of her breasts Joe could make out the rings of

crinkled flesh round the nipples. They sat down at a table

in the back room. "Gimme two beers," Joe yelled through

the door.

"Watta you wan', iho de mi alma?" asked Maria. "You

savvy Doc Sidner?" "Sure me savvy all yanki. Watta you

wan) you no go wid beeg sheep?" "No go wid beeg

sheep. . . Fight wid beeg sonofabeech, see?"

"Ché!" Maria's breasts shook like jelly when she

laughed. She put a fat hand at the back of his neck and

drew his face towards hers. "Poor baby . . . black eye."

"Sure he gave me a black eye." Joe pulled away from her.

"Petty officer. I knocked him cold, see . . . Navy's no

place for me after that. . . I'm through. Say, Doc said

you knew a guy could fake A.B. certificates. . . able sea-

man savvy? Me for the Merchant Marine from now on,

Maria."

Joe drank down his beer.

She sat shaking her head saying, "Ché. . . pobrecito

. . . Ché." Then she said in a tearful voice, " 'Ow much

dollars you got?" "Twenty," said Joe. "Heem want fif-

tee." "I guess I'm f -- d for fair then."

Maria walked round to the back of his chair and put a

fat arm round his neck, leaning over him with little cluck-

ing noises. "Wait a minute, we rink. . . sabes?" Her big

breast pressing against his neck and shoulder made him

feel itchy; he didn't like her touching him in the morning

when he was sober like this. But he sat there until she

suddenly let out a parrot screech. " Paquito . . . ven acá."

-6-

A dirty pearshaped man with a red face and neck came

in from the back. They talked Spanish over Joe's head.

At last she patted his cheek and said, "Awright Paquito

sabe where heem live. . . maybe heem take twenty,

sabes?"

Joe got to his feet. Paquito took off the smudged cook's

apron and lit a cigarette. "You savvy A.B. papers?" said Joe

walking up and facing him. He nodded, "Awright." Joe.

gave Maria a hug and a little pinch. "You're a good girl,

Maria." She followed them grinning to the door of the

bar.

Outside Joe looked sharply up and down the street.

Not a uniform. At the end of the street a crane tilted

black above the cement warehouse buildings. They got on

a'streetcar and rode a long time without saying anything.

Joe sat staring at the floor with his hands dangling be-

tween his knees until Paquito poked him. They got out in

a cheaplooking suburban section of new cement houses

already dingy. Paquito rang at a door like all the other

doors and after a while a man with redrimmed eyes and

big teeth like a horse came and opened it. He and Paquito

talked Spanish a long while through the halfopen door.

Joe stood first on one foot and then on the other. He

could tell that they were sizing up how much they could

get out of him by the way they looked at him sideways as

they talked.

He was just about to break in when the man in the

door spoke to him in cracked cockney. "You give the

blighter five pesos for his trouble, mytey, an' we'll settle

this hup between wahte men." Joe shelled out what silver

he had in his pocket and Paquito went.

Joe followed the limey into the front hall that smelt.

of cabbage and frying grease and wash day. When he got

inside he put his hand on Joe's shoulder and said, blowing

stale whiskeybreath in his face, "Well, mytey, 'ow much

can you afford?" Joe drew away. "Twenty American

-7-

dollars's all I got," he said through his teeth. The limey

shook his head, "Only four quid . . . well, there's no

'arm in seein' what we can do, is there, mytey? Let?s see

it." While the limey stood looking at him Joe took off his

belt, picked out a couple of stitches with the small blade of

his jackknife and pulled out two orangebacked American

bills folded long. He unfolded them carefully and was

about to hand them over when he thought better of it and

put them in his pocket. "Now let's take a look at the

paper," he said grinning.

The limey's redrimmed eyes looked tearful; he said

we ought to be 'elpful one to another and gryteful when

a bloke risked a forger's hend to 'elp 'is fellow creatures.

Then he asked Joe his name, age and birthplace, how

long he'd been to sea and all that and went into an inside

room, carefully locking the door after him.

Joe stood in the hall. There was a clock ticking some-

where. The ticks dragged slower and slower. At last Joe

heard the key turn in the lock and the limey came out with

two papers in his hand. "You oughter realize what I'm

doin' for yez, mytey. . . ." Joe took the paper. He wrin-

kled his forehead and studied it; looked all right to him.

The other paper was a note authorizing Titterton's Marine

Agency to garnishee Joe's pay monthly until the sum of

ten pounds had been collected. "But look here you," he

said, "that makes seventy dollars I'm shelling out." The

limey said think of the risk he was tyking and 'ow times

was 'ard and that arfter all he could tyke it or leave it.

Joe followed him into the paperlittered inside room and

leaned over the desk and signed with a fountain pen.

They went downtown on the streetcar and got off at

Rivadavia Street. Joe followed the limey into a small

office back of a warehouse. " 'Ere's a smart young 'and for

you, Mr. McGregor," the limey said to a biliouslooking

Scotchman who was walking up and down chewing his

nails.

-8-

Joe and Mr. McGregor looked at each other. "Ameri-

can?" "Yes." "You're not expectin' American pay I'm

supposin'?"

The limey went up to him and whispered something;

McGregor looked at the certificate and seemed satisfied.

"All right, sign in the book. . . . Sign under the last

name." Joe signed and handed the limey the twenty dol-

lars. That left him flat. "Well, cheeryoh, mytey." Joe

hesitated a moment before he took the limey's hand. "So

long," he said.

"Go get your dunnage and be back here in an hour,"

said McGregor in a rasping voice. "Haven't got any dun-

nage. I've been on the beach," said Joe, weighing the

cigarbox in his hand. "Wait outside then and I'll take you

aboard the Argyle by and by." Joe stood for a while in

the warehouse door looking out into the street. Hell, he'd

seen enough of B.A. He sat on a packingcase marked Tib-

bett & Tibbett, Enameled Ware, Blackpool, to wait for

Mr. McGregor, wondering if he was the skipper or the

mate. Time sure would drag all right till he got out of

B.A.

THE CAMERA EYE (28)

when the telegram came that she was dying (the

streetcarwheels screeched round the bellglass like all the

pencils on all the slates in all the schools) walking around

Fresh Pond the smell of puddlewater willowbuds in the

raw wind shrieking streetcarwheels rattling on loose trucks

through the Boston suburbs grief isnt a uniform

-9-

and go shock the Booch and drink wine for supper at the

Lenox before catching the Federal

I'm so tired of violets

Take them all away

when the telegram came that she was dying the bell-

glass cracked in a screech of slate pencils (have you ever

never been able to sleep for a week in April?) and He

met me in the grey trainshed my eyes were stinging with

vermillion bronze and chromegreen inks that oozed from

the spinning April hills His moustaches were white the

tired droop of an old man's cheeks She's gone Jack

grief isnt a uniform and the in the parlor the waxen

odor of lilies in the parlor (He and I we must bury the

uniform of grief)

then the riversmell the shimmering Potomac reaches

the little choppysilver waves at Indian Head there

were mockingbirds in the graveyard and the roadsides

steamed with spring April enough to shock the world

when the cable came that He was dead I walked

through the streets full of fiveoclock Madrid seething with

twilight in shivered cubes of aguardiente redwine gaslamp-

green sunsetpink tileochre eyes lips red cheeks brown

pillar of the throat climbed on the night train at the

Norte station without knowing why

I'm so tired of violets

Take them all away

-10-

the shattered iridescent bellglass the carefully copied

busts the architectural details the grammar of styles

it was the end of that book and I left the Oxford

poets in the little noisy room that smelt of stale oliveoil in

the Pension Boston Ahora. Now Maintenant Vita

Nuova but we

who had heard Copey's beautiful reading voice and

read the handsomely bound books and breathed deep

(breathe deep one two three four) of the waxwork

lilies and the artificial parmaviolet scent under the ether-

cone and sat breakfasting in the library where the bust was

of Octavius

were now dead at the cableoffice

on the rumblebumping wooden bench on the train

slamming through midnight climbing up from the steer-

age to get a whiff of Atlantic on the lunging steamship

(the ovalfaced Swiss girl and her husband were my

friends) she had slightly popeyes and a little gruff way of

saying Zut alors and throwing us a little smile a fish to a

sealion that warmed our darkness when the immigra-

tion officer came for her passport he couldn't send her to

Ellis Islandla grippe espagnole she was dead

washing those windows

K.P.

cleaning the sparkplugs with a pocketknife

-11-

A. W. O. L.

grinding the American Beauty roses to dust in that

whore's bed (the foggy night flamed with proclamations

of the League: of the Rights of Man) the almond smell

of high explosives sending singing éclats through the

sweetish puking grandiloquence of the rotting dead

tomorrow I hoped would be the first day of the first

month of the first year

PLAYBOY

Jack Reed

was the son of a United States Marshal, a promi-

nent citizen of Portland Oregon.

He was a likely boy

so his folks sent him east to school

and to Harvard.

Harvard stood for the broad a and those contacts

so useful in later life and good English prose . . . if

the hedgehog cant be cultured at Harvard the hedge-

hog cant

at all and the Lowells only speak to the Cabots

and the Cabots

and the Oxford Book of Verse.

Reed was a likely youngster, he wasnt a jew or a

socialist and he didnt come from Roxbury; he was

husky greedy had appetite for everything: a man's got

to like many things in his life.

Reed was a man; he liked men he liked women

he liked eating and writing and foggy nights and drink-

ing and foggy nights and swimming and football and

-12-

rhymed verse and being cheerleader ivy orator making

clubs (not the very best clubs, his blood didn't run thin

enough for the very best clubs)

and Copey voice reading The Man Who Would

Be King, the dying fall Urnburial, good English prose

the lamps coming on across the Yard, under the elms

in the twilight

dim voices in lecturehalls,

the dying fall the elms the Discobulus the bricks of

the old buildings and the commemorative gates and the

goodies and the deans and the instructors all crying in

thin voices refrain,

refrain; the rusty machinery creaked, the deans

quivered under their mortarboards, the cogs turned to

Class Day, and Reed was out in the world:

Washington Square!

Conventional turns out to be a cussword;

Villon seeking a lodging for the night in the

Italian tenements on Sullivan Street, Bleecker, Car-

mine;

research proves R.L.S. to have been a great cocks-

man,

and as for the Elizabethans

to hell with them.

Ship on a cattleboat and see the world have ad-

ventures you can tell funny stories about every evening;

a man's got to love. . . the quickening pulse the feel

that today in foggy evenings footsteps taxicabs women's

eyes. . . many things in his life.

Europe with a dash of horseradish, gulp Paris like

an oyster;

but there's more to it than the Oxford Book of

English Verse. Linc Steffens talked the cooperative

commonwealth.

-13-

revolution in a voice as mellow as Copey's, Diog-

enes Steffens with Marx for a lantern going through

the west looking for a good man, Socrates Steffens kept

asking why not revolution?

Jack Reed wanted to live in a tub and write verses;

but he kept meeting bums workingmen husky guys

he liked out of luck out of work why not revolution?

He couldnt keep his mind on his work with so

many people out of luck;

in school hadnt he learned the Declaration of In-

dependence by heart? Reed was a westerner and words

meant what they said; when he said something standing

with a classmate at the Harvard Club bar, he meant

what he said from the soles of his feet to the waves of

his untidy hair (his blood didnt run thin enough for

the Harvard Club and the Dutch Treat Club and re-

spectable New York freelance Bohemia).

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;

not much of that round the silkmills when

in 1913,

he went over to Paterson to write up the strike,

textile workers parading beaten up by the cops, the

strikers in jail; before he knew it he was a striker parad-

ing beaten up by the cops in jail;

he wouldn't let the editor bail him out, he'd learn

more with the strikers in jail.

He learned enough to put on the pageant of the

Paterson Strike in Madison Square garden.

He learned the hope of a new society where no-

body would be out of luck,

why not revolution?

The Metropolitan Magazine sent him to Mexico

to write up Pancho Villa.

Pancho Villa taught him to write and the skeleton

-14-

mountains and the tall organ cactus and the armored

trains and the bands playing in little plazas full of dark

girls in blue scarfs

and the bloody dust and the ping of rifleshots

in the enormous night of the desert, and the brown

quietvoiced peons dying starving killing for liberty

for land for water for schools.

Mexico taught him to write.

Reed was a westerner and words meant what they

said.

The war was a blast that blew out all the Diogenes

lanterns;

the good men began to gang up to call for ma-

chineguns. Jack Reed was the last of the great race of

warcorrespondents who ducked under censorships and

risked their skins for a story.

Jack Reed was the best American writer of his

time, if anybody had wanted to know about the war

they could have read about it in the articles he wrote

about the German front,

the Serbian retreat,

Saloniki;

behind the lines in the tottering empire of the

Czar,

dodging the secret police,

jail in Cholm.

The brasshats wouldnt let him go to France be-

cause they said one night in the German trenches kid-

ding with the Boche guncrew he'd pulled the string on a

Hun gun pointed at the heart of France . . . playboy

stuff but after all what did it matter who fired the guns

or which way they were pointed? Reed was with the

boys who were being blown to hell,

with the Germans the French the Russians the

-15-

Bulgarians the seven little tailors in the Ghetto in

Salonique,

and in 1917

he was with the soldiers and peasants

in Petrograd in October:

Smolny,

Ten Days That Shook the World;

no more Villa picturesque Mexico, no more Harv-

ard Club playboy stuff, plans for Greek theatres, rhym-

ing verse, good stories of an oldtime warcorrespondent,

this wasnt fun anymore

this was grim.

Delegate,

back in the States indictments, the Masses trial,

the Wobbly trial, Wilson cramming the jails,

forged passports, speeches, secret documents, rid-

ing the rods across the cordon sanitaire, hiding in the

bunkers on steamboats;

jail in Finland all his papers stolen,

no more chance to write verses now, no more warm

chats with every guy you met up with, the college boy

with the nice smile talking himself out of trouble with

the judge;

at the Harvard Club they're all in the Intelligence

Service making the world safe for the Morgan-Baker-

Stillman combination of banks;

that old tramp sipping his coffee out of a tomato-

can's a spy of the General Staff.

The world's no fun anymore,

only machinegunfire and arson

starvation lice bedbugs cholera typhus

no lint for bandages no chloroform or ether thou-

sands dead of gangrened wounds cordon sanitaire and

everywhere spies.

-16-

The windows of Smolny glow whitehot like a

bessemer,

no sleep in Smolny,

Smolny the giant rollingmill running twentyfour

hours a day rolling out men nations hopes millenniums

impulses fears,

rawmaterial

for the foundations

of a new society.

A man has to do many things in his life.

Reed was a westerner words meant what they said.

He threw everything he had and himself into

Smolny,

dictatorship of the proletariat;

U.S.S.R.

The first workers republic

was established and stands.

Reed wrote, undertook missions (there were spies

everywhere), worked till he dropped,

caught typhus and died in Moscow.

JOE WILLIAMS

Twentyfive days at sea on the steamer Argyle, Glas-

gow, Captain Thompson, loaded with hides, chipping rust,

daubing red lead on steel plates that were sizzling hot

griddles in the sun, painting the stack from dawn to dark,

pitching and rolling in the heavy dirty swelli bedbugs in

the bunks in the stinking focastle, slumgullion for grub,

with potatoes full of eyes and mouldy beans, cockroaches

mashed on the messtable, but a tot of limejuice every day

in accordance with the regulations; then sickening rainy

heat and Trinidad blue in the mist across the ruddy water.

-17-

Going through the Boca it started to rain and the islands

heaped with ferny parisgreen foliage went grey under the

downpour. By the time they got her warped into the

wharf at Port of Spain, everybody was soaked to the skin

with rain and sweat. Mr. McGregor, striding up and

down in a souwester purple in the face, lost his voice from

the heat and had to hiss out his orders in a mean whisper.

Then the curtain of the rain lifted, the sun came out and

everything steamed. Apart from the heat everybody was

sore because there was talk that they were going up to the

Pitch Lake to load asphaltum.

Next day nothing happened. The hides in the forward

hold stank when they unbattened the hatches. Clothes and

bedding, hung out to dry in the torrid glare of sun be-

tween showers, was always getting soaked again before

they could get it in. While it was raining there was no-

where you could keep dry; the awning over the deck

dripped continually.

In the afternoon, Joe's watch got off, though it wasn't

much use going ashore because nobody had gotten any

pay. Joe found himself sitting under a palm tree on a

bench in a sort of a park near the waterfront staring at

his feet. It began to rain and he ducked under an awning

in front of a bar. There were electric fans in the bar; a

cool whiff of limes and rum and whiskey in iced drinks

wafted out through the open door. Joe was thirsty for a

beer but he didn't have a red cent. The rain hung like a

bead curtain at the edge of the awning.

Standing beside him was a youngish man in a white suit

and a panama hat, who looked like an American. He

glanced at Joe several times, then he caught his eye and

smiled, "Are you an Am-m-merican," he said. He stut-

tered a little when he talked. "I am that," said Joe.

There was a pause. Then the man held out his hand.

"Welcome to our city," he said. Joe noticed that he had a

slight edge on. The man's palm was soft when he shook

-18-

his hand. Joe didn't like the way his handshake felt. "You

live here?" he asked. The man laughed. He had blue eyes

and a round poutlipped face that looked friendly. "Hell

no . . . I'm only here for a couple of days on this West

India cruise. Much b-b-better have saved my money and

stayed home. I wanted to go to Europe but you c-c-can't

on account of the war." "Yare, that's all they talk about

on the bloody limejuicer I'm on, the war."

"Why they brought us to this hole I can't imagine and

now there's something the matter with the boat and we

can't leave for two days."

"That must be the Monterey."

"Yes. It's a terrible boat, nothing on board but women.

I'm glad to run into a fellow I can talk to. Seems to be

nothing but niggers down here."

"Looks like they had 'em all colors in Trinidad."

"Say, this rain isn't going to stop for a hell of a time.

Come in and have a drink with me."

Joe looked at him suspiciously. "All right," he said

finally, "but I might as well tell you right now I can't

treat you back . . . I'm flat and those goddam Scotch-

men won't advance us any pay.""You're a sailor, aren't

you?" asked the man when they got to the bar. "I work

on a boat, if that's what you mean."

"What'll you have . . . They make a fine Planter's

punch here. Ever tried that?""I'll drink a beer . . . I

usually drink beer." The barkeeper was a broadfaced chink

with a heartbroken smile like a very old monkey's. He put

the drinks down before them very gently as if afraid of

breaking the glasses. The beer was cold and good in 'its

dripping glass. Joe drank it off. "Say, you don't know

any baseball scores, do you? Last time I saw a paper

looked like the Senators had a chance for the pennant."

The man took off his panama hat and mopped his

brow with a handkerchief. He had curly black hair. He

kept looking at Joe as if he was making up his mind about

-19-

something. Finally he said, "Say my name's . . . Wa-

wa-wa- . . . Warner Jones." "They call me Yank on the

Argyle. . . In the navy they called me Slim."

"So you were in the navy, were you? I thought you

looked more like a jackie than a merchant seaman, Slim."

"That so? "

The man who said his name was Jones ordered two

more of the same. Joe was worried. But what the hell,

they can't arrest a guy for a deserter on British soil. "Say,

did you say you knew anything about the baseball scores?

The leagues must be pretty well underway by now."

"I got the papers up at the hotel . . . like to look at

them?"

"I sure would."

The rain stopped. The pavement was already dry when

they came out of the bar.

"Say, I'm going to take a ride around this island. Tell

me you can see wild monkeys and all sorts of things.

Why don't you come along? I'm bored to death of sight-

seeing by myself."

Joe thought a minute. "These clothes ain't fit. . . ."

"What the hell, this isn't Fifth Avenue. Come ahead."

The man who said his name was Jones signalled a nicely

polishéd Ford driven by a young chinaman. The china-

man wore glasses and a dark blue suit and looked like a

college student; he talked with an English accent. He said

he'd drive them round the town and out to the Blue Pool.

As they were setting off the man who said his name was

Jones said, "Wait a minute," and ran in the bar and got a

flask of Planter's Punch.

He talked a blue streak all the time they were driving

out past the British bungalows and brick institution build-

ings and after that out along the road through rubbery

blue woods so dense and steamy it seemed to Joe there

must be a glass roof overhead somewhere. He said how

he liked adventure and travel and wished he was free to

-20-

ship on boats and bum around and see the world and that

it must be wonderful to depend only on your own sweat

and muscle the way Joe was doing. Joe said, "Yare?"

But the man who said his name was Jones paid no atten-

tion and went right on and said how he had to take care

of his mother and that was a great responsibility and

sometimes he thought he'd go mad and he'd been to a doc-

tor about it and the doctor had advised him to take a

trip, but that the food wasn't any good on the boat and.

gave him indigestion and it was all full of old women

with daughters they wanted to marry off and it made him

nervous having women run after him like that. The worst

of it was not having a friend to talk to about whatever

he had on his mind when he got lonely. He wished he

had a nice good looking fellow who'd been around and

wasn't a softy and knew what life was and could appre-

ciate beauty for a friend, a fellow like Joe in fact. His

mother was awfully jealous and didn't like the idea of his

having any intimate friends and would always get sick

or try to hold out on his allowance when she found out

about his having any friends, because she wanted him to

be always tied to her apron strings but he was sick and

tired of that and from now on he was going to do what

he damn pleased, and she didn't have to know about

everything he did anyway.

He kept giving Joe cigarettes and offering them to

the chinaman who said each time, "Thank you very much,

sir. I have forgone smoking." Between them they had

finished the flask of punch and the man who said his name

was Jones was beginning to edge over towards Joe in the

seat, when the chinaman stopped the car at the end of a

little path and said, "If you wish to view the Blue Pool

you must walk up there almost seven minutes, sir. It is the

principal attraction of the island of Trinidad."

Joe hopped out of the car and went to make water be-

side a big tree with shaggy red bark. The man who said

-21-

his name was Jones came up beside him. "Two minds with

but a single thought," he said. Joe said, "Yare," and went

and asked the chinaman where they could see some mon-

keys.

"The Blue: Pool," said the chinaman, "is one of their

favorite resorts." He got out of the car and walked around

it looking intently with his black beads of eyes into the

foliage over their heads. Suddenly he pointed. Something

black was behind a shaking bunch of foliage. A screechy

giggle came from behind it and three monkeys went off

flying from branch to branch with long swinging leaps. In

a second they were gone and all you could see was the

branches stirring at intervals through the woods where

they jumped. One of them had a pinkish baby monkey

hanging on in front. Joe was tickled. He'd never seen

monkeys really wild like that before. He went off up the

path, walking fast so that the man who said his name

was Jones had trouble keeping up to him. Joe wanted to

see some more monkeys.

After a few minutes' walk up hill he began to hear a

waterfall. Something made him think of Great Falls and

Rock Creek and he went all soft inside. There was a pool

under a waterfall hemmed in by giant trees. "Dod gast

it, I've got a mind to take me a dip," he said. "Wouldn't

there be snakes, Slim?""Snakes won't bother you, 'less

you bother 'em first."

But when they got right up to the pool they saw that

there were people picnicking there, girls in light pink and

blue dresses, two or three men in white ducks, grouped

under striped umbrellas. Two Hindoo servants were

waiting on them, bringing dishes out of a hamper. Across

the pool came the chirp-chirp of cultivated English voices.

"Shoot, we can't go swimmin' here and they won't be

any monkeys either."

"Suppose we joined them . . . I might introduce my-

self and you would be my kid brother. I've got a letter

-22-

to a Colonel Somebody but I felt too blue to present it."

"What the hell do they want to be fartin' around here

for?" said Joe and started back down the path again. He

didn't see any more monkeys and by the time he'd got

back to the car big drops had started to fall.

"That'll spoil their goddarn picnic," he said, grinning to

the man who said his name was Jones when he came up,

the sweat running in streams down his face. "My, you're

a fast walker, Slim." He puffed and patted him on the

back. Joe got into the car. "I guess we're goin' to get it."

"Sirs," said the chinaman, "I will return to the city for

I perceive that a downpour is imminent."

By the time they'd gone a half a mile it was raining

so hard the chinaman couldn't see to drive. He ran the

car into a small shed on the side of the road. The rain

pounding on the tin roof overhead sounded loud as a

steamboat letting off steam. The man who said his name

was Jones started talking; he had to yell to make himself

heard above the rain. "I guess you see some funny sights,

Slim, leading the life you lead."

Joe got out of the car and stood facing the sudden

curtain of rain; the spray in his face felt almost cool. The

man who said his name was Jones sidled up to him hold-

ing out a cigarette. "How did you like it in the navy?"

Joe took the cigarette, lit it and said, "Not so good."

"I've been friends with lots of navy boys . . . I sup-

pose you liked raising cain on shore leave, didn't you?"

Joe said he didn't usually have much pay to raise cain

with, used to play ball sometimes, that wasn't so bad.

"But, Slim, I thought sailors didn't care what they did

when they got in port." "I guess some of the boys try to

paint the town red, but they don't usually have enough

jack to get very far." "Maybe you and I can paint the

town red in Port of Spain, Slim." Joe shook his head. "No,

I gotta go back on board ship."

The rain increased till the tin roof roared so Joe

-23-

couldn't hear what the man who said his name was Jones

was trying to say, then slackened and stopped entirely.

"Well, at least you come up to my room in the hotel, Slim,

and we'll have a couple of drinks. Nobody knows me

here. I can do anything I like." "I'd like to see the sports

page of that paper from home if you don't mind."

They got into the car and rode back to town along roads

brimmed with water like canals. The sun came out hot

and everything was in a blue steam. It was late afternoon.

The streets of the town were crowded; hindoos with

turbans, chinks in natty Hart Schaffner and Marx

clothes, redfaced white men dressed in white, raggedy

shines of all colors.

Joe felt uncomfortable going through the lobby of the

hotel in his dungarees, pretty wet at that, and he needed

a shave. The man who said his name was Jones put his

arm over his shoulders going up the stairs. His room was

big with tall narrow shuttered windows and smelt of bay

rum. "My, but I'm hot and wet," he said. "I'm going to

take a shower . . . but first we'd better ring for a couple

of gin fizzes. . . . Don't you want to take your clothes

off and take it easy? His skin's about as much clothes as a

fellow can stand in this weather." Joe shook his head,

"They stink too much," he said. "Say, have you got them

papers?

The hindoo servant came with the drinks while the

man who said his name was Jones was in the bathroom.

Joe took the tray. There was something about the expres-

sion of the hindoo's thin mouth and black eyes looking

at something behind you in the room that made Joe sore.

He wanted to hit the tobaccocolored bastard. The man

who said his name was Jones came back looking cool in a

silk bathrobe.

"Sit down, Slim, and we'll have a drink and a chat."

The man ran his fingers gently over his forehead as if it

ached and through his curly black hair and settled in an

-24-

armchair. Joe sat down in a straight chair across the room.

"My, I think this heat would be the end of me if I

stayed a week in this place. I don't see how you stand

it, doing manual work and everything. You must be pretty

tough!"

Joe wanted to ask about the newspapers but the man

who said his name was Jones was talking again, saying

how he wished he was tough, seeing the world like that-,

meeting all kinds of fellows, going to all kinds of joints,

must see some funny sights, must be funny all these fel-

lows bunking together all these days at sea, rough and

tumble, hey? and then nights ashore, raising cain, paint-

ing the town red, several fellows with one girl. "If I was

living like that, I wouldn't care what I did, no reputation

to lose, no danger of somebody trying to blackmail you,

only have to be careful to keep out of jail, hay? Why,

Slim, I'd like to go along with you and lead a life like

that." "Yare?" said Joe.

The man who said his name was Jones rang for another

drink. When the hindoo servant had gone Joe asked

again about the papers. "Honestly, Slim, I looked every-

where for them. They must have been thrown out."

"Well, I guess I'll be gettin' aboard my bloody lime-

juicer." Joe had his hand on the door. The man who said

his name was Jones came running over and took his hand

and said, "No, you're not going. You said you?d go on a

party with me. You're an awful nice boy. You won't be

sorry. You can't go away like this, now that you've got

me feeling all sort of chummy and you know amorous.

Don't you ever feel that way, Slim? I'll do the handsome

thing. I'll give you fifty dollars." Joe shook his head

and pulled his hand away.

He had to give him a shove to get the door open; he

ran down the white marble steps and out into the street.

It was about dark; Joe walked along fast. The sweat

was pouring off him. He was cussing under his breath as

-25-

he walked along-He felt rotten and sore and he'd wanted

real bad to see some papers from home.

He loafed up and down a little in the sort of park

place where he'd sat that afternoon, then he started down

towards the wharves. Might as well turn in. The smell of

frying from eating joints reminded him he was hungry.

He turned into one before he remembered he didn't have

a cent in his pocket. He followed the sound of a mechan-

ical piano and found himself in the red light district.

Standing in the doorways of the little shacks there were

nigger wenches of all colors and shapes, halfbreed Chinese

and Indian women, a few faded fat German or French

women; one little mulatto girl who reached her hand out

and touched his shoulder as he passed was damn pretty.

He stopped to talk to her, but when he said he was broke,

she laughed and said, "Go long from here, Mister No-

Money Man . . . no room here for a No-Money Man."

When he got back on board he couldn't find the cook

to try and beg a little grub off him so he took a chaw

and let it go at that. The focastle was like an oven. He

went up on deck with only a pair of overalls on and

walked up and down with the watchman who was a pink-

faced youngster from Dover everybody called Tiny. Tiny

said he'd heard the old man and Mr. McGregor talking

in the cabin about how they'd be off tomorrow to St. Luce

to load limes and then 'ome to blighty and would 'e be

glad to see the tight little hile an' get off this bleedin'

crahft, not 'arf. Joe said a hell of a lot of good it'd do

him, his home was in Washington, D. C. "I want to get

out of the c----g life and get a job that pays something.

This way every bastardly tourist with a little jack thinks

he can hire you for his punk." Joe told Tiny about the

man who said his name was Jones and he laughed like

he'd split. "Fifty dollars, that's ten quid. I'd a 'ad 'arf a

mind to let the toff 'ave a go at me for ten quid."

The night was absolutely airless. The mosquitoes were

-26-

beginning to get at Joe's bare neck and arms. A sweet hot

haze came up from the slack water round the wharves

blurring the lights down the waterfront. They took a

couple of turns without saying anything.

"My eye what did 'e want ye to do, Yank? "I' said Tiny

giggling. "Aw to hell with him," said Joe. "I'm goin' to

get out of this life. Whatever happens, wherever you are,

the seaman gets the s -- y end of the stick. Ain't that true,

Tiny?"

"Not 'aft . . . ten quid! Why, the bleedin' toff ought

to be ashaymed of hisself. Corruptin' morals, that's what

'e's after. Ought to go to 'is 'otel with a couple of ship-

mytes and myke him pay blackmyl. There's many an old

toff in Dover payin' blackmyl for doin' less 'n 'e did.

They comes down on a vacaytion and goes after the

bath'ouse boys. Blackmyl lim, that's what I'd do,

Yank."

Joe didn't say anything. After a while he said, "Jeez,

an' when I was a kid I thought I wanted to go to the

tropics."

"This ain't tropics, it's a bleedin' 'ell 'ole, that's what

it is."

They took another couple of turns. Joe went and leaned

over the side looking down into the greasy blackness. God

damn these mosquitoes. When he spat out his plug of

tobacco it made a light plunk in the water. He went down

into the focastle again, crawled into his bunk and pulled

the blanket over his head and lay there sweating. "Darn

it, I wanted to see the baseball scores."

Next day they coaled ship and the day after they had

Joe painting the officers' cabins while the Argyle nosed out

through the Boca again between the slimegreen ferny

islands, and he was sore because he had A.B. papers and

-27-

here they were still treating him like an ordinary sea-

man and he was going to England and didn't know what

held do when he'd get there, and his shipmates said

they'd likely as not run him into a concentraytion camp;

bein' an alien and landin' in England without a passport,

war wit' war on and 'un spies everywhere, an' all; but

the breeze had salt in it now and when he peeked out of

the porthole he could see blue ocean instead of the pud-

dlewater off Trinidad and flying fish in hundreds skim-

ming away from the ship's side.

The harbor at St. Luce's was clean and landlocked,

white houses with red roofs under the coconutpalms. It

turned out that it was bananas they were going to load; it

took them a day and a half knocking up partitions in the

afterhold and scantlings for the bananas to hang from. It

was dark by the time they'd come alongside the banana-

wharf and had rigged the two gangplanks and the little

derrick for lowering the bunches into the hold. The wharf

was crowded with colored women laughing and shrieking

and yelling things at the crew, and big buck niggers stand-

ing round doing nothing. The women did the loading.

After a while they started coming up one gangplank, each

one with a huge green bunch of bananas slung on her

head and shoulders; there were old black mammies and

pretty young mulatto girls; their faces shone with sweat

under the big bunchlights, you could see their swinging

breasts hanging down through their ragged clothes, brown

flesh through a rip in a sleeve. When each woman got to

the top of the gangplank two big buck niggers lifted the

bunch tenderly off her shoulders, the foreman gave her

a slip of paper and she ran down the other gangplank to

the wharf again. Except for the donkeyengine men the

deck crew had nothing to do. They stood around uneasy,

watching the women, the glitter of white teeth and eye-

balls, the heavy breasts, the pumping motion of their

thighs. They stood around, looking at the women, scratch-

-28-

ing themselves, shifting their weight from one foot to the

otheri not even much smut was passed. It was a black still

night, the smell of the bananas and the stench of nigger-

woman sweat was hot around them; now and then a little

freshness came in a whiff off some cases of limes piled

on the wharf.

Joe caught on that Tiny was waving to him to come

somewhere. He followed him into the shadow. Tiny put

his mouth against his ear, "There's bleedin' tarts 'ere,

Yank, come along." They went up the bow and slid down

a rope to the wharf. The rope scorched their hands. Tiny

spat into his hands and rubbed them together. Joe did

the same. Then they ducked into the warehouse. A rat

scuttled past their feet. It was a guano warehouse and

stank of fertilizer. Outside a little door in the back it was

pitch black, sandy underfoot. A little glow from street-

lights hit the upper part of the warehouse. There were

women's voices, a little laugh. Tiny had disappeared. Joe

had his hand on a woman's bare shoulder. "But first you

must give me a shilling," said a sweet cockney West India

woman's voice. His voice had gone hoarse, "Sure, cutie,

sure I will."

When his eyes got used to the dark he could see that

they weren't the only ones. There were giggles, hoarse

breathing all round them. From the ship came the inter-

mittent whir of the winches, and a mixedup noise of

voices from the women loading bananas.

The woman was asking for money. "Come on now,

white boy, do like you say." Tiny was standing beside him

buttoning up his pants. "Be back in a jiff, girls."

"Sure, we left our jack on board the boat."

They ran back through the warehouse with the girls

after them, up the jacobsladder somebody had let down

over the side of the ship and landed on deck out of breath

and doubled up with laughing. When they looked over

the side the women were running up and down the wharf

-29-

spitting and cursing at them like wildcats. "Cheeryoh, lay-

dies," Tiny called down to them, taking off his cap. He

grabbed Joe's arm and pulled him along the deck; they

stood round a while near the end of the gangplank. "Say,

Tiny, yours was old enough to be your grandmother,

damned if she wasn't," whispered Joe. "Granny me eye,

it was the pretty un I 'ad." "The hell you say . . . She

musta been sixty." "Wot a bleedin' wopper . . . it was

the pretty un I 'ad," said Tiny, walking off sore.

A moon had come up red from behind the fringed hills.

The bananabunches the women were carrying up the

gangplank made a twisting green snake under the glare

of the working lights. Joe suddenly got to feeling dis-

gusted and sleepy. He went down and washed himself

carefully with soap and water before crawling into his

bunk. He went to sleep listening to the Scotch and British

voices of his shipmates, talking about the tarts out back

of the wharfhouse, 'ow many they'd 'ad, 'ow many times,

'ow it stacked up with the Argentyne or Durban or Sing-

apore. The loading kept up all night.

By noon they'd cleared for Liverpool with the Chief

stoking her up to make a fast passage and all hands talking

about blighty. They had bananas as much as they could eat

that trip; every day the supercargo was bringing up over-

ripe bunches and hanging them in the galley. Everybody

was grousing about the ship not being armed, but the

Old Man and Mr. McGregor seemed to take on more

about the bananas than about the raiders. They were al-

ways peeping down under the canvas cover over the hatch

that had been rigged with a ventilator on the peak of it,

to see if they were ripening too soon. There was a lot of

guying about the blahsted banahnas down in the focastle.

After crossing the tropic they ran into a nasty norther

that blew four days, after that the weather was dirty right

along. Joe didn't have much to do after his four hours

at the wheel; in the focastle they were all grousing about

-30-

the ship not being fumigated to kill the bugs and the cock-

roaches and not being armed and not picking up a convoy.

Then word got around that there were German sub-

marines cruising off the Lizard and everybody from the

Old Man down got short tempered as hell. They all

began picking on Joe on account of America's not being in

the war and he used to have long arguments with Tiny

and an old fellow from Glasgow they called Haig. Joe

said he didn't see what the hell business the States had

in the war and that almost started a fight.

After they picked up the Scilly Island lights, Sparks

said they were in touch with a convoy and would have a

destroyer all to themselves up through the Irish Sea that

wouldn't leave them until they were safe in the Mersey.

The British had won a big battle at Mons. The Old Man

served out a tot of rum all round and everybody was in

fine shape except Joe who was worried about what'd hap-

pen to him getting into England without a passport. He

was chilly all the time on account of not having any warm

clothes.

That evening a destroyer loomed suddenly out of the

foggy twilight, looking tall as a church above the great

wave of white water curling from her bows. It gave them

a great scare on the bridge because they thought at first it

was a Hun. The destroyer broke out the Union Jack and

slowed down to the Argyle's speed, keeping close and

abreast of her. The crew piled out on deck and gave the

destroyer three cheers. Some of them wanted to sing

God Save the King but the officer on the bridge of the de-

stroyer began' bawling out the Old Man through a mega-

phone asking him why in bloody f -- g hell he wasn't

steering a zigzag course and if he didn't jolly well know

that it was prohibited making any kind of bloody f -- g

noise on a merchantship in wartime.

It was eight bells and the watches were changing and

Joe and Tiny began to laugh coming along the deck just

-31-

at the moment when they met Mr. McGregor stalking by

purple in the face. He stopped square in front of Joe and

asked him what he found so funny? Joe didn't answer.

Mr. McGregor stared at him hard and began saying in his

slow mean voice that he was probably not an American

at all but a dirty 'un spy, and told him to report on the

next shift in the stokehole. Joe said he'd signed on as an

A.B. and they didn't have any right to work him as a

stoker. Mr. McGregor said he'd never struck a man yet

in thirty years at sea but if he let another word out he'd

damn well knock him down. Joe felt burning hot but he

stood still with his fists clenched without saying anything.

For several seconds Mr. McGregor just stared at him,

red as a turkey gobbler. Two of the watch passed along

the deck. "Turn this fellow over to the bosun and put him

in irons. He may be a spy. . . . You go along quiet now

or it'll be worse for you."

Joe spent that night hunched up in a little cubbyhole

that smelt of bilge with his feet in irons. The next morn-

ing the bosun let him out and told him fairly kindly to

go get cookee to give him some porridge but to keep off

the deck. He said they were going to turn him over to the

aliens control as soon as they docked in Liverpool.

When he crossed the deck to go to the galley, his ankles

still stiff from the irons, he noticed that they were already

in the Mersey. It was a ruddy sunlit morning. In every

direction there were ships at anchor, stumpylooking black

sailboats and patrolboats cutting through the palegreen

ruffled water. Overhead the great pall of brown smoke

was shot here and there with crisp white steam that

caught the sun.

The cook gave him some porridge and a mug of bitter

barely warm tea. When he came out of the galley they

were further up the river, you could see towns on both

sides, the sky was entirely overcast with brown smoke and

fog. The Argyle was steaming under one bell.

-32-

Joe went below to the focastle and rolled into his bunk.

His shipmates all stared at him without speaking and

when he spoke to Tiny who was in the bunk below him,

he didn't answer. That made Joe feel worse than any-

thing. He turned his face to the wall, pulled the blanket

over his head and went to sleep.

Somebody shaking him woke him up. "Come on, my

man," said a tall English bobby with a blue helmet and

varnished chinstrap who had hold of his shoulder. "All

right, just a sec," Joe said. "I'd like to get washed up."

The bobby shook his head. "The quieter and quicker you

come the better it'll be for you."

Joe pulled his cap over his eyes, took his cigarbox out

from under his mattress, and followed the bobby out on

deck. The Argyle was already tied up to the wharf. So

without saying goodby to anybody or getting paid off, he

went down the gangplank with the bobby half a step

behind. The bobby had a tight grip on the muscle of his

arm. They walked across a flagstoned wharf and out

through some big iron gates to where the Black Maria

was waiting. A small crowd of loafers, red faces in the

fog, black grimy clothes. "Look at the filthy 'un," one

man said. A woman hissed, there were a couple of boos

and a catcall and the shiny black doors closed behind him;

the car started smoothly and he could feel it speeding

through the cobbled streets.

Joe sat hunched up in the dark. He was glad he was

alone in there. It gave him a chance to get hold of him-

self. His hands and feet were cold. He had hard work to

keep from shivering. He wished he was dressed decently.

All he had on was a shirt and pants spotted with paint

and a pair of dirty felt slippers. Suddenly the car stopped,

two hobbies told him to get out and he was hustled down

a whitewashed corridor into a little room where a police

inspector, a tall longfaced Englishman, sat at a yellow

varnished table. The inspector jumped to his feet, walked

-33-

towards Joe with his fists clenched as if he was going to

hit him and suddenly said something in what Joe thought

must be German. Joe shook his head, it struck him funny

somehow and he grinned. "No'savvy," he said.

"What's in that box?" the inspector, who had sat down

at the desk again, suddenly bawled out at the bobbies.

"You'd oughter search these buggers before you bring

'em in here."

One of the bobbies snatched the cigarbox out from

under Joe's arm and opened it, looked relieved when he

saw it didn't have a bomb in it and dumped everything

out on the desk. "So you pretend to be an American?" the

man yelled at Joe. "Sure I'm an American," said Joe.

"What the hell do you want to come to England in war-

time for?""I didn't want to come to . . .""Shut up."

the man yelled.

Then he motioned to the bobbies to go, and said, "Send

in Corporal Eakins.""Very good, sir," said the two bob-

bies respectfully in unison. When they'd gone, he came

towards Joe with his fists clenched again. "You might as

well make a clean breast of it, my lad. . . . We have all

the necessary information."

Joe had to keep his teeth clenched to keep them from

chattering. He was scared.

"I was on the beach in B.A. you see . . . had to take

the first berth I could get. You don't think anybody'd ship

on a limejuicer if they could help it, do you?" Joe was

getting sore; he felt warm again.

The plainclothes man took up a pencil and tapped with

it threateningly on the desk. "Impudence won't help you,

my lad . . . you'd better keep a civil tongue in your

head." Then he began looking over the photographs and

stamps and newspaper clippings that had come out of

Joe's cigarbox. Two men in khaki came in. "Strip him

and search him," the man at the desk said without look-

ing up.

-34-

Joe looked at the two men without understanding;

they had a little the look of hospital orderlies. "Sharp

now," one of them said. "We don't want to 'ave to use

force." Joe took off his shirt. It made him sore that he

was blushing; he was ashamed because he didn't have any

underwear. "All right, breeches next." Joe stood naked

in his slippers while the men in khaki went through his

shirt and pants. They found a bunch of clean waste in one

pocket, a battered Prince Albert can with a piece of

chewing tobacco in it and a small jackknife with a broken

blade. One of them was examining the belt and pointed

out to the other the place where it had been resewed. He

slit it up with a knife and they both looked eagerly inside.

Joe grinned, "I used to keep my bills in there," he said.

They kept their faces stiff.

"Open your mouth." One of them put a heavy hand

on Joe's jaw. "Sergeant, shall we take out the fillin's? 'E's

got two or three fillin's in the back of 'is mouth." The

man behind the desk shook his head. One of the men

stepped out of the door and came back with an oiled rub-

ber glove on his hand. "Lean hover," said the other man,

putting his hand on Joe's neck and shoving his head down

while the man with the rubber glove felt in his rectum.

"Hay, for Chris' sake," hissed Joe through his teeth.

"All right, me lad, that's all for the present," said the

man who held his head, letting go. "Sorry, but we 'ave

to do it . . . part of the regulations."

The corporal walked up to the desk and stood at

attention. "All right, sir . . . Nothin' of interest on the

prisoner's person."

Joe was terribly cold. He couldn't keep his teeth from

chattering.

"Look in his slippers, can't you?" growled the inspec-

tor. Joe didn't like handing over his slippers because his

feet were dirty, but there was nothing he could do. The

corporal slashed them to pieces with his penknife. Then

-35-

both men stood at attention and waited for the inspector

to lift his eye. "All right, sir . . . nothin' to report. Shall

I get the prisoner a blanket, sir? 'E looks chilly."

The man behind the desk shook his head and beckoned

to Joe, "Come over here. Now are you ready to answer

truthfully and give us no trouble it won't be worse than a

concentraytion camp for duraytion. . . . But if you give

us trouble I can't say how serious it mightn't be. We're

under the Defence of the Realm Act, don't forget

that. . . . What's your name?"

After Joe had told his name, birthplace, father's and

mother's names, names, of ships he'd sailed on, the inspec-

tor suddenly shot a question in German at him. Joe shook

his head, "Hay, what do you think I know German for?"

"Shut the bugger up. . . . We know all about him

anyway."

"Shall we give him 'is kit, sir?" asked one of the men

timidly.

"He won't need a kit if he isn't jolly careful."

The corporal got a bunch of keys and opened a heavy

wooden door on the side of the room. They pushed Joe

into a little cell with a bench and no window. The door

slammed behind him and Joe was there shivering in the

dark. Well, you're in the pig's a. h. for fair, Joe Williams,

he said aloud. He found he could warm himself by doing

exercises and rubbing his arms and legs, but his feet

stayed numb.

After a while he heard the key in the lock; the man in

khaki threw a blanket into the cell and slammed the door

to, without giving him a chance to say anything.

Joe curled up in the blanket on the bench and tried to

go to sleep.

He woke in a sudden nightmare fright. It was cold. The

watch had been called. He jumped off the bench. It was

blind dark. For a second he thought he'd gone blind in

the night. Where he was, and everything since they

-36-

sighted the Scilly Island lights came back. He had a lump

of ice in his stomach. He walked up and down from wall

to wall of the cell for a while and then rolled up in the

blanket again. It was a good clean blanket and smelt of

lysol or something like that. He went to sleep.

He woke up again hungry as hell, wanting to make

water. He shuffled around the square cell for a long time

until he found an enamelled pail under the bench. He

used it and felt better. He was glad it had a cover on it.

He began wondering how he'd pass the time. He began

thinking about Georgetown and good times he'd had with

Alec and Janey and the gang that hung around Mul-

vaney's pool parlor and making pickups on moonlight

trips on the Charles Macalister and went over all the

good pitchers he'd ever seen or read about and tried to

remember the batting averages of every man on the

Washington ballteams.

He'd gotten back to trying to remember his high-

school games, inning by inning, when the key was put

into the lock. The corporal who'd searched him opened

the door and handed him his shirt and pants. "You can

wash up if you want to," he said. "Better clean up smart.

Orders is to take you to Captain Cooper-Trahsk.""Gosh,

can't you get me somethin' to eat or some water. I'm about

starved. . . . Say, how long have I been in here, any-

way?" Joe was blinking in the bright white light that

came in from the other room. He pulled on his shirt and

pants.

"Come along," said the corporal. "Can't ahnswer no

question till you've seen Captain Cooper-Trahsk.""But

what about my slippers?""You keep a civil tongue in

your mouth and ahnswer all questions you're harsked and

it'll be all the better for you. . . . Come along."

When he followed the corporal down the same corri-

dor he'd come in by all the English tommies stared at

his bare feet. In the lavatory there was a shiny brass tap

-37-

of cold water and a hunk of soap. First Joe took a long

drink. He felt giddy and his knees were shaking. The

cold water and washing his hands and face and feet made

him feel better. The only thing he had to dry himself on

was a roller towel already grimy. "Say, I need a shave,"

he said. "You'll 'ave to come along now," said the corporal

sternly. "But I got a Gillette somewheres. . . ."

The corporal gave him an angry stare. They were going

in the door of a nicely furnished office with a thick red

and brown carpet on the floor. At a mahogany desk sat

an elderly man with white hair and a round roastbeef

face and lots of insignia on his uniform. "Is that . . . ?"

Joe began, but he saw that the corporal after clicking his

heels and saluting had frozen into attention.

The elderly man raised his head and looked at them

with a fatherly blue eye, "Ah . . . quite so . . ." he said.

"Bring him up closer, corporal, and let's have a look at

him. . . . Isn't he in rather a mess, corporal? You'd bet-

ter give the poor beggar some shoes and stockings. . . ."

"Very good, sir," said the corporal in a spiteful tone, stif-

fening to attention again. "At ease, corporal, at ease," said

the elderly man, putting on a pair of eyeglasses and look-

ing at some papers on his desk. "This is . . . er . . .

Zentner . . . claim American citizenship, eh?""The

name is Williams, sir.""Ah, quite so . . . Joe Williams,

seaman. . . ." He fixed his blue eyes confidentially on

Joe. "Is that your name, me boy?"

"Yessir."

"Well, how do you come to be trying to get into Eng-

land in wartime without passport or other identifying doc-

ument?"

Joe told about how he had an American A.B. certifi-

cate and had been on the beach at B.A. . . . Buenos

Aires. "And why were you . . . er . . . in this condi-

tion in the Argentine?""Well, sir, I'd been on the Mal-

lory Line and my ship sailed without me and I'd been

-38-

painting the town red a little, sir, and the skipper pulled

out ahead of schedule so that left me on the beach."

"Ah . . . a hot time in the old town tonight . . . that

sort of thing, eh?" The elderly man laughed; then sud-

denly he puckered up his brows. "Let me see . . . er . . .

what steamer of the Mallory Line were you travelling

on?""The Patagonia, sir, and I wasn't travellin' on her,

I was a seaman on board of her."

The elderly man wrote a long while on a sheet of

paper, then he lifted Joe's cigarbox out of the desk drawer

and began looking through the clippings and photographs.

He brought out a photograph and turned it out so that

Joe could see it. "Quite a pretty girl . . . is that your

best beloved, Williams?" Joe blushed scarlet. "That's my

sister.""I say she looks like a ripping girl . . . don't you

think so, corporal?""Quite so, sir," said the corporal dis-

tantly. "Now, me boy, if you know anything about the ac-

tivities of German agents in South America . . . many of

them are Americans or impostors masquerading as Ameri-

cans . . . it'll be much better for you to make a clean

breast of it."

"Honestly, sir," said Joe, "I don't know a thing about

it. I was only in B.A. for a few days.""Have you any

parents living?""My father's a pretty sick man. . . . But

I have my mother and sisters in Georgetown."" George-

town . . . Georgetown . . . let me see . . . isn't that

in British Guiana?""It's part of Washington, D. C."

"Of course . . . ah, I see you were in the navy. . . ."

The elderly man held off the picture of Joe and the two

other gobs. Joe's knees felt so weak he thought he was

going to fall down. "No, sir, that was in the naval re-

serve."

The elderly man put everything back in the cigarbox.

"You can have these now, my boy. . . . You'd better give

him a bit of breakfast and let him have an airing in the

yard. He looks a bit weak on his pins, corporal."

-39-

"Very good, sir." The corporal saluted, and they

marched out.

The breakfast was watery oatmeal, stale tea and two

slices of bread with margarine on it. After it Joe felt hun-

grier than before. Still it was good to get out in the air,

even if it was drizzling and the flagstones of the small

courtyard where they put him were like ice to his bare

feet under the thin slime of black mud that was over

them.

There was another prisoner in the courtyard, a little

fatfaced man in a derby hat and a brown overcoat, who

came up to Joe immediately. "Say, are you an American?"

"Sure," said Joe.

"My name's Zentner . . . buyer in restaurant furnish-

ings . . . from Chicago. . . . This is the tamnest out-

rage. Here I come to this tamned country to buy their

tamned goods, to spend good American dollars. . . .

Three days ago yet I placed a ten tousand dollar order

in Sheffield. And they arrest me for a spy and I been

here all night yet and only this morning vill they let

me telephone the consulate. It is outrageous and I hale a

passport and visa all they vant. I can sue for this outrage.

I shall take it to Vashington. I shall sue the British gov-

ernment for a hundred tousand dollars for defamation of

character. Forty years an American citizen and my fader

he came not from Chermany but from Poland. . . . And

you, poor boy, I see that you haf no shoes. And they talk

about the atrocious Chermans and if this ain't an atrocity,

vat is it?"

Joe was shivering and running round the court at a jog-

trot to try to keep warm. Mr. Zentner took off his brown

coat and handed it to him.

"Here, kid, you put that coat on.""But, jeez, it's too

good; that's damn nice of you.""In adversity ve must

help von anoder."

"Dod gast it, if this is their spring, I hate to think what

-40-

their winter's like. . . . I'll give the coat back to you

when I go in. Jeez, my feet are cold. . . . Say, did they

search you?" Mr. Zentner rolled up his eyes. "Outra-

geous," he spluttered . . . "Vat indignities to a buyer

from a neutral and friendly country. Vait till I tell the

ambassador. I shall sue. I shall demand damages.""Same

here," said Joe, laughing.

The corporal appeared in the door and shouted, " Wil-

liams." Joe gave back the coat and shook Mr. Zentner's

fat hand. "Say, for Gawd's sake, don't forget to tell the

consul there's another American here. They're talkin'

about sendin' me to a concentration camp for duration."

"Sure, don't vorry, boy. I'll get you out," said Mr. Zent-

ner, puffing out his chest.

This time Joe was taken to a regular cell that had a

little light and room to walk around. The corporal gave

him a pair of shoes and some wool socks full of holes. He

couldn't get the shoes on but the socks warmed his feet

up a little. At noon they handed him a kind of stew that

was mostly potatoes with eyes in them and some more

bread and margarine.

The third day when the turnkey brought the noonday

slum, he brought a brownpaper package that had been

opened. In it was a suit of clothes, shirt, flannel under-

wear, socks and even a necktie.

"There was a chit with it, but it's against the regulay-

tions," said the turnkey. "That outfit'll make a bloomin'

toff out of you."

Late that afternoon the turnkey told Joe to come along

and he put on the clean collar that was too tight for his

neck and the necktie and hitched up the pants that were

much too big for him around the waist and followed along

corridors and across a court full of tommies into a little

office with a sentry at the door and a sergeant at a desk.

Sitting on a chair was a busylooking young man with a

straw hat on his knees. " 'Ere's your man, sir," said the

-41-

sergeant without looking at Joe. "I'll let you question

him."

The busylooking young man got to his feet and went

up to Joe. "Well, you've certainly been making me a lot

of trouble, but I've been over the records in your case and

it looks to me as if you were what you represented your-

self to be. . . . What's your father's name?"

"Same as mine, Joseph P. Williams. . . . Say, are you

the American consul?"

"I'm from the consulate. . . . Say, what the hell do

you want to come ashore without a passport for? Don't

you think we have anything better to do than to take care

of a lot of damn fools that don't know enough to come in

when it rains? Damn it, I was goin' to play golf this

afternoon and here I've been here two hours waiting to

get you out of the cooler."

"Jeez, I didn't come ashore. They come on and got

me."

"That'll teach you a lesson, I hope. . . . Next time

you have your papers in order."

"Yessirree . . . I shu will."

A half an hour later Joe was out on the street, the cigar-

box and his old clothes rolled up in a ball under his arm.

It was a sunny afternoon; the redfaced people in dark

clothes, longfaced women in crummy hats, the streets full

of big buses and the tall trolleycars; everything looked

awful funny, until he suddenly remembered it was Eng-

land and he'd never been there before.

He had to wait a long time in an empty office at the

consulate while the busylooking young man made up a

lot of papers. He was hungry and kept thinking of beef-

steak and frenchfried. At last he was called to the desk and

given a paper and told that there was a berth all ready

for him on the American steamer Tampa, out of Pensa-

cola, and held better go right down to the agents and make

sure about it and go on board and if they caught him

-42-

around Liverpool again it would be the worse for him.

Say, is there any way I can get anything to eat around

here, Mr. Consul?""What do you think this is, a restau-

rant? . . . No, we have no appropriations for any hand-

outs. You ought to be grateful for what we've done al-

ready.""They never paid me off on the Argyle and I'm

about starved in that jail, that's all.""Well, here's a shil-

ling but that's absolutely all I can do." Joe looked at the

coin, "Who's 'at -- King George? Well, thank you, Mr.

Consul."

He was walking along the street with the agent's ad-

dress in one hand and the shilling in the other. He felt

sore and faint and sick at his stomach. He saw Mr. Zent-

ner the other side of the street. He ran across through the

jammed up traffic and went up to him with his hand held

out.

"I got the clothes, Mr. Zentner, it was damn nice of

you to send them." Mr. Zentner was walking along with

a small man in an officer's uniform. He waved a pudgy

hand and said, "Glad to be of service to a fellow citizen,

and walked on.

Joe went into a fried fish shop and spent sixpence on

fried fish and spent the other sixpence on a big mug of

beer in a saloon where he'd hoped to find free lunch to

fill up on but there wasn't any free lunch. By the time

he'd found his way to the agent's office it was closed and

there he was roaming round the streets in the white misty

evening without any place to go. He asked several guys

around the wharves if they knew where the Tampa was

docked, but nobody did and they talked so funny he could

hardly understand what they said anyway.

Then just when the streetlights were going on, and Joe

was feeling pretty discouraged, he found himself walking

down a side street behind three Americans. He caught

up to them and asked them if they knew where the Tampa

was. Why the hell shouldn't they know, weren't they

-43-

off'n her and out to see the goddam town and he'd better

come along. And if he wasn't tickled to meet some guys

from home after those two months on the limejuicer and

being in jail and everything. They went into a bar and

drank some whiskey and he told all about the jail and

how the damn bobbies had taken him off the Argyle and

he'd never gotten his pay nor nutten and they set him up

to drinks and one of the guys who was from Norfolk,

Virginia, named Will Stirp pulled out a five dollar bill

and said to take that and pay him back when he could.

It was like coming home to God's country running into

guys like that and they all had a drink all around; they

were four of 'em Americans in this lousy limejuicer town

and they each set up a round because they were four of

'em Americans ready to fight the world. Olaf was a Swede

but he had his first papers so he counted too and the other

feller's name was Maloney. The hatchetfaced barmaid

held back on the change but they got it out of her; she'd

only given 'em fifteen shillings instead of twenty for a

pound, but they made her give the five shillings back.

They went to another fried fish shop; couldn't seem to

get a damn thing to eat in this country except fried fish

and then they all had some more drinks and were the

four of them Americans feeling pretty good in this lousy

limejuicer town. A runner got hold of them because it was

closing time on account of the war and there wasn't a damn

thing open and very few streetlights and funily little hats

on the streetlights on account of the zeppelins. The runner

was a pale ratfaced punk and said he knowed a house

where they could 'ave a bit of beer and nice girls and a

quiet social time. There was a big lamp with red roses

painted on it in the parlor of the house and the girls were

skinny and had horseteeth and there were some bloody

limejuicers there who were pretty well under way and

they were the four of them Americans. The limeys began

to pick on Olaf for bein' a bloody 'un. Olaf said he was a

-44-

Swede but that he'd sooner be a bloody 'un than a lime-

juicer at that. Somebody poked somebody else and the

first thing Joe knew he was fighting a guy bigger 'n he

was and police whistles blew and there was the whole

crowd of them piled up in the Black Maria.

Will Stirp kept saying they was the four of them

Americans just havin' a pleasant social time and there was

no call for the bobbies to interfere. But they were all

dragged up to a desk and committed and all four of 'em

Americans locked up in the same cell and the limeys in

another cell. The police station was full of drunks yelling

and singing. Maloney had a bloody nose. Olaf went to

sleep. Joe couldn't sleep; he kept saying to Will Stirp he

was scared they sure would send him to a concentration

camp for the duration of the war this time and each time

Will Stirp said they were the four of them Americans

and wasn't he a Freeborn American Citizen and there

wasn't a damn thing they could do to 'em. Freedom of the

seas, God damn it.

Next morning they were in court and it was funny as

hell except that Joe was scared; it was solemn as Quaker-

meetin' and the magistrate wore a little wig and they

were everyone of 'em fined three and six and costs. It

came to about a dollar a head. Darned lucky they still

had some jack on them.

And the magistrate in the little wig gave 'em a hell of

a talking to about how this was wartime and they had no

right being drunk and disorderly on British soil but had

ought to be fighting shoulder to shoulder with their broth-

ers, Englishmen of their own blood and to whom the

Americans owed everything, even their existence as a

great nation, to defend civilization and free institutions

and plucky little Belgium against the invading huns who

were raping women and sinking peaceful merchantmen.

When the magistrate had finished, the court attendants

said, "Hear, hear," under their breath and they all looked

-45-

very savage and solemn and turned the American boys

loose after they'd paid their fines and the police sergeant

had looked at their papers. They held Joe after the others

on account of his paper being from the consulate and not

having the stamp of the proper police station on it but

after a while they let him go with a warning not to come

ashore again and that if he did it would be worse for

him.

Joe felt relieved when he'd seen the skipper and had

been taken on and had rigged up his bunk and gone

ashore and gotten his bundle that he'd left with the nice

flaxenhaired barmaid at the first pub he'd gone to the

night before. At last he was on an American ship. She had

an American flag painted on either side of the hull and

her name Tampa, Pensacola, Florida, in white letters.

There was a colored boy cooking and first thing they had

cornmeal mush and karo syrup, and coffee instead of that

lousy tea and the food tasted awful good. Joe felt better

than any time since he'd left home. The bunks were clean

and a fine feeling it was when the Tampa left the dock

with her whistle blowing and started easing down the

slatecolored stream of the Mersey towards the sea.

Fifteen days to Hampton Roads, with sunny weather

and a sea like glass every day up to the last two days and

then a stiff northwesterly wind that kicked up considerable

chop off the Capes. They landed the few bundles of cot-

ton print goods that made up the cargo at the Union

Terminal in Norfolk. It was a big day for Joe when he

went ashore with his pay in his pocket to take a look

around the town with Will Stirp, who belonged there.

They went to see Will Stirp's folks and took in a ball

game and after that hopped the trolley down to Virginia

Beach with some girls Will Stirp knew. One of the girls'

-46-

names was Della; and she was very dark and Joe fell for

her, kind of. When they were putting on their bathing

suits in the bathhouse he asked Will would she . . . ?

And Will got sore and said, "Ain't you got the sense to

tell a good girl from a hooker?" And Joe said well, you

never could tell nowadays.

They went in swimming and fooled around the beach

in their bathing suits and built a fire and toasted marsh-

mallows and then they took the girls home. Della let Joe

kiss her when they said good night and he began kinder

planning that she'd be his steady girl.

Back in town they didn't know just what to do. They

wanted some drinks and a couple of frails but they were

afraid of getting tanked up and spending all their money.

They went to a poolroom Will knew and shot some pool

and Joe was pretty good and cleaned up the local boys.

After that they went and Joe set up a drink but it was

closing time and right away they were out on the street

again. They couldn't find any hookers; Will said he

knew a house but they soaked you too damn much, and

they were just about going home to turn in when they

ran into two high yellers who gave 'em the eye. They

followed 'em down the street a long way and into a cross

street where there weren't many lights. The girls were

hot stuff but they were scared and nervous for fear some-

body might see 'em. They found an empty house with a

back porch where it was black as pitch and took 'em up

there and afterwards they went back and slept at Will

Stirp's folks' house.

The Tampa had gone into drydock at Newport News

for repairs on a started plate. Joe and Will Stirp were

paid off and hung round Norfolk all day without know-

ing what to do with themselves. Saturday afternoons and

Sundays, Joe played a little baseball with a scratch team

of boys who worked in the Navy Yard, evenings he went

out with Della Matthews. She was a stenographer in the

-47-

First National Bank and used to say she'd never marry

a boy who went to sea, you couldn't trust 'em and that it

was a rough kind of a life and didn't have any advance-

ment in it. Joe said she was right but you were only

young once and what the hell things didn't matter so

much anyway. She used to ask him about his folks and why

he didn't go up to Washington to see them especially as

his dad was ill. He said the old man could choke for all

he cared, he hated him, that was about the size of it. She

said she thought he was terrible. That time he was setting

her up to a soda after the movies. She looked cute and

plump in a fluffy pink dress and her little black eyes all

excited and flashing. Joe said not to talk about that stuff,

it didn't matter, but she looked at him awful mean and

mad and said she'd like to shake him and that everything

mattered terribly and it was wicked to talk like that and

that he was a nice boy and came from nice people and

had been nicely raised and ought to be thinking of get-

ting ahead in the world instead of being a bum and a

loafer. Joe got sore and said was that so? and left her

at her folks' house without saying another word. He

didn't see her for four or five days after that.

Then he went by where Della worked, and waited for

her to come out one evening. He'd been thinking about

her more than he wanted to and what she'd said. First,

she tried to walk past him but he grinned at her and she

couldn't help smiling back. He was pretty broke by that

time but he took her and bought her a box of candy. They

talked about how hot it was and he said they'd go to the

ball game next week. He told her how the Tampa was

pulling out for Pensacola to load lumber and then across

to the other side.

They were waiting for the trolley to go to Virginia

Beach, walking up and down fighting the mosquitoes. She

looked all upset when he said he was going to the other

side. Before Joe knew what he was doing he was saying

-48-

that he wouldn't ship on the Tampa again, but that he'd

get a job right here in Norfolk.

That night was full moon. They fooled around in their

bathing suits a long while on the beach beside a little

smudgefire Joe made to keep the mosquitoes off. He was

sitting crosslegged and she lay with her head on his knees

and all the time he was stroking her hair and leaning

over and kissing her; she said how funny his face looked

upside down when he kissed her like that. She said they'd

get married as soon as he got a steady job and between the

two of them they'd amount to something. Ever since

she'd graduated from high school at the head of her class

she'd felt she ought to work hard and amount to some-

thing. "The folks round here are awful no-account, Joe,

don't know they're alive half the time."

"D'you know it, Del, you kinda remind me o' my sis-

ter Janey, honest you do. Dod gast it, she's amounting to

something all right. . . . She's awful pretty too. . . ."

Della said she hoped she could see her some day and

Joe said sure she would and he pulled her to her feet and

drew her to him tight and hugged her and kissed her. It

was late, and the beach was chilly and lonely under the big

moon. Della got atrembling and said she'd have to get her

clothes on or she'd catch her death. They had to run not

to lose the last car.

The rails twanged as the car lurched through the moonlit

pinebarrens full of tambourining dryflies and katydids.

Della suddenly crumpled up and began to cry. Joe kept

asking her what the matter was but she wouldn't answer,

only cried and cried. It was kind of a relief to leave her at

her folks' house and walk alone through the empty airless

streets to the boarding house where he had a room.

All the next week he hoofed it around Norfolk and

Portsmouth looking for a job that had a future to it. He

even went over to Newport News. Coming back on the

ferry, he didn't have enough jack to pay his fare and had

-49-

to get the guy who took tickets to let him work his way

over sweeping up. The landlady began to ask for next

week's rent. All the jobs Joe applied for needed experience

or training or you'd ought to have finished high school and

there weren't many jobs anyway, so in the end he had to

go boating again, on a seagoing barge that was waiting for

a towboat to take her down east to Rockport with a load of

coal.

There were five barges in the tow; it wasn't such a bad

trip, just him and an old man named Gaskin and his boy,

a kid of about fifteen whose name was Joe too. The only

trouble they had was in a squall off Cape Cod when the tow

rope parted, but the towboat captain was right up on his

toes and managed to get a new cable on board 'em before

they'd straightened out on their anchor.

Up in Rockport they unloaded their coal and anchored

out in the harbor waiting to be towed to another wharf to

load granite blocks for the trip back. One night when

Gaskin and his boy had gone ashore and Joe was on watch

the second engineer of the tug, a thinfaced guy named

Hart came under the stern in a skiff and whispered to Joe

did he want some c -- t. Joe was stretched out on the

house smoking a pipe and thinking about Della. The hills

and the harbor and the rocky shore were fading into a

warm pink twilight. Hart had a nervous stuttering man-

ner. Joe held off at first but after a while he said, "Bring

'em along.""Got any cards?" said Hart. "Yare I got a

pack."

Joe went below to clean up the cabin. He'd just kid 'em

along, he was thinking. He'd oughtn't to have a rough time

with girls and all that now that he was going to marry

Della. He heard the sound of the oars and went out on

deck. A fogbank was coming in from the sea. There was

Hart and his two girls under the stern. They tripped and

giggled and fell hard against him when he helped 'em over

the side. They'd brought some liquor and a couple of

-50-

pounds of hamburger and some crackers. They weren't

much for looks but they were pretty good sorts with big

firm arms and shoulders and they sure could drink liquor.

Joe'd never seen girls like that before. They were sports

all right. They had four quarts of liquor between 'em and

drank it in tumblers.

The other two barges were sounding their claxons every

two minutes, but Joe forgot all about his. The fog was

white like canvas nailed across the cabin ports. They played

strip poker but they didn't get very far with it. Him and

Hart changed girls three times that night. The girls were

cookoo, they never seemed to have enough, but round

twelve the girls were darned decent, they cooked up the

hamburger and served up a lunch and ate all old man

Gaskin's bread and butter.

Then Hart passed out and the girls began to get worried

about getting home on account of the fog and everything.

All of 'em laughing like loons they hauled Hart up on

deck and poured a bucket of water on him. That Maine

water was so cold that he came to like sixty sore as a

pup and wanting to fight Joe. The girls quieted him down

and got him into the boat and they went off into the fog

singing Tipperary.

Joe was reeling himself. He stuck his head in a bucket

of water and cleaned up the cabin and threw the bottles

overboard and started working on the claxon regularly.

To hell with 'em, he kept saying to himself, he wouldn't

be a plaster saint for anybody. He was feeling fine, he

wished he had something more to do than spin that damn

claxon.

Old man Gaskin came on board about day. Joe could see

he'd gotten wind of something because after that he never

would speak to him except to give orders and wouldn't let

his boy speak to him; so that when they'd unloaded the

granite blocks in East New York, Joe asked for his pay

and said he was through. Old man Gaskin growled out it

-51-

was a good riddance and that he wouldn't have no boozin'

and whorin' on his barge. So there was Joe with fortyfive

dollars in his pocket walking through Red Hook looking

for a boarding house.

After he'd been a couple of days reading want ads and

going around Brooklyn looking for a job he got sick. He

went to a sawbones an oldtimer at the boarding house told

him about. The doe who was a little kike with a goatee told

him it was the gonawria and he'd have to come every

afternoon for treatment. He said he'd guarantee to cure

him up for fifty dollars, half payable in advance, and that

he'd advise him to have a bloodtest taken to see if he had

syphilis too and that would cost him fifteen dollars. Joe

paid down the twentyfive but said he'd think about the test.

He had a treatment and went out onto the street. The doc

had told him to be sure to walk as little as possible, but

he couldn't seem to go home to the stinking boardinghouse

and wandered aimlessly round the clattering Brooklyn

streets. It was a hot afternoon. The sweat was pouring off

him as he walked. If you catch it right the first day or two

it ain't so bad, he kept saying to himself. He came out on a

bridge under the elevated; must be Brooklyn Bridge.

It was cooler walking across the bridge. Through the

spiderwebbing of cables, the shipping and the pack of tall

buildings were black against the sparkle of the harbor. Joe

sat down on a bench at the first pier and stretched his legs

out in front of him. Here he'd gone to work and caught a

dose. He felt terrible and how was he going to write Del

now; and his board to pay, and a job to get and these damn

treatments to take. Jesus, he felt lousy.

A kid came by with an evening paper. He bought a

Journal and sat with the paper on his lap looking at the

headlines: RUSH MORE TROOPS TO MEX BORDER. What the

hell could he do? He couldn't even join the national guard

and go to Mexico; they wouldn't take you if you were sick

and even if they did it would be the goddam navy all over

-52-

again. He sat reading the want ads, the ads about adding

to your income with two hours agreeable work at home

evenings, the ads of Pelmanism and correspondence

courses. What the hell could he do? He sat there until it

was dark. Then he took a car to Atlantic Avenue and went

up four flights to the room where he had a cot under the

window and turned in.

That night a big thundersquall came up. There was a

lot of thunder and lightning damned close. Joe lay flat on

his back watching the lightning so bright it dimmed the

streetlights flicker on the ceiling. The springs rattled

every time the guy in the other cot turned in his sleep. It

began to rain in, but Joe felt so weak and sick it was a

long time before he had the gumption to sit up and pull

down the window.

In the morning the landlady, who was a big raw-boned

Swedish woman with wisps of flaxen hair down over her

bony face, started bawling' him out about the bed's being

wet. "I can't help it if it rains, can I?" he grumbled, look-

ing at her big feet. When he caught her eye, it came over

him that she wag kidding him and they both laughed.

She was a swell Woman, her name was Mrs. Olsen and

she'd raised six children, three boys who'd grown up and

gone to sea, a girl who was a school teacher in St. Paul and

a pair of girl twins about seven or eight who were always

getting into mischief. "Yust one year more and I send

them to Olga in Milwaukee. I know sailormen." Pop Olsen

had been on the beach somewhere in the South Seas for

years. "Yust as well he stay there. In Brooklyn he been

always in de lockup. Every week cost me money to get

him outa yail."

Joe got to helping her round the house with the clean-

ing and did odd painting and carpentering jobs for her.

After his money ran out she let him stay on and even lent

him twentyfive bucks to pay the doctor when he told her

about being sick. She slapped him on the back when he

-53-

thanked her; "Every boy I even lend money to, he turn

out yust one big bum," she said and laughed. She was a

swell woman.

It was nasty sleety winter weather. Mornings Joe sat

in the steamy kitchen studying a course in navigation he'd

started getting from the Alexander Hamilton Institute.

Afternoons he fidgeted in the dingy doctor's office that

smelt of carbolic, waiting for his turn for treatment, looking

through frayed copies of the National Geographic for

1909. It was a glum looking bunch waited in there. Nobody

ever said anything much to anybody else. A couple of times

he met guys on the street he'd talked with a little waiting

in there, but they always walked right past him as if they

didn't see him. Evenings he sometimes went over to Man-

hattan and played checkers at the Seamen's Institute or

hung around the Seamen's Union getting the dope on ships

he might get a berth on when the doc dried him up. It was

a bum time except that Mrs. Olsen was darn good to him

and he got fonder of her than he'd ever been of his own

mother.

The darn kike sawbones tried to hold him up for an-

other twentyfive bucks to complete the cure but Joe said

to hell with it and shipped as an A.B. on a brandnew

Standard Oil tanker, the Montana, bound light for Tam-

pico and then out east, some of the boys said, to Aden and

others said to Bombay. He was sick of the cold and the

sleet and the grimy Brooklyn streets and the logarithm

tables in the course on navigation he couldn't get through

his head and Mrs. Olsen's bullying jollying voice; she was

beginning to act like she wanted to run his life for him.

She was a swell woman but it was about time he got the

hell out.

The Montana, rounded Sandy Hook in a spiteful lash-

ing snowstorm out of the northwest, but three days later

they were in the Gulf Stream south of Hatteras rolling

in a long swell with all the crew's denims and shirts drying

-54-

on lines rigged from the shrouds. It was good to be on

blue water again.

Tampico was a hell of a place; they said that mescal

made you crazy if you drank too much of it; there were

big dance halls full of greasers dancing with their hats on

and with guns on their hips, and bands and mechanical

pianos going full tilt in every bar, and fights and drunk

Texans from the oilwells. The doors of all the cribhouses

were open so that you could see the bed with white pillows

and the picture of the Virgin over it and the lamps with

fancy shades and the colored paper trimming; the broad-

faced brown girls sat out in front in lace slips. But every-

thing was so damned high that they spent up all their jack

first thing and had to go back on board before it was

hardly midnight. And the mosquitoes got into the focastle

and the sandflies about day and it was hot and nobody

could sleep.

When the tanks had been pumped full the Montana

went out into the Gulf of Mexico into a norther with the

decks awash and the spray lashing the bridge. They hadn't

been out two hours before they'd lost a man overboard

off the monkeywalk and a boy named Higgins had had his

foot smashed lashing the starboard anchor that had broken

loose. It made 'em pretty sore down in the focastle that

the skipper wouldn't lower a boat, though the older men

said that no boat could have lived in a sea like that. As it

was the skipper cruised in a wide curve and took a couple

of seas on his beam that like to stove in the steel decks.

Nothing much else happened on that trip except that

one night when Joe was at the wheel and the ship was

dead quiet except for the irregular rustle of broken water

as she ploughed through the long flat seas eastward, he

suddenly smelt roses or honeysuckle maybe. The sky was

blue as a bowl of curdled milk with a waned scrap of moon

bobbing up from time to time. It was honeysuckle, sure

enough, and manured garden patches and moist foliage like

-55-

walking past the open door of a florist's in winter. It made

him feel soft and funny inside like he had a girl standing

right beside him on the bridge, like he had Del there with

her hair all smelly with some kind of perfume. Funny,

the smell of dark, girls' hair. He took down the binoculars

but he couldn't see anything on the horizon only the

curdled scud drifting west in the faint moonlight. He

found he was losing his course, good thing the mate hadn't

picked out that moment to look aft at the wake. He got

her back to E.N.E. by 1/2E. When his trick was over and

he rolled into his bunk he lay awake a long time thinking

of Del. God, he wanted money and a good job and a girl

of his own instead of all these damn floosies when you got

into port. What he ought to do was go down to Norfolk

and settle down and get married.

Next day about noon they sighted the grey sugarloaf of

Pico with a band of white clouds just under the peak and

Fayal blue and irregular to the north. They passed be-

tween the two islands. The sea got very blue; it smelled

like the country lanes outside of Washington when there

was honeysuckle and laurel blooming in the runs. The

bluegreen yellowgreen patchwork fields covered the steep

hills like an oldfashioned quilt. That night they raised

other islands to the eastward.

Five days of a heavy groundswell and they were in

the Straits of Gibraltar. Eight days of dirty sea and chilly

driving rain and they were off the Egyptian coast, a warm

sunny morning, going into the port of Alexandria under

one bell while the band of yellow mist ahead thickened

up into masts, wharves, buildings, palmtrees. The streets

smelt like a garbage pail, they drank arrack in bars run

by Greeks who'd been in America and paid a dollar apiece

to see three Jewishlooking girls dance a belly dance naked

in a back room. In Alexandria they saw their first cam-

ouflaged ships, three British scoutcruisers striped like zebras

and a transport all painted up with blue and green water-

-56-

markings. When they saw them, all the watch on deck

lined up along the rail and laughed like they'd split.

When he got paid off in New York a month later it

made him feel pretty good to go to Mrs. Olsen and pay her

back what he owed her. She had another youngster stay-

ing with her at the boarding house, a towheaded Swede

who didn't know any English, so she didn't pay much at-

tention to Joe. He hung around the kitchen a little while

and asked her how things were and told her about the

bunch on the Montana, then he went over to the Penn

Station to see when he could catch a train to Washington.

He sat dosing in the smoker of the daycoach half the night

thinking of Georgetown and when he'd been a kid at school

and the bunch in the poolroom on 4 1/2 Street and trips on

the river with Alec and Janey.

It was a bright wintry sunny morning when he piled out

at the Union Station. He couldn't seem to make up his

mind to go over to Georgetown to see the folks. He loafed

around the Union Station, got a shave and a shine and a

cup of coffee, read the Washington Post, counted his

money; he still had more'n fifty iron men, quite a roll of

lettuce for a guy like him. Then he guessed he'd wait and

see Janey first, he'd wait around and maybe he'd catch her

coming out from where she worked at noon. He walked

around the Capitol Grounds and down Pennsylvania Ave-

nue to the White House. On the Avenue he saw the same

enlistment booth where he'd enlisted for the navy. Kinder

gave him the creeps. He went and sat in the winter sun-

light in Lafayette Square, looking at the little dressed up

kids playing and the nursemaids and the fat starlings hop-

ping round the grass and the statue of Andrew Jackson,

until he thought it was time to go catch Janey. His heart

was beating so he could hardly see straight. It must have

been later than he thought because none of the girls com-

ing out of the elevator was her, though he waited about an

hour in the vestibule of the Riggs Building until some

-57-

lousy dick or other came up to him and asked him what

the hell he was loitering around for.

So Joe had to go over to Georgetown after all to find

out where Janey was. Mommer was in and his kid sisters

and they were all talking about how they were going to

have the house remodeled with the ten thousand dollars

from the Old Man's insurance and they wanted him to go

up to Oak Hill to see the grave, but Joe said what was the

use and got away as soon as he could. They asked all kinds

of questions about how he was getting on and he didn't

know what the hell to tell 'em. They told him where Janey

lived but they didn't know when she got out of her office.

He stopped at the Belasco and bought some theatre

tickets and then went back to the Riggs Building. He got

there just as Janey was stepping out of the elevator. She

was nicely dressed and had her chin up with a new little

cute independent tilt. He was so glad to see her he was

afraid he was going to bawl. Her voice was different. She

had a quick chilly way of talking and a kidding manner

she'd never had before. He took her to supper and to the

theatre and she told him all about how well she was getting

on at Dreyfus and Carroll and what interesting people she

was getting to know. It made him feel. like a bum going

around with her.

Then he left her at the apartment she had with a girl

friend and took the car back to the station. He settled

down and smoked a cigar in the smoker of the day-

coach. He felt pretty blue. Next day in New York he

looked up a guy he knew and they went out and had a few

drinks and found 'em some skirts and the day after that he

was sitting on a bench in Union Square with a headache

and not a red cent in his jeans. He found the stubs of the

tickets to the show at the Belasco theatre he'd taken Janey

to and put them carefully in the cigarbox with the other

junk.

-58-

Next boat he shipped on was the North Star bound for

St. Nazaire with a cargo listed as canned goods that every-

body knew was shell caps, and bonuses for the crew on

account of the danger of going through the zone. She was

a crazy whaleback, had been an oreboat on the Great Lakes,

leaked so they had to have the pumps going half the time,

but Joe liked the bunch and the chow was darn good and

old Cap'n Perry was as fine an old seadog as you'd like to

see, had been living ashore for a couple of years down at

Atlantic Highlands but had come back on account of the

big money to try to make a pile for his daughter; she'd

get the insurance anyway, Joe heard him tell the mate with

a wheezy laugh. They had a smooth winter crossing, the

wind behind them all the way right till they were in the

Bay of Biscay. It was very cold and the sea was dead

calm when they came in sight of the French coast, low and

sandy at the mouth of the Loire.

They had the flag up and the ship's name signal and

Sparks was working overtime and they sure were nervous

on account of mines until the French patrol boat came out

and led the way through the winding channel into the

river between the minefields.

When they saw the spires and the long rows of grey

houses and the little clustered chimney pots of St. Nazaire

in the smoky dusk the boys were going round slapping

each other on the back and saying they sure would get

cockeyed this night.

But what happened was that they anchored out in the

stream and Cap'n Perry and the First Mate went ashore in

the dingy and they didn't dock till two days later on ac-

count of there being no room at the wharves. When they

did get ashore to take a look at the mademosels and the

vin rouge, they all had to show their seaman's passports

when they left the wharf to a redfaced man in a blue uni-

form trimmed with red who had a tremendous pair of

pointed black moustaches. Blackie Flannagan had crouched

-59-

down behind him and somebody was just going to give him

a shove over his back when the Chief yelled at them from

across the street, "For Chris' sake, can't you c-----s see

that's a frog cop? You don't want to get run in right on the

wharf, do you?"

Joe and Flannagan got separated from the others and

walked around to look the town over. The streets were

paved with cobblestones and awful little and funny and

the old women all wore tight white lace caps and every-

thing looked kinder falling down. Even the dogs looked

like frog dogs. They ended up in a place marked American

Bar but it didn't look like any bar they'd ever seen in the

States. They bought a bottle of cognac for a starter. Flan-

nagan said the town looked like Hoboken, but Joe said it

looked kinder like Villefranche where he'd been when he

was in the navy. American dollars went pretty far if you

knew enough not to let 'em gyp you.

Another American came in to the dump and they got to

talking and he said he'd been torpedoed on the Oswego

right in the mouth of the Loire river. They gave him some

of the cognac and he said how it had been, that Uboat had

blowed the poor old Oswego clear outa the water and

when smoke cleared away she'd split right in two and

closed up like a jackknife. They had another bottle of

cognac on that and then the feller took them to a house

he said he knew and there they found some more of the

bunch drinking beer and dancing around with the girls.

Joe was having a good time parleyvooing with one of

the girls, he'd point to something and she'd tell him how

to say it in French, when a fight started someway and the

frog cops came and the bunch had to run for it. They all

got back aboard ship ahead of the cops but they came and

stood on the dock and jabbered for about a half an hour

until old Cap'n Perry, who'd just gotten back from town

in a horsecab, told 'em where to get off.

The trip back was slow but pretty good. They were only

-60-

a week in Hampton Roads, loaded up with a cargo of steel

ingots and explosives, and cleared for Cardiff. It was

nervous work. The Cap'n took a northerly course and they

got into a lot of fog. Then after a solid week of icy cold

weather with a huge following sea they sighted Rockall.

Joe was at the wheel. The green hand in the crowsnest

yelled out, "Battleship ahead," and old Cap'n Perry stood

on the bridge laughing, looking at the rock through his

binoculars.

Next morning they raised the Hebrides to the south.

Cap'n Perry was just pointing out the Butt of Lewis to the

mate when the lookout in the bow gave a scared hail. It

was a submarine all right. You could see first the periscope

trailing a white feather of foam, then the dripping conning

tower. The submarine had hardly gotten to the surface

when she started firing across the North Star's bows with

a small gun that the squareheads manned while decks were

still awash. Joe went running aft to run up the flag, al-

though they had the flag painted amidships on either side

of the boat. The engineroom bells jingled as Cap'n Perry

threw her into full speed astern. The jerries stopped firing

and four of them came on board in a collapsible punt.

All hands had their life preservers on and some of the

men were going below for their duffle when the fritz officer

who came aboard shouted in English that they had five

minutes to abandon the ship. Cap'n Perry handed over the

ship's papers, the boats were lowered like winking as the

blocks were well oiled. Something made Joe run back up

to the boat deck and cut the lashings on the liferafts with

his jackknife, so he and Cap'n Perry and the ship's cat

were the last to leave the North Star. The jerries had

planted bombs in the engine room and were rowing back

to the submarine like the devil was after them. The Cap'n's

boat had hardly pushed off when the explosion lammed

them a blow on the side of the head. The boat swamped

and before they knew what had hit them they were swim-

-61-

ming in the icy water among all kinds of planking and

junk. Two of the boats were still afloat. The old North

Star was sinking quietly with the flag flying and the signal-

flags blowing out prettily in the light breeze. They must

have been half an hour or an hour in the water. After the

ship had sunk they managed to get onto the liferafts and

the mate's boat and the Chief's boat took them in tow.

Cap'n Perry called the roll. There wasn't a soul missing.

The submarine had submerged and gone some time ago.

The men in the boats started pulling towards shore. Till

nightfall the strong tide was carrying them in fast towards

the Pentland Firth. In the last dusk they could see the tall

headlands of the Orkneys. But when the tide changed they

couldn't make headway against it. The men in the boats

and the men in the rafts took turn and turn about at the

oars but they couldn't buck the terrible ebb. Somebody

said the tide ran eight knots an hour in there. It was a

pretty bad night. With the first dawn they caught sight of

a scoutcruiser bearing down on them. Her searchlight

glared suddenly in their faces making everything look

black again. The Britishers took 'em on board and hustled

them down into the engineroom to get warm. A redfaced

steward came down with a bucket of steaming tea with rum

in it and served it out with a ladle.

The scoutcruiser took 'em into Glasgow, pretty well

shaken up by the chop of the Irish Sea, and they all stood

around in the drizzle on the dock while Cap'n Perry went

to find the American consul. Joe was getting numb in the

feet standing still and tried to walk across to the iron gates

opposite the wharf house to take a squint down the street,

but an elderly man in a uniform poked a bayonet at his

belly and he stopped. Joe went back to the crowd and told

'em how they were prisoners there like they were fritzes.

Jez, it made 'em sore. Flannagan started telling about how

the frogs had arrested him one time for getting into a

fight with an orangeman in a bar in Marseilles and had

-62-

been ready to shoot him because they said the Irish were

all pro-German. Joe told about how the limeys had run

him in in Liverpool. They were all grousing about how

the whole business was a lousy deal when Ben Tarbell the

mate turned up with an old guy from the consulate and

told 'em to come along.

They had to troop half across town through streets

black dark for fear of airraids and slimy with rain, to a

long tarpaper shack inside a barbedwire enclosure. Ben

Tarbell told the boys he was sorry but they'd have to stay

there for the present, and that he was trying to get the

consul to do something about it and the old man had cabled

the owners to try to get 'em some pay. Some girls from

the Red Cross brought them grub, mostly bread and mar-

malade and meatpaste, nothing you could really sink your

teeth into, and some thin blankets. They stayed in that

damn place for twelve days, playing poker and yarning

and reading old newspapers. Evenings sometimes a frousy

halfdrunk woman would get past the old guard and peel

in the door of the shack and beckon one of the men out

into the foggy darkness behind the latrines somewhere.

Some of the guys were disgusted and wouldn't go.

They'd been shut up in there so long that when the

mate finally came around and told 'em they were going

home they didn't have enough spunk left in 'em to yell.

They went across the town packed with traffic and gas-

flare in the fog again and on board a new 6000 ton

freighter, the Vicksburg, that had just unloaded a cargo

of cotton. It felt funny being a passenger and being able

to lay around all day on the trip home.

Joe was lying out on the hatchcover the first sunny day

they'd had when old Cap'n Perry came up to him. Joe

got to his feet. Cap'n Perry said he hadn't had a chance

to tell him what he thought of him for having the presence

of mind to cut the lashings on those rafts and that half the

men on the boat owed their lives to him. He said Joe was

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a bright boy and ought to start studying how to get out

of the focastle and that the American merchant marine

was growing every day on account of the war and young

fellers like him were just what they needed for officers.

"You remind me, boy," he said, "when we get to Hampton

Roads and I'll see what I can do on the next ship I get.

You could get your third mate's ticket right now with a

little time in shore school." Joe grinned and said he sure

would like to. It made him feel good the whole trip. He

couldn't wait to go and see Del and tell her he wasn't in

the focastle any more. Dod gast it, he was tired of being

treated like a jailbird all his life.

The Vicksburg docked at Newport News. Hampton

Roads was fuller of shipping than Joe had ever seen it.

Along the wharves everybody was talking about the

Deutschland that had just unloaded a cargo of dyes in

Baltimore. When Joe got paid off he wouldn't even take

a drink with his shipmates but hustled down to the ferry

station to get the ferry for Norfolk. Jez, the old ferry

seemed slow. It was about five o'clock a Saturday after-

noon when he got into Norfolk. Walking down the street

he was scared she wouldn't be home yet.

Del was home and seemed glad to see him. She said

she had a date that night but he teased her into breaking

it off. After all, weren't they engaged to be married? They

went out and had a sundae at an icecream parlor and she

told him all about her new job with the Duponts and how

she was getting ten more a week and how all the boys she

knew and several girls were working in the munition fac-

tories and how some of 'em were making fifteen dollars a

day and they were buying cars and the boy she'd had a

date with that night had a Packard. It took a long time for

Joe to get around to tell her about what old Cap'n Perry

had said and she was all excited about his having been

torpedoed and said why didn't he go and get a job over at

Newport News in the shipyard and make real money, she

-64-

didn't like the idea of his being torpedoed every minute,

but Joe said he hated to leave the sea now that there

was a chance of getting ahead. She asked him how much

he'd make as third mate on a freighter and he said a

hundred and twentyfive a month but there'd always be

bonuses for the zone and there were a lot of new ships

being built and he thought the prospects pretty good all

around.

Del screwed her face up in a funny way and said she

didn't know how she'd like having a husband who was

away from home all the time, but she went into a phone

booth and called the other boy up and broke off the date

she had with him. They went back to Del's house and

she cooked up a bite of supper. Her folks had gone over

to Fortress Monroe to eat with an aunt of hers. It made

Joe feel good to see her with an apron on bustling around

the kitchen. She let him kiss her a couple of times but

when he went up behind her and hugged her and pulled

her face back and kissed her, she said not to do that, it

made her feel all out of breath. The dark smell of her

hair and the feel of her skin that was white like milk

against his lips made him feel giddy. It was a relief when

they went out on the street in the keen northwest wind

again. He bought her a box of Saturday night candies at

a drugstore. They went to see a bill of vaudeville and

movies at the Colonial. The Belgian war pictures were

awful exciting and Del said wasn't it terrible and Joe

started to tell her about what a guy he knew had told him

about being in an air raid in London but she didn't listen.

When he kissed her goodnight in the hall, Joe felt

awful hot and pressed her up in the corner by the hatrack

and tried to get his hand under her skirt but she said not

till they were married and he said with his mouth against

hers, when would they get married and she said they'd get

married as soon as he got his new job.

Just then they heard the key in the latch just beside

-65-

them and she pulled him into the parlor and whispered

not to say anything about their being engaged just yet. It

was Del's old man and her mother and her two kid sisters

and the old man gave Joe a mean look and the kid sisters

giggled and Joe went away feeling fussed. It was early

yet but Joe felt too het up to sleep so he walked around

a little and then went by the Stirps' house to see if Will

was in town. Will was in Baltimore looking for a job, but

old Mrs. Stirp said if he didn't have nowhere to go and

wanted to sleep in Will's bed he was welcome, but he

couldn't sleep for thinking of Del and how smart she was

and how she felt in his arms and how the smell of her

hair made him feel crazy and how much he wanted her.

First thing he did Monday morning was to go over to

Newport News and see Cap'n Perry. The old man was

darn nice to him, asked him about his schooling and his

folks. When Joe said he was old Cap'n Joe Williams' son,

Cap'n Perry couldn't do enough for him. Him and Joe's

old man had been on the Albert and Mary Smith together

in the old clipper ship days. He said he'd have a berth for

Joe as junior officer on the Henry B. Higginbotham as

soon as she'd finished repairs and he must go to work

at shore school over in Norfolk and get ready to go before

the licensing board and get his ticket. He'd coach him

up on the fine points himself. When he left the old man

said, "Ma boy, if you work like you oughter, bein' your

Dad's son, an' this war keeps up, you'll be master of

your own vessel in five years, I'll guarantee it."

Joe couldn't wait to get hold of Del and tell her about

it. That night he took her to the movies to see the Four

Horsemen. It 'was darned exciting, they held hands all

through and he kept his leg pressed against her plump

little leg. Seeing it with her and the war and everything

flickering on the screen and the music like in church and

her hair against his cheek and being pressed close to her

a little sweaty in the warm dark like to went to his head.

-66-

When the picture was over he felt he'd go crazy if he

couldn't have her right away. She was kinder kidding him

along and he got sore and said God damn it, they'd have

to get married right away or else he was through. She'd

held out on him just about long enough. She began to cry

and turned her face up to him all wet with tears and said

if he really loved her he wouldn't talk like that and that

that was no way to talk to a lady and he felt awful bad

about it. When they got back to her folks' house, every-

body had gone to bed and they went out in the pantry

back of the kitchen without turning the light on and she

let him love her up. She said honestly she loved him so

much she'd let him do anything he wanted only she knew

he wouldn't respect her if she did. She said she was sick

of living at home and having her mother keep tabs on her

all the time, and she'd tell her folks in the morning about

how he'd got a job as a ship's officer and they had to get

married before he left and that he must get him his uni-

form right away.

When Joe left the house to look around and find a flop,

he was walking on air. He hadn't planned to get married

that soon but what the hell, a man had to have a girl of

his own. He began doping out what he'd write Janey

about it, but he decided she wouldn't like it and that he'd

better not write. He wished Janey wasn't getting so kind

of uppish, but after all she was making a big success of

business. When he was skipper of his owd ship she'd think

it was all great.

Joe was two months ashore that time. He went to shore

school every day, lived at the Y.M.C.A. and didn't take

a drink or shoot pool or anything. The pay he had saved

up from the two trips on the North Star was just about

enough to swing it. Every week or so he went over to

Newport News to talk it over with old Cap'n Perry who

told him what kind of questions the examining board

would ask him and what kind of papers he'd need. Joe

-67-

was pretty worried about his original A.B. certificate, but

he had another now and recommendations from captains

of ships he'd been on. What the hell, he'd been at sea

four years, it was about time he knew a little about run-

ning a ship. He almost worried himself sick over the ex-

amination, but when he was actually there standing before

the old birds on the board it wasn't as bad as he thought

it ud be. When he actually got the third mate's license

and showed it to Del, they were both of them pretty

tickled.

Joe bought his uniform when he got an advance of pay.

From then on he was busy all day doing odd jobs round

the drydock for old Cap'n Perry who hadn't gotten a crew

together yet. Then in the evenings he worked painting

up the little bedroom, kitchenette and bath he'd rented

for him and Del to live in when he was ashore. Del's folks

insisted on having a church wedding and Will Stirp, who

was making fifteen dollars a day in a shipyard in Balti-

more, came down to be best man.

Joe felt awful silly at the wedding and Will Stirp

had gotten hold of some whiskey and had a breath like

a distillery wagon and a couple of the other boys were

drunk and that made Del and her folks awful sore

and Del looked like she wanted to crown him all

through the service. When it was over Joe found he'd

wilted his collar and Del's old man began pulling a lot

of jokes and her sisters giggled so much in their white

organdy dresses, he could have choked 'em. They went

back to the Matthews) house and everybody was awful

stiff except Will Stirp and his friends who brought in a

bottle of whiskey and got old man Matthews cockeyed.

Mrs. Matthews ran 'em all out of the house and all the

old cats from the Ladies Aid rolled their eyes up and said,

"Could you imagine it?" And Joe and Del left in a

taxicab a feller he knew drove and everybody threw rice

at them and Joe found he had a sign reading Newlywed

-68-

pinned on the tail of his coat and Del cried and cried and

when they got to their apartment Del locked herself in

the bathroom and wouldn't answer when he called and

he was afraid she'd fainted.

Joe took off his new blue serge coat and his collar and

necktie and walked up and down not knowing what to

do. It was six o'clock in the evening. He had to be aboard

ship at midnight because they were sailing for France as

soon as it was day. He didn't know what to do. He

thought maybe she'd want something to eat so he cooked

up some bacon and eggs on the stove. By the time every-

thing was cold and Joe was walking up and down cussing

under his breath, Del came out of the bathroom looking

all fresh and pink like nothing had happened. She said

she couldn't eat anything but let's go to a movie . . .

"But, honeybug," said Joe, "I've got to pull out at twelve."

She began to cry again and he flushed and felt awful

fussed. She snuggled up to him and said, "We won't stay

for the feature. We'll come back in time." He grabbed

her and started hugging her but she held him off firmly

and said, "Later."

Joe couldn't look at the picture. When they got back

to the apartment it was ten o'clock. She let him pull off

her clothes but she jumped into bed and wrapped the

bedclothes around her and whimpered that she was afraid

of having a baby, that he must wait till she found out what

to do to keep from having a baby. All she let him do was

rub up against her through the bedclothes and then sud-

denly it was ten of twelve and he had to jump into his

clothes and run down to the wharf. An old colored man

rowed him out to where his ship lay at anchor. It was a

sweetsmelling spring night without any moon. He heard

honking overhead and tried to squint up his eyes to see

the birds passing against the pale stars. "Them's geese,

boss," said the old colored man in a soft voice. When he

climbed onboard everybody started kidding him and de-

-69-

clared he looked all wore out. Joe didn't know what to

say so he talked big and kidded back and lied like a

fish.

NEWSREEL XXI

Goodby Broadway

Hello France

We're ten million strong

8 YEAR OLD BOY SHOT BY LAD WITH

RIFLE

the police have already notified us that any entertainment

in Paris must be brief and quietly conducted and not in public

view and that we have already had more dances than we ought

capitalization grown 104% while business expands 520%

HAWAIIAN SUGAR CONTROL LOST BY

GERMANS

efforts of the Bolshevik Government to discuss the with-

drawal of the U. S. and allied forces from Russia through

negotiation for an armistice are attracting no serious attention

BRITISH AIRMAN FIGHTS SIXTY FOES

SERBIANS ADVANCE 10 MILES; TAKE 10 TOWNS;

MENACE PRILEP

Good morning

Mr. Zip Zip Zip

You're surely looking fine

Good morning

Mr. Zip Zip Zip

With your hair cut just as short as

With your hair cut just as short as

With your hair cut just as short as mine

-70-

LENINE REPORTED ALIVE

AUDIENCE AT HIPPODROME TESTIMONIALS MOVED TO

CHEERS AND TEARS

several different stories have come to me well authenti-

cated concerning the depth of Hindenburg's brutality; the de-

tails are too horrible for print. They relate to outraged

womanhood and girlhood, suicide and blood of the innocent

that wet the feet of Hindenburg

WAR DECREASES MARRIAGES AND BIRTHS

Oh ashes to ashes

And dust to dust

If the shrapnel dont get you

Then the eightyeights must

THE CAMERA EYE (29)

the raindrops fall one by one out of the horsechestnut

tree over the arbor onto the table in the abandoned beer-

garden and the puddly gravel and my clipped skull where

my fingers move gently forward and back over the fuzzy

knobs and hollows

spring and we've just been swimming in the Marne

way off somewhere beyond the fat clouds on the horizon

they are hammering on a tin roof in the rain in the

spring after a swim in the Marne with that hammering to

the north pounding the thought of death into our ears

the winey thought of death stings in the spring blood

that throbs in the sunburned neck up and down the belly

-71-

under the tight belt hurries like cognac into the tips

of my toes and the lobes of my ears and my fingers stroking

the fuzzy closecropped skull

shyly tingling fingers feel out the limits of the hard

immortal skull under the flesh a deathshead and

skeleton sits wearing glasses in the arbor under the lucid

occasional raindrops inside the new khaki uniform inside

my twentyoneyearord body that's been swimming in the

Marne in red and whitestriped trunks in Chalons in the

spring

RICHARD ELLSWORTH SAVAGE

The years Dick was little he never heard anything

about his Dad, but when he was doing his homework eve-

nings up in his little room in the attic he'd start thinking

about him sometimes; he'd throw himself on the bed and

lie on his back trying to remember what he had been like

and Oak Park and everything before Mother had been so

unhappy and they had had to come east to live with Aunt

Beatrice. There was the smell of bay rum and cigarsmoke

and he was sitting on the back of an upholstered sofa be-

side a big man in a panama hat who shook the sofa when

he laughed; he held on to Dad's back and punched his

arm and the muscle was hard like a chair or a table and

when Dad laughed he could feel it rumble in his back,

"Dicky, keep your dirty feet off my palm beach suit," and

he was on his hands and knees in the sunlight that poured

through the lace curtains of the window trying to pick

the big purple roses off the carpet; they were all standing

in front of a red automobile and Dad's face was red and he

-72-

smelt of armpits and white steam was coming out around,

and people were saying Safetyvalve. Downstairs Dad and

Mummy were at dinner and there was company and wine

and a new butler and it must be awful funny because they

laughed so much and the knives and forks went click click

all the time; Dad found him in his nightgown peeking

through the portières and came out awful funny and ex-

cited smelling like wine and whaled him and mother came

out and said, " Henry, don't strike the child," and they

stood hissing at one another in low voices behind the por-

tières on account of company and Mummy had picked

Dick up and carried him upstairs crying in her evening

dress all lacy and frizzly and with big puffy silk sleeves;

touching silk put his teeth on edge, made him shudder

all down his spine. He and Henry had had tan over-

coats with pockets in them like grownup overcoats and

tan caps and he'd lost the button off the top of his. Way

back there it was sunny and windy; Dick got tired and

sickyfeeling when he tried to remember back like that

and it got him so he couldn't keep his mind on tomorrow's

lessons and would pull out "Twenty Thousand Leagues

Under the Sea" that he had under the mattress because

Mother took books away when they weren't just about

the lessons and would read just a little and then he'd for-

get everything reading and wouldn't know his lessons the

next day.

All the same he got along very well at school and the

teachers liked him, particularly Miss Teazle, the English

teacher, because he had nice manners and said little things

that weren't fresh but that made them laugh. Miss Teazle

said he showed real feeling for English composition. One

Christmas he sent her a little rhyme he made up about

the Christ Child and the Three Kings and she declared

he had a gift.

The better he liked it in school the worse it was at home.

Aunt Beatrice was always nag nag nag from morning till

-73-

night. As if he didn't know that he and mother were eating

her bread and sleeping under her roof; they paid board,

didn't they? even if they didn't pay as much as Major

and Mrs. Glen or Dr. Kern did, and they certainly did

enough work to pay for their keep anyway. He'd heard

Mrs. Glen saying when Dr. Atwood was calling and Aunt

Beatrice was out of the room how it was a shame that poor

Mrs. Savage such a sweet woman, and a good church-

woman too, and the daughter of a general in the army,

had to work her fingers to the bone for her sister who

was only a fussy old maid and overcharged so, though

of course she did keep a very charming house and set an

excellent table, not like a boarding house at all, more like

a lovely refined private home, such a relief to find in

Trenton, that was such a commercial city so full of work-

ing people and foreigners; too bad that the daughters of

General Ellsworth should be reduced to taking paying

guests. Dick felt Mrs. Glen might have said something

about his carrying out the ashes and shovelling snow and

all that. Anyway he didn't think a highschool student

ought to have to take time from his studies to do the

chores.

Dr. Atwood was the rector of St. Gabriel's Episcopal

Church where Dick had to sing in the choir every Sunday

at two services while mother and his brother Henry S.,

who was three years older than he was and worked in a

drafting office in Philadelphia and only came home week-

ends, sat comfortably in a pew. Mother loved St. Gabriel's

because it was so highchurch and they had processions and

even incense. Dick hated it on account of choirpractice and

having to keep his surplice clean and because he never

had any pocketmoney to shoot craps with behind the bench

in the vestry and he was always the one who had to stand

at the door and whisper, "Cheeze it," if anybody was

coming.

One Sunday, right after his thirteenth birthday, he'd

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walked home from church with his mother and Henry

feeling hungry and wondering all the way if they were

going to have fried chicken for dinner. They were all

three stepping up onto the stoop, Mother leaning a little

on Dick's arm and the purple and green poppies on her

wide hat jiggling in the October sunlight, when he saw

Aunt Beatrice's thin face looking worriedly out through

the glass panel of the front door. "Leona," she said in

an excited reproachful voice, "he's here." "Who, Beatrice

dear?" "You know well enough . . . I don't know what

to do . . . he says he wants to see you. I made him wait

in the lower hall on account of . . . er . . . our friends."

"Oh, God, Beatrice, haven't I borne enough from that

man?

Mother let herself drop onto the bench under the stags-

horn coatrack in the hall. Dick and Henry stared at the

white faces of the two women. Aunt Beatrice pursed up

her lips and said in a spiteful tone, "You boys had better

go out and walk round the block. I can't have two big

hulks like you loafing round the house. You be back for

Sunday dinner at one thirty sharp . . . run along now."

"Why, what's the matter with Aunt Beatrice?" asked

Dick as they walked off down the street. "Got the pip I

guess . . . she gives me a pain in the neck," Henry said

in a superior tone.

Dick walked along kicking at the pavement with his toes.

"Say, we might go around and have a soda they

have awful good sodas at Dryer's."

"Got any dough?"

Dick shook his head.

"Well, you needn't think I'm goin' to treat you. . . .

Jimminy criskets, Trenton's a rotten town. . . . In Phila-

delphia I seen a drugstore with a sodafountain half a

block long."

"Aw, you."

"I bet you don't remember when we lived in Oak

-75-

Park, Dick. . . . Now Chicago's a fine town." "Sure I

do . . . and you an' me going to kindergarden and Dad

being there and everything."

"Hell's bells, I wanta smoke."

"Mother'll smell it on you."

"Don't give a damn if she does."

When they got home Aunt Beatrice met them at the

front door looking sore as a crab and told them to go down

to the basement. Mother wanted to see them. The back

stairs smelt of Sunday dinner and sage chickenstuffing.

They hobbled down as slowly as possible, it must be about

Henry's smoking. She was in the dark basement hall. By

the light of the gasjet against the wall Dick couldn't make

out who the man was. Mother came up to them and they

could see that her eyes were red. "Boys, it's your father,"

she said in a weak voice. The tears began running down

her face.

The man had a grey shapeless head and his hair was

cut very short, the lids of his eyes were red and lashless

and his eyes were the same color as his face. Dick was

scared. It was somebody he'd known when he was little;

it couldn't be Dad.

"For God's sake, no more waterworks, Leona," the man

said in a whining voice. As he stood staring into the boys'

faces his body wabbled a little as if he was weak in the

knees. "They're good lookers both of them, Leona . . .

I guess they don't think much of their poor old Dad."

They all stood there without saying anything in the

dark basement hall in the rich close smell of Sunday dinner

from the kitchen. Dick felt he ought to talk but something

had stuck in his throat. He found he was stuttering, "Ha-

ha-hav-have you been sick?"

The man turned to Mother. "You'd better tell them all

about it when I'm gone . . . don't spare me . . . no-

body's ever spared me. . . . Don't look at me as if I was

a ghost, boys, I won't hurt you." A nervous tremor shook

-76-

the lower part of his face. "All my life I've always been

the one has gotten hurt. . . . Well, this is a long

way from Oak Park . . . I just wanted to take a look at

you, good-by. . . . I guess the likes of me had better go

out the basement door . . . I'll meet: you at the bank at

eleven sharp, Leona, and that'll be the last thing you'll

ever have to do for me."

The gasjet went red when the door opened and flooded

the hall with reflected sunlight. Dick was shaking for fear

the man was going to kiss him, but all he did was give

them each a little trembly pat on the shoulder. His suit

hung loose on him and he seemed to have trouble lifting

his feet in their soft baggy shoes up the five stone steps to

the street.

Mother closed the door sharply.

"He's going to Cuba," she said. "That's the last time

we'll see him. I hope God can forgive him for all this,

your poor mother never can . . . at least he's out of that

horrible place." "Where was he, Mom?" asked Henry in

a business like voice. "Atlanta."

Dick ran away and up to the top floor and into his own

room in the attic and threw himself on the bed sobbing.

They none of them went down to dinner although they

were hungry and the stairs were rich with the smell of

roast chicken. When Pearl was washing up Dick tiptoed

into the kitchen and coaxed a big heaping plate of chicken

and stuffing and sweetpotatoes out of her; she said to run

along and eat it in the back yard because it was her day

out and she had the dishes to do. He sat on a dusty step-

ladder in the laundry eating. He could hardly get the

chicken down on account of the funny stiffness in his throat.

When he'd finished, Pearl made him help her wipe.

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That summer they got him a job as bellboy in a small

hotel at Bay Head that was run by a lady who was a

parishioner of Dr. Atwood's. Before he left Major and

Mrs. Glen, who were Aunt Beatrice's star boarders, gave

him a fivedollar bill for pocket money and a copy of the

"Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come" to read on the train.

Dr. Atwood asked him to stay after the bibleclass his last

Sunday and told him the parable of the talent, that Dick

knew very well already because Dr. Atwood preached on

it as a text four times every year, and showed him a letter

from the headmaster of Kent accepting him for the next

year as a scholarship pupil and told him that he must

work hard because God expected from each of us accord-

ing to our abilities. Then he told him a few things a grow-

ing boy ought to know and said he must avoid temptations

and always serve God with a clean body and a clean mind,

and keep himself pure for the lovely sweet girl he would

some day marry, and that anything else led only to mad-

ness and disease. Dick went away with his cheeks burning.

It wasn't so bad at the Bayview, but the guests and help

were all old people; about his own age there was only

Skinny Murray the other bellhop, a tall sandyhaired boy

who never had anything to say. He was a couple of years

older than Dick. They slept on two cots in a small airless

room right up under the roof that would still be so hot

from the sun by bedtime they could hardly touch it.

Through the thin partition they could hear the waitresses

in the next room rustling about and giggling as they went

to bed. Dick hated that sound and the smell of girls and

cheap facepowder that drifted in through the cracks in

the wall. The hottest nights he and Skinny would take

the screen out of the window and crawl out along the

gutter to a piece of flat roof there was over one of the

upper porches. There the mosquitoes would torment them,

but it was better than trying to sleep on their cots. Once

the girls were looking out of the window and saw them

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crawling along the gutter and made a great racket that

they were peeping and that they'd report them to the

manageress, and they were scared to death and made plans

all night about what they'd do if they were fired, they'd

go to Barnegat and get work on fishing boats; but the next

day the girls didn't say anything about it. Dick was kinda

disappointed because he hated waiting on people and run-

ning up and down stairs answering bells.

It was Skinny who got the idea they might make some

extra money selling fudge, because when Dick got a

package of fudge from his mother he sold it to one of the

waitresses for a quarter. So Mrs. Savage sent a package

of fresh fudge and panocha every week by parcel post that

Dick and Skinny sold to the guests in little boxes. Skinny

bought the boxes and did most of the work but Dick con-

vinced him it wouldn't be fair for him to take more than

ten percent of the profits because he and his mother put

up the original capital.

The next summer they made quite a thing of the fudge-

selling. Skinny did the work more than ever because Dick

had been to a private school and had been hobnobbing

with rich boys all winter whose parents had plenty of

money. Luckily none of them came to Bay Head for the

summer. He told Skinny all about the school and recited

ballads about St. John Hospitaller and Saint Christopher

he'd made up and that had been published in the school

paper; he told him about serving at the altar and the

beauty of the Christian Faith and about how he'd made

the outfield in the junior baseball team. Dick made Skinny

go to church with him every Sunday to the little Episcopal

chapel called St. Mary's-by-the-Sea. Dick used to stay

after the service and discuss points of doctrine and cere-

mony with Mr. Thurlow the young minister and was

finally invited to come home with him to dinner and meet

his wife.

The Thurlows lived in an unpainted peakedroofed bun-

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galow in the middle of a sandlot near the station. Mrs.

Thurlow was a dark girl with a thin aquiline nose and

bangs, who smoked cigarettes and hated Bay Head. She

talked about how bored she was and how she shocked the

old lady parishioners and Dick thought she was wonderful.

She was a great reader of the Smart Set and The Black

Cat and books that were advanced, and poked fun at Ed-

win's attempts to restore primitive Christianity to the

boardwalk, as she put it. Edwin Thurlow would look at her

from under the colorless lashes of his pale eyes and whis-

per meekly, "Hilda, you oughtn't to talk like that"; then

he'd turn mildly to Dick and say, "Her bark is worse

than her bite, you know." They got to be great friends

and Dick took to running around to their house whenever

he could get away from the hotel. He took Skinny around

a couple of times but Skinny seemed to feel that their

talk was too deep for him and would never stay long but

would shuffle off after explaining that he had to sell some

fudge.

The next summer it was mostly the hope of seeing the

Thurlows that made Dick not mind going to work at the

Bayview where Mrs. Higgins gave him the job of room-

clerk with an increase of pay on account of his gentlemanly

manners. Dick was sixteen and his voice was changing;

he had dreams about things with girls and thought a lot

about sin and had a secret crush on Spike Culbertson, the

yellowhaired captain of his school ballteam. He hated

everything about his life, his aunt and the smell of her

boarding house, the thought of his father, his mother's

flowergarden hats, not having enough money to buy good

clothes or go to fashionable summerresorts like the other

fellows did. All kinds of things got him terribly agitated

so that it was hard not to show it. The wabble of the wait-

resses' hips and breasts while they were serving meals,

girls' underwear in store windows, the smell of the bath-

houses and the salty tingle of a wet bathingsuit and the

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tanned skin of fellows and girls in bathingsuits lying out

in the sun on the beach.

He'd been writing Edwin and Hilda long letters all

winter about anything that came into his head, but when

he actually gaw them he felt funny and constrained. Hilda

was using a new kind of perfume that tickled his nose;

even when he was sitting at the table at lunch with them,

eating cold ham and potato salad from the delicatessen

and talking about the primitive litanies and gregorian

music he couldn't help undressing them in his mind, think-

ing of them in bed naked; he hated the way he felt.

Sunday afternoons Edwin went to Elberon to conduct

services in another little summer chapel. Hilda never went

and often invited Dick to go out for a walk with her or

come to tea. He and Hilda began to have a little world

between them that Edwin had nothing to do with, where

they only talked about him to poke fun at him. Dick began

to see Hilda in his queer horrid dreams. Hilda began to

talk about how she and Dick were really brother and sister,

how passionless people who never really wanted anything

couldn't understand people like them. Those times Dick

didn't get much chance to say anything. He and Hilda

would sit on the back stoop in the shade smoking Egyptian

Deities until they felt a little sick. Hilda'd say she didn't

care whether the damn parishioners saw her or not and

talk and talk about how she wanted something to happen

in her life, and smart clothes and to travel to foreign

countries and to have money to spend and not to have

to fuss with the housekeeping and how she felt sometimes

she could kill Edwin for his mild calfish manner.

Edwin usually got back on a train that got in at 10:53

and, as Dick had Sunday evenings off from the hotel, he

and Hilda would eat supper alone together and then take

a walk along the beach. Hilda would take his arm and

walk close to him; he'd wonder if she felt him tremble

whenever their legs touched.

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All week he'd think about those Sunday evenings. Some-

times he'd tell himself that he wouldn't go another time.

He'd stay up in his room and read Dumas or go out with

fellows he knew; being alone with Hilda like that made

him feel too rotten afterwards. Then one moonless night,

when they'd walked way down the beach beyond the rosy

fires of the picnickers, and were sitting side by side on the

sand talking about India's Love Lyrics that Hilda had

been reading aloud that afternoon, she suddenly jumped

on him and mussed up his hair and stuck her knees into

his stomach and began to run her hands over his body

under his shirt. She was strong for a girl, but he'd just

managed to push her off when he had to grab her by the

shoulders and pull her down on top of him. They neither

of them said anything but lay there in the sand breathing

hard. At last she whispered, "Dick, I mustn't have a

baby. . . . We can't afford it. . . . That's why Edwin

won't sleep with me. Damn it, I want you, Dick. Don't

you see how awful it all is?" While she was talking her

hands were burning him, moving down across his chest,

over his ribs, around the curve of his belly. "Don't, Hilda,

don't." There were mosquitoes around their heads. The

long hissing invisible wash of the surf came almost to their

feet.

That night Dick couldn't go down to the train to meet

Edwin the way he usually did. He went back to the Bay-

view with his knees trembling, and threw himself on his

bed in his stuffy little room under the roof. He thought

of killing himself but he was afraid of going to hell; he

tried to pray, at least to remember the Lord's Prayer.

He was terribly scared when he found he couldn't even

remember the Lord's Prayer. Maybe that was the sin

against the Holy Ghost they had committed.

The sky was grey and the birds were chirping outside

before he got to sleep. All next day, as he sat holloweyed

behind the desk, passing on the guests' demands for ice-

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water and towels, answering inquiries about rooms and

traintimes, he was turning a poem over in his mind about

the scarlet of my sin and the scarlet of thy sin and dark

birds above the surging seawaves crying and damned souls

passionately sighing. When it was finished he showed the

poem to the Thurlows, Edwin wanted to know where

he got such morbid ideas, but was glad that faith and the

church triumphed in the end. Hilda laughed hysterically

and said he was a funny boy but that maybe he'd be a writer

someday.

When Skinny came down for a two weeks' vacation to

take the place of one of the new bellhops that was sick,

Dick talked very big to him about women and sin and

about how he was in love with a married woman. Skinny

said that wasn't right because there were plenty of easy

women around who'd give a feller all the loving he

wanted. But when Dick found out that he'd never been

with a girl although he was two years older, he put on

so many airs about experience and sin, that one night

when they'd gone down to the drugstore for a soda, Skinny

picked up a couple of girls and they walked down the

beach with them. The girls were thirtyfive if they were a

day and Dick didn't do anything but tell his girl about his

unhappy love affair and how he had to be faithful to his

love even though she was being unfaithful to him at the

very moment. She said he was too young to take things

serious like that and that a girl ought to be ashamed of her-

self who made a nice boy like him unhappy. "Jez, I'd

make a feller happy if I had the chanct," she said and burst

out crying.

Walking back to the Bayview, Skinny was worried for

fear he might have caught something, but Dick said physi-

cal things didn't matter and that repentance was the key

of redemption. It turned out that Skinny did get sick be-

cause later in the summer he wrote Dick that he was paying

a doctor five dollars a week to cure him up and that he felt

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terrible about it. Dick and Hilds went on sinning Sunday

evening when Edwin was conducting services in Elberon

and when Dick went back to school that fall he felt very

much the man of the world.

In the Christmas vacation he went to stay with the

Thurlows in East Orange where Edwin was the assistant

to the rector of the church of St. John, Apostle. There,

at tea at the rector's he met Hiram Halsey Cooper, a

Jersey City lawyer and politician who was interested in

High Church and first editions of Huysmans and who

asked Dick to come to see him. When Dick called Mr.

Cooper gave him a glass of sherry, showed him first edi-

tions of Beardsley and Huysmans and Austin Dobson,

sighed about his lost youth and offered him a job in his

office as soon as school was over. It turned out that Mr.

Cooper's wife, who was dead, had been an Ellsworth and

a cousin of Dick's mother's. Dick promised to send him

copies of all his poems, and the articles he published in

the school paper.

All the week he was with the Thurlows he was trying

to get to see Hilda alone, but she managed to avoid him.

He'd heard about French letters and wanted to tell her

about them, but it wasn't until the last day that Edwin

had to go out and make parochial calls. This time it was

Dick who was the lover and Hilda who tried to hold him

off, but he made her take off her clothes and they laughed

and giggled together while they were making love. This

time they didn't worry so much about sin and when Edwin

came home to supper he asked them what the joke was,

they seemed in such a good humor. Dick started telling a

lot of cock and bull stories about his Aunt Beatrice and

her boarders and they parted at the train in a gale of

laughter.

That summer was the Baltimore convention. Mr. Cooper

had rented a house there and entertained a great deal.

Dick's job was to stay in the outer office and be polite to

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everybody and take down people's names. He wore a

blue serge suit and made a fine impression on everybody

with his wavy black hair that Hilda used to tell him was

like a raven's wing, his candid blue eyes and his pink and

white complexion. What was going on was rather over his

head, but he soon discovered what people Mr. Cooper

really wanted to see and what people were merely to be

kidded along. Then when he and Mr. Cooper found them-

selves alone, Mr. Cooper would get out a bottle of

Amontillado and pour them each a glass and sit in a big

leather chair rubbing his forehead as if to rub the politics

out of his mind and start talking about literature and the

nineties and how he wished he was young again. It was

understood that he was going to advance Dick the money

to go through Harvard with.

Dick had hardly gotten back to school as a senior the

next fall when he got a telegram from his mother: Come

home at once darling your poor father is dead. He didn't

feel sorry but kind of ashamed, afraid of meeting any of

the masters or fellows who might ask him questions. At

the railway station it seemed as if the train would never

come. It was Saturday and there were a couple of fellows

in his class at the station. Until the train came he thought

of nothing else but dodging them. He sat stiff on his seat

in the empty daycoach looking out at the russet October

hills, all keyed up for fear somebody would speak to him.

It was a relief to hurry out of the Grand Central Station

into the crowded New York streets where nobody knew

him, where he knew nobody. Crossing on the ferry he felt

happy and adventurous. He began to dread getting home

and deliberately missed the first train to Trenton. He went

into the old dining room of the Pennsylvania Station and

ate fried oysters and sweet corn for lunch and ordered a

glass of sherry, half afraid the colored waiter wouldn't

serve him. He sat there a long time reading The Smart

Set and drinking the sherry feeling like a man of the

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world, a traveller on his own, but underneath it all was

the memory of that man's trembling white hurt face, the

way held walked up the area steps that day. The restaurant

gradually emptied. The waiter must be thinking it was

funny his sitting there that long. He paid his check, and

before he wanted to found himself on the train for

Trenton.

At Aunt Beatrice's house everything looked and smelt

the same. His mother was lying on the bed with the shades

down and a handkerchief soaked in eau de cologne on her

forehead. She showed him a photograph that he'd sent

from Havana, a withered man who looked too small for.

his palm beach suit and panama hat. He'd been working

in the consulate as a clerk and had left a ten thousand

dollar life insurance in her favor. While they were talking

Henry came in looking worried and sore. The two of them

went out in the back yard and smoked cigarettes together.

Henry said he was going to take Mother to live with

him in Philadelphia, get her away from Aunt Beatrice's

nagging and this damn boardinghouse. He wanted Dick

to come too and go to the U. of P. Dick said no, he was

going to Harvard. Henry asked him how he was going

to get the money. Dick said he'd make out all right, he

didn't want any of the damned insurance. Henry said he

wasn't going to touch it, that was Mother's, and they went

back upstairs feeling about ready to sock each other in the

jaw. Dick felt better though, he could tell the fellows at

school that his father had been consul at Havana and had

died of a tropical fever.

That summer Dick worked for Mr. Cooper at $25 a

week getting up a prospectus for an art museum he wanted

to found in Jersey City and delighted him so by dedicating

to him a verse translation of Horace's poem about Mae-

cenas that he worked up with the help of the trot, that

Mr. Cooper made him a present of a thousand dollars to

take him through college; for the sake of form and so that

-86-

Dick should feel his responsibilities he put it in the form

of a note maturing in five years at four percent interest.

He spent his two weeks' vacation with the Thurlows

at Bay Head. He'd hardly been able to wait going down

on the train to see how Hilda would be, but everything was

different. Edwin didn't have the paperwhite look he used

to have; he'd had a call as assistant in a rich church on

Long Island where the only thing that worried him was

that part of the congregation was low and wouldn't allow

chanting or incense. He was comforting himself with the

thought that they did allow candles on the altar. Hilda

was changed too. Dick was worried to see that she and

Edwin held hands during supper. When they got alone

she told him that she and Edwin were very happy now

and that she was going to have a baby and that bygones

must be bygones. Dick stalked up and down and ran his

hands through his hair and talked darkly about death and

hellonearth and going to the devil as fast as he could but

Hilda just laughed and told him not to be silly, that he

was a goodlooking attractive boy and would find many nice

girls crazy to fall in love with him. Before he left they

had a long talk about religion and Dick told them with a

bitter stare at Hilda, that he'd lost his faith and only be-

lieved in Pan and Bacchus, the old gods of lust and drink.

Edwin was quite startled, but Hilda said it was all non-

sense and only growing pains. After he'd left he wrote a

very obscure poem full of classical references that he la-

belled, To a Common Prostitute and sent to Hilda, add-

ing a postscript that he was dedicating his life to Beauty

and Sin.

Dick had an exam to repeat in Geometry which he'd

flunked in the spring and one in Advanced Latin that he

was taking for extra credits, so he went up to Cambridge a

week before college opened. He sent his trunk and suitcase

out by the transfer company from the South Station and

went out on the subway. He had on a new grey suit and a

-87-

new grey felt hat and was afraid of losing the certified

cheque he had in his pocket for deposit in the Cambridge

bank. The glimpse of redbrick Boston and the state house

with its gold dome beyond the slatecolored Charles as the

train came out into the air to cross the bridge looked like

the places in foreign countries he and Hilda had talked

about going to. Kendall Square . . . Central Square . . .

Harvard Square. The train didn't go any further; he had

to get out. Something about the sign on the turnstile Out

To The College Yard sent a chill down his spine. He

hadn't been in Cambridge two hours before he discovered

that his felt hat ought to have been brown and old instead

of new and that getting a room in the Yard had been a

grave mistake for a freshman.

Perhaps it was the result of living in the Yard that he

got to know all the wrong people, a couple of socialist

Jews in first year law, a graduate student from the middle-

west who was taking his Ph.D. in Gothic, a Y.M.C.A. ad-

dict out from Dorchester who went to chapel every morn-

ing. He went out for Freshman rowing but didn't make

any of the crews and took to rowing by himself in a wherry

three afternoons a week. The fellows he met down at the

boathouse were pleasant enough to him, but most of them

lived on the Gold Coast or in Beck and he never got much

further than hello and solong with them. He went to all

the football rallies and smokers and beer nights but he

never could get there without one of his Jewish friends or

a graduate student so he never met anybody there who was

anybody.

One Sunday morning in the spring he ran into Freddy

Wigglesworth in the Union just as they were both going

in to breakfast; they sat down at the same table. Freddy,

an old Kent man, was a junior now. He asked Dick what

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he was doing and who he knew, and appeared horrified by

what he heard. "My dear boy," he said, "there's nothing

to do now but go out for the Monthly or the Advocate.

. . . I don't imagine the Crime would be much in your

line, would it?"

"I was thinking of taking some of my stuff around, but

I hardly had the nerve."

"I wish you'd come around to see me last fall. . . .

Goodness, we owe it to the old school to get you started

right. Didn't anybody tell you that nobody lived in the

Yard except seniors?" Freddy shook his head sadly as he

drank his coffee.

Afterwards they went around to Dick's room and he

read some poems out loud. "Why, I don't think they're so

bad," said Freddy Wigglesworth, between puffs at a ciga-

rette. "Pretty purple I'd say, though. . . . You get a few

of them typed and I'll take them around to R. G. . . .

Meet me at the Union at eight o'clock a week from Mon-

day night and we'll go around to Copey's. . . . Well, so

long, I must be going." After he'd gone Dick walked up

and down his room, his heart thumping hard. He wanted

to talk to somebody, but he was sick of all the people he

knew around Cambridge, so he sat down and wrote Hilda

and Edwin a long letter with rhyming inserts about how

well he was getting on at college.

Monday night finally came around. Already trying to

tell himself not to be disappointed if Freddy Wigglesworth

forgot about the date, Dick was on his way to the Union

a full hour before the time. The cavernous clatter and

smell of Mem, the funny stories of the boneheads at his

table, and Mr. Kanrich's sweaty bald head bobbing above

the brass instruments of the band in the gallery seemed

particularly dreary that evening.

There were tulips in the trim Cambridge gardens, and

now and then a whiff of lilacs on the wind. Dick's clothes

irked him; his legs were heavy as he walked around and

-89-

around the blocks of yellow frame houses and grass door-

yards that he already knew too well. The blood pounding

through his veins seemed too fast and too hot to stand.

He must get out of Cambridge or go crazy. Of course at

eight sharp when he walked slowly up the Union steps

Wigglesworth hadn't come yet. Dick went upstairs to the

library and picked up a book, but he was too nervous to

even read the title. He went downstairs again and stood

around in the hall. A fellow who worked next to him in

Physics I lab. came up and started to talk about something,

but Dick could hardly drag out an answer. The fellow

gave him a puzzled look and walked off. It was twenty

past eight. Of course he wasn't coming, God damn him,

he'd been a fool to expect he'd come, a stuck up snob like

Wigglesworth wouldn't keep a date with a fellow like him.

Freddy Wigglesworth was standing in front of him,

with his hands in his pockets. "Well, shall we Copify?" he

was saying.

There was another fellow with him, a dreamy looking

boy with fluffy light gold hair and very pale blue eyes.

Dick couldn't help staring at him he was so handsome.

"This is Blake. He's my younger brother. . . . You're in

the same class." Blake Wigglesworth hardly looked at

Dick when they shook hands, but his mouth twisted up into

a lopsided smile. When they crossed the Yard in the early

summer dusk fellows were leaning out the windows yell-

ing "Rinehart O Rinehart" and grackles were making a

racket in the elms, and you could hear the screech of street-

car wheels from Mass. Avenue; but there was a complete

hush in the lowceiling room lit with candles where a

scrubbylooking little man was reading aloud a story that

turned out to be Kipling's "The Man Who Would be

King." Everybody sat on the floor and was very intent.

Dick decided he was going to be a writer.

Sophomore year Dick and Blake Wigglesworth began to

go around together. Dick had a room in Ridgely and Blake

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was always there. Dick suddenly found he liked college,

that the weeks were flying by. The Advocate and the

Monthly each published a poem of his that winter; he and

Ned, as he took to calling Blake Wigglesworth, had tea

and conversation about books and poets in the afternoons

and lit the room with candles. They hardly ever ate at

Mem any more, though Dick was signed up there. Dick

had no pocketmoney at all once he'd paid for his board

and tuition and the rent at Ridgely but Ned had a pretty

liberal allowance that went for both. The Wigglesworths

were well off; they often invited Dick to have Sunday din-

ner with them at Nahant. Ned's father was a retired art

critic and had a white Vandyke beard; there was an Ital-

ian marble fireplace in the drawingroom over which hung

a painting of a madonna, two angels and some lilies that

the Wigglesworths believed to be by Botticelli, although

B.B., out of sheer malice, Mr. Wigglesworth would ex-

plain, insisted that it was by Botticini.

Saturday nights Dick and Ned took to eating supper at

the Thorndike in Boston and getting a little tight on spar-

kling nebbiolo. Then they'd go to the theatre or the Old

Howard.

The next summer Hiram Halsey Cooper was campaign-

ing for Wilson. In spite of Ned's kidding letters, Dick

found himself getting all worked up about the New Free-

dom, Too Proud to Fight, Neutrality in Mind and Deed,

Industrial Harmony between capital and labor, and

worked twelve hours a day typing releases, jollying small-

town newspaper editors into giving more space to Mr.

Cooper's speeches, branding Privilege, flaying the Inter-

ests. It was a letdown to get back to the dying elms of the

Yard, lectures that neither advocated anything, nor at-

tacked anything, The Hill of Dreams and tea in the after-

noons. He'd gotten a scholarship from the English depart-

ment and he and Ned had a room together in a house on

Garden Street. They had quite a bunch of friends who

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were interested in English and Fine Arts and things like

that, who'd gather in their room in the late afternoon, and

sit late in the candlelight and the cigarettesmoke and the

incense in front of a bronze Buddha Ned had bought in

Chinatown when he was tight once, drinking tea and eat-

ing cake and talking. Ned never said anything unless the

talk came around to drinking or sailingships; whenever

politics or the war or anything like that came up he had a

way of closing his eyes and throwing back his head and

saying Blahblahblahblah.

Election Day Dick was so excited he cut all his classes.

In the afternoon he and Ned took a walk round the North

End, and out to the end of T wharf. It was a bitterly raw

grey day. They were talking about a plan they had, that

they never spoke about before people, of getting hold of

a small yawl or ketch after they'd graduated and follow-

ing the coast down to Florida and the West Indies and

then through the Panama Canal and out into the Pacific.

Ned had bought a book on navigation and started to study

it. That afternoon Ned was sore because Dick couldn't seem

to keep his mind on talk about sailing and kept wondering

out loud how this state and that state was going to vote.

They ate supper grumpily at the Venice, that was crowded

for once, of cold scallopini and spaghetti; the service was

wretched. As soon as they'd finished one bottle of white

orvieto, Ned would order another; they left the restau-

rant walking stiffly and carefully, leaning against each other

a little. Disembodied faces swirled past them against the

pinkishgold dark of Hanover Street. They found them-

selves on the Common in the fringes of the crowd watch-

ing the bulletin board on the BostonHerald building.

"Who's winning? Batter up. . . . Hurray for our side,"

Ned kept yelling. "Don't you know enough to know its

election night?" a man behind them said out of the corner

of his mouth. "Blahblahblahblah," brayed Ned in the man's

face.

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Dick had to drag him off among the trees to avoid a

fight. "We'll certainly be pinched if you go on like this,"

Dick was whispering earnestly in his ear. "And I want to

see the returns. Wilson might be winning."

"Let's go to Frank Locke's and have a drink."

Dick wanted to stay out with the crowd and see the re-

turns; he was excited and didn't want to drink any more.

"It means we won't go to war.""Razer have a war," said

Ned thickly, "be zo amuzing . . . but war or no war lez

have a lil drink on it."

The barkeep at Frank Locke's wouldn't serve them,

though he'd often served them before, and they were dis-

gruntedly on their way down Washington Street to an-

other bar when a boy ran past with an extra in four inch

black type HUGHES ELECTED. "Hurray," yelled Ned.

Dick put his hand over his mouth and they wrestled there

in the street while a hostile group of men gathered around

them. Dick could hear the flat unfriendly voices, "College

boys . . . Harvard men." His hat fell off. Ned let go his

hold to let him pick it up. A cop was elbowing his way

through toward them. They both straightened up and

walked off soberly, their faces red. "It's all blahblahblah-

blah," whispered Ned under his breath. They walked

along toward Scollay Square. Dick was sore.

He didn't like the looks of the crowd around Scollay

Square either and wanted to go home to Cambridge, but

Ned struck up a conversation with a thuggylooking indi-

vidual and a sailor whose legs were weaving. "Say, Chub,

let's take 'em along to Mother Bly's," said the thuggylook-

ing individual, poking the sailor in the ribs with his elbow.

"Take it easy now, feller, take it easy," the sailor kept

muttering unsteadily.

"Go anywhere they don't have all this blahblahblah-

blah," Ned was shouting, seesawing from one foot to the

other. "Say, Ned, you're drunk, come along back to Cam-

bridge," Dick whined desperately in his ear and tugged

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at his arm, "They want to get you drunk and take your

money."

"Can't get me drunk, I am drunk . . . blahblahblah-

blah," whinnied Ned and took the sailor's white cap and

put it on his head instead of his own hat.

"Well, do what you damn please, I'm going." Dick let

go Ned's arm suddenly and walked away as fast as he

could. He walked along across Beacon Hill, his ears ring-

ing, his head hot and thumping. He walked all the way

to Cambridge and got to his room shivering and tired, on

the edge of crying. He went to bed but he couldn't sleep

and lay there all night cold and miserable even after he'd

piled the rug on top of the blankets, listening for every

sound in the street.

In the morning he got up with a headache and a sour

burntout feeling all through him. He was having some

coffee and a toasted roll at the counter under the Lampoon

Building when Ned came in looking fresh and rosy with

his mouth all twisted up in a smile, "Well, my young po-

litico, Professor Wilson was elected and we've missed out

on the sabre and epaulettes." Dick grunted and went on

eating. "I was worried about you," went on Ned airily,

"where did you disappear to?""What do you think I

did? I went home and went to bed," snapped Dick. "That

Barney turned out to be a very amusing fellow, a boxing

instructor, if he didn't have a weak heart he'd be welter-

weight champion of New England. We ended up in a

Turkish Bath . . . a most curious place." Dick felt like

smashing him in the face. "I've got a lab period," he said

hoarsely and walked out of the lunchcounter.

It was dusk before he went back to Ridgely. There was

somebody in the room. It was Ned moving about the room

in the blue dusk. " Dick," he began to mumble as soon as

the door closed behind him, "never be sore." He stood in

the middle of the room with his hands in his pockets sway-

ing. "Never be sore, Dick, at things fellows do when

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they're drunk. . . . Never be sore at anything fellows do.

Be a good fellow and make me a cup of tea." Dick filled

the kettle and lit the alcohol flame under it. "Fellow has

to do lotta damn fool things, Dick."

"But people like that . . . picking up a sailor in Scol-

lay Square . . . so damn risky," he said weakly.

Ned swung around towards him laughing easily and

happily, "And you always told me I was a damn Backbay

snob."

Dick didn't answer. He had dropped into the chair be-

side the table. He wasn't sore any more. He was trying to

keep from crying. Ned had lain down on the couch and

was lifting first one leg and then the other above his head.

Dick sat staring at the blue alcohol flame of the lamp lis-

tening to the purring of the teakettle until the last dusk

faded to darkness and ashy light from the street began to

filter into the room.

That winter Ned was drunk every evening. Dick made

the Monthly and The Advocate, had poems reprinted

in The Literary Digest and The Conning Tower, attended

meetings of the Boston Poetry Society, and was invited to

dinner by Amy Lowell. He and Ned argued a good deal

because Dick was a pacifist and Ned said what the hell he'd

join the Navy, it was all a lot of Blah anyway.

In the Easter vacation, after the Armed Ship Bill had

passed Dick had a long talk with Mr. Cooper who wanted

to get him a job in Washington, because he said a boy of his

talent oughtn't to endanger his career by joining the army

and already there was talk of conscription. Dick blushed

becomingly and said he felt it would be against his con-

science to help in the war in any way. They talked a long

time without getting anywhere about duty to the state and

party leadership and highest expediency. In the end Mr.

Cooper made him promise not to take any rash step with-

out consulting him. Back in Cambridge everybody was

drilling and going to lectures on military science. Dick

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was finishing up the four year course in three years and

had to work hard, but nothing in the courses seemed to

mean anything any more. He managed to find time to

polish up a group of sonnets called Morituri Te Salutant

that he sent to a prize competition run by The Literary

Digest. It won the prize but the editors wrote back that

they would prefer a note of hope in the last sestet. Dick

put in the note of hope and sent the hundred dollars to

Mother to go to Atlantic City with. He discovered that if

he went into war work he could get his degree that spring

without taking any exams and went in to Boston one day

without saying anything to anybody and signed up in the

volunteer ambulance service.

The night he told Ned that he was going to France they

got very drunk on orvieto wine in their room and talked

a great deal about how it was the fate of Youth and Beauty

and Love and Friendship to be mashed out by an early

death, while the old fat pompous fools would make merry

over their carcasses. In the pearly dawn they went out and

sat with a last bottle on one of the old tombstones in the

graveyard, on the corner of Harvard Square. They sat on

the cold tombstone a long time without saying anything,

only drinking, and after each drink threw their heads back

and softly bleated in unison Blahblahblahblah.

Sailing for France on the Chicago in early June was like

suddenly having to give up a book he'd been reading and

hadn't finished. Ned and his mother and Mr. Cooper and

the literary lady considerably older than himself held slept

with several times rather uncomfortably in her double-

decker apartment on Central Park South, and his poetry

and his pacifist friends and the lights of the Esplanade

shakily reflected in the Charles, faded in his mind like

paragraphs in a novel laid by unfinished. He was a little

-96-

seasick and a little shy of the boat and the noisy boozing

crowd and the longfaced Red Cross women workers giv-

ing each other gooseflesh with stories of spitted Belgian

babies and Canadian officers crucified and elderly nuns

raped; inside he was coiled up tight as an overwound clock

with wondering what it would be like over there.

Bordeaux, the red Garonne, the pastelcolored streets of

old tall mansardroofed houses, the sunlight and shadow so

delicately blue and yellow, the names of the stations all out

of Shakespeare, the yellowbacked novels on the bookstands,

the bottles of wine in the buvettes, were like nothing he'd

imagined. All the way to Paris the faintly bluegreen fields

were spattered scarlet with poppies like the first lines of a

poem; the little train jogged along in dactyls; everything

seemed to fall into rhyme.

They got to Paris too late to report at the Norton-

Harjes office. Dick left his bag in the room assigned him

with two other fellows at the Hotel Mont Thabor and

walked around the streets. It wasn't dark yet. There was

almost no traffic but the boulevards were full of strollers

in the blue June dusk. As it got darker women leaned out

towards them from behind all the trees, girls' hands

clutched their arms, here and there a dirty word in Eng-

lish burst like a thrown egg above the nasal singsong of

French. The three of them walked arm in arm, a little

scared and very aloof, their ears still ringing from the talk

on the dangers of infection with syphilis and gonorrhea a

medical officer had given the last night on the boat. They

went back to the hotel early.

Ed Schuyler, who knew French on account of having

been to boarding school in Switzerland, shook his head as

he was cleaning his teeth at the washstand and spluttered

out through his toothbrush, "C'est la guerre.""Well, the

first five years 'll be the hardest," said Dick, laughing.

Fred Summers was an automobile mechanic from Kansas.

He was sitting up in bed in his woolly underwear. "Fel-

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lers," he said, solemnly looking from one to the other,

"This ain't a war. . . . It's a goddam whorehouse."

In the morning they were up early and hurried through

their coffee and rolls and rushed out hot and cold with

excitement to the rue François Premier to report. They

were told where to get their uniforms and cautioned to

keep away from wine and women and told to come back

in the afternoon. In the afternoon they were told to come

back next morning for their identity cards. The identity

cards took another day's waiting around. In between they

drove around the Bois in horsecabs, went to see Nôtre

Dame and the Conciérgerie and the Sainte Chapelle and

out on the street car to Malmaison. Dick was furbishing

up his prepschool French and would sit in the mild sun-

light among theshabby white statues in the Tuileries Gar-

dens reading Les Dieux Ont Soif and L'Ile des Pinguins.

He and Ed Schuyler and Fred stuck together and after

dining exceeding well every night for fear it might be their

last chance at a Paris meal, took a turn around the boule-

vards in the crowded horizonblue dusk; they'd gotten to

the point of talking to the girls now and kidding them

along a little. Fred Summers had bought himself a prophy-

lactic kit and a set of smutty postalcards. He said the last

night before they left he was going to tear loose. When

they got to the front he might get killed and then what?

Dick said he liked talking to the girls but that the whole

business was too commercial and turned his stomach. Ed

Schuyler, who'd been nicknamed* Frenchie and was getting

very continental in his ways, said that the street girls were

too naïve.

The last night before they left was bright moonlight, so

the Gothas came over. They were eating in a little res-

taurant in Montmartre. The cashlady and the waiter made

them all go down into the cellar when the sirens started

wailing for the second time. There they met up with three

youngish women named Suzette, Minette and Annette.

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When the little honking fireengine went by to announce

that the raid was over it was already closing time and they

couldn't get any more drinks at the bar; so the girls took

them to a closely shuttered house where they were ushered

into a big room with livercolored wallpaper that had green

roses on it. An old man in a green baize apron brought up

champagne and the girls began to sit on knees and ruffle

up hair. Summers got the prettiest girl and hauled her

right into the alcove where the bed was with a big mirror

above the whole length of it. Then he pulled the curtain.

Dick found himself stuck with the fattest and oldest one

and got disgusted. Her flesh felt like rubber. He gave her

ten francs and left.

Hurrying down the black sloping street outside he ran

into some Australian officers who gave him a drink of

whiskey out of a bottle and took him into another house

where they tried to get a show put on, but the madam said

the girls were all busy and the Australians were too drunk

to pay attention anyway and started to wreck the place.

Dick just managed to slip out before the gendarmes came.

He was walking in the general direction of the hotel when

there was another alerte and he found himself being

yanked down into a subway by a lot of Belgians. There was

a girl down there who was very pretty and Dick was trying

to explain to her that she ought to go to a hotel with him

when the man she was with, who was a colonel of Spahis

in a red cloak covered with gold braid, came up, his waxed

mustaches bristling with fury. Dick explained that it was

all a mistake and there were apologies all around and they

were all braves alliés. They walked around several blocks

looking for some place to have a drink together, but every-

thing was closed, so they parted regretfully at the door of

Dick's hotel. He went up to the room in splendid humor;

there he found the other two glumly applying argyrol and

Metchnikoff paste. Dick made a good tall story out of his

adventures. But the other two said he'd been a hell of a

-99-

poor sport to walk out on a lady and hurt her sensitive

feelings. "Fellers," began Fred Summers, looking in each

of their faces with his round eyes, "it ain't a war, it's a

goddam . . ." He couldn't think of a word for it so Dick

turned out the light.

NEWSREEL XXII

COMING YEAR PROMISES REBIRTH OF

RAILROADS

DEBS IS GIVEN 30 YEARS IN PRISON

There's a long long trail awinding

Into the land of my dreams

Where the nightingales are singing.

And the white moon beams

future generations will rise up and call those men blessed

who have the courage of their convictions, a proper appreciation

of the value of human life as contrasted with material gain, and

who, imbued with the spirit of brotherhood will lay hold of

the great opportunity

BONDS BUY BULLETS BUY BONDS

COPPERS INFLUENCED BY UNCERTAIN

OUTLOOK

WOMEN VOTE LIKE VETERAN POLITICIANS

restore time honored meat combination dishes such as

hash, goulash, meat pies and liver and bacon. Every German

soldier carries a little clothesbrush in his pocket; first thing he

does when he lands in a prisoncage is to get out this brush and

start cleaning his clothes

EMPLOYER MUST PROVE WORKER IS ESSENTIAL

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There's a long long night of waiting

Until my dreams all come true

AGITATORS CAN'T GET AMERICAN

PASSPORTS

the two men out of the Transvaal district during the

voyage expressed their opinion that the British and American

flags expressed nothing and, as far as they were concerned

could be sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic, and acknowledged

that they were socalled Nationalists, a type much resembling

the I.W.W. here. "I have no intention" wrote Hearst, "of

meeting Governor Smith either publicly, privately, politically,

or socially, as I do not find any satisfaction

KILLS HERSELF AT SEA; CROWDER IN CITY

AFTER SLACKERS

Oh old Uncle Sam

He's got the infantree

He's got the cavalree

He's got artilleree

And then by God we'll all go to Chermanee

God Help Kaiser Bill!

THE CAMERA EYE (30)

remembering the grey crooked fingers the thick drip

of blood off the canvas the bubbling when the lungcases

try to breathe the muddy scraps of flesh you put in the

ambulance alive and haul out dead

three of us sit in the dry cement fountain of the little

garden with the pink walls in Récicourt

No there must be some way they taught as

-101-

Land of the Free conscience Give me liberty or

give me Well they give us death

sunny afternoon through the faint aftersick of

mustardgas I smell the box the white roses and the white

phlox with a crimson eye three brownandwhitestriped

snails hang with infinite delicacy from a honeysuckle-

branch overhead up in the blue a sausageballoon grazes

drowsily like a tethered cow there are drunken wasps

clinging to the tooripe pears that fall and squash when-

ever the near guns spew their heavy shells that go off

rumbling through the sky

with a whir that makes you remember walking in the

woods and starting a woodcock

welltodo country people carefully built the walls and

the little backhouse with the cleanscrubbed seat and the

quartermoon in the door like the backhouse of an old

farm at home carefully planted the garden and savored

the fruit and the flowers and carefully planned this war

to hell with "em Patrick Henry in khaki submits

to shortarm inspection and puts all his pennies in a Liberty

Loan or give me

arrives shrapnel twanging its harps out of tiny

powderpuff clouds invites us delicately to glory we

happy watching the careful movements of the snails in the

afternoon sunlight talking in low voices about

La Libre Belgique The Junius papers Areop-

agitica Milton went blind for freedom of speech If

-102-

you hit the words Democracy will understand even the

bankers and the clergymen I you we must

When three men hold together

The kingdoms are less by three

we are happy talking in low voices in the afternoon

sunlight about apres la guerre that our fingers our blood

our lungs our flesh under the dirty khaki feldgrau bleu

horizon might go on sweeten grow until we fall from the

tree ripe like the tooripe pears the arriv know and

singing éclats sizzling gas shells theirs is the power

and the glory

or give me death

RANDOLPH BOURNE

Randolph Bourne

came as an inhabitant of this earth

without the pleasure of choosing his dwelling or

his career.

He was a hunchback, grandson of a congregational

minister, born in 1886 in Bloomfield, New Jersey;

there he attended grammarschool and highschool.

At the age of seventeen he went to work as secre-

tary to a Morristown businessman.

He worked his way through Columbia working in

a pianola record factory in Newark, working as proof-

reader, pianotuner, accompanist in a vocal studio in

Carnegie Hall.

At Columbia he studied with John Dewey,

got a travelling fellowship that took him to Eng-

land Paris Rome Berlin Copenhagen,

-103-

wrote a book on the Gary schools.

In Europe he heard music, a great deal of Wag-

ner and Scriabine

and bought himself a black cape.

This little sparrowlike man,

tiny twisted bit of flesh in a black cape,

always in pain and ailing,

put a pebble in his sling

and hit Goliath square in the forehead with it.

War, he wrote, is the health of the state.

Half musician, half educational theorist (weak

health and being poor and twisted in body and on bad

terms with his people hadn't spoiled the world for

Randolph Bourne; he was a happy man, loved die

Meistersinger and playing Bach with his long hands

that stretched so easily over the keys and pretty girls

and good food and evenings of talk. When he was

dying of pneumonia a friend brought him an eggnog;

Look at the yellow, its beautiful, he kept saying as his

life ebbed into delirium and fever. He was a happy

man.) Bourne seized with feverish intensity on the

ideas then going around at Columbia, he picked rosy

glasses out of the turgid jumble of John Dewey's teach-

ing through which he saw clear and sharp

the shining capitol of reformed democracy,

Wilson's New Freedom;

but he was too good a mathematician; he had to

work the equations out;

with the result

that in the crazy spring of 1917 he began to get

unpopular where his bread was buttered at the New

Republic;

-104-

for New Freedom read Conscription, for Democ-

racy, Win the War, for Reform, Safeguard the Morgan

Loans

for Progress Civilization Education Service,

Buy a Liberty Bond,

Straff the Hun,

Jail the Objectors.

He resigned from The New Republic; only The

Seven Arts had the nerve to publish his articles against

the war. The backers of The Seven Arts took their

money elsewhere; friends didn't like to be seen with

Bourne, his father wrote him begging him not to dis-

grace the family name. The rainbowtinted future of

reformed democracy went pop like a pricked soapbubble.

The liberals scurried to Washington;

some of his friends plead with him to climb up on

Schoolmaster Wilson's sharabang; the war was great.

fought from the swivel chairs of Mr. Creel's bureau in

Washington.

He was cartooned, shadowed by the espionage

service and the counter-espionage service; taking a walk

with two girl friends at Wood's Hole he was arrested, a

trunk full of manuscript and letters was stolen from

him in Connecticut. (Force to the utmost, thundered

Schoolmaster Wilson)

He didn't live to see the big circus of the Peace of

Versailles or the purplish normalcy of the Ohio Gang.

Six weeks after the armistice he died planning an

essay on the foundations of future radicalism in Amer-

ica.

If any man has a ghost

Bourne has a ghost,

a tiny twisted unscared ghost in a black cloak

hopping along the grimy old brick and brownstone

streets still left in downtown New York,

-105-

crying out in a shrill soundless giggle:

War is the health of the state.

NEWSREEL XXIII

If you dont like your Uncle Sammy

If you dont like the red white and blue

smiles of patriotic Essex County will be concentrated and

recorded at Branch Brook Park, Newark, N. J., tomorrow

afternoon. Bands will play while a vast throng marches hap-

pily to the rhythm of wartime anthems and airs. Mothers

of the nation's sons will be there; wives, many of them carry-

ing babes born after their fathers sailed for the front, will

occupy a place in Essex County's graphic pageant; relatives and

friends of the heroes who are carrying on the message of Free-

dom will file past a battery of cameras and all will smile a

message recording installment no. 7 of Smiles Across the Sea.

The hour for these folks to start smiling is 2:30.

MOBS PLUNDER CITIES

NEWSPAPERMAN LEADS THROUGH BARRAGE

it was a pitiful sight at dusk every evening when the

whole population evacuated the city, going to sleep in the

fields until daylight. Old women and tiny children, cripples

drawn in carts or wheeled in barrows men carrying chairs

bring those too feeble and old to walk

JERSEY TROOPS TAKE WOMAN GUNNERS

the trouble had its origin with the demand of the marine

workers for an eight hour day

If you dont like the stars in Old Glory

Then go back to your land across the sea

To the land from which you came

Whatever be its name

-106-

G.O.P. LEADER ACCUSED OF DRAFT FRAUDS

If you dont like the red white and blue

Then dont act like the cur in the story

Dont bite the hand that's feeding you

EVELINE HUTCHINS

Little Eveline and Arget and Lade and Gogo lived on

the top floor of a yellowbrick house on the North Shore

Drive. Arget and Lade were little Eveline's sisters. Gogo

was her little brother littler than Eveline; he had such

nice blue eyes but Miss Mathilda had horrid blue eyes.

On the floor below was Dr. Hutchins' study where Your-

father mustn't be disturbed, and Dearmother's room where

she stayed all morning painting dressed in a lavender

smock. On the groundfloor was the drawingroom and the

diningroom, where parishioners came and little children

must be seen and not heard, and at dinnertime you could

smell good things to eat and hear knives and forks and

tinkly companyvoices and Yourfather's booming scary voice

and when Yourfather's voice was going all the company-

voices were quiet. Yourfather was Dr. Hutchins but Our

Father art in heaven. When Yourfather stood beside the

bed at night to see that little girls said their prayers Eve-

line would close her eyes tightscared. It was only when

she'd hopped into bed and snuggled way down so that

the covers were light across her nose that she felt cosy.

George was a dear although Adelaide and Margaret

teased him and said he was their Assistant like Mr. Bless-

ington was Father's assistant. George always caught things

first and then they all had them. It was lovely when they

had the measles and the mumps all at once. They stayed

in bed and had hyacinths in pots and guinea pigs and Dear-

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mother used to come up and read the Jungle Book and do

funny pictures and Yourfather would come up and make

funny birdbeaks that opened out of paper and tell stories

he made up right out of his head and Dearmother said he

had said prayers for you children in church and that made

them feel fine and grownup.

When they were all up and playing in the nursery

George caught something again and had monia on account

of getting cold on his chest and Yourfather was very sol-

emn and said not to grieve if God called little brother

away. But God brought little George back to them only

he was delicate after that and had to wear glasses, and

when Dearmother let Eveline help bathe him because Miss

Mathilda was having the measles too Eveline noticed he

had something funny there where she didn't have anything.

She asked Dearmother if it was a mump, but Dearmother

scolded her and said she was a vulgar little girl to have

looked. "Hush, child, don't ask questions." Eveline got red

all over and cried and Adelaide and Margaret wouldn't

speak to her for days on account of her being a vulgar little

girl.

Summers they all went to Maine with Miss Mathilda

in a drawingroom. George and Eveline slept in the upper

and Adelaide and Margaret slept in the lower; Miss Ma-

thilda was trainsick and didn't close her eyes all night on

the sofa opposite. The train went rumblebump chug chug

and the trees and houses ran by, the front ones fast and

those way off very slow and at night the engine wailed

and the children couldn't make out why the strong nice

tall conductor was so nice to Miss Mathilda who was so

hateful and trainsick. Maine smelt all woodsy and mother

and father were there to meet them and they all put on

khaki jumpers and went camping with Father and the

guides. It was Eveline who learned to swim quicker than

anybody.

Going back to Chicago it would be autumn and Mother

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loved the lovely autumn foliage that made Miss Mathilda

feel so traurig on account of winter coming on, and the

frost on the grass beyond the shadows of the cars out of

the trainwindow in the morning. At home Sam would be

scrubbing the enamel paint and Phoebe and Miss Mathilda

would be putting up curtains and the nursery would smell

traurig of mothballs. One fall Father started to read aloud

a little of the Ideals of the King every night after they

were all tucked into bed. All that winter Adelaide and

Margaret were King Arthur and Queen Whenever. Ev-

eline wanted to be Elaine the Fair, but Adelaide said she

couldn't because her hair was mousy and she had a face

like a pie, so she had to be the Maiden Evelina.

The Maiden Evelina used to go into Miss Mathilda's

room when she was out and look at herself for a long time

in the lookingglass. Her hair wasn't mousy, it was quite

fair if only they would let her have it curly instead of in

pigtails and even if her eyes weren't blue like George's

they had little green specks in them. Her forehead was

noble. Miss Mathilda caught her staring like that into the

mirror one day.

"Look at yourself too much and you'll find you're look-

ing at the devil," said Miss Mathilda in her nasty stiff

German way.

When Eveline was twelve years old they moved to a

bigger house over on Drexel Boulevard. Adelaide and

Margaret went east to boardingschool at New Hope and

Mother had to go spend the winter with friends at Santa

Fé on account of her health. It was fun eating breakfast

every morning with just Dad and George and Miss Ma-

thilda, who was getting elderly and paid more attention to

running the house and to reading Sir Gilbert Parker's nov-

els than to the children. Eveline didn't like school but she

liked having Dad help her with her Latin evenings and

do algebra equations for her. She thought he was wonder-

ful when he preached so kind and good from the pulpit

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and was proud of being the minister's daughter at Sunday

afternoon bibleclass. She thought a great deal about the

fatherhood of God and the woman of Samaria and Joseph

of Arimathea and Baldur the beautiful and the Brother-

hood of Man and the apostle that Jesus loved. That Christ-

mas she took around a lot of baskets to poor people's

houses. Poverty was dreadful and the poor were so scary

and why didn't God do something about the problems and

evils of Chicago, and the conditions, she'd ask her father.

He'd smile and say she was too young to worry about those

things yet. She called him Dad now and was his Pal.

On her birthday Mother sent her a beautiful illustrated

book of the Blessed Damosel by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

with colored illustrations from his paintings and those of

Burne Jones. She used to say the name Dante Gabriel Ros-

setti over and over to herself like traurig she loved it so.

She started painting and writing little verses about choirs

of angels and little poor children at Christmastime. The

first picture she did in oils was a portrait of Elaine, the

Fair, that she sent her mother for Christmas. Everybody

said it showed great talent. When friends of Dad's came

to dinner they'd say when they were introduced to her,

"So this is the talented one, is it?"

Adelaide and Margaret were pretty scornful about all

that when they came home from school. They said the

house looked dowdy and nothing had any style to it in

Chicago, and wasn't it awful being ministers' daughters,

but of course Dad wasn't like an ordinary minister in a

white tie, he was a Unitarian and very broad and more

like a prominent author or scientist. George was getting to

be a sulky little boy with dirty fingernails who never could

keep his necktie straight and was always breaking his

glasses. Eveline was working on a portrait of him the way

he had been when he was little with blue eyes and gam-

boge curls. She used to cry over her paints she loved him

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so and little poor children she saw on the street. Every-

body said she ought to study art.

It was Adelaide who first met Sally Emerson. One Eas-

ter they were going to put on Aglavaine and Selizette at

the church for charity. Miss Rodgers the French teacher

at Dr. Grant's school was going to coach them and said

that they oughi to ask Mrs. Philip Payne Emerson, who

had seen the original production abroad, about the scenery

and costumes; and that besides her interest would be in-

valuable to make it go; everything that Sally Emerson

was interested in went. The Hutchins girls were all excited

when Dr. Hutchins called up Mrs. Emerson on the tele-

phone and asked if Adelaide might come over some morn-

ing and ask her advice about some amateur theatricals.

They'd already sat down to lunch when Adelaide came

back, her eyes shining. She wouldn't say much except that

Mrs. Philip Payne Emerson knew Matterlink intimately

and that she was coming to tea, but kept declaring, "She's

the most stylish woman I ever met."

A glavaine and Selizette didn't turn out quite as the

Hutchins girls and Miss Rodgers had hoped, though every-

body said the scenery and costumes Eveline designed

showed real ability, but the week after the performance,

Eveline got a message one morning that Mrs. Emerson

had asked her to lunch that day and only her. Adelaide

and Margaret were so mad they wouldn't speak to her.

She felt pretty shaky when she set off into the icybright

dusty day. At the last minute Adelaide had lent her a

hat and Margaret her fur neckpiece, so that she wouldn't

disgrace them they said. By the time she got to the Emer-

sons' house she was chilled to the bone. She was ushered

into a little dressing room with all kinds of brushes and

combs and silver jars with powder and even rouge and

toiletwaters in purple, green and pink bottles and left

to take off her things. When she saw herself in the big

mirror she almost screamed she looked so young and pie-

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faced and her dress was so horrid. The only thing that

looked any good was the foxfur so she kept that on

when she went into the big upstairs lounge with its deep

grey carpet soft underfoot and the sunlight pouring in

through French windows onto bright colors and the black

polished grandpiano. There were big bowls of freezias on

every table and yellow and pink French and German books

of reproductions of paintings. Even the sootbitten blocks

of Chicago houses flattened under the wind and the zero

sunlight looked faintly exciting and foreign through the

big pattern of the yellow lace curtains. In the rich smell of

the freezias there was a little expensive whisp of cigarette-

smoke.

Sally Emerson came in smoking a cigarette and said,

"Excuse me, my dear," some wretched woman had had

her impaled on the telephone like a butterfly on a pin for

the-last halfhour. They ate lunch at a little table the el-

derly colored man brought in all set and Eveline was

treated just like a grownup woman and a glass of port

poured out for her. She only dared take a sip but it was

delicious and the lunch was all crispy and creamy with

cheese grated on things and she would have eaten a lot

if she hadn't felt so shy. Sally Emerson talked about how

clever Eveline's costumes had been for the show and said

she must keep up her drawing and talked about how there

were as many people with artistic ability in Chicago as any-

where in the world and what was lacking was the milieu,

the atmosphere my dear, and that the social leaders were

all vicious numbskulls and that it was up to the few people

who cared about art to stick together and create the rich

beautiful milieu they needed, and about Paris, and about

Mary Garden, and Debussy. Eveline went home with her

head reeling with names and pictures, little snatches out

of operas and in her nose the tickling smell of the freezias

mixed with toasted cheese and cigarettesmoke. When she

got home everything looked so cluttered and bare and ugly

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she burst out crying and wouldn't answer any of her sis-

ters' questions; that made them madder than ever.

That June after school was over, they all went out to

Santa Fé to see her mother. She was awfully depressed out

at Santa Fé, the sun was so hot and the eroded hills were

so dry and dusty and Mother had gotten so washedout

looking and was reading theosophy and talking about God

and the beauty of soul of the Indians and Mexicans in a

way that made the children uncomfortable. Eveline read

a great many books that summer and hated going out. She

read Scott and Thackeray and W. J. Locke and Dumas and

when she found an old copy of Trilby in the house she

read it three times running. That started her seeing things

in Du Maurier illustrations instead of in knights and ladies.

When she wasn't reading she was lying flat on her back

dreaming out long stories about herself and Sally Emer-

son. She didn't feel well most of the time and would drop

into long successions of horrid thoughts about people's

bodies that made her feel nauseated. Adelaide and Mar-

garet told her what to do about her trouble every month

but she didn't tell them how horrid it made her feel in-

side. She read the Bible and looked up uterus and words

like that in encyclopaedias and dictionaries. Then one night

she decided she wouldn't stand it any more and went

through the medicine chest in the bathroom till she found

a bottle marked POISON that had some kind of laudanum

compound in it. But she wanted to write a poem before

she died, she felt so lovely musically traurig about dying,

but she couldn't seem to get the rhymes right and finally

fell asleep with her head on the paper. When she woke

up it was dawn and she was hunched up over the table by

her window, stiff and chilly in her thin nightgown. She

slipped into bed shivering. Anyway she promised herself

that she'd keep the bottle and kill herself whenever things

seemed too filthy and horrid. That made her feel better.

That fall Margaret and Adelaide went to Vassar. Eve-

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line would have liked to go east too but everybody said she

was too young though she'd passed most of her college

board exams. She stayed in Chicago and went to artclasses

and lectures of one sort or another and did churchwork.

It was an unhappy winter. Sally Emerson seemed to have

forgotten her. The young people around the church were

so stuffy and conventional. Eveline got to hate the eve-

nings at Drexel Boulevard, and all the vague Emerson

her father talked in his rich preacher's boom. What she

liked best was the work she did at Hull House. Eric Eg-

strom gave drawingclasses there in the evenings and she

used to see him sometimes smoking a cigarette in the back

passage, leaning against the wall, looking very Norse, she

thought, in his grey smock full of bright fresh dabs of

paint. She'd sometimes smoke a cigarette with him ex-

changing a few words about Manet or Claude Monet's in-

numerable haystacks, all the time feeling uneasy because

the conversation wasn't more interesting and clever and

afraid somebody would come and find her smoking.

Miss Mathilda said it was bad for a girl to be so dreamy

and wanted her to learn to sew.

All Eveline thought about that winter was going to the

Art Institute and trying to paint pictures of the Lake Front

that would be colored like Whistlers but be rich and full

like Millet drawings. Eric didn't love her or else he

wouldn't be so friendly and aloof. She'd had her great

love; now her life was over and she must devote herself

to art. She began to wear her hair screwed up in a knot

at the nape of her neck and when her sisters said it was

unbecoming she said she wanted it to be unbecoming. It

was at the Art Institute that her beautiful friendship with

Eleanor Stoddard began. Eveline was wearing her new

grey hat that she thought looked like something in a

Manet portrait and got to talking with such an interesting

girl. When she went home she was so excited she wrote

George, who was at boarding school, about it, saying she

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was the first girl she'd met who really seemed to feel

painting, that she could really talk about things with. And

then too she was really doing something, and so independ-

ent and told things so comically. After all if love was going

to be denied her she could build her life on a beautiful

friendship.

Eveline was getting to like it so much in Chicago, she

was really disappointed when the time came to leave for

the year's trip abroad that Dr. Hutchins had been plan-

ing for his family for so many years. But New York and

getting on the Baltic and making out the tags for their

baggage and the funny smell of the staterooms made her

forget all about that. They had a rough trip and the boat

rolled a good deal, but they sat at the captain's table and

the captain was a jovial Englishman and kept their spirits

up so that they hardly missed a meal. They landed in Liv-

erpool with twentythree pieces of baggage but lost the

shawlstrap that had the medicinechest in it on the way

down to London and had to spend their first morning get-

ting it from the Lost and Found Office at St. Pancras. In

London it was very foggy. George and Eveline went to

see the Elgin marbles and the Tower of London and ate

their lunches in A B C restaurants and had a fine time

riding in the tube. Dr. Hutchins only let them stay ten

days in Paris and most of that time they were making side

trips to see cathedrals. Notre Dame and Rheims and

Beauvais and Chartres with their bright glass and their

smell of incense in cold stone and the tall grey longfaced

statues nearly made Eveline a Catholic. They had a first

class compartment reserved all the way to Florence and a

hamper with cold chicken in it and many bottles of Saint

Galmier mineral water and they made tea on a little alco-

hol lamp.

That winter it rained a lot and the villa was chilly and

the girls squabbled among themselves a good deal and

Florence seemed to be full of nothing but old English la-

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dies; still Eveline drew from life and read Gordon Craig.

She didn't know any young men and she hated the young

Italians with names out of Dante that hung around Ade-

laide and Margaret under the delusion that they were rich

heiresses. On the whole she was glad to go home with

mother a little earlier than the others who were going to

take a trip to Greece. They sailed from Antwerp on the

Kroonland. Eveline thought it was the happiest moment

of her life when she felt the deck tremble under her feet as

the steamer left the dock and the long rumble of the

whistle in her ears.

Her mother didn't go down to the diningsaloon the first

night out so that Eveline was a little embarrassed going in

to table all alone and had sat down and started eating her

soup before she noticed that the young man opposite her

was an American and goodlooking. He had blue eyes and

crisp untidy tow hair. It was too wonderful when he turned

out to be from Chicago. His name was Dirk McArthur.

He'd been studying a year at Munich, but said he was get-

ting out before they threw him out. He and Eveline got

to be friends right away; they owned the boat after that.

It was a balmy crossing for April. They played shuffle-

board and decktennis and spent a lot of time in the bow

watching the sleek Atlantic waves curl and break under the

lunge of the ship.

One moonlight night when the moon was plunging

westward through scudding spindrift the way the. Kroon-

land was plunging through the uneasy swell, they climbed

up to the crowsnest. This was an adventure; Eveline

didn't want to show she was scared. There was no watch

and they were alone a little giddy in the snug canvas

socket that smelt a little of sailors' pipes. When Dirk put

his arm around her shoulders Eveline's head began to reel.

She oughtn't to let him. "Gee, you're a good sport, Eve-

line," he said in a breathless voice. "I never knew a nice

girl who was a good sport before." Without quite meaning

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to she turned her face towards his. Their cheeks touched

and his mouth slid around and kissed her hard on her

mouth. She pushed him away with a jerk.

"Hey, you're not trying to throw me overboard, are

you?" he said, laughing. "Look, Eveline, won't you give

me a little tiny kiss to show there's no hard feeling. There's

just you and me tonight on the whole broad Atlantic."

She kissed him scaredly on the chin. "Say, Eveline, I like

you so much. You're the swellest girl." She smiled at him

and suddenly he was hugging her tight, his legs hard and

strong against her legs, his hands spread over her back, his

lips trying to open her lips. She got her mouth away from

him. "No, no, please don't," she could hear her little

creaky voice saying.

"All right, I'm sorry. . . . No more caveman stuff,

honest injun, Eveline. But you mustn't forget that you're

the most attractive girl on the boat. . . . I mean in the

world, you know how a feller feels."

He started down first. Letting herself down through the

opening in the bottom of the crowsnest she began to get

dizzy. She was falling. His arms tightened around her.

"That's all right, girly, your foot slipped," he said

gruffly in her ear. "I've got you."

Her head was swimming, she couldn't seem to make her

arms and legs work; she could hear her little moaning

voice, "Don't drop me, Dirk, don't drop me."

When they finally got down the ladder to the deck Dirk

leaned against the mast and let out a long breath, "Whee

. . . you certainly gave me a scare, young lady."

"I'm so sorry," she said. "It was silly of me to suddenly

get girlish like that. . . . I must have fainted for a min-

ute."

"Gosh, I oughtn't to have taken you up there."

"I'm glad you did," Eveline said; then she found her-

self blushing and hurried off down the main deck to the

first class entrance and the stateroom, where she had to

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make up a story to explain to mother how she'd torn her

stocking.

She couldn't sleep that night but lay awake in her bunk

listening to the distant rhythm of the engines and the

creaking of the ship and the seethe of churned seas that

came in through the open porthole. She could still feel the

soft brush of his cheek and the sudden tightening muscles

of his arms around her shoulder. She knew now she was

terribly in love with Dirk and wished he'd propose to her.

But next morning she was really flattered when Judge

Ganch, a tall whitehaired lawyer from Salt Lake City with

a young red face and a breezy manner sat on the end of

her deckchair and talked to her by the hour about his early

life in the west and his unhappy marriage and politics and

Teddy Roosevelt and the progressive party. She'd rather

have been with Dirk, but it made her feel pretty and ex-

cited to see Dirk walk past with his nose out of joint while

she listened to Judge Ganch's stories. She wished the trip

would never end.

Back in Chicago she saw a lot of Dirk McArthur. He

always kissed her when he brought her home and he held

her very tight when he danced with her and sometimes

used to hold her hand and tell her what a nice girl she

was, but he never would say anything about getting mar-

ried. Once she met Sally Emerson at a dance she'd gone to

with Dirk she had to admit that she wasn't doing any

painting, and Sally Emerson looked so disappointed that

Eveline felt quite ashamed and started talking fast about

Gordon Craig and an exhibition of Matisse she'd seen in

Paris. Sally Emerson was just leaving. A young man was

waiting to dance with Eveline. Sally Emerson took her

hand and said: "But, Eveline, you mustn't forget that we

have high hopes of you." And while she was dancing

everything that Sally Emerson stood for and how wonder-

ful she used to think her came sweeping through Eveline's

head; but driving home with Dirk all these thoughts were

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dazzled out of her in the glare of his headlights, the strong

leap forward of the car on the pickup, the purr of the

motor, his arm around her, the great force pressing her

against him when they went around curves.

It was a hot night, he drove west through endless iden-

tical suburbs out into the prairie. Eveline knew that they

ought to go home, everybody was back from Europey now

and they'd notice how late she got in, but she didn't say

anything. It was only when he stopped the car that she

noticed that he was very drunk. He took out a flask and

offered her a drink. She shook her head. They'd stopped

in front of a white barn. In the reflection of the headlights

his shirtfront and his face and his mussed up hair all looked

chalky white. "You don't love me, Dirk," she said. "Sure

I do, love you better'n anybody . . . except myself . . .

that's a'trouble with me . . . love myself best." She

rubbed her knuckles through his hair, "You're pretty silly,

do you know it?""Ouch," he said. It was starting to rain

so he turned the car around and made for Chicago.

Eveline never knew exactly where it was they smashed

up, only that she was crawling out from under the seat

and that her dress was ruined and she wasn't hurt only the

rain was streaking the headlights of the cars that stopped

along the road on either side of them. Dirk was sitting on

the mudguard of the first car that had stopped. "Are you

all right, Eveline?" he called shakily. "It's only my dress,"

she said. He was bleeding from a gash in his forehead and

he was holding his arm against his body as if he were cold.

Then it was all nightmare, telephoning Dad, getting Dirk

to the hospital, dodging the reporters, calling up Mr. Mc-

Arthur to get him to set to work to keep it out of the

morning papers. It was eight o'clock of a hot spring morn-

ing when she got home wearing a raincoat one of the

nurses had lent her over her ruined evening dress.

The family was all at breakfast. Nobody said anything.

Then Dad got to his feet and came forward, with his nap-

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kin in his hand, "My dear, I shan't speak of your behavior

now, to say nothing of the pain and mortification you have

caused all of us. . . . I can only say it would have served

you right if you had sustained serious injuries in such an

escapade. Go up and rest if you can." Eveline went up-

stairs, doublelocked her door and threw herself sobbing on

the bed.

As soon as they could, her mother and sisters hurried

her off to Santa F. It was hot and dusty there and she

hated it. She couldn't stop thinking of Dirk. She began

telling people she believed in free love and lay for hours

on the bed in her room reading Swinburne and Laurence

Hope and dreaming. Dirk was there. She got so she could

almost feel the insistent fingers of his hands spread over

the small of her back and his mouth like that night in the

crowsnest on the Kroonland. It was a kind of relief when

she came down with scarlet fever and had to lie in bed for

eight weeks in the isolation wing of the hospital. Every-

body sent her flowers and she read a lot of books on de-

sign and interior decorating and did watercolors.

When she went up to Chicago for Adelaide's wedding in

October she had a pale mature look. Eleanor cried out

when she kissed her, "My dear, you've grown stunningly

handsome." She had one thing on her mind, to see Dirk

and get it over with. It was several days before they could

arrange to meet because Dad had called him up and for-

bidden him to come to the house and they had a scene over

the telephone. They met in the lobby of The Drake. She

could see at a glance that Dirk had been hitting it up since

she'd seen him. He was a little drunk now. He had a

sheepish boyish look that made her feel like crying. "Well,

how's Barney Oldfield?" she said, laughing. "Rotten, gee

you look stunning, Eveline. . . . Say The Follies of

1914 are in town, a big New York hit. . . . I got tickets,

do you mind if we go?""No, it'll be bully."

He ordered everything most expensive he could find on

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the bill of fare, and champagne. She had something in

her throat that kept her from swallowing. She had to say

it before he got too drunk.

" Dirk . . . this doesn't sound very ladylike, but like

this it's too tiresome. . . . The way you acted last spring

I thought you liked me . . . well, how much do you? I

want to know."

Dirk put his glass down and turned red. Then he took

a deep breath and said, " Eveline, you know I'm not the

marrying kind . . . love 'em and leave 'em 's more like

it. I can't help how I am."

"I don't mean I want you to marry me," her voice rose

shrilly out of control. She began to giggle. "I don't mean

I want to be made an honest woman. Anyway, there's no

reason." She was able to laugh more naturally. "Let's for-

get it. . . . I won't tease you anymore."

"You're a good sport, Eveline. I always knew you were

a good sport."

Going down the aisle of the theatre he was so drunk

she had to put her hand under his elbow to keep him from

staggering. The music and cheap colors and jiggling bod-

ies of the chorus girls all seemed to hit on some raw place

inside her, so that everything she saw hurt like sweet on

a jumpy tooth. Dirk kept talking all through, "See that

girl . . . second from the left on the back row, that's

Queenie Frothingham. . . . You understand, Eveline.

But I'll tell you one thing, I never made a girl take the

first misstep. . . . I haven't got that to reproach myself

with." The usher came down and asked him to quit talking

so loud, he was spoiling others' enjoyment of the show.

He gave her a dollar and said he'd be quiet as a mouse, as

a little dumb mouse and suddenly went to sleep.

At the end of the first act Eveline said she had to go

home, said the doctor had told her she'd have to have

plenty of sleep. He insisted on taking her to her door in

a taxicab and then went off to go back to the show and to

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Queenie. Eveline lay awake all night staring at her win-

dow. Next morning she was the first one down to breakfast.

When Dad came down she told him she'd have to go to

work and asked him to lend her a thousand dollars to start

an interior decorating business.

The decorating business she started with Eleanor Stod-

dard in Chicago didn't make as much money as Eveline

had hoped, and Eleanor was rather trying on the whole;

but they met such interesting people and went to parties

and first nights and openings of art exhibitions, and Sally

Emerson saw to it that they were very much in the van-

guard of things in Chicago socially. Eleanor kept complain-

ing that the young men Eveline collected were all so poor

and certainly more of a liability than an asset to the busi-

ness. Eveline had great faith in their all making names for

themselves, so that when Freddy Seargeant, who'd been

such a nuisance and had had to be lent money various

times, came through with an actual production of Tess of

the d'Urbervilles in New York, Eveline felt so trium-

phant she almost fell in love with him. Freddy was very

much in love with her and Eveline couldn't decide what to

do about him. He was a dear and she was very fond of

him, but she couldn't imagine marrying him and this would

be her first love affair and Freddy just didn't seem to

carry her off her feet.

What she did like was sitting up late talking to him

over Rhine wine and seltzer in the Brevoort café that

was full of such interesting people. Eveline would sit there

looking at him through the crinkling cigarettesmoke won-

dering whether she was going to have a love affair. He

was a tall thin man of about thirty with some splashes of

white in his thick black hair and a long pale face. He had

a distinguished rather literary manner, used the broad "a"

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so that people often thought he was from Boston, one of

the Back Bay Seargeants.

One night they got to making plans for themselves and

the American theater. If they could get backing they'd

start a repertory theatre and do real American plays. He'd

be the American Stanislavsky and she'd be the American

Lady Gregory, and maybe the American Bakst too. When

the café closed she told him to go around by the other

staircase and go up to her room. She was excited by the

idea of being alone in a hotel room with a young man and

thought how shocked Eleanor would be if she knew about

it. They smoked cigarettes and talked about the theatre a

little distractedly, and at last Freddy put his arm around

her waist and kissed her and asked if he could stay all

night. She let him kiss her but she could only think of

Dirk and told him please not this time, and he was very

contrite and begged her with tears in his eyes to forgive

him for sullying a beautiful moment. She said she didn't

mean that and to come back and have breakfast with her.

After he'd gone she half wished she'd made him stay.

Her body tingled all over the way it used to when Dirk

put his arms around her and she wanted terribly to know

what making love was like. She took a cold bath and went

to bed. When she woke up and saw Freddy again she'd

decide whether she was in love with him. But the next

morning she got a telegram calling her home. Dad was

seriously ill with diabetes. Freddy put her on the train.

She'd expected that the parting would carry her off her-

feet, but it didn't somehow.

Dr. Hutchins got better and Eveline took him down to

Santa Fé to recuperate. Her mother was sick most of the

time too, and as Margaret and Adelaide were both married

and George had gotten a job abroad with Hoover's Belgian

Relief, it seemed to be up to her to take care of the old peo-

ple. She spent a dreamy unhappy year in spite of the great

skeleton landscape and horsebacktrips and working at

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watercolors of Mexicans and Indian penitentes. She went

around the house ordering meals, attending to housekeep-

ing, irritated by the stupidity of servantgirls, making out

laundry lists.

The only man she met there who made her seem alive

was José O'Riely. He was a Spaniard in spite of his Irish

name, a slender young man with a tobaccocolored face and

dark green eyes, who had somehow gotten married to a

stout Mexican woman who brought out a new squalling

brown infant every nine months. He was a painter and

lived by doing odd carpenter jobs and sometimes posing

as a model. Eveline got to talk to him one day when he

was painting the garage doors and asked him to pose for

her. He kept looking at the pastel she was doing of him

and telling her it was wretched, until she broke down and

cried. He apologized in his stiff English and said she must

not be upset, that she had talent and that he'd teach her

to draw himself. He took her down to his house, an untidy

little shack in the Mexican part of town, where he intro-

duced her to Lola, his wife, who looked at her with scared

suspicious black eyes, and showed her his paintings, big

retablos painted on plaster that looked like Italian primi-

tives. "You see I paint martires," he said, "but not Chris-

tian. I paint the martires of the working class under ex-

ploitation. Lola does not understand. She want me to paint

rich ladies like you and make plenty money. Which you

think is best?" Eveline flushed; she didn't like being classed

with the rich ladies. But the pictures thrilled her and she

said she would advertise them among her friends; she de-

cided she'd discovered a genius.

O'Riely was grateful and wouldn't take any money for

posing or criticizing her paintings after that, instead he

sometimes borrowed small sums as a friend. Even before

he started making love to her, she decided that this time it

must be a real affair. She'd go crazy if something didn't

happen to her soon.

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The main difficulty was finding somewhere they could

go. Her studio was right back of the house and there was

the danger that her father or mother or friends coming to

call might break in on them any time. Then too Santa Fé

was a small place and people were already noticing how

often he went to her studio.

One night when the Hutchins' chauffeur was away, they

climbed up to his room above the garage. It was pitch

black there and smelled of old pipes and soiled clothes.

Eveline was terrified to find she'd lost control of her own

self; it was like going under ether. He was surprised to

find she was a virgin and was very kind and gentle, almost

apologetic. But she felt none of the ecstasy she had ex-

pected lying in his arms on the chauffeur's bed; it was

almost as if it had all happened before. Afterwards they

lay on the bed talking a long time in low intimate voices.

His manner had changed; he treated her gravely and in-

dulgently, like a child. He said he hated things to be se-

cret and sordid like that, it was brutalizing to them both.

He would find a place where they could meet in the open,

in the sun and air, not like criminals this way. He wanted

to draw her, the beautiful slenderness of her body would

be the inspiration of his painting and her lovely little round

breasts. Then he looked her over carefully to see if her

dress looked mussed and told her to run over to the house

and go to bed; and to take precautions if she didn't want

to have a baby, though he would be proud to have her bear

a child of his, particularly as she was rich enough to sup-

port it. The idea horrified her and she felt it was coarse

and unfeeling of him to talk about it lightly that way.

They met all that winter a couple of times a week in a

little deserted cabin that lay off the trail in the basin of a

small stony cañon back of the town. She would ride over

and he would walk by a different road. They called it their

desert island. Then one day Lola looked in his portfolios

and found hundreds of drawings of the same naked girl;

-125-

she came up to the Hutchins' house shaking and screaming

with the hair streaming down her face, looking for Eveline

and crying that she was going to kill her. Dr. Hutchins was

thunderstruck; but though she was terribly frightened in-

side, Eveline managed to keep cool and tell her father that

she had let O'Riely do drawings of her but that there'd

been nothing else between them, and that his wife was a

stupid ignorant Mexican and couldn't imagine a man and a

woman being alone in a studio together without thinking

something disgusting. Although he scolded her for being

so imprudent Dad believed her and they managed to keep

the whole thing from Mother, but she only managed to

see Pepe once more after that. He shrugged his shoulders

and said what could he do, he couldn't abandon his wife

and children to starve, poor as he was he had to live with

them, and a man had to have a woman to work for him

and cook; he couldn't live on romantic lifeclasses, he

had to eat, and Lola was a good woman but stupid and

untidy and had made him promise not to see Eveline again.

Eveline turned on her heel and left him before he was

through talking. She was glad she had a horse she could

jump on and ride away.

THE CAMERA EYE (31)

a matrass covered with something from Vantine's

makes a divan in the ladyphotographer's studio we

sit on the divan and on cushions on the floor and the long-

necked English actor reads the Song of Songs in rhythms

and the ladyphotographer in breastplates and silk

bloomers dances the Song of Songs in rhythms

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the little girl in pink is a classical dancer with pan-

pipes but the hennahaired ladyphotographer dances the

Song of Songs in rhythms with winking bellybutton and

clash of breastplates in more oriental style

stay muh with flahgons comfort muh with ahpples

for I am sick of loeuve

his left hand is under muh head and his rahght hand

cloth embrace muh

the semiretired actress who lived upstairs let out a

yell and then another Burglars secondstory men

Good God she's being attacked we men run up the

stairs poor woman she's in hysterics Its the wrong flat

the stairs are full of dicks outside they're backing

up the waggon All right men on one side girls on

the other what the hell kind of place is this anyway? Dicks

coming in all the windows dicks coming out of the kitchen-

ette

the hennahaired ladyphotographer holds them at bay

draped in a portiere waving the telephone Is this

Mr. Wickersham's office? District Attorney trying

experience a few friends a little dance recital

in the most brutal manner prominent actress upstairs

in hysterics allright officer talk to the District Attor-

ney he'll tell you who I am who our friends are

Dicks slink away waggon jangles to another street

the English actor is speaking Only by the greatest

-127-

control I kept muh temper the swine I'm terrible when

I'm aroused terrible

and the Turkish consul and his friend who were

there incog belligerent nation Department of Justice

Espionage hunting radicals proGermans slipped quietly

out and the two of us ran down the stairs and walked

fast downtown and crossed to Weehawken on the ferry

it was a night of enormous fog through which moved

blunderingly the great blind shapes of steamboat sirens

from the lower bay

in the bow of the ferry we breathed the rancid river-

breeze talking loud in a shouting laugh

out of the quiet streets of Weehawken incredible

slanting viaducts lead up into the fog

EVELINE HUTCHINS

She felt half crazy until she got on the train to go back

east. Mother and Dad didn't want her to go, but she

showed them a telegram she'd wired Eleanor to send her

offering her a high salary in her decorating business. She

said it was an opening that wouldn't come again and she

had to take it, and anyway, as George was coming home

for a vacation, they wouldn't be entirely alone. The night

she left she lay awake in her lower berth tremendously

happy in the roar of the air and the swift pound of the

wheels on the rails. But after St. Louis she began to worry:

she'd decided she was pregnant.

She was terribly frightened. The Grand Central Station

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seemed so immense, so full of blank faces staring at her

as she passed following the redcap who carried her bag.

She was afraid she'd faint before she got to the taxicab.

All the way downtown the jolting of the cab and the

jangling throb of the traffic in her ears made her head

swim with nausea. At the Brevoort she had some coffee.

Ruddy sunlight was coming in the tall windows, the place

had a warm restaurant smell; she began to feel better. She

went to the phone and called Eleanor. A French maid

answered that Mademoiselle was still asleep, but that

she would tell her who had called as soon as she woke

up. Then she called Freddy who sounded very much

excited and said he'd be there as soon as he could get over

from Brooklyn.

When she saw Freddy it was just as if she hadn't been'

away at all. He almost had a backer for the Maya ballet

and he was mixed up in a new musical show he wanted

Eveline to do costumes for. But he was very gloomy about

the prospects of war with Germany, said he was a pacifist

and would probably have to go to jail, unless there was a

revolution. Eveline told him about her talks with José

O'Riely and what a great painter he was, and said she

thought maybe she was an anarchist. Freddy looked

worried and asked her if she was sure she hadn't fallen

in love with him, and she blushed and smiled and said

no, and Freddy said she was a hundred times better look-

ing than last year.

They went together to see Eleanor whose house in the

east thirties was very elegant and expensivelooking. Elea-

nor was sitting up in bed answering her mail. Her hair

was carefully done and she had on a pink satin dressing

gown with lace and ermine on it. They had coffee with her

and hot rolls that the Martinique maid had baked herself.

Eleanor was delighted to see Eveline and said how well

she looked and was full of mysteries about her business

and everything. She said she was on the edge of becoming

-129-

a theatrical producer and spoke about "my financial ad-

viser" this and that, until Eveline didn't know what to

think; still it was evident that things were going pretty

well with her. Eveline wanted to ask her what she knew

about birthcontrol, but she never got around to it, and

perhaps it was just as well, as, when they got on the sub-

ject of the war they quarrelled at once.

That afternoon Freddy took her to tea with him at

the house of a middleaged lady who lived on West 8th

Street and was an enthusiastic pacifist. The house was full

of people arguing and young men and young women

wagging their heads together in important whispers. There

she got to talking with a haggardlooking brighteyed young

man named Don Stevens. Freddy had to go off to a re-

hearsal and she stayed there talking to Don Stevens. Then

all of a sudden they found that everybody had gone and

that they were alone with the hostess, who was a stout

puffy eager woman that Eveline decided was just too tire-

some. She said Goodnight and left. She had hardly gotten

down the front steps to the street when Stevens was after

her with his lanky stride dragging his overcoat behind him;

"Where are you going to eat supper, Eveline Hutchins?"

Eveline said she hadn't thought and before she knew it

was eating with him in an Italian restaurant on 3rd Street.

He ate a lot of spaghetti very fast and drank a lot of red

wine and introduced her to the waiter, whose name was

Giovanni. "He's a maximalist and so am I," he said.

"This young woman seems to be a philosophic anarchist,

but we'll get her over that."

Don Stevens came from South Dakota and had worked

on small town papers ever since his highschool days. He'd

also worked as a harvest hand back home and been in on

several I.W.W. scraps. He showed Eveline his red card

with considerable pride. He'd come to New York to work

on The Call, but had just resigned because they were too

damn lilylivered. he said. He also wrote for the Metro-politan Magazine

-130-

politan Magazine and the Masses, and spoke at antiwar

meetings. He said that there wasn't a chinaman's chance

that the U. S. would keep out of the war; the Germans

were winning, the working class all over Europe was on

the edge of revolt, the revolution in Russia was the begin-

ning of the worldwide social revolution and the bankers

knew it and Wilson knew it; the only question was whether

the industrial workers in the east and the farmers and

casual laborers in the middle west and west would stand

for war. The entire press was bought and muzzled. The

Morgans had to fight or go bankrupt. "It's the greatest

conspiracy in history."

Giovanni and Eveline listened holding their breath,

Giovanni occasionally looking nervously around the room

to see if any of the customers at the other tables looked

like detectives. "God damn it, Giovanni, let's have an-

other bottle of wine," Don would cry out in the middle of

a long analysis of Kuhn, Loeb and Company's foreign

holdings. Then suddenly he'd turn to Eveline filling up

her glass, "Where have you been all these years? I've

so needed a lovely girl like you. Let's have a splendid time

tonight, may be the last good meal we ever get, we may

be in jail or shot against a wall a month from now, isn't

that so, Giovanni?"

Giovanni forgot to wait on his other tables and was

bawled out by the proprietor. Eveline kept laughing.

When Don asked her why, she said she didn't know ex-

cept that he was so funny.

"But it really is Armageddon, God damn it." Then he

shook his head: "What's the use, there never was a

woman living who could understand political ideas."

"Of course I can . . . I think it's terrible. I don't know

what to do."

"I don't know what to do," he said savagely, "I don't

know whether to fight the war and go to jail, or to get a

job as a war correspondent and see the goddam mess. If

-131-

you could rely on anybody to back you up it ud be another

thing . . . Oh, hell, let's get out of here."

He charged the cheque, and asked Eveline to lend him

half a dollar to leave for Giovanni, said he didn't have a

cent in his jeans. She found herself drinking a last glass

of wine with him in a chilly littered room up three flights

of dirty wooden stairs in Patchin Place. He began to make

love to her and when she objected that she'd just known

him for seven hours he said that was another stupid bour-

geois idea she ought to get rid of. When she asked him

about birthcontrol, he sat down beside her and talked for

half an hour about what a great woman Margaret Sanger

was and how birthcontrol was the greatest single blessing

to mankind since the invention of fire. When he started to

make love to her again in a businesslike way she laughing

and blushing let him take off her clothes. It was three

o'clock when feeling weak and guilty and bedraggled she

got back to her room at the Brevoort. She took a huge

dose of castor oil and went to bed where she lay awake

till daylight wondering what she could say to Freddy.

She'd had a date to meet him at eleven for a bite of supper

after his rehearsal. Her fear of being pregnant had dis-

appeared, like waking up from a nightmare.

That spring was full of plans for shows and decorating

houses with Eleanor and Freddy, but nothing came of

them, and after a while Eveline couldn't keep her mind on

New York, what with war declared, and the streets filling

with flags and uniforms, and everybody going patriotic

crazy around her and seeing spies and pacifists under

every bed. Eleanor was getting herself a job in the Red

Cross. Don Stevens had signed up with the Friends'

Relief. Freddy announced a new decision every day, but

finally said he wouldn't decide what to do till he was called

for the draft. Adelaide's husband had a job in Washington

in the new Shipping Board. Dad was writing her every

few days that Wilson was the greatest president since

-132-

Lincoln. Some days she felt that she must be losing her

mind, people around her seemed so cracked. When she

began talking about it to Eleanor, Eleanor smiled in a

superior way and said she'd already asked to have her

as assistant in her office in Paris.

"Your office in Paris, darling?" Eleanor nodded. "I

don't care what kind of work it is, I'll do it gladly," said

Eveline. Eleanor sailed one Saturday on the Rochambeau,

and two weeks later Eveline herself sailed on the Touraine.

It was a hazy summer evening. She'd been almost rude

cutting short the goodbys of Margaret and Adelaide and

Margaret's husband Bill who was a Major by this time and

teaching sharpshooting out on Long Island, she was so

anxious to cut loose from this America she felt was just

too tiresome. The boat was two hours late in sailing. The

band kept playing Tipperary and Auprès de ma Blonde

and La Madelon. There were a great many young men

around in various uniforms, all rather drunk. The little

French sailors with their red pompons and baby faces

yelled back and forth in rolling twangy bordelais. Eveline

walked up and down the deck until her feet were tired.

It seemed as if the boat would never sail. And Freddy,

who had turned up late, kept waving to her from the

dock and she was afraid Don Stevens would come and she

was sick of all her life in these last years.

She went down to her cabin and started reading Bar-

busse's Le Feu that Don had sent her. She fell asleep,

and when the greyhaired skinny woman who was her

cabinmate woke her up bustling around, the first thing

she felt was the trembling pound of the ship's engines.

"Well, you missed dinner," said the greyhaired woman.

Her name was Miss Eliza Felton and she was an

illustrator of children's books. She was going to France

to drive a truck. At first Eveline thought she was just too

tiresome, but as the warm quiet days of the crossing wore

on she got to like her. Miss Felton had a great crush on

-133-

Eveline and was a nuisance, but she was fond of wine and

knew a great deal about France, where she'd lived for

many years. In fact she'd studied painting at Fontaine-

bleau in the old days of the impressionists. She was bitter

against the Huns on account of Rheims and Louvain and

the poor little Belgian babies with their hands cut off, but

she didn't have much use for any male government, called

Wilson a coward, Clemenceau a bully and Lloyd George a

sneak. She laughed at the precautions against submarine

attack and said she knew the French line was perfectly safe

because all the German spies travelled by it. When they

landed in Bordeaux she was a great help to Eveline.

They stayed over a day to see the town instead of going

up to Paris with all the other Red Cross people and Re-

lief workers. The rows of grey eighteenth century houses

were too lovely in the endless rosy summer twilight, and

the flowers for sale and the polite people in the shops and

the delicate patterns of the ironwork, and the fine dinner

they had at the Chapon Fin.

The only trouble with going around with Eliza Felton

was that she kept all the men away. They went up to Paris

on the day train next day and Eveline could hardly keep

from tears at the beauty of the country and the houses

and the vines and the tall ranks of poplars. There were

little soldiers in pale blue at every station and the elderly

and deferential conductor looked like a collegeprofessor.

When the train finally slid smoothly through the tunnel

and into the Orleans station her throat was so tight she

could hardly speak. It was as if she'd never been to Paris

before.

"Now where are you going, dear? You see we have to

carry our own traps," said Eliza Felton in a businesslike

way.

"Well, I suppose I should go to the Red Cross and

report."

"Too late for tonight, I can tell you that."

-134-

"Well, I might try to call up Eleanor."

"Might as well try to wake the dead as try to use the

Paris telephone in wartime . . . what you'd better do,

dear, is come with me to a little hotel I know on the Quai

and sign up with the Red Cross in the morning; that's

what I'm going to do."

"I'd hate to get sent back home."

"They won't know you're here for weeks. . . . I know

those dumbbells."

So Eveline waited with their traps while Eliza Felton

fetched a little truck. They piled their bags on it and

rolled them out of the station and through the empty

streets in the last faint mauve of twilight to the hotel.

There were very few lights and they were blue and

hooded with tin hats so that they couldn't be seen from

above. The Seine, the old bridges, and the long bulk of

the Louvre opposite looked faint and unreal; it was like

walking through a Whistler.

"We must hurry and get something to eat before every-

thing closes up. . . . I'll take you to Adrienne's," said

Miss Felton.

They left their bags to be taken up to their rooms at

the hôtel du Quai Voltaire and walked fast through a lot

of narrow crisscross fastdarkening streets. They ducked

into the door of the little restaurant just as some one was

starting to pull the heavy iron shutter down. "Tiens, c'est

Mademoiselle Elise," cried a woman's voice from the back

of the heavily upholstered little room. A short French-

woman with a very large head and very large popeyes ran

forward and hugged Miss Felton and kissed her a number

of times. "This is Miss Hutchins," said Miss Felton in

her dry voice. "Verry plised . . . she is so prretty . . .

beautiful eyes, hem?" It made Eveline uncomfortable the

way the woman looked at her, the way her big powdered

face was set like an egg in a cup in the frilly highnecked

blouse. She brought out some soup and cold veal and

-135-

bread, with many apologies on account of not having butter

or sugar, complaining in a singsong voice about how severe

the police were and how the profiteers were hoarding food

and how bad the military situation was. Then she suddenly

stopped talking; all their eyes lit at the same moment on

the sign on the wall:

MEFIEZ VOUS LES OREILLES ENEMIES

VOUS ECOUTENT

"Enfin c'est la guerre," Adrienne said. She was sitting

beside Miss Felton, patting Miss Felton's thin hand with

her pudgy hand all covered with paste rings. She had

made them coffee. They were drinking little glasses of

Cointreau. She leaned over and patted Eveline on the

neck. "Faut pas s'en faire, hein?" Then she threw back

her head and let out a shrill hysterical laugh. She kept

pouring out more little glasses of Cointreau and Miss

Felton seemed to be getting a little tipsy. Adrienne kept

patting her hand. Eveline felt her own head swimming

in the stuffy dark closedup little room. She got to her feet

and said she was going back to the hotel, that she had a

headache and was sleepy. They tried to coax her to stay

but she ducked out under the shutter.

Half the street outside was lit up by moonlight, the

other half was in pitchblack shadow. All at once Eveline

remembered that she didn't know the way back to the

hotel, still she couldn't go into that restaurant again and

that woman gave her the horrors, so she walked along fast,

keeping in the moonlight, scared of the silence and the few

shadowy people and the old gaunt houses with their wide

inky doorways. She came out on a boulevard at last where

there were men and women strolling, voices and an occa-

sional automobile with blue lights running silently over

the asphalt. Suddenly the nightmare scream of a siren

started up in the distance, then another and another. Some-

where lost in the sky was a faint humming like a bee,

-136-

louder then fainter, then louder again. Eveline looked at

the people around her. Nobody seemed alarmed or to

hurry their strolling pace.

"Les avions . . . les boches . . . "she heard people

saying in unstartled tones. She found herself standing at

the curb staring up into the milky sky that was fast be-

coming rayed with searchlights. Next to her was a fatherly-

looking French officer with all kinds of lace on his kepi

and drooping moustaches. The sky overhead began to

sparkle like with mica; it was beautiful and far away like

fireworks seen across the lake on the Fourth. Involuntarily

she said aloud, "What's that?" "C'est le shrapnel,

mademoiselle. It is ourr ahnt-aircrahft cannons," he said

carefully in English, and then gave her his arm and

offered to take her home. She noticed that he smelt rather

strongly of cognac but he was very nice and paternal in

his manner and made funny gestures of things coming

down on their heads and said they must get under cover.

She said please to go to the hôtel du Quai Voltaire as she'd

lost her way.

"Ah charmant, charmant," said the elderly French

officer. While they had stood there talking everybody else

on the street had melted out of sight. Guns were barking

in every direction now. They were going down through the

narrow streets again, keeping close to the wall. Once he

pulled her suddenly into a doorway and something landed

whang on the pavement opposite. "It is the fragments of

shrapnel, not good," he said, tapping himself on the top

of the kepi. He laughed and Eveline laughed and they

got along famously. They had come out on the riverbank.

It seemed safe for some reason under the thickfoliaged

trees. From the door of the hotel he suddenly pointed into

the sky, "Look, c'est les fokkers, ils s'en fichent de nous."

As he spoke the Boche planes wheeled overhead so that

their wings caught the moonlight. For a second they were

like seven tiny silver dragonflies, then they'd vanished.

-137-

At the same moment came the rending snort of a bomb

from somewhere across the river. "Permettez, mademoi-

selle." They went into the pitchblack hall of the hotel

and felt their way down into the cellar. As he handed

Eveline down the last step of the dusty wooden stairs the

officer gravely saluted the mixed group of people in bath-

robes or overcoats over their nightclothes who were

grouped around a couple of candles. There was a waiter

there and the officer tried to order a drink, but the waiter

said, "Ah, mon colonel, s'est defendu," and the colonel

made a wry face. Eveline sat up on a sort of table. She

was so excited looking at the people and listening to the

distant snort of the bombs that she hardly noticed that

colonel was squeezing her knee a little more than was

necessary. The colonel's hands became a problem. When

the airraid was over something went by on the street mak-

ing a funny seesaw noise between the quacking of a duck

and a burro's bray. It struck Eveline so funny she laughed

and laughed so that the colonel didn't seem to know what

to make of her. When she tried to say goodnight to him to

go up to her room and get some sleep, he wanted to go up

too. She didn't know what to do. He'd been so nice and

polite she didn't want to be rude to him, but she couldn't

seem to make him understand that she wanted to go to

bed and to sleep; he'd answer that so did he. When she

tried to explain that she had a friend with her, he asked

if the friend was as charming as mademoiselle, in that case

he'd be delighted. Eveline's French broke down entirely.

She wished to heavens Miss Felton would turn up, she

couldn't make the concièrge understand that she wanted

the key to her room and that mon colonel wasn't coming

up and was ready to break down and cry when a young

American in civilian clothes with a red face and a turned-

up nose appeared from somewhere out of the shadows and

said with a flourish in very bad French, "Monsieur, moi

frère de madmosel, can't you see that the little girl is

-138-

fatiguee and wants to say bon-soir?" He linked his arm in

the colonel's and said, "Vive la France. . . . Come up to

my room and have a drink." The colonel drew himself up

and looked very angry. Without waiting to see what hap-

pened Eveline ran up the stairs to her room, rushed in and

doublelocked the door.

NEWSREEL XXIV

it is difficult to realize the colossal scale upon which Eu-

rope will have to borrow in order to make good the destruc-

tion of war

BAGS 28 HUNS SINGLEHANDED

Peace Talk Beginning To Have Its Effect On Southern

Iron Market

LOCAL BOY CAPTURES OFFICER

ONE THIRD WAR ALLOTMENTS FRAUDULENT

There are smiles that make us happy

There are smiles that make us blue

again let us examine into the matter of rates; let it be

assumed that the United States is operating fleets aggregating

3000 freight and passenger vessels between U.S. and foreign

ports

GANG LEADER SLAIN IN STREET

There are smiles that wipe away the teardrops

Like the sunbeams dry away the dew

There are smiles that have a tender meaning

That the eyes of love alone can see.

SOLDIER VOTE CARRIED ELECTION

suppose now that into this delicate medium of economic

law there is thrust the controlling factor of an owner of a

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third of the world's tonnage, who regards with equanimity

both profit and loss, who does not count as a factor in the cost

of operation the interest on capital investment, who builds

vessels whether they, may be profitably operated or not and

who charges rates commensurate in no certain measure with

the laws of supply and demand; how long would it be before

the ocean transport of the whole world had broken down

completely?

CROWN PRINCE ON THE RUN

But the smiles that fill my heart with sunshine

Are

the

smiles

you

give

to

me

persistent talk of peace is an unsettling factor and the

epidemic of influenza has deterred country buyers from visiting

the larger centers

THE CAMERA EYE (32)

à quatorze heures precisement the Boche diurnally

shelled that bridge with their wellknown precision as to

time and place à quatorze heures precisement Dick Nor-

ton with his monocle in his eye lined up his section at a

little distance from the bridge to turn it over to the Amer-

ican Red Cross

the Red Cross majors looked pudgy and white under

their new uniforms in their shined Sam Browne belts in

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their shined tight leather puttees so this was overseas

so this was the front well well

Dick Norton adjusted his monocle and began to talk

about how as gentlemen volunteers he had signed us up

and as gentlemen volunteers he bade us farewell Wham

the first arrivé the smell of almonds the sunday feeling of

no traffic on the road not a poilu in sight Dick Norton

adjusted his monocle the Red Cross majors felt the

showering mud sniffed the lyddite swift whiff of

latrines and of huddled troops

Wham Wham Wham like the Fourth of July the

shellfragments sing our ears ring

the bridge is standing and Dick Norton adjusting his

monocle is standing talking at length about gentlemen

volunteers and ambulance service and la belle France

The empty staffcar is standing

but where are the majors taking over command

who were to make a speech in the name of the Red

Cross? The slowest and pudgiest and whitest of the

majors is still to be seen on his hands and knees with mud

all over his puttees crawling into the abris and that's the

last we saw of the Red Cross Majors

and the last we heard of gentlemen

or volunteers

-141-

THE HAPPY WARRIOR

The Roosevelts had lived for seven righteous gen-

erations on Manhattan Island; they owned a big brick

house on 20th Street, an estate up at Dobbs Ferry, lots

in the city, a pew in the Dutch Reformed Church, inter-

ests, stocks and bonds, they felt Manhattan was theirs,

they felt America was theirs. Their son,

Theodore,

was a sickly youngster, suffered from asthma, was

very nearsighted; his hands and feet were so small it

was hard for him to learn to box; his arms were very

short;

his father was something of a humanitarian, gave

Christmas dinners to newsboys, deplored conditions,

slums, the East Side, Hell's Kitchen.

Young Theodore had ponies, was encouraged to

walk in the woods, to go camping, was instructed in

boxing and fencing (an American gentleman should

know how to defend himself) taught Bible Class, did

mission work (an American gentleman should do his

best to uplift those not so fortunately situated);

righteousness was his by birth;

he had a passion for nature study, for reading

about birds and wild animals, for going hunting; he

got to be a good shot in spite of his glasses, a good

walker in spite of his tiny feet and short legs, a fair

horseman, an aggressive scrapper in spite of his short

reach, a crack politician in spite of being the son of one

of the owning Dutch families of New York.

In 1876 he went up to Cambridge to study at

Harvard, a wealthy talkative erratic young man with

sidewhiskers and definite ideas about everything under

the sun,

at Harvard he drove around in a dogcart, collected

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stuffed birds, mounted specimens he'd shot on his trips

in the Adirondacks; in spite of not drinking and being

somewhat of a christer, having odd ideas about reform

and remedying abuses, he made Porcellian and the

Dickey and the clubs that were his right as the son of

one of the owning Dutch families of New York.

He told his friends he was going to devote his life

to social service: I wish to preach not the doctrine of

ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the

life of toil and effort, of labor and strife.

From the time he was eleven years old he wrote

copiously, filled diaries, notebooks, loose leaves with a

big impulsive scrawl about everything he did and

thought and said;

naturally he studied law.

He married young and went to Switzerland to

climb the Matterhorn; his first wife's early death broke

him all up. He went out to the badlands of western

Dakota to become a rancher on the Little Missouri

River;

when he came back to Manhattan he was Teddy,

the straight shooter from the west, the elkhunter, the

man in the Stetson hat, who'd roped steers, fought a

grizzly hand to hand, acted as Deputy Sheriff,

(a Roosevelt has a duty to his country; the duty of

a Roosevelt is to uplift those not so fortunately situated,

those who have come more recently to our shores)

in the west, Deputy Sheriff Roosevelt felt the

white man's burden, helped to arrest malefactors, bad

men; service was bully.

All this time he'd been writing, filling the maga-

zines with stories of his hunts and adventures, filling

political meetings with his opinions, his denunciations,

his pat phrases: Strenuous Life, Realizable Ideals, Just

Government, when men fear work or fear righteous

-143-

war, when women fear motherhood, they tremble on

the brink of doom, and well it is that they should vanish

from the earth, where they are fit subjects for the scorn

of all men and women who are themselves strong and

brave and highminded.

T.R. married a wealthy woman and righteously

raised a family at Sagamore Hill.

He served a term in the New York Legislature,

was appointed by Grover Cleveland to the unremunera-

tive job of Commissioner for Civil Service Reform,

was Reform Police Commissioner of New York,

pursued malefactors, stoutly maintained that white was

white and black was black,

wrote the Naval History of the War of 1812,

was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy,

and when the Maine blew up resigned to lead the

Rough Riders,

Lieutenant-Colonel.

This was the Rubicon, the Fight, the Old Glory,

the Just Cause. The American public was not kept in

ignorance of the Colonel's bravery when the bullets

sang, how he charged without his men up San Juan

Hill and had to go back to fetch them, how he shot a

running Spaniard in the tail.

It was too bad that the regulars had gotten up

San Juan Hill first from the other side, that there was

no need to get up San Juan Hill at all. Santiago was

surrendered. It was a successful campaign. T.R.

charged up San Juan Hill into the governorship of the

Empire State;

but after the fighting, volunteers warcorrespond-

ents magazinewriters began to want to go home;

it wasn't bully huddling under puptents in the

tropical rain or scorching in the morning sun of the

seared Cuban hills with malaria mowing them down

and dysentery and always yellowjack to be afraid of.

-144-

T.R. got up a round robin to the President and

asked for the amateur warriors to be sent home and

leave the dirtywork to the regulars

who were digging trenches and shovelling crap

and fighting malaria and dysentery and yellowjack

to make Cuba cosy for the Sugar Trust

and the National City Bank.

When he landed at home, one of his first inter-

views was with Lemuel Quigg, emissary of Boss Platt

who had the votes of upstate New York sewed into the

lining of his vest;

he saw Boss Platt too, but he forgot about that

afterwards. Things were bully. He wrote a life of

Oliver Cromwell whom people said he resembled. As

Governor he doublecrossed the Platt machine (a

righteous man may have a short memory); Boss Platt

thought he'd shelved him by nominating him for the

Vice-Presidency in 1900;

Czolgocz made him president.

T.R. drove like a fiend in a buckboard over the

muddy roads through the driving rain from Mt. Marcy

in the Adirondacks to catch the train to Buffalo where

McKinley was dying.

As President

he moved Sagamore Hill, the healthy happy

normal American home, to the White House, took

foreign diplomats and fat armyofficers out walking in

Rock Creek Park where he led them a terrible dance

through brambles, hopping across the creek on stepping-

stones, wading the fords, scrambling up the shaly banks,

and shook the Big Stick at malefactors of great

wealth.

-145-

Things were bully.

He engineered the Panama revolution under the

shadow of which took place the famous hocuspocus of

juggling the old and new canal companies by which

forty million dollars vanished into the pockets of the

international bankers,

but Old Glory floated over the Canal Zone

and the canal was cut through.

He busted a few trusts,

had Booker Washington to lunch at the White

House,

and urged the conservation of wild life.

He got the Nobel Peace Prize for patching up the

Peace of Portsmouth that ended the Russo-Japanese

war,

and sent the Atlantic Fleet around the world for

everybody to see that America was a firstclass power.

He left the presidency to Taft after his second term

leaving to that elephantine lawyer the congenial task of

pouring judicial oil on the hurt feelings of the money-

masters

and went to Africa to hunt big game.

Big game hunting was bully.

Every time a lion or an elephant went crashing

down into the jungle underbrush, under the impact of

a wellplaced mushroom bullet

the papers lit up with headlines;

when he talked with the Kaiser on horseback

the world was not ignorant of what he said, or

when he lectured the Nationalists at Cairo telling them

that this was a white man's world.

He went to Brazil where he travelled through the

Matto Grosso in a dugout over waters infested with the

tiny maneating fish, the piranha,

shot tapirs,

jaguars,

-146-

specimens of the whitelipped peccary.

He ran the rapids of the River of Doubt

down to the Amazon frontiers where he arrived

sick, an infected abscess in his leg, stretched out under

an awning in a dugout with a tame trumpeterbird beside

him.

Back in the States he fought his last fight when

he came out for the republican nomination in 1912 a

progressive, champion of the Square Deal, crusader for

the Plain People; the Bull Moose bolted out from

under the Taft steamroller and formed the Progressive

Party for righteousness' sake at the Chicago Colosseum

while the delegates who were going to restore demo-

cratic government rocked with tears in their eyes as

they sang

On ward Christian so old gers

Marching as to war

Perhaps the River of Doubt had been too much for

a man of his age; perhaps things weren't so bully any

more; T.R. lost his voice during the triangular cam-

paign. In Duluth a maniac shot him in the chest, his

life was saved only by the thick bundle of manuscript

of the speech he was going to deliver. T.R. delivered

the speech with the bullet still in him, heard the scared

applause, felt the plain people praying for his recov-

ery but the spell was broken somehow.

The Democrats swept in, the world war drowned

out the righteous voice of the Happy Warrior in the

roar of exploding lyddite. this was.

Wilson wouldn't let T.R. lead a division, this was

no amateur's war (perhaps the regulars remembered

the round robin at Santiago). All he could do was

write magazine articles against the Huns, send his sons;

Quentin was killed.

-147-

It wasn't the bully amateur's world any more.

Nobody knew that on armistice day, Theodore Roose-

velt, happy amateur warrior with the grinning teeth,

the shaking forefinger, naturalist, explorer, magazine-

writer, Sundayschool teacher, cowpuncher, moralist,

politician, righteous orator with a short memory, fond

of denouncing liars (the Ananias Club) and having

pillowfights with his children, was taken to the Roose-

velt hospital gravely ill with inflammatory rheumatism.

Things weren't bully any more;

T.R. had grit;

he bore the pain, the obscurity, the sense of being

forgotten as he had borne the grilling portages when he

was exploring the River of Doubt, the heat, the fetid

jungle mud, the infected abscess in his leg,

and died quietly in his sleep

at Sagamore Hill

on January 6, 1919

and left on the shoulders of his sons

the white man's burden.

THE CAMERA EYE (33)

11,000 registered harlots said the Red Cross Pub-

licity Man infest the streets of Marseilles

the Ford stalled three times in the Rue de Rivoli

in Fontainebleau we had our café au lait in bed the For-

est was so achingly red yellow novemberbrown under the

tiny lavender rain beyond the road climbed through

dovecolored hills the air smelt of apples

Nevers (Dumas nom de dieu) Athos Pcrthos and

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d'Artagnan had ordered a bisque at the inn we wound

down slowly into red Macon that smelt of winelees and

the vintage fais ce que voudras saute Bourgignon.

in the Rhone valley the first strawcolored sunlight streaked

the white road with shadows of skeleton poplars at

every stop we drank wine strong as beefsteaks rich as the

palace of François Premier bouquet of the last sleet-

lashed roses we didn't cross the river to Lyon where

Jean-Jacques suffered from greensickness as a young-

ster the landscapes of Provence were all out of the Gal-

lic Wars the towns were dictionaries of latin roots Orange

Tarascon Arles where Van Gogh cut off his ears the

convoy became less of a conducted tour we stopped to

play craps in the estaminets boys we're going south to

drink the red wine the popes loved best to eat fat

meals in oliveoil. and garlic bound south cêpes pro-

vençale the north wind was shrilling over the plains of

the Camargue hustling us into Marseilles where the eleven

thousand were dandling themselves in the fogged mirrors

of the promenoir at the Apollo

oysters and vin de Cassis petite fille tellement brune

tête de lune qui amait les veentair sports in the end

they were all slot machines undressed as Phocean figurines

posted with their legs apart around the scummy edges of

the oldest port

the Riviera was a letdown but there was a candycol-

ored church with a pointed steeple on every hill beyond

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San Remo Porto Maurizio blue seltzerbottles stand-

ing in the cinzanocolored sunlight beside a glass of VER-

MOUTH TORINO Savona was set for the Merchant

of Venice painted by Veronese Ponte Decimo in Ponte

Decimo ambulances were parked in a moonlit square of

bleak stone, workingpeople's houses hoarfrost covered

everything in the little bar the Successful Story Writer

taught us to drink cognac and maraschino half and half

havanuzzerone

it turned out he was not writing what he felt he

wanted to be writing What can you tell them at home

about the war? it turned out he was not wanting what he

wrote he wanted to be feeling cognac and mara-

schino was no longer young (It made us damn sore

we greedy for what we felt we wanted tell 'em all they

lied see new towns go to Genoa) havanuzzerone? it

turned out that he wished he was a naked brown shep-

herd boy sitting on a hillside playing a flute in the sunlight

going to Genoa was easy enough the streetcar went

there Genoa the new town we'd never seen full of marble

doges and breakneck stairs marble lions in the moon-

light Genoa was, the ancient ducal city burning?

all the marble palaces and the square stone houses and the

campaniles topping hills had one marble wall on fire

bonfire under the moon

the bars were full of Britishers overdressed civilians

strolling under porticoes outside the harbor under the

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Genoa moon the sea was on fire the member of His

Majesty's Intelligence Service said it was a Yankee tanker

had struck a mine? been torpedoed? why don't they scut-

tle her?

Genoa eyes flared with the light of the burning

tanker Genoa what are you looking for? the flare

in the blood under the moon down the midnight streets

in boys' and girls' faces Genoa eyes the question in

their eyes

through the crumbling stone courts under the Genoa

moon up and down the breakneck stairs eyes on fire under

the moon round the next corner full in your face the flare

of the bonfire on the sea

11,000 registered harlots said the Red Cross Publicity

Man infest the streets of Marseilles

JOE WILLIAMS

It was a lousy trip. Joe was worried all the time about

Del and about not making good and the deckcrew was a

bunch of soreheads. The engines kept breaking down. The

Higginbotham was built like a cheesebox and so slow there

were days when they didn't make more'n thirty or forty

miles against moderate head winds. The only good times

he had was taking boxing lessons from the second en-

gineer, a fellow named Glen Hardwick. He was a little

wiry guy, who was a pretty good amateur boxer, though

he must have been forty years old. By the time they

-151-

got to Bordeaux Joe was able to give him a good workout.

He was heavier and had a better reach and Glen said he'd

a straight natural right that would take him far as a

lightweight.

In Bordeaux the first port official that came on board

tried to kiss Cap'n Perry on both checks. President Wilson

had just declared war on Germany. All over the town

nothing was too good for Les Americains. Evenings when

they were off Joe and Glen Hardwick cruised around to-

gether. The Bordeaux girls were damn pretty. They met

up with a couple one afternoon in the public garden that

weren't hookers at all. They were nicely dressed and

looked like they came of good families, what the hell it

was wartime. At first Joe thought he ought to lay off that

stuff now that he was married, but hell, hadn't Del held

out on him. What did she think he was, a plaster saint?

They ended by going to a little hotel the girls knew and

eating supper and drinking beaucoup wine and champagne

and having a big party. Joe had never had such a good

time with a girl in his life. His girl's name was Marceline

and when they woke up in the morning the help at the

hotel brought them in coffee and rolls and they ate break-

fast, both of 'em sitting up in bed and Joe's French began

to pick up and he learned how to say C'est la guerre and

On les aura and Je m'en fiche and Marceline said she'd

always be his sweetie when he was in Bordeaux and called

him petit lapin.

They only stayed in Bordeaux the four days it took 'em

to wait their turn to go up to the dock and unload, but

they drank wine and cognac all the time and the food was

swell and nobody could do enough for them on account

of America having come into the war and it was a great

old four days.

On the trip home the Higginbotham sprung leaks so

bad the old man stopped worrying about submarines al-

together. It was nip and tuck if they'd make Halifax.

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The ship was light and rolled like a log so that even with

fiddles on they couldn't keep dishes on the messtable. One

dirty night of driving fog somewhere south of Cape Race,

Joe with his chin in his peajacket was taking a turn on the

deck amidship when he was suddenly thrown flat. They

never knew what hit 'em, a mine or a torpedo. It was

only that the boats were in darn good order and the sea

was smooth that they got off at all. As it was the four

boats got separated. The Higginbotham faded into the

fog and they never saw her sink, though the last they

could make out her maindeck was awash.

They were cold and wet. In Joe's boat nobody said

much. The men at the oars had to work hard to keep her

bow into the little chop that came up. Each sea a little

bigger than the others drenched them with spray. They

had on wool sweaters and lifepreservers but the cold

seeped through. At last the fog greyed a little and it was

day. Joe's boat and the captain's boat managed to keep to-

gether until late that afternoon they were picked up by a

big fishing schooner, a banker bound for Boston.

When they were picked up old Cap'n Perry was in a

bad way. The master of the fishing schooner did every-

thing he could for him, but he was unconscious when

they reached Boston four days later and died on the way

to the hospital. The doctors said it was pneumonia.

Next morning Joe and the mate went to the office of the

agent of Perkins and Ellerman, the owners, to see about

getting themselves and the crew paid off. There was some

kind of damn monkeydoodle business about the vessel's

having changed owners in midAtlantic, a man named

Rosenberg had bought her on a speculation and now he

couldn't be found and the Chase National Bank was

claiming ownership and the underwriters were raising

cain. The agent said he was sure they'd be paid all right,

because Rosenberg had posted bond, but it would be some

time. "And what the hell do they expect us to do all that

-153-

time, eat grass?" The clerk said he was sorry but they'd

have to take it up direct with Mr. Rosenberg.

Joe and the first mate stood side by side on the curb

outside the office and cursed for a while, then the mate

went over to South Boston to break the news to the chief

who lived there.

It was a warm June afternoon. Joe started to go around

the shipping offices to see what he could do in the way of

a berth. He got tired of that and went and sat on a

bench on the Common, staring at the sparrows and the

gobs loafing around and the shop girls coming home from

work, their little heels clattering on the asphalt paths.

Joe hung around Boston broke for a couple of weeks.

The Salvation Army took care of the survivors, serving

'em beans and watery soup and a lot of hymns off key

that didn't appeal to Joe the way he felt just then. He

was crazy to get enough jack to go to Norfolk to see Del.

He wrote her every day but the letters he got back to

General Delivery seemed kinder cool. She was worried

about the rent and wanted some spring clothes and was

afraid they wouldn't like it at the office if they found out

about her being married.

Joe sat on the benches on the Common and roamed

around among the flowerbeds in the Public Garden, and

called regularly at the agent's office to ask about a berth,

but finally he got sick of hanging around and went down

and signed on as quartermaster, on a United Fruit boat,

the Callao. He thought it ud be a short run and by the

time he got back in a couple of weeks he'd be able to get

his money.

On the home trip they had to wait several days an-

chored outside in the roads at Roseau in Dominica, for

the limes they were going to load to be crated. Every-

body was sore at the port authorities, a lot of damn Brit-

ish niggers, on account of the quarantine and the limes

not being ready and how slow the lighters were coming

-154-

off from the shore. The last night in port Joe and Larry,

one of the other quartermasters, got kidding some young

coons in a bumboat that had been selling fruit and liquor

to the crew under the stern; first thing they knew they'd

offered 'em a dollar each to take 'em ashore and land 'em

down the beach so's the officers wouldn't see them. The

town smelt of niggers. There were no lights in the streets.

A little coalblack youngster ran up and asked did they

want some mountain chicken. "I guess that means wild

women, sure," said Joe. "All bets are off tonight." The

little dinge took 'em into a bar kept by a stout mulatto

woman and said something to her in the island lingo they

couldn't understand, and she said they'd have to wait a

few minutes and they sat down and had a couple of drinks

of corn and oil. "I guess she must be the madam," said

Larry. "If they ain't pretty good lookers they can go to

hell for all I care. I'm not much on the dark meat." From

out back came a sound of sizzling and a smell of some-

thing frying. "Dod gast it, I could eat something," said

Joe. "Say, boy, tell her we want something to eat." "By

and by you eat mountain chicken." "What the hell?"

They finished their drinks just as the woman came back

with a big platter of something fried up. "What's that?"

asked Joe. "That's mountain chicken, mister; that's how

we call froglegs down here but they ain't like the frogs

you all has in the states. I been in the states and I know.

We wouldn't eat them here. These here is clean frogs

just like chicken. You'll find it real good if you eat it."

They roared. "Jesus, the drinks are on us," said Larry,

wiping the tears out of his eyes.

Then they thought they'd go pick up some girls. They

saw a couple leaving the house where the music was and

followed 'em down the dark street. They started to talk

to 'em and the girls showed their teeth and wriggled in

their clothes and giggled. But three or four nigger men

came up sore as hell and began talking in the local lingo.

-155-

"Jez, Larry, we'd better watch our step," said Joe through

his teeth. "Those bozos got razors." They were in the

middle of a yelling bunch of big black men when they

heard an American voice behind them, "Don't say an-

other word, boys, I'll handle this." A small man in khaki

riding breeches and a panama hat was pushing his way

through the crowd talking in the island lingo all the time.

He was a little man with a gray triangular face tufted

with a goatee. "My name's Henderson, DeBuque Hen-

derson of Bridgeport, Connecticut." He shook hands with

both of them.

"Well, what's the trouble, boys? It's all right now,

everybody knows me here. You have to be careful on

this island, boys, they're touchy, these people, very

touchy. . . . You boys better come along with me and

have a drink. . . ." He took them each by the arm and

walked them hurriedly up the street. "Well, I was young

once . . . I'm still young . . . sure, had to see the

island . . . damn right too, the most interesting island in

the whole Caribbean only lonely . . . never see a white

face."

When they got to his house he walked them through a

big whitewashed room onto a terrace that smelt of vanilla

flowers. They could see the town underneath with its few

lights, the dark hills, the white hull of the Callao with the

lighters around her lit up by the working lights. At in-

tervals the rattle of winches came up to them and a crazy

jigtune from somewhere.

The old feller poured them each a glass of rum; then

another. He had a parrot on a perch that kept screeching.

The landbreeze had come up full of heavy flowersmells

off the mountains and blew the old feller's stringy white

hair in his eyes. He pointed at the Callao all lit up with its

ring of lighters. "United Fruit . . . United Thieves

Company . . . it's a monopoly . . . if you won't take

their prices they let your limes rot on the wharf; it's a

-156-

monopoly. You boys are working for a bunch of thieves,

but I know it ain't your fault. Here's lookin' at you."

Before they knew it Larry and Joe were singing. The

old man was talking about cotton spinning machinery and

canecrushers and pouring out drinks from a rumbottle.

They were pretty goddam drunk. They didn't know how

they got aboard. Joe remembered the dark focastle and

the sound of snoring from the bunks spinning around,

then sleep hitting him like a sandbag and the sweet, sicky

taste of rum in his mouth.

A couple of days later Joe came down with a fever

and horrible pains in his joints. He was out of his head

when they put him ashore at St. Thomas's. It was dengue

and he was sick for two months before he had the strength

even to write Del to tell her where he was. The hos-

pital orderly told him he'd been out of his head five days

and they'd given him up for a goner. The doctors had

been sore as hell about it because this was post hospital;

after all he was a white man and unconscious and they

couldn't very well feed him to the sharks.

It was July before Joe was well enough to walk around

the steep little coraldust streets of the town. He had to

leave the hospital and would have been in a bad way if one

of the cooks at the marine barracks hadn't looked out for

him and found him a flop in an unused section of the

building. It was hot and there was never a cloud in the

sky and he got pretty sick of looking at the niggers and

the bare hills and the blue shutin harbor. He spent a lot

of time sitting out on the old coalwharf in the shade of a

piece of corrugated iron roof looking through the plank-

ing at the clear deep bluegreen water, watching shoals of

snappers feeding around the piles. He got to thinking*

about Del and that French girl in Bordeaux and the war

and how the United Fruit was a bunch of thieves and then

the thoughts would go round and round in his head like

the little silver and blue and yellow fish round the swaying

-157-

weeds on the piles and he'd find held dropped off to

sleep.

When a northbound fruitsteamer came into the harbor

he got hold of one of the officers on the wharf and told

him his sad story. They gave him passage up to New

York. First thing he did was try to get hold of Janey;

maybe if she thought he ought to, he'd give up this dog's

life and take a steady job ashore. He called up the J.

Ward Moorehouse advertising office where she worked

but the girl at the other end of the line told him she was

the boss's secretary and was out west on business.

He went over and got a flop at Mrs. Olsen's in Red-

hook. Everybody over there was talking about the draft

and how they rounded you up for a slacker if they picked

you up on the street without a registration card. And sure

enough, just as Joe was stepping out of the subway at

Wall Street one morning a cop came up to him and asked

him for his card. Joe said he was a merchant seaman and

had just got back from a trip and hadn't had time to regis-

ter yet and that he was exempt, but the cop said he'd have

to tell that to the judge. They were quite a bunch being

marched down Broadway; smart guys in the crowd of

clerks and counterjumpers along the sidewalks yelled

"Slackers" at them and the girls hissed and booed.

In the Custom House they were herded into some of

the basement rooms. It was a hot August day. Joe elbowed

his way through the sweating, grumbling crowd towards

the window. Most of them were foreigners, there were

longshoremen and waterfront loafers; a lot of the group

were talking big but Joe remembered the navy and kept

his mouth shut and listened. He was in there all day. The

cops wouldn't let anybody telephone and there was only

one toilet and they had to go to that under guard. Joe

felt pretty weak on his pins, he hadn't gotten over the

effect of that dengue yet. He was about ready to pass out

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when he saw a face he knew. Damned if it wasn't Glen

Hardwick.

Glen had been picked up by a Britisher' and taken into

Halifax. He'd signed as second on the Chemang, taking

out mules to Bordeaux and a general cargo to Genoa, going

to be armed with a threeinch gun and navy gunners, Joe

ought to come along. "Jesus, do you think I could get

aboard her?" Joe asked. "Sure, they're crazy for naviga-

tion officers; they'd take you on even without a ticket."

Bordeaux sounded pretty good, remember the girlfriends

there? They doped out that when Glen got out he'd phone

Mrs. Olsen to bring over Joe's license that was in a cigar-

box at the head of his bed. When they finally were taken

up to the desk to be questioned the guy let Glen go right

away and said Joe could go as soon as they got his license

over but that they must register at once even if they were

exempt from the draft. "After all, you boys ought to re-

member that there's a war on," said the inspector at the

desk. "Well, we sure ought to know," said Joe.

Mrs. Olsen came over all in a flurry with Joe's papers

and Joe hustled over to the office in East New York and

they took him on as bosun. The skipper was Ben Tarbell

who'd been first mate on the Higginbotham. Joe wanted

to go down to Norfolk to see Del, but hell this was no

time to stay ashore. What he did was to send her fifty

bucks he borrowed from Glen. He didn't have time to

worry about it anyway because they sailed the next day

with sealed orders as to where to meet the convoy.

It wasn't so bad steaming in convoy. The navy officers

on the destroyers and the Salem that was in command

gave the orders, but the merchant captains kidded back

and forth with wigwag signals. It was some sight to see

the Atlantic Ocean full of long strings of freighters all

blotched up with gray and white watermarkings like bar-

berpoles by the camouflage artists. There were old tubs

in that convoy that a man wouldn't have trusted himself

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in to cross to Staten Island in peacetime and one of the

new wooden Shipping Board boats leaked so bad, jerry-

built out of new wood -- somebody musta been making

money -- that she had to be abandoned and scuttled half

way across.

Joe and Glen smoked their pipes together in Glen's

cabin and chewed the fat a good deal. They decided that

everything ashore was the bunk and the only place for

them was blue water. Joe got damn fed up with bawling

out the bunch of scum he had for a crew. Once they got

in the zone, all the ships started steering a zigzag course

and everybody began to get white around the gills. Joe

never cussed so much in his life. There was a false alarm

of submarines every few hours and seaplanes dropping

depth bombs and excited gun crews firing at old barrels,

bunches of seaweed, dazzle in the water. Steaming into

the Gironde at night with the searchlights crisscrossing

and the blinker signals and the patrolboats scooting.

around, they sure felt good.

It was a relief to get the dirty trampling mules off the

ship and their stench out of everything, and to get rid of

the yelling and cussing of the hostlers. Glen and Joe only

got ashore for a few hours and couldn't find Marceline

and Loulou. The Garonne was beginning to look like the

Delaware with all the new Americanbuilt steel and con-

crete piers. Going out they had to anchor several hours to

repair a leaky steampipe and saw a patrol boat go by tow-

ing five ships' boats crowded to the gunnels, so they

guessed the fritzes must be pretty busy outside.

No convoy this time. They slipped out in the middle of

a foggy night. When one of the deckhands came up out

of the focastle with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth,

the mate knocked him flat and said he'd have him arrested

when he got back home for a damn German spy. They

coasted Spain as far as Finisterre. The skipper had just

changed the course to southerly when they saw a sure

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enough periscope astern. The skipper grabbed the wheel

himself and yelled down the tube to the engine room to

give him everything they'd got, that wasn't much to be

sure, and the gun crew started blazing away.

The periscope disappeared but a couple of hours later

they overhauled a tubby kind of ketch, must be a Spanish

fishingboat, that was heading for the shore, for Vigo prob-

ably, scudding along wing and wing in the half a gale

that was blowing up west northwest. They'd no sooner

crossed the wake of the ketch than there was a thud that

shook the ship and a column of water shot up that

drenched them all on the bridge. Everything worked like

clockwork. No. I was the only compartment flooded. As

luck would have it, the crew was all out of the focastle

standing on deck amidships in their life preservers. The

Chemang settled a little by the bow, that was all. The

gunners were certain it was a mine dropped by the old

black ketch that had crossed their bow and let them have

a couple of shots, but the ship was rolling so in the heavy

sea that the shots went wild. Anyway, the ketch went out

of sight behind the island that blocks the mouth of the

roadstead of Vigo. The Chemang crawled on in under one

bell.

By the time they got into the channel opposite the

town of Vigo, the water was gaining on the pumps in No.

2, and there was four feet of water in the engineroom.

They had to beach her on the banks of hard sand to the

right of the town.

So they were ashore again with their bundles standing

around outside the consul's office, waiting for him to find

them somewhere to flop. The consul was a Spaniard and

didn't speak as much English as he might have but he

treated them fine. The Liberal Party of Vigo invited offi-

cers and crew to go to a bullfight there was going to be

that afternoon. More monkeydoodle business, the skipper

got a cable to turn the ship over to the agents of Gomez

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and Ca. of Bilboa who had bought her as she stood and

were changing her registry.

When they got to the bullring half the crowd cheered

them and yelled, "Viva los Aliados," and the rest hissed

and shouted, "Viva Maura." They thought there was

going to be a fight right there but the bull came out and

everybody quieted down. The bullfight was darn bloody,

but the boys with the spangles were some steppers and

the people sitting around made them drink wine all the

time out of little black skins and passed around bottles of

cognac so that the crew got pretty cockeyed and Joe spent

most of his time keeping the boys in order. Then the

officers were tendered a banquet by the local pro-allied

society and a lot of bozos with mustachlos made fiery

speeches that nobody could understand and the Ameri-

cans cheered and sang, The Yanks are Coming and Keep

the Home Fires Burning and We're Bound for the Ham-

burg Show. The chief, an old fellow named McGillicudy,

did some card tricks, and the evening was a big success.

Joe and Glen bunked together at the hotel. The maid

there was awful pretty but wouldn't let 'em get away with

any foolishness. "Well, Joe," said Glen, before they went

to sleep, "it's a great war." "Well, I guess that's strike

three," said Joe. "That was no strike, that was a ball,"

said Glen.

They waited two weeks in Vigo while the officials quar-

reled about their status and they got pretty fed up with

it. Then they were all loaded on a train to take them to

Gibraltar where they were to be taken on board a Ship-

ping Board boat. They were three days on the train with

nothing to sleep on but hard benches. Spain was just one

set of great dusty mountains after another. They changed

cars in Madrid and in Seville and a guy turned up each

time from the consulate to take care of them. When they

got to Seville they found it was Algeciras they were going

to instead of Gib.

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When they got to Algeciras they found that nobody

had ever heard of them. They camped out in the con-

sulate while the consul telegraphed all over the place and

finally chartered two trucks and sent them over to Cadiz.

Spain was some country, all rocks and wine and busty

black eyed women and olive trees. When they got to

Cadiz the consular agent was there to meet them with a.

telegram in his hand. The tanker Gold Shell was waiting

in Algeciras to take them on board there, so it was back

again cooped up on the trucks, bouncing on the hard

benches with their faces powdered with dust and their

mouths full of it and not a cent in anybody's jeans left

to buy a drink with. When they got on board the Gold

Shell around three in the morning a bright moonlight

night some of the boys were so tired they fell down and

went to sleep right on the deck with their heads on their

seabags.

The Gold Shell landed 'em in Perth Amboy in late

October. Joe drew his back pay and took the first train

connections he could get for Norfolk. He was fed up

with bawling out that bunch of pimps in the focastle.

Damn it, he was through with the sea; he was going to

settle down and have a little married life.

He felt swell coming over on the ferry from Cape

Charles, passing the Ripraps, out of the bay full of white-

caps into the smooth brown water of Hampton Roads

crowded with shipping; four great battlewaggons at an-

chor, subchasers speeding in and out and a white revenue

cutter, camouflaged freighters and colliers, a bunch of red

munitions barges anchored off by themselves. It was a

sparkling fall day. He felt good; he had three hundred

and fifty dollars in his pocket. He had a good suit on and

he felt sunburned and he'd just had a good meal. God

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damn it, he wanted a little love now. Maybe they'd have

a kid.

Things sure were different in Norfolk. Everybody in

new uniforms, twominute speakers at the corner of Main

and Granby, liberty loan posters, bands playing. He

hardly knew the town walking up from the ferry. He'd

written Del that he was coming but he was worried about

seeing her, hadn't had any letters lately. He still had a

latch key to the apartment but he knocked before open-

ing the door. There was nobody there.

He'd always pictured her running to the door to meet

him. Still it was only four o'clock, she must be at her

work. Must have another girl with her, don't keep the

house so tidy. . . . Underwear hung to dry on a line, bits

of clothing on all the chairs, a box of candy with half-

eaten pieces in it on the table. . . . Jez, they must have

had a party last night. There was a half a cake, glasses

that had had liquor in them, a plate full of cigarette butts

and even a cigar butt. Oh, well, she'd probably had some

friends in. He went to the bathroom and shaved and

cleaned up a little. Sure Del was always popular, she

probably had a lot of friends in all the time, playing

cards and that. In the bathroom there was a pot of rouge

and lipsticks, and facepowder spilt over the faucets. It

made Joe feel funny shaving among all these women's

things.

He heard her voice laughing on the stairs and a man's

voice; the key clicked in the lock. Joe closed his suitcase

and stood up. Del had bobbed her hair. She flew up to

him and threw her arms around his neck. "Why, I declare

it's my hubby." Joe could taste rouge on her lips. "My,

you look thin, Joe. Poor Boy, you musta been awful

sick. . . . If I'd had any money at all I'd have jumped

on a boat and come on down. . . . This is Wilmer Tay-

loe . . . I mean Lieutenant Tayloe, he just got his com-

mission yesterday."

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Joe hesitated a moment and then held out his hand.

The other fellow had red hair clipped close and a freckled

face. He was all dressed up in a whipcord uniform, shiny

Sam Browne belt and puttees. He had a silver bar on each

shoulder and spurs on his feet.

"He's just going overseas tomorrow. He was coming

by to take me out to dinner. Oh, Joe, I've got so much to

tell you, honey."

Joe and Lieutenant Tayloe stood around eyeing each

other uncomfortably while Del bustled around tidying

the place up, talking to Joe all the time. "It's terrible I

never get any chance to do anything and neither does

Hilda . . . You remember Hilda Thompson, Joe? Well,

she's been livin' with me to help make up the rent but

we're both of us doin' war work down at the Red Cross

canteen every evening and then I sell Liberty bonds. . . .

Don't you hate the huns, Joe. Oh, I just hate them, and

so does Hilda. . . . She's thinking of changing her name

on account of its being German. I promised to call her

Gloria but I always forget. . . . You know, Wilmer, Joe's

been torpedoed twice."

"Well, I suppose the first six times is the hardest,"

stammered Lieutenant Tayloe. Joe grunted.

Del disappeared into the bathroom and closed the

door. "You boys make yourselves comfortable. I'll be

dressed in a minute."

Neither of them said anything. Lieutenant Tayloe's

shoes creaked as he shifted his weight from one foot to

the other. At last he pulled a flask out of his hip pocket.

"Have a drink," he said. "Ma outfit's goin' overseas any

time after midnight.""I guess I'd better," said Joe,

without smiling. When Della came out of the bathroom

all dressed up she certainly looked snappy. She was much

prettier than last time Joe had seen her. He was all the

time wondering if he ought to go up and hit that damn

-165-

shavetail until at last he left, Del telling him to come by

and get her at the Red Cross canteen.

When he'd left she came and sat on Joe's knee and

asked him about everything and whether he'd got his sec-

ond mate's ticket yet and whether he'd missed her and

how she wished he could make a little more money be-

cause she hated to have another girl in with her this

way but it was the only way she could pay the rent. She

drank a little of the whiskey that the lieutenant had for-

gotten on the table and ruffled his hair and loved him up.

Joe asked her if Hilda was coming in soon and she said

no she had a date and she was going to meet her at the

canteen. But Joe went and bolted the door anyway and

for the first time they were really happy hugged in each

other's arms on the bed.

Joe didn't know what to do with himself around Nor-

folk. Del was at the office all day and at the Red Cross

canteen all the evening. He'd usually be in bed when she

came home. Usually there'd be some damn army officer

or other bringing her home, and he'd hear them talking

and kidding outside the door and lie there in bed imag-

ining that the guy was kissing her or loving her up. He'd

be about ready to hit her when she'd come in and bawl

her out and they'd quarrel and yell at each other and

she'd always end by saying that he didn't understand

her and she thought he was unpatriotic to be interfering

with her war work and sometimes they'd make up and

he'd feel crazy in love with her and she'd make herself

little and cute in his arms and give him little tiny kisses

that made him almost cry they made him feel so happy.

She was getting better looking every day and she sure

was a snappy dresser.

Sunday mornings she'd be too tired to get up and he'd

cook breakfast for her and they'd sit up in bed together

and eat breakfast like he had with Marceline that time in

Bordeaux. Then she'd tell him she was crazy about him

-166-

and what a smart guy he was and how she wanted him

to get a good shore job and make a lot of money so that

she wouldn't have to work any more and how Captain

Barnes whose folks were worth a million had wanted her

to get a divorce from Joe and marry him and Mr. Can-

field in the Dupont office who made a cool 50,000 a year

had wanted to give her a pearl necklace but she hadn't

taken it because she didn't think it was right. Talk like

that made Joe feel pretty rotten. Sometimes he'd start to

talk about what they'd do if they had some kids, but Del

ud always make a funny face and tell him not to talk like

that.

Joe went around looking for work and almost landed

the job of foreman in one of the repairshops over at the

shipyard in Newport News, but at the last minute another

berry horned in ahead of him and got it. A couple of

times he went out on parties with Del and Hilda Thomp-

son, and some army officers and a midshipman off a de-

stroyer, but they all high-hatted him and Del let any

boy who wanted to kiss her and would disappear into a

phone booth with anything she could pick up so long as

it had a uniform on and he had a hell of a time. He found

a poolroom where some boys he knew hung out and

where he could get corn liquor and started tanking up a

good deal. It made Del awful sore to come home and

find him drunk but he didn't care any more.

Then one night when Joe had been to a fight with some

guys and had gotten an edge on afterward, he met Del and

another damn shavetail walking on the street. It was

pretty dark and there weren't many people around and

they stopped in every dark doorway and the shavetail was

kissing and hugging her. When he got them under a street

light so's he made sure it was Del he went up to them

and asked them what the hell they meant. Del must have

had some drinks because she started tittering in a shrill

little voice that drove him crazy and he hauled off and let

-167-

the shavetail have a perfect left right on the button. The

spurs tinkled and the shavetail went to sleep right flat on

the little grass patch under the streetlight. It began to hit

Joe kinder funny but Del was sore as the devil and said

she'd have him arrested for insult to the uniform and

assault and battery and that he was nothing but a yellow

snivelling slacker and what was he doing hanging around

home when all the boys were at the front fighting the

huns. Joe sobered up and pulled the guy up to his feet

and told them both they could go straight to hell. He

walked off before the shavetail, who musta been pretty

tight, had time to do anything but splutter, and went

straight home and packed his suitcase and pulled out.

Will Stirp was in town so Joe went over to his house

and got him up out of bed and said he'd busted up house-

keeping and would Will lend him twentyfive bucks to

go up to New York with. Will said it was a damn good

thing and that love 'em and leave 'em was the only

thing for guys like them. They talked till about day about

one thing and another. Then Joe went to sleep and slept

till late afternoon. He got up in time to catch the Wash-

ington boat. He didn't take a room but roamed around

on deck all night. He got to cracking with one of the offi-

cers and went and sat in the pilot house that smelt com-

fortably of old last year's pipes. Listening to the sludge

of water from the bow and watching the wabbly white

finger of the searchlight pick up buoys and lighthouses he

began to pull himself together. He said he was going up

to New York to see his sister and try for a second mate's

ticket with the Shipping Board. His stories about being

torpedoed went big because none of them on the Dominion

City had even been across the pond.

It felt like old times standing in the bow in the sharp

November morning, sniffing the old brackish smell of the

Potomac water, passing redbrick Alexandria and Anacostia

and the Arsenal and the Navy Yard, seeing the MonuU00AD

-168-

ment stick up pink through the mist in the early light.

The wharves looked about the same, the yachts and power

boats anchored opposite, the Baltimore boat just coming

in, the ramshackle excursion steamers, the oystershells

underfoot on the wharf, the nigger roustabouts standing

around. Then he was hopping the Georgetown car and

too soon he was walking up the redbrick street. While he

rang the bell he was wondering why he'd come home.

Mommer looked older but she was in pretty good

shape and all taken up with her boarders and how the

girls were both engaged. They said that Janey was doing

so well in her work, but that living in New York had

changed her. Joe said he was going down to New York

to try to get his second mate's ticket and that he sure

would look her up. When they asked him about the war

and the submarines and all that he didn't know what to

tell 'em so he kinder kidded them along. He was glad

when it was time to go over to Washington to get his

train, though they were darn nice to him and seemed to

think that he was making a big success getting to be a

second mate so young. He didn't tell 'em about being

married.

Going down on the train to New York Joe sat in the

smoker looking out of the window at farms and stations

and billboards and the grimy streets of factory towns

through Jersey under a driving rain and everything he

saw seemed to remind him of Del and places outside of

Norfolk and good times he'd had when he was a kid.

When he got to the Penn Station in New York first thing

he did was check his bag, then he walked down Eighth

Avenue all shiny with rain to the corner of the street

where Janey lived. He guessed he'd better phone her

first and called from a cigarstore. Her voice sounded

-169-

kinder stiff; she said she was busy and couldn't see him

till tomorrow. He came out of the phonebooth and

walked down the street not knowing where to go. He had

a package under his arm with a couple of Spanish shawls

he'd bought for her and Del on the last trip. He felt so

blue he wanted to drop the shawls and everything down

a drain, but he thought better of it and went back to the

checkroom at the station and left them in his suitcase.

Then he went and smoked a pipe for a while in the wait-

ingroom.

God damn it to hell he needed a drink. He went over

to Broadway and walked down to Union Square, stopping

in every place he could find that looked like a saloon but

they wouldn't serve him anywhere. Union Square was

all lit up and full of navy recruiting posters. A big wooden

model of a battleship filled up one side of it. There was

a crowd standing around and a young girl dressed like a

sailor was making a speech about patriotism. The cold rain

came on again and the crowd scattered. Joe went down a

street and into a ginmill called The Old Farm. He must

have looked like somebody the barkeep knew because he

said hello and poured him out a shot of rye.

Joe got to talking with two guys from Chicago who

were drinking whiskey with beer chasers. They said this

wartalk was a lot of bushwa propaganda and that if work-

ing stiffs stopped working in munition factories making

shells to knock other working stiffs' blocks off with, there

wouldn't be no goddam war. Joe said they were goddam

right but look at the big money you made. The guys from

Chicago said they'd been working in a munitions factory

themselves but they were through, goddam it, and that if

the working stiffs made a few easy dollars it meant that

the war profiteers were making easy millions. They said

the Russians had the right idea, make a revolution and

shoot the goddam profiteers and that ud happen in this

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country if they didn't watch out and a damn good thing

too. The barkeep leaned across the bar and said they'd

oughtn't to talk thataway, folks ud take 'em for German

spies.

"Why, you're a German yourself, George," said one

of the guys.

The barkeep flushed and said, "Names don't mean

nothin' . . . I'm a patriotic American. I vas talking yust

for your good. If you vant to land in de hoosgow it's not

my funeral." But he set them up to drinks on the house

and it seemed to Joe that he agreed with 'em.

They drank another round and Joe said it was all true

but what the hell could you do about it? The guys said

what you could do about it was join the I.W.W. and

carry a red card and be a classconscious worker. Joe said

that stuff was only for foreigners, but if somebody started

a white man's party to fight the profiteers and the goddam

bankers he'd be with 'em. The guys from Chicago began

to get sore and said the wobblies were just as much white

men as he was and that political parties were the bunk

and that all southerners were scabs. Joe backed off and

was looking at the guys to see which one of 'em he'd hit

first when the barkeep stepped around from the end of

the bar and came between them. He was fat but he had

shoulders and a meanlooking pair of blue eyes.

"Look here, you bums," he said, "you listen to me,

sure I'm a Cherman but am I for de Kaiser? No, he's a

schweinhunt, I am sokialist unt I live toity years in Union

City unt own my home unt pay taxes unt I'm a good

American, but dot don't mean dot I vill foight for

Banker Morgan, not vonce. I know American vorkman

in de sokialist party toity years unt all dey do is foight

among each oder. Every sonofabitch denk him better den

de next sonofabitch. You loafers geroutahere . . . closin'

time . . . I'm goin' to close up an' go home."

-171-

One of the guys from Chicagothe

lee of the recruiting tent. Joe felt lousy. He went down

into the subway and waited for the Brooklyn train.

At Mrs. Olsen's everything was dark. Joe rang and in

a little while she came down in a padded pink dressing

gown and opened the door. She was sore at being waked

up and bawled him out for drinking, but she gave him a

flop and next morning lent him fifteen bucks to tide him

over till he got work on a Shipping Board boat. Mrs.

Olsen looked tired and a lot older, she said she had pains

in her back and couldn't get through her work any more.

Next morning Joe put up some shelves in the pantry

for her and carried out a lot of litter before he went over

to the Shipping Board recruiting office to put his name

down for the officer's school. The little kike behind the

desk had never been to sea and asked him a lot of dam-

fool questions and told him to come around next week

to find out what action would be taken on his application.

Joe got sore and told him to f -- k himself and walked out.

He took Janey out to supper and to a show, but she

talked just like everybody else did and bawled him out

for cussing and he didn't have a very good time. She liked

the shawls though and he was glad she was making out

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so well in New York. He never did get around to talking

to her about Della.

After taking her home he didn't know what the hell

to do with himself. He wanted a drink, but taking Janey

out and everything had cleaned up the fifteen bucks he'd

borrowed from Mrs. Olsen. He walked west to a saloon

he knew on Tenth Avenue, but the place was closed:

wartime prohibition. Then he walked back towards Union

Square, maybe that feller Tex he'd seen when he was

walking across the square with Janey would still be sit-

ting there and he could chew the rag a while with him.

He sat down on a bench opposite the cardboard battle-

ship and began sizing it up: not such a bad job. Hell, I

wisht I'd never seen the inside of a real battleship, he was

thinking, when Tex slipped into the seat beside him and

put his hand on his knee. The minute he touched him Joe

knew he'd never liked the guy, eyes too close together:

"What you lookin' so blue about, Joe? Tell me you're

gettin' your ticket."

Joe nodded and leaned over and spat carefully between

his feet.

"What do you think of that for a model battleship,

pretty nifty, ain't it? Jez, us guys is lucky not to be over-

seas.fightin' the fritzes in the trenches."

"Oh, I'd just as soon," growled Joe. "I wouldn't give

a damn."

"Say, Joe, I got a job lined up. Guess I oughtn't to

blab around about it, but you're regular. I know you

won't say nothin'. I been on the bum for two weeks,

somethin' wrong with my stomach. Man, I'm sick, I'm

tellin' you. I can't do no heavy work no more. A punk I

know works in a whitefront been slippin' me my grub,

see. Well, I was sittin' on a bench right here on the square,

a feller kinda well dressed sits down an' starts to chum up.

Looked to me like one of these here sissies lookin' for

rough trade, see, thought I'd roll him for some jack,

-173-

what the hell, what can you do if you're sick an' can't

work?"

Joe sat leaning back with his legs stuck out, his hands in

his pockets staring hard at the outline of the battleship

against the buildings. Tex was talking fast, poking his face

into Joe's: "Turns out the sonofabitch was a dick. S -- t I

was scared pissless. A secret service agent. Burns is his

big boss . . . but what he's lookin' for's reds, slackers,

German spies, guys that can't keep their traps shut . . .

an' he turns around and hands me out a job, twentyfive

smackers a week if little Willy makes good. All I got to

do's bum around and listen to guys talk, see? If I hears

anything that ain't 100 per cent I slips the word to the

boss and he investigates. Twentyfive a week and servin'

my country besides, and if I gets in any kind of jam,

Burns gets me out. . . . What do you think of that for

the gravy, Joe?"

Joe got to his feet. "Guess I'll go back to Brooklyn."

"Stick around . . . look here, you've always treated me

white . . . you belong, I know that Joe . . . I'll put

you next to this guy if you want. He's a good scout, edu-

cated feller an' all that and he knows where you can get

plenty liquor an' women if you want 'em." "Hell, I'm

goin' to sea and get out of all this s -- t," said Joe, turning

his back and walking towards the subway station.

THE CAMERA EYE (34)

his voice was three thousand miles away all the

time he kept wanting to get up outa bed his cheeks were

bright pink and the choky breathing No kid you better

lay there quiet we dont want you catching more cold

-174-

that's why they sent me down to stay with you to keep

you from getting up outa bed,

the barrelvaulted room all smells fever and white-

wash carbolic sick wops outside the airraid siren's got a

nightmare

( Mestre's a railhead and its moonlight over the

Brenta and the basehospital and the ammunition dump

carbolic blue moonlight)

all the time he kept trying to get up outa bed Kiddo

you better lay there quiet his voice was in Minnesota

but dontjaunerstandafellersgottogetup I got a date anim-

portantengagementtoseeabout those lots ought never-

tohavestayedinbedsolate I'll lose my deposit For

chrissake dont you think I'm broke enough as it is?

Kiddo you gotto lay there quiet we're in the hos-

pital in Mestre you got a little fever makes things seem

funny

Cant you letafellerbe? You're in cahoots withem

thaswhassematteris I know theyreouttorookme they

think Imagoddamsucker tomadethatdeposit I'll showem

Illknockyergoddamblockoff

my shadow on the vault bulkyclumsily staggering and

swaying from the one candle spluttering red in the raw

winterhospital carbolic night above the shadow on the cot

gotto keep his shoulders down to the cot Curley's husky

inspite of

(you can hear their motors now the antiaircraft bat-

-175-

teries are letting loose must be great up there in the moon-

light out of the smell of carbolic and latrines and sick

wops)

sit back and light a macedonia by the candle he

seems to be asleep his breathing's so tough pneumonia

breathing can hear myself breathe and the water tick

in the faucet doctors and orderlies all down in the bomb-

proof cant even hear a sick wop groan

Jesus is the guy dying?

they've cut off their motors the little drums in my

ears sure that's why they call em drums (up there in the

blue moonlight the Austrian observer's reaching for the

string that dumps the applecart) the candleflame stands

up still

not that time but wham in the side of the head woke

Curley and the glass tinkling in the upstairs windows the

candle staggered but didnt go out the vault sways with

my shadow and Curley's shadow dammit he's strong

head's full of the fever reek Kiddo you gotto stay in

bed (they dumped the applecart allright) shellfragments

hailing around outside Kiddo you gotto get back to bed

But I gotadate oh christohsweetiesus cant you tell me

how to get back to the outfit haveaheart dad I didntmean-

noharm itsnonlyaboutthose lots

the voice dwindles into a whine I'm pulling the

covers up to his chin again light the candle again smoke a

-176-

macedonia again look at my watch again must be near day

ten o'clock they dont relieve me till eight

way off a voice goes up and up and swoops like the

airraid siren ayayoooTO

NEWSREEL XXV

General Pershing's forces today occupied Belle Joyeuse

Farm and the southern edges of the Bois des Loges. The

Americans encountered but little machinegun opposition. The

advance was in the nature of a linestraightening operation.

Otherwise the activity along the front today consisted prin-

cipally of artillery firing and bombing. Patrols are operating

around Belluno having preceded the flood of allies pouring

through the Quero pass in the Grappa region

REBEL SAILORS DEFY ALLIES

Bonjour ma cherie

Comment allez vous?

Bonjour ma cherie

how do you do?

after a long conference with a secretary of war and the

secretary of state President Wilson returned to the White

House this afternoon apparently highly pleased that events are

steadily pursuing the course which he had felt they would take

Avez vous fiancé cela ne fait rien

Voulez vous couchez avec moi ce soir?

Wee, wee, combien?

HELP THE FOOD ADMINISTRATION BY

REPORTING WAR PROFITEERS

Lord Robert, who is foreign minister Balfour's right

hand man added, "When victory comes the responsibility for

America and Great Britain will rest not on statesmen but on

the people." The display of the red flag in our thoroughfares

-177-

seems to be emblematic of unbridled licence and an insignia

for lawhating and anarchy, like the black flag it represents

everything that is repulsive

LENINE FLEES TO FINLAND

here I am snug as a bug in a rug on this third day of

October. It was Sunday I went over and got hit in the left

leg with a machinegun bullet above the knee. I am in a base

hospital and very comfortable. I am writing with my left

hand as my right one is under my head

STOCK MARKET STRONG BUT NARROW

Some day I'm going to murder the bugler

Some day they're going to find him dead

I'll dislocate his reveille

And step upon it heavily

And spend

the rest of my life in bed

A HOOSIER QUIXOTE

Hibben, Paxton, journalist, Indiandpolis, Ind.,

Dec. 5, 1880, s. Thomas Entrekin and Jeannie Merrill

(Ketcham) H.; A.B. Princeton 1903, A.M. Harvard

1904

Thinking men were worried in the middle west in

the years Hibben was growing up there, something was

wrong with the American Republic, was it the Gold

Standard, Privilege, The Interests, Wall Street?

The rich were getting richer, the poor were getting

poorer, small farmers were being squeezed out, work-

ingmen were working twelve hours a day for a bare

living; profits were for the rich, the law was for the

rich, the cops were for the rich;

was it for that the pilgrims had bent their heads

-178-

into the storm, filled the fleeing Indians with slugs out

of their blunderbusses

and worked the stony farms of New England;

was it for that the pioneers had crossed the Appa-

lachians,

long squirrelauns slung across lean backs,

a fistful of corn in the pocket of the buckskin vest,

was it for that the Indiana farmboys had turned out

to shoot down Johnny Reb and make the black man

free?

Paxton Hibben was a small cantankerous boy, son

of one of the best families (the Hibbens had a whole-

sale dry goods business in Indianapolis); in school the

rich kids didn't like him because he went around with

the poor kids and the poor kids didn't like him because

his folks were rich,

but he was the star pupil of Short Ridge High

ran the paper,

won all the debates.

At Princeton he was the young collegian, editor

of the Tiger, drank a lot, didn't deny that he ran around

after girls, made a brilliant scholastic record and was

a thorn in the flesh of the godly. The natural course

for a bright young man of his class and position was to

study law, but Hibben wanted

travel and romance á la Byron and de Musset,

wellgroomed adventures in foreign lands,

so

as his family was one of the best in Indiana and

friendly with Senator Beveridge he was gotten a post in

the diplomatic service:

3rd see and 2nd see American Embassy St. Peters-

burg and Mexico City 1905-6, see Legation and Chargé

d'affaires, Bogotá, Colombia, 1908-9; Then Hague and

-179-

Luxemburg 1909-12, Santiago de Chile 1912 (re-

tired).

Pushkin for de Musset; St. Petersburg was a young

dude's romance:

goldencrusted spires under a platinum sky,

the icegrey Neva flowing swift and deep under

bridges that jingled with sleighbells;

riding home from the Islands with the Grand

Duke's mistress, the most beautiful most amorous singer

of Neapolitan streetsongs;

staking a pile of rubles in a tall room glittering

with chandeliers, monocles, diamonds dripped on white

shoulders;

white snow, white tableclothes, white sheets,

Kakhetian wine, vodka fresh as newmown hay,

Astrakhan caviar, sturgeon, Finnish salmon, Lapland

ptarmigan, and the most beautiful women in the world;

but it was 1905, Hibben left the embassy one night

and saw a flare of red against the trampled snow of the

Nevsky

and red flags,

blood frozen in the ruts, blood trickling down the

cartracks;

he saw the machineguns on the balconies of the

Winter Palace, the cossacks charging the unarmed

crowds that wanted peace and food and a little freedom,

heard the throaty roar of the Russian Marseillaise;

some stubborn streak in the old American blood

flared in revolt, he walked the streets all night with

the revolutionists, got in wrong at the embassy

and was transferred to Mexico City where there

was no revolution yet, only peons and priests and the

stillness of the great volcanos.

The Cientificos made him a member of the jockey

Club

-180-

where in the magnificent building of blue Puebla

tile he lost all his money at roulette and helped them

drink up the last few cases of champagne left over from

the plunder of Cortez.

Chargé d'Affaires in Colombia (he never forgot

he owed his career to Beveridge; he believed passion-

ately in Roosevelt, and righteousness and reform, and

the antitrust laws, the Big Stick that was going to scare

away the grafters and malefactors of great wealth and

get the common man his due) he helped wangle the

revolution that stole the canal zone from the bishop of

Bogotá later he stuck up for Roosevelt in the Pulitzer

libel suit; he was a progressive, believed in the Canal

and T.R.

He was shunted to the Hague where he went to

sleep during the vague deliberations of the Interna-

tional Tribunal.

In 1912 he resigned from the Diplomatic Service

and went home to campaign for Roosevelt,

got to Chicago in time to hear them singing On-

ward Christian Soldiers at the convention in the Colos-

seum; in the closepacked voices and the cheers, he

heard the trample of the Russian Marseillaise, the

sullen silence of Mexican peons, Colombian Indians

waiting for a deliverer, in the reverberance of the hymn

he heard the measured cadences of the Declaration of

Independence.

The talk of social justice petered out; T.R. was

a windbag like the rest of 'em, the Bull Moose was

stuffed with the same sawdust as the G.O.P.

Paxton Hibben ran for Congress as a progressive

in Indiana but the European war had already taken

people's minds off social justice.

-181-

War Corr Collier's Weekly 1914-15, staff corr

Associated Press in Europe, 1915-17; war corr Leslie's

Weekly in Near East and sec Russian commn for Near

East Relief, June-Dec 1921

In those years he forgot all about the diplomat's

mauve silk bathrobe and the ivory toilet sets and the

little tête-à-têtes with grandduchesses,

he went to Germany as Beveridge's secretary, saw

the German troops goosestepping through Brussels,

saw Poincaré visiting the long doomed galleries

of Verdun between ranks of bitter halfmutinous sol-

diers in blue,

saw the gangrened wounds, the cholera, the typhus,

the little children with their bellies swollen with famine,

the maggoty corpses of the Serbian retreat, drunk Allied

officers chasing sick naked girls upstairs in the brothels

in Saloniki, soldiers looting stores and churches, French

and British sailors fighting with beerbottles in the bars;

walked up and down the terrace with King Con-

stantine during the bombardment of Athens, fought a

duel with a French commission agent who got up and

left when a German sat down to eat in the diningroom

at the Grande Bretagne; Hibben thought the duel was a

joke until all his friends began putting on silk hats; he

stood up and let the Frenchman take two shots at him

and then fired into the ground; in Athens as every-

where he was always in hot water, a slightly built

truculent man, always standing up for his friends, for

people out of luck, for some idea, too reckless ever to

lay down the careful steppingstones of a respectable

career.

Commd 1st lieut F.A. Nov 27-1917; capt May

31-1919; served at war coll camp Grant; in France with

332nd E.A.; Finance Bureau S.O.S.; at G.H.Q. in

-182-

office of Insp Gen of A.E.F.; discharged Aug. 21-

1919; capt O.R.C. Feb 7th 1920; recommd Feb 7-

1925

The war in Europe was bloody and dirty and dull,

but the war in New York revealed such slimy depths

of vileness and hypocrisy that no man who saw it can

ever feel the same again; in the army training camps

it was different, the boys believed in a world safe for

Democracy; Hibben believed in the Fourteen Points,

he believed in The War To End War.

With mil Mission to Armenia, Aug-Dec 1919; staff

corr in Europe for the Chicago Tribune; with the Near

East Relief 1920-22; sec Russian Red Cross commn in

America 1922; v dir for U.S. Nansen Relief Mission

1923; sec AM Commn Relief Russian Children Apr

1922

In the famineyear the cholera year the typhusyear

Paxton Hibben went to Moscow with a relief commis-

sion.

In Paris they were still haggling over the price

of blood, squabbling over toy flags, the riverfrontiers

on reliefmaps, the historical destiny of peoples, while

behind the scenes the good contractplayers, the Deterd-

ings, the Zahkaroffs, the Stinnesses sat quiet and pos-

sessed themselves of the raw materials.

In Moscow there was order,

in Moscow there was work,

in Moscow there was hope;

the Marseillaise of 1905, Onward Christian Sol-

diers of 1912, the sullen passiveness of American In-

dians, of infantrymen waiting for death at the front

was part of the tremendous roar of the Marxian Inter-

nationale.

Hibben believed in the new world.

-183-

Back in America

somebody got hold of a photograph of Captain

Paxton Hibben laying a wreath on Jack Reed's gravei

they tried to throw him out of the O.R.C.;

at Princeton at the twentieth reunion of his col-

lege class his classmates started to lynch him; they were

drunk and perhaps it was just a collegeboy prank twenty

years too late but they had a noose around his neck,

lynch the goddam red,

no more place in America for change, no more

place for the old gags: social justice, progressivism, re-

volt against oppression, democracy; put the reds on the

skids,

no money for them,

no jobs for them.

Mem Authors League of America, Soc of Colonial

Wars, Vets Foreign Wars, Am Legion, fellow Royal

and Am Geog Socs. Decorated chevalier Order of St.

Stanislas (Russian), Officer Order of the Redeemer

(Greek), Order of the Sacred Treasure ( Japan). Clubs

Princeton, Newspaper, Civic ( New York)

Author: Constantine and the Greek People 1920,

The Famine in Russia 1922, Henry Ward Beecher an

American Portrait 1927.

d. 1929.

NEWSREEL XXVI

EUROPE ON KNIFE EDGE

Tout le long de la Thamise

Nous sommes allés tout les deux

Gouter l'heure exquise.

-184-

in such conditions is it surprising that the Department of

Justice looks with positive affection upon those who refused

service in the draft, with leniency upon convicted anarchists

and with something like indifference upon the overwhelming

majority of them still out of jail or undeported for years after

the organization of the U. S. Steel Corporation Wall Street

was busy on the problem of measuring the cubic yards of water

injected into the property

FINISHED STEEL MOVES RATHER MORE FREELY

Where do we go from here boys

Where do we go from here?

WILD DUCKS FLY OVER PARIS

FERTILIZER INDUSTRY STIMULATED BY WAR

Anywhere from Harlem

To a Jersey City pier

the winning of the war is just as much dependent upon

the industrial workers as it is upon the soldiers. Our wonder-

ful record of launching one hundred ships on independence

day shows what can be done when we put our shoulders to the

wheel under the spur of patriotism

SAMARITAINE BATHS SINK IN SWOLLEN

SEINE

I may not know

What the war's about

But you bet by gosh

I'll soon find out

And so my sweetheart

Don't you fear

I'll bring you a king

For a souvenir

And I'll get you a Turk

And the Kaiser too

And that's about all

One feller can do

-185-

AFTER-WAR PLANS OF AETNA EXPLOSIVES

ANCIENT CITY IN GLOOM EVEN THE CHURCH

BELLS ON SUNDAY BEING STILLED

Where do we go from here boys

Where do we go from here?

RICHARD ELLSWORTH SAVAGE

It was at Fontainebleau lined up in the square in front

of Francis I's palace they first saw the big grey Fiat ambu-

lances they were to drive. Schuyler came back from talking

with the French drivers who were turning them over with

the news that they were sore as hell because it meant they

had to go back into the front line. They asked why the

devil the Americans couldn't stay home and mind their

own business instead of coming over here and filling up

all the good embusqué jobs. That night the section went

into cantonment in tarpaper barracks that stank of carbolic,

in a little town in Champagne. It turned out to be the

Fourth of July, so the maréchale-de-logis served out

champagne with supper and a general with white walrus

whiskers came and made a speech about how with the help

of Amérique héroique la victoire was certain, and proposed

a toast to le président Veelson. The chef of the section,

Bill Knickerbocker, got up a little nervously and toasted

la France héroique, l'héroique Cinquième Armée and la

victoire by Christmas. Fireworks were furnished by the

Boches who sent over an airraid that made everybody

scuttle for the bombproof dugout.

Once they got down there Fred Summers said it smelt

too bad and anyway he wanted a drink and he and Dick

went out to find an estaminet, keeping close under the eaves

-186-

of the houses to escape the occasional shrapnel fragments

from the antiaircraft guns. They found a little bar all full

of tobacco smoke and French poilus singing la Madelon.

Everybody cheered when they came in and a dozen glasses

were handed to them. They smoked their first caporal

ordinaire and everybody set them up to drinks so that at

closing time, when the bugles blew the French equivalent

of taps, they found themselves walking a little unsteadily

along the pitchblack streets arm in arm with two poilus

who'd promised to find them their cantonment. The poilus

said la guerre was une saloperie and la victorie was une

sale blague and asked eagerly if les americains knew any-

thing about la revolution en Russie. Dick said he was a

pacifist and was for anything that would stop the war and

they all shook hands very significantly and talked about

la revolution mondiale. When they were turning in on

their folding cots, Fred Summers suddenly sat bolt up-

right with his blanket around him and said in a solemn

funny way he had, "Fellers, this ain't a war, it's a goddam

madhouse."

There were two other fellows in the section who liked

to drink wine and chatter bad French; Steve Warner,

who'd been a special student at Harvard, and Ripley who

was a freshman at Columbia. The five of them went

around together, finding places to get omelettes and pom-

mes frites in the villages within walking distance, making

the rounds of the estaminets every night; they got to be

known as the grenadine guards. When the section moved

up onto the Voie Sacrée back of Verdun and was quartered

for three rainy weeks in a little ruined village called Erize

la Petite, they set up their cots together in the same corner

of the old brokendown barn they were given for a canton-

ment. It rained all day and all night; all day and all night

camions ground past through the deep liquid putty of the

roads carrying men and munitions to Verdun. Dick used

to sit on his cot looking out through the door at the jiggling

-187-

mudspattered faces of the young French soldiers going up

for the attack, drunk and desperate and yelling à bas la

guerre, mort au vachea, à bas la guerre. Once Steve came in

suddenly, his face pale above the dripping poncho, his eyes

snapping, and said in a low voice, "Now I know what the

tumbrils were like in the Terror, that's what they are,

tumbrils."

Dick was relieved to find out, when they finally moved

up within range of the guns, that he wasn't any more

scared than anybody else. The first time they went on post

he and Fred lost their way in the shellshredded woods and

were trying to turn the car around on a little rise naked as

the face of the moon when three shells from an Austrian

eightyeight went past them like three cracks of a whip.

They never knew how they got out of the car and into

the ditch, but when the sparse blue almondsmelling smoke

cleared they were both lying flat in the mud. Fred went

to pieces and Dick had to put his arm around him and

keep whispering in his ear, "Come on, boy, we got to make

it. Come on, Fred, we'll fool 'em." It all hit him funny

and he kept laughing all the way back along the road

into the quieter section of the woods where the dressing

station had been cleverly located right in front of a bat-

tery of 405s so that the concussion almost bounced the

wounded out of their stretchers every time a gun was fired.

When they got back to the section after taking a load to

the triage they were able to show three jagged holes from

shellfragments in the side of the car.

Next day the attack began and continual barrages and

counterbarrages and heavy gasbombardmentsi the section

was on twentyfour hour duty for three days, at the end of

it everybody had dysentery and bad nerves. One fellow

got shellshock, although he'd been too scared to go on

post, and had to be sent back to Paris. A couple of men

had to be evacuated for dysentery. The grenadine guards

came through the attack pretty well, except that Steve

-188-

and Ripley had gotten a little extra sniff of mustard gas

up at P2 one night and vomited whenever they ate any-

thing.

In their twentyfour hour periods off duty they'd meet

in a little garden at Récicourt that was the section's base.

No one else seemed to know about it. The garden had

been attached to a pink villa but the villa had been mashed

to dust as if a great foot had stepped on it. The garden

was untouched, only a little weedy from neglect, roses

were in bloom there and butterflies and bees droned around

the flowers on sunny afternoons. At first they took the bees

for distant arrivés and went flat on their bellies when they

heard them. There had been a cement fountain in the mid-

dle of the garden and there they used to sit when the

Germans got it into their heads to shell the road and the

nearby bridge. There was regular shelling three times a

day and a little scattering between times. Somebody would

be detailed to stand in line at the Copé and buy south of

France melons and four franc fifty champagne. Then

they'd take off their shirts to toast their backs and shoulders

if it was sunny and sit in the dry fountain eating the melons

and drinking the warm cidery champagne and talk about

how they'd go back to the States and start an underground

newspaper like La Libre Belgique to tell people what the

war was really like.

What Dick liked best in the garden was the little back-

house, like the backhouse in a New England farm, with a

clean scrubbed seat and a half moon in the door, through

which on sunny days the wasps who had a nest in the ceiling

hummed busily in and out. He'd sit there with his belly

aching listening to the low voices of his friends talking

in the driedup fountain. Their voices made him feel happy

and at home while he stood wiping himself on a few old

yellowed squares of a 1914 Petit Journal that still hung

on the nail. Once he came back buckling his belt and say-

ing, "Do you know? I was thinking how fine it would be

-189-

if you could reorganize the cells of your body into some

other kind of life . . . it's too damn lousy being a human

. . . I'd like to be a cat, a nice comfortable housecat sit-

ting by the fire."

"It's a hell of a note," said Steve, reaching for his shirt

and putting it on. A cloud had gone over the sun and it

was suddenly chilly. The guns sounded quiet and distant.

Dick felt suddenly chilly and lonely. "It's a hell of a note

when you have to be ashamed of belonging to your own

race. But I swear I am, I swear I'm ashamed of being a

man . . . it will take some huge wave of hope like a

revolution to make me feel any selfrespect ever again. . . .

God, we're a lousy cruel vicious dumb type of tailless ape."

"Well, if you want to earn your selfrespect, Steve, and

the respect of us other apes, why don't you go down, now

that they're not shelling, and buy us a bottle of champagny

water?" said Ripley.

After the attack on hill 304 the division went en repos

back of Bar-le-Duc for a couple of weeks and then up

into a quiet section of the Argonne called le Four de Paris

where the French played chess with the Boches in the front

line and where one side always warned the other before

setting off a mine under a piece of trench. When they were

off duty they could go into the inhabited and undestroyed

town of Sainte Ménéhoulde and eat fresh pastry and

pumpkin soup and roast chicken. When the section was

disbanded and everybody sent back to Paris Dick hated to

leave the mellow autumn woods of the Argonne. The

U. S. army was to take over the ambulance service at-

tached to the French. Everybody got a copy of the section's

citation; Dick Norton made them a speech under shell-

fire, never dropping the monocle out of his eye, dismissing

them as gentlemen volunteers and that was the end of the

section.

Except for an occasional shell from the Bertha, Paris

-190-

was quiet and pleasant that November. It was too foggy

for airraids. Dick and Steve Warner got a very cheap

room back of the Pantheon; in the daytime they read

French and in the evenings roamed round cafés and drink-

ing places. Fred Summers got himself a job with the Red

Cross at twentyfive dollars a week and a steady girl the

second day they hit Paris. Ripley and Ed Schuyler took

lodgings in considerable style over Henry's bar. They all

ate dinner together every night and argued themselves sick

about what they ought to do. Steve said he was going

home and C.O. and to hell with it; Ripley and Schuyler

said they didn't care what they did as long as they kept out

of the American army, and talked about joining the For-

eign Legion or the Lafayette Escadrille.

Fred Summers said, "Fellers, this war's the most gigan-

tic cockeyed graft of the century and me for it and the

cross red nurses." At the end of first week he was holding

down two Red Cross jobs, each at twentyfive a week, and

being kept by a middleaged French marraine who owned

a big house in Neuilly. When Dick's money gave out Fred

borrowed some for him from his marraine, but he never

would let any of the others see her. "Don't want you

fellers to know what I'm in for," he'd say.

At lunchtime one day Fred Summers came round to

say that everything was fixed up and that he had jobs for

them all. The wops, he explained, were pretty well shot

after Caporetto and couldn't get out of the habit of re-

treating. It was thought that sending an American Red

Cross ambulance section down would help their morale.

He was in charge of recruiting for the time being and had

put all their names down. Dick immediately said he spoke

Italian and felt he'd be a great help to the morale of the

Italians, so the next morning they were all at the Red Cross

office when it opened and were duly enrolled in Section 1

of the American Red Cross for Italy. There followed a

couple more weeks waiting around during which Fred

-191-

Summers took on a mysterious Serbian lady he picked up

in a café back of the Place St. Michel who wanted to teach

them to take hashish, and. Dick became friends with a

drunken Montenegran who'd been a barkeep in New York

and who promised to get them all decorated by King

Nicholas of Montenegro. But the day they were going

to be received at Neuilly to have the decorations pinned

on, the section left.

The convoy of twelve Fiats and eight Fords ran along

the smooth macadam roads south through the Forest of

Fontainebleau and wound east through the winecolored

hills of central France. Dick was driving a Ford alone and

was so busy trying to remember what to do with his feet

he could hardly notice the scenery. Next day they went

over the mountains and down into the valley of the Rhone,

into a rich wine country with planetrees and cypresses,

smelling of the vintage and late fall roses and the south.

By Montélimar, the war, the worry about jail and protest

and sedition all seemed a nightmare out of another century.

They had a magnificent supper in the quiet pink and

white town with cêpes and garlic and strong red wine.

"Fellers," Fred Summers kept saying, "this ain't a war,

it's a goddam Cook's tour." They slept in style in the big

brocadehung beds at the hotel, and when they left in the

morning a little schoolboy ran after Dick's car shouting

Vive l'Amerique and handed him a box of nougat, the local

specialty; it was the land of Cockaigne.

That day the convoy fell to pieces running into Mar-

seilles; discipline melted away; drivers stopped at all the

wineshops along the sunny roads to drink and play craps.

The Red Cross publicity man and the Saturday Evening

Post correspondent who was the famous writer, Mont-

gomery Ellis, got hideously boiled and could be heard

whooping and yelling in the back of the staffcar, while the

little fat lieutenant ran up and down the line of cars at

every stop red and hysterically puffing. Eventually they

-192-

were all rounded up and entered Marseilles in formation.

They'd just finished parking in a row in the main square

and the boys were settling back into the bars and cafés

round about, when a man named Ford got the bright idea

of looking into his gasoline tank with a match and blew his

car up. The local firedepartment came out in style and

when car No. 8 was properly incinerated turned their high-

pressure hose on the others, and Schuyler, who spoke the

best French in the section, had to be dragged away from a

conversation with the cigarette girl at the corner café to

beg the firechief for chrissake to lay off.

With the addition of a fellow named Sheldrake who was

an expert on folkdancing and had been in the famous sec-

tion 7, the grenadine guards dined in state at the Bristol.

They continued the evening at the promenoire at the

Apollo, that was so full of all the petite femmes in the

world, they never saw the show. Everything was cock-

eyed and full of women, the shrill bright main streets with

their cafés and cabarets, and the black sweaty tunnels of

streets back of the harbor full of rumpled beds and sailors

and black skin and brown skin, wriggling bellies, flopping

purplewhite breasts, grinding thighs.

Very late Steve and Dick found themselves alone in a

little restaurant eating ham and eggs and coffee. They were

drunk and sleepy and quarrelling drowsily. When they

paid, the middleaged waitress told them to put the tip on

the corner of the table and blew them out of their chairs

by calmly hoisting her skirts and picking up the coins

between her legs.

"It's a hoax, a goddam hoax. . . . Sex is a slotmachine,"

Steve kept saying and it seemed gigantically funny, so

funny that they went into an early morning bar and tried

to tell the man behind the counter about it, but he didn't

understand them and wrote out on a piece of paper the

name of an establishment where they could faire rigajig,

une maison, propre, convenable, et de haute moralité.

-193-

Hooting with laughter they found themselves reeling and

stumbling as they climbed endless stairways. The wind was

cold as hell. They were in front of a crazylooking cathe-

dral looking down on the harbor, steamboats, great ex-

panses of platinum sea hemmed in by ashen mountains.

"By God, that's the Mediterranean."

They sobered up in the cold jostling wind and the wide

metallic flare of dawn and got back to their hotel in time

to shake the others out of their drunken slumbers and be

the first to report for duty at the parked cars. Dick was

so sleepy he forgot what he ought to do with his feet and

ran his Ford into the car ahead and smashed his headlights.

The fat lieutenant bawled him out shrilly and took the car

away from him and put him on a Fiat with Sheldrake, so

he had nothing to do all day but look out of his drowse at

the Corniche and the Mediterranean and the redroofed

towns and the long lines of steamboats bound east hugging

the shore for fear of Uboats, convoyed by an occasional

French destroyer with its smokestacks in all the wrong

places.

Crossing the Italian border they were greeted by crowds

of schoolchildren with palmleaves and baskets of oranges,

and a movie operator. Sheldrake kept stroking his beard

and bowing and saluting at the cheers of evviva gli

americani, until zowie, he got an orange between the eyes

that pretty near gave him a nosebleed. Another man down

the line came within an inch of having his eye put out by

a palmbranch thrown by a delirious inhabitant of Vinti-

miglia. It was a great reception. That night in San Remo

enthusiastic wops kept running up to the boys on the street,

shaking their hands and congratulating them on il Presi-

dente Veelson; somebody stole all the spare tires out of

the camionette and the Red Cross Publicity Man's suitcase

that had been left in the staffcar. They were greeted

effusively and shortchanged in the bars. Evviva gli aleati.

Everybody in the section began to curse out Italy and

-194-

the rubber spaghetti and the vinegary wine, except. Dick

and Steve, who suddenly became woplovers and bought

themselves grammars to learn the language. Dick already

gave a pretty good imitation of talking Italian, especially

before the Red Cross officers, by putting an o on the end of

all the French words he knew. He didn't give a damn

about anything any more. It was sunny, vermouth was a

great drink, the towns and the toy churches on the tops of

hills and the vineyards and the cypresses and the blue sea

were like a succession of backdrops for an oldfashioned

opera. The buildings were stagy and ridiculously mag-

nificent; on every blank wall the damn wops had painted

windows and colonnades and balconies with fat Titian-

haired beauties leaning over them and clouds and covies of

dimpletummied cupids.

That night they parked the convoy in the main square of

a godforsaken little burg on the outskirts of Genoa. They

went with Sheldrake to have a drink in a bar and found

themselves drinking with the Saturday Evening Post

correspondent who soon began to get tight and to say how

he envied them their good looks and their sanguine youth

and idealism. Steve picked him up about everything and

argued bitterly that youth was the lousiest time in your

life, and that he ought to be goddam glad he was forty

years old and able to write about the war instead of fight-

ing in it. Ellis goodnaturedly pointed out that they weren't

fighting either. Steve made Sheldrake sore by snapping

out, "No, of course not, we're goddamned embusqués."

He and Steve left the bar and ran like deer to get out of

sight before Sheldrake could follow them. Around the

corner they saw a streetcar marked Genoa and Steve hopped

it without saying a word. Dick didn't have anything to

do but follow.

The car rounded a block of houses and came out on the

waterfront. "Judas Priest, Dick," said Steve, "the goddam

town's on fire." Beyond the black hulks of boats drawn up

-195-

on the shore a rosy flame like a gigantic lampflame sent a

broad shimmer towards them across the water. "Gracious,

Steve, do you suppose the Austrians are in there?"

The car went whanging along; the conductor who came

and got their fare looked calm enough. "Inglese?" he

asked. "Americani," said Steve. He smiled and clapped

them on the back and said something about the Presidente

Veelson that they couldn't understand.

They got off the car in a big square surrounded by huge

arcades that a raw bittersweet wind blew hugely through.

Dressedup people in overcoats were walking up and down

on the clean mosaic pavement. The town was all marble.

Every façade that faced the sea was pink with the glow

of the fire. "Here the tenors and the baritones and the

sopranos all ready for the show to begin," said Dick. Steve

grunted, "Chorus'll probably be the goddam Austrians."

They were cold and went into one of the shiny nickel

and plateglass cafés to have a grog. The waiter told them

in broken English that the fire was on an American tanker

that had hit a mine and that she'd been burning for three

days. A longfaced English officer came over from the bar

and started to tell them how he was on a secret mission;

it was all bloody awful about the retreat; it hadn't stopped

yet; in Milan they were talking about falling back on the

Po; the only reason the bloody Austrians hadn't overrun

all bloody Lombardy was they'd been so disorganized by

their rapid advance they were in almost as bad shape as the

bloody Italians were. Damned Italian officers kept talking

about the quadrilateral, and if it wasn't for the French and

British troops behind the Italian lines they'd have sold out

long ago. French morale was pretty shaky, at that. Dick

told him about how the tools got swiped every time they

took their eyes off their cars. The Englishman said the

thievery in these parts was extraordinary; that was what

his secret mission was about; he was trying to trace an

entire carload of boots that had vanished between Vinti

-196-

miglia and San Raphael, "Whole bloody luggage van turns

into thin air overnight . . . extraordinary. . . . See those

blighters over there at that table, they're bloody Austrian

spies every mother's son of them . . . but try as I can I

can't get them arrested . . . extraordinary. It's a bloody

melodrama that's what it is, just like Drury Lane. A jolly

good thing you Americans have come in. If you hadn't

you'd see the bloody German flag flying over Genoa at

this minute." He suddenly looked at his wristwatch, ad-

vised them to buy a bottle of whiskey at the bar if they

wanted another bit of drink, because it was closing time,

said cheeryoh, and hustled out.

They plunged out again into the empty marble town,

down dark lanes and streets of stone steps with always the

glare on some jutting wall overhead brighter and redder

as they neared the waterfront. Time and again they got

lost; at last they came out on wharves and bristle of masts

of crowded feluccas and beyond the little crimsontipped

waves of the harbor, the breakwater, and outside the break-

water the mass of flame of the burning tanker. Excited and

drunk they walked on and on through the town: "By God,

these towns are older than the world," Dick kept saying.

While they were looking at a marble lion, shaped like a

dog, that stood polished to glassy smoothness by centuries

of hands at the bottom of a flight of steps, an American

voice hailed them, wanting to know if they knew their way

around this goddam town. It was a young fellow who was

a sailor on an American boat that had come over with a

carload of mules. They said sure they knew their way and

gave him a drink out of the bottle of cognac they'd bought.

They sat there on the stone balustrade beside the lion that

looked like a dog and swigged cognac out of the bottle and

talked. The sailor showed them some silk stockings he'd

salvaged off the burning oilship and told them about how

he'd been jazzing an Eyetalian girl only she'd gone to

sleep and he'd gotten disgusted and walked out on her.

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"This war's hell ain't it de truth?" he said; they all got to

laughing.

"You guys seem to be a couple of pretty good guys," the

sailor said. They handed him the bottle and he took a gulp.

"You fellers are princes," he added spluttering, "and I'm

goin' to tell you what I think, see. . . . This whole god-

dam war's a gold brick, it ain't on the level, its crooked

from A to Z. No matter how it comes out fellers like us

gets the's-y end of the stick, see? Well, what I say is all

bets is off . . . every man go to hell in his own way . . .

and three strikes is out, see?" They finished up the cognac.

Singing out savagely, "To hell wid 'em I say," the

sailor threw the bottle with all his might against the head

of the stone lion. The Genoese lion went on staring ahead

with glassy doglike eyes.

Sourlooking loafers started gathering around to see

what the trouble was so they moved on, the sailor waving

his silk stockings as he walked. They found him his steamer

tied up to the dock and shook hands again and again at the

gangplank.

Then it was up to Dick and Steve to get themselves back

across the ten miles to Ponte Decimo. Chilly and sleepy

they walked until their feet were sore, then hopped a wop

truck the rest of the way. The cobbles of the square and

the roofs of the cars were covered with hoarfrost when

they got there. Dick made a noise getting into the stretcher

beside Sheldrake's and Sheldrake woke up, "What the

hell?" he said. "Shut up," said Dick, "don't you see you're

waking people up?"

Next day they got to Milan, huge wintry city with its

overgrown pincushion cathedral and its Galleria jammed

with people and restaurants and newspapers and whores

and Cinzano and Campari Bitters. There followed another

period of waiting during which most of the section settled

down to an endless crapgame in the back room at Cova's;

then they moved out to a place called Dolo on a frozen

-198-

canal somewhere in the Venetian plain. To get to the ele-

gant carved and painted villa where they were quartered

they had to cross the Brenta. A company of British sappers

had the bridge all mined and ready to blow up when the

retreat began again.They promised to wait till Section 1

had crossed before blowing the bridge up. In Dolo there

was very little to do; it was raw wintry weather; while

most of the section sat around the stove and swapped their

jack at poker, the grenadine guards made themselves hot

rum punches over a gasoline burner, read Boccaccio in

Italian and argued with Steve about anarchism.

Dick spent a great deal of his time wondering how he

was going to get to Venice. It turned out that the fat

lieutenant was worried by the fact that the section had

no cocoa and that the Red Cross commissary in Milan

hadn't sent the section any breakfast foods. Dick suggested

that Venice was one of the world's great cocoamarkets, and

that somebody who knew Italian ought to be sent over

there to buy cocoa; so one frosty morning Dick found

himself properly equipped with papers and seals boarding

the little steamboat at Mestre.

There was a thin skim of ice on the lagoon that tore with

a sound of silk on either side of the narrow bow where Dick

stood leaning forward over the rail, tears in his eyes from

the raw wind, staring at the long rows of stakes and the

light red buildings rising palely out of the green water to

bubblelike domes and square pointedtipped towers that

etched themselves sharper and sharper against the zinc

sky. The hunchback bridges, the greenslimy steps, the

palaces, the marble quays were all empty. The only life

was in a group of torpecloboats anchored in the Grand

Canal. Dick forgot all about the cocoa walking through

sculptured squares and the narrow streets and quays along

the icefilled canals of the great dead city that lay there on

the lagoon frail and empty as a cast snakeskin. To the

north he could hear the tomtomming of the guns fifteen

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miles away on the Piave. On the way back it began to

snow.

A few days later they moved up to Bassano behind

Monte Grappa into a late renaissance villa all painted up

with cupids and angels and elaborate draperies. Back of

the villa the Brenta roared day and night under a covered

bridge. There they spent their time evacuating cases of

frozen feet, drinking hot rum punches at Citadella where

the base hospital and the whorehouses were, and singing

The Foggy Foggy Dew and The Little Black Bull Came

Down From the Mountain over the rubber spaghetti at

chow. Ripley and Steve decided they wanted to learn to

draw and spent their days off drawing architectural details

or the covered bridge. Schuyler practiced his Italian talking

about Nietzsche with the Italian Lieut. Fred Summers

had gotten a dose off a Milanese lady who he said must

have belonged to one of the best families because she was

riding in a carriage and picked him up, not he her, and

spent most of his spare time brewing himself home reme-

dies like cherry stems in hot water. Dick got to feeling

lonely and blue, and in need of privacy, and wrote a great

many letters home. The letters he got back made him feel

worse than not getting any.

"You must understand how it is," he wrote the Thur-

lows, answering an enthusiastic screed of Hilda's about the

"war to end war," "I don't believe in Christianity any

more and can't argue from that standpoint, but you do, or

at least Edwin does, and he ought to realize that in urging

young men to go into this cockeyed lunatic asylum of war

he's doing everything he can to undermine all the principles

and ideals he most believes in. As the young fellow we had

that talk with in Genoa that night said, it's not on the level,

it's a dirty goldbrick game put over by governments and

politicians for their own selfish interests, it's crooked from

A to Z. If it wasn't for the censorship I could tell you

things that would make you vomit."

-200-

Then he'd suddenly snap out of his argumentative

mood and all the phrases about liberty and civilization

steaming up out of his head would seem damn silly too,

and he'd light the gasoline burner and make a rum punch

and cheer up chewing the rag with Steve about books or

painting or architecture. Moonlight nights the Austrians

made things lively by sending bombing planes over. Some

nights Dick found that staying out of the dugout and

giving them a chance at him gave him a sort of bitter

pleasure, and the dugout wasn't any protection against a

direct hit anyway.

Sometime in February Steve read in the paper that the

Empress Taitu of Abyssinia had died. They held a wake.

They drank all the rum they had and keened until the

rest of the section thought they'd gone crazy. They sat

in the dark round the open moonlit window wrapped in

blankets and drinking warm zabaglione. Some Austrian

planes that had been droning overhead suddenly cut off

their motors and dumped a load of bombs right in front

of them. The antiaircraft guns had been barking for some

time and shrapnel sparkling in the moonhazy sky over-

head but they'd been too drunk to notice. One bomb fell

geflump into the Brenta and the others filled the space in

front of the window with red leaping glare and shook the

villa with three roaring snorts. Plaster fell from the ceiling.

They could hear the tiles skuttering down off the roof

overhead.

"Jesus, that was almost good night," said Summers.

Steve started singing, Come away from that window, my

light and my life, but the rest of them drowned it out with

an out of tune Deutschland Deutschland Uber Alles. They

suddenly all felt crazy drunk.

Ed Schuyler was standing on a chair giving a recitation

of the Erlkönig when Feldmann, the Swiss hotel-

keeper's son who was now head of the section, stuck his

head in the door and asked what in the devil they thought

-201-

they were doing. "You'd better go down in the abris, one

of the Italian mechanics was killed and a soldier walking

up the road had his legs blown off . . . no time for

monkeyshines." They offered him a drink and he went off

in a rage. After that they drank marsala. Sometime in the

early dawn greyness Dick got up and staggered to the

window to vomit; it was raining pitchforks, the foaming

r'ds of the Brenta looked very white through the shim-

mering rain.

Next day it was Dick's and Steve's turn to go on post

to Rova. They drove out of the yard at six with their

heads like fireballoons, damn glad to be away from the big

scandal there'd be at the section. At Rova the lines were

quiet, only a few pneumonia or venereal cases to evacuate,

and a couple of poor devils who'd shot themselves in the

foot and were to be sent to the hospital under guard; but

at the officers' mess where they ate things were very agi-

tated indeed. Tenente Sardinaglia was under arrest in his

quarters for saucing the Coronele and had been up there

for two days making up a little march on his mandolin

that he called the march of the medical colonels. Serrati

told them about it giggling behind his hand while they

were waiting for the other officers to come to mess. It was

all on account of the macchina for coffee. There were only

three macchine for the whole mess, one for the colonel,

one for the major, and the other went around to the

junior officers in rotation; well, one day last week they'd

been kidding that bella ragazza, the niece of the farmer

on whom they were quartered; she hadn't let any of the

officers kiss her and had carried on like a crazy woman

when they pinched her behind, and the colonel had been

angry about it, and angrier yet when Sardinaglia had bet

him five lira that he could kiss her and he'd whispered

something in her ear and she'd let him and that had made

the colonel get purple in the face and he'd told the ordi-

nanza not to give the macchina to the tenente when his

-202-

turn came round; and Sardinaglia had slapped the ordi-

nanza's face and there'd been a row and as a result Sardi-

naglia was confined to his quarters and the Americans

would see what a circus it was. They all had to straighten

their faces in a hurry because the colonel and the major

and the two captains came jingling in at that moment.

The ordinanza came and saluted, and said pronto

spaghetti in a cheerful tone, and everybody sat down. For

a while the officers were quiet sucking in the long oily

tomatocoated strings of spaghetti, the wine was passed

around and the colonel had just cleared his throat to begin

one of his funny stories that everybody had to laugh at,

when from up above there came the tinkle of a mandolin.

The colonel's face got red and he put a forkful of spaghetti

in his mouth instead of saying anything. As it was Sunday

the meal was unusually long: at dessert the coffee macchina

was awarded to Dick as a courtesy to gli americani and

somebody produced a bottle of strega. The colonel told the

ordinanza to tell the bella ragazza to come and have a

glass of strega with him; he looked pretty sour at the idea,

Dick thought; but he went and got her. She turned out

to be a handsome stout oliveskinned countrygirl. Her

cheeks burning she went timidly up to the colonel and

said, thank you very much but please she never drank

strong drinks. The colonel grabbed her and made her sit

on his knee and tried to make her drink his glass of strega,

but she kept her handsome set of ivory teeth clenched and

wouldn't drink it. It ended by several of the officers hold-

ing her and tickling her and the colonel pouring the strega

over her chin. Everybody roared with laughter except the

ordinanza, who turned white as chalk, and Steve and Dick

who didn't know where to look. While the senior officers

were teasing and tickling her and running their hands into

her blouse, the junior officers were holding her feet and

running their hands up her legs. Finally the colonel got

control of his laughter enough to say, "Basta, now she

-203-

must give me a kiss." But the girl broke loose and ran out

of the room.

"Go and bring her back," the colonel said to the ordi-

nanza. After a moment the ordinanza came back and stood

at attention and said he couldn't find her. "Good for him,"

whispered Steve to Dick. Dick noticed that the ordinanza's

legs were trembling. "You can't can't you?" roared the

colonel, and gave the ordinanza a push; one of the lieu-

tenants stuck his foot out and the ordinanza tripped over

it and fell. Everybody laughed and the colonel gave him a

kick; he had gotten to his hands and knees when the

colonel gave him a kick in the seat of his pants that sent

him flat to the floor again. The officers all roared, the

Ordinanza crawled to the door with the colonel running

after him giving him little kicks first on one side and then

on the other, like a soccerplayer with a football. That put

everybody in a good humor and they had another drink of

strega all around. When they got outside Serrati, who'd

been laughing with the rest, grabbed Dick's arm and hissed

in his ear, "Bestie, . . . sono tutti bestie."

When the other officers had gone, Serrati took them up

to see Sardinaglia who was a tall longfaced young man who

liked to call himself a futurista. Serrati told him what had

happened and said he was afraid the Americans had been

disgusted. "A futurist must be disgusted at nothing except

weakness and stupidity," said Sardinaglia sententiously.

Then he told them he'd found out who the bella ragazza

was really sleeping with . . . with the ordinanza. That he

said disgusted him; it showed that women were all pigs.

Then he said to sit down on his cot while he played them

the march of the medical colonels. They declared it was

fine. "A futurist must be strong and disgusted with noth-

ing," he said, still trilling on the mandolin, "that's why I

admire the Germans and American millionaires." They

all laughed.

Dick and Steve went out to pick up some feriti to evacu-

-204-

ate to the hospital. Behind the barn where they parked the

cars, they found the ordinanza sitting on a stone with his

head in his hands, tears had made long streaks on the dirt

of his face. Steve went up to him and patted him on the

back and gave him a package of Mecca cigarettes, that had

been distributed to them by the Y.M.C.A. The ordinanza

squeezed Steve's hand, looked as if he was going to kiss it.

He said after the war he was going to America where

people were civilized, not bestie like here. Dick asked him

where the girl had gone. "Gone away," he said. "Andata

via."

When they got back to the section they found there was

hell to pay. Orders had come for Savage, Warner, Ripley

and Schuyler to report to the head office in Rome in order

to be sent back to the States. Feldmann wouldn't tell them

what the trouble was. They noticed at once that the other

men in the section were looking at them suspiciously and

were nervous about speaking to them, except for Fred

Summers who said he didn't understand it, the whole frig-

ging business was a madhouse anyway. Sheldrake, who'd

moved his dufflebag and cot into another room in the villa,

came around with an I told you so air and said he'd heard

the words seditious utterances and that an Italian intelli-

gence officer had been around asking about them. He

wished them good luck and said it was too bad. They left

the section without saying goodby to anybody. Feldmann

drove them and their dufflebags and bedrolls down to

Vicenza in the camionette. At the railroad station he handed

them their orders of movement to Rome, said it was too

bad, wished them good luck, and went off in a hurry

without shaking hands.

"The sons of bitches," growled Steve, "you might think

we had leprosy." Ed Schuyler was reading the military

passes, his face beaming. "Men and brethren," he said, "I

am moved to make a speech . . . this is the greatest graft

yet . . . do you gentlemen realize that what's happening

-205-

is that the Red Cross, otherwise known as the goose that

lays the golden egg, is presenting us with a free tour of

Italy? We don't have to get to Rome for a year.""Keep

out of Rome till the revolution," suggested Dick. "Enter

Rome with the Austrians," said Ripley.

A train came into the station. They piled into a first

class compartment; when the conductor came and tried

to explain that their orders read for second class trans-

portation, they couldn't understand Italian, so finally he

left them there. At Verona they piled off to check their

dufflebags and cots to Rome. It was suppertime so they

decided to walk around the town and spend the night. In

the morning they went to see the ancient theatre and the

great peachcolored marble church of San Zeno. Then they

sat around the café at the station until a train came by for

Rome. The train was jampacked with officers in pale blue

and pale green cloaks; by Bologna they'd gotten tired of

sitting on the floor of the vestibule and decided they must

see the leaning towers. Then they went to Pistoa, Lucca,

Pisa and back to the main line at Florence. When the con-

ductors shook their heads over the orders of movement

they explained that they'd been misinformed and due to

ignorance of the language had taken the wrong train. At

Florence, where it was rainy and cold and the buildings all

looked like the replicas of them they'd seen at home, the

station master put them forcibly on the express for Rome,

but they sneaked out the other side after it had started

and got into the local for Assisi. From there they got to

Siena by way of San Gimignano, as full of towers as New

York, in a hack they hired for the day, and ended up one

fine spring morning full up to the neck with painting and

architecture and oil and garlic and scenery, looking at

the Signorelli frescoes in the cathedral at Orvieto. They

stayed there all day looking at the great fresco of the Last

Judgment, drinking the magnificent wine and basking in

the sunny square outside. When they got to Rome, to the

-206-

station next to the baths of Diocletian, they felt pretty bad

at the prospect of giving up their passes; they were amazed

when the employee merely stamped them and gave them

back, saying, "Per il ritorno."

They went to a hotel and cleaned up, and then pooling

the last of their money went on a big bust with a high-

class meal, Frascati wine and asti for dessert, a vaudeville

show and a cabaret on the Via Roma where they met an

American girl they called the baroness who promised to

show them the town. By the end of the evening nobody

had enough money left to go home with the baroness or

any of her charming ladyfriends, so they hired a cab with

their last ten lire to take them out to see the Colosseum by

moonlight. The great masses of ruins, the engraved stones,

the names, the stately Roman names, the old cabdriver

with his oilcloth stovepipe hat and his green soupstrainers

recommending whorehouses under the last quarter of the

ruined moon, the great masses of masonry full of arches

and columns piled up everywhere into the night, the boom

of the word Rome dying away in pompous chords into the

past, sent them to bed with their heads whirling, Rome

throbbing in their ears so that they could not sleep.

Next morning Dick got up while the others were still

dead to the world and went round to the Red Cross; he

was suddenly nervous and worried so that he couldn't eat

his breakfast. At the office he saw a stoutish Bostonian

Major who seemed to be running things, and asked him

straight out what the devil the trouble was. The Major

hemmed and hawed and kept the conversation in an agree-

able tone, as one Harvard man to another. He talked

about indiscretions and the oversensitiveness of the Italians.

As a matter of fact the censor didn't like the tone of certain

letters, etcetera, etcetera. Dick said he felt he ought to ex-

plain his position, and that if the Red Cross felt he hadn't

done his duty they ought to give him a courtmartial, he

said he felt there were many men in his position who had

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pacifist views but now that the country was at war were

willing to do any kind of work they could to help, but that

didn't mean he believed in the war, he felt he ought to be

allowed to explain his position. The major said Ah well he

quite understood, etcetera, etcetera, but that the young

should realize the importance of discretion, etcetera, et-

cetera, and that the whole thing had been satisfactorily

explained as an indiscretion; as a matter of fact the inci-

dent was closed. Dick kept saying, he ought to be allowed

to explain his position, and the major kept saying the inci-

dent was closed, etcetera, etcetera, until it all seemed a little

silly and he left the office. The major promised him trans-

portation to Paris if he wanted to take it up with the office

there. Dick went back to the hotel feeling baffled and sore.

The other two had gone out, so he and Steve walked

around the town, looking at the sunny streets, that smelt of

frying oliveoil and wine and old stones, and the domed

baroque churches and the columns and the Pantheon and

the Tiber. They didn't have a cent in their pockets to buy

lunch or a drink with. They spent the afternoon hungry,

napping glumly on the warm sod of the Pincian, and got

back to the room famished and depressed to find Schuyler

and Ripley drinking vermouth and soda and in high spirits.

Schuyler had run into an old friend of his father's, Colonel

Anderson, who was on a mission investigating the Red

Cross, and had poured out his woes and given him dope

about small graft at the office in Milan. Major Anderson

had set him up to lunch and highballs at the Hotel de

Russie, lent him a hundred dollars and fixed him up with

a job in the publicity department. "So men and brethren,

evviva Italia and the goddamned Alleati, we're all set."

"What about the dossier?" Steve asked savagely. "Aw

forget it, siamo tutti Italiani . . . who's a defeatist now?"

Schuyler set them all up to meals, took them out to

Tivoli and the Lake of Nemi in a staff car, and finally put

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them on the train to Paris with the rating of captain on

their transport orders.

The first day in Paris Steve went off to the Red Cross

office to get shipped home. "To hell with it, I'm going to

C.O.," was all he'd say. Ripley enlisted in the French

artillery school at Fontainebleau. Dick got himself a cheap

room in a little hotel on the Ile St. Louis and spent his

days interviewing first one higher up and then another in

the Red Cross; Hiram Halsey Cooper had suggested the

names in a very guarded reply to a cable Dick sent him

from Rome. The higherups sent him from one to the

other. "Young man," said one baldheaded official in a

luxurious office at the Hotel Crillon, "your opinions, while

showing a senseless and cowardly turn of mind, don't

matter. The American people is out to get the kaiser. We

are bending every nerve and every energy towards that

end; anybody who gets in the way of the great machine

the energy and devotion of a hundred million patriots is

building towards the stainless purpose of saving civiliza-

tion from the Huns will be mashed like a fly. I'm surprised

that a collegebred man like you hasn't more sense. Don't

monkey with the buzzsaw."

Finally he was sent to the army intelligence service

where he found a young fellow named Spaulding he'd

known in college who greeted him with a' queazy smile.

"Old man," he said, "in a time like this we can't give in

to our personal feelings can we . . .? I think it's per-

fectly criminal to allow yourself the luxury of private

opinions, perfectly criminal. It's war time and we've all got

to do our duty, it's people like you that are encouraging

the Germans to keep up the fight, people like you and the

Russians." Spaulding's boss was a captain and wore spurs

and magnificently polished puttees; he was a sternlooking

young man with a delicate profile. He strode up to Dick,

put his face close to his and yelled, "What would you do

if two Huns attacked your sister? You'd fight, wouldn't

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you? . . . if you're not a dirty yellow dawg. . . ." Dick

tried to point out that he was anxious to keep on doing the

work he had been doing, he was trying to get back to the

front with the Red Cross, he wanted an opportunity to ex-

plain his position. The captain strode up and down, bawling

him out, yelling that any man who was still a pacifist after

the President's declaration of war was a moron or what

was worse a degenerate and that they didn't want people

like that in the A.E.F. and that he was going to see to

it that Dick would be sent back to the States and that he

would not be allowed to come back in any capacity what-

soever. "The A.E.F. is no place for a slacker."

Dick gave up and went to the Red Cross office to get his

transportation; they gave him an order for the Touraine

sailing from Bordeaux in two weeks. His last two weeks in

Paris he spent working as a volunteer stretcherbearer at

the American hospital on the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne.

It was June. There were airraids every clear night and

when the wind was right you could hear the guns on the

front. The German offensive was on, the lines were so

near Paris the ambulances were evacuating wounded

directly on the basehospitals. All night the stretcher cases

would spread along the broad pavements under the trees

in fresh leaf in front of the hospital; Dick would help carry

them up the marble stairs into the reception room. One

night they put him on duty outside the operating room and

for twelve hours he had the job of carrying out buckets of

blood and gauze from which protruded occasionally a

shattered bone or a piece of an arm or a leg. When he went

off duty he'd walk home achingly tired through the straw-

berryscented early Parisian morning, thinking of the faces

and the eyes and the sweatdrenched hair and the clenched

fingers clotted with blood and dirt and the fellows kidding

and pleading for cigarettes and the bubbling groans of the

lung cases.

One day he saw a pocket compass in a jeweller's win-

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dow on the Rue de Rivoli. He went in and bought it;

there was suddenly a fullformed plan in his head to buy a

civilian suit, leave his uniform in a heap on the wharf at

Bordeaux and make for the Spanish border. With luck and

all the old transport orders he had in his inside pocket he

was sure he could make it; hop across the border and then,

once in a country free from nightmare, decide what to do.

He even got ready a letter to send his mother.

All the time he was packing his books and other junk

in his dufflebag and carrying it on his back up the quais to

the Gare d'Orleans, Swinburne Song in Time of Order

kept going through his head:

While three men hold together

The kingdoms are less by three.

By gum, he must write some verse: what people needed

was stirring poems to nerve them for revolt against their

cannibal governments. Sitting in the secondclass compart-

ment he was so busy building a daydream of himself living

in a sunscorched Spanish town, sending out flaming poems

and manifestoes, calling young men to revolt against their

butchers, poems that would be published by secret presses

all over the world, that he hardly saw the suburbs of Paris

or the bluegreen summer farmlands sliding by.

Let our flag run out straight in the wind

The old red shall be floated again

When the ranks that are thin shall be thinned

When the names that were twenty are ten

Even the rumblebump rumblebump of the French rail-

road train seemed to be chanting as if the words were mut-

tered low in unison by a marching crowd:

While three men hold together

The kingdoms are less by three.

-211-

At noon Dick got hungry and went to the diner to

eat a last deluxe meal. He sat down at a table opposite a

goodlooking young man in a French officer's uniform.

"Good God, Ned, is that you?" Blake Wigglesworth

threw back his head in the funny way he had and laughed.

"Garçon," he shouted, "un verre pour le monsieur."

"But how long were you in the Lafayette Escadrille?"

stammered Dick.

"Not long . . . they wouldn't have me."

"And how about the Navy?"

"Threw me out too, the damn fools think I've got T.B.

. . . garçon, une bouteille de champagne. . . . Where

are you going?"

"I'll explain."

"Well, I'm going home on the Touraine." Ned threw

back his head laughing again and his lips formed the syl-

lables blahblahblahblah. Dick noticed that although his

face was very pale and thin his skin under his eyes and up

onto the temples was flushed and his eyes looked a little

too bright. "Well, so am I," he heard himself say.

"I got into hot water," said Ned.

"Me too," said Dick. "Very."

They lifted their glasses and looked into each other's

eyes and laughed. They sat in the diner all afternoon talk-

ing and drinking and got to Bordeaux boiled as owls. Ned

had spent all his money in Paris and Dick had very little

left, so they had to sell their bedrolls and equipment to a

couple of American lieutenants just arrived they met in

the Café de Bordeaux. It was almost like old days in

Boston going around from bar to bar and looking for

places to get drinks after closing. They spent most of the

night in an elegant maison publique all upholstered in

pink satin, talking to the madam, a driedup woman with

a long upper lip like a llama's wearing a black spangled

evening dress, who took a fancy to them and made them

stay and eat onion soup with her. They were so busy

-212-

talking they forgot about the girls. She'd been in the

Transvaal during the Boer War and spoke a curious

brand of South African English. "Vous comprennez ve

had very fine clientele, every man jack officers, very much

elegance, decorum. These johnnies off the veldt . . . get

the hell outen here . . . bloody select don't you know. Ve

had two salons, one salon English officers, one salon Boer

officers, very select, never in all the war make any bloody

row, no fight. . . . Vos compatriotes les Americains ce

n'est pas comme ça, mes amis. Beaucoup sonofabeetch,

make drunk, make bloody row, make sick, naturellement

il y a aussi des gentils garçons comme vous, mes mignons,

des veritables gentlemens," and she patted them both on

the cheeks with her horny ringed hands. When they left

she wanted to kiss them and went with them to the door

saying, "Bonsoir mes jolis petits gentlemens."

All the crossing they were never sober after eleven in

the morning; it was calm misty weather; they were very

happy. One night when he was standing alone in the stern

beside the small gun, Dick was searching his pocket for a

cigarette when his fingers felt something hard in the lining

of his coat. It was the little compass he had bought to

help him across the Spanish border. Guiltily, he fished it

out and dropped it overboard.

NEWSREEL XXVII

HER WOUNDED HERO OF WAR A FRAUD

SAYS WIFE IN SUIT

Mid the wars great coise

Stands the red cross noise

She's the rose of no man's land

-213-

according to the thousands who had assembled to see the

launching and were eyewitnesses of the disaster the scaffold

simply seemed to turn over like a gigantic turtle precipitating

its occupants into twentyfive feet of water. This was exactly

four minutes before the launching was scheduled

Oh that battle of Paree

It's making a bum out of me

BRITISH BEGIN OPERATION ON AFGHAN

FRONTIER

the leading part in world trade which the U.S. is now

confidently expected to take, will depend to a very great extent

upon the intelligence and success with which its harbors are

utilized and developed

I wanta go home I wanta go home

The bullets they whistle the cannons they roar

I dont want to go to the trenches no more

Oh ship me over the sea

Where the Allemand cant get at me

you have begun a crusade against toys, but if all the

German toys were commandeered and destroyed the end of

German importations would not yet have been reached

HOLDS UP 20 DINERS IN CAFE

LAWHATING GATHERINGS NOT TO BE ALLOWED IN

CRITICAL TIME THREATENING SOCIAL UPHEAVAL

Oh my I'm too young to die

I wanta go home

Nancy Enjoys Nightlife Despite Raids

TATTOOED WOMAN SOUGHT BY POLICE IN

TRUNK MURDER

ARMY WIFE SLASHED BY ADMIRER

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Young Man Alleged to Have Taken Money to Aid in

Promotion of a Reserve Officer. It appears that these men

were Chinese merchants from Irkutsk, Chita and elsewhere

who were proceeding homeward to Harbin carrying their

profits for investment in new stocks

Oh that battle of Paree

Its making a bum out of me

Toujours la femme et combien

300,000 RUSSIAN NOBLES SLAIN BY

BOLSHEVIKI

Bankers of This Country, Britain and France to

Safeguard Foreign Investors

these three girls came to France thirteen months ago and

were the first concertparty to entertain at the front. They

staged a show for the American troops from a flatcar base of

a large naval gun three kilometers behind the line on the day

of the evening of the drive at Chateau Thierry. After that

they were assigned to the Aix-les-Bains leave area where they

acted during the day as canteen girls and entertained and

danced at night

You never knew a place that was so short of men

Beaucoup rum beaucoup fun

Mother'd never know her loving son

Oh if you want to see that statue of Libertee

Keep away from that battle of Paree

THE CAMERA EYE (35)

there were always two cats the color of hot milk with

a little coffee in it with aquamarine eyes and sootblack

faces in the window of the laundry opposite the little

creamery where we ate breakfast on the Montagne St.

-215-

Geneviève huddled between the old squeezedup slate-

grey houses of the Latin Quarter leaning over steep small

streets cosy under the fog minute streets lit with dif-

ferentcolored chalks cluttered with infinitesimal bars res-

taurants paintshops and old prints beds bidets faded per-

fumery microscopic sizzle of frying butter

the Bertha made a snapping noise no louder than a

cannoncracker near the hotel where Oscar Wilde died we

all ran up stairs to see if the house was on fire but the old

woman whose lard was burning was sore as a crutch

all the big new quarters near the Arc de Triomphe

were deserted but in the dogeared yellowbacked Paris of

the Carmagnole the Faubourg St Antoine the Commune

we were singing

'suis dans l'axe

'suis dans l'axe

'suis dans l'axe du gros canon

when the Bertha dropped in the Seine there was a

concours de pêche in the little brightgreen skiffs among all

the old whiskery fishermen scooping up in nets the minnows

the concussion had stunned

EVELINE HUTCHINS

Eveline went to live with Eleanor in a fine apartment

Eleanor had gotten hold of somehow on the quai de la

-216-

Tournelle. It was the mansard floor of a grey peeling-

faced house built at the time of Richelieu and done over

under Louis Quinze. Eveline never tired of looking out the

window, through the delicate tracing of the wroughtiron

balcony, at the Seine where toy steamboats bucked the cur-

rent, towing shinyvarnished barges that had lace curtains

and geraniums in the windows of their deckhouses painted

green and red, and at the island opposite where the rock-

eting curves of the flying buttresses shoved the apse of

Nôtre Dâme dizzily upwards out of the trees of a little

park. They had tea at a small Buhl table in the window

almost every evening when they got home from the office

on the Rue de Rivoli, after spending the day pasting pic-

tures of ruined French farms and orphaned children and

starving warbabies into scrapbooks to be sent home for use

in Red Cross drives.

After tea she'd go out in the kitchen and watch Yvonne

cook. With the groceries and sugar they drew at the Red

Cross commissary, Yvonne operated a system of barter so

that their food hardly cost them anything. At first Eveline

tried to stop her but she'd answer with a torrent of argu-

ment: did Mademoiselle think that President Poincaré or

the generals or the cabinet ministers, ces salots de prof-

iteurs, ces salots d'embusqués, went without their brioches?

It was the systeme D, ils s'en fichent des particuliers, des

pauvres gens . . . very well her ladies would eat as well

as any old camels of generals, if she had her way she'd

have all the generals line up before a firingsquad and the

embusqué ministers and the ronds de cuir too. Eleanor said

her sufferings had made the old woman a little cracked but

Jerry Burnham said it was the rest of the world that was

cracked.

Jerry Burnham was the little redfaced man who'd been

such a help with the colonel the first night Eveline got to

Paris. They often laughed about it afterwards. He was

working for the U.P. and appeared every few days in her

-217-

office on his rounds covering Red Cross activities. He knew

all the Paris restaurants and would take Eveline out to

dinner at the Tour d'Argent or to lunch at the Taverne

Nicholas Flamel and they'd walk around the old streets of

the Marais afternoons and get late to their work together.

When they'd settle in the evening at a good quiet table in

a café where they couldn't be overheard (all the waiters

were spies he said), he'd drink a lot of cognac and soda and

pour out his feelings, how his work disgusted him, how a

correspondent couldn't get to see anything anymore, how

he had three or four censorships on his neck all the time

and had to send out prepared stuff that was all a pack of

dirty lies every word of it, how a man lost his self-

respect doing things like that year after year, how a news-

paperman had been little better than a skunk before the

war, but that now there wasn't anything low enough you

could call him. Eveline would try to cheer him up telling

him that when the war was over he ought to write a book

like Le Feu and really tell the truth about it. "But the

war won't ever be over . . . too damn profitable, do you

get me? Back home they're coining money, the British are

coining money; even the French, look at Bordeaux and

Toulouse and Marseilles coining money and the goddam

politicians, all of 'em got bank accounts in Amsterdam or

Barcelona, the sons of bitches." Then he'd take her hand

and get a crying jag and promise that if it did end he'd

get back his selfrespect and write the great novel he felt he

had in him.

Late that fall Eveline came home one evening tramp-

ing through the mud and the foggy dusk to find that

Eleanor had a French soldier to tea. She was glad to see

him, because she was always complaining that she wasn't

getting to know any French people, nothing but profes-

sional relievers and Red Cross women who were just too

tiresome; but it was some moments before she realized it

was Maurice Millet. She wondered how she could have

-218-

fallen for him even when she was a kid, he looked so

middleaged and pasty and oldmaidish in his stained blue

uniform. His large eyes with their girlish long lashes had

heavy violet rings under them. Eleanor evidently thought

he was wonderful still, and drank up his talk about l'élan

suprème du sacrifice and l'harmonie mysterieuse de la

mort. He was a stretcherbearer in a basehospital at Nancy,

had become very religious and had almost forgotten his

English. When they asked him about his painting he

shrugged his shoulders and wouldn't answer. At supper

he ate very little and drank only water. He stayed till late

in the evening telling them about miraculous conversions

of unbelievers, extreme unction on the firing line, a vision

of the young Christ he'd seen walking among the wounded

in a dressingstation during a gasattack. Après la guerre he

was going into a monastery. Trappist perhaps. After he

left Eleanor said it had been the most inspiring evening

she'd ever had in her life; Eveline didn't argue with her.

Maurice came back one other afternoon before his perme

expired bringing a young writer who was working at the

Quai d'Orsay, a tall young Frenchman with pink cheeks

who looked like an English publicschool boy, whose name

was Raoul Lemonnier. He seemed to prefer to speak

English than French. He'd been at the front for two years

in the Chasseurs Alpins and had been reformé on account

of his lungs or his uncle who was a minister he couldn't

say which. It was all very boring, he said. He thought

tennis was ripping, though, and went out to St. Cloud to

row every afternoon. Eleanor discovered that what she'd

been wanting all fall had been a game of tennis. He said

he liked English and American women because they liked

sport. Here every woman thought you wanted to go to

bed with her right away; "Love is very boring," he said.

He and Eveline stood in the window talking about cock-

tails (he adored American drinks) and looked out at the

last purple shreds of dusk settling over Nôtre Dâme and

-219-

the Seine, while Eleanor and Maurice sat in the dark in

the little salon talking about St. Francis of Assisi. She asked

him to dinner.

The next morning Eleanor said she thought she was

going to become a Catholic. On their way to the office she

made Eveline stop into Nôtre Dâme with her to hear

mass and they both lit candles for Maurice's safety at the

front before what Eveline thought was a just too tiresome-

looking virgin near the main door. But it was impressive

all the same, the priests moaning and the lights and the

smell of chilled incense. She certainly hoped poor Maurice

wouldn't be killed.

For dinner that night Eveline invited Jerry Burnham,

Miss Felton who was back from Amiens and Major

Appleton who was in Paris doing something about tanks.

It was a fine dinner, duck roasted with oranges, although

Jerry, who was sore about how much Eveline talked to

Lemonnier, had to get drunk and use a lot of bad language

and tell about the retreat at Caporetto and say that the

Allies were in a bad way. Major Appleton said he

oughtn't to say it even if it was true and got quite red in

the face. Eleanor was pretty indignant and said he ought

to be arrested for making such a statement, and after

everybody had left she and Eveline had quite a quarrel.

"What will that young Frenchman be thinking of us?

You're a darling, Eveline dear, but you have the vulgarest

friends. I don't know where you pick them up, and that

Felton woman drank four cocktails, a quart of beaujolais

and three cognacs, I kept tabs on her myself;" Eveline

started to laugh and they both got to laughing. But

Eleanor said that their life was getting much too bohe-

mian and that it wasn't right with the war on and things

going so dreadfully in Italy and Russia and the poor boys

in the trenches and all that.

That winter Paris gradually filled up with Americans

in uniform, and staffcars, and groceries from the Red

-220-

Cross supply store; and Major Moorehouse who, it turned

out, was an old friend of Eleanor's, arrived straight from

Washington to take charge of the Red Cross publicity.

Everybody was talking about him before he came because

he'd been one of the best known publicity experts in New

York before the war. There was no one who hadn't heard

of J. Ward Moorehouse. There was a lot of scurry around

the office when word came around that he'd actually

landed in Brest and everybody was nervous worrying

where the axe was going to fall.

The morning he arrived the first thing Eveline noticed

was that Eleanor had had her hair curled. Then just be-

fore noon the whole publicity department was asked into

Major Wood's office to meet Major Moorehouse. He was

a biggish man with blue eyes and hair so light it was

almost white. His uniform fitted well and his Sam Browne

belt and his puttees shone like glass. Eveline thought at

once that there was something sincere and appealing about

him, like about her father, that she liked. He looked

young too, in spite of the thick jowl, and he had a slight

southern accent when he talked. He made a little speech

about the importance of the work the Red Cross was

doing to keep up the morale of civilians and combatants,

and that their publicity ought to have two aims, to stimu-

late giving among the folks back home and to keep people

informed of the progress of the work. The trouble now

was that people didn't know enough about what a valuable

effort the Red Cross workers were making and were too

prone to listen to the criticisms of proGermans working

under the mask of pacifism and knockers and slackers

always ready to carp and criticize; and that the American

people and the warwracked populations of the Allied coun-

tries must be made to know the splendid sacrifice the Red

Cross workers were making, as splendid in its way as the

sacrifice of the dear boys in the trenches.

"Even at this moment, my friends, we are under fire,ready to make the supreme sacrifice that civilization shall

not perish from the earth."

-221-

ready to make the supreme sacrifice that civilization shall

not perish from the earth." Major Wood leaned back in

his swivelchair and it let out a squeak that made everybody

look up with a start and several people looked out of the

window as if they expected to see a shell from big Bertha

hurtling right in on them. "You see," said Major Moore-

house eagerly, his blue eyes snapping, "that is what we

must make people feel . . . the catch in the throat, the

wrench to steady the nerves, the determination to carry

on."

Eveline felt stirred in spite of herself. She looked a

quick sideways look at Eleanor, who looked cool and lily-

like as she had when she was listening to Maurice tell

about the young Christ of the gasattack. Can't ever tell

what she's thinking, though, said Eveline to herself.

That afternoon when J. W., as Eleanor called Major

Moorehouse, came down to have a cup of tea with them,

Eveline felt that she was being narrowly watched and

minded her P's and Q's as well as she could; it is the

financial adviser; she was giggling about it inside. He

looked a little haggard and didn't say much, and winced

noticeably when they talked about airraids moonlight

nights, and how President Poincaré went around in per-

son every morning to visit the ruins and condole with the

survivors. He didn't stay long and went off someplace in

a staffcar to confer with some high official or other.

Eveline thought he looked nervous and uneasy and would

rather have stayed with them. Eleanor went out on the

landing of the stairs with him and was gone some time.

Eveline watched her narrowly when she came back into

the room but her face had its accustomed look of finely

chiselled calm. It was on the tip of Eveline's tongue to

ask her if Major Moorehouse was her . . . her . . . but

she couldn't think of a way of putting it.

Eleanor didn't say anything for some time; then she

shook her head and said, "Poor Gertrude.""Who's that?"

-222-

Eleanor's voice was just a shade tinny, "J. W.'s wife . . .

she's in a sanitarium with a nervous breakdown . . . the

strain, darling, this terrible war."

Major Moorehouse went down to Italy to reorganize

the publicity of the American Red Cross there, and a

couple of weeks later Eleanor got orders from Washing-

ton to join the Rome office. That left Eveline alone with

Yvonne in the apartment.

It was a chilly, lonely winter and working with all these

relievers was just too tiresome, but Eveline managed to

hold her job and to have some fun sometimes in the eve-

ning with Raoul, who would come around and take her

out to some petite boite or other that he'd always say was

very boring. He took her to the Noctambules where you

could sometimes get drinks after the legal hour; or up to

a little restaurant on the Butte of Montmartre where one

cold moonlit January night they stood on the porch of

the Sacré Coeur and saw the Zeppelins come over. Paris

stretched out cold and dead as if all the tiers of roofs

and domes were carved out of snow and the shrapnel

sparkled frostily overhead and the searchlights were an-

tennae of great insects moving through the milky dark-

ness. At intervals came red snorting flares of the incen-

diary bombs. Just once they caught sight of two tiny

silver cigars overhead. They looked higher than the moon.

Eveline found that Raoul's arm that had been around

her waist had slipped up and that he had his hand over

her breast. "C'est fou tu sais . . . c'est fou tu sais," he

was saying in a singsong voice, he seemed to have forgot-

ten his English. After that they talked French and Eveline

thought she loved him terribly much. After the breloque

had gone through the streets they walked home across

dark silent Paris. At one corner a gendarme came up and

asked Lemonnier for his papers. He read them through

painfully in the faint blue glow of a corner light, while

Eveline stood by breathless, feeling her heart pound. The

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gendarme handed back the papers, saluted, apologized

profusely and walked off. Neither of them said anything

about it, but Raoul seemed to be taking it for granted he

was going to sleep with her at her apartment. They walked

home briskly through the cold black streets, their foot-

steps clacking sharply on the cobbles. She hung on his

arm; there was something tight and electric and uncom-

fortable in the way their hips occasionally touched as they

walked.

Her house was one of the few in Paris that didn't have

a concièrge. She unlocked the door and they climbed shiv-

ering together up the cold stone stairs. She whispered to

him to be quiet, because of her maid. "It is very boring,"

he whispered; his lips brushed warm against her ear. "I

hope you won't think it's too boring."

While he was combing his hair at her dressingtable,

taking little connoisseur's sniffs at her bottles of perfume,

preening himself in the mirror without haste and embar-

rassment, he said, " Charmante Eveline, would you like

to be my wife? It could be arranged, don't you know. My

uncle who is the head of the family is very fond of Ameri-

cans. Of course it would be very boring, the contract and

all that.""Oh, no, that wouldn't be my idea at all," she

whispered giggling and shivering from the bed. Raoul

gave her a furious offended look, said good night very

formally and left.

When the trees, began to bud outside her window and

the flowerwomen in the markets began to sell narcissuses

and daffodils, the feeling that it was spring made her long

months alone in Paris seem drearier than ever. Jerry

Burnham had gone to Palestine; Raoul Lemonnier had

never come to see her again; whenever he was in town

Major Appleton came around and paid her rather elab-

orate attentions, but he was just too tiresome. Eliza Felton

was driving an ambulance attached to a U. S. basehospital

on the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne and would come

-224-

around those Sundays when she was off duty and make

Eveline's life miserable with her complaints that Eveline

was not the free pagan soul she'd thought at first. She said

that nobody loved her and that she was praying for the

Bertha with her number on it that would end it all. It

got so bad that Eveline wasn't able to stay in the house at

all on Sunday and often spent the afternoon in her office

reading Anatole France.

Then Yvonne's crotchets were pretty trying; she tried

to run Eveline's life with her tightlipped comments.

When Don Stevens turned up for a leave, looking more

haggard than ever in the grey uniform of the Quaker out-

fit, it was a godsend, and Eveline decided maybe she'd

been in love with him after all. She told Yvonne he was

her cousin and that they'd been brought up like brother

and sister and put him up in Eleanor's room.

Don was in a tremendous state of excitement about the

success of the Bolsheviki in Russia, ate enormously, drank

all the wine in the house, and was full of mysterious ref-

erences to underground forces he was in touch with. He

said all the armies were mutinous and that what had hap-

pened at Caporetto would happen on the whole front, the

German soldiers were ready for revolt too and that would

be the beginning of the world revolution. He told her

about the mutinies at Verdun, about long trainloads of sol-

diers he'd seen going up to an attack crying, "A bas la

guerre," and shooting at the gendarmes as they went.

" Eveline, we're on the edge of gigantic events. . . .

The working classes of the world won't stand for this

nonsense any longer . . . damn it, the war will have

been almost worth while if we get a new socialist civiliza-

tion out of it." He leaned across the table and kissed her

right under the thin nose of Yvonne who was bringing in

pancakes with burning brandy on them. He wagged his

finger at Yvonne and almost got a smile out of her by the

way he said, "Après la guerre finie."

-225-

That spring and summer things certainly did seem

shaky, almost as if Don were right. At night she could

hear the gigantic surf of the guns in continuous barrage on

the crumpling front. The office was full of crazy rumors:

the British Fifth army had turned and run, the Canadians

had mutinied and seized Amiens, spies were disabling all

the American planes, the Austrians were breaking through

in Italy again. Three times the Red Cross office had or-

ders to pack up their records and be ready to move out of

Paris. In the face of all that it was hard for the publicity

department to keep up the proper cheerful attitude in

their releases, but Paris kept on filling up reassuringly

with American faces, American M.P.s, Sam Browne belts

and canned goods; and in July Major Moorehouse, who

had just arrived back from the States, came into the office

with a firsthand account of Château Thierry and announced

that the war would be over in a year.

The same evening he asked Eveline to dine with him at

the Café de la Paix and to do it she broke a date she

had with Jerry Burnham who had gotten back from the

Near East and the Balkans and was full of stories of

cholera and calamity. J.W. ordered a magnificent dinner,

he said Eleanor had told him to see if Eveline didn't need

a little cheering up. He talked about the gigantic era of

expansion that would dawn for America after the war.

America the good samaritan healing the wounds of war-

torn Europe. It was as if he was rehearsing a speech, when

he got to the end of it he looked at Eveline with a funny

deprecatory smile and said, "And the joke of it is, it's

true," and Eveline laughed and suddenly found that she

liked J.W. very much indeed.

She had on a new dress she'd bought at Paquin's with

some money her father had sent her for her birthday,

and it was a relief after the uniform. They were through

eating before they had really gotten started talking.

Eveline wanted to try to get him to talk about himself.

-226-

After dinner they went to Maxim's, but that was full up

with brawling drunken aviators, and the rumpus seemed

to scare J.W. so that Eveline suggested to him that they

go down to her place and have a glass of wine. When they

got to the quai de la Tournelle, just as they were stepping

out of J.W.'s staffcar she caught sight of Don Stevens

walking down the street. For a second she hoped he

wouldn't see them, but he turned around and ran back.

He had a young fellow with him in a private's uniform

whose name was Johnson. They all went up and sat

around glumly in her parlor. She and J.W. couldn't seem

to talk about anything but Eleanor, and the other two sat

glumly in their chairs looking embarrassed until J.W.

got to his feet, went down to his staffcar, and left.

"God damn it, if there's anything I hate it's a Cross

Red Major," broke out Don as soon as the door closed

behind J.W.

Eveline was angry. "Well, it's no worse than being a

fake Quaker," she said icily.

"You must forgive our intruding, Miss Hutchins,"

mumbled the doughboy who had a blonde Swedish look.

"We wanted to get you to come out to a café or some-

thing, but it's too late now," started Don crossly. The

doughboy interrupted him, "I hope, Miss Hutchins, you

don't mind our intruding, I mean my intruding . . . I

begged Don to bring me along. He's talked so much

about you and it's a year since I've seen a real nice Amer-

ican girl."

He had a deferential way of talking and a whiny Min-

nesota accent that Eveline hated at first, but by the time

he excused himself and left she liked him and stood up

for him when Don said, "He's an awful sweet guy but

there's something sappy about him. I was afraid you

wouldn't like him." She wouldn't let Don spend the night

with her as he'd expected and he went away looking very

sullen.

-227-

In October Eleanor came back with a lot of antique

Italian painted panels she'd picked up for a song. In the

Red Cross office there were more people than were needed

for the work and she and Eleanor and J.W. took a tour of

the Red Cross canteens in the east of France in a staffcar.

It was a wonderful trip, the weather was good for a won-

der, almost like American October, they had lunch and

dinner at regimental headquarters and army corps head-

quarters and divisional headquarters everywhere, and all

the young officers were so nice to them, and J.W. was in

such a good humor and kept them laughing all the time,

and they saw field batteries firing and an airplane duel

and sausage balloons and heard the shriek of an arrivé.

It was during that trip that Eveline began to notice for

the first time something cool in Eleanor's manner that

hurt her; they'd been such' good friends the first week

Eleanor had gotten back from Rome.

Back in Paris it suddenly got very exciting, so many

people they knew turned up, Eveline's brother George

who was an interpreter at the headquarters of the S.O.S.

and a Mr. Robbins, a friend of J.W.'s who was always

drunk and had a very funny way of talking and Jerry

Burnham and a lot of newspaper men and Major Apple-

ton who was now a Colonel. They had little dinners and

parties and the main difficulty was sorting out ranks and

getting hold of people who mixed properly. Fortunately

their friends were all officers or correspondents who ranked

as officers. Only once Don Stevens turned up just before

they were having Colonel Appleton and Brigadier Gen-

eral Byng to dinner, and Eveline's asking him to stay

made things very awkward because the General thought

Quakers were slackers of the worst kind, and Don flared

up and said a pacifist could be a better patriot than a staff

officer in a soft job and that patriotism was a crime against

humanity anyway. It would have been very disagreeable

if Colonel Appleton who had drunk a great many cock-

-228-

tails hadn't broken through the little gilt chair he was sit-

ting on and the General had laughed and kidded the

Colonel with a bad pun about avoir du poise that took

everybody's mind off the argument. Eleanor was very

sore about Don, and after the guests had left she and

Eveline had a standup quarrel. Next morning Eleanor

wouldn't speak to her; Eveline went out to look for an-

other apartment.

NEWSREEL XXVIII

Oh the eagles they fly high

In Mobile, in Mobile

Americans swim broad river and scale steep banks of canal

in brilliant capture of Dun. It is a remarkable fact that the

Compagnie Generale Transatlantique, more familiarly known

as the French Line, has not lost a single vessel in its regular

passenger service during the entire period of the war

RED FLAG FLIES ON BALTIC

"I went through Egypt to join Allenby;" he said, "I flew

in an aeroplane making the journey in two hours that it took

the children of Israel forty years to make. That is something

to set people thinking of the progress of modern science."

Lucky cows don't fly

In Mobile, in Mobile

PERSHING FORCES FOE FURTHER BACK

SINGS FOR WOUNDED SOLDIERS; NOT SHOT AS SPY

Je donnerais Versailles

Paris et Saint Denis

Le tours de Nôtre Dâme

Les clochers de mon pays

-229-

HELP THE FOOD ADMINISTRATION BY

REPORTING WAR PROFITEERS

the completeness of the accord reached on most points by

the conferees caused satisfaction and even some surprise among

participants

REDS FORCE MERCHANT VESSELS TO FLEE

HUNS ON RUN

Auprès de ma blonde

Qu'il fait bon fait bon fait bon

Auprès de ma blonde

Qu'il fait bon dormir

CHEZ LES SOCIALISTES LES AVEUGLES

SONT ROI

The German government requests the President of the

United States of America to take steps for the restoration of

peace, to notify all the belligerents of this request and to invite

them to delegate plenipotentiaries for the purpose of taking

up negotiations. The German Government accepts, as a basis

for the peace negotiations, the programme laid down by the

President of the United States in his message to Congress of

January 8th, 1918, and in his subsequent pronouncements, par-

ticularly in his address of September 27th, 1918. In order to

avoid further bloodshed the German government requests the

President of the United States to bring about the immediate

conclusion of a general armistice on land, on the water, and in

the air.

JOE WILLIAMS

Joe had been hanging around New York and Brooklyn

for a while, borrowing money from Mrs. Olsen and get-

ting tanked up all the time. One day she went to work

and threw him out. It was damned cold and he had to go

-230-

to a mission a couple of nights. He was afraid of getting

arrested for the draft and he was fed up with every

goddam thing; it ended by his going out as ordinary sea-

man on the Appalachian, a big new freighter bound for

Bordeaux and Genoa. It kinder went with the way he felt

being treated like a jailbird again and swobbing decks and

chipping paint. In the focastle there was mostly country

kids who'd never seen the sea and a few old bums who

weren't good for anything. They got into a dirty blow

four days out and shipped a small tidal wave that stove

in two of the starboard lifeboats and the convoy got scat-

tered and they found that the deck hadn't been properly

caulked and the water kept coming down into the focastle.

It turned out that Joe was the only man they had on board

the mate could trust at the wheel, so they took him off

scrubbing paint and in his four hour tricks he had plenty

of time to think about how lousy everything was. In Bor-

deaux he'd have liked to look up Marceline, but none of

the crew got to go ashore.

The bosun went and got cockeyed with a couple of

doughboys and came back with a bottle of cognac for Joe,

whom he'd taken a shine to, and a lot of latrine talk about

how the frogs were licked and the limeys and the wops

were licked something terrible and how if it hadn't been

for us the Kaiser ud be riding into gay Paree any day

and as it was it was nip and tuck. It was cold as hell.

Joe and the bosun went and drank the cognac in the galley

with the cook who was an old timer who'd been in the

Klondike gold rush. They had the ship to themselves be-

cause the officers were all ashore taking a look at the ma-

demosels and everybody else was asleep. The bosun said it

was the end of civilization and the cook said he didn't give

a f -- k and Joe said he didn't give a f -- k and the bosun

said they were a couple of goddam bolshevikis and passed

out cold.

It was a funny trip round Spain and through the

-231-

Straits and up the French coast to Genoa. All the way

there was a single file of camouflaged freighters, Greeks

and Britishers and Norwegians and Americans, all hug-

ging the coast and creeping along with lifepreservers piled

on deck and boats swung out on the davits. Passing 'em

was another line coming back light, transports and colliers

from Italy and Saloniki, white hospital ships, every kind

of old tub out of the seven seas, rusty freighters with their

screws so far out of the water you could hear 'em thrash-

ing a couple of hours after they were hull down and out

of sight. Once they got into the Mediterranean there were

French and British battleships to seaward all the time

and sillylooking destroyers with their long smokesmudges

that would hail you and come aboard to see the ship's

papers. Ashore it didn't look like the war a bit. The

weather was sunny after they passed Gibraltar. The Span-

ish coast was green with bare pink and yellow mountains

back of the shore and all scattered with little white houses

like lumps of sugar that bunched up here and there into

towns. Crossing the Gulf of Lyons in a drizzling rain and

driving fog and nasty choppy sea they came within an

aceof running down a big felucca loaded with barrels of

wine. Then they were bowling along the French Riviera

in a howling northwest wind, with the redroofed towns

all bright and shiny and the dry hills rising rocky behind

them, and snowmountains standing out clear up above.

After they passed Monte Carlo it was a circus, the houses

were all pink and blue and yellow and there were tall

poplars and tall pointed churchsteeples in all the valleys.

That night they were on the lookout for the big light

marked on the chart for Genoa when they saw a red glare

ahead. Rumor went around that the heinies had captured

the town and were burning it. The second mate put up to

the skipper right on the bridge that they'd all be captured

if they went any further and they'd better go back and

put into Marseilles but the skipper told him it was none of

-232-

his goddam business and to keep his mouth shut till his

opinion was asked. The glare got brighter as they got

nearer. It turned out to be a tanker on fire outside the

breakwater. She was a big new Standard Oil tanker, set-

tled a little in the bows with fire pouring out of her and

spreading out over the water. You could see the break-

water and the lighthouses and the town piling up the hills

behind with red glitter in all the windows and the crowded

ships in the harbor all lit up with the red flare.

After they'd anchored, the bosun took Joe and a couple

of the youngsters in the dingy and they went over to see

what they could do aboard the tanker. The stern was way

up out of water. So far as they could see there was no one

on the ship. Some wops in a motorboat came up and jab-

bered at them but they pretended not to understand what

they meant. There was a fireboat standing by too, but

there wasn't anything they could do. "Why the hell don't

they scuttle her?" the bosun kept saying.

Joe caught sight of a ropeladder hanging into the

water and pulled the dingy over to it. Before the others

had started yelling at him to come back he was half way

up it. When he jumped down onto the deck from the rail

he wondered what the hell he was doing up there. God

damn it, I hope she does blow up, he said aloud to him-

self. It was bright as day up there. The forward part of

the ship and the sea around it was burning like a lamp.

He reckoned the boat had hit a mine or been torpedoed.

The crew had evidently left in a hurry as there were all

sorts of bits of clothing and a couple of seabags by the

davits aft where the lifeboats had been. Joe picked him-

self out a nice new sweater and then went down into the

cabin. On a table he found a box of Havana cigars. He

took out a cigar and lit one. It made him feel good to

stand there and light a cigar with the goddam tanks ready

to blow him to Halifax any minute. It was a good cigar,

too. In a tissuepaper package on the table were seven

-233-

pairs of ladies' silk stockings. Swell to take home to Del,

was his first thought. But then he remembered that he was

through with all that. He stuffed the silk stockings into

his pants pockets anyway, and went back on deck.

The bosun was yelling at him from the boat for chris-

sake to come along or he'd get left. He just had time to

pick up a wallet on the companion way. "It ain't gasoline,

it's crude oil. She might burn for a week," he yelled at

the guys in the boat as he came slowly down the ladder

pulling at the cigar as he came and looking out over the

harbor packed with masts and stacks and derricks at the

big marble houses and the old towers and porticos and the

hills behind all lit up in red. "Where the hell's the crew?"

"Probably all cockeyed ashore by this time, where I'd

like to be," said the bosun. Joe divvied up the cigars but

he kept the silk stockings for himself. There wasn't any-

thing in the wallet. "Hellofa note," grumbled the bosun,

"haven't they got any chemicals?""These goddam wops

wouldn't know what to do with 'em if they did have,"

said one of the youngsters.

They rowed back to the Appalachian and reported to the

skipper that the tanker had been abandoned and it was up

to the port authorities to get rid of her.

All next day the tanker burned outside the breakwater.

About nightfall another of her tanks went off like a roman

candle and the fire began spreading more and more over

the water. The Appalachian heaved her anchor and went

up to the wharf.

That night Joe and the bosun went out to look at the

town. The streets were narrow and had steps in them

leading up the hill to broad avenues, with cafés and little

tables out under the colonnades, where the pavements were

all polished marble set in patterns. It was pretty chilly

and they went into a bar and drank pink hot drinks with

rum in them.

There they ran into a wop named Charley who'd been

-234-

twelve years in Brooklyn and he took them to a dump

where they ate a lot of spaghetti and fried veal and drank

white wine. Charley told about how they treated you like

a dog in the Eyetalian army and the pay was five cents a

day and you didn't even get that and Charley was all for

il Presidente Veelson and the fourteen points and said soon

they'd make peace without victory and bigga revoluzione

in Italia and make bigga war on the Francese and the

Inglese treata Eyetalian lika dirt. Charley brought in two

girls he said were his cousins, Nedda and Dora, and one

of 'em sat on Joe's knees and, boy, how she could eat

spaghetti, and they all drank wine. It cost 'em all the

money Joe had to pay for supper.

When he was taking Nedda up to bed up an outside

staircase in the courtyard he could see the flare of the tanker

burning outside of the harbor on the blank walls and tiled

roofs of the houses.

Nedda wouldn't get undressed but wanted to see Joe's

money. Joe didn't have any money so he brought out the

silk stockings. She looked worried and shook her head

but she was darn pretty and had big black eyes and Joe

wanted it bad and yelled for Charley and Charley came

up the stairs and talked wop to the girl and said sure

she'd take the silk stockings and wasn't America the great-

est country in the world and tutti aleati and Presidente

Veelson big man for Italia. But the girl wouldn't go ahead

until they'd gotten hold of an old woman who was in the

kitchen, who came wheezing up the stairs and felt the

stockings, and musta said they were real silk and worth

money, because the girl put her arm around Joe's neck

and Charley said, "Sure, pard, she sleepa with you all

night, maka love good."

But about midnight when the girl had gone to sleep

Joe got tired of lying there. He could smell the closets

down in the court and a rooster kept crowing loud as the

dickens like it was right under his ear. He got up and put

-235-

on his clothes and tiptoed out. The silk stockings were

hanging on a chair. He picked 'em up and shoved them in

his pockets again. His shoes creaked like hell. The street

door was all bolted and barred and he had a devil of a

time getting it open. Just as he got out in the street a dog

began to bark somewhere and he ran for it. He got lost

in a million little narrow stone streets, but he figured that

if he kept on going down hill he'd get to the harbor some-

time. Then he began to see the pink glow from the burn-

ing tanker again on some of the housewalls and steered

by that.

On some steep steps he ran into a couple of Americans

in khaki uniforms and asked them the way and they gave

him a drink out of a bottle of cognac and said they were

on their way to the Eyetalian front and that there'd been

a big retreat and that everything was cockeyed and they

didn't know where the cockeyed front was and they were

going to wait right there till the cockeyed front came

right to them. He told 'em about the silk stockings and

they thought it was goddam funny, and showed him the

way to the wharf where the Appalachian was and they

shook hands a great many times when they said goodnight

and they said the wops were swine and he said they were

princes to have shown him the way and they said he was

a prince and they finished up the cognac and he went on

board and tumbled into his bunk.

When the Appalachian cleared for home the tanker was

still burning outside the harbor. Joe came down with dose

on the trip home and he couldn't drink anything for sev-

eral months and kinda steadied down when he got to

Brooklyn. He went to the shoreschool run by the Shipping

Board in Platt Institute and got his second mate's license

and made trips back and forth between New York and St.

Nazaire all through that year on a new wooden boat built

in Seattle called the Owanda, and a lot of trouble they

had with her.

-236-

He and Janey wrote each other often. She was over-

seas with the Red Cross and very patriotic. Joe began to

think that maybe she was right. Anyway if you believed

the papers the heinies were getting licked, and it was a

big opportunity for a young guy if you didn't get in wrong

by being taken for a proGerman or a Bolshevik or some

goddam thing. After all as Janey kept writing civilization

had to be saved and it was up to us to do it. Joe started

a savings account and bought him a Liberty bond.

Armistice night Joe was in St. Nazaire. The town was

wild. Everybody ashore, all the doughboys out of their

camps, all the frog soldiers out of their barracks, every-

body clapping everybody else on the back, pulling corks,

giving each other drinks, popping champagne bottles, kiss-

ing every pretty girl, being kissed by old women, kissed

on both cheeks by French veterans with whiskers. The

mates and the skipper and the chief and a couple of naval

officers they'd never seen before all started to have a big

feed in a café but they never got further than soup be-

cause everybody was dancing in the kitchen and they

poured the cook so many drinks he passed out cold and

they all sat there singing and drinking champagne out of

tumblers and cheering the allied flags that girls kept

carrying through.

Joe went cruising looking for Jeanette who was a girl

he'd kinder taken up with whenever he was in St. Nazaire.

He wanted to find her before he got too zigzag. She'd

promised to couchay with him that night before it turned

out to be Armistice Day. She said she never couchayed with

anybody else all the time the Owanda was in port and he

treated her right and brought her beaucoup presents from

L'Amerique, and du sucer and du cafay. Joe felt good,

he had quite a wad in his pocket and, god damn it, American

money was worth something these days; and a couple of

pounds of sugar he'd brought in the pockets of his raincoat

was better than money with the mademosels.

-237-

He went in back where there was a cabaret all red

plush with mirrors and the music was playing The Star

Spangled Banner and everybody cried Vive L'Amerique

and pushed drinks in his face as he came in and then he

was dancing with a fat girl and the music was playing

some damn foxtrot or other. He pulled away from the

fat girl because he'd seen Jeanette. She had an American

flag draped over her dress. She was dancing with a big six-

foot black Senegalese. Joe saw red. He pulled her away

from the nigger who was a frog officer all full of gold

braid and she said, "Wazamatta cherie," and Joe hauled

off and hit the damn nigger as hard as he could right on

the button but the nigger didn't budge. The nigger's face

had a black puzzled smiling look like he was just going

to ask a question. A waiter and a coupla frog soldiers came

up and tried to pull Joe away. Everybody was yelling

and jabbering. Jeanette was trying to get between Joe

and the waiter and got a sock in the jaw that knocked her

flat. Joe laid out a couple of frogs and was backing off

towards the door, when he saw in the mirror that a big

guy in a blouse was bringing down a bottle on his head

held with both hands. He tried to swing around but he

didn't have time. The bottle crashed his skull and he was

out.

NEWSREEL XXIX

the arrival of the news caused the swamping of the city's

telephone lines

Y fallait pas

Y fallait pas

Y fallait pas-a-a-a-a-yallez

BIG GUNS USED IN HAMBURG

-238-

at the Custom House the crowd sang The Star Spangled

Banner under the direction of Byron R. Newton the Collector

of the Port

MORGAN ON WINDOWLEDGE

KICKS HEELS AS HE SHOWERS

CROWD WITH TICKERTAPE

down at the battery the siren of the fireboat New York

let out a shriek when the news reached there and in less time

than it takes to say boo pandemonium broke loose all along the

waterfront

Oh say can you see by the dawn's early light

WOMEN MOB CROWN PRINCE FOR

KISSING MODISTE

Allons enfants de la patrie

Le jour de gloire est arrivé

It's the wrong way to tickle Mary

It's the wrong place to go

"We've been at war with the devil and it was worth all

the suffering it entailed," said William Howard Taft at a vic-

tory celebration here last night

Kakakatee, beautiful Katee

She's the only gugugirl that I adore

And when the moon shines

Unipress, N. Y.

Paris urgent Brest Admiral Wilson who announced

16:00 (4P.M.) Brest newspaper armistice been signed later

notified unconfirmable meanwhile Brest riotously celebrating

TWO TROLLIES HELD UP BY GUNMEN IN

QUEENS

Over the cowshed

I'll be waiting at the kakakitchen door

-239-

SPECIAL GRAND JURY ASKED TO INDICT

BOLSHEVISTS

the soldiers and sailors gave the only touch of color to

the celebration. They went in wholeheartedly for having a

good time, getting plenty to drink despite the fact that they

were in uniform. Some of these returned fighters nearly

caused a riot when they took an armful of stones and attempted

to break an electric sign at Broadway and Forty-second Street

reading:

WELCOME HOME TO OUR HEROES

Oh say can you see by the dawn's early light

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming

When the rocket's red glare the bombs bursting in air

Was proof to our eyes that the flag was still there

THE CAMERA EYE (36)

when we emptied the rosies to leeward over the side

every night after the last inspection we'd stop for a

moment's gulp of the November gale the lash of spray

in back of your ears for a look at the spume splintered

off the leaping waves shipwreckers drowners of men (in

their great purple floating mines rose and fell gently sub-

marines travelled under them on an even keel) to glance

at the sky veiled with scud to take our hands off the greasy

handles of the cans full of slum they couldnt eat (nine

meals nine dumpings of the leftover grub nine cussing-

matches with the cockney steward who tried to hold out

-240-

on the stewed apricots inspections AttenSHUN click

clack At Ease shoot the flashlight in everycorner of

the tin pans nine lineups along the heaving airless cor-

ridor of seasick seascared doughboys with their messkits

in their hands)

Hay sojer tell me they've signed an armístice tell

me the wars over they're takin us home latrine talk

the hell you say now I'll tell one we were already

leading the empty rosies down three flights of iron ladders

into the heaving retching hold starting up with the full

whenever the ship rolled a little slum would trickle out

the side

MEESTER VEELSON

The year that Buchanan was elected president

Thomas Woodrow Wilson

was born to a presbyterian minister's daughter

in the manse at Staunton in the valley of Virginia;

it was the old Scotch-Irish stock; the father was a pres-

byterian minister too and a teacher of rhetoric in theo-

logical seminaries; the Wilsons lived in a universe of

words linked into an incontrovertible firmament by two

centuries of calvinist divines,

God was the Word

and the Word was God.

Dr. Wilson was a man of standing who loved his

home and his children and good books and his wife and

correct syntax and talked to God every day at family

prayers;

-241-

he brought his sons up

between the bible and the dictionary.

The years of the Civil War the years of fife and drum and platoonfire and

proclamations

the Wilsons lived in Augusta, Georgia; Tommy

was a backward child, didn't learn his letters till he

was nine, but when he learned to read his favorite read-

ing was Parson Weems'

Life of Washington.

In 1870 Dr. Wilson was called to the Theological

Seminary at Columbia, South Carolina; Tommy at-

tended Davidson college,

where he developed a good tenor voice;

then he went to Princeton and became a debater

and editor of the Princetonian. His first published ar-

ticle in the Nassau Literary Magazine was an apprecia-

tion of Bismarck.

Afterwards he studied law at the University of Vir-

ginia; young Wilson wanted to be a Great Man, like

Gladstone and the eighteenth century English parlia-

mentarians; he wanted to hold the packed benches spell-

bound in the cause of Truth; but lawpractice irked him;

he was more at home in the booky air of libraries, lec-

turerooms, college chapel, it was a relief to leave his

lawpractice at Atlanta and take a Historical Fellowship

at Johns Hopkins; there he wrote Congressional Gov-

ernment.

At twentynine he married a girl with a taste for

painting (while he was courting her he coached her in

how to use the broad "a") and got a job at Bryn Mawr

teaching the girls History and Political Economy.

When he got his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins he moved

-242-

to a professorship at Wesleyan, wrote articles, started

a History of the United States,

spoke out for Truth Reform Responsible Govern-

ment Democracy from the lecture platform, climbed

all the steps of a brilliant university careeri in 1901

the trustees of Princeton offered him the presidency;

he plunged into reforming the university, made

violent friends and enemies, set the campus by the ears,

and the American people began to find on the

front pages

the name of Woodrow Wilson.

In 1909 he made addresses on Lincoln and Robert

E. Lee

and in 1910

the democratic bosses of New Jersey, hardpressed

by muckrakers and reformers, got the bright idea of

offering the nomination for governor to the stainless

college president who attracted such large audiences

by publicly championing Right.

When Mr. Wilson addressed the Trenton conven-

tion that nominated him for governor he confessed his

belief in the common man, (the smalltown bosses and

the wardheelers looked at each other and scratched

their heads); he went on, his voice growing firmer:

that is the man by whose judgment I for one wish

to be guided, so that as the tasks multiply, and as the

days come when all will feel confusion and dismay, we

may lift up our eyes to the hills out of these dark

valleys where the crags of special privilege overshadow

and darken our path, to where the sun gleams through

the great passage in the broken cliffs, the sun of God,

the sun meant to regenerate men,

the sun meant to liberate them from their passion

and despair and lift us to those uplands which are the

-243-

promised land of every man who desires liberty and

achievement.

The smalltown bosses and the wardheelers looked

at each other and scratched their heads; then they

cheered; Wilson fooled the wiseacres and double-

crossed the bosses, was elected by a huge plurality;

so he left Princeton only half reformed to be

Governor of New Jersey,

and became reconciled with Bryan

at the Jackson Day dinner: when Bryan remarked,

"I of course knew that you were not with me in my

position on the currency," Mr. Wilson replied, "All I

can say, Mr. Bryan, is that you are a great big man."

He was introduced to Colonel House,

that amateur Merlin of politics who was spinning

his webs at the Hotel Gotham

and at the convention in Baltimore the next July

the upshot of the puppetshow staged for sweating dele-

gates by Hearst and House behind the scenes, and

Bryan booming in the corridors with a handkerchief

over his wilted collar, was that Woodrow Wilson was

nominated for the presidency.

The bolt of the Progressives in Chicago from Taft

to T.R. made his election sure;

so he left the State of New Jersey halreformed

(pitiless publicity was the slogan of the Shadow

Lawn Campaign)

and went to the White House

our twentyeighth president.

While Woodrow Wilson drove up Pennsylvania

Avenue beside Taft the great buttertub, who as presi-

dent had been genially undoing T.R.'s reactionary ef-

forts to put business under the control of the govern-

ment,

J. Pierpont Morgan sat playing solitaire in his

-244-

back office on Wall Street, smoking twenty black cigars

a day, cursing the follies of democracy.

Wilson flayed the interests and branded privilege

refused to recognize Huerta and sent the militia to the

Rio Grande

to assume a policy of watchful waiting. He pub-

lished The New Freedom and delivered his messages

to Congress in person, like a college president address-

ing the faculty and students. At Mobile he said:

I wish to take this occasion to say that the United

States will never again seek one additional foot of terri-

tory by conquest;

and he landed the marines at Vera Cruz.

We are witnessing a renaissance of public spirit, a

reawakening of sober public opinion, a revival of the

power of the people the beginning of an age of thought-

ful reconstruction . . .

but the world had started spinning round Sarajevo.

First it was neutrality in thought and deed, then

too proud to fight when the Lusitania sinking and the

danger to the Morgan loans and the stories of the Brit-

ish and French propagandists set all the financial centers

in the East bawling for war, but the suction of the

drumbeat and the guns was too strong; the best people

took their fashions from Paris and their broad "a's"

from London, and T.R. and the House of Morgan.

Five months after his reelection on the slogan He

kept us out of war, Wilson pushed the Armed Ship

Bill through congress and declared that a state of war

existed between the United States and the Central

Powers:

Force without stint or limit, force to the utmost.

Wilson became the state (war is the health of the

state), Washington his Versailles, manned the socialized

-245-

government with dollar a year men out of the great

corporations and ran the big parade

of men munitions groceries mules and trucks to

France. Five million men stood at attention outside of

their tarpaper barracks every sundown while they

played The Star Spangled Banner.

War brought the, eight hour day, women's votes,

prohibition, compulsory arbitration, high wages, high

rates of interest' cost plus contracts and the luxury of

being a Gold Star Mother.

If you objected to making the world safe for cost

plus democracy you went to jail with Debs.

Almost too soon the show was over, Prince Max

of Baden was pleading for the Fourteen Points, Foch

was occupying the bridgeheads on the Rhine and the

Kaiser out of breath ran for the train down the platform

at Potsdam wearing a silk hat and some say false

whiskers.

With the help of Almighty God, Right, Truth,

Justice, Freedom, Democracy, the Selfdetermination of

Nations, No indemnities no annexations,

and Cuban sugar and Caucasian manganese and

Northwestern wheat and Dixie cotton, the British

blockade, General Pershing, the taxicabs of Paris and

the seventyfive gun

we won the war.

On December 4th, 1918, Woodrow Wilson, the

first president to leave the territory of the United States

during his presidency, sailed for France on board the

George Washington,

the most powerful man in the world.

In Europe they knew what gas smelt like and the

sweet sick stench of bodies buried too shallow and the

grey look of the skin of starved children; they read in

-246-

the papers that Meester Veelson was for peace and free-

dom and canned goods and butter and sugar;

he landed at Brest with his staff of experts and

publicists after a rough trip on the George Washington.

La France héroïque was there with the speeches,

the singing schoolchildren, the mayors in their red

sashes. (Did Meester Veelson see the gendarmes at

Brest beating back the demonstration of dockyard

workers who came to meet him with red flags?)

At the station in Paris he stepped from the train

onto a wide red carpet that lead him, between rows of

potted palms, silk hats, legions of honor, decorated

busts of uniforms, irockcoats, rosettes, boutonnières, to

a Rolls Royce. (Did Meester Veelson see the women

in black, the cripples in their little carts, the pale anxious

faces along the streets, did he hear the terrible anguish

of the cheers as they hurried him and his new wife to

the hôtel de Mrat, where in rooms full of brocade,

gilt clocks, Buhl cabinets and ormolu cupids the presi-

dential suite had been prepared?)

While the experts were organizing the procedure

of the peace conference, spreading green baize on the

tables, arranging the protocols,

the Wilsons took a tour to see for themselves: the

day after Christmas they were entertained at Bucking-

ham Palace; at Newyears they called on the pope and

on the microscopic Italian king at the Quirinal. (Did

Meester Veelson know that in the peasants' wargrimed

houses along the Brenta and the Piave they were burn-

ing candles in front of his picture cut out of the illus-

trated papers?) (Did Meester Veelson know that the

people of Europe spelled a challenge to oppression out

of the Fourteen Points as centuries before they had

spelled a challenge to oppression out of the ninetyfive

articles Martin Luther nailed to the churchdoor in

Wittenberg?)

-247-

January 18, 1919, in the midst of serried uniforms,248

cocked hats and gold braid, decorations, epaulettes, or-

ders of merit and knighthood, the High Contracting

Parties, the allied and associated powers met in the

Salon de I'Horloge at the quai d'Orsay to dictate the

peace,

but the grand assembly of the peace conference

was too public a place to make peace in

so the High Contracting Parties

formed the Council of Ten, went into the Gobelin

Room and, surrounded by Rubens's History of Manie

de Medici,

began to dictate the peace.

But the Council of Ten was too public a place to

make peace in

so they formed the Council of Four.

Orlando went home in a huff

and then there were three:

Clemenceau,

Lloyd George,

Woodrow Wilson.

Three old men shuffling the pack,

dealing out the cards:

the Rhineland, Danzig, the Polish corridor, the

Ruhr, self determination of small nations, the Saar,

League of Nations, mandates, the Mespot, Freedom of

the Seas, Transjordania, Shantung, Fiume and the

Island of Yap:

machine gun fire and arson

starvation, lice, cholera, typhusi

oil was trumps.

Woodrow Wilson believed in his father's God

so he told the parishioners in the little Lowther

Street Congregational church where his grandfather

had preached in Carlisle in Scotland, a day so chilly that

-248-

the newspaper men sitting in the old pews all had to

keep their overcoats on.

On April 7th he ordered the George Washington

to be held at Brest with steam up ready to take the

American delegation home;

but he didn't go.

On April 19 sharper Clemenceau. and sharper

Lloyd George got him into their little cosy threecard-

game they called the Council of Four.

On June 28th the Treaty of Versailles was ready

and Wilson had to go back home to explain to the

politicians who'd been ganging up on him meanwhile

in the Senate and House and to sober public opinion

and to his father's God how he'd let himself be trimmed

and how far he'd made the world safe

for democracy and the New Freedom.

From the day he landed in Hoboken he had his

back to the wall of the White House, talking to save

his faith in words, talking to save his faith in the

League of Nations, talking to save his faith in himself,

in his father's God.

He strained every nerve of his body and brain,

every agency of the government he had under his

control; (if anybody disagreed he was a crook or a red;

no pardon for Debs).

In Seattle the wobblies whose leaders were in

jail, in Seattle the wobblies whose leaders had been

lynched, who'd been shot down like dogs, in Seattle

the wobblies lined four blocks as Wilson passed, stood

silent with their arms folded staring at the great liberal

as he was hurried past in his car, huddled in his over-

coat, haggard with fatigue, one side of his face twitch-

ing. The men in overalls, the workingstiffs let him

-249-

pass in silence after all the other blocks of handclapping

and patriotic cheers.

In Pueblo, Colorado, he was a grey man hardly

able to stand, one side of his face twitching:

Now that the mists of this great question have

cleared away, I believe that men will see the Truth,

eye for eye and face to face. There is one thing the

American People always rise to and extend their hand

to, that is, the truth of justice and of liberty and of peace.

We have accepted that truth and we are going to be

led by it, and it is going to lead us, and through us the

world, out into pastures of quietness and peace such as

the world never dreamed of before.

That was his last speech;

on the train to Wichita he had a stroke. He gave

up the speaking tour that was to sweep the country for

the League of Nations. After that he was a ruined

paralysed man barely able to speak;

the day he gave up the presidency to Harding the

joint committee of the Senate and House appointed

Henry Cabot Lodge, his lifelong enemy, to make the

formal call at the executive office in the Capitol and

ask the formal question whether the president had any

message for the congress assembled in joint session;

Wilson managed to get to his feet, lifting himself

painfully by the two arms of the chair. "Senator

Lodge, I have no further communication to make,

thank you . . . Good morning," he said.

In 1924 on February 3rd he died.

-250-

NEWSREEL XXX

MONSTER GUNS REMOVED?

Longhaired preachers come out every night

Try to tell you what's wrong and what's right

But when asked about something to eat

They will answer in accents so sweet

PRESIDENT HAS SLIGHT COLD AT SEA

Special Chef and Staff of Waiters and Kitchen Helpers

Drafted from the Biltmore

Every Comfort Provided

Orchestra to Play During Meals and Navy Yard Band

to Play for Deck Music

You will eat bye and bye

In that glorious land above the sky

the city presents a picture of the wildest destruction espe-

cially around the General Post Office which had been totally

destroyed by fire, nothing but ruins remaining

Work and pray

Live on hay

Three Truckloads of Records Gathered Here

eleven men were killed and twentythree injured, some

of them seriously as the result of an explosion of fulminate of

mercury in the priming unit of one of the cap works of the

E. I. duPont de Nemours Powder Company; in the evening

Mrs. Wilson released carrier pigeons . . . and through it all

how fine the spirit of the nation was, what unity of purpose

what untiring zeal what elevation of purpose ran through all

its splendid display of strength, its untiring accomplishment.

I have said that those of us who stayed at home to do the work

of organization and supply would always wish we had been

with the men we sustained by our labor, but we can never be

ashamed . . . in the dining room music was furnished by a

quartet of sailors

-251-

You'll get pie

In the sky

When you die

GORGAS WOULD PUT SOLDIERS IN HUTS

800 FIGHTING MEN CHEER BOLSHEVIKI

All the arrangements were well ordered but the crowd

was kept at a distance. The people gathered on the hills near

the pier raised a great shout when the president's launch

steamed up. A detour was made from the Champs Elysees to

cross the Seine over the Alexander III bridge which recalled

another historic pageant when Paris outdid herself to honor

an absolute ruler in the person of the czar.

ADDRESSED 1400 MAYORS FROM PALACE BALCONY

BRITISH NAVY TO BE SUPREME DECLARES

CHURCHILL

THE CAMERA EYE (37)

alphabetically according to rank tapped out with two

cold index fingers on the company Corona Allots Class

A & B Ins prem C & D

Atten -- SHUN snap to the hooks and eyes at my

throat constricting the adamsapple bringing together the

US and the Caduceus

At Ease

outside they're, drilling in the purple drizzle of a

winter afternoon in Ferrièes en Gatinais, Abbaye founded

by Clovis over the skeletons of three disciples of nôtre

-252-

seigneur Jésus-Christ 3rd Lib Loan Sec of Treas Altian

Politian and Hermatian 4th Lib Loan Sec of Treas must

be on CL E or other form Q.M.C. 3^8 now it's raining

hard and the gutters gurgle there's tinkling from all the

little glassgreen streams Alcuin was prior once and mill-

wheels grind behind the mossed stone walls and Clodhilde

and Clodomir were buried here

promotions only marked under gains drowsily clacked

out on the rusteaten Corona in the cantonment of O'Riel-

ly's Travelling Circus alone except for the undertaker sol-

diering in his bunk and the dry hack of the guy that has

TB that the MO was never sober enough to examine

Iodine will make you happy

Iodine will make you well

fourthirty the pass comes alive among the CC pills in

my pocket

the acting QM Sarge and the Topkicker go out

through the gate of USAAS base camp in their slickers in

the lamplit rain and make their way without a cent in their

OD to the Cheval Blanc where by chevrons and parleyvoo-

ing they bum drinks and omelettes avec pornmes frites and

kid applecheeked Madeleine may wee

in the dark hallway to the back room the boys are

lined up waiting to get in to the girl in black from out of

town to drop ten francs and hurry to the propho station

sol viol sk not L D viol Go 41/14 rd sent S C M

-253-

outside it's raining on the cobbled town inside we

drink vin rouge parlezvous froglegs may wee couchez avec

and the old territorial at the next table drinks illegal

pernod and remarks Toute est bien fait dans la nature à

la votre aux Americains

Après la guerre finee

Back to the States for me

Dans la mort il n'y a rien de terrible Quant on va

mourir on pense à tout mais vite

the first day in the year dismissed after rollcall I went

walking with a fellow from Philadelphia along the purple

wintryrutted roads under the purple embroidery of the

pleached trees full of rooks cackling overhead over the

ruddier hills to a village we're going to walk a long way

get good wine full of Merovingian names millwheels

glassgreen streams where the water gurgles out of old

stone gargoyles Madeleine's red apples the smell of beech

leaves we're going to drink wine the boy from Philadel-

phia's got beaucoup jack wintry purpler wine the sun

breaks out through the clouds on the first day in the year

in the first village

we stop in our tracks

to look at a waxwork

the old man has shot the pretty peasant girl who looks

like Madeleine but younger she lies there shot in the left

breast in the blood in the ruts of the road pretty and plump

as a little quail

-254-

The old man then took off one shoe and put the

shotgun under his chin pulled the trigger with his toe and

blew the top of his head off we stand looking at the bare

foot and the shoe and the foot in the shoe and the shot

girl and the old man with a gunnysack over his head and

the dirty bare toe he pulled the trigger with Faut pas

toucher until the commissaire comes proce's verbale

on this first day

of the year the sun

is shining

NEWSREEL XXXI

washing and dressing hastily they came to the ground

floor at the brusque call of the commissaries, being assembled

in one of the rear rooms in the basement of the house. Here

they were lined up in a semicircle along the wall, the young

grandduchesses trembling at the unusual nature of the orders

given and at the gloomy hour. They more than suspected the

errand upon which the commissaries had come. Addressing

the czar, Yarodsky, without the least attempt to soften his

announcement, stated that they must all die and at once. The

revolution was in danger, he stated, and the fact that there

were still the members of the reigning house living added to

that danger. Therefore to remove them was the duty of all

Russian patriots. "Thus your life is ended," he said in con,

clusion.

"I am ready," was the simple announcement of the czar,

while the czarina, clinging to him, loosed her hold long

enough to make the sign of the cross, an example followed by

the grandducbess Olga and by Dr. Botkin.

The czarevitch, paralyzed with fear, stood in stupefac-

tion beside his mother, uttering no sound either in supplication

-255-

or protest, while his three sisters and the other grandduchesses

sank to the floor trembling.

Yarodsky drew his revolver and fired the first shot. A

volley followed and the prisoners reeled to the ground. Where

the bullets failed to find their mark the bayonet put the finish-

ing touches. The mingled blood of the victims not only cov-

ered the floor of the room where the execution took place but

ran in streams along the hallway

DAUGHTER

The Trents lived in a house on Pleasant avenue that was

the finest street in Dallas that was the biggest and fastest

growing town in Texas that was the biggest state in the

Union and had the blackest soil and the whitest people and

America was the greatest country in the world and Daugh-

ter was Dad's onlyest sweetest little girl. Her real name

was Anne Elizabeth Trent after poor dear mother who

had died when she was a little tiny girl but Dad and the

boys called her Daughter. Buddy's real name was William

Delaney Trent like Dad who was a prominent attorney,

and Buster's real name was Spencer Anderson Trent.

Winters they went to school and summers they ran wild

on the ranch that grandfather had taken up as a pioneer.

When they'd been very little there hadn't been any fences

yet and still a few maverick steers out along the creekbot-

toms, but by the time Daughter was in highschool every-

thing was fenced and they were building a macadam road

out from Dallas and Dad went everywhere in the Ford in-

stead of on his fine Arab stallion Mullah he'd been given

by a stockman at the Fat Stock Show in Waco when the

stockman had gone broke and hadn't been able to pay his

lawyer's fee. Daughter had a creamcolored pony named

Coffee who'd nod his head and paw with his hoof when he

wanted a lump of sugar, but some of the girls she knew

-256-

had cars and Daughter and the boys kept after Dad to buy

a car, a real car instead of that miserable old flivver he

drove around the ranch.

When Dad bought a Pierce Arrow touring car the spring

Daughter graduated from highschool, she was the happiest

girl in the world. Sitting at the wheel in a fluffy white

dress the morning of Commencement outside the house

waiting for Dad, who had just come out from the office and

was changing his clothes, she had thought how much she'd

like to be able to see herself sitting there in the not too hot

June morning in the lustrous black shiny car among the

shiny brass and nickel fixtures under the shiny paleblue big

Texas sky in the middle of the big flat rich Texas country

that ran for two hundred miles in every direction. She

could see half her face in the little oval mirror on the mud-

guard. It looked red and sunburned under her sandybrown

hair. If she only had red hair and a skin white like butter-

milk like Susan Gillespie had, she was wishing when she

saw Joe Washburn coming along the street dark and seri-

ouslooking under his panama hat. She fixed her face in a

shy kind of smile just in time to have him say, "How

lovely you look, Daughter, you must excuse ma sayin' so."

"I'm just waiting for Dad and the boys to go to the exer-

cises. O Joe, we're late and I'm so excited. . . . I feel like

a sight."

"Well, have a good time." He walked on unhurriedly

putting his hat back on his head as he went. Something

hotter than the June sunshine had come out of Joe's very

dark eyes and run in a blush over her face and down the

back of her neck under her thin dress and down the middle

of her bosom, where the little breasts that she tried never

to think of were just beginning to be noticeable. At last

Dad and the boys came out all looking blonde and dressed

up and sunburned. Dad made her sit in the back seat with

Bud who sat up stiff as a poker.

The big wind that had come up drove grit in their faces.

-257-

After she caught sight of the brick buildings of the high-

school and the crowd and the light dresses and the stands

and the big flag with the stripes all wiggling against the

sky she got so excited she never remembered anything that

happened.

That night, wearing her first evening dress at the dance

she came to in the feeling of tulle and powder and crowds,

boys all stiff and scared in their dark coats, girls pack-

ing into the dressing room to look at each other's dresses.

She never said a word while she was dancing, just smiled

and held her head a little to one side and hoped some-

body would cut in. Half the time she didn't know who

she was dancing with, just moved smiling in a cloud of

pink tulle and colored lights; boys' faces bobbed in front

of her, tried to say smarty ladykillerish things or else were

shy and tonguetied, different colored faces on top of the

same stiff bodies. Honestly she was surprised when Susan

Gillespie came up to her when they were getting their

wraps to go home and giggled, "My dear, you were the

belle of the ball." When Bud and Buster said so next

morning and old black Emma who'd'brought them all up

after mother died came in from the kitchen and said,

"Lawsy, Miss Annie, folks is talkin' all over town about

how you was the belle of the ball last night," she felt her-

self blushing happily all over. Emma said she'd heard-it

from, that noaccount yaller man on the milk route whose

aunt worked at Mrs. Washburn's, then she set down the

popovers and went out with a grin as wide as a piano.

"Well, Daughter," said Dad in his deep quiet voice, tap-

ping the top of her hand, "I thought so myself but I

thought maybe I was prejudiced."

During the summer Joe Washburn, who'd just gradu-

ated from law school at Austin and who was going into

Dad's office in the fall, came and spent two weeks with

them on the ranch. Daughter was just horrid to him, made

old Hildreth give him a mean little old oneeyed pony to

-258-

ride, put homed toads in his cot, would hand him hot

chile sauce instead of catsup at table or try to get him to

put salt instead of sugar in his coffee. The boys got so off

her they wouldn't speak to her and Dad said she was get-

ting to be a regular tomboy, but she couldn't seem to stop

acting like she did.

Then one day they all rode over to eat supper on Clear

Creek and went swimming by moonlight in the deep

hole there was under the bluff. Daughter got a crazy

streak in her after a while and ran up and said she was

going to dive from the edge of the bluff. The water looked

so good and the moon floated shivering on top. They all

yelled at her not to do it but she made a dandy dive right

from the edge. But something was the matter. She'd hit

her head, it hurt terribly. She was swallowing water, she

was fighting a great weight that was pressing down on her,

that was Joe. The moonlight flowed out in a swirl leaving

it all black, only she had her arms around Joe's neck, her

fingers were tightening around the ribbed muscles of his

arms. She came to with his face looking into hers and the

moon up in the sky again and warm stuff pouring over her

forehead. She was trying to say, "Joe, I wanto, Joe, I

wanto," but it all drained away into warm sticky black

again, only she caught his voice deep, deep . . . "pretty

near had me drowned too . . ." and Dad sharp and angry

like in court, "I told her she oughtn't to dive off there."

She came to herself again in bed with her head hurting

horribly and Dr. Winslow there, and the first thing she

thought was where was Joe and had she acted like a little

silly telling him she was crazy about him? But nobody said

anything about it and they were all awful nice to her ex-

cept that Dad came, still talking with his angry courtroom

voice, and lectured her for being foolhardy and a tomboy

and having almost cost Joe his life by the stranglehold she

had on him when they'd pulled them both out of the

water. She had a fractured skull and had 'to be in bed all

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summer and Joe was awful nice though he looked at her

kinder funny out of his sharp black eyes the first time he

came in her room. As long as he stayed on the ranch he

came to read to her after lunch. He read her all of Lorna

Doone and half of Nicholas Nickleby and she lay there in

bed, hot and cosy in her fever, feeling the rumble of his

deep voice through the pain in her head and fighting all

the time inside not to cry out like a little silly that she was

crazy about him and why didn't he like her just a little bit.

When he'd gone it wasn't any fun being sick any more.

Dad or Bud came and read to her sometimes but most of

the time she liked better reading to herself. She read all

of Dickens, Lorna Doone twice, and Poole The Harbor;

that made her want to go to New York.

Next fall Dad took her north for a year in a finishing

school in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She was excited on the

trip up on the train and loved every minute of it, but Miss

Tynge's was horrid and the girls were all northern girls

and so mean and made fun of her clothes and talked about

nothing but Newport, and Southampton, and matinée idols

she'd never seen; she hated it. She cried every night,after

she'd gone to bed thinking how she hated the school and

how Joe Washburn would never like her now. When

Christmas vacation came and she had to stay on with the

two Miss Tynges and some of the teachers who lived too

far away to go home either, she just decided she wouldn't

stand it any longer and one morning before anybody was

up she got out of the house, walked down to the station,

bought herself a ticket to Washington, and got on the first

westbound train with nothing but a toothbrush and a night-

gown in her handbag. She was scared all alone on the train

at first but such a nice young Virginian who was a West

Point Cadet got on at Havre de Grace where she had to

change; they had the time of their lives together laughing

and talking. In Washington he asked permission to be her

escort in the nicest way and took her all around, to see the

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Capitol and the White House and the Smithsonian Insti-

tute and set her up to lunch at the New Willard and put

her on the train for St. Louis that night. His name was

Paul English. She promised she'd write him every day

of her life. She was so excited she couldn't sleep lying in

her berth looking out of the window of the pullman at the

trees and the circling hills all in the faint glow of snow

and now and then lights speeding by; she could remember

exactly how he looked and how his hair was parted and

the long confident grip of his hand when they said goodby.

She'd been a little nervous at first, but they'd been like old

friends right from the beginning and held been so cour-

teous and gentlemanly. He'd been her first pickup.

When she walked in on Dad and the boys at breakfast

a sunny winter morning two days later, my, weren't they

surprised; Dad tried to scold her, but Daughter could see

that he was as pleased as she was. Anyway, she didn't care,

it was so good to be home.

After Christmas she and Dad and the boys went for a

week's hunting down near Corpus Christi and had the time

of their lives and Daughter shot her first deer. When they

got back to Dallas Daughter said she wasn't going back to

be finished but that what she would like to do was go up

to New York to stay with Ada Washburn, who was study-

ing at Columbia, and to take courses where she'd really

learn something. Ada was Joe Washburn's sister, an old

maid but bright as a dollar and was working for her Ph.D

in Education. It took a lot of arguing because Dad had set

his heart on having Daughter go to a finishing school but

she finally convinced him and was off again to New York.

She was reading Les Misérables all the way up on the

train and looking out at the greyishbrownish winter land-

scape that didn't seem to have any life to it after she left

the broad hills of Texas, pale green with winter wheat and

alfalfa, feeling more and more excited and scared as hour

by hour she got nearer New York. There was a stout

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motherly woman who'd lost her husband who got on the

train at Little Rock and wouldn't stop talking about the

dangers and pitfalls that beset a young woman's path in

big cities. She kept such a strict watch on Daughter that

she never got a chance to talk to the interesting looking

young man with the intense black eyes who boarded the

train at St. Louis and kept going over papers of some kind

he had in a brown briefcase. She thought he looked a little

like Joe Washburn. At last when they were crossing New

Jersey and there got to be more and more factories and

grimy industrial towns, Daughter's heart got to beating so

fast she couldn't sit still but kept having to go out and

stamp around in the cold raw air of the vestibule. The fat

greyheaded conductor asked her with a teasing laugh if

her beau was going to be down at the station to meet her,

she seemed so anxious to get in. They were going through

Newark then. Only one more stop. The sky was lead color

over wet streets full of automobiles and a drizzly rain was

pitting the patches of snow with grey. The train began to

cross wide desolate saltmarshes, here and there broken by

an uneven group of factory structures or a black river with

steamboats on it. There didn't seem to be any people; it

looked so cold over those marshes Daughter felt scared

and lonely just looking at them and wished she was home.

Then suddenly the train was in a tunnel, and the porter

was piling all the bags in the front end of the car. She got

into the fur coat Dad had bought her as a Christmas pres-

ent and pulled her gloves on over her hands cold with

excitement for fear that maybe Ada Washburn hadn't got-

ten her telegram or hadn't been able to come down to meet

her.

But there she was on the platform in noseglasses and

raincoat looking as oldmaidish as ever and a slightly

younger girl with her who turned out to be from Waco

and studying art. They had a long ride in a taxi up crowded

streets full of slush with yellow and grey snowpiles along

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the sidewalks. "If, you'd have been here a week ago, Anne

Elizabeth, I declare you'd have seen a real blizzard."

"I used to think snow was like on Christmas cards," said

Esther Wilson who was an interestinglooking girl with

black eyes and a long face and a deep kind of tragicsound-

ing voice. "But it was just an illusion like a lot of things."

" New York's no place for illusions," said Ada sharply. "It

all looks kinder like a illusion to me," said Daughter, look-

ing out of the window of the taxicab.

Ada and Esther had a lovely big apartment on Univer-

sity Heights where they had fixed up the dining room as

a bedroom for Daughter. She didn't like New York but it

was exciting; everything was grey and grimy and the

people all seemed to be foreigners and nobody paid any

attention to you except now and then a man tried to pick

you up on the street or brushed up against you in the sub-

way which was disgusting. She was signed up as a special

student and went to lectures about Economics and English

Literature and Art and talked a little occasionally with

some boy who happened to be sitting next to her, but she

was so much younger than anybody she met and she didn't

seem to have the right line of talk to interest them. It was

fun going to matinées with Ada sometimes or riding down

all bundled up on top of the bus to go to the art-museum

with Esther on Sunday afternoons, but they were both of

them so staid and grown up and all the time getting

shocked by things she said and did.

hen Paul English called up and asked her to go to a

matiné with him one Saturday, she was very thrilled.

They'd written a few letters back and forth but they hadn't

seen each other since Washington. She was all morning

putting on first one dress and then the other, trying out

different ways of doing her hair and was still taking a hot

bath when he called for her so that Ada had to entertain

him for the longest time. When she saw him all her thrill

dribbled away, he looked so stiff and stuckup in his dress

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uniform. First thing she knew she was kidding him, and

acting silly going downtown in the subway so that by the

time they got to the Astor where he took her to lunch, he

looked sore as a pup. She left him at the table and went

to the ladies' room to see if she couldn't get her hair to look

a little better than it did and got to talking with an elderly

Jewish lady in diamonds who'd lost her pocketbook, and

when she got back the lunch was standing cold on the

table and Paul English was looking at his wristwatch un-

easily. She didn't like the play and he tried to get fresh in

the taxicab driving up Riverside Drive although it was still

broad daylight, and she slapped his face. He said she was

the meanest girl he'd ever met and she said she liked

being mean and if he didn't like it he knew what he could

do. Before that she'd made up her mind that she'd crossed

him off her list.

She went in her room and cried and wouldn't take any

supper. She felt real miserable having Paul English turn

out a pill like that. It was lonely not having anybody to

take her out and no chance of meeting anybody because she

had to go everywhere with those old maids. She lay on

her back on the floor looking at the furniture from under-

neath like when she'd been little and thinking of , Joe

Washburn. Ada came in and found her in the silliest posi-

tion lying on the floor with her legs in the air; she jumped

up and kissed her all over her face and hugged her and

said she'd been a little idiot but it was all over now and

was there anything to eat in the icebox.

When she met Edwin Vinal at one of Ada's Sunday eve-

ning parties that she didn't usually come out to on account

of people sitting around so prim and talking so solemn and

deep over their cocoa and cupcakes, it made everything dif-

ferent and she began to like New York. He was a scrawny

kind of young fellow who was taking courses in sociology.

He sat on a stiff chair with his cocoacup balanced uncom-

fortably in his hand and didn't seem to know where to put

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his legs. He didn't say anything all evening but just as he

was going, he picked up something Ada said about values

and began to talk a blue streak, quoting all the time from

a man named Veblen. Daughter felt kind of attracted to

him and asked who Veblen was, and he began to talk to

her. She wasn't up on what he was talking about but it

made her feel lively inside to have him talking right to her

like that. He had light hair and black eyebrows and lashes

around very pale grey eyes with little gold specks in them.

She liked his awkward lanky way of moving around. Next

evening he came to see her and brought her a volume of

the Theory of the Leisure Class and asked her if she didn't

want to go skating with him at the St. Nicholas rink. She

went in her room to get ready and began to dawdle around

powdering her face and looking at herself in the glass.

"Hey, Anne, for gosh sakes, we haven't got all night," he

yelled through the door. She had never had iceskates on

her feet before, but she knew how to rollerskate, so with

Edwin holding her arm she was able to get around the big

hall with its band playing and all the tiers of lights and

faces around the balcony. She had more fun than she'd had

any time since she left home.

Edwin Vinal had been a social worker and lived in a

settlement house and now he had a scholarship at Columbia

but he said the profs were too theoretical and never seemed

to realize it was real people like you and me they were

dealing with. Daughter had done churchwork and taken

around baskets to poorwhite families at Christmas time and

said she'd like to do some socialservicework right here in

New York. As they were taking off their skates he asked

her if she really meant it and she smiled up at him and

said, "Hope I may die if I don't."

So the next evening he took her downtown threequar-

ters of an hour's ride in the subway and then a long stretch

on a crosstown car to a settlement house on Grand Street

where she had to wait while he gave an English lesson to

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a class of greasylooking young Lithuanians or Polaks or

something like that. Then they walked around the streets

and Edwin pointed out the conditions. It was like the Mex-

ican part of San Antonio or Houston only there were all

kinds of foreigners. None of them looked as if they ever

bathed and the streets smelt of garbage. There was laun-

dry hanging out everywhere and signs in all kinds of funny

languages. Edwin showed her some in Russian and Yid-

dish, one in Armenian and two in Arabic. The streets were

awful crowded and there were pushcarts along the curb

and peddlers everywhere and funny smells of cooking

coming out of restaurants, and outlandish phonograph

music. Edwin pointed out two tiredlooking painted girls

who he said were streetwalkers, drunks stumbling out of

a saloon, a young man in a checked cap he said was a cadet

drumming up trade for a disorderly house, some sallow-

faced boys he said were gunmen and dope peddlers. It was

a relief when they came up again out of the subway way

uptown where a springy wind was blowing down the broad

empty streets that smelt of the Hudson River. "Well,

Anne, how did you like your little trip to the underworld?"

"Allright," she said after a pause. "Another time I think

I'll take a gun in my handbag. . . . But all those people,

Edwin, how on earth can you make citizens out of them?

We oughtn't to let all these foreigners come over and mess

up our country."

"You're entirely wrong," Edwin snapped at her.

"They'd all be decent if they had a chance. We'd be just

like them if we hadn't been lucky enough to be born of

decent families in small prosperous American towns."

"Oh, how can you talk so silly, Edwin, they're not white

people and they never will be. They're just like Mexicans

or somethin', or niggers." She caught herself up and swal-,

lowed the last word. The colored elevator boy was drows-

ing on a bench right behind her.

If you're not the benightedest little heathen I ever

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saw," said Edwin teasingly. "You're a Christian, aren'

you, well, have you ever thought that Christ was a Jew?"

"Well, I'm fallin' down with sleep and can't argue with

you but I know you're wrong." She went into the elevator

and the colored elevator boy got up yawning and stretch:'

ing. The last she saw of Edwin in the rapidly decreasing

patch of light between the floor of the elevator and the

ceiling of the vestibule he was shaking his fist at her. She

threw him a kiss without meaning to.

When she got in the apartment, Ada, who was reading

in the livingroom, scolded her a little for being so late,

but she pleaded that she was too tired and sleepy to be

scolded. "What do you think of Edwin Vinal, Ada?"

"Why, my dear, I think he's a splendid young fellow, a

little restless maybe, but he'll settle down. . . . Why?"

"Oh, I dunno," said Daughter, yawning, "Good night,

Ada darlin'."

he took a hot bath and put a lot of perfume on and

went to bed, but she couldn't go to sleep. Her legs ached

from the greasy pavements and she could feel the walls

of the tenements sweating lust and filth and the smell of

crowded bodies closing in on her, in spite of the perfume

she still had the rank garbagy smell in her nose, and the

dazzle of street lights and faces pricked her eyes. When

she went to sleep she dreamed she had rouged her lips and

was walking up and down, up and down with a gun in her

handbag; Joe Washburn walked by and she kept catching

at his arm to try to make him stop but he kept walking by

without looking at her and so did Dad and they wouldn't

look when a big Jew with a beard kept getting closer to

her and he smelt horrid of the East Side and garlic and

waterclosets and she tried to get the gun out of her bag

to shoot him and he had his arms around her and was pull-

ing her face close to his. She couldn't get the gun out of

the handbag and behind the roaring clatter of the subway

in her ears was Edwin Vinal's voice saying, "You're a

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Christian, aren't you? You're entirely wrong . . . a Chris-

tian, aren't you? Have you ever thought that Christ would

have been just like them if he hadn't been lucky enough

to have been born of decent people . . . a Christian, aren't

you. . . ."

Ada, standing over her in a nightgown, woke her up,

"What can be the matter, child?" "I was having a night-

mare . . . isn't that silly?" said Daughter and sat bolt-

upright in bed. "Did I yell bloody murder?" "I bet you

children were out eating Welsh Rabbit, that's why you

were so late," said Ada, and went back to her room

laughing.

That spring Daughter coached a girls' basketball team

at a Y.W.C.A. in the Bronx, and got engaged to Edwin

Vinal. She told him she didn't want to marry anybody for

a couple of years yet, and he said he didn't care about car-

nal marriage but that the important thing was for them to

plan a life of service together. Sunday evenings, when the

weather got good, they would go and cook a steak together

in Palisades Park and sit there looking through the trees

at the lights coming on in the great toothed rockrim of the

city and talk about what was good and evil and what real

love was. Coming back they'd stand hand in hand in the

bow of the ferry boat among the crowd of boyscouts and

hikers and picnickers and look at the great sweep of

lighted buildings fading away into the ruddy haze down

the North River and talk about all the terrible conditions

in the city. Edwin would kiss her on the forehead when

he said Goodnight and she'd go up in the elevator feeling

that the kiss was a dedication.

At the end of June she went home to spend three months

on the ranch, but she was very unhappy there that summer.

Somehow she couldn't get around to telling Dad about her

engagement. When Joe Washburn came out to spend a

week the boys made her furious teasing her about him and

telling her that he was engaged to a girl in Oklahoma City,

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and she got so mad she wouldn't speak to them and was

barely civil to Joe. She insisted on riding a mean little

pinto that bucked and threw her once or twice. She drove

the car right through a gate one night and busted both

lamps to smithereens. When Dad scolded her about her

recklessness she'd tell him he oughtn't to care because she

was going back east to earn her own living and he'd be rid

of her. Joe Washburn treated her with the same grave

kindness as always, and sometimes when she was acting

crazy she'd catch a funny understanding kidding gleam in

his keen eyes that would make her feel suddenly all weak

and silly inside. The night before he left the boys cornered

a rattler on the rockpile behind the corral and Daughter

dared Joe to pick it up and snap its head off. Joe ran for

a forked stick and caught the snake with a jab behind the

head and threw it with all his might against the wall of

the little smokehouse. As it lay wriggling on the grass

with a broken back Bud took its head off with a hoe. It

had six rattles and a button. "Daughter," Joe drawled,

looking her in the face with his steady smiling stare,

"sometimes you talk like you didn't have good sense."

"You're yaller, that's what's the matter with you," she

said.

"Daughter, you're crazy . . . you apologize to Joe,"

yelled Bud, running up red in the face with the dead snake

in his hand. She turned and went into the ranchhouse and

threw herself on her bed. She didn't come out of her room.

till after Joe had left in the morning.

The week before she left to go back to Columbia she

was good as gold and tried to make it up to Dad and the

boys by baking cakes for them and attending to the house-

keeping for having acted so mean and crazy all summer.

She met Ada in Dallas and they engaged a section to-

gether. She'd been hoping that Joe would come down to

the station to see them off, but he was in Oklahoma City

on oil business. On her way north she wrote him a long

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letter saying she didn't know what had gotten into her that

day with the rattler and wouldn't he please forgive her.

Daughter worked hard that autumn. She'd gotten her-

self admitted to the School of Journalism, in spite of Ed-

win's disapproval. He wanted her to study to be a teacher

or social worker, but she said journalism offered more op-

portunity. They more or less broke off over it; although

they saw each other a good deal, they didn't talk so much

about being engaged. There was a boy named Webb Cruth-

ers studying journalism that Daughter got to be good

friends with although Ada said he was no good and

wouldn't let her bring him to the house. He was shorter

than she, had dark hair and looked about fifteen although

he said he was twentyone. He had a creamy white skin

that made people call him Babyface, and a funny confiden-

tial way of talking as if he didn't take what he was saying

altogether seriously himself. He said he was an anarchist

and talked all the time about politics and the war. He used

to take her down to the East Side, too, but it was more fun

than going with Edwin. Webb always wanted to go in

somewhere to get a drink and talk to people. He took her

to saloons and to Roumanian rathskellers and Arabian res-

taurants and more places than she'd ever imagined. He

knew everybody everywhere and seemed to manage to

make people trust him for the check, because he hardly

ever had any money, and when they'd spent whatever she

-had with her Webb would have to charge the rest. Daugh-

ter didn't drink more than an occasional glass of wine, and

if he began to get too obstreperous, she'd make him take

her to the nearest subway and go on home. Then next day

he'd be a little weak and trembly and tell her about his

hangover and funny stories about adventures held had

when he was tight. He always had pamphlets in his pock-

ets about socialism and syndicalism and copies of Mother

Earth or The Masses.

After Christmas Webb got all wrapped up in a strike of

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textile workers that was going on in a town over in New

Jersey. One Sunday they went over to see what it was like.

They got off the train at a grimy brick station in the mid-

dle of the empty business section, a few people standing

around in front of lunchcounters, empty stores closed for

Sunday; there seemed nothing special about the town until

they walked out to the long low square brick buildings of

the mills. There were knots of policemen in blue standing

about in the wide muddy roadway outside and inside the

wiremesh gates huskylooking young men in khaki. "Those

are special deputies, the sons of bitches," muttered Webb

between his teeth. They went to Strike Headquarters to see

a girl Webb knew who was doing publicity for them. At

the head of a grimy stairway crowded with greyfaced for-

eign men and women in faded greylooking clothes, they

found an office noisy with talk and click of typewriters. The

hallway was piled with stacks of handbills that a tiredlook-

ing young man was giving out in packages to boys in

ragged sweaters. Webb found Sylvia Dalhart, a longnosed

girl with glasses who was typing madly at a desk piled

with newspapers and clippings. She waved a hand and said,

"Webb, wait for me outside. I'm going to show some news-

paper guys around and you'd better come."

Out in the hall they ran into a fellow Webb knew, Ben

Compton, a tall young man with a long thin nose and red-

rimmed eyes, who said he was going to speak at the meet-

ing and asked Webb if he wouldn't speak. "Jeez, what

could I say to those fellers? I'm just a bum of a college

stoodjent, like you, Ben." "Tell 'em the workers have got

to win the world, tell 'em this fight is part of a great his-

toric battle. Talking's the easiest part of the movement.

The truth's simple enough." He had an explosive way of

talking with a pause between each sentence, as if the sen-

tence took sometime to come up from someplace way down

inside. Daughter sized up that he was attractive, even

though he was probably a Jew. "Well, IT try to stammer

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out something about democracy in industry," said Webb.

Sylvia Dalhart was already pushing them down the

stairs. She had with her a pale young man in a raincoat

and black felt hat who was chewing the. end of a half of

a cigar that had gone out. "Fellowworkers, this is Joe Big-

low from the Globe, "she had a western burr in her voice

that made Daughter feel at home. "We're going to show

him around."

They went all over town, to strikers' houses where tired-

looking women in sweaters out at the elbows were cooking

up lean Sunday dinners of corned beef and cabbage or

stewed meat and potatoes, or in some houses they just had

cabbage and bread or just potatoes. Then they went to a

lunchroom near the station and ate some lunch. Daughter

paid the check as nobody seemed to have any money, and

it was time to go to the meeting.

The trolleycar was crowded with strikers and their wives

and children. The meeting was to be held in the next town

because in that town the Mills owned everything and there

was no way of hiring a hall. It had started to sleet, and

they got their feet wet wading through the slush to the

mean frame building where the meeting was going to be

held. When they got to the door there were mounted po-

lice out in front. "Hall full," a cop told them at the street-

corner, "no more allowed inside."

They stood around in the sleet waiting for somebody

with authority. There were thousands of strikers, men and

women and boys and girls, the older people talking among

themselves in low voices in foreign languages. Webb kept

saying, "Jesus, this is outrageous. Somebody ought to do

something." Daughter's feet were cold and she wanted to

go home.

Then Ben Compton came around from the back of the

building. People began to gather around him, "There's

Ben . . . there's Compton, good boy, Benny," she heard

people saying. Young men moved around through the

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crowd whispering, "Overflow meeting . . . stand your

ground, folks."

He began to speak hanging by one arm from a lamp-

post. "Comrades, this is another insult flung in the face of

the working class. There are not more than forty people in

the hall and they close the doors and tell us it's full . . ."

The crowd began swaying back and forth, hats, umbrellas

bobbing in the sleety rain. Then she saw the two cops were

dragging Compton off and heard the jangle of the patrol-

wagon. "Shame, shame," people yelled. They began to

back off from the cops; the flow was away from the hall.

People were moving quietly and dejectedly down the street

toward the trolley tracks with the cordon of mounted po-

lice pressing them on. Suddenly Webb whispered in her

ear, "Let me lean on your shoulder," and jumped on a

hydrant.

"This is outrageous," he shouted, "you people had a per-

mit to use the hall and had hired it and no power on earth

has a right to keep you out of it. To hell with the cossacks."

Two mounted police were loping towards him, opening

a lane through the crowd as they came. Webb was off the

hydrant and had grabbed Daughter's hand, "Let's run like

hell," he whispered and was off doubling back and forth

among the scurrying people. She followed him laughing

and out of breath. A trolley car was coming down the main

street. Webb caught it on the move but she couldn't make

it and had to wait for the next. Meanwhile the cops were

riding slowly back and forth among the crowd breaking

it up.

Daughter's feet ached from paddling in slush all after-

noon and she was thinking that she ought to get home be-

fore she caught her death of cold. At the station waiting

for the train she saw Webb. He looked scared to death.

He'd pulled his cap down over his eyes and his muffler up

over his ch0000nd pretended not to know Daughter when

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she went up to him. Once they got on the overheated train

he sneaked up the aisle and sat down next to her.

"I was afraid some dick ud recognize me at the station,"

he whispered. "Well, what do you think of it?"

"I thought it was terrible . . . they're all so yaller

. . . the only people looked good to me were those boys

guardin' the mills, they looked like white men. . . . And

as for you, Webb Cruthers, you ran like a deer."

"Don't talk so loud. . . . Do you think I ought to have

waited and gotten arrested like Ben."

"Of course it's none of my business."

"You don't understand revolutionary tactics, Anne.'

Going over on the ferry they were both of them cold

and hungry. Webb said he had the key to a room a friend

of his had down on Eighth Street and that they'd better

go there and warm their feet and make some tea before

they went uptown. They had a long sullen walk, neither of

them saying anything, from the ferry landing to the house.

The room, that smelt of turpentine and was untidy, turned

out to be a big studio heated by a gasburner. It was cold

as Greenland, so they wrapped themselves in blankets and

took off their shoes and stockings and toasted their feet in

front of the gas. Daughter took her skirt off under the

blanket and hung it up over the heater. "Well, I declare,"

she said, "if your friend comes in we sure will be compro-

mised."

"He won't," said Webb, "he's up at Cold Spring for

the weekend." Webb was moving around in his bare feet,

putting on water to boil and making toast. "You'd better

take your trousers off, Webb, I can see the water dripping

off them from here." Webb blushed and pulled them off,

draping the blanket around himself like a Roman senator.

For a long time they didn't say anything and all they

could hear above the distant hum of traffic was the hiss of

the gasflame and the intermittent purr of the kettle just

beginning to boil. Then Webb suddenly began to talk in

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a nervous spluttering way. "So you think I'm yellow, do

you? Well, you may be right, Anne . . . not that I give

a damn . . . I mean, you see, there's times when a fellow

ought to be a coward and times when he ought to do the

he-man stuff. Now don't talk for a minute, let me say

something. . . . I'm hellishly attracted to you . . . and

it's been yellow of me not to tell you about it before, see?

I don't believe in love or anything like that, all bourgeois

nonsensei but I think when people are attracted to each

other I think it's yellow of them not to . . . you know

what I mean."

"No, I doan', Webb," said Daughter after a pause.

Webb looked at her in a puzzled way as he brought her

a cup of tea and some buttered toast with a piece of cheese

on it. They ate in silence for a while; it was so quiet they

could hear each other gulping little swallows of tea. "Now,

what in Jesus Christ's name did you mean by that?" Webb

suddenly shouted out.

Daughter felt warm and drowsy in her blanket, with the

hot tea in her and the dry gasheat licking the soles of her

feet. "Well, what does anybody mean by anything," she

mumbled dreamily.

Webb put down his teacup and began to walk up and

down the room trailing the blanket after him. "S -- t," he

suddenly said, as he stepped on a thumbtack. He stood on

one leg looking at the sole of his foot that was black from

the grime of the floor. "But, Jesus Christ, Anne . . . peo-

ple ought to be free and happy about sex . . . come ahead

let's." His cheeks were pink and his black hair that needed

cutting was every which way. He kept on standing on one

leg and looking at the sole of his foot. Daughter began to

laugh. "You look awful funny like that, Webb." She felt

a warm glow all over her. "Give me another cup of tea

and make me some more toast."

After she'd had the tea and toast she said, "Well isn't

it about time we ought to be going uptown?" "But Christ,

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Anne, I'm making indecent proposals to you," he said

shrilly, half laughing and half in tears. "For God's sake

pay attention . . . Damn it, I'll make you pay attention,

you little bitch." He dropped his blanket and ran at her.

She could see he was fighting mad. He pulled her up out

of her chair and kissed her on the mouth. She had quite a

tussle with him, as he was wiry and strong, but she man-

aged to get her forearm under his chin and to push his

face away far enough to give him a punch on the nose.

His nose began to bleed. "Don't be silly, Webb," she said,

breathing hard, "I don't want that sort of thing, not yet,

anyway . . . go and wash your face."

He went to the sink and began dabbling his face with

water. Daughter hurried into her skirt and shoes and stock-

ings and went over to the sink where he was washing his

face, "That was mean of me, Webb, I'm terribly sorry.

There's something always makes me be mean to people I

like." Webb wouldn't say anything for a long time. His

nose was still bleeding.

"Go along home," he said, "I'm going to stay here. . . .

It's all right . . . my mistake."

She put on her dripping raincoat and went out into the

shiny evening streets. All the way home on the express in

the subway she was feeling warm and tender towards

Webb, like towards Dad or the boys.

She didn't see him for several days, then one evening

he called and asked her if she wanted to go out on the

picket line next morning. It was still dark when she met

him at the ferry station. They were both cold and sleepy

and didn't say much going out on the train. From the train

they had to run through the slippery streets to get to the

mills in time to join the picket line. Faces looked cold and

pinched in the blue early light. Women had shawls over

their heads, few of the men or boys had overcoats. The

young girls were all shivering in their cheap fancy topcoats

that had no warmth to them. The cops had already begun

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to break up the head of the line. Some of the strikers were

singing Solidarity Forever, others were yelling Scabs, Scabs

and making funny long jeering hoots. Daughter was con-

fused and excited.

Suddenly everybody around her broke and ran and left

her in a stretch of empty street in front of the wire fencing

of the mills. Ten feet in front of her a young woman

slipped and fell. Daughter caught the scared look in her

eyes that were round and black. Daughter stepped for-

ward to help her up but two policemen were ahead of her

swinging their nightsticks. Daughter thought they were

going to help the girl up. She stood still for a second,

frozen in her tracks when she saw one of the policemen's

feet shoot out. He'd kicked the girl full in the face. Daugh-

ter never remembered what happened except that she was

wanting a gun and punching into the policeman's big red

face and against the buttons and the thick heavy cloth of

his overcoat. Something crashed down on her head from

behind; dizzy and sick she was being pushed into the po-

licewagon. In front of her was the girl's face all caved in

and bleeding. In the darkness inside were other men and

women cursing and laughing. But Daughter and the

woman opposite looked at each other dazedly and said

nothing. Then the door closed behind them and they were

in the dark.

When they were committed she was charged with riot-

ing, felonious assault, obstructing an officer and inciting to

sedition. It wasn't so bad in the county jail. The women's

section was crowded with strikers, all the cells were full of

girls laughing and talking, singing songs and telling each

other how they'd been arrested, how long they'd been in,

how they were going to win the strike. In Daughter's cell

the girls all clustered around her and wanted to know how

she'd gotten there. She began to feel she was quite a hero.

Towards evening her name was called and she found Webb

and Ada and a lawyer clustered around the policesergeant's

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desk. Ada was mad, "Read that, young woman, and see

how that'll sound back home," she said, poking an after-

noon paper under her nose.

TEXAS BELLE ASSAULTS Cop said one headline. Then

followed an account of her knocking down a policeman

with a left on the jaw. She was released on a thousand dol-

lars bail; outside the jail, Ben Compton broke away from

the group of reporters around him and rushed up to her.

"Congratulations, Miss Trent," he said, "that was a darn

nervy thing to do . . . made a very good impression in

the press." Sylvia Dalhart was with him. She threw her

arms around her and kissed her: "That was a mighty

spunky thing to do. Say, we're sending a delegation to

Washington to see President Wilson and present a peti-

tion and we want you on it. The President will refuse to

see the delegation and you'll have a chance to picket the

White House and get arrested again."

"Well, I declare," said Ada when they were safely on

the train for New York. "I think you've lost your mind."

"You'd have done the same thing, Ada darlin', if you'd

seen what I saw . . . when I tell Dad and the boys about

it they'll see red. It's the most outrageous thing I ever

heard of." Then she burst out crying.

When they got back to Ada's apartment they found a

telegram from Dad saying Coming at once. Make no state-

ment until I arrive. Late that night another telegram

came; it read: Dad seriously ill come on home at once

have Ada retain best lawyer obtainable. In the morning

Daughter scared and trembling was on the first train

south. At St. Louis she got a telegram saying Don't worry

condition fair double pneumonia. Upset as she was it cer-

tainly did her good to see the wide Texas country, the

spring crops beginning, a few bluebonnets in bloom. Buster

was there to meet her at the depot, "Well, Daughter," he

said after he had taken her bag, "you've almost killed

Dad."

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Buster was sixteen and captain of the highschool ball

team. Driving her up to the house in the new Stutz he

told her how things were. Bud had been tearing things

up at the University and was on the edge of getting fired

and had gotten balled up with a girl in Galveston who was

trying to blackmail him. Dad had been very much worried

because he'd gotten in too deep in the oil game and seeing

Daughter spread all over the front page for knocking down

a cop had about finished him; old Emma was getting too

old to run the house for them anymore and it was up to

Daughter to give up her crazy ideas and stay home and

keep house for them. "See this car? A dandy ain't it. . . .

I bought it myself. . . . Did a little tradin' in options up

near Amarillo on my own, jus' for the hell of it, and I

made five thousand bucks." "Why, you smart kid. I tell

you, Bud, it's good to be home. But about that policeman

you'd have done the same yourself or you're not my

brother. I'll tell you all about it sometime. Believe me it

does me good to see Texas faces after those mean weasel-

faced Easterners." Dr. Winslow was in the hall when they

came in. He shook hands warmly and told her how well

she was looking and not to worry because he'd pull her

Dad through if it was the last thing he did on earth. The

sickroom and Dad's restless flushed face made her feel

awful, and she didn't like finding a trained nurse running

the house.

After Dad began to get around a little they both went

down to Port Arthur for a couple of weeks for a change to

stay with an old friend of Dad's. Dad said he'd give her

a car if she'd stay on, and that he'd get her out of this silly

mess she'd gotten into up north.

She began to play a lot of tennis and golf again and

to go out a good deal socially. Joe Washburn had married

and was living in Oklahoma getting rich on oil. She felt

easier in Dallas when he wasn't there; seeing him upset

her so. The next fall Daughter went down to Austin to

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finish her journalism course, mostly because she thought

her being there would keep Bud in the straight and nar-

row. Friday afternoons they drove back home together in

her Buick sedan for the weekend. Dad had bought a new

Tudor style house way out and all her spare time was

taken up picking out furniture and hanging curtains and

arranging the rooms. She had a great many beaux always

coming around to take her out and had to start keeping an

engagement book. Especially after the declaration of war

social life became very hectic. She was going every minute

and never got any sleep. Everybody was getting commis-

sions or leaving for officers training camps. Daughter went

in for Red Cross work and organized a canteen, but that

wasn't enough and she kept applying to be sent abroad.

Bud went down to San Antonio to learn to fly and Buster,

who'd been in the militia, lied about his age and joined up

as a private and was sent to Jefferson Barracks. At the can-

teen she lived in a whirl and had one or two proposals of

marriage a week, but she always told them that she hadn't

any intention of being a war bride.

Then one morning a War Department telegram came.

Dad was in Austin on business so she opened it. Bud had

crashed, killed. First thing Daughter thought was how

hard it would hit Dad. The phone rang; it was a long

distance call from San Antonio, sounded like Joe Wash-

burn's voice. "Is that you, Joe?" she said weakly. "Daugh-

ter, I want to speak to your father," came his grave drawl.

"I know . . . O Joe."

"It was his first solo flight. He was a great boy. Nobody

seems to know how it happened. Must have been defect in

structure. I'll call Austin. I know where to get hold of him.

. . . I've got the number . . . see you soon, Daughter."

Joe rang off. Daughter went into her room and burrowed

face down into the bed that hadn't been made up. For a

minute she tried to imagine that she hadn't gotten up yet,

that she dreamed the phone ringing and Joe's voice. Then

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she thought of Bud so sharply it was as if he'd come into

the room, the way he laughed, the hard pressure of his

long thin hand over her hands when he'd suddenly

grabbed the wheel when they'd skidded going around a

corner into San Antonio the last time she'd driven him

down after a leave, the clean anxious lean look of his face

above the tight khaki collar of the uniform. Then she

heard Joe's voice again: Must have been some defect in

structure.

She went down and jumped into her car. At the filling-

station where she filled up with gas and oil the garageman

asked her how the boys liked it in the army. She couldn't

stop to tell him about it now. "Bully, they like it fine,"

she said, with a grin that hurt her like a slap in the face.

She wired Dad at his lawpartner's office that she was com-

ing and pulled out of town for Austin. The roads were in

bad shape, it made her feel better to feel the car plough

through the muddy ruts and the water spraying out in a

wave on either side when she went through a puddle at

fifty.

She averaged fortyfive all the way and got to Austin

before dark. Dad had already gone down to San Antonio

on the train. Dead tired, she started off. She had a blow-

out and it took her a long time to get it fixed; it was mid-

night before she drew up at the Menger. Automatically

she looked at herself in the little mirror before going in.

There were streaks of mud on her face and her eyes were

red.

In the lobby she found Dad and Joe Washburn sitting

side by side with burntout cigars in their mouths. Their

faces looked a little alike. Must have been the grey drawn

look that made them look alike. She kissed them both.

"Dad, you ought to go to bed," she said briskly. "You

look all in." "I suppose I might as well . . . There's

nothing left to do," he said.

"Wait for me, Joe, until I get Dad fixed up," she said

-281-

in a low voice as she passed him. She went up to the room

with Dad, got herself a room adjoining, ruffled his hair and

kissed him very gently and left him to go to bed.

When she got back down to the lobby Joe was sitting

in the same place with the same expression on his face. It

made her mad to see him like that.

Her sharp brisk voice surprised her. "Come outside a

minute, Joe, I want to walk around a little." The rain had

cleared the air. It was a transparent early summer night.

"Look here, Joe, who's responsible for the condition of

the planes? I've got to know." "Daughter, how funny you

talk . . . what you ought to do is get some sleep, you're

all overwrought." "Joe, you answer my question." "But

Daughter, don't you see nobody's responsible. The army's

a big institution. Mistakes are inevitable. There's a lot of

money being made by contractors of one kind or another.

Whatever you say aviation is in its infancy we all

knew the risks before we joined up."

"If Bud had been killed in France I wouldn't have felt

like this . . . but here . . . Joe, somebody's directly re-

sponsible for my brother's death. I want to go and talk to

him, that's all. I won't do anything silly. You all think I'm

a lunatic I know, but I'm thinking of all the other girls

who have brothers training to be aviators. The man who

inspected those planes is a traitor to his country and ought

to be shot down like a dog." "Look here, Daughter," Joe

said as he brought her back to the hotel, "we're fightin' a

war now. Individual lives don't matter, this isn't the time

for lettin' your personal feelin's get away with you or em-

barrassin' the authorities with criticism. When we've licked

the huns'll be plenty of time for gettin' the incompetents

and the crooks . . . that's how I feel about it."

"Well, good night, Joe . . . you be mighty careful

yourself. When do you expect to get your wings?" "Oh, in

a couple of weeks." "How's Gladys and Bunny?" "Oh,

they're all right," said Joe; a funny constraint came into

-282-

his voice and he blushed. "They're in Tulsa with Mrs.

Higgins."

She went to bed and lay there without moving, feeling

desperately quiet and cool; she was too tired to sleep.

When morning came she went around to the garage to get

her car. She felt in the pocket on the door to see if her

handbag was there that always had her little pearlhandled

revolver in it, and drove out to the aviation camp. At the

gate the sentry wouldn't let her by, so she sent a note to

Colonel Morrissey who was a friend of Dad's, saying that

she must see him at once. The corporal was very nice and

got her a chair in the little office at the gate and a few min-

utes later said he had Colonel Morrissey on the wire. She

started to talk to him but she couldn't think what to say.

The desk and the office and the corporal began swaying

giddily and she fainted.

She came to in a staffcar with Joe Washburn who was

taking her back to the hotel. He was patting her hand

saying, "That's all right, Daughter." She was clinging to

him and crying like a little tiny girl. They put her to bed

at the hotel and gave her bromides and the doctor wouldn't

let her get up until after the funeral was over.

She got a reputation for being a little crazy after that.

She stayed on in San Antonio. Everything was very gay

and tense. All day she worked in a canteen and evenings

she went out, supper and dancing, every night with a dif-

ferent aviation officer. Everybody had taken to drinking a

great deal. It was like when she used to go to highschool

dances, she felt herself moving in a brilliantly lighted daze

of suppers and lights and dancing and champagne and dif-

ferent colored faces and stiff identical bodies of men danc-

ing with her, only now she had a kidding line and let them

hug her and kiss her in taxicabs, in phonebooths, in people's

backyards.

One night she met Joe Washburn at a party Ida Olsen

was giving for some boys who were leaving for overseas.

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It was the first time she'd ever seen Joe drink. He wasn't

drunk but she could see that he'd been drinking a great

deal. They went and sat side by side on the back steps of

the kitchen in the dark. It was a clear hot night full of

dryflies with a hard hot wind rustling the dry twigs of the

trees. Suddenly she took Joe's hand: "Oh, Joe, this is

awful."

Joe began to talk about how unhappy he was with his

wife, how he was making big money through his oil leases

and didn't give a damn about it, how sick he was of the

army. They'd made him an instructor and wouldn't let

him go overseas and he was almost crazy out there in

camp. "Oh, Joe, I want to go overseas too. I'm leading

such a silly life here." "You have been actin' kinder wild,

Daughter, since Bud died," came Joe's soft deep drawling

voice. "Oh, Joe, I wisht I was dead," she said and put her

head on his knee and began to cry. "Don't cry, Daughter,

don't cry," he began to say, then suddenly he was kissing

her. His kisses were hard and crazy and made her go all

limp against him.

"I don't love anybody but you, Joe," she suddenly said

quietly. But he already had control of himself; "Daughter,

forgive me," he said in a quiet lawyer's voice, "I don't

know what I was thinking of, I must be crazy . . . this

war is making us all crazy . . . Good night . . . Say

. . . er . . . erase this all from the record, will you?"

That night she couldn't sleep a wink. At six in the morn-

ing she got into her car, filled up with gas and oil and

started for Dallas. It was a bright fall morning with blue

mist in the hollows. Dry cornstalks rustled on the long

hills red and yellow with fall. It was late when she got

home. Dad was sitting up reading the war news in pyjamas

and bathrobe. "Well, it won't be long now, Daughter," he

said. "The Hindenburg line is crumpling up. I knew our

boys could do it once they got started." Dad's face was

more lined and his hair whiter than she'd remembered it.

-284-

She heated up a can of Campbell's soup as she hadn't taken

any time to eat. They had a cosy little supper together and

read a funny letter of Buster's from Camp Merritt where

his outfit was waiting to go overseas. When she went to

bed in her own room it was like being a little girl again,

she'd always loved times when she got a chance to have a

cosy chat with Dad all alone; she went to sleep the minute

her head hit the pillow.

She stayed on in Dallas taking care of Dad; it was only

sometimes when she thought of Joe Washburn that she

felt she couldn't stand it another minute. The fake armi-

stice came and then the real armistice, everybody was crazy

for a week like a New Orleans mardigras. Daughter de-

cided that she was going to be an old maid and keep house

for Dad. Buster came home looking very Anned and full

of army slang. She started attending lectures at Southern

Methodist, doing church work, getting books out of the

circulating library, baking angelcake; when young girl-

friends of Buster's came to the house she acted as a chap-

eron.

Thanksgiving Joe Washburn and his wife came to din-

ner with them. Old Emma was sick so Daughter cooked

the turkey herself. It was only when they'd all sat down

to table, with the yellow candles lighted in the silver can-

dlesticks and the salted nuts set out in the little silver trays

and the decoration of pink and purple mapleleaves, that

she remembered Bud. She suddenly began to feel faint and

ran into her room. She lay face down on the bed listening

to their grave voices. Joe came to the door to see what was

the matter. She jumped up laughing, and almost scared

Joe to death by kissing him square on the mouth. "I'm all

right, Joe," she said. "How's yourself?"

Then she ran to the table and started cheering every-

body up, so that they all enjoyed their dinner. When they

were drinking their coffee in the other room she told them

that she'd signed up to go overseas for six months with the

-285-

Near East Relief, that had been recruiting at Southern

Methodist. Dad was furious and Buster said she ought to

stay home now the war was over, but Daughter said, others

had given their lives to save the world from the Germans

and that she certainly could give up six months to relief

work. When she said that they all thought of Bud and

were quiet.

It wasn't actually true that she'd signed up, but she did

the next morning and got around Miss Frazier, a returned

missionary from China who was arranging it, so that they

sent her up to New York that week, with orders to sail

immediately with the office in Rome as her first destina-

tion. She was so wildly excited all the time she was get-

ting her passport and having her uniform fitted, she hardly

noticed how glum Dad and Buster looked. She only had a

day in New York. When the boat backed out of the dock

with its siren screaming and started steaming down the

North River, she stood on the front deck with her hair

blowing in the wind, sniffing the funny steamboat harbor

overseas smell and feeling like a twoyearold.

NEWSREEL XXXII

GOLDEN VOICE OF CARUSO SWELLS IN

VICTORY SONG TO CROWDS ON STREETS

Oh Oh Oh, it's a lovely war

Oo wouldn't be a sodger, ay

from Pic Umbral to the north of the Stelvio it will follow

the crest of the Rhetian alps up to the sources of the Adige and

the Eisah passing thence by mounts Reschen and Brenner and

the heights of Oetz and Boaller; thence south crossing Mount

Toblach

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As soon as reveille has gone

We feel just as 'eavy as lead

But we never git up till the sergeant

Brings us a cup of tea in bed

HYPNOTIZED BY COMMON LAW WIFE

army casualties soar to 64,305 with 318 today; 11,760

have paid the supreme sacrifice in action and 6,193 are severely

wounded

Oh Oh Oh. it's a lovely war

Oo wouldn't be a sodger ay

Oh, it's a shayme to tayke the pay

in the villages in peasant houses the Americans are

treated as guests living in the best rooms and courteously

offered the best shining samovars or teaurns by the housewives

Le chef de gare il est cocu

in the largely populated districts a spectacular touch was

given the festivities by groups of aliens appearing in costume

and a carnival spirit prevailed

BRITISH SUPPRESS SOVIETS

Le chef de gare il est cocu

Qui est cocu? Le chef de gare

Sa femme elle l'a voulut

there can be no reason to believe these officers of an estab-

lished news organization serving newspapers all over the coun-

try failed to realize their responsibilities at a moment of supreme

significance to the people of this country. Even to anticipate

the event in a matter of such moment would be a grave im-

position for which those responsible must be called to account

Any complaynts this morning?

Do we complayn? Not we

Wats the matter with lumps of onion

Floatin' around in the tea?

PEACE DOVE IN JEWELS GIVEN

MRS. WILSON

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and the watershed of the Cols di Polberdo, Podlaniscam

and Idria. From this point the line turns southeast towards

the Schneeberg, excludes the whole basin of the Saave and its

tributaries. From Schneeberg it goes down to the coast in

such a way as to include Castna, Mattuglia and Volusca

THE CAMERA EYE (38)

sealed signed and delivered all over Tours you

can smell lindens in bloom it's hot my uniform sticks the

OD chafes me under the chin

only four days ago AWOL crawling under the

freight cars at the station of St. Pierre-des-Corps waiting

in the buvette for the MP on guard to look away from

the door so's I could slink out with a cigarette (and my

heart) in my mouth then in a tiny box of a hotel room

changing the date on that old movement order

but today

my discharge sealed signed and delivered sends off

sparks in my pocket like a romancandle

I walk past the headquarters of the SOS Hay sojer

your tunic's unbuttoned (f -- k you buddy) and down

the lindenshaded street to the bathhouse that has a court

with flowers in the middle of it the hot water gushes

green out of brass swanheads into the whitemetal tub

I strip myself naked soap myself all over with the sour

pink soap slide into the warm deepgreen tub through

-288-

the white curtain in the window a finger of afternoon sun-

light lengthens on the ceiling towel's dry and warm

smells of steam in the suitcase I've got a suit of civvies

I borrowed from a fellow I know the buck private in

the rear rank of Uncle Sam's Medical Corps (serial

number . . . never could remember the number anyway

I dropped it in the Loire) goes down the drain with a

gurgle and hiss and

having amply tipped and gotten the eye from the

fat woman who swept up the towels

I step out into the lindensmell of a July afternoon

and stroll up to the café where at the little tables outside

only officers may set their whipcord behinds and order

a drink of cognac unservable to those in uniform while

waiting for the train to Paris and sit down firmly in long

pants in the iron chair

an anonymous civilian

NEWSREEL XXXIII

CAN'T RECALL KILLING SISTER; CLAIMS

I've got the blues

I've got the blues

I've got the alcohoholic blues

SOAP CRISIS THREATENED

with the gay sunlight and the resumption of racing Paris

has resumed its normal life. The thousands and thousands of

-289-

flags of all nations hang on dozens of lines stretching from

mast to mast making a fairylike effect that is positively aston-

ishing

THREAT LETTERS REVEALED

I love my country indeed I do

But this war is making me blue

I like fightin' fightin's my name

But fightin is the least about this fightin game

the police found an anteroom full of mysteriouslooking

packages which when opened were found full of pamphlets in

Yiddish Russian and English and of membership cards for

the Industrial Workers of the World

HIGH WIND INCREASES DANGER OF MEN

WHILE PEACE IS TALKED OF WORLDWIDE WAR RAGES

the agents said the arrests were ordered from the State

Department. The detention was so sudden neither of the

men had time to obtain his baggage from the vessel. Then

came a plaintive message from two business men at Lure;

the consignment had arrived, the sacks had been opened and

their contents was ordinary building plaster. The huge car

remained suspended in some trees upside down while the pas-

sengers were thrown into the torrent twenty feet below

Lordy, lordy, war is hell

Since he amputated my booze

OUTRAGE PERPETRATED IN SEOUL

I've got the alcohohoholic blues

The Department of Justice Has the Goods on the Pack-

ers According to Attorney General Palmer

L'Ecole du Malheur Nous Rend Optimistes

Unity of Free Peoples Will Prevent any Inequitable

Outcome of Peace of Paris

it is only too clear that the league of nations lies in pieces

on the floor of the Hotel Crillon and the modest alliance that

might with advantage occupy its place is but a vague sketch

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HOW TO DEAL WITH BOLSHEVISTS? SHOOT

THEM! POLES' WAY! Hamburg Crowds Flock to

See Ford

HINTS AT BIG POOL TO DEVELOP ASIA

When Mr. Hoover said to cut our eatin down

I did it and I didn't ever raise a frown

Then when he said to cut out coal,

But now he's cut right into my soul

Allons-nous Assister h la Painique des Sots?

stones were clattering on the roof and crashing through

the windows and wild men were shrieking through the key-

hole while enormous issues depended on them that required

calm and deliberation at any rate the President did not speak

to the leaders of the democratic movements

LIEBKNECHT KILLED ON WAY TO PRISON

EVELINE HUTCHINS

Eveline had moved to a little place on the rue de Bussy

where there was a street market every day. Eleanor to show

that there was no hard feeling had given her a couple of

her Italian painted panels to decorate the dark parlor

with. In early November rumors of an armistice began to

fly around and then suddenly one afternoon Major Wood

ran into the office that Eleanor and Eveline shared and

dragged them both away from their desks and kissed them

both and shouted, "At last it's come." Before she knew

it Eveline found herself kissing Major Moorehouse right

on the mouth. The Red Cross office turned into a college

dormitory the night of a football victory: it was the Armi-

stice.

Everybody seemed suddenly to have bottles of cognac

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and to be singing, There's a long long trail awinding or

La Madel-lon pour nous n'est pas sévère.

She and Eleanor and J.W. and Major Wood were in

a taxicab going to the Café de la Paix.

For some reason they kept getting out of taxicabs and

other people kept getting in. They had to get to the Café

de la Paix but whenever they got into a taxicab it was

stopped by the crowd and the driver disappeared. But

when they got there they found every table filled and files

of people singing and dancing streaming in and out all

the doors. They were Greeks, Polish legionaires, Russians,

Serbs, Albanians in white kilts, a Highlander with bag-

pipes and a lot of girls in Alsatian costume. It was annoy-

ing not being able to find a table. Eleanor said maybe

they ought to go somewhere else. J.W. was preoccupied

and wanted to get to a telephone.

Only Major Wood seemed to be enjoying himself. He

was a greyhaired man with a little grizzled mustache and

kept saying, "Ah, the lid's off today." He and Eveline

went upstairs to see if they could find room there and ran

into two Anzacs seated on a billiard table surrounded by a

dozen bottles of champagne. Soon they were all drinking

champagne with the Anzacs. They couldn't get anything

to eat although Eleanor said she was starving and when

J.W. tried to get into the phone booth he' found an Italian

officer and a girl tightly wedged together in it. The Anzacs

were pretty drunk, and one of them was saying that the

Armistice was probably just another bloody piece of lying

propaganda; so Eleanor suggested they try to go back to

her place to have something to eat. J.W. said yes, they

could stop at the Bourse so that he could send some cables.

He must get in touch with his broker. The Anzacs didn't

like it when they left and were rather rude.

They stood around for a long time in front of the opera

in the middle of swirling crowds. The streetlights were on;

the grey outlines of the opera were edged along the cor-

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nices with shimmering gas flames. They were jostled and

pushed about. There were no busses, no automobiles; occa-

sionally they passed a taxicab stranded in the crowd like

a rock in a stream. At last on a side street they found them-

selves alongside a Red Cross staffcar that had nobody in it.

The driver, who wasn't too sober, said he was trying to

get the car back to the garage and said he'd take them

down to the quai de la Tournelle first.

Eveline was just climbing in when somehow she felt

it was just too tiresome and she couldn't. The next minute

she was marching arm in arm with a little French sailor

in a group of people mostly in Polish uniform who were

following a Greek flag and singing la Brabançonne.

A minute later she realized she'd lost the car and her

friends and was scared. She couldn't recognize the streets

even, in this new Paris full of arclights and flags and bands

and drunken people. She found herself dancing with the

little sailor in the asphalt square in front of a church with

two towers, then with a French colonial officer in a red

cloak, then with a Polish legionaire who spoke a little

English and had lived in Newark, New Jersey, and then

suddenly some young French soldiers were dancing in a

ring around her holding hands. The game was you had

to kiss one of them to break the ring. When she caught

on she kissed one of them and everybody clapped and

cheered and cried Vive l'Amerique. Another bunch came

and kept on and on dancing around her until she began to

feel scared. Her head was beginning to whirl around when

she caught sight of an American uniform on the outskirts

of the crowd. She broke through the ring bowling over a

little fat Frenchman and fell on the doughboy's neck and

kissed him, and everybody laughed and cheered and cried

encore. He looked embarrassed; the man with him was

Paul Johnson, Don Stevens' friend. "You see I had to

kiss somebody," Eveline said blushing. The doughboy

laughed and looked pleased.

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"Oh, I hope you didn't mind, Miss Hutchins, I hope

you don't mind this crowd and everything," apologized

Paul Johnson.

People spun around them dancing and shouting and she

had to kiss Paul Johnson too before they'd let them go.

He apologized solemnly again and said, "Isn't it wonder-

ful to be in Paris to see the armistice and everything, if

you don't mind the crowd and everything . . . but hon-

estly, Miss Hutchins, they're awful goodnatured. No fights

or nothin' . . . Say, Don's in this car."

Don was behind a little zinc bar in the entrance to the

café shaking up cocktails for a big crowd of Canadian and

Anzac officers all very drunk. "I can't get him out of

there," whispered Paul. "He's had more than he ought."

They got Don out from behind the bar. There seemed

to be nobody there to pay for the drinks. In the door he

pulled off his grey cap and cried, "Vive les quakers . . .

à bas la guerre," and everybody cheered. They roamed

around aimlessly for a while, now and then they'd be

stopped by a ring of people dancing around her and Don

would kiss her. He was noisy drunk and she didn't like

the way he acted as if she was his girl. She began to feel

tired by the time they got to the place de la Concorde

and suggested that they cross the river and try to get to

her apartment where she had some cold veal and salad.

Paul was embarrassedly saying perhaps he'd better not

come, when Don ran off after a group of Alsatian girls

who were hopping and skipping up the Champs Elysées.

"Now you've got to come," she said. "To keep me from

being kissed too much by strange men."

"But Miss Hutchins, you mustn't think Don meant any-

thing running off like that. He's very excitable, especially

when he drinks." She laughed and they walked on with-

out saying anything more.

When they got to her apartment the old concièrge

hobbled out from her box and shook hands with both of

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them. "Ah, madame, c'est la victoire," she said, "but it

won't make my dead son come back to life, will it?" For

some reason Eveline could not think of anything to do but

give her five francs and she went back muttering a sing-

song, "Merci, m'sieur, madame."

Up in Eveline's tiny rooms Paul seemed terribly em-

barrassed. They ate everything there was to the last crumb

of stale bread and talked a little vaguely. Paul sat on the

edge of his chair and told her about his travels back and

forth with despatches. He said how wonderful it had been

for him coming abroad and seeing the army and European

cities and meeting people like her and Don Stevens and

that he hoped she didn't mind his not knowing much about

all the things she and Don talked about. "If this really is

the beginning of peace I wonder what we'll all do, Miss

Hutchins." "Oh, do call me Eveline, Paul." "I really do

think it is the peace, Eveline, according to Wilson's Four-

teen Points. I think Wilson's a great man myself in spite

of all Don says, I know he's a darn sight cleverer than I

am, but still . . . maybe this is the last war there'll ever

be. Gosh, think of that . . ." She hoped he'd kiss her when

he left but all he did was shake hands awkwardly and say

all in a breath, "I hope you won't mind if I come to see

you next time I can get to Paris."

For the Peace Conference, J.W. had a suite at the

Crillon, with his blonde secretary Miss Williams at a desk

in a little anteroom, and Morton his English valet serving

tea in the late afternoon. Eveline liked dropping into the

Crillon late in the afternoon after walking up the arcades

of the rue de Rivoli from her office. The antiquated cor-

ridors of the hotel were crowded with Americans coming

and going. In J.W.'s big salon there'd be Morton stealthily

handing around tea, and people in uniform and in frock

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coats and the cigarettesmoky air would be full of halftold

anecdotes. J.W. fascinated her, dressed in grey Scotch

tweeds that always had a crease on the trousers (he'd

given up wearing his Red Cross major's uniform), with

such an aloof agreeable m Anner, tempered by the pre-

occupied look of a very busy man always being called up

on the phone, receiving telegrams or notes from his secre-

tary, disappearing into the embrasure of one of the win-

dows that looked out on the place de la Concorde with

someone for a whispered conversation, or being asked to

step in to see Colonel House for a moment; and still

when he handed her a champagne cocktail just before they

all went out to dinner on nights he didn't have to go to

some official function, or asked if she wanted another cup

of tea, she'd feel for a second in her eyes the direct glance

of two boyish blue eyes with a funny candid partly hu-

morous look that teased her. She wanted to know him

better; Eleanor, she felt, watched them like a cat watching

a mouse. After all, Eveline kept saying to herself, she

hadn't any right. It wasn't as if there was anything really

between them.

When J.W. was busy they often went out with Edgar

Robbins who seemed to be a sort of assistant of J.W.'s.

Eleanor couldn't abide him, said there was something in-

sulting in his cynicism, but Eveline liked to hear him talk.

He said the peace was going to be ghastlier than the war,

said it was a good thing nobody ever asked his opinion

about anything because he'd certainly land in jail if he

gave it. Robbins' favorite hangout was Freddy's up back

of Montmartre. They'd sit there all evening in the small

smokycrowded rooms while Freddy, who had a big white

beard like Walt Whitman, would play on the guitar and

sing. Sometimes he'd get drunk and set the company up

to drinks on the house. Then his wife, a cross woman who

looked like a gypsy, would come out of the back room

and curse and scream at him. People at the tables would

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get up and recite long poems about La Grand' route, La

Misère, L'Assassinat or sing old French songs like Les

Filles de Nantes. If it went over everybody present would

clap hands in unison. They called that giving a bon.

Freddy got to know them and would make a great fuss

when they arrived, "Ah, les belles Amèricaines." Robbins

would sit there moodily drinking calvados after calvados,

now and then letting out a crack about the day's happen-

ings at the peace conference. He said that the place was a

fake that the calvados was wretched and that Freddy was

a dirty old bum, but for some reason he always wanted

to go back.

J.W. went there a couple of times, and occasionally

they'd take some delegate from the peace conference who'd

be mightily impressed by their knowledge of the inner

life of Paris. J.W. was enchanted by the old French songs,

but he said the place made him feel itchy and that he

thought there were fleas there. Eveline liked to watch him

when he was listening to a song with his eyes half closed

and his head thrown back. She felt that Robbins didn't

appreciate the rich potentialities of his nature and always

shut him up when he started to say something sarcastic

about the big cheese, as he called him. She thought it was

disagreeable of Eleanor to laugh at things like that, espe-

cially when J.W. seemed so devoted to her.

When Jerry Burnham came back from Armenia and

found that Eveline was going around with J. Ward

Moorehouse all the time he was terribly upset. He took

her out to lunch at the Medicis Grill on the left bank

and talked and talked about it.

"Why, Eveline, I thought of you as a person who

wouldn't be taken in by a big bluff like that. The guy's

nothing but a goddam megaphone. . . . Honestly, Eve-

line, it's not that I expect you to fall for me, I know very

well you don't give a damn about me and why should

you? . . . But Christ, a damn publicity agent."

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"Now, Jerry," said Eveline with her mouth full of hors

d'oeuvres, "you know very well I'm fond of you . . . It's

just too tiresome of you to talk like that."

"You don't like me the way I'd like you to but

to hell with that . . . Have wine or beer?"

"You pick out a nice Burgundy, Jerry, to warm us up

a little. . . . But you wrote an article about J.W. your-

self . . . I saw it reprinted in that column in the Herald."

"Go ahead, rub it in . . . Christ, I swear, Eveline, I'm

going to get out of this lousy trade and . . . that was all

plain oldfashioned bushwa and I thought you'd have had

the sense to see it. Gee, this is good sole."

"Delicious . . . but, Jerry, you're the one ought to

have more sense."

"I dunno I thought you were different from other

upperclass women, made your own living and all that."

"Let's not wrangle, Jerry, let's have some fun, here

we are in Paris and the war's over and it's a fine wintry

day and everybody's here. . . ."

"War over, my eye," said Jerry rudely. Eveline thought

he was just too tiresome, and looked out the window at

the ruddy winter sunlight and the old Medici fountain and

the delicate violet lacework of the bare trees behind the

high iron fence of the Luxemburg Garden. Then she

looked at Jerry's red intense face with the turnedup nose

and the crisp boyishly curly hair that was beginning to turn

a little grey; she leaned over and gave the back of his

hand a couple of little pats.

"I understand, Jerry, you've seen things that I haven't

imagined . . . I guess it's the corrupting influence of the

Red Cross."

He smiled and poured her out some more wine and said

with a sigh:

"You're the most damnably attractive woman I ever

met, Eveline . . . but like all women what you worship

is power, when money's the main thing it's money, when

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it's fame it's fame, when it's art, you're a goddamned art-

lover . . . I guess I'm the same, only I kid myself more."

Eveline pressed her lips together and didn't say any-

thing. She suddenly felt cold and frightened and lonely

and couldn't think of anything to say. Jerry gulped down

a glass of wine and started talking about throwing up his

job and going to Spain to write a book. He said he didn't

pretend to have any selfrespect, but that being a news-

paper correspondent was too damn much nowadays. Eve-

line said she never wanted to go back to America, she felt

life would be just too tiresome there after the war.

When they'd had their coffee they walked through the

gardens. Near the senate chamber some old gentlemen

were playing croquet in the last purplish patch of after-

noon sunlight. "Oh, I think the French are wonderful,"

said Eveline. "Second childhood," growled Jerry. They

rambled aimlessly round the streets, reading palegreen

yellow and pink theatre notices on kiosks, looking into

windows of antiqueshops. "We ought both to be at our

offices," said Jerry. "I'm not going back," said Eveline,

"I'll call up and say I have a cold and have gone home to

bed . . . I think I'll do that anyway." "Don't do that,

let's play hookey and have a swell time." They went to

the café opposite St. Germain-des-Prés. When Eveline

came back from phoning, Jerry had bought her a bunch of

violets and ordered cognac and seltzer. "Eveline, let's

celebrate," he said, "I think I'll cable the sonsobitches and

tell 'em I've resigned.""Do you think you ought to do

that, Jerry? After all it's a wonderful opportunity to see

the peace conference and everything."

After a few minutes she left him and walked home.

She wouldn't let him come with her. As she passed the

window where they'd been sitting she looked in; he was

ordering another drink.

On the rue de Bussy the market was very jolly under the

gaslights. It all smelt of fresh greens, and butter and

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cheese. She bought some rolls for breakfast and a'few little

cakes in case somebody came in to tea. It was cosy in her

little pink and white salon with the fire of brickettes going

in the grate. Eveline wrapped herself up in a steamerrug

and lay down on the couch.

She was asleep when her bell jingled. It was Eleanor

and J.W. come to inquire how she was. J.W. was free

tonight and wanted them to come to the opera with him

to see Castor and Pollux. Eveline said she was feeling

terrible but she thought she'd go just the same. She put

on some tea for them and ran into her bedroom to dress.

She felt so happy she couldn't help humming as she sat

at her dressingtable looking at herself in the glass. Her

skin looked very white and her face had a quiet mysterious

look she liked. She carefully put on very little lipstick and

drew her hair back to a knot behind; her hair worried her,

it wasn't curly and didn't have any particular color; for

a moment she thought she wouldn't go. Then Eleanor

came in with a cup of tea in her hand telling her to hurry

because they had to go down and wait while she dressed

herself and that the opera started early. Eveline didn't

have any real evening wrap so she had to wear an old

rabbitfur coat over her eveningdress. At Eleanor's they

found Robbins waiting; he wore a tuxedo that looked a

little the worse for wear. J.W. was in the uniform of a

Red Cross major. Eveline thought he must have been

exercising, because his jowl didn't curve out from the tight

high collar as much as it had formerly.

They ate in a hurry at Poccardi's and drank a lot of

badly made Martinis. Robbins and J.W. were in fine

feather, and kept them laughing all the time. Eveline

understood now why they worked together so well. At

the opera, where they arrived late, it was wonderful,

glittering with chandeliers and uniforms. Miss Williams,

J.W.'s secretary, was already in the box. Eveline thought

how nice he must be to work for, and for a moment bit-

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terly envied Miss Williams, even to her peroxide hair and

her brisk chilly manner of talking. Miss Williams leaned

back and said they'd missed it, that President and Mrs.

Wilson had just come in and had been received with a

great ovation, and Marshal Foch was there and she thought

President Poincaré.

Between the acts they worked their way as best they

could into the crowded lobby. Eveline found herself

walking up and down with Robbins, every now and then

she'd catch sight of Eleanor with J.W. and feel a little

envious.

"They put on a better show out here than they do on

the stage," said Robbins.

"Don't you like the production. . . . I think it's a

magnificent production."

"Well, I suppose looked at from the professional point

of view. . . ."

Eveline was watching Eleanor, she was being introduced

to a French general in red pants; she looked handsome this

evening in her hard chilly way. Robbins tried to pilot

them in through the crowd to the little bar, but they gave

it up, there were too many people ahead of them. Robbins

started all at once to talk about Baku and the oil business.

"It's funny as a crutch," he kept saying, "while we sit

here wrangling under schoolmaster Wilson, John Bull's

putting his hands on all the world's future supplies of

oil . . . just to keep it from the bolos. They've got Persia

and the messpot and now I'll be damned if they don't

want Baku." Eveline was bored and thinking to herself

that Robbins had been in his cups too much again, when

the bell rang.

When they got back to their box a leanfaced man who

wasn't in evening clothes was sitting in the back talking to

J.W. in a low voice. Eleanor leaned over to Eveline and

whispered in her car, "That was General Gouraud." The

lights went out; Eveline found she was forgetting herself

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in the deep stateliness of the music. At the next intermis-

sion she leaned over to J.W. and asked him how he liked

it. "Magnificent," he said, and she saw to her surprise

that he had tears in his eyes. She found herself talking

about the music with J.W. and the man without a dress

suit, whose name was Rasmussen.

It was hot and crowded in the tall overdecorated lobby.

Mr. Rasmussen managed to get a window open and they

went out on the balcony that opened on the serried lights

that dimmed down the avenue into a reddish glow of fog.

"That's the time I'd liked to have lived," said J.W.

dreamily. "The court of the sun king?" asked Mr. Ras-

mussen. "No, it must have been too chilly in the winter

months and I bet the plumbing was terrible." "Ah, it was

a glorious time," said J.W. as if he hadn't heard. Then he

turned to Eveline, "You're sure you're not catching cold

. . . you ought to have a wrap, you know."

"But as I was saying, Moorehouse," said Rasmussen in

a different tone of voice, "I have positive information that

they can't hold Baku without heavy reinforcements and

there's no one they can get them from except from us."

The bell rang again and they hurried to their box.

After the opera they went to the Café de la Paix to

drink a glass of champagne, except for Robbins who went

off to take Miss Williams back to her hotel. Eveline and

Eleanor sat on the cushioned bench on either side of J.W.

and Mr. Rasmussen sat on a chair opposite them. He did

most of the talking, taking nervous gulps of champagne

between sentences or else running his fingers through his

spiky black hair. He was an engineer with Standard Oil.

He kept talking about Baku and Mohommarah and Mosul,

how the Anglo-Persian and the Royal Dutch were getting

ahead of the U.S. in the Near East and trying to foist

off Armenia on us for a mandate, which the Turks had

pillaged to the last blade of grass, leaving nothing but a

lot of starving people to feed. "We'll probably have to

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feed 'em anyway," said J.W. "But my gosh, man, some-

thing can be done about it, even if the president has so

far forgotten American interests to let himself be bull-

dozed by the British in everything, public opinion can be

aroused. We stand to lose our primacy in world oil pro-

duction." "Oh, well, the matter of mandates isn't settled

yet." "What's going to happen is that the British are going

to present a fait accompli to the Conference . . . findings

keepings . . . why it would be better for us for the French

to have Baku." "How about the Russians?" asked Eveline.

"According to selfdetermination the Russians have no right

to it. The population is mostly Turkish and Armenian,"

said Rasmussen. "But, by gorry, I'd rather have the reds

have it than the British, of course I don't suppose they'll

last long."

"No, I have reliable information that Lenine and

Trotsky have split and the monarchy will be restored in

Russia inside of three months." When they finished the

first bottle of champagne, Mr. Rasmussen ordered an-

other. By the time the café closed Eveline's ears were ring-

ing. "Let's make a night of it," Mr. Rasmussen was saying.

They went in a taxicab up to Montmartre to L'Abbaye

where there was dancing and singing and uniforms every-

where and everything was hung with the flags of the Allies.

J.W. asked Eveline to dance with him first and Eleanor

looked a little sour when she had to go off in the arms of

Mr. Rasmussen who danced very badly indeed. Eveline

and J.W. talked about the music of Rameau and J.W.

said again that he would have liked to have lived in the

times of the court at Versailles. But Eveline said what

could be more exciting than to be in Paris right now with

all the map of Europe being remade right under their

noses, and J.W. said perhaps she was right. They agreed

that the orchestra was too bad to dance to.

Next dance Eveline danced with Mr. Rasmussen who

told her how handsome she was and said he needed a good

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woman in his life; that he'd spent all his life out in the

bush grubbing around for gold or testing specimens of shale

and that he was sick of it, and if Wilson now was going

to let the British bulldoze him into giving them the world's

future supply of oil when we'd won the war for them,

he was through. "But can't you do something about it,

can't you put your ideas before the public, Mr. Ras-

mussen?" said Eveline, leaning a little against him; Eve-

line had a crazy champagneglass spinning in her head.

"That's Moorehouse's job not mine, and there isn't any

public since the war. The public'll damn well do what it's

told, and besides like God Almighty it's far away . . .

what we've got to do is make a few key men understand

the situation. Moorehouse is the key to the key men."

"And who's the key to Moorehouse?" asked Eveline reck-

lessly. The music had stopped. "Wish to heaven I knew,"

said Rasmussen soberly in a low voice. "You're not, are

you?" Eveline shook her head with a tightlipped smile

like Eleanor's.

When they'd eaten onion soup and some cold meat

J.W. said, "Let's go up to the top of the hill and make

Freddy play us some songs." "I thought you didn't like

it up there," said Eleanor. "I don't, my dear," said J.W.,

"but I like those old French songs." Eleanor looked cross

and sleepy. Eveline wished she and Mr. Rasmussen would

go home; she felt if she could only talk to J.W. alone,

he'd be so interesting.

Freddy's was almost empty; it was chilly in there. They

didn't have any champagne and nobody drank the liqueurs

they ordered. Mr. Rasmussen said Freddy looked like an

old prospector he'd known out in the Sangre de Cristo

mountains and began to tell a long story about Death

Valley that nobody listened to. They were all chilly and

sleepy and silent, going back across Paris in the old

mouldysmelling twocylinder taxi. J.W. wanted a cup of

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coffee, but there didn't seem to be anywhere open where

he could get it.

Next day Mr. Rasmussen called Eveline up at her.

office to ask her to eat lunch with him and she was hard

put to it to find an excuse not to go. After that Mr. Ras-

mussen seemed to be everywhere she went, sending her

flowers and theatre tickets, coming around with automobiles

to take her riding, sending her little blue pneumatiques

full of tender messages. Eleanor teased her about her new

Romeo.

Then Paul Johnson turned up in Paris, having gotten

himself into the Sorbonne detachment, and used to come

around to her place on the rue de Bussy in the late after-

noons and sit watching her silently and lugubriously. He

and Mr. Rasmussen would sit there talking about wheat

and the stockyards, while Eveline dressed to go out with

somebody else, usually Eleanor and J.W. Eveline could

see that J.W. always liked to have her along as well as

Eleanor when they went out in the evenings; it was just

that welldressed American girls were rare in Paris at that

time, she told herself, and that J.W. liked to be seen with

them and to have them along when he took important

people out to dinner. She and Eleanor treated each other

with a stiff nervous sarcasm now, except occasionally when

they were alone together, they talked like in the old days,

laughing at people and happenings together. Eleanor

would never let a chance pass to poke fun at her Romeos.

Her brother George turned up at the office one day

with a captain's two silver bars on his shoulders. His whip-

cord uniform fitted like a glove, his puttees shone and he

wore spurs. He'd been in the intelligence service attached

to the British and had just come down from Germany

where he'd been an interpreter on General McAndrews'

staff. He was going to Cambridge for the spring term and

called everybody blighters or rotters and said the food at

the restaurant where Eveline took him for lunch was

-305-

simply ripping. After he'd left her, saying her ideas were

not cricket, she burst out crying. When she was leaving

the office that afternoon, thinking gloomily about how

George had grown up to be a horrid little prig of a brass-

hat, she met Mr. Rasmussen under the arcades of the

rue de Rivoli; he was carrying a mechanical canarybird.

It was a stuffed canary and you wound it up underneath

the cage. Then it fluttered its wings and sang. He made.

her stop on the corner while he made it sing. "I'm going

to send that back home to the kids," he said. "My wife

and I are separated but I'm fond of the kids; they live in

Pasadena . . . I've had a very unhappy life." Then he

invited Eveline to step into the Ritz bar and have a cock-

tail with him. Robbins was there with a redheaded news-

paper woman from San Francisco. They sat at a wicker

table together and drank Alexanders. The bar was

crowded. "What's the use of a league of nations if it's to

be dominated by Great Britain and her colonies?" said Mr.

Rasmussen sourly. "But don't you think any kind of a

league's better than nothing?" said Eveline. "It's not the

name you give things, it's who's getting theirs underneath

that counts," said Robbins.

"That's a very cynical remark," said the California

woman. "This isn't any time to be cynical."

"This is a time," said Robbins, "when if we weren't

cynical we'd shoot ourselves."

In March Eveline's two week leave came around.

Eleanor was going to make a trip to Rome to help wind

up the affairs of the office there, so they decided they'd go

down on the train together and spend a few days in Nice.

They needed to get the damp cold of Paris out of their

bones. Eveline felt as excited as a child the afternoon when

they were all packed and ready to go and had bought

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wagon lit reservations and gotten their transport orders

signed.

Mr. Rasmussen insisted on seeing her off and ordered

up a big dinner in the restaurant at the Gare de Lyon that

Eveline was too excited to eat, what with the smell of

the coalsmoke and the thought of waking up where it

would be sunny and warm. Paul Johnson appeared when

they were about half through, saying he'd come to help

them with their bags. He'd lost one of the buttons off his

uniform and he looked gloomy and mussed up. He said

he wouldn't eat anything but nervously drank down sev-

eral glasses of wine. Both he and Mr. Rasmussen looked

like thunderclouds when Jerry Burnham appeared drunk

as a lord carrying a large bouquet of roses. "Won't that

be taking coals to Newcastle, Jerry?" said Eveline. "You

don't know Nice . . . you'll probably have skating down

there . . . beautiful figure eights on the ice." "Jerry,"

said Eleanor in her chilly little voice, "you're thinking of

St. Moritz." "You'll be thinking of it too," said Jerry,

"when you feel that cold wind."

Meanwhile Paul and Mr. Rasmussen had picked up

their bags. "Honestly, we'd better make tracks," said

Paul, nervously jiggling Eveline's suitcase. "It's about

traintime." They all scampered through the station. Jerry

Burnham had forgotten to buy a ticket and couldn't go

out on the platform; they left him arguing with the officials

and searching his pockets for his presscard. Paul put the

bags in the compartment and shook hands hurriedly with

Eleanor. Eveline found his eyes in hers serious and hurt

like a dog's eyes.

"You won't stay too long, will you? There's not much

time left," he said. Eveline felt she'd like to kiss him,

but the train was starting. Paul scrambled off. All Mr.

Rasmussen could do was hand some papers and Jerry's

roses through the window and wave his hat mournfully

from the platform. It was a relief the train had started.

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Eleanor was leaning back against the cushions laughing

and laughing.

"I declare, Eveline. You're too funny with your

Romeos." Eveline couldn't help laughing herself. She

leaned over and patted Eleanor on the shoulder. "Let's

just have a wonderful time," she said.

Next morning early when Eveline woke up and looked

out they were in the station at Marseilles. It gave her a

funny feeling because she'd wanted to stop off there and

see the town, but Eleanor had insisted on going straight

to Nice, she hated the sordidness of seaports she'd said.

But later when they had their coffee in the diner, looking

out at the pines and the dry hills and headlands cutting out

blue patches of the Mediterranean, Eveline felt excited and

happy again.

They got a good room in a hotel and walked through

the streets in the cool sunshine among the wounded sol-

diers and officers of all the allied armies and strolled along

the Promenade des Anglais under the grey palmtrees and

gradually Eveline began to feel a chilly feeling of dis-

appointment coming over her. Here was her two weeks

leave and she was going to waste it at Nice. Eleanor kept

on being crisp and cheerful and suggested they sit down

in the big café on the square where a brass band was play-

ing and have a little dubonnet before lunch. After they'd

sat there for some time, looking at the uniforms and the

quantities of overdressed women who were no better than

they should be, Eveline leaned back in her chair and said,

"And now that we're here, darling, what on earth shall

we do?"

The next morning Eveline woke late; she almost hated

to get up as she couldn't imagine how she was going to

pass the time all day. As she lay there looking at the stripes

of sunlight on the wall that came through the shutters,

she heard a man's voice in the adjoining room, that was

Eleanor's. Eveline stiffened and listened. It was J.W.'s

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voice. When she got up and dressed she found her heart

was pounding. She was pulling on her best pair of trans-

parent black silk stockings when Eleanor came in, "Who

do you think's turned up? J.W. just motored down to see

me off to Italy . . . He said it was getting too stuffy for

him around the Peace Conference and he had to get a

change of air . . . Come on in, Eveline, dear, and have

some coffee with us."

She can't keep the triumph out of her voice, aren't

women silly, thought Eveline. "That's lovely, I'll be

right in, darling," she said in her most musical tones.

J.W. had on a light grey flannel suit and a bright blue

necktie and his face was pink from the long ride. He was

in fine spirits. He'd driven down from Paris in fifteen

hours with only four hours sleep after dinner in Lyons.

They all drank a great deal of bitter coffee with hot milk

and planned out a ride.

It Was a fine day. The big Packard car rolled them

smoothly along the Corniche. They lunched at Monte

Carlo, took a look at the casino in the afternoon and went

on and had tea in an English tearoom in Mentone. Next

day they went up to Grasse and saw the perfume factories,

and the day after they put Eleanor on the rapide for

Rome. J.W. was to leave immediately afterwards to go

back to Paris. Eleanor's thin white face looked a little

forlorn Eveline thought, looking out at them through the

window of the wagonlit. When the train pulled out Eveline

and J.W. stood on the platform in the empty station with

the smoke swirling milky with sunlight under the glass

roof overhead and looked at each other with a certain

amount of constraint. "She's a great little girl," said J.W.

"I'm very fond of her," said Eveline. Her voice rang

false in her ears. "I wish we were going with her."

They walked back out to the car. "Where can I take

you, Eveline, before I pull out, back to the hotel?" Eve-

line's heart was pounding again. "Suppose we have a little

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lunch before you go, let me invite you to lunch." "That's

very nice of you . . . well, I suppose I might as well,

I've got to lunch somewhere. And there's no place fit for

a white man between here and Lyons."

They lunched at the casino over the water. The sea

was very blue. Outside there were three sailboats with

lateen sails making for the entrance to the port. It was

warm and jolly, smelt of wine and food sizzled in butter

in the glassedin restaurant. Eveline began to like it in

Nice.

J.W. drank more wine than he usually did. He began

to talk about his boyhood in Wilmington and even

hummed a little of a song he'd written in the old days.

Eveline was thrilled. Then he began to tell her about

Pittsburgh and his ideas about capital and labor. For des-

sert they had peaches flambé with rum; Eveline recklessly

ordered a bottle of champagne. They were getting along

famously.

They began to talk about Eleanor. Eveline told about

how she'd met Eleanor in the Art Institute and how

Eleanor had meant everything to her in Chicago, the only

girl she'd ever met who was really interested in the things

she was interested in, and how much talent Eleanor had,

and how much business ability. J.W. told about how much

she'd meant to him during the trying years with his second

wife Gertrude in New York, and how people had mis-

understood their beautiful friendship that had been always

free from the sensual and the degrading.

"Really," said Eveline, looking J.W. suddenly straight

in the eye, "I'd always thought you and Eleanor were

lovers." J.W. blushed. For a second Eveline was afraid

she'd shocked him. He wrinkled up the skin around his

eyes in a comical boyish way. "No, honestly not . . . I've

been too busy working all my life ever to develop that

side of my nature . . . People think differently about

those things than they did." Eveline nodded. The deep

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flush on his face seemed to have set her cheeks on fire.

"And now," J.W. went on, shaking his head gloomily,

"I'm in my forties and it's too late."

"Why too late?"

Eveline sat looking at him with her lips a little apart,

her cheeks blazing. "Maybe it's taken the war to teach

us how to live," he said. "We've been too much interested

in money and material things, it's taken the French to show

us how to live. Where back home in the States could you

find a beautiful atmosphere like this?" J.W. waved his

arm to include in a sweeping gesture the sea, the tables

crowded with women dressed in bright colors and men in

their best uniforms, the bright glint of blue light on glasses

and cutlery. The waiter mistook his gesture and slyly sub-

stituted a full bottle for the empty bottle in the cham-

pagnepail.

"By golly, Eveline, you've been so charming, you've

made me forget the time and going back to Paris and

everything. This is the sort of thing I've missed all my

life until I met you and Eleanor . . . of course with

Eleanor it's been all on the higher plane . . . Let's take

a drink to Eleanor . . . beautiful talented Eleanor . . .

Eveline, women have been a great inspiration to me all

my life, lovely charming delicate women. Many of my

best ideas have come from women, not directly, you

understand, but through the mental stimulation . . .

People don't understand me, Eveline, some of the news-

paper boys particularly have written some very hard things

about me . . . why, I'm an old newspaper man myself

. . . Eveline, permit me to say that you look so charming

and understanding . . . this illness of my wife . . . poor

Gertrude . . . I'm afraid she'll never be herself again.

. . . You see, it's put me in a most disagreeable position,

if some member of her family is appointed guardian it

might mean that the considerable sum of money invested

by the Staple family in my business, would be withdrawn

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. . . that would leave me with very grave embarrass-

ments . . . then I've had to abandon my Mexican affairs

. . . what the oil business down there needs is just some-

body to explain its point of view to the Mexican public,

to the American public, my aim was to get the big interests

to take the public in . . ." Eveline filled his glass. Her

head was swimming a little, but she felt wonderful. She

wanted to lean over and kiss him, to make him feel how

she admired and understood him. He went on talking

with the glass in his hand, almost as if he were speaking

to a whole rotary club. ". . . to take the public into its

confidence . . . I had to throw overboard all that . . .

when I felt the government of my country needed me.

My position is very difficult in Paris, Eveline. . . .

They've got the President surrounded by a Chinese wall

. . . I fear that his advisers don't realize the importance

of publicity, of taking the public into their confidence at

every move. This is a great historical moment, America

stands at the parting of the ways . . . without us the war

would have ended in a German victory or a negotiated

peace . . . And now our very allies are trying to mon-

opolize the natural resources of the world behind our backs.

. . . You remember what Rasmussen said . . . well, he's

quite right. The President is surrounded by sinister in-

trigues. Why, even the presidents of the great corporations

don't realize that now is the time to spend money, to

spend it like water. I could have the French press in my

pocket in a week with the proper resources, even in Eng-

land I have a hunch that something could be done if it

was handled the right way. And then the people are

fully behind us everywhere, they are sick of autocracy and

secret diplomacy, they are ready to greet American democ-

racy, American democratic business methods with open

arms. The only way for us to secure the benefits of the

peace to the world is for us to dominate it. Mr. Wilson

doesn't realize the power of a modern campaign of scien-

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tific publicity . . . Why, for three weeks I've been trying

to get an interview with him, and back in Washington I

was calling him Woodrow, almost . . . It was at his per-

sonal request that I dropped everything in New York

at great personal sacrifice, brought over a large part of my

office staff . . . and now . . . but Eveline, my dear girl,

I'm afraid I'm talking you to death."

Eveline leaned over and patted his hand that lay on

the edge of the table. Her eyes were shining, "Oh, it's

wonderful," she said. "Isn't this fun, J.W.?"

"Ah, Eveline, I wish I was free to fall in love with

you."

"Aren't we pretty free, J.W.? and it's wartime . . .

I think all the conventional rubbish about marriage and

everything is just too tiresome, don't you?"

"Ah, Eveline, if I was only free . . . let's go out and

take a little air . . . Why, we've been here all afternoon."

Eveline insisted on paying for the lunch although it took

all the money she had on her. They both staggered a little

as they left the restaurant, Eveline felt giddy and leaned

against J.W.'s shoulder. He kept patting her hand and

saying, "There, there, we'll take a little ride."

Towards sunset they were riding around the end of the

bay into Cannes. "Well, well, we must pull ourselves to-

gether," said J.W. "You don't want to stay down here

all alone, do you, little girl? Suppose you drive back to

Paris with me, we'll stop off in some picturesque villages,

make a trip of it. Too likely to meet people we know

around here. I'll send back the staff car and hire a French

car . . . take no chances." "All right, I think Nice is just

too tiresome anyway."

J.W. called to the chauffeur to go back to Nice. He

dropped her at her hotel and saying he'd call for her at

ninethirty in the morning and that she must get a good

night's sleep. She felt terribly let down after he'd gone;

had a cup of tea that was cold and tasted of soap sent to

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her room; and went to bed. She lay in bed thinking that

she was acting like a nasty little bitch; but it was too late

to go back now. She couldn't sleep, her whole body felt

jangled and twitching. This way she'd look like a wreck

tomorrow, she got up and rustled around in her bag until

she found some aspirin. She took a lot of the aspirin and

got back in bed again and lay perfectly still but she kept

seeing faces that would grow clear out of the blur of a half-

dream and then fade again, and her ears buzzed with long

cadences of senseless talk. Sometimes it was Jerry Burn-

ham's face that would bud out of the mists changing slowly

into Mr. Rasmussen's or Edgar Robbins' or Paul Johnson's

or Freddy Seargeant's. She got up and walked shivering

up and down the room for a long time. Then she got into

bed again and fell asleep and didn't wake up until the

chambermaid knocked on the door saying that a gentleman

was waiting for her.

When she got down J.W. was pacing up and down in

the sun outside the hotel door. A long lowslung Italian

car was standing under the palms beside the geranium bed.

They had coffee together without saying much at a little

iron table outside the hotel. J.W. said he'd had a miserable

room in a hotel where the service was poor.

As soon as Eveline got her bag down they started off

at sixty miles an hour. The chauffeur drove like a fiend

through a howling north wind that increased as they went

down the coast. They were in Marseilles stiff and dust-

caked in time for a late lunch at a fish restaurant on the

edge of the old harbor. Eveline's head was whirling again,

with speed and lashing wind and dust and vines and olive-

trees and grey rock mountains whirling past and now and

then a piece of slateblue sea cut out with a jigsaw.

"After all, J.W., the war was terrible," said Eveline.

"But it's a great time to be alive. Things are happening at

last." J.W. muttered something about a surge of idealism

between his teeth and went on eating his bouillabaisse. He

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didn't seem to be very talkative today. "Now at home," he

said, "they wouldn't have left all the bones in the fish this

way." "Well, what do you think is going to happen about

the oil situation?" Eveline started again. "Blamed if I

know," said J.W. "We'd better be starting if we're going

to make that place before nightfall."

J.W. had sent the chauffeur to buy an extra rug and

they wrapped themselves up tight under the little hood

in the back of the car. J.W. put his arm around Eveline

and tucked her in. "Now we're snug as a bug in a rug,"

he said. They giggled cosily together.

The mistral got so strong the poplars were all bent

double on the dusty plains before the car started to climb

the winding road to Les Baux. Bucking the wind cut down

their speed. It was dark when they got into the ruined

town.

They were the only people in the hotel. It was cold

there and the knots of olivewood burning in the grates

didn't give any heat, only puffs of grey smoke when a gust

of wind came down the chimney, but they had an excellent

dinner and hot spiced wine that made them feel much

better. They had to put on their overcoats to go up to

their bedroom. Climbing the stairs J.W. kissed her under

the ear and whispered, "Eveline, dear little girl, you make

me feel like a boy again."

Long after J.W. had gone to sleep Eveline lay awake

beside him listening to the wind rattling the shutters, yell-

ing around the corners of the roof, howling over the desert

plain far below. The house smelt of dry dusty coldness. No

matter how much she cuddled against him, she couldn't get

to feel really warm. The same creaky carrousel of faces,

plans, scraps of talk kept going round and round in her

head, keeping her from thinking consecutively, keeping her

from going to sleep.

Next morning when J.W. found he had to bathe out of

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a basin he made a face and said, "I hope you don't mind

roughing it this way, dear little girl."

They went over across the Rhone to Nîmes for lunch

riding through Arles and Avignon on the way, then they

turned back to the Rhone and got into Lyons late at night.

They had supper sent up to their room in the hotel and

took hot baths and drank hot wine again. When the waiter

had taken away the tray Eveline threw herself on J.W.'s

lap and began to kiss him. It was a long time before she'd

let him go to sleep.

Next morning it was raining hard. They waited around

a couple of hours hoping it would stop. J.W. was preoccu-

pied and tried to get Paris on the phone, but without any

luck. Eveline sat in the dreary hotel salon reading old

copies of l'Illustration. She wished she was back in Paris

too. Finally they decided to start.

The rain went down to a drizzle but the roads were

in bad shape and by dark they hadn't gotten any further

than Nevers. J.W. was getting the sniffles and started

taking quinine to ward off a cold. He got adjoining rooms

with a bath between in the hotel at Nevers, so that night

they slept in separate beds. At supper Eveline tried to get

him talking about the peace conference, but he said, "Why

talk shop, we'll be back there soon enough, why not talk

about ourselves and each other."

When they got near Paris, J.W. began to get nervous.

His nose had begun to run. At Fontainebleau they had a

fine lunch. J.W. went in from there on the train, leaving

the chauffeur to take Eveline home to the rue de Bussy

and then deliver his baggage at the Crillon afterward.

Eveline felt pretty forlorn riding in all alone through the

suburbs of Paris. She was remembering how excited she'd

been when they'd all been seeing her off at the Gare de

Lyons a few days before and decided she was very un-

happy indeed.

Next day she went around to the Crillon at about the

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usual time in the afternoon. There was nobody in J.W.s

anteroom but Miss Williams, his secretary. She stared

Eveline right in the face with such cold hostile eyes that

Eveline immediately thought she must know something.

She said Mr. Moorehouse had a bad cold and fever and

wasn't seeing anybody.

"Well, I'll write him a little note," said Eveline. "No,

I'll call him up later. Don't you think that's the idea,

Miss Williams?" Miss Williams nodded her head dryly.

"Very well," she said.

Eveline lingered. "You see, I've just come back from

leave . . . I came back a couple of days early because

there was so much sightseeing I wanted to do near Paris.

Isn't the weather miserable?"

Miss Williams puckered her forehead thoughtfully

and took a step towards her. "Very . . . It's most unfor-

tunate, Miss Hutchins, that Mr. Moorehouse should have

gotten this cold at this moment. We have a number of

important matters pending. And the way things are at the

Peace Conference the situation changes every minute so

that constant watchfulness is necessary . . . We think

it is a very important moment from every point of

view . . . Too bad Mr. Moorehouse should get laid up

just now. We feel very badly about it, all of us. He feels

just terribly about it."

"I'm so sorry," said Eveline, "I do hope he'll be better

tomorrow."

"The doctor says he will . . . but it's very unfortu-

nate."

Eveline stood hesitating. She didn't know what to say.

Then she caught sight of a little gold star that Miss Wil-

liams wore on a brooch. Eveline wanted to make friends.

"Oh, Miss Williams," she said, "I didn't know you lost

anyone dear to you." Miss Williams's face got more chilly

and pinched than ever. She seemed to be fumbling for

something to say. "Er . . . my brother was in the navy,"

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she said and walked over to her desk where she started

typing very fast. Eveline stood where she was a second

watching Miss Williams's fingers twinkling on the key-

board. Then she said weakly, "Oh, I'm so sorry," and

turned and went out.

When Eleanor got back, with a lot of old Italian

damask in her trunk, J.W. was up and around again. It

seemed to Eveline that Eleanor had something cold and

sarcastic in her manner of speaking she'd never had be-

fore. When she went to the Crillon to tea Miss Williams

would hardly speak to Eveline, but put herself out to be

polite to Eleanor. Even Morton, the valet, seemed to

make the same difference. J.W. from time to time gave

her a furtive squeeze of the hand, but they never got to

go out alone any more. Eveline began to think of going

home to America, but the thought of going back to Santa

Fé or to any kind of life she'd lived before was hideous

to her. She wrote J.W. long uneasy notes every day tell-

ing him how unhappy she was, but he never mentioned

them when she saw him. When she asked him once why

he didn't ever write her a few words he said quickly, "I

never write personal letters," and changed the subject.

In the end of April Don Stevens turned up in Paris.

He was in civilian clothes as he'd resigned from the re-

construction unit. He asked Eveline to put him up as

he was broke. Eveline was afraid of the concièrge and

of what Eleanor or J.W. might say if they found out,

but she felt desperate and bitter and didn't care much

what happened anyway; so she said all right, she'd put

him up but he wasn't to tell anybody where he was stay-

ing. Don teased her about her bourgeois ideas, said those

sorts of things wouldn't matter after the revolution, that

the first test of strength was coming on the first of May.

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He made her read L'Humanité and took her up to the rue

du Croissant to show her the little restaurant where

Jaurès had been assassinated.

One day a tall longfaced young man in some kind of a

uniform came into the office and turned out to be Freddy

Seargeant, who had just got a job in the Near East Re-

lief and was all excited about going Out to Constantinople.

Eveline was delighted to see him, but after she'd been

with him all afternoon she began to feel that the old talk

about the theater and decoration and pattern and color

and form didn't mean much to her any more. Freddy was

in ecstasy about being in Paris, and the little children

sailing boats in the ponds in the Tuileries gardens, and

the helmets of the Garde Republicaine turned out to

salute the King and Queen of the Belgians who happened

to be going up the rue de Rivoli when they passed.

Eveline felt mean and teased him about not having gone

through with it as a C.O.; he explained that a friend had

gotten him into the camouflage service before he knew it

and that he didn't care about politics anyway, and that

before he could do anything the war was over and he was

discharged. They tried to get Eleanor to go out to din-

ner with them, but she had a mysterious engagement to

dine with J.W. and some people from the quai d'Orsay,

and couldn't come. Eveline went with Freddy to the

Opera Comique to see Pélléas but she felt fidgety all

through it and almost slapped him when she saw he was

crying at the end. Having an orange water ice at the Café

Néapolitain afterwards, she upset Freddy terribly by say-

ing Debussy was old hat, and he took her home glumly in

a taxi. At the last minute she relented and tried to be

nice to him; she promised to go out to Chartres with

him the next Sunday.

It was still dark when Freddy turned up Sunday morn-

ing. They went out and got some coffee sleepily from

an old woman who had a little stand in the doorway op-

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posite. They still had an hour before train time and

Freddy suggested they go and get Eleanor up. He'd so

looked forward to going to Chartres with both of them,

he said; it would be old times all over again, he hated

to think how life was drawing them all apart. So they

got into a cab and went down to the quai de la Tournelle.

The great question was how to get in the house as the

street door was locked and there was no concièrge. Freddy

rang and rang the bell until finally the Frenchman who

lived on the lower floor came out indignant in his bath-

robe and let them in.

They banged on Eleanor's door. Freddy kept shouting,

"Eleanor Stoddard, you jump right up and come to Char-

tres with us." After a while Eleanor's face appeared, cool

and white and collected, in the crack of the door above a

stunning blue negligée.

" Eleanor, we've got just a' half an hour to catch the

train for Chartres, the taxi has full steam up outside and

if you don't come we'll all regret it to our dying day."

"But I'm not dressed . . . it's so early."

"You look charming enough to go just as you are."

Freddy pushed through the door and grabbed her in his

arms. "Eleanor, you've got to come . . . I'm off for the

Near East tomorrow night."

Eveline followed them into the salon. Passing the

half open door of the bedroom, she glanced in and found

herself looking J.W. full in the face. He was sitting bolt

upright in the bed, wearing pyjamias with a bright blue

stripe. His blue eyes looked straight through her. Some

impulse made Eveline pull the door to. Eleanor noticed

her gesture. "Thank you, darling," she said coolly, "it's

so untidy in there."

"Oh, do come, Eleanor . . . after all you can't have

forgotten old times the way hardhearted Hannah there

seems to have," said Freddy in a cajoling whine.

"Let me think," said Eleanor, tapping her chin with

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the sharp pointed nail of a white forefinger, "I'll tell you

what we'll do, darlings, you two go out on the poky old

train as you're ready and I'll run out as soon as I'm

dressed and call up J.W. at the Crillon and see if he

won't drive me out. Then we can all come back together.

How's that?"

"That would be lovely, Eleanor dear," said Eveline in

a singsong voice. "Splendid, oh, I knew you'd come . . .

well, we've got to be off. If we miss each other we'll be

in front of the cathedral at noon . . . Is that all right?"

Eveline went downstairs in a daze. All the way out to

Chartres Freddy was accusing her bitterly of being ab-

sentminded and not liking her old friends any more.

By the time they got to Chartres it was raining hard.

They spent a gloomy day there. The stained glass that

had been taken away for safety during the war hadn't been

put back yet. The tall twelfthcentury saints had a wet,

slimy look in the driving rain. Freddy said that the sight

of the black virgin surrounded by candles in the crypt

was worth all the trouble of the trip for him, but it wasn't

for Eveline. Eleanor and J.W. didn't turn up; "Of course

not in this rain," said Freddy. It was a kind of relief to

Eveline to find that she'd caught cold and would have to

go to bed as soon as she got home. Freddy took her to

her door in a taxi but she wouldn't let him come up for

fear he'd find Don there.

Don was there, and was very sympathetic about her

cold and tucked her in bed and made her a hot lemonade

with cognac in it. He had his pockets full of money, as

held just sold some articles, and had gotten a job to go to

Vienna for the Daily Herald of London. He was pulling

out as soon after May 1 as he could . . . "unless some-

thing breaks here," he said impressively. He went away

that evening to a hotel, thanking her for putting him up

like a good comrade even if she didn't love him any more.

The place felt empty after he'd gone. She almost wished

-321-

she'd made him stay. She lay in bed feeling feverishly

miserable, and finally went to sleep feeling sick and scared

and lonely.

The morning of the first of May, Paul Johnson came

around before she was up. He was in civilian clothes and

looked young and slender and nice and lighthaired and

handsome. He said Don Stevens had gotten him all

wrought up about what was going to happen what with

the general strike and all that; he'd come to stick around

if Eveline didn't mind. "I thought I'd better not be in

uniform, so I borrowed this suit from a feller," he said.

"I think I'll strike too," said Eveline. "I'm so sick of that

Red Cross office I could scream."

"Gee, that ud be wonderful, Eveline. We can walk

around and see the excitement. . . . It'll be all right if

you're with me. . . I mean I'll be easier in my mind if

I know where you are if there's trouble. . . You're

awful reckless, Eveline."

"My, you look handsome in that suit, Paul . . . I

never saw you in civilian clothes before."

Paul blushed and put his hands uneasily into his pock-

ets, "Lord, I'll be glad to get into civvies for keeps," he

said seriously. "Even though it'll mean me goin' back to

work . . . I can't get a darn thing out of these Sorbonne

lectures . . . everybody's too darn restless, I guess . . .

and I'm sick of hearing what bums the boche are, that's all

the frog profs seem to be able to talk about."

"Well, go out and read a book and I'll get up. . . .

Did you notice if the old woman across the way had coffee

out?"

"Yare, she did," called Paul from the salon to which

he'd retreated when Eveline stuck her toes out from

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under the bedclothes. "Shall I go out and bring some

in?"

"That's a darling, do. . . . I've got brioches and but-

ter here . . . take that enamelled milkcan out of the

kitchen."

Eveline looked at herself in the mirror before she

started dressing. She had shadows under her eyes and

faint beginnings of crowsfeet. Chillier than the damp Paris

room came the thought of growing old. It was so horribly

actual that she suddenly burst into tears. An old hag's

tearsmeared face looked at her bitterly out of the mirror.

She pressed the palms of her hands hard over her eyes.

"Oh, I lead such a silly life," she whispered aloud.

Paul was back. She could hear him moving around

awkwardly in the salon. "I forgot to tell you . . . Don

says Anatole France is going to march with the mutilays

of la guerre. . . . I've got the cafay o lay whenever

you're ready."

"Just a minute," she called from the basin where she

was splashing cold water on her face. "How old are you,

Paul?" she asked him when she came out of her bedroom

all dressed, smiling, feeling that she was looking her best.

"Free, white and twenty one . . . we'd better drink

up this coffee before it gets cold." "You don't look as old

as that." "Oh, I'm old enough to know better," said Paul,

getting very red in the face. "I'm five years older than

that," said Eveline. "Oh, how I hate growing old." "Five

years don't mean anything," stammered Paul.

He was so nervous he spilt a lot of coffee over his

trouserleg. "Oh, hell, that's a dumb thing to do," he

growled. "I'll get it out in a second," said Eveline, run-

ning for a towel.

She made him sit in a chair and kneeled down in front

of him and scrubbed at the inside of his thigh with the

towel. Paul sat there stiff, red as a beet, with his lips

pressod together. He jumped to his feet before she'd fin-

-323-

ished. "Well, let's go out and see what's happening. I

wish I knew more about what it's all about."

"Well, you might at least say thank you," said Eveline,

looking up at him.

"Thanks, gosh, it's awful nice of you, Eveline."

Outside it was like Sunday. A few stores were open

on the side streets but they had their iron shutters half-

way down. It was a grey day; they walked up the Boule-

vard St. Germain, passing many people out strolling in

their best clothes. It wasn't until a squadron of the Guarde

Republicaine clattered past them in their shiny helmets

and their tricolor plumes that they had any inkling of

tenseness in the air.

Over on the other side of the Seine there were more

people and little groups of gendarmes standing around.

At the crossing of several streets they saw a cluster

of old men in workclothes with a red flag and a

sign, LUMON DES TRAVAILLEURS FERA LA

PAIX DU MONDE. A cordon of republican guards

rode down on them with their sabres drawn, the sun flash-

ing on their helmets. The old men ran or flattened them-

selves in doorways.

On the Grands Boulevards there were companies of

poilus in tin hats and grimy blue uniforms standing round

their stacked rifles. The crowds on the streets cheered

them as they surged past, everything seemed goodna-

tured and jolly. Eveline and Paul began to get tired;

they'd been walking all morning. They began to wonder

where they'd get any lunch. Then too it was starting to

rain.

Passing the Bourse they met Don Stevens, who had

just come out of the telegraph office. He was sore and

tired. He'd been up since five o'clock. "If they're going

to have a riot why the hell can't they have it in time to

make the cables. . . Well, I saw Anatole France dis-

persed on the, Place d'Alma. Ought to be a story in that

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except for all this damned censorship. Things are pretty

serious in Germany . . . I think something's going to

happen there."

"Will anything happen here in Paris, Don?" asked

Paul.

"Damned if I know some kids busted up those

gratings around the trees and threw them at the cops on

the avenue Magenta. . . . Burnham in there says there

are barricades at the end of the place de la Bastille, but

I'm damned if I'm going over till I get something to

eat . . . I don't believe it anyway . . . I'm about foun-

dered. What are you two bourgeois doing out a day like

this?"

"Hey, fellowworker, don't shoot," said Paul, throwing

up his hands. "Wait till we get something to eat," Eveline

laughed. She thought how much better she liked Paul

than she liked Don.

They walked around a lot of back streets in the driz-

zling rain and at last found a little restaurant from which

came voices and a smell of food. They ducked in under

the iron shutter of the door. It was dark and crowded

with taxidrivers and workingmen. They squeezed into the

end of a marble table where two old men were playing

chess. Eveline's leg was pressed against Paul's. She didn't

move; then he began to get red and moved his chair a

little. "Excuse me," he said.

They all ate liver and onions and Don got to talking

with the old men in his fluent bad French. They said the

youngsters weren't good for anything nowadays, in the

old days when they descended into the street they tore up

the pavings and grabbed the cops by the legs and pulled

them off their horses. Today was supposed to be a gen-

eral strike and what had they done? . . . nothing . . .

a few urchins had thrown some stones and one café win-

dow had been broken. It wasn't like that that liberty de-

fended itself and the dignity of labor. The old men went

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back to their chess. Don set them up to a bottle of wine.

Eveline was sitting back halflistening, wondering if

she'd go around to see J.W. in the afternoon. She hadn't

seen him or Eleanor since that Sunday morning; she

didn't care anyway. She wondered if Paul would marry

her, how it would be to have a lot of little babies that

would have the same young coltish fuzzy look he had.

She liked it in this little dark restaurant that smelt of

food and wine and caporal ordinaire, sitting back and let-

ting Don lay down the law to Paul about the revolu-

tion. "When I get back home I guess I'll bum around

the country a little, get a job as a harvest hand and stuff

like that and find out about those things," Paul said

finally. "Now I don't know a darn thing, just what I hear

people say."

After they had eaten they were sitting over some glasses

of wine, when they heard an American voice. Two M.P.'s

had come in and were having a drink at the zinc bar.

"Don't talk English," whispered Paul. They sat there

stiffly trying to look as French as possible until the two

khaki uniforms disappeared, then Paul said, "Whee, I was

scared . . . they'd picked me up sure as hell if they'd

found me without my uniform. . . . Then it'd have been

the Roo Saint Anne and goodby Paree." "Why, you poor

kid, they'd have shot you at sunrise," said Eveline. "You

go right home and change your clothes at once . . . I'm

going to the Red Cross for a while anyway."

Don walked over to the rue de Rivoli with her. Paul

shot off down another street to go to his room and get

his uniform. "I think Paul Johnson's an awfully nice boy,

where did you collect him, Don?" Eveline said in a casual

tone. "He's kinder simple . . . unlicked cub kind of a

kid . . . I guess he's all right . . . I got to know him

when the transport section he was in was billeted near us

up in the Marne . . . Then he got this cush job in the

Post Despatch Service and now he's studying at the Sor-

-326-

bonne. . . . By God, he needs it . . . no social ideas

. . . Paul still thinks it was the stork."

"He must come from near where you came from . . .

back home, I mean."

"Yare, his dad owns a grain elevator in some little

tank town or other . . . petit bourgeois . . . bum en-

vironment . . . He's not a bad kid in spite of it . . .

Damn shame he hasn't read Marx, something to stiffen his

ideas up." Don made a funny face. "That goes with you

too, Eveline, but I gave you up as hopeless long ago.

Ornamental but not useful." They'd stopped and were

talking on the streetcorner under the arcade. "Oh, Don,

I think your ideas are just too tiresome," she began. He

interrupted, "Well, solong, here comes a bus . . . I

oughtn't to ride on a scab bus but it's too damn far to

walk all the way to the Bastille." He gave her a kiss.

"Don't be sore at me." Eveline waved her hand, "Have a

good time in Vienna, Don." He jumped on the platform

of the bus as it rumbled past. The last Eveline saw the

woman conductor was trying to push him off because the

bus was complet.

She went up to her office and tried to look as if she'd

been there all day. At a little before six she walked up the

street to the Crillon and went up to see J.W. Everything

was as usual there, Miss Williams looking chilly and

yellowhaired at her desk, Morton stealthily handing

around tea and petit fours, J.W. deep in talk with a

personage in a cutaway in the embrasure of the window,

halfhidden by the heavy champagnecolored drapes,

Eleanor in a pearlgrey afternoon dress Eveline had never

seen before, chatting chirpily with three young staffofficers

in front of the fireplace. Eveline had a cup of tea and

talked about something or other with Eleanor for a mo-

ment, then she said she had an engagement and left.

In the anteroom she caught Miss Williams' eye as she

-327-

passed. She stopped by her desk a momen: "Busy as ever,

Miss Williams," she said.

"It's better to be busy," she said. "It keeps a person out

of mischief . . . It seems to me that in Paris they waste

a great, deal of time . . . I never imagined that there

could be a place where people could sit around idle so

much of the time."

"The French value their leisure more than anything."

"Leisure's all right if you have something to do with

it . . . but this social life wastes so much of our time . . .

People come to lunch and stay all afternoon, I don't know

what we can do about it . . . it makes a very difficult situa-

tion." Miss Williams looked hard at Eveline. "I don't

suppose you have much to do down at the Red Cross any

more, do you, Miss Hutchins?"

Eveline smiled sweetly. "No, we just live for our leisure

like the French."

She walked across the wide asphalt spaces of the place

de la Concorde, without knowing quite what to do with

herself, and turned up the Champs Elysées where the

horsechestnuts were just coming into flower. The general

strike seemed to be about over, because there were a few

cabs on the streets. She sat down on a bench and a cadaver-

ous looking individual in a frock coat sat down beside her

and tried to pick her up. She got up and walked as fast as

she could. At the Rond Point she had to stop to wait for

a bunch of French mounted artillery and two seventyfives

to go past before she could cross the street. The cadaver-

ous man was beside her; he turned and held out his

hand, tipping his hat as he did so, as if he was an old

friend. She muttered, "Oh, it's just too tiresome," and

got into a horsecab that was standing by the curb. She

almost thought the man was going to get in too, but he

just stood looking after her scowling as the cab drove off

following the guns as if she was part of the regiment.

-328-

Once at home she made herself some cocoa on the gasstove

and went lonely to bed with a book.

Next evening when she got back to her apartment Paul

was waiting for her, wearing a new uniform and with a

resplendent shine on his knobtoed shoes. "Why, Paul, you

look as if you'd been through a washing machine." "A

friend of mine's a sergeant in the quartermaster's stores

. . . coughed up a new outfit." "You look too beautiful

for words." "You mean you do, Eveline."

They went over to the boulevards and had dinner on

the salmoncolored plush seats among the Pompeian col-

umns at Noël Peters' to the accompaniment of slithery

violinmusic. Paul had his month's pay and commutation

of rations in his pocket and felt fine. They talked about

what they'd do when they got back to America. Paul

said his dad wanted him to go into a grain broker's office

in Minneapolis, but he wanted to try his luck in New

York. He thought a young feller ought to try a lot of

things before he settled down at a business so that he

could find out what he was fitted for. Eveline said she

didn't know what she wanted to do. She didn't want to

do anything she'd done before, she knew that, maybe she'd

like to live in Paris.

"I didn't like it much in Paris before," Paul said, "but

like this, goin' out with you, I like it fine." Eveline teased

him, "Oh, I don't think you like me much, you never act

as if you did." "But jeeze, Eveline, you know so much and

you've been around so much. It's mighty nice of you to

let me come around at all, honestly I'll appreciate it all

my life."

"Oh, I wish you wouldn't be like that . . . I hate

people to be humble," Eveline broke out angrily.

They went on eating in silence. They were eating as-

paragus with grated cheese on it. Paul took several gulps

of wine and looked at her in a hurt dumb way she hated.

"Oh, I feel like a party tonight," she said a little later.

-329-

"I've been so miserable all day, Paul . . . I'll tell you

about it sometime . . . you know the kind of feeling

when everything you've wanted crumbles in your fingers

as you grasp it." "All right, Eveline," Paul said, banging

with his fist on the table, "let's cheer up and have a big

time."

When they were drinking coffee the orchestra began

to play polkas and people began to dance among the tables

encouraged by cries of Ah Polkaah aaah from the violinist.

It was a fine sight to see the middleaged diners whirling

around under the beaming eyes of the stout Italian head-

waiter who seemed to feel that la gaité was coming back

to Paree at last. Paul and Eveline forgot themselves and

tried to dance it too. Paul was very awkward, but having

his arms around her made her feel better somehow, made

her forget the scaring loneliness she felt.

When the polka had subsided a little Paul paid the fat

check and they went out arm in arm, pressing close against

each other like all the Paris lovers, to stroll on the boule-

vards in the May evening that smelt of wine and hot rolls

and wild strawberries. They felt lightheaded. Eveline

kept smiling. "Come on, let's have a big time," whispered

Paul occasionally as if to keep his courage up. "I was just

thinking what my friends ud think if they saw me walking

up the Boulevard arm in arm with a drunken dough-

boy," Eveline said. "No, honest, I'm not drunk," said

Paul. "I can drink a lot more than you think. And I

won't be in the army much longer, not if this peace treaty

goes through." "Oh, I don't care," said Eveline, "I don't

care what happens."

They heard music in another café and saw the shadows

of dancers passing across the windows upstairs. "Let's go

up there," said Eveline. They went in and upstairs to

the dancehall that was a long room full of mirrors. There

Eveline said she wanted to drink some Rhine wine. They

studied the card a long while and finally with a funny

-330-

sideways look at Paul, she suggested liebefraumilch. Paul

got red, "I wish I had a liebe frau," he said. "Why, prob-

ably you have . . . one in every port," said Eveline. He

shook his head.

Next time they danced he held her very tight. He

didn't seem so awkward as he had before. "I feel pretty

lonely myself, these days," said Eveline when they sat

down again. "You, lonely . . . with the whole of the

Peace Conference running after you, and the A.E.F.

too . . . Why, Don told me you're a dangerous woman."

She shrugged her shoulders, "When did Don find that

out? Maybe you could be dangerous too, Paul."

Next time they danced she put her cheek against his.

When the music stopped he looked as if he was going to

kiss her, but he didn't. "This is the most wonderful eve-

ning I ever had in my life," he said, "I wish I was the

kind of guy you really wanted to have take you out."

"Maybe you could get to be, Paul . . . you seem to be

learning fast. . . . No, but we're acting silly . . . I hate

ogling and flirting around . . . I guess I want the moon

. . . maybe I want to get married and have a baby."

Paul was embarrassed. They sat silent watching the other

dancers. Eveline saw a young French soldier lean over and

kiss the little girl he was dancing with on the lips; kissing,

they kept on dancing. Eveline wished she was that girl.

"Let's have a little more wine," she said to Paul. "Do you

think we'd better? All right, what the hec, we're having a

big time."

Getting in the taxicab Paul was pretty drunk, laughing

and hugging her. As soon as they were in the darkness of

the back of the taxi they started kissing. Eveline held Paul

off for a minute, "Let's go to your place instead of mine,"

she said. "I'm afraid of my concièrge." "All right . . .

it's awful little," said Paul, giggling. "But ish gebibbel,

we should worry get a wrinkle."

When they had gotten past the bitter eyes that sized

-331-

them up of the old man who kept the keys at Paul's hotel

they staggered up a long chilly winding stair and into a

little room that gave on a court. "It's a great life if you

don't weaken," said Paul, waving his arms after he'd

locked and bolted the door. It had started to rain again

and the rain made the sound of a waterfall on the glass

roof at the bottom of the court. Paul threw his hat and

tunic in the corner of the room and came towards her, his

eyes shining.

They'd hardly gotten to bed when he fell asleep with

his head on her shoulder. She slipped out of bed to turn

the light off and open the window and then snuggled shiv-

ering against his body that was warm and relaxed like a

child's. Outside the rain poured down on the glass roof.

There was a puppy shut up somewhere in the building

that whined and yelped desperately without stopping.

Eveline couldn't get to sleep. Something shut up inside

her was whining like the puppy. Through the window she

began to see the dark peak of a roof and chimneypots

against a fading purple sky. Finally she fell asleep.

Next day they spent together. She'd phoned in to the

Red Cross that she was sick as usual and Paul forgot about

the Sorbonne altogether. They sat all morning in the

faint sunshine at a café near the Madeleine making plans

about what they'd do. They'd get themselves sent back

home as soon as they possibly could and get jobs in New

York and get married. Paul was going to study engineer-

ing in his spare time. There was a firm of grain and feed

merchants in Jersey City, friends of his father's he knew

he could get a job with. Eveline could start up her dec-

orating business again. Paul was happy and confident and

had lost his apologetic manner. Eveline kept telling her-

self that Paul had stuff in him, that she was in love with

Paul, that something could be made out of Paul.

The rest of the month of May they were both a little

lightheaded all the time. They spent all their pay the first

-332-

few days so that they had to eat at little table d'hoôte res-

taurants crowded with students and working people and

poor clerks where they bought books of tickets that gave

them a meal for two francs or two fifty. One Sunday in

June they went out to St. Germain and walked through

the forest. Eveline had spells of nausea and weakness

and had to lie down on the grass several times. Paul

looked worried sick. At last they got to a little settlement

on the bank of the Seine. The Seine flowed fast streaked

with green and lilac in the afternoon light, brimming the

low banks bordered by ranks of huge poplars. They

crossed a little ferry rowed by an old man that Eveline

called Father Time. Halfway over she said to Paul, "Do

you know what's the matter with me, Paul? I'm going to

have a baby."

Paul let his breath out in a whistle. "Well, I hadn't just

planned for that . . . I guess I've been a stinker not

to make you marry me before this. . . . We'll get mar-

ried right away. I'll find out what you have to do to get

permission to get married in the A.E.F. I guess it's all

right, Eveline . . . but, gee, it does change my plans."

They'd reached the other bank and walked up through

Conflans to the railroad station to get the train back to

Paris. Paul looked worried. "Well, don't you think it

changes my plans too?" said Eveline dryly. "It's going

over Niagara Falls in a barrel, that's what it is."

" Eveline," said Paul seriously with tears in his eyes,

"what can I ever do to make it up to you? . . . honest,

I'll do my best." The train whistled and rumbled into the

platform in front of them. They were so absorbed in their

thoughts they hardly saw it. When they'd climbed into a

third class compartment they sat silent bolt upright facing

each other, their knees touching, looking out of the win-

dow without seeing the suburbs of Paris, not saying any-

thing. At last Eveline said with a tight throat, "I want

to have the little brat, Paul, we have to go through every-

-333-

thing in life." Paul nodded. Then she couldn't see his

face anymore. The train had gone into a tunnel.

NEWSREEL XXXIV

WHOLE WORLD IS SHORT OF PLATINUM

Il serait Criminel de Negliger Les Intérêts Français dans

les Balkans

KILLS SELF IN CELL

the quotation of United Cigar Stores made this month of

$.167 per share means $501 per share for the old stock upon

which present stockholders are receiving 27% per share as

formerly held. Through peace and war it has maintained and

increased its dividends

6 TRAPPED ON UPPER FLOOR

How are you goin' to keep 'em down on the farm

After they've seen Paree

If Wall street needed the treaty, which means if the

business interests of the country properly desired to know to

what extent we are being committed in affairs which do not

concern us, why should it take the trouble to corrupt the

tagrag and bobtail which forms Mr. Wilson's following in

Paris?

ALLIES URGE MAGYAR PEOPLE TO UPSET

BELA KUN REGIME

11 WOMEN MISSING IN BLUEBEARD MYSTERY

Enfin La France Achète les stocks Américains

How are you goin' to keep 'em away from Broadway

Jazzin' around

Paintin' the town

-334-

the boulevards during the afternoon presented an un-

wonted aspect. The café terraces in most cases were deserted

and had been cleared of their tables and chairs. At some of

the cafés customers were admitted one by one and served by

faithful waiters, who, however, had discarded their aprons

YEOMANETTE SHRIEKS FOR FORMER

SUITOR AS SHE SEEKS DEATH

IN DRIVE APARTMENT

DESIRES OF HEDJAZ STIR PARIS CRITICS

in order not prematurely to show their colors a pretense

is made of disbanding a few formations; in reality however,

these troops are being transferred lock stock and barrel to

Kolchak

I.W.W. IN PLOT TO KILL WILSON

Find 10,000 Bags of Decayed Onions

FALL ON STAIRS KILLS WEALTHY CITIZEN

the mistiness of the weather hid the gunboat from sight

soon after it left the dock, but the President continued to wave

his hat and smile as the boat headed towards the George

Washington

OVERTHROW OF SOVIET RULE SURE

THE HOUSE OF MORGAN

I commit my soul into the hands of my savior,

wrote John Pierpont Morgan in his will, in full con-

fidence that having redeemed it and washed it in His

most precious blood, He will present it faultless before

my heavenly father, and I intreat my children to main-

tain and defend at all hazard and at any cost of personal

sacrifice the blessed doctrine of complete atonement for

-335-

sin through the blood of Jesus Christ once offered and

through that alone,

and into the hands of the House of Morgan repre-

sented by his son,

he committed,

when he died in Rome in 1913,

the control of the Morgan interests in New York,

Paris and London, four national banks, three trust com-

panies, three life insurance companies, ten railroad sys-

tems, three street railway companies, an express com-

pany, the International Mercantile Marine,

power,

on the cantilever principle, through interlocking

directorates

over eighteen other railroads, U.S. Steel, General

Electric, American Tel and Tel, five major industries;

the interwoven cables of the Morgan Stillman

Baker combination held credit up like a suspension

bridge, thirteen percent of the banking resources of the

world.

The first Morgan to make a pool was Joseph

Morgan, a hotelkeeper in Hartford Connecticut who

organized stagecoach lines and bought up Ætna Life

Insurance stock in a time of panic caused by one of the

big New York fires in the 1830's;

his son Junius followed in his footsteps, first in

the drygoods business, and then as partner to George

Peabody, a Massachusetts banker who built up an enor-

mous underwriting and mercantile business in London

and became a friend of Queen Victoria;

Junius married the daughter of John Pierpont, a

Boston preacher, poet, eccentric, and abolitionist; and

their eldest son,

John Pierpont Morgan

arrived in New York to make his fortune

-336-

after being trained in England, going to school at

Vevey, proving himself a crack mathematician at the

University of Göttingen,

a lanky morose young man of twenty,

just in time for the panic of '57.

(war and panics on the stock exchange, bank-

ruptcies, warloans, good growing weather for the House

of Morgan.)

When the guns started booming at Fort Sumter,

young Morgan turned some money over reselling con-

demned muskets to the U.S. army and began to make

himself felt in the gold room in downtown New York;

there was more in trading in gold than in trading in

muskets; so much for the Civil War.

During the Franco-Prussian war Junius Morgan

floated a huge bond issue for the French government

at Tours.

At the same time young Morgan was fighting Jay

Cooke and the German-Jew bankers in Frankfort over

the funding of the American war debt (he never did

like the Germans or the Jews).

The panic of '75 ruined Jay Cooke and made J.

Pierpont Morgan the boss croupier of Wall Street; he

united with the Philadelphia Drexels and built the

Drexel building where for thirty years he sat in his

glassedin office, redfaced and insolent, writing at his

desk, smoking great black cigars, or, if important issues

were involved, playing solitaire in his inner office; he

was famous for his few words, Yes or No, and for his

way of suddenly blowing up in a visitor's face and for

that special gesture of the arm that meant, What do I

get out of it?

In '77 Junius Morgan retired; J. Pierpont got

himself made a member of the board of directors of the

New York Central railroad and launched the first

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Corsair. He liked yachting and to have pretty actresses

call him Commodore.

He founded the Lying-in Hospital on Stuyvesant

Square, and was fond of going into St. George's church

and singing a hymn all alone in the afternoon quiet.

In the panic of '93

at no inconsiderable profit to himself

Morgan saved the U.S. Treasury; gold was drain-

ing out, the country was ruined, the farmers were howl-

ing for a silver standard, Grover Cleveland and his

cabinet were walking up and down in the blue room at

the White House without being able to come to a

decision, in Congress they were making speeches while

the gold reserves melted in the Subtreasuries; poor

people were starving; Coxey's army was marching to

Washington; for a long time Grover Cleveland couldn't

bring himself to call in the representative of the Wall

Street moneymasters; Morgan sat in his suite at the

Arlington smoking cigars and quietly playing solitaire

until at last the president sent for him;

he had a plan all ready for stopping the gold

hemorrhage.

After that what Morgan said went; when Carnegie

sold out he built the Steel Trust.

J. Pierpont Morgan was a bullnecked irascible

man with small black magpie's eyes and a growth on his

nose; he let his partners work themselves to death over

the detailed routine of banking, and sat in his back

office smoking black cigars; when there was something

to be decided he said Yes or No or just turned his back

and went back to his solitaire.

Every Christmas his librarian read him Dickens'

A Christmas Carol from the original manuscript.

He was fond of canarybirds and pekinese dogs

-338-

and liked to take pretty actresses yachting. Each

Corsair was a finer vessel than the last.

When he dined with King Edward he sat at His

Majesty's right; he ate with the Kaiser tête-à-tête; he

liked talking to cardinals or the pope, and never missed

a conference of Episcopal bishops;

Rome was his favorite city.

He liked choice cookery and old wines and pretty

women and yachting, and going over his collections, now

and then picking up a jewelled snuffbox and staring at

it with his magpie's eyes.

He made a collection of the autographs of the

rulers of France, owned glass cases full of Babylonian

tablets, seals, signets, statuettes, busts,

Gallo-Roman bronzes,

Merovingian jewels, miniatures, watches, tapes-

tries, porcelains, cuneiform inscriptions, paintings by all

the old masters, Dutch, Italian, Flemish, Spanish,

manuscripts of the gospels and the Apocalypse,

a collection of the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau,

and the letters of Pliny the Younger.

His collectors bought anything that was expensive

or rare or had the glint of empire on it, and he had it

brought to him and stared hard at it with his magpie's

eyes. Then it was put in a glass case.

The last year of his life he went up the Nile on a

dahabiyeh and spent a long time staring at the great

columns of the Temple of Karnak.

The panic of 1907 and the death of Harriman, his

great opponent in railroad financing, in 1909, had left

him the undisputed ruler of Wall Street, most power-

ful private citizen in the world;

an old man tired of the purple, suffering from

gout, he had deigned to go to Washington to answer the

questions of the Pujo Committee during the Money

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Trust Investigation: Yes, I did what seemed to me to

be for the best interests of the country.

So admirably was his empire built that his death

in 1913 hardly caused a ripple in the exchanges of the

world: the purple descended to his son, J. P. Morgan,

who had been trained at Groton and Harvard and

by associating with the British ruling class

to be a more constitutional monarch: J. P. Morgan

suggests. . .

By 1917 the Allies had borrowed one billion, nine-

hundred million dollars through the House of Mor-

gan: we went overseas for democracy and the flag;

and by the end of the Peace Conference the phrase

J. P. Morgan suggests had compulsion over a power of

seventyfour billion dollars.

J. P. Morgan is a silent man, not given to public

utterances, but during the great steel strike, he wrote

Gary: Heartfelt congratulations on your stand for the

open shop, with which I am, as you know, absolutely in

accord. I believe American principles of liberty are

deeply involved, and must win if we stand firm.

(Wars and panics on the stock exchange,

machinegunfire and arson,

bankruptcies, warloans,

starvation, lice, cholera and typhus:

good growing weather for the House of Morgan.)

NEWSREEL XXXV

the Grand Prix de la Victoire, run yesterday for fifty-

second time was an event that will long remain in the mem-

ories of those present, for never in the history of the classic

race has Longchamps presented such a glorious scene

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Keep the home fires burning

Till the boys come home.

LEVIATHAN UNABLE TO PUT TO SEA

BOLSHEVIKS ABOLISH POSTAGE STAMPS

ARTIST TAKES GAS IN NEW HAVEN

FIND BLOOD ON $1 BILL

While our hearts are yearning

POTASH CAUSE OF BREAK IN PARLEY

MAJOR DIES OF POISONING

TOOK ROACH SALTS BY MISTAKE

riot and robbery developed into the most awful pogrom

ever heard of. Within two or three days the Lemberg ghetto

was turned into heaps of smoking debris. Eyewitnesses esti-

mate that the Polish soldiers killed more than a thousand jew-

ish men and women and children

LENINE SHOT BY TROTSKY IN DRUNKEN

BRAWL

you know where I stand on beer, said Brisbane in seek-

ing assistance

Though the boys are far away

They long for home

There's a silver lining

Through the dark clouds shining

PRESIDENT EVOKES CRY OF THE DEAD

LETTER CLEW TO BOMB OUTRAGE

Emile Deen in the preceding three installments of his

interview described the situation between the Royal Dutch and

the Standard Oil Company, as being the beginning of a struggle

for the control of the markets of the world which was only

halted by the war. "The basic factors," he said, "are envy,

-341-

discontent and suspicion." The extraordinary industrial

growth of our nation since the Civil War, the opening up of

new territory, the development of resources, the rapid increase

in population, all these things have resulted in the creation of

many big and sudden fortunes. Is there a mother, father,

sweetheart, relative or friend of any one of the two million

boys fighting abroad who does not thank God that Wall Street

contributed H. P. Davidson to the Red Cross?

BOND THIEF MURDERED

Turn the bright side inside out

Till the boys come home

THE CAMERA EYE (39)

daylight enlarges out of ruddy quiet very faintly

throbbing wanes into my sweet darkness broadens red

through the warm blood weighting the lids warmsweetly

then snaps on

enormously blue yellow pink

today is Paris pink sunlight hazy on the clouds

against patches of robinsegg a tiny siren hoots shrilly

traffic drowsily rumbles clatters over the cobbles taxis

squawk the yellow's the comforter through the open

window the Louvre emphasizes its sedate architecture of

greypink stone between the Seine and the sky

and the certainty of Paris

the towboat shiny green and red chugs against the

current towing three black and mahoganyvarnished

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barges their deckhouse windows have green shutters and

lace curtains and pots of geraniums in flower to get

under the bridge a fat man in blue had to let the little

black stack drop flat to the deck

Paris comes into the room in the servantgirl's eyes

the warm bulge of her breasts under the grey smock the

smell of chickory in coffee scalded milk and the shine that

crunches on the crescent rolls stuck with little dabs of very

sweet unsalted butter

in the yellow paperback of the book that halfhides the

agreeable countenance of my friend

Paris of 1919

paris-mutuel

roulettewheel that spins round the Tour Eiffel red

square white square a million dollars a billion marks a

trillion roubles baisse du franc or a mandate for Mont-

martre

Cirque-Médrano the steeplechase gravity of cellos

tuning up on the stage at the Salle Gaveau oboes and a tri-

angle la musique s'n fout de moi says the old

marchioness jingling with diamonds as she walks out on

Stravinski but the red colt took the jumps backwards and

we lost all our money

la peinture opposite the Madeleine Cezanne Picasso

Modigliani

Nouvelle Athènes

Ja Doesie of manifestos always freshtinted on the kiosks

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and slogans scrawled in chalk on the urinals L'UNION

DES TRAVAILLEURS FERA LA PAIX DU

MONDE

revolution round the spinning Eiffel Tower

that burns up our last year's diagrams the dates fly

off the calendar we'll make everything new today is the

Year I Today is the sunny morning of the first day of

spring We gulp our coffee splash water on us jump

into our clothes run downstairs step out wideawake into

the first morning of the first day of the first year

NEWSREEL XXXVI

TO THE GLORY OF FRANCE ETERNAL

Oh a German officer crossed the Rhine

Parleyvoo

Germans Beaten at Riga Grateful Parisians Cheer Mar-

shals of France

Oh a German officer crossed the Rhine

He liked the women and loved the wine

Hankypanky parleyvoo

PITEOUS PLAINT OF WIFE TELLS OF

RIVAL'S WILES

Wilson's Arrival in Washington Starts Trouble. Paris

strikers hear harangues at picnic. Café wrecked and bombs

thrown in Fiume streets. Parisians pay more for meat. Il

Serait Dangereux d'Augmenter les Vivres. Bethmann Hol-

weg's Blood Boils. Mysterious Forces Halt Antibolshevist

March.

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HUNIS HAND SEEN IN PLOTS

Oh Mademoiselle from Arnientières

Parleyvoo

Oh Mademoiselle from Armentières

Parleyvoo

Hasn't been ---- for forty years

Hankypanky parleyvoo

wrecks mark final day at La Baule; syndicated wage

earners seize opportunity to threaten employers unprepared

for change. LAYS WREATH ON TOMB OF LAFAY-

ETTE. Richest Negress is Dead. Yale Dormitories stormed

by Angry Mob of Soldiers. Goldmine in Kinks.

TIGHTENS SCREW ON BERLIN

Oh he took her upstairs and into bed

And there he cracked her maidenhead

Hankypanky parleyvoo

NO DROP IN PRICES TO FOLLOW PEACE SAY

BUSINESS MEN

KILLS SELF AT DESK IN OFFICE

MODERN BLUEBEARD NOW VICTIM OF MELANCHOLIA

He is none other than General Minus of the old Russian

Imperial General Staff, who, during the Kerensky régime, was

commander of troops in the region of Minsk. Paris policemen

threaten to join strike movement, allow it to send into France

barrels bearing the mystic word Mistelles. One speculator is

said to have netted nearly five million francs within a week.

Oh the first three months and all went well

But the second three months she began to swell

Hankypanky parleyvoo

large financial resources, improved appliances and abun-

dant raw materials of America should assist French genius in

restoring and increasing industrial power of France, joining

hands in the charming scenery, wonderful roads, excellent

hotels, and good cookery makes site of Lyons fair crossed by

-345-

the 45th parallel. Favored by great mineral resources its future

looms incalculably splendid. Any man who attempts to take

over control of municipal functions here will be shot on sight,

Mayor Ole Hanson remarked. He is a little man himself but

has big ideas, a big brain, and big hopes. Upon first meeting

him one is struck by his resemblance to Mark Twain

RICHARD ELLSWORTH SAVAGE

Dick and Ned felt pretty rocky the morning they sighted

Fire Island lightship. Dick wasn't looking forward to land-

ing in God's Country with no money and the draft board

to face, and he was worried about how his mother was

going to make out. All Ned was complaining about was

wartime prohibition. They were both a little jumpy from

all the cognac they'd drunk on the trip over. They were

already in the slategreen shallow seas off Long Island;

no help for it now. The heavy haze to the west and then

the low boxlike houses that looked as if they were drowned

in the water and then the white strip of beach of the Rock-

aways; the scenicrailways of Coney Island; the full green

summer trees and the grey framehouses with their white

trim on Staten Island; it was all heartbreakingly like home.

When the immigration tug came alongside Dick was sur-

prised to see Hiram Halsey Cooper, in khaki uniform and

puttees, clambering up the steps. Dick lit a cigarette and

tried to look sober.

"My boy, it's a great relief to see you. . . . Your

mother and I have been . . . et . . ." Dick interrupted

to introduce him to Ned. Mr. Cooper, who was in the

uniform of a major, took him by the sleeve and drew him

up the deck. "Better put on your uniform to land.""All

right, sir, I thought it looked rather shabby.""All the

better. . . . Well, I suppose it's hell over there . . . and

-346-

no chance for courting the muse, eh? . . . You're coming

up to Washington with me tonight. We've been very un-

easy about you, but that's all over now . . . made me

realize what a lonely old man I am. Look here, my boy,

your mother was the daughter of Major General Ells-

worth, isn't that so?" Dick nodded. "Of course she must

have been because my dear wife was his niece. . . . Well,

hurry and put your uniform on and remember . . . leave

all the talking to me."

While he was changing into the old Norton-Harjes

uniform Dick was thinking how suddenly Mr. Cooper had

aged and wondering just how he could ask him to lend him

fifteen dollars to pay the bill he'd run up at the bar.

New York had a funny lonely empty look in the

summer afternoon sunlight; well here he was home. At

the Pennsylvania station there were policemen and plain-

clothes men at all the entrances demanding the registra-

tion cards of all the young men who were not in uniform.

As'he and Mr. Cooper ran for the train he caught sight of

a dejectedlooking group of men herded together in a cor-

ner hemmed by a cordon of sweating cops. When they

got in their seats in the parlorcar on the Congressional

Mr. Cooper mopped his face with a handkerchief. "You

understand why I said to put your uniform on. Well, I

suppose it was hell?"

"Some of it was pretty bad," said Dick casually. "I

hated to come back though."

"I know you did, my boy. . . . You didn't expect to

find your old mentor in the uniform of a major . . . well,

we must all put our shoulders to the wheel. I'm in the

purchasing department of Ordnance. You see the chief of

our bureau of personnel is General Sykes; he turns out to

have served with your grandfather. I've told him about

you, your experience on two fronts, your knowledge of

languages and . . . well . . . naturally he's very much

-347-

interested. . . . I think we can get you a commission

right away."

"Mr. Cooper, it's . . ." stammered Dick, "it's extraor-

dinarily decent . . . damn kind of you to interest yourself

in me this way."

"My boy, I didn't realize how I missed you . . . our

chats about the muse and the ancients . . . until you had

gone." Mr. Cooper's voice was drowned out by the roar

of the train. Well, here I am home, something inside

Dick's head kept saying to him.

When the train stopped at the West Philadelphia sta-

tion the only sound was the quiet droning of the electric

fans; Mr. Cooper leaned over and tapped Dick's knee,

"Only one thing you must promise . . . no more peace

talk till we win the war. When peace comes we can put

some in our poems. . . . Then'll be the time for us all

to work for a lasting peace. . . . As for that little incident

in Italy . . . it's nothing . . . forget it . . . nobody ever

heard of it." Dick nodded; it made him sore to feel that

he was blushing. They neither of them said anything until

the waiter came through calling, "Dinner now being

served in the dining car forward."

In Washington (now you are home, something kept

saying in Dick's head) Mr. Cooper had a room in the

Willard where he put Dick up on the couch as the hotel

was full and it was impossible to get another room any-

where. After he'd rolled up in the sheet Dick heard Mr.

Cooper tiptoe over and stand beside the couch breathing

hard. He opened his eyes and grinned. "Well, my boy,"

said Mr. Cooper, "it's nice to have you home . . . sleep

well," and he went back to bed.

Next morning he was introduced to General Sykes:

"This is the young man who wants to serve his country,"

said Mr. Cooper with a flourish, "as his grandfather served

it. . . . In fact he was so impatient that he went to war

before his country did, and enlisted in the volunteer ambu-

-348-

lance service with the French and afterwards with the

Italians." General Sykes was a little old man with bright

eyes and a hawk nose and extremely deaf. "Yes, Ellsworth

was a great fellow, we campaigned against Hieronimo to-

gether . . . Ah, the old west . . . I was only fourteen at

Gettysburg and damme I don't think he was there at all.

We went through West Point in the same class after the

war, poor old Ellsworth. . . . So you've smelled powder

have you, my boy?" Dick colored and nodded.

"You see, General," shouted Mr. Cooper, "he feels he

wants some more . . . er . . . responsible work than was

possible in the ambulance service."

"Yessiree, no place for a highspirited young fellow.

. . . You know Andrews, Major . . ." The General was

scribbling on a pad. "Take him to see Colonel Andrews

with this memorandum and he'll fix him up, has to decide

on qualifications etc. . . . You understand . . . good

luck, my boy." Dick managed a passable salute and they

were out in the corridori Mr. Cooper was smiling broadly.

"Well, that's done. I must be getting back to my office.

You go and fill out the forms and take your medical exami-

nation . . . or perhaps that'll be at the camp . . . Any-

way come and lunch with me at the Willard at one. Come

up to the room." Dick saluted smiling.

He spent the rest of the morning filling out blanks.

After lunch he went down to Atlantic City to see his

mother. She looked just the same. She was staying in a

boarding house at the Chelsea end and was very much

exercised about spies. Henry had enlisted as a private

in the infantry and was somewhere in France. Mother said

it. made her blood boil to think of the grandson of General

Ellsworth being a mere private, but that she felt confident

he'd soon rise from the ranks. Dick hadn't heard her

speak of her father since she used to talk about him when

he was a child, and asked her about him. He had died

when she was quite a little girl leaving the family not too

-349-

well off considering their station in life. All she remem-

bered was a tall man in blue with a floppy felt hat caught

up on one side and a white goatee; when she'd first seen a

cartoon of Uncle Sam she'd thought it was her father. He

always had hoarhound drops in a little silver bonbonnière

in his pocket, she'd been so excited about the military

funeral and a nice kind army officer giving her his handker-

chief. She'd kept the bonbonnière for many years but it

had had to go with everything else when your poor father

. . . er . . . failed.

A week later Dick received a war department envelope

addressed to Savage, Richard Ellsworth, 2nd Lieut. Ord.

Dept., enclosing his commission and ordering him to pro-

ceed to Camp Merritt, N. J., within 24 hours. Dick found

himself in charge of a casuals company at Camp Merritt

and wouldn't have known what on earth to do if it hadn't

been for the sergeant. Once they were on the transport it

was better; he had what had been a first class cabin with

two other 2nd Lieutenants and a Major; Dick had the drop

on them all because he'd been at the front. The transport

was the Leviathan; Dick began to feel himself again when

he saw the last of Sandy Hook; he wrote Ned a long letter

in doggerel that began:

His father was a jailbird and his mother had no kale

He was much too fond of cognac and he drank it by the pail

But now he's a Second Lieut and supported by the State.

Sports a handsome uniform and a military gait

And this is the most terrific fate that ever can befall

A boy whose grandpa was a Major-General.

The other two shavetails in the cabin were nondescript

youngsters from Leland Stanford, but Major Thompson

was a Westpointer and stiff as a ramrod. He was a middle-

aged man with a yellow round face, thin lips and nose-

glasses. Dick thawed him out a little by getting him a

pint of whiskey through his sergeant who'd gotten chummy

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with the stewards, when he got seasick two days out, and

discovered that he was a passionate admirer of Kipling and

had heard Copeland read Danny Deever and been very

much impressed. Furthermore he was an expert on mules

and horseflesh and the author of a monograph: The Span-

ish Horse. Dick admitted that he'd studied with Copeland

and somehow it came out that he was the grandson of the

late General Ellsworth. Major Thompson began to take

an interest in him and to ask him questions about the don-

keys the French used to carry ammunition in the trenches,

Italian cavalry horses and the works of Rudyard Kipling.

The night before they reached Brest when everybody was

flustered and the decks were all dark and silent for the

zone, Dick went into a toilet and reread the long kidding

letter he'd written Ned first day out. He tore it up into

small bits, dropped them in the can and then flushed it

carefully: no more letters.

In Brest Dick took three majors downtown and ordered

them a meal and good wine at the hotel; during the eve-

ning Major Thompson told stories about the Philippines

and the Spanish war; after the fourth bottle Dick taught

them all to sing Mademoiselle from Armentières. A few

days later he was detached from his casuals company and

sent to Tours; Major Thompson, who felt he needed

somebody to speak French for him and to talk about

Kipling with, had gotten him transferred to his office. It

was a relief to see the last of Brest, where everybody was

in a continual grouch from the drizzle and the mud and

the discipline and the saluting and the formations and the,

fear of getting in wrong with the brasshats.

Tours was full of lovely creamystone buildings buried in

dense masses of bluegreen late summer foliage. Dick was

on commutation of rations and boarded with an agreeable

old woman who brought him up his café au lait in bed

every morning. He got to know a fellow in the Personnel

Department through whom he began to work to get Henry

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transferred out of the infantry. He and Major Thompson

and old Colonel Edgecombe and several other officers

dined together very often; they got so they couldn't do

without Dick who knew how to order a meal comme il

faut, and the proper vintages of wines and could parleyvoo

with the French girls and make up limericks and was the

grandson of the late General Ellsworth.

When the Post Despatch Service was organized as a

separate outfit, Colonel Edgecombe who headed it, got

him away from. Major Thompson and his horsedealers;

Dick became one of his assistants with the rank of Captain.

Immediately he managed to get Henry transferred from

the officers' school to Tours. It was too late though to get

him more than a first lieutenancy.

When Lieutenant Savage reported to Captain Savage

in his office he looked brown and skinny and sore. That

evening they drank a bottle of white wine together in

Dick's room. The first thing Henry said when the door

closed behind them was, "Well, of all the goddam lousy

grafts . . . I don't know whether to be proud of the

little kid brother or to sock him in the eye."

Dick poured him a drink. "It must have been Mother's

doing," he said. "Honestly, I'd forgotten that granpa was

a general."

"If you knew what us guys at the front used to say

about the S.O.S."

"But somebody's got to handle the supplies and the

ordnance and . . ."

"And the mademosels and the vin blanc," broke in

Henry.

"Sure, but I've been very virtuous. . . . Your little

brother's minding his p's and q's, and honestly I've been

working like a nigger."

"Writing loveletters for ordnance majors, I bet. . . .

Hell, you can't beat it. He lands with his nose in the but-

ter every time. . . . Anyway I'm glad there's one suc-

-352-

cessful member of the family to carry on the name of the

late General Ellsworth."

"Have a disagreeable time in the Argonne?"

" Lousy . . . until they sent me back to officers' school."

"We had a swell time there in the ambulance service in

'17."

"Oh, you would."

Henry drank some more wine and mellowed up a little.

Every now and then he'd look around the big room with

its lace curtains and its scrubbed tile floor and its big four-

poster bed and make a popping sound with his lips and

mutter: "Pretty soft." Dick took him out and set him up

to a fine dinner at his favorite bistro and then went around

and fixed him up with Minette, who was the bestlooking

girl at Madame Patou's.

After Henry had gone upstairs, Dick sat in the parlor a

few minutes with a girl they called Dirty Gertie who had

hair dyed red and a big floppy painted mouth, drinking

the bad cognac and feeling blue. "Vous triste?" she said,

and put her clammy hand on his forehead. He nodded.

"Fièvre . . . trop penser . . . penser no good . . . moi

aussi." Then she said she'd kill herself but she was afraid,

not that she believed in God, but that she was afraid of

how quiet it would be after she was dead. Dick cheered her

up, "Bientot guerre finee. Tout le monde content go back

home." The girl burst out crying and Madame Patou

came running in screaming and clawing like a seagull.

She was a heavy woman with an ugly jaw. She grabbed the

girl by the hair and began shaking her. Dick was flustered.

He managed to make the woman let the girl go back to

her room, left some money and walked out. He felt ter-

rible. When he got home he felt like writing some verse.

He tried to recapture the sweet and heavy pulsing of

feelings he used to have when he sat down to write a poem.

But all he could do was just feel miserable so he went to

bed. All night half thinking half dreaming he couldn't

-353-

get Dirty Gertie's face out of his head. Then he began

remembering the times he used to have with Hilda at

Bay Head and had a long conversation with himself about

love: Everything's so hellishly sordid . . . I'm sick of

whores and chastity, I want to have love affairs. He began

planning what he'd do after the war, probably go home

and get a political job in Jersey; a pretty sordid prospect.

He was lying on his back staring at the ceiling that was

livid with dawn when he heard Henry's voice calling his

name down in the street outside; he tiptoed down the cold

tiled stairs and let him in.

"Why the hell did you let me go with that girl, Dick?

I feel like a louse . . . Oh Christ . . . mind if I have

half this bed, Dick? I'll get me a room in the morning."

Dick found him a pair of pyjamas and made himself small

on his side of the bed. "The trouble with you, Henry," he

said, yawning, "is that you're just an old Puritan . . . you

ought to be more continental."

"I notice you didn't go with any of those bitches your-

self."

"I haven't got any morals but I'm finnicky, my dear,

Epicurus' owne sonne," Dick drawled sleepily.

"S -- t I feel like a dirty dishrag," whispered Henry.

Dick closed his eyes and went to sleep.

Early in October Dick was sent to Brest with a despatch

case that the Colonel said was too important to entrust to

an enlisted man. At Rennes he had to wait two hours for

the train, and was sitting eating in the restaurant when a

doughboy with his arm in a sling came up to him saying,

"Hello, Dick, for crying out loud." It was Skinny Murray.

"By gosh, Skinny, I'm glad to see you . . . it must be

five or six years . . . Gee, we're getting old. Look, sit

down . . . no, I can't do that."

"I suppose I ought to have saluted, sir," said Skinny

stiffly.

"Can that, Skinny . . . but we've got to find a place to

-354-

talk . . . got any time before your train? You see it's me

the M.P.'s would arrest if they saw me eating and drink-

ing with an enlisted man. . . . Wait around till I've fin-

ished my lunch and we'll find a ginmill across from the

station. I'll risk it.""I've got an hour I'm going to

the Grenoble leave area."

"Lucky bastard . . . were you badly wounded, Skin-

ny?""Piece of shrapnel in the wing, captain," said Skinny,

coming to attention as a sergeant of M.P.'s stalked stiffly

through the station restaurant. "Those birds gimme the

willies."

Dick hurried through his lunch, paid, and walked

across the square outside the station. One of the cafés had

a back room that looked dark and quiet. They were just

settling down to chat over two beers when Dick remem-

bered the despatch case. He'd left it at the table. Whisper-

ing breathlessly that he'd be back he ran across the square

and into the station restaurant. Three French officers were

at the table. "Pardon, messieurs." It was still where he'd

left it under the table. "If I'd lost that I'd have had to

shoot myself," he told Skinny. They chatted about Tren-

ton and Philadelphia and Bay Head and Dr. Atwood.

Skinny was married and had a good job in a Philadelphia

bank. He had volunteered for the tanks and was winged

by a bit of shrapnel before the attack started, damn lucky

for him, because his gang had been wiped out by a black

maria. He was just out of hospital today and felt pretty

weak on his pins. Dick took down his service data and said

held get him transferred to Tours; just the kind of fellow

they needed for a courier. Then Skinny had to run for

his train, and Dick, with the despatch case tightly wedged

under his arm, went out to stroll around the town daintily

colored and faintly gay under the autumn drizzle.

The rumor of the fake armistice set Tours humming

like a swarm of bees; there was a lot of drinking and back-

slapping and officers and enlisted men danced snakedances

-355-

in and out of the officebuildings. When it turned out to be

a false alarm Dick felt almost relieved. The days that fol-

lowed everybody round the headquarters of the Despatch

Service wore a mysterious expression of knowing more than

they were willing to tell. The night of the real armistice

Dick ate supper a little deliriously with Colonel Edge-

combe and some other officers. After dinner Dick happened

to meet the colonel in the courtyard out back. The colonel's

face was red and his moustache bristled. "Well, Savage,

it's a great day for the race," he said, and laughed a great

deal. "What race?" said Dick shyly. "The human race,"

roared the colonel.

Then he drew Dick aside: "How would you like to go to

Paris, my boy? It seems that there's to be a peace con-

ference in Paris and that President Wilson is going to

attend it in person . . . seems incredible . . . and I've

been ordered to put this outfit at the disposal of the Ameri-

can delegation that's coming soon to dictate the peace, so

we'll be Peace Conference couriers. Of course I suppose if

you feel you have to go home it could be arranged."

"Oh, no, sir," broke in Dick hurriedly. "I was just be-

ginning to worry about having to go home and look for a

job. . . . The Peace Conference will be a circus and any

chance to travel around Europe suits me." The colonel

looked at him with narrowed eyes. "I wouldn't put it just

that way . . . service should be our first thought . . .

naturally what I said is strictly confidential.""Oh, strictly,"

said Dick, but he couldn't help wearing a grin on his face

when he went back to join the others at the table.

Paris again; and this time in a new whipcord uniform

with silver bars at his shoulders and with money in his

pockets. One of the first things he did was to go back to

look at the little street behind the Pantheon where held

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lived with Steve Warner the year before. The tall chalky-

grey houses, the stores, the little bars, the bigeyed children

in the black smocks, the youngsters in caps with silk hand-

kerchiefs around their necks, the Parisian drawl of the

argot: it all made him feel vaguely unhappy; he was won-

dering what had happened to Steve. It was a relief to get

back to the office where the enlisted men were moving in

newly arrived American rolltop desks and yellow varnished

card index cases.

The hub of this Paris was the hôtel de Crillon on the

place de la Concorde, its artery the rue Royale where

arriving dignitaries, President Wilson, Lloyd George and

the King and Queen of the Belgians were constantly parad-

ing escorted by the garde republicaine in their plumed

helmets; Dick began living in a delirium of trips to Brus-

sels on the night express, lobster cardinal washed down

with Beaune on the red plush settees at Larue's, champagne

cocktails at the Ritz bar, talk full of the lowdown over a

demie at the Café Weber; it was like the old days of the

Baltimore convention, only he didn't give a damn any

more; it all hit him cockeyed funny.

One night soon after Christmas, Colonel Edgecombe

took Dick to dinner at Voisin's with a famous New York

publicity man who was said to be very near to Colonel

House. They stood a moment on the pavement outside the

restaurant to look at the tubby domed church opposite.

"You see, Savage, this fellow's the husband of a relative of

mine, one of the Pittsburgh Staples . . . smooth . . . it

seems to me. You look him over. For a youngster you seem

to have a keen eye for character."

Mr. Moorehouse turned out to be a large quietspoken

blueeyed jowly man with occasionally a touch of the south-

ern senator in his way of talking. With him were a man

named Robbins and a Miss Stoddard, a fraillooking woman

with very transparent alabaster skin and a sharp chirpy

voice; Dick noticed that she was stunningly welldressed.

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The restaurant was a little too much like an Episcopal

church; Dick said very little, was very polite to Miss

Stoddard and kept his eyes and ears open, eating the

grandducal food and carefully tasting the mellow wine

that nobody else seemed to pay any attention to. Miss

Stoddard kept everybody talking, but nobody seemed to

want to commit themselves to saying anything about the

peace conference. Miss Stoddard told with considerable

malice about the furnishings of the hôtel de Mûrat and

the Wilsons' colored maid and what kind of clothes the

President's wife, whom she insisted on calling Mrs. Galt,

was wearing. It was a relief when they got to the cigars

and liqueurs. After dinner Colonel Edgecombe offered to

drop Mr. Moorehouse at the Crillon, as his staffcar had

come for him. Dick and Mr. Robbins took Miss Stoddard

home in a taxicab to her apartment opposite Nôtre Dâme

on the left bank. They left her at her door. "Perhaps you'll

come around some afternoon to tea, Captain Savage," she

said.

The taximan refused to take them any further, said it was

late and that he was bound home to Noisy-le-sec and

drove off. Robbins took hold of Dick's arm. "Now for

crissake let's go and have a decent drink. . . . Boy, I'm

sick of the bigwigs.""All right," said Dick, "where'll we

go?" Walking along the foggy quay, past the shadowy bulk

of Nôtre Dâme, they talked scatteringly about Paris and

how cold it was. Robbins was a short man with an impudent

bossy look on his red face. In the café it was only a little

less chilly than in the street. "This climate's going to be

the death of me," said Robbins, snuggling his chin down

in his overcoat. "Woolly underwear's the only answer,

that's one thing I've learned in the army," said Dick

laughing.

They settled on a plush bench near the stove at the end

of the cigarsmoky giltornamented room. Robbins ordered

a bottle of Scotch whiskey, glasses, lemon, sugar and a lot

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of hot water. It took a long time to get the hot water, so

Robbins poured them each a quarter of a tumbler of the

whiskey straight. When he'd drunk his, his face that had

been sagging and tired, smoothed out so that he looked ten

years younger. "Only way to keep warm in this goddam

town's to keep stewed.""Still I'm glad to be back in

little old Paree," said Dick, smiling and stretching his legs

out under the table. "Only place in the world to be right

at present," said Robbins. " Paris is the hub of the world

. . . unless it's Moscow."

At the word Moscow a Frenchman playing checkers at

the next table brought his eyes up from the board and

stared at the two Americans. Dick couldn't make out what

there was in his stare; it made him uneasy. The waiter came

with the hot water. It wasn't hot enough, so Robbins made

a scene and sent it back. He poured out a couple of half-

tumblers of straight whiskey to drink while they were wait-

ing. "Is the President going to recognize the soviets?"

Dick found himself asking in a low voice.

"I'm betting on it . . . I believe he's sending an un-

official mission. Depends a little on oil and manganese . . .

it used to be King Coal, but now it's Emperor Petroleum

and Miss Manganese, queen consort of steel. That's all in

the pink republic of Georgia . . . I hope to get there

soon, they say that they have the finest wine and the most

beautiful women in the world. By God, I got to get

there. . . . But the oil . . . God damn it, that's what

this damned idealist Wilson can't understand, while they're

setting him up to big feeds at Buckingham palace the jolly

old British army is occupying Mosul, the Karun River,

Persia . . . now the latrine news has it that they're in

Baku . . . the future oil metropolis of the world."

"I thought the Baku fields were running dry."

"Don't you believe it . . . I just talked to a fellow

who'd been there . . . a funny fellow, Rasmussen, you

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ought to meet him." Dick said hadn't we got plenty of oil

at home. Robbins banged his fist on the table.

"You never can have plenty of anything . . . that's the

first law of thermodynamics. I never have plenty of whis-

key. . . . You're a young fellow, do you ever have plenty

of tail? Well, neither Standard Oil or the Royal Dutch-

Shell can ever have plenty of crude oil."

Dick blushed and laughed a little forcedly. He didn't

like this fellow Robbins. The waiter finally came back with

boiling water and Robbins made them each a toddy. For a

while neither of them said anything. The checkerplayers

had gone. Suddenly Robbins turned to Dick and looked in

his face with his hazy blue drunkard's eyes: "Well, what

do you boys think about it all? What do the fellers in the

trenches think?"

"How do you mean?"

"Oh, hell, I don't mean anything. . . . But if they

thought the war was lousy wait till they see the peace . . .

Oh, boy, wait till they see the peace."

"Down at Tours I don't think anybody thought much

about it either way . . . however, I don't think that any-

body that's seen it considers war the prize way of settling

international difficulties . . . I don't think Blackjack

Pershing himself thinks that."

"Oh, listen to him . . . can't be more than twenty-

five and he talks like a book by Woodrow Wilson . . .

I'm a son of a bitch and I know it, but when I'm drunk

I say what I goddam please."

"I don't see any good a lot of loud talk's going to do.

It's a magnificent tragic show . . . the Paris fog smells of

strawberries . . . the gods don't love us but we'll die

young just the same. . . . Who said I was sober?"

They finished up a bottle. Dick taught Robbins a rhyme

in French:

Les marionettes font font font

Trois petit tours et puis s'en vont

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and when the café closed they went out arm in arm. Rob-

bins was humming,

Cheer up, Napoleon, you'll soon be dead

A short life and a gay one

and stopping to talk with all the petite femmes they met on

the Boul' Mich'. Dick finally left him talking to a cowlike

woman in a flappy hat in front of the fountain on the Place

St. Michel, and began the long walk home to his hotel

that was opposite the Gare St. Lazare.

The broad asphalt streets were deserted under the pink

arclights but here and there on benches along the quais,

under the bare dripping trees along the bank of the Seine,

in spite of the raw night couples were still sitting huddled

together in the strangleholds of l'amour. At the corner

of the boulevard Sébastopol a whitefaced young man who

was walking the other way looked quickly into his face and

stopped. Dick slackened his pace for a moment, but walked

on past the string of marketcarts rumbling down the rue

de Rivoli, taking deep breaths to clear the reek of whiskey

out of his head. The long brightlylighted avenue that led

to the opera was empty. In front of the opera there were

a few people, a girl with a lovely complexion who was

hanging on the arm of a pollu gave him a long smile.

Almost at his hotel he ran face to face into a girl who-

seemed remarkably pretty, before he knew it he was asking

her what she was doing out so late. She laughed, charm-

ingly he thought, and said she was doing the same thing he

was. He took her to a little hotel on the back street behind

his own. They were shown into a chilly room that smelt of

furniture polish. There was a big bed, a bidet, and a lot of

heavy claretcolored hangings. The girl was older than he'd

thought and very tired, but she had a beautiful figure

and very pale skin; he was glad to see how clean her under-

wear was, with a pretty lace edging. They sat a little while

on the edge of the bed talking low.

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When he asked her what her name was, she shook her

head and smiled, "Qu'est-ce que ça vous fait?"

"L'homme sans nom et la femme sans nom, vont faire

l'amour a l'hotel du néant," he said. "Oh qu'il est rigolo,

celui-là," she giggled. "Dis, tu n'est pas malade?" He

shook his head. "Moi non plus," she said, and started rub-

bing up against him like a kitten.

When they left the hotel they roamed around the dark

streets until they found an earlymorning coffeebar. They

ate coffee and croissants together in drowsy intimate quiet,

leaning very close to each other as they stood against the

bar. She left him to go up the hill towards Montmartre.

He asked her if he couldn't see her again sometime. She

shrugged her shoulders. He gave her thirty francs and

kissed her and whispered in her ear a parody of his little

rhyme:

Les petites marionettes font font font

Un p'tit peu d'amour et puis s'en vont

She laughed and pinched his cheek and the last he heard

of her was her gruff giggle and "Oh qu'il est rigolo,

celui-là."

He went back to his room feeling happy and sleepy and

saying to himself: what's the matter with my life is I

haven't got a woman of my own. He had just time to wash

and shave and put on a clean shirt and to rush down to

headquarters in order to be there when Colonel Edge-

combe, who was a damnably early riser, got in. He found

orders to leave for Rome that night.

By the time he got on the train his eyes were stinging

with sleepiness. He and the sergeant who went with him

had a compartment reserved at the end of a first class

coach marked Paris-Brindisi. Outside of their compart-

ment the train was packed; people were standing in the

aisles. Dick had taken off his coat and Sam Browne belt

and was loosening his puttees, planning to stretch out on

-362-

one of the seats and go to sleep even before the train left,

when he saw a skinny American face in the door of the

compartment. "I beg your pardon, is this Ca-ca-captain

Savage?" Dick sat up and nodded yawning. " CaptainSav-

age, my name is Barrow, G. H. Barrow, attached to the

American delegation. . . . I have to go to Rome tonight

and there's not a seat on the train. The transport officer in

the station very kindly said that . . . er . . . er although

it wasn't according to Hoyle you might stretch a point and

allow us to ride with you . . . I have with me a very

charming young lady member of the Near East Re-

lief . . ."" CaptainSavage, it certainly is mighty nice of

you to let us ride with you," came a drawling Texas voice,

and a pinkcheeked girl in a dark grey uniform brushed past

the man who said his name was Barrow and climbed up into

the car. Mr. Barrow, who was shaped like a string bean

and had a prominent twitching Adam's apple and popeyes,

began tossing up satchels and suitcases. Dick was sore and

began to say stiffly, "I suppose you know that it's entirely

against my orders . . ." but he heard his own voice saying

it and suddenly grinned and said, "All right, Sergeant

Wilson and I will probably be shot at sunrise, but go

ahead." At that moment the train started.

Dick reluctantly scraped his things together into one

corner and settled down there and immediately closed his

eyes. He was much too sleepy to make the effort of talk-

ing to any damn relievers. The sergeant sat in the other

corner and Mr. Barrow and the girl occupied the other

seat. Through his doze Dick could hear Mr. Barrow's

voice chugging along, now and then drowned out by the

rattle of the express train. He had a stuttery way of talk-

ing like a badly running motorboat engine. The girl didn't

say much except, "Oh my," and "I declare," now and then.

It was the European situation: President Wilson says . . .

new diplomacy . . . new Europe . . . permanent peace

without annexations or indemnities. President Wilson

-363-

says . . . new understanding between capital and labor

. . . President Wilson appeals to . . . industrial democ-

racy . . . plain people all over the world behind the

president. Covenant. League of Nations . . . Dick was

asleep dreaming of a girl rubbing her breasts against him

purring like a kitten, of a popeyed man making a speech, of

William Jennings Wilson speaking before the Baltimore conflagration, of industrial democracy in a bathhouse on

the Marne in striped trunks, with a young Texas boy with

pink cheeks who wanted to . . . like a string bean . . .

with a twitching adamsapple . . .

He woke up with a nightmarish feeling that somebody

was choking him. The train had stopped. It was stifling

in the compartment. The blue shade was drawn down on

the lamp overhead. He stepped over everybody's legs and

went out in the passage and opened a window. Cold moun-

tain air cut into his nostrils. The hills were snowy in the

moonlight. Beside the track a French sentry was sleepily

leaning on his rifle. Dick yawned desperately.

The Near East Relief girl was standing beside him,

looking at him smiling. "Where are we gettin' to, Captain

Savage? . . . Is this Italy yet?""I guess it's the Swiss

border . . . we'll have a long wait, I guess . . . they take

forever at these borders."

"Oh Jimminy," said the girl, jumping up and down,

"it's the first time I ever crossed a border."

Dick laughed and settled back into his seat again. The

train pulled into a barny lonelylooking, station, very dimly

lit, and the civilian passengers started piling out with their

baggage. Dick sent his papers by the sergeant to the mili-

tary inspection and settled back to sleep again.

He slept soundly and didn't wake up until the Mont

Cenis. Then it was the Italian frontier. Again cold air,

snowy mountains, everybody getting out into an empty

barn of a station.

Sleepysentimentally remembering the last time he'd

-364-

gone into Italy on the Fiat car with Sheldrake, he walked

shivering to the station bar and drank a bottle of mineral

water and a glass of wine. He took a couple of bottles of

mineral water and a fiasco of chianti back to the compart-

ment, and offered Mr. Barrow and the girl drinks when

they came back from the customs and the police looking

very cross and sleepy. The girl said she couldn't drink

wine because she'd signed a pledge not to drink or smoke

when she joined the N.E.R., but she drank some mineral

water and complained that it tickled her nose. Then they

all huddled back into their corners to try to sleep some

more. By the time they pulled into the Termi station in

Rome they were all calling each other by their first names.

The Texas girl's name was Anne Elizabeth. She and Dick

had spent the day standing in the corridor looking out at

the saffronroofed towns and the peasants' houses each with

a blue smear on the stucco behind the grapevine over the

door, and the olives and the twisted shapes of the vines in

their redterraced fields; the pale hilly Italian landscape

where the pointed cypresses stood up so dark they were

like gashes in a canvas. She'd told him all about trying to

get overseas all through the war and how her brother

had been killed learning to fly at San Antonio, and how nice

Mr. Barrow had been on the boat and in Paris but that he

would try to make love to her and acted so silly, which

was very inconvenient; Dick said well maybe it wasn't so

silly. He could see that Anne Elizabeth felt fine about

travelling to Rome with a real army officer who'd been

to the front and could talk Italian and everything.

From the station he had to rush to the embassy with

his despatch cases, but he had time to arrange to call up

Miss Trent at the Near East Relief. Barrow too shook

hands with him warmly and said he hoped they'd see

something of each other; he was anxious to establish con-

tacts with people who really knew what it was all about.

The only thing Dick thought of that night was to get

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through and get to bed. Next morning he called up Ed

Schuyler at the Red Cross. They ate a big winey lunch

together at an expensive restaurant near the Pincio gardens.

Ed had been leading the life of Riley; he had an apart-

ment on the Spanish Stairs and took a lot of trips. He'd

gotten fat. But now he was in trouble. The husband of an

Italian woman he'd been running round with was threaten-

ing to challenge him to a duel and he was afraid there'd

be a row and he'd lose his job with the Red Cross. "The

war was all right but it's the peace that really gets you,"

he said. Anyway he was sick of Italy and the Red Cross

and wanted to go home. The only thing was that they were

going to have a revolution in Italy and he'd like to stay and

see it. "Well, Dick, for a member of the grenadine guards

you seem to have done pretty well for yourself."

"All a series of accidents," said Dick, wrinkling up his

nose. "Things are funny, do you know it?""Don't I know

it . . . I wonder what happened to poor old Steve? Fred

Summers was joining the Polish Legion, last I heard of

him."" Steve's probably in jail," said Dick, "where we

ought to be.""But it's not every day you get a chance to

see a show like this."

It was four o'clock when they left the restaurant. They

went to Ed's room and sat drinking cognac in his window

looking out over the yellow and verdigris roofs of the city

and the baroque domes sparkling in the last sunlight, re-

membering how tremendously they'd felt Rome the last

time they'd been there together, talking about what they'd

be doing now that the war was over. Ed Schuyler said he

wanted to get a foreign correspondent job that would take

him out east; he couldn't imagine going back home to up-

state New York; he had to see Persia and Afghanistan.

Talking about what he was going to do made Dick feel

hellishly miserable. He started walking back and forth

across the tiled floor.

The bell rang and Schuyler went out in the hall. Dick

-366-

heard whispering and a woman's voice talking Italian in a

thin treble. After a moment Ed pushed a little long.

nosed woman with huge black eyes into the room. "This is

Magda," he said, " Signora Sculpi, meet Captain Savage."

After that they had to talk in mixed French and Italian.

"I don't think it's going to rain," said Dick. "Suppose I

get hold of a girl for you and we take a drive and eat

supper at Caesar's palace . . . maybe it won't be too cold."

Dick remembered Anne Elizabeth and called up the

N.E.R. The Texas voice was delighted, said the relievers

were awful and that she'd made a date with Mr. Barrow

but would get out of it. Yes, she'd be ready if they called

for her in half an hour. After a lot of bargaining between

Signora Sculpi and a cabman they hired a twohorse landau

considerably elegant and decrepit. Anne Elizabeth was

waiting for them at her door. "Those old hens make me

tired," she said, jumping into the cab. "Tell him to hurry

or Mr. Barrow'll catch us. . . . Those old hens say I have

to be in by nine o'clock. I declare it worse'n Sunday-

school in there. . . . It was mighty nice of you to ask me

out to meet your friends, Captain Savage. . . . I was

just dying to get out and see the town. . . . Isn't it won-

derful? Say, where does the Pope live?"

The sun had set and it had begun to get chilly. The

Palazzo dei Cesari was empty and chilly, so they merely

had a vermouth there and went back into town for dinner.

After dinner they went to a show at the Apollo. "My, I'll

ketch it," said Anne Elizabeth, "but I don't care. I want

to see the town."

She took Dick's arm as they went into the theatre. "Do

you know, Dick . . . all these foreigners make me feel

kinder lonesome . . . I'm glad I got a white man with

me. . . . When I was at school in New York I used to

go out to Jersey to see a textile strike . . . I used to be

interested in things like that. I used to feel like I do now

then. But I wouldn't miss any of it. Maybe it's the way

-367-

you feel when you're having a really interesting time."

Dick felt a little drunk and very affectionate. He squeezed

her arm and leaned over her. "Bad mans shan't hurt lil'

Texas girl," he crooned. "I guess you think I haven't got

good sense," said Anne Elizabeth, suddenly changing her

tone. "But oh lawsie, how'm I going to get along with that

Methodist Board of Temperance and Public Morals I've

got to live with! I don't mean I don't think their work's

fine . . . It's awful to think of poor little children starv-

ing everywhere. . . . We've won the war, now it's up to

us to help patch things up in Europe just like the President

says." The curtain was going up and all the Italians around

started shushing. Anne Elizabeth subsided. When Dick

tried to get hold of her hand she pulled it away and

flicked his with her fingers. "Say, I thought you were

out of highschool," she said.

The show wasn't much, and Anne Elizabeth who

couldn't understand a word, kept letting her head drop

on Dick's shoulder and going to sleep. In the intermission

when they all went to the bar for drinks, Anne Elizabeth

dutifully took lemonade. Going upstairs again to their

seats, there was suddenly a scuffle. A little Italian with eye-

glasses and a bald head had run at Ed Schuyler screaming,

"Traditore." He ran at him so hard that they both lost

their balance and rolled down the redcarpeted steps, the

little Italian punching and kicking and Ed holding him

off at arm's length as best he could. Dick and Anne Eliza-

beth, who turned out to be very strong, grabbed the little

Italian, picked him up off the ground and locked his arms

behind him while Signora Sculpi fell on his neck sobbing.

It was the husband.

Ed meanwhile got to his feet looking very red and

sheepish. By the time the Italian police appeared every-

thing had quieted down and the manager was nervously

brushing the dust off Ed's uniform. Anne Elizabeth found

the little Italian his eyeglasses, that were badly bent, and

-368-

he led his wife out, who was sobbing. He looked so funny,

when he stopped in the door with his bent eyeglasses

trembling on the end of his nose to shake his fist at Ed,

that Dick couldn't help laughing. Ed was apologizing pro-

fusely to the manager, who seemed to take his side, ex-

plaining to the policemen in their shiny hats that the hus-

band was pazzo. The bell rang and they all went back to

their seats. "Why, Anne Elizabeth, you're a jujutsu ex-

pert," Dick whispered, his lips touching her ear. They got

to giggling so they couldn't pay attention to the show and

had to go out to a café.

"Now I suppose all the wops'll think I'm a coward if

I don't challenge the poor little bugger to a duel.""Sure,

it'll be cappistols at thirty paces now . . . or eggplants at

five yards." Dick was laughing so hard he was crying. Ed

began to get sore. "It isn't funny," he said, "it's a hell of a

thing to have happen . . . a guy never seems to be able to

have any fun without making other people miserable . . .

poor Magda . . . it's hellish for her. . . . Miss Trent,

I hope you'll excuse this ridiculous exhibition." Ed got up

and went home.

"Well, what on earth was that about, Dick?" asked

Anne Elizabeth, when they'd gotten out in the street and

were walking towards the N.E.R. boarding house. "Well,

I suppose Signore husband was jealous on account of Ed's

running around with Magda . . . or else it's a pretty little

blackmail plot . . . poor Ed seems all cut up about it."

"People sure do things over here they wouldn't do at

home . . . I declare it's peculiar.""Oh, Ed gets in trouble

everywhere. . . . He's got a special knack.""I guess it's

the war and continental standards and everything loosens

up people's morals. . . . I never was prissy, but my good-

ness, I was surprised when Mr. Barrow asked me to go to

his hotel the first day we landed . . . I'd only spoken to

him three or four times before on the boat. . . . Now at

home he wouldn't have done that, not in a thousand years."

-369-

Dick looked searchingly into Anne Elizabeth's face. "In

Rome do as the Romans do," he said with a funny smirk.

She laughed, looking hard into his eyes as if trying to

guess what he meant. "Oh, well, I guess it's all part of

life," she said. In the shadow of the doorway he wanted

to do some heavy kissing, but she gave him a quick peck in

the mouth and shook her head. Then she grabbed his hand

and squeezed it hard and said, "Let's us be good friends."

Dick walked home with his head swimming with the scent

of her sandy hair.

Dick had three or four days to wait in Rome. The Presi-

dent was to arrive on January 3 and several couriers were

held at his disposition. Meanwhile he had nothing to do

but walk around the town and listen to the bands practicing

The Star-Spangled Banner and watch the flags and the

stands going up.

The first of January was a holiday; Dick and Ed and

Mr. Barrow and Anne Elizabeth hired a car and went out

to Hadrian's Villa and then on to Tivoli for lunch. It

was a showery day and there was a great deal of mud on

the roads. Anne Elizabeth said the rolling Campagna, yel-

low and brown with winter, made her think of back home

along the Middlebuster. They ate fritto misto and drank a

lot of fine gold Frascati wine at the restaurant above the

waterfall. Ed and Mr. Barrow agreed about the Roman

Empire and that the ancients knew the art of life. Anne

Elizabeth seemed to Dick to be flirting with Mr. Barrow.

It made him sore the way she let him move his chair close

to hers when they sat drinking their coffee on the terrace

afterwards, looking down into the deep ravine brimmed

with mist from the waterfall. Dick sat drinking his coffee

without saying anything.

When she'd emptied her cup Anne Elizabeth jumped

to her feet and said she wanted to go up to the little round

temple that stood on the hillside opposite like something

in an old engraving. Ed said the path was too steep for so

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soon after lunch. Mr. Barrow said without enthusiasm, er,

he'd go. Anne Elizabeth was off running across the bridge

and down the path with Dick running after her slipping

and stumbling in the loose gravel and the puddles. When

they got to the bottom the mist was soppy and cold on

their faces. The waterfall was right over their heads. Their

ears were full of the roar of it. Dick looked back to see if

Mr. Barrow was coming.

"He must have turned back," he shouted above the falls.

"Oh, I hate people who won't ever go anywhere," yelled

Anne Elizabeth. She grabbed his hand. "Let's run up to the

temple." They got up there breathless. Across the ravine

they could see Ed and Mr. Barrow still sitting on the ter-

race of the restaurant. Anne Elizabeth thumbed her nose

at them and then waved. "Isn't this wonderful?" she

spluttered. "Oh, I'm wild about ruins and scenery . . .

I'd like to go all over Italy and see everything. . . .

Where can we go this afternoon? . . . Let's not go back

and listen to them mouthing about the Roman Empire."

"We might get to Nemi . . . you know the lake where

Caligula had his galleys . . . but I don't think we can

get there without the car.""Then they'd come along. . . .

No, let's take a walk.""It might rain on us.""Well, what

if it does? We won't run."

They went up a path over the hills above the town and

soon found themselves walking through wet pastures and

oakwoods with the Campagna stretching lightbrown below

them and the roofs of Tivoli picked out with black cypresses

like exclamation points. It was a showery springfeeling

afternoon. They could see the showers moving in dark

grey and whitish blurs across the Campagna. Underfoot

little redpurple cyclamens were blooming. Anne Elizabeth

kept picking them and poking them in his face for him to

smell. Her cheeks were red and her hair was untidy and

she seemed to feel too happy to walk, running and skip-

ping all the way. A small sprinkle of rain wet them a

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little and made the hair streak on her forehead. Then there

was a patch of chilly sunlight. They sat down on the root

of a big beechtree and looked up at the long redbrown

pointed buds that glinted against the sky. Their noses were

full of the smell of the little cyclamens. Dick felt steamy

from the climb and the wet underbrush and the wine he'd

drunk and the smell of the little cyclamens. He turned

and looked in her eyes. "Well," he said. She grabbed him

by the ears and kissed him again and again. "Say you love

me," she kept saying in a strangling voice. He could smell

her sandy hair and warm body and the sweetness of the

little cyclamens. He pulled her to her feet and held her

against his body and kissed her on the mouth; their

tongues touched. He dragged her through a break in the

hedge into the next field. The ground was too wet. Across

the field was a little hut made of brush. They staggered

as they walked with their arms around each other's waists,

their thighs grinding stiffly together. The hut was full of

dry cornfodder. They lay squirming together among the

dry crackling cornfodder. She lay on her back with her

eyes closed, her lips tightly pursed. He had one hand

under her head and with the other was trying to undo her

clothes; something tore under his hand. She began push-

ing him away. "No, no, Dick, not here . . . we've got to

go back.""Darling girl . . . I must . . . you're so won-

derful." She broke away from him and ran out of the hut.

He sat up on the floor, hating her, brushing the dry shreds

off his uniform.

Outside it was raining hard. "Let's go back; Dick, I'm

crazy about you but you oughtn't to have torn my panties

. . . oh, you're so exasperating." She began to laugh.

"You oughtn't to start anything you don't want to fin-

ish," said Dick. "Oh, I think women are terrible . . . ex-

cept prostitutes . . . there you know what you're getting."

She went up to him and kissed him. "Poor little boy . . .

he feels so cross. I'm so sorry . . . I'll sleep with you,

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Dick . . . I promise I will. You see it's difficult . . . In

Rome we'll get a room somewhere."

"Are you a virgin?" His voice was constrained and stiff.

She nodded. "Funny, isn't it? . . . in wartime . . .

You boys have risked your lives. I guess I can risk that."

"I guess I can. borrow Ed's apartment. I think he's going to

Naples tomorrow.""But you really love me, Dick?""Of

course, . . . it's only this makes me feel terrible . . .

making love's so magnificent.""I suppose it is . . . Oh, I

wish I was dead."

They plodded along down the hill through the down-

pour that gradually slackened to a cold drizzle. Dick felt

tired out and sodden; the rain was beginning to get down

his neck. Anne Elizabeth had dropped her bunch of

cyclamens.

When they got back the restaurant keeper said that the

others had gone to the Villa d'Este, but would come back

soon. They drank hot rum and water and tried to dry

themselves over a brazier of charcoal in the kitchen.

"We're a fine pair of drowned rats," tittered Anne Eliza-

beth. Dick growled, "A pair of precious idiots."

By the time the others came back they were warm but

still wet. It was a relief to argue with Barrow who was

saying that if the ruling classes of today knew as much

about the art of life as those old Italians he wouldn't be

a socialist. "I didn't think you were a socialist any more,"

broke in Anne Elizabeth. "I'm sure I'm not; look how the

German socialists have acted in the war and now they

try to crybaby and say they wanted peace all along."

"It's possible . . . to rec . . . to reconcile being a so-

cialist with faith in our President and . . . er . . . in

democracy," stammered Barrow, going close to her. "We'll

have to have a long talk about that, Anne Elizabeth."

Dick noticed how his eyes goggled when he looked at

her. I guess he's out after her, he said to himself. When

they got into the car he didn't care whether Barrow sat

-373-

next to her or not. They drove all the way back to Rome in the rain.

The next three days were very busy with President Wil-

son's visit to Rome. Dick got cards to various official

functions, heard a great many speeches in Italian and

French and English, saw a great many silk hats and decora-

tions and saluted a great deal and got a pain in the back

from holding a stiff military posture. In the Roman Forum

he was near enough the President's party to hear the short

man with black mustaches who was pointing out the ruins

of the temple of Romulus, say in stiff English, "Every-

thing here bears relation to the events of the great war."

There was a hush as the people in the outer groups of

dignitaries strained their ears to hear what Mr. Wilson

would say.

"That is true," replied Mr. Wilson in a measured voice.

"And we must not look upon these ruins as mere stones,

but as immortal symbols." A little appreciative murmur

came from the group. The Italian spoke a little louder next

time. All the silk hats cocked at an angle as the dignitaries

waited for the Italian's reply. "In America," he said with

a little bow, "you have something greater, and it is hidden

in your hearts."

Mr. Wilson's silk hat stood up very straight against all

the timeeaten columns and the endless courses of dressed

stone. "Yes," replied Mr. Wilson, "it is the greatest pride

of Americans to have demonstrated the immense love of

humanity which they bear in their hearts." As the Presi-

dent spoke Dick caught sight of his face past the cocks-

feathers of some Italian generals. It was a grey stony cold

face grooved like the columns, very long under the silk

hat. The little smile around the mouth looked as if it had

been painted on afterwards. The group moved on and

passed out of earshot.

That evening at five, when he met Anne Elizabeth

at Ed's apartment he had to tell her all about the official

-374-

receptions. He said all he'd seen had been a gold replica

of the wolf suckling Romulus and Remus up at the Capitol

when the President had been made a Roman citizen, and

his face in the forum. "A terrifying face, I swear it's a

reptile's face, not warmblooded, or else the face on one of

those old Roman politicians on a tomb on the Via Appia.

. . . Do you know what we are, Anne Elizabeth? we're

the Romans of the Twentieth Century"; he burst out

laughing, "and I always wanted to be a Greek."

Anne Elizabeth who was a great admirer of Wilson was

annoyed at first by what he was saying. He was nervous

and excited and went on talking and talking. For this once

she broke her pledge and drank some hot rum with him,

as the room was terribly chilly. In the light of the street

lamps on the little corner of the Spanish Stairs they could

see from Ed's window, they could see the jumbled dark-

ness of crowds continually passing and repassing. "By God,

Anne Elizabeth, it's terrible to think about it. . . . You

don't know the way people feel, people praying for him in

peasants' huts . . . oh, we don't know anything and we're

grinding them all underfoot. . . . It's the sack of Corinth . . .

they think he's going to give them peace, give them

back the cosy beforethewar world. It makes you sick to

hear all the speeches. . . . Oh, Christ, let's stay human

as long as we can . . . not get reptile's eyes and stone

faces and ink in our veins instead of blood. . . . I'm

damned if I'll be a Roman."

"I know what you mean," said Anne Elizabeth, ruffling

up his hair. "You're an artist, Dick, and I love you very

much . . . you're my poet, Dick."

"To hell with them all," said Dick, throwing his arms

around her.

In spite of the hot rum, Dick was very nervous when

he took his clothes off. She was trembling when he came

to her on the bed. It was all right, but she bled a good deal

and they didn't have a very good time. At supper after-

-375-

wards they couldn't seem to find anything to say to each

other. She went home early and Dick wandered deso-

lately around the streets among the excited crowds and

the flags and the illuminations and the uniforms. The Corso

was packed; Dick went into a café and was greeted by a

group of Italian officers who insisted on setting him up to

drinks. One young fellow with an olive skin and very long

black eyelashes, whose name was Carlo Hugobuoni, became

his special friend and entertainer and took him around to

all the tables introducing him as Il capitan Salvaggio

Ricardo. It was all asti spumante and Evviva gli ameri-

cani and Italia irridenta and Meester Veelson who had

saved civiltá and evviva la pace, and they ended by taking

Dick to see the belle ragazze. To his great relief all the

girls were busy at the house where they took him and Dick

was able to slip away and go back to the hotel to bed.

The next morning when he came down to drink his

coffee there was Carlo waiting for him in the hotel lobby.

Carlo was very sleepy; he hadn't been able to find a

raggaza until five in the morning but now he was at the

orders of his caro amico to show him round the town. All

day Dick had him with him, in spite of his efforts to get rid

of him without hurting his feelings. He waited while Dick

went to get his orders from the military mission, had lunch

with him and Ed Schuyler; it was all Ed could do to get

him away so that Dick could go to Ed's apartment to meet

Anne Elizabeth. Ed was very funny about it, said that, as

he'd lost Magda, he wouldn't be able to do anything worth-

while there himself and was glad to have Dick using the

room for venereal purposes. Then he linked his arm firmly

in Carlo's and carried him off to a café.

Dick and Anne Elizabeth were very tender and quiet.

It was their last afternoon together. Dick was leaving for

Paris that night, and Anne Elizabeth expected to be sent

to Constantinople any day. Dick promised he'd get himself

out to see her there. That night Anne Elizabeth went with

-376-

him to the station. There they found Carlo⊥ waiting with

a huge salami wrapped in silver paper and a bottle of

chianti. The fellow that was going with him had brought

the despatch cases, so there was nothing for Dick to do but

get on the train. He couldn't seem to think of anything

to say and it was a relief when the train pulled out.

As soon as he reported to Colonel Edgecombe he was

sent off again to Warsaw. Through Germany all the trains

were late and people looked deathly pale and everybody

talked of a bolshevik uprising. Dick was walking up and

down the snowy platform, stamping to keep his feet warm,

during an endless wait at a station in East Prussia, when he

ran into Fred Summers. Fred was a guard on a Red Cross

supply car and invited Dick to ride with him a couple of

stations. Dick fetched his despatches and went along. Fred

had the caboose fitted with an oilstove and a cot and a

great store of wine, cognac and Baker's chocolate. They

rode all day together talking as the train joggled slowly

across an endless grey frozen plain. "It's not a peace,"

said Fred Summers, "it's a cockeyed massacre! Christ, you

ought to see the pogroms." Dick laughed and laughed.

" Jeerusalem, it makes me feel good to hear you, you old

bum, Fred. . . . It's like the old days of the grenadine

guards."

" Jez, that was a circus," said Fred. "Out here it's too

damn hellish to be funny. everybody starved and

crazy."

"You were damn sensible not to get to be an officer . . .

you have to be so damn careful about everything you say

and do you can't have any kind of good time."

" Jez, you're the last man I'd ever have expected to

turn out a captain."

"C'est la guerre," said Dick.

They drank and talked and talked and drank so much

that Dick could barely get back to his compartment with

his despatch case. When they got into the Warsaw station

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Fred came running up with a package of chocolate bars.

"Here's a little relief, Dick," he said. "It's a fine for

coucher avec. Ain't a woman in Warsaw won't coucher

for all night for a chocolate bar."

When he got back to Paris, Dick and Colonel Edge-

combe went to tea at Miss Stoddard's. Her drawingroom

was tall and stately with Italian panels on the walls and

yellow and orange damask hangings; through the heavy

lace in the windows you could see the purple branches of

the trees along the quai, the jade Seine and the tall stone

lace of the apse of Nôtre Dôme. "What a magnificent set-

ting you have arranged for yourself, Miss Stoddard,"

said Colonel Edgecombe, "and if you excuse the compli-

ment, the gem is worthy of its setting.""They were fine

old rooms," said Miss Stoddard, "all you need do with

these old houses is to give them a chance." She turned

to Dick: "Young man, what did you do to Robbins that

night we all had supper together? He talks about nothing

else but what a bright fellow you are." Dick blushed. "We

had a glass of uncommonly good scotch together after-

wards . . . It must have been that.""Well, I'll have to

keep my eye on you . . . I don't trust these bright young

men."

They drank tea sitting around an ancient wroughtiron

stove. A fat major and a lanternjawed Standard Oil man

named Rasmussen came in, and later a Miss Hutchins who

looked very slender and welltailored in her Red Cross

uniform. They talked about Chartres and about the devas-

tated regions and the popular enthusiasm that was greet-

ing Mr. Wilson everywhere and why Clemenceau always

wore grey lisle gloves. Miss Hutchins said it was because

he really had claws instead of hands and that was why

they called him the tiger.

Miss Stoddard got Dick in the window: "I hear you've

just come from Rome, Captain Savage . . . I've been in

Rome a great deal since the war began . . . Tell me what

-378-

you saw . . . tell me about everything . . . I like it bet-

ter than anywhere.""Do you like Tivoli?""Yes, I sup-

pose so; it's rather a tourist place, though, don't you

think?" Dick told her the story of the fight at the Apollo

without mentioning Ed's name, and she was very much

amused. They got along very well in the window watch-

ing the streetlamps come into greenish bloom along the

river as they talked; Dick was wondering how old she

was, la femme de trente ans.

As he and the Colonel were leaving they met Mr.

Moorehouse in the hall. He shook hands warmly with

Dick, said he was so glad to see him again and asked him

to come by late some afternoon, his quarters were at the

Crillon and there were often some interesting people

there. Dick was curiously elated by the tea, although he'd

expected to be bored. He began to think it was about

time he got out of the service, and, on the way back to

the office, where they had some work to clean up, asked

the Colonel what steps he ought to take to get out of the

service in France. He thought he might get a position of

some kind in Paris. "Well, if you're looking for that, this

fellow Moorehouse is the man for you . . . I believe he's

to be in charge of some sort of publicity work for Standard

Oil . . . Can you see yourself as a public relations coun-

sel, Savage?" The Colonel laughed. "Well, I've got my

mother to think of," said Dick seriously.

At the office Dick found two letters. One was from Mr.

Wigglesworth saying that Blake had died of tuberculosis

at Saranac the week before, and the other was from Anne

Elizabeth:

DARLING:

I'm working at a desk in this miserable dump that's

nothing but a collection of old cats that make me tired.

Darling, I love you so much. We must see each other

soon. I wonder what Dad and Buster would say if I

-379-

brought a goodlooking husband home from overseas.

They'd be hopping mad at first but I reckon they'd get

over it. Gol darn it, I don't want to work at a desk, I want

to travel around Europe and see the sights. The only

thing I like here is a little bunch of cyclamens on my

desk. Do you remember the cute little pink cyclamens?

I've got a bad cold and I'm lonely as the Dickens. This

Methodist Board of Temperance and Public Morals are

the meanest people I've ever seen. Ever been homesick,

Dick? I don't believe you ever have. Do get yourself sent

right back to Rome. I wish I hadn't been such a prissy

silly little girl up there where the cyclamens bloomed. It's

hard to be a woman, Dick. Do anything you like but don't

forget me. I love you so.

ANNE ELIZABETH

When Dick got back to his hotel room with the two

letters in the inside pocket of his tunic he threw himself

down on the bed and lay a long time staring at the ceil-

ing. A little before midnight Henry knocked on the door.

He was just in from Brussels. "Why, what's the matter,

Dick, you look all grey . . . are you sick or something?"

Dick got to his feet and washed his face at the wash-

basin. "Nothing the matter," he spluttered through the

water. "I'm fed up with this man's army, I guess."

"You look like you'd been crying."

"Crying over spilt milk," said Dick, and cleared his

throat with a little laugh.

"Say, Dick, I'm in trouble, you've got to help me

out. . . . You remember that girl Olga, the one who

threw the teapot at me?" Dick nodded. "Well, she says

she's going to have a baby and that I'm the proud

parent. . . . It's ridiculous."

"Well, things like that happen," said Dick sourly.

"No, but Christ, man, I don't want to marry the bitch

. . . or support the offspring . . . it's too silly. Even if

-380-

she is going to have a baby it's probably not mine . . .

She says she'll write to General Pershing. Some of those

poor devils of enlisted men they sent up for twenty years

for rape . . . it's the same story."

"They shot a couple. . . . Thank God I wasn't on that

courtmartial."

"But think of how it ud upset mother. . . . Look here,

you can parleyvoo better'n I can . . . I want you to come

and talk to her."

"All right . . . but I'm dead tired and feel lousy . . ."

Dick put on his tunic. "Say, Henry, how are you off for

jack? The franc's dropping all the time. We might be

able to give her a little money, and we'll be going home

soon, we'll be too far away for blackmail." Henry looked

low. "It's a hell of a thing to have to admit to your kid

brother," he said, "but I played poker the other night and.

got cleaned out . . . I'm S.O.L. all down the line."

They went around to the place on Montmartre where

Olga was hatcheck girl. There was nobody there yet,

so she was able to come out and have a drink with them

at the bar. Dick rather liked her. She was a bleached blonde

with a small, hard, impudent face and big brown eyes.

Dick talked her around, saying that his brother couldn't

marry a foreigner on account of la famille and not having

a situation and that he would soon be out of the army and

back at a drafting desk . . . did she know how little a

draftsman in an architect's office was paid en Amerique?

Nothing at all, and with la vie chère and la chute du franc

and le dollar would go next maybe and la revolution

mondiale would be coming on, and the best thing she

could do was to be a good little girl and not have the baby.

She began to cry . . . she so wanted to get married and

have children and as for an avortment . . . mais non,

puis non. She stamped her foot and went back to her hat-

check booth. Dick followed her and consoled her and pat-

ted her cheek and said qu'e voulez vous it was la vie and

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wouldn't she consider a present of five hundred francs?

She shook her head but when he mentioned a thousand

she began to brighten up and to admit that que voulez

vous it was la vie. Dick left her and Henry cheerfully

making a date to go home together after the boite closed.

"Well, I had a couple of hundred bucks saved up, I guess

it'll have to go . . . try to hold her off until we can get

a good exchange . . . and Henry, the next time you

play poker, for goodness' sake watch yourself."

The day before the first plenary session of the Peace

Conference Dick was running into the Crillon to go up

to see Mr. Moorehouse who had promised to get cards

for him and Colonel Edgecombe, when he saw a familiar

face in a French uniform. It was Ripley, just discharged

from the French artillery school at Fontainebleau. He said

he was in there trying to find an old friend of his father's

to see if he could get a job connected with the peace dele-

gations. He was broke and Marianne the Third Republic

wasn't keeping him any more unless he enlisted in the

foreign legion and that was the last thing he wanted to do.

After Dick had phoned Major Edgecombe that Mr.

Moorehouse had been unable to get them cards and that

they must try again through military channels they went

and had a drink together at the Ritz bar.

"Big time stuff," said Ripley, looking around at the

decorations on the uniforms and the jewels on the women,

"How are you goin' to keep 'em down on the farm . . .

After they've seen Paree?" Dick grunted. "I wish to hell

I knew what I was going to do after I got out of this

manys army.""Ask me something easy . . . oh, I guess

I can get a job somewhere . . . if the worst comes to the

worst I'll have to go back and finish Columbia . . . I

wish the revolution ud come. I don't want to go back to

the States . . . hell, I dunno what I want to do." This

kind of talk made Dick feel uneasy: "Mefiez vous," he

-382-

quoted. "Les oreilles enemies vous écoutent.""And that's

not the half of it."

"Say, have you heard anything from Steve Warner?"

Dick asked in a low voice. "I got a letter from Boston . . .

I think he got a year's sentence for refusing to register

. . . He's lucky . . . A lot of those poor devils got

twenty years.""Well, that comes of monkeying with the

buzzsaw," said Dick outloud. Ripley looked at him hard

with narrowed eyes for a second; then they went on talk-

ing about other things.

That afternoon Dick took Miss Stoddard to tea at Rum-

pelmeyers, and afterwards walked up to the Crillon with

her to call on Mr. Moorehouse. The corridors of the Cril-

lon were lively as an anthill with scuttling khaki uni-

forms, marine yeomen, messenger boys, civilians; a gust

of typewriter clicking came out from every open door. At

every landing groups of civilian experts stood talking in

low voices, exchanging glances with passersby, scribbling

notes on scratchpads. Miss Stoddard grabbed Dick's arm

with her sharp white fingers. "Listen . . . it's like a dy-

namo . . . what do you think it means?""Not peace,"

said Dick.

In the vestibule of Mr. Moorehouse's suite, she intro-

duced him to Miss Williams, the tiredlooking sharpfaced

blonde who was his secretary. "She's a treasure," Miss

Stoddard whispered as they went through into the draw-

ingroom, "does more work than anybody in the whole

place."

There were a great many people standing around in the

blue light that filtered in through the long windows. A

waiter was making his way among the groups with a tray

of glasses and a valetlooking person was tiptoeing around

with a bottle of port. Some people had teacups and others

had glasses in their hands but nobody was paying much

attention to them. Dick noticed at once from the way Miss

Stoddard walked into the room and the way Mr. Moore-

-383-

house came forward a little to meet her, that she was used

to running the show in that room. He was introduced to

various people and stood around for a while with his

mouth shut and his ears open. Mr. Moorehouse spoke to

him and remembered his name, but at that moment a mes-

sage came that Colonel House was on the phone and Dick

had no further chance to talk to him. As he was leaving

Miss Williams, the secretary, said: " CaptainSavage, ex-

cuse me a moment . . . You're a friend of Mr. Robbins',

aren't you?" Dick smiled at her and said, "Well, rather

an acquaintance, I'd say. He seems a very interesting fel-

low.""He's a very brilliant man," said Miss Williams,

"but I'm afraid he's losing his grip . . . as I look at it

it's very demoralizing over here . . . for a man. How

can anybody expect to get through their work in a place

where they take three hours for lunch and sit around

drinking in those miserable cafés the rest of the time?"

"You don't like Paris, Miss Williams."

"I should say not."

" Robbins does," said Dick maliciously. "Too well,"

said Miss Williams. "I thought if you were a friend of

his you might help us straighten him out. We're very wor-

ried over him. He hasn't been here for two days at a most

important time, very important contacts to be made. J.W.'s

working himself to the bone. I'm so afraid he'll break

down under the strain . . . And you can't get a reliable

stenographer or an extra typewriter . . . I have to do all

the typing beside my secretarial duties.""Oh, it's a busy

time for all of us," said Dick. "Goodby, Miss Williams."

She gave him a smile as he left.

In late February he came back from a long dismal run

to Vienna to find another letter from Anne Elizabeth:

Dick DARLING:

Thanks for the fine postcards. I'm still at this desk job

and so lonely. Try to come to Rome if you can. Some-

-384-

thing is happening that is going to make a great change in

our lives. I'm terribly worried about it but I have every

confidence in you. I know you're straight, Dicky boy.

Oh, I've got to see you. If you don't come in a day or

two I may throw up everything and come to Paris.

Your girl,

ANNE ELIZABETH.

Dick went cold all over when he read the letter in the

Brasserie Weber where he'd gone to have a beer with an

artillery 2nd lieutenant named Staunton Wills who was

studying at the Sorbonne. Then he read a letter from his

mother complaining about her lonely old age and one

from Mr. Cooper offering him a job. Wills was talking

about a girl he'd seen at the Theatre Caumartin he wanted

to get to know, and was asking Dick in his capacity of an

expert in these matters, how he ought to go about it. Dick

tried to keep talking about how he could certainly get to

see her by sending her a note through the ouvreuse, tried

to keep looking at the people with umbrellas passing up

and down the rue Royale and the wet taxis and shiny

staffcars, but his mind was in a panic; she was going to

have a baby; she expected him to marry her; I'm damned

if I will. After they'd had their beer, he and Wills went

walking down the left bank of the Seine, looking at old

books and engravings in the secondhand bookstalls and

ended up having tea with Eleanor Stoddard.

"Why are you looking so doleful, Richard?" asked

Eleanor. They had gone into the window with their tea-

cups. At the table Wills was sitting talking with Eveline

Hutchins and a newspaper man. Dick took a gulp of tea.

"Talking to you's a great pleasure to me, Eleanor," he

said.

"Well, then it's not that that's making you pull such a

long face?"

"You know . . . some days you feel as if you were

-385-

stagnating . . . I guess I'm tired of wearing a uniform

. . . I want to be a private individual for a change."

"You don't want to go home, do you?"

"Oh, no, I've got to go, I guess, to do something about

mother, that is if Henry doesn't go . . . Colonel Edge-

combe says he can get me released from the service over

here, that is, if I waive my right to transportation home.

God knows I'm willing to do that."

"Why don't you stay over here . . . We might get

J.W. to fix up something for you . . . How would you

like to be one of his bright young men?"

"It ud be better than ward politics in Joisey . . . I'd

like to get a job that sent me traveling . . . It's ridicu-

lous because I spend my life on the train in this service,

but I'm not fed up with it yet."

She patted the back of his hand: "That's what I like

about you, Richard, the appetite you have for everything

. . . J.W. spoke several times about that keen look you

have . . . he's like that, he's never lost his appetite, that's

why he's getting to be a power in the world . . . you

know Colonel House consults him all the time . . . You

see, I've lost my appetite." They went back to the tea-

table.

Next day orders came around to send a man to Rome;

Dick jumped at the job. When he heard Anne Elizabeth's

voice over the phone, chilly panic went through him again,

but he made his voice as agreeable as he could. "Oh, you

were a darling to come, Dicky boy," she was saying. He

met her at a café at the corner of the Piazza Venezia. It

made him feel embarrassed the uncontrolled way she ran

up to him and threw her arms around his neck and kissed

him. "It's all right," she said laughing, "they'll just

think we're a couple of crazy Americans . . . Oh, Dick,

lemme look at you . . . Oh, Dickyboy, I've been so lone-

some for you."

Dick's throat was tight. "We can have supper together,

-386-

can't we?" he managed to say. "I thought we might get

hold of Ed Schuyler."

She'd picked out a small hotel on a back street for them

to go to. Dick let himself be carried away by her; after

all, she was quite pretty today with her cheeks so flushed,

and the smell of her hair made him think of the smell of

the little cyclamens on the hill above Tivoli; but all the

time he was making love to her, sweating and straining

in her arms, wheels were going round in his head: what

can I do, can I do, can I do?

They were so late getting to Ed's place that he had

given them up. He was all packed up to leave Rome for

Paris and home the next day. "That's fine," said Dick,

"we'll go on the same train.""This is my last night in

Rome, ladies and gentlemen," said Ed, "let's go and have

a bangup supper and to hell with the Red Cross."

They ate an elaborate supper with first class wines, at

a place in front of Trajan's column, but Dick couldn't taste

anything. His own voice sounded tinnily in his ears. He

could see that Ed was making mighty efforts to cheer

things up, ordering fresh bottles, kidding the waiter, tell-

ing funny stories about his misadventures with Roman

ladies. Anne Elizabeth drank a lot of wine, said that the

N.E.R. dragons weren't as bad as she had painted them,

that they'd given her a latchkey when she'd told them her

fiancé was in Rome for just that evening. She kept nudg-

ing Dick's knee with hers under the table and wanting

them to sing Auld Lang Syne. After dinner they rode

around in a cab and stopped to drop coins in the Trevi

fountain. They ended up at Ed's place sitting on packing

boxes, finishing up a bottle of champagne Ed suddenly

remembered and singing Auprès de ma blonde.

All the time Dick felt sober and cold inside. It was a

relief when Ed announced drunkenly that he was going

to visit some lovely Roman ladies of his acquaintance for

the last time and leave his flat to I promessi sposi for the

-387-

night. After he'd gone Anne Elizabeth threw her arms

around Dick: "Give me one kiss, Dickyboy, and then you

must take me back to the Methodist Board of Temperance

and Public Morals . . . after all, it's private morals that

count. Oh, I love our private morals." Dick kissed her,

then he went and looked out of the window. It had started

to rain again. Frail ribbons of light from a streetlamp shot

along the stone treads of the corner of the Spanish Stairs

he could see between the houses. She came and rested her

head on his shoulder:

"What you tinking about, Dickyboy?"

"Look, Anne Elizabeth, I've been wanting to talk about

it . . . do you really think that . . .?"

"It's more than two months now . . . It couldn't be

anything else, and I have a little morning sickness now

and then. I'd been feeling terrible today, only I declare

seeing you's made me forget all about it."

"But you must realize . . . it worries me terribly.

There must be something you can do about it."

"I tried castor oil and quinine . . . that's all I know

. . . you see I'm just a simple country girl."

"Oh, do be serious . . . you've got to do something.

There are plenty of doctors would attend to it . . . I can

raise the money somehow . . . It's hellish, I've got to

go back tomorrow . . . I wish I was out of this goddam

uniform."

"But I declare I think I'd kinda like a husband and a

baby . . . if you were the husband and the baby was

yours."

"I can't do it . . . I couldn't afford it . . . They

won't let you get married in the army."

"That's not so, Dick," she said slowly.

They stood a long time side by side without looking at

each other, looking at the rain over the dark roofs and

the faint phosphorescent streaks of the streets. She spoke

-388-

in a trembly frail voice, "You mean you don't love me

anymore."

"Of course I do, I don't know what love is . . . I

suppose I love any lovely girl . . . and especially you,

sweetheart." Dick heard his own voice, like somebody

else's voice in his ears. "We've had some fine times to-

gether." She was kissing him all around his neck above

the stiff collar of the tunic. "But, darling, can't you un-

derstand I can't support a child until I have some definite

career, and I've got my mother to support; Henry's so

irresponsible I can't expect anything from him. But I've

got to take you home; it's getting late."

When they got down into the street the rain had let up

again. All the waterspouts were gurgling and water

glinted in the gutters under the street lamps. She sud-

denly slapped him, shouted you're it, and ran down the

street. He had to chase her, swearing under his breath.

He lost her in a small square and was getting ready to

give her up and go home when she jumped out at him

from behind a stone phoenix on the edge of a fountain.

He grabbed her by the arm, "Don't be so damn kitten-

ish," he said nastily. "Can't you see I'm worried sick."

She began to cry.

When they got to her door she suddenly turned to him

and said seriously, "Look, Dick, maybe we'll put off the

baby . . . I'll try horseback riding. Everybody says that

works. I'll write you . . . honestly, I wouldn't hamper

your career in any way . . . and I know you ought to

have time for your poetry . . . You've got a big future,

boy, I know it . . . if we got married I'd work too."

" Anne Elizabeth, you're a wonderful girl, maybe if we

didn't have the baby we might wangle it somehow." He

took her by the shoulders and kissed her on the forehead.

Suddenly she started jumping up and down, chanting

like a child, "Goody, goody, goody, we're going to get

married."

-389-

"Oh, do be serious, kid."

"I am . . . unto death," she said slowly. "Look, don't

come to see me tomorrow . . . I have a lot of supplies

to check up. I'll write you to Paris."

Back at the hotel it gave him a curious feeling putting

on his pyjamas and getting alone into the bed where he

and Anne Elizabeth had been together that afternoon.

There were bedbugs and the room smelt and he spent a

miserable night.

All the way down to Paris on the train, Ed kept mak-

ing him drink and talking about the revolution, saying

he had it on good authority the syndicates were going to

seize the factories in Italy the first of May. Hungary had

gone red and Bavaria, next it would be Austria, then

Italy, then Prussia and France; the American troops sent

against the Russians in Archangel had mutinied: "It's the

world revolution, a goddam swell time to be alive, and

we'll be goddam lucky if we come out of it with whole

skins."

Dick said grumpily that he didn't think so; the Allies

had things well in hand. "But, Dick, I thought you were

all for the revolution, it's the only possible way to end

this cockeyed war.""The war's over now and all these

revolutions are just the war turned inside out . . . You

can't stop war by shooting all your opponents. That's just

more war." They got sore and argued Savagely. Dick was

glad they were alone in the compartment. "But I thought

you were a royalist, Ed.""I was . . . but since seeing

the King of Italy I've changed my mind . . . I guess

I'm for a dictator, the man on the white horse."

They settled to sleep on either side of the compartment,

sore and drunk. In the morning they staggered out with

headaches into the crisp air of a frontier station and drank

steaming hot chocolate a freshfaced Frenchwoman poured

out for them into big white cups. Everything was frosty.

The sun was rising bright vermilion. Ed Schuyler talked

-390-

about la belle, la douce France, and they began to get

along better. By the time they reached the banlieue, they

were talking about going to see Spinelli in Plus Ça Ckange

that night.

After the office and details to attend to and the necessity

of appearing stiff and military before the sergeants it was

a relief to walk down the left bank of the Seine, where

the buds were bursting pink and palest green on the trees,

and the bouquinistes were closing up their stalls in the

deepening lavender twilight, to the quai de la Tournelle

where everything looked like two centuries ago, and to

walk slowly up the chilly stone stairs to Eleanor's and to

find her sitting behind the teatable in an ivorycolored

dress with big pearls around her neck pouring tea and re-

tailing, in her malicious gentle voice, all the latest gossip

of the Crillon and the Peace Conference. It gave Dick a

funny feeling when she said as he was leaving that they

wouldn't see each other for a couple of weeks as she was

going to Rome to do some work at the Red Cross office

there. "What a shame we couldn't have been there at the

same time," said Dick. "I'd have liked that too," she said.

"A revederci, Richard."

March was a miserable month for Dick. He didn't seem

to have any friends any more and he was sick to death of

everybody around the despatch service. When he was

off duty his hotel room was so cold that he'd have to go

out to a café to read. His missed Eleanor and going to

her cosy apartment in the afternoon. He kept getting wor-

rying letters from Anne Elizabeth; he couldn't make out

from them what had happened; she made mysterious ref-

erences to having met a charming friend of his at the Red

Cross who had meant so much. Then too he was broke be-

cause he kept having to lend Henry money to buy off

Olga with.

Early in April he got back from one of his everlasting

trips to Coblenz and found a pneumatique from Eleanor

-391-

for him at his hotel. She was inviting him to go on a picnic

to Chantilly with her and J.W. the next Sunday.

They left at eleven from the Crillon in J.W.'s new

Fiat. There was Eleanor in her grey tailored suit and a

stately lady of a certain age named Mrs. Wilberforce, the

wife of a vicepresident of Standard Oil, and longfaced

Mr. Rasmussen. It was a fine day and everybody felt the

spring in the air. At Chantilly they went through the

château and fed the big carp in the moat. They ate their

lunch in the woods, sitting on rubber cushions. J.W. kept

everybody laughing explaining how he hated picnics, ask-

ing everybody what it was that got into even the most

intelligent women that they were always trying to make

people go on picnics. After lunch they drove to Senlis

to see the houses that the Uhlans had destroyed there

in the battle of the Marne. Walking through the garden

of the ruined château, Eleanor and Dick dropped behind

the others. "You don't know anything about when they're

going to sign peace, do you, Eleanor?" asked Dick.

"Why, it doesn't look now as if anybody would ever

sign . . . certainly the Italians won't; have you seen

what d'Annunzio said?"

"Because the day after peace is signed I take off Uncle

Sam's livery . . . The only time in my life time has ever

dragged on my hands has been since I've been in the

army."

"I got to meet a friend of yours in Rome," said Eleanor,

looking at him sideways. Dick felt chilly all over. "Who

was that?" he asked. It was an effort to keep his voice

steady. "That little Texas girl . . . she's a cute little

thing. She said you were engaged!" Eleanor's voice was

cool and probing like a dentist's tool.

"She exaggerated a little," he gave a little dry laugh,

"as Mark Twain said when they reported his death." Dick

felt that he was blushing furiously.

"I hope so . . . You see, Richard . . . I'm old

-392-

enough to be, well at least your maiden aunt. She's a

cute little thing . . . but you oughtn't to marry just yet,

of course it's none of my business . . . an unsuitable mar-

riage has been the ruination of many a promising young

fellow . . . I shouldn't say this."

"But I like your taking an interest like that, honestly

it means a great deal to me . . . I understand all about

marry in haste and repent at leisure. In fact I'm not very

much interested in marriage anyway . . . but . . . I

don't know . . . Oh, the whole thing is very difficult."

"Never do anything difficult . . . It's never worth it,"

said Eleanor severely. Dick didn't say anything. She quick-

ened her step to catch up with the others. Walking beside

her he caught sight of her coldly chiselled profile jiggling

a little from the jolt of her high heels on the cobbles.

Suddenly she turned to him laughing, "Now I won't

scold you any more, Richard, ever again."

A shower was coming up. They'd hardly got back into

the car before it started to rain. Going home the gimcrack

Paris suburbs looked grey and gloomy in the rain. When

they parted in the lobby of the Crillon J.W. let Dick

understand that there would be a job for him in his office

as soon as he was out of the service. Dick went home and

wrote his mother about it in high spirits:

. . . It's not that everything isn't intensely interesting

here in Paris or that I haven't gotten to know people quite

close to what's really going on, but wearing a uniform and

always having to worry about army regulations and salut-

ing and everything like that, seems to keep my mind from

working. Inside I'll be in the doldrums until I get a suit

of civvies on again. I've been promised a position in J.

Ward Moorehouse's office here in Paris; he's a dollar a

year expert, but as soon as peace is signed he expects to

start his business up again. He's an adviser on public rela-

tions and publicity to big corporations like Standard Oil.

-393-

It's the type of work that will allow me to continue

my real work on the side. Everybody tells me it's the

opportunity of a lifetime. . . .

The next time he saw Miss Williams she smiled

broadly and came right up to him holding out her hand.

"Oh, I'm so glad, Captain Savage. J.W. says you're going

to be with us . . . I'm sure it'll be an enjoyable and

profitable experience for all parties."

"Well, I don't suppose I ought to count my chickens

before they're hatched," said Dick. "Oh, they're hatched

all right," said Miss Williams, beaming at him.

In the middle of May Dick came back from Cologne

with a hangover after a party with a couple of aviators

and some German girls. Going out with German girls was

strictly against orders from G.H.Q. and he was nervous

for fear they might have been seen conducting them-

selves in a manner unbecoming to officers and gentlemen.

He could still taste the sekt with peaches in it when he

got off the train at the Gare du Nord. At the office Colonel

Edgecombe noticed how pale and shaky he looked and

kidded him about what a tremendous time they must be

having in the occupied area. Then he sent him home to

rest up. When he got to his hotel he found a pneumatique

from Anne Elizabeth:

I'm staying at the Continental and must see you at

once.

He took a hot bath and went to bed and slept for sev-

eral hours. When he woke up it was already dark. It was

some time before he remembered Anne Elizabeth's let-

ter. He was sitting on the edge of the bed sullenly buck-

ling his puttees to go around and see her when there was a

knock on his door. It was the elevatorman telling him a

lady was waiting for him downstairs. The elevatorman

had hardly said it before Anne Elizabeth came running

down the hall. She was pale and had a red bruise on one

-394-

side of her face. Something cantankerous in the way she

ran immediately got on Dick's nerves. "I told them I was

your sister and ran up the stairs," she said, kissing him

breathlessly. Dick gave the elevatorman a couple of

francs and whispered to her, "Come in. What's the mat-

ter?" He left the room door half open.

"I'm in trouble . . . the N.E.R. is sending me home."

"How's that?"

"Played hookey once too often, I guess . . . I'm just

as glad; they make me tired."

"How did you hurt yourself?"

"Horse fell with me down at Ostia . . . I've been hav-

ing the time of my life riding Italian cavalry horses . . .

they'll take anything."

Dick was looking her hard in the face trying to make

her out. "Well," he said, "is it all right? . . . I've got

to know . . . I'm worried sick about it."

She threw herself face down on the bed. Dick tiptoed

over and gently closed the door. She had her head stuck

into her elbow and was sobbing. He sat on the edge of the

bed and tried to get her to look at him. She suddenly got

up and began walking around the room. "Nothing does

any good . . . I'm going to have the baby . . . Oh,

I'm so worried about Dad. I'm afraid it'll kill him if he

finds out . . . Oh, you're so mean . . . you're so mean."

"But, Anne Elizabeth, do be reasonable . . . Can't we

go on being friends? I've just been offered a very fine

position when I get out of the service, but I can't take a

wife and child at this stage of the game, you must under-

stand that . . . and if you want to get married there are

plenty of fellows who'd give their eyeteeth to marry

you . . . You know how popular you are . . . I don't

think marriage means anything anyway."

She sat down in a chair and immediately got up again.

She was laughing: "If Dad or Buster was here it would

be a shotgun wedding, I guess . . . but that wouldn't help

-395-

much." Her hysterical laugh got on his nerves; he was

shaking from the effort to control himself and talk rea-

sonably.

"Why not G. H. Barrow? He's a prominent man and

has money . . . He's crazy about you, told me so himself

when I met him at the Crillon the other day . . . After

all, we have to be sensible about things . . . It's no more

my fault than it is yours . . . if you'd taken proper pre-

cautions. . . ."

She took her hat off and smoothed her hair in the mirror.

Then she poured some water out in his washbasin, washed

her face and smoothed her hair again. Dick was hoping

she'd go, everything she did drove him crazy. There were

tears in her eyes when che came up to him. "Give me a

kiss, Dick . . . don't worry about me . . . I'll work

things out somehow."

"I'm sure it's not too late for an operation," said Dick.

"I'll find out an address tomorrow and drop you a line

to the Continental . . . Anne Elizabeth . . . it's splen-

did of you to be so splendid about this."

She shook her head, whispered goodby and hurried out

of the room.

"Well, that's that, " said Dick aloud to himself. He felt

terribly sorry about Anne Elizabeth. Gee, I'm glad I'm

not a girl, he kept thinking. He had a splitting headache.

He locked his door, got undressed and put out the light.

When he opened the window a gust of raw rainy air came

into the room and made him feel better. It was just like

Ed said, you couldn't do anything without making other

people miserable. A hell of a rotten world. The streets in

front of the Gare St. Lazare shone like canals where the

streetlamps were reflected in them. There were still peo-

ple on the pavements, a man calling I'nTRANsigeant,

twangy honk of taxicabs. He thought of Anne Elizabeth

going home alone in a taxicab through the wet streets. He

wished he had a great many lives so that he might have

-396-

spent one of them with Anne Elizabeth. Might write a

poem about that and send it to her. And the smell of the

little cyclamens. In the café opposite the waiters were

turning the chairs upside down and setting them on the

tables. He wished he had a great many lives so that he

might be a waiter in a café turning the chairs upside down.

The iron shutters clanked as they came down. Now was the

time the women came out on the streets, walking back and

forth, stopping, loitering, walking back and forth, and

those young toughs with skin the color of mushrooms.

He began to shiver. He got into bed, the sheets had a

clammy glaze on them. All the same Paris was no place to

go to bed alone, no place to go home alone in a honking

taxi, in the heartbreak of honking taxis. Poor Anne Eliza-

beth. Poor Dick. He lay shivering between the clammy

sheets, his eyes were pinned open with safetypins.

Gradually he got warmer. Tomorrow. Seventhirty:

shave, buckle puttees . . . café au lait, brioches, beurre.

He'd be hungry, hadn't had any supper . . . deux oeux

sur le plat. Bonjour m'ssieurs mesdames. Jingling spurs to

the office, Sergeant Ames, at ease. Day dragged out in

khaki; twilight tea at Eleanor's, make her talk to Moore-

house to clinch job after the signing of the peace, tell her

about the late General Ellsworth, they'll laugh about it

together. Dragged out khaki days until after the signing

of the peace. Dun, drab, khaki. Poor Dick got to go to

work after the signing of the peace. Poor Tom's cold.

Poor Dickyboy . . . Richard . . . He brought his feet

up to where he could rub them. Poor Richard's feet. After

the Signing of the Peace.

By the time his feet were warm he'd fallen asleep.

-397-

NEWSREEL XXXVII

SOVIET GUARDS DISPLACED

the American commander-in-chief paid tribute to the

dead and wounded, urged the soldiers to thank God for the

victory and declared that a new version of duty to God and

Country had come to all. When the numbers were hoisted it

was found that that of M. A. Aumont's Zimzizimi was miss-

ing. The colt had been seized with a fit of coughing in the

morning and was consequently withdrawn almost at the last

moment

REPUBLICANS GETTING READY FOR THE

HECKLING OF WILSON

MOVE TO INDICT EXKAISER IN CHICAGO

Johnny get your gun

get your gun

get your gun

We've got em on the run

we face a great change in the social structure of this

great country, declared Mr. Schwab, the man who becomes

the aristocrat of the future will become so not because of birth

or wealth but because he has done something for the good of

the country

RUTHLESS WAR TO CRUSH REDS

on the run

on the run

at the same time several columns of soldiers and sailors

appeared in front of the chancellor's palace. The situation in

Germany is developing into a neck and neck race between

American food and Bolshevism. Find Lloyd George Taking

Both Sides in Peace Disputes.

-398-

Oh that tattooed French Ladee

Tattooed from neck to knee

She was a sight to see

MACKAY OF POSTAL CALLS BURLESON

BOLSHEVIK

popular demonstrations will mark the visits of the Presi-

dent and of the rulers of Great Britain and Belgium who will

be entertained at a series of fêtes. The irony of the situation

lies in the fact that the freedom of speech and the press for

which the social democrats clamored is now proving the chief

source of menace to the new government

Right across her jaw

Was the Royal Flying Corps

On her back was the Union Jack

Now could you ask for more?

the war department today decided to give out a guarded

bulletin concerning a near mutiny of some of the American

troops in the Archangel sector and their refusal to go to the

front when ordered in spite of police orders comparative quiet

prevailed, but as the procession moved along the various

avenues, Malakoff, Henri Martin, Victor Hugo, and the

Trocadèro and through the district in the aristocratic quarter

of Paris in which Jaurès lived there was a feeling of walking

over mined roads where the merest incident might bring

about an explosion

REINFORCEMENTS RUSHED TO REMOVE

CAUSE OF ANXIETY

All up and down her spine

Was the Kings Own Guard in line

And all around her hips

Steamed a fleet of battleships

the workers of Bavaria have overcome their party divisions

and united in a mighty bloc against all domination and ex-

ploitation; they have taken over in Workers, Soldiers and

Peasant's Councils entire public authority

-399-

Right above her kidney

Was a birdseye view of Sydney

But what I loved best was across her chest

My home in Tennessee

FORMER EASTSIDERS LARGELY RESPON-

SIBLE FOR BOLSHEVISM, SAYS

DR. SIMONS

ORDERS HOUSING OF LABOR IN PALACES

UKRAINIANS FIRE ON ALLIED MISSION

it looks at present as if Landru would be held responsible

for the deaths of all the women who have disappeared in

France, not only for the past ten years but for many decades

previously

THE CAMERA EYE (40)

I walked all over town general strike no busses

no taxicabs the gates of the Metro closed Place de

Iéna I saw red flags Anatole France in a white beard

placards MUTILES DE LA GUERRE and the nut-

cracker faces of the agents de sûreté

Mort aux vaches

at the place de la Concorde the Republican Guards in

christmastree helmets were riding among the crowd

whacking the Parisians with the flat of their swords

scraps of the International worriedlooking soldiers in their

helmets lounging with grounded arms all along the

Grands Boulevards

-400-

Vive les poilus

at the Republique à bas la guerre MORT AUX

VACHES à bas la Paix des Assassins they've torn up

the gratings from around the trees and are throwing stones

and bits of cast iron at the fancydressed republican guards

hissing whistling poking at the horses with umbrel-

las scraps of the International

at the Gare de l'Est they're singing the International

entire the gendarmerie nationale is making its way

slowly down Magenta into stones whistles bits of iron the

International Mort Aux Vaches Barricades we must

build barricades young kids are trying to break down the

shutters of an arms shop revolver shots an old woman in

a window was hit (Whose blood is that on the cobbles?)

we)re all running down a side street dodging into court-

yards concièrges trying to close the outside doors on cav-

alry charging twelve abreast firecracker faces scared and

mean behind their big moustaches under their Christmas-

tree helmets

ata corner I run into a friend running too Look

out They're shooting to kill and its begun to rain hard

so we dive in together just before a shutter slams down

on the door of the little café dark and quiet inside a few

working men past middle age are grumblingly drinking at

the bar Ah les salops There are no papers Some-

body said the revolution had triumphed in Marseilles and

Lille Ça va taper dure We drink grog americain our

-401-

feet are wet at the next table two elderly men are play-

ing chess over a bottle of white wine

later we peep out from under the sliding shutter

that's down over the door into the hard rain on the empty

streets only a smashed umbrella and an old checked cap

side by side in the clean stone gutter and a torn handbill

L'UNION DES TRAVAILLEURS FERA

NEWSREEL XXXVIII

C'est la lutte finale

Groupons-nous et demain

L'internationale

Sera le genre humain

FUSILLADE IN THE DIET

Y.M.C.A. WORKERS ARRESTED FOR STEALING FUNDS

declares wisdom of people alone can guide the nation in

such an enterprise SAYS U.S. MUST HAVE WORLD'S

GREATEST FLEET when I was in Italy a little limping

group of wounded Italian soldiers sought an interview with

me. I could not conjecture what they were going to say to

me, and with the greatest simplicity, with a touching sim-

plicity they presented me with a petition in favor of the League

of Nations. Soldiers Rebel at German Opera

ORDERED TO ALLOW ALL GREEKS TO DIE

CANADIANS RIOT IN BRITISH CAMP

Arise ye pris'ners of starvation

Arise ye wretched of the earth

For justice thunders condemnation

-402-

A qui la Faute si le Beurre est Cher?

GAINS RUN HIGH IN WALL

STREET

MANY NEW RECORDS

NE SOYONS PAS LES DUPES DU TRAVESTI BOLCHEVISTE

the opinion prevails in Washington that while it might

be irksome to the American public to send troops to Asia Minor

people would be more willing to use an army to establish order

south of the Rio Grande. Strikers menace complete tieup of

New York City. Order restored in Lahore. Lille under-

takes on strike

THREAT OF MUTINY BY U. S. TROOPS

CALIFORNIA JURY QUICKLY RENDERS VERDICT AGAINST

SACRAMENTO WORKERS

'Tis the final conflict

Let each stand in his place

The international party

Shall be the human race

BOLSHEVISM READY TO COLLAPSE SAYS

ESCAPED GENERAL

the French Censor will not allow the Herald to say what

the Chinese Delegation has done but that there is serious un-

rest it would be idle to deny. Men who have been deprived

of the opportunity to earn a living, who see their children

crying for food, who face an indefinite shutdown of indus-

tries and a possible cessation of railway traffic with all the

disorganization of national life therein implied, can hardly be

expected to view the situation calmly and with equanimity

BRITISH TRY HARD TO KEEP PROMISE

TO HANG KAISER

-403-

it is declared the Coreans are confident President Wilson

will come in an aeroplane and listen to their views. A white

flag set up on Seoul Hill is presumed to indicate the landing-

place

DAUGHTER

She wasn't sick a bit and was very popular on the cross-

ing that was very gay although the sea was rough and it

was bitter cold. There was a Mr. Barrow who had been

sent on a special mission by the President who paid her a

great deal of attention. He was a very interesting man and

full of information about everything. He'd been a social-

ist and very close to labor. He was so interested when she

told him about her experiences in the textile strike over in

Jersey. In the evenings they'd walk around and around

the deck arm in arm, now and then being almost thrown

off their feet by an especially heavy roll. She had a little

trouble with him trying to make love to her, but managed

to argue him out of it by telling him what she needed

right now was a good friend, that she'd had a very un-

happy love affair and couldn't think of anything like that

any more. He was so kind and sympathetic, and said he

could understand that thoroughly because his relation with

women had been very unsatisfactory all his life. He said

people ought to be free in love and marriage and not tied

by conventions or inhibitions. He said what he believed in

was passionate friendship. She said she did too, but when

he wanted her to come to his room in the hotel the first

night they were in Paris, she gave him a terrible tongue-

lashing. But he was so nice to her on the trip down to

Rome that she began to think that maybe if he asked her

to marry him she might do it.

There was an American officer on the train, Captain

Savage, so good looking and such a funny talker, on his

-404-

way to Rome with important despatches. From the minute

she met Dick, Europe was wonderful. He talked French

and Italian, and said how beautiful the old tumbledown

towns were and screwed up his mouth so funnily when he

told stories about comical things that happened in the

war. He was a little like Webb only so much nicer and

more selfreliant and betterlooking. From the minute she

saw him she forgot all about Joe and as for G. H. Barrow,

she couldn't stand the thought of him. When Captain

Savage looked at her it made her all melt up inside; by

the time they'd gotten to Rome she'd admitted to herself

she was crazy about him. When they went out walking

together the day they all made an excursion to the ruins

of the Emperor Hadrian's villa, and the little town where

the waterfall was, she was glad that he'd been drinking.

She wanted all the time to throw herself in his arms;

there was something about the rainy landscape and the

dark lasciviouseyed people and the old names of the towns

and the garlic and oil in the food and the smiling voices

and the smell of the tiny magenta wildflowers he said were

called cyclamens that made her not care about anything

anymore. She almost fainted when he started to make love

to her. Oh, she wished he would, but No, No, she couldn't

just then, but the next day she'd drink in spite of the pledge

she'd signed with the N.E.R. and shoot the moon. It

wasn't so sordid as she'd expected but it wasn't so wonder-

ful either; she was terribly scared and cold and sick, like

when she'd told him she hadn't ever before. But the next

day he was so gentle and strong, and she suddenly felt

very happy. When he had to go back to Paris and there

was nothing but office work and a lot of dreary old maids

to talk to, it was too miserable.

When she found she was going to have a baby she was

scared, but she didn't really care so much; of course he'd

marry her. Dad and Buster would be sore at first but

they'd be sure to like him. He wrote poetry and was going

-405-

to be a writer when he got out of the army; she was sure

he was going to be famous. He didn't write letters very

often and when she made him come back to Rome he

wasn't nearly as nice about it as she expected; but of

course it must have been a shock to him. They decided

that perhaps it would be better not to have the baby just

then or get married till he got out of the service, though

there didn't seem to be any doubt in his mind about get-

ting married then. She tried several things and went rid-

ing a great deal with Lieutenant Grassi, who had been ed-

ucated at Eton and spoke perfect English and was so

charming to her and said she was the best woman rider

he'd ever known. It was on account of her going out riding

so much with Lieutenant Grassi and getting in so late that

the old cats at the N.E.R. got sore and sent her home to

America.

Going to Paris on the train, Daughter really was scared.

The horseback riding hadn't done any good, and she was

sore all over from a fall she'd had when one of Lieutenant

Grassi's cavalry horses fell with her and broke his leg

when she took him over a stone wall. The horse had to be

shot and the Lieutenant had been horrid about it; these

foreigners always showed a mean streak in the end. She

was worried about people's noticing how she looked be-

cause it was nearly three months now. She and Dick would

have to get married right away, that's all there was to it.

Perhaps it would even be better to tell people they'd been

married in Rome by a fat little old priest.

The minute she saw Dick's face when she was running

down the corridor towards him in his hotel, she knew it

was all over; he didn't love her the least bit. She walked

home to her hotel hardly able to see where she was going

through the slimywet Paris streets. She was surprised

when she got there because she expected she'd lose her

way. She almost hoped she'd lose her way. She went up

to her room and sat down in a chair without taking off her

-406-

dripping wet hat and coat. She must think. This was the

end of everything.

The next morning she went around to the office; they

gave her her transportation back home and told her what

boat she was going on and said she must sail in four days.

After that she went back to the hotel and sat down in a

chair again and tried to think. She couldn't go home to

Dallas like this. A note from Dick came around giving

her the address of a doctor.

Do forgive me, he wrote. You're a wonderful girl and

I'm sure it'll be all right.

She tore the thin blue letter up in little tiny pieces and

dropped it out the window. Then she lay down on the bed

and cried till her eyes burned. Her nausea came on and

she had to go out in the hall to the toilet. When she lay

down again she went to sleep for a while and woke up

feeling hungry.

The day had cleared; sunlight was streaming into the

room. She walked downstairs to the desk and called up

G. H. Barrow in his office. He seemed delighted and said

if she'd wait for him a half an hour, he'd come and fetch

her out to lunch in the Bois; they'd forget everything ex-

cept that it was spring and that they were beautiful pagans

at heart. Daughter made a sour face, but said pleasantly

enough over the phone that she'd wait for him.

When he came he wore a sporty grey flannel suit and

a grey fedora hat. She felt very drab beside him in the

darkgray uniform she hated so. "Why, my dearest little

girl . . . you've saved my life," he said. "Su-su-spring

makes me think of suicide unless I'm in lu-lu-love . . . I

was feeling . . . er . . . er . . . elderly and not in love.

We must change all that.""I was feeling like that too."

"What's the matter?""Well, maybe I'll tell you and

maybe I won't." She almost liked his long nose and his

long jaw today. "Anyway, I'm too starved to talk.""I'll

do all the talking . . ." he said laughing. "Alwawaways

-407-

do anywawaway . . . and I'll set you up to the bububest

meal you ever ate."

He talked boisterously all the way out in the cab about

the Peace Conference and the terrible fight the President

had had to keep his principles intact. "Hemmed in by

every sinister intrigue, by all the poisonous ghosts of se-

cret treaties, with two of the cleverest and most unscrupu-

lous manipulators out of oldworld statecraft as his

opponents . . . He fought on . . . we are all of us fight-

ing on . . . It's the greatest crusade in history; if we win,

the world will be a better place to live in, if we lose, it

will be given up to Bolshevism and despair . . . you can

imagine, Anne Elizabeth, how charming it was to have

your pretty little voice suddenly tickle my ear over the

telephone and call me away if only for a brief space from

all this worry and responsibility . . . why, there's even a

rumor that an attempt has been made to poison the Presi-

dent at the hôtel Mûrat . . . it's the President alone

with a few backers and wellwishers and devoted adher-

ents who is standing out for decency, fairplay and good

sense, never forget that for an instant. . . ." He talked on

and on as if he was rehearsing a speech. Daughter heard

him faintly like through a faulty telephone connection.

The day too, the little pagodas of bloom on the horsechest-

nuts, the crowds, the overdressed children, the flags against

the blue sky, the streets of handsome. houses behind trees

with their carved stonework and their iron balconies and

their polished windows shining in the May sunshine;

Paris was all little and bright and far away like a picture

seen through the wrong end of a field glass. When the

luncheon came on at the big glittery outdoor restaurant

it was the same thing, she couldn't taste what she was

eating.

He made her drink quite a lot of wine and after a

while she heard herself talking to him. She'd never talked

like this to a man before. He seemed so understanding

-408-

and kind. She found herself talking to him about Dad and

how hard it had been giving up Joe Washburn, and how

going over on the boat her life had suddenly seemed all

new . . . "Somethin' funny's happened to me, I declare

. . . I always used to get along with everybody fine and

now I can't seem to. In the N.E.R. office in Rome I

couldn't get along with any of those old cats, and I got

to be good friends with an Italian boy, used to take me

horseback riding an' I couldn't get along with him, and

you know Captain Savage on the train to Italy who let us

ride in his compartment, we went out to Tivoli with him,"

her ears began to roar when she spoke of Dick. She was

going to tell Mr. Barrow everything. "We got along so

well we got engaged and now I've quarreled with him."

She saw Mr. Barrow's long knobbly face leaning to-

wards her across the table. The gap was very wide between

his front teeth when he smiled. "Do you think, Annie

girl, you could get along with me a little?" He put his

skinny puffyveined hand towards her across the table. She

laughed and threw her head to one side, "We seem to be

gettin' along all right right now."

"It would make me very happy if you could . . . you

make me very happy anyway, just to look at you . . .

I'm happier at this moment than I've been for years, ex-

cept perhaps for the mumumoment when the Covenant

for the League of Nations was signed."

She laughed again, "Well, I don't feel like any Peace

Treaty, the fact is I'm in terrible trouble." She found her-

self watching his face carefully; the upper lip thinned, he

wasn't smiling any more.

"Why, what's the mamamatter . . . if there was any

wawaway I could . . . er . . . be of any assistance . . .

I'd be the happiest fellow in the world."

"Oh, no . . . I hate losing my job though and having

to go home in disgrace . . . that's about the size of it . . .

it's all my fault for running around like a little nitwit."

-409-

She was going to break down and cry, but suddenly the

nausea came on again and she had to hurry to the ladies'

room of the restaurant. She got there just in time to

throw up. The shapeless leatherfaced woman there was

very kind and sympathetic; it scared Daughter how she

immediately seemed to know what was the matter. She

didn't know much French but she could see that the

woman was asking if it was Madame's first child, how

many months, congratulating her. Suddenly she decided

she'd kill herself. When she got back Barrow had paid

the bill and was walking back and forth on the gravel path

in front of the tables.

"You poor little girl," he said. "What can be the matter?

You suddenly turned deathly pale."

"It's nothing . . . I think I'll go home and lie down

. . . I don't think all that spaghetti and garlic agreed

with me in Italy . . . maybe it's that wine."

"But perhaps I could do something about finding you a

job in Paris. Are you a typist or stenographer?"

"Might make a stab at it," said Daughter bitterly. She

hated Mr. Barrow. All the way back in the taxi she couldn't

get to say anything. Mr. Barrow talked and talked. When

she got back to the hotel she lay down on the bed and

gave herself up to thinking about Dick.

She decided she'd go home. She stayed in her room and

although Mr. Barrow kept calling up asking her out and

making suggestions about possible jobs she wouldn't see

him. She said she was having a bilious attack and would

stay in bed. The night before she was to sail he asked her

to dine with him and some friends and before she knew it

she said she'd go along. He called for her at six and took

her for cocktails at the Ritz Bar. She'd gone out and

bought herself an evening dress at the Galleries Lafayette

and was feeling fine, she was telling herself as she sat

drinking the champagne cocktail, that if Dick should come

in now she wouldn't bat an eyelash. Mr. Barrow was talk-

-410-

ing about the Fiume situation and the difficulties the Pres-

ident was having with Congress and how he feared that

the whole great work of the League of Nations was in

danger, when Dick came in looking very handsome in his

uniform with a pale older woman in grey and a tall stout-

ish lighthaired man, whom Mr. Barrow pointed out as

J. Ward Moorehouse. Dick must have seen her but he

wouldn't look at her. She didn't care anymore about any-

thing. They drank down their cocktails and went out. On

the way up to Montmartre she let Mr. Barrow give her a

long kiss on the mouth that put him in fine spirits. She

didn't care; she had decided she'd kill herself.

Waiting for them at the table at the Hermitage Mr.

Barrow had reserved, was a newspaper correspondent

named Burnham and a Miss Hutchins who was a Red

Cross worker. They were very much excited about a man

named Stevens who had been arrested by the Army of Oc-

cupation, they thought accused of Bolshevik propaganda;

he'd been courtmartialed and they were afraid he was

going to be shot. Miss Hutchins was very upset and said

Mr. Barrow ought to go to the President about it as soon

as Mr. Wilson got back to Paris. In the meantime they

had to get the execution stayed. She said Don Stevens was

a newspaper man and although a radical not connected

with any kind of propaganda and anyway it was horrible

to shoot a man for wanting a better world. Mr. Barrow

was very embarrassed and stuttered and hemmed and

hawed and said that Stevens was a very silly young man

who talked too much about things he didn't understand,

but that he supposed he'd have to do the best he could to

try to get him out but that after all, he hadn't shown the

proper spirit. . . . That made Miss Hutchins very angry,

"But they're going to shoot him . . . suppose it had hap-

pened to you . . ." she kept saying. "Can't you under-

stand that we've got to save his life?"

Daughter couldn't seem to think of anything to say as

-411-

she didn't know what they were talking about; she sat

there in the restaurant looking at the waiters and the lights

and the people at the tables. Opposite there was a party

of attractive looking young French officers. One of them,

a tall man with a hawk nose, was looking at her. Their

eyes met and she couldn't help grinning. Those boys looked

as if they were having a fine time. A party of Americans

dressed up like plush horses crossed the floor between her

and the Frenchmen. It was Dick and the pale woman and

J. Ward Moorehouse and a big middleaged woman in a

great many deep pink ruffles and emeralds. They sat down

at the table next to Daughter's table where there had been

.a sign saying Reservée all evening. Everybody was intro-

duced and she and Dick shook hands very formally, as

if they were the merest acquaintances. Miss Stoddard,

whom she'd been so friendly with in Rome, gave her a

quick inquisitive cold stare that made her feel terrible.

Miss Hutchins immediately went over and began talk-

ing about Don Stevens and trying to get Mr. Moorehouse

to call up Colonel House right away and get him to take

some action in his case. Mr. Moorehouse acted very quiet

and calm and said he was sure she need have no anxiety,

he was probably only being held for investigation and in

any case he didn't think the courtmartial in the Army of

Occupation would take extreme measures against a civilian

and an American citizen. Miss Hutchins said all she

wanted was a stay because his father was a friend of La

Follette's and would be able to get together considerable

influence in Washington. Mr. Moorehouse smiled when

he heard that. "If his life depended on the influence of

Senator La Follette, I think you would have cause to be

alarmed, Eveline, but I think I can assure you that it

doesn't." Miss Hutchins looked very cross when she heard

that and settled back to glumly eating her supper. Any-

way the party was spoiled. Daughter couldn't imagine what,

it was that had made everybody so stiff and constrained;

-412-

maybe she was imagining it on account of her and Dick.

Now and then she gave him a sideways glance. He looked

so different from the way she'd known him sitting there

so prim and prissylooking, talking to the stout woman in

pink in a low pompous whisper now and then. It made

her want to throw a plate at him.

It was a relief when the orchestra started playing dance

music. Mr. Barrow wasn't a very good dancer and she

didn't like the way he kept squeezing her hand and patting

her neck. After they were through dancing they went into

the bar to have a gin fizz. The ceiling was hung with

tricolor decoration; the four French officers were in there;

there were people singing La Madelon de la Victoire and

all the tough little girls were laughing and talking loud

shrill French. Mr. Barrow was whispering in her ear all

the time, "Darling girl, you must let me take you home

tonight. . . . You mustn't sail . . . I'm sure I can ar-

range everything with the Red Cross or whatever it is.

. . . I've led such an unhappy life and I think I'd kill

myself if I had to give you up . . . couldn't you love

me just a little . . . I've dedicated my life to unattainable

ideals and here I am getting old without grasping true

happiness for a moment. You're the only girl I've ever

known who seemed really a beautiful pagan at heart . . .

appreciate the art of life." Then he kissed her wetly in

the ear.

"But, George, I can't love anybody now . . . I hate

everybody."

"Let me teach you just give me a chance."

"If you knew about me, you wouldn't want me," she said

coldly. She caught again a funny scared look on his face

and a thinning of his lips over his widely spaced teeth.

They went back to the table. She sat there fidgeting

while everybody talked carefully, with long pauses, about

the Peace Treaty, when it was going to be signed, whether

the Germans would sign. Then she couldn't stand it any

-413-

longer and went to the ladies' room to powder her nose.

On the way back to the table she peeped into the bar to

see what was going on in there. The hawknosed French

officer caught sight of her, jumped to his feet, clicked his

heels together, saluted, bowed and said in broken English,

"Charming lady, will you not stay a moment and drink

once with your umble servant?" Daughter went to their

table and sat down. "You boys looked like you were having

such a good time," she said. "I'm with the worst old set

of plush horses . . . They make me tired.""Permettez,

mademoiselle," he said, and introduced her to his friends.

He was an aviator. They were all aviation officers. His

name was Pierre. When she told them her brother had been

an aviator and had been killed, they were very nice to her.

She couldn't help letting them think Bud had been killed

at the front. "Mademoiselle," said Pierre solemnly, "allow

me, with all possible respect, to be your brother.""Shake,"

she said. They all shook hands solemnly, they were drink-

ing little glasses of cognac, but after that they ordered

champagne. She danced with them all. She was very happy

and didn't care what happened. They were young good-

looking boys, all the time laughing and nice to her. They

had clasped their hands and were dancing ring around the

rosy in the middle of the floor while everybody around

was clapping, when she saw Mr. Barrow's face red and

indignant in the door. Next time the doorway spun around

she yelled over her shoulder, "Be back in a minute,

teacher." The face disappeared. She was dizzy but Pierre

caught her and held her tight; he smelt of perfume but

still she liked having him hold her tight.

He suggested they go somewhere else, "Mademoiselle

Sistair," he whispered, "allow us to show you the mystères

de Paree . . . afterwards we can come back to your plus

orsairs. They will probably become intoxicate . . . plus

orsairs invariably intoxicate." They laughed. He had grey

eyes and light hair, he said he was a Norman. She said

-414-

he was the nicest Frenchman she'd ever met. She had a

hard time getting her coat from the checkroom because

she didn't have any check, but she went in and picked it

out while Pierre talked French to the checkgirl. They got

into a long low grey car; Daughter had never seen such

speeding. Pierre was a fine driver though; he had a game

of running full speed towards a gendarme and swerving

just enough at the right moment. She said supposing he

hit one; he shrugged his shoulders and said, "It does not

mattair . . . they are . . . ow do you call it? . . .

bloody cows." They went to Maxims, where it was too

quiet for them, then to a little tough dancehall way across

Paris. Daughter could see that Pierre was wellknown

everywhere and an Ace. The other aviators met girls in

different places and dropped away. Before she realized it

she and Pierre were alone in the long grey car. "Primo,"

he was explaining, "we will go to Les Halles to eat soupe

à l'oignon . . . and then I shall take you a little tour en

avion.""Oh, please do. I've never been up in a plane

. . . I'd like to go up and loop the loop . . . promise

you'll loop the loop.""Entendu," he said.

They sat a little sleepily in a small empty eatingplace

and ate onion soup and drank some more champagne. He

was still very kind and considerate but he seemed to have

exhausted his English. She thought vaguely about going

back to the hotel and catching the boattrain, but all she

seemed to be able to say was, "Loop the loop, promise me

you'll loop the loop." His eyes had gotten a little glazy,

"With Mademoiselle Sistair," he said, "I do not make

love . . . I make loop the loop."

It was a long drive out to the aviation field. A little

greyness of dawn was creeping over everything. Pierre

couldn't drive straight any more, so that she had to grab

the wheel once or twice to steady him. When they drew

up with a jerk at the field she could see the row of hangars

and three planes standing out in deepest blue and beyond,

-415-

rows of poplartrees against the silver rim of the plain.

Overhead the sky sagged heavily like a wet tent. Daughter

got out of the car shivering. Pierre was staggering a little.

"Perhaps you will go instead to bed . . . to bed it is very

good," he said yawning. She put her arm around him,

"You promised you'd take me up and loop the loop."

"Allright," he said angrily and walked towards one of the

planes. He fumbled with the engine a while and she could

hear him swearing in French. Then he went into the

hangar to wake up a mechanic. Daughter stood there

shivering in the growing silvery light. She wouldn't think

of anything. She wanted to go up in a plane. Her head

ached but she didn't feel nauseated. When the mechanic

came back with Pierre she could make out that he was

arguing with him trying to make him give up the flight.

She got very sore: " Pierre, you've got to take me up," she

yelled at the two men sleepily arguing in French. "Aw-

right, Mademoiselle Sistair." They wrapped a heavy army-

coat around her and strapped her very carefully in the

observer's seat. Pierre climbed into the pilot seat. It was

a Bleriot monoplane, he said. The mechanic spun the

propeller. The engine started. Everything was full of the

roar of the engine. Suddenly she was scared and sober,

thought about home and Dad and Buster and the boat she

was going to take tomorrow, no it was today. It seemed

an endless time with the engine roaring. The light was

brighter. She started to fumble with the straps to unstrap

them. It was crazy going up like this. She had to catch that

boat. The plane had started. It was bouncing over the

field, bouncing along the ground. They were still on the

ground rumbling bouncing along. Maybe it wouldn't go

up. She hoped it wouldn't go up. A row of poplars swept

past below them. The motor was a settled roar now, they

were climbing. It was daylight; a cold silver sun shone in

her face. Underneath them was a floor of thick white

-416-

clouds like a beach. She was terribly cold and stunned by

the roar of the motor. The man in goggles in front of

her turned around and yelled something. She couldn't

hear. She'd forgotten who Pierre was. She stretched her

hand out towards him and waved it around. The plane

went on climbing steadily. She began to see hills standing

up in the light on either side of the white beach of clouds,

must be the valley of the Seine full of fog; where was

Paris? They were plunging into the sun, no, no, don't,

don't, now it's the end. The white clouds were a ceiling

overhead, the sun spun around once first fast then slowly

then the plane was climbing again. She felt terribly sick,

she was afraid she was going to faint. Dying must be like

this. Perhaps she'd have a miscarriage. Her body was

throbbing with the roar of the engine. She had barely

strength enough to stretch her hand toward him again

and make the same motion. The same thing again. This

time she didn't feel so bad. They were climbing again

into blue sky, a wind must have come up because the

plane was lunging a little, took an occasional sickening

drop into a pocket. The face in the goggles turned around

and swayed from side to side. She thought the lips formed

the words, No good; but now she could see Paris like an

embroidered pincushion, with all the steeples and the Eiffel

Tower and the towers of the Trocadèro sticking up through

a milky haze. The Sacré Cœur on Montmartre was very

white and cast a shadow clear to the garden that looked

like a map. Then it was behind them and they were circling

over green country. It was rough and she began to feel

sick again. There was a ripping sound of some kind. A

little wire waving loose and glistening against the blue

began to whine. She tried to yell to the man in goggles.

He turned and saw her waving and went into another

dive. This time. No. Paris, the Eiffel Tower, the Sacré

Cœur, the green fields spun. They were climbing again.

-417-

Daughter saw the shine of a wing gliding by itself a little

way from the plane. The spinning sun blinded her as they

dropped.

NEWSREEL XXXIX

spectacle of ruined villages and tortured earth "the work

of fiends" wrings heart of Mr. Hugh C. Wallace during his

visit to wasted and shelltorn regions

WHIPPET TANKS ON FIFTH AVENUE STIR LOAN

ENTHUSIASM

U. S. MOBILIZES IN ORIENT AGAINST

JAP MENACE

Rule Britannia, rule the waves

Britains never never shall be slaves

YOUYG WOMAN FOUND STRANGLED IN YONKERS

the socialrevolutionaries are the agents of Denekine,

Kolchak and the Allied Imperial Armies. I was one of the

organizers of the Soldiers, Sailors and Workmen's council in

Seattle. There is the same sentiment in this meeting that

appeared at our first meeting in Seattle when 5000 men in

uniform attended. EX-KAISER SPENDS HOURS IN

WRITING. Speaking broadly their choice is between revolu-

tionary socialism and anarchy. England already has plunged

into socialism, France hesitates, Belgium has gone, Italy is

going, while Lenine's shadow grows stronger and stronger

over the conference.

TEN SHIPS LAID BARRIER OF SUDDEN DEATH FROM

ORKNEYS TO SKAGGERAK

NO COAL? TRY PEAT

-418-

If you want to find the generals

I know where they are

If you want to find the generals

I know where they are

masses still don't know how the war started, how it was

conducted or how it ended, declared Maximilian Harden.

The war ministry was stormed by demonstrators who dragged

out Herr Neuring and threw him into the Elbe where he was

shot and killed as he tried to swim to the bank

VICIOUS PRACTICES RESPONSIBLE FOR HIGH LIVING

COST, WILSON TELLS CONGRESS

I saw them

I saw them

Down in the

Deep dugout

THE CAMERA EYE (41)

arent you coming to the anarchist picnic there's

going to be an anarchist picnic sure you've got to come to

the anarchist picnic this afternoon it was way out at Garches

in a kind of park it took a long time to get out there we

were late there were youngsters and young girls with

glasses and old men with their whiskers and long white

zits and everybody wore black artist ties some had

taken off their shoes and stockings and were wandering

around in the long grass a young man with a black artist

tie was reading a poem Voilà said a voice c'est plûtot le

-419-

geste proletaire it was a nice afternoon we sat on the grass

and looked around le geste proletaire

But God damn it they've got all the machineguns in the

world all the printingpresses linotypes tickerribbon curling

irons plushhorses Ritz and we you I? barehands a few

songs not very good songs plûtot le geste proletaire

Les bourgeois à la lanterne nom de dieu

et l'humanité la futurité la lutte des classes l'inépuis-

able angoisse des foules la misère du travailleur tu sais mon

vieux sans blague

it was chilly early summer gloaming among the eight-

eenthcenturyshaped trees when we started home I sat

on the impériale of the third class car with the daughter

of the Libertaire (that's Patrick Henry ours after all give

me or death) a fine girl her father she said never let her

go out alone never let her see any young men it was like

being in a convent she wanted liberty fraternity equality

and a young man to take her out in the tunnels the coal-

gas made us cough and she wanted l'Amérique la vie le

theatre le feev o'clock le smoking le foxtrot she was a

nice girl we sat side by side on the roof of the car and

looked at the banlieue de Paris a desert of little ginger-

bread brick maisonettes flattening out under the broad

gloom of evening she and I tu sais mon ami but what kind

of goddam management is this?

-420-

NEWSREEL XL

CRIMINAL IN PYJAMAS SAWS BARS;

SCALES WALLS; FLEES

Italians! against all and everything remember that the

beacon is lighted at Fiume and that all harangues are contained

in the words: Fiume or Death.

Criez au quatre vents que je n'accepte aucune transaction.

Le reste ici contre tout le monde et je prépare de très mauvais

jours.

Criez cela je vous prie a tû-tête

the call for enlistments mentions a chance for gold service

stripes, opportunities for big game hunting and thrilling water-

sports added to the general advantages of travel in foreign

countries

Chi va piano

Va sano

Chi va forte

Va 'la morte

Evviva la libertá

EARTHQUAKE IN ITALY DEVASTATES

LIKE WAR

only way Y.M.C.A. girls can travel is on troop ships;

part of fleet will go seaward to help Wilson

DEMPSEY KNOCKS OUT WILLARD IN

THIRD ROUND

Ils sont sourds.

Je vous embrasse.

Le cœur de Fiume est à vous.

JOE HILL

A young Swede named Hillstrom went to sea, got

himself calloused hands on sailingships and tramps,

-421-

learned English in the focastle of the steamers that

make the run from Stockholm to Hull, dreamed the

Swede's dream of the west;

when he got to America they gave him a job

polishing cuspidors in a Bowery saloon.

He moved west to Chicago and worked in a ma-

chineshop.

He moved west and followed the harvest, hung

around employment agencies, paid out many a dollar

for a job in a construction camp, walked out many a

mile when the grub was too bum, or the boss too tough,

or too many bugs in the bunkhouse;

read Marx and the I.W.W. Preamble and

dreamed about forming the structure of the new so-

ciety within the shell of the old.

He was in California for the S.P. strike (Casey

Jones, two locomotives, Casey Jones), used to play the

concertina outside the bunkhouse door, after supper,

evenings (Longhaired preachers come out every night),

had a knack for setting rebel words to tunes (And the

union makes us strong).

Along the coast in cookshacks flophouses jungles

wobblies hoboes bindlestiffs began singing Joe Hill's

songs. They sang 'em in the county jails of the State

of Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Idaho, in

the bullpens in Montana and Arizona, sang 'em in

Walla Walla, San Quentin and Leavenworth,

forming the structure of the new society within

the jails of the old.

At Bingham, Utah, Joe Hill organized the work-

ers of the Utah Construction Company in the One Big

Union, won a new wagescale, shorter hours, better

grub. (The angel Moroni didn't like labororganizers

any better than the Southern Pacific did.)

-422-

The angel Moroni moved the hearts of the Mor-

mons to decide it was Joe Hill shot a grocer named

Morrison. The Swedish consul and President Wilson

tried to get him a new trial but the angel Moroni moved

the hearts of the supreme court of the State of Utah to

sustain the verdict of guilty. He was in jail a year,

went on making up songs. In November 1915 he was

stood up against the wall in the jail yard in Salt Lake

City.

"Don't mourn for me organize," was the last word

he sent out to the workingstiffs of the I.W.W. Joe

Hill stood up against the wall of the jail yard, looked

into the muzzles of the guns and gave the word to fire.

They put him in a black suit, put a stiff collar

around his neck and a bow tie, shipped him to Chicago

for a bangup funeral, and photographed his handsome

stony mask staring into the future.

The first of May they scattered his ashes to the

wind.

BEN COMPTON

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history

of class struggles. . . .

The old people were Jews but at school Benny always

said no he wasn't a Jew he was an American because he'd

been born in Brooklyn and lived at 2531 25th Avenue in

Flatbush and they owned their home. The teacher in the

seventh grade said he squinted and sent him home with a

note, so Pop took an afternoon off from the jewelry store

where he worked with a lens in his eye repairing watches,

to take Benny to an optician who put drops in his eyes and

made him read little teeny letters on a white card. Pop

seemed tickled when the optician said Benny had to wear

-423-

glasses, "Vatchmaker's eyes . . . takes after his old man,"

he said and patted his cheek. The steel eyeglasses were

heavy on Benny's nose and cut into him behind the ears.

It made him feel funny to have Pop telling the optician

that a boy with glasses wouldn't be a bum and a baseball

player like Sam and Isidore but would attend to his stud-

ies and be a lawyer and a scholar like the men of old. "A

rabbi maybe," said the optician, but Pop said rabbis were

loafers and lived on the blood of the poor, he and the old

woman still ate kosher and kept the sabbath like their

fathers but synagogue and the rabbis. . . he made a spit-

ting sound with his lips. The optician laughed and said as

for himself he was a freethinker but religion was good for

the commonpeople. When they got home momma said the

glasses made Benny look awful old. Sam and Izzy yelled,

"Hello, foureyes," when they came in from selling papers,

but at school next day they told the other kids it was a states-

prison offence to roughhouse a feller with glasses. Once he

had the glasses Benny got to be very good at his lessons.

In highschool he made the debating team. When he was

thirteen Pop had a long illness and had to give up work

for a year. They lost the house that was almost paid for

and went to live in a flat on Myrtle Avenue. Benny got

work in a drugstore evenings. Sam and Izzy left home,

Sam to work in a furrier's in Newark; Izzy had gotten to

loafing in poolparlors so Pop threw him out. He'd always

been a good athlete and palled around with an Irishman

named Pug Riley who was going to get him into the ring.

Momma cried and Pop forbade any of the kids to mention

his name; still they all knew that Gladys, the oldest one,

who was working as a stenographer over in Manhattan,

sent Izzy a five dollar bill now and then. Benny looked

much older than he was and hardly ever thought of any-

thing except making money so the old people could have

a house of their own again. When he grew up he'd be a

lawyer and a business man and make a pile quick so that

-424-

Gladys could quit work and get married and the old people

could buy a big house and live in the country. Momma

used to tell him about how when she was a young maiden

in the old country they used to go out in the woods after

strawberries and mushrooms and stop by a farmhouse and

drink milk all warm and foamy from the cow. Benny

was going to get rich and take them all out in the country

for a trip to a summer resort.

When Pop was well enough to work again he rented

half a twofamily house in Flatbush where at least they'd

be away from the noise of the elevated. The same year

Benny graduated from highschool and won a prize for an

essay on The American Government. He'd gotten very

tall and thin and had terrible headaches. The old people

said he'd outgrown himself and took him to see Dr. Cohen

who lived on the same block but had his office downtown

near Borough Hall. The doctor said he'd have to give up

night work and studying too hard, what he needed was

something that would keep him outdoors and develop his

body. "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," he

said, scratching the grizzled beard under his chin. Benny

said he had to make some money this summer because he

wanted to go to New York University in the fall. Dr.

Cohen said he ought to eat plenty, of milkdishes and fresh

eggs and go somewhere where he could be out in the sun

and take it easy all summer. He charged two dollars.

Walking home the old man kept striking his forehead with

the flat of his hand and saying he was a failure, thirty

years he had worked in America and now he was a sick

old man all used up and couldn't provide for his children.

Momma cried. Gladys told them not to be silly, Benny was

a clever boy and a bright student and what was the use of

all his booklearning if he couldn't think up some way of

getting a job in the country. Benny went to bed without

saying anything.

A few days later Izzy came home. He rang the door-

-425-

bell as soon as the old man had gone to work one morn-

ing. "You almost met Pop," said Benny who opened the

door. "Nutten doin'. I waited round the corner till I seen

him go. . . . How's everybody?" Izzy had on a light

grey suit and a green necktie and wore a fedora hat to

match the suit. He said he had to get to Lancaster, Penn-

sylvania, to fight a Filipino featherweight on Saturday.

"Take me with you," said Benny. "You ain't tough enough,

kid . . . too much the momma's boy." In the end Benny

went with him. They rode on the L to Brooklyn Bridge

and then walked across. New York to the ferry. They

bought tickets to Elizabeth. When the train stopped in a

freightyard they sneaked forward into the blind baggage.

At West Philadelphia they dropped off and got chased by

the yard detective. A brewery wagon picked them up and

carried them along the road as far as West Chester. They

had to walk the rest of the way. A Mennonite farmer let

them spend the night in his barn, but in the morning he

wouldn't let them have any breakfast until they'd chopped

wood for two hours. By the time they got to Lancaster

Benny was all in. He went to sleep in the lockerroom at

the Athletic Club and didn't wake up until the fight was

over. Izzy had knocked out the Filipino featherweight in

the third round and won a purse of twentyfive dollars.

He sent Benny over to a lodginghouse with the shine who

took care of the lockerroom and went out with the boys

to paint the town red. Next morning he turned up with

his face green and his eyes bloodshot; he'd spent all his

money, but he'd gotten Benny a job helping a feller who

did a little smalltime fightpromoting and ran a canteen in

a construction camp up near Mauch Chunk.

It was a road job. Ben stayed there for two months earn-

ing ten dollars a week and his keep. He learned to drive a

team and to keep books. The boss of the canteen, Hiram

Volle, gypped the construction workers in their accounts,

but Benny didn't think much about it because they were

-426-

most of 'em wops, until he got to be friends with a young

fellow named Nick Gigli who worked with the gang at the

gravelpit. Nick used to hang around the canteen before

closingtime in the evening; then they'd go out and smoke

a cigarette together and talk. Sunday's they'd walk out in

the country with the Sunday paper and fool around all aft-

ernoon lying in the sun and talking about the articles in

the magazine section. Nick was from north Italy and all

the men in the gang were Sicilians, so he was lonely. His

father and elder brothers were anarchists and he was too;

he told Benny about Bakunin and Malatesta and said

Benny ought to be ashamed of himself for wanting to get

to be a rich businessman; sure he ought to study and learn,

maybe he ought to get to be a lawyer, but he ought to

work for the revolution and the working class, to be a

business man was to be a shark and a robber like that son

of a bitch Volle. He taught Benny to roll cigarettes and

told him about all the girls that were in love with him;

that girl in the boxoffice of the movie in Mauch Chunk;

he could have her anytime he wanted, but a revolutionist

ought to be careful about the girls he went with, women

took a classconscious working man's mind off his aims, they

were the main seduction of capitalist society. Ben asked him

if he thought he ought to throw up his job with Volle, be-

cause Volle was such a crook, but Nick said any other capi-

talist would be the same, all they could do was wait for

the Day. Nick was eighteen with bitter brown eyes and a

skin almost as dark as a mulatto's. Ben thought he was

great on account of all he'd done; he'd shined shoes, been

a sailor, a miner, a dishwasher and had worked in textile

mills, shoefactories and a cement factory and had had all

kinds of women and been in jail for three weeks in the

Paterson strike. Round the camp if any of the wops saw

Ben going anywhere alone he'd yell at him, "Hey, kid,

where's Nick?"

On Friday evening there was an argument in front of

-427-

the window where the construction boss was paying the

men off. That night, when Ben was getting into his bunk

in the back of the tarpaper shack the canteen was in, Nick

came, around and whispered in his ear that the bosses had

been gypping the men on time and that they were going on

strike tomorrow. Ben said if they went out he'd go out too.

Nick called him a brave comrade in Italian and hauled off

and kissed him on both cheeks. Next morning only a few of

the pick and shovel men turned out when the whistle blew.

Ben hung around the door of the colokshack not knowing

what to do with himself. Volle noticed him and told him

to hitch up the team to go down to the station after a box

of tobacco. Ben looked at his feet and said he couldn't be-

cause he was on strike. Volle burst out laughing and told

him to quit his kidding, funniest thing he'd ever heard of

a kike walking out with a lot of wops. Ben felt himself go

cold and stiff all over: "I'm not a kike any more'n you are.

. . . I'm an American born. . . and I'm goin' to stick

with my class, you dirty crook." Volle turned white and

stepped up and shook a big fist under Ben's nose and said

he was fired and that if he wasn't a little f -- g shrimp of

a foureyed kike he'd knock his goddam block off, anyway

his brother sure would give him a whaling when he heard

about it.

Ben went to his bunk and rolled his things into a bundle

and went off to find Nick. Nick was a little down the road

where the bunkhouses were, in the center of a bunch of

wops all yelling and waving their arms. The superintend-

ent and the gangbosses all turned out with revolvers in

black holsters strapped around their waists and one of

them made a speech in English and another one Sicilian

saying that this was a squareshooting concern that had al-

ways treated laborers square and if they didn't like it they

could get the hell out. They'd never had a strike and didn't

propose to begin now. There was big money involved in

this job and the company wasn't going to work and see it

-428-

tied up by any goddam foolishness. Any man who wasn't

on his job next time the whistle blew was fired and would

have to get a move on and remember that the State of

Pennsylvania had vagrancy laws. When the whistle blew

again everybody went back to work except Ben and Nick.

They walked off down the road with their bundles. Nick

had tears in his eyes and was saying, "Too much gentle,

too much patient. . . we do not know our strength yet."

That night they found a brokendown schoolhouse a little

off the road on a hill above a river. They'd bought some

bread and peanut butter at a store and sat out in front eat-

ing it and talking about what they'd do. By the time they'd

finished eating it was dark. Ben had never been out in the

country alone like that at night. The wind rustled the

woods all around and the rapid river seethed down in the

valley. It was a chilly August night with a heavy dew.

They didn't have any covering so Nick showed Ben how to

take his jacket off and put it over his head and how to

sleep against the wall to keep from getting sore lying on

the bare boards. He'd hardly gotten to sleep when he woke

up icycold and shaking. There was a window broken; he

could see the frame and the jagged bits of glass against

the cloudy moonlight. He lay back, musta been dreaming.

Something banged on the roof and rolled down the shin-

gles over his head and dropped to the ground. "Hay, Ben,

for chrissake wassat?" came Nick's voice in a hoarse whis-

per. They both got up and stared out through the broken

windowframe.

"That was busted before," said Nick. He walked over

and opened the outside door. They both shivered in the

chilly wind up the valley that rustled the trees like rain,

the river down below made a creaking grinding noise like

a string of carts and wagons.

A stone hit the roof above them and rolled off. The next

one went between their heads and hit the cracked plaster

of the wall behind. Ben heard the click of the blade as

-429-

Nick opened his pocketknife. He strained his eyes till the

tears came but he couldn't make out anything but the

leaves stirring in the wind.

"You come outa there . . . come up here . . . talk

. . . you son of a bitch," yelled Nick.

There was no answer.

"What you think?" whispered Nick over his shoulder

to Ben.

Ben didn't say anything; he was trying to keep his teeth

from chattering. Nick pushed him back in and pulled the

door to. They piled the dusty benches against the door

and blocked up the lower part of the window with boards

out of the floor.

"Break in. I keell one of him anyhow," said Nick.

"You don't believe in speerits?"

"Naw, no such thing," said Ben. They sat down side by

side on the floor with their backs to the cracked plaster and

listened. Nick had put the knife down between them. He

took Ben's fingers and made him feel the catch that held

the blade steady. "Good knife. . . sailor knife," he whis-

pered. Ben strained his ears. Only the spattering sound of

the wind in the trees and the steady grind of the river. No

more stones came.

Next morning they left the schoolhouse at first day.

Neither of them had had any sleep. Ben's eyes were sting-

ing. When the sun came up they found a man who was

patching up a broken spring on a truck. They helped him

jack it up with a block of wood and he gave them a lift

into Scranton where they got jobs washing dishes in a

hash joint run by a Greek.

. . . all fixed fastfrozen relations, with their train of

ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept

-430-

away, all newformed ones become antiquated before they

can ossify. . . .

Pearldiving wasn't much to Ben's taste, so at the end of

a couple of weeks, as he'd saved up the price of the ticket,

he said he was going back home to see the old people. Nick

stayed on because a girl in a candystore had fallen for him.

Later he'd go up to Allentown, where a brother of his had

a job in a steelmill and was making big money. The last

thing he said when he went down and put Ben on the train

for New York was, "Benny, you learn and study . . . be

great man for workingclass and remember too much girls

bad business."

Ben hated leaving Nick but he had to get home to find

a job for the winter that would give him time to study. He

took the exams and matriculated at the College of the City

of New York. The old man borrowed a hundred dollars

from the Morris Plan to get him started and Sam sent him

twentyfive from Newark to buy books with. Then he made

a little money himself working in Kahn's drugstore eve-

nings. Sunday afternoons he went to the library and read

Marx Capital. He joined the Socialist Party and went to

lectures at the Rand School whenever he got a chance. He

was working to be a wellsharpened instrument.

The next spring he got sick with scarlet fever and was

ten weeks in the hospital. When he got out his eyes were

so bad it gave him a headache to read for an hour. The old

man owed the Morris Plan another hundred dollars be-

sides the first hundred dollars and the interest and the in-

vestigation fees.

Ben had met a girl at a lecture at Cooper Union who

had worked in a textile mill over in Jersey. She'd

been arrested during the Paterson strike and had been

blacklisted. Now she was a salesgirl at Wanamaker's, but

her folks still worked in the Botany Mill at Passaic. Her

name was Helen Mauer; she was five years older than

Ben, a pale blonde and already had lines in her face. She

-431-

said there was nothing in the socialist movement; it was

the syndicalists had the right idea. After the lecture she

took him to the Cosmopolitan Café on 2nd Avenue to have

a glass of tea and introduced him to some people she said

were real rebels; when Ben told Gladys and the old people

about them the old man said, "Pfooy. . . radical jews,"

and made a spitting sound with his lips. He said Benny

ought to cut out these monkeyshines and get to work. He

was getting old and now he was in debt, and if he got sick

it would be up to Benny to support him and the old

woman. Ben said he was working all the time but that

your folks didn't count, it was the workingclass that he

was working for. The old man got red in the face and said

his family was sacred and next to that his own people.

Momma and Gladys cried. The old man got to his feet;

choking and coughing, he raised his hands above his head

and cursed Ben and Ben left the house.

He had no money on him and was still weak from the

scarlet fever. He walked across Brooklyn and across the

Manhattan Bridge and up through the East Side, all full

of ruddy lights and crowds and pushcarts with vegetables

that smelt of the spring, to the house where Helen lived

on East 6th Street. The landlady said he couldn't go up

to her room. Helen said it wasn't any of her business but

while they were arguing about it his ears began to ring and

he fainted on the hall settee. When he came to with water

running down his neck Helen helped him up the four

flights and made him lie down on her bed. She yelled

down to the landlady who was screaming about the police,

that she would leave first thing in the morning and noth-

ing in the world could make her leave sooner. She made

Ben some tea and they sat up all night talking on her bed.

They decided that they'd live in free union together and

spent the rest of the night packing her things. She had

mostly books and pamphlets.

Next morning they' went out at six o'clock, because she

-432-

had to be at Wanamaker's at eight, to look for a room.

They didn't exactly tell the next landlady they weren't

married, but when she said, "So you're bride and groom?"

they nodded and smiled. Fortunately Helen had enough

money in her purse to pay the week in advance. Then she

had to run off to work. Ben didn't have any money to buy

anything to eat so he lay on the bed reading Progress and

Poverty all day. When she came back in the evening she

brought in some supper from a delicatessen. Eating the rye

bread and salami they were very happy. She had such large

breasts for such a slender little girl. He had to go out to

a drugstore to buy some safeties because she said how could

she have a baby just now when they had to give all their

strength to the movement. There were bedbugs in the bed

but they told each other that they were as happy as they

could be under the capitalist system, that some day they'd

have a free society where workers wouldn't have to huddle

in filthy lodginghouses full of bedbugs or row with land-

ladies and lovers could have babies if they wanted to.

A few days later Helen was laid off from Wanamaker's

because they were cutting down their personnel for the

slack summer season. They went over to Jersey where she

went to live with her folks and Ben got a job in the ship-

ping department of a worsted mill. They rented a room

together in Passaic. When a strike came he and Helen were

both on the committee. Ben got to be quite a speechmaker.

He was arrested several times and almost had his skull

cracked by a policeman's billy and got six months in jail

out of it. But he'd found out that when he got up on a

soapbox to talk he could make people listen to him, that

he could talk and say what he thought and get a laugh or

a cheer out of the massed upturned faces. When he stood

up in court to take his sentence he started to talk about

surplus value. The strikers in the audience cheered and the

judge had the attendants clear the courtroom. Ben could

see the reporters busily taking down what he said; he was

-433-

glad to be a living example of the injustice and brutality

of the capitalist system. The judge shut him up by saying

he'd give him another six months for contempt of court if

he didn't keep quiet, and Ben was taken to the county jail

in an automobile full of special deputies with riot guns.

The papers spoke of him as a wellknown socialist agitator.

In jail Ben got to be friends with a wobbly named Bram

Hicks, a tall youngster from Frisco with light hair and

blue eyes who told him if he wanted to know the labor-

movement he ought to get him a red card and go out to

the Coast. Bram was a boilermaker by profession but had

shipped as a sailor for a change and landed in Perth Amboy

broke. He'd been working on the repairshift of one of the

mills and had gone out with the rest. He'd pushed a cop

in the face when they'd broken up a picketline and been

sent up for six months for assault and battery. Meeting

him once a day in the prison yard was the one thing kept

Ben going in jail.

They were both released on the same day. They walked

along the street together. The strike was over. The mills

were running. The streets where there'd been picketlines,

the hall where Ben had made speeches looked quiet and or-

dinary. He took Bram around to Helen's. She wasn't there,

but after a while she came in with a little redfaced ferret-

nosed Englishman whom she introduced as Billy, an Eng-

lish comrade. First thing Ben guessed that he was sleeping

with her. He left Bram in the room with the Englishman

and beckoned her outside. The narrow upper hall of the

old frame house smelt of vinegar. "You're through with

me?" he asked in a shaky voice.

"Oh, Ben, don't act so conventional."

"You mighta waited till I got outa jail."

"But can't you see that we're all comrades? You're a

brave fighter and oughtn't to be so conventional, Ben. . . .

Billy doesn't mean anything to me. He's a steward on a

liner. He'll be going away soon."

-434-

"Then I don't mean anything to you either." He

grabbed Helen's wrist and squeezed it as hard as he could.

"I guess I'm all wrong, but I'm crazy about you. . . . I

thought you. . ."

"Ouch, Ben . . . you're talkin' silly, you know how

much I like you." They went back in the room and talked

about the movement. Ben said he was going west with

Bram Hicks.

. . . he becomes an appendage of the machine and it is

only the most simple, most monotonous, most easily re-

quired knack that is required of him. . . .

Bram knew all the ropes. Walking, riding blind baggage

or on empty gondolas, hopping rides on delivery wagons

and trucks, they got to Buffalo. In a flophouse there Bram

found a guy he knew who got them signed on as deckhands

on a whaleback going back light to Duluth. In Duluth they

joined a gang being shipped up to harvest wheat for an

outfit in Saskatchewan. At first the work was very heavy

for Ben and Bram was scared he'd cave in, but the four-

teen hour days out in the sun and the dust, the copious

grub, the dead sleep in the lofts of the big barns began to

toughen him up. Lying flat on the straw in his sweaty

clothes he'd still feel through his sleep the tingle of the

sun on his face and neck, the strain in his muscles, the whir

of the reapers and binders along the horizon, the roar of

the thresher, the grind of gears of the trucks carrying the

red wheat to the elevators. He began to talk like a harvest

stiff. After the harvest they worked in a fruitcannery on

the Columbia River, a lousy steamy job full of the sour

stench of rotting fruitpeelings. There they read in Soli-

darity about the shingleweavers' strike and the free speech

fight in Everett, and decided they'd go down and see what

they could do to help out. The last day they worked there

-435-

Bram lost the forefinger of his right hand repairing the

slicing and peeling machinery. The company doctor said

he couldn't get any compensation because he'd already

given notice, and, besides, not being a Canadian. . . A

little shyster lawyer came around to the boarding house

where Bram was lying on the bed in a fever, with his hand

in a big wad of bandage, and tried to get him to sue, but

Bram yelled at the lawyer to get the hell out. Ben said he

was wrong, the working class ought to have its lawyers

too.

When the hand had healed a little they went down on

the boat from Vancouver to Seattle. I.W.W. headquarters

there was like a picnic ground, crowded with young men

coming in from every part of the U.S. and Canada. One

day a big bunch went down to Everett on the boat to try

to hold a meeting at the corner of Wetmore and Hewitt

Avenues. The dock was full of deputies with rifles, and re-

volvers. "The Commercial Club boys are waiting for us,"

some guy's voice tittered nervously. The deputies had

white handkerchiefs around their necks. "There's Sheriff

McRae," said somebody. Bram edged up to Ben. "We bet-

ter stick together. . . . Looks to me like we was goin' to

get tamped up some." The wobblies were arrested as fast

as they stepped off the boat and herded down to the end of

the dock. The deputies were drunk most of them, Ben

could smell the whiskey on the breath of the redfaced guy

who grabbed him by the arm. "Get a move on there, you

son of a bitch. . ." He got a blow from a riflebutt in the

small of the back. He could hear the crack of saps on men's

skulls. Anybody who resisted had his face beaten to a jelly

with a club. The wobblies were made to climb up into a

truck. With the dusk a cold drizzle had come on. "Boys,

we got to show 'em we got guts," a redhaired boy said. A

deputy who was holding on to the back of the truck aimed

a blow at him with his sap but lost his balance and fell off.

The wobblies laughed. The deputy climbed on again, pur-

-436-

ple in the face. "You'll be laughin' outa the other side of

your dirty mugs when we get through with you," he

yelled.

Out in the woods where the county road crossed the

railroad track they were made to get out of the trucks.

The deputies stood around them with their guns leveled

while the sheriff who was reeling drunk, and two well-

dressed middleaged men talked over what they'd do. Ben

heard the word gauntlet. "Look here, sheriff," somebody

said, "we're not here to make any kind of disturbance. All

we want's our constitutional rights of free speech." The

sheriff turned towards them waving the butt of his revol-

ver, "Oh, you do, do you, you c----s. Well, this is Sno-

homish county and you ain't goin' to forget it . . . if you

come here again some of you fellers is goin' to die, that's

all there is about it. . . . All right, boys, let's go."

The deputies made two lines down towards the railroad

track. They grabbed the wobblies one by one and beat them

up. Three of them grabbed Ben. "You a wobbly?" "Sure I

am, you dirty yellow . . ." he began. The sheriff came up

and hauled off to hit him. "Look out, he's got glasses on."

A big hand pulled the glasses off. "We'll fix that." Then

the sheriff punched him in the nose with his fist. "Say you

ain't." Ben's mouth was full of blood. He set his jaw.

"He's a kike, hit him again for me." "Say, you ain't a wob-

bly." Somebody whacked a riflebarrel against his shins and

he fell forward. "Run for it," they were yelling. Blows

with clubs and riflebutts were splitting his ears.

He tried to walk forward without running. He tripped

on a rail and fell, cutting his arm on something sharp.

There was so much blood in his eyes he couldn't see. A

heavy boot was kicking him again and again in the side.

He was passing out. Somehow he staggered forward. Some-

body was holding him up under the arms and was drag-

ging him free of the cattleguard on the track. Another fel-

low began to wipe his face off with a handkerchief. He

-437-

heard Bram's voice way off somewhere, "We're over the

county line, boys." What with losing his glasses and the

rain and the night and the shooting pain all up and down

his back Ben couldn't see anything. He heard shots behind

them and yells from where other guys were running the

gauntlet. He was the center of a little straggling group of

wobblies making their way down the railroad track. "Fel-

low workers," Bram was saying in his deep quiet voice, "we

must never forget this night."

At the interurban trolley station they took up a collec-

tion among the ragged and bloody group to buy tickets to

Seattle for the guys most hurt. Ben was so dazed and sick

he could hardly hold the ticket when somebody pushed it

into his hand. Bram and the rest of them set off to walk

the thirty miles back to Seattle.

Ben was in hospital three weeks. The kicks in the back

had affected his kidneys and he was in frightful pain most

of the time. The morphine they gave him made him so

dopey he barely knew what was happening when they

brought in the boys wounded in the shooting on the Ever-

ett dock on November 5th. When he was discharged he

could just walk. Everybody he knew was in jail. At Gen-

eral Delivery he found a letter from Gladys enclosing fifty

dollars and saying his father wanted him to come home.

The Defense Committee told him to go ahead; he was

just the man to raise funds for them in the east. An enor-

mous amount of money would be needed for the defense of

the seventyfour wobblies held in the Everett jail charged

with murder. Ben hung around Seattle for a couple of

weeks doing odd jobs for the Defense Committee, trying

to figure out a way to get home. A sympathizer who

worked in a shipping office finally got him a berth as super-

cargo on a freighter that was going to New York through

the Panama canal. The sea trip and the detailed clerical

work helped him to pull himself together. Still there wasn't

a night he didn't wake up with a nightmare scream in his

-438-

throat sitting up in his bunk dreaming the deputies were

coming to get him to make him run the gauntlet. When

he got to sleep again he'd dream he was caught in the

cattleguard and the teeth were tearing his arms and heavy

boots were kicking him in the back. It got so it took all his

nerve to lie down in his bunk to go to sleep. The men on

the ship thought he was a hophead and steered clear of

him. It was a great day when he saw the tall buildings of

New York shining in the brown morning haze.

. . . when in the course of development class distinc-

tions have disappeared and all production has been concen-

trated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation,

the public power will lose its political character. . . .

Ben lived at home that winter because it was cheaper.

When he told Pop he was going to study law in the office

of a radical lawyer named Morris Stein whom he'd met in

connection with raising money for the Everett boys, the

old man was delighted. "A clever lawyer can protect the

workers and the poor Jews and make money too," he said,

rubbing his hands. "Benny, I always knew you were a

good boy." Momma nodded and smiled. "Because in this

country it's not like over there under the warlords, even a

lazy bum's got constitootional rights, that's why they wrote

the constitootion for." It made Ben feel sick talking to

them about it.

He worked as a clerk in Stein's office on lower Broad-

way and in the evenings addressed protest meetings about

the Everett massacre. Morris Stein's sister Fanya, who was

a thin dark wealthy woman about thirtyfive, was an ardent

pacifist and made him read Tolstoy and Kropotkin. She

believed that Wilson would keep the country out of the

European war and sent money to all the women's peace

organizations. She had a car and used to run him around

-439-

town sometimes when he had several meetings in one eve-

ning. His heart would always be thumping when he went

into the hall where the meeting was and began to hear the

babble and rustle of the audience filing in, garment work-

ers on the East Side, waterfront workers in Brooklyn,

workers in chemical and metalproducts plants in Newark,

parlor socialists and pinks at the Rand School or on lower

Fifth Avenue, the vast anonymous mass of all classes,

races, trades in Madison Square Garden. His hands would

always be cold when he shook hands with the chairman

and other speakers on the platform. When his turn came

to speak there'd be a moment when all the faces looking

up at him would blur into a mass of pink, the hum of the

hall would deafen him, he'd be in a panic for fear he'd for-

gotten what he wanted to say. Then all at once he'd hear

his own voice enunciating clearly and firmly, feel its re-

verberance along the walls and ceiling, feel ears growing

tense, men and women leaning forward in their chairs, see

the rows of faces quite clearly, the groups of people who

couldn't find seats crowding at the doors. Phrases like pro-

test, massaction, united workingclass of this country and

the world, revolution, would light up the eyes and faces

under him like the glare of a bonfire.

After the speech he'd feel shaky, his glasses would be

so misted he'd have to wipe them, he'd feel all the awk-

wardness of his tall gangling frame. Fanya would get him

away as soon as she could, tell him with shining eyes that

he'd spoken magnificently, take him downtown, if the

meeting had been in Manhattan, to have some supper in

the Brevoort basement or at the Cosmopolitan Café before

he went home on the subway to Brooklyn. He knew that

she was in love with him, but they rarely talked about

anything outside of the movement.

When the Russian revolution came in February, Ben

and the Steins bought every edition of the papers for

weeks, read all the correspondents' reports with desperate

-440-

intentness; it was the dawning of The Day. There was a

feeling of carnival all down the East Side and in the Jew-

ish sections of Brooklyn. The old people cried whenever

they spoke of it. "Next Austria, then the Reich, then Eng-

land . . . freed peoples everywhere," Pop would say.

"And last, Uncle Sam," Ben would add, grimly setting his

jaw.

The April day Woodrow Wilson declared war, Fanya

went to bed with a hysterical crying fit. Ben went up to see

her at the apartment Morris Stein and his wife had on

Riverside Drive. She'd come back from Washington the

day before. She'd been up there with a women's peace

delegation trying to see the President. The detectives had

run them off the White House lawn and several girls had

been arrested. "What did you expect?. . . of course the

capitalists want war. They'll think a little different when

they find what they're getting's a revolution." She begged

him to stay with her, but he left saying he had to go see

them down at The Call. As he left the house, he found

himself making a spitting noise with his lips like his father.

He told himself he'd never go there again.

He registered for the draft on Stein's advice, though he

wrote conscientious objector on the card. Soon after that he

and Stein quarrelled. Stein said there was nothing to it

but to bow before the storm; Ben said he was going to agi-

tate against it until he was put in jail. That meant he was

out of a job and it was the end of his studying law. Kahn

wouldn't take him back in his drugstore because he was

afraid the cops would raid him if it got to be known he

had a radical working for him. Ben's brother Sam was

working in a munition factory at Perth Amboy and mak-

ing big money; he kept writing Ben to stop his foolishness

and get a job there too. Even Gladys told him it was silly

to ram his head against a stone wall. In July he left home

and went back to live with Helen Mauer over in Passaic.

His number hadn't been called yet, so it was easy to get a

-441-

job in the shipping department of one of the mills. They

were working overtime and losing hands fast by the draft.

The Rand School had been closed up, The Call sus-

pended, every day new friends were going around to Wil-

son's way of looking at things. Helen's folks and their

friends were making good money, working overtime; they

laughed or got sore at any talk of protest strikes or revolu-

tionary movements; people were buying washing machines,

liberty bonds, vacuum cleaners, making first payments on

houses. The girls were buying fur coats and silk stockings.

Helen and Ben began to plan to go out to Chicago, where

the wobblies were putting up a fight. September 2nd came

the roundup of I.W.W. officials by government agents.

Ben and Helen expected to be arrested, but they were

passed over. They spent a rainy Sunday huddled on the

bed in their dank room, trying to decide what they ought

to do. Everything they trusted was giving way under their

feet. "I feel like a rat in a trap," Helen kept saying. Every

now and then Ben would jump up and walk up and down

hitting his forehead with the palm of his hand. "We gotta

do something here, look what they're doing in Russia."

One day a warworker came around to the shipping de-

partment to sign everybody up for a Liberty Bond. He

was a cockylooking young man in a yellow slicker. Ben

wasn't much given to arguments during working hours, so

he just shook his head and went back to the manifest he

was making out. "You don't want to spoil the record of

your department, do you? It's one hundred percent perfect

so far." Ben tried to smile. "It seems too bad, but I guess

it'll have to be." Ben could feel the eyes of the other men

in the office on him. The young man in the slicker was

balancing uneasily from one foot to the other. "I don't

suppose you want people to think you're a pro-German or

a pacifist, do you?" "They can suppose what they damn

like, for all I care." "Let's see your registration card, I

bet you're a slacker." "Look here, get me," said Ben, get-

-442-

ting to his feet, "I don't believe in capitalist war and I'm

not going to do anything I can help to support it." The

young man in the slicker turned his back, "Oh, if you're

one of them yellow bastards I won't even talk to you."

Ben went back to work. That evening when he was punch-

ing the timeclock a cop stepped up to him. "Let's see your

registration card, buddy." Ben brought the card out from

his inside pocket. The cop read it over carefully, "Looks

all right to me," he said reluctantly. At the end of the

week Ben found he was fired; no reason given.

He went to the room in a panic. When Helen came

back he said he was going to Mexico. "They could get me

under the espionage act for what I told that guy about

fighting capitalism." Helen tried to calm him down, but

he said he wouldn't sleep in that room another night, so

they packed their bags and went over to New York on the

train. They had about a hundred dollars saved up between

them. They got a room on East 8th Street under the

name of Mr. and Mrs. Gold. It was the next morning

that they read in the Times that the Maximalists had

taken over the government in Petrograd with the slogan

All Power to the Soviets. They were sitting in a small

pastry shop on 2nd Avenue drinking their morning coffee,

when Ben, who had run around to the newsstand for a

paper, came back with the news. Helen began to cry: "Oh,

darling, it's too good to be true. It's the world revolution.

. . . Now the workers 'll see that they were being de-

ceived by false good times, that the war's really aimed at

them. Now the other armies 'll start to mutiny." Ben took

her hand under the table and squeezed it hard. "We gotto

work now, darling. . . . I'll go to jail here before I'll run

away to Mexico. I'd acted like a yellow bastard if it hadn't

been for you, Helen. . . . A man's no good alone."

They gulped their coffee and walked around to the

Ferbers' house on 17th Street. Al Ferber was a doctor, a

short stout man with a big paunch; he was just leaving

-443-

the house to go to his office. He went back into the hall

with them and yelled upstairs to his wife: "Molly, come

down . . . Kerensky's run out of Petrograd with a flea

in his ear . . . dressed as a woman he ran." Then he

said in Yiddish to Ben that if the comrades were going to

hold a meeting to send greetings to the soldiers' and

peasants' government, he'd give a hundred dollars toward

expenses, but his name would have to be kept out of it or

else he'd lose his practice. Molly Ferber came downstairs

in a quilted dressing gown and said she'd sell something

and add another hundred. They spent the day going

around to find comrades they had the addresses of; they

didn't dare use the phone for fear of the wires being

tapped.

The meeting was held at the Empire Casino in the

Bronx a week later. Two Federal agents with beefsteak

faces sat in the front row with a stenographer who took

down everything that was said. The police closed the

doors after the first couple of hundred people had come

in. The speakers on the platform could hear them break-

ing up the crowd outside with motorcycles. Soldiers and

sailors in uniform were sneaking into the gallery by ones

and twos and trying to stare the speakers out of counte-

nance.

When the old whitehaired man who was chairman of

the meeting walked to the front of the stage and said,

"Comrades, gentlemen of the Department of Justice and

not forgetting our young wellwishers up in the gallery,

we have met to send a resolution of greetings from the

oppressed workers of America to the triumphant workers

of Russia," everybody stood up and cheered. The crowd

milling around outside cheered too. Somewhere they could

hear a bunch singing the International. They could hear

policewhistles and the dang dang of a patrol wagon. Ben

noticed that Fanya Stein was in the audience; she looked

pale and her eyes held onto him with a fixed feverish stare.

-444-

When his turn came to speak he began by saying that on

account of the kind sympathizers from Washington in the

audience, he couldn't say what he wanted to say but that

every man and woman in the audience who was not a

traitor to their class knew what he wanted to say. . . .

"The capitalist governments are digging their own graves

by driving their people to slaughter in a crazy unnecessary

war that nobody can benefit from except bankers and

munition makers. . . . The American working class, like

the working classes of the rest of the world, will learn

their lesson. The profiteers are giving us instruction in the

use of guns; the day will come when we will use it."

"That's enough, let's go, boys," yelled a voice from the

gallery. The soldiers and sailors started hustling the

people out of the seats. The police from the entrances con-

verged on the speakers. Ben and a couple of others were

arrested. The men in the audience who were of conscrip-

tion age were made to show their registration cards before

they could leave. Ben was hustled out into a closed limou-

sine with the blinds drawn before he could speak to Helen.

He'd hardly noticed who it was had clicked the handcuffs

on his wrists.

They kept him for three days without anything to eat

or drink in a disused office in the Federal building on

Park Row. Every few hours a new bunch of detectives

would stamp into the room and question him. His head

throbbing, and ready to faint with thirst, he'd face the

ring of long yellow faces, jowly red faces, pimply faces,

boozers' and hopheads' faces, feel the eyes boring into him;

sometimes they kidded and cajoled him, and sometimes

they bullied and threatened; one bunch brought in pieces

of rubber hose to beat him up with. He jumped up and

faced them. For some reason they didn't beat him up, but

instead brought him some water and a couple of stale ham

sandwiches. After that he was able to sleep a little.

An agent yanked him off his bench and led him out

-445-

into a wellappointed office where he was questioned almost

kindly by an elderly man at a mahogany desk with a bunch

of roses on the corner of it. The smell of the roses made

him feel sick. The elderly man said he could see his

lawyer and Morris Stein came into the room.

" Benny," he said, "leave everything to me . . . Mr.

Watkins has consented to quash all charges if you'll

promise to report for military training. It seems your

number's been called."

"If you let me out," Ben said in a low trembling voice,

"I'll do my best to oppose capitalist war until you arrest

me again." Morris Stein and Mr. Watkins looked at each

other and shook their heads indulgently. "Well," said Mr.

Watkins, "I can't help but admire your spirit and wish it

was in a better cause." It ended by his being let out on

fifteen thousand dollars bail on Morris Stein's assurance

that he would do no agitating until the date of his trial.

The Steins wouldn't tell him who put up the bail.

Morris and Edna Stein gave him a room in their apart-

ment; Fanya was there all the time. They fed him good

food and tried to make him drink wine with his meals and

a glass of milk before going to bed. He didn't have any

interest in anything, slept as much as he could, read all the

books he found on the place. When Morris would try

to talk to him about his case he'd shut him up, "You're

doing this, Morris. . . do anything. . . why should I

care. I might as well be in jail as like this." "Well, I must

say that's a compliment," Fanya said laughing.

Helen Mauer called up several times to tell him how

things were going. She'd always say she had no news to

tell that she could say over the telephone, but he never

asked her to come up to see him. About as far as he went

from the Steins' apartment was to go out every day to sit

for a while on a bench on the Drive and look out over the

grey Hudson at the rows of frame houses on the Jersey

side and the grey palisades.

-446-

The day his case came up for trial the press was full of

hints of German victories. It was spring and sunny outside

the broad grimy windows of the courtroom. Ben sat sleep-

ily in the stuffy gloom. Everything seemed very simple.

Stein and the Judge had their little jokes together and the

Assistant District Attorney was positively genial. The jury

reported "guilty" and the judge sentenced him to twenty

years' imprisonment. Morris Stein filed an appeal and the

judge let him stay out on bail. The only moment Ben came

to life was when he was allowed to address the court before

being sentenced. He made a speech about the revolutionary

movement he'd been preparing all these weeks. Even as

he said it it seemed silly and weak. He almost stopped in

the middle. His voice strengthened and filled the court-

room as he got to the end. Even the judge and the old

snuffling attendants sat up when he recited for his perora-

tion, the last words of the communist manifesto:

In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and

class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which

the free development of each is the condition for the free

development of all.

The appeal dragged and dragged. Ben started studying

law again. He wanted to work in Stein's office to pay for

his keep, but Stein said it would be risky, he said the war

would be over soon and the red scare would die down, so

that he could get him off with a light sentence. He brought

lawbooks up for him to study and promised to take him into

partnership if he passed his bar exam, once he could get

his citizenship restored. Edna Stein was a fat spiteful

woman and rarely spoke to him; Fanya fussed over him

with nervous doting attentions that made him feel sick.

He slept badly and his kidneys bothered him. One night

he got up and dressed and was tiptoeing down the carpeted

-447-

hall towards the door with his shoes in his hand, when

Fanya with her black hair down her back came out of the

door of her room. She was in a nightdress that showed her

skinny figure and flat breasts. "Benny, where are you

going?"

"I'm going crazy here. . . I've got to get out." His

teeth were chattering. "I've got to get back into the move-

ment. . . . They'll catch me and send me to jail right

away. . . it will be better like that."

"You poor boy, you're in no condition." She threw her

arms round his neck and pulled him into her room.

"Fanya, you gotto let me go. . . . I might make it

across the Mexican border. . . other guys have."

"You're crazy . . . and what about your bail?"

"What do I care . . . don't you see we gotto do some-

thing."

She'd pulled him down on her bed and was stroking his

forehead. "Poor boy . . . I love you so, Benny, couldn't

you think of me a little bit . . . just a little teeny bit . . .

I could help you so much in the movement. . . . To-

morrow we'll talk about it . . . I want to help you,

Benny." He let her untie his necktie.

The armistice came, and news of the peace conference,

revolutionary movements all over Europe, Trotsky's

armies driving the whites out of Russia. Fanya Stein told

everybody she and Ben'were married and took him to live

with her at her studio apartment on 8th Street, where she

nursed him through the flu and double pneumonia. The

first day the doctor said he could go out she drove up the

Hudson in her Buick sedan. They came back in the early

summer gloaming to find a special delivery letter from

Morris. The circuit court had denied the appeal, but re-

duced the sentence to ten years. The next day at noon

he'd have to report to be delivered by his bondsmen to

the custody of the U.S. District Court. He'd probably go

to Atlanta. Soon after the letter Morris himself turned

-448-

up. Fanya had broken down and was crying hysterically.

Morris looked pale. "Ben," he said, "we're beaten . . .

You'll have to go to Atlanta for a while . . . you'll have

good company down there . . . but don't worry. We'll

take your case to the President. Now that the war's over

they can't keep the liberal press muzzled any more."

"That's all right," said Ben, "it's better to know the

worst."

Fanya jumped up from the couch where she'd been

sobbing and started screaming at her brother. When Ben

went out to walk around the block he left them quarrel-

ing bitterly. He found himself looking carefully at the

houses, the taxicabs, the streetlights, people's faces, a funny

hydrant that had a torso like a woman's, some bottles of

mineral oil stacked in a drugstore window, Nujol. He de-

cided he'd better go over to Brooklyn to say goodby to

the old people. At the subway station he stopped. He

hadn't the strength; he'd write them.

Next morning at nine he went down to Morris Stein's

office with his suitcase in his hand. He'd made Fanya

promise not to come. He had to tell himself several times

he was going to jail, he felt as if he was going on a business

trip of some kind. He had on a new suit of English tweed

Fanya had bought him.

Lower Broadway was all streaked red, white and blue

with flags; there were crowds of clerks and stenographers

and officeboys lining both pavements where he came up

out of the subway. Cops on motorcycles were keeping the

street clear. From down towards the Battery came the

sound of a military band playing Keep the Home Fires

Burning. Everybody looked flushed and happy. It was hard

to keep from walking in step to the music in the fresh

summer morning that smelt of the harbor and ships. He

had to keep telling himself: those are the people who

sent Debs to jail, those are the people who shot Joe Hill,

who murdered Frank Little, those are the people who

-449-

beat us up in Everett, who want me to rot for ten years

in jail.

The colored elevatorboy grinned at him when he took

him up in the elevator, "Is they startin' to go past yet,

mister?" Ben shook his head and frowned.

The lawoffice looked clean and shiny. The telephone girl

had red hair and wore a gold star. There was an American

flag draped over the door of Stein's private office. Stein

was at his desk talking to an upperclasslooking young man

in a tweed suit. "Ben," Stein said cheerily, "meet Stevens

Warner . . . He's just gotten out of Charlestown, served

a year for refusing to register."

"Not quite a year," said the young man, getting up and

shaking hands. "I'm out on good behavior."

Ben didn't like him, in his tweed suit and his expensive

looking necktie; all at once he remembered that he was

wearing the same kind of suit himself. The thought made

him sore. "How was it?" he asked coldly.

"Not so bad, they had me working in the green-

house. . . They treated me fairly well when they found

out I'd already been to the front."

"How was that?"

"Oh, in the ambulance service. . . . They just thought

I was mildly insane. . . . It was a damned instructive

experience."

"They treat the workers different," said Ben angrily.

"And now we're going to start a nationwide campaign

to get all the other boys out," said Stein, getting to his feet

and rubbing his hands, "starting with Debs. . . you'll

see, Ben, you won't be down there long. . . people are

coming to their senses already."

A burst of brassy music came up from Broadway, and

the regular tramp of soldiers marching. They all looked

out of the window. All down the long grey canyon flags

were streaming out, uncoiling tickertape and papers glinted

-450-

all through the ruddy sunlight, squirmed in the shadows;

people were yelling themselves hoarse.

"Damn fools," said Warner, "it won't make the dough-

boys forget about K.P."

Morris Stein came back into the room with a funny

brightness in his eyes. "Makes me feel maybe I missed

something."

"Well, I've got to be going," said Warner, shaking

hands again. "You certainly got a rotten break, Compton

. . . don't think for a minute we won't be working night

and day to get you out. . . I'm sure public sentiment will

change. We have great hopes of President Wilson . . .

after all, his labor record was fairly good before the war."

"I guess it'll be the workers will get me out, if I'm

gotten out," said Ben.

Warner's eyes were searching his face. Ben didn't smile.

Warner stood before him uneasily for a moment and then

took his hand again. Ben didn't return the pressure. "Good

luck," said Warner and walked out of the office.

"What's that, one of these liberalminded college boys?"

Ben asked of Stein. Stein nodded. He'd gotten interested

in some papers on his desk. "Yes. . . great boy, Steve

Warner. . . you'll find some books or magazines in the

library. . . I'll be with you in a few minutes."

Ben went into the library and took down a book on

Torts. He read and read the fine print. When Stein came

to get him he didn't know what he'd been reading or how

much time had passed. Walking up Broadway the going

was slow on account of the crowds and the bands and the

steady files of marching soldiers in khaki with tin hats

on their heads. Stein nudged him to take his hat off as

a regimental flag passed them in the middle of a fife and

drum corps. He kept it in his hand so as not to have to

take it off again. He took a deep breath of the dusty sunny

air of the street, full of girls' perfumerysmells and gasoline

from the exhaust of the trucks hauling the big guns, full

-451-

of laughing and shouting and shuffle and tramp of feet;

then the dark doorway of the Federal Building gulped

them.

It was a relief to have it all over, alone with the deputy

on the train for Atlanta. The deputy was a big morose

man with bluish sacks under his eyes. As the handcuffs

cut Ben's wrist he unlocked them except when the train

was in a station. Ben remembered it was his birthday; he

was twentythree years old.

NEWSREEL XLI

in British Colonial Office quarters it is believed that

Australian irritation will diminish as soon as it is realized that

the substance is more important than the shadow. It may be

stated that press representatives who are expeditious in sending

their telegrams at an early hour, suffer because their telegrams

are thrown into baskets. Others which come later are heaped

on top of them and in the end the messages on top of the

basket are dealt with first. But this must not be taken as an

insult. Count von Brochdorf-Ranzau was very weak and it

was only his physical condition that kept him from rising

PRIVATES HOLD UP CABMAN

Hold the fort for we are coming

Union men be strong;

Side by side we battle onward,

Victory will come.

New York City Federation Says Evening Gowns Are

Demoralizing Youth of the Land

SOLDIERS OVERSEAS FEAR LOSS

OF GOLD V

CONSCRIPTION A PUZZLE

-452-

Is there hostile propaganda at work in Paris?

We meet today in Freedom's cause

And raise our voices high

We'll join our hands in union strong

To battle or to die

FRANCE YET THE FRONTIER OF

FREEDOM

provision is made whereby the wellbeing and develop-

ment of backward and colonial regions are regarded as the

sacred trust of civilization over which the league of nations

exercises supervising care

REDS WEAKENING WASHINGTON HEARS

Hold the fort for we are coming

Union men be strong

the marine workers affiliation meeting early last night

at no. 26 Park Place voted to start a general walkout at 6

A.M. tomorrow

BURLESON ORDERS ALL POSTAL TELE-

GRAPH NEWS SUPPRESSED

his reply was an order to his followers to hang these two

lads on the spot. They were placed on chairs under trees,

halters fastened on the boughs were placed around their necks,

and then they were maltreated until they pushed the chair

away from them with their feet in order to finish their tor-

ments

THE CAMERA EYE (42)

four hours we casuals pile up scrapiron in the flatcars

and four hours we drag the scrapiron off the flatcars and

pile it on the side of the track KEEP THE BOYS FIT

-453-

TO GO HOME is the slogan of the YMCA in the

morning the shadows of the poplars point west and in

the afternoon they point out east where Persia is the

jagged bits of old iron cut into our hands through the

canvas gloves a kind of grey slagdust plugs our noses and

ears stings eyes four hunkies a couple of wops a

bohunk dagoes guineas two little dark guys with

blue chins nobody can talk to

spare parts no outfit wanted to use

mashed mudguards busted springs old spades and

shovels entrenching tools twisted hospital cots a moun-

tain of nuts and bolts of all sizes four million miles of

barbedwire chickenwire rabbitfence acres of tin roofing

square miles of parked trucks long parades of loco-

motives strung along the yellow rails of the sidings

KEEP THE BOYS FIT TO GO up in the office

the grumpy sergeants doing the paperwork dont know

where home is lost our outfits our service records our alu-

minum numberplates no spika de Engliss no entiendo com-

prend pas no capisco nyeh panimayoo

day after day the shadows of the poplars point west

northwest north northeast east When they desoit they

always heads south the corporal said Pretty tough but

if he aint got a soivice record how can we make out his

díscharge KEEP OUR BOYS FIT for whatthehell the

war's over

scrap

-454-

NEWSREEL XLII

it was a gala day for Seattle. Enormous crowds not only

filled the streets on the line of march from the pier but finally

later in the evening machineguns were placed in position, the

guardsmen withstanding a shower of missles until their in-

action so endangered them the officers gave the order to fire.

WOULD CUT OFF LIGHT. President Lowell of Har-

vard University has urged the students to serve as strikebreak-

ers. "In accordance with its tradition of public service, the

university desires at this time of crisis to maintain order and

support the laws of the Commonwealth."

THREE ARMIES FIGHT FOR KIEW

Calls Situation a Crime against Civilization

TO MAKE US INVULNERABLE

during the funeral services of Horace Traubel, literary

executor and biographer of Walt Whitman, this afternoon,

a fire broke out in the Unitarian Church of the Messiah. Pe-

riodicals, tugboats and shipyards were effected. 2000 pas-

sengers held up at Havre from which Mr. Wilson embarked

to review the Pacific fleet, but thousands were massed on each

side of the street seemingly satisfied merely to get a glimpse of

the President. As the George Washington steamed slowly to

her berth in Hoboken through the crowded lower bay, every

craft afloat gave welcome to King Albert and Queen Elizabeth

by hoarse blasts of their whistles

CRUCIBLE STEEL CONTINUES TO LEAD MARKET

My country 'tis of thee

Sweet land of libertee

Of thee I sing

-455-

PAUL BUNYAN

When Wesley Everest came home from overseas

and got his discharge from the army he went back to

his old job of logging. His folks were of the old

Kentucky and Tennessee stock of woodsmen and squir-

relhunters who followed the trail blazed by Lewis and

Clark into the rainy giant forests of the Pacific slope.

In the army Everest was a sharpshooter, won a medal

for a crack shot.

(Since the days of the homesteaders the western

promoters and the politicians and lobbyists in Wash-

ington had been busy with the rainy giant forests of the

Pacific slope, with the result that:

ten monopoly groups aggregating only one thou-

sand eight hundred and two holders, monopolized one

thousand two hundred and eight billion, eight hundred

million,

[1,208,800,000,000]

square feet of standing timber, . . . enough stand-

ing timber . . . to yield the planks necessary [over

and above the manufacturing wastage] to make a float-

ing bridge more than two feet thick and more than five

miles wide from New York to Liverpool; --

wood for scaffolding, wood for jerrybuilding resi-

dential suburbs, billboards, wood for shacks and ships

and shantytowns, pulp for tabloids, yellow journals,

editorial pages, advertizing copy, mailorder catalogues,

filingcards, army paperwork, handbills, flimsy.)

Wesley Everest was a logger like Paul Bunyan.

The lumberjacks, loggers, shingleweavers, saw-

mill workers were the helots of the timber empire; the

I.W.W. put the idea of industrial democracy in Paul Bunyan's

-456-

Bunyan's head; wobbly organizers said the forests

ought to belong to the whole people, said Paul Bunyan

ought to be paid in real money instead of in company

scrip, ought to have a decent place to dry his clothes,

wet from the sweat of a day's work in zero weather and

snow, an eight hour day, clean bunkhouses, wholesome

grub; when Paul Bunyan came back from making

Europe safe for the democracy of the Big Four, he

joined the lumberjack's local to help make the Pacific

slope safe for the workingstiffs. The wobblies were

reds. Not a thing in this world Paul Bunyan's ascared

of.

(To be a red in the summer of 1919 was worse

than being a hun or a pacifist in the summer of 1917.)

The timber owners, the sawmill and shinglekings

were patriots; they'd won the war (in the course of

which the price of lumber had gone up from $16 a

thousand feet to $116; there are even cases where the

government paid as high as $1200 a thousand for

spruce); they set out to clean the reds out of the log-

ging camps;

free American institutions must be preserved at

any cost;

so they formed the Employers Association and the

Legion of Loyal Loggers, they made it worth their

while for bunches of ex-soldiers to raid I.W.W. halls,

lynch and beat up organizers, burn subversive literature.

On Memorial Day 1918 the boys of the American

Legion in Centralia led by a group from the Chamber

of Commerce wrecked the I.W.W. hall, beat up every-

body they found in it, jailed some and piled the rest of

the boys in a truck and dumped them over the county

line, burned the papers and pamphlets and auctioned

-457-

off the fittings for the Red Cross; the wobblies' desk

still stands in the Chamber of Commerce.

The loggers hired a new hall and the union kept

on growing. Not a thing in this world Paul Bunyan's

ascared of.

Before Armistice Day, 1919, the town was full of

rumors that on that day the hall would be raided for

keeps. A young man of good family and pleasant man-

ners, Warren O. Grimm, had been an officer with the

American force in Siberia; that made him an authority

on labor and Bolsheviks, so he was chosen by the busi-

ness men to lead the 100% forces in the Citizens Pro-

tective League to put the fear of God into Paul Bunyan.

The first thing the brave patriots did was pick up

a blind newsdealer and thrash him and drop him in a

ditch across the county line.

The loggers consulted counsel and decided they

had a right to defend their hall and themselves in case

of a raid. Not a thing in this world Paul Bunyan's

ascared of.

Wesley Everest was a crack shot; Armistice Day

he put on his uniform and filled his pockets with car-

tridges. Wesley Everest was not much of a talker; at

a meeting in the Union Hall the Sunday before the

raid, there'd been talk of the chance of a lynching bee;

Wesley Everest had been walking up and down the aisle

with his O.D. coat on over a suit of overalls, distribut-

ing literature and pamphlets; when the boys said they

wouldn't stand for another raid, he stopped in his tracks

with the papers under his arm, rolled himself a brown-

paper cigarette and smiled a funny quiet smile.

Armistice Day was raw and cold; the mist rolled in

from Puget Sound and dripped from the dark boughs

-458-

of the spruces and the shiny storefronts of the town.

Warren O. Grimm commanded the Centralia section of

the parade. The exsoldiers were in their uniforms.

When the parade passed by the union hall without halt-

ing, the loggers inside breathed easier, but on the way

back the parade halted in front of the hall. Somebody

whistled through his fingers. Somebody yelled, "Let's

go. . . at 'em, boys." They ran towards the wobbly

hall. Three men crashed through the door. A rifle

spoke. Rifles crackled on the hills back of the town,

roared in the back of the hall.

Grimm and an exsoldier were hit.

The parade broke in disorder but the men with

rifles formed again and rushed the hall. They found

a few unarmed men hiding in an old icebox, a boy in

uniform at the head of the stairs with his arms over his

head.

Wesley Everest shot the magazine of his rifle out,

dropped it and ran for the woods. As he ran he broke

through the crowd in the back of the hall, held them

off with a blue automatic, scaled a fence, doubled down

an alley and through the back street. The mob fol-

lowed. They dropped the coils of rope they had with

them to lynch Britt Smith the I.W.W. secretary. It was

Wesley Everest's drawing them off that kept them

from lynching Britt Smith right there.

Stopping once or twice to hold the mob off with

some scattered shots, Wesley Everest ran for the river,

started to wade across. Up to his waist in water he

stopped and turned.

Wesley Everest turned to face the mob with a

funny quiet smile on his face. He'd lost his hat and

his hair dripped with water and sweat. They started

to rush him.

"Stand back," he shouted, "if there's bulls in the

crowd I'll submit to arrest."

-459-

The mob was at him. He shot from the hip four

times, then his gun jammed. He tugged at the trigger,

and taking cool aim shot the foremost of them dead.

It was Dale Hubbard, another exsoldier, nephew of

one of the big lumber men of Centralia.

Then he threw his empty gun away and fought

with his fists. The mob had him. A man bashed his

teeth in with the butt of a shotgun. Somebody brought

a rope and they started to hang him. A woman el-

bowed through the crowd and pulled the rope off his

neck.

"You haven't the guts to hang a man in the day-

time," was what Wesley Everest said.

They took him to the jail and threw him on the

floor of a cell. Meanwhile they were putting the other

loggers through the third degree.

That night the city lights were turned off. A

mob smashed in the outer door of the jail. "Don't

shoot, boys, here's your man," said the guard. Wesley

Everest met them on his feet, "Tell the boys I did my

best," he whispered to the men in the other cells.

They took him off in a limousine to the Chehalis

River bridge. As Wesley Everest lay stunned in the

bottom of the car a Centralia business man cut his penis

and testicles off with a razor. Wesley Everest gave a

great scream of pain. Somebody has remembered that

after a while he whispered, "For God's sake, men, shoot

me. . . don't let me suffer like this." Then they

hanged him from the bridge in the glare of the head-

lights.

The coroner at his inquest thought it was a great

joke.

He reported that Wesley Everest had broken out

of jail and run to the Chehalis River bridge and tied a

rope around his neck and jumped off, finding the rope

-460-

too short he'd climbed back and fastened on a longer

one, had jumped off again, broke his neck and shot

himself full of holes.

They jammed the mangled wreckage into a pack-

ing box and buried it.

Nobody knows where they buried the body of

Wesley Everest, but the six loggers they caught they

buried in the Walla Walla Penitentiary.

RICHARD ELLSWORTH SAVAGE

The pinnacles and buttresses of the apse of Nôtre Dâme

looked crumbly as cigarash in the late afternoon sunshine.

"But you've got to stay, Richard," Eleanor was saying as

she went about the room collecting the teathings on a tray

for the maid to take out. "I had to do something about

Eveline and her husband before they sailed. . . after

all, she's one of my oldest friends. . . and I've invited

all her wildeyed hangerson to come in afterwards." A fleet

of big drays loaded with winebarrels rumbled along the

quay outside. Dick was staring out into the grey ash of

the afternoon. "Do close that window, Richard, the dust

is pouring in. . . . Of course, I realize that you'll have to

leave early to go to J.W.'s meeting with the press. . . .

If it hadn't been for that he'd have had to come, poor

dear, but you know how busy he is." "Well, I don't exactly

find the time hanging on my hands. . . but I'll stay and

greet the happy pair. In the army I'd forgotten about

work." He got to his feet and walked back into the room

to light a cigarette.

"Well, you needn't be so mournful about it."

"I don't see you dancing in the streets yourself."

"I think Eveline's made a very grave mistake. . .

-461-

Americans are just too incredibly frivolous about marriage."

Dick's throat got tight. He found himself noticing how

stiffly he put the cigarette to his mouth, inhaled the smoke

and blew it out. Eleanor's eyes were on his face, cool and

searching. Dick didn't say anything, he tried to keep his

face stiff.

"Were you in love with that poor girl, Richard?"

Dick blushed and shook his head.

"Well, you needn't pretend to be so hard about it. . .

it's just young to pretend to be hard about things."

"Jilted by army officer, Texas belle killed in plane

wreck. . . but most of the correspondents know me and

did their best to kill that story. . . . What did you expect

me to do, jump into the grave like Hamlet? The Hon.

Mr. Barrow did all of that that was necessary. It was a

frightfully tough break. . ." He let himself drop into

a chair. "I wish I was hard enough so that I didn't give

a damn about anything. When history's walking on all

our faces is no time for pretty sentiments." He made a

funny face and started talking out of the corner of his

mouth. "All I ask sister is to see de woild with Uncle

Woodrow. . . le beau monde sans blague tu sais."

Eleanor was laughing her little shrill laugh when they

heard Eveline's and Paul Johnson's voices outside on the

landing.

Eleanor had bought them a pair of little blue parakeets

in a cage. They drank Montracher and ate roast duck

cooked with oranges. In the middle of the meal Dick had

to go up to the Crillon. It was a relief to be out in the

air, sitting in an open taxi, running past the Louvre made

enormous by the late twilight under which the Paris streets

seemed empty and very long ago like the Roman forum.

All the way up past the Tuileries he played with an im-

pulse to tell the taxidriver to take him to the opera, to the

circus, to the fortifications, anywhere to hell and gone.

-462-

He set his pokerface as he walked past the doorman at the

Crillon.

Miss Williams gave him a relieved smile when he

appeared in the door. "Oh, I was afraid you'd be late,

Captain Savage." Dick shook his head and grinned. "Any-

body come?" "Oh, they're coming in swarms. It'll make

the front pages," she whispered. Then she had to answer

the phone.

The big room was already filling up with newspaper

men. Jerry Burnham whispered as he shook hands, "Say,

Dick, if it's a typewritten statement you won't leave the

room alive.""Don't worry," said Dick with a grin. "Say,

where's Robbins?""He's out of the picture," said Dick

dryly, "I think he's in Nice drinking up the last of his

liver."

J.W. had come in by the other door and was moving

around the room shaking hands with men he knew, being

introduced to others. A young fellow with untidy hair and

his necktie crooked put a paper in Dick's hand. "Say, ask

him if he'd answer some of these questions." "Is he going

home to campaign for the League of Nations?" somebody

asked in his other ear.

Everybody was settled in chairs; J.W. leaned over the

back of his and said that this was going to be an informal

chat, after all, he was an old newspaper man himself. There

was a pause. Dick glanced around at J.W.'s pale slightly

jowly face just in time to catch a flash of his blue eyes

around the faces of the correspondents. An elderly man

asked in a grave voice if Mr. Moorehouse cared to say

anything about the differences of opinion between the

President and Colonel House. Dick settled himself back

to be bored. J.W. answered with a cool smile that they'd

better ask Colonel House himself about that. When some-

body spoke the word oil everybody sat up in their chairs.

Yes, he could say definitely an accord, a working agree-

ment had been reached between certain American oil

-463-

producers and perhaps the Royal Dutch-Shell, oh, no, of

course not to set prices but a proof of a new era of inter-

national cooperation that was dawning in which great

aggregations of capital would work together for peace and

democracy, against reactionaries and militarists on the one

hand and against the bloody forces of bolshevism on the

other. And what about the League of Nations? "A new

era," went on J.W. in a confidential tone, "is dawning."

Chairs scraped and squeaked, pencils scratched on pads,

everybody was very attentive. Everybody got it down that

J.W. was sailing for New York on the Rochambeau in

two weeks. After the newspapermen had gone off to make

their cable deadline, J.W. yawned and asked Dick to

make his excuses to Eleanor, that he was really too tired

to get down to her place tonight. When Dick got out on

the streets again there was still a little of the violet of

dusk in the sky. He hailed a taxi; goddam it, he could take

a taxi whenever he wanted to now.

It was pretty stiff at Eleanor's, people were sitting

around in the parlor and in one bedroom that had been

fitted up as a sort of boudoir with a tall mirror draped

with lace, talking uncomfortably and intermittently. The

bridegroom looked as if he had ants under his collar.

Eveline and Eleanor were standing in the window talking

with a gauntfaced man who turned out to be Don Stevens

who'd been arrested in Germany by the Army of Occupa-

tion and for whom Eveline had made everybody scamper

around so. "And any time I get in a jam," he was saying,

"I always find a little Jew who helps get me out. . . this

time he was a tailor."

"Well, Eveline isn't a little Jew or a tailor," said

Eleanor icily, "but I can tell you she did a great deal."

Stevens walked across the room to Dick and asked him

what sort of a man Moorehouse was. Dick found himself

blushing. He wished Stevens wouldn't talk so loud. "Why,

he's a man of extraordinary ability," he stammered.

-464-

"I thought he was a stuffed shirt. . . I didn't see what

those damn fools of the bourgeois press thought they were

getting for a story. . . I was there for the D.H."

"Yes, I saw you," said Dick.

"I thought maybe, from what Steve Warner said, you

were the sort of guy who'd be boring from within."

"Boring in another sense, I guess, boring and bored."

Stevens stood over him glaring at him as if he was going

to hit him. "Well, we'll know soon enough which side a

man's on. We'll all have to show our faces, as they say in

Russia, before long."

Eleanor interrupted with a fresh smoking bottle of

champagne. Stevens went back to talk to Eveline in the

window. "Why, I'd as soon have a Baptist preacher in the

house," Eleanor tittered.

"Damn it, I hate people who get their pleasure by

making other people feel uncomfortable," grumbled Dick

under his breath. Eleanor smiled a quick V-shaped smile

and gave his arm a pat with her thin white hand, that

was tipped by long nails pointed and pink and marked

with halfmoons. "So do I, Dick, so do I."

When Dick whispered that he had a headache and

thought he'd go home and turn in, she gripped his arm

and pulled him into the hall. "Don't you dare go home

and leave me alone with this frost." Dick made a face and

followed her back into the salon. She poured him a glass

of champagne from the bottle she still held in her hand:

"Cheer up Eveline," she whispered squeakily. "She's about

ready to go down for the third time."

Dick stood around for hours talking to Mrs. Johnson

about books, plays, the opera. Neither of them seemed

to be able to keep track of what the other was saying.

Eveline couldn't keep her eyes off her husband. He had

a young cubbish look Dick couldn't help liking; he was

standing by the sideboard getting tight with Stevens, who

kept making ugly audible remarks about parasites and the

-465-

lahdedah boys of the bourgeoisie. It went on for a long

time. Paul Johnson got sick and Dick had to help him find

the bathroom. When he came back into the salon he almost

had a fight with Stevens, who, after an argument about

the Peace Conference, suddenly hauled off with his fists

clenched and called him a goddam fairy. The Johnsons

hustled Stevens out. Eleanor came up to Dick and put her

arm around his neck and said he'd been magnificent.

Paul Johnson came back upstairs after they'd gone to

get the parakeets. He looked pale as a sheet. One of the

birds had died and was lying on its back stiff with his claws

in the air at the bottom of the cage.

At about three o'clock Dick rode home to his hotel in

a taxi.

NEWSREEL XLIII

the placards borne by the radicals were taken away from

them, their clothing torn and eyes blackened before the service

and ex-service men had finished with them

34 Die After Drinking Wood Alcohol Trains in France

May Soon Stop

Gerard Throws His Hat into the Ring

SUPREME COURT DASHES LAST HOPE OF

MOIST MOUTH

LIFE BOAT CALLED BY ROCKET SIGNALS SEARCHES IN

VAIN FOR SIXTEEN HOURS

America I love you

You're like a sweetheart of mine

LES GENS SAGES FUIENT LES REUNIONS POLITIQUES

WALLSTREET CLOSES WEAK: FEARS

TIGHT MONEY

-466-

From ocean to ocean

For you my devotion

Is touching each boundary line

LITTLE CARUSO EXPECTED

his mother, Mrs. W. D. McGillicudy said: "My first

husband was killed while crossing tracks in front of a train,

my second husband was killed in the same way and now it is

my son

Just like a little baby

Climbing its mother's knee

MACHINEGUNS MOW DOWN MOBS IN

KNOXVILLE

America I love you

Aviators Lived for Six Days on Shellfish

the police compelled the demonstrators to lower these

flags and ordered the convention not to exhibit any red em-

blems save the red in the starry banner of the United States;

it may not be indiscreet to state, however, in any case it cannot

dim his glory, that General Pershing was confined to his state-

room through seasickness when the message arrived. Old

Fellow of 89 Treasures Chewinggum as Precious Souvenir

Couldn't Maintain His Serenity In Closing League Debates

And there's a hundred million others like me

THE BODY OF AN AMERICAN

Whereas the Congress of the united states by a concurrent reso-

lution adoptedon the 4th day of march last authorized the Secretary-

of war to cause to be brought to the united states the body of an

American who was a member of the american expeditionary forces in-

europe who lost his life during the world war and whose identity has-

-467-

not been established for burial in the memorial amphi theatre ofthe

national cemeteryatarlington virginia

In the tarpaper morgue at Chalons-sur-Marne in

the reek of chloride of lime and the dead, they picked

out the pine box that held all that was left of

enie menie minle moe plenty other pine boxes

stacked up there containing what they'd scraped up of

Richard Roe

and other person or persons unknown. Only one

can go. How did they pick John Doe?

Make sure he aint a dinge, boys,

make sure he aint a guinea or a kike,

how can you tell a guy's a hunredpercent when all

you've got's a gunnysack full of bones, bronze buttons

stamped with the screaming eagle and a pair of roll

puttees?

. . . and the gagging chloride and the puky dirt-

stench of the yearold dead. . .

The day withal was too meaningful and tragic for ap-

plause. Silence, tears, songs and prayer, muffled drums and

soft music were the instrumentalities today of national approba-

tion.

John Doe was born (thudding din of blood in love

into the shuddering soar of a man and a woman alone

indeed together lurching into

and ninemonths sick drowse waking into scared

agony and the pain and blood and mess of birth). John

Doe was born

and raised in Brooklyn, in Memphis, near the lake-

front in Cleveland, Ohio, in the stench of the stock-

yards in Chi, on Beacon Hill, in an old brick house in

Alexandria Virginia, on Telegraph Hill, in a halftim-

bered Tudor cottage in Portland the city of roses,

-468-

in the Lying-In Hospital old Morgan endowed on

Stuyvesant Square,

across the railroad tracks, out near the country

club, in a shack cabin tenement apartmenthouse ex-

clusive residential suburb;

scion of one of the best families in the social reg-

ister, won first prize in the baby parade at Coronado

Beach, was marbles champion of the Little Rock gram-

marschools, crack basketballplayer at the Booneville

High, quarterback at the State Reformatory, having

saved the sheriff's kid from drowning in the Little

Missouri River was invited to Washington to be photo-

graphed shaking hands with the President on the White

House steps; --

though this was a time of mourning, such an assemblage

necessarily has about it a touch of color. In the boxes are

seen the court uniforms of foreign diplomats, the gold braid

of our own and foreign fleets and armies, the black of the con-

ventional morning dress of American statesmen, the varicol-

ored furs and outdoor wrapping garments of mothers and.

sisters come to mourn, the drab and blue of soldiers and sailors,

the glitter of musical instruments and the white and black of

a vested choir

-- busboy harveststiff hogcaller boyscout champeen

cornshucker of Western Kansas bellhop at the United

States Hotel at Saratoga Springs office boy callboy

fruiter telephone lineman longshoreman lumberjack

plumber's helper,

worked for an exterminating company in Union

City, filled pipes in an opium joint in Trenton, N. J.

Y.M.C.A. secretary, express agent, truckdriver,

fordmechanic, sold books in Denver Colorado: Madam

would you be willing to help a young man work his way

through college?

-469-

President Harding, with a reverence seemingly more sig-

nificant because of his high temporal station, concluded his.

speech:

We are met today to pay the impersonal tribute;

the name of him whose body lies before us took flight with

his imperishable soul. . .

as a typical soldier of this representative democracy he

fought and died believing in the, indisputable justice of his

country's cause. . .

by raising his right hand and asking the thousands within

the sound of his voice to join in the prayer:

Our Father which art in heaven hallowed be thy

name. . .

Naked he went into the army;

they weighed you, measured you, looked for flat

feet, squeezed your penis to see if you had clap, looked

up your anus to see if you had piles, counted your teeth,

made you cough, listened to your heart and lungs, made

you read the letters on the card, charted your urine and

your intelligence,

gave you a service record for a future (imperish-

able soul)

and an identification tag stamped with your serial

number to hang around your neck, issued O D regula-

tion equipment, a condiment can and a copy of the

articles of war.

Atten'SHUN suck in your gut you c ----- r wipe

that smile off your face eyes right wattja tink dis is a

choirch-social? For-war-D'ARCH.

Jolhn Doe

and Richard Roe and other person or persons un-

known

drilled hiked, manual of arms, ate slum, learned

-470-

to salute, to soldier, to loaf in the latrines, forbidden to

smoke on deck, overseas guard duty, forty men and

eight horses, shortarm inspection and the ping of shrap-

nel and the shrill bullets combing the air and the sore-

head woodpeckers the machineguns mud cooties gas-

masks and the itch.

Say feller tell me how I can get back to my outfit.

John Doe had a head

for twentyodd years intensely the nerves of the

eyes the ears the palate the tongue the fingers the toes

the armpits, the nerves warmfeeling under the skin

charged the coiled brain with hurt sweet warm cold

mine must dont sayings print headlines:

Thou shalt not the multiplication table long di-

vision, Now is the time for all good men knocks but

once at a young man's door, It's a great life if Ish

gebibbel, The first five years'll be the Safety First,

Suppose a hun tried to rape your my country right or

wrong, Catch 'em young, What he dont know wont

treat 'em rough, Tell 'em nothin, He got what was

coming to him he got his, This is a white man's coun-

try, Kick the bucket, Gone west, If you dont like it

you can croaked him

Say buddy cant you tell me how I can get back to

my outfit?

Cant help jumpin when them things go off, give

me the trots them things do. I lost my identification tag

swimmin in the Marne, roughhousin with a guy while

we was waitin to be deloused, in bed with a girl named

Jeanne (Love moving picture wet French postcard

dream began with saltpeter in the coffee and ended at

the propho station); --

Say soldier for chrissake cant you tell me how I

can get back to my outfit?

-471-

John Doe's

heart pumped blood:

alive thudding silence of blood in your ears

down in the clearing in the. Oregon forest where the

punkins were punkincolor pouring into the blood

through the eyes and the fallcolored trees and the

bronze hoopers were hopping through the dry grass,

where tiny striped snails hung on the underside of the

blades and the flies hummed, wasps droned, bumblebees

buzzed, and the woods smelt of wine and mushrooms

and apples, homey smell of fall pouring into the blood,

and I dropped the tin hat and the sweaty pack and

lay flat with the dogday sun licking my throat and

adamsapple and the tight skin over the breastbone.

The shell had his number on it.

The blood ran into the ground.

The service record dropped out of the filing cab-

inet when the quartermaster sergeant got blotto that

time they had to pack up and leave the billets in a

hurry.

The identification tag was in the bottom of the

Marne.

The blood ran into the ground, the brains oozed

out of the cracked skull and were licked up by the

trenchrats, the belly swelled and raised a generation of

bluebottle flies,

and the incorruptible skeleton,

and the scraps of dried viscera and skin bundled

in khaki

they took to Chalons-sur-Marne

and laid it out neat in a pine coffin

-472-

and took it home to God's Country on a battleship

and buried it in a sarcophagus in the Memorial

Amphitheatre in the Arlington National Cemetery

and draped the Old Glory over it

And the bugler played taps

and Mr. Harding prayed to God and the diplo-

mats and the generals and the admirals and the brass-

hats and the politicians and the handsomely dressed

ladies out of the society column of the Washington

Post stood up solemn

and thought how beautiful sad Old Glory God's

Country it was to have the bugler play taps and the

three volleys made their ears ring.

Where his chest ought to have been they pinned

the Congressional Medal, the D.S.C., the Me-

daille Militaire, the Belgian Croix de Guerre, the Ital-

ian gold medal, the Vitutea Militara sent by Queen

Marie of Rumania, the Czechoslovak war cross, the

Virtuti Militari of the Poles, a wreath sent by Hamilton

Fish, Jr., of New York, and a little wampum presented

by a deputation of Arizona redskins in warpaint and

feathers. All the Washingtonians brought flowers.

Woodrow Wilson brought a bouquet of poppies.

-473-

THE BIG MONEY

CONTENTS

CHARLEY ANDERSON

3

NEWSREEL XLIV Yankee Doodle that melodee

10

CHARLEY ANDERSON

11

NEWSREEL XLV 'Twarn't for powder and for

storebought hair

18

THE AMERICAN PLAN

19

NEWSREEL XLVI these are the men for whom

the rabid

25

NEWSREEL XLVII boy seeking future offered

28

The Camera Eye (44) the unnamed arrival

29

CHARLEY ANDERSON

32

NEWSREEL XLVIII truly the Steel Corporation

46

TIN LIZZIE

47

NEWSREEL XLIX Jack o' Diamonds Jack o' Dia-

monds

57

CHARLEY ANDERSON

58

NEWSREEL L Don't blame it all on Broadway

91

THE BITTER DRINK

93

NEWSREEL LI The sunshine drifted from our

alley

105

MARY FRENCH

106

The Camera Eye (45) the narrow yellow

room teems with talk

125

-v-

MARY FRENCH

127

The Camera Eye (46) walk the streets and

walk the streets

149

NEWSREEL LII assembled to a service for the

dear departed

152

ART AND ISADORA

153

NEWSREEL LIII Bye bye blackbird

162

MARGO DOWLING

163

NEWSREEL LIV there was nothing significant

about the morning's trading

188

ADAGIO DANCER

189

NEWSREEL LV THRONGS IN STREETS

194

The Camera Eye (47) sirens bloom in the fog

over the harbor

195

CHARLEY ANDERSON

197

NEWSREEL LVI his first move was to board a

fast train for Miami

236

The Camera Eye (48) westbound to Havana

Puerto-Mexico Galveston

238

MARGO DOWLING

243

NEWSREEL LVII the psychic removed all cloth-

ing

255

MARGO DOWLING

256

NEWSREEL LVIII In my dreams it always seems

277

NEWSREEL LIX the stranger first coming to De-

troit

285

-vi-

CHARLEY ANDERSON

287

NEWSREEL LX Was Céline to blame?

325

MARGO DOWLING

327

NEWSREEL LXI High high high up in the hills

340

CHARLEY ANDERSON

342

NEWSREEL LXII STARS PORTEND EVIL

378

MARGO DOWLING

379

NEWSREEL LXIII but a few minutes later this

false land disappeared

426

NEWSREEL LXIV WEIRD FISH DRAWN FROM

SARGASSO SEA

433

The Camera Eye (49) walking from Plym-

outh to North Plymouth

435

NEWSREEL LXV STORM TIES UP SUBWAY;

FLOODS AND LIGHTNING DARKEN CITY

437

MARY FRENCH

439

NEWSREEL LXVI HOLMES DENIES STAY

460

The Camera Eye (50) they have clubbed us

off the streets

461

NEWSREEL LXVII when things are upset, there's

always chaos

464

RICHARD ELLSWORTH SAVAGE

477

-vii-

The Camera Eye (51) at the head of the val-

ley in the dark of the hills

522

POWER SUPERPOWER

525

MARY FRENCH

533

VAG

559

-viii-

CHARLEY ANDERSON

Charley Anderson lay in his bunk in a glary red buzz.

Oh. Titine, damn that tune last night. He lay flat with

his eyes hot; the tongue in his mouth was thick warm sour

felt. He dragged his feet out from under the blanket and

hung them over the edge of the bunk, big white feet with

pink knobs on the toes; he let them drop to the red carpet

and hauled himself shakily to the porthole. He stuck his

head out.

Instead of the dock, fog, little greygreen waves slap-

ping against the steamer's scaling side. At anchor. A gull

screamed above him hidden in the fog. He shivered and

pulled his head in.

At the basin he splashed cold water on his face and neck.

Where the cold water hit him his skin flushed pink.

He began to feel cold and sick and got back into his

bunk and pulled the stillwarm covers up to his chin.

Home. Damn that tune.

He jumped up. His head and stomach throbbed in time

now. He pulled out the chamberpot and leaned over it.

He gagged; a little green bile came. No, I don't want to

puke. He got into his underclothes and the whipcord pants

of his uniform and lathered his face to shave. Shaving

made him feel blue. What I need's a . . . He rang for the

steward. "Bonjour, m'sieur.""Say, Billy, let's have a dou-

ble cognac tootsuite."

He buttoned his shirt carefully and put on his tunic;

looking at himself in the glass, his eyes had red rims and

his face looked green under the sunburn. Suddenly he

began to feel sick again; a sour gagging was welling up

from his stomach to his throat. God, these French boats

stink. A knock, the steward's frog smile and "Voilá,

m'sieur," the white plate slopped with a thin amber spill-

-3-

ing out of the glass. "When do we dock?" The steward

shrugged and growled, "La brume."

Green spots were still dancing in front of his eyes as he

went up the linoleumsmelling companionway. Up on deck

the wet fog squeezed wet against his face. He stuck his

hands in his pockets and leaned into it. Nobody on deck,

a few trunks, steamerchairs folded and stacked. To wind-

ward everything was wet. Drops trickled down the brass-

rimmed windows of the smokingroom. Nothing in any di-

rection but fog.

Next time around he met Joe Askew. Joe looked fine.

His little mustache spread neat under his thin nose. His

eyes were clear.

"Isn't this the damnedest note, Charley? Fog."

"Rotten."

"Got a head?"

"You look topnotch, Joe."

"Sure, why not? I got the fidgets, been up since six

o'clock. Damn this fog, we may be here all day."

"It's fog all right."

They took a couple of turns round the deck.

"Notice how the boat stinks, Joe?"

"It's being at anchor, and the fog stimulates your smell-

ers, I guess. How about breakfast?" Charley didn't say

anything for a moment, then he took a deep breath and

said, "All right, let's try it."

The diningsaloon smelt of onions and brasspolish. The

Johnsons were already at the table. Mrs. Johnson looked

pale and cool. She had on a little grey hat Charley hadn't

seen before, all ready to land. Paul gave Charley a sickly

kind of smile when he said hello. Charley noticed how

Paul's hand was shaking when he lifted the glass of

orangejuice. His lips were white.

"Anybody seen Ollie Taylor?" asked Charley.

"The major's feelin' pretty bad, I bet," said Paul, gig-

gling.

-4-

"And how are you, Charley?" Mrs. Johnson intoned

sweetly.

"Oh, I'm . . . I'm in the pink."

"Liar," said Joe Askew.

"Oh, I can't imagine," Mrs. Johnson was saying, "what

kept you boys up so late last night."

"We did some singing," said Joe Askew.

"Somebody I know," said Mrs. Johnson, "went to bed

in his clothes." Her eye caught Charley's.

Paul was changing the subject: "Well, we're back in

God's country."

"Oh, I can't imagine," cried Mrs. Johnson, "what

America's going to be like."

Charley was bolting his wuffs avec du bakin and the

coffee that tasted of bilge.

"What I'm looking forward to," Joe Askew was say-

ing, "is a real American breakfast."

"Grapefruit," said Mrs. Johnson.

"Cornflakes and cream," said Joe.

"Hot cornmuffins," said Mrs. Johnson.

"Fresh eggs and real Virginia ham," said Joe.

"Wheatcakes and country sausage," said Mrs. Johnson.

"Scrapple," said Joe.

"Good coffee with real cream," said Mrs. Johnson,

laughing.

"You win," said Paul with a sickly grin as he left the

table.

Charley took a last gulp of his coffee. Then he said he

thought he'd go on deck to see if the immigration officers

had come. "Why, what's the matter with Charley?" He

could hear Joe and Mrs. Johnson laughing together as he

ran up the companionway.

Once on deck he decided he wasn't going to be sick. The

fog had lifted a little. Astern of the Niagara he could see

the shadows of other steamers at anchor, and beyond, a

rounded shadow that might be land. Gulls wheeled and

-5-

screamed, overhead. Somewhere across the water a foghorn

groaned at intervals. Charley walked up forward and

leaned into the wet fog.

Joe Askew came up behind him smoking' a cigar and

took him by the arm: "Better walk, Charley," he said.

"Isn't this a hell of a note? Looks like little old New York

had gotten torpedoed during the late unpleasantness. . . .

I can't see a damn thing, can you?"

"I thought I saw some land a minute ago, but it's gone

now."

"Musta been Atlantic Highlands; we're anchored off

the Hook. . . . Goddam it, I want to get ashore."

"Your wife'll be there, won't she, Joe?"

"She ought to be. . . . Know anybody in New York,

Charley?"

Charley shook his head. "I got a long ways to go yet

before I go home. . . . I don't know what I'll do when

I get there."

"Damn it, we may be here all day," said Joe Askew.

"Joe," said Charley, "suppose we have a drink . . .

one final drink."

"They've closed up the damn bar."

They'd packed their bags the night before. There was

nothing to do. They spent the morning playing rummy in

the smokingroom. Nobody could keep his mind on the

game. Paul kept dropping his cards. Nobody ever knew

who had taken the last trick. Charley was trying to keep

his eyes off Mrs. Johnson's eyes, off the little curve of her

neck where it ducked under the grey fur trimming of her

dress. "I can't imagine," she said again, "what you boys

found to talk about so late last night. . . . I thought we'd

talked about everything under heaven before I went to

bed."

"Oh, we found topics but mostly it came out in the form

of singing," said Joe Askew.

"I know I always miss things when I go to bed." Char-

-6-

ley noticed Paul beside him staring at her with pale loving

eyes. "But," she was saying with her teasing smile, "it's

just too boring to sit up."

Paul blushed, he looked as if he were going to cry;

Charley wondered if Paul had thought of the same thing

held thought of. "Well, let's see; whose deal was it?" said

Joe Askew briskly.

Round noon Major Taylor came into the smokingroom.

"Good morning, everybody. . . . I know nobody feels

worse than I do. Commandant says we may not dock till

tomorrow morning."

They put up the cards without finishing the hand.

"That's nice," said Joe Askew.

"It's just as well," said Ollie Taylor. "I'm a wreck.

The last of the harddrinking hardriding Taylors is a wreck.

We could stand the war but the peace has done us in."

Charley looked up in Ollie Taylor's grey face sagging in

the pale glare of the fog through the smokingroom win-

dows and noticed the white streaks in his hair and mus-

tache. Gosh, he thought to himself, I'm going to quit this

drinking.

They got through lunch somehow, then scattered to

their cabins to sleep. In the corridor outside his cabin

Charley met Mrs. Johnson. "Well, the first ten days'll be

the hardest, Mrs. Johnson."

"Why don't you call me Eveline, everybody else does?"

Charley turned red.

"What's the use? We won't ever see each other again."

"Why not?" she said. He looked into her long hazel

eyes; the pupils widened till the hazel was all black.

"Jesus, I'd like it if we could," he stammered. " Don't

think for a minute I . . ."

She'd already brushed silkily past him and was gone

down the corridor. He went into his cabin and slammed

the door. His bags were packed. The steward had put

away the bedclothes. Charley threw himself face down on

-7-

the striped mustysmelling ticking of the mattress. "God

damn that woman," he said aloud.

The rattle of a steamwinch woke him, then he heard

the jingle of the engineroom bell. He looked out the port-

hole and saw a yellow and white revenuecutter and, be-

yond, vague pink sunlight on frame houses. The fog was

lifting; they were in the Narrows.

By the time he'd splashed the aching sleep out of his

eyes and run up on deck, the Niagara was nosing her way

slowly across the greengrey glinting bay. The ruddy fog

was looped up like curtains overhead. A red ferryboat

crossed their bow. To the right there was a line of four-

and fivemasted schooners at anchor, beyond them a square-

rigger and a huddle of squatty Shipping Board steamers,

some of them still striped and mottled with camouflage.

Then dead ahead, the up and down gleam in the blur of

the tall buildings of New York.

Joe Askew came up to him with his trenchcoat on and

his German fieldglasses hung over his shoulder. Joe's blue

eyes were shining. "Do you see the Statue of Liberty yet,

Charley?"

"No . . . yes, there she is. I remembered her lookin'

bigger."

"There's Black Tom where the explosion was."

"Things look pretty quiet, Joe."

"It's Sunday, that's why."

"It would be Sunday."

They were opposite the Battery now. The long spans

of the bridges to Brooklyn went off into smoky shadow

behind the pale skyscrapers.

"Well, Charley, that's where they keep all the money.

We got to get some of it away from 'em," said Joe Askew,

tugging at his mustache.

"Wish I knew how to start in, Joe."

They were skirting a long row of roofed slips. Joe held

-8-

out his hand. "Well, Charley, write to me, kid, do you

hear? It was a great war while it lasted."

"I sure will, Joe."

Two tugs were shoving the Niagara around into the

slip against the strong ebbtide. American and French flags

flew over the wharfbuilding, in the dark doorways were

groups of people waving. "There's my wife," said Joe

Askew suddenly. He squeezed Charley's hand. "So long,

kid. We're home."

First thing Charley knew, too soon, he was walking

down the gangplank. The transportofficer barely looked at

his papers; the customsman said, "Well, I guess it's good

to be home, lieutenant," as he put the stamps on his grip.

He got past the Y man and the two reporters and the

member of the mayor's committee; the few people and the

scattered trunks looked lost and lonely in the huge yellow

gloom of the wharfbuilding. Major Taylor and the John-

sons shook hands like strangers.

Then he was following his small khaki trunk to a taxi-

cab. The Johnsons already had a cab and were waiting for

a stray grip. Charley went over to them. He couldn't think

of anything to say. Paul said he must be sure to come to

see them if he stayed in New York, but he kept standing

in the door of the cab, so that it was hard for Charley to

talk to Eveline. He could see the muscles relax on Paul's

jaw when the porter brought the lost grip. "Be sure and

look us up," Paul said and jumped in and slammed the

door.

Charley went back to his cab, carrying with him a last

glimpse of long hazel eyes and her teasing smile. "Do you

know if they still give officers special rates at the Mc-

Alpin?" he asked the taximan.

"Sure, they treat you all right if you're an officer. . . .

If you're an enlisted man you get your ass kicked," an-

swered the taximan out of the corner of his mouth and

slammed the gears.

-9-

The taxi turned into a wide empty cobbled street. The

cab rode easier than the Paris cabs. The big warehouses and

marketbuildings were all closed up. "Gee, things look

pretty quiet here," Charley said, leaning forward to talk

to the taximan through the window.

"Quiet as hell. . . . You wait till you start to look for

a job," said the taximan.

"But, Jesus, I don't ever remember things bein' as quiet

as this."

"Well, why shouldn't they be quiet. . . . It's Sunday,

ain't it?"

"Oh, sure, I'd forgotten it was Sunday."

"Sure it's Sunday."

"I remember now it's Sunday."

NEWSREEL XLIV

Yankee Doodle that melodee

COLONEL HOUSE ARRIVES FROM EUROPE

APPARENTLY A VERY SICK MAN

Yankee Doodle that melodee

TO CONQUER SPACE AND SEE DISTANCES

but has not the time come for newspaper proprietors to

join in a wholesome movement for the purpose of calming

troubled minds, giving all the news but laying less stress on

prospective calamities

DEADLOCK UNBROKEN AS FIGHT SPREADS

they permitted the Steel Trust Government to trample

underfoot the democratic rights which they had so often been

assured were the heritage of the people of this country

-10-

SHIPOWNERS DEMAND PROTECTION

Yankee doodle that melodee

Yankee doodle that melodee

Makers me stand right tip and cheer

only survivors of crew of schooner Onato are put in jail

on arrival in Philadelphia

PRESIDENT STRONGER WORKS IN SICKROOM

I'm coming U.S.A.

I'll say

MAY GAG PRESS

There's no land . . . so grand

Charles M. Schwab, who has returned from Europe, was

a luncheon guest at the White House. He stated that this

country was prosperous but not so prosperous as it should be,

because there were so many disturbing investigations on foot

. . . as my land

From California to Manhattan Isle

CHARLEY ANDERSON

The ratfaced bellboy put down the bags, tried the fau-

cets of the washbowl, opened the window a little, put the

key on the inside of the door and then stood at something

like attention and said, "Anything else, lootenant?" This

is the life, thought Charley, and fished a quarter out of his

pocket. "Thank you, Sir, lootenant." The bellboy shuffled

his feet and cleared his throat. "It must have been terrible

overseas, lootenant." Charley laughed. "Oh, it was all

right.""I wish I coulda gone, lootenant." The boy showed

-11-

a couple of ratteeth in a grain. "It must be wonderfull to be

a hero," he said and backed out the door.

Charley stood looking out the window as he unbuttoned

his tunic. He was high up. Through a street of grimy

square buildings he could see some columns and the roofs

of the new Penn station and beyond, across the trainyards,

a blurred sun setting behind high ground the other side of

the Hudson. Overhead was purple and pink. An el train

clattered raspingly through the empty Sundayevening

streets. The wind that streamed through the bottom of the

window had a gritty smell of coalashes. Charley put the

window down and went to wash his face and hands. The

hotel towel felt soft and thick with a little whiff of chlo-

ride. He went to the lookingglass and combed his hair.

Now what?

He was walking up and down the room fidgeting with

a cigarette, watching the sky go dark outside the window,

when the jangle of the phone startled him. It was Ollie

Taylor's polite fuddled voice. "I thought maybe you

wouldn't know where to get a drink. Do you want to come

around to the club?""Gee, that's nice of you, Ollie. I was

jusy wonderin' what a feller could do with himself in this

man's town.""You know it's quite dreadful here," Ollie's

voice went on. "Prohibition and all that, it's worse than

the wildest imagination could conceive. I'll come and pick

you up with a cab.""All right, Ollie, I'll be in the lobby."

Charley put on his tunic, remembered to leave off his

Sam Browne belt, straightened his scrubby sandy hair

again, and went down into the lobby. He sat down in a

deep chair facing the revolving doors.

The lobby was crowded. There was music coming from

somewhere in back. He sat there listening to the dance-

tunes, looking at the silk stockings and the high heels and

the furcoats and the pretty girls' faces pinched a little by

the wind as they came in off the street. There was an ex-

pensive jingle and crinkle to everything. Gosh, it was

-12-

great. The girls left little trails of perfume and a warm

smell of furs as they passed him. He started counting up

how much jack he had. He had a draft for three hundred

bucks he'd saved out of his pay, four yellowbacked twenties

in the wallet in his inside pocket he'd won at poker on the

boat, a couple of tens, and let's see how much change. The

coins made a little jingle in his pants as he fingered them

over.

Ollie Taylor's red face was nodding at Charley above a

big camelshair coat. "My dear boy, New York's a wreck.

. . . They are pouring icecream sodas in the Knicker-

bocker bar. . . ." When they got into the cab together he

blew a reek of highgrade rye whiskey in Charley's face.

" Charley, I've promised to take you along to dinner with

me. . . . Just up to ole Nat Benton's. You won't mind

. . . he's a good scout. The ladies want to see a real flying

aviator with palms.""You're sure I won't be buttin' in,

Ollie?""My dear boy, say no more about it."

At the club everybody seemed to know Ollie Taylor.

He and Charley stood a long time drinking Manhattans at

a darkpaneled bar in a group of whitehaired old gents

with a barroom tan on their faces. It was Major this and

Major that and Lieutenant every time anybody spoke to

Charley. Charley was getting to be afraid Ollie would get

too much of a load on to go to dinner at anybody's house.

At last it turned out to be seventhirty, and leaving the

final round of cocktails, they got into a cab again, each of

them munching a clove, and started uptown. "I don't

know what to say to 'em," Ollie said. "I tell them I've just

spent the most delightful two years of my life, and they

make funny mouths at me, but I can't help it."

There was a terrible lot of marble, and doormen in

green, at the apartmenthouse where they went out to din-

ner and the elevator was inlaid in different kinds of wood.

Nat Benton, Ollie whispered while they were waiting for

the door to open, was a Wall Street broker.

-13-

They were all in eveningdress waiting for them for

dinner in a pinkishcolored drawingroom. They were evi-

dently old friends of Ollie's because they made a great

fuss over him and they were very cordial to Charley and

brought out cocktails right away, and Charley felt like the

cock of the walk.

There was a girl named Miss Humphries who was as

pretty as a picture. The minute Charley set eyes on her

Charley decided that was who he was going to talk to.

Her eyes and her fluffy palegreen dress and the powder in

the little hollow between her shoulderblades made him

feel a little dizzy so that he didn't dare stand too close to

her. Ollie saw the two of them together and came up and

pinched her ear. "Doris, you've grown up to be a raving

beauty." He stood beaming teetering a little on his short

legs. "Hum . . . only the brave deserve the fair. . . .

It's not every day we come home from the wars, is it,

Charley me boy?"

"Isn't he a darling?" she said when Ollie turned away.

"We used to be great sweethearts when I was about six

and he was a collegeboy." When they were all ready to go

into dinner Ollie, who'd had a couple more cocktails,

spread out his arms and made a speech. "Look at them,

lovely, intelligent, lively American women. . . . There

was nothing like that on the other side, was there, Char-

ley? Three things you can't get anywhere else in the

world, a good cocktail, a decent breakfast, and an American

girl, God bless 'em.""Oh, he's such a darling," whispered

Miss Humphries in Charley's ear.

There was silverware in rows and rows on the table and

a Chinese bowl with roses in the middle of it, and a group

of giltstemmed wineglasses at each place. Charley was re-

lieved when he found he was sitting next to Miss Hum-

phries. She was smiling up at him. "Gosh," he said, grin-

ning into her face, "I hardly know how to act." "It must

-14-

be a change . . . from over there. But just act natural.

That's what I do."

"Oh, no, a feller always gets into trouble when he acts

natural."

She laughed. "Maybe you're right. . . . Oh, do tell me

what it was really like over there. . . . Nobody'll ever

tell me everything." She pointed to the palms on his Croix

de Guerre. "Oh, Lieutenant Anderson, you must tell me

about those."

They had white wine with the fish and red wine with

the roastbeef and a dessert all full of whippedcream.

Charley kept telling himself he mustn't drink too much so

that he'd be sure to behave right.

Miss Humphries' first name was Doris. Mrs. Benton

called her that. She'd spent a year in a convent in Paris

before the war and asked him about places she'd known,

the church of the Madeleine and Rumpelmayers and the

pastryshop opposite the Comédie Française. After dinner

she and Charley took their coffeecups into a windowbay

behind a big pink begonia in a brass pot and she asked him

if he didn't think New York was awful. She sat on the

windowseat and he stood over her looking past her white

shoulder through the window down at the traffic in the

street below. It had come on to rain and the lights of the

cars made long rippling streaks on the black pavement of

Park Avenue. He said something about how he thought

home would look pretty good to him all the same. He was

wondering if it would be all right if he told her she had

beautiful shoulders. He'd just about gotten around to it

when he heard Ollie Taylor getting everybody together

to go out to a cabaret. "I know it's a chore," Ollie was

saying, "but you children must remember it's my first

night in New York and humor my weakness."

They stood in a group under the marquee while the

doorman called taxicabs. Doris Humphries in her long

eveningwrap with fur at the bottom of it stood so close to

-15-

Charley her shoulder touched his arm. In the lashing

rainy wind off the street he could smell the warm perfume

she wore and her furs and her hair. They stood back while

the older people got into the cabs. For a second her hand

was in his, very little and cool as he helped her into the

cab. He handed out a half a dollar to the doorman who

had whispered " Shanley's" to the taxidriver in a serious

careful flunkey's voice.

The taxi was purring smoothly downtown between the

tall square buildings. Charley was a little dizzy. He didn't

dare look at her for a moment but looked out at faces, cars,

trafficcops, people in raincoats and umbrellas passing

against drugstore windows.

"Now tell me how you got the palms."

"Oh, the frogs just threw those in now and then to keep

the boys cheerful."

"How many Huns did you bring down?"

"Why bring that up?"

She stamped her foot on the floor of the taxi. "Oh, no-

body'll ever tell me anything. . . . I don't believe you

were ever at the front, any of you." Charley laughed. His

throat was a little dry. "Well, I was over it a couple of

times."

Suddenly she turned to him. There were flecks of light

in her eyes in the dark of the cab. "Oh, I understand. . . .

Lieutenant Anderson, I think you flyers are the finest

people there are.""Miss Humphries, I think you're a

. . . humdinger. . . . I hope this taxi never gets to this

dump . . . wherever it is we're goin'." She leaned her

shoulder against his for a second. He found he was holding

her hand. "After all, my name is Doris," she said in a tiny

babytalk voice.

"Doris," he said. "Mine's Charley."

" Charley, do you like to dance?" she asked in the same

tiny voice. "Sure," Charley said, giving her hand a quick

-16-

squeeze. Her voice melted like a little tiny piece of candy.

"Me too. . . . Oh, so much."

When they went in the orchestra was playing Darda-

nella. Charley left his trenchcoat and his hat in the check-

room. The headwaiter's heavy grizzled eyebrows bowed

over a white shirtfront. Charley was following Doris's

slender back, the hollow between the shoulderblades where

his hand would like to be, across the red carpet, between

the white tables, the men's starched shirts, the women's

shoulders, through the sizzly smell of champagne and

welshrabbit and hot chafingdishes, across a corner of the

dancefloor among the swaying couples to the round white

table where the rest of them were already settled. The

knives and forks shone among the stiff creases of the fresh

tablecloth.

Mrs. Benton was pulling off her white kid gloves look-

ing at Ollie Taylor's purple face as he told a funny story.

"Let's dance," Charley whispered to Doris. "Let's dance

all the time."

Charley was scared of dancing too tough so he held her

a little away from him. She had a way of dancing with her

eyes closed. "Gee, Doris, you are a wonderful dancer."

When the music stopped the tables and the cigarsmoke and

the people went on reeling a little round their heads. Doris

was looking up at him out of the corners of her eyes. "I

bet you miss the French girls, Charley. How did you like

the way the French girls danced, Charley?"

"Terrible."

At the table they were drinking champagne out of

breakfast coffeecups. Ollie had had two bottles sent up

from the club by a messenger. When the music Started

again Charley had to dance with Mrs. Benton, and then

with the other lady, the one with the diamonds and the

spare tire round her waist. He and Doris only had two

more dances together. Charley could see the others wanted

to go home because Ollie was getting too tight. He had a

-17-

flask of rye on his hip and a couple of times had beckoned

Charley out to have a swig in the cloakroom with him.

Charley tongued the bottle each time because he was hop-

ing he'd get a chance to take Doris home.

When they got outside it turned out she lived in the

same block as the Bentons did; Charley cruised around on

the outside of the group while the ladies were getting their

wraps on before going out to the taxicab, but he couldn't

get a look from her. It was just, "Goodnight, Ollie dear,

goodnight, Lieutenant Anderson," and the doorman slam-

ming the taxi door. He hardly knew which of the hands

he had shaken had been hers.

NEWSREEL XLV

'Twarn't for powder and for storebought hair

De man I love would not gone nowhere

if one should seek a simple explanation of his career it

would doubtless be found in that extraordinary decision to for-

sake the ease of a clerkship for the wearying labor of a section

hand. The youth who so early in life had so much of judgment

and willpower could not fail to rise above the general run of

men. He became the intimate of bankers

St. Louis woman wid her diamon' rings

Pulls dat man aroun' by her apron strings

Tired of walking, riding a bicycle or riding in streetcars,

he is likely to buy a Ford.

DAYLIGHT HOLDUP SCATTERS CROWD

Just as soon as his wife discovers that every Ford is like

every other Ford and that nearly everyone has one, she is likely

to influence him to step into the next social group, of which

the Dodge is the most conspicuous example.

-18-

The next step comes when daughter comes back from col-

lege and the family moves into a new home. Father wants

economy. Mother craves opportunity for her children, daugh-

ter desires social prestige and son wants travel, speed, get-up-

and-go.

MAN SLAIN NEAR HOTEL MAJESTIC BY

THREE FOOTPADS

I hate to see de evenin sun go down.

Hate to see de evenin sun go down

Cause my baby he done lef' dis town

such exploits may indicate a dangerous degree of bravado

but they display the qualities that made a boy of high school

age the acknowledged leader of a gang that has been a thorn

in the side of the State of

THE AMERICAN PLAN

Frederick Winslow Taylor (they called him

Speedy Taylor in the shop) was born in Germantown,

Pennsylvania, the year of Buchanan's election. His

father was a lawyer, his mother came from a family of

New Bedford whalers; she was a great reader of Emer-

son, belonged to the Unitarian Church and the Brown-

ing Society. She was a fervent abolitionist and believed

in democratic manners; she was a housekeeper of the

old school, kept everybody busy from dawn till dark.

She laid down the rules of conduct:

self respect, selfreliance, selfcontrol

and a cold long head for figures.

But she wanted her children to appreciate the finer

things so she' took them abroad for three years on the

-19-

Continent, showed them cathedrals, grand opera, Ro-

man pediments, the old masters under their brown

varnish in their great frames of tarnished gilt.

'Later Fred Taylor was impatient of these wasted

years, stamped out of the room when people talked

about the finer things; he was a testy youngster, fond

of practical jokes and a great hand at rigging up con-

traptions and devices.

At Exeter he was head of his class and captain of

the ballteam, the first man to pitch overhand. (When

umpires complained that overhand pitching wasn't in

the rules of the game, he answered that it got results.)

As a boy he had nightmares, going to bed was

horrible for him; he thought they came from sleeping

on his back. He made himself a leather harness with

wooden pegs that stuck into his flesh when he turned

over. When he was grown he slept in a chair or in bed

in a sitting position propped up with pillows. All his

life he suffered from sleeplessness.

He was a crackerjack tennisplayer. In 1881, with

his friend Clark, he won the National Doubles Cham-

pionship. (He used a spoonshaped racket of his own

design.)

At school he broke down from overwork, his eyes

went back on him. The doctor suggested manual labor.

So instead of going to Harvard he went into the

machineshop of a small pumpmanufacturing concern,

owned by a friend of the family's, to learn the trade

of patternmaker and machinist. He learned to handle

a lathe and to dress and cuss like a workingman.

Fred Taylor never smoked tobacco or drank

liquor or used tea or coffee; he couldn't understand

why his fellowmechanics wanted to go on sprees and

get drunk and raise Cain Saturday nights. He lived at

-20-

home, when he wasn't reading technical books he'd

play parts in amateur theatricals or step up to the piano

in the evening and sing a good tenor in A Warrior

Bold or A Spanish Cavalier.

He served his first year's apprenticeship in the

machineshop without pay; the next two years he made

a dollar and a half a week, the last year two dollars.

Pennsylvania was getting rich off iron and coal.

When he was twentytwo, Fred Taylor went to work at

the Midvale Iron Works. At first he had to take a

clerical job, but he hated that and went to work with

a shovel. At last he got them to put him on a lathe.

He was a good machinist, he worked ten hours a day

and in the evenings followed an engineering course at

Stevens. In six years he rose from machinist's helper to

keeper of toolcribs to gangboss to foreman to master-

mechanic in charge of repairs to chief draftsman and

director of research to chief engineer of the Midvale

Plant.

The early years he was a machinist with the other

machinists in the shop, cussed and joked and worked

with the rest of them, soldiered on the job when they

did. Mustn't give the boss more than his money's

worth. But when he got to be foreman he was on the

management's side of the fence, gathering in on the

part of those on the management's side all' the great

mass of traditional knowledge which in the past has

been in the heads of the workmen and in the physical

skill and knack of the workman. He couldn't stand to

see an idle lathe or an idle man.

Production went to his head and thrilled his sleep-

less nerves like liquor or women on a Saturday night.

-21-

He never loafed and he'd be damned if anybody else

would. Production was an itch under his skin.

He lost his friends in the shop; they called him

niggerdriver. He was a stockily built man with a tem-

per and a short tongue.

I was a young man in years but I give you my

word I was a great deal older than I am now, what

with the worry, meanness and contemptibleness of the

whole damn thing. It's a horrid life for any man to

live not being able to look any workman in the face

without seeing hostility there, and a feeling that every

man around you is your virtual enemy.

That was the beginning of the Taylor System of

Scientific Management.

He was impatient of explanations, he didn't care

whose hide he took off in enforcing the laws he believed

inherent in the industrial process.

When starting an experiment in any field question

everything, question the very foundations upon which

the art rests, question the simplest, the most selfevident,

the most universally accepted facts; prove everything,

except the dominant Quaker Yankee (the New

Bedford\ skippers were the greatest niggerdrivers on

the whaling seas) rules of conduct. He boasted he'd

never ask a workman to do anything he couldn't do.

He devised an improved steamhammer; he stand-

ardized tools and equipment, he filled the shop with

college students with stopwatches and diagrams, tabu-

lating, standardizing. There's the right way of doing a

thing and the' wrong way of doing it; the right way

means increased production, lower costs, higher wages,

bigger profits: the American plan.

He broke up the foreman's job into separate func-

-22-

tions, speedbosses, gangbosses, timestudy men, orderof-

work men.

The skilled mechanics were too stubborn for him,

what he wanted was a plain handyman who'd do what

he was told. If he was a firstclass man and did firstclass

work Taylor was willing to let him have firstclass pay;

that's where he began to get into trouble with the

owners.

At thirtyfour he married and left Midvale and

took a flyer for the big money in connection with a

pulpmill started in Maine by some admirals and po-

litical friends of Grover Cleveland's;

the panic of '93 made hash of that enterprise,

so Taylor invented for himself the job of Con-

sulting Engineer in Management and began to build

up a fortune by careful investments.

The first paper he read before the American So-

ciety of Mechanical Engineers was anything but a suc-

cess, they said he was crazy. I have found, he wrote in

1909, that any improvement is not only opposed but

aggressively and bitterly opposed by the majority of

men.

He was called in by Bethlehem Steel. It was in

Bethlehem he made his famous experiments with han-

dling pigiron; he taught a Dutchman named Schmidt

to handle fortyseven tons instead of twelve and a half

tons of pigiron a day and got Schmidt to admit he

was as good as ever at the end of the day.

He was a crank about shovels, every job had to

have a shovel of the right weight and size for that job

alone; every job had to have a man of the right weight

and size for that job alone; but when he began to pay

his men in proportion to the increased efficiency of their

work,

-23-

the owners who were a lot of greedy smalleyed

Dutchmen began to raise Hail Columbia; when Schwab

bought Bethlehem Steel in 1901

Fred Taylor

inventor of efficiency

who had doubled the production of the stamping-

mill by speeding up the main lines of shafting from

ninetysix to twohundred and twentyfive revolutions a

minute

was unceremoniously fired.

After that Fred Taylor always said he couldn't af-

ford to work for money.

He took to playing golf (using golfclubs of his

own design), doping out methods for transplanting

huge boxtrees into the garden of his home.

At Boxly in Germantown he kept open house for

engineers, factorymanagers, industrialists;

he wrote papers,

lectured in colleges,

appeared before a congressional committee,

everywhere preached the virtues of scientific man-

agement and the Barth slide rule, the cutting down of

waste and idleness, the substitution for skilled mechanics

of the plain handyman (like Schmidt the pigiron

handler) who'd move as he was told

and work by the piece:

production;

more steel rails more bicycles more spools of

thread more armorplate for battleships more bedpans

more barbedwire more needles more lightningrods

more ballbearings more dollarbills;

(the old Quaker families of Germantown were

growing rich, the Pennsylvania millionaires were breed-

ing billionaires out of iron and coal)

-24-

production would make every firstclass American

rich who was willing to work at piecework and not

drink or raise' Cain or think or stand mooning at his

lathe.

Thrifty Schmidt the pigiron handler can invest his

money and get to be an owner like Schwab and the rest

of the greedy smalleyed Dutchmen and cultivate a

taste for Bach and have hundred gyearold boxtrees in his

garden at Bethlehem or Germantown or Chestnut Hill,

and lay down the rules of conduct;

the American plan.

But Fred Taylor never saw the working of the

American plan;

in 1915 he went to the hospital in Philadelphia

suffering from a breakdown.

Pneumonia developed; the nightnurse heard him

winding his watch;

on the morning of his fiftyninth birthday, when

the nurse went into his room to look at him at four-

thirty,

he was dead with his watch in his hand.

NEWSREEL XLVI

these are the men for whom the rabid lawless, anarchistic

element of society in this country has been laboring ever since

sentence was imposed, and of late they have been augmented

by many good lawabiding citizens who have been misled by the

subtle arguments of those propagandists

The times are hard and the wages low

Leave her Johnny leave her

The bread is hard and the beef is salt

It's time for us to leave her

-25-

BANKERS HAIL ERA OF EXPANSION

PROSPERITY FOR ALL SEEN ASSURED

Find German Love of Caviar a Danger to Stable Money

EX-SERVICE MEN DEMAND JOBS

No one knows

No one cares if I'm weary

Oh how soon they forgot Chhteau-Thierry

WE FEEL VERY FRIENDLY TOWARDS THE

TYPEWRITER USERS OF NEW YORK CITY

JOBLESS RIOT AT AGENCY

Ships in de oceans

Rocks in de sea

Blond-headed woman

Made a fool outa me

THE CAMERA EYE (43)

throat tightens when the redstacked steamer churn-

ing the faintlyheaving slatecolored swell swerves shaking

in a long greenmarbled curve past the red lightship

spine stiffens with the remembered chill of the off-

shore Atlantic

and the jag of framehouses in the west above the

invisible land and spiderweb rollercoasters and the chew-

inggum towers of Coney and the freighters with their

stacks way aft and the blur beyond Sandy Hook

and the smell of saltmarshes warmclammysweet

-26-

remembered bays silvery inlets barred with trestles

the put put before day of a gasolineboat way up the

creek

raked masts of bugeyes against straight tall pines on

the shellwhite beach

the limeycold reek of an oysterboat in winter

and creak of rockers on the porch of the scrollsaw cot-

tage and uncles' voices pokerface stories told sideways out

of the big mouth (from Missouri who took no rubber

nickels) the redskin in the buffalorobe selling snakeroot in

the flare of oratorical redfire the sulphury choke and the

hookandladder clanging down the redbrick street while the

clinging firemen with uncles' faces pull on their rubbercoats

and the crunch of whitecorn muffins and coffee with

cream gulped in a hurry before traintime and apartment-

house mornings stifling with newspapers and the smooth

powdery feel of new greenbacks and the whack of a cop's

billy cracking a citizen's skull and the faces blurred with

newsprint of men in jail

the whine and shriek of the buzzsaw and the tipsy

smell of raw lumber and straggling through slagheaps

through fireweed through wasted woodlands the shanty-

towns the shantytowns

what good burying those years in the old graveyard

by the brokendown brick church that morning in the spring

-27-

when the sandy lanes were streaked with blue puddles and

the air was violets and pineneedles

what good burying those hated years in the latrine-

stench at Brocourt under the starshells

if today the crookedfaced customsinspector with the

soft tough talk the burring speech the funnypaper antics of

thick hands jerking thumb

(So you brought home French books didjer?)

is my uncle

NEWSREEL XLVII

boy seeking future offered opportunity . . . good posi-

tions for bright . . . CHANCE FOR ADVANCEMENT . . . boy

to learn . . . errand boy office boy

YOUNG MAN WANTED

Oh tell me how long

I'll have to wait

OPPORTUNITY

in bank that chooses its officers from the ranks, for wide-

awake ambitious bookkeeper . . . architectural draftsman

with experience on factory and industrial buildings in brick,

timber, and reinforced concrete . . . bronze fitter . . . let-

terer . . . patternmaker . . . carriage painter . . . first class

striper and finisher . . . young man for hosiery, underwear

and notion house . . . assistant in order department . . .

first class penman accurate at figures . . . energetic hard-

worker for setting dies in power presses for metal parts

canvasser . . . flavor chemist . . . freight elevator man

. . . house salesman . . . insurance man . . . insurance

-28-

man . . . invoice clerk . . . jeweler . . . laborer . . . ma-

chinist . . . milling machine man . . . shipping clerk . . .

shipping clerk . . . shipping clerk . . . shoe salesman . . .

signwriter . . . solicitor for retail fishmarket . . . teacher

. . . timekeeper . . . tool and diemaker, tracer, toolroom

foreman, translator, typist . . . window trimmer . . . wrap-

per

OPPORTUNITY FOR

Do I get it now

Or must I hesitate

young man not afraid of hard work

young man for office

young man for stockroom

young man as stenographer

young man to travel

young man to learn

OPPORTUNITY

Oh tell me how long

to superintend municipal light, water and ice plant in

beautiful growing, healthful town in Florida's highlands . . .

to take charge of underwear department in large wholesale

mail house . . . to assist in railroad investigation . . . to take

charge of about twenty men on tools, dies, gigs and gauges

. . . as bookkeeper in stockroom . . . for light porter work

. . . civil engineer . . . machinery and die appraiser . . .

building estimator . . . electrical and power plant engineer

THE CAMERA EYE (44)

the unnamed arrival

(who had hung from the pommel of the unshod

white stallion's saddle

a full knapsack

-29-

and leaving the embers dying in the hollow of the

barren Syrian hills where the Agail had camped when

dawn sharpshining cracked night off the ridged desert had

ridden towards the dungy villages and the patches of ses-

ame and the apricotgardens)

shaved off his beard in Damascus

and sat drinking hot milk and coffee in front of the

hotel in Beirut staring at the white hulk of Lebanon

fumbling with letters piled on the table and clipped

streamers of newsprint

addressed not to the unspeaker of arabic or the clumsy

scramblerup on camelback so sore in the rump from riding

but to someone

who

(but this evening in the soft nightclimate of the

Levantine coast the kind officials are contemplating further

improvements

scarcelybathed he finds himself cast for a role pro-

vided with a white tie carefully tied by the viceconsul.

stuffed into a boiled shirt a tailcoat too small a pair of

dresstrousers too large which the kind wife of the kind offi-

cial gigglingly fastens in the back with safetypins which

immediately burst open when he bows to the High Com-

missioner's lady faulty costuming makes the role of

eminent explorer impossible to play and the patent

leather pumps painfully squeezing the toes got lost under

the table during the champagne and speeches)

-30-

who arriving in Manhattan finds waiting again the

forsomebodyelsetailored dress suit

the position offered the opportunity presented the col-

larbutton digging into the adamsapple while a wooden

image croaks down a table at two rows of freshlypressed

gentlemen who wear fashionably their tailored names

stuffed into shirts to caption miles lightyears of

clipped streamers of newsprint

Gentlemen I apologize it was the wrong bell it was

due to a misapprehension that I found myself on the stage

when the curtain rose the poem I recited in a foreign lan-

guage was not mine in fact it was somebody else who was

speaking it's not me in uniform in the snapshot it's a

lamentable error mistaken identity the servicerecord was

lost the gentleman occupying the swivelchair wearing the

red carnation is somebody else than

whoever it was who equipped with false whiskers was

standing outside in the rainy street and has managed un-

detected to make himself scarce down a manhole

the pastyfaced young man wearing somebody else's

readymade business opportunity

is most assuredly not

the holder of any of the positions for which he made

application at the employmentagency

-31-

CHARLEY ANDERSON

The train was three hours late getting into St. Paul.

Charley had his coat on and his bag closed an hour before

he got in. He sat fidgeting in the seat taking off and pull-

ing on a pair of new buckskin gloves. He wished they

wouldn't all be down at the station to meet him. Maybe

only Jim would be there. Maybe they hadn't got his wire.

The porter came and brushed him off, then took his

bags. Charley couldn't see much through the driving steam

and snow outside the window. The train slackened speed,

stopped in a broad snowswept freightyard, started again

with a jerk and a series of snorts from the forced draft in

the engine. The bumpers slammed all down the train.

Charley's hands were icy inside his gloves. The porter

stuck his head in and yelled, "St. Paul." There was noth-

ing to do but get out.

There they all were. Old man Vogel and Aunt Hart-

mann with their red faces and their long noses looked just

the same as ever, but Jim and Hedwig had both of them

filled out. Hedwig had on a mink coat and Jim's overcoat

looked darn prosperous. Jim snatched Charley's bags away

from him and Hedwig and Aunt Hartmann kissed him

and old man Vogel thumped him on the back. They all

talked at once and asked him all kinds of questions. When

he asked about Ma, Jim frowned and said she was in the

hospital, they'd go around to see her this afternoon. They

piled the bags into a new Ford sedan and squeezed them-

selves in after with a lot of giggling and squealing from

Aunt Hartmann. "You see I got the Ford agency now,"

said Jim. "To tell the truth, things have been pretty good

out here.""Wait till you see the house, it's all been done

over," said Hedwig. "'Vell, my poy made de Cherman

Kaiser run. Speaking for the Cherman-American com-

moonity of the Twin Cities, ve are pr'roud of you."

-32-

They had a big dinner ready and Jim gave him a drink

of whiskey and old man Vogel kept pouring him out beer

and saying, "Now tell us all about it." Charley sat there

his face all red, eating the stewed chicken and the dump-

lings and drinking the beer till he was ready to burst. He

couldn't think what to tell them so he made funny cracks

when they asked him questions. After dinner old man

Vogel gave him one of his best Havana cigars.

That afternoon Charley and Jim went to the hospital

to see Ma. Driving over, Jim said she'd been operated

on for a tumor but that he was afraid' it was cancer, but

even that hadn't given Charley an idea of how sick she'd

be. Her face was shrunken and yellow against the white

pillow. When he leaned over to kiss her her lips felt thin

and hot. Her breath was very bad. "Charley, I'm glad you

came," she said in a trembly voice. "It would have been

better if you'd come sooner. . . . Not that I'm not com-

fortable here . . . anyway I'll be glad having my boys

around me when I get well. God has watched over us all,

Charley, we mustn't forget Him." "Now, Ma, we don't

want to get tired and excited," said Jim. "We want to

keep our strength to get well."

"Oh, but He's been so merciful." She brought her small

hand, so thin it was blue, out from under the cover and

dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. "Jim, hand me my

glasses, that's a good boy," she said in a stronger voice.

"Let me take a look at the prodigal son."

Charley couldn't help shuffling his feet uneasily as she

looked at him.

"You're quite a man now and you've made quite a name

for yourself over there. You boys have turned out better

than I hoped. . . . Charley, I was afraid you'd turn out a

bum like your old man." They all laughed. They didn't

know what to say.

She took her glasses off again and tried to reach for the

bedside table with them. The glasses dropped out of her

-33-

hand and broke on the concrete floor. "Oh . . . my . . .

never mind, I don't need 'em much here."

Charley picked the pieces up and put them carefully

in his vest pocket. "I'll get 'em fixed, Ma."

The nurse was standing in the door beckoning with her

head. "Well, goodby, see you tomorrow," they said.

Once they were out in the corridor Charley felt that

tears were running down his face.

"That's how it is," said Jim, frowning. "They keep her

under dope most of the time. I thought she'd be more

comfortable in a private room, but they sure do know how

to charge in these damn hospitals." "I'll chip in on it," said

Charley. "I got a little money saved up." "Well, I sup-

pose it's no more than right you should," Jim said.

Charley took a deep breath of the cold afternoon when

they paused on the hospital steps, but he couldn't get the

smell of ether and drugs and sickness out of his head. It

had come on fine with an icy wind. The snow on the streets

and roofs was bright pink from the flaring sunset.

"We'll go down to the shop and see what's what," said

Jim. "I told the guy works for me to call up some of the

newspaperboys. I thought it would be a little free adver-

tising if they came down to the salesroom to interview

you." Jim slapped Charley on the back. "They eat up this

returnedhero stuff. String 'em along a little, won't you?"

Charley didn't answer.

" Jesus Christ, Jim, I don't know what to tell 'em," he

said in a low voice when they got back in the car. Jim was

pressing his foot on the selfstarter. "What do you think of

comin' in the business, Charley? It's gettin' to be a good

un, I can tell you that." "That's nice of you, Jim. Suppose

I kinder think about it."

When they got back to the house, they went around to

the new salesroom Jim had built out from the garage, that

had been a liverystable in the old days, back of old man

Vogel's house. The salesroom had a big plateglass window

-34-

with Ford slanting across it in blue letters. Inside stood

a new truck all shining and polished. Then there was a

green carpet and a veneered mahogany desk and a tele-

phone that pulled out on a nickel accordion bracket and an

artificial palm in a fancy jardiniere in the corner. "Take

your weight off your feet, Charley," said Jim, pointing to

the swivelchair and bringing out a box of cigars. "Let's sit

around and chew the rag a little."

Charley sat down and picked himself out a cigar. Jim

stood against the radiator with his thumbs in the armholes

of his vest. "What do you think of it, kid, pretty keen,

ain't it?"

"Pretty keen, Jim." They lit their cigars and scuffled

around with their feet a little.

Jim began again: "But it won't do. I got to get me a

big new place downtown. This used to be central. Now it's

out to hell and gone."

Charley kinder grunted and puffed on his cigar. Jim

took a couple of steps back and forth, looking at Charley

all the time. "With your connections in the Legion and

aviation and all that kinder stuff, we'll be jake. Every

other Ford dealer in the district's got a German name."

" Jim, can that stuff. I can't talk to newspapermen."

Jim flushed and frowned and sat down on the edge of

the desk. "But you got to hold up your end. . . . What

do you think I'm taking you in on it for? I'm not doin' it

for my kid brother's pretty blue eyes."

Charley got to his feet. "Jim, I ain't goin' in on it. I'm

already signed up with an aviation proposition with my

old C.O."

"Twentyfive years from now you can talk to me about

aviation. Ain't practical yet."

"Well, we got a couple of tricks up our sleeve. . . .

We're shootin' the moon."

"That's about the size of it." Jim got to his feet. His lips

got thin. "Well, you needn't think you can lay around my

-35-

house all winter just because you're a war hero. If that's

your idea you've got another think comin'." Charley burst

out laughing. Jim came up and put his hand wheedlingly

on Charley's shoulder. "Say, those birds'll be around here

in a few minutes. You be a good feller and change into

your uniform and put on all the medals. . . . Give us a

break."

Charley stood a minute staring at the ash on his cigar.

"How about givin' me a break? Haven't been in the house

five hours and there you go pickin' on me just like when

I was workin' back here. . . ."

Jim was losing control of himself, he was starting to

shake. "Well, you know what you can do about that," he

said, cutting his words off sharp. Charley felt like smash-

ing him one in his damn narrow jaw. "If it wasn't for Ma,

you wouldn't need to worry about that," he said quietly.

Jim didn't answer for a minute. The wrinkles came out

of his forehead. He shook his head and looked grave.

"You're right, Charley, you better stick around. If it gives

her any pleasure . . ."

Charley threw his cigar halfsmoked into the brass spit-

toon and walked out the door before Jim could stop him.

He went to the house and got his hat and coat and went

for a long walk through the soggy snow of the grey after-

noon.

They were just finishing at the suppertable when Char-

ley got back. His supper had been set out on a plate for

him at his place. Nobody spoke but old man Vogel. "Ve

been tinking, dese airmen maybe dey live on air too," he

said and laughed wheezily. Nobody else laughed. Jim got

up and went out of the room. As soon as Charley had swal-

lowed his supper he said he was sleepy and went up to bed.

Charley stayed on while November dragged on towards

Thanksgiving and Christmas. His mother never seemed to

be any better. Every afternoon he went over to see her for

five or ten minutes. She was always cheerful. It made him

-36-

37-124

snow, the watertanks, the little stations, the grainelevators,

the redfaced trainmen with their earflaps and gauntlets.

Early in the morning going through the industrial district

before Chicago she looked out at the men, young men old

men with tin dinnerpails, faces ruddy and screwed up with

the early cold, crowding the platforms waiting to go to

work. She looked in their faces carefully, studying their

faces; they were people she expected to get to know, be-

cause she was going to stay in Chicago instead of going

back to college.

THE CAMERA EYE (45)

the narrow yellow room teems with talk under the

low ceiling and crinkling tendrils of cigarettesmoke twine

blue and fade round noses behind ears under the rims of

women's hats in arch looks changing arrangements of lips

the toss of a bang the wise I-know-it wrinkles round the

eyes all scrubbed stroked clipped scraped with the help of

lipstick rouge shavingcream razorblades into a certain pat-

tern that implies

this warmvoiced woman who moves back and forth

with a throaty laugh head tossed a little back distributing

with teasing looks the parts in the fiveoclock drama

every man his pigeonhole

the personality must be kept carefully adjusted over

the face

to facilitate recognition she pins on each of us a badge

-125-

today entails tomorrow

Thank you but why me? Inhibited? Indeed

goodby

the old brown hat flopped faithful on the chair beside

the door successfully snatched

outside the clinking cocktail voices fade

even in this elderly brick dwellinghouse made over

with green paint orange candles a little tinted calcimine into

Greenwich Village

the stairs go up and down

lead through a hallway ranked with bells names evok-

ing lives tangles unclassified

into the rainy twoway street where cabs slither slush-

ing footsteps plunk slant lights shimmer on the curve of a

wet cheek a pair of freshcolored lips a weatherlined neck

a gnarled grimed hand an old man's bloodshot eye

street twoway to the corner of the roaring avenue

where in the lilt of the rain and the din the four directions

(the salty in all of us ocean the protoplasm throbbing

through cells growing dividing sprouting into the billion

diverse not yet labeled not yet named

always they slip through the fingers

the changeable the multitudinous lives)

box dizzingly the compass

-126-

MARY FRENCH

For several weeks the announcement of a lecture had

caught Mary French's eye as she hurried past the bulletin-

board at Hull House: May 15 G. H. Barrow, Europe:

Problems of Postwar Reconstruction. The name teased her

memory but it wasn't until she actually saw him come into

the lecturehall that she remembered that he was the nice

skinny redfaced lecturer who talked about how it was the

workingclass that would keep the country out of war at

Vassar that winter. It was the same sincere hesitant voice

with a little stutter in the beginning of the sentences some-

times, the same informal way of stalking up and down the

lecturehall and sitting on the table beside the waterpitcher

with his legs crossed. At the reception afterwards she didn't

let on that she'd met him before. When they were intro-

duced she was happy to be able to give him some informa-

tion he wanted about the chances exsoldiers had of finding

jobs in the Chicago area. Next morning Mary French was

all of a fluster when she was called to the phone and there

was Mr. Barrow's voice asking her if she could spare him

an hour that afternoon as he'd been asked by Washington

to get some unofficial information for a certain bureau.

"You see, I thought you would be able to give me the real

truth because you are in daily contact with the actual peo-

ple." She said she'd be delighted and he said would she

meet him in the lobby of the Auditorium at five.

At four she was up in her room curling her hair, won-

dering what dress to wear, trying to decide whether she'd

go without her glasses or not. Mr. Barrow was so nice.

They had such an interesting talk about the employment

situation which was not at all a bright picture and when

Mr. Barrow asked her to go to supper with him at a little

Italian place he knew in the Loop she found herself say-

ing yes without a quiver in spite of the fact that she hadn't

-127-

been out to dinner with a man since she left Colorado

Springs after her father's death three years ago. She felt

somehow that she'd known Mr. Barrow for years.

Still she was a bit surprised at the toughlooking place

with sawdust on the floor he took her to, and that they

sold liquor there and that he seemed to expect her to drink

a cocktail. He drank several cocktails himself and ordered

red wine. She turned down the cocktails but did sip a little

of the wine not to seem too oldfashioned. "I admit," he

said, "that I'm reaching the age where I have to have a

drink to clear the work out of my head and let me relax.

. . . That was the great thing about the other side . . .

having wine with your meals. . . . They really under-

stand the art of life over there."

After they'd had their spumoni Mr. Barrow ordered

himself brandy and she drank the bitter black coffee and

they sat in the stuffy noisy restaurant smelly of garlic and

sour wine and tomatosauce and sawdust and forgot the

time and talked. She said she'd taken up socialservice work

to be in touch with something real but now she was be-

ginning to feel coopedup and so institutional that she often

wondered if she wouldn't have done better to join the Red

Cross overseas or the Friends Reconstruction Unit as so

many of the girls had but she so hated war that she didn't

want to do anything to help even in the most peaceful

way. If she'd been a man she would have been a C.O.,

she knew that.

Mr. Barrow frowned and cleared his throat: "Of course

I suppose they were sincere, but they were very much

mistaken and probably deserved what they got.""Do you

still,think so?""Yes, dear girl, I do. . . . Now we can

ask for anything; nobody can refuse us, wages, the closed

shop, the eighthour day. But it was hard differing with old

friends . . . my attitude was much misunderstood in cer-

tain quarters. . . ."

-128-

"But you can't think it's right to give them these dread-

ful jail sentences."

"That's just to scare the others. . . . You'll see they'll

be getting out as soon as the excitement quiets down . . .

Debs's pardon is expected any day."

"I should hope so," said Mary.

"Poor Debs," said Mr. Barrow, "one mistake has de-

stroyed the work of a lifetime, but he has a great heart,

the greatest heart in the world." Then he went on to tell

her about how he'd been a railroadman himself in the old

days, a freightagent in South Chicago; they'd made him

the businessagent of his local and he had worked for the

Brotherhood, he'd had a hard time getting an education

and suddenly he'd waked up when he was more than

thirty, in New York City writing a set of articles for the

Evening Globe, to the fact that there was no woman in his

life and that he knew nothing of the art of life and the

sort of thing that seemed to come natural to them over

there and to the Mexicans now. He'd married unwisely

and gotten into trouble with a chorusgirl, and a woman

had made his life a hell for five years but now that he'd

broken away from all that, he found himself lonely get-

ting old wanting something more substantial than the little

pickups a man traveling on missions to Mexico and Italy

and France and England, little international incidents, he

called them with a thinlipped grin, that were nice affairs

enough at the time but were just dust and ashes. Of course

he didn't believe in bourgeois morality but he wanted un-

derstanding and passionate friendship in a woman.

When he talked he showed the tip of his tongue some-

times through the broad gap in the middle of his upper

teeth. She could see in his eyes how much he had suffered.

"Of course I don't believe in conventional marriage

either," said Mary. Then Mr. Barrow broke out that she

was so fresh so young so eager so lovely so what he needed

in his life and his speech began to get a little thick and

-129-

she guessed it was time she was getting back to Hull House

because she had to get up so early. When he took her home

in a taxi she sat in the furthest corner of the seat but he

was very gentlemanly although he did seem to stagger a

little when they said goodnight.

After that supper the work at Hull House got to be

more and more of a chore, particularly as George Barrow,

who was making a lecturetour all over the country in de-

fense of the President's policies, wrote her several times a

week. She wrote him funny letters back, kidding about the

oldmaids at Hull House and saying that she felt it in her

bones that she was going to graduate from there soon, the

way she had from Vassar. Her friends at Hull House

began to say how pretty she was getting to look now that

she was curling her hair.

For her vacation that June Mary French had been plan-

ning to go up to Michigan with the Cohns, but when the

time came she decided she really must make a break; so

instead she took the Northland around to Cleveland and

got herself a job as countergirl in the Eureka Cafeteria on

Lakeside Avenue near the depot.

It was pretty tough. The manager was a fat Greek who

pinched the girls' bottoms when he passed behind them

along the counter. The girls used rouge and lipstick and

were mean to Mary, giggling in corners about their dates

or making dirty jokes with the busboys. At night she had

shooting pains in her insteps from being so long on her

feet and her head spun from the faces the asking mouths

the probing eyes jerking along in the rush hours in front of

her like beads on a string. Back in the rattly brass bed in

the big yellowbrick roominghouse, a girl she talked to on

her boat had sent her to, she couldn't sleep or get the smell

of cold grease and dishwashing out of her nose; she lay

there scared and lonely listening to the other roomers stir-

ring behind the thin partitions, tramping to the bathroom,

slamming doors in the hall.

-130-

After she'd worked two weeks at the cafeteria she de-

cided she couldn't stand it another minute, so she gave up

the job and went and got herself a room at the uptown

Y.W.C.A. where they were very nice to her when they

heard she'd come from Hull House and showed her a list

of socialservice jobs she might want to try for, but she

said No, she had to do real work in industry for once, and

took the train to Pittsburgh where she knew a girl who

was an assistant librarian at Carnegie Institute.

She got into Pittsbutgh late on a summer afternoon.

Crossing the bridge she had a glimpse of the level sun-

light blooming pink and orange on a confusion of metal-

colored smokes that jetted from a wilderness of chimneys

ranked about the huge corrugated iron and girderwork

structures along the riverbank. Then right away she was

getting out of the daycoach into the brownish dark gloom

of the station with her suitcase cutting into her hand. She

called up her friend from a dirty phonebooth that smelled

of cigarsmoke. " Mary French, how lovely!." came Lois

Speyer's comical burbling voice. "I'll get you a room right

here at Mrs. Gansemeyer's, come on out to supper. It's a

boardinghouse. Just wait till you see it. . . . But I just

can't imagine anybody coming to Pittsburgh for their vaca-

tion." Mary found herself getting red and nervous right

there in the phonebooth. "I wanted to see something dif-

ferent from the socialworker angle."

"Well, it's so nice the idea of having somebody to talk

to that I hope it doesn't mean you've lost your mind . . .

you know they don't employ Vassar graduates in the open-

hearth furnaces."

"I'm not a Vassar graduate," Mary French shouted into

the receiver, feeling the near tears stinging her eyes. "I'm

just like any other workinggirl. . . . You ought to have

seen me working in that cafeteria in Cleveland.""Well,

come on out, Mary darling, I'll save some supper for

-131-

you." It was a long ride out on the streetcar. Pittsburgh

was grim all right.

Next day she went around to the employment offices of

several of the steelcompanies. When she said she'd been

a socialworker they looked at her awful funny. Nothing

doing; not taking on clerical or secretarial workers now.

She spent days with the newspapers answering helpwanted

ads.

Lois Speyer certainly laughed in that longfaced sarcastic

way she had when Mary had to take a reporting job that

Lois had gotten her because Lois knew the girl who wrote

the society column on the Times-Sentinel.

As the Pittsburgh summer dragged into August, hot and

choky with coalgas and the strangling fumes from blast-

furnaces, bloomingmills, rollingmills that clogged the

smoky Y where the narrow rivervalleys came together,

there began to be talk around the office about how red

agitators had gotten into the mills. A certain Mr. Gorman

said to be one of the head operatives for the Sherman Serv-

ice was often seen smoking a cigar in the managingeditor's

office. The paper began to fill up with news of alien riots

and Russian Bolshevists and the nationalization of women

and the defeat of Lenin and Trotzky.

Then one afternoon in early September Mr. Healy

called Mary French into his private office and asked her to

sit down. When he went over and closed the door tight

Mary thought for a second he was going to make indecent

proposals to her, but instead he said in his most tired

fatherly manner, "Now, Miss French, I have an assign-

ment for you that I don't want you to take unless you

really want to. I've got a daughter myself and I hope when

she grows up she'll be a nice simple wellbroughtup girl

like you are. So honestly if I thought it was demeaning I

wouldn't ask you to do it . . . you know that. We're

strictly the family newspaper . . . we let the other fellers

pull the rough stuff. . . . You know an item never goes

-132-

through my desk that I don't think of my own wife and

daughters, how would I like to have them read it."

Ted Healy was a large round blackhaired man with a

rolling grey eye like a codfish's eye. "What's the story,

Mr. Healy?" asked Mary briskly; she'd made up her

mind it must be something about the whiteslave traffic.

"Well, these damned agitators, you know they're trying to

start a strike. . . . Well, they've opened a publicity office

downtown. I'm scared to send one of the boys down . . .

might get into some trouble with those gorillas . . . I

don't want a dead reporter on my front page. . . . But

sending you down . . . You know you're not working for

a paper, you're a socialservice worker, want to get both

sides of the story. . . . A sweet innocentlooking girl can't

possibly come to any harm. . . . Well, I want to get the

lowdown on the people working there . . . what part of

Russia they were born in, how they got into this country

in the first place . . . where the money comes from . . .

prisonrecords, you know. . . . Get all the dope you can.

It'll make a magnificent Sunday feature."

"I'm very much interested in industrial relations . . .

it's a wonderful assignment. . . . But, Mr. Healy, aren't

conditions pretty bad in the mills?"

Mr. Healy jumped to his feet and began striding up

and down the office. "I've got all the dope on that. . . .

Those damn guineas are making more money than they

ever made in their lives, they buy stocks, they buy wash-

ingmachines and silk stockings for their women and they

send money back to the old folks. While our boys were

risking their lives in the trenches, they held down all the

good jobs and most of 'em are enemy aliens at that. Those

guineas are welloff, don't you forget it. The one thing

they can't buy is brains. That's how those agitators get at

'em. They talk their language and fill 'em up with a lot

of notions about how all they need to do is stop working

and they can take possession of this country that we've

-133-

built up into the greatest country in the world. . . . I

don't hold it against the poor devils of guineas, they're just

ignoranti but those reds who accept the hospitality of our

country and then go around spreading their devilish prop-

aganda . . . My god, if they were sincere I could forgive

'em, but they're just in it for the money like anybody else.

We have absolute proof that they're paid by Russians reds

with money and jewels they've stole over there; and

they're not content with that, they go around shaking

down those poor ignorant guineas . . . Well, all I can

say is shooting's too good for 'em." Ted Healy was red

in the face. A boy in a green eyeshade burst in with a big

bunch of flimsy. Mary French got to her feet. "I'll get

right after it, Mr. Healy," she said.

She got off the car at the wrong corner and stumbled up

the uneven pavement of a steep broad cobbled street of

little gimcrack stores poolrooms barbershops and Italian

spaghettiparlors. A gusty wind whirled dust and excelsior

and old papers. Outside of an unpainted doorway foreign-

looking men stood talking in low voices in knots of three

or four. Before she could get up her nerve to go up the

long steep dirty narrow stairs she looked for a minute into

the photographer's window below at the tinted enlarge-

ments of babies with toopink cheeks and the family groups

and the ramrodstiff bridal couples. Upstairs she paused in

the littered hall. From offices on both sides came a sound

of typing and arguing voices. In the dark she ran into a

young man. "Hello," he said in a gruff voice she liked,

"are you the lady from New York?"

"Not exactly. I'm from Colorado."

"There was a lady from New York comin' to help us

with some publicity. I thought maybe you was her."

"That's just what I came for."

"Come in, I'm just Gus Moscowski. I'm kinder the

officeboy." He opened one of the closed doors for her into

a small dusty office piled with stackedup papers and filled

-134-

up with a large table covered with clippings at which two

young men in glasses sat in their shirtsleeves. "Here are

the regular guys." All the time she was talking to the

others she couldn't keep her eyes off him. He had blond

closecropped hair and very blue eyes and a big bearcub

look in his cheap serge suit shiny at the elbows and knees.

The young men answered her questions so politely that she

couldn't help telling them she was trying to do a feature

story for the Times-Sentinel. They laughed their heads

off. "But Mr. Healy said he wanted a fair wellrounded

picture. He just thinks the men are being misled." Mary

found herself laughing too. "Gus," said the older man,

"you take this young lady around and show her some of

the sights. . . . After all Ted Healy may have lost his

mind. First here's what Ted Healy's friends did to Fanny

Sellers." She couldn't look at the photograph that he

poked under her nose. "What had she done?""Tried to

organize the workinaclass, that's the worst crime you can

commit in this man's country."

It was a relief to be out on the street again, hurrying

along while Gus Moscowski shambled grinning beside her.

"Well, I guess I'd better take you first to see how folks

live on fortytwo cents an hour. Too bad you can't talk

Polish. I'm a Polack myself.""You must have been born

in this country.""Sure, highschool graduate. If I can get

the dough I want to take engineering at Carnegie Tech.

. . . I dunno why I string along with these damn Po-

lacks." He looked her straight in the face and grinned

when he said that. She smiled back at him. "I understand

why," she said. He made a gesture with his elbow as they

turned a corner past a group of ragged kids making mud-

pies; they were pale flabby filthy little kids with pouches

under their eyes. Mary turned her eyes away but she'd

seen them, as she'd seen the photograph of the dead

woman with her head caved in. "Git an eyeful of cesspool

-135-

alley the land of opportunity," Gus Moscowski said way

down in his throat.

That night when she got off the streetcar at the corner

nearest Mrs. Gansemeyer's her legs were trembling and

the small of her back ached. She went right up to her room

and hurried into bed. She was too tired to eat or to sit up

listening to Lois Speyer's line of sarcastic gossip. She

couldn't sleep. She lay in her sagging bed listening to the

voices of the boarders rocking on the porch below and to

the hooting of engines and the clank of shunted freight-

cars down in the valley, seeing again the shapeless broken

shoes and the worn hands folded over dirty aprons and the

sharp anxious beadiness of women's eyes, feeling the quake

underfoot of the crazy stairways zigzagging up and down

the hills black and bare as slagpiles where the steelworkers

lived in jumbled shanties and big black rows of smoke-

gnawed clapboarded houses, in her nose the stench of

cranky backhouses and kitchens with cabbage cooking and

clothes boiling and unwashed children and drying diapers.

She slept by fits and starts and would wake up with Gus

Moscowski's warm tough voice in her head, and her whole

body tingling with the hard fuzzy bearcub feel of him

when his arm brushed against her arm or he put out his

big hand to steady her at a place where the boardwalk had

broken through and she'd started to slip in the loose shaly

slide underneath. When she fell solidly asleep she went

on dreaming about him. She woke up early feeling happy

because she was going to meet him again right after break-

fast.

That afternoon she went back to the office to write the

piece. Just the way Ted Healy had said, she put in all she

could find out about the boys running the publicity bureau.

The nearest to Russia any of them came from was Canar-

sie, Long Island. She tried to get in both sides of the ques-

tion, even called them "possibly misguided."

About a minute after she'd sent it in to the Sunday edi-

-136-

tor she was called to the city desk. Ted Healy had on a

green eyeshade and was bent over a swirl of galleys. Mary

could see her copy on top of the pile of papers under his

elbow. Somebody had scrawled across the top of it in red

pencil: Why wish this on me? "Well, young lady," he said

without looking up, "you've written a firstrate propaganda

piece for the Nation or some other parlorpink sheet in

New York, but what the devil do you think we can do with

it? This is Pittsburgh." He got to his feet and held out his

hand. "Goodby, Miss French, I wish I had some way of

using you because you're a mighty smart girl . . . and

smart girl reporters are rare. . . . I've sent your slip to

the cashier. . . ." Before Mary French could get her

breath she was out on the pavement with an extra week's

salary in her pocketbook, which after all was pretty white

of old Ted Healy.

That night Lois Speyer looked aghast when Mary told

her she'd been fired, but when Mary told Lois that she'd

gone down and gotten a job doing publicity for the Amal-

gamated Lois burst into tears. "I said you'd lost your mind

and it's true. . . . Either I'll have to move out of this

boardinghouse or you will . . . and I won't be able to go

around with you like I've been doing.""How ridiculous,

Lois.""Darling, you don't know Pittsburgh. I don't care

about those miserable strikers but I absolutely have got to

hold onto my job. . . . You know I just have to send

money home. . . . Oh, we were just beginning to have

such fun and now you have to go and spoil everything."

"If you'd seen what I've seen you'd talk differently,"

said Mary French coldly. They were never very good

friends again after that.

Gus Moscowski found her a room with heavy lace cur-

tains in the windows in the house of a Polish storekeeper

who was a cousin of his father's. He escorted her solemnly

back there from the office nights when they worked late,

and they always did work late.

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Mary French had never worked so hard in her life. She

wrote releases, got up statistics on t.b., undernourishment

of children, sanitary conditions, crime, took trips on inter-

urban trolleys and slow locals to Rankin and Braddock and

Homestead and Bessemer and as far as Youngstown and

Steubenville and Gary, took notes on speeches of Foster

and Fitzpatrick, saw meetings broken up and the troopers

in their darkgrey uniforms moving in a line down the un-

paved alleys of company patches, beating up men and

women with their clubs, kicking children out of their way,

chasing old men off their front stoops. "And to think," said

Gus of the troopers, "that the sonsabitches are lousy Po-

lacks themselves most of 'em. Now ain't that just like a

Polack?"

She interviewed metropolitan newspapermen, spent

hours trying to wheedle A.P. and U.P. men into sending

straight stories, smoothed out the grammar in the English-

language leaflets. The fall flew by before she knew it. The

Amalgamated could only pay the barest expenses, her

clothes were in awful shape, there was no curl in her hair,

at night she couldn't sleep for the memory of the things

she'd seen, the jailings, the bloody heads, the wreck of

some family's parlor, sofa cut open, chairs smashed, china-

closet hacked to pieces with an ax, after the troopers had

been through looking for "literature." She hardly knew

herself when she looked at her face in the greenspotted

giltframed mirror over the washstand as she hurriedly

dressed in the morning. She had a haggard desperate look.

She was beginning to look like a striker herself.

She hardly knew herself either when Gus's voice gave

her cold shivers or when whether she felt good or not that

day depended on how often he smiled when he spoke to

her; it didn't seem like herself at all the way that when-

ever her mind was free for a moment, she began to im-

agine him coming close to her, putting his arms around.

her, his lips, his big hard hands. When that feeling came

-138-

on she would have to close her eyes and would feel herself

dizzily reeling. Then she'd force her eyes open and fly at

her typing and after a while would feel cool and clear

again.

The day Mary French admitted to herself for the first

time that the highpaid workers weren't coming out and

that the lowpaid workers were going to lose their strike

she hardly dared look Gus in the face when he called for

her to take her home. It was a muggy drizzly outofseason

November night. As they walked along the street without

saying anything the fog suddenly glowed red in the direc-

tion of the mills. "There they go," said Gus. The glow

grew and grew, first pink then orange. Mary nodded and

said nothing. "What can you do when the woikin'class

won't stick together. Every kind of damn foreigner thinks

the others is bums and the 'Mericans they think every-

body's a bum 'cept you an' me. Wasn't so long ago we was

all foreigners in this man's country. Christ, I dunno why I

string along wid 'em."

"Gus, what would you do if we lost the strike? I mean

you personally."

"I'll be on the black books all right. Means I couldn't

get me another job in the metaltrades not if I was the last

guy on earth. . . . Hell, I dunno. Take a false name an'

join the Navy, I guess. They say a guy kin get a real good

eddication in the Navy."

"I guess we oughtn't to talk about it. . . . Me, I don't

know what I'll do."

"You kin go anywheres and git a job on a paper like

you had. . . . I wish I had your schoohn'. . . . I bet

you'll be glad to be quit of this bunch of hunkies."

"They are the workingclass, Gus."

"Sure, if we could only git more sense into our damn

heads. . . . You know I've got an own brother scabbin'

right to this day."

"He's probably worried about his wife and family."

-139-

"I'd worry him if I could git my hands on him. . . .

A woikin'man ain't got no right to have a wife and family."

"He can have a girl. . . ." Her voice failed. She felt

her heart beating so hard as she walked along beside him

over the uneven pavement she was afraid held hear it.

"Girls aplenty." Gus laughed. "They're free and easy,

Polish girls are. That's one good thing."

"I wish . . ." Mary heard her voice saying.

"Well, goodnight. Rest good, you look all in." He'd

given her a pat on the shoulder and he'd turned and gone

off with his long shambling stride. She was at the door of

her house. When she got in her room she threw herself on

the bed and cried.

It was several weeks later that Gus Moscowski was ar-

rested distributing leaflets in Braddock. She saw him

brought up before the squire, in the dirty courtroom packed

close with the grey uniforms of statetroopers, and sen-

tenced to five years. His arm was in a sling and there was

a scab of clotted blood on the towy stubble on the back of

his head. His blue eyes caught hers in the crowd and he

grinned and gave her a jaunty wave of a big hand. "So

that's how it is, is it?" snarled a voice beside her. "Well,

you've had the last piece of c -- k you get outa dat baby."

There was a hulking grey trooper on either side of her.

They hustled her out of court and marched her down to

the interurban trolleystop. She didn't say anything but she

couldn't keep back the tears. She hadn't known men could

talk to women like that. "Come on now, loosen up, me an'

Steve here we're twice the men. . . . You ought to have

better sense than to be spreadin' your legs for that punk."

At last the Pittsburgh trolley came and they put her on

it with a warning that if they ever saw her around again

they'd have her up for soliciting. As the car pulled out

she saw them turn away slapping each other on the back

and laughing. She sat there hunched up in the seat in the

back of the car with her stomach churning and her face set.

-140-

Back at the office all she said was that the cossacks had run

her out of the courthouse.

When she heard that George Barrow was in town with

the Senatorial Investigating Commission, she went to him

at once. She waited for him in the lobby of the Schenley.

The still winter evening was one block of black iron cold.

She was shivering in her thin coat. She was deadtired. It

seemed weeks since she'd slept. It was warm in the big

quiet hotel lobby, through her thin paper soles she could

feel the thick nap of the carpet. There must have been a

bridgeparty somewhere in the hotel because groups of

welldressed middleaged women that reminded her of her

mother kept going through the lobby. She let herself drop

into a deep chair by a radiator and started at once to

drowse off.

"You poor little girl, I can see you've been working.

. . . This is different from socialservice work, I'll bet."

She opened her eyes. George had on a furlined coat with

a furcollar out of which his thin neck and long knobby

face stuck out comically like the head of a marabou stork.

She got up. "Oh, Mr. Barrow . . . I mean George." He

took her hand in his left hand and patted it gently with

his right. "Now I know what the frontline trenches are

like," she said, laughing at his kind comical look. "You're

laughing at my furcoat. . . . Wouldn't help the Amal-

gamated if I got pneumonia, would it? . . . Why haven't

you got a warm coat? . . . Sweet little Mary French.

. . . Just exactly the person I wanted to see. . . . Do you

mind if we go up to the room? I don't like to talk here,

too many eavesdroppers."

Upstairs in his square warm room with pink hangings

and pink lights he helped her off with her coat. He stood

there frowning and weighing it in his hand. "You've got to

get a warm coat," he said. After he'd ordered tea for her

from the waiter he rather ostentatiously left the door into

the hall open. They settled down on either side of a little

-141-

table at the foot of the bed that was littered with news-

papers and typewritten sheets. "Well, well, well," he said.

"This is a great pleasure for a lonely old codger like me.

What would you think of having dinner with the senator?

. . . To see how the other half lives."

They talked and talked. Now and then he slipped a

little whiskey in her tea. He was very kind, said he was

sure all the boys could be gotten out of jail as soon as the

strike was settled and that it virtually was settled. He'd

just been over in Youngstown talking to Fitzpatrick. He

thought he'd just about convinced him that the only thing

to do was to get the men back to work. He had Judge

Gary's own private assurance that nobody would be dis-

criminated against and that experts were working on the

problem of an eighthour day. As soon as the technical dif-

ficulties could be overcome the whole picture of the steel-

worker's life would change radically for the better. Then

and there he offered to put Mary French on the payroll

as his secretary. He said her actual experience with condi-

tions would be invaluable in influencing legislation. If the

great effort of the underpaid steelworkers wasn't to be lost

it would have to be incorporated in legislation. The center

of the fight was moving to Washington. He felt the time

was ripe in the senate. She said her first obligation was to

the strike committee. "But, my dear sweet child," George

Barrow said, gently patting the back of her hand, "in a few

days there won't be any strikecommittee."

The senator was a southerner with irongrey hair and

white spats who looked at Mary French when he first

came in the room as if he thought she was going to plant a

bomb under the big bulge of his creamcolored vest, but

his fatherly respectful delicate flowerofwomanhood man-

ner was soothing. They ordered dinner brought up to

George's room. The senator kidded George in a heavy

rotund way about his dangerous Bolsheviki friends. They'd

been putting away a good deal of rye and the smoky air of

-142-

George's room was rich with whiskey. When she left them

to go down to the office again they were talking about tak-

ing in a burlesque show.

The bunch down at the office looked haggard and sour.

When she told them about G. H. Barrow's offer they told

her to jump at it; of course it would be wonderful to have

her working for them in Washington and beside they

wouldn't be able to pay even her expenses any more. She

finished her release and glumly said goodnight. That night

she slept better than she had for weeks though all the way

home she was haunted by Gus Moscowski's blue eyes and

his fair head with the blood clotted on it and his jaunty

grin when his eyes met hers in the courtroom. She had

decided that the best way to get the boys out of jail was to

go to Washington with George.

Next morning George called her up at the office first

thing and asked her what about the job. She said she'd take

it. He said would fifty a week be all right; maybe he could

raise it to seventyfive later. She said it was more than she'd

ever made in her life. He said he wanted her to come

right around to the Schenley; he had something important

for her to do. When she got there he met her in the lobby

with a hundreddollar bill in his hand. "The first thing I

want you to do, sweet girl, is to go buy yourself a warm

overcoat. Here's two weeks' salary in advance. . . . You

won't be any good to me as a secretary if you catch your

death of pneumonia the first day."

On the parlorcar going to Washington he handed over

to her two big square black suitcases full of testimony.

"Don't think for a moment there's no work connected with

this job," he said, fishing out manila envelope after manila

envelope full of closely typed stenographers' notes on

onionskin paper. "The other stuff was more romantic," he

said, sharpening a pencil, "but this in the longrange view

is more useful."

"I wonder," said Mary.

-143-

"Mary dear, you are very young . . . and very sweet."

He sat back in his greenplush armchair looking at her a

long time with his bulging eyes while the snowy hills

streaked with green of lichened rocks and laced black with

bare branches of trees filed by outside. Then he blurted out

wouldn't it be fun if they got married when they got to

Washington. She shook her head and went back to the

problem of strikers' defense but she couldn't help smiling

at him when she said she didn't want to get married just

yet; he'd been so kind. She felt he was a real friend.

In Washington she fixed herself up a little apartment

in a house on H Street that was being sublet cheap by

Democratic officeholders who were moving out. She often

cooked supper for George there. She'd never done any

cooking before except camp cooking, but George was quite

an expert and knew how to make Italian spaghetti and

chiliconcarne and oysterstew and real French bouillabaisse.

He'd get wine from the Rumanian Embassy and they'd

have very cozy meals together after long days working in

the office. He talked and talked about love and the impor-

tance of a healthy sexllfe for men and women, so that at

last she let him. He was so tender and gentle that for a

while she thought maybe she really loved him. He knew

all about contraceptives and was very nice and humorous

about them. Sleeping with a man didn't make as much dif-

ference in her life as she'd expected it would.

The day after Harding's inauguration two seedylooking

men in shapeless grey caps shuffled up to her in the lobby

of the little building on G Street where George's office was.

One of them was Gus Moscowski. His cheeks were hollow

and he looked tired and dirty. "Hello, Miss French," he

said. "Meet the kid brother . . . not the one that scabbed,

this one's on the up and up. . . . You sure do look well."

"Oh, Gus, they let you out." He nodded. "New trial, cases

dismissed. . . . But I tell you it's no fun in that cooler."

-144-

She took them up to George's office. "I'm sure Mr. Bar-

row'l want to get firsthand news of the steelworkers."

Gus made a gesture of pushing something away with his

hand. "We ain't steelworkers, we)re bums. . . . Your

friends the senators sure sold us out pretty. Every sonofa-

bitch ever walked across the street with a striker's black-

listed. The old man got his job back, way back at fifty

cents instead of a dollar ten after the priest made him kiss

the book and promise not to join the union. . . . Lots of

people goin' back to the old country. Me an' the kid we

pulled out, went down to Baltimore to git a job on a boat

somewheres but the seamen are piled up ten deep on the

wharf. . . . So we thought we might as well take in the

'nauguration and see how the fat boys looked."

Mary tried to get them to take some money but they

shook their heads and said, "We don't need a handout, we

can woik." They were just going when George came in.

He didn't seem any too pleased to see them, and began

to lecture them on violence; if the strikers hadn't threat-

ened violence and allowed themselves to be misled by a lot

of Bolshevik agitators, the men who were really negotiat-

ing a settlement from the inside would have been able to

get them much better terms. "I won't argue with you,

Mr. Barrow. I suppose you think Father Kazinski was a

red and that it was Fanny Sellers that bashed in the head

of a statetrooper. An' then you say you're on the side of

the woikin'man."

"And, George, even the senate committee admitted that

the violence was by the deputies and statetroopers. . . . I

saw it myself after all," put in Mary.

"Of course, boys . . . I know what you're up against.

I hold no brief for the Steel Trust. . . . But, Mary,

what I want to impress on these boys is that the working-

man is often his own worst enemy in these things."

"The woikin' man gits f'rooked whatever way you

look at it," said Gus, "and I don't know whether it's his

-145-

friends or his enemies does the worst rookin'. . . . Well,

we got to git a move on."

"Boys, I'm sorry I've got so much pressing business to

do. I'd like to hear about your experiences. Maybe some

other time," said George, settling down at his desk.

As they left Mary French followed them to the door

and whispered to Gus, "And what about Carnegie Tech?"

His eyes didn't seem so blue as they'd seemed before he

went to jail. "Well, what about it?" said Gus without look-

ing at her and gently closed the groundglass door behind

him.

That night while they were eating supper Mary sud-

denly got to her feet,and said, "George, we're as respon-

sible as anybody for selling out the steelworkers.""Non-

sense, Mary, it's the fault of the leaders who picked the

wrong minute for the strike and then let the bosses hang

a lot of crazy revolutionary notions on them. Organized

labor gets stung every time it mixes in politics. Gompers

knows that. We all did our best for 'em."

Mary French started to walk back and forth in the

room. She was suddenly bitterly uncontrollably angry.

"That's the way they used to talk back in Colorado

Springs. I might better go back and live with Mother and

do charitywork. It would be better than making a living

off the workingclass."

She walked back and forth. He went on sitting there at

the table she'd fixed so carefully with flowers and a white

cloth, drinking little sips of wine and putting first a little

butter on the corner of a cracker and then a piece of Roque-

fort cheese and then biting it off and then another bit of

butter and another piece of cheese, munching slowly all

the time. She could feel his bulging eyes traveling over her

body. "We're just laborfakers," she yelled in his face, and

ran into the bedroom.

He stood over her still chewing on the cheese and

crackers as he nervously patted the back of her shoulder.

-146-

"What a spiteful thing to say. . . . My child, you mustn't

be so hysterical. . . . This isn't the first strike that's ever

come out badly. . . . Even this time there's a gain. Fair-

minded people all over the country have been horrified by

the ruthless violence of the steelbarons. It will influence

legislation. . . . Sit up and have a glass of wine. . . .

Now, Mary, why don't we get married? It's too silly liv-

ing like this. I have some small investments. I saw a nice

little house for sale in Georgetown just the other day.

This is just the time now to buy a house when prices are

dropping . . . personnel being cut out of all the depart-

ments. . . . After all I've reached an age when I have a

right to settle down and have a wife and kids. . . . I

don't want to wait till it's too late."

Mary sat up sniveling. "Oh, George, you've got plenty

of time. . . . I don't know why I've got a horror of get-

ting married. . . . Everything gives me the horrors to-

night.""Poor little girl, it's probably the curse coming

on," said George and kissed her on the forehead. After

he'd gone home to his hotel she decided she'd go back to

Colorado Springs to visit her mother for a while. Then

she'd try to get some kind of newspaper job.

Before she could get off for the West she found that a

month had gone by. Fear of having a baby began to obsess

her. She didn't want to tell George about it because she

knew he'd insist on their getting married. She couldn't

wait. She didn't know any doctor she could go to. Late

one night she went into the kitchenette to stick her head

in the oven and tried to turn on the gas, but it seemed so

inconvenient somehow and her feet felt so cold on the

linoleum that she went back to bed.

Next day she got a letter from Ada Cohn all about what

a wonderful time Ada was having in New York where she

had the loveliest apartment and was working so hard on

her violin and hoped to give a concert in Carnegie Hall

next season. Without finishing reading the letter Mary

-147-

French started packing her things. She got to the station in

time to get the ten o'clock to New York. From the station

she sent George a wire: FRIEND SICK CALLED TO NEW YORK

WRITING.

She'd wired Ada and Ada met her at the Pennsylvania

station in New York looking very handsome and rich. In

the taxicab Mary told her that she had to lend her the

money to have an abortion. Ada had a crying fit and said

of course she'd lend her the money but who on earth could

she go to? Honestly she wouldn't dare ask Dr. Kirstein

about it because he was such a friend of her father's and

mother's that he'd be dreadfully upset. "I won't have a

baby. I won't have a baby," Mary was muttering.

Ada had a fine threeroom apartment in the back of a

building on Madison Avenue with a light tancolored car-

pet and a huge grandpiano and lots of plants in pots and

flowers in vases. They ate their supper there and strode

up and down the livingroom all evening trying to think.

Ada sat at the piano and played Bach preludes to calm her

nerves, she said, but she was so upset she couldn't follow

her music. At last Mary wrote George a specialdelivery

letter asking him what to do. Next evening she got a reply.

George was brokenhearted, but he enclosed the address of

a doctor. Mary gave the letter to Ada to read. "What a

lovely letter. I don't blame him at all. He sounds like a

fine sensitive beautiful nature.""I hate him," said Mary,

driving her nails into the palms of her hands. "I hate

him."

Next morning she went down all alone to the doctor's

and had the operation. After it she went home in a taxicab

and Ada put her to bed. Ada got on her nerves terribly

tiptoeing in and out of the bedroom with her face wrinkled

up. After about a week Mary French got up. She seemed to

be all right, and started to go around New York looking

for a job.

-148-

THE CAMERA EYE (46)

walk the streets and walk the streets inquiring of

Coca Cola signs Lucky Strike ads pricetags in storewindows

scraps of overheard conversations stray tatters of news-

print yesterday's headlines sticking out of ashcans

for a set of figures a formula of action an address you

don't quite know you've forgotten the number the street

may be in Brooklyn a train leaving for somewhere a steam-

boat whistle stabbing your ears a job chalked up in front

of an agency

to do to make there are more lives than walking des-

perate the streets hurry underdog do make

a speech urging action in the crowded hall after hand-

clapping the pats and smiles of others on the platform the

scrape of chairs the expectant hush the few coughs during

the first stuttering attempt to talk straight tough going the

snatch for a slogan they are listening and then the easy

climb slogan by slogan to applause (if somebody in your

head didn't say liar to you and on Union Square

that time you leant from a soapbox over faces avid

young opinionated old the middleaged numb with over-

work eyes bleared with newspaperreading trying to

tell them the straight dope make them laugh tell them

what they want to hear wave a flag whispers the internal

agitator crazy to succeed)

-149-

you suddenly falter ashamed flush red break out in

sweat why not tell these men stamping in the wind that

we stand on a quicksand? that doubt is the whetstone

of understanding is too hard hurts instead of urging

picket John D. Rockefeller the bastard if the cops knock

your blocks off it's all for the advancement of the human

race while I go home after a drink and a hot meal and

read (with some difficulty in the Loeb Library trot) the

epigrams of Martial and ponder the course of history and

what leverage might pry the owners loose from power and

bring back (I too Walt Whitman) our storybook democ-

racy

and all the time in my pocket that letter from that

collegeboy asking me to explain why being right which he

admits the radicals are in their private lives such shits

lie abed underdog (peeling the onion of doubt) with

the book unread in your hand and swing on the seesaw

maybe after all maybe topdog make

money you understood what he meant the old

party with the white beard beside the crystal inkpot at the

cleared varnished desk in the walnut office in whose voice

boomed all the clergymen of childhood and shrilled the

hosannahs of the offkey female choirs All you say is

very true but there's such a thing as sales and I have

daughters I'm sure you too will end by thinking dif-

ferently make

money in New York (lipstick kissed off the lips of a

-150-

girl fashionablydressed fragrant at five o'clock in a taxicab

careening down Park Avenue when at the end of each

crosstown street the west is flaming with gold and white

smoke billows from the smokestacks of steamboats leaving

port and the sky is lined with greenbacks

the riveters are quiet the trucks of the producers are

shoved off onto the marginal avenues

winnings sing from every streetcorner

crackle in the ignitions of the cars swish smooth in

ballbearings sparkle in the lights going on in the show-

windows croak in the klaxons tootle in the horns of im-

ported millionaire shining towncars

dollars are silky in her hair soft in her dress sprout

in the elaborately contrived rosepetals that you kiss be-

come pungent and crunchy in the speakeasy dinner sting

shrill in the drinks

make loud the girlandmusic show set off the laughing

jag in the cabaret swing in the shufflingshuffling orchestra

click sharp in the hatcheck girl's goodnight)

if not why not? walking the streets rolling on your

bed eyes sting from peeling the speculative onion of doubt

if somebody in your head topdog? underdog?

didn't (and on Union Square) say liar to you

-151-

NEWSREEL LII

assembled to a service for the dear departed, the last half

hour of devotion and remembrance of deeds done and work

undone; the remembrance of friendship and love; of what was

and what could have been. Why not use well that last half

hour, why not make that last service as beautiful as Frank E.

Campbell can make it at the funeral church (nonsectarian)

BODY TIED IN BAG IS FOUND FLOATING

Chinatown my Chinatown where the lights are low

Hearts that know no other land

Drifting to and fro

APOPLEXY BRINGS END WHILE WIFE READS TO HIM

Mrs. Harding was reading to him in a low soothing voice.

It had been hoped that he would go to sleep under that in-

fluence

DAUGHERTY IN CHARGE

All alone

By the telephone

Waiting for a ring

Two Women's Bodies in Slayer's Baggage

WORKERS MARCH ON REICHSTAG

CITY IN DARKNESS

RACE IN TAXI TO PREVENT SUICIDE ENDS IN

FAILURE AT THE BELMONT

Pershing Dances Tango in the Argentine

HARDING TRAIN CRAWLS FIFTY MILES THROUGH MASSED

CHICAGO CROWDS

Girl Out of Work Dies from Poison

-152-

MANY SEE COOLIDGE BUT FEW HEAR HIM

If you knew Susie

Like I I know Susie

Oh oh oh what a girl

ART AND ISADORA

In San Francisco in eighteen seventyeight Mrs.

Isadora O'Gorman Duncan, a highspirited lady with a

taste for the piano, set about divorcing her husband, the

prominent Mr. Duncan, whose behavior we are led to

believe had been grossly indelicate; the whole thing

made her so nervous that she declared to her children

that she couldn't keep anything on her stomach but a

little champagne and oysters; in the middle of the

bitterness and recriminations of the family row,

into a world of gaslit boardinghouses kept by

ruined southern belles and railroadmagnates and swing-

ing doors and whiskery men nibbling cloves to hide the

whiskey on their breaths and brass spittoons and four-

wheel cabs and basques and bustles and long ruffled

trailing skirts (in which lecturehall and concertroom,

under the domination of ladies of culture, were the cen-

ters of aspiring life)

she bore a daughter whom she named after herself

Isadora.

The break with Mr. Duncan and the discovery of

his duplicity turned Mrs. Duncan into a bigoted femi-

nist and an atheist, a passionate follower of Bob Inger-

soll's lectures and writings; for God read Nature; for

duty beauty, and only man is vile.

Mrs. Duncan had a hard struggle to raise her

children in the love of beauty and the hatred of corsets

-153-

and conventions and manmade laws. She gave piano-

lessons, she did embroidery and knitted scarves and

mittens.

The Duncans were always in debt.

The rent was always due.

Isadora's earliest memories were of wheedling

grocers and butchers and landlords and selling little

things her mother had made from door to door,

helping hand valises out of back windows when

they had to jump their bills at one shabbygenteel board-

inghouse after another in the outskirts of Oakland and

San Francisco.

The little Duncans and their mother were a clan;

it was the Duncans against a rude and sordid world.

The Duncans weren't Catholics any more or Presby-

terians or Quakers or Baptists; they were Artists.

When the children were quite young they man-

aged to stir up interest among their neighbors by giv-

ing theatrical performances in a barn; the older girl

Elizabeth gave lessons in society dancing; they were

westerners, the world was a goldrush; they weren't

ashamed of being in the public eye. Isadora had green

eyes and reddish hair and a beautiful neck and arms.

She couldn't afford lessons in conventional dancing,

so she made up dances of her own.

They moved to Chicago. Isadora got a job dancing

to The Washington Post at the Masonic Temple Roof

Garden for fifty a week. She danced at clubs. She went

to see Augustin Daly and told him she'd discovered

the Dance

-154-

and went on in New York as a fairy in cheesecloth

in a production of Midsummer Night's Dream with

Ada Rehan.

The family followed her to New York. They

rented a big room in Carnegie Hall, put mattresses in

the corners, hung drapes on the wall and invented the

first Greenwich Village studio.

They were never more than one jump ahead of

the sheriff, they were always wheedling the tradespeo-

ple out of bills, standing the landlady up for the rent,

coaxing handouts out of rich philistines.

Isadora arranged recitals with Ethelbert Nevin

danced to readings of Omar Khayyám for society

women at Newport. When the Hotel Windsor burned

they lost all their trunks and the very long bill they

owed and sailed for London on a cattleboat

to escape the materialism of their native America.

In London at the British Museum

they discovered the Greeks;

the Dance was Greek.

Under the smoky chimneypots of London, in

the sootcoated squares they danced in muslin tunics,

they copied poses from Greek vases, went to lectures,

artgalleries, concerts, plays, sopped up in a winter

fifty years of Victorian culture.

Back to the Greeks.

Whenever they were put out of their lodgings for

nonpayment of rent Isadora led them to the best hotel

and engaged a suite and sent the waiters scurrying for

-155-

lobster and champagne and fruits outofseason; nothing

was too good for Artists, Duncans, Greeks;

and the nineties London liked her gall.

In Kensington and even in Mayfair she danced at

parties in private houses,

the Britishers, Prince Edward down,

were carried away by her preraphaelite beauty

her lusty American innocence

her California accent.

After London, Paris during the great exposition

of nineteen hundred. She danced with Loïe Fuller.

She was still a virgin too shy to return the advances

of Rodin the great master, completely baffled by the

extraordinary behavior of Loïe Fuller's circle of crack-

brained invert beauties. The Duncans were vegetarians,

suspicious of vulgarity and men and materialism. Ray-

mond made them all sandals.

Isadora and her mother and her brother Raymond

went about Europe in sandals and fillets and Greek

tunics

staying at the best hotels leading the Greek life

of nature in a flutter of unpaid bills.

Isadora's first solo recital was at a theater in

Budapest;

after that she was the diva, had a loveaffair with

a leading actor; in Munich the students took the horses

out of her carriage. Everything was flowers and hand-

clapping and champagne suppers. In Berlin she was the

rage.

With the money she made on her German tour

she took the Duncans all to Greece. They arrived on a

fishingboat from Ithaca. They posed in the Parthenon

-156-

for photographs and danced in the Theater of Dionysus

and trained a crowd of urchins to sing the ancient chorus

from the Suppliants and built a temple to live in on a

hill overlooking the ruins of ancient Athens, but there

was no water on the hill and their money; ran out be-

fore the temple was finished

so they had to stay at the Hôtel d'Angleterre and

run up a bill there. When credit gave out they took

their chorus back to Berlin and put on the Suppliants

in ancient Greek. Meeting Isadora in her peplum

marching through the Tiergarten at the head of her

Greek boys marching in order all in Greek tunics, the

kaiserin's horse shied,

and her highness was thrown.

Isadora was the vogue.

She arrived in St. Petersburg in time to see the

night funeral of the marchers shot down in front of

the Winter Palace in 1905. It hurt her. She was an

American like Walt Whitman; the murdering rulers

of the world were not her people; the marchers were

her people; artists were not on the side of the

machineguns; she was an American in a Greek tunic;

she was for the people.

In St. Petersburg, still under the spell of the

eighteenthcentury ballet of the court of the Sunking,

her dancing was considered dangerous by the au-

thorities.

In Germany she founded a school with the help

of her sister Elizabeth who did the organizing, and she

had a baby by Gordon Craig.

She went to America in triumph as she'd always

planned and harried the home philistines with a tour;

her followers were all the time getting pinched for

-157-

wearing Greek tanics; she found no freedom for Art

in America.

Back in' Paris it was the top of the world; Art

meant Isadora. At the funeral of the Prince de Polig-

nac she met the mythical millionaire (sewingmachine

king) who was to be her backer and to finance her

school. She went off with him in his yacht (whatever

Isadora did was Art)

to dance in the Temple at Paestum

only for him,

but it rained and the musicians all got drenched.

So they all got drunk instead.

Art was the millionaire life. Art was whatever

Isadora did. She was carrying the millionaire's child

to the great scandal of the oldlady clubwomen and

spinster artlovers when she danced on her second

American tour;

she took to drinking too much and stepping to the

footlights and bawling out the boxholders.

Isadora was at the height of glory and scandal and

power and wealth, her school going, her millionaire

was about to build her a theater in Paris, the Duncans

were the priests of a cult, (Art was whatever Isadora

did),

when the car that was bringing her two children

home from the other side of Paris stalled on a bridge

across the Seine. Forgetting that he'd left the car in

gear the chauffeur got out to crank the motor. The car

started, knocked down the chauffeur, plunged off the

bridge into the Seine.

The children and their nurse were drowned.

-158-

The rest of her life moved desperately on

in the clatter of scandalized tongues, among the

kidding faces of reporters, the threatening of bailiffs,

the expostulations of hotelmanagers bringing overdue

bills.

Isadora drank too much, she couldn't keep her

hands off goodlooking young men, she dyed her hair

various shades of brightred, she never took the trouble

to make up her face properly, was careless about her

dress, couldn't bother to keep her figure in shape,

never could keep track of her money

but a great sense of health

filled the hall

when the pearshaped figure with the beautiful

great arms tramped forward slowly from the back of

the stage.

She was afraid of nothing; she was a great dancer.

In her own city of San Francisco the politicians

wouldn't let her dance in the Greek Theater they'd

built under her influence. Wherever she went she gave

offense to the philistines. When the war broke out she

danced the Marseillaise, but it didn't seem quite re-

spectable' and she gave offense by refusing to give up

Wagner or to show the proper respectable feelings

of satisfaction at the butchery.

On her South American tour

she picked up men everywhere,

a Spanish painter, a couple of prizefighters, a

stoker on the boat, a Brazilian poet,

brawled in tangohalls, bawled out the Argentines

for niggers from the footlights, lushly triumphed in

Montevideo and Brazil; but if she had money she

-159-

couldn't help scandalously spending it on tangodancers,

handouts, afterthetheater suppers, the generous gesture,

no, all on my bill. The managers gypped her. She

was afraid of nothing, never ashamed in the public eye

of the clatter of scandalized tongues, the headlines in

the afternoon papers.

When October split the husk off the old world

she remembered St. Petersburg, the coffins lurching

through the silent streets, the white faces, the clenched

fists that night in St. Petersburg, and danced the Marche

Slave

and waved red cheesecloth under the noses of the

Boston old ladies in Symphony Hall,

but when she went to Russia full of hope of a

school and work and a new life in freedom, it was too

enormous, it was too difficult: cold, vodka, lice, no

service in the hotels, new and old still piled pellmell

together, seedbed, and scrapheap, she hadn't the pa-

tience, her life had been too easy;

she picked up a yellowhaired poet

and brought him back

to Europe and the grand hotels.

Yessenin smashed up a whole floor of the Adlon

in Berlin in one drunken party, he ruined a suite at

the Continental in Paris. When he went back to Russia

he killed himself. It was too enormous, it was too diffi-

cult.

When it was impossible to raise any more money

for Art, for the crowds eating and drinking in the

hotel suites and the rent of Rolls-Royces and the board

of her pupils and disciples,

Isadora went down to the Riviera to write her

-160-

memoirs to scrape up some cash out of the American

public that had awakened after the war to the crassness

of materialism and the Greeks and scandal and Art,

and still had dollars to spend.

She hired a studio in Nice, but she could never

pay the rent. She'd quarreled with her millionaire.

Her jewels, the famous emerald, the ermine cloak, the

works of art presented by the artists had all gone into

the pawnshops or been seized by hotelkeepers. All she

had was the old blue drapes that had seen her great

triumphs, a redleather handbag, and an old furcoat

that was split down the back.

She couldn't stop drinking or putting her arms

round the neck of the nearest young man, if she got

any cash she threw a party or gave it away.

She tried to drown herself but an English naval

officer pulled her out of the moonlit Mediterranean.

One day at a little restaurant at Golfe Juan she

picked up a goodlooking young wop who kept a garage

and drove a little Bugatti racer.

Saying that she might want to buy the car, she

made him go to her studio to take her out for a ride;

her friends didn't want her to go, said he was

nothing but a mechanic, she insisted, she'd had a few

drinks (there was nothing left she cared for in the

world but a few drinks and a goodlooking young man);

she got in beside him and

she threw her heavilyfringed scarf round her neck

with a big sweep she had and

turned back and said,

with the strong California accent her French,

never lost:

Adieu, mes amis, je vais à la gloire.

The mechanic put his car in gear and started.

-161-

The heavy trailing scarf caught in a wheel, wound

tight. Her head was wrenched against the side of the

car. The car stopped instantly; her neck was broken,

her nose crushed, Isadora was dead.

NEWSREEL LIII

Bye bye blackbird

ARE YOU NEW YORK'S MOST BEAUTIFUL

GIRL STENOGRAPHER?

No one here can love and understand me

Oh what hard luck stories they all hand me

BRITAIN DECIDES TO GO IT ALONE

you too can quickly learn dancing at home without music

and without a partner . . . produces the same results as an

experienced masseur only quicker, easier and less expensive.

Remember only marriageable men in the full possession of

unusual physical strength will be accepted as the Graphic

Apollos

Make my bed and light the light

I'll arrive late to-night

WOMAN IN HOME SHOT AS BURGLAR

Grand Duke Here to Enjoy Himself

ECLIPSE FOUR SECONDS LATE

Downtown Gazers See Corona

others are more dressy being made of rich ottoman silks,

heavy satins, silk crepe or côte de cheval with ornamentation

of ostrich perhaps

MAD DOG PANIC IN PENN STATION

-162-

UNHAPPY WIFE TRIES TO DIE

the richly blended beauty of the finish, both interior and

exterior, can come only from the hand of an artist working

towards an ideal. Substitutes good normal solid tissue for that

disfiguring fat. He touches every point in the entire compass

of human need. It may look a little foolish in print but he can

show you how to grow brains. If you are a victim of physical

ill-being he can liberate you from pain. He can show you how

to dissolve marital or conjugal problems. He is an expert in

matters of sex

Blackbird bye bye

SKYSCRAPERS BLINK ON EMPTY STREETS

it was a very languid, a very pink and white Peggy Joyce

in a very pink and white boudoir who held out a small white

hand

MARGO DOWLING

When Margie got big enough she used to go across to

the station to meet Fred with a lantern dark winter nights

when he was expected to be getting home from the city on

the nine fourteen. Margie was very little for her age,

Agnes used to say, but her red broadcloth coat with the

fleece collar tickly round her ears was too small for her all

the same, and left her chapped wrists out nights when the

sleety wind whipped round the corner of the station and

the wire handle of the heavy lantern cut cold into her

hand. Always she went with a chill creeping down her

spine and in her hands and feet for fear Fred wouldn't

be himself and would lurch and stumble the way he some-

times did and be so red in the face and talk so awful. Mr.

Bemis the stoopshouldered station agent used to kid about

it with big Joe Hines the sectionhand who was often put-

-163-

tering around in the station at traintime, and Margie

would stand outside in order not to listen to them saying,

"Well, here's bettin' Fred Dowlin' comes in stinkin' again

tonight." It was when he was that way that he needed

Margie and the lantern on account of the plankwalk over

to the house being so narrow and slippery. When she was

a very little girl she used to think that it was because he

was so tired from the terrible hard work in the city that he

walked so funny when he got off the train but by the time

she was eight or nine Agnes had told her all about how

getting drunk was something men did and that they hadn't

ought to. So every night she felt the same awful feeling

when she saw the lights of the train coming towards her

across the long trestle from Ozone Park.

Sometimes he didn't come at all and she'd go back home

crying; but the good times he would jump springily off

the train, square in his big overcoat that smelt of pipes,

and swoop down on her and pick her up lantern and all:

"How's Daddy's good little girl?" He would kiss her

and she would feel so proudhappy riding along there and

looking at mean old Mr. Bemis from up there, and Fred's

voice deep in his big chest would go rumbling through his

muffler, "Goodnight, chief," and the yellowlighted win-

dows of the train would be moving and the red caterpil-

lar's eyes in its tail would get little and draw together as

the train went out of sight across the trestle towards Ham-

mels. She would bounce up and down on his shoulder and

feel the muscles of his arm hard like oars tighten against

her when he'd run with her down the plankwalk shouting

to Agnes, "Any supper left, girlie?" and Agnes would

come to the door grinning and wiping her hands on her

apron and the big pan of hot soup would be steaming on

the stove, and it would be so cozywarm and neat in the

kitchen, and they'd let Margie sit up till she was nodding

and her eyes were sandy and there was the sandman com-

ing in the door, listening to Fred tell about pocket billiards

-164-

and sweepstakes and racehorses and terrible fights in the

city. Then Agnes would carry her into bed in the cold

room and Fred would stand over her smoking his pipe

and tell her about shipwrecks at Fire Island when he was

in the Coast Guard, till the chinks of light coming in

through the door from the kitchen got more and more

blurred, and in spite of Margie's trying all the time to

keep awake because she was so happy listening to Fred's

burring voice, the sandman she'd tried to pretend had lost

the train would come in behind Fred, and she'd drop off.

As she got older and along in gradeschool at Rockaway

Park it got to be less often like that. More and more Fred

was drunk when he got off the train or else he didn't come

at all. Then it was Agnes who would tell her stories about

the old days and what fun it had been, and Agnes would

sometimes stop in the middle of a story to cry, about how

Agnes and Margie's mother had been such friends and

both of them had been salesladies at Siegel Cooper's at

the artificialflower counter and used to go to Manhattan

Beach, so much more refined than. Coney, Sundays, not to

the Oriental Hotel of course, that was too expensive, but

to a little beach near there, and how Fred was lifeguard

there. "You should have seen him in those days, with his

strong tanned limbs he was the handsomest man . . ."

"But he's handsome now, isn't he, Agnes?" Margie would

put in anxiously. "Of course, dearie, but you ought to have

seen him in those days." And Agnes would go on about

how lucky he was at the races and how many people he'd

saved from drowning and how all the people who owned

the concessions chipped in to give him a bonus every year

and how much money he always had in his pocket and a

wonderful laugh and was such a cheery fellow. "That

was the ruination of him," Agnes would say. "He never

could say no." And Agnes would tell about the wedding

and the orangeblossoms and the cake and how Margie's

mother Margery died when she was born. "She gave

-165-

her life for yours, never forget that"; it made Margie feel

dreadful, like she wasn't her own self, when Agnes said

that. And then one day when Agnes came out of work

there he'd been standing on the sidewalk wearing a derby

hat and all dressed in black and asking her to marry him

because she'd been Margery Ryan's best friend, and so

they were married, but Fred never got over it and never

could say no and that was why Fred took to drinking and

lost his job at Holland's and nobody would hire him on

any of the beaches on account of his fighting and drinking

and so they'd moved to Broad Channel but they didn't

make enough with bait and rowboats and an occasional

shoredinner so Fred had gotten a job in Jamaica in a

saloon keeping bar because he had such a fine laugh and

was so goodlooking and everybody liked him so. But that

was the ruination of him worse than ever. "But there's

not a finer man in the world than Fred Dowling when

he's himself. . . . Never forget that, Margie." And

they'd both begin to cry and Agnes would ask Margie if

she loved her as much as if she'd been her own mother

and Margie would cry and say, "Yes, Agnes darling."

"You must always love me," Agnes would say, "because

God doesn't seem to want me to have any little babies of

my own."

Margie had to go over on the train every day to go to

school at Rockaway Park. She got along well in the grade-

school and liked the teachers and the books and the sing-

ing but the children teased because her clothes were all

homemade and funnylooking and because she was a mick

and a Catholic and lived in a house built on stilts. After

she'd been Goldilocks in the school play one Christmas,

that was all changed and she began to have a better time

at school than at home.

At home there was always so much housework to do,

Agnes was always washing and ironing and scrubbing be-

cause Fred hardly ever brought in any money any more.

-166-

He'd lurch into the house drunk and dirty and smelling

of stale beer and whiskey and curse and grumble about the

food and why didn't Agnes ever have a nice piece of steak

any more for him like she used to when he got home from

the city and Agnes would break down, blubbering, "What

am I going to use for money?" Then he would call her

dirty names, and Margie would run into her bedroom and

slam the door and sometimes even pull the bureau across

it and get into bed and lie there shaking. Sometimes when

Agnes was putting breakfast on the table, always in a

fluster for fear Margie would miss the train to school,

Agnes would have a black eye and her face would be

swollen and puffy where he'd hit her and she'd have a

meek sorryforherself look Margie hated. And Agnes

would be muttering all the time she watched the cocoa and

condensed milk heating on the stove, "God knows I've

done my best and worked my fingers to the bone for him.

. . . Holy.saints of God, things can't go on like this."

All Margie's dreams were about running away.

In summer they would sometimes have had fun if it

hadn't been for always dreading that Fred would take a bit

too much. Fred would get the rowboats out of the boat-

house the first sunny day of spring and work like a demon

calking and painting them a fresh green and whistle as he

worked, or he would be up before day digging clams or

catching shiners for bait with a castingnet, and there was

money around and big pans of chowder Long Island style

and New England style simmering on the back of the

stove, and Agnes was happy and singing and always in a

bustle fixing shoredinners and sandwiches for fishermen,

and Margie would go out sometimes with fishingparties,

and Fred taught her to swim in the clear channel up under

the railroad bridge and took her with him barefoot over

the muddy flats clamming and after softshell crabs, and

sportsmen with fancy vests who came down to rent a boat

would often give her a quarter. When Fred was in a sober

-167-

spell it was lovely in summer, the warm smell of the

marshgrass, the freshness of the tide coming in through the

inlet, the itch of saltwater and sunburn, but then as soon

as he'd gotten a little money together Fred would get to

drinking and Agnes's eyes would be red all the time and

the business would go to pot. Margie hated the way

Agnes's face got ugly and red when she cried, she'd tell

herself that she'd never cry no matter what happened

when she grew up.

Once in a while during the good times Fred would say

he was going to give the family a treat and they'd get all

dressed up and leave the place with old man Hines, Joe

Hines's father, who had a wooden leg and big bushy white

whiskers, and go over on the train to the beach and walk

along the boardwalk to the amusementpark at Holland's.

It was too crowded and Margie would be scared of get-

ting something on her pretty dress and there was such a

glare and men and women with sunburned arms and legs

and untidy hair lying out in the staring sun with sand over

them, and Fred and Agnes would romp around in their

bathingsuits like the others. Margie was scared of the big

spuming surf crashing over her head, even when Fred held

her in his arms she was scared and then it was terrible he'd

swim so far out.

Afterwards they'd get back itchy into their clothes and

walk along the boardwalk shrilling with peanutwagons

and reeking with the smell of popcorn and saltwater taffy

and hotdogs and mustard and beer all mixed up with the

surf and the clanking roar of the rollercoaster and the

steamcalliope from the merrygoround and so many horrid

people pushing and shoving, stepping on your toes. She

was too little to see over them. It was better when Fred

hoisted her on his shoulder though she was too old to ride

on her father's shoulder in spite of being so small for her

age and kept pulling at her prettv paleblue frock to keep

it from getting above her knees.

-168-

What she liked at the beach was playing the game where

you rolled a little ball over the clean narrow varnished

boards into holes with numbers and there was a Jap there

in a clean starched white coat and shelves and shelves of

the cutest little things for prizes: teapots, little china men

that nodded their heads, vases for flowers, rows and rows

of the prettiest Japanese dolls with real eyelashes some

of them, and jars and jugs and pitchers. One time Margie

won a little teapot shaped like an elephant that she kept

for years. Fred and Agnes didn't seem to think much of

the little Jap who gave the prizes but Margie thought he

was lovely, his face was so smooth and he had such a funny

little voice and his lips and eyelids were so clearly marked

just like the dolls' and he had long black eyelashes too.

Margie used to think she'd like to have him to take to

bed with her like a doll. She said that and Agnes and Fred

laughed and laughed at her so that she felt awful ashamed.

But what she liked best at Holland's Beach was the

vaudeville theater. They'd go in there and the crowds and

laughs and racket would die away as the big padded doors

closed behind them. There'd be a movingpicture going on

when they went in. She didn't like that much, but what she

liked best in all the world were the illustrated songs that

came next, the pictures of lovely ladies and gentlemen in

colors like tinted flowers and such lovely dresses and big

hats and the words with pansies and forgetmenots around

them and the lady or gentleman singing them to the dark

theater. There were always boats on ripply streams and

ladies in lovely dresses being helped out of them, but not

like at Broad Channel where it was so glary and there was

nothing but mudflats and the slimysmelly piles and the

boatlanding lying on the ooze when the tide went out, but

lovely blue ripply rivers with lovely green banks and

weepingwillowtrees hanging over them. After that it was

vaudeville. There were acrobats and trained seals and men

in straw hats who told funny jokes and ladies that danced.

-169-

The Merry Widow Girls it was once, in their big black

hats tipped up so wonderfully on one side and their

sheathdresses and trains in blue and green and purple and

yellow and orange and red, and a handsome young man in

a cutaway coat waltzing with each in turn.

The trouble with going to Holland's Beach was that

Fred would meet friends there and keep going in through

swinging doors and coming back with his eyes bright and

a smell of whiskey and pickled onions on his breath, and

halfway through the good time, Margie would see that

worried meek look coming over Agnes's face, and then

she'd know that there would be no more fun that day. The

last time they all went over together to the beach they lost

Fred although they looked everywhere for him, and had

to go home without him. Agnes sobbed so loud that every-

body stared at her on the train and Ed Otis the conductor

who was a friend of Fred's came over and tried to tell her

not to take on so, but that only made Agnes sob the worse.

Margie was so ashamed she decided to run away or kill

herself as soon as she got home so that she wouldn't have

to face the people on the train ever again.

That time Fred didn't turn up the next day the way he

usually did. Joe Hines came in to say that a guy had told

him he'd seen Fred on a bat over in Brooklyn and that

he didn't think he'd come home for a while. Agnes made

Margie go to bed and she could hear her voice and Joe

Hines's in the kitchen talking low for hours. Margie woke

up with a start to find Agnes in her nightgown getting into

bed with her. Her cheeks were' fiery hot and she kept say-

ing, "Imagine his nerve and him a miserable trackwalker.

. . . Margie. . . . We can't stand this life any more, can

we, little girl?"

"I bet he'd come here fussing, the dreadful old thing,"

said Margie.

"Something like that. . . . Oh, it's too awful, I can't

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stand it any more. God knows I've worked my fingers to

the bone."

Margie suddenly came out with, "Well, when the cat's

away the mice will play," and was surprised at how long

Agnes laughed though she was crying too.

In September just when Agnes was fixing up Margie's

dresses for the opening of school, the rentman came round

for the quarter's rent. All they'd heard from Fred was a

letter with a fivedollar bill in it. He said he'd gotten into a

fight and gotten arrested and spent two weeks in jail but

that he had a job now and would be home as soon as he'd

straightened things out a little. But Margie knew they

owed the five dollars and twelve dollars more for gro-

ceries. When Agnes'came back into the kitchen from talk-

ing to the rentman with her face streaky and horrid with

crying, she told Margie that they were going into the city

to live. "I always told Fred Dowling the day would come

when I couldn't stand it any more. Now he can make his

own home after this."

It was a dreadful day when they got their two bags and

the awful old dampeaten trunk up to the station with the

help of Joe Hines, who was always doing odd jobs for

Agnes when Fred was away, and got on the train that took

them into Brooklyn. They went to Agnes's father's and

mother's, who lived in the back of a small paperhanger's

store on Fulton Street under the el. Old Mr. Fisher was

a paperhanger and plasterer and the whole house smelt of

paste and turpentine and plaster. He was a small little

grey man and Mrs. Fisher was just like him except that

he had drooping grey mustaches and she didn't. They fixed

up a cot for Margie in the parlor but she could see that

they thought she was a nuisance. She didn't like them

either and hated it in Brooklyn.

It was a relief when Agnes said one evening when she

came home before supper looking quite stylish, Margie

thought, in her city clothes, that she'd taken a position as

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cook with a family on Brooklyn Heights and that she was

going to send Margie to the Sisters' this winter.

Margie was a little scared all the time she was at the

convent, from the minute she went in the door of the grey-

stone vestibule with a whitemarble figure standing up in

the middle of it. Margie hadn't ever had much religion,

and the Sisters were scary in their dripping black with their

faces and hands looking so pale always edged with white

starched stuff, and the big dark church full of candles and

the catechismclass and confession, and the way the little

bell rang at mass for everybody to close their eyes when

the Saviour came down among angels and doves in a glare

of amber light onto the altar. It was funny, after the way

Agnes had let her run round the house without any clothes

on, that when she took her bath once a week the Sister

made her wear a sheet right in the tub and even soap her-

self under it.

The winter was a long slow climb to Christmas, and

after all the girls had talked about what they'd do at

Christmas so much Margie's Christmas was awful, a late

gloomy dinner with Agnes and the old people and only

one or two presents. Agnes looked pale, she was deadtired

from getting the Christmas dinner for the people she

worked for. She did bring a net stocking full of candy and

a pretty goldenhaircd dolly with eyes that opened and

closed, but Margie felt like crying. Not even a tree. Al-

ready sitting at the table she was busy making up things

to tell the other girls anyway.

Agnes was just kissing her goodnight and getting ready

putting on her little worn furpiece to go back to Brooklyn

Heights when Fred came in very much under the influence

and wanted to take them all out on a party. Of course they

wouldn't go and he went away mad and Agnes went away

crying, and Margie lay awake half the night on the cot

made up for her in the old peoples' parlor thinking how

awful it was to be poor and have a father like that.

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It was dreary, too, hanging round the old people's house

while the vacation lasted. There was no place to play and

they scolded her for the least little thing. It was bully to

get back to the convent where there was a gym and she

could play basketball and giggle with the other girls at

recess. The winter term began to speed up towards Easter.

Just before, she took her first communion. Agnes made the

white dress for her and all the Sisters rolled up their eyes

and said how pretty and pure she looked with her golden

curls and blue eyes like an angel, and Minette Hardy, an

older girl with a snubnose, got a crush on her and used to

pass her chocolatepeppermints in the playground wrapped

in bits of paper with little messages scrawled on them: To

Goldilocks with love from her darling Minette, and things

like that.

She hated it when commencement came, and there was

nothing about summer plans she could tell the other girls.

She grew fast that summer and got gawky and her breasts

began to show. The stuffy gritty hot weather dragged on

endlessly at the Fishers'. It was awful there cooped up

with the old people. Old Mrs. Fisher never let her forget

that she wasn't really Agnes's little girl and that she

thought it was silly of her daughter to support the child

of a noaccount like Fred. They tried to get her to do

enough housework to pay for her keep and every day there

were scoldings and tears and tantrums.

Margie was certainly happy when Agnes came in one

day and said that she had a new job and that she and

Margie would go over to New York to live. She jumped

up and down yelling, "Goody goody. . . . Oh, Agnes,

we're going to get rich.""A fat chance," said Agnes, "but

anyway it'll be better than being a servant."

They gave their trunks and bags to an expressman and

went over to New York on the el and then uptown on the

subway. The streets of the uptown West Side looked

amazingly big and wide and sunny to Margie. They were

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going to live with the Francinis in a little apartment on

the corner on the same block with the bakery they ran on

Amsterdam Avenue where Agnes was going to work. They

had a small room for the two of them but it had a canary-

bird in a cage and a lot of plants in the window and the

Francinis were both of them fat and jolly and they had

cakes with icing on them at every meal. Mrs. Francini was

Grandma Fisher's sister.

They didn't let Margie play with the other children on

the block; the Francinis said it wasn't a safe block for little

girls. She only got out once a week and that was Sunday

evening, everybody always had to go over to the Drive

and walk up to Grant's Tomb and back. It made her legs

ache to walk so slowly along the crowded streets the way

the Francinis did. All summer she wished for a pair of

rollerskates, but the way the Francinis talked and the way

the nuns talked about dangers made her scared to go out

on the streets alone. What she was so scared of she didn't

quite know. She liked it, though, helping Agnes and the

Francinis in the bakery.

That fall she went back to the convent. One afternoon

soon after she'd gone back from the Christmas holidays

Agnes came over to see her; the minute Margie went in

the door of the visitors' parlor she saw that Agnes's eyes

were red and asked what was the matter. Things had

changed dreadfully at the bakery. Poor Mr. Francini had

fallen dead in the middle of his baking from a stroke and

Mrs. Francini was going out to the country to live with

Uncle Joe Fisher. "And then there's something else,"

Agnes said and smiled and blushed. "But I can't tell you

about it now. You mustn't think that poor Agnes is bad

and wicked but I couldn't stand it being so lonely." Margie

jumped up and down. "Oh, goody, Fred's come back."

"No, darling, it's not that," Agnes said and kissed her and

went away.

That Easter Margie had to stay at the convent all

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through the vacation. Agnes wrote she didn't have any

place to take her just then. There were other girls there

and it was rather fun. Then one day Agnes came over to

get her to go out, bringing in a box right from the store a

new darkblue dress and a little straw hat with pink flowers

on it. It was lovely the way the tissuepaper rustled when

she unpacked them. Margie ran up to the dormitory and

put on the dress with her heart pounding, it was the pret-

tiest and grownupest dress she'd ever had. She was only

twelve but from what little she could see of herself in the

tiny mirrors they were' allowed it made her look quite

grownup. She ran down the empty greystone stairs, tripped

and fell into the arms of Sister Elizabeth. "Why such a

hurry?""My mother's come to take me out on a party

with my father and this is my new dress.""How nice,"

said Sister Elizabeth, "but you mustn't . . ." Margie was

already off down the passage to the parlor and was jump-

ing up and down in front of Agnes hugging and kissing

her. "It's the prettiest dress I ever had." Going over to

New York on the elevated Margie couldn't talk about

anything else but the dress.

Agnes said they were going to lunch at a restaurant

where theatrical people went. "How wonderful. I've never

had lunch in a real restaurant. . . . He must have made

a lot of money and gotten rich.""He makes lots of

money," said Agnes in a funny stammering way as they

were walking west along Thirtyeighth Street from the el-

station.

Instead of Fred it was a tall dark man with a dignified

manner and a long straight nose who got up from the table

to meet them. " Margie," said Agnes, "this is Frank Man-

deville." Margie never let on she hadn't thought all the

time that that was how it would be.

The actor shook hands with her and bowed as if she

was a grownup young lady. " Aggie never told me she was

such a beauty . . . what eyes . . . what hair!" he said in

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his solemn voice. They had a wonderful lunch and after-

wards they went to Keith's and sat in orchestra seats.

Margie was breathless and excited at being with a real

actor. He'd said that the next day he was leaving for a

twelveweeks tour with a singing and piano act and that

Agnes was going with him. "And after that we'll come

back and make a home for my little girl," said Agnes.

Margie was so excited that it wasn't till she was back in bed

in the empty dormitory at the convent that she doped out

that what it would mean for her was she'd have to stay at

the Sisters' all summer.

The next fall she left the convent for good and went to

live with Mr. and Mrs. Mandeville, as they called them-

selves, in two front rooms they sublet from a chiropractor.

It was a big old brownstone house with a high stoop and

steps way west on Seventyninth Street. Margie loved it

there and got on fine with the theater people, all so well-

dressed and citifiedlooking, who lived in the apartments

upstairs. Agnes said she must be careful not to get spoiled,

because everybody called attention to her blue eyes and

her curls like Mary Pickford's and her pert frozenface

way of saying funny things.

Frank Mandeville always slept till twelve o'clock and

Agnes and Margie would have breakfast alone quite early,

talking in whispers so as not to wake him and looking out

of the window at the trucks and cabs and movingvans pass-

ing in the street outside and Agnes would tell Margie

about vaudeville houses and onenight stands and all about

how happy she was and what a free and easy life it was

and so different from the daily grind at Broad Channel

and how she'd first met Frank Mandeville when he was

broke and blue and almost ready to turn on the gas. He

used to come into the bakery every day for his breakfast at

two in the afternoon just when all the other customers had

gone. He lived around the corner on Onehundredand-

fourth Street. When he was completely flat Agnes had let

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him charge his meals and had felt so sorry for him on

account of his being so gentlemanly about it and out of a

job, and then he got pleurisy and was threatened with t.b.

and she was so lonely and miserable that she didn't care

what anybody thought, she'd just moved in with him to

nurse him and had stayed ever since, and now they were

Mr. and Mrs. Mandeville to everybody and he was mak-

ing big money with his act The Musical Mandevilles. And

Margie would ask about Frank Mandeville's partners,

Florida Schwartz, a big hardvoiced woman with titian

hair, "Of course she dyes it," Agnes said, "henna," and her

son, a horrid waspwaisted young man of eighteen who paid

no attention to Margie at all. The chiropractor downstairs

whom everybody called Indian was Florida's affinity and

that was why they'd all come to live in his house. "Stage-

people are odd but I think they have hearts of gold,"

Agnes would say.

The Musical Mandevilles used to practice afternoons in

the front room where there was a piano. They played all

sorts of instruments and sang songs and Mannie whose

stage name was Eddy Keller did an eccentric dance and an

imitation of Hazel Dawn. It all seemed wonderful to

Margie, and she was so excited she thought she'd die when

Mr. Mandeville said suddenly one day when they were all

eating supper brought in from a delicatessen that the child

must take singing and dancing lessons.

"You'll be wasting your money, Frank," said Mannie

through a chickenbone he was gnawing.

" Mannie, you're talking out of turn," snapped Florida.

"Her father was a great one for singing and dancing in

the old days," put in Agnes in her breathless timid manner.

A career was something everybody had in New York and Margie decided she had one too. She walked down

Broadway every day to her lesson in a studio in the same

building as the Lincoln Square Theater. In October The

Musical Mandevilles played there two weeks. Almost

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every day Agnes would come for her after the lesson and

they'd have a sandwich and a glass of milk in a dairy lunch

and then go to see the show. Agnes could never get over

how pretty and young Mrs. Schwartz looked behind the

footlights and how sad and dignified Frank looked when

he came in in his operacloak.

During the winter Agnes got a job too, running an

artistic tearoom just off Broadway on Seventysecond Street,

with a Miss Franklyn, a redhaired lady who was a theoso-

phist and was putting in the capital. They all worked so

hard they only met in the evenings when Frank and

Florida and Mannie would be eating a bite in a hurry

before going off to their theater.

The Musical Mandevilles were playing Newark the

night Margie first went on. She was to come out in the

middle of an Everybody's Doing It number rolling a

hoop, in a blue muslin dress she didn't like because it made

her look about six and she thought she ought to look

grownup to go on the stage, and do a few steps of a ragtime

dance and then curtsy like they had taught her at the

convent and run off with her hoop. Frank had made her

rehearse it again and again. She'd often burst out crying in

the rehearsals on account of the mean remarks Mannie

made.

She was dreadfully scared and her heart pounded wait-

ing for the cue, but it was over before she knew what had

happened. She had run on from the grimy wings into the

warm glittery glare of the stage. They'd told her not to

look out into the audience. Just once she peeped out into

the blurry lightpowdered cave of ranked white faces. She

forgot part of her song and skimped her business and cried

in the dressingroom after the act was over, but Agnes came

round back saying she'd been lovely, and Frank was smil-

ing, and even Mannie couldn't seem to think of anything

mean to say; so the next time she went on her heart wasn't

pounding so hard. Every littlest thing she did got an

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answer from the vague cave of faces. By the end of the

week she was getting such a hand that Frank decided to

run the Everybody's Doing It number just before the

finale.

Florida Schwartz had said that Margery was too vulgar

a given name for the stage, so she was billed as Little

Margo.

All winter and the next summer they toured on the

Keith circuit, sleeping in pullmans and in all kinds of

hotels and going to Chicago and Milwaukee and Kansas City and so many towns that Margie couldn't remember

their names. Agnes came along as wardrobemistress and

attended to the transportation and fetched and carried for

everybody. She was always washing and ironing and heat-

ing up canned soup on an alcohol stove. Margie got to be

ashamed of how shabby Agnes looked on the street beside

Florida Schwartz. Whenever she met other stagechildren

and they asked her who she thought the best matinee idol

was, she'd answer Frank Mandeville.

When the war broke out The Musical Mandevilles were

back in New York looking for new bookings. One evening

Frank was explaining his plan to make the act a real head-

liner by turning it into a vestpocket operetta, when he and

the Schwartzes got to quarreling about the war. Frank

said the Mandevilles were descended from a long line of

French nobility and that the Germans were barbarian swine

and had no idea of art. The Schwartzes blew up and said

that the French were degenerates and not to be trusted in

money matters and that Frank was holding out receipts

on them. They made such a racket that the other boarders

banged on the wall and a camelfaced lady came up from

the basement wearing a dressinggown spattered with red

and blue poppies and with her hair in curlpapers to tell

them to keep quiet. Agnes cried and Frank in a ringing

voice ordered the Schwartzes to leave the room and not to

darken his door again, and Margie got an awful fit of

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giggling. The more Agnes scolded at her the more she

giggled. It wasn't until Frank took her in the arms of his

rakishlytailored checked suit and stroked her hair and her

forehead that she was able to quiet down. She went to bed

that night still feeling funny and breathless inside with

the whiff of bayrum and energine and Egyptian cigarettes

that had teased her nose when she leaned against his chest.

That fall it was hard times again, vaudeville bookings

were hard to get and Frank didn't have a partner for his

act. Agnes went back to Miss Franklyn's teashop and

Margie had to give up her singing and dancing lessons.

They moved into one room, with a curtained cubicle for

Margie to sleep in.

October was very warm that year. Margie was miserable

hanging round the house all day, the steamheat wouldn't

turn off altogether and it was too hot even with the win-

dow open. She felt tired all the time. The house smelled

of frizzing hair and beautycreams and shavingsoap. The

rooms were all rented to theater people and there was no

time of the day that you could go up to the bathroom

without meeting heavyeyed people in bathrobes or kimonos

on the stairs. There was something hot and sticky in the

way the men looked at Margie when' she brushed past

them in the hall that made her feel awful funny.

She loved Frank best of anybody. Agnes was always

peevish, in a hurry to go to work or else deadtired just

back from work, but Frank always spoke to her seriously

as if she were a grownup young lady. The rare afternoons

when he was in, he coached her on elocution and told her

stories about the time he'd toured with Richard Mansfield.

He'd give her bits of parts to learn and she had to recite

them to him when he came home. When she didn't know

them, he'd get very cold and stride up and down and say,

"Well, it's up to you, my dear, if you want a career you

must work for it. . . . You have the godgiven gifts . . .

but without hard work they are nothing. . . . I suppose

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you want to work in a tearoom like poor Agnes all your

life."

Then she'd run up to him and throw her arms round

his neck and kiss him and say, "Honest, Frank, I'll work

terrible hard." He'd be all flustered when she did that or

mussed his hair and would say, "Now, child, no liberties,"

and suggest they go out for a walk up Broadway. Some-

times when he had a little money they'd go skating at the

St. Nicholas rink. When they spoke of Agnes they always

called her poor Agnes as if she were a little halfwitted.

There was something a little hick about Agnes.

But most of the time Margie just loafed or read maga-

zines in the room or lay on the bed and felt the hours

dribble away so horribly slowly. She'd dream about boys

taking her out to the theater and to restaurants and what

kind of a house she would live in when she became a great

actress, and the jewelry she'd have, or else she'd remember

how Indian the chiropractor had kneaded her back the

time she had the sick headache. He was strong and brown

and wiry in his shirtsleeves working on her back with his

bigknuckled hands. It was only his eyes made her feel

funny; eyes like Indian's would suddenly be looking at

her when she was walking along Broadway, she'd hurry

and wouldn't dare turn back to see if they were still look-

ing, and get home all breathless and scared.

One warm afternoon in the late fall, Margie was lying

on the bed reading a copy of the Smart Set Frank had

bought that Agnes had made her promise not to read. She

heard a shoe creak and jumped up popping the magazine

under the pillow. Frank was standing in the doorway look-

ing at her. She didn't need to look at him twice to know

that he'd been drinking. His eyes had that look and there

was a flush on his usually white face. "Haha, caught you

that time, little Margo," he said.

"I bet you think I don't now my part," said Margie.

"I wish I didn't know mine," he said. "I've just signed

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the lousiest contract I ever signed in my life. . . . The

world will soon see Frank Mandeville on the filthy stage

of a burlesque house." He sat down on the bed with his

felt hat still on his head and put a hand over his eyes.

"God, I'm tired. . . ." Then he looked up at her with his

eyes red and staring. "Little Margo, you don't know what

it is yet to buck the world."

Margie said with a little giggle that she knew plenty

and sat down beside him on the bed and took his hat off

and smoothed his sweaty hair back from his forehead.

Something inside of her was scared of doing it, but she

couldn't help it.

"Let's go skating, Frank, it's so awful to be in the house

all day."

"Everything's horrible," he said. Suddenly he pulled

her to him and kissed her lips. She felt dizzy with the

smell of bayrum and cigarettes and whiskey and cloves

and armpits that came from him. She pulled away from

him. "Frank, don't, don't." He had tight hold of her. She

could feel his hands trembling, his heart thumping under

his vest. He had grabbed her to him with one arm and was

pulling at her clothes with the other. His voice wasn't like

Frank's voice at all. "I won't hurt you. I won't hurt you,

child. Just forget. It's nothing. I can't stand it any more."

The voice went on and on whining in her ears. "Please.

Please."

She didn't dare yell for fear the people in the house

might come. She clenched her teeth and punched and

scratched at the big wetlipped face pressing down hers.

She felt weak like in a dream. His knee was pushing her

legs apart.

When it was over, she wasn't crying. She didn't care. He

was walking up and down the room sobbing. She got up

and straightened her dress.

He came over to her and shook her by the shoulders.

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"If you ever tell anybody I'll kill you, you damn little

brat. . . . Are you bleeding?" She shook her head.

He went over to the washstand and washed his face.

"I couldn't help it, I'm not a saint. . . . I've been

under a terrible strain."

Margie heard Agnes coming, the creak of her steps on

the stairs. Agnes was puffing as she fumbled with the door-

knob. "Why, what on earth's the matter?" she said, coming

in all out of breath.

" Agnes, I've had to scold your child," Frank was say-

ing in his tragedy voice. "I come in deadtired and find the

child reading that filthy magazine. . . . I won't have it.

. . . Not while you are under my protection."

"Oh, Margie, you promised you wouldn't. . . . But

what did you do to your face?"

Frank came forward into the center of the room, pat-

ting his face all over with the towel. " Agnes, I have a con-

fession to make. . . . I got into an altercation downtown.

I've had a very trying day downtown. My nerves have

all gone to pieces. What will you think of me when I tell

you I've signed a contract with a burlesque house?"

"Why, that's fine," said Agnes. We certainly need the

money. . . . How much will you be making?"

"It's shameful . . . twenty a week."

"Oh, I'm so relieved . . . I thought something terrible

had happened. Maybe Margie can start her lessons again."

"If she's a good girl and doesn't waste her time reading

trashy magazines."

Margie was trembly like jelly inside. She felt herself

breaking out in a cold sweat. She ran upstairs to the bath-

room and doublelocked the door and stumbled to the

toilet and threw up. Then she sat a long time on the edge

of the bathtub. All she could think of was to run away.

But she couldn't seem to get to run away. At Christmas

some friends of Frank's got her a job in a children's play.

She made twentyfive dollars a performance and was the

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pet of all the society ladies. It made her feel quite stuckup.

She almost got caught with the boy who played the Knight

doing it behind some old flats when the theater was dark

during a rehearsal.

It was awful living in the same room with Frank and

Agnes. She hated them now. At night she'd lie awake with

her eyes hot in the stuffy cubicle and listen to them. She

knew that they were trying to be quiet, that they didn't

want her to hear, but she couldn't help straining her ears

and holding her breath when the faint rattle of springs

from the rickety old iron bed they slept in began. She

slept late after those nights in a horrible deep sleep she

never wanted to wake up from. She began to be saucy and

spiteful with Agnes and would never do anything she said.

It was easy to make Agnes cry. "Drat the child," she'd

say, wiping her eyes. "I can't do anything with her. It's

that little bit of success that went to her head."

That winter she began to find Indian in the door of his

consultationroom when she went past, standing there

brown and sinewy in his white coat, always wanting to chat

or show her a picture or something. He'd even offer her

treatments free, but she'd look right into those funny blue-

black eyes of his and kid him along. Then one day she

went into the office when there were no patients and sat

down on his knee without saying a word.

But the boy she liked best in the house was a Cuban

named Tony Garrido, who played the guitar for two

South Americans who danced the maxixe in a Broadway

cabaret. She used to pass him on the stairs and knew all

about it and decided she had a crush on him long before

they ever spoke. He looked so young with his big brown

eyes and his smooth oval face a very light coffeecolor with

a little flush on the cheeks under his high long cheekbones.

She used to wonder if he was the same color all over. He

had polite bashful manners and a low grownup voice. The

first time he spoke to her, one spring evening when she

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was standing on the stoop wondering desperately what she

could do to keep from going up to the room, she knew he

was going to fall for her. She kidded him and asked him

what he put on his eyelashes to make them so black. He

said it was the same thing that made her hair so pretty

and golden and asked her to have an icecream soda with

him.

Afterwards they walked on the Drive. He'talked Eng-

lish fine with a little accent that Margie thought was very

distinguished. Right away they'd stopped kidding and

he was telling her how homesick he was for Havana and

how crazy he was to get out of New York, and she was

telling him what an awful life she led and how all the men

in the house were always pinching her and jostling her on

the stairs, and how she'd throw herself in the river if she

had to go on living in one room with Agnes and Frank

Mandeville. And as for that Indian, she wouldn't let him

touch her not if he was the last man in the world.

She didn't get home until it was time for Tony to go

downtown to his cabaret. Instead of supper they ate some

more icecream sodas. Margie went back happy as a lark.

Coming out of the drugstore, she'd heard a woman say to

her friend, "My, what a handsome young couple."

Of course Frank and Agnes raised Cain. Agnes cried and

Frank lashed himself up into a passion and said he'd

punch the damn greaser's head in if he so much as laid a

finger on a pretty, pure American girl. Margie yelled out

that she'd do what she damn pleased and said everything

mean she could think of. She'd decided that the thing for

her to do was to marry Tony and run away to Cuba with

him.

Tony didn't seem to like the idea of getting married

much, but she'd go up to his little hall bedroom as soon

as Frank was out of the house at noon and wake Tony up

and tease him and pet him. He'd want to make love to

her but she wouldn't let him. The first time she fought

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him off he broke down and cried and said it was an insult

and that in Cuba men didn't allow women to act like that.

"It's the first time in my life a woman has refused my

love."

Margie said she didn't care, not till they were married

and had gotten out of this awful place. At last one after-

noon she teased him till he said all right. She put her hair

up on top of her head and put on her most grownuplook-

ing dress and they went down to the marriagebureau on

the subway. They were both of them scared to death when

they had to go up to the clerk; he was twentyone and she

said she was nineteen and got away with it. She'd stolen

the money out of Agnes's purse to pay for the license.

She almost went crazy the weeks she had to wait for

Tony to finish out his contract. Then one day in May,

when she tapped on his bedroom door he showed her two

hundred dollars in bills he'd saved up and said, "Today

we get married. . . . Tomorrow we sail for La 'Avana.

We can make very much money there. You will dance and

I will sing and play the guitar." He made the gesture of

playing the guitar with the thinpointed fingers of one of

his small hands. Her heart started beating hard. She ran

downstairs. Frank had already gone out. She scribbled a

note to Agnes on the piece of cardboard that had come

back from the laundry in one of Frank's boiled shirts:

AGNES DARLING:

Don't be mad. Tony and I got married today and we're

going to Havana, Cuba, to live. Tell Father if he comes

around. I'll write lots. Love to Frank.

Your grateful daughter,

MARGERY

Then she threw her clothes into an English pigskin suit-

case of Frank's that he'd just got back from the hockshop

and ran down the stairs three at a time. Tony was waiting

for her on the stoop, pale and trembling with his guitar-

-186-

case and his suitcase beside him. "I do not care for the

money. Let's take a taxi," he said.

In the taxi she grabbed his hand, it was icy cold. At City

Hall he was so fussed he forgot all his English and she

had to do everything. They borrowed a ring from the

justice of the peace. It was over in a minute, and they were

back in the taxi again going uptown to a hotel. Margie

never could remember afterwards what hotel it was, only

that they'd looked so fussed that the clerk wouldn't believe

they were married until she showed him the marriageli-

cense, a big sheet of paper all bordered with forgetmenots.

When they got up to the room they kissed each other in a

hurry and washed up to go out to a show. First they went

to Shanley's to dinner. Tony ordered expensive cham-

pagne and they both got to giggling on it.

He kept telling her what a rich city La 'Avana was and

how the artists were really appreciated there and rich men

would pay him fifty, one hundred dollars a night to play

at their parties, "And with you, darling Margo, it will be

two three six time that much. . . . And we shall rent a

fine house in the Vedado, very exclusive section, and serv-

ants very cheap there, and you will be like a queen. You

will see I have many friends there, many rich men like me

very much." Margie sat back in her chair, looking at the

restaurant and the welldressed ladies and gentlemen and

the waiters so deferential and the silver dishes everything

came in and at Tony's long eyelashes brushing his pink

cheek as he talked about how warm it was and the cool

breeze off the sea, and the palms and the roses, and parrots

and singing birds in cages, and how everybody spent

money in La 'Avana. It seemed the only happy day she'd

ever had in her life.

When they took the boat the next day, Tony only had

enough money to buy secondclass passages. They went over

to Brooklyn on the el to save taxifare. Margie had to carry

-187-

both bags up the steps because Tony said he had a head-

ache and was afraid of dropping his guitarcase.

NEWSREEL LIV

there was nothing significant about the morning's trading.

The first hour consisted of general buying and selling to even

up accounts, but soon after eleven o'clock prices did less fluc-

tuating and gradually firmed

TIMES SQUARE PATRONS LEFT HALF SHAVED

Will Let Crop Rot In Producers' Hands Unless Prices Drop

RUSSIAN BARONESS SUICIDE AT MIAMI

. . . the kind of a girl that men forget

Just a toy to enjoy for a while

Coolidge Pictures Nation Prosperous Under His Policies

HUNT JERSEY WOODS FOR ROVING LEOPARD

PIGWOMAN SAW SLAYING

It had to be done and I did it, says Miss Ederle

FORTY-TWO INDICTED IN FLORIDA DEALS

Saw a Woman Resembling Mrs. Hall Berating Couple Near

Murder Scene, New Witness Says

several hundred tents and other light shelters put up by

campers on a hill south of Front Street, which overlooks

Hempstead Harbor, were laid in rows before the tornado as

grass falls before a scythe

When they play Here comes the bride.

You'll stand outside

-188-

3000 AMERICANS FOUND PENNILESS IN PARIS

I am a poor girl

My fortune's been sad

I always was courted

By the wagoner's lad

NINE DROWNED IN UPSTATE FLOODS

SHEIK SINKING

Rudolph Valentino, noted screen star, collapsed suddenly

yesterday in his apartment at the Hotel Ambassador. Several

hours later he underwent

ADAGIO DANCER

The nineteenyearold son of a veterinary in Cas-

tellaneta in the south of Italy was shipped off to

America like a lot of other unmanageable young Ital-

ians when his parents gave up trying to handle him, to

sink or swim and maybe send a few lire home by inter-

national postal moneyorder. The family was through

with him. But Rodolfo Guglielmi wanted to make

good.

He got a job as assistant gardener in Central Park

but that kind of work was the last thing he wanted to

do; he wanted to make good in the brightlights; money

burned his pockets.

He hung around cabarets doing odd jobs, sweep-

ing out for the waiters, washing cars; he was lazy

handsome wellbuilt slender goodtempered and vain;

he was a born tangodancer.

Lovehungry women thought he was a darling. He

began to get engagements dancing the tango in ball-

rooms and cabarets; he teamed up with a girl named

-189-

Jean Acker on a vaudeville tour and took the name of

Rudolph Valentino.

Stranded on the Coast he headed for Hollywood,

worked for a long time as an extra for five dollars a

day; directors began to notice he photographed well.

He got his chance in The Four Horsemen

and became the gigolo of every woman's dreams.

Valentino spent his life in the colorless glare of

klieg lights, in stucco villas obstructed with bricabrac

oriental rugs tigerskins, in the bridalsuites of hotels, in

silk bathrobes in private cars.

He was always getting into limousines or getting

out of limousines,

or patting the necks of fine horses.

Wherever he went the sirens of the motorcyclecops

screeched ahead of him

flashlights flared,

the streets were jumbled with hysterical faces,

waving hands, crazy eyes; they stuck out their auto-

graphbooks, yanked his buttons off, cut a tail off his

admirablytailored dress suit; they stole his hat and

pulled at his necktie; his valets removed young women

from under his bed; all night in nightclubs and caba-

rets actresses leching for stardom made sheepseyes at

him under their mascaraed lashes.

He wanted to make good under the glare of the

milliondollar searchlights

of El Dorado:

the Sheik, the Son of the Sheik;

personal appearances.

He married his old vaudeville partner, divorced

her, married the adopted daughter of a millionaire,

-190-

went into lawsuits with the producers who were debas-

ing the art of the screen, spent a million dollars on one

European trip;

he wanted to make good in the brightlights.

When the Chicago Tribune called him a pink

powderpuff

and everybody started wagging their heads over

a slavebracelet he wore that he said his wife had given

him and his taste for mushy verse of which he pub-

lished a small volume called Daydreams and the whis-

pers grew about the testimony in his divorce case that

he and his first wife had never slept together,

it broke his heart.

He tried to challenge the Chicago Tribune to a

duel;

he wanted to make good

in heman twofisted broncobusting pokerplaying

stockjuggling America. (He was a fair boxer and had

a good seat on a horse, he loved the desert like the

sheik and was tanned from the sun of Palm Springs.)

He broke down in his suite in the Hotel Ambassador

in New York: gastric ulcer.

When the doctors cut into his elegantlymolded

body they found that peritonitis had begun; the ab-

dominal cavity contained a large amount of fluid and

food particles; the viscera were coated with a greenish-

grey film; a round hole a centimeter in diameter was

seen in the anterior wall of the stomach; the tissue of

the stomach for one and onehalf centimeters immedi-

ately surrounding the perforation was necrotic. The

appendix was inflamed and twisted against the small

intestine.

When he came to from the ether the first thing

-191-

he said was, "Well, did I behave like a pink powder-

puff?"

His expensivelymassaged actor's body fought peri-

tonitis for six days.

The switchboard at the hospital was swamped with

calls, all the corridors were piled with flowers, crowds

filled the street outside, filmstars who claimed they

were his betrothed entrained for New York.

Late in the afternoon a limousine drew up at the

hospital door (where the grimyfingered newspapermen

and photographers stood around bored tired hoteyed

smoking too many cigarettes making trips to the nearest

speak exchanging wisecracks and deep dope waiting for

him to die in time to make the evening papers) and a

woman, who said she was a maid employed by a dancer

who was Valentino's first wife, alighted. She delivered

to an attendant an envelope addressed to the filmstar

and inscribed From Jean, and a package. The package

contained a white counterpane with lace ruffles and the

word Rudy embroidered in the four corners. This was

accompanied by a pillowcover to match over a blue silk

scented cushion.

Rudolph Valentino was only thirtyone when he

died.

His managers planned to make a big thing of his

highlypublicized funeral but the people in the streets

were too crazy.

While he lay in state in a casket covered with a

cloth of gold, tens of thousands of men, women, and

children packed the streets outside. Hundreds were

trampled, had their feet hurt by policehorses. In the

muggy rain the cops lost control. Jammed masses

-192-

stampeded under the clubs and the rearing hoofs of

the horses. The funeral chapel was gutted, men and

women fought over a flower, a piece of wallpaper, a

piece of the broken plateglass window. Showwindows

were burst in. Parked cars were overturned and

smashed. When finally the mounted police after re-

peated charges beat the crowd off Broadway, where

traffic was tied up for two hours, they picked up

twentyeight separate shoes, a truckload of umbrellas,

papers, hats, tornoff sleeves. All the ambulances in

that part of the city were busy carting off women who'd

fainted, girls who'd been stepped on. Epileptics threw

fits. Cops collected little groups of abandoned chil-

dren.

The fascisti sent a guard of honor and the anti-

fascists drove them off. More rioting, cracked skulls,

trampled feet. When the public was barred from the

undertaking parlors hundreds of women groggy with

headlines got in to view the poor body

claiming to be exdancingpartners, old playmates,

relatives from the old country, filmstars; every few

minutes a girl fainted in front of the bier and was re-

vived by the newspapermen who put down her name

and address and claim to notice in the public prints.

Frank E. Campbell's undertakers and pallbearers, dig-

nified wearers of black broadcloth and tackersup of

crape, were on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Even the boss had his fill of publicity that time.

It was two days before the cops could clear the

streets enough to let the flowerpieces from Hollywood

be brought in and described in the evening papers.

The church service was more of a success. The

policecommissioner barred the public for four blocks

round.

-193-

Many notables attended.

America's Sweetheart sobbing bitterly in a small

black straw with a black band and a black bow behind,

in black georgette over black with a white lace collar

and white lace cuffs followed the coffin that was

covered by a blanket of pink roses

sent by a filmstar who appeared at the funeral

heavily veiled and swooned and had to be taken back

to her suite at the Hotel Ambassador after she had

shown the reporters a message allegedly written by one

of the doctors alleging that Rudolph Valentino had

spoken of her at the end

as his bridetobe.

A young woman committed suicide in London.

Relatives arriving from Europe were met by

police reserves and Italian flags draped with crape.

Exchamp Jim Jeffries said, "Well, he made good."

The champion himself allowed himself to be quoted

that the boy was fond of boxing and a great admirer

of the champion.

The funeral train left for Hollywood.

In Chicago a few more people were hurt trying

to see the coffin, but only made the inside pages.

The funeral train arrived in Hollywood on page

23 of the New York Times.

NEWSREEL LV

THRONGS IN STREETS

LUNATIC BLOWS UP PITTSBURGH BANK

-194-

Krishnamurti Here Says His Message Is

World Happiness

Close the doors

They are coming

Through the windows

AMERICAN MARINES LAND IN NICARAGUA

TO PROTECT ALIENS

PANGALOS CAUGHT; PRISONER IN ATHENS

Close the windows

They are coming through the doors

Saw Pigwoman The Other Says But Neither Can Identify

Accused

FUNDS ACCUMULATE IN NEW YORK

the desire for profits and more profits kept on increasing

and the quest for easy money became well nigh universal. All

of this meant an attempt to appropriate the belongings of others

without rendering a corresponding service

"Physician" Who Took Prominent Part in Valentino

Funeral Exposed as Former Convict

NEVER SAW HIM SAYS MANAGER

Close the doors they are coming through the windows

My God they're coming through the floor

THE CAMERA EYE (47)

sirens bloom in the fog over the harbor horns of all

colors everyshaped whistles reach up from the river and

the churn of screws the throb of engines bells

-195-

the steady broken swish of waves cut by prows out

of the unseen stirring fumblingly through the window

tentacles stretch tingling

to release the spring

tonight start out ship somewhere join up sign on the

dotted line enlist become one of

hock the old raincoat of incertitude (in which you

hunch alone from the upsidedown image on the retina

painstakingly out of color shape words remembered light

and dark straining

to rebuild yesterday to clip out paper figures to

simulate growth warp newsprint into faces smoothing

and wrinkling in the various barelyfelt velocities of time)

tonight now the room fills with the throb and hub-

bub of departure the explorer gets a few necessities to-

gether coaches himself on a beginning

better the streets first a stroll uptown down-

town along the wharves under the el peering into faces in

taxicabs at the drivers of trucks at old men chewing in

lunchrooms at drunk bums drooling puke in alleys

what's the newsvendor reading? what did the elderly

wop selling chestnuts whisper to the fat woman behind the

picklejars? where is she going the plain girl in a red hat

running up the subway steps and the cop joking the other

cop across the street? and the smack of a kiss from two

shadows under the stoop of the brownstone house and the

grouchy faces at the streetcorner suddenly gaping black

-196-

with yells at the thud of a blow a whistle scampering

feet the event?

tonight now

but instead you find yourself (if self is the bellyaching

malingerer so often the companion of aimless walks) the

jobhunt forgotten neglected the bulletinboard where

the futures are scrawled in chalk

among nibbling chinamen at the Thalia

ears dazed by the crash of alien gongs the chuckle of

rattles the piping of incomprehensible flutes the swing and

squawk of ununderstandable talk otherworld music

antics postures costumes

an unidentified stranger

destination unknown

hat pulled down over the has he any? face

CHARLEY ANDERSON

It was a bright metalcolored January day when Charley

went downtown to lunch with Nat Benton. He got to the

broker's office a little early, and sat waiting in an empty

office looking out through the broad steelframed windows

at the North River and the Statue of Liberty and the bay

beyond all shiny ruffled green in the northwest wind,

spotted with white dabs of smoke from tugboats, streaked

with catspaws and the churny wakes of freighters bucking

the wind, checkered with lighters and flatboats, carferries,

barges and the red sawedoff passengerferries. A schooner

with grey sails was running out before the wind.

-197-

Charley sat at Nat Benton's desk smoking a cigarette

and being careful to get all his ashes in the polished brass

ashreceiver that stood beside the desk. The phone buzzed.

It was the switchboard girl. "Mr. Anderson . . . Mr.

Benton asked me to beg you to excuse him for a few more

minutes. He's out on the floor. He'll be over right away."

A little later Benton stuck in the crack of the door his thin

pale face on a long neck like a chicken's. "Hullo, Charley

. . . be right there." Charley had time to smoke one more

cigarette before Benton came back. "I bet you're starved."

"That's all right, Nat, I been enjoyin' the view."

"View? . . . Sure. . . . Why, I don't believe I look

out of that window from one week's end to the other. . . .

Still it was on one of those darned red ferries that old

Vanderbilt got his start. . . . I guess if I took my nose

out of the ticker now and then I'd be better off. . . .

Come along, let's get something to eat." Going down in

the elevator Nat Benton went on talking. "Why, you are

certainly a difficult customer to get hold of."

"The first time I've had my overalls off in a year," said

Charley, laughing.

The cold stung when they stepped out of the revolving

doors. "You know, Charley, there's been quite a little talk

about you fellers on the street. . . . Askew-Merritt went

up five points yesterday. The other day there was a feller

from Detroit, a crackerjack feller . . . you know the Tern

outfit . . . looking all over for you. We'll have lunch to-

gether next time he's in town."

When they got to the corner under the el an icy blast of

wind lashed their faces and brought tears to their eyes.

The street was crowded; men, errandboys, pretty girl

stenographers, all had the same worried look and pursed

lips Nat Benton had. "Plenty cold today."Benton was

gasping, tugging at his coatcollar. "These steamheated of-

fices soften a feller up." They ducked into a building and

went down into the warm hotrolls smell of a basement

-198-

restaurant. Their faces were still tingling from the cold

when they had sat down and were studying the menucards.

"Do you know," Benton said, "I've got an idea you

boys stand in the way of making a little money out there."

"It's sure been a job gettin' her started," said Charley as

he put his spoon into a plate of peasoup. He was hungry.

"Every time you turn your back somethin' breaks down

and everythin' goes cockeyed. But now I've got a wonder-

ful guy for a foreman. He's a Heinie used to work for the

Fokker outfit."

Nat Benton was eating rawroastbeef sandwiches and

buttermilk. "I've got no more digestion than . . .""Than

John D. Rockefeller," put in. Charley. They laughed.

Benton started talking again. "But as I was saying, I

don't know anything about manufacturing but it's always

been my idea that the secret of moneymaking in that line

of business was discovering proper people to work for you.

They work for you or you work for them. That's about

the size of it. After all you fellers turn out the product out

there in Long Island City, but if you want to make the

money you've got to come down here to make it. . . .

Isn't that true?"

Charley looked up from the juicy sirloin he was just

about to cut. He burst out laughing. "I guess," he said.

"A man'ud be a damn fool to keep his nose on his draftin'-

board all his life." They talked about golf for a while,

then when they were having their coffee, Nat Benton said,

"Charley, I just wanted to pass the word along, on account

of you being a friend of old Ollie's and the Humphries

and all that sort of thing . . . don't you boys sell any of

your stock. If I were you I'd scrape up all the cash you

could get ahold of for a margin and buy up any that's

around loose. You'll have the chance soon."

"You think she'll keep on risin'?"

"Now you keep this under your hat . . . Merritt and

that crowd are worried. They're selling, so you can expect

-199-

a drop. That's what these Tern people in Detroit are wait-

ing for to get in cheap, see, they like the looks of your

little concern. . . . They think your engine is a whiz.

. . . If it's agreeable to you I'd like to handle your brok-

erage account, just for old times' sake, you understand."

Charley laughed. "Gosh, I hadn't pictured myself with

a brokerage account . . . but by heck, you may be right."

"I wouldn't like to see you wake up one morning and

find yourself out on the cold cold pavement, see, Charley."

After they'd eaten Nat Benton asked Charley if he'd

ever seen the stockexchange operating. "It's interesting to

see if a feller's never seen it," he said and led Charley

across Broadway where the lashing wind cut their faces

and down a narrow street shaded by tall buildings into a

crowded vestibule. "My, that cold nips your ears," he said.

"You ought to see it out where I come from," said Char-

ley. They went up in an elevator and came out in a little

room where some elderly parties in uniform greeted Mr.

Benton with considerable respect. Nat signed in a book and

they were let out through a small door into the visitors'

gallery and stood a minute looking down into a great

greenish hall like a railroadstation onto the heads of a

crowd of men, some in uniform, some with white badges,

slowly churning around the tradingposts. Sometimes the

crowd knotted and thickened at one booth and sometimes

at another. The air was full of shuffle and low clicking

machinesounds in which voices were lost. "Don't look like

much," said Nat, "but that's where it all changes hands."

Nat pointed out the booths where different classes of stocks

were traded. "I guess they don't think much about avia-

tion stocks," said Charley. "No, it's all steel and oil and

the automotive industries," said Nat. "We'll give 'em a

few years . . . what do you say, Nat?" said Charley bois-

terously.

Charley went uptown on the Second Avenue el and out

across the Queensboro Bridge. At Queens Plaza he got off

-200-

and walked over to the garage where he kept his car, a

Stutz roadster he'd bought secondhand. The traffic was

heavy and he was tired and peevish before he got out to

the plant. The sky had become overcast and dry snow

drove on the wind. He turned in and jammed on his

brakes in the crunching ash of the yard in front of the

office, then he pulled off his padded aviator's helmet and

sat there a minute in the car after he'd switched off the

motor listening to the hum and whir and clatter of the

plant. "The sonsabitches are slackenin' up," he muttered

under his breath.

He stuck his head in Joe's office for a moment but Joe

was busy talking to a guy in a coonskin coat who looked

like a bond salesman. So he ran down the hall to his own

office, said, "Hello, Ella, get me Mr. Stauch," and sat

down at his desk which was covered with notes on blue

and yellow sheets. "A hell of a note," he was thinking,

"for a guy to be glued to a desk all his life."

Stauch's serious square pale face topped by a brush of

colorless hair sprouting from a green eyeshade was lean-

ing over him. "Sit down, Julius," he said. "How's tricks?

. . . Burnishin' room all right?""Ach, yes, but we haf

two stampingmachines broken in one day.""The hell you

say. Let's go look at them."

When Charley got back to the office he had a streak of

grease on his nose. He still had an oily micrometer in his

hand. It was six o'clock. He called up Joe. "Hello, Joe,

goin' home?""Sure, I was waiting for you; what was the

trouble?""I was crawlin' around on my belly in the

grease as usual."

Charley washed his hands and face in the lavatory and

ran down the rubbertreaded steps. Joe was waiting for him

in the entry. "My wife's got my car, Charley, let's take

yours," said Joe. "It'll be a bit drafty, Joe.""We can stand

it.""Goodnight, Mr. Askew, goodnight, Mr. Anderson,"

-201-

said the old watchman in his blue cap with earflaps, who

was closing up behind them.

"Say, Charley," Joe said when they'd turned into the

stream of traffic at the end of the alley. "Why don't you

let Stauch do more of the routine work? He seems pretty

efficient.""Knows a hell of a lot more than I do," said

Charley, squinting through the frosted windshield. The

headlights coming the other way made big sparkling

blooms of light in the driving snow. On the bridge the

girders were already all marked out with neat streaks of

white. All you could see of the river and the city was a

shadowy swirl, now dark, now glowing. Charley had all he

could do to keep the car from skidding on the icy places

on the bridge. "Attaboy, Charley," said Joe as they slewed

down the ramp into the crosstown street full of golden

light.

Across Fiftyninth they had to go at a snail's pace. They

were stiff with cold and it was seven thirty before they

drove up to the door of the apartmenthouse on Riverside

Drive where Charley had been living all winter with the

Askews. Mrs. Askew and two yellowhaired little girls met

them at their door.

Grace Askew was a bleachedlooking woman with pale

hair and faint crowsfeet back of her eyes and on the sides

of her neck that gave her a sweet crumpled complaining

look. "I was worried," she said, "about your not having

the car in this blizzard."

Jean, the oldest girl, was jumping up and down singing,

"Snowy snowy snowy, it's going to be snowy."

"And, Charles," said Grace in a teasing voice as they

went into the parlor, that smelt warm of dinner cooking,

to spread their hands before the gaslogs, "if she called up

once she called up twenty times. She must think I'm trying

to keep you away from her."

"Who . . . Doris?"

Grace pursed up her lips and nodded. "But, Charles,

-202-

you'd better stay home to dinner. I've got a wonderful leg

of lamb and sweetpotatoes. You know you like our dinners

better here than all those fancy fixin's over there . . ."

Charley was already at the phone. "Oh, Charley," came

Doris's sweet lisping voice, "I was afraid you'd been

snowed in over on Long Island. I called there but nobody

answered. . . . I've got an extra place . . . I've got

some people to dinner you'd love to meet. . . . He was

an engineer under the Czar. We're all waiting for you."

"But honestly, Doris, I'm all in.""This'll be a change.

Mother's gone south and we'll have the house to ourselves.

We'll wait. . . ."

"It's those lousy Russians again," muttered Charley as

he ran to his room and hopped into his dinnerclothes.

"Why, look at the loungelizard," kidded Joe from the

easychair where he was reading the evening paper with his

legs stretched out towards the gaslogs. "Daddy, what's a

loungelizard?" intoned Jean. "Grace, would you mind?"

Charley went up to Mrs. Askew blushing, with the two

ends of his black tie hanging from his collar.

"Well, it's certainly devotion," Grace said, getting up

out of her chair -- to tie the bow she had to stick the tip of

her tongue out of the corner of her mouth -- "on a night

like this.""I'd call it dementia if you asked me," said Joe.

"Daddy, what's dementia?" echoed Jean, but Charley was

already putting on his overcoat as he waited for the ele-

vator in the fakemarble hall full of sample whiffs of all the

dinners in all the apartments on the floor.

He pulled on his woolly gloves as he got into the car.

In the park the snow hissed under his wheels. Turning out

of the driveway at Fiftyninth he went into a skid, out of

it, into it again. His wheels gripped the pavement just be-

side a cop who stood at the corner beating his arms against

his chest. The cop glared. Charley brought his hand up to

his forehead in a snappy salute. The cop laughed.

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"Naughty naughty," he said and went on thrashing his

arms.

When the door of the Humphries' apartment opened

Charley's feet sank right away into the deep nap of a

Beluchistan rug. Doris came out to meet him. "Oh, you

were a darling to come in this dreadful weather," she

cooed. He kissed her. He wished she didn't have so much

greasy lipstick on. He hugged her to him so slender in the

palegreen eveninggown. "You're the darling," he whis-

pered.

From the drawingroom he could hear voices, foreign

accents, and the clink of ice in a shaker. "I wish we were

goin' to be alone," he said huskily. "Oh, I know, Charley,

but they were some people I just had to have. Maybe

they'll go home early." She straightened his necktie and

patted down his hair and pushed him before her into the

drawingroom.

When the last of Doris's dinnerguests had gone the

two of them stood in the hall facing each other. Charley

drew a deep breath. He had drunk a lot of cocktails and

champagne. He was crazy for her. "Jesus, Doris, they

were pretty hard to take.""It was sweet of you to come,

Charley." Charley felt bitter smoldering anger swelling

inside him. "Look here, Doris, let's have a talk . . .""Oh,

now we're going to be serious." She made a face as she let

herself drop on the settee. "Now look here, Doris . . .

I'm crazy about you, you know that. . . ."

"Oh, but, Charley, we've had such fun together . . .

we don't want to spoil it yet. . . . You know marriage

isn't always so funny. . . . Most of my friends who've

gotten married have had a horrid time."

"If it's a question of jack, don't worry. The concern's

goin' to go big. . . . I wouldn't lie to you. Ask Nat Ben-

ton. Just this after' he was explainin' to me how I could

start gettin' in the money right away."

Doris got up and went over to him and kissed him.

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"Yes, he was a poor old silly. . . . You must think I'm

a horrid mercenary little bitch. I don't see why you'd want

to marry me if you thought I was like that. Honestly,

Charley, what I'd love more than anything in the world

would be to get out and make my own living. I hate this

plushhorse existence." He grabbed her to him. She pushed

him away. "It's my dress, darling, yes, that costs money,

not me. . . . Now you go home and go to bed like a good

boy. You look all tired out."

When he got down to the street, he found the snow

had drifted in over the seat of the car. The motor would

barely turn over. No way of getting her to start. He called

his garage to send somebody to start the car. Since he was

in the phonebooth he might as well call up Mrs. Darling.

"What a dreadful night, dearie. Well, since it's Mr. Char-

ley, maybe we can fix something up but it's dreadfully

short notice and the end of the week too. Well . . . in

about an hour."

Charley walked up and down in the snow in front of the

apartmenthouse waiting for them to come round from the

garage. The black angry bile was still rising in him. When

they finally came and got her started he let the mechanic

take her back to the garage. Then he walked around to a

speak he knew.

The streets were empty. Dry snow swished in his face

as he went down the steps to the basement door. The bar

was full of men and girls halftight and bellowing and tit-

tering. Charley felt like wringing their goddam necks. He

drank off four whiskies one after another and went around

to Mrs. Darling's. Going up in the elevator he began to

feel tight. He gave the elevatorboy a dollar and caught

out of the corner of his eye the black boy's happy surprised

grin when he shoved the' bill into his pocket. Once inside

he let out a whoop. "Now, Mr. Charley," said the colored

girl in starched cap and apron who had opened the door,

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"you know the missis don't like no noise . . . and you're

such a civilspoken young gentleman."

"Hello, dearie." He hardly looked at the girl. "Put out

the light," he said. "Remember your name's Doris. Go

in the bathroom and take your clothes off and don't forget

to put on lipstick, plenty lipstick." He switched off the

light and tore off his clothes. In the dark it was hard to

get the studs out of his boiled shirt. He grabbed the boiled

shirt with both hands and ripped out the buttonholes.

"Now come in here, goddam you. I love you, you bitch

Doris." The girl was trembling. When he grabbed her to

him she burst out crying.

He had to get some liquor for the girl to cheer her up

and that started him off again. Next day he woke up late

feeling too lousy to go out to the plant, he didn't want to

go out, all he wanted to do was drink so he hung around

all day drinking gin and bitters in Mrs. Darling's drapery-

choked parlor. In the afternoon Mrs. Darling came in and

played Russian bank with him and told him about how an

operasinger had ruined her life, and wanted to get him to

taper off on beer. That evening he got her to call up the

same girl again. When she came he tried to explain to her

that he wasn't crazy. He woke up alone in the bed feeling

sober and disgusted.

The Askews were at breakfast when he got home Sun-

day morning. The little girls were lying on the floor read-

ing the funny papers. There were Sunday papers on all

the chairs. Joe was sitting in his bathrobe smoking a cigar

over his last cup of coffee. "Just in time for a nice cup of

fresh coffee," he said. "That must have been quite a din-

nerparty," said Grace, giggling. "I got in on a little poker-

game," growled Charley. When he sat down his overcoat

opened and they saw his torn shirtfront. "I'd say it was

quite a pokergame," said Joe. "Everything was lousy,"

said Charley. "I'll go and wash my face."

When he came back in his bathrobe and slippers he

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began to feel better. Grace got him some country sausage

and hot cornbread. "Well, I've heard about these Park

Avenue parties before but never one that lasted two days."

"Oh, lay off, Grace."

"Say, Charley, did you read that article in the financial

section of the Evening Post last night tipping off about a

boom in airplane stocks?""No . . . but I had a talk with

Nat Benton, you know he's a broker I told you about, a

friend of Ollie Taylor's. . . . Well, he said . . ."

Grace got to her feet. "Now you know if you boys talk

shop on Sundays I leave the room." Joe took his wife's

arm and gently pulled her back into her chair. "Just let me

say one thing and then we'll shut up. . . . I hope we keep

out of the hands of the operators for at least five years.

I'm sorry the damned stuff's listed. I wish I trusted Mer-

ritt and them as much as I do you and me.""We'll talk

about that," said Charley. Joe handed him a cigar. "All

right, Gracie," he said. "How about a selection on the vic-

trola?"

Charley had been planning all winter to take Doris with

him to Washington when he flew down one of the sample

planes to show off some of his patents to the experts at the

War Department, but she and her mother sailed for Eu-

rope the week before. That left him with nothing to do

one springy Saturday night, so he called up the Johnsons.

He'd met Paul on the subway during the winter and Paul

had asked him in a hurt way why he never came down

any more. Charley had answered honestly he hadn't stuck

his nose out of the plant in months. Now it made him feel

funny calling up, listening to the phone ring and then

Eveline's teasing voice that always seemed to have a little

jeer in it: What fun, he must come down at once and stay

to supper, she had a lot of funny people there, she said.

Paul opened the door for him. Paul's face had a tallowy

look Charley hadn't noticed before. "Welcome, stranger,"

he said in a forced boisterous tone and gave him a couple

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of pats on the back as he went into the crowded room.

There were some very pretty girls, and young men of dif-

ferent shapes and sizes, cocktailglasses, trays of little things

to eat on crackers, cigarettesmoke. Everybody was talking

and screeching like a lot of lathes in a turningplant. At the

back of the room Eveline, looking tall and pale and beau-

tiful, sat on a marbletopped table beside a small man with

a long yellow nose and pouches under his eyes. "Oh, Char-

ley, how prosperous you look. . . . Meet Charles Edward

Holden . . . Holdy, this is Charley Anderson; he's in

flyingmachines. . . . Why, Charley, you look filthy rich."

"Not yet," said Charley. He was trying to keep from

laughing. "Well, what are you looking so pleased about?

Everybody is just too dreary about everything this after-

noon."

"I'm not dreary," said Holden. "Now don't tell me I'm

dreary."

"Of course, Holdy, you're never dreary but your re-

marks tend towards murder and suicide."

Everybody laughed a great deal. Charley found him-

self pushed away from Eveline by people trying to listen

to what Charles Edward Holden was saying. He found

himself talking to a plain young woman in a shiny grey

hat that had a big buckle set in it like a headlight. "Do

tell me what you do," she said. "How do you mean?"

"Oh, I mean almost everybody here does something,

writes or paints or something.""Me? No, I don't do any-

thing like that . . . I'm in airplane motors.""A flyer, oh,

my, how thrilling. . . . I always love to come to Eve-

line's, you never can tell who you'll meet. . . . Why,

last time I was here Houdini had just left. She's wonder-

ful on celebrities. But I think it's hard on Paul, don't

you? . . . Paul's such a sweet boy. She and Mr. Holden

. . . it's all so public. He writes about her all the time in

his column. . . . Of course I'm very oldfashioned. Most

people don't seem to think anything of it. . . . Of course

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it's grand to be honest. . . . Of course he's such a celeb-

rity too. . . . I certainly think people ought to be honest

about their sexlife, don't you? It avoids all those dreadful

complexes and things. . . . But it's too bad about Paul,

such a nice cleancut young fellow. . . ."

When the guests had thinned out a little a Frenchspeak-

ing colored maid served a dinner of curry and rice with lots

of little fixings. Mr. Holden and Eveline did all the talk-

ing. It was all about people Charley hadn't ever heard of.

He tried to break it up by telling about how he'd been

taken for Charles Edward Holden in that saloon that

time, but nobody listened, and he guessed it was just as

well anyway. They had just come to the salad when

Holden got up and said, "My dear, my only morals con-

sist in never being late to the theater, we must run." He

and Eveline went out in a hurry leaving Charley and Paul

to talk to a quarrelsome middleaged man and his wife that

Charley had never been introduced to. It wasn't much use

trying to talk to them because the man was too tight to

listen to anything anybody said and the woman was set on

some kind of a private row with him and couldn't be got

off it. When they staggered out Charley and Paul were

left alone. They went out to a movingpicture house for a

while but the film was lousy so Charley went uptown glum

and tumbled into bed.

Next day Charley went by early for Andy Merritt and

sat with him in the big antisepticlooking diningroom at

the Yale Club while he ate his breakfast. "Will it be

bumpy?" was the first thing he asked. "Weather report

was fine yesterday.""What does Joe say?""He said for

us to keep our goddam traps shut an' let the other guys

do the talkin'."

Merritt was drinking his last cup of coffee in little sips.

"You know Joe's a little overcautious sometimes. . . . He

wants to have a jerkwater plant to run himself and hand

down to his grandchildren. Now that was all very well in

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upstate New York in the old days . . . but now if a busi-

ness isn't expanding it's on the shelf.""Oh, we're ex-

pandin' all right," said Charley, getting to his feet to fol-

low Merritt's broadshouldered tweed suit to the door of

the diningroom. "If we weren't expandin', we wouldn't be

at all."

While they were washing their hands in the lavatory

Merritt asked Charley what he was taking along for

clothes. Charley laughed and said he probably had a clean

shirt and a toothbrush somewhere. Merritt turned a square

serious face to him: "But we might have to go out. . . .

I've engaged a small suite for us at the Waldman Park.

You know in Washington those things count a great deal."

"Well, if the worst comes to the worst I can rent me a

soup an' fish."

As the porter was putting Merritt's big pigskin suitcase

and his hatbox into the rumbleseat of the car, Merritt

asked with a worried frown if Charley thought it would

be too much weight. "Hell, no, we could carry a dozen

like that," said Charley, putting his foot on the starter.

They drove fast through the empty streets and out across

the bridge and along the wide avenues bordered by low

gimcrack houses out towards Jamaica. Bill Cermak had the

ship out of the hangar and all tuned up.

Charley put his hand on the back of Bill's greasy leather

jerkin. "Always on the dot, Bill," he said. "Meet Mr.

Merritt. . . . Say, Andy . . . Bill's comin' with us, if

you don't mind . . . he can rebuild this motor out of old

hairpins and chewin'gum if anythin' goes wrong."

Bill was already hoisting Merritt's suitcase into the tail.

Merritt was putting on a big leather coat and goggles like

Charley had seen in the windows of Abercrombie and

Fitch. "Do you think it will be bumpy?" Merritt was ask-

ing again. Charley gave him a boost. "May be a little

bumpy over Pennsylvania . . . but we ought to be there

in time for a good lunch. . . . Well, gents, this is the first

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time I've ever been in the Nation's Capital." "Me neither,'

said Bill. "Bill ain't never been outside of Brooklyn," said

Charley, laughing.

He felt good as he climbed up to the controls. He put

on his goggles and yelled back at Merritt, "You're in the

observer's seat, Andy."

The Askew-Merritt starter worked like a dream. The

motor sounded smooth and quiet as a sewingmachine.

"What do you think of that, Bill?" Charley kept yelling

at the mechanic behind him. She taxied smoothly across

the soft field in the early spring sunshine, bounced a couple

of times, took the air and banked as he turned out across

the slatecolored squares of Brooklyn. The light northwest

wind made a million furrows on the opaque green bay.

Then they were crossing the gutted factory districts of

Bayonne and Elizabeth. Beyond the russet saltmeadows,

Jersey stretched in great flat squares, some yellow, some

red, some of them misted with the green of new crops.

There were ranks of big white cumulus clouds catching

the sunlight beyond the Delaware. It got to be a little

bumpy and Charley rose to seven thousand feet where it

was cold and clear with a fiftymile wind blowing from the

northwest. When he came down again it was noon and the

Susquehanna shone bright blue in a rift in the clouds. Even

at two thousand feet he could feel the warm steam of

spring from the plowed land. Flying low over the farms

he could see the white fluff of orchards in bloom. He got

too far south, avoiding a heavy squall over the head of the

Chesapeake, and had to follow the Potomac north up to-

wards the glinting white dome of the Capitol and the shin-

ing sliver of the Washington Monument. There was no

smoke over Washington. He circled around for a half an

hour before he found the flyingfield. There was so much

green it all looked like flyingfield.

"Well, Andy," said Charley when they were stretching

-211-

their legs on the turf, "when those experts see that starter

their eyes'll pop out of their heads."

Merritt's face looked pale and he tottered a little as he

walked. "Can't hear," he shouted. "I got to take a leak."

Charley followed him to the hangar, leaving Bill to go

over the motor. Merritt was phoning for a taxi. "Christ

amighty, am I hungry?" roared Charley. Merritt winced.

"I got to get a drink to settle my stomach first."

When they got into the taxi with their feet on Mer-

ritt's enormous pigskin suitcase, "I'll tell you one thing,

Charley," Merritt said, "we've got to have a separate cor-

poration for that starter . . . might need a separate pro-

ductionplant and everything. Standard Airparts would list

well."

They had two rooms and a large parlor with pink easy-

chairs in it at the huge new hotel. From the windows you

could look down into the fresh green of Rock Creek Park.

Merritt looked around with considerable satisfaction. "I

like to get into a place on Sunday," he said. "It gives you

a chance to get settled before beginning work." He added

that he didn't think there'd be anybody in the diningroom

he knew, not on a Sunday, but as it turned out it took them

quite a while to get to their table. Charley was introduced

on the way to a senator, a corporation lawyer, the youngest

member of the House of Representatives and a nephew of

the Secretary of the Navy. "You see," explained Merritt,

"my old man was a senator once."

After lunch Charley 'went out to the field again to take

a look at the ship. Bill Cermak had everything bright as a

jeweler's window. Charley brought Bill back to the hotel

to give him a drink. There were waiters in the hall outside

the suite and cigarsmoke and a great sound of social voices

pouring out the open door. Bill laid a thick finger against

his crooked nose and said maybe he'd better blow. "Gee, it

does sound like the socialregister. Here, I'll let you in my

bedroom an' I'll bring you a drink if you don't mind wait-

-212-

ing a sec,""Sure, it's all right by me, boss." Charley

washed his hands and straightened his necktie and went

into the sittingroom all in a rush like a man diving into a

cold pool.

Andy Merritt was giving a cocktailparty with dry mar-

tinis, chickensalad, sandwiches, a bowl of caviar, strips of

smoked fish, two old silverhaired gentlemen, three husky-

voiced southern belles with too much makeup on, a fat

senator and a very thin senator in a high collar, a sprin-

kling of pale young men with Harvard accents and a sal-

low man with a gold tooth who wrote a syndicated column

called Capitol Small Talk. There was a young publicity-

man named Savage he'd met at Eveline's. Charley was in-

troduced all around and stood first on one foot and then

on the other until he got a chance to sneak into the bed-

room with two halftumblers of rye and a plate of sand-

wiches. "Gosh, it's terrible in there. I don't dare open my

mouth for fear of puttin' my foot in it."

Charley and Bill sat on the bed eating the sandwiches

and listening to the jingly babble that came in from the

other room. When he'd drunk his whiskey Bill got to his

feet, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and asked

what time Charley wanted him to report in the morning.

"Nine o'clock will do. You sure you don't want to stick

around? . . . I don't know what to say to those birds

. . . we might fix you up with a southern belle." Bill said

he was a quiet family man and would get him a flop and

go to bed. When he left it meant Charley had to go back

to the cocktailparty.

When Charley went back into Merritt's room he found

the black eyes of the fat senator fixed on him from be-

tween the two cute bobbing hats of two pretty girls. Char-

ley found himself saying goodby to them. The browneyed

one was a blonde and the blueeyed one had very black

hair. A little tang of perfume and kid gloves lingered after

them when they left. "Now which would you say was the

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prettiest, young man?" The fat senator was standing be-

side him looking up at him with a tooconfidential smile.

Charley felt his throat stiffen, he didn't know why.

"They're a couple of beauties," he said. "They leave you

like the ass between two bundles of hay," said the fat sena-

tor with a soft chuckle that played smoothly in and out of

the folds of his chin.

"Buridan's ass died of longing, senator," said the thin

senator putting the envelope back in his pocket on which

he and Andy Merritt had been doping out figures of some

kind. "And so do I, senator," said the fat one, pushing

back the streak of black hair from his forehead, his loose

jowls shaking. "I die daily. . . . Senator, will you dine

with me and these young men? I believe old Horace is

getting us up a little terrapin." He put a small plump

hand on the thin senator's shoulder and another on Char-

ley's. "Sorry, senator, the missis is having some friends out

at the Chevy Chase Club.""Then I'm afraid these young-

sters will have to put up with eating dinner with a pair of

old fogies. I'd hoped you'd bridge the gap between the

generations. . . . General Hicks is coming." Charley saw

a faint pleased look come over Andy Merritt's serious

wellbred face. The fat senator went on with his smooth

ponderous courtroom voice. "Perhaps we had better be on

our way. . . . He's coming at seven and those old war-

horses tend to be punctual."

A great black Lincoln was just coming to a soundless

stop at the hotel entry when the four of them, Charley

and Andy Merritt and Savage and the fat senator, came

out into the Washington night that smelt of oil on asphalt

and the exhausts of cars and of young leaves and of wis-

teriablossoms. The senator's house was a continuation of his

car, big and dark and faintly gleaming and soundless.

They sprawled in big blackleather chairs and an old white-

haired mulatto brought around manhattans on an engraved

silver tray.

-214-

The senator took each of the men separately to show

them where to wash up. Charley didn't much like the little

pats on the back he got from the senator's small padded

hands as he was ushered into a big oldfashioned bathroom

with a setin marble tub. When he came back from washing

his hands the folding doors were open to the diningroom

and a halelooking old gentleman with a white mustache

and a slight limp was walking up and down in front of

them impatiently. "I can smell that terrapin, Bowie," he

was saying. "Ole Horace is still up to his tricks."

With the soup and the sherry the general began to

talk from the head of the table. "Of course all this work

with flyin'machines is very interestin' for the advance-

ment of science . . . I tell you, Bowie, you're one of the

last people in this town who sets a decent table . . . per-

haps it points to vast possibilities in the distant future. . . .

But speakin' as a military man, gentlemen, you know some

of us don't feel that they have proved their worth. . . .

The terrapin is remarkable, Bowie. . . . I mean we don't

put the confidence in the flyin'machine that they seem to

have over at the Navy Department. . . . A good glass of

burgundy, Bowie, nothin' I like so much. . . . Experi-

ment is a great thing, gentlemen, and I don't deny that

perhaps in the distant future . . ."

"In the distant future," echoed Savage, laughing, as he

followed Merritt and Charley out from under the stone

portico of Senator Planet's house. A taxi was waiting for

him. "Where can I drop you, gentlemen? . . . The trou-

ble with us is we are in the distant future and don't know

it."

"They certainly don't know it in Washington," said

Merritt as they got into the cab. Savage giggled. "The

senator and the general were pricelessly archaic . . . like

something dug up. . . . But don't worry about the gen-

eral . . . once he knows he's dealing with . . . you know

. . . presentable people, he's gentle as Santa Claus . . . .

-215-

He believes in a government of gentlemen, for gentlemen

and by gentlemen."

"Well, don't we all?" said Merritt sternly.

Savage let out a hooting laugh. "Nature's gentlemen

. . . been looking for one for years." Then he turned his

bulging alcoholic eyes and his laughing pugface to Char-

ley. "The senator thinks you're the whiteheaded boy. . . .

He asked me to bring you around to see him . . . the

senator is very susceptible, you know." He let out another

laugh.

The guy must be pretty tight, thought Charley. He was

a little woozy himself from the Napoleon brandy drunk

out of balloonshaped glasses they'd finished off the dinner

with. Savage let them out at the Waldman Park and his

taxi went on. "Say, who is that guy, Andy?""He's a wild

man," said Merritt. "He is one of Moorehouse's bright

young men. He's bright enough, but I don't like the stories

I hear about him. He wants the Askew-Merritt contract

but we're not in that class yet. Those publicrelations people

will eat you out of house and home."

As they were going up in the elevator Charley said,

yawning, "Gee, I hoped those pretty girls were comin' to

dinner.""Senator Planet never has women to dinner. . . .

He's got a funny reputation. . . . There are some funny

people in this town.""I guess there are," said Charley. He

was all in, he'd hardly got his clothes off before he was

asleep.

At the end of the week Charley and Bill flew back to

New York leaving Andy Merritt to negotiate contracts

with the government experts. When they'd run the ship

into the hangar Charley said he'd wheel Bill home to

Jamaica in his car. They stopped off in a kind of hofbrau

for a beer. They were hungry and Bill thought his wife

would be through supper so they ate noodlesoup and

schnitzels. Charley found they had some fake rhinewine

and ordered it. They drank the wine and ordered another

-216-

set of schnitzels. Charley was telling Bill how Andy Mer-

ritt said the government contracts were going through and

Andy Merritt was always right and he'd said it was a

patriotic duty to capitalize production on a broad base.

"Bill, goddam it, we'll be in the money. How about an-

other bottle? . . . Good old Bill, the pilot's nothin' with-

out his mechanic, the promotor's nothin' without produc-

tion. . . . You and me, Bill, we're in production, and by

God I'm goin' to see we don't lose out. If they try to rook

us we'll fight, already I've had offers, big offers from De-

troit . . . in five years now we'll be in the money and I'll

see you're in the big money too."

They ate applecake and then the proprietor brought out

a bottle of kümmel. Charley bought the bottle. "Cheaper

than payin' for it drink by drink, don't you think so, Bill?"

Bill began to start saying he was a family man and had

better be getting along home. "Me," said Charley, pour-

ing out some kümmel into a tumbler, "I haven't got no

home to go to. . . . If she wanted she could have a home.

I'd make her a wonderful home."

Charley discovered that Bill Cermak had gone and that

he was telling all this to a stout blonde lady of uncertain

age with a rich German accent. He was calling her Aunt

Hartmann and telling her that if he ever had a home she'd

be his housekeeper. They finished up the kümmel and

started drinking beer. She stroked his head and called him

her vandering yunge. There was an orchestra in Bavarian

costume and a thicknecked man that sang. Charley wanted

to yodel for the company but she pulled him back to the

table. She was very strong and pushed him away with big

red arms when he tried to get friendly, but when he

pinched her seat she looked down into her beer and gig-

gled. It was all like back home in the old days, he kept

telling her, only louder and funnier. It was dreadfully

funny until they were sitting in the car and she had her

head on his shoulder and was calling him schatz and her

-217-

long coils of hair had come undone and hung down over

the wheel. Somehow he managed to drive.

He woke up next morning in a rattletrap hotel in Coney

Island. It was nine o'clock, he had a frightful head and

Aunt Hartmann was sitting up in bed looking pink, broad

and beefy and asking for kaffee und schlagsahne. He took

her out to breakfast at a Vienna bakery. She ate a great

deal and cried a great deal and said he mustn't think she

was a bad woman, because she was just a poor girl out of

work and she'd felt so badly on account of his being a poor

homeless boy. He said he'd be a poor homeless boy for

fair if he didn't get back to the office. He gave her all the

change he had in his pocket and a fake address and left

her crying over a third cup of coffee in the Vienna bakery

and headed for Long Island City. About Ozone Park he

had to stop to upchuck on the side of the road. He just

managed to get into the yard of the plant with his last drop

of gas. He slipped into his office. It was ten minutes of

twelve.

His desk was full of notes and letters held together with

clips and blue papers marked IMMEDIATE ATTENTION. He

was scared Miss Robinson or Joe Askew would find out

he was back. Then he remembered he had a silver flask of

old bourbon in his desk drawer that Doris had given him

the night before she sailed, to forget her by she'd said,

kidding him. He'd just tipped his head back to take a swig

when he saw Joe Askew standing in front of his desk.

Joe stood with his legs apart with a worn frowning look

on his face. "Well, for Pete's sake, where have you been?

We been worried as hell about you. . . . Grace waited

dinner an hour."

"Why didn't you call up the hangar?"

"Everybody had gone home. . . . Stauch's sick. Every-

thing's tied up."

"Haven't you heard from Merritt?"

"Sure . . . but that means we've got to reorganize pro-

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duction. . . . And frankly, Charley, that's a hell of an

example to set the employees . . . boozing around the

office. Last time I kept my mouth shut, but my god . . ."

Charley walked over to the cooler and drew himself a

couple of papercupfuls of water. "I got to celebratin' that

trip to Washington last night. . . . After all, Joe, these

contracts will put us on the map. . . . How about havin'

a little drink?" Joe frowned. "You look like you'd been

having plenty . . . and how about shaving before you

come into the office? We expect our employees to do it,

we ought to do it too. . . . For craps' sake, Charley, re-

member that the war's over." Joe turned on his heel and

went back to his own office.

Charley took another long pull on the flask. He was

mad. "I won't take it," he muttered, "not from him or

anybody else." Then the phone rang. The foreman of the

assemblyroom was standing in the door. "Please, Mr. An-

derson," he said.

That was the beginning of it. From then everything

seemed to go haywire. At eight o'clock that night Charley

hadn't yet had a shave. He was eating a sandwich and

drinking coffee out of a carton with the mechanics of the

repaircrew over a busted machine. It was midnight and he

was all in before he got home to the apartment. He was al

ready to give Joe a piece of his mind but there wasn't an

Askew in sight.

Next morning at breakfast Grace's eyebrows were raised

when she poured out the coffee. "Well, if it isn't the lost

battalion," she said.

Joe Askew cleared his throat. "Charley," he said nerv-

ously, "I didn't have any call to bawl you out like that

. . . I guess I'm getting cranky in my old age. The plant's

been hell on wheels all week."

The two little girls began to giggle.

"Aw, let it ride," said Charley.

"Little pitchers, Joe," said Grace, rapping on the table

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for order. "I guess we all need a rest. Now this summer,

Joe, you'll take a vacation. I need a vacation in the worst

way myself, especially from entertaining Joe's dead cats.

He hasn't had anybody to talk to since you've been away,

Charley, and the house has been full of dead cats.""That's

just a couple of guys I've been trying to fix up with jobs.

Grace thinks they're no good because they haven't much

social smalltalk.""I don't think, I know they are dead

cats," said Grace. The little girls started to giggle some

more. Charley got to his feet and pushed back his. chair.

"Comin', Joe?" he said. "I've got to get back to my

wreckin'crew."

It was a couple of weeks before Charley got away from

the plant except to sleep. At the end of that time Stauch

was back with his quiet regretful manner like the manner

of an assisting physician in a hospital operatingroom, and

things began to straighten out. The day Stauch finally

came to Charley's office door saying, "Production is now

again smooth, Mr. Anderson," Charley decided he'd knock

off at noon. He called up Nat Benton to wait for him for

lunch and slipped out by the employees' entrance so that

he wouldn't meet Joe in the entry.

In Nat's office they had a couple of drinks before going

out to lunch. At the restaurant after they'd ordered, he

said, "Well, Nat, how's the intelligence service going."

"How many shares have you got?"

"Five hundred."

"Any other stock, anything you could put up for mar-

gin?"

"A little. . . . I got a couple of grand in cash."

"Cash," said Nat scornfully. "For a rainy day . . .

stuff and nonsense. . . . Why not put it to work?"

"That's what I'm talkin' about."

"Suppose you try a little flyer in Auburn just to get

your hand in."

"But how about Merritt?"

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"Hold your horses. . . . What I want to do is get you

a little capital so you can fight those birds on an equal

basis. . . . If you don't they'll freeze you out sure as

fate."

"Joe wouldn't," said Charley.

"I don't know the man personally but I do know men

and there are darn few who won't look out for number one

first."

"I guess' they'll all rook you if they can."

"I wouldn't put it just that way, Charley. There are

some magnificent specimens of American manhood in the

business world." That night Charley got drunk all by him-

self at a speak in the Fifties.

By the time Doris landed from Europe in the fall

Charley had made two killings in Auburn and was buying

up all the Askew-Merritt stock he could lay his hands on.

At the same time he discovered he had credit, for a new

car, for suits at Brooks Brothers, for meals at speakeasies.

The car was a Packard sport phaeton with a long low cus-

tombody upholstered in red leather. He drove down to

the dock to meet Doris and Mrs. Humphries when they

came in on the Leviathan. The ship had already docked

when Charley got to Hoboken. Charley parked his car and

hurried through the shabby groups at the thirdclass to the

big swirl of welldressed people chattering round piles of

pigskin suitcases, patentleather hatboxes, wardrobetrunks

with the labels of Ritz hotels on them, in the central part

of the wharfbuilding. Under the H he caught sight of old

Mrs. Humphries. Above the big furcollar her face looked

like a faded edition of Doris's, he had never before no-

ticed how much.

She didn't recognize him for a moment. "Why, Charles

Anderson, how very nice." She held her hand out to him

without smiling. "This is most trying. Doris of course had

to leave her jewelcase in the cabin. . . . You are meeting

someone, I presume." Charley blushed. "I thought I

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might give you a lift . . . I got a big car now. I thought

it would take your bags better than a taxi." Mrs. Hum-

phries wasn't paying much attention. "There she is. . . ."

She waved a gloved hand with an alligatorskin bag in it.

"Here I am."

Doris came running through the crowd. She was flushed

and her lips were very red. Her little hat and her fur were.

just the color of her hair. "I've got it, Mother . . . what

a silly girl.""Every time I go through this," sighed Mrs.

Humphries, "I decide I'll never go abroad again."

Doris leaned over to tuck a piece of yellow something

into a handbag that had been opened.

"Here's Mr. Anderson, Doris," said Mrs. Humphries.

Doris turned with a jump and ran up to him and threw

her arms round his neck and kissed him on the cheek. "You

darling to come down." Then she introduced him to a red-

faced young Englishman in an English plaid overcoat who

was carrying a big bag of golfclubs. "I know you'll like

each other."

"Is this your first visit to this country?" asked Charley.

"Quite the contrary," said the Englishman, showing his

yellow teeth in a smile. "I was born in Wyoming."

It was chilly on the wharf. Mrs. Humphries went to sit

in the heated waitingroom. When the young man with the

golfsticks went off to attend to his own bags, Doris said,

"How do you like George Duquesne? He was born here

and brought up in England. His mother comes from peo-

ple in the Doomsday Book. I went to stay with them at

the most beautiful old abbey. . . . I had the time of my

life in England. I think George is a duck. The Duquesnes

have copper interests. They are almost like the Guggen-

heims except of course they are not Jewish. . . . Why,

Charley, I believe you're jealous. . . . Silly . . . George

and I are just like brother and sister, really. . . . It's not

like you and me at all, but he's such fun."

It took the Humphries family a couple of hours to get

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through the customs. They had a great many bags and

Doris had to pay duty on some dresses. When Mrs. Hum-

phries found she was to drive uptown in an open car with

the top down she looked black indeed, the fact that it was

a snakylooking Packard didn't seem to help. "Why, it's a

regular rubberneck wagon," said Doris. "Mother, this is

fun . . . Charley'll point out all the tall buildings." Mrs.

Humphries was grumbling as, surrounded by handbag-

gage, she settled into the back seat, "Your dear father,

Doris, never liked to see a lady riding in an open cab,

much less in an open machine."

When he'd taken them uptown Charley didn't go back

to the plant. He spent the rest of the day till closing at

the Askews' apartment on the telephone talking to Ben-

ton's office. Since the listing of Standard Airparts there'd

been a big drop in Askew-Merritt. He was hocking every-

thing and waiting for it to hit bottom before buying.

Every now and then he'd call up Benton and say, "What

do you think, Nat?"

Nat still had no tips late that afternoon, so Charley

spun a coin to decide; it came heads. He called up the

office and told them to start buying at the opening figure

next day. Then he changed his clothes and cleared out

before Grace brought the little girls home from school;

he hardly spoke to the Askews these days. He was fed up

out at the plant and he knew Joe thought he was a slacker.

When he changed his wallet from one jacket to the

other he opened it and counted his cash. He had four cen-

turies and some chickenfeed. The bills were crisp and new,

straight from the bank. He brought them up to his nose

to sniff the new sweet sharp smell of the ink. Before he

knew what he'd done he'd kissed them. He laughed out

loud and put the bills back in his wallet. Jesus, he was

feeling good. His new blue suit fitted nicely. His shoes

were shined. He had clean socks on. His belly felt hard

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under his belt. He was whistling as he waited for the ele-

vator.

Over at Doris's there was George Duquesne saying how

ripping the new buildings looked on Fifth Avenue. "Oh,

Charley, wait till you taste one of George's alexanders,

they're ripping," said Doris. "He learned to make them

out in Constant after the war. . . . You see he was in the

British army. . . . Charley was one of our star aces,

George."

Charley took George and Doris to dinner at the Plaza

and to a show and to a nightclub. All the time he was

feeding highpower liquor into George in the hope he'd

pass out, but all George did was get redder and redder in

the face and quieter and quieter, and he hadn't had much

to say right at the beginning. It was three o'clock and

Charley was sleepy and pretty tight himself before he

could deliver George at the St. Regis where he was stay-

ing. "Now what shall we do?""But, darling, I've got to

go home.""I haven't had a chance to talk to you. . . .

Jeez, I haven't even had a chance to give you a proper

hug since you landed." They ended by going to the Co-

lumbus Circle Childs and eating scrambled eggs and bacon.

Doris was saying there ought to be beautiful places

where people in love could go where they could find pri-

vacy and bed in beautiful surroundings. Charley said he

knew plenty of places but they weren't so beautiful. "I'd

go, Charley, honestly, if I wasn't afraid it would be sordid

and spoil everything." Charley squeezed her hand hard.

"I wouldn't have the right to ask you, kid, not till we was

married." As they walked up the street to where he'd

parked his car she let her head drop on his shoulder. "Do

you want me, Charley?" she in a little tiny voice. "I want

you too . . . but I've got to go home or Mother'll be

making a scene in the morning."

Next Saturday afternoon Charley spent looking for a

walkup furnished apartment. He rented a livingroom

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kitchenette and bath all done in grey from a hennahaired

artist lady in flowing batiks who said she was going to

Capri for six months of sheer beauty, and called up an

agency for a Japanese houseboy to take care of it. Next

day at breakfast he told the Askews he was moving.

Joe didn't say anything at first, but after he'd drunk the

last of his cup of coffee he got up frowning and walked a

couple of times across the livingroom. Then he went to

the window saying quietly, "Come here, Charley, I've got

something to show you." He put a hand on Charley's arm.

. . . "Look here, kid, it isn't on account of me being so

sour all the time, is it? You know I'm worried about the

damn business . . . seems to me we're getting in over our

heads . . . but you know Grace and I both think the

world of you. . . . I've just felt that you were putting

in too much time on the stockmarket. . . . I don't sup-

pose it's any of my damn business. . . . Anyway us fel-

lows from the old outfit, we've got to stick together."

"Sure, Joe, sure. . . . Honestly, the reason I want this

damn apartment has nothin' to do with that. . . . You're

a married man with kids and don't need to worry about

that sort of thing . . . but me, I got woman trouble."

Joe burst out laughing, "The old continental sonofagun,

but for crying out loud, why don't you get married?"

"God damn it, that's what I want to do," said Charley.

He laughed and so did Joe.

"Well, what's the big joke?" said Grace from behind

the coffeeurn. Charley nodded his head towards the little

girls. "Smokin'room stories," he said. "Oh, I think you're

mean," said Grace.

One snowy afternoon before Christmas, a couple of

weeks after Charley had moved into his apartment, he got

back to town early and met Doris at the Biltmore. She said,

"Let's go somewhere for a drink," and he said he had

drinks all laid out and she ought to come up to see the

funny little sandwiches Taki made all in different colors.

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She asked if the Jap was there now. He grinned and shook

his head. It only took the taxi a couple of minutes to get

them around to the converted brownstone house. "Why,

isn't this cozy?" Doris panted a little breathless from the

stairs as she threw open her furcoat. "Now I feel really

wicked.""But it's not like it was some guy you didn't

know," said Charley, "or weren't fond of." She let him

kiss her. Then she took off her coat and hat and dropped

down beside him on the windowseat warm from the steam-

heat.

"Nobody knows the address, nobody knows the phone-

number," said Charley. When he put his arm around her

thin shoulders and pulled her to him she gave in to him

with a little funny shudder and let him pull her on his

knee. They kissed for a long time and then she wriggled

loose and said, "Charley darling, you invited me here for

a drink."

He had the fixings for oldfashioneds in the kitchenette

and a plate of sandwiches. He brought them in and set

them out on the round wicker table. Doris bit into several

sandwiches before she decided which she liked best. "Why,

your Jap must be quite an artist, Charley," she said.

"They're a clever little people," said Charley.

"Everything's lovely, Charley, except this light hurts

my eyes."

When he switched off the lights the window was bright-

blue. The lights and shadows of the taxis moving up and

down the snowy street and the glare from the stores oppo-

site made shifting orange oblongs on the ceiling. "Oh, it's

wonderful here," said Doris. "Look how oldtimy the

street looks with all the ruts in the snow."

Charley kept refilling the oldfashioneds with whiskey.

He got her to take her dress off. "You know you told me

about how dresses cost money.""Oh, you big silly. . . .

Charley, do you like me a little bit?""What's the use of

talking . . . I'm absolutely cuckoo about you . . . you

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know I want us to be always together. I want us to get

mar --""Don't spoil everything, this is so lovely, I never

thought anything could be like this. . . . Charley, you're

taking precautions, aren't you?""Sure thing," said Char-

ley through clenched, teeth and went to his bureau for a

condom.

At seven o'clock she got dressed in a hurry, said she had

a dinner engagement and would be horribly late. Charley

took her down and put her in a taxi. "Now, darling," he

said, "we won't talk about what I said. We'll just do it."

Walking back up the steep creaky stairs he could taste her

mouth, her hair, his head was bursting with the perfume

she used. A chilly bitter feeling was getting hold of him,

like the feeling of seasickness. "Oh, Christ," he said aloud

and threw himself face down on the windowseat.

The apartment and Taki and the bootlegger and the

payments on his car and the flowers he sent Doris every

day all ran into more money than he expected every

month. As soon as he made a deposit in the bank he drew

it out again. He owned a lot of stock but it wasn't paying

dividends. At Christmas he had to borrow five hundred

bucks from Joe Askew to buy Doris a present. She'd told

him he mustn't give her jewelry, so he asked Taki what he

thought would be a suitable present for a very rich and

beautiful young lady and Taki had said a silk kimono was

very suitable, so Charley went out and bought her a man-

darincoat. Doris made a funny face when she saw it, but

she kissed him with a little quick peck in the corner of the

mouth, because they were at her mother's, and said in a

singsongy tone, "Oh, what a sweet boy."

Mrs. Humphries had asked him for Christmas dinner.

The house smelt of tinsel and greens, there was a lot of

tissuepaper and litter on the chairs. The cocktails were

weak and everybody stood around, Nat and Sally Benton,

and some nephews and nieces of Mrs. Humphries', and

her sister Eliza who was very deaf, and George Duquesne

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who would talk of nothing but wintersports, waiting for

the midafternoon dinner to be announced. People seemed

sour and embarrassed, except Ollie Taylor who was just

home from Italy full of the Christmas spirit. He spent

most of the time out in the pantry with his coat off manu-

facturing what he called an oldtime Christmas punch. He

was so busy at it that it was hard to get him to the table

for dinner. Charley had to spend all his time taking care

of him and never got a word with Doris all day. After

dinner and the Christmas punch he had to take Ollie back

to his club. Ollie was absolutely blotto and huddled fat

and whitefaced in the taxi, bubbling "Damn good Christ-

mas" over and over again.

When he'd put Ollie in the hands of the doorman Char-

ley couldn't decide whether to go back to the Humphries'

where he'd be sure to find Doris and George with their

heads together over some damnfool game or other or to go

up to the Askews' as he'd promised to. Bill Cermak had

asked him out to take a look at the bohunks in Jamaica but

he guessed it wouldn't be the thing, he'd said. Charley

said sure he'd come, anyplace to get away from the stuffed-

shirts. From the Penn station he sent a wire wishing the

Askews a Merry Christmas. Sure the Askews would under-

stand he had to spend his Christmas with Doris. On the

empty train to Jamaica he got to worrying about Doris,

maybe he oughtn't to have left her with that guy.

Out in Jamaica Bill Cermak and his wife and their

elderly inlaws and friends were all tickled and a little bit

fussed by Charley's turning up. It was a small frame house

with a green papertile roof in a block of identical little

houses with every other roof red and every other roof

green. Mrs. Cermak was a stout blonde a little fuddled

from the big dinner and the wine that had brought bright-

red spots to her cheeks. She made Charley eat some of the

turkey and the plumpudding they'd just taken off the

table. Then they made hot wine with cloves in it and Bill

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played tunes on the pianoaccordion while everybody

danced and the kids yelled and beat on drums and got

underfoot.

When Charley said he had to go Bill walked to the sta-

tion with him. "Say, boss, we sure do appreciate your

comin' out," began Bill. "Hell, I ain't no boss," said Char-

ley. "I belong with the mechanics . . . don't I, Bill? You

and me, Bill, the mechanics against the world . . . and

when I get married you're comin' to play that damned

accordeen of yours at the weddin' . . . get me, Bill . . .

it may not be so long." Bill screwed up his face and rubbed

his long crooked nose. "Women is fine once you got 'em

pinned down, boss, but when they ain't pinned down

they're hell.""I got her pinned down, I got her pinned

down all right so she's got to marry me to make an honest

man of me.""Thataboy," said Bill Cermak. They stood

laughing and shaking hands on the drafty station platform

till the Manhattan train came in.

During the automobile show Nat called up one day to

say Farrell who ran the Tern outfit was in town and

wanted to see Charley and Charley told Nat to bring him

around for a cocktail in the afternoon. This time he got

Taki to stay.

James Yardly Farrell was a roundfaced man with sandy-

gray hair and a round bald head. When he came in the

door he began shouting, "Where is he? Where is he?"

"Here he is," said Nat Benton, laughing. Farrell pumped

Charley's hand. "So this is the guy with the knowhow, is

it? I've been trying to get hold of you for months . . .

ask Nat if I haven't made his life miserable. . . . Look

here, how about coming out to Detroit . . . Long Island

City's no place for a guy like you. We need your knowhow

out there . . . and what we need we're ready to pay for."

Charley turned red. "I'm pretty well off where I am,

Mr. Farrell."

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"How much do you make?"

"Oh, enough for a young feller."

"We'll talk about that . . . but don't forget that in a

new industry like ours the setup changes fast. . . . We

got to keep our eyes open or we'll get left. . . . Well,

we'll let it drop for the time being. . . . But I can tell

you one thing, Anderson, I'm not going to stand by and

see this industry ruined by being broken up in a lot of little

onehorse units all cutting each other's throats. Don't you

think it's better for us to sit around the table and cut the

cake in a spirit of friendship and mutual service, and I tell

you, young man, it's going to be a whale of a big cake."

He let his voice drop to a whisper.

Taki, with his yellow face drawn into a thin diplomatic

smile, came around with a tray of bacardi cocktails. "No,

thanks, I don't drink," said Farrell. "Are you a bachelor,

Mr. Anderson?"

"Well, something like that. . . . I don't guess I'll stay

that way long."

"You'd like it out in Detroit, honestly. Benton

tells me you're from Minnesota."

"Well, I was born in North Dakota." Charley talked

over his shoulder to the Jap. " Taki, Mr. Benton wants

another drink."

"We got a nice sociable crowd out there," said Farrell.

After they'd gone Charley called up Doris and asked

her right out if she'd like to live in Detroit after they were

married. She gave a thin shriek at the other end of the

line. "What a dreadful idea . . . and who said anything

about that dreadful . . . you know, state . . . I don't

like even to mention the horrid word. . . . Don't you

think we've had fun in New York this winter?""Sure,"

answered Charley. "I guess I'd be all right here if . . .

things were different. . . . I thought maybe you'd like a

change, that's all. . . . I had an offer from a' concern out

there, see.""Now, Charley, you must promise not to men-

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tion anything so silly again.""Sure . . . if you'll have

dinner with me tomorrow night."" Darling, tomorrow I

couldn't.""How about Saturday then?""All right, I'll

break an engagement. Maybe you can come by for me

at Carnegie Hall after the concert.""I'll even go to the

damn concert if you like.""Oh, no, Mother's asked a lot

of old ladies." She was talking fast, her voice twanging in

the receiver. "There won't be any room in the box. You

wait for me at the little tearoom, the Russian place where

you waited and got so cross the time before.""All right,

anyplace. . . . Say, you don't know how I miss you when

you're not with me.""Do you? Oh, Charley, you're a

dear." She rang off.

Charley put the receiver down and let himself slump

back in his chair. He couldn't help feeling all of a tremble

when he talked to her on the telephone. "Hey, Taki, bring

me that bottle of scotch. . . . Say, tell me, Taki," Charley

went on, pouring himself a stiff drink, "in your country

. . . is it so damn difficult for a guy to get married?" The

Jap smiled and made a little bow. "In my country every-

thing much more difficult."

Next day when Charley got back from the plant he

found a wire from Doris saying Saturday absolutely im-

possible. "Damn the bitch," he said aloud. All evening he

kept calling up on the phone and leaving messages, but she

was never in. He got to hate the feel of the damn mouth-

piece against his lips. Saturday he couldn't get any word to

her either. Sunday morning he got Mrs. Humphries on

the phone. The cold creaky oldwoman's voice shrieked that

Doris had suddenly gone to Southampton for the week-

end. "I know she'll come back with a dreadful cold," Mrs.

Humphries added. "Weekends in this weather.""Well,

goodby, Mrs. Humphries," said Charley and rang off.

Monday morning when Taki brought him a letter in

Doris's hand, a big blue envelope that smelt of her per-

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fume, the minute he opened it he knew before he read it

what it would say.

CHARLEY DEAR,

You are such a dear and I'm so fond of you and do so

want you for a friend [underlined]. You know the silly

life I lead, right now I'm on the most preposterous week-

end and I've told everybody I have a splitting headache

and have gone to bed just to write to you. But, Charley,

please forget all about weddings and things like that. The

very idea makes me physically sick and besides I've prom-

ised George I'd marry him in June and the Duquesnes

have a publicrelations counsel -- isn't it just too silly -- but

his business is to keep the Duquesnes popular with the

public and he's given the whole story to the press, how I

was courted among the Scotch moors and in the old medi-

eval abbey and everything. And that's why I'm in such a

hurry to write to you, Charley darling, because you're the

best friend [twice underlined] I've got and the only one

who lives in the real world of business and production and

labor and everything like that, which I'd so love to belong

to, and I wanted you to know first thing. Oh, Charley

darling, please don't think horrid things about me.

Your loving friend [three times underlined]

D

Be a good boy and burn up this letter, won't you?

The buzzer was rattling. It was the boy from the ga-

rage with his car. Charley got on his hat and coat and went

downstairs. He got in and drove out to Long Island City,

walked up the rubbertreaded steps to his office, sat down

at his desk, rustled papers, talked to Stauch over the

phone, lunched in the employees' lunchroom with Joe

Askew, dictated letters to the new towhaired stenographer

and suddenly it was six o'clock and he was jockeying his

way through the traffic home.

Crossing the bridge he had an impulse to give a wrench

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to the wheel and step on the gas, but the damn car

wouldn't clear the rail anyway, it would just make a nasty

scrapheap of piledup traffic and trucks.

He didn't want to go home or to the speakeasy he and

Doris had been having dinner in several times a week

all winter, so he turned down Third Avenue. Maybe he'd

run into somebody at Julius's. He stood up at the bar.

He didn't want to drink any more than he wanted to do

anything else. A few raw shots of rye made him feel bet-

ter. To hell with her. Nothing like a few drinks. He was

alone, he had money on him, he could do any goddam

thing in the world.

Next to Charley at the bar stood a couple of fattish

dowdylooking women. They were with a redfaced man

who was pretty drunk already. The women were talking

about clothes and the man was telling about Belleau Wood.

Right away he and Charley were old buddies from the

A.E.F. "The name is De Vries. Profession . . . bon-

vivant," said the man and tugged at the two women until

they faced around towards Charley. He put his arms

around them with a flourish and shouted, "Meet the wife."

They had drinks on Belleau Wood, the Argonne, the

St. Mihiel salient, and the battle of Paree. The women

said goodness, how they wanted to go to Hoboken to the

hofbrau. Charley said he'd take them all in his car. They

sobered up a little and were pretty quiet crossing on the

ferry. At the restaurant in the chilly dark Hoboken street

they couldn't get anything but beer. After they'd finished

supper De Vries said he knew a place where they could

get real liquor. They circled round blocks and blocks and

ended in a dump in Union City. When they'd drunk

enough to start them doing squaredances the women said

wouldn't it be wonderful to go to Harlem. This time the

ferry didn't sober them up so much because they had a bot-

tle of scotch with them. In Harlem they were thrown out

of a dancehall and at last landed in a nightclub. The bon-

-233-

vivant fell down the redcarpeted stairs and Charley had a

time laughing that off with the management. They ate

fried chicken and drank some terrible gin the colored

waiter sent out for, and danced. Charley kept thinking

how beautifully he was dancing. He couldn't make out

why he didn't have any luck picking up any of the high-

yallers.

Next morning he woke up in a room in a hotel. He

looked around. No, there wasn't any woman in the bed.

Except that his head ached and his ears were burning, he

felt good. Stomach all right. For a moment he thought

he'd just landed from France. Then he thought of the

Packard, where the hell had he left it? He reached for

the phone. "Say, what hotel is this?" It was the McAlpin,

goodmorning. He remembered Joe Turbino's number and

phoned him to ask what the best thing for a hangover was.

When he was through phoning he didn't feel so good. His

mouth tasted like the floor of a chickencoop. He went back

to sleep. The phone woke him. "A gentleman to see you."

Then he remembered all about Doris. The guy from Tur-

bino's brought a bottle of scotch. Charley took a drink of

it straight, drank a lot of icewater, took a bath, ordered up

some breakfast. But it was time to go out to lunch. He

put the bottle of scotch in his overcoat pocket and went

round to Frank and Joe's for a cocktail.

That night he took a taxi up to Harlem. He went from

joint to joint dancing with the highyallers. He got in a

fight in a breakfastclub. It was day when he found himself

in another taxi going downtown to Mrs. Darling's. He

didn't have any money to pay the taximan and the man

insisted on going up in the elevator while he got the

money. There was nobody in the apartment but the col-

ored maid and she shelled out five dollars. She tried to get

Charley to lie down but he wanted to write her out a check.

He could sign his name all right but he couldn't sign it on

-234-

the check. The maid tried to get him to take a bath and

go to bed. She said he had blood all over his shirt.

He felt fine and was all cleaned up, had been asleep in

a barberchair while the barber shaved him and put an ice-

bag on his black eye, and he had gone back to Frank and

Joe's for a pickup when there was Nat Benton. Good old

Nat was worried asking him about his black eye and he

was showing Nat where he'd skinned his knuckles on the

guy, but Nat kept talking about the business and Askew-

Merritt and Standard Airparts and said Charley'd be out

on the sidewalk if it wasn't for him. They had some drinks

but Nat kept talking about buttermilk and wanted Charley

to come around to the hotel and meet Farrell. Farrell

thought Charley was about the best guy in the world, and

Farrell was the coming man in the industry, you could bet

your bottom dollar on Farrell. And right away there was

Farrell and Charley was showing him his knuckle and tell-

ing him he'd socked the guy in that lousy pokergame and

how he'd have cleaned 'em all up if somebody hadn't

batted him back of the ear with a stocking full of sand.

Detroit, sure. He was ready to go to Detroit any time,

Detroit or anywhere else. Goddam it, a guy don't like to

stay in a town where he's just been rolled. And that damn

highyaller had his pocketbook with all his addresses in it.

Papers? Sure. Sign anythin' you like, anythin' Nat says.

Stock, sure. Swop every last share. What the hell would a

guy want stock for in a plant in a town where he'd been

rolled in a clip joint. Detroit, sure, right away. Nat, call a

taxi, we're goin' to Detroit.

Then they were back at the apartment and Taki was

chattering and Nat attended to everything and Farrell was

saying, "I'd hate to see the other guy's eye," and Charley

could sign his name all right this time. First time he signed

it on the table but then he got it on the contract, and Nat

fixed it all up about swapping his Askew-Merritt stock for

Tern stock and then Nat and Farrell said Charley must be

-235-

sleepy and Taki kept squeaking about how he had to take

right away a hot bath.

Charley woke up the next morning feeling sober and

dead like a stiff laid out for the undertaker. Taki brought

him orangejuice but he threw it right up again. He

dropped back on the pillow. He'd told Taki not to let any-

body in, but there was Joe Askew standing at the foot of

the bed. Joe, looked paler than usual and had a worried

frown like at the office, and was pulling at his thin blond

mustache. He didn't smile. "How are you coming?" he

said.

"Soso," said Charley.

"So it's the Tern outfit, is it?"

"Joe, I can't stay in New York now. I'm through with

this burg."

"Through with a lot of other things, it looks like to

me."

"Joe, honest I wouldn'ta done it if I hadn't had to get

out of this town . . . and I put as much into this as you

did, some people think a little more."

Joe's thin lips were clamped firmly together. He started

to say something, stopped himself and walked stiffly out of

the room.

" Taki," called Charley, "try squeezin' out half a grape-

fruit, will you?"

NEWSREEL LVI

his first move was to board a fast train for Miami to see

whether the builders engaged in construction financed by his

corporation were speeding up the work as much as they might

and to take a look at things in general

Pearly early in the mornin'

-236-

Oh joy

Feel that boat arockin'

Oh boy

See those darleies floclein'

What's that whistle sayin'

All aboard toot toot

AIR REJECTION BLAMED FOR WARSHIP DISASTER

You're in Ken-tucky just as sure as you're born

LINER AFIRE

POSSE CLOSING IN ON AIRMAIL BANDITS

Down beside the summer sea

Along Miami Shore

Some one waits alone for me

Along Miami Shore

SINCE THIS TIME YESTERDAY NEARLY TWO THOUSAND MEN

HAVE CHANGED TO CHESTERFIELDS

PEACHES FLED WITH FEW CLOTHES

Saw a rosebud in a store

So I'm goin' where there's more

Good-bye blues

the three whites he has with him appear to be of primitive

Nordic stock. Physically they are splendid creatures. They

have fine flaxen hair, blue-green eyes and white skins. The

males are covered with a downlike hair

Let me lay me down to sleep in Carolina

With a peaceful pillow 'neath my weary head

For a rolling stone like me there's nothing finer

Oh Lordy what a thrill

To hear that whip-poor-will

In Carolina

-237-

THE CAMERA EYE (48)

westbound to Havana Puerto-MexicoGalveston out

of Santander (the glassy estuary the feeling of hills hem-

ming the moist night an occasional star drips chilly out of

the rainy sky a row of lights spills off the muffled shore)

the twinscrews rumble

at last westbound away from pension spinsters tasty

about watercolors the old men with crocodile eyes hiding

their bloody claws under neat lisle gloves the landscapes

corroded with literature westbound

for an old man he is old

for an old man he is grey

but a young man's heart is full of love

get away old man get away

at the dinnertable westbound in the broadlit saloon

the amplybosom'ed broadbeamed la bella cubana in a yel-

low lowcut dress archly with the sharp rosy nail of her

littlest finger points

the curlyhaired young bucks from Bilbao (louder and

funnier) in such tightwaisted icecreamcolored suits silk

shirts striped ties (westbound to Havana for the sugar-

boom) the rich one has a diamond ring tooshiny eyes

look the way her little finger jabs

but a young man's heart is full of love

-238-

she whispers He came out of her cabin when I

was on the way to the bath Why was she giggling in

number sixtysix? the rich one from Bilbao orders cham-

pagne

to echo the corks that pop in an artillery salute from

the long table where the Mexican general tall solemnfaced

with a black mustache and five tall solemnfaced bluejowled

sons a fat majordomo and a sprinkling of blank henshaped

ladies who rustle out hurriedly in black silk with their

handkerchiefs to their mouths as soon as we round the cape

where the lighthouse is

westbound (out of old into new inordinate new uncle-

ciphered new) southerly summertime crossing (towards

events) the roar in the ears the deep blue heaving the sun

hot on the back of your hand the feel of wet salt on the

handrails the smell of brasspolish and highpressure steam

the multitudinous flickering dazzle of light

and every noon we overeat hors d'œuvres drink too

much wine while gigglingly with rolling eyes la bella to

indicate who slept with who sharply jabs with littlest pin-

sharpened finger

la juerga

alas the young buck from Bilbao the one with the dia-

mond ring suffers amidships (westbound the ancient furies

follow in our wake) a kick from Venus's dangerous toe

retires to bed we take our coffee in his cabin instead of

the fumoir the ladies interest themselves in his plight

-239-

two gallegos loosemouthed frognecked itinerant are

invited up from the steerage to sing to the guitar ( Vichy

water and deep song argyrol rhymes with rusiñol)

si quieres qu'el carro cante

mójele y déjele en rio

que después de buen moja'o

canta com' un silbi'o

and funny stories a thousand and one Havana nights

the dance of the millions the fair cubanas a ellas les

gustan los negros

but stepping out on deck to get a breath of briny

afternoon there's more to be seen than that rusty freighter

wallowing in indigo el rubio the buck from Bilbao

who has no diamond ring beset with yelling cubans la

bella leads with heaving breast a small man with grey side-

burns is pushed out at el rubio they shove at him from

behind

escándalo

alternately the contestants argue with their friends

who hold them back break loose fly at each other

with threshing arms are recaptured pulled apart

shipsofficers intervene.

pale and trembling the champions are led away

he of the sideburns to the ladies' drawingroom el rubio

aft to the fumoir

-240-

there we masticate the insults what was it all

about? no señor no el rubio grabs a sheet of the note-

paper of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique but

fingers refuse to hold the pen while he twined them

in his long curly hair an unauthorized observer who had

become involved in the broil misspelled glibly to his dic-

tation

a challenge

and carried it frozenfaced to the parties in the ladies'

drawingroom coño

then we walk el rubio back and forth across the pal-

pitating stern discuss rapiers pistols fencingpractice

now only the westbound observer appears at meals

el. rubio mopes at the end of the bunk of his beclapped

friend and prepares for doom the ship's agog with

dueltalk until mon commandant a redfaced Breton visits

all parties and explains that this kind of nonsense is ex-

pressly forbidden in the regulations of the Compagnie

Générale Transatlantique and that the musical gallegos

must go back to the steerage from whence they sprang

despair

enter with martial tread mi general expert he says in

affairs of honor un militar coño vamos may he try

to conciliate the parties

all to the fumoir where already four champagnebot-

tles are ranked cozily iced in their whitemetal pails

coño, sandwiches are served mi general clears up the

-241-

misunderstanding something about los negros and las

cubanas overheard in the cabin of the bucks from Bilbao

by listening vamos down the ventilator many

things were that better were unsaid but in any case honor

insulated by the ventilator was intact gingerly the

champions take each others hands coño palmas som-

breros música mi general is awarded the ear

in the steerage the gallegos sing and strum

el rubio at the bar confides to me that it was from

la bella of the pink jabbing finger and the dainty ear at

ventilators that he with the diamond ring received the

and that he himself has fears coño una puta in-

decente

arrival in Havana an opulentlydressed husband in

a panamahat receives la bella the young bucks from

Bilbao go to the Sevilla-Biltmore and I

dance of the millions or not lackofmoney has raised

its customary head inevitable as visas

in the whirl of sugarboom prices in the Augustblister-

ing sun yours truly tours the town and the sugary nights

with twenty smackers fifteen eightfifty dwindling in the

jeans in search of lucrative

and how to get to Mexico

or anywhere

-242-

MARGO DOWLING

Margo Dowling was sixteen when she married Tony.

She loved the trip down to Havana on the boat. It was

very rough but she wasn't sick a minute; Tony was. He

turned very yellow and lay in his bunk all the time and

only groaned when she tried to make him come on deck to

breathe some air. The island was in sight before she could

get him into his clothes. He was so weak she had to dress

him like a baby. He lay on his bunk with his eyes closed

and his cheeks hollow while she buttoned his shoes for

him. Then she ran up on deck to see Havana, Cuba. The

sea was still rough. The waves were shooting columns of

spray up the great rocks under the lighthouse. The young

thinfaced third officer who'd been so nice all the trip

showed her Morro Castle back of the lighthouse and the

little fishingboats with tiny black or brown figures in them

swinging up and down on the huge swells outside of it.

The other side the pale caramelcolored houses looked as if

they were standing up right out of the breakers. She asked

him where Vedado was and he pointed up beyond into the

haze above the surf. "That's the fine residential section,"

he said. It was very sunny and the sky was full of big

white clouds.

By that time they were in the calm water of the harbor

passing a row of big schooners anchored against the steep

hill under the sunny forts and castles, and she had to go

down into the bilgy closeness of their cabin to get Tony up

and close their bags. He was still weak and kept saying

his head was spinning. She had to help him down the gang-

plank.

The ramshackle dock was full of beadyeyed people in

white and tan clothes bustling and jabbering. They all

seemed to have come to meet Tony. There were old ladies

in'shawls and pimplylooking young men in straw hats and

-243-

an old gentleman with big bushy white whiskers wearing

a panamahat. Children with dark circles under their eyes

got under everybody's feet. Everybody was yellow or cof-

feecolored and had black eyes, and there was one grey-

haired old niggerwoman in a pink dress. Everybody cried

and threw up their arms and hugged and kissed Tony and

it was a long time before anybody noticed Margo at all.

Then all the old women crowded around kissing her and

staring at her and making exclamations in Spanish about

her hair and her eyes and she felt awful silly not under-

standing a word and kept asking Tony which his mother

was, but Tony had forgotten his English. When he finally

pointed to a stout old lady in a shawl and said la mamá

she was very much relieved it wasn't the colored one.

If this is the fine residential section, Margo said to her-

self when they all piled out of the streetcar, after a long

ride through yammering streets of stone houses full of

dust and oily smells and wagons and mulecarts, into the

blisteringhot sun of a cobbled lane, I'm a milliondollar

heiress.

They went through a tall doorway in a scabby peeling

pinkstucco wall cut with narrow barred windows that went

right down to the ground, into a cool rankishsmelling ves-

tibule set with wicker chairs and plants. A parrot in a cage

squawked and a fat piggy little white dog barked at Margo

and the old lady who Tony had said was la mamá came

forward and put her arm around her shoulders and said a

lot of things in Spanish. Margo stood there standing first

on one foot and then on the other. The doorway was

crowded with the neighbors staring at her with their mon-

keyeyes.

"Say, Tony, you might at least tell me what she's say-

ing," Margo whined peevishly. "Mother says this is your

house and you are welcome, things like that. Now you

must say muchas gracias, mamá." Margo couldn't say any-

thing. A lump rose in her throat and she burst out crying.

-244-

She cried some more when she saw their room, a big

dark alcove hung with torn lace curtains mostly filled up

by a big iron bed with a yellow quilt on it that was all

spotted with a brown stain. She quit crying and began to

giggle when she saw the big cracked chamberpot with roses

on it peeping out from under.

Tony was sore. "Now you must behave very nice," he

said. "My people they say you are very pretty but not

wellbred."

"Aw, you kiss my foot," she said.

All the time she was in Havana she lived in that alcove

with only a screen in front of the glass door to the court.

Tony and the boys were always out. They'd never take her

anywhere. The worst of it was when she found she was

going to have a baby. Day after day she lay there all

alone staring up at the cracked white plaster of the ceil-

ing, listening to the shrill jabber of the women in the court

and the vestibule and the parrot and the yapping of the

little white dog that was named Kiki. Roaches ran up and

down the wall and ate holes in any clothes that weren't put

away in chests.

Every afternoon a hot square of sunlight pressed in

through the glass roof of the court and ran along the edge

of the bed and across the tiled floor and made the alcove

glary and stifling.

Tony's family never let her go out unless one of the old

women went along, and then it was usually just to market

or to church. She hated going to the market that was so

filthy and rancidsmelling and jammed with sweaty jostling

negroes and chinamen yelling over coops of chickens and

slimy stalls of fish. La mamá and Tia Feliciana and Carné

the old niggerwoman seemed to love it. Church was bet-

ter, at least people wore better clothes there and the tinsel

altars were often full of flowers, so she went to confession

regularly, though the priest didn't understand the few

Spanish words she was beginning to piece together, and

-245-

she couldn't understand his replies. Anyway church was

better than sitting all day in the heat and the rancid smells

of the vestibule trying to talk to the old women who never

did anything but fan and chatter, while the little white dog

slept on a dirty cushion on a busted gilt chair and occasion-

ally snapped at a fly.

Tony never paid any attention to her any more; she

could hardly blame him her face looked so redeyed and

swollen from crying. Tony was always around with a mid-

dleaged babyfaced fat man in a white suit with an enor-

mous double gold watchchain looped across his baywindow

whom everybody spoke of very respectfully as el señor

Manfredo. He was a sugarbroker and was going to send

Tony to Paris to study music. Sometimes he'd come and

sit in the vestibule on a wicker chair with his goldheaded

cane between his fat knees. Margo always felt there was

something funny about Sefior Manfredo, but she was as

nice to him as she could be. He paid no attention to her

either. He never took his eyes off Tony's long black lashes.

Once she got desperate and ran out alone to Central

Park to an American drugstore she'd noticed there one

evening when the old women had taken her to hear the

military band play. Every man she passed stared at her.

She got to the drugstore on a dead run and bought all the

castoroil and quinine she had money for. Going home she

couldn't seem to go a block without some man following

her and trying to take her arm. "You go to hell," she'd

say to them in English and walk all the faster. She lost

her way, was almost run over by a car and at last got to

the house breathless. The old women were back and raised

Cain.

When Tony got home they told him and he made a big

scene and tried to beat her up, but she was stronger than he

was and blacked his eye for him. Then he threw himself

on the bed sobbing and she put cold compresses on his eye

to get the swelling down and petted him and they were

-246-

happy and cozy together for the first time since they'd

come to Havana. The trouble was the old women found

out about how she'd blacked his eye and everybody teased

him about it. The whole street seemed to know and every-

body said Tony was a sissy. La mamá never forgave

Margo and was mean and spiteful to her after that.

If she only wasn't going to have the baby Margo would

have run away. All the castoroil did was to give her ter-

rible colic and the quinine just made her ears ring. She

stole a sharppointed knife from the kitchen and thought

she'd kill herself with it, but she didn't have the nerve to

stick it in. She thought of hanging herself by the bedsheet,

but she couldn't seem to do that either. She kept the knife

under the mattress and lay all day on the bed dreaming

about what she'd do if she ever got back to the States and

thinking about Agnes and Frank and vaudeville shows and

the Keith circuit and the St. Nicholas rink. Sometimes

she'd get herself to believe that this was all a long night-

mare and that she'd wake up in bed at home at Indian's.

She wrote Agnes every week and Agnes would some-

times send her a couple of dollars in a letter. She'd saved

fifteen dollars in a little alligatorskin purse Tony had given

her when they first got to Havana, when he happened to

look into it one day and pocketed the money and went out

on a party. She was so sunk that she didn't even bawl him

out about it when he came back after a night at a rumba-

joint with dark circles under his eyes. Those days she was

feeling too sick to bawl anybody out.

When her pains began nobody had any idea of taking

her to the hospital. The old women said they knew just

what to do, and two Sisters of Mercy with big white but-

terfly headdresses began to bustle in and out with basins

and pitchers of hot water. It lasted all day and all night

and some of the next day. She was sure she was going to

die. At last she yelled so loud for a doctor that they went

out and fetched an old man with yellow hands all knobbed

-247-

with rheumatism and a tobaccostained beard they said was

a doctor. He had goldrimmed eyeglasses on a ribbon that

kept falling off his long twisted nose. He examined her

and said everything was fine and the old women grinning

and nodding stood around behind him. Then the pains

grabbed her again; she didn't know anything but the pain.

After it was all over she lay back so weak she thought

she must be dead. They brought it to her to look at but

she wouldn't look. Next day when she woke up she heard

a thin cry beside her and couldn't imagine what it was. She

was too sick to turn her head to look at it. The old women

were shaking their heads over something, but she didn't

care. When they told her she wasn't well enough to nurse

it and that it would have to be raised on a bottle she didn't

care either.

A couple of days passed in blank weakness. Then she

was able to drink a little orangejuice and hot milk and

could raise her head on her elbow and look at the baby

when they brought it to her. It looked dreadfully little.

It was a little girl. Its poor little face looked wrinkled and

old like a monkey's. There was something the matter with

its eyes.

She made them send for the old doctor and he sat on

the edge of her bed looking very solemn and wiping and

wiping his eyeglasses with his big clean silk handkerchief.

He kept calling her a poor little niña and finally made her

understand that the baby was blind and that her husband

had a secret disease and that as soon as she was well enough

she must go to a clinic for treatments. She didn't cry or say

anything but just lay there staring at him with her eyes

hot and her hands and feet icy. She didn't want him to go,

that was all she could think of. She made him tell her all

about the disease and the treatment and made out to un-

derstand less Spanish than she did, just so that he wouldn't

go away.

A couple of days later the old women put on their best

-248-

black silk shawls and took the baby to the church to be

christened. Its little face looked awful blue in the middle

of all the lace they dressed it in. That night it turned

almost black. In the morning it was dead. Tony cried and

the old women all carried on and they spent a lot of money

on a little white casket with silver handles and a hearse and

a priest for the funeral. Afterwards the Sisters of Mercy

came and prayed beside her bed and the priest came and

talked to the old women in a beautiful tragedy voice like

Frank's voice when he wore his morningcoat, but Margo

just lay there in the bed hoping she'd die too, with her

eyes closed and her lips pressed tight together. No matter

what anybody said to her she wouldn't answer or open her

eyes.

When she got well enough to sit up she wouldn't go to

the clinic the way Tony was going. She wouldn't speak to

him or to the old women. She pretended not to under-

stand what they said. La mamá would look into her face

in a spiteful way she had and shake her head and say,

"Loca." That meant crazy.

Margo wrote desperate letters to Agnes: for God's sake

she must sell something and send her fifty dollars so that

she could get home. Just to get to Florida would be

enough. She'd get a job. She didn't care what she did if

she could only get back to God's Country. She just said

that Tony was a bum and that she didn't like it in Havana.

She never said a word about the baby or being sick.

Then one day she got an idea; she was an American

citizen, wasn't she? She'd go to the consul and see if they

wouldn't send her home. It was weeks before she could

get out without one of the old women. The first time she

got down to the consulate all dressed up in her one good

dress only to find it closed. The next time she went in the

morning when the old women were out marketing and got

to see a clerk who was a towheaded American collegeboy.

My, she felt good talking American again.

-249-

She could see he thought she was a knockout. She liked

him too but she didn't let him see it. She told him she was

sick and had to go back to the States and that she'd been

gotten down there on false pretenses on the promise of an

engagement at the Alhambra. "The Alhambra," said the

clerk. "Gosh, you don't look like that kind of a girl."

"I'm not," she said.

His name was George. He said that if she'd married a

Cuban there was nothing he could do as you lost your

citizenship if you married a foreigner. She said suppose

they weren't really married. He said he thought she'd said

she wasn't that kind of a girl. She began to blubber and

said she didn't care what kind of a girl she was, she had

to get home. He said to come back next day and he'd see

what the consulate could do, anyway wouldn't she have tea

with him at the Miami that afternoon.

She said it was a date and hurried back to the house feel-

ing better than she had for a long time. The minute she

was by herself in the alcove she took the marriagelicense

out of her bag and tore it up into little tiny bits and

dropped it into the filthy yellow bowl of the old water-

closet in the back of the court. For once the chain worked

and every last bit of forgetmenotspotted paper went down

into the sewer.

That afternoon she got a letter from Agnes with a fifty-

dollar draft on the National City Bank in it. She was so

excited her heart almost stopped beating. Tony was out

gallivanting around somewhere with the sugarbroker. She

wrote him a note saying it was no use looking for her,

she'd gone home, and pinned it on the underpart of the

pillow on the bed. Then she waited until the old women

had drowsed off for their siesta, and ran out.

She wasn't coming back. She just had the clothes she had

on, and a few little pieces of cheap jewelry Tony had given

her when they were first married, in her handbag. She

went to the Miami and ordered an icecreamsoda in Eng-

-250-

lish so that everybody would know she was an American

girl, and waited for George.

She was so scared every minute she thought she'd keel

over. Suppose George didn't come. But he did come and

he certainly was tickled when he saw the draft, because he

said the consulate didn't have any funds for a case like

hers. He said he'd get the draft cashed in the morning and

help her buy her ticket and everything. She said he was a

dandy and then suddenly leaned over and put her hand in

its white kid glove on his arm and looked right into his

eyes that were blue like hers were and whispered, "George,

you've got to help me some more. You've got to help me

hide. . . . I'm so scared of that Cuban. You know they

are terrible when they're jealous."

George turned red and began to hem and haw a little,

but Margo told him the story of what had happened on

her street just the other day, how a man, an armyofficer,

had come home and found, well, his sweetheart, with an-

other man, well, she might as well tell the story the way

it happened, she guessed George wasn't easily shocked

anyway, they were in bed together and the armyofficer

emptied all the chambers of his revolver into the other

man and then chased the woman up the street with a

carvingknife and stabbed her five times in the public

square. She began to giggle when she got that far and

George began to laugh. "I know it sounds funny to you

. . . but it wasn't so funny for her. She died right there

without any clothes on in front of everybody."

"Well, I guess we'll have to see what we can do," said

George, "to keep you away from that carvingknife."

What they did was to go over to Matanzas on the

Hershey electriccar and get a room at a hotel. They had

supper there and a lot of ginfizzes and George, who'd told

her he'd leave her to come over the next day just in time

for the boat, got romantic over the ginfizzes and the moon-

light and dogs barking and the roosters crowing. They

-251-

went walking with their arms round each other down the

quiet chalkycolored moonstruck streets, and he missed the

last car back to Havana. Margo didn't care about anything

except not to be alone in that creepy empty whitewalled

hotel with the moon so bright and everything. She liked

George anyway.

The next morning at breakfast he said she'd have to let

him lend her another fifty so that she could go back first-

class and she said honestly she'd pay it back as soon as she

got a job in New York and that he must write to her every

day.

He went over on the early car because he had to be at

the office and she went over later all alone through the

glary green countryside shrilling with insects, and went in

a cab right from the ferry to the boat. George met her

there at the dock with her ticket and a little bunch of

orchids, the first she'd ever had, and a roll of bills that

she tucked into her purse without counting. The stewards

seemed awful surprised that she didn't have any baggage,

so she made George tell them that she'd had to leave

home at five minutes' notice because her father, who was

a very wealthy man, was sick in New York. She and

George went right down to her room, and he was very

sad about her going away and said she was the loveliest

girl he'd ever seen and that he'd write her every day too,

but she couldn't follow what he was saying she was so

scared Tony would come down to the boat looking for her.

At last the gong rang and George kissed her desperate

hard and went ashore. She didn't dare go up on deck until

she heard the engineroom bells and felt the shaking of the

boat as it began to back out of the dock. Out of the port-

hole, as the boat pulled out, she got a glimpse of a dapper

dark man in a white suit, that might have been Tony,

who broke away from the cops and ran yelling and waving

his arms down to the end of the wharf.

Maybe it was the orchids or her looks or the story about

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her father's illness, but the captain asked her to his table

and all the officers rushed her, and she had the time of her

life on the trip up. The only trouble was that she could

only come on deck in the afternoon because she only had

that one dress.

She'd given George a cable to send so when they got to

New York Agnes met her at the dock. It was late fall and

Margo had nothing on but a light summer dress, so she

said she'd set Agnes up to a taxi to go home. It was only

when they got into the cab that she noticed Agnes was

wearing black. When she asked her why Agnes said Fred

had died in Bellevue two weeks before. He'd been picked

up on Twentythird Street deaddrunk and had died there

without coming to. "Oh, Agnes, I knew it . . . I had a

premonition on the boat," sobbed Margo.

When she'd wiped her eyes she turned and looked at

Agnes. "Why, Agnes dear, how well you look," she said.

"What a pretty suit. Has Frank got a job?""Oh, no,"

said Agnes. "You see Miss Franklyn's teashops are doing

quite well. She's branching out and she's made me man-

ageress of the new branch on Thirtyfourth Street at sev-

entyfive dollars a week. Wait till you see our new apart-

ment just off the Drive. . . . Oh, Margie, you must have

had an awful time."

"Well," said Margo, "it was pretty bad. His people are

pretty well off and prominent and all that but it's hard to

get on to their ways. Tony's a bum and I hate him more

than anything in the world. But after all it was quite an

experience . . . I wouldn't have missed it."

Frank met them at the door of the apartment. He

looked fatter than when Margo had last seen him and had

patches of silvery hair on either side of his forehead that

gave him a distinguished look like a minister or an ambas-

sador. "Little Margo. . . . Welcome home, my child.

. . . What a beautiful young woman you have become."

When he took her in his arms and kissed her on the brow,

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she smelt again the smell of bayrum and energine she'd

remembered on him. "Did Agnes tell you that I'm going

on the road With Mrs. Fiske? . . . Dear Minnie Mad-

dern and I were children together."

The apartment was a little dark, but it had a parlor, a

diningroom and two bedrooms and a beautiful big bath-

room and kitchen. "First thing I'm goin' to do," said

Margo, "is take a hot bath. . . . I don't believe I've had

a hot bath since I left New York."

While Agnes, who had taken the afternoon off from the

tearoom, went out to do some marketing for supper,

Margo went into her neat little bedroom with chintz cur-

tains on the walls and took off her chilly rumpled summer

dress and got into Agnes's padded dressinggown. Then she

sat back in the morrischair in the parlor and strung Frank

along when he asked her questions about her life in

Havana.

Little by little he sidled over to the arm of her chair,

telling her how attractivelooking she'd become. Then sud-

denly he made a grab for her. She'd been expecting it and

gave him a ringing slap on the face as she got to her feet.

She felt herself getting hysterical as he came towards her

across the room panting.

"Get away from me, you old buzzard," she yelled, "get

away from me or I'll tell Agnes all about you and Agnes

and me we'll throw you out on your ear." She wanted to

shut up but she couldn't stop yelling. "Get away from me.

I caught a disease down there, if you don't keep away

from me you'll catch it too."

Frank was so shocked he started to tremble all over.

He'let himself drop into the morrischair and ran his long

fingers through his slick silver and black hair. She slammed

her bedroom door on him and locked it. Sitting in there

alone on the bed she began to think how she would never

see Fred again, and could it have been a premonition when

she'd told them on the boat that her father was sick. Tears

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came to her eyes. Certainly she'd had a premonition. The

stearnheat hissed cozily. She lay back on the bed that was

so comfortable with its clean pillows and silky comforter,

and still crying fell asleep.

NEWSREEL LVII

the psychic removed all clothing before séances at Har-

vard. Electric torches, bells, large megaphones, baskets, all

illuminated by phosphorescent paint, formed the psychic's equip-

ment

My brother's coming

with pineapples

Watch the circus begin

IS WILLING TO FACE PROBERS

the psychic's feet were not near the professor's feet when

his trouser leg was pulled. An electric bulb on the ceiling

flashed on and off. Buzzers rang. A teleplasmic arm grasped

objects on the table and pulled Dr. B.'s hair. Dr. B. placed

his nose in the doughnut and encouraged Walter to pull as

hard as possible, His nose was pulled.

Altho' we both agreed to part

It left a sadness in my heart

UNHAPPY WIFE TRIES TO DIE

SHEIK DENTIST RECONCILED

Financing Only Problem

I thought that I'd get along

and now

I find that I was wrong

somehow

Society Women Seek Jobs in Vain as Maids to Queen

-255-

NUN WILL WED GOB

I'm broken hearted

QUEEN HONORS UNKNOWN SOLDIER

Police Guard Queen in Mob

Beneath a dreamy Chinese moon

Where love is like a haunting tune

PROFESSOR TORTURES RIVAL

QUEEN SLEEPS AS HER TRAIN DEPARTS

Social Strife Brews

COOLIDGE URGES ADVERTISING

I found her beneath the setting sun

When the day was done

Cop Feeds Canary on $500 Rich Bride Left

While the twilight deepened

The sky above

I told my love

In o-o-old Ma-an-ila-a-a

ABANDONED APOLLO STILL HOPES FOR RETURN OF WEALTHY

BRIDE

MARGO DOWLING

Agnes was a darling. She managed to raise money

through the Morris Plan for Margo's operation when Dr.

Dennison said it was absolutely necessary if her health

wasn't to be seriously impaired, and nursed her the way

she'd nursed her when she'd had measles when she was a

little girl. When they told Margo she never could have

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a baby, Margo didn't care so much but Agnes cried and

cried.

By the time Margo began to get well again and think of

getting a job she felt as if she and Agnes had just been

living together always. The Old Southern Waffle Shop

was doing very well and Agnes was making seventyfive

dollars a week; it was lucky that she did because Frank

Mandeville hardly ever seemed able to get an engage-

ment any more, there's no demand for real entertainment

since the war, he'd say. He'd become very sad and respect-

able since he and Agnes had been married at the Little

Church Around the Corner, and spent most of his time

playing bridge at the Lambs Club and telling about the

old days when he'd toured with Richard Mansfield. After

Margo got on her feet she spent a whole dreary winter

hanging around the agencies and in the castingoffices of

musical shows, before Flo Ziegfeld happened to see her

one afternoon sitting in the outside office in a row of other

girls. By chance she caught his eye and made a faint ghost

of a funny face when he passed; he stopped and gave her

a onceover; next day Mr. Herman picked her for first row

in the new show. Rehearsals were the hardest work she'd

ever done in her life.

Right from the start Agnes said she was going to see to

it that Margo didn't throw herself away with a trashy

crowd of chorusgirls; so, although Agnes had to be at

work by nine o'clock sharp every morning, she always

came by the theater every night after late rehearsals or

evening performances to take Margo home. It was only

after Margo met Tad Whittlesea, a Yale halfback who

spent his weekends in New York once the football season

was over, that Agnes missed a single night. The nights

Tad met her, Agnes stayed home. She'd looked Tad over

carefully and had him to Sunday dinner at the apartment

and decided that for a millionaire's son he was pretty

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steady and that it was good for him to feel some responsi-

bility about Margo.

Those nights Margo would be in a hurry to give a last

pat to the blond curls under the blue velvet toque and to

slip into the furcape that wasn't silver fox but looked a

little like it at a distance, and to leave the dusty stuffy

dressingroom and the smells of curling irons and cocoa-

butter and girls' armpits and stagescenery and to run down

the flight of drafty cement stairs and past old greyfaced

Luke who was in his little glass box pulling on his over-

coat getting ready to go home himself. She'd take a deep

breath when she got out into the cold wind of the street.

She never would let Tad meet her at the theater with the

other stagedoor Johnnies. She liked to find him standing

with his wellpolished tan shoes wide apart and his coonskin

coat thrown open so that you could see his striped tie and

soft rumpled shirt, among people in eveningdress in the

lobby of the Astor.

Tad was a simple kind of redfaced boy who never had

much to say. Margo did all the talking from the minute

he handed her into the taxi to go to the nightclub. She'd

keep him laughing with stories about the other girls and

the wardrobewomen and the chorusmen. Sometimes he'd

ask her to tell him a story over again so that he could

remember it to tell his friends at college. The story about

how the chorusmen, who were most of them fairies, had

put the bitch's curse on a young fellow who was Maisie

De Mar's boyfriend, so that he'd turned into a fairy too,

scared Tad half to death. "A lot of things sure do go on

that people don't know about," he said.

Margo wrinkled up her nose. "You don't know the half

of it, dearie." "But it must be just a story." "No, honestly,

Tad, that's how it happened . . . we could hear them

yelling and oohooing like they do down in their dressing-

room. They all stood around in a circle and put the bitches'

curse on him. I tell you we were scared."

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That night they went to the Columbus Circle Childs

for some ham and eggs. "Gee, Margo," said Tad with his

mouth full as he was finishing his second order of butter-

cakes. "I don't think this is the right life for you. . . .

You're the smartest girl I ever met and damn refined

too." "Don't worry, Tad, little Margo isn't going to stay

in the chorus all her life."

On the way home in the taxi Tad started to make passes

at her. It surprised Margo because he wasn't a fresh kind

of a boy. He wasn't drunk either, he'd only had one bottle

of Canadian ale. "Gosh, Margo, you're wonderful. . . .

You won't drink and you won't cuddlecooty." She gave

him a little pecking kiss on the cheek. "You ought to un-

derstand, Tad," she said, "I've got to keep my mind on

my work."

"I guess you think I'm just a dumb cluck."

"You're a nice boy, Tad, but I like you best when you

keep your hands in your pockets."

"Oh, you're marvelous," sighed Tad, looking at her

with round eyes from out of his turnedup fuzzy collar

from his own side of the cab. "Just a woman men forget,"

she said.

Having Tad to Sunday dinner got to be a regular

thing. He'd come early to help Agnes lay the table, and

take off his coat and roll up his shirtsleeves afterwards to

help with the dishes, and then all four of them would play

hearts and each drink a glass of beefironandwine tonic

from the drugstore. Margo hated those Sunday afternoons

but Frank and Agnes seemed to love them, and Tad would

stay till the last minute before he had to rush off to meet

his father at the Metropolitan Club, saying he'd never

had such a good time in his life.

One snowy Sunday afternoon when Margo had slipped

away from the cardtable saying she had a headache and

had lain on the bed all afternoon listening to the hissing

of the steamheat almost crying from restlessness and bore-

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dom, Agnes said with her eyes shining when she came in

in her negligee after Tad was gone, "Margo, you've got to

marry him. He's the sweetest boy. He was telling us how

this place is the first time in his life he's ever had any

feeling of home. He's been brought up by servants and

ridingmasters and people like that. . . . I never thought

a millionaire could be such a dear. I just think he's a

darling."

"He's no millionaire," said Margo, pouting.

"His old man has a seat on the stockexchange," called

Frank from the other room. "You don't buy them with

cigarstore coupons, do you, dear child?"

"Well," said Margo, stretching and yawning, "I cer-

tainly wouldn't be getting a spendthrift for a husband.

. . ." Then she sat up and shook her finger at Agnes. "I

can tell you right now why he likes to come here Sundays.

He gets a free meal and it don't cost him a cent."

Jerry Herman, the yellowfaced bald shriveledup little

castingdirector, was a man all the girls were scared to

death of. When Regina Riggs said she'd seen Margo hav-

ing a meal with him at Keene's Chophouse between per-

formances, one Saturday, the girls never quit talking about

it. It made Margo sore and gave her a sick feeling in the

pit of her stomach to hear them giggling and whispering

behind her back in the dressingroom.

Regina Riggs, a broadfaced girl from Oklahoma whose

real given name was Queenie and who'd been in the Zieg-

feld choruses since the days when they had horsecars on

Broadway, took Margo's arm when they were going down

the stairs side by side after a morning rehearsal. "Look

here, kiddo," she said, "I just want to tip you off about

that guy, see? You know me, I been through the mill an'

I don't give a hoot in hell for any of 'em . . . but let me

tell you somethin'. There never been a girl got a spoken

word by givin' that fourflusher a lay. Plenty of 'em have

-260-

tried it. Maybe I've tried it myself. You can't beat the

game with that guy an' a beautiful white body's about the

cheapest thing there is in this town. . . . You got a kinda

peart innocent look and I thought I'd put you wise."

Margo opened her blue eyes wide. "Why, the idea.

. . . What made you think I'd . . ." She began to titter

like a schoolgirl. "All right, baby, let it ride. . . . I guess

you'll hold out for the weddin'bells." They both laughed.

They were always good friends after that.

But not even Queenie knew about it when after a long

wearing rehearsal late one Saturday night of a new num-

ber that was coming in the next Monday, Margo found

herself stepping into Jerry Herman's roadster. He said

he'd drive her home, but when they reached Columbus

Circle, he said wouldn't she drive out to his farm in Con-

necticut with him and have a real rest. Margo went into

a drugstore and phoned Agnes that there'd be rehearsals

all day Sunday and that she'd stay down at Queenie

Riggs's flat that was nearer the theater. Driving out, Jerry

kept asking Margo about herself. "There's something dif-

ferent about you, little girl," he said. "I bet you don't tell

all you know. . . . You've got mystery."

All the way out Margo was telling about her early life

on a Cuban sugarplantation and her father's great town-

house in the Vedado and Cuban music and dances, and

how her father had been ruined by the sugartrust and

she'd supported the family as a child actress in Christmas

pantomimes in England and about her early unfortunate

marriage with a Spanish nobleman, and how all that life

was over now and all she cared about was her work. "Well,

that story would make great publicity," was what Jerry

Herman said about it.

When they drew up at a lighted farmhouse under a lot

of tall trees, they sat in the car a moment, shivering a little

in the chilly mist that came from a brook somewhere. He

turned to her in the dark and seemed to be trying to look

-261-

in her face. "You know about the three monkeys, dear?"

"Sure," said Margo. "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no

evil." "Correct," he said. Then she let him kiss her.

Inside it was the prettiest farmhouse with a roaring fire

and two men in checked lumberman's shirts and a couple

of funnylooking women in Paris clothes with Park Avenue

voices who turned out to be in the decorating business. The

two men were scenic artists. Jerry cooked up ham and eggs

in the kitchen for everybody and they drank hard cider

and had quite a time, though Margo didn't quite know

how to behave. To have something to do she got hold of

a guitar that was hanging on the wall and picked out

Siboney and some other Cuban songs Tony had taught her.

When one of the women said something about how she

ought to do a Cuban specialty her heart almost stopped

beating. Blue daylight was coming through the mist out-

side of the windows before they got to bed. They all had

a fine country breakfast giggling and kidding in their

dressinggowns and Sunday afternoon Jerry drove her in

to town and let her out on the Drive near Seventyninth

Street.

Frank and Agnes were in a great stew when she got

home. Tad had been calling up all day. He'd been to the

theater and found out that there weren't any rehearsals

called. Margo said spitefully that she had been rehearsing

a little specialty and that if any young collegeboy thought

he could interfere with her career he had another think

coming. The next weekend when he called up she wouldn't

see him.

But a week later when she came out of her room about

two o'clock on Sunday afternoon just in time for Agnes's

big Sunday dinner, Tad was sitting there hanging his head,

with his hick hands dangling between his knees. On the

chair beside him was a green florist's box that she knew

when she looked at it was American Beauty roses. He

jumped up. "Oh, Margo . . . don't be sore . . . I just

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can't seem to have a good time going around without you."

"I'm not sore, Tad," she said. "I just want everybody to

understand that I won't let my life interfere with my

work."

"Sure, I get you," said Tad.

Agnes came forward all smiles and put the roses in

water. "Gosh, I forgot," said Tad and pulled a redleather

case out of his pocket. He was stuttering. "You see

D-d-dad g-g-gave me some s-s-stocks to play around with

an' I made a little killing last week and I bought these,

only we can't wear them except when we both go out to-

gether, can we?" It was a string of pearls, small and not

very well matched, but pearls all right.

"Who else would take me anyplace where I could wear

them, you mut?" said Margo. Margo'felt herself blush-

ing. "And they're not Teclas?" Tad shook his head. She

threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.

"Gosh, you honestly like them," said Tad, talking fast.

"Well, there's one other thing . . . Dad's letting me have

the Antoinette, that's his boat, you know, for a two weeks'

cruise this summer with my own crowd. I want you and

Mrs. Mandeville to come. I'd ask Mr. Mandeville too

but . . ."

"Nonsense," said Agnes. "I'm sure the party will be

properly chaperoned without me. . . . I'd just get sea-

sick. . . . It used to be terrible when poor Fred used to

take me out fishing."

"That was my father," said Margo. "He loved being

out on the water . . . yachting . . . that kind of thing.

. . . I guess that's why I'm such a good sailor."

"That's great," said Tad.

At that minute Frank Mandeville came in from his

Sunday walk, dressed in his morningcoat and carrying a

silverheaded cane, and Agnes ran into the kitchenette to

dish up the roast stuffed veal and vegetables and the straw-

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berrypie from which warm spicy smells had been seeping

through the air of the small apartment for some time.

"Gosh, I like it here," said Tad, leaning back in his chair

after they'd sat down to dinner.

The rest of that spring Margo had quite a time keeping

Tad and Jerry from bumping into each other. She and

Jerry never saw each other at the theater; early in the

game she'd told him she had no intention of letting her

life interfere with her work and he'd looked sharply at

her with his shrewd boiledlooking eyes and said, "Humph

. . . I wish more of our young ladies felt like you do.

. . . I spend most of my time combing them out of my

hair."

"Too bad about you," said Margo. "The Valentino of

the castingoffice." She liked Jerry Herman well enough.

He was full of dope about the theater business. The only

trouble was that when they got confidential he began mak-

ing Margo pay her share of the check at restaurants and

showed her pictures of his wife and children in New

Rochelle. She worked hard on the Cuban songs, but noth-

ing ever came of the specialty.

In May the show went on the road. For a long time

she couldn't decide whether to go or not. Queenie Riggs

said absolutely not. It was all right for her, who didn't

have any ambition any more except to pick her off a travel-

ingman in a onehorse town and marry him before he

sobered up, but for Margo Dowling who had a career

ahead of her, nothing doing. Better be at liberty all sum-

mer than a chorine on the road.

Jerry Herman was sore as a crab when she wouldn't sign

the roadcontract. He blew up right in front of the office-

force and all the girls waiting in line and everything. "All

right, I seen it coming . . . now she's got a swelled head

and thinks she's Peggy Joyce. . . . All right, I'm

through."

Margo looked him straight in the eye. "You must have

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me confused with somebody else, Mr. Herman. I'm sure

I never started anything for you to be through with." All

the girls were tittering when she walked out, and Jerry

Herman looked at her like he wanted to choke her. It

meant no more jobs in any company where he did the

casting.

She spent the summer in the hot city hanging round

Agnes's apartment with nothing to do. And there was

Frank always waiting to make a pass at her, so that she had

to lock her door when she went to bed. She'd lie around all

day in the horrid stuffy little room with furry green wall-

paper and an unwashed window that looked out on cindery

backyards and a couple of allanthustrees and always wash-

ing hung out. Tad had gone to Canada as soon as college

was over. She spent the days reading magazines and mon-

keying with her hair and manicuring her fingernails and

dreaming about how she could get out of this miserable

sordid life. Sordid was a word she'd just picked up. It

was in her mind all the time, sordid, sordid, sordid. She

decided she was crazy about Tad Whittlesea.

When August came Tad wrote from Newport that his

mother was sick and the yachting trip was off till next

winter. Agnes cried when Margo showed her the letter.

"Well, there are other fish in the sea," said Margo.

She and Queenie, who had resigned from the roadtour

when she had a runin with the stagemanager, started mak-

ing the rounds of the castingoffices again. They rehearsed

four weeks for a show that flopped the opening night.

Then they got jobs in the Greenwich Village Follies. The

director gave Margo a chance to do her Cuban number

and Margo got a special costume made and everything

only to be cut out before the dressrehearsal because the

show was too long.

She would have felt terrible if Tad hadn't turned up

after Thanksgiving to take her out every Saturday night.

He talked a lot about the yachting trip they were going to

-265-

take during his midwinter vacation. It all depended on

when his exams came.

After Christmas she was at liberty again. Frank was

sick in bed with kidney trouble and Margo was crazy to

get away from the stuffy apartment and nursing Frank and

doing the housekeeping for Agnes who often didn't get

home from her job till ten or eleven o'clock at night.

Frank lay in bed, his face looking drawn and yellow and

pettish, and needed attention all the time. Agnes never

complained, but Margo was so fed up with hanging around

New York she signed a contract for a job as entertainer in

a Miami cabaret, though Queenie and Agnes carried on

terrible and said it would ruin her career.

She hadn't yet settled her wrangle with the agent about

who was going to pay her transportation south when one

morning in February Agnes came in to wake her up.

Margo could see that it was something because Agnes

was beaming all over her face. It was Tad calling her on

the phone. He'd had bronchitis and was going to take a

month off from college with a tutor on his father's boat

in the West Indies. The' boat was in Jacksonville. Before

the tutor got there he'd be able to take anybody he liked

for a little cruise. Wouldn't Margo come and bring a

friend? Somebody not too gay. He wished Agnes could go,

he said, if that was impossible on account of Mr. Mande-

ville's being sick who else could she take? Margo was so

excited she could hardly breathe. "Tad, how wonderful,"

she said. "I was planning to go south this week anyway.

You must be a mindreader."

Queenie Riggs arranged to go with her though she

said she'd never been on a yacht before and was scared she

wouldn't act right. "Well, I spent a lot of time in row-

boats when I was a kid. . . . It's the same sort of thing,"

said Margo.

When they got out of the taxicab at the Penn station

there was Tad and a skinny little sleekhaired boy with

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him waiting to meet them. They were all very much ex-

cited and the boys' breaths smelled pretty strong of gin.

"You girls buy your own tickets," said Tad, taking Margo

by the arm and pushing some bills down into the pocket

of her furcoat. "The reservations are in your name, you'll

have a drawingroom and we'll have one."

"A couple of wise guys," whispered Queenie in her ear

as they stood in line at the ticketwindow.

The'other boy's name was Dick Rogers. Margo could

see right away that he thought Queenie was too old and

not refined enough. Margo was worried about their bag-

gage too. Their bags looked awful cheap beside the boys'

pigskin suitcases. She felt pretty down in the mouth when

the train pulled out of the station. Here I am pulling a

boner the first thing, she thought. And Queenie was

throwing her head back and showing her gold tooth and

yelling and shrieking already like she was at a fireman's

picnic.

The four of them settled down in the girls' stateroom

with the little table between them to drink a snifter of gin

and began to feel more relaxed. When the train came out

of the tunnel and lights began flashing by in the blackness

outside, Queenie pulled down the shade. "My, this is real

cozy," she said.

"Now the first thing I got to worry about is how to get

you girls out on the boat. Dad won't care if he thinks we

met you in Jacksonville, but if he knew we'd brought you

down from New York he'd raise Hail Columbia."

"I think we've got a chaperon all lined up in Jackson-

ville," said young Rogers. "She's a wonder. She's deaf

and blind and she can't speak English."

"I wish we had Agnes along," said Tad. "That's Mar-

go's stepmother. My, she's a good sport."

"Well, girls," said young Rogers, taking a noisy swig

from the ginbottle. "When does the necking start?"

After they'd had dinner in the diningcar, they went

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lurching back to the drawingroom and had some more gin

and young Rogers wanted them to play strip poker but

Margo said no. "Aw, be a sport," Queenie giggled.

Queenie was pretty tight already. Margo put on her fur-

coat. "I want Tad to turn in soon," she said. "He's just

out of a sickbed."

She grabbed Tad's hand and pulled him out into the

passage. "Come on, let's give the kids a break. . . . The

trouble with you collegeboys is that the minute a girl's

unconventional you think she's an easy mark.""Oh,

Margo . . ." Tad hugged her through her furcoat as they

stepped out into the cold clanging air of the observation

platform. "You're grand."

That night after they'd gotten undressed young Rogers

came in the girls' room in his bathrobe and said there was

somebody asking for Margo in the other stateroom. She

slept in the same stateroom with Tad, but she wouldn't

let him get into the bunk with her. "Honest, Tad, I like

you fine," she said, peeking from under the covers in the

upper berth, "but you know . . . Heaven won't protect

a workinggirl unless she protects herself. . . . And in my

family we get married before the loving instead of after."

Tad sighed and rolled over with his face to the wall on

the berth below. "Oh, heck . . . I'd been thinking about

that." She switched off the light. "But, Tad, aren't you

even going to kiss me goodnight?"

In the middle of the night there was a knock on the

door. Young Rogers came in looking pretty rumpled.

"Time to switch," he said. "I'm scared the conductor'll

catch us.""The conductor'll mind his own damn business,"

said Tad grumpily, but Margo had already slipped out

and gone back to her own stateroom.

Next morning at breakfast in the diningcar, Margo

wouldn't stop kidding the other two about the dark circles

under their eyes. Young Rogers ordered a plate of oysters

and they thought they'd never get over the giggles. By

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the time they got to Jacksonville Tad had taken Margo

back to the observation platform and asked her why the

hell they didn't get married anyway, he was free white

and twentyone, wasn't he? Margo began to cry and.

grinned at him through her tears and said she guessed

there were plenty reasons why not.

"By gum," said Tad when they got off the train into the

sunshine of the station, "we'll buy us an engagement ring

anyway."

First thing on the way to a hotel in a taxi they went to

a jeweler's and Tad bought her a solitaire diamond set in

platinum and paid for it with a check. "My, his old man

must be some millionaire," whispered Queenie into

Margo's ear in a voice like in church.

After they'd been to the jeweler's the boys drove the

girls to the Mayflower Hotel. They got a room there and

went upstairs to fix up a little. The girls washed their

underclothes and took hot baths and laid out their dresses

on the beds. "If you want my opinion," Queenie was say-

ing while she was helping Margo wash her hair, "those

two livewires are gettin' cold feet. . . . All my life I've

wanted to go on a yachtin' trip an' now we're not gettin' to

go any more than a rabbit. . . . Oh, Margo, I hope it

wasn't me gummed the game."

"Tad'll do anything I say," said Margo crossly.

"You wait and see," said Queenie. "But here we are

squabblin' when we ought to be enjoyin' ourselves. . . .

Isn't this the swellest room in the swellest hotel in Jack-

sonville, Florida?" Margo couldn't help laughing. "Well,

whose fault is it?" "That's right," said Queenie, flouncing

out of the shampoosteaming bathroom where they were

washing their hair, and slamming the door on Margo.

"Have the last word."

At one o'clock the boys came by for them, and made

them get all packed up and check out of the hotel. They

went down to the dock in a Lincoln car Tad had hired.

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It was a beautiful sunny day. The Antoinette was anchored

out in the St. Johns River, so they had to go out in a little

speedboat.

The sailor was a goodlooking young fellow all in white;

he touched his cap and held out his arm to help the girls

in. When Margo put her hand in his arm to step into the

boat she felt the hard muscles under the white duck sleeve

and noticed how the sun shone on the golden hairs on his

brown hand. Sitting on the darkblue soft cushion she

looked up at Tad handing the bags down to the sailor. Tad

looked pale from being sick and had that funny simple

broadfaced look, but he was a husky wellbuilt boy too.

Suddenly she wanted to hug him.

Tad steered and the speedboat went through the water

so fast it took the girls' breath away and they were scared

for fear the spray would spoil the new sportsdresses they

were wearing for the first time. "Oh, what a beauty," they

both sighed when they saw the Antoinette so big and

white with a mahogany deckhouse and a broad yellow

chimney. "Oh, I didn't know it was a steamyacht," crooned

Queenie. "Why, my lands, you could cross the ocean in it."

"It's a diesel," said Tad. "Aren't we all?" said Margo.

Tad was going so fast they crashed right in the little

mahogany stairway they had for getting on the boat, and

for a second it cracked and creaked like it would break

right off, but the sailors managed to hold on somehow.

"Hold her, Newt," cried young Rogers, giggling.

"Damn," said Tad and he looked very sore as they went

on board. The girls were glad to get up onto the beautiful

yacht and out of the tippy little speedboat where they

were afraid of getting their dresses splashed.

The yacht had goodlooking officers in white uniforms

and a table was all ready for lunch out under an awning

on deck and a Filipino butler was standing beside it with

a tray of cocktails and all kinds of little sandwiches cut

into fancy shapes. They settled down to lunch in a hurry,

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because the boys said they were starved. They had broiled

Florida lobster in a pink sauce and cold chicken and salad

and they drank champagne. Margo had never been so

happy in her life.

While they were eating the yacht started to move slowly

down the river, away from the ramshackle wharves and

the dirtylooking old steamboats into the broad reaches of

brown river that was splotched with green floating patches

of waterhyacinths. A funny damp marshy smell came on

the wind off the tangled trees that hid the banks. Once

they saw a dozen big white birds with long necks fly up

that Tad said were egrets. "I bet they're expensive," said

Queenie. "They're protected by the federal government,"

said young Rogers.

They drank little glasses of brandy with their coffee.

By the time they got up from the table they were all

pretty well spiffed. Margo had decided that Tad was the

swellest boy she'd ever known and that she wouldn't hold

out on him any longer, no matter what happened.

After lunch Tad showed them all over the boat. The

diningroom was wonderful, all mirrors paneled in white

and gold, and the cabins were the coziest things. The girls'

cabin was just like an oldfashioned drawingroom. Their

things had been all hung out for them while they'd been

eating lunch.

While they were looking at the boat young Rogers and

Queenie disappeared somewhere, and the first thing

Margo knew she and Tad were alone in a cabin looking

at a photograph of a sailboat his father had won the Ber-

muda race with. Looking at the picture his cheek brushed

against hers and there they were kissing.

"Gee, you're great," said Tad. "I'm kind of clumsy at

this . . . no experience, you know."

She pressed against him. "I bet you've had plenty."

With his free hand he was bolting the door. "Will you do

like the ring said, Tad?"

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When they went up on deck afterwards, Tad was acting

kind of funny; he wouldn't look her in the eye and talked

all the time to young Rogers. Queenie looked flushed and

all rumpled up like she'd been through a wringer, and

staggered when she walked. Margo made her fix herself

up and do her hair. She sure was wishing she hadn't

brought Queenie. Margo looked fresh as a daisy herself,

she decided when she looked in the big mirror in the up-

stairs saloon.

The boat had stopped. Tad's face looked like a thunder-

cloud when he came back from talking to the captain.

"We've got to go back to Jacksonville, burned out a bear-

ing on the oilpump," he said. "A hell of a note."

"That's great," said young Rogers. "We can look into

the local nightlife."

"And what I want to know is," said Queenie, "where's

that chaperon you boys were talkin' about?"

"By gum," said Tad, "we forgot Mrs. Vinton. . . . I

bet she's been waiting down at the dock all day."

"Too late for herbicide," said Margo and they all

laughed except Tad who looked sourer than ever.

It was dark when they got to Jacksonville. They'd had

to pack their bags up again and they'd changed into dif-

ferent dresses. While they were changing their clothes

Queenie had talked awful silly. "You mark my words,

Margo, that boy wants to marry you." "Let's not talk

about it," Margo said several times. "You treat him like

he was dirt." Margo heard her own voice whining and

mean: "And who's business it is?" Queenie flushed and

went on with her packing. Margo could see she was sore.

They ate supper grumpily at the hotel. After supper

young Rogers made them go out to a speakeasy held

found. Margo didn't want to go and said she had a head-

ache, but everybody said now be a sport and she went. It

was a tough kind of a place with oilcloth on the tables and

sawdust on the floor. There were some foreigners, wops ors

-272-

Cubans or something, standing against a bar in another

room. Queenie said she didn't think it was the kind of

place Mother's little girl ought to be seen in. "Who the

hell's going to see us?" said Tad still in his grouch. "Don't

we want to see life?" Rogers said, trying to cheer every-

body up.

Margo lost track of what they were saying. She was

staring through the door into the barroom. One of the

foreigners standing at the bar was Tony. He looked older

and his face was kind of puffy, but there was no doubt that

it was Tony. He looked awful. He wore a rumpled white

suit frayed at the cuffs of the trousers and he wiggled his

hips like a woman as he talked. The first thing Margo

thought was how on earth she could ever have liked that

fagot. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Tad's

sullen face and his nice light untidy hair and the cleancut

collegeboy way he wore his clothes. She had to work fast.

She was just opening her mouth to say honestly she had

to go back to the hotel, when she caught sight of Tony's

big black eyes and dark lashes. He was coming towards the

table with his mincing walk, holding out both hands.

"Querida mia. . . . Why are you here?"

She introduced him as Antonio de Garrido, her partner

in a Cuban dance number on the Keith circuit, but he let

the cat out of the bag right away by calling her his dear

wife. She could feel the start Tad gave when he heard

that. Then suddenly Tad began to make a great fuss over

Tony and to order up drinks for him. He and Rogers kept

whispering and laughing together about something. Then

Tad was asking Tony to come on the cruise with them.

She could see Tad was acting drunker than he really

was. She was ready for it when the boys got up to go.

Tad's face was red as a beet. "We got to see the skipper

about that engine trouble," he said. "Maybe Señor de

Garrido will see you girls back to the hotel. . . . Now

don't do anything I wouldn't do."

-273-

"See you in the morning, cuties," chimed in young

Rogers.

After they'd gone Margo got to her feet. "Well, no use

waiting around this dump. . . . You sure put your foot in

it, Tony." Tony had tears in his eyes. "Everything is very

bad with me," he said. "I thought maybe my little Margo

remembered . . . you know we used to be very fond.

Don Manfredo, you remember my patron, Margo, had

to leave Havana very suddenly. I hoped he would take

me to Paris, but he brought me to Miami with him. Now

we are no more friends. We have been unlucky at roulette.

. . . He has only enough money for himself."

"Why don't you get a job?"

"In these clothes . . . I am ashamed to show my face

. . . maybe your friends . . ."

"You lay off of them, do you hear?" Margo burst out.

Queenie was blubbering, "You should have bought us

return tickets to New York. Another time you remember

that. Never leave the homeplate without a return ticket."

Tony took them home to the hotel in a taxi and insisted

on paying for it. He made a big scene saying goodnight.

"Little Margo, if you never see me again, remember I

loved you. . . . I shall keel myself." As they went up in

the elevator they could see him still standing on the side-

walk where they had left him.

In the morning they were waked up by a bellboy bring-

ing an envelope on a silver tray. It was a letter to Margo

from Tad. The handwriting was an awful scrawl. All it

said was that the trip was off because the tutor had come

and they were going to have to pick up Dad in Palm Beach.

Enclosed there were five twenties. "Oh, goody goody,"

cried Queenie, sitting up in bed when she saw them. "It

sure would have been a long walk home. . . . Honest,

that boy's a prince.""A damn hick," said Margo. "You

take fifty and I take fifty. . . . Lucky I have an engage-

ment fixed up in Miami." It was a relief when Queenie

-274-

said she'd take the first train back to little old New York.

Margo didn't want ever to see any of that bunch again.

They hadn't finished packing their bags when there was

Tony at the door. He sure looked sick. Margo was so

nervous she yelled at him, "Who the hell let you in?"

Tony let himself drop into a chair and threw back his

head with his eyes closed. Queenie closed up her traveling-

bag and came over and looked at him. "Say, that bozo

looks halfstarved. Better let me order up some coffee or

something. . . . Was he really your husband like he

said?"

Margo nodded.

"Well, you've got to do something about him. Poor

boy, he sure does look down on his uppers."

"I guess you're right," said Margo, staring at them both

with hot dry eyes.

She didn't go down to Miami that day. Tony was sick

and threw up everything he ate. It turned out he hadn't

had anything to eat for a week and had been drinking

hard. "I bet you that boy dopes," Queenie whispered in

Margo's ear.

They both cried when it was time for Queenie to go to

her train. "I've got to thank you for a wonderful time

while it lasted," she said. Margo put Tony to bed after

Queenie had gone off to her train. When they objected

down at the desk she said he was her husband. They had to

register again. It made her feel awful to have to write

down in the book Mr. and Mrs. Antonio de Garrido. Once

it was written it didn't look so bad though.

It was three days before Tony could get up. She had to

have a doctor for him. The doctor gave him bromides and

hot milk. The room was seven fifty a day and the meals

sent up and the doctor and medicine and everything ran

into money. It began to look like she'd have to hock the

ring Tad had given her.

It made her feel like she was acting in a play living

-275-

with Tony again. She was kind of fond of him after all,

but it sure wasn't what she'd planned. As he began to feel

better he began to talk confidently about the magnificent

act they could put on together. Maybe they could sell it

to the cabaret she'd signed an engagement with in Miami.

After all Tony was a sweettempered kind of a boy.

The trouble was that whenever she went out to get her

hair curled or something, she'd always find one of the

bellhops, a greasylooking blackhaired boy who was some

kind of a spick himself, in the room with Tony. When

she asked Tony what about it he'd laugh and say, "It is

nothing. We talk Spanish together. That is all. He has

been very attentive.""Yes, very," said Margo. She felt so

damn lousy about everything she didn't give a damn any-

way.

One morning when she woke up Tony was gone. The

roll of bills in her pocketbook was gone and all her jewelry

except the solitaire diamond she wore on her finger was

gone too. When she called up the desk to ask if he'd paid

the bill they said that he had left word for her to be called

at twelve and that was all. Nobody had seen him go out.

The spick bellhop had gone too.

All that Margo had left was her furcoat and fifteen

cents. She didn't ask for the bill, but she knew it must be

about fifty or sixty bucks. She dressed thoughtfully and

carefully and decided to go out to a lunchroom for a cup

of coffee. That was all the breakfast she had the price of.

Outside it was a warm spring day. The sunshine glinted

on the rows of parked cars. The streets and the stores and

the newsstands had a fresh sunny airy look. Margo walked

up and down the main stem of Jacksonville with an awful

hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach. She looked in

haberdashery store windows and in the windows of cheap

jewelers and hockshops and read over carefully all the

coming attractions listed at the movingpicture. houses. She

found herself in front of a busstation. She read the fares

-276-

and the times buses left for Miami and New Orleans and

Tallahassee and Orlando and Tampa and Atlanta,

Georgia, and Houston, Texas, and Los Angeles, Cali-

fornia. In the busstation there was a lunch counter. She

went in to spend her fifteen cents. She'd get more for the

ring at a hockshop if she didn't barge in on an empty

stomach, was what she was thinking as she sat down at the

counter and ordered a cup of coffee and a sandwich.

NEWSREEL LVIII

In my dreams it always seems

I hear you softly call to me

Valencia!

Where the orange trees forever scent the

Breeze beside the sea

which in itself typifies the great drama of the Miami we

have today. At the time only twenty years ago when the site

of the Bay of Biscayne Bank was a farmer's hitchingyard and

that of the First National Bank a public barbecue ground the

ground here where this ultramodern hotel and club stands

was isolated primeval forest. My father and myself were clear-

ing little vegetable patches round it and I was peddling vege-

tables at the hotel Royal Palm, then a magnificent hotel set in

a wild frontier. Even eight years ago I was growing tomatoes

Valencia!

SEEK MISSING LOOT

WOMAN DIRECTS HIGHWAY ROBBERY

Lazy River flowing to the southland

Down where I long to be

RADIUM VICTIMS TIPPED BRUSHES IN MOUTHS

-277-

this peninsula has been white every month though there

have been some months when West Florida was represented

as only fair

GIRL EVANGELS AWAIT CHRIST IN

NEW YORK

When the red red robin

Comes bob bob bobbin' along along

We Want You to Use Our Credit System to Your Ut-

most Advantage. Only a Small Down Payment and the Bal-

ance in Small Amounts to Suit Your Convenience.

There'll be no more sobbin'

When he starts throbbin'

URGES STRIKES BE TERMED FELONIES

When he starts throbbin'

His old sweet song

When the red red robin

bright and early he showed no signs of fatigue or any of

the usual evidences of a long journey just finished. There was

not a wrinkle on his handsome suit of silken material, the

weave and texture and color of which were so suitable for

tropic summer days. His tie with its jeweled stickpin and his

finger ring were details in perfect accord with his immaculate

attire. Though small in stature and unassuming in manner, he

disposed of $20,000,000 worth of building operations with as

little fuss or flurry as ordinarily accompanies the act of a pas-

senger on a trolley car in handing a nickel to the conductor.

THE CAMPERS AT KITTY HAWK

On December seventeenth, nineteen hundred and

three, Bishop Wright of the United Brethren onetime

editor of the Religious Telescope received in his frame

-278-

house on Hawthorn Street in Dayton, Ohio, a telegram

from his boys Wilbur and Orville who'd gotten it into

their heads to spend their vacations in a little camp out

on the dunes of the North Carolina coast tinkering with

a homemade glider they'd knocked together them-

selves. The telegram read:

SUCCESS FOUR FLIGHTS THURSDAY MORNING ALL

AGAINST TWENTYONE MILE WIND STARTED FROM LEVEL

WITH ENGINEPOWER ALONE AVERAGE SPEED THROUGH

AIR THIRTYONE MILES LONGEST FIFTYSEVEN SECONDS

INFORM PRESS HOME CHRISTMAS

The figures were a little wrong because the tele-

graph operator misread Orville's hasty penciled scrawl

but the fact remains

that a couple of young bicycle mechanics from

Dayton, Ohio

had designed constructed and flown

for the first time ever a practical airplane.

After running the motor a few minutes to heat it

up I released the wire that held the machine to the

track and the machine started forward into the wind.

Wilbur ran at the side of the machine holding the wing

to balance it on the track. Unlike the start on the 14th

made in a calm the machine facing a 27 mile wind

started very slowly. . . . Wilbur was able to stay with

it until it lifted from the track after a forty-foot run.

One of the lifesaving men snapped the camera for us

taking a picture just as it reached the end of the track

and the machine had risen to a height of about two

feet. . . . The course of the flight up and down was

extremely erratic, partly due to the irregularities of the

air, partly to lack of experience in handling this ma-

chine. A sudden dart when a little over a hundred and

twenty feet from the point at which it rose in the air

-279-

ended the flight. . . . This flight lasted only 12 sec-

onds but it was nevertheless the first in the history of

the world in which a machine carrying a man had raised

itself by its own power into the air in full flight, had

sailed forward without reduction of speed and had

finally landed at a point as high as that from which it

started.

A little later in the day the machine was caught

in a gust of wind and turned over and smashed, almost

killing the coastguardsman who tried to hold it down;

it was too bad

but the Wright brothers were too happy to care

they'd proved that the damn thing flew.

When these points had been definitely established

we at once packed our goods and returned home know-

ing that the age of the flying machine had come at last.

They were home for Christmas in Dayton, Ohio,

where they'd been born in the seventies of a family who

had been settled west of the Alleghenies since eighteen

fourteen, in Dayton, Ohio, where they'd been to

grammarschool and highschool and joined their father's

church and played baseball and hockey and worked out

on the parallel bars and the flying swing and sold news-

papers and built themselves a printingpress out of odds

and ends from the junkheap and flown kites and tink-

ered with mechanical contraptions and gone around

town, as boys doing odd jobs to turn an honest penny.

The folks claimed it was the bishop's bringing

home a helicopter, a fiftycent mechanical toy made of

two fans worked by elastic bands that was supposed to

hover in the air, that had got his two youngest boys

hipped on the subject of flight

so that they stayed home instead of marrying the

-280-

way the other boys did, and puttered all day about the

house picking up a living with jobprinting,

bicyclerepair work,

sitting up late nights reading books on aero-

dynamics.

Still they were sincere churchmembers, their bicy-

cle business was prosperous, a man could rely on their

word. They were popular in Dayton.

In those days flyingmachines were the big laugh

of all the crackerbarrel philosophers. Langley's and

Chanute's unsuccessful experiments had been jeered

down with an I-told-you-so that rang from coast to

coast. The Wrights' big problem was to find a place

secluded enough to carry on their experiments without

being the horselaugh of the countryside. Then they

had no money to spend;

they were practical mechanics; when they needed

anything they built it themselves.

They hit on Kitty Hawk,

on the great dunes and sandy banks that stretch

south towards Hatteras seaward of Albemarle Sound,

a vast stretch of seabeach

empty except for a coastguard station, a few fish-

ermen's shacks and the swarms of mosquitoes and the

ticks and chiggers in the crabgrass behind the dunes

and overhead the gulls and swooping terns, in the

evening fishhawks and cranes flapping across the salt-

marshes, occasionally eagles

that the Wright brothers followed soaring with

their eyes

as Leonardo watched them centuries before

straining his sharp eyes to apprehend

the laws of flight.

-281-

Four miles across the loose sand from the scatter-

ing of shacks, the Wright brothers built themselves a

camp and a shed for their gliders. It was a long way to

pack their groceries, their tools, anything they hap-

pened to need; in summer it was hot as blazes, the mos-

quitoes were hell;

but they were alone there

and they'd figured out that the loose sand was as

soft as anything they could find to fall in.

There with a glider made of two planes and a

tail in which they lay flat on their bellies and controlled

the warp of the planes by shimmying their hips, taking

off again and again all day from a big dune named Kill

Devil Hill,

they learned to fly.

Once they'd managed to hover for a few seconds

and soar ever so slightly on a rising aircurrent

they decided the time had come

to put a motor in their biplane.

Back in the shop in Dayton, Ohio, they built an

airtunnel, which is their first great contribution' to the

science of flying, and tried out model planes in it.

They couldn't interest any builders of gasoline

engines so they had to build their own motor.

It worked; after that Christmas of nineteen three

the Wright brothers weren't doing it for fun any more;

they gave up their bicycle business, got the use of a

big old cowpasture belonging to the local banker for

practice flights, spent all the time when they weren't

working on their machine in promotion, worrying about

patents, infringements, spies, trying to interest govern-

-282-

ment officials, to make sense out of the smooth involved

heartbreaking remarks of lawyers.

In two years they had a plane that would cover'

twentyfour miles at a stretch round and round the cow-

pasture.

People on the interurban car used to crane their

necks out of the windows when they passed along the

edge of the field, startled by the clattering pop pop of

the old Wright motor and the sight of the white biplane

like a pair of ironingboards one on top of the other

chugging along a good fifty feet in the air. The cows

soon got used to it.

As the flights got longer

the Wright brothers got backers,

engaged in lawsuits,

lay in their beds at night sleepless with the whine

of phantom millions, worse than the mosquitoes at

Kitty Hawk.

In nineteen seven they went to Paris,

allowed themselves to be togged out in dress suits

and silk hats,

learned to tip waiters

talked with government experts, got used to gold

braid and postponements and vandyke beards and the

outspread palms of politicos. For amusement

they played diabolo in the Tuileries gardens.

They gave publicized flights at Fort Myers, where

they had their first fatal crackup, St. Petersburg, Paris,

Berlin; at Pau they were all the rage,

such an attraction that the hotelkeeper

-283-

wouldn't charge them for their room.

Alfonso of Spain shook hands with them and was

photographed sitting in the machine,

King Edward watched a flight,

the Crown Prince insisted on being taken up,

the rain of medals began.

They were congratulated by the Czar

and the King of Italy and the amateurs of sport,

and the society climbers and the papal titles,

and decorated by a society for universal peace.

Aeronautics became the sport of the day.

The Wrights don't seem to have been very much

impressed by the upholstery and the braid and the gold

medals and the parades of plush horses,

they remained practical mechanics

and insisted on doing all their own work them-

selves,

even to filling the gasolinetank.

In nineteen eleven they were back on the dunes

at Kitty Hawk with a new glider.

Orville stayed up in the air for nine and a half

minutes, which remained a long time the record for

motorless flight.

The same year Wilbur died of typhoidfever in

Dayton.

In the rush of new names: Farman, Blériot, Cur-

tiss, Ferber, Esnault-Peltrie, Delagrange;

in the snorting impact of bombs and the whine and

rattle of shrapnel and the sudden stutter of machine-

guns after the motor's been shut off overhead,

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and we flatten into the mud

and make ourselves small cowering in the corners

of ruined walls,

the Wright brothers passed out of the headlines

but not even headlines or the bitter smear of news-

print or the choke of smokescreen and gas or chatter

of brokers on the stockmarket or barking of phantom

millions or oratory of brasshats laying wreaths on new

monuments

can blur the memory

of the chilly December day

two shivering bicycle mechanics from Dayton,

Ohio,

first felt their homemade contraption

whittled out of hickory sticks,

gummed together with Arnstein's bicycle cement,

stretched with muslin they'd sewn on their sister's

sewingmachine in their own backyard on Hawthorn

Street in Dayton, Ohio,

soar into the air

above the dunes and the wide beach

at Kitty Hawk.

NEWSREEL LIX

the stranger first coming to Detroit if he be interested in

the busy economic side of modern life will find a marvelous

industrial beehive; if he be a lover of nature he will take notice

of a site made forever remarkable by the waters of that noble

strait that gives the city its name; if he be a student of romance

and history he will discover legends and records as entertaining

and as instructive as the continent can supply

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I've a longing for my Omaha town

I long to go there and settle down

DETROIT LEADS THE WORLD IN THE

MANUFACTURE OF AUTOMOBILES

I want to see my pa

I want to see my ma

I want to go to dear old Omaha

DETROIT IS FIRST

IN PHARMACEUTICALS

STOVES RANGES FURNACES

ADDING MACHINES

PAINTS AND VARNISHES

MARINE MOTORS

OVERALLS

SODA AND SALT PRODUCTS

SPORT SHOES

TWIST DRILLS

SHOWCASES

CORSETS

GASOLINE TORCHES

TRUCKS

Mr. Radio Man won't you do what you can

'Cause I'm so lonely

Tell my Mammy to come back home

Mr. Radio Man

DETROIT THE DYNAMIC RANKS HIGH

IN FOUNDRY AND MACHINE SHOP PRODUCTS

IN BRASS AND BRASS PRODUCTS

IN TOBACCO AND CIGARS

IN ALUMINUM CASTINGS

IN IRON AND STEEL

IN LUBRICATOR TOOLS

MALLEABLE IRON

METAL BEDS

-286-

Back to the land that gave me birth

The grandest place on God's green earth

California! That's where I belong.

"DETROIT THE CITY WHERE LIFE IS

WORTH LIVING"

CHARLEY ANDERSON

First thing Charley heard when he climbed down from

the controls was Farrell's voice shouting, " Charley Ander-

son, the boy with the knowhow. Welcome to little old

Detroit," and then he saw Farrell's round face coming

across the green grass of the field and his big mouth wide

open. "Kind of bumpy, wasn't it?"

"It was cold as hell," said Charley. "Call this a field?"

"We're getting the Chamber of Commerce het up about

it. You can give 'em an earful about it maybe."

"I sure did slew around in that mud. Gosh, I pulled out

in such a hurry I didn't even bring a toothbrush."

Charley pulled off his gloves that were dripping with

oil from a leak he'd had trouble with in the bumpy going

over the hills. His back ached. It was a relief that Bill

Cermak was there to get the boat into the hangar. "All

right, let's go," he said. "Thataboy," roared Farrell and

put his hand on Charley's shoulder. "We'll stop by the

house and see if I can fit you into a change of clothes."

At that moment a taxi rolled out onto the field and out

of it stepped Taki. He came running over with Charley's

suitcase. He reached the car breathless. "I hope you have

a nice journey, sir.""Check," said Charley. "Did you get

me a walkup?""Very nice inexpensive elevator apartment

opposed to the Museum of Municipal Art," panted Taki in

his squeaky voice.

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"Well, that's service," Farrell said and put his foot on

the starter of his puttycolored Lincoln towncar. The motor

purred silkily.

Taki put the suitcase in back and Charley hopped in

beside Farrell. " Taki thinks we lack culture," said Charley,

laughing. Farrell winked.

It was pleasant sitting slumped in the seat beside Far-

rell's welldressed figure behind the big softpurring motor,

letting a little drowsiness come over him as they drove

down broad straight boulevards with here and there a con-

struction job that gave them a whiff of new bricks and raw

firboards and fresh cement as they passed. A smell of early

spring came off the fields and backlots on a raw wind that

had little streaks of swampy warmth in it.

"Here's our little shanty," said Farrell and swerved into

a curving graded driveway and jammed on the brakes at

the end of a long greystone house with narrow pointed

windows and gothic pinnacles like a cathedral. They got

out and Charley followed him across a terrace down an

avenue of boxtrees in pots and through a frenchwindow

into a billiardroom with a heavilycarved ceiling. "This is

my playroom," said Farrell. "After all a man's got to have

someplace to play. . . . Here's a bathroom you can

change in. I'll be back for you in ten minutes."

It was a big bathroom all in jadegreen with a couch,

an easychair, a floorlamp, and a set of chestweights and

indianclubs in the corner. Charley stripped and took a hot

shower and changed his clothes. He was just putting on

his bestlooking striped tie when Farrell called through the

door. "Everything O.K.?""Check," said Charley as he

came out. "I feel like a million dollars." Farrell looked

him in the eye in a funny way and laughed. "Why not?"

he said.

The office was in an unfinished officebuilding in a ring of

unfinished officebuildings round Grand Circus Park. "You

won't mind if I run you through the publicity department

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first, Charley," said Farrell. " Eddy Sawyer's a great boy.

Then we'll all get together in my office and have some

food."

"Check," said Charley.

"Say, Eddy, here's your birdman," shouted Farrell,

pushing Charley into a big bright office with orange hang-

ings. "Mr. Sawyer, meet Mr. Anderson . . . the Charley

Anderson, our new consulting engineer. . . . Give us a

buzz when you've put him through a course of sprouts."

Farrell hurried off leaving Charley alone with a small

yellowfaced man with a large towhead who had the talk

and manners of a highschool boy with the cigarette habit.

Eddy Sawyer gave Charley's hand a tremendous squeeze,

asked him how he liked the new offices, explained that

orange stood for optimism, asked him if he ever got air-

sick, explained that he did terribly, wasn't it the damnedest

luck seeing the business he was in, brought out from under

his desk a bottle of whiskey. "I bet J. Y. didn't give you a

drink. . . . That man lives on air, a regular salamander."

Charley said he would take a small shot and Eddy

Sawyer produced two glasses that already had the ice in

them and a siphon. "Say when." Charley took a gulp, then

Eddy leaned back in his swivelchair having drained off his

drink and said, "Now, Mr. Anderson, if you don't mind

let's have the old lifehistory, or whatever part of it is fit

to print. . . . Mind you, we won't use anything right

away but we like to have the dope so that we can sort of

feed it out as occasion demands."

Charley blushed. "Well," he said, "there's not very

much to tell."

"Thataboy," said Eddy Sawyer, pouring out two more

and putting away the whiskeybottle. "That's how

all the best stories begin." He pressed a buzzer and a

curlyhaired stenographer with a pretty pink dollface came

in and sat down with her notebook at the other side of the

desk. While he was fumbling through his story, Charley

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kept repeating to himself in the back of his head, "Now,

bo, don't make an ass of yourself the first day." Before

they were through Farrell stuck his head in the door and

said to come along, the crowd was waiting.

"Well, did you get all fixed up? . . . Charley, I want

you to meet our salesmanager . . . Joe Stone, Charley

Anderson. And Mr. Frank and Mr. O'Brien, our battery

of legal talent, and Mr. Bledsoe, he's in charge of output

. . . that's your department."

Charley shook a number of hands; there was a slick

black head with hair parted in the middle, a pair of bald

heads and a steelgrey head with hair bristling up like a

shoebrush, noseglasses, tortoiseshell glasses, one small mus-

tache. "Sure mike," Eddy Sawyer was stuttering away

nervously. "I've got enough on him to retire on the black-

mail any time now."

"That's a very good starter, young man," said Cyrus

Bledsoe, the greyhaired man, gruffly. "I hope you've got

some more notions left in the back of your head."

"Check," said Charley.

They all, except Bledsoe who growled that he never ate

lunch, went out with him to the Athletic Club where they

had a private diningroom and cocktails set out. Going up

in the elevator a voice behind him said, "How's the boy,

Charley?" and Charley turned round to find himself face

to face with Andy Merritt. Andy Merritt's darkgrey suit

seemed to fit him even better than usual. His sour smile

was unusually thin.

"Why, what are you doing here?" Charley blurted out.

" Detroit," said Andy Merritt, "is a town that has al-

ways interested me extremely."

"Say, how's Joe making out?" Andy Merritt looked

pained and Charley felt he ought to have kept his mouth

shut. "Joe was in excellent health when I last saw him,"

said Andy. It turned out that Andy was lunching with

them too.

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When they were working on the filetmignon, Farrell

got up and made a speech about how this luncheon was

a beginning of a new spirit in the business of manufac-

turing airplane parts and motors and that the time had

come for the airplane to quit hanging on the apronstrings

of the automotive business because airplanes were going to

turn the automobile men into a lot of bicycle manufac-

turers before you could say Jack Robinson. A million-

dollar business had to be handled in a milliondollar way.

Then everybody yelled and clapped and Farrell held up

his hand and described Charley Anderson's career as a war

ace and an inventor and said it was a very happy day, a

day he'd been waiting for a long time, when he could wel-

come him into the Tern flock. Then Eddy Sawyer led a

cheer for Anderson and Charley had to get up and say

how he was glad to get out there and be back in the great

open spaces and the real manufacturing center of this

country, and when you said manufacturing center of this

country what you meant was manufacturing center of the

whole bloody world. Eddy Sawyer led another cheer and

then they all settled down to eat their peachmelba.

When they were getting their hats from the checkroom

downstairs Andy Merritt tapped Charley on the shoulder

and said, "A very good speech. . . . You know I'd felt

for some time we ought to make a break. . . . You can't

run a bigtime business with smalltown ideas. That's the

trouble with poor old Joe who's a prince, by the way

smalltown ideas. . . ."

Charley went around to see the apartment. Taki had

everything fixed up in great shape, flowers in the vases and

all that sort of thing. "Well, this is slick," said Charley.

"How do you like it in Detroit?""Very interesting," said

Taki. "Mr. Ford permits to visit Highland Park.""Gosh,

you don't lose any time. . . . Nothing like that assembly-

line in your country, is there?" Taki grinned and nodded.

"Very interesting," he said with more emphasis.

-291-

Charley took off his coat and shoes and lay down on the

couch in the sittingroom to take a nap but it seemed he'd

just closed his eyes when Taki was grinning and bowing

from the door.

"Very sorry, sir, Mr. Benton, longdistance.""Check,"

said Charley.

Taki had his slippers there for him to stick his feet into

and had discreetly laid his bathrobe on a chair beside the

couch. At the phone Charley noticed that it was already

dusk and that the streetlights were just coming on.

"Hello, Nat.""Hay, Charley, how are you making

out?""Great," said Charley. "Say, I just called up to let

you know you and Andy Merritt were going to be elected

vicepresidents at the next meeting of Tern stockholders."

"How do you know?" Nat laughed into the phone. "Some

intelligence service," said Charley. "Well, service is what

we're here for," said Nat. "And, Charley, there's a little

pool down here. . . . I'm taking a dip myself and I

thought you might like to come in. . . . I can't tell you

the details over the phone but I wrote you this afternoon."

"I haven't got any cash.""You could put up about ten

grand of stock to cover. The stock won't be tied up long."

"Check," said Charley. "Shoot the moon . . . this is my

lucky year."

The plant was great. Charley drove out there in a new

Buick sedan he bought himself right off the dealer's floor

the next morning. The dealer seemed to know all about

him and wouldn't even take a downpayment. "It'll be a

pleasure to have your account, Mr. Anderson," he said.

Old Bledsoe seemed to be on the lookout for him and

showed him around. Everything was lit with skylights.

There wasn't a belt in the place. Every machine had its

own motor. " Farrell thinks I'm an old stickinthemud be-

cause I don't talk high finance all the time, but God damn

it, if there's a more uptodate plant than this anywhere,

I'll eat a goddamned dynamo.""Gee, I thought we were

-292-

in pretty good shape out at Long Island City. . . . But

this beats the Dutch.""That's exactly what it's intended

to do," growled Bledsoe.

Last Bledsoe introduced Charley to the engineering

force and then showed him into the office off the drafting-

room that was to be his. They closed the groundglass door

and sat down facing each other in the silvery light from

the skylight. Bledsoe pulled out a stogie and offered one

to Charley. "Ever smoke these? . . . They clear the

head."

Charley said he'd try anything once. They lit the stogies

and Bledsoe began to talk between savage puffs of stinging

blue smoke. "Now look here, Anderson, I hope you've

come out here to work with us and not to juggle your

damned stock. . . . I know you're a war hero and all that

and are slated for windowdressing, but it looks to me like

you might have somepun in your head too. . . . I'm say-

ing this once and I'll never say it again. . . . If you're

workin' with us, you're workin' with us and if you're not

you'd better stick around your broker's office where you

belong."

"But, Mr. Bledsoe, this is the chance I've been lookin'

for," stammered Charley. "Hell, I'm a mechanic, that's

all. I know that."

"Well, I hope so. . . . If you are, and not a god-

damned bondsalesman, you know that our motor's lousy

and the ships they put it in are lousy. We're ten years be-

hind the rest of the world in flyin' and we've got to catch

up. Once we get the designs we've got the production ap-

paratus to flatten 'em all out. Now I want you to go home

and get drunk or go wenchin' or whatever you do when

you're worried and think about this damn business.""I'm

through with that stuff," said Charley. "I had enough of

that in New York."

Bledsoe got to his feet with a jerk, letting the ash from

his stogie fall on his alpaca vest. "Well, you better get

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married then.""I been thinkin' of that. . . . But I can't

find the other name to put on the license," said Charley,

laughing. Bledsoe smiled. "You design me a decent light

dependable sixteencylinder aircooled motor and I'll get

my little girl to introduce you to all the bestlookin' gals in

Detroit. She knows 'em all. . . . And if it's money you're

lookin' for, they sweat money." The phone buzzed. Bled-

soe answered it, muttered under his breath, and stamped

out of the office.

At noon Farrell came by to take Charley out to lunch.

"Did old Bledsoe give you an earful?" he asked. Charley

nodded. "Well, don't let him get under your skin. His

bark is worse than his bite. He wouldn't be in the outfit if

he wasn't the best plantmanager in the country."

It was at the Country Club dance that Farrell and his

wife, who was a thin oldish blonde haggard and peevish

under a festoon of diamonds, took him out to, that Char-

ley met old Bledsoe's daughter Anne. She was a square-

shouldered girl in pink with a large pleasantlysmiling

mouth and a firm handshake. Charley cottoned to her first

thing. They danced to Just a Girl That Men Forget and

she talked about how crazy she was about flying and had

five hours toward her pilot's license. Charley said he'd take

her up any time if she wasn't too proud to fly a Curtiss-

Robin. She said he'd better not make a promise if he didn't

intend to keep it because she always did what she said she'd

do. Then she talked about golf and he didn't let on that

he'd never had a golfclub in his hand in his life.

At supper when he came back from getting a couple of

plates of chickensalad he found her sitting at a round table

under a Japanese lantern with a pale young guy, who

turned out to be her brother Harry, and a girl with beau-

tiful ashenblond hair and a touch of Alabama' in her talk

whose name was Gladys Wheatley. She seemed to be en-

gaged or something to Harry Bledsoe who had a silver

flask and kept pouring gin into the fruitpunch and held

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her hand and called her Glad. They were all younger

than Charley, but they made quite a fuss over him and

kept saying what a godawful town Detroit was. When

Charley got a little gin inside of him he started telling

war yarns for the first time in his life.

He drove Anne home and old Bledsoe came out with

a copy of the Engineering Journal in his hand and said,

"So you've got acquainted, have you?""Oh, yes, we're

old friends, Dad," she said. "Charley's going to teach me

to fly.""Humph," said Bledsoe and closed the door in

Charley's face with a growling: "You go home and worry

about that motor."

All that summer everybody thought that Charley and

Anne were engaged. He'd get away from the plant for an

hour or two on quiet afternoons and take a ship up at the

flyingfield to give her a chance to pile up flying hours and

on Sundays they'd play golf. Charley would get up early

Sunday mornings to take a lesson with the golf pro out at

the Sunnyside Club where he didn't know anybody. Sat-

urday nights they'd often have dinner at the Bledsoes'

house and go out to the Country Club to dance. Gladys

Wheatley and Harry were usually along and they were

known as a foursome by all the younger crowd. Old Bled-

soe seemed pleased that Charley had taken up with his

youngsters and began to treat him as a member of the

family. Charley was happy, he enjoyed his work; after

the years in New York being in Detroit was like being

home. He and Nat made some killings in the market. As

vicepresident and consulting engineer of the Tern Com-

pany he was making $25,000 a year.

Old Bledsoe grumbled that it was too damn much

money for a young engineer, but it pleased him that

Charley spent most of it on a small experimental shop

where he and Bill Cermak were building a new motor on

their own. Bill Cermak had moved his family out from

Long Island and was full of hunches for mechanical im-

-295-

provements. Charley was so busy he didn't have time to

think of women or take anything but an occasional drink in

a social way. He thought Anne was a peach and enjoyed

her company but he never thought of her as a girl he might

someday go to bed with.

Over the Labor Day weekend the Farrells invited the

young Bledsoes and Gladys Wheatley out for a cruise.

When he was asked Charley felt that this was highlife at

last and suggested he bring Taki along to mix drinks and

act as steward. He drove the Bledsoes down to the yacht-

club in his Buick. Anne couldn't make out why he was feel-

ing so good. "Nothing to do for three days but sit around

on a stuffy old boat and let the mosquitoes bite you," she

was grumbling in a gruff tone like her father's. "Dad's

right when he says he doesn't mind working over his work

but he's darned if he'll work over his play."

"But look at the company we'll have to suffer in, An-

nie." Charley put his arm round her shoulders for a mo-

ment as she sat beside him on the front seat. Harry who

was alone in the back let out a giggle. "Well, you needn't

act so smart, mister," said Anne, without turning back. "You

and Gladys certainly do enough public petting to make a

cat sick.""The stern birdman's weakening," said Harry.

Charley blushed. "Check," he said. They were already at

the yachtclub, and two young fellows in sailorsuits were

taking the bags out of the back of the car.

Farrell's boat was a fast fiftyfoot cruiser with a dining-

room on deck and wicker chairs and a lot of freshvarnished

mahogany and polished brass. Farrell wore a yachtingcap

and walked up and down the narrow deck with a worried

look as the boat nosed out into the little muggy breeze.

The river in the late afternoon had a smell of docks and

weedy swamps. "It makes me feel good to get out on the

water, don't it you, Charley? . . . The one place they

can't get at you."

Meanwhile Mrs. Farrell was apologizing to the ladies

-296-

for the cramped accommodations. "I keep trying to get

Yardly to get a boat with some room in it but it seems to

me every one he gets is more cramped up than the last

one."

Charley had been listening to a light clinking sound

from the pantry. When Taki appeared with a tray of man-

hattan cocktails everybody cheered up. As he watched Taki

bobbing with the tray in front of Gladys, Charley thought

how wonderful she looked all in white with her pale abun-

dant hair tied up in a white silk handkerchief.

Smiling beside him was Anne with her brown hair blow-

ing in her eyes from the wind of the boat's speed. The

engine made so much noise and the twinscrews churned up

so much water that he could talk to her without the others'

hearing. " Annie," he said suddenly, "I been thinking it's

about time I got married."

"Why, Charley, a mere boy like you."

Charley felt warm all over. All at once he wanted a

woman terribly bad. It was hard to control his voice.

"Well, I suppose we're both old enough to know better,

but what would you think of the proposition? I've been

pretty lucky this year as far as dough goes."

Anne sipped her cocktail looking at him and laughing

with her hair blowing across her face. "What do you want

me to do, ask for a statement of your bankdeposit?"

"But I mean you."

"Check," she said.

Farrell was yelling at them, "How about a little game

of penny ante before supper? . . . It's gettin' windy out

here. We'd be better off in the saloon."

"Aye, aye, cap," said Anne.

Before supper they played penny ante and drank man-

hattans and after supper the Farrells and the Bledsoes set-

tled down to a game of auction. Gladys said she had a

headache and Charley, after watching the game for a

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while, went out on deck to get the reek of the cigar he'd

been smoking out of his lungs.

The boat was anchored in a little bay, near a lighted

wharf that jutted out from shore. A halfmoon was setting

behind a rocky point where one tall pine reached out of a

dark snarl of branches above a crowd of shivering white-

birches. At the end of the wharf there was some sort of

clubhouse that spilt ripples of light from its big windows;

dancemusic throbbed and faded from it over the water.

Charley sat in the bow. The boys who ran the boat for

Farrell had turned in. He could hear their low voices and

catch a smell of cigarettesmoke from the tiny hatch for-

ward of the pilothouse. He leaned over to watch the small

grey waves slapping against the bow. "Bo, this is the big-

time stuff," he was telling himself.

When he turned around there was Gladys beside him.

"I thought you'd gone to bed, young lady," he said.

"Thought you'd gotten rid of me for one night?" She

wasn't smiling.

"Don't you think it's a pretty night, Glad?"

He took her hand; it was trembling and icecold. "You

don't want to catch cold, Glad," he said. She dug her long

nails into his hand. "Are you going to marry Anne?"

"Maybe. . . . Why? You're goin' to marry Harry,

aren't you?"

"Nothing in this world would make me marry him."

Charley put his arms round her. "You poor little girl,

you're cold. You ought to be in bed." She put her head on

his chest and began to sob. He could feel the tears warm

through his shirt. He didn't know what to say. He stood

there hugging her with the smell of her hair giddy, like

the smell of Doris's hair used to be, in his nostrils.

"I wish we were off this damn boat," he whispered. Her

face was turned up to his, very round and white. When he

kissed her lips she kissed him too. He pressed her to him

hard. Now it was her little breasts he could feel against

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his chest. For just a second she let him put his tongue be-

tween her lips, then she pushed him away.

"Charley, we oughtn't to be acting like this, but I sud-

denly felt so lonely."

Charley's voice was gruff in his throat. "I'll never let

you feel like that again. . . . Never, honestly . . .

never. . . .""Oh, you darling Charley." She kissed him

again very quickly and deliberately and ran away from him

down the deck.

He walked up and down alone. He didn't know what

to do. He was crazy for Gladys now. He couldn't go back

and talk to the others. He couldn't go to bed. He slipped

down the forward hatch and through the galley, where

Taki sat cool as a cucumber in his white coat reading some

thick book, into the cabin where his berth was and changed

into his bathingsuit and ran up and dove over the side.

The water wasn't as cold as he'd expected. He swam

around for a while in the moonlight. Pulling himself up

the ladder aft he felt cold and goosefleshy. Farrell with

a cigar in his teeth leaned over, grabbed his hand and

hauled him on deck.

"Ha, ha, the iron man," he shouted. "The girls beat us

two rubbers and went to bed with their winnings. Suppose

you get into your bathrobe and have a drink and a half

an hour of red dog or something silly before we turn in."

"Check," said Charley, who was jumping up and down on

the deck to shake off the water.

While Charley was rubbing himself down with a towel

below, he could hear the girls chattering and giggling in

their stateroom. He was so embarrassed when he sat down

next to Harry who was a little drunk and silly so that he

drank off a half a tumbler of rye and lost eighty dollars.

He was glad to see that it was Harry who won. "Lucky

at cards, unlucky in love," he kept saying to himself after

he'd turned in.

A week later Gladys took Charley to see her parents

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after they'd had tea together at his flat chaperoned by

Taki's grin and his bobbing black head. Horton B. Wheat-

ley was a power, so Farrell said, in the Security Trust

Company, a redfaced man with grizzled hair and a small

silvery mustache. Mrs. Wheatley was a droopy woman

with a pretty Alabama voice and a face faded and pouchy

and withered as a spent toyballoon. Mr. Wheatley started

talking before Gladys had finished the introductions:

"Well, sir, we'd been expectin' somethin' like that to hap-

pen. Of course it's too soon for us all to make up our

minds, but I don't see how I kin help tellin' you, ma boy,

that I'd rather see ma daughter wedded to a boy like you

that's worked his way up in the world, even though we

don't know much about you yet, than to a boy like Harry

who's a nice enough kid in his way, but who's never done a

thing in his life but take the schoolin' his father provided

for him. Ma boy, we are mighty proud, my wife and me,

to know you and to have you and our little girl . . . she's

all we've got in this world so she's mighty precious to

us . . ."

"Your parents are . . . have been called away, I be-

lieve, Mr. Anderson," put in Mrs. Wheatley. Charley

nodded. "Oh, I'm so sorry. . . . They were from St.

Paul, Gladys says . . ."

Mr. Wheatley was talking again. "Mr. Anderson,

Mother, was one of our most prominent war aces, he won

his spurs fightin' for the flag, Mother, an' his whole career

seems to me to be an example . . . now I'm goin' to make

you blush, ma boy. . . . of how American democracy

works at its very best pushin' forward to success the most

intelligent and bestfitted and weedin' out the weaklin's.

. . . Mr. Anderson, there's one thing I'm goin' to ask

you to do right now. I'm goin' to ask you to come to

church with us next Sunday an' address ma Sundayschool

class. I'm sure you won't mind sayin' a few words of in-

spiration and guidance to the youngsters there."

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Charley blushed and nodded. "Aw, Daddy," sang

Gladys, putting her arms around both their necks, "don't

make him do that. Sunday's the only day the poor boy gets

any golf. . . . You know I always said I never would

marry a Sundayschool teacher."

Mr. Wheatley laughed and Mrs. Wheatley cast down

her eyes and sighed. "Once won't hurt him, will it, Char-

ley?""Of course not," Charley found himself saying. "It

would be an inspiration."

Next day Charley and Mr. Wheatley had lunch alone

at the University Club. "Well, son, I guess the die is cast,"

said Mr. Wheatley when they met in the lobby. "The

Wheatley women have made up their minds, there's

nothin' for us to do but bow to the decision. I certainly

wish you children every happiness, son. . . ." As they ate

Mr. Wheatley talked about the bank and the Tern inter-

ests and the merger with Askew-Merritt that would a

little more than double the capitalization of the new Tern

Aviation Company. "You're surprised that I know all

about this, Charley . . . that's what I'd been thinkin',

that boy's a mechanical genius but he don't keep track of

the financial end . . . he don't realize what his holdin's

in that concern mean to him and the financial world."

"Well, I know some pretty good guys who give me the

lowdown," said Charley.

"Fair enough, fair enough," said Mr. Wheatley, "but

now that it's in the family maybe some of ma advice, the

result of twenty years of bankin' experience at home in

Birmingham and here in this great new dazzlin' city of

Detroit . . ."

"Well, I sure will be glad to take it, Mr. Wheatley,"

stammered Charley.

Mr. Wheatley went on to talk about a lot on the water-

front with riparian rights at Grosse Pointe he was plan-

ning to turn over to the children for a weddingpresent

and how they ought to build on it right away if only as an

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investment in the most restricted residential area in the

entire United States of America. "And, son, if you come

around to ma office after lunch you'll see the plans for the

prettiest little old English house to set on that lot you

ever did see. I've been havin' 'em drawn up as a surprise

for Mother and Gladys, by Ordway and Ordway. . . .

Halftimbered Tudor they call it. I thought I'd turn the

whole thing over to you children, as it'll be too big for

Mother and me now that Gladys is gettin' married. I'll

chip in the lot and you chip in the house and we'll settle

the whole thing on Gladys for any children."

They finished their lunch. As they got up Mr. Wheat-

ley took Charley's hand and shook it. "And I sincerely

hope and pray that there'll be children, son."

Just after Thanksgiving the society pages of all the De-

troit papers were full of a dinnerdance given by Mr. and

Mrs. Horton B. Wheatley to announce the approaching

marriage of their daughter Gladys to Mr. Charles Ander-

son inventor war ace and head of the research department

at the great Tern Airplane Plant.

Old Bledsoe never spoke to Charley after the day the

engagement was announced but Anne came over to Char-

ley and Gladys the night of the Halloween dance at the

Country Club and said she thoroughly understood and

wished them every happiness.

A few days before the wedding Taki gave notice. "But

I thought you would stay on. . . . I'm sure my wife

would like it too. Maybe we can give you a raise." Taki

grinned and bowed. "It is regrettable," he said, "that I

experience only bachelor establishments . . . but I wish

you hereafter every contentment."

What hurt Charley most was that when he wrote Joe

Askew asking him to be his bestman, he wired back only

one word: "No."

The wedding was at the Emmanuel Baptist Church.

Charley wore a cutaway and new black shoes that pinched

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his toes. He kept trying to remember not to put his hand

up to his tie. Nat Benton came on from New York to be

bestman and was a great help. While they were waiting in

the vestry Nat pulled a flask out of his pants pocket and

tried to get Charley to take a drink. "You look kinda

green around the gills, Charley." Charley shook his head

and made a gesture with his thumb in the direction from

which the organ music was coming. "Are you sure you got

the ring?" Nat grinned and took a drink himself. He

cleared his throat. "Well, Charley, you ought to con-

gratulate me for picking a winner. . . . If I could spot

the market like I can spot a likely youngster I'd be in the

money right now."

Charley was so nervous he stammered. "Did . . .

don't worry, Nat, I'll take care of you." They both laughed

and felt better. An usher was already beckoning wildly at

them from the vestry door.

Gladys in so many satinwhite frills and the lace veil and

the orangeblossoms, with a little boy in white satin hold-

ing up her train, looked like somebody Charley had never

seen before. They both said "I will" rather loud without

looking at each other. At the reception afterwards there

was no liquor in the punch on account of the Wheatleys.

Charley felt halfchoked with the smell of the flowers and

of women's furs and with trying to say something to all

the overdressed old ladies he was introduced to, who all

said the same thing about what a beautiful wedding. He'd

just broken away to go upstairs to change his clothes when

he saw Ollie Taylor, very tight, trip on a Persian rug in

the hall and measure his length at the feet of Mrs. Wheat-

ley who'd just come out of the receptionroom looking very

pale and weepy in lavender and orchids. Charley kept

right on upstairs.

In spite of the wedding's being dry, Nat and Farrell

had certainly had something, because their eyes were shin-

ing and there was a moist look round their mouths when

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they came into the room where Charley was changing into

a brown suit for traveling. "Lucky bastards," he said.

"Where did you get it? . . . Gosh, you might have kept

Ollie Taylor out."

"He's gone," said Nat. They added in chorus, "We at-

tend to everything."

"Gosh," said Charley, "I was just thinkin' it's a good

thing I sent my brother in Minneapolis and his gang in-

vitations too late for 'em to get here. I can just see my

old Uncle Vogel runnin' around pinchin' the dowagers in

the seat and cryin' hochheit."

"It's too bad about Ollie," said Nat. "He's one of the

besthearted fellers in the world."

"Poor old Ollie," echoed Charley. "He's lost his grip."

There was a knock on the door. It was Gladys, her little

face pale and goldenhaired and wonderfullooking in the

middle of an enormous chinchilla collar. "Charley, we've

got to go. You naughty boy, I don't believe you've looked

at the presents yet."

She led them into an upstairs sittingroorn stacked with

glassware and silver table articles and flowers and smoking-

sets and toiletsets and cocktailshakers until it looked like a

departmentstore. "Aren't they sweet?" she said. "Never

saw anythin' like it in my life," said Charley. They saw

some guests coming in at the other end and ran out into

the back hall again. "How many detectives have they

got?" asked Charley. "Four," said Gladys.

"Well, now," said Charley. "We vamoose."

"Well, it's time for us to retire," chorused Farrell and

Nat suddenly doubled up laughing. "Or may we kiss the

bride?"

"Check," said Charley. "Thank all the ushers for me."

Gladys fluttered her hand. "You are dears . . . go

away now."

Charley tried to hug her to him but she pushed him

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away. "Daddy's got all the bags out the kitchen door. . . .

Oh, let's hurry. . . . Oh, I'm almost crazy."

They ran down the back stairs and got into a taxi with

their baggage. His was pigskin; hers was shiny black. The

bags had a new expensive smell. Charley saw Farrell and

Nat come out from under the columns of the big colonial

porch but before they could throw the confetti the taxi-

driver had stepped on the gas and they were off.

At the depot there was nobody but the Wheatleys, Mrs.

Wheatley crying in her baggy mink coat, Mr. Wheatley

orating about the American home whether anybody lis-

tened or not. By the time the train pulled out Gladys was

crying too and Charley was sitting opposite her feeling

miserable and not knowing how the hell to begin.

"I wish we'd flown."

"You know it wouldn't have been possible in this

weather," said Gladys and then burst out crying again.

To have something to do Charley ordered some dinner

from the diningcar and sent the colored porter to get a

pail of ice for the champagne.

"Oh, my nerves," moaned Gladys, pressing her gloved

hands over her eyes.

"After all, kid, it isn't as if it was somebody else.

It's just you and me," said Charley gently.

She began to titter. "Well, I guess I'm a little silly."

When the porter grinning and respectfully sympathetic

opened the champagne she just wet her lips with it. Char-

ley drank off his glass and filled it up again. "Here's how,

Glad, this is the life." When the porter had gone Charley

asked her why she wouldn't drink. "You used to be quite

a rummy out at the countryclub, Glad."

"I don't want you to drink either."

"Why?"

She turned very red. "Mother says that if the parents

get drunk they have idiot children."

"Oh, you poor baby," said Charley, his eyes filling with

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tears. They sat for a long time looking at each other while

the fizz went out of the champagne in the glasses and the

champagne slopped out onto the table with the jolting of

the train. When the broiled chicken came Gladys couldn't

eat a bite of it. Charley ate both portions and drank up the

champagne and felt he was acting like a hog.

The train clanked and roared in their ears through the

snowy night. After the porter had taken away the supper-

dishes Charley took off his coat and sat beside her and

tried to make love to her. She'd only let him kiss her and

hug her like they'd done before they were married. When

he tried to undo her dress she pushed him away. "Wait,

wait."

She went into the lavatory to get into her nightdress.

He thought he'd go crazy she took so long. He sat in his

pyjamas in the icy gritty flaw of wind that came in through

the crack of the window until his teeth were chattering. At

last he started to bang on the door of the toilet. "Anything

wrong, Glad? What's the matter, darlin'?"

She came out in a fluffy lace negligee. She'd put on too

much makeup. Her lips were trembling under the greasy

lipstick. "Oh, Charley, don't let's tonight on the train, it's

so awful like this."

Charley felt suddenly uncontrollably angry. "But you're

my wife. I'm your husband, God damn it." He switched off

the light. Her hands were icy in his. As he grabbed her to

him he felt the muscles of his arms swelling strong behind

her slender back. It felt good the way the lace and silk tore

under his hands.

Afterwards she made him get out of bed and lie on the

couch wrapped in a blanket. She bled a great deal. Neither

of them slept. Next day she looked so pale and the bleed-

ing hadn't stopped and they were afraid they'd have to

stop somewhere to get a doctor. By evening she felt better,

but still she couldn't eat anything. All afternoon she lay

halfasleep on the couch while Charley sat beside her hold-

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ing her hand with a pile of unread magazines on his knees.

It was like getting out of jail when they got off the train

at Palm Beach and saw the green grass and the palmtrees

and the hedges of hibiscus in flower. When she saw the

big rooms of their corner suite at the Royal Poinciana,

where she'd wanted to go because that was where her

father and mother had gone on their weddingtrip, and the

flowers friends had sent that filled up the parlor, Gladys

threw her arms round his neck and kissed him even before

the last bellboy had got out of the room. "Oh, Charley,

forgive me for being so horrid." Next morning they lay

happy in bed side by side after they'd had their breakfast

and looked out of the window at the sea beyond the palm-

trees, and smelt the freshness of the surf and listened to

it pounding along the beach. "Oh, Charley," Gladys said,

"let's have everything always just like this."

Their first child was born in December. It was a boy.

They named him Wheatley. When Gladys came back

from the hospital instead of coming back to the apartment

she went into the new house out at Grosse Pointe that still

smelt of paint and raw plaster. What with the hospital ex-

penses and the furniture bills and Christmas, Charley had

to borrow twenty thousand from the bank. He spent more

time than ever talking over the phone to Nat Benton's

office in New York. Gladys bought a lot of new clothes

and kept tiffanyglass bowls full of freezias and narcissus

all over the house. Even on the dressingtable in her bath-

room she always had flowers. Mrs. Wheatley said she got

her love of flowers from her grandmother Randolph, be-

cause the Wheatleys had never been able to tell one flower

from another. When the next child turned out to be a girl,

Gladys said, as she lay in the hospital, her face looking

drawn and yellow against the white pillows, beside the

great bunch of glittering white orchids Charley had or-

dered from the florist at five dollars a bloom, she wished

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she could name her Orchid. They ended by naming her

Marguerite after Gladys's grandmother Randolph.

Gladys didn't recover very well after the little girl's

birth and had to have several small operations that kept

her in bed three months. When she got on her feet she had

the big room next to the nursery and the children's nurse's

room redecorated in white and gold for her own bedroom.

Charley groused about it a good deal because it was in the

other wing of the house from his room. When he'd come

over in his bathrobe before turning in and try to get into

bed with her, she would keep him off with a cool smile,

and when he insisted, she would give him a few pecking

kisses and tell him not to make a noise or he would wake

the babies. Sometimes tears of irritation would start into

his eyes. "Jesus, Glad, don't you love me at all?" She

would answer that if he really loved her he'd have come

home the night she had the Smyth Perkinses to dinner in-

stead of phoning at the last minute that he'd have to stay

at the office.

"But, Jesus, Glad, if I didn't make the money how

would I pay the bills?"

"If you loved me you'd be more considerate, that's all,"

she would say and two curving lines would come on her

face from her nostrils to the corners of her mouth like the

lines on her mother's face and Charley would kiss her

gently and say poor little girl and go back to his room

feeling like a louse. Times she did let him stay she lay so

cold and still and talked about how he hurt her, so that

he would go back to the tester bed in his big bedroom

feeling so nervous and jumpy it would take several stiff

whiskies to get him in shape to go to sleep.

One night when he'd taken Bill Cermak, who was now

a foreman at the Flint plant, over to a roadhouse the other

side of Windsor to talk to him about the trouble they were

having with molders and diemakers, after they'd had a

couple of whiskies, Charley found himself instead asking

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Bill about married life. "Say, Bill, do you ever have trou-

ble with your wife?"

"Sure, boss," said Bill, laughing. "I got plenty trouble.

But the old lady's all right, you know her, nice kids good

cook, all time want me to go to church."

"Say, Bill, when did you get the idea of callin' me

boss? Cut it out."

"Too goddam rich," said Bill.

"S---t, have another whiskey." Charley drank his down.

"And beer chasers like in the old days. . . . Remember

that Christmas party out in Long Island City and that

blonde at the beerparlor. . . . Jesus, I used to think I was

a little devil with the women. . . . But my wife she don't'

seem to get the idea."

"You have two nice kids already; what the hell, maybe

you're too ambitious."

"You wouldn't believe it . . . only once since little

Peaches was born."

"Most women gets hotter when they're married a while.

. . . That's why the boys are sore at your damned effi-

ciency expert."

"Stauch? Stauch's a genius at production."

"Maybe, but he don't give the boys any chance for re-

production." Bill laughed and wiped the beer off his

mouth.

"Good old Bill," said Charley. "By God, I'll get you on

the board of directors yet."

Bill wasn't laughing any more. "Honestly, no kiddin'.

That damn squarehead make the boys work so hard they

can't get a hard on when they go to bed, an' their wives

raise hell with 'em. I'm strawboss and they all think son-

ofabitch too, but they're right."

Charley was laughing. "You're a squarehead yourself,

Bill, and I don't know what I can do about it, I'm just an

employee of the company myself. . . . We got to have

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efficient production or they'll wipe us out of business.

Ford's buildin' planes now."

"You'll lose all your best guys. . . . Slavedrivin' may

be all right in the automobile business, but buildin' an air-

plane motor's skilled labor."

"Aw, Christ, I wish I was still tinkerin' with that damn

motor and didn't have to worry about money all the time.

. . . Bill, I'm broke. . . . Let's have another whiskey."

"Better eat."

"Sure, order up a steak anythin' you like. Let's go

take a piss. That's one thing they don't charge for. . . .

Say, Bill, does it seem to you that I'm gettin' a potbelly?

. . . Broke, a potbelly, an' my wife won't sleep with me.

. . . Do you think I'm a rummy, Bill? I sometimes think

I better lay off for keeps. I never used to pull a blank when

I drank."

"Hell, no, you smart young feller, one of the smartest,

a fool for a threepoint landing and a pokerplayer . . . my

God."

"What's the use if your wife won't sleep with you?"

Charley wouldn't eat anything. Bill ate up both their

steaks. Charley kept on drinking whiskey out of a bottle

he had under the table and beer for chasers. "But tell me

. . . your wife, does she let you have it any time you want

it? . . . The guys in the shop, their wives won't let 'em

alone, eh?"

Bill was a little drunk too. "My wife she do what I

say."

It ended by Bill's having to drive Charley's new Pack-

ard back to the ferry. In Detroit Bill made Charley drink

a lot of sodawater in a drugstore, but when he got back in

the car he just slumped down at the wheel. He let Bill

drive him home to Grosse Pointe. Charley could hear Bill

arguing with the guards along the road, each one really

had to see Mr. Anderson passed out in the back of the car

before he'd let Bill through, but he didn't give a hoot,

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struck him so funny he began to giggle. The big joke was

when the houseman had to help Bill get him up to his bed-

room. "The boss a little sick, see, overwork," Bill said

each time, then he'd tap his head solemnly. "Too much

brainwork." Charley came to up in his bedroom and was

able to articulate muzzily: "Bill, you're a prince. . . .

George, call a taxi to take Mr. Cermak home . . . lucky

bastard go home to his wife." Then he stretched out on

the bed with one shoe on and one shoe off and went

quietly to sleep.

When he came back from his next trip to New York and Washington, he called up Bill at the plant. "Hay,

Bill, how's the boy? Your wife still do what you say, ha,

ha. Me, I'm terrible, very exhaustin' business trip, under-

stand . . . never drank so much in my life or with so

many goddam crooks. Say, Bill, don't worry if you get

fired, you're on my private payroll, understand. . . .

We're goin' to fire the whole outfit. . . . Hell, if they

don't like it workin' for us let 'em try to like it workin'

for somebody else. . . . This is a free country. I wouldn't

want to keep a man against his will. . . . Look, how long

will it take you to tune up that little Moth type, you know,

number 16 . . . yours truly's Mosquito?'? . . . Check.

. . . Well, if we can get her in shape soon enough so they

can use her as a model, see, for their specifications. . . .

Jesus, Bill, if we can do that . . . we're on easystreet.

. . . You won't have to worry about if the kids can go to

college or not . . . goddam it, you an' the missis can go

to college yourselves. . . . Check."

Charley put the receiver back on the desk. His secretary

Miss Finnegan was standing in the door. She had red hair

and a beautiful complexion with a few freckles round her

little sharp nose. She was a snappy dresser. She was look-

ing at Charley with her lightbrown eyes all moist and wide

as he was laying down the law over the phone. Charley

felt his chest puff out a little. He pulled in his belly as

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hard as he could. "Gosh," he was saying at the back of his

head, "maybe I could lay Elsie Finnegan." Somebody had

put a pot of blue hyacinths on his desk; a smell of spring

came from them that all at once made him remember

Bar-le-Duc, and troutfishing up the Red River.

It was a flowerysmelling spring morning again when

Charley drove out to the plant from the office to give the

Anderson Mosquito its trial spin. He had managed to give

Elsie Finnegan a kiss for the first time and had left her

crumpled and trembling at her desk. Bill Cermak had said

over the phone that the tiny ship was tuned up and in fine

shape. It was a relief to get out of the office where he'd

been fidgeting for a couple of hours trying to get through

a call to Nat Benton's office about some stock he'd wired

them to take a profit on. After he'd kissed her he'd told

Elsie Finnegan to switch the call out to the trial field for

him. It made him feel good to be driving out through the

halfbuilt town, through the avenue jammed with trucks

full of construction materials, jockeying his car among the

trucks with a feeling of shine and strength at the perfect

action of his clutch and the smooth response of the gears.

The gatekeeper had the New York call for him. The con-

nection was perfect. Nat had banked thirteen grand for

him. As he hung up the receiver he thought poor little

Elsie, he'd have to buy her something real nice. "It's a

great day, Joe, ain't it?" he said to the gatekeeper.

Bill was waiting for him beside the new ship at the en-

trance to the hangar, wiping grease off his thick fingers

with a bunch of waste. Charley slapped him on the back.

"Good old Bill. . . . Isn't this a great day for the race?"

Bill fell for it. "What race, boss?""The human race, you

fathead. . . . Say, Bill," he went on as he took off his

gloves and his welltailored spring overcoat, "I don't mind

tellin' you I feel wonderful today . . . made thirteen

grand on the market yesterday . . . easy as rollin' off a

log."

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While Charley pulled a suit of overalls on the me-

chanics pushed the new ship out onto the grass for Bill to

make his general inspection. "Jesus, she's pretty." The

tiny aluminum ship glistened in the sun out on the green

grass like something in a jeweler's window. There were

dandelions and clover on the grass and a swirling flight of

little white butterflies went up right from under his black

clodhoppers when Bill came back to Charley and stood

beside him. Charley winked at Bill Cermak standing be-

side him in his blue denims stolidly looking at his feet.

"Smile, you sonofabitch," he said. "Don't this weather

make you feel good?"

Bill turned a square bohunk face towards Charley.

"Now look here, Mr. Anderson, you always treat me good

. . . from way back Long Island days. You know me, do

work, go home, keep my face shut.""What's on your

mind, Bill? . . . Want me to try to wangle another raise

for you? Check."

Bill shook his heavy square face and rubbed his nose

with a black forefinger. "Tern Company used to be good

place to work good work good pay. You know me, Mr.

Anderson, I'm no bolshayvik . . . but, no stoolpigeon

either."

"But damn it, Bill, why can't you tell those guys to have

a little patience . . . we're workin' out a profitsharin'

scheme. I've worked on a lathe myself. . . . I've worked

as a mechanic all over this goddam country. . . . I know

what the boys are up against, but I know what the manage-

ment's up against too. . . . Gosh, this thing's in its in-

fancy, we're pouring more capital into the business all the

time. . . . We've got a responsibility towards our inves-

tors. Where do you think that jack I made yesterday's

goin' but the business of course. The oldtime shop was a

great thing, everybody kidded and smoked and told smutty

stories, but the pressure's too great now. If every depart-

ment don't click like a machine we're rocked. If the boys

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want a union we'll give 'em a union. You get up a meeting

and tell 'em how we feel about it but tell em. we've got to

have some patriotism. Tell 'em the industry's the first line

of national defense. We'll send Eddy Sawyer down to talk

to 'em . . . make 'em understand our problems."

Bill Cermak shook his head. "Plenty other guys do

that." Charley frowned. "Well, let's see how she goes,"

he snapped impatiently.

"Gosh, she's a honey."

The roar of the motor kept them from saying any more.

The mechanic stepped from the controls and Charley

climbed in. Bill Cermak got in behind. She started taxiing

fast across the green field. Charley turned her into the

wind and let her have the gas. At the first soaring bounce

there was a jerk. As he pitched forward Charley switched

off the ignition.

They were carrying him across the field on a stretcher.

Each step of the men carrying the stretcher made two

jagged things grind together in his leg. He tried to tell

'em that he had a piece of something in his side, but his

voice was very small and hoarse. In the shadow of the

hangar he was trying to raise himself on his elbow. "What

the devil happened? Is Bill all right?" The men shook

their heads. Then he passed out again like the juice failing

in a car.

In the ambulance he tried to ask the man in the white

jacket about Bill Cermak and to remember back exactly

what had happened, but the leg kept him too busy trying

not to yell. "Hay, doc," he managed to croak, "can't you

get these aluminum splinters out of my side? The damn

ship must have turned turtle on them. Wing couldn't take

it maybe, but it's time they got the motor lifted off me.

Hay, doc, why can't they get a move on?"

When he got the first whiff of the hospital, there were

a lot of men in white jackets moving and whispering round

him. The hospital smelt strong of ether. The trouble was

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he couldn't breathe. Somebody must have spilt that

damned ether. No, not on my face. The motor roared. He

must have been seeing things. The motor's roar swung into

an easy singsong. Sure, she was taking it fine, steady as

one of those big old bombers. When he woke up a nurse

was helping him puke into a bowl.

When he woke up again, for chrissake no more ether,

no, it was flowers, and Gladys was standing beside the bed

with a big bunch of sweetpeas in her hand. Her face had a

pinched look. "Hello, Glad, how's the girl?""Oh, I've

been so worried, Charley. How do you feel? Oh, Charley,

for a man of your standing to risk his life in practice

flights . . . Why don't you let the people whose business

it is do it, I declare." There was something Charley wanted-

to ask. He was scared about something. "Say, are the kids

all right?""Wheatley skinned his knee and I'm afraid the

baby has a little temperature. I've phoned Dr. Thompson.

I don't think it's anything though."

"Is Bill Cermak all right?"

Gladys's mouth trembled. "Oh, yes," she said, cutting

the words off sharply. "Well, I suppose this means our

dinnerdance is off. . . . The Edsel Fords were coming."

"Hell, no, why not have it anyway? Yours truly can attend

in a wheelchair. Say, they sure have got me in a strait-

jacket. . . . I guess I busted some ribs." Gladys nodded;

her mouth was getting very small and thin. Then she sud-

denly began to cry.

The nurse came in and said reproachfully, "Oh, Mrs.

Anderson." Charley was just as glad when Gladys went

out and left him alone with the nurse. "Say, nurse, get

hold of the doctor, will you? Tell him I'm feeling fine

and want to look over the extent of the damage.""Mr.

Anderson, you mustn't have anything on your mind.""I

know, tell Mrs. Anderson I want her to get in touch with

the office.""But it's Sunday, Mr. Anderson. A great many

people have been downstairs but I don't think the doctor

-315-

is letting them up yet." The nurse was a freshfaced girl

with a slightly Scotch way of talking. "I bet you're a

Canadian," said Charley. "Right that time," said the nurse.

"I knew a wonderful nurse who was a Canadian once. If

I'd had any sense I'd have married her."

The housephysician was a roundfaced man with a jovial

smooth manner almost like a headwaiter at a big hotel.

"Say, doc, ought my leg to hurt so damn much?""You

see we haven't set it yet. You tried to puncture a lung but

didn't quite get away with it. We had to remove a few

little splinters of rib.""Not from the lung . . .""Luck-

ily not.""But why the hell didn't you set the leg at the

same time?""Well, we're waiting for Dr. Roberts to come

on from New York. . . . Mrs. Anderson insisted on him.

Of course we are all very pleased, as he's one of the most

eminent men in his profession. . . . It'll be another little

operation."

It wasn't until he'd come to from the second operation

that they told him that Bill Cermak had died of a frac-

tured skull.

Charley was in the hospital three months with his leg

in a Balkan frame. The fractured ribs healed up fast, but

he kept on having trouble with his breathing. Gladys han-

dled all the house bills and came every afternoon for a

minute. She was always in a hurry and always terribly

worried. He had to turn over a power of attorney to Moe

Frank his lawyer who used to come to see him a couple of

times a week to talk things over. Charley couldn't say

much, he couldn't say much to anybody he was in so much

pain.

He liked it best when Gladys sent Wheatley to see him.

Wheatley was three years old now and thought it was

great in the hospital. He liked to see the nurse working

all the little weights and pulleys of the frame the leg hung

in. "Daddy's living in a airplane," was what he always

-316-

said about it. He had tow hair and his nose was beginning

to stick up and Charley thought he took after him.

Marguerite was still too little to be much fun. The one

time Gladys had the governess bring her, she bawled so

at the look of the scarylooking frame she had to be taken

home. Gladys wouldn't let her come again. Gladys and

Charley had a bitter row about letting Wheatley come as

she said she didn't want the child to remember his father

in the hospital. "But, Glad, he'll have plenty of time to get

over it, get over it a damn sight sooner than I will."

Gladys pursed her lips together and said nothing. When

she'd gone Cfiarley lay there hating her and wondering

how they could ever have had children together.

Just about the time he began to see clearly that they all

expected him to be a cripple the rest of his life he began

to mend, but it was winter before he was able to go home

on crutches. He still suffered sometimes from a sort of

nervous difficulty in breathing. The house seemed strange

as he dragged himself around in it. Gladys had had every

room redecorated while he was away and all the servants

were different. Charley didn't feel it was his house at all.

What he enjoyed best was the massage he had three times

a week. He spent his days playing with the kids and talk-

ing to Miss Jarvis, their stiff and elderly English gov-

erness. After they'd gone to bed he'd sit in his sittingroom

drinking scotch and soda and feeling puffy and nervous.

God damn it, he was getting too fat. Gladys was always

cool as a cucumber these days; even when he went into fits

of temper and cursed at her, she'd stand there looking at

him with a cold look of disgust on her carefully madeup

face. She'entertained a great deal but made the servants

understand that Mr. Anderson wasn't well enough to come

down. He began to feel like a poor relation in his own

house. Once when the Farrells were coming he put on his

tuxedo and hobbled down to dinner on his crutches. There

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was no place set for him and everybody looked at him like

he was a ghost.

"Thataboy," shouted Farrell in his yapping voice. "I

was expecting to come up and chin with you after dinnex."

It turned out that what Farrell wanted to talk about was

the suit for five hundred thousand some damn shyster had

induced Cermak's widow to bring against the company.

Farrell had an idea that if Charley went and saw her he

could induce her to be reasonable and settle for a small

annuity. Charley said he'd be damned if he'd go. At din-

ner Charley got tight and upset the afterdinner coffeecups

with his crutch and went off to bed in a rage.

What he enjoyed outside of playing with the kids was

buying and selling stocks and talking to Nat over the long-

distance. Nat kept telling him he was getting the feel of

the market. Nat warned him and Charley knew damn well

that he was slipping at Tern and that if he didn't do some-

thing he'd be frozen out, but he felt too rotten to go to

directors' meetings; what he did do was to sell out about

half his stocks in small parcels. Nat kept telling him if he'd

only get a move on he could get control of the whole busi-

ness before Andy Merritt pulled off his new reorganiza-

tion, but he felt too damn nervous and miserable to make

the effort. All he could seem to do was to grumble and

call Julius Stauch and raise hell about details. Stauch had

taken over his work on the new monoplane and turned out

a little ship that had gone through all tests with flying

colors. When he'd put down the receiver, Charley would

pour himself a little scotch and settle back on the couch in

his window and mutter to himself, "Well, you're dished

this time."

One evening Farrell came around and had a long talk

and said what Charley needed was a fishing trip, he'd

never get well if he kept on this way. He said he'd been

talking to Doc Thompson and that he recommended three

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months off and plenty of exercise if he ever expected to

throw away his crutches.

Gladys couldn't go because old Mrs. Wheatley was sick,

so Charley got into the back of his Lincoln towncar alone

with the chauffeur to drive him, and a lot of blankets to

keep him warm, and a flask of whiskey and a thermosbottle

of hot coffee, to go down all alone to Miami.

At Cincinnati he felt so bum he spent a whole day in

bed in the hotel there. He got the chauffeur to get him

booklets about Florida from a travel agency, and finally

sent a wire to Nat Benton asking him to spend a week with

him down at the Key Largo fishingcamp. Next morning

he started off again early. He'd had a good night's sleep

and he felt better and began to enjoy the trip. But he felt

a damn fool sitting there being driven like an old woman

all bundled up in rugs. He was lonely too because the

chauffeur wasn't the kind of bird you could talk to. He

was a sourlooking Canuck Gladys had hired because she

thought it was classy to give her orders in French through

the speakingtube; Charley was sure the bastard gypped

him on the price of gas and oil and repairs along the road;

that damn Lincoln was turning out a bottomless pit for

gas and oil.

In Jacksonville the sun was shining. Charley gave him-

self the satisfaction of firing the chauffeur as soon as they'd

driven up to the door of the hotel. Then he went to bed

with a pint of bum corn the bellboy sold him and slept like

a log.

In the morning he woke up late feeling thirsty but

cheerful. After breakfast he checked out of the hotel and

drove around the town a little. It made him feel good to

pack his own bag and get into the front seat and drive his

own car.

The town had a cheerful rattletrap look in the sunlight

under the big white clouds and the blue sky. At the lunch-

room next to the busstation he stopped to have a drink.

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He felt so good that he got out of the car without his

crutches and hobbled across the warm pavement. The wind

was fluttering the leaves of the magazines and the pink

and palegreen sheets of the papers outside the lunchroom

window. Charley was out of breath from the effort when

he slid onto a stool at the counter. "Give me a limeade

and no sweetnin' in it, please," he said to the ratfaced boy

at the fountain.

The sodajerker didn't pay any attention, he was looking

down the other way. Charley felt his face get red. His

first idea was, I'll get him fired. Then he looked where

the boy was looking. There was a blonde eating a sandwich

at the other end of the counter. She certainly was pretty.

She wore a little black hat and a neat bluegrey suit and a

little white lace around her neck and at her wrists. She had

an amazed look on her face like she'd just heard some-

thing extraordinarily funny. Forgetting to favor his game

leg Charley slipped up several seats towards her. "Say, bo,

how about that limeade?" he shouted cheerfully at the

sodajerker.

The girl was looking at Charley. Her eyes really were

a perfectly pure blue. She was speaking to him. "Maybe

you know how long the bus takes to Miami, mister. This

boy thinks he's a wit so I can't get any data."

"Suppose we try it out and see," said Charley.

"They surely come funny in Florida. . . . Another

humorist."

"No, I mean it. If you let me drive you down you'll be

doing a sick man a great favor."

"Sure it won't mean a fate worse than death?"

"You'll be perfectly safe with me, young lady. I'm al-

most a cripple. I'll show you my crutches in the car."

"What's the trouble?"

"Cracked up in a plane."

"You a pilot?"

Charley nodded. "Not quite skinny enough for Lind-

-320-

bergh," she said, looking him up and down. Charley

turned red. "I am a little overweight. It's being cooped

up with this lousy leg."

"Well, I guess I'll try it. If I step into your car and

wake up in Buenos Aires it'll be my bad luck."

Charley tried to pay for her coffee and sandwich but she

wouldn't let him. Something about her manner kept him

laughing all the time. When he got up and she saw how

he limped she pursed her mouth up. "Gee, that's too bad."

When she saw the car she stopped in her tracks. "Zowie,"

she said, "we're bloomin' millionaires."

They were laughing as they got into the car. There was

something about the way she said things that made him

laugh. She wouldn't say what her name was. "Call me

Mme. X," she said. "Then you'll have to call me Mr. A,"

said Charley.

They laughed and giggled all the way to Daytona Beach

where they stopped off and went into the surf for a dip.

Charley felt ashamed of his pot and his pale skin and his

limp as he walked across the beach with her looking brown

and trim in her blue bathingsuit. She had a pretty figure

although her hips were a little big. "Anyway it's not as if

I'd come out of it with one leg shorter than the other. The

doc says I'll be absolutely O.K. if I exercise it right."

"Sure, you'll be great in no time. And me thinkin' you

was an elderly sugardaddy in the drugstore there."

"I think you're a humdinger, Mme. X."

"Be sure you don't put anything in writing, Mr. A."

Charley's leg ached like blazes when he came out of the

water, but it didn't keep him from having a whale of a

good appetite for the first time in months. After a big fish-

dinner they started off again. She went to sleep in the car

with her neat little head on his shoulder. He felt very

happy driving down the straight smooth concrete highway

although he felt tired already. When they got into Miami that night she made him take her to a small hotel back

-321-

near the railroad tracks and wouldn't let him come in with

her. "But gosh, couldn't we see each other again?"

"Sure, you can see me any night at the Palms. I'm an

entertainer there."

"Honest . . . I knew you were an entertainer but I

didn't know you were a professional."

"You sure did me a good turn, Mr. A. Now it can be

told . . . I was flat broke with exactly the price of that

ham sandwich and if you hadn't brought me down I'da

lost the chance of working here. . . . I'll tell you about

it sometime."

"Tell me your name. I'd like to call you up."

"You tell me yours."

" Charles Anderson. I'll be staying bored to death at the

Miami-Biltmore."

"So you really are Mr. A. . . . Well, goodby, Mr. A,

and thanks a million times." She ran into the hotel. Char-

ley was crazy about her already. He was so tired he just

barely made his hotel. He went up to his room and tum-

bled into bed and for the first time in months went to sleep

without getting drunk first.

A week later when Nat Benton turned up he was sur-

prised to find Charley in such good shape. "Nothin' like a

change," said Charley, laughing. They drove on down to-

wards the Keys together. Charley had. Margo Dowling's

photograph in his pocket, a professional photograph of her

dressed in Spanish costume for her act. He'd been to the

Palms every night, but he hadn't managed to get her to

go out with him yet. When he'd suggest anything she'd

shake her head and make a face and say, "I'll tell you all

about it sometime." But the last night she had given him a

number where he could call her up.

Nat kept trying to talk about the market and the big

reorganization of Tern and Askew-Merritt that Merritt

was engineering but Charley would shut him up with,

"Aw, hell, let's talk about somethin' else." The camp was

-322-

all right but the mosquitoes were fierce. They spent a good

day on the reef fishing for barracuda and grouper. They

took a jug of bacardi out in the motorboat and fished and

drank and ate sandwiches. Charley told Nat all about the

crackup. "Honestly, I don't think it was my fault. It was

one of those damn things you can't help. . . . Now I feel

as if I'd lost the last friend I had on earth. Honest, I'd a

given anythin' I had in the world if that hadn't happened

to Bill.""After all," said Nat, "he was only a mechanic."

One day when they got in from fishing, drunk and with

their hands and pants fishy, and their faces burned by the

sun and glare, and dizzy from the sound and smell of the

motor and the choppy motion of the boat, they found wait-

ing for them a wire from Benton's office.

UNKNOWN UNLOADING TERN STOP DROPS FOUR AND A

HALF POINTS STOP WIRE INSTRUCTIONS

"Instructions hell," said Benton, jamming his stuff into

his suitcase. "We'll go up and see. Suppose we charter a

plane at Miami.""You take the plane," said Charley

coolly. "I'm going to ride on the train."

In New York he sat all day in the back room of Nat

Benton's office smoking too many cigars, watching the

ticker, fretting and fuming, riding up and down town in

taxicabs, getting the lowdown from various sallowfaced

friends of Nat's and Moe Frank's. By the end of the week

he'd lost four hundred thousand dollars and had let go

every airplane stock he had in the world.

All the time he was sitting there putting on a big show

of business he was counting the minutes, the way he had

when he was a kid in school, for the market to close so that

he could go uptown to a speakeasy on Fiftysecond Street

to meet a hennahaired girl named Sally Hogan he'd met

when he was out with Nat at the Club Dover. She was the

first girl he'd picked up when he got to New York. He

didn't give a damn about her but he had to have some kind

-323-

of a girl. They were registered at the hotel as Mr. and

Mrs. Smith.

One morning when they were having breakfast in bed

there was a light knock on the door. "Come in," yelled

Charley, thinking it was the waiter. Two shabbylooking

men rushed into the room, followed by O'Higgins, a shy-

ster lawyer he'd met a couple of times back in Detroit.

Sally let out a shriek and covered her head with the pillow.

"Howdy, Charley," said O'Higgins. "I'm sorry to do

this but it's all in the line of duty. You don't deny that you

are Charles Anderson, do you? Well, I thought you'd

rather hear it from me than just read the legal terms.

Mrs. Anderson is suing you for divorce in Michigan. . . .

That's all right, boys."

The shabby men bowed meekly and backed out the door.

"Of all the lousy stinkin' tricks . . ."

"Mrs. Anderson's had the detectives on your trail ever

since you fired her chauffeur in Jacksonville."

Charley had such a splitting headache and felt so weak

from a hangover that he couldn't lift his head. He wanted

to get up and sock that sonofabitch O'Higgins but all he

could do was lie there and take' it. "But she never said

anything about it in her letters. She's been writin' me right

along. There's never been any trouble between us."

O'Higgins shook his curly red head. "Too bad," he

said. "Maybe if you can see her you can arrange it between

you. You know my advice about these things is always

keep 'em out of court. Well, I'm heartily sorry, old boy,

to have caused you and your charming friend any embar-

rassment . . . no hard feelings I hope, Charley old man.

. . . I thought it would be pleasanter more open and

aboveboard if I came along if you saw a friendly face, as

you might say. I'm sure this can all be amicably settled."

He stood there a while rubbing his hands and nodding and

then tiptoed to the door. Standing there with one hand on

the doorknob he waved the other big flipper towards the

-324-

bed. "Well, so long, Sally. . . . Guess I'll be seein' you

down at the office." Then he closed the door softly after

him. Sally had jumped out of bed and was running to-

wards the door with a terrified look on her face. Charley

began to laugh in spite of his splitting headache. "Aw,

never mind, girlie," he said. "Serves me right for bein' a

sucker. . . . I know we all got our livin's to make. . . .

Come on back to bed."

NEWSREEL LX

Was Céline to blame? To young Scotty marriage seemed

just a lark, a wild time in good standing. But when she began

to demand money and the extravagant things he couldn't af-

ford did Céline meet him halfway? Or did she blind herself

to the very meaning of the sacred word: wife?

CROOK FROZEN OUT OF SHARE IN BONDS TELLS MURDER

PLOT

TO REPEAL DECISION ON CAST IRON PIPE

In a little Spanish town

'Twas, on a night like this

speculative sentiment was encouraged at the opening of

the week by the clearer outlook. Favorable weather was doing

much to eliminate the signs of hesitation lately evinced by sev-

eral trades

I'm in love again

And the Spring

Is comin'

I'm in love again

Hear my heart strings

Strummin'

ITCHING GONE IN ONE NIGHT

-325-

thousands of prosperous happy women began to earn dou-

ble and treble their former wages and sometimes even more

immediately

Yes sir that's my baby

That's my baby na-ow!

APE TRIAL GOAT TO CONFER WITH

ATTORNEYS

Mysterious Mr. Y to Testify

an exquisite replica in miniature of a sunlit French coun-

try home on the banks of the Rhone boldly built on the crest

of Sunset Ridge overlooking the most beautiful lakeland in New

Jersey where every window frames a picture of surprising

beauty

And the tune I'm hummin'

I'll not go roamin' like a kid again

I'll stay home and be a kid again

NEIGHBORS ENJOIN NOCTURNAL SHOUTS IN

TURKISH BATH

ALL CITY POLICE TURN OUT IN

BANDIT HUNT

CONGOLEUM BREAK FEATURES OPENING

for the sixth week freight car loadings have passed the

million mark in this country, indicating that prosperity is gen-

eral and that records are being established and broken every-

where

Good-bye east and good-bye west

Good-bye north and all the rest

Hello Swan-ee Hello

-326-

MARGO DOWLING

When Margo got back to the city after her spring in

Miami everybody cried out how handsome she looked with

her tan and her blue eyes and her hair bleached out light

by the Florida sun. But she sure found her work cut out

for her. The Mandevilles were in a bad way. Frank had

spent three months in the hospital and had had one kidney

removed in an operation. When he got home he was still

so sick that Agnes gave up her position to stay home and

nurse him; she and Frank had taken up Science and

wouldn't have the doctor any more. They talked all the

time about having proper thoughts and about how Frank's

life had been saved by Miss Jenkins, a practitioner Agnes

had met at her tearoom. They owed five hundred dollars

in doctor's bills and hospital expenses, and talked about

God all the time. It was lucky that Mr. Anderson the new

boyfriend was a very rich man.

Mr. A, as she called him, kept offering to set Margo up

in an apartment on Park Avenue, but she always said noth-

ing doing, what did he think she was, a kept woman? She

did let him play the stockmarket a little for her, and buy

her clothes and jewelry and take her to Atlantic City and

Long Beach weekends. He'd been an airplane pilot and

decorated in the war and had big investments in airplane

companies. He drank more than was good for him; he was

a beefy florid guy who looked older than he was, a big

talker, and hard to handle when he'd been drinking, but

he was openhanded and liked laughing and jokes when he

was feeling good. Margo thought he was a pretty good

egg. "Anyway, what can you do when a guy picks up a

telephone and turns over a thousand dollars for you?" was

what she'd tell Agnes when she wanted to tease her.

"Margie dear, you mustn't talk like that," Agnes would

say. "It sounds so mercenary." Agnes talked an awful lot

-327-

about Love and right thoughts and being true and good

these days. Margo liked better to hear Mr. Anderson

blowing about his killings on the stockmarket and the

planes he'd designed, and how he was going to organize

a net of airways that would make the Pennsylvania Rail-

road look like a suburban busline.

Evening after evening she'd have to sit with him in

speakeasies in the Fifties drinking whiskey and listening to

him talk about this business and that and big deals in stocks

down on the Street, and about how he was out to get that

Detroit crowd that was trying to ease him out of Standard

Airparts and about his divorce and how much it was cost-

ing him. One night at the Stork Club, when he was show-

ing her pictures of his kids, he broke down and started to

blubber. The court had just awarded the custody of the

children to his wife.

Mr. A had his troubles all right. One of the worst was

a redheaded girl he'd been caught with in a hotel by his

wife's detectives who was all the time blackmailing him,

and threatening to sue for breach of promise and give the

whole story to the Hearst papers. "Oh, how awful," Agnes

would keep saying, when Margo would tell her about it

over a cup of coffee at noon. "If he only had the right

thoughts. . . . You must talk to him and make him try

and see. . . . If he only understood I know everything

would be different. . . . A successful man like that should

be full of right thoughts."

"Full of Canadian Club, that's what's the matter with

him. . . . You ought to see the trouble I have getting

him home nights." "You're the only friend he has," Agnes

would say, rolling up her eyes. "I think it's noble of you

to stick by him."

Margo was paying all the back bills up at the apartment

and had started a small account at the Bowery Savings

Bank just to be on the safe side. She felt she was getting

the hang of the stockmarket a little. Still it made her feel

-328-

trashy not working and it gave her the creeps sitting

around in the apartment summer afternoons while Agnes

read Frank Science and Health in a singsong voice, so she

started going around the dress shops to see if she could get

herself a job as a model. "I want to learn some more about

clothes . . . mine always look like they were made of old

floursacks," she explained to Agnes. "Are you sure Mr.

Anderson won't mind?""If he don't like it he can lump

it," said Margo, tossing her head.

In the fall they finally took her on at Piquot's new

French gownshop on Fiftyseventh Street. It was tiresome

work but it left her evenings free. She confided to Agnes

that if she ever let Mr. A out of her sight in the evening

some little floosey or other would get hold of him sure as

fate. Agnes was delighted that Margo was out of the show

business. "I never felt it was right for you to do that sort

of thing and now I feel you can be a real power for good

with poor Mr. Anderson," Agnes said. Whenever Margo

told them about a new plunger he had taken on the mar-

ket, Agnes and Frank would hold the thought for Mr.

Anderson.

Jules Piquot was a middleaged roundfaced Frenchman

with a funny waddle like a duck who thought all the girls

were crazy about him. He took a great fancy to Margo, or

maybe it was that he'd found out somewhere that her pro-

tector, as he called it, was a millionaire. He said she must

always keep that beautiful golden tan and made her wear

her hair smooth on her head instead of in the curls she'd

worn it in since she had been a Follies girl. "Vat is te use

to make beautiful clothes for American women if tey look

so healty like from milkin' a cow?" he said. "Vat you need

to make interestin' a dress is 'ere," and he struck himself

with a pudgy ringed fist on the bosom of his silk pleated

shirt. "It is drama. . . . In America all you care about is

te perfect tirtysix."

"Oh, I guess you think we're very unrefined," said

-329-

Margo. "If I only 'ad some capital," groaned Piquot,

shaking his head as he went back to his office on the mez-

zanine that was all glass and eggshellwhite with aluminum

fittings. "I could make New York te most stylish city in

te vorld."

Margo liked it parading around in the Paris models and

in Piquot's own slinky contraptions over the deep putty-

colored rugs. It was better than shaking her fanny in the

chorus all right. She didn't have to get down to the show-

rooms till late. The showrooms were warm and spotless,

with a faint bitter smell on the air of new materials and

dyes and mothballs, shot through with a whiff of scented

Egyptian cigarettes.The models had a little room in the

back where they could sit and read magazines and talk

about beauty treatments and the theaters and the football

season, when there were no customers. There were only

two other girls who came regularly and there weren't too

many customers either. The girls said that Piquot was

going broke.

When he had his sale after Christmas Margo got Agnes

to go down one Monday morning and buy her three stun-

ning gowns for thirty dollars each; she tipped Agnes off

on just what to buy and made out not to know her when

she pranced out to show the new spring models off.

There wasn't any doubt any more that Piquot was going

broke. Billcollectors stormed in the little office on the mez-

zanine and everybody's pay was three weeks in arrears, and

Piquot's moonshaped face drooped in tiny sagging

wrinkles. Margo decided she'd better start looking around

for another job, especially as Mr. A's drinking was getting

harder and harder to handle. Every morning she studied

the stockmarket reports. She didn't have the faith she had

at first in Mr. A's tips after she'd bought Sinclair one day

and had had to cover her margin and had come out three

hundred dollars in the hole.

One Saturday there was a great stir around Piquot's.

-330-

Piquot himself kept charging out of his office waving his

short arms, sometimes peevish and sometimes cackling and

giggling, driving the salesladies and models before him

like a new rooster in a henyard. Somebody was coming to

take photographs for Vogue. The photographer when he

finally came was a thinfaced young Jewish boy with a pasty

skin and dark circles under his eyes. He had a regular

big photographer's camera and a great many flashlight

bulbs all silvercrinkly inside that Piquot kept picking up

and handling in a gingerly kind of way and exclaiming

over. "A vonderful invention. . . . I vould never 'ave

photographs taken before because I detest explosions and

ten te danger of fire."

It was a warm day in February and the steamheated

showrooms were stifling hot. The young man who came

to take the pictures was drenched in sweat when he came

out from under the black cloth. Piquot wouldn't leave him

alone for a second. He had to take Piquot in his office,

Piquot at the draftingboard, Piquot among the models.

The girls thought their turn would never come. The pho-

tographer kept saying, "You let me alone, Mr. Piquot.

. . . I want to plan something artistic." The girls all got

to giggling. At last Piquot went off and locked himself in

his office in a pet. They could see him in there through the

glass partition, sitting at his desk with his head in his

hands. After that things quieted down. Margo and the

photographer got along very well. He kept whispering to

her to see what she could do to keep the old gent out of

the pictures. When he left to go up to the loft upstairs

where the dresses were made, the photographer handed

her his card and asked her if she wouldn't let him take

her picture at his studio some Sunday. It would mean a

great deal to him and it wouldn't cost her anything. He

was sure he could get something distinctively artistic. She

took his card and said she'd be around the next afternoon.

On the card it said Margolies, Art Photographer.

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That Sunday Mr. A took her out to lunch at the Hotel

Pennsylvania and afterwards she managed to get him to

drive her over to Margolies' studio. She guessed the young

Jewish boy wasn't so well off and thought Mr. A might

just as well pay for a set of photographs. Mr. A was sore

about going because he'd gotten his big car out and wanted

to take her for a drive up the Hudson. Anyway he went.

It was funny in Margolies' studio. Everything was hung

with black velvet and there were screens of different sizes

in black and white and yellow and green and silver stand-

ing all over the big dusty room under the grimy skylights.

The young man acted funny too, as if he hadn't expected

them. "All this is over," he said. "This is my brother

Lee's studio. I'm attending to his clientele while he's

abroad. . . . My interests are in the real art of the fu-

ture.""What's that?" asked Mr. A, grumpily clipping the

end off a cigar as he looked around for a place to sit down.

"Motionpictures. You see I'm Sam Margolies. . . .

You'll hear of me if you haven't yet."

Mr. A sat down grouchily on a dusty velvet model-

stand. "Well, make it snappy. . . . We want to go driv-

ing".

Sam Margolies seemed sore because Margo had just

come in her streetclothes. He looked her over with his

petulant grey eyes for a long time. "I may not be able to

do anything . . . I can't create if I'm hurried. . . . I had

seen you stately in Spanish black." Margo laughed. "I'm

not exactly the type."

"The type for a small infanta by Velasquez." He had

a definite foreign accent when he spoke earnestly. "Well,

I was married to a Spaniard once. . . . That was enough

of Spanish grandees and all that kind of thing to last me

a lifetime.""Wait, wait," said Sam Margolies, walking all

round her. "I see it, first in streetclothes and then . . ."

He ran out of the room and came back with a black lace

shawl. "An infanta in the court of old Spain."

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"You don't know what it's like to be married to one,"

said Margo. "And to live in a house full of noble spick

relatives."

While Sam Margolies was posing her in her street-

clothes Mr. A was walking up and down fidgeting with

his cigar. It must have been getting cloudy out because

the overhead skylight grew darker and darker. When Sam

Margolies turned the floodlights on her the skylight went

blue, like on the stage. Then when he got to posing her in

the Spanish shawl and made her take her things off and

let her undies down so that she had nothing on but the

shawl above the waist, she noticed that Mr. A had let his

cigar go out and was watching intently. The reflection from

the floodlight made his eyes glint.

After the photographer was through, when they were

walking down the gritty wooden stairs from the studio,

Mr. A said, "I don't like that guy . . . makes me think

of a pimp."

"Oh, no, it's just that he's very artistic," said Margo.

"How much did he say the photographs were?"

"Plenty," said Mr. A.

In the unlighted hall that smelt of cabbage cooking

somewhere, he grabbed her to him and kissed her.

Through the glass front door she could see a flutter of

snow in the street that was empty under the lamps. "Aw,

to hell with him," he said, stretching his fingers out across

the small of her back. "You're a great little girl, do you

know it? Gosh. I like this house. It makes me think of the

old days."

Margo shook her head and blinked. "Too bad about

our drive," she said. "It's snowing.""Drive hell," said

Mr. A. "Let's you and me act like we was fond of each

other for tonight at least. . . . First we'll go to the

Meadowbrook and have a little bite to drink. . . . Jesus,

I wish I'd met you before I got in on the dough, when

I war livin' in bedbug alley and all that sort of thing."

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She let her head drop on his chest for a moment. "Char-

ley, you're number one," she whispered.

That night he got Margo to say that when Agnes took

Frank out to his sister's house in New Jersey like she was

planning, to try if a little country air wouldn't do him

good, she'd go and live with him. "If you knew how I was

sick of this hellraisin' kind of life," he told her. She looked

straight up in his boiled blue eyes. "Do you think I like

it, Mr. A?" She was fond of Charley Anderson that night.

After that Sunday Sam Margolies called up Margo

about every day, at the apartment and at Piquot's, and sent

her photographs of herself all framed for hanging but she

would never see him. She had enough to think of, what

with being alone in the apartment now, because Agnes had

finally got Frank away to the country with the help of a

practitioner and a great deal of reading of Science and

Health, and all the bills to pay and daily letters from

Tony who'd found out her address saying he was sick and

begging for money and to be allowed to come around to

see her.

Then one Monday morning she got down to Piquot's

late and found the door locked and a crowd of girls mill-

ing shrilly around in front of it. Poor Piquot had been

found dead in his bathtub from a dose of cyanide of potas-

sium and there was nobody to pay their back wages.

Piquot's being dead gave Margo the creeps so that she

didn't dare go home. She went down to Altman's and did

some shopping and at noon called up Mr. A's office to tell

him about Piquot and to see if he wouldn't have lunch

with her. With poor old Piquot dead and her job gone,

there was nothing to do but to strike Mr. A for a lump

sum. About two grand would fix her up, and she could get

her solitaire diamond Tad had given her out of hock.

Maybe if she teased him he would put her up to something

good on the market. When she called up they said Mr.

Anderson wouldn't be in his office until three. She went to

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Schrafft's and had chickenpatties for lunch all by herself

in the middle of the crowd of cackling women shoppers.

She already had a date to meet Mr. A that evening at a

French speakeasy on Fiftysecond Street where they often

ate dinner. When she got back from having her hair

washed and waved it was too early to get dressed but she

started fiddling around with her clothes anyway because

she didn't know what else to do, and it was so quiet and

lonely in the empty apartment. She took a long time doing

her nails and then started trying on one dress after an-

other. Her bed got all piled with rumpled dresses. Every-

thing seemed to have spots on it. She was almost crying

when she at last slipped her furcoat over a paleyellow

eveningdress that had come from Piquot's but that she

wasn't sure about, and went down in the shabby elevator

into the smelly hallway of the apartmenthouse. The ele-

vatorboy fetched her a taxi.

There were white columns in the hall of the oldfash-

ioned wealthy family residence converted into a restaurant,

and a warm expensive pinkish glow of shaded lights. She

felt cozier than she'd felt all day as she stepped in on the

thick carpet. The headwaiter bowed her to a table and she

sat there sipping an oldfashioned, feeling the men in the

room looking at her and grinning a little to herself when

she thought what the girls at Piquot's would have said

about a dame who got to a date with the boyfriend ahead

of time. She wished he'd hurry up and come, so that she

could tell him the story and stop imagining how poor old

Piquot must have looked slumped down in his bathtub,

dead from cyanide. It was all on the tip of her tongue

ready to tell.

Instead of Mr. A a freshlooking youngster with a long

sandy head and a lantern jaw was leaning over her table.

She straightened herself in her chair to give him a dirty

look, but smiled up at him when he leaned over and said

in a Brooklyn confidential kind of voice, "Miss Dowlin'

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. . . excuse it . . . I'm Mr. Anderson's secretary. He

had to hop the plane to Detroit on important business. He

knew you were crazy to go to the Music Box opening, so

he sent me out to get tickets. Here they are, I pretty near

had to blackjack a guy to get 'em for you. The boss said

maybe you'd like to take Mrs. Mandeville." He had been

talking fast, like he was afraid she'd shut him up; he drew

a deep breath and smiled.

Margo took the two green tickets and tapped them

peevishly on the tablecloth. "What a shame . . . I don't

know who I could get to go now, it's so late. She's in the

country."

"My, that's too bad. . . . I don't suppose I could

pinchhit for the boss?"

"Of all the gall . . ." she began; then suddenly she

found herself laughing. "But you're not dressed."

"Leave it to me, Miss Dowlin'. . . . You eat your sup-

per and I'll come back in a soup an' fish and take you to

the show."

Promptly at eight there he was back with his hair

slicked, wearing a rustylooking dinnerjacket that was too

short in the sleeves. When they got in the taxi she asked

him if he'd hijacked a waiter and he put his hand over his

mouth and said, "Don't say a wold, Miss Dowlin' . . .

it's hired."

Between the acts, he pointed out all the celebrities to

her, including himself. He told her that his name was

Clifton Wegman and that everybody called him Cliff and

that he was twentythree years old and could play the man-

dolin and was a little demon with pocket billiards.

"Well, Cliff, you're a likely lad," she said.

"Likely to succeed?"

"I'll tell the world."

"A popular graduate of the New York School of Busi-

ness . . . opportunities wanted."

They had the time of their lives together. After the

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show Cliff said he was starved, because he hadn't had his

supper, what with chasing the theatertickets and the tuck

and all, and she took him to the Club Dover to have a

bite to eat. He surely had an appetite. It was a pleasure

to see him put away a beefsteak with mushrooms. They

had home drinks there and laughed their heads off at the

floorshow, and, when he tried to get fresh in the taxicab,

she slapped his face, but not very hard. That kid could

talk himself out of anything.

When they got to her door, he said could he come up

and before she could stop herself she'd said yes, if he

acted like a gentleman. He said that wasn't so easy with

a girl like her but he'd try and they were laughing and

scuffling so in front of her door she dropped her key. They

both stooped to pick it up. When she got to her feet flush-

ing from the kiss he'd given her, she noticed that the man

sitting all hunched up on the stairs beside the elevator was

Tony.

"Well, goodnight, Cliff, thanks for seeing a poor little

workinggirl home," Margo said cheerily.

Tony got to his feet and staggered over towards the

open door of the apartment. His face had a green pallor

and his clothes looked like he'd lain in the gutter all night.

"This is Tony," said Margo. "He's a . . . a relative

of mine . . . not in very good repair."

Cliff looked from one to the other, let out a low whistle

and walked down the stairs.

"Well, now you can tell me what you mean by hanging

around my place. . . . I've a great mind to have you ar-

rested'for a burglar."

Tony could hardly talk. His lip was bloody and all

puffed up. "No place to go," he said. "A gang beat me

up." He was teetering so she had to grab the sleeve of his

filthy overcoat to keep him from falling. "Oh, Tony," she

said, "you sure are a mess. Come on in, but if you pull any

-337-

tricks like you did last time . . . I swear to God I'll

break every bone in your body."

She put him to bed. Next morning he was so jittery she

had to send for a doctor. The sawbones said he was suffer-

ing from dope and exposure and suggested a cure in a

sanatorium. Tony lay in bed white and trembling. He

cried a great deal, but he was as meek as a lamb and said

yes, he'd do anything the doctor said. Once he grabbed her

hand and kissed it and begged her to forgive him for hav-

ing stolen her money so that he could die happy. "You

won't die, not you," said Margo, smoothing the stiff black

hair off his forehead with her free hand. "No such luck."

She went out for a little walk on the Drive to try to

decide what to do. The dizzysweet clinging smell of the

paraldehyde the doctor had given Tony for a sedative had

made her feel sick.

At the end of the week when Charley Anderson came

back from Detroit and met her at the place on Fiftysecond

Street for dinner, he looked worried and haggard. She

came out with her sad story and he didn't take it so well.

He said he was hard up for cash, that his wife had every-

thing tied up on him, that he'd had severe losses on the

market; he could raise five hundred dollars for her but

he'd have to pledge some securities to do that. Then she

said she guessed she'd have to go back to her old engage-

ment as entertainer at the Palms at Miami and he said,

swell, if she didn't look out he'd come down there and let

her support him. "I don't know why everybody's got to

thinkin' I'm a lousy millionaire. All I want is get out of

the whole business with enough jack to let me settle down

to work on motors. If it hadn't been for this sonofabitchin'

divorce I'd been out long ago. This winter I expect to clean

up and get out. I'm only a dumb mechanic anyway."

"You want to get out and I want to get in," said Margo,

looking him straight in the eye. They both laughed to-

gether. "Aw, let's go up to your place, since the folks are

-338-

away. I'm tired of these lousy speakeasies." She shook her

head, still laughing. "It's swarming with Spanish rela-

tives," she said. "We can't go there." They got a bag at

his hotel and went over to Brooklyn in a taxi, to a hotel

where they were wellknown as Mr. and Mrs. Dowling.

On the way over in the taxi she managed to get the ante

raised to a thousand.

Next day she took Tony to a sanatorium up in the

Catskills. He did everything she said like a good little boy

and talked about getting a job when he got out and about

honor and manhood. When she got back to town she called

up the office and found that Mr. A was back in Detroit,

but he'd left instructions with his secretary to get her her

ticket and a drawingroom and fix up everything about the

trip to Miami. She closed up her apartment and the office

attended to storing the furniture and the packing and

everything.

When she went down to the train there was Cliff wait-

ing to meet her with his wiseguy grin and his hat on the

back of his long thin head. "Why, this certainly is sweet

of him," said Margo, pinning some lilies of the valley Cliff

had brought her to her furcoat as two redcaps rushed for-

ward to get her bags. "Sweet of who?" Cliff whispered.

"Of the boss or of me?"

There were roses in the drawingroom, and Cliff had

bought her Theatre and Variety and Zit's Weekly and

Town Topics and Shadowland."My, this is grand," she

said.

He winked. "The boss said to send you off in the best

possible style." He brought a bottle out of his overcoat

pocket. "That's Teacher's Highland Cream. . . . Well,

so long." He made a little bow and went off down the

corridor.

Margo settled herself in the drawingroom and almost

wished Cliff hadn't gone so soon. He might at least have

taken longer to say goodby. My, that boy was fresh. The

-339-

train had no sooner started when there he was back, with

his hands in his pants pockets, looking anxious and chew-

ing gum at a great rate. "Well," she said, frowning, "now

what?"

"I bought me a ticket to Richmond. . . . I don't travel

enough . . . freedom from office cares."

"You'll get fired.""Nope . . . this is Saturday. I'll be

back bright and early Monday morning."

"But he'll find out."

Cliff took his coat off, folded it carefully and laid it on

the rack, then he sat down opposite her and pulled the

door of the drawingroom to. "Not unless you tell him."

She started to get to her feet. "Well, of all the fresh

kids." He went on in the same tone of voice. "And you

won't tell him and I won't tell him about . . . er . . ."

"But, you damn fool, that's just my exhusband.""Well,

I'm lookin' forward to bein' the exboyfriend. . . . No,

honestly, I know you'll like me . . . they all like me."

He leaned over to take her hand. His hand was icycold.

"No, honest, Margo, why's it any different from the other

night? Nobody'll know. You just leave it to me." Margo

began to giggle. "Say, Cliff, you ought to have a sign on

you.""Sayin' what?""Fresh paint."

She went over and sat beside him. Through the shaking

rumble of the train she could feel him shaking. "Why, you

funny kid," she said. "You were scared to death all the

time."

NEWSREEL LXI

High high high

Up in the hills

Watching the cloud roll by

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genius, hard work, vast resources, and the power and will

to achieve something distinctive, something more beautiful,

something more appealing to the taste and wise judgment of

the better people than are the things which have made the

Coral Gables of today, and that tomorrow may be better, big-

ger, more compellingly beautiful

High high high up in the hills

GIANT AIRSHIP BREAKS IN TWO IN

MIDFLIGHT

here young and old will gather to disport themselves in

fresh invigorating salt water, or to exchange idle gossip in the

loggias which overlook the gleaming pool, and at night the

tinkle of music will tempt you to dance the hours away

Shaking hands with the sky

It Is the Early Investor Who Will Share to the Fullest

Extent in the Large and Rapid Enhancement of Values That

Will Follow Such Characterful Development

Who's the big man with gold in his mouth?

Where does he come from? he comes from the south

TOWN SITE OF JUPITER SOLD FOR TEN MILLION DOLLARS

like Aladdin with his magic lamp, the Capitalist, the In-

vestor and the Builder converted what was once a desolate

swamp into a wonderful city linked with a network of glisten-

ing boulevards

Sleepy head sleepy head

Open your eyes

Sun's in the skies

Stop yawnin'

It's mornin'

ACRES OF GOLD NEAR TAMPA

like a magnificent shawl of sapphire and jade, studded

with a myriad of multicolored gems, the colorful waters of the

lower Atlantic weave a spell of lasting enchantment. The spot

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where your future joy, contentment and happiness is so sure

that to deviate is to pass up the outstanding opportunity of your

lifetime

MATE FOLLOWS WIFE IN LEAP FROM WINDOW

BATTLE DRUG-CRAZED KILLERS

Lulu always wants to do

What we boys don't want her to

A detachment of motorcycle police led the line of march

and cleared the way for the white-clad columns. Behind the

police rose A. P. Schneider, grand marshal. He was followed

by Mr. Sparrow's band and members of the painters' union.

The motion picture operators were next in line and the cigar

workers, the glaziers, the musicians, the signpainters and the

Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen followed in the order

named. The meat cutters brought up the rear of the first

division.

The second division was composed of more than 3,500

carpenters. The third division was led by the Clown Band and

consisted of electricians, blacksmiths, plasterers, printers, press-

men, elevator constructors, postoffice clerks and plumbers and

steamfitters.

The fourth division was led by ironworkers, brick masons,

the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, steam and operat-

ing engineers, the Typographical Union, lathers, composition

roofers, sheetmetal workers, tailors and machinists

Don't bring Lulu

I'll bring her myself

CHARLEY ANDERSON

"You watch, Cliff. . . . We'll knock 'em higher than

a kite," Charley said to his secretary, as they came out of

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the crowded elevator into the humming lobby of the

Woolworth Building. "Yessiree," said Cliff, nodding

wisely. He had a long face with a thin parchment skin

drawn tightly from under his brown felt hat over high

cheekbones and thin nose. The lipless mouth never opened

very wide above the thin jaw. He repeated out of the

corner of his mouth, "Yessiree, boddy . . . higher than a

kite."

They went through the revolving doors into the five-

o'clock crowd that packed the lower Broadway sidewalks

to the curbs in the drizzly dusk of a raw February day.

Charley pulled a lot of fat envelopes out of the pockets of

his English waterproof and handed them to Cliff. "Take

these up to the office and be sure they get into Nat Ben-

ton's personal safe. They can go over to the bank in the

mornin' . . . then you're through. Call me at nine, see?

You were a little late yesterday. . . . I'm not goin' to

worry about anythin' till then.""Yessir, get a good night's

sleep, sir," said Cliff and slid out of sight in the crowd.

Charley stopped a cruising taxicab and let himself drop

into the seat. Weather like this his leg still ached. He swal-

lowed a sigh; what the hell was the number? "Go on up-

town up Park Avenue," he yelled at the driver. He

couldn't think of the number of the damn place. . . . "To

East Fiftysecond Street. I'll show you the house." He set-

tled back against the cushions. Christ, I'm tired, he whis-

pered to himself. As he sat slumped back jolted by the

stopping and starting of the taxi in the traffic his belt cut

into his belly. He loosened the belt a notch, felt better,

brought a cigar out of his breastpocket and bit the end off.

It took him some time to light the cigar. Each time he

had the match ready the taxi started or stopped. When he

did light it it didn't taste good. "Hell, I've smoked too

much today . . . what I need's a drink," he muttered

aloud.

The taxi moved jerkily uptown. Now and then out of

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the corner of his eye he caught grey outlines of men in

other taxis and private cars. As soon as he'd made out one

group of figures another took its place. On Lafayette Street

the traffic was smoother. The whole stream of metal, glass,

upholstery, overcoats, haberdashery, flesh and blood was

moving uptown. Cars stopped, started, shifted gears in

unison as if they were run by one set of bells. Charley

sat slumped in the seat feeling the layer of fat on his belly

against his trousers, feeling the fat of his jowl against his

stiff collar. Why the hell couldn't he remember that num-

ber? He'd been there every night for a month. A vein in

his left eyelid kept throbbing.

"Bonjour, monsieur," said the plainclothes doorman.

"How do you do, mon capitaine," said Freddy the rat-

toothed proprietor, nodding a sleek black head. "Monsieur

dining with Mademoiselle tonight?" Charley shook his

head. "I have a feller coming to dinner with me at seven."

"Bien, monsieur.""Let's have a scotch and soda while I'm

waitin' and be sure it ain't that rotgut you tried to palm

off on me yesterday."

Freddy smiled wanly. "It was a mistake, Mr. Anderson.

We have the veritable pinchbottle. You see the wrappings.

It is still wet from the saltwater." Charley grunted and

dropped into an easychair in the corner of the bar.

He drank the whiskey off straight and sipped the soda

afterwards. "Hay, Maurice, bring me another," he called

to the greyhaired old wrinklefaced Swiss waiter. "Bring

me another. Make it double, see? . . . in a regular high-

ball glass. I'm tired this evenin'."

The shot of whiskey warmed his gut. He sat up

straighter. He grinned up at the waiter. "Well, Maurice,

you haven't told me what you thought about the market

today.""I'm not so sure, sir. . . . But you know, Mr.

Anderson. . . If you only wanted to you could tell me."

Charley stretched his legs out and laughed. "Flyin'

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higher than a kite, eh. . . . Oh, hell, it's a bloody chore.

I want to forget it."

By the time he saw Eddy Sawyer threading his way

towards him through the faces, the business suits, the hands

holding glasses in front of the cocktailbar, he felt good. He

got to his feet. "How's the boy, Eddy? How's things in

little old Deetroit? They all think I'm pretty much of a

sonofabitich, don't they? Give us the dirt, Eddy."

Eddy sighed and sank into the deep chair beside him.

"Well, it's a long story, Charley."

"What would you say to a bacardi with a touch of

absinthe in it? . . . All right, make it two, Maurice."

Eddy's face was yellow and wrinkled as a summer apple

that's hung too long on the tree. When he smiled the

deepening wrinkles shot out from his mouth and eyes over

his cheeks. "Well, Charley old man, it's good to see you.

. . . You know they're calling you the boy wizard of avi-

ation financing?"

"Is that all they're callin' me?" Charley tapped his dead

cigar against the brass rim of the ashtray. "I've heard

worse things than that."

By the time they'd had their third cocktail Charley got

so he couldn't stop talking. "Well, you can just tell J. Y.

from me that there was one day I could have put him out

on his ass and I didn't do it. Why didn't I do it? Because

I didn't give a goddam. I really owned my stock. They'd

hocked everythin' they had an' still they couldn't cover,

see. . . . I thought, hell, they're friends of mine. Good

old J. Y. Hell, I said to Nat Benton when he wanted me

to clean up while the cleanin' was good . . . they're

friends of mine. Let era ride along with us. An' now look

at 'em gangin' up on me with Gladys. Do you know how

much alimony Gladys got awarded her? Four thousand

dollars a month. Judge is a friend of her old man . . .

probably gets a rakeoff. Stripped me of my children . . .

every damn thing I've got they've tied up on me. . . .

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Pretty, ain't it, to take a man's children away from him?

Well, Eddy, I know you had nothin' to do with it, but

when you get back to Detroit and see those yellow bastards

who had to get behind a woman's skirts because they

couldn't outsmart me any other way . . . you tell 'em.

from me that I'm out to strip 'em to their shirts every

last one of 'em. . . . I'm just beginnin' to get the hang

of this game. I've made some dust fly . . . the boy wiz-

ard, eh? . . . Well, you just tell 'em they ain't seen

nothin' yet. They think I'm just a dumb cluck of an in-

ventor . . . just a mechanic like poor old Bill Cermak.

. . . Hell, let's eat."

They were sitting at the table and the waiter was put-

ting differentcolored horsd'œon Charley's plate.

"Take it away . . . I'll eat a piece of steak, nothing else."

Eddy was eating busily. He looked up at Charley and his

face began to wrinkle into a wisecrack. "I guess it's another

case of the woman always pays."

Charley didn't laugh. " Gladys never paid for anythin'

in her life. You know just as well as I do what Gladys was

like. All of those Wheatleys are skinflints. She takes after

the old man. . . . Well, I've learned my lesson. . . .

No more rich bitches. . . . Why, a goddam whore

wouldn't have acted the way that bitch has acted. . . .

Well, you can just tell 'em, when you get back to your

employers in Detroit . . . I know what they sent you for.

. . . To see if the old boy could still take his liquor. . . .

Drinkin' himself to death, so that's the story, is it? Well,

I can still drink you under the table, good old Eddy, ain't

that so? You just tell 'em, Eddy, that the old boy's as

good as ever, a hell of a lot wiser. . . . They thought

they had him out on his can after the divorce, did they,

well, you tell em to wait an' see. An' you tell Gladys the

first time she makes a misstep . . . just once, she needn't

think I haven't got my operatives watchin' her . . . Tell

her I'm out to get the kids back, an' strip her of every god-

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dam thing she's got. . . . Let her go out on the streets,

I don't give a damn."

Eddy was slapping him on the back. "Well, oldtimer,

I've got to run along. . . . Sure good to see you still rid-

ing high, wide and handsome."

"Higher than a kite," shouted Charley, bursting out

laughing. Eddy had gone. Old Maurice was trying to

make him eat the piece of steak he'd taken out to heat up.

Charley couldn't eat. "Take it home to the wife and kid-

dies," he told Maurice. The speak had cleared for the thea-

tertime lull. "Bring me a bottle of champagne, Maurice

old man, and then maybe I can get the steak down. That's

how they do it in the old country, eh? Don't tell me I been

drinkin' too much . . . I know it. . . . When everybody

you had any confidence in has rocked you all down the line

you don't give a damn, do you, Maurice?"

A man with closecropped black hair and a closecropped

black mustache was looking at Charley, leaning over a

cocktailglass on the bar. "I say you don't give a damn,"

Charley shouted at the man when he caught his eye. "Do

you?"

" Hell, no, got anything to say about it?" said the man,

squaring off towards the table.

" Maurice, bring this gentleman a glass." Charley got to

his feet and swayed back and forth bowing politely across

the table. The bouncer, who'd come out from a little door

in back wiping his red hands on his apron, backed out of

the room again. " Anderson my name is. . . . Glad to

meet you, Mr. . . .""Budkiewitz," said the blackhaired

man who advanced scowling and swaying a little to the

other side of the table.

Charley pointed to a chair. "I'm drunk . . . beaucoup

champagny water . . . have a glass."

"With pleasure if you put it that way. . . . Always

rather drink than fight. . . . Here's to the old days of the

Rainbow Division."

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"Was you over there?"

"Sure. Put it there, baddy."

"Those were the days."

"And now you come back and over here there's nothin'

but a lot of doublecrossin' bastards."

"Businessmen . . . to hell wid 'em . . . doublecrossin'

bastards I call 'em."

Mr. Budkiewitz got to his feet, scowling again. "To

what kind of business do you refer?"

"Nobody's business. Take it easy, buddy." Mr. Budkie-

witz sat down again. "Oh, hell, bring out another bottle,

Maurice, and have it cold. Ever drunk that wine in

Saumur, Mr. Budkibbitzer?"

"Have I drunk Saumur? Why shouldn't I drink it?

Trained there for three months."

"That's what I said to myself. That boy was overseas,"

said Charley.

"I'll tell the cockeyed world."

"What's your business, Mr. Buchanan?"

"I'm an inventor."

"Just up my street. Ever heard of the Askew-Merritt

starter?"

He'd never heard of the Askew-Merritt starter and

Charley had never heard of the Autorinse washingmachine

but soon they were calling each other Charley and Paul.

Paul had had trouble with his wife too, said he was going

to jail before he'd pay her any more alimony. Charley said

he'd go to jail too.

Instead they went to a nightclub where they met two

charming girls. Charley was telling the charming girls how

he was going to set Paul, good old Paul, up in business, in

the washingmachine business. They went places in taxicabs

under the el with the girls. They went to a place in the

Village. Charley was going to get all the girls the sweet

pretty little girls jobs in the chorus, Charley was explain-

ing how he was going to take the shirts off those bastards

-348-

in Detroit. He'd get the girls jobs in the chorus so that

they could take their shirts off. It was all very funny.

In the morning light he was sitting alone in a place with

torn windowshades. Good old Paul had gone and the girls

had gone and he was sitting at a table covered with ciga-

rettestubs and spilt dago red looking at the stinging bright-

ness coming through the worn places in the windowshade.

It wasn't a hotel or a callhouse, it was some kind of a

dump with tables and it stank of old cigarsmoke and last

night's spaghetti and tomatosauce and dago red. Some-

body was shaking him. "What time is it?" A fat wop and

a young slickhaired wop in their dirty shirtsleeves were

shaking him. "Time to pay up and get out. Here's your

bill."

A lot of things were scrawled on a card. Charley could

only read it with one eye at a time. The total was seventy-

five dollars. The wops looked threatening.

"You tell us give them girls twentyfive dollar each on

account."

Charley reached for his billroll. Only a dollar. Where

the hell had his wallet gone? The young wop was playing

with a small leather blackjack he'd taken out of his back

pocket. "A century ain't high for what you spent an' the

girls an' all. . . . If you f---k around it'll cost you more.

. . . You got your watch, ain't you? This ain't no clip-

joint."

"What time is it?"

"What time is it, Joe?"

"Let me call up the office. I'll get my secretary to come

up.""What's the number? What's his name?" The young

wop tossed up the blackjack and caught it. "I'll talk to

him. We're lettin' you out of this cheap. We don't want

no hard feelin's."

After they'd called up the office and left word that Mr.

Anderson was sick and to come at once, they gave him

some coffee with rum in it that made him feel sicker than

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ever. At last Cliff was standing over him looking neat and

wellshaved. "Well, Cliff, I'm not the drinker I used to

be."

In the taxicab he passed out cold.

He opened his eyes in his bed at the hotel. "There

must have been knockout drops in the coffee," he said to

Cliff who sat by the window reading the paper. "Well,

Mr. Anderson, you sure had us worried. A damn lucky

thing it was they didn't know who they'd bagged in that

clipjoint. If they had it would have cost us ten grand to get

out of there."

" Cliff, you're a good boy. After this you get a raise."

"Seems to me I've heard that story before, Mr. Ander-

son."

" Benton know?"

"I had to tell him some. I said you'd eaten some bad

fish and had ptomaine poisoning."

"Not so bad for a young feller. God, I wonder if I'm

gettin to be a rummy. . . . How are things downtown?"

"Lousy. Mr. Benton almost went crazy trying to get in

touch with you yesterday."

"Christ, I got a head. . . . Say, Cliff, you don't think

I'm gettin' to be a rummy, do you?"

"Here's some dope the sawbones left."

"What day of the week is it?""Saturday.""Jesus

Christ, I thought it was Friday."

The phone rang. Cliff went over to answer it. "It's the

massageman."

"Tell him to come up. . . . Say, is Benton stayin' in

town?"

"Sure he's in town, Mr. Anderson, he's trying to get

hold of Merritt and see if he can stop the slaughter. . . .

Merritt . . ."

"Oh, hell, I'll hear about it soon enough. Tell this mas-

seur to come in."

After the massage, that was agony, especially the cheer-

-350-

ful Germanaccent remarks about the weather and the

hockey season made by the big curlyhaired Swede who

looked like a doorman, Charley felt well enough to go to

the toilet and throw up some green bile. Then he took a

cold shower and went back to bed and shouted for Cliff,

who was typing letters in the drawingroom, to ring for

the bellhop to get cracked ice for a rubber icepad to put on

his head.

He lay back on the pillows and began to feel a little

better.

"Hay, Cliff, how about lettin' in the light of day? What

time is it?""About noon.""Christ. . . . Say, Cliff, did

any women call up?" Cliff shook his head. "Thank god."

"A guy called up said he was a taxidriver, said you'd

told him you'd get him a job in an airplane factory . . . I

told him you'd left for Miami."

Charley was beginning to feel a little better. He lay back

in the soft comfortable bed on the crisplylaundered pillows

and looked around the big clean hotel bedroom. The room

was high up. Silvery light poured in through the broad

window. Through the A between the curtains in the win-

dow he could see a piece of sky bright and fleecy as milk-

weed silk. Charley began to feel a vague sense of accom-

plishment, like a man getting over the fatigue of a long

journey or a dangerous mountainclimb.

"Say, Cliff, how about a small gin and bitters with a lot

of ice in it? . . . I think that 'ud probably be the makin'

of me.""Mr. Anderson, the doc said to swear off and to

take some of that dope whenever you felt like taking a

drink.""Every time I take it that stuff makes me puke.

What does he think I am, a hophead?""All right, Mr.

Anderson, you're the boss," said Cliff, screwing up his thin

mouth. "Thataboy, Cliff. . . . Then I'll try some grape-

fruitjuice and if that stays down I'll take a good breakfast

and to hell wid 'em. . . . Why aren't the papers here?"

"Here they are, Mr. Anderson . . . I've got 'em all

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turned to the financial section." Charley looked over the

reports of trading. His eyes wouldn't focus very well yet.

He still did better by closing one eye. A paragraph in

News and Comment made him sit up.

"Hay, Cliff," he yelled, "did you see this?"

"Sure," said Cliff. "I said things were bad."

"But if they're goin' ahead it means Merritt and Farrell

have got their proxies sure."

Cliff nodded wisely with his head a little to one side.

"Where the hell's Benton?""He just phoned, Mr. An-

derson, he's on his way uptown now,""Hay, give me that

drink before he comes and then put all the stuff away and

order up a breakfast."

Benton came in the bedroom behind the breakfast tray.

He wore a brown suit and a derby. His face looked like

an old dishcloth in spite of his snappy clothes. Charley

spoke first, "Say, Benton, am I out on my fanny?"

Benton carefully and slowly took off his gloves and hat

and overcoat and set them on the mahogany table by the

window.

"The sidewalk is fairly well padded," he said.

"All right, Cliff. . . . Will you finish up that cor-

respondence?" Cliff closed the door behind him gently.

" Merritt outsmarted us?"

"He and Farrell are playing ball together. All you can

do is take a licking and train up for another bout."

"But damn it, Benton . . ."

Benton got to his feet and walked up and down the

room at the foot of the bed. "No use cussing at me. . . .

I'm going to do the cussing today. What do you think of a

guy who goes on a bender at a critical moment like this?

Yellow, that's what I call it. . . . You deserved what you

got . . . and I had a hell of a time saving my own hide,

I can tell you. Well, I picked you for a winner, Anderson,

and I still think that if you cut out the funny business you

could be in the real money in ten years. Now let me tell

-352-

you something, young man, you've gone exactly as far as

you can go on your record overseas, and that was certainly

a hell of a lot further than most. As for this invention

racket . . . you know as well as I do there's no money in

it unless you have the genius for promotion needed to go

with it. You had a big initial success and thought you were

the boy'wizard and could put over any damn thing you

had a mind to."

"Hay, Nat, for Pete's sake don't you think I've got

brains enough to know that? . . . This darn divorce and

bein' in hospital so long kinder got me, that's all."

"Alibis."

"What do you think I ought to do?"

"You ought to pull out of this town for a while. . . .

How about your brother's business out in Minnesota?"

"Go back to the sticks and sell tin lizzies . . . that's a

swell future.""Where do you think Henry Ford made his

money?""I know. But he keeps his dealers broke. . . .

What I need's to get in good physical shape. I always have

a good time in Florida. I might go down there and lay

around in the sun for a month."

"O.K. if you keep out of that landboom."

"Sure, Nat, I won't even play poker . . . I'm goin'

down there for a rest. Get my leg in real good shape.

Then when I come back we'll see the fur fly. After' all

there's still that Standard Airparts stock."

"No longer listed."

"Check."

"Well, optimist, my wife's expecting me for lunch.

. . . Have a good trip."

Benton went out. "Hay, Cliff," Charley called through

the door. "Tell 'em to come and get this damn breakfast

tray. It didn't turn out so well. And phone Parker to get

the car in shape. Be sure the tires are all O.K. I'm pullin'

out for Florida Monday."

In a moment Cliff stuck his head in the door. His face

-353-

was red. "Are you . . . will you be needing me down

there, sir?""No, I'll be needin' you here to keep an eye on

the boys downtown. . . . I got to have somebody here I

can trust. . . . I'll tell you what I will have you do

though . . . go down to Trenton and accompany Miss

Dowlin' down to Norfolk. I'll pick her up there. She's in

Trenton visitin' her folks. Her old man just died or some-

thin'. You'd just as soon do that, wouldn't you? It'll give

you a little trip."

Charley was watching Cliff's face. He screwed his mouth

further to one side and bowed like a butler. "Very good,

sir," he said.

Charley lay back on the pillows again. His head was

throbbing, his stomach was still tied up in knots. When he

closed his eyes dizzy red lights bloomed in front of them.

He began to think about Jim and how Jim had never paid

over his share of the old lady's money he'd put into the

business. Anyway he ain't got a plane, two cars, a suite

at the Biltmore and a secretary that'll do any goddam

thing in the world for you, and a girl like Margo. He tried

to remember how her face looked, the funny amazed way

she opened her eyes wide when she was going to make a

funny crack. He couldn't remember a damn thing, only

the sick feeling he had all over and the red globes bloom-

ing before his eyes. In a little while he fell asleep.

He was still feeling so shaky when he started south that

he took Parker along to drive the car. He sat glumly in

his new camelshair coat with his hands hanging between

his knees staring ahead through the roaring blank of the

Holland Tunnel, thinking of Margo and Bill Edwards

the patent lawyer he had to see in Washington about a

suit, and remembering the bills in Cliff's desk drawer and

wondering where the money was coming from to fight this

patent suit against Askew-Merritt. He had a grand in bills

in his pocket and that made him feel good anyway. Gosh,

money's a great thing, he said to himself.

-354-

They came out of the tunnel into a rainygrey morning

and the roar and slambanging of trucks through Jersey

City. Then the traffic gradually thinned and they were

going across the flat farmlands of New Jersey strawcolored

and ruddy with winter. At Philadelphia Charley made

Parker drive him to Broad Street. "I haven't got the pa-

tience to drive, I'll take the afternoon train. Come to the

Waldman Park when you get in."

He hired a drawingroom in the parlorcar and went and

lay down to try to sleep. The train clattered and roared so

and the grey sky and the lavender fields and yellow pas-

tures and the twigs of the trees beginning to glow red and

green and paleyellow with a foretaste of spring made him

feel so blue, so like howling like a dog, that he got fed up

with being shut up in the damn drawingroom and went

back to the clubcar to smoke a cigar.

He was slumped in the leather chair fumbling for the

cigarclipper in his vest pocket when the portly man in the

next chair looked up from a bluecovered sheaf of law-

papers he was poring over. Charley looked into the black

eyes and the smooth bluejowled face and at the bald head

still neatly plastered with a patch of black hair shaped like

a bird's wing, without immediately recognizing it.

"Why, Charley ma boy, I reckon you must be in love."

Charley straightened up and put out his hand. "Hello,

senator," he said, stammering a little like he used to in

the old days. "Goin' to the nation's capital?""Such is my

unfortunate fate." Senator Planet's eyes went searching all

over him. " Charley, I hear you had an accident."

"I've had a series of them," said Charley, turning red.

Senator Planst nodded his head understandingly and made

a clucking noise with his tongue. "Too bad . . . too bad.

. . . Well, sir, a good deal of water has run under the

bridge since you and young Merritt had dinner with me

that night in Washington. . . . Well, we're none of us

gettin' any younger." Charley got the feeling that the

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senator's black eyes got considerable pleasure from ex-

ploring the flabby lines where his neck met his collar and

the bulge of his belly against his vest. "Well, we're none

of us getting any younger," the senator repeated. "You

are, senator. I swear you look younger than you did the

last time I saw you."

The senator smiled. "Well, I hope you'll forgive me for

makin' the remark . . . but it's been one of the most sen-

sational careers I have had the luck to witness in many

years of public life."

"Well, it's a new industry. Things happen fast."

"Unparalleled," said the senator. "We live in an age

of unparalleled progress . . . everywhere except in

Washington. . . . You should come down to our quiet

little village more often. . . . You have many friends

there. I see by the papers, as Mr. Dooley used to say, that

there's been considerable reorganization out with you folks

in Detroit. Need a broader capital base, I suppose."

"A good many have been thrown out on their broad

capital bases," said Charley. He thought the senator would

never quit laughing. The senator pulled out a large ini-

tialed silk handkerchief to wipe the tears from his eyes and

brought his small pudgy hand down on Charley's knee.

"God almighty, we ought to have a drink on that."

The senator ordered whiterock from the porter and mys-

teriously wafted a couple of slugs of good rye whiskey

into it from a bottle he had in his Gladstone bag. Charley

began to feel better. The senator was saying that some very

interesting developments were to be expected from the

development of airroutes. The need for subsidies was

pretty generally admitted if this great nation was to catch

up on its lag in air transportation. The question would be

of course which of a number of competing concerns en-

joyed the confidence of the Administration. There was

more in this airroute business than there ever had been in

supplying ships and equipment. "A question of the con-

-356-

fidence of the Administration, ma boy." At the word con-

fidence, Senator Planet's black eyes shone. "That's why,

ma boy, I'm glad to see you up here. Stick close to our

little village on the Potomac, ma boy."

"Check," said Charley.

"When you're in Miami, look up my old friend Homer

Cassidy. . . . He's got a nice boat . . . he'll take you out

fishin' . . . I'll write him, Charley. If I could get away

I might spend a week down there myself next month.

There's a world of money bein' made down there right

now."

"I sure will, senator, that's mighty nice of you, senator."

By the time they got into the Union station Charley and

the senator were riding high. They were talking trunklines

and connecting lines, airports and realestate. Charley

couldn't make out whether he was hiring Senator Planet

for the lobbying or whether Senator Planet was hiring

him. They parted almost affectionately at the taxistand.

Next afternoon he drove down through Virginia. It was

a pretty, sunny afternoon. The judastrees were beginning

to come out red on the sheltered hillsides. He had two

bottles of that good rye whiskey Senator Planet had sent

up to the hotel for him. As he drove he began to get sore

at Parker the chauffeur. All the bastard did was get rake-

offs on the spare parts and gas and oil. Here he'd charged

up eight new tires in the last month, what did he do with

tires anyway, eat them? By the time they were crossing

the tollbridge into Norfolk Charley was sore as a crab.

He had to hold himself in to keep from hauling off and

giving the bastard a crack on the sallow jaw of his smooth

flunkey's face. In front of the hotel he blew up.

"Parker, you're fired. Here's your month's wages and

your trip back to New York. If I see your face around this

town tomorrow I'll have you run in for theft. You know

what I'm referrin' to just as well as I do. You damn

chauffeurs think you're too damn smart. I know the whole

-357-

racket, see. . . . I have to work for my dough just as

hard as you do. Just to prove it I'm goin' to drive myself

from now on." He hated the man's smooth unmoving face.

"Very well, sir," Parker said coolly. "Shall I return you

the uniform?"

"You can take the uniform and shove it up your . . ."

Charley paused. He was stamping up and down red in the

face on the pavement at the hotel entrance in a circle of

giggling colored bellboys. "Here, boy, take those bags in

and have my car taken around to the garage. . . . All

right, Parker, you have your instructions."

He strode into the hotel and ordered the biggest double

suite they had. He registered in his own name. "Mrs.

Anderson will be here directly." Then he called up the

other hotels to find out where the hell Margo was. "Hello,

kid," he said when at last it was her voice at the end of

the wire. "Come on over. You're Mrs. Anderson and no

questions asked. Aw, to hell with 'em; nobody's goin' to

dictate to me what I'll do or who I'll see or what I'm

goin' to do with my money. I'm through with all that.

Come right around. I'm crazy to see you. . . ."

When she came in, followed by the bellhop with the

bags, she certainly looked prettier than ever. "Well, Char-

ley," she said, when the bellhop had gone out, "this sure

is the cream de la cream. . . . You must have hit oil."

After she'd run all around the rooms she came back and

snuggled up to him. "I bet you been giving 'em hell on

the market.""They tried to put somethin' over on me,

but it can't be done. Take it from me. . . . Have a drink,

Margo. . . . Let's get a little bit cockeyed you and me,

Margo. . . . Christ, I was afraid you wouldn't come."

She was doing her face in the mirror. "Me? Why I'm

only a pushover," she said in that gruff low tone that made

him shiver all up his spine.

"Say, where's Cliff?"

"Our hatchetfaced young friend who was kind enough

-358-

to accompany me to the meeting with the lord and master?

He pulled out on the six o'clock train."

"The hell he did. I had some instructions for him."

"He said you said be in the office Tuesday morning and

he'd do it if he had to fly. Say, Charley, if he's a sample

of your employees they must worship the ground you

walk on. He couldn't stop talking about what a great guy

you were."

"Well, they know I'm regular, been through the mill

. . . understand their point of view. It wasn't so long ago

I was workin' at a lathe myself."

Charley felt good. He poured them each another drink.

Margo took his and poured half of the rye back into the

bottle. "Don't want to get too cockeyed, Mr. A," she said

in that new low caressing voice.

Charley grabbed her to him and kissed her hard on the

mouth. "Christ, if you only knew how I've wanted to

have a really swell woman all to myself. I've had some

awful bitches . . . Gladys, God, what a bitch she was.

She pretty near ruined me . . . tried to strip me of every

cent I had in the world . . . ganged up on me with guys

I thought were my friends. . . . But you just watch, little

girl. I'm goin' to show 'em. In five years they'll come

crawlin' to me on their bellies. I don't know what it is, but

I got a kind of feel for the big money . . . Nat Benton

says I got it . . . I know I got it. I can travel on a hunch,

see. Those bastards all had money to begin with."

After they'd ordered their supper and while they were

having just one little drink waiting for it, Margo brought

out some bills she had in her handbag. "Sure, I'll handle

'em right away." Charley shoved them into his pocket

without looking at them. "You know, Mr. A, I wouldn't

have to worry you about things like that if I had an ac-

count in my own name.""How about ten grand in the

First National Bank when we get to Miami?"

"Suit yourself, Charley . . . I never did understand

-359-

more money than my week's salary, you know that. That's

all any real trouper understands. I got cleaned out fixing

the folks up in Trenton. It certainly costs money to die in

this man's country."

Charley's eyes filled with tears. "Was it your dad,

Margery?"

She made a funny face. "Oh, no. The old man bumped

off from too much Keeley cure when I was a little twirp

with my hair down my back. . . . This was my step-

mother's second husband. I'm fond of my stepmother, be-

lieve it or not. . . . She's been the only friend I had in

this world. I'll tell you about her someday. It's quite a

story."

"How much did it cost? I'll take care of it."

Margo shook her head. "I never loaded my relations

on any man's back," she said.

When the waiter came in with a tray full of big silver

dishes followed by a second waiter pushing in a table

already set, Margo pulled apart from Charley. "Well, this

is the life," she whispered in a way that made him laugh.

Driving down was a circus. The weather was good. As

they went further south there began to be a green fuzz of

spring on the woods. There were flowers in the pinebar-

rens. Birds were singing. The car ran like a dream.

Charley kept her at sixty on the concrete roads, driving

carefully, enjoying the driving, the good fourwheel brakes,

the easy whir of the motor under the hood. Margo was a

smart girl and crazy about him and kept making funny

cracks. They drank just enough to keep them feeling good.

They made Savannah late that night and felt so good they

got so tight there the manager threatened to run them

out of the big old hotel. That was when Margo threw

an ashtray through the transom.

They'd been too drunk to have much fun in bed that

night and woke up with a taste of copper in their mouths

and horrible heads. Margo looked haggard and green and

-360-

saggy under the eyes before she went in to take her bath.

Charley made her a prairie oyster for breakfast like he said

the English aviators used to make over on the other side,

and she threw it right up without breaking the eggyolk.

She made him come and look at it in the toilet before she

pulled the chain. There was the raw eggyolk looking up

at them like it had just come out of the shell. They

couldn't help laughing about it in spite of their heads.

It was eleven o'clock when they pulled out. Charley

drove kind of easy along the winding road through the

wooded section of southern Georgia, cut with inlets and

saltmarshes from which cranes flew up and once a white

flock of egrets. They felt pretty pooped by the time they

got to Jacksonville. Neither of them could eat anything

but a lambchop washed down with some lousy gin they

paid eight dollars a quart for to the colored bellboy who

claimed it was the best English gin imported from Nassau

the night before. They drank the gin with bitters and went

to bed.

Driving down from Jax to Miami the sun was real hot.

Charley wanted to have the top down to get plenty of air

but Margo wouldn't hear of it. She made him laugh about

it. "A girl'll sacrifice anything for a man except her com-

plexion." They couldn't eat on the way down, though

Charley kept tanking up on the gin. When they got into

Miami they went right to the old Palms where Margo

used to work and got a big ovation from Joe Kantor and

Eddy Palermo and the boys of the band. They all said it

looked like a honeymoon and kidded about seeing the

marriagelicense. "Merely a chance acquaintance . . .

something I picked up at the busstation in Jax," Margo

kept saying. Charley ordered the best meal they had in

the house and drinks all around and champagne. They

danced all evening in spite of his game leg. When he

passed out they took him upstairs to Joe and Mrs. Kantor's

own room. When he began to wake up Margo was sitting

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fully dressed looking fresh as a daisy on the edge of the

bed. It was late in the morning. She brought him up break-

fast on a tray herself.

"Look here, Mr. A," she said. "You came down here

for a rest. No more nightclubs for a while. I've rented us

a little bungalow down on the beach and we'll put you up

at the hotel to avoid the breath of scandal and you'll like

it. What we need's the influence of the home. . . . And

you and me, Mr. A, we're on the wagon."

The bungalow was in Spanishmission style, and cost a

lot, but they sure had a good time at Miami Beach. They

played the dograces and the roulettewheels and Charley

got in with a bunch of allnight pokerplayers through

Homer Cassidy, Senator Planet's friend, a big smiling cul-

tured whitehaired southerner in a baggy linen suit, who

came round to the hotel to look him up. After a lot of

talking about one thing and another, Cassidy got around

to the fact that he was buying up options on property for

the new airport and would let Charley in on it for the sake

of his connections, but he had to have cash right away. At

poker Charley's luck was great, he always won enough to

have a big roll of bills on him, but his bankaccount was a

dog of a different stripe. He began burning up the wires to

Nat Benton's office in New York.

Margo tried to keep him from drinking; the only times

he could really get a snootful were when he went out fish-

ing with Cassidy. Margo wouldn't go fishing, she said she

didn't like the way the fish looked at her when they came

up out of the water. One day he'd gone down to the dock

to go fishing with Cassidy but found that the norther that

had come up that morning was blowing too hard. It was

damn lucky because just as Charley was leaving the dock

a Western Union messengerboy came up on his bike. The

wind was getting sharper every minute and blew the chilly

dust in Charley's face as he read the telegram. It was

from the senator: ADMINISTRATION PREPARES OATS FOR

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PEGASUS. As soon as he got back to the beach Charley

talked to Benton over longdistance. Next day airplane

stocks bounced when the news came over the wires of a

bill introduced to subsidize airlines. Charley sold every-

thing he had at the top, covered his margins and was sit-

ting pretty when the afternoon papers killed the story.

A week later he started to rebuy at twenty points lower.

Anyway he'd have the cash to refinance his loans and go

in with Cassidy on the options. When he told Cassidy he

was ready to go in with him they went out on the boat

to talk things over. A colored boy made them mintjuleps.

They sat in the stern with their rods and big straw hats

to keep the sun out of their eyes and the juleps on a table

behind them. When they got to the edge of the blue water

they began to troll for sailfish.

It was a day of blue sky with big soft pinkishwhite

clouds lavender underneath drifting in the sun. There was

enough wind blowing against the current out in the Gulf

Stream to make sharp choppy waves green where they

broke and blue and purple in the trough. They followed

the long streaks of mustardcolored weed but they didn't

see any sailfish. Cassidy caught a dolphin and Charley lost

one. The boat pitched so that Charley had to keep working

on the juleps to keep his stomach straight.

Most of the morning they cruised back and forth in

front of the mouth of the Miami River. Beyond the steep

dark waves they could see the still sunny brown water of

the bay and against the horizon the new buildings spar-

kling white among a red web of girder construction.

"Buildin', that's what I like to see," said Homer Cassidy,

waving a veined hand that had a big old gold sealring on

it towards the city. "And it's just beginnin'. . . . Why,

boy, I kin remember when Miamah was the jumpin' off

place, a little collection of brokendown shacks between the

railroad and the river, and I tell you the mosquitoes were

fierce. There were a few crackers down here growin' early

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tomatoes and layin' abed half the time with chills and

fever . . . and now look at it . . . an' up in New York

they try to tell you the boom ain't sound." Charley nodded

without speaking. He was having a tussle with a fish on

his line. His face was getting red and his hand was

cramped from reeling. "Nothin' but a small bonito," said

Cassidy. ". . . The way they try to tell you the fishin'

ain't any good . . . that's all propaganda for the West

Coast. . . . Boy, I must admit that I saw it comin' years

ago when I was workin' with old Flagler. There was a

man with vision. . . . I went down with him on the first

train that went over the overseas extension into Key West

I was one of the attorneys for the road at the time.

Schoolchildren threw roses under his feet all the way from

his private car to the carriage. . . . We had nearly a

thousand men carried away in hurricanes before the line

was completed . . . and now the new Miamah . . . an'

Miamah Beach, what do you think of Miamah Beach?

It's Flagler's dream come true."

"Well, what I'd like to do," Charley began and stopped

to take a big swig of the new julep the colored boy had

just handed him. He was beginning to feel wonderful now

that the little touch of seasickness had gone. Cassidy's fish-

ing guide had taken Charley's rod up forward to put a new

hook on it, so Charley was sitting there in the stern of the

motorboat feeling the sun eat into his back and little flecks

of salt spray drying on his face with nothing to do but sip

the julep, with nothing to worry about. " Cassidy, this sure

is the life . . . why can't a guy do what he wants to with

his life? I was just goin' to say what I want to do is get

out of this whole racket . . . investments, all that crap.

. . . I'd like to get out with a small pile and get a house

and settle down to monkeyin' around with motors and de-

signin' planes and stuff like that. . . . I always thought

if I could pull out with enough jack I'd like to build me

a windtunnel all my own . . . you know that's what they

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test out model planes in.""Of course," said Cassidy, "it's

aviation that's goin' to make Miami. . . . Think of it,

eighteen, fourteen, ten hours from New York. . . . I

don't need to tell you. . . . and you and me and the

Senator . . . we're right in among the foundin' fathers

with that airport. . . . Well, boy, I've waited all ma life

to make a real killin'. All ma life I been servin' others

. . . on the bench, railroad lawyer, all that sort of thing.

. . . Seems to me about time to make a pile of ma own."

"Suppose they pick some other place, then we'll be

holdin' the bag. After all it's happened before," said

Charley.

"Boy, they can't do it. You know yourself that that's

the ideal location and then . . . I oughtn't to be tellin'

you this but you'll find it out soon anyway . . . well, you

know our Washington friend, well, he's one of the for-

wardestlooking men in this country. . . . That money I

put up don't come out of Homer Cassidy's account because

Homer Cassidy's broke. That's what's worryin' me right

this minute. I'm merely his agent. And in all the years

I've been associated with Senator Planet upon ma soul and

body I've never seen him put up a cent unless it was a sure

thing."

Charley began to grin. "Well, the old sonofabitch."

Cassidy laughed. "You know the one about a nod's as good

as a wink to a blind mule. How about a nice Virginia ham

sandwich?"

They had another drink with the sandwiches. Charley

got to feeling like talking. It was a swell day. Cassidy was

a prince. He was having a swell time. "Funny," Charley

said, "when I first saw Miami it was from out at sea like

this. I never would have thought I'd be down here shov-

elin' in the dough. . . . There weren't all those tall

buildin's then either. I was goin' up to New York on a

coastin' boat. I was just a kid and I'd been down to New

Orleans for the Mardi Gras and I tell you I was broke.

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I got on the boat to come up to New York and got to

pallin' with, a Florida cracker . . . he was a funny guy.

. . . We went up to New York together. He said the

thing to do was get over an' see the war, so him and me

like a pair of damn fools we enlisted in one of those volun-

teer ambulance services. After that I switched to aviation.

That's how I got started in my line of business. Miami

didn't mean a thing to me then."

"Well, Flagler gave me ma start," said Cassidy. "And

I'm not ashamed to admit it . . . buyin' up rightofway

for the Florida East Coast. . . . Flagler started me and

he started Miamah."

That night when they got in sunburned and a little

drunk from the day on the Gulf Stream they tucked all

the options away in the safe in Judge Cassidy's office and

went over to the Palms to relax from business cares.

Margo wore her silver dress and she certainly looked

stunning. There was a thin dark Irishlooking girl there

named Eileen who seemed to know Cassidy from way

back. The four of them had dinner together, Cassidy got

good -- and tight and opened his mouth wide as a grouper's

talking about the big airport and saying how he was going

to let the girls in on some lots on the deal. Charley was

drunk, but he wasn't too drunk to know Cassidy ought to

keep his trap shut. When he danced with Eileen he talked

earnestly in her ear telling her she ought to make the boy-

friend keep his trap shut until the thing was made public

from the proper quarters. Margo saw them with their

heads together and acted the jealous bitch and started mak-

ing over Cassidy to beat the cars. When Charley got her

to dance with him she played dumb and wouldn't answer

when he spoke to her.

He left her at the table and went over to have some

drinks at the bar. There he got into an argument with a

skinny guy who looked like a cracker. Eddy Palermo, with

an oily smile on his face the shape and color of an olive,

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ran over and got between them. "You can't fight this

gentleman, Mr. Anderson, he's our county attorney. . . .

I know you gentlemen would like each other . . . Mr.

Pappy, Mr. Anderson was one of our leading war aces."

They dropped their fists and stood glaring at each other

with the little wop nodding and grinning between them.

Charley put out his hand. "All right, put it there, pal,"

he said. The county attorney gave him a mean look and

put his hands in his pockets. "County attorney' s -- t," said

Charley. He was reeling. He had to put his hand against

the wall to steady himself. And he turned and walked out

the door. Outside he found Eileen who'd just come out of

the ladies' room and was patting back her sleek hair in

front of the mirror by the hatchecking stand. He felt

choked with the whiskey and the cigarsmoke and the

throbbing hum of the band and the shuffle of feet. He had

to get outdoors. "Come on, girlie, we're goin' for a ride,

get some air." Before the girl could open her mouth he'd

dragged her out to the parkinglot. "Oh, but I don't think

we ought to leave the others," she kept saying. "They're

too goddam drunk to know. I'll bring you back in five

minutes. A little air does a little girl good, especially a

pretty little girl like you."

The gears shrieked because he didn't have the clutch

shoved out. The car stalled; he started the motor again

and immediately went into high. The motor knocked for

a minute but began to gather speed. "See," he said, "not

a bad little bus." As he drove he talked out of the corner

of his mouth to Eileen. "That's the last time I go into

that dump. . . . Those little cracker politicians fresh out

of the turpentine camps can't get fresh with me. I can buy

and sell 'em too easy like buyin' a bag of peanuts. Like that

bastard Farrell. I'll buy and sell him yet. You don't know

who he is but all you need to know is he's a crook, one of

the biggest crooks in the country, an' he thought, the whole

damn lot of 'em thought, they'd put me out like they did

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poor old Joe Askew. But the man with the knowhow, the

boy who thinks up the gadgets, they can't put him out. I

can outsmart 'em at their own game too. We got somethin'

bigger down here than they ever dreamed of. And the

Administration all fixed up. This is goin' to be big, little

girl, the biggest thing you ever saw and I'm goin' to let

you in on it. We'll be on easystreet from now on. And

when you're on easystreet you'll all forget poor old

Charley Anderson the boy that put you wise."

"Oh, it's so cold," moaned Eileen. "Let's go back. I'm

shivering." Charley leaned over and put his arm round her

shoulders. As he turned the car swerved. He wrenched it

back onto the concrete road again. "Oh, please do be care-

ful, Mr. Anderson. . . . You're doing eightyfive now.

. . . Oh, don't scare me, please."

Charley laughed. "My, what a sweet little girl. Look,

we're down to forty just bowlin' pleasantly along at forty.

Now we'll turn and go back, it's time little chickens were

in bed. But you must never be scared in a car when I'm

driving. If there's one thing I can do it's drive a car. But

I don't like to drive a car. Now if I had my own ship here.

How would you like to take a nice trip in a plane? I'da

had it down here before this but it was in hock for the

repair bills. Had to put a new motor in. But now I'm on

easystreet. I'll get one of the boys to fly it down to me.

Then we'll have a real time. You an' me an' Margo. Old

Margo's a swell girl, got an awful temper though. That's

one thing I can do, I know how to pick the women."

When they turned to run back towards Miami they saw

the long streak of the dawn behind the broad barrens

dotted with dead pines and halfbuilt stucco houses and

closed servicestations and dogstands.

"Now the wind's behind us. We'll have you back before

you can say Jack Robinson." They were running along

beside a railroad track. They were catching up on two red

lights. "I wonder if that's the New York train." They

-368-

were catching up on it, past the lighted observation car,

past the sleepers with no light except through the ground-

glass windows of the dressingrooms at the ends of the

cars. They were creeping up on the baggagecar and mail-

cars and the engine, very huge and tall and black with a

little curling shine from Charley's headlights in the dark.

The train had cut off the red streak of the dawn. "Hell,

they don't make no speed." As they passed the cab the

whistle blew. "Hell, I can beat him to the crossin'." The

lights of the crossing were ahead of them and the long

beam of the engine's headlight, that made the red and

yellow streak of the dawn edging the clouds very pale and

far away. The bar was down at the crossing. Charley

stepped on the gas. They crashed through the bar, shat-

tering their headlights. The car swerved around sideways.

Their eyes were full of the glare of the locomotive head-

light and the shriek of the whistle. "Don't be scared, we're

through," Charley yelled at the girl. The car swerved

around on the tracks and stalled.

He was jabbing at the starter with his foot. The crash

wasn't anything. When he came to he knew right away he

was in a hospital. First thing he began wondering if he was

going to have a hangover. He couldn't move. Everything

was dark. From way down in a pit he could see the ceiling.

Then he could see the peak of a nurse's cap and a nurse

leaning over him. All the time he was talking. He couldn't

stop talking.

"Well, I thought we were done for. Say, nurse, where

did we crack up? Was it at the airport? I'd feel better if I

could remember. It was this way, nurse . . . I'd taken

that little girl up to let her get the feel of that new

Boeing ship . . . you know the goldarned thing. . . . I

was sore as hell at somebody, must have been my wife,

poor old Gladys, did she give me a dirty deal? But now

after this airport deal I'll be buyin' an' sellin' the whole

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bunch of them. Say, nurse, what happened? Was it at the

airport?"

The nurse's face and her hair were yellow under the

white cap. She had a thin face without lips and thin hands

that went past his eyes to smooth the sheet under his chin.

"You must try and rest," she said. "Or else I'll have to

give you another hypodermic."

"Say, nurse, are you a Canadian? I bet you're a

Canadian."

"No, I'm from Tennessee. . . . Why?"

"My mistake. You see always when I've been in a hos-

pital before the nurses have been Canadians. Isn't it kinder

dark in here? I wish I could tell you how it happened.

Have they called the office? I guess maybe I drink too

much. After this I attend strictly to business. I tell you a

man has to keep his eyes open in this game. . . . Say,

can't you get me some water?"

"I'm the night nurse. It isn't day yet. You try and get

some sleep."

"I guess they've called up the office. I'd like Stauch to

take a look at the ship before anything's touched. Funny,

nurse. I don't feel much pain, but I feel so terrible."

"That's just the hypodermics," said the nurse's brisk low

voice. "Now you rest quietly and in the morning you'll

wake up feeling a whole lot better. You can only rinse

out your mouth with this."

"Check."

He couldn't stop talking. "You see it was this way. I

had some sort of a wrangle with a guy. Are you listenin',

nurse? I guess I've got a kind of a chip on my shoulder

since they've been gangin' up on me so. In the old days I

used to think everybody was a friend of mine, see. Now

I know they're all crooks . . . even Gladys, she turned

out the worst crook of the lot. . . . I guess it's the hang-

over makes me so terribly thirsty."

The nurse was standing over him again. "I'm afraid

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we'll have to give you a little of the sleepy stuff, brother.

. . . Now just relax. Think of somethin' nice. That's a

good boy."

He felt her dabbing at his arm with something cold and

wet. He felt the prick of the needle. The hard bed where

he lay awake crumbled gradually under him. He was sink-

ing, without any sweetness of sleep coming on, he was

sinking into dark.

This time it was a stout starched woman standing over

him. It was day. The shadows were different. She was

poking some papers under his nose. She had a hard cheer-

ful voice. "Good morning, Mr. Anderson, is there any-

thing I can do for you?"

Charley was still down in a deep well. The room, the

stout starched woman, the papers were far away above him

somewhere. All around his eyes was stinging hot.

"Say, I don't feel as if I was all there, nurse."

"I'm the superintendent. There are a few formalities if

you don't mind . . . if you feel well enough."

"Did you ever feel like it had all happened before?

Say, where, I mean what town . . . ? Never mind, don't

tell me, I remember it all now."

"I'm the superintendent. If you don't mind, the office

would like a check for your first week in advance and then

there are some other fees."

"Don't worry. I've got money. . . . For God's sake get

me a drink."

"It's just the regulations."

"There must be a checkbook in my coat somewhere. . . .

Or get hold of Cliff . . . Mr. Wegman, my secretary. . . .

He can make out a check for you."

"Now don't you bother about anything, Mr. Ander-

son. . . . The office has made out a blank check. I'll fill

in the name of the bank. You sign it. That will be two

hundred and fifty dollars on account."

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"Bankers' Trust, New York. . . . Gosh, I can just

about sign my name."

"The questionnaire we'll get the nurse to fill out later

. . . for our records. . . . Well, goodby, Mr. Anderson,

I hope you have a very pleasant stay with us and wishing

you a quick recovery." The stout starched woman had

gone.

"Hay, nurse," called Charley. He suddenly felt scared.

"What is this dump anyway? Where am I? Say, nurse,

nurse." He shouted as loud as he could. The sweat broke

out all over his face and neck and ran into his ears and

eyes. He could move his head and his arms but the pit

of his stomach was gone. He had no feeling in his legs.

His mouth was dry with thirst.

A new pretty pink nurse was leaning over him. "What

can I do for you, mister?" She wiped his face and showed

him where the bell was hanging just by his hand. "Nurse,

I'm terribly thirsty," he said in a weak voice.

"Now you must just rinse out your mouth. The doctor

doesn't want you to eat or drink anything until he's estab-

lished the drainage."

"Where is this doctor? . . . Why isn't he here now? . . .

Why hasn't he been here right along? If he isn't careful

I'll fire him and get another."

"Here's Dr. Snyder right now," said the nurse in an

awed whisper.

"Well, Anderson, you surely had a narrow squeak. You

probably thought you were in a plane all the time. . . .

Funny, I've never known an airplane pilot yet who could

drive a car. My name's Snyder. Dr. Ridgely Snyder of

New York. Dr. Booth the housephysician here has called

me in as a consultant. It's possible we may have to patch

up your inside a little. You see when they picked you up,

as I understand it, a good deal of the car was lying across

your middle . . . a very lucky break that it didn't finish

you right there. . . . You understand me, don't you?"

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Dr. Snyder was a big man with flat closeshaven cheeks

and square hands ending in square nails. A song old man

Vogel used to sing ran across Charley's faint mind as he

looked at the doctor standing there big and square and

paunchy in his white clothes: he looked like William Kaiser

the butcher but they don't know each other.

"I guess it's the dope but my mind don't work very

good. . . . You do the best you can, doc . . . and don't

spare any expense. I just fixed up a little deal that'll make

their ears ring. . . . Say, doctor, what about that little

girl? Wasn't there a little girl in the car?"

"Oh, don't worry about her. She's fine. She was thrown

absolutely clear. A slight concussion, a few contusions, she's

coming along splendidly."

"I was scared to ask."

"We've got to do a little operating suture of the

intestine, a very interesting problem. Now I don't want

you to have anything on your mind, Mr. Anderson. . . .

It'll just be a stitch here and a stitch there . . . we'll see

what we can do. This was supposed to be my vacation but

of course I'm always glad to step in in an emergency."

"Well, thank you, doc, for whatever you can do. . . . I

guess I ought not to drink so much. . . . Say, why won't

they let me drink some water? . . . It's funny, when I

first came to in here I thought I was in another of them

clip joints. Now Doris, she wouldn'ta liked me to talk like

that, you know, bad grammar, conduct unbecoming an

officer and a gentleman. But you know, doc, when you get

so you can buy 'em and sell 'em like an old bag of peanuts,

a bag of stale goobers, you don't care what they think.

You know, doc, it may be a great thing for me bein' laid

up, give me a chance to lay off the liquor, think about

things. . . . Ever thought about things, doc?"

"What I'm thinking right now, Mr. Anderson, is that

I'd like you to be absolutely quiet."

"All right, you do your stuff, doc . . . you send that

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pretty nurse in an' lemme talk to her. I want to talk about

old Bill Cermak. . . . He was the only straight guy I ever

knew, him an' Joe Askew. . . . I wonder how he felt

when he died. . . . You see the last time I was, well, call

it constitutionally damaged . . . him and me smashed up

in a plane . . . the new Mosquito . . . there's millions

in it now but the bastards got the stock away from me. . . .

Say, doc, I don't suppose you ever died, did you?"

There was nothing but the white ceiling above him,

brighter where the light came from the window. Charley

remembered the bell by his hand. He rang and rang it.

Nobody came. Then he yanked at it until he felt the cord

pull out somewhere. The pretty pink nurse's face bloomed

above him like a closeup in a movie. Her young rarely-

kissed mouth was moving. He could see it making clucking

noises, but a noise like longdistance in his ears kept him

from hearing what she said. It was only when he was talk-

ing he didn't feel scared. "Look here, young woman . . ."

he could hear himself talking. He was enjoying hearing

himself talking. "I'm payin' the bills in this hospital and

I'm goin' to have everythin' just how I want it. . . . I

want you to sit here an' listen while I talk, see. Let's see,

what was I tellin' that bird about? He may be a doctor

but he looks like William Kaiser the butcher to me. You're

too young to know that song."

"There's somebody to see you, Mr. Anderson. Would

you like me to freshen your face up a little?"

Charley turned his eyes. The screen had been pushed

open. In the grey oblong of the door there was Margo.

She was in yellow. She was looking at him with eyes

round as a bird's.

"You're not mad, Margery, are you?"

"I'm worse than mad, I'm worried."

"Everythin's goin' to be oke, Margo. I got a swell saw-

bones from New York. He'll patch me up. He looks like

William Kaiser the butcher all except the mustaches . . .

-374-

what do you know about that, I forgot the mustaches. . . .

Don't look at me funny like that. I'm all right, see. I just

feel better if I talk, see. I bet I'm the talkin'est patient

they ever had in this hospital. . . . Margo, you know I

mighta gotten to be a rummy if I'd kept on drinkin' like

that. It's just as well to be caught up short."

"Say, Charley, are you well enough to write out a check?

I've got to have some jack. You know you were goin' to

give me a commission on that airport deal. And I've got

to hire a lawyer for you. Eileen's folks are going to sue.

That county attorney's sworn out a warrant. I brought

your New York checkbook."

"Jesus, Margo, I've made a certain amount of jack but

I'm not the Bank of England."

"But, Charley, you said you'd open an account for me."

"Gimme a chance to get out of the hospital."

"Charley, you poor unfortunate Mr. A . . . you don't

think it's any fun for me to worry you at a time like this

. . . but I've got to eat like other people . . . an' if I had

some jack I could fix that county attorney up . . . and

keep the stuff out of the papers and everything. You know

the kind of story they'll make out of it . . . but I got to

have money quick."

"All right, make out a check for five thousand. . . .

Damn lucky for you I didn't break my arm."

The pretty pink nurse had come back. Her voice was

cold and sharp and icy. "I'm afraid it's time," she said.

Margo leaned over and kissed him on the forehead.

Charley felt like he was in a glass case. There was the

touch of her lips, the smell of her dress, her hair, the

perfume she used, but he couldn't feel them. Like a scene

in a movie he watched her walk out, the sway of her hips

under the tight dress, the little nervous way she was flutter-

ing the check under her chin to dry the ink on it.

"Say, nurse, it's like a run on a bank . . . I guess they

think the old institution's not so sound as it might be. . . .

-375-

I'm givin' orders now, see, tell 'em down at the desk, no

more visitors, see? You and me an' Dr. Kaiser William

there, that's enough, see."

"Anyway now it's time for a little trip across the hall,"

said the pretty pink nurse, in a cheerful voice like it was

a show or a baseballgame they were going to.

An orderly came in. The room started moving away

from the cot, a grey corridor was moving along, but the

moving made blind spasms of pain rush up through his

legs. He sank into sour puking blackness again. When it

was light again it was very far away. His tongue was dry

in his mouth he was so thirsty. Reddish mist was over

everything. He was talking but way off somewhere. He

could feel the talk coming out of his throat but he couldn't

hear it. What he heard was the doctor's voice saying peri-

tonitis like it was the finest party in the world, like you'd

say Merry Christmas. There were other voices. His eyes

were open, there were other voices. He must be delirious.

There was Jim sitting there with a puzzled sour gloomy

look on his face like he used to see him when he was a kid

on Sunday afternoons going over his books.

"That you, Jim? How did you get here?"

"We flew," answered Jim. It was a surprise to Charley

that people could hear him, his voice was so far away.

"Everything's all right, Charley . . . you mustn't exert

yourself in the least way. I'll attend to everything."

"Can you hear me, Jim? It's like a bum longdistance

phone connection."

"That's all right, Charley. . . . We'll take charge of

everything. You just rest quiet. Say, Charley, just as a

precaution I want to ask you, did you make a will?"

"Say, was it peritonitis I heard somebody say? That's

bad, ain't it?"

Jim's face was white and long. "It's . . . it's just a little

operation. I thought maybe you'd better give me power of

attorney superseding all others, so that you won't have

-376-

anything on your mind, see. I have it all made out, and I

have Judge Grey here as a witness and Hedwig'll come

in a minute. . . . Tell me, are you married to this

woman?"

"Me married? Never again. . . . Good old Jim, always

wantin' people to sign things. Too bad I didn't break my

arm. Well, what do you think about planes now, Jim? Not

practical yet . . . eh? But practical enough to make more

money than you ever made sellin' tin lizzies. . . . Don't

get sore, Jim. . . . Say, Jim, be sure to get plenty of good

doctors . . . I'm pretty sick, do you know it? . . . It

makes you so hoarse . . . make 'em let me have some

water to drink, Jim. Don't do to save on the doctors. . . .

I want to talk like we used to when, you know, up the Red

River fishin' when there wasn't any. We'll try the fishin'

out here. . . . swell fishin' right outside of Miami here. . . .

I. feel like I was passin' out again. Make that doctor give

me somethin'. That was a shot. Thank you, nurse, made

me feel fine, clears everythin' up. I tell you, Jim, things

are hummin' in the air . . . mail subsidies . . . airports

. . . all these new airlines. . . . we'll be the foundin'

fathers on all that. . . . They thought they had me out

on my ass but I fooled 'em. . . . Jesus, Jim, I wish I

could stop talkin' and go to sleep. But this passin' out's not

like sleep, it's like a . . . somethin' phony."

He had to keep on talking but it wasn't any use. He was

too hoarse. His voice was a faint croak, he was so thirsty.

They couldn't hear him. He had to make them hear him.

He was too weak. He was dropping spinning being sucked

down into

-377-

NEWSREEL LXII

STARS PORTEND EVIL FOR COOLIDGE

If you can't tell the world

She's a good little girl

Then just say nothing at all

the elder Way had been attempting for several years to

get a certain kind of celery spray on the market. The investi-

gation of the charges that he had been beaten revealed that

Way had been warned to cease writing letters, but it also

brought to light the statement that the leading celery growers

were using a spray containing deadly poison

As long as she's sorree

She needs sympathee

MINERS RETAIL HORRORS OF DEATH PIT

inasmuch as banks are having trouble in Florida at this

time, checks are not going through as fast as they should. To

prevent delay please send us express money order instead of

certified check

Just like a butterfly that's caught in the rain

Longing for flowers

Dreaming of hours

Back in that sun-kissed lane

TOURISTS ROB GAS STATION

PROFIT TAKING FAILS TO CHECK STOCK RISE

the climate breeds optimism and it is hard for pessimism to

survive the bright sunshine and balmy breezes that blow from

the Gulf and the Atlantic

Oh it ain't gonna rain no more

HURRICANE SWEEPS SOUTH FLORIDA.

-378-

SOUTH FLORIDA DEVASTATED

1000 DEAD, 38,000 DESTITUTE

BROADWAY BEAUTY BEATEN

Fox he got a bushy tail

Possum's tail is bare

Rabbit got no tail at all

But only a tuft o' hair

FLORIDA RELIEF FUND FAR SHORT

MARTIAL LAW LOOMS

It ain't gonna rain no more

according to the police the group spent Saturday evening

at Hillside Park, a Belleville amusement resort and about mid-

night went to the bungalow. The Bagley girls retired, they

told the police, and when the men entered their room one of

the girls jumped from a window

But how in hell kin the old folks tell

It ain't gonna rain no more?

MARGO DOWLING

Agnes got off the sleeper dressed from head to foot in

black crape. She had put on weight and her face had a grey

rumpled look Margo hadn't noticed on it before. Margo

put her head on Agnes's shoulder and burst out crying

right there in the sunny crowded Miami station. They got

into the Buick to go out to the beach. Agnes didn't even

notice the car or the uniformed chauffeur or anything.

She took Margo's hand and they sat looking away from

each other out into the sunny streets full of slowlymoving

people in light clothes. Margo was patting her eyes with

her lace handkerchief. "Oughtn't you to wear black?"

-379-

Agnes said. "Wouldn't you feel better if you were wearing

black?"

It wasn't until the blue Buick drew up at the door of

the bungalow on the beach and Raymond, the thinfaced

mulatto chauffeur, hopped out smiling respectfully to take

the bags that Agnes began to notice anything. She cried

out "Oh, what a lovely car."

Margo showed her through the house and out on the

screened porch under the palms facing the purpleblue sea

and the green water along the shore and the white

breakers. "Oh, it's too lovely," Agnes said and let herself

drop into a Gloucester hammock sighing. "Oh, I'm so

tired." Then she began to cry again. Margo went to do her

face at the long mirror in the hall. "Well," she said when

she came back looking freshpowdered and rosy, "how do

you like the house? Some little shack, isn't it?"

"Oh, we won't be able to stay here now. . . . What'll

we do now?" Agnes was blubbering. "I know it's all the'

wicked unreality of matter. . . . Oh, if he'd only had

proper thoughts."

"Anyway the rent's paid for another month," said

Margo.

"Oh, but the expense," sobbed Agnes.

Margo was looking out through the screendoor at a big

black tanker on the horizon. She turned her head and

talked peevishly over her shoulder. "Well, there's nothing

to keep me from turning over a few options, is there? I

tell you what they are having down here's a boom. Maybe

we can make some money. I know everybody who is any-

body in this town. You just wait and see, Agnes."

Eliza, the black maid, brought in a silver coffeeservice

and cups and a plate of toast on a silver tray covered by

a lace doily. Agnes pushed back her veil, drank some

coffee in little gulps and began to nibble at a piece of toast.

"Have some preserves on it," said Margo, lighting herself

-380-

a cigarette. "I didn't think you and Frank believed in

mourning."

"I couldn't help it. It made me feel better. Oh, Margo,

have you ever thought that if it wasn't for our dreadful

unbelief they might be with us this day." She dried her

eyes and went back to the coffee and toast. "When's the

funeral?"

"It's going to be in Minnesota. His folks have taken

charge of everything. They think I'm ratpoison."

"Poor Mr. Anderson. . . . You must be prostrated, you

poor child."

"You ought to see 'em. His brother Jim would take

the pennies off a dead man's eyes. He's threatening to sue

to get back some securities he claims were Charley's. Well,

let him sue. Homer Cassidy's my lawyer and what he says

goes in this town. . . . Agnes, you've got to take off those

widow's weeds and act human. What would Frank think if

he was here?"

"He is here," Agnes shrieked and went all to pieces and

started sobbing again. "He's watching over us right now.

I know that!" She dried her eyes and sniffed. "Oh,

Margie, coming down on the train I'd been thinking that

maybe you and Mr. Anderson had been secretly married.

He must have left an enormous estate."

"Most of it is tied up. . . . But Charley was all right,

he fixed me up as we went along."

"But just think of it, two such dreadful things happen-

ing in one winter."

" Agnes," said Margo, getting to her feet, "if you talk

like that I'm going to send you right back to New

York. . . . Haven't I been depressed enough? Your nose

is all red. It's awful. . . . Look, you make yourself at

home. I'm going out to attend to some business.""Oh, I

can't stay here. I feel too strange," sobbed Agnes. "Well,

you can come along if you take off that dreadful veil.

Hurry up, I've got to meet somebody."

-381-

She made Agnes fix her hair and put on a white blouse.

The black dress really was quite becoming to her. Margo

made her put on a little makeup. "There, dearie. Now

you look lovely," she said and kissed her.

"Is this really your car?" sighed Agnes as she sank

back on the seat of the blue Buick sedan. "I can't believe

it.""Want to see the registration papers?" said Margo.

"All right, Raymond, you know where the broker's office

is.""I sure do, miss," said Raymond, touching the shiny

visor of his cap as the motor started to hum under the

unscratched paint of the hood.

At the broker's office there was the usual welldressed

elderly crowd in sportsclothes filling up the benches, men

with panamahats held on knees of Palm Beach suits and

linen plusfours, women in pinks and greens and light tan

and white crisp dresses. It always affected Margo a little

like church, the whispers, the deferential manners, the

boys quick and attentive at the long blackboards marked

with columns of symbols, the click of the telegraph, the

firm voice reading the quotations off the ticker at a desk

in the back of the room. As they went in Agnes in an awed

voice whispered in Margo's ear hadn't she better go and

sit in the car until Margo had finished her business. "No,

stick around," said Margo. "You see those boys are chalk-

ing up the stockmarket play by play on those black-

boards. . . . I'm just beginning to get on to this business."

Two elderly gentlemen with white hair and broadflanged

Jewish noses smilingly made room for them on a bench

in the back of the room. Several people turned and stared

at Margo. She heard a woman's voice hissing something

about Anderson to the man beside her. There was a little

stir of whispering and nudging. Margo felt welldressed

and didn't care.

"Well, ma dear young lady," Judge Cassidy's voice

purred behind her, "buyin' or sellin' today?" Margo

turned her head. There was the glint of a gold tooth in

-382-

the smile on the broad red face under the thatch of silvery

hair the same color as the grey linen suit which was crossed

by another glint of gold in the watchchain looped double

across the ample bulge of the judge's vest. Margo shook

her head. "Nothing much doing today," she said. Judge

Cassidy jerked his head and started for the door. Margo

got up and followed, pulling Agnes after her. When they

got out in the breezy sunshine of the short street that ran

to the bathingbeach, Margo introduced Agnes as her

guardian angel.

"I hope you won't disappoint us today the way you did

yesterday, ma dear young lady," began Judge Cassidy.

"Perhaps we can induce Mrs. Mandeville . . ."

"I'm afraid not," broke in Margo. "You see the poor

darling's so tired. . . . She's just gotten in from New

York. . . . You see, Agnes dear, we are going to look at

some lots. Raymond will take you home, and lunch is all

ordered for you and everything. . . . You just take a nice

rest."

"Oh, of course I do need a rest," said Agnes, flushing.

Margo helped her into the Buick that Raymond had just

brought around from the parkingplace, kissed her and

then walked down the block with the judge to where his

Pierce Arrow touringcar stood shiny and glittery in the hot

noon sunlight.

The judge drove his own car. Margo sat with him in

the front seat. As soon as he'd started the car she said,

"Well, what about that check?""Why, ma dear young

lady, I'm very much afraid that no funds means no

funds. . . . I presume we can recover from the estate."

"Just in time to make a first payment on a cemetery lot."

"Well, those things do take time . . . the poor boy seems

to have left his affairs in considerable confusion."

"Poor guy," said Margo, looking away through the rows

of palms at the brown reaches of Biscayne Bay. Here and

there on the green islands new stucco construction stuck out

-383-

raw, like stagescenery out on the sidewalk in the daytime.

"Honestly I did the best I could to straighten him out."

"Of course. . . . Of course he had very considerable

holdings. . . . It was that crazy New York life. Down

here we take things easily, we know how to let the fruit

ripen on the tree."

"Orangaes," said Margo, "and lemons." She started to

laugh but the judge didn't join in.

Neither of them said anything for a while. They'd

reached the end of the causeway and turned past yellow

frame wharfbuildings into the dense traffic of the Miami

waterfront. Everywhere new tall buildings iced like layer-

cake were standing up out of scaffolding and builder's

rubbish. Rumbling over the temporary wooden bridge

across the Miami River in a roar of concretemixers and a

drive of dust from the construction work, Margo said,

turning a roundeyed pokerface at the judge, "Well, I guess

I'll have to hock the old sparklers." The judge laughed.

and said, "I can assure you the bank will afford you every

facility. . . . Don't bother your pretty little head about it.

You hold some very considerable options right now if I'm

not mistaken.""I don't suppose you could lend me a couple

of grand to run on on the strength of them, judge."

They were running on a broad new concrete road

through dense tropical scrub. "Ma dear young lady," said

Judge Cassidy in his genial drawl, "I couldn't do that for

your own sake . . . think of the false interpretations . . .

the idle gossip. We're a little oldfashioned down here.

We're easygoin' but once the breath of scandal . . . Why,

even drivin' with such a charmin' passenger through the

streets of Miamah is a folly, a very pleasant folly. But

you must realize, ma dear young lady . . . A man in ma

position can't afford . . . Don't misunderstand ma motive,

ma dear young lady. I never turned down a friend in ma

life. . . . But ma position would unfortunately not be

understood that way. Only a husband or a . . ."

-384-

"Is this a proposal, judge?" she broke in sharply. Her

eyes were stinging. It was hard keeping back the tears.

"Just a little advice to a client. . . ." The judge sighed.

"Unfortunately I'm a family man."

"How long is this boom going to last?"

"I don't need to remind you what type of animal is

born every minute."

"No need at all," said Margo gruffly.

They were driving into the parkinglot behind the great

new caramelcolored hotel. As she got out of the car Margo

said, "Well, I guess some of them can afford to lose their

money but we can't, can we, judge?""Ma dear young lady,

there's no such word in the bright lexicon of youth." The

judge was ushering her into the diningroom in his fatherly

way. "Ah, there are the boys now."

At a round table in the center of the crowded dining-

room sat two fatfaced young men with big mouths wearing,

pinkstriped shirts and nilegreen wash neckties and white

suits. They got up still chewing and pumped Margo's hand

when the judge presented them. They were twins. As they

sat down again one of them winked and shook a fat fore-

finger. "We used to see you at the Palms, girlie, naughty

naughty."

"Well, boys," said the judge, "how's tricks?""Couldn't

be better," one of them said with his mouth full. "You see,

boys," said the judge, "this young lady wants to make a

few small investments with a quick turnover. . . ." The

twins grunted and went on chewing.

After lunch the judge drove them all down ta the

Venetian Pool where William Jennings Bryan sitting in an

armchair on the float under a striped awning was talking

to the crowd. From where they were they couldn't hear

what he was saying, only the laughter and handclapping

of the crowd in the pauses. "Do you know, judge," said

one of the twins, as they worked their way through the

fringes of the crowd around the pool, "if the old boy

-385-

hadn't wasted his time with politics, he'da made a great

auctioneer."

Margo began to feel tired and wilted. She followed the

twins into the realestateoffice full of perspiring men in

shirtsleeves. The judge got her a chair. She sat there tap-

ping with her white kid foot on the tiled floor with her

lap full of blueprints. The prices were all so high. She felt

out of her depth and missed Mr. A to buy for her, held

have known what to buy sure. Outside, the benches on the

lawn were crowded. Bawling voices came from everywhere.

The auction was beginning. The twins on the stand were

waving their arms and banging with their hammers. The

judge was striding around behind Margo's chair talking

boom to anybody who would listen. When he paused for

breath she looked up at him and said, " JudgeCassidy,

could you get me a taxi?""Ma dear young lady, I'll drive

you home myself. It'll be a pleasure.""O.K.," said Margo.

"You are very wise," whispered Judge Cassidy in her ear.

As they were walking along the edge of the crowd one

of the twins they'd had lunch with left the auctioneer's

stand and dove through the crowd after them. "Miss

Dowlin'," he said, "kin me an' Al come to call?""Sure,"

said Margo, smiling. "Name's in the phonebook under

Dowling.""We'll be around." And he ran back to the

stand where his brother was pounding with his hammer.

She'd been afraid she hadn't made a hit with the twins.

Now she felt the tired lines smoothing out of her face.

"Well, what do you think of the great development of

Coral Gables?" said the judge as he helped her into the

car. "Somebody must be making money," said Margo

dryly.

Once in the house she pulled off her hat and told Ray-

mond, who acted as butler in the afternoons, to make some

martini cocktails, found the judge a cigar and then excused

herself for a moment. Upstairs she found Agnes sitting in

her room in a lavender negligee manicuring her nails at

-386-

the dressingtable. Without saying a word Margo dropped

on the bed and began to cry. Agnes got up looking big

and flabby and gentle and came over to the bed. "Why,

Margie, you never cry. . . .""I know I don't," sobbed

Margo, "but it's all so awful. . . . Judge Cassidy's down,

there, you go and talk to him. . . .""Poor little girl.

Surely I will but it's you he'll be wanting to see. . . .

You've been through too much.""I won't go back to the

chorus . . . I won't," Margo sobbed. "Oh, no, I wouldn't

like that. . . . But I'll go down now. . . . I feel really

rested for the first time in months," said Agnes.

When Margo was alone she stopped bawling at once.

"Why, I'm as bad as Agnes," she muttered to herself as

she got to her feet. She turned on the water for a bath.

It was late by the time she'd gotten into an afternoondress

and come downstairs. The judge looked pretty glum. He

sat puffing at the butt of a cigar and sipping at a cocktail

while Agnes talked to him about Faith.

He perked up when he saw Margo coming down the

stairs. She put some dancemusic on the phonograph.

"When I'm in your house I'm like that famed Grecian

sage in the house of the sirens . . . I forget hometies,

engagements, everything," said the judge, coming toward

her onestepping. They danced. Agnes went upstairs again.

Margo could see that the judge was just on the edge of

making a pass at her. She was wondering what to do about

it when Cliff Wegman was suddenly ushered into the room.

The judge gave the young man a scared suspicious look.

Margo could see he thought he was going to be framed.

"Why, Mr. Wegman, I didn't know you were in

Miami." She took the needle off the record and stopped

the phonograph. " JudgeCassidy, meet Mr. Wegman."

"Glad to meet you, judge. Mr. Anderson used to talk

about you. I was his personal secretary." Cliff looked hag-

gard and nervous. "I just pulled into this little old town,"

he said. "I hope I'm not intruding." He grinned at Margo.

-387-

"Well, I'm woiking for the Charles Anderson estate now."

"Poor fellow," said Judge Cassidy, getting to his feet.

"I had the honor of bein' quite a friend of Lieutenant

Anderson's. . . ." Shaking his head he walked across the

soft plumcolored carpet to Margo. "Well, ma dear young

lady, you must excuse me. But duty calls. This was indeed

delightful." Margo went out with him to his car. The

rosy evening was fading into dusk. A mockingbird was

singing in a peppertree beside the house. "When can I

bring the jewelry?" Margo said, leaning towards the judge

over the front seat of the car. "Perhaps you better come

to my office tomorrow noon. We'll go over to the bank

together. Of course the appraisal will have to be at the

expense of the borrower.""O.K. and by that time I hope

you'll have thought of some way I can turn it over quick.

What's the use of having a boom if you don't take advan-

tage of it?" The judge leaned over to kiss her. His wet lips

brushed against her ear as she pulled her head away. "Be

yourself, judge," she said.

In the livingroom Cliff was striding up and down fit to

be tied. He stopped in his tracks and came towards her

with his fists clenched as if he were going to hit her. He

was chewing gum; the thin jaw moving from side to side

gave him a face like a sheep. "Well, the boss soitenly

done right by little Orphan Annie."

"Well, if that's all you came down here to tell me you

can just get on the train and go back home."

"Look here, Margo, I've come on business."

"On business?" Margo let herself drop into a pink over-

stuffed chair. "Sit down, Cliff . . . but you didn't need to

come barging in here like a process server. Is it about

Charley's estate?"

"Estate hell . . . I want you to marry me. The pickin's

are slim right now but I've got a big career ahead."

Margo let out a shriek and let her head drop on the back

of the chair. She got to laughing and couldn't stop laugh-

-388-

ing. "No, honestly, Cliff," she spluttered. "But I don't

want to marry anybody just now. . . . Why, Cliff, you

sweet kid. I could kiss you." He came over and tried to

hug her. She got to her feet and pushed him away. "I'm

not going to let things like that interfere with my career

either."

Cliff frowned. "I won't marry an actress. . . . You'd

have to can that stuff."

Margo got to laughing again. "Not even a moving-

picture actress?"

"Aw, hell, all you do is kid and I'm nuts about you."

He sat down on the davenport and wrung his head between

his hands. She moved over and sat down beside him. "For-

get it, Cliff."

Cliff jumped up again. "I can tell you one thing, you

won't get anywheres fooling around with that old buzzard

Cassidy. He's a married man and so crooked he has to go

through a door edgeways. He gypped hell out of the boss

in that airport deal. Hell. . . . That's probably no news

to you. You probably were in on it and got your cut first

thing. . . . And then you think it's a whale of a joke when

a guy comes all the way down to the jumpingoff place to

offer you the protection of his name. All right, I'm

through. Good . . . night." He went out slamming the

glass doors into the hall so hard that a pane of glass broke

and tinkled down to the floor.

Agnes rushed in from the diningroom. "Oh, how dread-

ful," she said. "I was listening. I thought maybe poor Mr.

Anderson had left a trustfund for you.""That boy's got

bats in his belfry," said Margo. A minute later the phone

rang. It was Cliff with tears in his voice, apologizing, ask-

ing if he couldn't come back to talk it over. "Not on your

tintype," said Margo and hung up. "Well, Agnes," said

Margo as she came from the telephone, "that's that. . . .

We've got to figure these things out. . . . Cliff's right

about that old fool Cassidy. He never was in the picture

-389-

anyways.""Such a dignified man," said Agnes, making

clucking noises with her tongue.

Raymond announced dinner. Margo and Agnes ate

alone, each at one end of the long mahogany table covered

with doilies and silverware. The soup was cold and too

salty. "I've told that damn girl a hundred times not to

do anything to the soup but take it out of the can and

heat it," Margo said peevishly. "Oh, Agnes, please do the

housekeeping . . . I can't get 'em to do anything right."

"Oh, I'd love to," said Agnes. "Of course I've never kept

house on a scale like this.""We're not going to either,"

said Margo. "We've got to cut down."

"I guess I'd better write Miss Franklyn to see if she's

got another job for me."

"You just wait a little while," said Margo. "We can stay

on here for a couple months. I've got an idea it would do

Tony good down here. Suppose we send him his ticket to

come down? Do you think he'd sell it on me and hit the

dope again?""But he's cured. He told me himself he'd

straightened out completely." Agnes began to blubber over

her plate. "Oh, Margo, what an openhanded girl you

are . . . just like your poor mother . . . always thinking

of others."

When Tony got to Miami he looked pale as a mealy-

worm but lying on the beach in the sun and dips in the

breakers soon got him into fine shape. He was good as gold

and seemed very grateful and helped Agnes with the

housework, as they'd let the maids go; Agnes declared she

couldn't do anything with them and would rather do the

work herself. When men Margo knew came around she

introduced him as a Cuban relative. But he and Agnes

mostly kept out of sight when she had company. Tony

was tickled to death when Margo suggested he learn to

drive the car. He drove fine right away, so they could let

Raymond go. One day when he was getting ready to drive

her over to meet some big realtors at Cocoanut Grove,

-390-

Margo suggested, just as a joke, that Tony try to see if

Raymond's old uniform wouldn't fit him. He looked fine.

in it. When she suggested he wear it when he drove her

he went into a tantrum, and talked about honor and man-

hood. She cooled him down saying that the whole thing

was a joke and he said, well, if it was a joke, and wore it.

Margo could tell he kinder liked the uniform because she

saw him looking at himself in it in the pierglass in the hall.

Miami realestate was on the skids, but Margo managed

to make a hundred thousand dollars' profit on the options

she held; on paper. The trouble was that she' couldn't get

any cash out of her profits.

The twins she'd met at Coral Gables gave her plenty of

advice but she was leery, and advice was all they did give

her. They were always around in the evenings and Sun-

days, eating up everything Agnes had in the icebox and

drinking all the liquor and talking big about the good

things they were going to put youall onto. Agnes said she

never shook the sand out of her beachslippers without

expecting to find one of the twins in it. And they never

came across with any parties either, didn't even bring

around a bottle of scotch once in a while. Agnes was kinder

soft on them because Al made a fuss over her while Ed

was trying to make Margo. One Sunday when they'd all

been lying in the sun on the beach and sopping up cock-

tails all afternoon Ed broke into Margo's room when she

was dressing after they'd come in to change out of their

bathingsuits and started tearing her wrapper off her. She

gave him a poke but he was drunk as a fool and came at her

worse than ever. She had to yell for Tony to come in and

play the heavy husband. Tony was white as a sheet and

trembled all over, but he managed to pick up a chair and

was going to crown Ed with it when Al and Agnes came in

to see what the racket was about. Al stuck by Ed and gave

Tony a poke and yelled that he was a pimp and that they

were a couple of goddam whores. Margo was scared. They

-391-

never would have got them out of the house if Agnes

hadn't gone to the phone and threatened to call the police.

The twins said nothing doing, the police were there to run

women like them out of town, but they got into their

clothes and left and that was the last Margo saw of them.

After they'd gone Tony had a crying fit and said that

he wasn't a pimp and that this life was impossible and that

he'd kill himself if she didn't give him money to go back

to Havana. To get Tony to stay they had to promise to

get out of Miami as soon as they could. "Now, Tony, you

know you want to go to California," Agnes kept saying

and petting him like a baby. "Sandflies are getting too bad

on the beach anyway," said Margo. She went down in the

livingroom and shook up another cocktail for them all.

"The bottom's dropped out of this dump. Time to pull

out," she said. "I'm through."

It was a sizzling hot day when they piled the things in

the Buick and drove off up U.S. I with Tony, not in his

uniform but in a new waspwaisted white linen suit, at the

wheel. The Buick was so piled with bags and household

junk there was hardly room for Agnes in the back seat.

Tony's guitar was slung from the ceiling. Margo's ward-

robetrunk was strapped on behind. "My goodness," said

Agnes when she came back from the restroom of the fill-

ingstation in West Palm Beach where they'd stopped for

gas, "we look like a traveling tentshow."

Between them they had about a hundred dollars in cash

that Margo had turned over to Agnes to keep in her black

handbag. The first day Tony would talk about nothing but

the hit he'd make in the movies. "If Valentino can do it,

it will be easy for me," he'd say, craning his neck to see his

clear brown profile in the narrow drivingmirror at the top

of the windshield.

At night they stopped in touristcamps, all sleeping in

one cabin to save money, and ate out of cans. Agnes loved

it. She said it was like the old days when they were on the

-392-

Keith circuit and Margo was a child actress. Margo said

child actress hell, it made her feel like an old crone.

Towards afternoon Tony would complain of shooting pains

in his wrists and Margo would have to drive.

Along the gulf coast of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisi-

ana the roads were terrible. It was a relief when they got

into Texas, though the weather there was showery. They

thought they never would get across the state of Texas,

though. Agnes said she didn't know there was so much

alfalfa in the world. In El Paso they had to buy two new

tires and get the brakes fixed. Agnes began to look worried

when she counted over the roll of bills in her purse. The

last couple of days across the desert to Yuma they had

nothing to eat but one can of baked beans and a bunch of

frankfurters. It was frightfully hot but Agnes wouldn't

even let them get Coca-Cola at the dustylooking drugstores

in the farbetween little towns because she said they had to

save every cent if they weren't going to hit Los Angeles,

deadbroke. As they were wallowing along in the dust of

the unfinished highway outside of Yuma, a shinylooking

S. P. expresstrain passed them, big new highshouldered

locomotive, pullmancars, diner, clubcar with girls and men

in light suits lolling around on the observation platform.

The train passed slowly and the colored porters leaning

out from the pullmans grinned and waved. Margo remem-

bered her trips to Florida in a drawingroom and sighed.

"Don't worry, Margie," chanted Agnes from the back seat.

"We're almost there.""But where? Where? That's what

I want to know," said Margo, with tears starting into her

eyes. The car went over a bump that almost broke the

springs. "Never mind," said Tony, "when I make the ori-

entations I shall be making thousands a week and we shall.

travel in a private car."

In Yuma they had to stop in the hotel because the camps

were all full and that set them back plenty. They were all

in, the three of them, and Margo woke up in the night

-393-

in a high fever from the heat and dust and fatigue. In

the morning the fever was gone, but her eyes were puffed

up and red and she looked a sight. Her hair needed wash-

ing and was stringy and dry as a handful of tow.

The next day they were too tired to enjoy it when they

went across the high fragrant mountains and came out into

the San Bernardino valley full of wellkept fruittrees,

orangegroves that still had a few flowers on them, and

coolsmelling irrigation ditches. In San Bernardino Margo

said she'd have to have her hair washed if it was the last

thing she did on this earth. They still had twentyfive

dollars that Agnes had saved out of the housekeeping

money in Miami, that she hadn't said anything about.

While Margo and Agnes went to a beautyparlor, they

gave Tony a couple of dollars to go around and get the

car washed. That night they had a regular fiftycent dinner

in a restaurant and went to a movingpicture show. They

slept in a nice roomy cabin on the road to Pasadena in a

camp the woman at the beautyparlor had told them about,

and the next morning they set out early before the white

clammy fog had lifted.

The road was good and went between miles and miles

of orangegroves. By the time they got to Pasadena the sun

had come out and Agnes and Margo declared it was the

loveliest place they'd ever seen in their lives. Whenever

they passed a particularly beautiful residence Tony would

point at it with his finger and say that was where they'd

live as soon as he had made the orientations.

They saw signs pointing to Hollywood, but somehow

they got through the town without noticing it, and drew

up in front of a small rentingofficc in Santa Monica. All

the furnished bungalows the man had listed were too

expensive and the man insisted on a month's rent in ad-

vance, so they drove on. They ended up in a dusty stucco

bungalow court in the outskirts of Venice where the man

seemed impressed by the blue Buick and the wardrobe-

-394-

trunk and let them take a place with only a week paid in

advance. Margo thought it was horrid but Agnes was in

the highest spirits. She said Venice reminded her of Hol-

land's in the old days. "That's what gives me the sick,"

said Margo. Tony went in and collapsed on the couch and

Margo had to get the neighbors to help carry in the bags

and wardrobetrunk. They lived in that bungalow court for

more months than Margo ever liked to admit even at the

time.

Margo registered at the agency as Margo de Garrido.

She got taken on in society scenes as extra right away on

account of her good clothes and a kind of a way of wearing

them she had that she'd picked up at old Piquot's. Tony

sat in the agency and loafed around outside the gate of any

studio where there was a Spanish or South American pic-

ture being cast, wearing a broadbrimmed Cordoba hat he'd

bought at a costumer's and tightwaisted trousers and some-

times cowboy boots and spurs, but the one thing there

always seemed to be enough of was Latin types. He turned

morose and peevish and took to driving the car around

filled up with simpering young men he'd picked up, until

Margo put her foot down and said it was her car and

nobody else's, and not to bring his fagots around the house

either. He got sore at that and walked out, but Agnes, who

did the housekeeping and handled all the money Margo

brought home, wouldn't let him have any pocketmoney

until he'd apologized. Tony was away two days and came

back looking hungry and hangdog.

After that Margo made him wear the old chauffeur's

uniform when he drove her to the lot. She knew that if he

wore that he wouldn't go anywhere after he'd left her

except right home to change and then Agnes could take the

car key. Margo would come home tired from a long day

on the lot to find that he'd been hanging round the house

all day strumming It Ain't Gonna Rain No More on his

guitar, and sleeping and yawning on all the beds and

-395-

dropping cigaretteashes everywhere. He said Margo had

ruined his career. What she hated most about him was the

way he yawned.

One Sunday, after they had been three years in the out-

skirts of L. A., moving from one bungalow to another,

Margo getting on the lots fairly consistently as an extra,

but never getting noticed by a director, managing to put

aside a little money to pay the interest but never getting

together enough in a lump sum to bail out her jewelry at

the bank in Miami, they had driven up to Altadena in the

afternoon; on the way back they stopped at a garage to

get a flat fixed; out in front of the garage there were some

secondhand cars for sale. Margo walked up and down look-

ing at them to have something to do while they were

waiting. "You wouldn't like a Rolls-Royce, would you,

lady?" said the garage attendant kind of kidding as he

pulled the jack out from under the car. Margo climbed

into the big black limousine with a red coatofarms on the

door and tried the seat. It certainly was comfortable. She

leaned out and said, "How much is it?""One thousand

dollars . . . it's a gift at the price.""Cheap at half the

price," said Margo. Agnes had gotten out of the Buick and

come over. "Are you crazy, Margie?"

"Maybe," said Margo and asked how much they'd allow

her if she traded in the Buick. The attendant called the

boss, a toadfaced young man with a monogram on his silk

shirt. He and Margo argued back and forth for an hour

about the price. Tony tried driving the car and said it ran

like a dream. He was all pepped up at the idea of driv-

ing a Rolls, even an old one. In the end the man took

the Buick and five hundred dollars in tendollar weekly

payments. They signed the contract then and there, Margo

gave Judge Cassidy's and Tad Whittlesea's names as ref-

erences; they changed the plates and drove home that

night in the Rolls-Royce to Santa Monica where they were

living at the time. As they turned into Santa Monica

-396-

Boulevard at Beverly Hills, Margo said carelessly, " Tony,

isn't that mailed hand holding a sword very much like the

coatofarms of the Counts de Garrido?""These people

out here are so ignorant they wouldn't know the differ-

ence," said. Tony. "We'll just leave it there," said Margo.

"Sure," said Tony, "it looks good."

The other extras surely stared when Tony in his trim

grey uniform drove her down to the lot next day, but

Margo kept her pokerface. "It's just the old family bus,"

she said when a girl asked her about it. "It's been in hock."

"Is that your mother?" the girl asked again, pointing with

her thumb at Agnes who was driving away sitting up

dressed in her best black in the back of the huge shiny

car with her nose in the air. "Oh, no," said Margo coldly.

"That's my companion."

Plenty of men tried to date Margo up, but they were

mostly extras or cameramen or propertymen or carpenters

and she and Agnes didn't see that it would do her any

good to mix up with them. It was a lonely life after all the

friends and the guys crazy about her and the business deals

and everything in Miami. Most nights she and Agnes just

played Russian bank or threehanded bridge if Tony was

in and not too illtempered to accommodate. Sometimes

they went to the movies or to the beach if it was warm

enough. They drove out through the crowds on Holly-

wood Boulevard nights when there was an opening at

Grauman's Chinese Theater. The Rolls looked so fancy

and Margo still had a good eveningdress not too far out

of style so that everybody thought they were filmstars.

One dusty Saturday afternoon in midwinter Margo was

feeling particularly desperate because styles had changed

so she couldn't wear her old dresses any more and didn't

have any money for new; she jumped up from her seat

knocking the pack of solitaire cards onto the floor and

shouted to Agnes that she had to have a little blowout or

she'd go crazy. Agnes said why didn't they drive to Palm

-397-

Springs to see the new resort hotel. They'd eat dinner

there if it wouldn't set them back too much and then spend

the night at a touristcamp down near the Salton Sea. Give

them a chance to get the chill of the Los Angeles fog out

of their bones.

When they got to Palm Springs Agnes thought every-

thing looked too expensive and wanted to drive right on,

but Margo felt in her element right away. Tony was in his

uniform and had to wait for them in the car. He looked

so black in the face Margo thought he'd burst when she

told him to go and get himself some supper at a dog-

wagon, but he didn't dare answer back because the doorman

was right there.

They'd been to the ladies' room to freshen their faces

up and were walking up and down under the big date-

palms looking at the people to see if they could recognize

any movie actors, when Margo heard a voice that was

familiar. A dark thinfaced man in white serge who was

chatting with an importantlooking baldheaded Jewish gen-

tleman was staring at her. He left his friend and came up.

He had a stiff walk like an officer reviewing a company

drawn up at attention. "Miss Dowling," he said, "how

very lucky for both of us." Margo looked smiling into

the twitching sallow face with dark puffs under the eyes.

"You're the photographer," she said.

He stared at her hard. " Sam Margolies," he said.

"Well, I've searched all over America and Europe for

you. . . . Please be in my office for a screentest at ten

o'clock tomorrow. . . . Irwin will give you the details."

He waved his hand lackadaisically towards the fat man.

"Meet Mr. Harris . . . Miss Dowling . . . forgive me,

I never take upon myself the responsibility of introducing

people. . . . But I want Irwin to see you . . . this is one

of the most beautiful women in America, Irwin." He

drew his hand down in front of Margo a couple of inches

from her face working the fingers as if he were modeling

-398-

something out of clay, "Ordinarily it would be impossibli

to photograph her. Only I can put that face on the

screen. . . ." Margo felt cold all up her spine. She heard

Agnes's mouth come open with a gasp behind her. She

let a slow kidding smile start in the corners of her mouth.,

"Look, Irwin," cried Margolies, grabbing the fat man by

the shoulder. "It is the spirit of comedy. . . . But why

didn't you come to see me?" He spoke with a strong for-

eign accent of some kind. "What have I done that you

should neglect me?"

Margo looked bored. "This is Mrs. Mandeville, my. . .

companion. . . . We are taking a little look at California."

"What's there here except the studios?"

"Perhaps you'd show Mrs. Mandeville around a mov-

ingpicture studio. She's so anxious to see one, and I don't

know a soul in this part of the world . . . not a soul."

"Of course I'll have someone take you to all you care

to see tomorrow. Nothing to see but dullness and vulgar.

ity. . . . Irwin, that's the face I've been looking for for

the little blonde girl . . . you remember. . . . You talk

to me of agencies, extras, nonsense, I don't want actors. . . .

But, Miss Dowling, where have you been? I halfexpected

to meet you at Baden-Baden last summer. . . . You are

the type for Baden-Baden. It's a ridiculous place but one

has to go somewhere. . . . Where have you been?"

" Florida . . . Havana . . . that sort of thing." Margo

was thinking to herself that the last time she met him he

hadn't been using the broad a.

"And you've given up the stage?"

Margo gave a little shrug. "The family were so horrid

about it.""Oh, I never liked her being on the stage," cried

Agnes who'd been waiting for a chance to put a word in.

"You'll like working in pictures," said the fat man sooth-

ingly. "My dear Margo," said Margolies, "it is not a very

large part but you are perfect for it, perfect. I can bring

out in you the latent mystery. . . . Didn't I tell you,

-399-

Irwin, that the thing to do was to go out of the studio and

see the world . . . open the book of life? . . . In this

ridiculous caravanserai we find the face, the spirit of

comedy, the smile of the Mona Lisa. . . . That's a famous

painting in Paris said to be worth five million dollars. . . .

Don't ask me how I knew she would be here. . . . But I

knew. Of course we cannot tell definitely until after the

screentest . . . I never commit myself. . . ."

"But, Mr. Margolies, I don't know if I can do it,"

Margo said, her heart pounding. "We're in a rush. . . .

We have important business to attend to in Miami . . .

family matters, you understand."

"That's of no importance. I'll find you an agent . . .

we'll send somebody. . . . Petty details are of no impor-

tance to me. Realestate, I suppose."

Margo nodded vaguely.

"A couple of years ago the house where we'd been liv-

ing, it was so lovely, was washed clear out to sea," said

Agnes breathlessly.

"You'll get a better house . . . Malibu Beach, Beverly

Hills. . . . I hate houses. . . . But I have been rude, I

have detained you. . . . But you will forget Miami. We

have everything out here. . . . You remember, Margo

dearest, I told you that day that pictures had a great

future . . . you and . . . you know, the great automo-

bile magnate, I have forgotten his name . . . I told you

you would hear of me in the pictures. . . . I rarely make

predictions, but I am never wrong. They are based on

belief in a sixth sense."

"Oh, yes," interrupted Agnes, "it's so true, if you believe

you're going to succeed you can't fail, that's what I tell

Margie . . ."

"Very beautifully said, dear lady. . . . Miss Dowling

darling, Continental Attractions at ten. . . . I'll have

somebody stationed at the gate so that they'll let your

chauffeur drive right to my office. It is impossible to reach

-400-

me by phone. Even Irwin can't get at me when I am work-

ing on a picture. It will be an experience for you to see

me at work."

"Well, if I can manage it and my chauffeur can find the

way."

"You'll come," said Margolies and dragged Irwin

Harris away by one short white flannel arm into the dining-

room. Welldressed people stared after them as they went.

Then they were staring at Margo and Agnes. "Let's go

to the dogwagon and tell Tony. They'll just think we are

eccentric, " whispered Margo in Agnes's ear. "I declare I

never imagined the Margolies was him."

"Oh, isn't it wonderful," said Agnes.

They were so excited they couldn't eat. They drove

back to Santa Monica that night and Margo went straight

to bed so as to be rested for the next morning.

Next morning when they got to the lot at a quarter

of ten Mr. Margolies hadn't sent word. Nobody had

heard of an appointment. They waited half an hour.

Agnes was having trouble keeping back the tears. Margo

was laughing. "I bet that bozo was full of hop or some-

thing and forgot all about it." But she felt sick inside. Tony

had just started the motor and was about to pull away

because Margo didn't like being seen waiting at the gate

like that when a white Pierce Arrow custombuilt towncar

with Margolies all in white flannel with a white beret sit-

ting alone in the back diove up alongside. He was' peering

into the Rolls-Royce and she could see him start with

surprise when he recognized her. He tapped on the window

of his car with a porcelainheaded cane. Then he got out

of his car and reached in and took Margo by the hand.

"I never apologize. . . . It is often necessary for me to

keep people waiting. You will come with me. Perhaps your

friend will call for you at five o'clock. . . . I have much

to tell you and to show you."

They went upstairs in the elevator in a long plainfaced

-401-

building. He ushered her through several offices where

young men in their shirtsleeves were working at drafting-

boards, stenographers were typing, actors were waiting on

benches. " Frieda, a screentest for Miss Dowling right

away, please," he said as he passed a secretary at a big desk

in the last room. Then he ushered her into his own office

hung with Chinese paintings and a single big carved gothic

chair set in the glare of a babyspot opposite a huge carved

gothic desk. "Sit there, please. . . . Margo darling, how

can I explain to you the pleasure of a face unsmirched by

the camera? I can see that there is no strain. . . . You do

not care. Celtic freshness combined with insouciance of

noble Spain. . . . I can see that you've never been before

a camera before. . . . Excuse me." He sank in the deep

chair behind his desk and started telephoning. Every now

and then a stenographer came and took notes that he

recited to her in a low voice. Margo sat and sat. She

thought Margolies had forgotten her. The room was warm

and stuffy and began to make her feel sleepy. She was

fighting to keep her eyes open when Margolies jumped

up from his desk and said, "Come, darling, we'll go down

now."

Margo stood around for a while in front of some cam-

eras in a plasterysmelling room in the basement and then

Margolies took her to lunch at the crowded restaurant on

the lot. She could feel that everybody was looking up from

their plates to see who the new girl was that Margolies

was taking to lunch. While they ate he asked her ques-

tions about her life on a great sugarplantation in Cuba,

and her debutante girlhood in New York. Then he talked

about Carlsbad and Baden-Baden and Marienbad and how

Southern California was getting over its early ridiculous

vulgarity: "We have everything here that you can find

anywhere," he said.

After lunch they went to see the rushes in the projection-

room. Mr. Harris turned up too, smoking a cigar. Nobody

-402-

said anything as they looked at Margo's big grey and white

face, grinning, turning, smirking, mouth opening and clos-

ing, head tossing, eyes rolling. It made Margo feel quite

sick looking at it, though she loved still photographs of

herself. She couldn't get used to its being so big. Now and

then Mr. Harris would grunt and the end of his cigar

would glow red. Margo felt relieved when the film was

over and they were in the dark again. Then the lights were

on and they were filing out of the projectionroom past a

redfaced operator in shirtsleeves who had thrown open the

door to the little black box where the machine was and

gave Margo a look as she passed. Margo couldn't make

out whether he thought she was good or not.

On the landing of the outside staircase Margolies put

out his hand coldly and said, "Goodby, dearest Margo. . . .

There are a hundred people waiting for me." Margo

thought it was all off. Then he went on, "You and Irwin

will make the business arrangements . . . I have no un-

derstanding of those matters. . . . I'm sure you'll have a

very pleasant afternoon."

He turned back into the projectionroom swinging his

cane as he went. Mr. Harris explained that Mr. Margolies

would let her know when he wanted her and that mean-

while they would work out the contract. Did she have

an agent? If she didn't he would recommend that they call

in his friend Mr. Hardbein to protect her interests.

When she got into the office with Mr. Harris sitting

across the desk from her and Mr. Hardbein, a hollow-

faced man with a tough kidding manner, sitting beside her,

she found herself reading a threeyear contract at three

hundred a week. "Oh, dear," she said, "I'm afraid I'd be

awfully tired of it after that length of time. . . . Do you

mind if I ask my companion Mrs. Mandeville to come

around? . . . I'm so ignorant about these things." Then

she called up Agnes and they fiddled around talking about

the weather until Agnes got there.

-403-

Agnes was wonderful. She talked about commitments

and important business to be transacted and an estate to

care for, and said that at that figure it would not be worth

Miss Dowling's while to give up her world cruise, would

it, darling, if she appeared in the picture anyway it was

only to accommodate an old friend Mr. Margolies and of

course Miss Dowling had always made sacrifices for her

work, and that she herself made sacrifices for it and if

necessary would work her fingers to the bone to give her

a chance to have the kind of success she believed in and

that she knew she would have because if you believed with

an unsullied heart God would bring things about the way

they ought to be. Agnes went on to talk about how awful

unbelief was and at five o'clock just as the office was closing

they went out to the car with a contract for three months

at five hundred a week in Agnes's handbag. "I hope the

stores are still open," Margo was saying. "I've got to have

some clothes."

A toughlooking greyfaced man in ridingclothes with

light tow hair was sitting in the front seat beside Tony.

Margo and Agnes glared at the flat back of his head as

they got into the car. "Take us down to Tasker and Hard-

ing's on Hollywood Boulevard . . . the Paris Gown

Shop," Agnes said. "Oh, goody, it'll be lovely to have

you have some new clothes," she whispered in Margo's ear.

When Tony let the stranger off at the corner of Holly-

wood and Sunset, he bowed stiffly and started off up the

broad sidewalk. " Tony, I don't know how many times I've

told you you couldn't pick up your friends in my car,"

began Margo. She and Agnes nagged at him so that when

he got home he was in a passion and said that he was

moving out next day. "You have done nothing but exploit

me and interfere with my career. That was Max Hirsch.

He's an Austrian count and a famous poloplayer." Next

day sure enough Tony packed his things and left the house.

The five hundred a week didn't go as far as Agnes and

-404-

Margo thought it would. Mr. Hardbein the agent took

ten percent of it first thing, then Agnes insisted on deposit-

ing fifty to pay off the loan in Miami so that Margo could

get her jewelry back. Then moving into a new house in the

nice part of Santa Monica cost a lot. There was a cook and

a housemaid's wages to pay and they had to have a chauf

feur now that Tony had gone. And there were clothes

and'a publicityman and all kinds of charities and handouts

around the studio that you couldn't refuse. Agnes was won-

derful. She attended to everything. Whenever any busi-

ness matter came up Margo would press her fingers to the

two sides of her forehead and let her eyes close for a

minute and groan. "It's too bad but I just haven't got a

head for business."

It was Agnes who picked out the new house, a Puerto

Rican cottage with the cutest balconies, jampacked with

antique Spanish furniture. In the evening Margo sat in

an easychair in the big livingroom in front of an open

fire playing Russian bank with Agnes. They got a few

invitations from actors and people Margo met on the lot,

but Margo said she wasn't going out until she found out

what was what in this town. "First thing you know we'll

be going around with a bunch of bums who'll do us more

harm than good.""How true that is," sighed Agnes.

"Like those awful twins in Miami."

They didn't see anything of Tony until, one Sunday

night that Sam Margolies was coming to the house for the

first time, he turned up drunk at about six o'clock and

said that he and Max Hirsch wanted to start a polo school

and that he had to have a thousand dollars right away.

"But, Tony," said Agnes, "where's Margie going to get

it? . . . You know just as well as I do how heavy our

expenses are." Tony made a big scene, stormed and cried

and said Agnes and Margo had ruined his stage career

and that now they were out to ruin his career in pictures.

-405-

"I have been too patient," he yelled, tapping himself on

the chest. "I have let myself be ruined by women."

Margo kept looking at the clock on the mantel. It was

nearly seven. She finally shelled out twentyfive bucks and

told him to come back during the week. "He's hitting the

hop again," she said after he'd gone. "He'll go crazy one

of these days.""Poor boy," sighed Agnes, "he's not a bad

boy, only weak."

"What I'm scared of is that that heinie'll get hold of

him and make us a lot of trouble. . . . That bird had a

face like state's prison . . . guess the best thing to do is

get a lawyer and start a divorce.""But think of the pub-

licity," wailed Agnes. "Anyway," said Margo, " Tony's

got to pass out of the picture. I've taken all I'm going to

take from that greaser."

Sam Margolies came an hour late. "How peaceful," he

was saying. "How can you do it in delirious Hollywood?"

"Why, Margie's just a quiet little workinggirl," said

Agnes, picking up her sewingbasket and starting to sidle

out. He sat down in the easychair without taking off his

white beret and stretched out his bowlegs towards the fire.

"I hate the artificiality of it.""Don't you now?" said

Agnes from the door.

Margo offered him a cocktail but he said he didn't drink.

When the maid brought out the dinner that Agnes had

worked on all day he wouldn't eat anything but toast and

lettuce. "I never eat or drink at mealtimes. I come only

to look and to talk.""That's why you've gotten so thin,"

kidded Margo. "Do you remember the way I used to be in

those old days? My New York period. Let's not talk about

it. I have no memory. I live only in the present. Now

I am thinking of the picture you are going to star in. I

never go to parties but you must come with me to Irwin

Harris's tonight. There will be people there you'll have

'to know. Let me see your dresses. I'll pick out what you

bught to wear. After this you must always let me come

-406-

when you buy a dress." Following her up the creaking

stairs to her bedroom he said, "We must have a different

setting for you. This won't do. This is suburban."

Margo felt funny driving out through the avenues of

palms of Beverly Hills sitting beside Sam Margolies.

He'd made her put on the old yellow eveningdress she'd

bought at Piquot's years ago that Agnes had recently had

done over and lengthened by a little French dressmaker

she'd found in Los Angeles. Her hands were cold and she

was afraid Margolies would hear her heart knocking

against her ribs. She tried to think of something funny to

say but what was the use, Margolies never laughed. She

wondered what he was thinking. She could see his face, the

narrow forehead under his black bang, the pouting lips,

the beaklike profile very dark against the streetlights as

he sat stiffly beside her with his hands on his knees. He still

had on his white flannels and a white stock with a diamond

pin in it in the shape of a golfclub. As the car turned into

a drive towards a row of bright tall frenchwindows through

the trees he turned to her and said, "You are afraid you

will be bored. . . . You'll be surprised. You'll find we

have something here that matches the foreign and New

York society you are accustomed to." As he turned his face

towards her the light glinted on the whites of his eyes

and sagging pouches under them and the wet broad lips.

He went on whispering squeezing her hand as he helped

her out of the car. "You will be the most elegant woman

there but only as one star is brighter than the other stars."

Going into the door past the butler Margo caught her-

self starting to giggle. "How you do go on," she said.

"You talk like a . . . like a genius.""That's what they

call me," said Margolies in a loud voice drawing his shoul-

ders back and standing stiffly at attention to let her go

past him through the large glass doors into the vestibule.

The worst of it was going into the dressingroom to take

off her wraps. The women who were doing their faces and

-407-

giving a last pat to their hair all turned and gave her a

quick onceover that started at her slippers, ran up her

stockings, picked out every hook and eye of her dress, ran

round her neck to see if it was wrinkled and up into her

hair to see if it was dyed. At once she knew that she ought

to have an ermine wrap. There was one old dame standing

smoking a cigarette by the lavatory door in a dress all

made of cracked ice who had xray eyes; Margo felt

her reading the pricetag on her stepins. The colored

maid gave Margo a nice toothy grin as she laid Margo's

coat over her arm that made her feel better. When she

went out she felt the stares clash together on her back

and hang there like a tin can on a dog's tail. Keep a stiff

upper lip, they can't eat you, she was telling herself as the

door of the ladies' room closed behind her. She wished

Agnes was there to tell her how lovely everybody was.

Margolies was waiting for her in the vestibule full of

sparkly chandeliers. There was an orchestra playing and

they were dancing in a big room. He took her to the fire-

place at the end. Irwin Harris and Mr. Hardbein who

looked as alike as a pair of eggs in their tight dress suits

came up and said goodevening. Margolies gave them each

a hand without looking at them and sat down by the fire-

place with his back to the crowd in a big carved chair like

the one he had in his office. Mr. Harris asked her to dance

with him. After that it was like any other collection of

dressedup people. At least until she found herself dancing

with Rodney Cathcart.

She recognized him at once from the pictures, but it was

a shock to find that his face had color in it, and that there

was warm blood and muscle under his rakish eveningdress.

He was a tall tanned young man with goldfishyellow hair

and an English way of mumbling his words. She'd felt

cold and shivery until she started to dance with him. After

he'd danced with her once he asked her to dance with him

again. Between dances he led her to the buffet at the end

-408-

of the room and tried to get her to drink. She held a

scotch and soda in a big blue glass each time and just sipped

it while he drank down a couple of scotches straight and

ate a large plate of chicken salad. He seemed a little drunk

but he didn't seem to be getting any drunker. He didn't

say anything so she didn't say anything either. She loved

dancing with him.

Every now and then when they danced round the end of

the room she caught sight of the whole room in the huge

mirror over the fireplace. Once when she got just the right

angle she thought she saw Margolies' face staring at her

from out of the carved highbacked chair that faced the

burning logs. He seemed to be staring at her attentively.

The firelight playing on his face gave it a warm lively

look she hadn't noticed on it before. Immediately blond

heads, curly heads, bald heads, bare shoulders, black shoul-

ders got in her way and she lost sight of that corner of the

room.

It must have been about twelve o'clock when she found

him standing beside the table where the scotch was. "Hello,

Sam," said Rodney Cathcart. "How's every little thing?"

"We must go now, the poor child is tired in all this

noise. . . . Rodney, you must let Miss Dowling go now."

"O.K., pal," said Rodney Cathcart and turned his back to

pour himself another glass of scotch.

When Margo came back from getting her wraps she

found Mr. Hardbein waiting for her in the vestibule. He

bowed as he squeezed her hand. "Well, I don't mind tell-

ing you, Miss Dowling, that you made a sensation. The

girls are all asking what you use to dye your hair with."

A laugh rumbled down into his broad vest. "Would you

come by my office? We might have a bite of lunch and talk

things over a bit." Margo gave a little shudder. "It's sweet

of you, Mr. Hardbein, but I never go to offices . . . I

don't understand business. . . . You call us up, won't

you?"

-409-

When she got out to the colonial porch there was Rod-

ney Cathcart sitting beside Margolies in the long white

car. Margo grinned and got in between them as cool as if

she'd expected to find Rodney Cathcart there all the while.

The car drove off. Nobody said anything. She couldn't tell

where they were going, the avenues of palms and the

strings of streetlamps all looked alike. They stopped at

a big restaurant. "I thought we'd better have a little

snack. . . . You didn't eat anything all evening," Mar-

golies said, giving her hand a squeeze as he helped her out

of the car. "That's the berries," said Rodney Cathcart

who'd hopped out first. "This dawncing makes a guy

beastly 'ungry."

The headwaiter bowed almost to the ground and led

them through the restaurant full of eyes to a table that

had been reserved for them on the edge of the dancefloor.

Margolies ate shreddedwheat biscuits and milk, Rodney

Cathcart ate a steak and Margo took on the end of her

fork a few pieces of a lobsterpatty. "A blighter needs a

drink after that," grumbled Rodney Cathcart, pushing back

his plate after polishing off the last fried potato. Margolies

raised two fingers. "Here it is forbidden. . . . How silly

we are in this country. . . . How silly they are." He

rolled his eyes towards Margo. She caught a wink in time

to make it just a twitch of the eyelid and gave him that

slow stopped smile he'd made such a fuss over at Palm

Springs. Margolies got to his feet. "Come, Margo darling

I have something to show you." As she and Rodney

Cathcart followed him out across the red carpet she could

feel ripples of excitement go through the people in the

restaurant the way she'd felt it when she went places in

Miami after Charley Anderson had been killed.

Margolies drove them to a big creamcolored apartment-

house. They went up in an elevator. He opened a door

with a latchkey and ushered them in. "This," he said, "in

my little bachelor flat."

-410-

It was a big dark room with a balcony at the end hung

with embroideries. The walls were covered with all kinds

of oilpaintings each lit by a little overhead light of its own.

There were oriental rugs piled one on the other on the

floor and couches round the walls covered with zebra and

lion skins. "Oh, what a wonderful place," said Margo.

Margolies turned to her, smiling. "A bit baronial, eh? The

sort of thing you're accustomed to see in the castle of a

Castilian grandee.""Absolutely," said Margo. Rodney

Cathcart lay down full length on one of the couches. "Say,

Sam old top," he said, "have you got any of that good

Canadian ale? 'Ow about a little Guinness in it?"

Margolies went out into a pantry and the swinging door

closed behind him. Margo roamed around looking at the

brightcolored pictures and the shelves of wriggling Chinese

figures. It made her feel spooky.

"Oh, I say," Rodney Cathcart called from the couch.

"Come over here, Margo. . . . I like you. . . . You've

got to call me Si. . . . My friends call me that. It's more

American.""All right by me," said Margo, sauntering

towards the couch. Rodney Cathcart put out his hand. "Put

it there, pal," he said. When she-put her hand in his he

grabbed it and tried to pull her towards him on the couch.

"Wouldn't you like to kiss me, Margo?" He had a terrific

grip. She could feel how strong he was.

Margolies came back with a tray with bottles and glasses

and set it on an ebony stand near the couch. "This is where

I do my work," he said. "Genius is helpless without the

proper environment. . . . Sit there." He pointed to the

couch where Cathcart was lying. "I shot that lion myself.

. . . Excuse me a moment." He went up the stairs to the

balcony and a light went on up there. Then a door closed

and the light was cut off. The only light in the room was

over the pictures. Rodney Cathcart sat up on the edge of

the couch. "For crissake, sister, drink something. . . ."

Margo started to titter. "All right, Si, you can give me a

-411-

spot of gin," she said and sat down beside him on the

couch.

He was attractive. She found herself letting him kiss

her but right away his hand was working up her leg and

she had to get up and walk over to the other side of the

room to look at the pictures again. "Oh, don't be silly," he

sighed, letting himself drop back on the couch.

There was no sound from upstairs. Margo began to get

the jeebies wondering what Margolies was doing up there.

She went back to the couch to get herself another spot of

gin and Rodney Cathcart jumped up all of a sudden and

put his arms around her from behind and bit her ear.

"Quit that caveman stuff," she said, standing still. She

didn't want to wrestle with him for fear he'd muss her

dress. "That's me," he whispered in her ear. "I find you

most exciting."

Margolies was standing in front of them with some

papers in his hand. Margo wondered how long he'd been

there. Rodney Cathcart let himself drop back on the couch

and closed his eyes. "Now sit down, Margo darling,"

Margolies was saying in an even voice. "I want to tell you

a story. See if it awakens anything in you." Margo felt

herself flushing. Behind her Rodney Cathcart was giving

long deep breaths as if he were asleep.

"You are tired of the giddy whirl of the European

capitals," Margolies was saying. "You are the daughter of

an old armyofficer. Your mother is dead. You go every-

where, dances, dinners, affairs. Proposals are made for

your hand. Your father is a French or perhaps a Spanish

general. His country calls him. He is to be sent to Africa

to repel the barbarous Moors. He wants to leave you in

a convent but you insist on going with him. You are fol-

lowing this?"

"Oh, yes," said Margo eagerly. "She'd stow away on

the ship to go with him to the war."

"On the same boat there's a young American collegeboy

-412-

who has run away to join the foreign legion. We'll get the

reason later. That'll be your friend Si. You meet. . . .

Everything is lovely between you. Your father is very ill.

By this time you are in a mud fort besieged by natives,

howling bloodthirsty savages. Si breaks through the block-

ade to get the medicine necessary to save your father's life.

. . . On his return he's arrested as a deserter. You rush

to Tangier to get the American consul to intervene. Your

father's life is saved. You ride back just in time to beat

the firingsquad. Si is an American citizen and is decorated.

The general kisses him on both cheeks and hands his lovely

daughter over into his strong arms. . . . I don't want

you to talk about this now. . . . Let it settle deep into

your mind. Of course it's only a rudimentary sketch. The

story is nonsense but it affords the director certain oppor-

tunities. I can see you risking all, reputation, life itself to

save the man you love. Now I'll take you home. . . .

Look, Si's asleep. He's just an animal, a brute blond beast."

When Margolies put her wrap around her he let his

hands rest for a moment on her shoulders. "There's

another thing I want you to let sink into your heart . . .

not your intelligence . . . your heart. . . . Don't answer

me now. Talk it over with your charming companion. A

little later, when we have this picture done I want you

to marry me. I am free. Years ago in another world I had

a wife as men have wives but we agreed to misunderstand

and went our ways. Now I shall be too busy. You have

no conception of the intense detailed work involved. When

I am directing a picture I can think of nothing else, but

when the creative labor is over,. in three months' time

perhaps, I want you to marry me. . . . Don't reply now."

They didn't say anything as he sat beside her on the

way home to Santa Monica driving slowly through the

thick white clammy morning mist. When the car drove

up to her door she leaned over and tapped him on the

-413-

cheek. "Sam," she said, "you've given me the loveliest

evening."

Agnes was all of a twitter about where she'd been so

late. She was walking around in her dressinggown and

had the lights on all over the house. "I had a vague brood-

ing feeling after you'd left, Margie. So I called up

Madame Esther to ask her what she thought. She had a

message for me from Frank. You know she said last time

he was trying to break through unfortunate influences."

"Oh, Agnes, what did it say?""It said success is in your

grasp, be firm. Oh, Margie, you've just got to marry him.

. . . That's what Frank's been trying to tell us.""Jiminy

crickets," said Margo, falling on her bed when she got

upstairs, "I'm all in. Be a darling and hang up my clothes

for me, Agnes."

Margo was too excited to sleep. The room was too light.

She kept seeing the light red through her eyelids. She

must get her sleep. She'd look a sight if she didn't get

her sleep. She called to Agnes to bring her an aspirin.

Agnes propped her up in bed with one hand and gave

her the glass of water to wash the aspirin down with the

other; it was like when she'd been a little girl and Agnes

used to give her medicine when she was sick. Then sud-

denly she was dreaming that she was just finishing the

Everybody's Doing It number and the pink cave of faces

was roaring with applause and she ran off into the wings

where Frank Mandeville was waiting for her in his black

cloak with his arms stretched wide open, and she ran into

his arms and the cloak closed about her and she was down

with the cloak choking her and he was on top of her claw-

ing at her dress and past his shoulder she could see Tony

laughing, Tony all in white with a white beret and a

diamond golfclub on his stock jumping up and down and

clapping. It must have been her yelling that brought

Agnes. No, Agnes was telling her something. She sat up

in bed shuddering. Agnes was all in a fluster. "Oh, it's

-414-

dreadful. Tony's down there. He insists on seeing you,

Margie. He's been reading in the papers. You know it's

all over the papers about how you are starring with

Rodney Cathcart in Mr. Margolies' next picture. Tony's

wild. He says he's your husband and he ought to attend

to your business for you. He says he's got a legal right."

"The little rat," said Margo. "Bring him up here. . . .

What time is it?" She jumped out of bed and ran to the

dressingtable to fix her face. When she heard them com-

ing up the stairs she pulled on her pink lace bedjacket and

jumped back into bed. She was very sleepy when Tony

came in the room. "What's the trouble, Tony?" she said.

"I'm starving and here you are making three thousand

a week. . . . Yesterday Max and I had no money for

dinner. We are going to be put out of our apartment. By

rights everything you make is mine. . . . I've been too

soft . . . I've let myself be cheated."

Margo yawned. "We're not in Cuba, dearie." She sat

up in bed. "Look here, Tony, let's part friends. The con-

tract isn't signed yet. Suppose when it is we fix you up a

little so that you and your friend can go and start your

polo school in Havana. The trouble with you is you're

homesick."

"Wouldn't that be wonderful," chimed in Agnes. " Cuba

would be just the place . . . with all the tourists going.

down there and everything."

Tony drew himself up stiffly. "Margo, we are Chris-

tians. We believe. We know that the church forbids di-

vorce. . . . Agnes she doesn't understand."

"I'm a lot better Christian than you are . . . you know

that you . . ." began Agnes shrilly.

"Now, Agnes, we can't argue about religion before

breakfast." Margo sat up and drew her knees up to her

chin underneath the covers. " Agnes and I believe that

Mary Baker Eddy taught the truth, see, Tony. Sit down

here, Tony. . . . You're getting too fat, Tony, the boys

-415-

won't like you if you lose your girlish figure. . . . Look

here, you and me we've seen each other through some

tough times." He sat on the bed and lit a cigarette. She

stroked the spiky black hair off his forehead. "You're not

going to try to gum the game when I've got the biggest

break I ever had in my life."

"I been a louse. I'm no good," Tony said. "How about

a thousand a month? That's only a third of what you

make. You'll just waste it. Women don't need money."

"Like hell they don't. You know it costs money to make

money in this business."

"All right . . . make it five hundred. I don't under-

stand the figures, you know that. You know I'm only a

child."

"Well, I don't either. You and Agnes go downstairs

and talk it over while I get a bath and get dressed. I've

got a dressmaker coming and I've got to have my hair

done. I've got about a hundred appointments this after-

noon. . . . Good boy, Tony." She patted him on the

cheek and he went away with Agnes meek as a lamb.

When Agnes came upstairs again after Margo had had

her bath, she said crossly, " Margie, we ought to have di-

vorced Tony long ago. This German who's got hold of

him is a bad egg. You know how Mr. Hays feels about

scandals."

"I know I've been a damn fool."

"I've got to ask Frank about this. I've got an appoint-

ment with Madame Esther this afternoon. Frank might

tell us the name of a reliable lawyer."

"We can't go to Vardaman. He's Mr. Hardbein's law-

yer and Sam's lawyer too. A girl sure is a fool ever to put

anything in writing."

The phone rang. It was Mr. Hardbein calling up about

the contract. Margo sent Agnes down to the office to talk

to him. All afternoon, standing there in front of the long

pierglass while the dressmaker fussed around her with her

-416-

mouth full of pins she was worrying about what to do.

When Sam came around at five to see the new dresses

her hair was still in the dryer. "How attractive you look

with your head in that thing," Sam said, "and the lacy

negligee and the little triangle of Brussels lace between

your knees. . . . I shall remember it. I have total recall

I never forget anything I've seen. That is the secret of

visual imagination."

When Agnes came back for her in the Rolls she had

trouble getting away from Sam. He wanted to take them

wherever they were going in his own car. "You must have

no secrets from me, Margo darling," he said gently. "You

will see I understand everything . . . everything. . . .

I know you better than you know yourself. That's why I

know I can direct you. I have studied every plane of your

face and of your beautiful little girlish soul so full of

desire. . . . Nothing you do can surprise or shock me."

"That's good," said Margo.

He went away sore.

"Oh, Margie, you oughtn't to treat Mr. Margolies like

that," whined Agnes.

"I can do without him better than he can do without

me," said Margo. "He's got to have a new star. They say

he's pretty near on the skids anyway.""Mr. Hardbein

says that's just because he's fired his publicityman," said

Agnes.

It was late when they got started. Madame Esther's

house was way downtown in a dilapidated part of Los

Angeles. They had the chauffeur let them out two blocks

from the house and walked to it down an alley between

dusty bungalow courts like the places they'd lived in when

they first came out to the coast years ago. Margo nudged

Agnes. "Remind you of anything?" Agnes turned to her,

frowning. "We must only remember the pleasant beautiful

things, Margie."

Madame Esther's house was a big old frame house with

-417-

wide porches and cracked shingle roofs. The blinds were

drawn on all the grimy windows. Agnes knocked at a

little groundglass door in back. A thin spinsterish woman

with grey bobbed hair opened it immediately. "You are

late," she whispered. "Madame's in a state. They don't

like to be kept waiting. It'll be difficult to break the chain."

"Has she had anything from Frank?" whispered Agnes.

"He's very angry. I'm afraid he won't answer again. . . .

Give me your hand."

The woman took Agnes's hand and Agnes took Margo's

hand and they went in single file down a dark passageway

that had only a small red bulb burning in it, and through

a door into a completely dark room that was full of people

breathing and shuffling.

"I thought it was going to be private," whispered

Margo. "Shush," hissed Agnes in her ear. When her eyes

got accustomed to the darkness she could see Madame

Esther's big puffy face swaying across a huge round table

and faint blurs of other faces around it. They made way

for Agnes and Margo and Margo found herself sitting

down with somebody's wet damp hand clasped in hers.

On the table in front of Madame Esther were a lot of

little pads of white paper. Everything was quiet except

for Agnes's heavy breathing next to her.

It seemed hours before anything happened. Then

Margo saw that Madame Esther's eyes were open but all

she could see was the whites. A deep baritone voice was

coming out of her lips talking a language she didn't under-

stand. Somebody in the ring answered in the same lan-

guage, evidently putting questions. "That's Sidi Hassan

the Hindu," whispered Agnes. "He's given some splendid

tips on the stockmarket."

"Silence," yelled Madame Esther in a shrill woman's

voice that almost scared Margo out of her wits. "Frank

is waiting. No, he has been called away. He left a message

that all would be well. He left a message that tomorrow

-418-

he would impart the information the parties desired and

that his little girl must on no account take any step with-

out consulting her darling Agnes."

Agnes burst into hysterical sobs and a hand tapped

Margo on the shoulder. The same greyhaired woman led

them to the back door again. She had some smellingsalts

that she made Agnes sniff. Before she opened the ground-

glass door she said, "That'll be fifty dollars, please.

Twentyfive dollars each. . . . And Madame says that the

beautiful girl must not come any more, it might be dan-

gerous for her, we are surrounded by hostile influences.

But Mrs. Mandeville must come and get the messages.

Nothing can harm her, Madame says, because she has the

heart of a child."

As they stepped out into the dark alley to find that it

was already night and the lights were on everywhere

Margo pulled her fur up round her face so that nobody

could recognize her.

"You see, Margie," Agnes said as they settled back into

the deep seat of the old Rolls, "everything is going to

be all right, with dear Frank watching over us. He means

that you must go ahead and marry Mr. Margolies right

away.""Well, I suppose it's no worse than signing a three-

year contract," said Margo. She told the chauffeur to drive

as fast as he could because Sam was taking her to an open-

ing at Grauman's that night.

When they drove up round the drive to the door, the

first thing they saw was Tony and Max Hirsch sitting on

the marble bench in the garden. "I'll talk to them," said

Agnes. Margo rushed upstairs and started to dress. She

was sitting looking at herself in the glass in her stepins

when Tony rushed into the room. When he got into the

light over the dressingtable she noticed that he had a black

eye. "Taking up the gentle art, eh, Tony?" she said with-

out turning around.

Tony talked breathlessly. "Max blacked my eye be-

-419-

cause I did not want to come. Margo, he will kill me if

you don't give me one thousand dollars. We will not leave

the house till you give us a check and we got to have some

cash too, because Max is giving a party tonight and the

bootlegger will not deliver the liquor until he's paid cash.

Max says you are getting a divorce. How can you? There

is no divorce under the church. It's a sin that I will not

have on my soul. You cannot get a divorce."

Margo got up and turned around to face him. "Hand

me my negligee on the bed there . . . no use catching

my death of cold. . . . Say, Tony, do you think I'm get-

ting too fat? I gained two pounds last week. . . . Look

here, Tony, that squarehead's going to be the ruination

of you. You better cut him out and go away for another

cure somewhere. I'd hate to have the federal dicks get

hold of you on a narcotic charge. They made a big raid

in San Pedro only yesterday."

Tony burst into tears. "You've got to give it to me.

He'll break every bone in my body."

Margo looked at her wristwatch that lay on the dress-

ingtable beside the big powderbox. Eight o'clock. Sam

would be coming by any minute now. "All right," she

said, "but next time this house is going to be guarded by

detectives. . . . Get that," she said. "And any monkey-

business and you birds land in jail. If you think Sam

Margolies can't keep it out of the papers you've got an-

other think coming. Go downstairs and tell Agnes to make

you out a check and give you any cash she has in the

house." Margo went back to her dressing.

A few minutes later Agnes came up crying. "What shall

we do? I gave them the check and two hundred dollars.

. . . Oh, it's awful. Why didn't Frank warn us? I know

he's watching over us but he might have told us what to

do about that dreadful man." Margo went into her dress-

closet and slipped into a brand new eveninggown. "What

we'll do is stop that check first thing in the morning. You

-420-

call up the homeprotection office and get two detectives

out here on day and night duty right away. I'm through,

that's all."

Margo was mad, she was striding up and down the

room in her new white spangly dress with a trimming of

ostrich feathers. She caught sight of herself in the big

triple mirror standing between the beds. She went over

and stood in front of it. She looked at the three views of

herself in the white spangly dress. Her eyes were a flash-

ing blue and her cheeks were flushed. Agnes came up

behind her bringing her the rhinestone band she was going

to wear in her hair. "Oh, Margie," she cried, "you never

looked so stunning."

The maid came up to say that Mr. Margolies was wait-

ing. Margo kissed Agnes and said, "You won't be scared

with the detectives, will you, dearie?" Margo pulled the

ermine wrap that they'd sent up on approval that after-

noon round her shoulders and walked out to the car.

Rodney Cathcart was there lolling in the back seat in his

dressclothes. A set of perfect teeth shone in his long brown

face when he smiled at her. Sam had got out to help her

in, "Margo darling, you take our breaths away, I knew

that was the right dress," he said. His eyes were brighter

than usual. "Tonight's a very important night. It is the

edict of the stars. I'll tell you about it later. I've had our

horoscopes cast."

In the crowded throbbing vestibule Margo and Rodney

Cathcart had to stop at the microphone to say a few words

about their new picture and their association with Sam

Margolies as they went in through the beating glare of

lights and eyes to the lobby. When the master of cere-

monies tried to get Margolies to speak he turned his back

angrily and walked into the theater as if it was empty, not

looking to the right or the left. After the show they went

to a restaurant and sat at a table for a while. Rodney

Cathcart ordered some kidneychops. "You mustn't eat too

-421-

much, Si," said Margolies. "The pièce de résistance is at

my flat."

Sure enough there was a big table set out with cold

salmon and lobstersalad and a Filipino butler opening

champagne for just the three of them when they went

back there after the restaurant had started to thin out.

This time Margo tore loose and ate and drank all she

could hold. Rodney Cathcart put away almost the whole

salmon, muttering that it was topping and even Sam, say-

ing he was sure it would kill him, ate a plate of lobster-

salad.

Margo was dizzygiggly drunk when she found that the

Filipino and Sam Margolies had disappeared and that she

and Si were sitting together on the couch that had the

lionskin on it. "So you're going to marry Sam," said Si,

gulping down a glass of champagne. She nodded. "Good

girl." Si took off his coat and vest and hung them care-

fully on a chair. "Hate clothes," he said. "You must come

to my ranch. . . . Hot stuff.""But you wear them so

beautifully," said Margo. "Correct," said Si.

He reached over and lifted her into his knee. "But,

Si, we oughtn't to, not on Sam's lionskin." Si put his mouth

to hers and kissed her. "You find me exciting? You ought

to see me stripped.""Don't, don't," said Margo. She

couldn't help it, he was too strong, his hands were all over

her under her dress.

"Oh, hell, I don't give a damn," she said. He went

over and got her another glass of champagne. For him-

self he filled a bowl that had held cracked ice earlier in

the evening. "As for that lion it's bloody rot. Sam shot it

but the blighter shot it in a zoo. They were sellin' off

some old ones at one of the bloody lionfarms and they

had a shoot. Couldn't miss 'em. It was a bloody crime."

He drank down the champagne and suddenly jumped at

her. She fell on the couch with his arms crushing her.

She was dizzy. She walked up and down the room

-422-

trying to catch her breath. "Goodnight, hot sketch," Si

said and carefully put on his coat and vest again and was

gone out the door. She was dizzy.

Sam was back and was showing her a lot of calculations

on a piece of paper. His eyes bulged shiny into her face

as she tried to read. His hands were shaking."It's tonight,"

he kept saying, "it's tonight that our lifelines cross. . . .

We are married whether we wish it or not. I don't believe

in freewill. Do you, darling Margo?"

Margo was dizzy. She couldn't say anything. "Come,

dear child, you are tired." Margolies' voice burred sooth-

ingly in her ears. She let him lead her into the bedroom

and carefully take her clothes off and lay her between the

black silk sheets of the big poster bed.

It was broad daylight when Sam drove her back to the

house. The detective outside touched his hat as they turned

into the drive. It made her feel good to see the man's big

pugface as he stood there guarding her house. Agnes was

up and walking up and down in a padded flowered dress-

inggown in the livingroom with a newspaper in her hand.

"Where have you been?" she cried. "Oh, Margie, you'll

ruin your looks if you go on like this and you're just get-

ting a start too. . . . Look at this . . . now don't be

shocked . . . remember it's all for the best."

She handed the Times to Margo, pointing out a head-

line with the sharp pink manicured nail of her forefinger.

"Didn't I tell you Frank was watching over us?"

HOLLYWOOD EXTRA SLAIN AT PARTY

Noted Polo Player Disappears

Sailors Held

Two enlisted men in uniform, George Cook and Fred Cos-

tello, from the battleship Kenesaw were held for questioning

when they were found stupefied with liquor or narcotics in the

basement of an apartment house at 2234 Higueras Drive, San

Pedro, where residents allege a drunken party had been in

-423-

progress all night. Near them was found the body of a young

man whose skull had been fractured by a blow from a blunt

instrument who was identified as a Cuban, Antonio Garrido,

erstwhile extra on several prominent studio lots. He was still

breathing when the police broke in in response to telephoned

complaints from the neighbors. The fourth member of the

party, a German citizen named Max Hirsch, supposed by some

to be an Austrian nobleman, who shared an apartment at

Mimosa in a fashionable bungalow court with the handsome

young Cuban, had fled before police reached the scene of the

tragedy. At an early hour this morning he had not yet been

located by the police.

Margo felt the room swinging in@great circles around

her head. "Oh, my God," she said. Going upstairs she had

to hold tight to the baluster to keep from falling. She

tore off her clothes and ran herself a hot bath and lay

back in it with her eyes closed.

"Oh, Margie," wailed Agnes from the other room,

"your lovely new gown is a wreck."

Margo and Sam Margolies flew to Tucson to be mar-

ried. Nobody was present except Agnes and Rodney

Cathcart. After the ceremony Margolies handed the jus-

tice of the peace a new hundreddollar bill. The going was

pretty bumpy on the way back and the big rattly Ford tri-

motor gave them quite a shakingup crossing the desert.

Margolies' face was all colors under his white beret but

he said it was delightful. Rodney Cathcart and Agnes

vomited frankly into their cardboard containers. Margo

felt her pretty smile tightening into a desperate grin but

she managed to keep the wedding breakfast down. When

the plane came to rest at the airport at last, they kept the

cameramen waiting a half an hour before they could trust

themselves to come down the gangplank flushed and smil-

ing into a rain of streamers and confetti thrown by the

attendants and the whir of the motionpicture cameras.

-424-

Rodney Cathcart had to drink most of a pint of scotch

before he could get his legs not to buckle under him.

Margo wore her smile over a mass of yellow orchids that

had been waiting for her in the refrigerator at the airport,

and Compton looked tickled to death because Sam had bought

her orchids too, lavender ones, and insisted that she stride

down the gangplank into the cameras with the rest of

them.

It was a relief after the glare of the desert and the

lurching of the plane in the airpockets to get back to the

quiet dressingroom at the lot. By three o'clock they were

in their makeup. In a small room in the ground floor

Margolies went right back to work taking closeups of

Margo and Rodney Cathcart in a clinch against the back-

ground of a corner of a mud fort. Si was stripped to the

waist with two cartridgebelts crossed over his chest and

a canvas legionnaire's kepi on his head and Margo was

in a white eveningdress with highheeled satin slippers.

They were having trouble with the clinch on account of

the cartridgebelts. Margolies with his porcelainhandled

cane thrashing in front of him kept strutting back and

forth from the little box he stood on behind the camera

into the glare of the klieg light where Margo and Si

clinched and unclinched a dozen times before they hit a

position that suited him. "My dear Si," he was saying

"you must make them feel it. Every ripple of your muscles

must make them feel passion . . . you are stiff like a

wooden doll. They all love her, a piece of fragile beau-

tiful palpitant womanhood ready to give all for the man

she loves. . . . Margo darling, you faint, you let your-

self go in his arms. If his strong arms weren't there to

catch you you would fall to the ground. Si, my dear fel-

low, you are not an athletic instructor teaching a young

lady to swim, you are a desperate lover facing death. . . .

They all feel they are you, you are loving her for them,

the millions who want love and beauty and excitement,

-425-

but forget them, loosen up, my dear fellow, forget that

I'm here and the camera's here, you are alone together

snatching a desperate moment, you are alone except for

your two beating hearts, you and the most beautiful girl

in the world, the nation's newest sweetheart. . . . All

right. . . . hold it. . . . Camera."

NEWSREEL LXIII

but a few minutes later this false land disappeared as

quickly and as mysteriously as it had come and I found before

me the long stretch of the silent sea with not a single sign of

life in sight

Whippoorwills call

And evening is nigh

I hurry to . . . my blue heaven

LINDBERGH IN PERIL AS WAVE TRAPS HIM IN

CRUISER'S BOW

Down in the Tennessee mountains

Away from the sins of the world

Old Dan Kelly's son there he leaned on his gun

Athinkin' of Zeb Turney's girl

ACCLAIMED BY HUGE CROWDS IN THE STREETS

Snaps Pictures From Dizzy Yardarm

Dan was a hotblooded youngster

His Dad raised him up sturdy an' right

ENTHRALLED BY DARING DEED CITY CHEERS

FROM DEPTHS OF ITS HEART

FLYER SPORTS IN AIR

-426-

His heart in a whirl with his love for the girl

He loaded his doublebarreled gun

LEADERS OF PUBLIC LIFE BREAK INTO

UPROAR AT SIGHT OF FLYER

CONFUSION IN HOTEL

Aviator Nearly Hurled From Auto as it Leaps Forward

Through Gap in Crowd

Over the mountains he wandered

This son of a Tennessee man

With fire in his eye and his gun by his side

Alooking for Zeb Turney's clan

SHRINERS PARADE IN DELUGE OF RAIN

Paper Blizzard Chokes Broadway

Shots ringin' out through the mountain

Shots ringin' out through the breeze

LINDY TO HEAD BIG AIRLINE

The story of Dan Kelly's moonshine

Is spread far and wide o'er the world

How Dan killed the clan shot them down to a man

And brought back old Zeb Turney's girl

a short, partly bald man, his face set in tense emotion, ran

out from a mass of people where he had been concealed and

climbed quickly into the plane as if afraid he might be stopped.

He had on ordinary clothes and a leather vest instead of a coat

He was bareheaded. He crowded down beside Chamberlin

looking neither at the crowd nor at his own wife who stood a

little in front of the plane and at one side, her eyes big with

wonder. The motor roared and the plane started down the

runway, stopped and came back again and then took off per-

fectly

-427-

ARCHITECT

A muggy day in late spring in eighteen eighty-

seven a tall youngster of eighteen with fine eyes and a

handsome arrogant way of carrying his head arrived in

Chicago with seven dollars left in his pocket from buy-

ing his ticket from Madison with some cash he'd got by

pawning Plutarch's Lives, a Gibbon Decline and Fall

of the Roman Empire and an old furcollared coat.

Before leaving home to make himself a career in

an architect's office (there was no architecture course at

Wisconsin to clutter his mind with stale Beaux Arts

drawings); the youngster had seen the dome of the

new State Capitol in Madison collapse on account of

bad rubblework in the piers, some thieving contractors'

skimping materials to save the politicians their rakeoff,

and perhaps a trifling but deadly error in the archi-

tect's plans;

he never forgot the roar of burst masonry, the

flying plaster, the soaring dustcloud, the mashed bodies

of the dead and dying being carried out, set faces livid

with plasterdust.

Walking round downtown Chicago, crossing and

recrossing the bridges over the Chicago River in the

jingle and clatter of traffic, the rattle of vans and

loaded wagons and the stamping of big drayhorses and

the hooting of towboats with barges and the rumbling

whistle of lakesteamers waiting for the draw,

he thought of the great continent stretching a

thousand miles east and south and north, three thou-

sand miles west, and everywhere, at mineheads, on the

shores of newlydredged harbors, along watercourses, at

the intersections of railroads, sprouting

shacks roundhouses tipples grainelevators stores

warehouses tenements, great houses for the wealthy set

-428-

in broad treeshaded lawns, domed statehouses on hills,

hotels churches operahouses auditoriums.

He walked with long eager steps

towards the untrammeled future opening in every

direction for a young man who'd keep his hands to his

work and his wits sharp to invent.

The same day he landed a job in an architect's

office.

Frank Lloyd Wright was the grandson of a Welsh

hatter and preacher who'd settled in a rich Wiscon-

sin valley, Spring Valley, and raised a big family of

farmers and preachers and schoolteachers there.

Wright's father was a preacher too, a restless illadjusted

Newenglander who studied medicine, preached in a

Baptist church in Weymouth, Massachusetts, and then

as a Unitarian in the middle west, taught music, read

Sanskrit and finally walked out on his family.

Young Wright was born on his grandfather's farm

went to school in Weymouth and Madison, worked

summers on a farm of his uncle's in Wisconsin.

His training in architecture was the reading of

Viollet le Duc, the apostle of the thirteenth century

and of the pure structural mathematics of gothic stone-

masonry, and the seven years he worked with Louis

Sullivan in the office of Adler and Sullivan in Chicago.

(It was Louis Sullivan who, after Richardson, invented

whatever was invented in nineteenthcentury architec-

ture in America).

When Frank Lloyd Wright left Sullivan he had

already launched a distinctive style, prairie architecture.

In Oak Park he built broad suburban dwellings for

rich men that were the first buildings to break the hold

on American builders' minds of centuries of pastward

routine, of the wornout capital and plinth and pedi-

-429-

ment dragged through the centuries from the Acropolis,

and the jaded traditional stencils of Roman masonry,

the halfobliterated Palladian copybooks.

Frank Lloyd Wright was cutting out a new avenue

that led towards the swift constructions in glassbricks

and steel

foreshadowed today.

Delightedly he reached out for the new materials,

steel in tension, glass, concrete, the million new metals

and alloys.

The son and grandson of preachers, he became a

preacher in blueprints,

projecting constructions in the American future

instead of the European past.

Inventor of plans,

plotter of tomorrow's girderwork phrases,

he preaches to the young men coming of age in

the time of oppression, cooped up by the plasterboard

partitions of finance routine, their lives and plans made

poor by feudal levies of parasite money standing

astride every process to shake down progress for the

cutting of coupons:

The properly citified citizen has become a broker,

dealing chiefly in human frailties or the ideas and

inventions of others, a puller of levers, a presser of

buttons of vicarious power, his by way of machine

craft . . . and over beside him and beneath him, even

in his heart as he sleeps, is the taximeter of rent, in

some form to goad this anxious consumer's unceasing

struggle for or against more or less merciful or mer-

ciless money increment.

To the young men who spend their days and

nights drafting the plans for new rented aggregates of

rented cells upended on hard pavements,

-430-

he preaches

the horizons of his boyhood,

a future that is not the rise of a few points in a

hundred selected stocks, or an increase in carloadings,

or a multiplication of credit in the bank or a rise in the

rate on callmoney,

but a new clean construction, from the ground up,

based on uses and needs,

towards the American future instead of towards

the painsmeared past of Europe and Asia. Usonia he

calls the broad teeming band of this new nation across

the enormous continent between Atlantic and Pacific.

He preaches a project for Usonia:

It is easy to realize how the complexity of crude

utilitarian construction in the mechanical infancy of

our growth, like the crude scaffolding for some noble

building, did violence to the landscape. . . . The crude

purpose of pioneering days has been accomplished. The

scaffolding may be taken down and the true work, the

culture of a civilization, may appear.

Like the life of many a preacher, prophet, ex-

horter, Frank Lloyd Wright's life has been stormy.

He has raised children, had rows with wives, over-

stepped boundaries, got into difficulties with the law,

divorcecourts, bankruptcy, always the yellow press

yapping at his heels, his misfortunes yelled out in head-

lines in the evening papers: affairs with women, the

nightmare horror of the burning of his house in Wis-

consin.

By a curious irony

the building that is most completely his is the Im-

perial Hotel in Tokyo that was one of the few struc-

tures to come unharmed through the earthquake of

1923 (the day the cable came telling him that the

-431-

building had stood saving so many hundreds of lives

he writes was one of his happiest days)

and it was reading in German that most Ameri-

cans first learned of his work.

His life has been full of arrogant projects unac-

complished. (How often does the preacher hear his

voice echo back hollow from the empty hall, the drafts-

man watch the dust fuzz over the carefullycontrived

plans, the architect see the rolledup blueprints curl

yellowing and brittle in the filingcabinet.)

Twice he's rebuilt the house where he works in his

grandfather's valley in Wisconsin after fires and disas-

ters that would have smashed most men forever.

He works in Wisconsin,

an erect spare whitehaired man, his sons are archi-

tects, apprentices from all over the world come to work

with him,

drafting the new city (he calls it Broadacre City).

Near and Far are beaten (to imagine the new city

you must blot out every ingrained habit of the past,

build a nation from the ground up with the new tools).

For the architect there are only uses:

the incredible multiplication of functions, strength

and tension in metal,

the dynamo, the electric coil, radio, the photo-

electric cell, the internalcombustion motor,

glass

concrete;

and needs. (Tell us, doctors of philosophy, what

are the needs of a man. At least a man needs to be

not jailed notafraid nothungry notcold not without love,

not a worker for a power he has never seen

that cares nothing for the uses and needs of a

man or a woman or a child.)

Building a building is building the lives of the

workers and dwellers in the building.

-432-

The buildings determine civilization as the cells

in the honeycomb the functions of bees.

Perhaps in spite of himself the arrogant drafts-

man, the dilettante in concrete, the bohemian artist for

wealthy ladies desiring to pay for prominence with the

startling elaboration of their homes has been forced by

the logic of uses and needs, by the lifelong struggle

against the dragging undertow of money in mortmain,

to draft plans that demand for their fulfillment a

new life;

only in freedom can we build the Usonian city.

His plans are coming to life. His blueprints, as once

Walt Whitman's words, stir the young men: --

Frank Lloyd Wright,

patriarch of the new building,

not without honor except in his own country.

NEWSREEL LXIV

WEIRD FISH DRAWN FROM SARGASSO SEA

by night when the rest of the plant was still dim figures

ugly in gasmasks worked in the long low building back of the

research laboratory

RUM RING LINKS NATIONS

All around the water tank

Waitin' for a train

WOMAN SLAIN MATE HELD

Business Men Not Alarmed Over Coming Election

GRAVE FOREBODING UNSETTLES MOSCOW

LABOR CHIEFS RULED OUT OF PULPITS

-433-

imagination boggles at the reports from Moscow. These

murderers have put themselves beyond the pale. They have

shown themselves to be the mad dogs of the world

WALLSTREET EMPLOYERS BANISH CHRISTMAS WORRIES AS

BONUSES ROLL IN

Left my girl in the mountains

Left her standin' in the rain

OUR AIR SUPREMACY ACCLAIMED

LAND SO MOUNTAINOUS IT STANDS ON END

Got myself in trouble

An' shot a county sheriff down

In The Stealth of the Night Have You Heard Padded

Feet Creeping Towards You?

TROTZKY OPENS ATTACK ON STALIN

Strangled Man Dead in Street

Moanin' low . . .

My sweet man's gonna go

HUNT HATCHET WOMAN WHO ATTACKED

SOCIETY MATRON

CLASPS HANDS OF HEROES

GIRL DYING IN MYSTERY PLUNGE

He's the kind of man that needs the kind of woman like me

Completely Lost In Fog over Mexico

ASSERT RUSSIA RISING

For I'm dancin' with tears in my eyes

'Cause the girl in my arms isn't you

600 PUT TO DEATH AT ONCE IN CANTON

SEE BOOM YEAR AHEAD

-434-

this checking we do for you in our investors consulting

service, we analyze every individual security you own and give

you an impartial report and rating thereon. Periodically

through the year we keep you posted on important develop-

ments. If danger signals suddenly develop we advise you

promptly

THE CAMERA EYE (49)

walking from Plymouth to North Plymouth through

the raw air of Massachusetts Bay at each step a small cold

squudge through the sole of one shoe

looking out past the grey framehouses under the

robinsegg April sky across the white dories anchored in

the bottleclear shallows across the yellow sandbars and the

slaty bay ruffling to blue to the eastward

this is where the immigrants landed the roundheads

the sackers of castles the kingkillers haters of oppression

this is where they stood in a cluster after landing from

the crowded ship that stank of bilge on the beach that

belonged to no one between the ocean that belonged

to no one and the enormous forest that belonged to no

one that stretched over the hills where the deertracks were

up the green rivervalleys where the redskins grew their

tall corn in patches forever into the incredible west

for threehundred years the immigrants toiled into the

west

and now today

-435-

walking from Plymouth to North Plymouth sud-

denly round a bend in the road beyond a little pond and

yellowtwigged willows hazy with green you see the

Cordage huge sheds and buildings companyhouses all

the same size all grimed the same color a great square

chimney long roofs sharp ranked squares and oblongs cut-

ting off the sea the Plymouth Cordage this is

where another immigrant worked hater of oppression who

wanted a world unfenced when they fired him from

the cordage he peddled fish the immigrants in the

dark framehouses knew him bought his fish listened to

his talk following his cart around from door to door

you ask them What was he like? why are they scared to

talk of Bart scared because they knew him scared eyes

narrowing black with fright? a barber the man in the

little grocerystore the woman he boarded with in

scared voices they ask Why won't they believe? We knew

him We seen him every day Why won't they believe that

day we buy the eels?

only the boy isn't scared

pencil scrawls in my notebook the scraps of recollec-

tion the broken halfphrases the effort to intersect word

with word to dovetail clause with clause to rebuild out of

mangled memories unshakably (Oh Pontius Pilate) the

truth

the boy walks shyly browneyed beside me to the sta-

tion talks about how Bart helped him with his homework

-436-

wants to get ahead why should it hurt him to have

known Bart? wants to go to Boston University we

shake hands don't let them scare you

accustomed the smokingcar accustomed the jum-

ble of faces rumble cozily homelike towards Boston

through the gathering dark how can I make them feel

how our fathers our uncles haters of oppression came to

this coast how say Don't let them scare you how

make them feel who are your oppressors America

rebuild the ruined words worn slimy in the mouths

of lawyers districtattorneys collegepresidents judges

without the old words the immigrants haters of oppression

brought to Plymouth how can you know who are your

betrayers America

or that this fishpeddler you have in Charlestown Jail

is one of your founders Massachusetts?

NEWSREEL LXV

STORM TIES UP SUBWAY; FLOODS AND LIGHTNING

DARKEN CITY

Love oh love oh careless love

Like a thief comes in the night

ONLOOKERS CRY HALLELUJAH AS PEACE

DOVE LIGHTS; SAID TO HAVE

SPLIT $100,000

-437-

CRASH UPSETS EXCHANGE

Chicago Nipple Slump Hits Trading On Curb

Bring me a pillow for my poor head

A hammer for to knock cut my brains

For the whiskey has ruined this body of mine

And the red lights have un me insane

FAITH PLACED IN RUBBER BOATS

But I'll love my baby till the sea runs dry

This Great New Searchlight Sunburns You Two Miles

Away

Till the rocks all dissolve by the sun

Oh ain't it hard?

Smythe according to the petition was employed testing the

viscosity of lubricating oil in the Okmulgee plant of the com-

pany on July 12, 1924. One of his duties was to pour benzol

on a hot vat where it was boiled down so that the residue could

be examined. Day after day he breathed the not unpleasant

fumes from the vat.

One morning about a year later Smythe cut his face while

shaving and noticed that the blood flowed for hours in copious

quantities from the tiny wound. His teeth also began to bleed

when he brushed them and when the flow failed to stop after

several days he consulted a doctor. The diagnosis was that the

benzol fumes had broken down the walls of his blood vessels.

After eighteen months in bed, during which he slept only

under the effect of opiates, Smythe's spleen and tonsils were

removed. Meanwhile the periodic blood transfusions were re-

sorted to in an effort to keep his blood supply near normal.

In all more than thirty-six pints of blood were infused

through his arms until when the veins had been destroyed it

was necessary to cut into his body to open other veins. During

the whole time up to eight hours before his death, the com-

plaint recited, he was conscious and in pain.

-438-

Mary French

The first job Mary French got in New York she got

through one of Ada's friends. It was sitting all day in an

artgallery on Eighth Street where there was an exposition

of sculpture and answering the questions of ladies in flow-

ing batiks who came in in the afternoons to be seen ap-

preciating art. After two weeks of that the girl she was

replacing came back and Mary who kept telling herself

she wanted to be connected with something real went and

got herself a job in the ladies' and misses' clothing de-

partment at Bloomingdale's. When the summer layoff

came she was dropped, but she went home and wrote an

article about departmentstore workers for the Freeman

and on the strength of it got herself a job doing research

on wages, livingcosts and the spread between wholesale

and retail prices in the dress industry for the International

Ladies' Garment Workers. She liked the long hours dig-

ging out statistics, the talk with the organizers, the wise-

cracking radicals, the working men and girls who came

into the crowded dingy office she shared with two or three

other researchworkers. At last she felt what she was doing

was real.

Ada had gone to Michigan with her family and had

left Mary in the apartment on Madison Avenue. Mary

was relieved to have her gone; she was still fond of her

but their interests were so different and they had silly

arguments about the relative importance of art and social

justice that left them tired and cross at each other so that

sometimes they wouldn't speak for several days; and then

they hated each other's friends. Still Mary couldn't help

being fond-of Ada. They were such old friends and. Ada

forked out so generously for the strikers' defense com-

mittees, legalaid funds and everything that Mary sug-

gested; she was a very openhanded girl, but her point of

-439-

view was hopelessly rich, she had no social consciousness.

The apartment got on Mary French's nerves, too, with

its pastelcolored nicknacks and the real Whistler and the

toothick rugs and the toosoft boxsprings on the bed and the

horrid little satin tassels on everything; but Mary was

making so little money that not paying rent was a great

help.

Ada's apartment came in very handy the night of the

big meeting in Madison Square Garden to welcome the

classwar prisoners released from Atlanta. Mary French

who had been asked to sit on the platform overheard some

members of the committee saying that they had no place

to put up Ben Compton. They were looking for a quiet

hideout where he could have a rest and shake the D. J.

operatives who'd been following him around everywhere

since he'd gotten to New York. Mary went up to them and

in a whisper suggested her place. So after the meeting she

waited in a yellow taxicab at the corner of Twentyninth

and Madison until a tall pale man with a checked cap

pulled way down over his face got in and sat down shakily

beside her. When the cab started he put his steelrimmed

glasses back on. "Look back and see if a grey sedan's fol-

lowing us," he said. "I don't see anything," said Mary.

"Oh, you wouldn't know it if you saw it," he grumbled.

To be on the safe side they left the cab at the Grand

Central station and walked without speaking a way up

Park Avenue and then west on a' cross street and down

Madison again. Mary plucked his sleeve to stop him in

front of the door. Once in the apartment he made Mary

shoot the bolt and let himself drop into a chair without

taking off his cap or his overcoat.

He didn't say anything. His shoulders were shaking.

Mary didn't like to stare at him. She didn't know what

to do. She puttered around the livingroom, lit the gaslogs,

smoked a cigarette and then she went into the kitchenette

to make coffee. When she got back he'd taken off his things

-440-

and was warming his bigknuckled hands at the gaslogs.

"You must excuse me, comrade," he said in a dry hoarse

voice. "I'm all in."

"Oh, don't mind me," said Mary. "I thought you might

want some coffee."

"No coffee . . . hot milk," he said hurriedly. His teeth

were chattering as if he were cold. She came back with a

cup of hot milk. "Could I have some sugar in it?" he said

and almost smiled.

"Of course," she said. "You made a magnificent speech,

so restrained and kind of fiery. . . . It was the best in the

whole meeting.""You didn't think I seemed agitated? I

was afraid I'd go to pieces and not be able to finish. . . .

You're sure nobody knows this address, or the phonenum-

ber? You're sure we weren't followed?""I'm sure no-

body'll find you here on Madison Avenue. . . . It's the

last place they'd look.""I know they are trailing me," he

said with a shudder and dropped into a chair again. They

were silent for a long time. Mary could hear the gaslogs

and the little sucking sips he drank the hot milk with.

Then she said:

"It must have been terrible."

He got to his feet and shook his head as if he didn't

want to talk about it. He was a young man lankilybuilt,

but he walked up and down in front of the gaslogs with

a strangely elderly dragging walk. His face was white as

a mushroom with sags of brownish skin under the eyes.

"You see," he said, "it's like people who've been sick

and have to learn to walk all over again don't pay

any attention."

He drank several cups of hot milk and then he went

to bed. She went into the other bedroom and closed the

door and lay down on the bed with a pile of books and

pamphlets. She had some legal details to look up.

She had just gotten sleepy and crawled under the covers

herself whon a knocking woke her. She snatched at her

-441-

bathrobe and jumped up and opened the door. Ben Comp-

ton stood there trembling wearing a long unionsuit. He'd

taken off his glasses and they'd left a red band across the

bridge of his nose. His hair was rumpled and his knobby

feet were bare. "Comrade," he stammered, "d'you mind

if I . . . d'you mind if I . . . d'you mind if I lie on the

bed beside you? I can't sleep. I can't stay alone.""You

poor boy. . . . Get into bed, you are shivering," she said.

She lay down beside him still wearing her bathrobe and

slippers.

"Shall I put out the light?" He nodded. "Would you

like some aspirin?" He shook his head. She pulled the

covers up under his chin as if he were a child. He lay there

on his back staring with wideopen black eyes at the ceiling.

His teeth were clenched. She put her hand on his forehead

as she would on a child's to see if he was feverish. He

shuddered and drew away. "Don't touch me," he said.

Mary put out the light and tried to compose herself to

sleep on the bed beside him. After a while he grabbed her

hand and held it tight. They lay there in the dark side

by side staring up at the ceiling. Then she felt his grip on

her hand loosen; he was dropping off to sleep. She lay

there beside him with her eyes open. She was afraid the

slightest stir might wake him. Every time she fell asleep

she dreamed that detectives were breaking in the door and

woke up with a shuddering start.

Next morning when she went out to go to the office he

was still asleep. She left a latchkey for him and a note

explaining that there was food and coffee in the icebox.

When she got home that afternoon her heart beat fast as

she went up in the elevator.

Her first thought after she'd opened the door was that

he'd gone. The bedroom was empty. Then she noticed that

the bathroom door was closed and that a sound of hum-

ming came from there. She tapped. "That you, Comrade

Compton?" she said.

-442-

"Be right out." His voice sounded firmer, more like

the deep rich voice he'd addressed the meeting in. He

came out smiling, long pale legs bristling with black hairs

sticking oddly out from under Mary's lavender bathrobe.

"Hello, I've been taking a hot bath. This is the third

I've taken. Doctor said they were a good thing. . . . You

know, relax. . . ." He pulled out a pinkleather edition of

Oscar Wilde Dorian Grey from under his arm and shook

it in front of her. "Reading this tripe. . . . I feel better.

. . . Say, comrade, whose apartment is this anyway?"

"A friend of mine who's a violinist. . . . She's away

till fall.""I wish she was here to play for us. I'd love to

hear some good music. . . . Maybe you're musical."

Mary shook her head.

"Could you eat some supper? I've brought some in."

"I'll try . . . nothing too rich . . . I've gotten very

dyspeptic. . . . So you thought I spoke all right?""I

thought it was wonderful," she said.

"After supper I'll look at the papers you brought in.

. . . If the kept press only' wouldn't always garble what

we say."

She heated some peasoup and made toast and bacon and

eggs and he ate up everything she gave him. While they

were eating they had a nice cozy talk about the movement.

She told him about her experiences in the great steelstrike.

She could see he was beginning to take an interest in her.

They'd hardly finished eating before he began to turn

white. He went to the bathroom and threw up.

"Ben, you poor kid," she said when he came back look-

ing haggard and shaky. "It's awful."

"Funny," he said in a weak voice. "When I was in the

Bergen County jail over there in Jersey I came out feel-

ing fine . . . but this time it's hit me.""Did they treat

szyou badly?" His teeth clenched and the muscles of his

jaw stiffened, but he shook his head. Suddenly he grabbed.

her hand and his eyes filled with tears. " Mary French,

-443-

you're being too good to me," he said. Mary couldn't help

throwing her arms around him and hugging him. "You

don't know what it means to find a . . . to find a sweet

girl comrade," he said, pushing her gently away. "Now

let me see what the papers did to what I said."

After Ben had been hiding out in the apartment for

about a week the two of them decided one Saturday night

that they loved each other. Mary was happier than she'd

ever been in her life. They romped around like kids all

Sunday and went out walking in the park to hear the band

play in the evening. They threw sponges at each other in

the bathroom and teased each other while they were get-

ting undressed; they slept tightly clasped in each other's

arms.

In spite of never going out except at night, in the next

few days Ben's cheeks began to have a little color in them

and his step began to get some spring into it. "You've

made me feel like a man again, Mary," he'd tell her a

dozen times a day. "Now I'm beginning to feel like I

could do something again. After all the revolutionary

labor movement's just beginning in this country. The tide's

going to turn, you watch. It's begun with Lenin and

Trotzky's victories in Russia." There was something mov-

ing to Mary in the way he pronounced those three words:

Lenin, Trotzky, Russia.

After a couple of weeks he began to go to conferences

with radical leaders. She never knew if she'd find him in

or not when she got home from work. Sometimes it was

three or four in the morning before he came in tired and

haggard. Always his pockets bulged with literature and

leaflets. Ada's fancy livingroom gradually filled up with

badlyprinted newspapers and pamphlets and mimeo-

graphed sheets. On the mantelpiece among Ada's dresden-

china figures playing musical instruments were stacked the

three volumes of Capital with places marked in them with

pencils. In the evening he'd read Mary pieces of a pam-

-444-

phlet he was working on, modeled on Lenin What's to

Be Done? and ask her with knitted brows if he was clear,

if simple workers would understand what he meant.

One Sunday in August he made her go with him to

Coney Island where he'd made an appointment to meet

his folks; he'd figured it would be easier to see them in

a crowded place. He didn't want the dicks to trail him

home and then be bothering the old people or his sister

who had a good job as secretary to a prominent business-

man. When they met it was some time before the Comp-

tons noticed Mary at all. They sat at a big round table

at Stauch's and drank nearbeer. Mary found it hard to

sit still in her chair when the Comptons all turned their

eyes on her at once. The old people were very polite with

gentle manners but she could see that they wished she

hadn't come. Ben's sister Gladys gave her one hard mean

stare and then paid no attention to her. Ben's brother

Sam, a stout prosperouslooking Jew who Ben had said

had a small business, a sweatshop probably, was polite and

oily. Only Izzy, the youngest brother, looked anything

like a workingman and he was more likely a gangster.

He treated her with kidding familiarity, she could see he

thought of her as Ben's moll. They all admired Ben, she

could see; he was the bright boy, the scholar, but they

felt sorry about his radicalism as if it was an unfortunate

sickness he had contracted. Still his name in the paper,

the applause in Madison Square Garden, the speeches call-

ing him a workingclass hero had impressed them. After

Ben and Mary had left the Comptons and were going into

the subwaystation, Ben said bitterly in her ear, "Well,

that's the Jewish family. . . . What do you think of it?

Some straitjacket. . . . It'ud be the same if I killed a

man or ran a string of whorehouses . . . even in the

movement you can't break away from them.""But, Ben,

it's got its good side . . . they'd do anything in the world

-445-

for you . . . my mother and me we really hate each

other."

Ben needed clothes and so did Mary; she never had

any of the money from the job left over from week to

week, so for the first time in her life she wrote her mother

asking for five hundred dollars. Her mother sent back a

check with a rather nice letter saying that she'd been made

Republican State Committeewoman and that she admired

Mary's independence because she'd always believed women

had just as much iright as men to earn their own living and

maybe women in politics would have a better influence

than she'd once thought, and certainly Mary was showing

grit in carving out a career for herself, but she did hope

she'd soon come around to seeing that she could have

just as interesting a career if she'd come back to Colorado

Springs and occupy the social position her mother's situ-

ation entitled her to. Ben was so delighted when he saw

the check he didn't ask what Mary had got the money

for. "Five hundred bucks is just what I needed," he said.

"I hadn't wanted to tell you but they want me to lead a

strike over in Bayonne . . . rayonworkers . . . you know,

the old munitionplants made over to make artificial silk.

. . . It's a tough town and the workers are so poor they

can't pay their union dues . . . but they've got a fine

radical union over there. It's important to get a foothold

in the new industries . . . that's where the old sellout

organizations of the A. F. of L. are failing. . . . Five hun-

dred bucks'll take care of the printing bill."

"Oh, Ben, you are not rested yet. I'm so afraid they'll

arrest you again."

He kissed her. "Nothing to worry about."

"But, Ben, I wanted you to get some clothes."

"This is a fine suit. What's the matter with this suit?

Didn't Uncle Sam give me this suit himself? . . . Once

we get things going we'll get you over to do publicity for

us . . . enlarge your knowledge of the clothing industry.

-446-

Oh, Mary, you're a wonderful girl to have raised that

money."

That fall when Ada came back, Mary moved out and

got herself a couple of small rooms on West Fourth Street

in the Village, so that Ben could have some place to go

when he came over to New York. That winter she worked

tremendously hard, still handling her old job and at the

same time doing publicity for the strikes Ben led in several

Jersey towns. "That's nothing to how hard we'll have to

work when we have soviets in America," Ben would say

when she'd ask him didn't he think they'd do better work

if they didn't always try to do so many things at once.

She never knew when Ben was going to turn up. Some-

times he'd be there every night for a week and sometimes

he would be away for a month and she'd only hear from

him through newsreleases about meetings, picketlines

broken up, injunctions fought in the courts. Once they de-

cided they'd get married and have a baby, but the com-

rades were calling for Ben to come and organize the

towns around Passaic and he said it would distract him

from his work and that they were young and that there'd

be plenty of time for that sort of thing after the revo-

lution. Now was the time to fight. Of course she could

have the baby if she wanted to but it would spoil her use-

fulness in the struggle for several months and he didn't

think this was the time for it. It was the first time they'd

quarreled. She said he was heartless. He said they had to

sacrifice their personal feelings for the workingclass, and

stormed out of the house in a temper. In the end she had

an abortion but she had to write her mother again for

money to pay for it.

She threw herself into her work for the strikecommittee

harder than ever. Sometimes for weeks she only slept four

or five hours a night. She took to smoking a great deal.

There was always a cigarette resting on a corner of her

typewriter. The fine ash dropped into the pages as they

-447-

came from the multigraph machine. Whenever she could

be spared from the office she went around collecting money

from wealthy women, inducing prominent liberals to come

and get arrested on the picketline, coaxing articles out of

newspapermen, traveling around the country to find chari-

table people to go on bailbonds. The strikers, the men and

women and children on picketlines, in soupkitchens, being

interviewed in the dreary front parlors of their homes

stripped of furniture they hadn't been able to make the

last payment on, the buses full of scabs, the cops and

deputies with sawedoff shotguns guarding the tall palings

of the silent enormouslyextended oblongs of the black-

windowed millbuildings, passed in a sort of dreamy haze

before her, like a show on the stage, in the middle of the

continuous typing and multigraphing, the writing of let-

ters and working up of petitions, the long grind of office-

work that took up her days and nights.

She and Ben had no life together at all any more. She

thrilled to him the way the workers did at meetings when

he'd come to the platform in a tumult of stamping and

applause and talk to them with flushed cheeks and shining

eyes talking clearly directly to each man and woman, en-

couraging them, warning them, explaining the economic

setup to them. The millgirls were all crazy about him.

In spite of herself Mary French would get a sick feeling

in the pit of her stomach at the way they looked at him

and at the way some big buxom freshlooking woman

would stop him sometimes in the hall outside the office

and put her hand on his arm and make him pay attention

to her. Mary working away at her desk with her tongue

bitter and her mouth dry from too much smoking would

look at her yellowstained fingers and push her untidy un-

curled hair off her forehead and feel badlydressed and

faded and unattractive. If he'd give her one smile just

for her before he bawled her out before the whole office be-

cause the leaflets weren't ready, she'd feel happy all day.

-448-

But mostly he seemed to have forgotten that they'd ever

been lovers.

After the A. F. of L. officials from Washington in expen-

sive overcoats and silk mufflers who smoked twentyfivecent

cigars and spat on the floor of the office had taken the

strike out of Ben's hands and settled it, he came back to

the room on Fourth Street late one night just as Mary

was going to bed. His eyes were redrimmed from lack of

sleep and his cheeks were sunken and grey. "Oh, Ben," she

said and burst out crying. He was cold and bitter and des-

perate. He sat for hours on the edge of her bed telling her

in a sharp monotonous voice about the sellout and the

wrangles between the leftwinggers and the oldline socialists

and laborleaders, and how now that it was all over here

was his trial for contempt of court coming up. "I feel so

bad about spending the workers' money on my defense.

. . . I'd as soon go to jail as not . . . but it's the pre-

cedent. . . . We've got to fight every case and it's the

one way we can use the liberal lawyers, the lousy fakers.

. . . And it costs so much and the union's broke and I

don't like to have them spend the money on me . . . but

they say that if we win my case then the cases against the

other boys will all be dropped. . . .""The thing to do,"

she said, smoothing his hair off his forehead, "is to relax

a little.""You should be telling me?" he said and started

to unlace his shoes.

It was a long time before she could get him to get into

bed. He sat there halfundressed in the dark shivering and

talking about the errors that had been committed in the

strike. When at last he'd taken his clothes off and stood

up to lay them on a chair he looked like a skeleton in the

broad swath of grey glare that cut across the room from

the streetlight outside her window. She burst out crying

all over again at the sunken look of his chest and the

deep hollows inside his collarbone. "What's the matter,

girl?" Ben said gruffly. "You crying because you haven't

-449-

got a Valentino to go to bed with you?""Nonsense, Ben,

I was just thinking you needed fattening up . . . you

poor kid, you work so hard,""You'll be going off with a

goodlooking young bondsalesman one of these days, like

you were used to back in Colorado Springs. . . . I know

what to expect . . . I don't give a damn . . . I can make

the fight alone.""Oh, Ben, don't talk like that . . . you

know I'm heart and soul . . ." She drew him to her. Sud-

denly he kissed her.

Next morning they quarreled bitterly while they were

dressing, about the value of her researchwork. She said

that after all he couldn't talk; the strike hadn't been such

a wild success. He went out without eating his breakfast.

She went uptown in a clenched fury of misery, threw up

her job and a few days later went down to Boston to

work on the Sacco-Vanzetti case with the new committee

that had just been formed.

She'd never been in Boston before. The town these

sunny winter days had a redbrick oldtime steelengraving

look that pleased her. She got herself a little room on the

edge of the slums back of Beacon Hill and decided that

when the case was won, she'd write a novel about Boston.

She bought some school copybooks in a little musty sta-

tioners' shop and started right away taking notes for the

novel. The smell of the new copybook with its faint blue

lines made her feel fresh and new. After this she'd observe

life. She'd never fall for a man again. Her mother had

sent her a check for Christmas. With that she bought her-

self some new clothes and quite a becoming hat. She started

to curl her hair again.

Her job was keeping in touch with newspapermen and

trying to get favorable items into the press. It was uphill

work. Although most of the newspapermen who had any

connection with the case thought the two had been wrongly

convicted they tended to say that they were just two wop

anarchists, so what the hell? After she'd been out to

-450-

Dedham jail to talk to Sacco and to Charlestown to talk

to Vanzetti, she tried to tell the U.P. man what she felt

about them one Saturday night when he was taking her

out to dinner at an Italian restaurant on Hanover Street.

He was the only one of the newspapermen she got really

friendly with. He was an awful drunk but he'd seen a

great deal and he had a gentle detached manner that she

liked. He liked her for some reason, though he kidded her

unmercifully about what he called her youthful fanaticism.

When he'd ask her out to dinner and make her drink a

lot of red wine she'd tell herself that it wasn't really a

waste of time, that it was important for her to keep in

touch with the press services. His name was Jerry Burn-

ham.

"But, Jerry, how can you stand it? If the State of Mas-

sachusetts can kill those two innocent men in the face of

the protest of the whole world it'll mean that there never

will be any justice in America ever again.""When was

there any to begin with?" he said with a mirthless giggle,

leaning over to fill up her glass. "Ever heard of Tom

Mooney?" The curly white of his hair gave a strangely

youthful look to his puffy red face. "But there's something

so peaceful, so honest about them; you get such a feeling

of greatness out of them. Honestly they are great men."

"Everything you say makes it more remarkable that they

weren't executed years ago.""But the workingpeople, the

common people, they won't allow it.""It's the common

people who get most fun out of the torture and execution

of great men. . . . If it's not going too far back I'd like

to know who it was demanded the execution of our friend

Jesus H. Christ?"

It was Jerry Burnham who taught her to drink. He

lived himself in a daily alcoholic haze carrying his drinks

carefully and circumspectly like an acrobat walking across

a tight wire with a tableful of dishes balanced on his head.

He was so used to working his twentyfourhour newsserv-

-451-

ice that he attended to his wires and the business of his

office as casually as he'd pay the check in one speakeasy

before walking around the corner to another. His kidneys

were shot and he was on the winewagon he said, but she

often noticed whiskey on his breath when she went into

his office. He was so exasperating that she'd swear to her-

self each time she went out with him it was the last. No

more wasting time when every minute was precious. But

the next time he'd ask her out she'd crumple up at once

and smile and say yes and waste another evening drinking

wine and listening to him ramble on. "It'll all end in

blindness and sudden death," he said one night as he left

her in a taxi at the corner of her street. "But who cares?

Who in hell cares . . . ? Who on the bloody louseinfested

globe gives one little small microscopic vestigial hoot?"

As courtdecision after courtdecision was lost and the ran-

cid Boston spring warmed into summer and the governor's

commission reported adversely and no hope remained but

a pardon from the governor himself, Mary worked more

and more desperately hard. She wrote articles, she talked

to politicians and ministers and argued with editors, she

made speeches in unionhalls. She wrote her mother piti-

ful humiliating letters to get money out of her on all sorts

of pretexts. Every cent she could scrape up went into the

work of her committee. There were always stationery and

stamps and telegrams and phonecalls to pay for. She spent

long evenings trying to coax communists, socialists, anar-

chists, liberals into working together. Hurrying along the

stonepaved streets she'd be whispering to herself, "They've

got to be saved, they've got to be saved." When at last

she got to bed her dreams were full of impossible tasks;

she was trying to glue a broken teapot together and as

soon as she got one side of it mended the other side would

come to pieces again, she was trying to mend a rent in her

skirt and by the time the bottom was sewed the top had

come undone again; she was trying to put together pieces

-452-

of a torn typewritten sheet, the telegram was of the great

est importance, she couldn't see, it was all a blur before

her eyes; it was the evidence that would force a new

trial, her eyes were too bad, when she had spelled out

one word from the swollen throbbing letters she'd for-

gotten the last one; she was climbing a shaky hillside

among black guttedlooking houses pitching at crazy angles

where steelworkers lived, at each step she slid back, it was

too steep, she was crying for help, yelling, sliding back.

Then warm reassuring voices like Ben Compton's when

he was feeling well were telling her that Public Opinion

wouldn't allow it that after all Americans' had a sense of

Justice and Fair Play that the Workingclass would rise;

she'd see crowded meetings, slogans, banners, glary bill-

boards with letters pitching into perspective saying: Work-

ers of the World Unite, she'd be marching in the middle

of crowds in parades of protest. They Shall Not Die.

She'd wake up with a start, bathe and dress hurriedly

and rush down to the office of the committee snatching up

a glass of orange juice and a cup of coffee on the way. She

was always the first there; if she slackened her work for

a moment she'd see their faces, the shoemaker's sharply-

modeled pale face with the flashing eyes and the fish-

peddler's philosophical mustaches and his musing unscared

eyes. She'd see behind them the electric chair as clear as

if it were standing in front of her desk in the stuffy

crowded office.

July went by all too fast. August came. A growing

crowd of all sorts of people began pouring through the

office: old friends, wobblies who'd hitchhiked from the

coast, politicians interested in the Italian vote, lawyers with

suggestions for the defense, writers, outofwork newspaper-

men, cranks and phonies of all kinds attracted by rumors

of an enormous defensefund. She came back one afternoon

from speaking in a unionhall in Pawtucket and found

G. H. Barrow sitting at her desk. He had written a great

-453-

pile of personal telegrams to senators congressmen mini-

sters laborleaders demanding that they join in the protest

in the name of justice and civilization and the working-

class, long telegrams and cables at top rates. She figured

out the cost as she checked them off. She didn't know how

the committee could pay for them, but she handed them

to the messengerboy waiting outside. She could hardly be-

lieve that those words had made her veins tingle only a

few weeks before. It shocked her to think how meaning-

less they seemed to her now like the little cards you get

from a onecent fortunetelling machine. For six months

now she'd been reading and writing the same words every

day.

Mary didn't have time to be embarrassed meeting

George Barrow. They went out together to get a plate of

soup at a cafeteria talking about nothing but the case as if

they'd never known each other before. Picketing the State

House had begun again and as they came out of the restau-

rant Mary turned to him and said, "Well, George, how

about going up and getting arrested. . . . There's still

time to make the afternoon papers. Your name would give

us back the front page."

He flushed red, and stood there in front of the restau-

rant in the noontime crowd looking tall and nervous and

popeyed in his natty lightgrey suit. "But, my dear g-g-girl,

I . . . if I thought it would do the slightest good I would

. . . I'd get myself arrested or run over by a truck . . .

but I think it would rob me of whatever usefulness I

might have."

Mary French looked him straight in the eye, her face

white with fury. "I didn't think you'd take the risk," she

said, clipping each word off and spitting it in his face. She

turned her back on him and hurried to the office.

It was a sort of relief when she was arrested herself.

She'd planned to keep out of sight of the cops as she

had been told her work was too valuable to lose, but she'd

-454-

had to run up the hill with a set of placards for a new

batch of picketers who had gone off without them,

There was nobody in the office she could send. She was

just crossing Beacon Street when two large polite cops

suddenly appeared, one on each side of her. One of them

said, "Sorry, miss, please come quietly," and she found

herself sitting in the dark patrolwagon. Driving to the

policestation she had a soothing sense of helplessness and

irresponsibility. It was the first time in weeks she had

felt herself relax. At the Joy Street station they booked

her but they didn't put her in a cell. She sat on a bench

opposite the window with two Jewish garmentworkers and

a welldressed woman in a flowered summer dress with a

string of pearls round her neck and watched the men pick-

eters pouring through into the cells. The cops were polite,

everybody was jolly; it seemed like a kind of game, it

was hard to believe anything real was at stake.

In a crowd that had just been unloaded from the wagon

on the steep street outside the policestation she caught

sight of a tall man she recognized as Donald Stevens from

his picture in the Daily. A redfaced cop held on to each

of his arms. His shirt was torn open at the neck and his

necktie had a stringy look as if somebody had been yank-

ing on it. The first thing Mary thought was how hand-

somely he held himself. He had steelgrey hair and a

brown outdoorlooking skin and luminous grey eyes over

high cheekbones. When he was led away from the desk

she followed his broad shoulders with her eyes into the

gloom of the cells. The woman next to her whispered in

an awed voice that he was being held for inciting to riot

instead of sauntering and loitering like the rest. Five

thousand dollars bail. He had tried to hold a meeting on

Boston Common.

Mary had been there about a halfhour when little Mr.

Feinstein from the office came round with a tall fashion-

ablydressed man in a linen suit who put up the bail for

-455-

her. At the same time Donald Stevens was bailed out.

The four of them walked down the hill from the police-

station together. At the corner the man in the linen suit

said, "You two were too useful to leave in there all day.

. . . Perhaps we'll see you at the Bellevue . . . suite D,

second floor." Then he waved his hand and left them.

Mary was so anxious to talk to Donald Stevens she didn't

think to ask the man's name. Events were going past her

faster than she could focus her mind on them.

Mary plucked at Donald Stevens' sleeve, she and Mr.

Feinstein both had to hurry to keep up with his long

stride. "I'm Mary French," she said. "What can we do?

. . . We've got to do something." He turned to her

with a broad smile as if he'd seen her for the first time.

"I've heard of you," he said. "You're a plucky little girl

. . . you've been putting up a real fight in spite of your

liberal committee.""But they've done the best they

could," she said.

"We've' got to get the entire workingclass of Boston

out on the streets," said Stevens in his deep rattling voice.

"We've gotten out the garmentworkers but that's all."

He struck his open palm with his fist. "What about the

Italians? What about the North End? Where's your

office? Look what we did in New York. Why can't you

do it here?" He leaned over towards her with a caressing

confidential manner. Right away the feeling of being tired

and harassed left her, without thinking she put her hand

on his arm. "We'll go and talk to your committee; then

we'll talk to the Italian committee. Then we'll shake up

the unions.""But, Don, we've only got thirty hours," said

Mr. Feinstein in a dry tired voice. "I have more con-

fidence in political pressure being applied to the governor.

You know he has presidential aspirations. I think the gov-

ernor's going to commute the sentences."

At the office Mary found Jerry Burnham waiting for

her. "Well, Joan of Arc," he said, "I was just going

-456-

down to bail you out. But I see they've turned you loose."

Jerry and Donald Stevens had evidently known each other

before. "Well, Jerry," said Donald Stevens savagely,

"doesn't this shake you out of your cynical pose a little?"

"I don't see why it should. It's nothing new to me that

collegepresidents are skunks."

Donald Stevens drew off against the wall as if he were

holding himself back from giving Jerry a punch in the

jaw. "I can't see how any man who has any manhood left

can help getting red . . . even a pettybourgeois journal-

ist."

"My dear Don, you ought to know by this time that

we hocked our manhood for a brass check about the time

of the first world war . . . that is if we had any . . . I

suppose there'd be various opinions about that." Donald

Stevens had already swung on into the inner office. Mary

found herself looking into Jerry's reddening face, not

knowing what to say. "Well, Mary, if you have a need

for a pickup during the day . . . I should think you

would need it . . . I'll be at the old stand.""Oh, I

won't have time," Mary said coldly. She could hear Don-

ald Stevens' deep voice from the inner office. She hurried

on after him.

The lawyers had failed. Talking, wrangling, arguing

about how a lastminute protest could be organized Mary

could feel the hours ebbing, the hours of these men's lives.

She felt the minutes dripping away as actually as if they

were bleeding from her own wrists. She felt weak and

sick. She couldn't think of anything. It was a relief to

be out in the street trotting to keep up with Donald Ste-

vens' big stride. They made a round of the committees. It

was, nearly noon, nothing was done. Down on Hanover

Street a palefaced Italian in a shabby Ford sedan hailed

them. Stevens opened the door of the car. "Comrade

French, this is Comrade Strozzi . . . he's going to drive

us around.""Are you a citizen?" she asked with an

-457-

anxious frown. Strozzi shook his head and smiled a thin-

lipped smile. "Maybe they give me a free trip back to

the Italy," he said.

Mary never remembered what they did the rest of the

day. They drove all over the poorer Boston suburbs. Often

the men they were looking for were out. A great deal of

the time she spent in phonebooths calling wrong numbers.

She couldn't seem to do anything right. She looked with

numb staring eyes out of eyelids that felt like sandpaper

at the men and women crowding into the office. Stevens

had lost the irritated stinging manner he'd had at first.

He argued with tradeunion officials, socialists, ministers,

lawyers, with an aloof sarcastic coolness. "After all they

are brave men. It doesn't matter whether they are saved

or not any more, it's the power of the workingclass that's

got to be saved," he'd say. Everywhere there was the same

opinion. A demonstration will mean violence, will spoil the

chance that the governor will commute at the last moment.

Mary had lost all her initiative. Suddenly she'd become

Donald Stevens' secretary. She was least unhappy when

she was running small errands for him.

Late that night she went through all the Italian restau-

rants on Hanover Street looking for an anarchist Stevens

wanted to see. Every place was empty. There was a hush

over everything. Death watch. People kept away from

each other as if to avoid some contagion. At the back of

a room in a little upstairs speakeasy she saw Jerry Burn-

ham sitting alone at a table with a jigger of whiskey and

a bottle of gingerale in front of him. His face was white

as a napkin and he was teetering gently in his chair. He

stared at her without seeing her. The waiter was bending

over him shaking him. He was hopelessly drunk.

It was a relief to run back to the office where Stevens

was still trying to line up a general strike. He gave her

a searching look when she came in. "Failed again," she

said bitterly. He put down the telephone receiver, got to

-458-

his feet, strode over to the line of hooks on the grimy

yellow wall and got down his hat and coat. "Mary French,

you're deadtired. I'm going to take you home."

They had to walk around several blocks to avoid the

cordon of police guarding the State House. "Ever played

tug of war?" Don was saying. "You pull with all your

might but the other guys are heavier and you feel your-

self being dragged their way. You're being pulled for-

ward faster than you're pulling back. . . . Don't let me

talk like a defeatist. . . . We're not a couple of god-

damned liberals," he said and burst into a dry laugh.

"Don't you hate lawyers?" They were standing in front

of the bowfronted brick house where she had her room.

"Goodnight, Don," she said. "Goodnight, Mary, try and

sleep."

Monday was like another Sunday. She woke late. It

was an agony getting out of bed. It was a fight to put on

her clothes, to go down to the office and face the de-

feated eyes. The people she met on the street seemed to

look away from her when she passed them. Death watch.

The streets were quiet, even the traffic seemed muffled as

if the whole city were under the terror of dying that night.

The day passed in a monotonous mumble of words, col-

umns in newspapers, telephone calls. Death watch. That

night she had a moment of fierce excitement when she

and Don started for Charlestown to join the protest pa-

rade. She hadn't expected they'd be so many. Gusts of

singing, scattered bars of the International burst and faded

above the packed heads between the blank windows of the

dingy houses. Death watch. On one side of her was a

little man with eyeglasses who said he was a musicteacher,

on the other a Jewish girl, a member of the Ladies' Full-

fashioned Hosiery Workers. They linked arms. Don was

in the front rank, a little ahead. They were crossing the

bridge. They were walking on cobbles on a badlylighted

-459-

street under an elevated structure. Trains roared overhead.

"Only a few blocks from Charlestown jail," a voice yelled.

This time the cops were using their clubs. There was

the clatter of the horses' hoofs on the cobbles and the

whack thud whack thud of the clubs. And way off the

jangle jangle of patrolwagons. Mary was terribly scared.

A big truck was bearing down on her. She jumped to one

side out of the way behind one of the girder supports.

Two cops had hold of her. She clung to the grimy girder.

A cop was cracking her on the hand with his club. She

wasn't much hurt, she was in a patrolwagon, she'd lost

her hat and her hair had come down. She caught herself

thinking that she ought to have her hair bobbed if she

was going to do much of this sort of thing. "Anybody

know where Don Stevens is?" Don's voice came a little

shakily from the blackness in front. "That you, Mary?"

"How are you, Don?""O.K. Sure. A little battered round

the head an' ears.""He's bleedin' terrible," came another

man's voice. "Comrades, let's sing," Don's voice shouted.

Mary forgot everything as her voice joined his voice, all

their voices, the voices of the crowds being driven back

across the bridge in singing:

Arise ye prisoners of starvation. . .

NEWSREEL LXVI

HOLMES DENIES STAY

A better world's in birth

Tiny Wasps Imported From Korea In Battle To Death

With Asiatic Beetle

BOY CARRIED MILE DOWN SEWER; SHOT OUT ALIVE

-460-

CHICAGO BARS MEETINGS

For justice thunders condemnation

Washington Keeps Eye On Radicals

Arise rejected of the earth

PARIS BRUSSELS MOSCOW GENEVA ADD THEIR VOICES

It is the final conflict

Let each stand in his place

Geologist Lost In Cave Six Days

The International Party

SACCO AND VANZETTI MUST DIE

Shall be the human race.

Much I thought of you when I was lying in the death

house -- the singing, the kind tender voices of the children from

the playground where there was all the life and the joy of lib-

erty -- just one step from the wall that contains the buried

agony of three buried souls. It would remind me so often of

you and of your sister and I wish I could see you every mo-

ment, but I feel better that you will not come to the death

house so that you could not see the horrible picture of three

living in agony waiting to be electrocuted.

THE CAMERA EYE (50)

they have clubbed us off the streets they are

stronger they are rich they hire and fire the poli-

ticians the newspapereditors the old judges the small men

with reputations the collegepresidents the wardheelers

(listen businessmen collegepresidents judges America

-461-

will not forget her betrayers) they hire the men with

guns the uniforms the policecars the patrolwagons

all right you have won you will kill the brave

men. our friends tonight

there is nothing left to do we are beaten we

the beaten crowd together in these old dingy school-

rooms on Salem Street shuffle up and down the gritty

creaking stairs sit hunched with bowed heads on benches

and hear the old words of the haters of oppression made

new in sweat and agony tonight

our work is over the scribbled phrases the nights

typing releases the smell of the printshop the sharp reek

of newprinted leaflets the rush for Western Union

stringing words into wires the search for stinging words

to make you feel who are your oppressors America

America our nation has been beaten by strangers who

have turned our language inside out who have taken the

clean words our fathers spoke and made them slimy and

foul

their hired men sit on the judge's bench they sit

back with their feet on the tables under the dome of the

State House they are ignorant of our beliefs they have the

dollars the guns the armed forces the powerplants

they have built the electricchair and hired the execu-

tioner to throw the switch

all right we are two nations

America our nation has been beaten by strangers who

-462-

have bought the laws and fenced off the meadows and

cut down the woods for pulp and turned our pleasant

cities into slums and sweated the wealth out of our people

and when they want to they hire the executioner to throw

the switch

but do they know that the old words of the immi-

grants are being renewed in blood and agony tonight do

they know that the old American speech of the haters of

oppression is new tonight in the mouth of an old woman

from Pittsburgh of a husky boilermaker from Frisco who

hopped freights clear from the Coast to come here in the

mouth of a Back Bay socialworker in the mouth of an

Italian printer of a hobo from Arkansas the language

of the beaten nation is not forgotten in our ears tonight

the men in the deathhouse made the old words new

before they died

If it had not been for these things, I might have

lived out my life talking at streetcorners to scorning men.

I might have died unknown, unmarked, a failure. This is

our career and our triumph. Never in our full life can we

hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's

understanding of man as how we do by an accident.

now their work is over the immigrants haters of

oppression lie quiet in black suits in the little undertaking

parlor in the North End the city is quiet the men of

-463-

the conquering nation are not to be seen on the streets

they have won why are they scared to be seen on

the streets? on the streets you see only the downcast

faces of the beaten the streets belong to the beaten

nation all the way to the cemetery where the bodies

of the immigrants are to be burned we line the curbs in

the drizzling rain we crowd the wet sidewalks elbow to

elbow silent pale looking with scared eyes at the coffins

we stand defeated America

NEWSREEL LXVII

when things are upset, there's always chaos, said Mr.

Ford. Work can accomplish wonders and overcome chaotic

conditions. when the Russian masses will learn to want more

than they have, when they will want white collars, soap, better

clothes, better shoes, better housing, better living conditions

I lift up my finger and I say tweet tweet

shush shush

now now

come come

REPUBLIC-TRUMBULL STEEL MERGER VOTED

There along the dreamy Amazon

We met upon the shore

Tho' the love I knew is ever gone

WHEAT OVERSOLD REACHES NEW HIGH

Dreams linger on

-464-

the first thing the volunteer firefighters did was to open

the windows to let the smoke out. This created a draft and the

fire with a good thirty mile wind right from the ocean did

the rest

RECORD TURNOVER IN INSURANCE SHARES AS TRADING

PROGRESSES

outside the scene was a veritable bedlam. Well-dressed

women walked up and down wringing their hands, helpless to

save their belongings, while from the windows of the upper

stories there rained a shower of trunks, suitcases and clothing

hurled out indiscriminately. Jewelry and bricabrac valued at

thousands was picked up by the spectators from the lawn, who

thrust the objects under their coats and disappeared

BROKERS LOANS HIT NEW HIGH

Change all of your gray skies

Turn them into gay skies

And keep sweeping the cobwebs off the moon

MARKETS OPTIMISTIC

learn new uses for cement. How to develop profitable

concrete business. How to judge materials. How to figure

jobs. How to reinforce concrete. How to build forms, roads,

sidewalks, floors, foundations, culverts, cellars

And even tho' the Irish and the Dutch

Say it don't amount to much

Fifty million Frenchmen can't be wrong

STARSPANGLED BANDIT GANG

ROBS DINERS

MURDER BARES QUAKER STATE FANTASIES

Poker Slayer Praised

Poor little Hollywood Rose

so all alone

No one in Hollywood knows

how sad she's grown

-465-

FIVE HUNDRED MILLIONS IN BANK DEAL

Sure I love the dear silver that shines in your hair

And the brow that's all furrowed

And wrinkled with care

I kiss the dear fingers so toil worn for me

CARBONIC BUYS IN DRY ICE

GAB MARATHON RUN FOR GOLD ON BROADWAY

the broad advertising of the bull markets, the wide ex-

tension of the ticker services, the equipping of branch brokerage

offices with tickers, transparent, magnified translux stockquota-

tion rolls have had the natural result of stirring up nation-wide

interest in the stockmarket

POOR LITTLE RICH BOY

William Randolph Hearst was an only son, the

only chick in the richlyfeathered nest of George and

Phebe Hearst.

In eighteen fifty George Hearst had left his folks

and the farm in Franklin County, Missouri, and driven

a team of oxen out to California. (In fortynine the

sudden enormous flare of gold had filled the west;

the young men couldn't keep their minds on their

plowing, on feeding the swill to the pigs, on threshing

the wheat

when the fires of gold were sweeping the Pacific

Slope. Cholera followed in the ruts of the oxcarts, they

died of cholera round the campfires, in hastilybuilt

chinchinfested cabins, they were picked off by hostile

Indians, they blew each other's heads off in brawls.)

George Hearst was one of the few that made it;

he developed a knack for placermining;

-466-

as a prospector he had an accurate eye for picking

a goldbearing vein of quartz;

after seven years in El Dorado County he was a

millionaire, Anaconda was beginning, he owned one-

sixth of the Ophir Mine, he was in on Comstock

Lode.

In sixtyone he went back home to Missouri with

his pockets full of nuggets and married Phebe Apper-

son and took her back by boat and across Panama to

San Francisco the new hilly capital of the millionaire

miners and bought a mansion for her beside the Golden

Gate on the huge fogbound coast of the Pacific.

He owned vast ranges and ranches, raised cattle,

ran racehorses, prospected in Mexico, employed five

thousand men in his mines, on his estates, lost and won

fortunes in mining deals, played poker at a century a

chip, never went out without a bag of clinkers to hand

out to old friends down on their uppers,

and died in Washington

a senator,

a rough diamond, a lusty beloved whitebearded

old man with the big beak and sparrowhawk eyes of a

breaker of trails, the beetling brows under the black

slouch hat

of an oldtimer.

Mrs. Hearst's boy was born in sixtythree.

Nothing too good for the only son.

The Hearsts doted on their boy;

the big lanky youngster grew up solemneyed and

selfwilled among servants and hired men, factotums,

overseers, hangerson, old pensioners; his grandparents

spoiled him; he always did everything he wanted.

Mrs. Hearst's boy must have everything of the best.

-467-

No lack of gold auggets, twentydollar goldpieces,

big silver cartwheels.

The boy had few playmates; he was too rich to

get along with the others in the roughandtumble de-

mocracy of the boys growing up in San Francisco in

those days. He was too timid and too arrogant; he

wasn't liked.

His mother could always rent playmates with ice-

cream, imported candies, expensive toys, ponies, fire-

works always ready to set off. The ones he could buy

he despised, he hankered always after the others.

He was great on practical jokes and pulling the

leg of the grownups; when the new Palace Hotel was

opened with a reception for General Grant he and a

friend had themselves a time throwing down handfuls

of birdshot on the glass roof of the court to the con-

sternation of the bigwigs and stuffedshirts below.

Wherever they went royally the Hearsts could

buy their way,

up and down the California coast, through ranches

and miningtowns

in Nevada and in Mexico,

in the palace of Porfirio Diaz;

the old man had lived in the world, had rubbed

shoulders with rich and poor, had knocked around in

miners' hells, pushed his way through unblazed trails

with a packmule. All his life Mrs. Hearst's boy was

to hanker after that world

hidden from him by a mist of millions;

the boy had a brain, appetites, an imperious will,

but he could never break away from the gilded

apronstrings;

adventure became slumming.

-468-

He was sent to boardingschool at St. Paul's, in

Concord, New Hampshire. His pranks kept the school

in an uproar. He was fired.

He tutored and went to Harvard

where he cut quite a swath as businessmanager of

the Lampoon, a brilliant entertainer; he didn't drink

much himself, he was softspoken and silent; he got the

other boys drunk and paid the bills, bought the fire-

works to celebrate Cleveland's election, hired the brass-

bands,

bought the creampies to throw at the actors from

the box at the Old Howard,

the cannon crackers to blow out the lamps of

herdic cabs with,

the champagne for the chorines.

He was rusticated and finally fired from Harvard,

so the story goes, for sending to each of a number of

professors a chamberpot with the professor's portrait

tastefully engraved on it.

He went to New York. He was crazy about

newspapers. Already he'd been hanging around the

Boston newspaperoffices. In New York he was taken

by Pulitzer's newfangled journalism. He didn't want

to write; he wanted to be a newspaperman. (News-

papermen were part of that sharpcontoured world he

wanted to see clear, the reallife world he saw distorted

by a haze of millions, the ungraded lowlife world of

American Democracy.)

Mrs. Hearst's boy would be a newspaperman and

a Democrat. (Newspapermen saw heard ate drank

touched horsed kidded rubbed shoulders with real men,

whored; that was life.)

He arrived home in California, a silent soft smil-

ing solemneyed young man

-469-

dressed in the height of the London fashion.

When his father asked him what he wanted to do

with his life,

he said he wanted to run the Examiner which was

a moribund sheet in San Francisco which his father had

taken over for a bad debt. It didn't seem much to ask.

The old man couldn't imagine why Willie wanted the

old rag instead of a mine or a ranch, but Mrs. Hearst's

boy always had his way.

Young Hearst went down to the Examiner one

day

and turned the office topsyturvy. He had a knack

for finding and using bright young men, he had a

knack for using his own prurient hanker after the lusts

and envies of plain unmonied lowlife men and women

(the slummer sees only the streetwalkers, the dope-

parlors, the strip acts and goes back uptown saying he

knows the workingclass districts); the lowest common

denominator;

manure to grow a career in,

the rot of democracy. Out of it grew rankly an

empire of print. (Perhaps he liked to think of himself

as the young Caius Julius flinging his millions away,

tearing down emblems and traditions, making faces at

togaed privilege, monopoly, stuffedshirts in office;

Caesar's life like his was a millionaire prank. Per-

haps W. R. had read of republics ruined before;

Alcibiades, too, was a practical joker.)

The San Francisco Examiner grew in circulation,

tickled the prurient hankers of the moneyless man

became The Monarch of the Dailies.

When the old man died Mrs. Hearst sold out of

Anaconda for seven and a half millions of dollars.

-470-

W. R. got the money from her to enter the New York

fields he bought the Morning Journal

and started his race with the Pulitzers

as to who should cash in most

on the geewhizz emotion.

In politics he was the people's Democrat; he came

out for Bryan in ninetysix; on the Coast he fought the

Southern Pacific and the utilities and the railroad law-

yers who were grabbing the state of California away

from the first settlers; on election day in ninetysix his

three papers in New York put out between them more

than a million and a half copies, a record

that forced the World to cut its price to a penny.

When there's no news make news.

"You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the

war," he's supposed to have wired Remington in Ha-

vana. The trouble in Cuba was a goldmine for circu-

lation when Mark Hanna had settled national politics

by planting McKinley in the White House.

Hearst had one of his bright young men engineer

a jailbreak for Evangelina Cisneros, a fair Cuban revo-

lutionist shoved into a dungeon by Weyler, and put on

a big reception for her in Madison Square.

Remember the "Maine."

When McKinley was forced to declare war on

Spain W. R. had his plans all made to buy and sink a

British steamer in the Suez Canal

but the Spanish fleet didn't take that route.

He hired the Sylvia and the Buccaneer and went

down to Cuba himself with a portable press and a fleet

of tugs

and brandishing a sixshooter went in with the

longboat through the surf and captured twentysix un-

-471-

armed halfdrowned Spanish sailors on the beach and

forced them to kneel and kiss the American flag

in front of the camera.

Manila Bay raised the circulation of the Morning

Journal to

one million six hundred thousand.

When the Spaniards were licked there was nobody

left to heckle but the Mormons. Polygamy titillated

the straphangers, and the sexlife of the rich, and pen-

andink drawings of women in underclothes and pre-

historic monsters in four colors. He discovered the

sobsister: Annie Laurie, Dorothy Dix, Beatrice Fairfax.

He splurged on comics, the Katzenjammer Kids, Buster

Brown, Krazy Kat. Get excited when the public is

excited;

his editorials hammered at malefactors of great

wealth, trusts, the G.O.P., Mark Hanna and McKinley

so shrilly that when McKinley was assassinated most

Republicans in some way considered Hearst responsible

for his death.

Hearst retorted by renaming the Morning Journal

the American

and stepping into the limelight

wearing a black frockcoat and a tengallon hat,

presidential timber,

the millionaire candidate of the common man.

Bryan made him president of the National Asso-

ciation of Democratic Clubs and advised him to start a

paper in Chicago.

After Bryan's second defeat. Hearst lined up with

Charles F. Murphy in New York and was elected to

Congress.

-472-

His headquarters were at the Holland House; the

night of his election he gave a big free show of fire-

works in Madison Square Garden; a mortar exploded

and killed or wounded something like a hundred peo-

ple; that was one piece of news the Hearst men made

that wasn't spread on the front pages of the Hearst

papers.

In the House of Representatives he was unpopu-

lar; it was schooldays over again. The limp hand-

shake, the solemn eyes set close to the long nose, the

small flabby scornful smile were out of place among

the Washington backslappers. He was ill at ease with-

out his hired gang around him.

He was happier entertaining firstnighters and

footlight favorites at the Holland House. In those

years when Broadway still stopped at Fortysecond

Street,

Millicent Willson was a dancer in The Girl from

Paris; she and her sister did a sister act together; she

won a popularity contest in the Morning Telegraph

and the hand of

William Randolph Hearst.

In nineteen four he spent a lot of money putting

his name up in electric lights at the Chicago Conven-

tion to land the Democratic nomination but Judge

Parker and Wall Street got it away from him.

In nineteen five he ran for Mayor of New York

on a municipal ownership ticket.

In nineteen six he very nearly got the governor-

ship away from the solemnwhiskered Hughes. There

were Hearst for President clubs all over the country.

-473-

He was making his way in politics spending millions to

the tune of Waltz Me Around Again, Willie.

He managed to get his competitor James Gordon

Bennett up in court for running indecent ads in the

New York Herald and fined $25,000, a feat which

hardly contributed to his popularity in certain quarters.

In nineteen eight he was running revelations about

Standard Oil, the Archbold letters that proved that the

trusts were greasing the palms of the politicians in a

big way. He was the candidate of the Independence

party made up almost exclusively, so his enemies

claimed, of Hearst employees.

(His fellowmillionaires felt he was a traitor to his

class but when he was taxed with his treason he an-

swered:

You know I believe in property, and you know

where I stand on personal fortunes, but isn't it better

that I should represent in this country the dissatisfied

than have somebody else do it who might not have the

same real property relations that I may have?)

By nineteen fourteen, although he was the greatest

newspaperowner in the country, the proprietor of hun-

dreds of square miles of ranching and mining country

in California and Mexico,

his affairs were in such a scramble he had trouble

borrowing a million dollars,

and politically he was ratpoison.

All the millions he signed away

all his skill at putting his own thoughts

into the skull of the straphanger

failed to bridge the tiny Rubicon between amateur

and professional politics (perhaps he could too easily

forget a disappointment buying a firstrate writer or an

-474-

embroidered slipper attributed to Charlemagne or the

gilded bed a king's mistress was supposed to have

slept in).

Sometimes he was high enough above the battle to

see clear. He threw all the power of his papers, all

his brilliance as a publisher into an effort to keep the

country sane and neutral during the first world war;

he opposed loans to the Allies, seconded Bryan

in his lonely fight to keep the interests of the United

States as a whole paramount over the interests of the

Morgan banks and the anglophile businessmen of the

East;

for his pains he was razzed as a pro-German,

and when war was declared had detectives placed

among his butlers,

secretserviceagents ransacking his private papers,

gumshoeing round his diningroom on Riverside Drive

to investigate rumors of strange colored lights seen in

his windows.

He opposed the peace of Versailles and the league

of victorious nations

and ended by proving that he was as patriotic as

anybody

by coming out for conscription

and printing his papers with red white and blue

borders and with little Amercian flags at either end of

the dateline and continually trying to stir up trouble

across the Rio Grande

and inflating the Yankee Doodle bogey,

the biggest navy in the world.

The people of New York City backed him up by

electing Hearst's candidate for Mayor, Honest John

Hylan,

-475-

but Al Smith while he was still the sidewalks' hero

rapped Hearst's knuckles when he tried to climb back

onto the Democratic soundtruck.

In spite of enormous expenditures on forged docu-

ments he failed to bring about war with Mexico.

In spite of spraying hundreds of thousands of dol-

lars into moviestudios he failed to put over his favorite

moviestar as America's sweetheart.

And more and more the emperor of newsprint re-

tired to his fief of San Simeon on the Pacific Coast,

where he assembled a zoo, continued to dabble in

movingpictures, collected warehouses full of tapestries,

Mexican saddles, bricabrac, china, brocade, embroidery,

old chests of drawers, tables and chairs, the loot of dead

Europe,

built an Andalusian palace and a Moorish ban-

quethall and there spends his last years amid the re-

laxing adulations of screenstars, admen, screenwriters,

publicitymen, columnists, millionaire editors,

a monarch of that new El Dorado

where the warmedover daydreams of all the

ghettos

are churned into an opiate haze

more scarily blinding to the moneyless man

more fruitful of millions

than all the clinking multitude of double eagles

the older Hearst minted out of El Dorado County

in the old days (the empire of the printed word con-

tinues powerful by the inertia of bigness; but this power

over the dreams

of the adolescents of the world

grows and poisons like a cancer),

and out of the westcoast haze comes now and then

an old man's querulous voice

-476-

advocating the salestax,

hissing dirty names at the defenders of civil lib-

erties for the workingman;

jail the reds,

praising the comforts of Baden-Baden under the

blood and bludgeon rule of Handsome Adolph

(Hearst's own loved invention, the lowest common

denominator come to power

out of the rot of democracy)

complaining about the California incometaxes,

shrilling about the dangers of thought in the col-

leges.

Deport; jail.

Until he dies

the magnificent endlesslyrolling presses will pour

our print for him, the whirring everywhere projectors

will spit images for him,

a spent Caesar grown old with spending

never man enough to cross the Rubicon.

RICHARD ELLSWORTH SAVAGE

Dick Savage walked down Lexington to the office in the

Graybar Building. The December morning was sharp as

steel, bright glints cut into his eyes, splintering from store-

windows, from the glasses of people he passed on the

street, from the chromium rims of the headlights of auto-

mobiles. He wasn't quite sure whether he had a hang-

over or not. In a jeweler's window he caught sight of his

face in the glass against the black velvet backing, there

was a puffy boiled look under the eyes like in the photo-

-477-

graphs of the Prince of Wales. He felt sour and gone in

the middle like a rotten pear. He stepped into a drugstore

and ordered a bromoseltzer. At the sodafountain he stood

looking at himself in the mirror behind the glass shelf

with the gingeralebottles on it; his new darkblue broad-

cloth coat looked well anyway. The black eyes of the soda-

jerker were seeking his eyes out. "A heavy evening, eh?"

Dick nodded and grinned. The sodajerker passed a thin

redknuckled hand over his patentleather hair. "I didn't

get off till one thirty an' it takes me an hour to get home

on the subway. A whale of a chance I got to . . .""I'm

late at the office now," said Dick and paid and walked out,

belching a little, into the sparkling morning street. He

walked fast, taking deep breaths. By the time he was stand-

ing in the elevator with a sprinkling of stoutish fortyish

welldressed men, executives like himself getting to their

offices late, he had a definite sharp headache.

He'd hardly stretched his legs out under his desk when

the interoffice phone clicked. It was Miss Williams' voice:

"Good morning, Mr. Savage. We've been waiting for you

. . . Mr. Moorehouse says please step into his office, he

wants to speak with you a minute before the staff confer-

ence." Dick got up and stood a second with his lips pursed

rocking on the balls of his feet looking out the window

over the ashcolored blocks that stretched in a series of

castiron molds east to the chimneys of powerplants, the

bridge, the streak of river flashing back steel at the steel-

blue sky. Riveters shrilly clattered in the new huge con-

struction that was jutting up girder by girder at the corner

of Fortysecond. They all seemed inside his head like a

dentist's drill. He shuddered, belched and hurried along

the corridor into the large corner office.

J. W. was staring at the ceiling with his big jowly face

as expressionless as a cow's. He turned his pale eyes on

Dick without a smile. "Do you realize there are seventy-

five million people in this country unwilling or unable to

-478-

go to a physician in time of sickness?" Dick twisted his

face into a look of lively interest. He's been talking to Ed

Griscolm, he said to himself. "Those are the people the

Bingham products have got to serve. He's touched only

the fringes of this great potential market.""His business

would be to make them feel they're smarter than the big-

bugs who go to Battle Creek," said Dick. J. W. frowned

thoughtfully.

Ed Griscolm had come in. He was a sallow long man

with an enthusiastic flash in his eye that flickered on and

off like an electriclight sign. He had a way of carrying his

arms like a cheerleader about to lead a college yell. Dick

said "Hello" without warmth. "Top of the morning,

Dick . . . a bit overhung I see. . . . Too bad, old man,

too bad."

"I was just saying, Ed," J. W. went on in his slow even

voice, "that our talkingpoints should be first that they

haven't scratched the top of their potential market of

seventyfive million people and second that a properlycon-

ducted campaign can eradicate the prejudice many people

feel against proprietary medicines and substitute a feeling

of pride in their use."

"It's smart to be thrifty . . . that sort of thing,"

shouted Ed.

"Selfmedication," said Dick. "Tell them the average

sodajerker knows more about medicine today than the

family physician did twentyfive years ago."

"They think there's something hick about patent medi-

cines," yelled Ed Griscolm. "We got to put patent medi-

cines on Park Avenue.""Proprietary medicines," said

J. W. reprovingly.

Dick managed to wipe the smile off his face. "We've

got to break the whole idea," he said, "into its component

parts."

"Exactly." J. W. picked up a carvedivory papercutter

and looked at it in different angles in front of his face.

-479-

The office was so silent they could hear the traffic roaring

outside and the wind whistling between the steel window-

frame and the steel window. Dick and Ed Griscolm held

their breath. J. W. began to talk. "The American public

has become sophisticated . . . when I was a boy in Pitts-

burgh all we thought of was display advertising, the ap-

peal to the eye. Now with the growth of sophistication

we must think of the other types of appeal, and the eradi-

cation of prejudice. . . . Bingo . . . the name is out of

date, it's all wrong. A man would be ashamed to lunch

at the Metropolitan Club with a bottle of Bingo at his

table . . . that must be the talkingpoint. . . . Yesterday

Mr. Bingham seemed inclined to go ahead. He was balk-

ing a little at the cost of the campaign. . . ."

"Never mind," screeched Ed Griscolm, "we'll nail the

old buzzard's feet down yet."

"I guess he has to be brought around gently just as

you were saying last night, J. W.," said Dick in a low

bland voice. "They tell me Halsey of Halsey O'Connor's

gone to bed with a nervous breakdown tryin' to get old

Bingham to make up his mind." Ed Griscolm broke into

a tittering laugh.

J. W. got to his feet with a faint smile. When J. W.

smiled Dick smiled too. "I think he can be brought to

appreciate the advantages connected with the name . . .

dignity . . . established connections. . . ." Still talking

J. W. led the way down the hall into the large room with

a long oval mahogany table in the middle of it where the

whole office was gathered. J. W. went first with his con-

siderable belly waggling a little from side to side as he

walked, and Dick and Ed Griscolm, each with an armful

of typewritten projects in paleblue covers, followed a step

behind him. Just as they were settling down after a certain

amount of coughing and honking and J. W. was begin-

ning about how there were seventy five million people, Ed

Griscolm ran out and came back with a neatly drawn chart

-480-

in blue and red and yellow lettering showing the layout

of the proposed campaign. An admiring murmur ran

round the table.

Dick caught a triumphant glance in his direction from

Ed Griscolm. He looked at J. W. out of the corner of his

eye. J. W. was looking at the chart with an expressionless

face. Dick walked over to Ed Griscolm and patted him

on the shoulder. "A swell job, Ed old man," he whispered.

Ed Griscolm's tense lips loosened into a smile. "Well,

gentlemen, what I'd like now is a snappy discussion," said

J. W. with a mean twinkle in his paleblue eye that

matched for a second the twinkle of the small diamonds

in his cufflinks.

While the others talked Dick sat staring at J. W.'s

hands spread out on the sheaf of typewritten papers on

the table in front of him. Oldfashioned starched cuffs pro-

truded from the sleeves of the perfectlyfitting double-

breasted grey jacket and out of them hung two pudgy

strangely hicklooking hands with liverspots on them. All

through the discussion Dick stared at the hands, all the

time writing down phrases on his scratchpad and scratching

them out. He couldn't think of anything. His brains felt

boiled. He went on scratching away with his pencil at

phrases that made no sense at all. On the fritz at the

Ritz . . . Bingham's products cure the fits.

It was after one before the conference broke up. Every-

body was congratulating Ed Griscolm on his layout. Dick

heard his own voice saying it was wonderful but it needed

a slightly different slant. "All right," said J. W. "How

about finding that slightly different slant over the week-

end? That's the idea I want to leave with every man here.

I'm lunching with Mr. Bingham Monday noon. I must

have a perfected project to present."

Dick Savage went back to his office and signed a pile of

letters his secretary had left for him. Then he suddenly

remembered he'd told Reggie Talbot held meet him for

-481-

lunch at "63" to meet the girlfriend and ran out, adjust-

ing his blue muffler as he went down in the elevator. He

caught sight of them at a table with their heads leaning

together in the crinkled cigarettesmoke in the back of the

crowded Saturdayafternoon speakeasy. "Oh, Dick, hello,"

said Reggie, jumping to his feet with his mild smile, grab-

bing Dick's hand and drawing him towards the table. "I

didn't wait for you at the office because I had to meet this

one. . . . Jo, this is Mr. Savage. The only man in New

York who doesn't give a damn. . . . What'll you have to

drink?" The girl certainly was a knockout. When Dick

let himself drop on the redleather settee beside her, facing

Reggie's slender ashblond head and his big inquiring light-

brown eyes, he felt boozy and tired.

"Oh, Mr. Savage, what's happened about the Bingham

account? I'm so excited about it. Reggie can't talk about

anything else. I know it's indiscreet to ask." She looked

earnestly in his face out of longlashed black eyes. They

certainly made a pretty couple.

"Telling tales out of school, eh?" said Dick, picking up

a breadstick and snapping it into his mouth.

"But you know, Dick, Jo and me . . . we talk about

everything . . . it never goes any further. . . . And hon-

estly all the younger guys in the office think it's a damn

shame J. W. didn't use your first layout. . . . Griscolm

is going to lose the account for us if he isn't careful . . .

it just don't click. . . . I think the old man's getting soft-

ening of the brain."

"You know I've thought several times recently that

J. W. wasn't in very good health. . . . Too bad. He's the

most brilliant figure in the publicrelations field." Dick

heard an oily note come into his voice and felt ashamed

in front of the youngsters and shut up suddenly. "Say,

Tony," he called peevishly to the waiter. "How about

some cocktails? Give me a bacardi with a little absinthe in

-482-

it, you know, my special. . . . Gosh, I feel a hundred

years old."

"Been burning the candle at both ends?" asked Reggie.

Dick twisted his face into a smirk. "Oh, that candle,"

he said. "It gives me a lot of trouble." They all blushed.

Dick chuckled. "By God, I don't think there are three

other people in the city that have a blush left in them."

They ordered more cocktails. While they were drinking

Dick felt the girl's eyes serious and dark fixed on his face.

She lifted her glass to him. " Reggie says you've been aw-

fully sweet to him at the office. . . . He says he'd have

been fired if it wasn't for you.""Who could help being

sweet to Reggie? Look at him." Reggie got red as a

beet. "The lad's got looks," said the girl. "But has he

any brains?"

Dick began to feel better with the onionsoup and the

third cocktail. He began to tell them how he envied them

being kids and getting married. He promised he'd be

bestman. When they asked him why he didn't get mar-

ried himself he confusedly had some more drinks and said

his life was a shambles. He made fifteen thousand a year

but he never had any money. He knew a dozen beautiful

women but he never had a girl when he needed her. All

the time he was talking he was planning in the back of

his head a release on the need for freedom of selfmedi-

cation. He couldn't stop thinking about that damned Bing-

ham account.

It was beginning to get dark when they came out of

"63". A feeling of envy stung him as he put the young

people into a taxi. He felt affectionate and amorous and

nicely buoyed up by the radiating warmth of food and

alcohol in his belly. He stood for a minute on the corner

of Madison Avenue watching the lively beforechristmas

crowd pour along the sidewalk against the bright show-

windows, all kinds of faces flushed and healthylooking for

-483-

once in the sharp cold evening in the slanting lights. Then

he took a taxi down to Twelfth Street.

The colored maid who let him in was wearing a pretty

lace apron. "Hello, Cynthia.""How do you do, Mr.

Dick." Dick could feel the impatient blood pounding in

his temples as he walked up and down the old uneven par-

quet floor waiting. Eveline was smiling when she came

out from the back room. She'd put too much powder on

her face in too much of a hurry and it brought out the

drawn lines between her nostrils and her mouth and gave

her nose a floury look. Her voice still had a lovely swing

to it. " Dick, I thought you'd given me up."

"I've been working like a dog. . . . I've gotten so my

brain won't work. I thought it would do me good to see

you." She handed him a Chinese porcelain box with ciga-

rettes in it. They sat down side by side on a rickety old-

fashioned horsehair sofa. "How's Jeremy?" asked Dick in

a cheerful tone.

Her voice went flat. "He's gone out west with Paul for

Christmas."

"You must miss him . . . I'm disappointed myself. I

love the brat."

" Paul and I have finally decided to get a divorce . . .

in a friendly way."

" Eveline, I'm sorry."

"Why?"

"I dunno. . . . It does seem silly. . . . But I always

liked Paul."

"It all got just too tiresome. . . . This way it'll be

much better for him."

There was something coolly bitter about her as she sat

beside him in her a little too frizzy afternoondress. He

felt as if he was meeting her for the first time. He picked

up her long blueveined hand and put it on the little table

in front of them and patted it. "I like you better . . .

anyway." It sounded phony in his ears, like something

-484-

he'd say to a client. He jumped to his feet. "Say, Eveline,

suppose I call up Settignano and get some gin around?

I've got to have a drink. . . . I can't get the office out

of my head."

"If you go back to the icebox you'll find some perfectly

lovely cocktails all mixed. I just made them. There are

some people coming in later.""How much later?""About

seven o'clock . . . why?" Her eyes followed him teas-

ingly as he went back through the glass doors.

In the pantry the colored girl was putting on her hat.

" Cynthia, Mrs. Johnson alleges there are cocktails out

here.""Yes, Mr. Dick, I'll get you some glasses.""Is

this your afternoon out?""Yessir, I'm goin' to church."

"On Saturday afternoon?""Yessir, our church we have

services every Saturday afternoon . . . lots of folks don't

get Sunday off nowadays.""It's gotten so I don't get

any day off at all.""It shoa is too bad, Mr. Dick."

He went back into the front room shakily, carrying the

tray with the shaker jiggling on it. The two glasses clinked.

"Oh, Dick, I'm going to have to reform you. Your hands

are shaking like an old greybeard's.""Well, I am an old

greybeard. I'm worrying myself to death about whether

that bastardly patentmedicine king will sign on the dotted

line Monday."

"Don't talk about it. . . . It sounds just too awful.

I've been working hard myself . . . I'm trying to put on

a play."

" Eveline, that's swell! Who's it by?"

" Charles Edward Holden. . . . It's a magnificent

piece of work. I'm terribly excited about it. I think I know

how to do it. . . . I don't suppose you want to put a

couple of thousand dollars in, do you, Dick?"

" Eveline, I'm flat broke. . . . They've got my salary

garnisheed and Mother has to be supported in the style

to which she is accustomed and then there's Brother

Henry's ranch in Arizona . . . he's all balled up with a

-485-

mortgage. . . . I thought Charles Edward Holden was

just a columnist."

"This is a side of him that's never come out. . . . I

think he's the real poet of modern New York . . . you

wait and see."

Dick poured himself another cocktail. "Let's talk about

just us for a minute. . . . I feel so frazzled. . . . Oh,

Eveline, you know what I mean. . . . We've been pretty

good friends." She let him hold her hand but she did not

return the squeeze he gave it. "You know we always said

we were just physically attractive to each other . . . why

isn't that the swellest thing in the world?" He moved up

close to her on the couch, gave her a little kiss on the

cheek, tried to twist her face around. "Don't you like this

miserable sinner a little bit?"

" Dick, I can't." She got to her feet. Her lips were

twitching and she looked as if she was going to burst into

tears. "There's somebody I like very much . . . very,

very much. I've decided to make some sense out of my

life."

"Who? That damn columnist?"

"Never mind who."

Dick buried his face in his hands. When he took his

hands away he was laughing. "Well, if that isn't just my

luck. . . . Just Johnny on the spot and me full of speak-

easy Saturdayafternoon amorosity."

"Well, Dick, I'm sure you won't lack for partners."

"I do today. . . . I feel lonely and hellish. My life is

a shambles."

"What a literary phrase."

"I thought it was pretty good myself but honestly I

feel every whichway. . . . Something funny happened to

me last night. 'I'll tell you about it someday when you like

me better."

" Dick, why don't you go to Eleanor's? She's giving a

party for all the boyars."

-486-

"Is she really going to marry that horrid little prince?"

Eveline nodded with that same cold bitter look in her

eyes. "I suppose a title is the last word in the decorating

business. . . . Why won't Eleanor put up some money?"

"I don't want to ask her. She's filthy with money, though,

she's had a very successful fall. I guess we're all getting

grasping in our old age. . . . What does poor Moore-

house think about the prince?"

"I wish I knew what he thought about anything. I've

been working for him for years now and I don't know

whether he's a genius or a stuffed shirt. . . . I wonder if

he's going to be at Eleanor's. I want to get hold of him

this evening for a moment. . . . That's a very good idea.

. . . Eveline, you always do me good one way or an-

other."

"You'd better not go without phoning. . . . She's per-

fectly capable of not letting you in if you come uninvited

and particularly with a houseful of émigrée Russians in

tiaras."

Dick went to the phone and called up. He had to wait

a long time for Eleanor to come. Her voice sounded shrill

and rasping. At first she said why didn't he come to din-

ner next week instead. Dick's voice got very coaxing.

"Please let me see the famous prince, Eleanor. . . . And

I've got something very important to ask you about. . . .

After all you've always been my guardian angel, Eleanor

If I can't come to you when I'm in trouble, who can I

come to?" At last she loosened up and said he could come

but he mustn't stay long. "You can talk to poor J. Ward

. . . he looks a little forlorn." Her voice ended in a

screechy laugh that made the receiver jangle and hurt his

ear.

When he went back to the sofa Eveline was lying back

against the pillows soundlessly laughing. "Dick," she said,

"you're a master of blarney." Dick made a face at her,

kissed her on the forehead and left the house.

-487-

Eleanor's place was glittering with chandeliers and cut-

glass. When she met him at the drawingroom door her

small narrow face looked smooth and breakable as a piece

of porcelain under her carefullycurled hair and above a

big rhinestone brooch that held a lace collar together.

From behind her came the boom and the high piping of

Russian men's and women's voices and a smell of tea and

charcoal. "Well, Richard, here you are," she said in a rapid

hissing whisper. "Don't forget to kiss the grandduchess's

hand . . . she's had such a dreadful life. You'd like to do

any little thing that would please her, wouldn't you? . . .

And, Richard, I'm worried about Ward . . . he looks so

terribly tired . . . I hope he isn't beginning to break up.

He's the type you know that goes off like that. . . . You

know these big shortnecked blonds."

There was a tall silver samovar on the Buhl table in

front of the marble fireplace and beside it sat a large oldish

woman in a tinsel shawl with her hair in a pompadour and

the powder flaking off a tired blotchy face. She was very

gracious and had quite a twinkle in her eye and she was

piling caviar out of a heaped cutglass bowl onto a slice of

blackbread and laughing with her mouth full. Around her

were grouped Russians in all stages of age and decay, some

in tunics and some in cheap business suits and some frowsty-

looking young women and a pair of young men with slick

hair and choirboy faces. They were all drinking tea or little

glasses of vodka. Everybody was ladling out caviar. Dick

was introduced to the prince who was an olivefaced young

man with black brows and a little pointed black mustache

who wore a black tunic and black soft leather boots and

had a prodigiously small waist. They were all merry as

crickets chirping and roaring in Russian, French and Eng-

lish. Eleanor sure is putting out, Dick caught himself

thinking as he dug into the mass of big greygrained caviar.

J. W. looking pale and fagged was standing in the cor-

ner of the room with his back to an icon that had three

-488-

candles burning in front of it. Dick distinctly remembered

having seen the icon in Eleanor's window some weeks be-

fore, against a piece of purple brocade. J. W. was talking

to an ecclesiastic in a black cassock with purple trimmings

who when Dick went up to them turned out to have a rich

Irish brogue. "Meet the Archimandrite O'Donnell, Dick,"

said J. W. "Did I get it right?" The Archimandrite

grinned and nodded. "He's been telling me about the

monasteries in Greece.""You mean where they haul you

up in a basket?" said Dick. The Archimandrite jiggled his

grinning, looselipped face up and down. "I'm goin' to have

the honorr and pleasurr of introducin' dear Eleanor into

the mysteries of the true church. I was tellin' Mr. Moore-

house the story of my conversion." Dick found an impu-

dent rolling eye looking him over. "Perhaps you'd be

carin' to come someday, Mr. Savage, to hear our choir.

Unbelief dissolves in music like a lump of sugar in a glass

of hot tay.""Yes, I like the Russian choir," said J. W.

"Don't you think that our dear Eleanor looks happier

and younger for it?" The Archimandrite was beaming into

the crowded room. J. W. nodded doubtfully. "Och, a

lovely graceful little thing she is, clever too. . . . Per-

haps, Mr. Moorehouse and Mr. Savage, you'd come to the

service and to lunch with me afterwards. . . . I have

some ideas about a little book on my experiences at Mount

Athos. . . . We could make a little parrty of it." Dick

was amazed to find the Archimandrite's fingers pinching

him in the seat and hastily moved away a step, but not be-

fore he'd caught from the Archimandrite's left eye a slow

vigorous wink.

The big room was full of clinking and toasting, and

there was the occasional crash of a broken glass. A group

of younger Russians were singing in deep roaring voices

that made the crystal chandelier tinkle over their heads.

The caviar was all gone but two uniformed maids were

-489-

bringing in a table set with horsdœuvres in the middle of

which was a large boiled salmon.

J. W. nudged Dick. "I think we might go someplace

where we can talk.""I was just waiting for you, J. W. I

think I've got a new slant. I think it'll click this time."

They'd just managed to make their way through the

crush to the door when a Russian girl in black with fine

black eyes and arched brows came running after them.

"Oh, you mustn't go. Leocadia Pavlovna likes you so

much. She likes it here, it is informal . . . the bohème.

That is what we like about Leonora Ivanovna. She is

bohème and we are bohème. We luff her." "I'm afraid we

have a business appointment," said J. W. solemnly. The

Russian girl snapped her fingers with, "Oh, business it is

disgusting. . . . America would be so nice without the

business."

When they got out on the street J. W. sighed. "Poor

Eleanor, I'm afraid she's in for something. . . . Those

Russians will eat her out of house and home. Do you sup-

pose she really will marry this Prince Mingraziali? I've

made inquiries about him. . . . He's all that he says he is.

But heavens!""With crowns and everything," said Dick,

"the date's all set." "After all, Eleanor knows her own

business. She's been very successful, you know."

J. W.'s car was at the door. The chauffeur got out with

a laprobe over his arm and was just about to close the door

on J. W. when Dick said, "J. W., have you a few minutes

to talk about this Bingham account?" "Of course, I was

forgetting," said J. W. in a tired voice. "Come on out to

supper at Great Neck. . . . I'm alone out there except for

the children." Smiling, Dick jumped in and the chauffeur

closed the door of the big black towncar behind him.

It was pretty lugubrious eating in the diningroom with

its painted Italian panels at the Moorehouses' with the

butler and the secondman moving around silently in the

dim light and only Dick and J. W. and Miss Simpson, the

-490-

children's so very refined longfaced governess, at the long

candlelit table. Afterwards when they went into J. W.'s

little white den to smoke and talk about the Bingham ac-

count, Dick thanked his stars when the old butler appeared

with a bottle of scotch and ice and glasses. "Where did you

find that, Thompson?" asked J. W. "Been in the ceflaz

since before the war, Sir . . . those cases Mrs. Moore-

house bought in Scotland. . . . I knew Mr. Savage liked

a bit of a spot."

Dick laughed. "That's the advantage of having a bad

name," he said.

J. W. drawled solemnly, "It's the best to be had, I know

that. . . . Do you know I never could get much out of

drinking, so I gave it up, even before prohibition."

J. W. had lit himself a cigar. Suddenly he threw it in

the fire. "I don't think I'll smoke tonight. The doctor says

three cigars a day won't hurt me . . . but I've been feel-

ing seedy all week. . . . I ought to get out of the stock-

market. . . . I hope you keep out of it, Dick."

"My creditors don't leave me enough to buy a ticket to

a raffle with."

J. W. took a couple of steps across the small room lined

with unscratched sets of the leading authors in morocco,

and then stood with his back to the Florentine fireplace

with his hands behind him. "I feel chilly all the time. I

don't think my circulation's very good. . . . Perhaps it

was going to see Gertrude. . . . The doctors have finally

admitted her case is hopeless. It was a great shock to me."

Dick got to his feet and put down his glass. "I'm sorry,

J. W. . . . Still, there have been surprising cures in brain

troubles."

J. W. was standing with his lips in a thin tight line, his

big jowl trembling a little. "Not in schizophrenia. . . .

I've managed to do pretty well in everything except that.

. . . I'm a lonely man," he said. "And to think once upon

a time I was planning to be a songwriter." He smiled.

-491-

Dick smiled too and held out his hand. "Shake hands,

J. W.," he said, "with the ruins of a minor poet."

"Anyway," said J. W., "the children will have the ad-

vantages I never had. . . . Would it bore you, before we

get down to business, to go up and say goodnight to them?

I'd like to have you see them."

"Of course not, I love kids," said Dick. "In fact I've

never yet quite managed to grow up myself."

At the head of the stairs Miss Simpson met them with

her finger to her lips. "Little Gertrude's asleep." They tip-

toed down the allwhite hall. The children were in bed

each in a small hospitallike room cold from an open win-

dow, on each pillow was a head of pale strawcolored hair.

"Staple's the oldest . . . he's twelve," whispered J. W.

"Then Gertrude, then Johnny." Staple said goodnight po-

litely. Gertrude didn't wake up when they turned the

light on. Johnny sat up in a nightmare with his bright blue

eyes open wide, crying, "No, no," in a tiny frightened

voice. J. W. sat on the edge of the bed petting him for a

moment until he fell asleep again. "Goodnight, Miss

Simpson," and they were tiptoeing down the stairs. "What

do you think of them?" J. W. turned beaming to Dick.

"They sure are a pretty sight. . . . I envy you," said

Dick.

"I'm glad I brought you out . . . I'd have been lonely

without you . . . I must entertain more," said J. W.

They settled back into their chairs by the fire and started

to go over the layout to be presented to Bingham Products.

When the clock struck ten J. W. began to yawn. Dick got

to his feet. "J. W., do you want my honest opinion?"

"Go ahead, boy, you know you can say anything you

like to me."

"Well, here it is." Dick tossed off the last warm weak

remnant of his scotch. "I think we can't see the woods for

the trees . . . we're balled up in a mass of petty detail.

You say the old gentleman's pretty pigheaded . . . one

-492-

of these from newsboy to president characters. . . . Well,

I don't think that this stuff really sets in high enough re-

lief the campaign you outlined to us a month ago. . . ."

"I'm not very well satisfied with it, to tell the truth."

"Is there a typewriter in the house?"

"I guess Thompson or Morton can scrape one up some-

where."

"Well, I think that I might be able to bring your funda-

mental idea out a little more. To my mind it's one of the

biggest ideas ever presented in the business world."

"Of course it's the work of the whole office."

"Let me see if I can take this to pieces and put it to-

gether again over the weekend. After all there'll be noth-

ing lost. . . . We've got to blow that old gent clean out

of the water or else Halsey'll get him."

"They're around him every minute like a pack of

wolves," said J. W., getting up yawning. "Well, I leave

it in your hands." When he got to the door J. W. paused

and turned. "Of course those Russian aristocrats are so-

cially the top. It's a big thing for Eleanor that way. . . .

But I wish she wouldn't do it. . . . You know, Dick,

Eleanor and I have had a very beautiful relationship. . . .

That little woman's advice and sympathy have meant a

great deal to me. . . . I wish she wasn't going to do it.

. . . Well, I'm going to bed."

Dick went up to the big bedroom hung with English

huntingscenes. Thompson brought him up a new noiseless

typewriter and the bottle of whiskey. Dick sat there work-

ing all night in his pyjamas and bathrobe smoking and

drinking the whiskey. He was still at it when the windows

began to get blue with day and he began to make out be-

tween the heavy curtains black lacy masses of sleetladen

trees grouped round a sodden lawn. His mouth was sour

from too many cigarettes. He went into the bathroom

frescoed with dolphins and began to whistle as he let the

-493-

hot water pour into the tub. He felt bleary and dizzy but

he had a new layout.

Next day at noon when J. W. came back from church

with the children Dick was dressed and shaved and walk-

ing up and down the flagged terrace in the raw air. Dick's

eyes felt hollow and his head throbbed but J. W. was de-

lighted with the work. "Of course selfservice, independ-

ence, individualism is the word I gave the boys in the be-

ginning. This is going to be more than a publicity cam-

paign, it's going to be a campaign for Americanism. . . .

After lunch I'll send the car over for Miss Williams and

get her to take some dictation. There's more meat in this

yet, Dick." "Of course," said Dick, reddening. "All I've

done is restore your original conception, J. W."

At lunch the children sat up at the table and Dick had a

good time with them, making them talk to him and tell-

ing them stories about the bunnies he'd raised when he was

a little boy in Jersey. J. W. was beaming. After lunch Dick

played pingpong in the billiardroom in the basement with

Miss Simpson and Staple and little Gertrude while Johnny

picked up the balls for them. J. W. retired to his den to

take a nap.

Later they arranged the prospectus for Miss Williams

to type. The three of them were working there happily in

front of the fire when Thompson appeared in the door and

asked reverently if Mr. Moorehouse cared to take a

phonecall from Mr. Griscolm. "All right, give it to me

on this phone here," said J. W.

Dick froze in his chair. He could hear the voice at the

other end of the line twanging excitedly. "Ed, don't you

worry," J. W. was drawling. "You take a good rest, my

boy, and be fresh as a daisy in the morning so that you

can pick holes in the final draft that Miss Williams and I

were working over all last night. A few changes occurred

to me in the night. . . . You know sleep brings council.

. . . How about a little handball this afternoon? A sweat's

-494-

a great thing for a man, you know. If it wasn't so wet I'd

be putting in eighteen holes of golf myself. All right, see

you in the morning, Ed." J. W. put down the receiver.

"Do you know, Dick," he said, "I think Ed Griscolm ought

to take a couple of weeks off in Nassau or some place like

that. He's losing his grip a little. . . . I think I'll sug-

gest it to him. He's been a very valuable fellow in the

office, you know."

"One of the brightest men in the publicrelations field,"

said Dick flatly. They went back to work.

Next morning Dick drove in with J. W. but stopped off

on Fiftyseventh to run round to his mother's apartment on

Fiftysixth to change his shirt. When he got to the office the

switchboard operator in the lobby gave him a broad grin.

Everything was humming with the Bingham account. In

the vestibule he ran into the inevitable Miss Williams. Her

sour lined oldmaidish face was twisted into a sugary smile.

"Mr. Savage, Mr. Moorehouse says would you mind

meeting him and Mr. Bingham at the Plaza at twelve

thirty when he takes Mr. Bingham to lunch?"

He spent the morning on routine work. Round eleven

Eveline Johnson called him up and said she wanted to see

him. He said how about towards the end of the week. "But

I'm right in the building," she said in a hurt voice. "Oh,

come on up, but I'm pretty busy. . . . You know Mon-

days."

Eveline had a look of strain in the bright hard light

that poured in the window from the overcast sky. She had

on a grey coat with a furcollar that looked a little shabby

and a prickly grey straw hat that fitted her head tight and

had a kind of a last year's look. The lines from the flanges

of her nose to the ends of her mouth looked deeper and

harder than ever. Dick got up and took both her hands.

"Eveline, you look tired."

"I think I'm coming down with the grippe." She talked

fast. "I just came in to see a friendly face. I have an ap-

-495-

pointment to see J. W. at eleven fifteen. . . . Do you

think he'll come across? If I can raise ten thousand the

Shuberts will raise the rest. But it's got to be right away

because somebody has some kind of an option on it that

expires tomorrow. . . . Oh, I'm so sick of not doing any-

thing. . . . Holden has wonderful ideas about the pro-

duction and he's letting me do the sets and costumes . . .

and if some Broadway producer does it he'll ruin it. . . .

Dick, I know it's a great play."

Dick frowned. "This isn't such a very good time . . .

we're all pretty preoccupied this morning."

"Well, I won't disturb you any more." They were

standing in the window. "How can you stand those riveters

going all the time?"

"Why, Eveline, those riveters are music to our ears,

they make us sing like canaries in a thunderstorm. They

mean business. . . . If J. W. takes my advice that's where

we're going to have our new office."

"Well, goodby." She put her hand in its worn grey

glove in his. "I know you'll put in a word for me. . . .

You're the whitehaired boy around here."

She went out leaving a little frail familiar scent of co-

logne and furs in the office. Dick walked up and down in

front of his desk frowning. He suddenly felt nervous and

jumpy. He decided he'd run out to get a breath of air and

maybe a small drink before he went to lunch. "If anybody

calls," he said to his secretary, "tell them to call me after

three. I have an errand and then an appointment with Mr.

Moorehouse."

In the elevator there was J. W. just going down in a

new overcoat with a big furcollar and a new grey fedora.

"Dick," he said, "if you're late at the Plaza I'll wring your

neck. . . . You're slated for the blind bowboy."

"To shoot Bingham in the heart?" Dick's ears hummed

as the elevator dropped.

J. W. nodded, smiling. "By the way, in strict confidence

-496-

what do you think of Mrs. Johnson's project to put on a

play? . . . Of course she's a very lovely woman. . . .

She used to be a great friend of Eleanor's. . . . Dick, my

boy, why don't you marry?"

"Who? Eveline? She's married already."

"I was thinking aloud, don't pay any attention to it."

They came out of the elevator and walked across the

Grand Central together in the swirl of the noontime

crowd. The sun had come out and sent long slanting mote-

filled rays across under the great blue ceiling overhead.

"But what do you think of this play venture? You see I'm

pretty well tied up in the market. . . . I suppose I could

borrow the money at the bank."

"The theater's always risky," said Dick. "Eveline's a

great girl and all that and full of talent but I don't know

how much of a head she has for business. Putting on a

play's a risky business."

"I like to help old friends out . . . but it occurred to

me that if the Shuberts thought there was money in it

they'd be putting it in themselves. . . . Of course Mrs.

Johnson's very artistic."

"Of course," said Dick.

At twelve thirty he was waiting for J. W. in the lobby

of the Plaza chewing sensen to take the smell of the three

whiskeys he'd swallowed at Tony's on the way up off his

breath. At twelve fortyfive he saw coming from the check-

room J. W.'s large pearshaped figure with the paleblue

eyes and the sleek strawgrey hair, and beside him a tall

gaunt man with untidy white hair curling into ducktails

over his ears. The minute they stepped into the lobby Dick

began to hear a rasping opinionated boom from the tall

man.

". . . never one of those who could hold my peace

while injustice ruled in the marketplace. It has been a long

struggle and one which from the vantage of those three-

score and ten years that the prophets of old promised to

-497-

man upon this earth I can admit to have been largely

crowned with material and spiritual success. Perhaps it was

my early training for the pulpit but I have always felt, and

that feeling, Mr. Moorehouse, is not rare among the

prominent businessmen in this country, that material suc-

cess is not the only thing . . . there is the attainment of

the spirit of service. That is why I say to you frankly that

I have been grieved and wounded by this dark conspiracy.

Who steals my purse steals trash but who would . . .

what is it? . . . my memory's not what it was . . . my

good name . . . Ah, yes, how do you do, Mr. Savage?"

Dick was surprised by the wrench the handshake gave

his arm. He found himself standing in front of a gaunt

loosejointed old man with a shock of white hair and a big

prognathous skull from which the sunburned skin hung in

folds like the jowls of a birddog. J. W. seemed small and

meek beside him. "I'm very glad to meet you, sir," E. R.

Bingham said. "I have often said to my girls that had I

grown up in your generation I would have found happy

and useful work in the field of publicrelations. But alas in

my day the path was harder for a young man entering life

with nothing but the excellent tradition of moral fervor

and natural religion I absorbed if I may say so with my

mother's milk. We had to put our shoulders to the wheel

in those days' and it was the wheel of an old muddy wagon

drawn by mules, not the wheel of a luxurious motorcar."

E. R. Bingham boomed his way into the diningroom. A

covey of palefaced waiters gathered round, pulling out

chairs, setting the table, bringing menucards. "Boy, it is no

use handing me the bill of fare," E. R. Bingham addressed

the headwaiter. "I live by nature's law. I eat only a few

nuts and vegetables and drink raw milk. . . . Bring me

some cooked spinach, a plate of grated carrots and a glass

of unpasteurized milk. . . . As a result, gentlemen, when

I went a few days ago to a great physician at the request of

one of the great lifeinsurance companies in this city he was

-498-

dumbfounded when he examined me. He could hardly be-

lieve that I was not telling a whopper when I told him I

was seventyone. 'Mr. Bingham,' he said, 'you have the

magnificent physique of a healthy athlete of fortyfive' . . .

Feel that, young man." E. R. Bingham flexed his arm

under Dick's nose. Dick gave the muscle a prod with two

fingers. "A sledgehammer," Dick said, nodding his head.

E. R. Bingham was already talking again: "You see I prac-

tice what I preach, Mr. Moorehouse . . . and I expect

others to do the same. . . . I may add that in the entire

list of remedies and proprietary medicines controlled by

Bingham Products and the Rugged Health Corporation,

there is not a single one that contains a mineral, a drug or

any other harmful ingredient. I have sacrificed time and

time again hundreds of thousands of dollars to strike from

my list a concoction deemed injurious or habitforming by

Dr. Gorman and the rest of the splendid men and women

who make up our research department. Our medicines and

our systems of diet and cure are nature's remedies, herbs

and simples culled in the wilderness in the four corners of

the globe according to the tradition of wise men and the

findings of sound medical science."

"Would you have coffee now, Mr. Bingham, or later?"

"Coffee, sir, is a deadly poison, as are alcohol, tea and

tobacco. If the shorthaired women and the longhaired men

and the wildeyed cranks from the medical schools, who are

trying to restrict the liberties of the American people to

seek health and wellbeing, would restrict their activities to

the elimination of these dangerous poisons that are sap-

ping the virility of our young men and the fertility of our

lovely American womanhood I would have no quarrel

with them. In fact I would do everything I could to aid

and abet them. Someday I shall put my entire fortune at

the disposal of such a campaign. I know that the plain

people of this country feel as I do because I'm one of them,

born and raised on the farm of plain godfearing farming

-499-

folk. The American people need to be protected from

cranks."

"That, Mr. Bingham," said J. W., "will be the keynote

of the campaign we have been outlining." The fingerbowls

had arrived. "Well, Mr. Bingham," said J. W., getting to

his feet, "this has been indeed a pleasure. I unfortunately

shall have to leave you to go downtown to a rather im-

portant directors' meeting but Mr. Savage here has every-

thing right at his fingertips and can, I know, answer any

further questions. I believe we are meeting with your sales

department at five."

As soon as they were alone E. R. Bingham leaned over

the table to Dick and said, "Young man, I very much need

a little relaxation this afternoon. Perhaps you could come

to some entertainment as my guest. . . . All work and no

play . . . you know the adage. Chicago has always been

my headquarters and whenever I've been in New York

I've been too busy to get around. . . . Perhaps you could

suggest some sort of show or musical extravaganza. I be-

long to the plain people, let's go where the plain people

go." Dick nodded understandingly. "Let's see, Monday

afternoon . . . I'll have to call up the office. . . . There

ought to be vaudeville. . . . I can't think of anything but

a burlesque show." "That's the sort of thing, music and

young women. . . . I have high regard for the human

body. My daughters, thank God, are magnificent physical

specimens. . . . The sight of beautiful female bodies is

relaxing and soothing. Come along, you are my guest. It

will help me to make up my mind about this matter. . . .

Between you and me Mr. Moorehouse is a very extraor-

dinary man. I think he can lend the necessary dignity. . . .

But we must not forget that we are talking to the plain

people."

"But the plain people aren't so plain as they were, Mr.

Bingham. They like things a little ritzy now," said Dick,

following E. R. Bingham's rapid stride to the checkroom.

-500-

"I never wear hat or coat, only that muffler, young lady,"

E. R. Bingham was booming.

"Have you any children of your own, Mr. Savage?"

asked E. R. Bingham when they were settled in the taxi-

cab. "No, I'm not married at the moment," said Dick

shakily, and lit himself a cigarette. "Will you forgive a

man old enough to be your father for pointing something

out to you?" E. R. Bingham took Dick's cigarette between

two long knobbed fingers and dropped it out of the win-

dow of the cab. "My friend, you are poisoning yourself

with narcotics and destroying your virility. When I was

around forty years old I was in the midst of a severe eco-

nomic struggle. All my great organization was still in its

infancy. I was a physical wreck. I was a slave to alcohol

and tobacco. I had parted with my first wife and had I had

a wife I wouldn't have been able to . . . behave with her

as a man should. Well, one day I said to myself: ' Doc

Bingham' -- my friends called me Doc in those days -- 'like

Christian of old you are bound for the City of Destruction

and when you're gone, you'll have neither chick nor child

to drop a tear for you.' I began to interest myself in the

proper culture of the body . . . my spirit I may say was

already developed by familiarity with the classics in my

youth and a memory that many have called prodigious.

. . . The result has been success in every line of endeavor.

. . . Someday you shall meet my family and see what

sweetness and beauty there can be in a healthy American

home."

E. R. Bingham was still talking when they went down

the aisle to seats beside the gangplank at a burlesque show.

Before he could say Jack Robinson, Dick found himself

looking up a series of bare jiggling female legs spotted

from an occasional vaccination. The band crashed and

blared, the girls wiggled and sang and stripped in a smell

of dust and armpits and powder and greasepaint in the

glare of the moving spot that kept lighting up E. R. Bing-

-501-

ham's white head. E. R. Bingham was particularly de-

lighted when one of the girls stooped and cooed, "Why,

look at Grandpa," and sang into his face and wiggled her

geestring at him. E. R. Bingham nudged Dick and whis-

pered, "Get her telephone number." After she'd moved

on he kept exclaiming, "I feel like a boy again."

In the intermission Dick managed to call Miss Williams

at the office and to tell her to suggest to people not to

smoke at the conference. "Tell J. W. the old buzzard

thinks cigarettes are coffinnails," he said. "Oh, Mr. Sav-

age," said Miss Williams reprovingly. At five Dick tried

to get him out but he insisted on staying till the end of

the show. "They'll wait for me, don't worry," he said.

When they were back in a taxi on the way to the office

E. R. Bingham chuckled. "By gad, I always enjoy a good

legshow, the human form divine. . . . Perhaps we might,

my friend, keep the story of our afternoon under our hats."

He gave Dick's knee a tremendous slap. "It's great to play

hookey."

At the conference Bingham Products signed on the

dotted line. Mr. Bingham agreed to anything and paid no

attention to what went on. Halfway through he said he

was tired and was going home to bed and left yawning,

leaving Mr. Goldmark and a representative of the J. Win-

throp Hudson Company that did the advertising for Bing-

ham Products to go over the details of the project. Dick

couldn't help admiring the quiet domineering way J. W.

had with them. After the conference Dick got drunk and

tried to make a girl he knew in a taxicab but nothing came

of it and he went home to the empty apartment feeling

frightful.

The next morning Dick overslept. The telephone woke

him. It was Miss Williams calling from the office. Would

Mr. Savage get himself a bag packed and have it sent

down to the station so as to be ready to accompany Mr.

Moorehouse to Washington on the Congressional. "And,

-502-

Mr. Savage," she added, "excuse me for saying so, but we

all feel at the office that you were responsible for nailing

the Bingham account. Mr. Moorehouse was saying you

must have hypnotized them." "That's very nice of you,

Miss Williams," said Dick in his sweetest voice.

Dick and J. W. took a drawingroom on the train. Miss

Williams came too and they worked all the way down.

Dick was crazy for a drink all afternoon, but he didn't dare

take one, although he had a bottle of scotch in his bag, be-

cause Miss Williams would be sure to spot him getting

out the bottle and say something about it in that vague

acid apologetic way she had, and he knew J. W. felt he

drank too much. He felt so nervous he smoked cigarettes

until his tongue began to dry up in his mouth and then

took to chewing chiclets.

Dick kept J. W. busy with new slants until J. W. lay

down to take a nap saying he felt a little seedy; then Dick

took Miss Williams to the diner to have a cup of tea and

told her funny stories that kept her in a gale. By the time

they reached the smoky Baltimore tunnels he felt about

ready for a padded cell. He'd have been telling people he

was Napoleon before he got to Washington if he hadn't

been able to get a good gulp of scotch while Miss Williams

was in the ladies' room and J. W. was deep in a bundle of

letters E. R. Bingham had given, him between Bingham

Products and their Washington lobbyist Colonel Judson

on the threat of pure food legislation.

When Dick finally escaped to his room in the corner

suite J. W. always took at the Shoreham, he poured out

a good drink to take quietly by himself, with soda and ice,

while he prepared a comic telegram to send the girl he

had a date for dinner with that night at the Colony Club.

Held barely sipped the drink when the phone rang. It was

E. R. Bingham's secretary calling up from the Willard to

see if Dick would dine with Mr. and Mrs. Bingham and

the Misses Bingham. "By all means go," said J. W. when

-503-

Dick inquired if he'd need him. "First thing you know I'll

be completing the transaction by marrying you off to one

of the lovely Bingham girls."

The Bingham girls were three strapping young women

named Hygeia, Althea and Myra, and Mrs. Bingham was

a fat faded flatfaced blonde who wore round steel spec-

tacles. The only one of the family who didn't wear glasses

and have buckteeth was Myra who seemed to take more

after her father. She certainly talked a blue streak. She was

the youngest, too, and E. R. Bingham, who was striding

around in oldfashioned carpetslippers with his shirt open

at the neck and a piece of red flannel undershirt showing

across his chest, introduced her as the artistic member of

the family. She giggled a great deal about how she was

going to New York to study painting. She told Dick he

looked as if he had the artistic temperament.

They ate in some confusion because Mr. Bingham kept

sending back the dishes, and flew into a towering passion

because the cabbage was overcooked and the raw carrots

weren't ripe and cursed and swore at the waiters and finally

sent for the manager. About all they'd had was potatosoup

and boiled onions sprinkled with hazelnuts and peanut-

butter spread on wholewheat bread, all washed down with

Coca-Cola, when two young men appeared with a micro-

phone from N.B.C. for E. R. Bingham to broadcast his

eighto'clock health talk. He was suddenly smiling and

hearty again and Mrs. Bingham reappeared from the bed-

room to which she'd retreated crying, with her hands over

her ears not to hear the old man's foul language. She came

back with her eyes red and a little bottle of smellingsalts

in her hand, just in time to be chased out of the room

again. E. R. Bingham roared that women distracted his

attention from the mike, but he made Dick stay and listen

to his broadcast on health and diet and exercise hints and

to the announcement of the annual crosscountry hike from

Washington to Louisville sponsored by Rugged Health,

-504-

the Bingham Products houseorgan, which he was going to

lead in person for the first three days, just to set the pace

for the youngsters, he said.

After the broadcast Mrs. Bingham and the girls came

in all rouged and powdered up wearing diamond earrings

and pearl necklaces and chinchilla coats. They invited Dick

and the radio young men to go to Keith's with them but

Dick explained that he had work to do. Before Mrs. Bing-

ham left she made Dick promise to come to visit them at.

their home in Eureka. "You come and spend a month,

young feller," boomed E. R. Bingham, interrupting her.

"We'll make a man of you out there. The first week

orangejuice and high irrigations, massage, rest. . . . After

that we build you up with crackedwheat and plenty of milk

and cream, a little boxing or trackwork, plenty of hiking

out in the sun without a lot of stifling clothes on, and

you'll. come back a man, nature's richest handiwork, the

paragon of animals . . . you know the lines of the im-

mortal bard . . . and you'll have forgotten all about that

unhealthy New York life that's poisoning your system.

You come out, young man. . . . Well, good night. By the

time I've done my deep breathing it'll be my bedtime.

When I'm in Washington I get up at six every morning

and break the ice in the Basin. . . . How about coming

down for a little dip tomorrow? Pathé Newsreel is going

to be there. . . . It would be worth your while in your

business." Dick excused himself hastily, saying, "Another

time, Mr. Bingham."

At the Shoreham he found J. W. finishing dinner with

Senator Planet and Colonel Judson, a smooth pink toad-

faced man with a caressingly amiable manner. The senator

got to his feet and squeezed Dick's hand warmly. "Why,

boy, we expected to see you come back wearin' a tigerskin.

. . . Did the old boy show you his chestexpansion?" J. W.

was frowning. "Not this time, senator," said Dick quietly.

"But, senator," J. W. said with some impatience, evi-

-505-

dently picking up a speech where it had been broken off,

"it's the principle of the thing. Once government inter-

ference in business is established as a precedent it means

the end of liberty and private initiative in this country."

"It means the beginning of red Russian bolshevistic tyr-

anny," added Colonel Judson with angry emphasis. Sena-

tor Planet laughed. "Aren't those rather harsh words,

Joel?""What this bill purports to do is to take the right of

selfmedication from the American people. A set of lazy

government employees and remittancemen will be able to

tell you what laxative you may take and what not. Like all

such things, it'll be in the hands of cranks and busybodies.

Surely the American people have the right to choose what

products they want to buy. It's an insult to the intelligence

of our citizens."

The senator tipped up an afterdinner coffeecup to get

the last dregs of it. Dick noticed that they were drinking

brandy out of big balloonglasses. "Well," said the senator

slowly, "what you say may be true but the bill has a good

deal of popular support and you gentlemen mustn't forget

that I am not entirely a free agent in this matter. I have

to consult the wishes of my constituents . . ." "As I look

at it," interrupted Colonel Judson, "all these socalled pure

food and' drug bills are class legislation in favor of the

medical profession. Naturally the doctors want us to con-

sult them before we buy a toothbrush or a package of

licorice powder." J. W. picked up where he left off: "The

tendency of the growth of scientificallyprepared proprie-

tary medicine has been to make the layman free and self-

sufficient, able to treat many minor ills without consulting

a physician." The senator finished his brandy without an-

swering.

"Bowie," said Colonel Judson, reaching for the bottle

and pouring out some more. "You know as well as I do

that the plain people of your state don't want their free-

dom of choice curtailed by any Washington snoopers and

-506-

busybodies. . . . And we've got the money and the or-

ganization to be of great assistance in your campaign. Mr.

Moorehouse is about to launch one of the biggest educa-

tional drives the country has ever seen to let the people

know the truth about proprietary medicines, both in the

metropolitan and the rural districts. He will roll up a great

tidal wave of opinion that Congress will have to pay at-

tention to. I've seen him do it before."

"Excellent brandy," said the senator. "Fine Armagnac

has been my favorite for years." He cleared his throat and

took a cigar from a box in the middle of the table and lit

it in a leisurely fashion. "I've been much criticized of late,

by irresponsible people of course, for what they term my

reactionary association with big business. You know the

demagogic appeal."

"It is particularly at a time like this that an intelligently-

run organization can be of most use to a man in public

life," said Colonel Judson earnestly. Senator Planet's black

eyes twinkled and he passed a hand over the patch of spiky

black hair that had fallen over his low forehead, leaving a

segment of the top of his head bald. "I guess it comes

down to how much assistance will be forthcoming," he

said, getting to his feet. "The parallelogram of forces."

The other men got to their feet too. The senator flicked

the ash from his cigar. "The force of public opinion, sena-

tor," said J. W. portentously. "That is what we have to

offer.""Well, Mr. Moorehouse, you must excuse me, I

have some speeches to prepare. . . . This has been most

delightful. . . . Dick, you must come to dinner while

you're in Washington. We've been missing you at our lit-

tle dinners. . . . Goodnight, Joel, see you tomorrow."

J. W.'s valet was holding the senator's furlined overcoat

for him. "Mr. Bingham," said J. W., "is a very public-

spirited man, senator, he's willing to spend a very consid-

erable sum of money." "He'll have to," said the senator.

After the door had closed on Senator Planet the rest of

-507-

them sat silent a moment. Dick poured himself a glass of

the Armagnac. "Well, Mr. Bingham don't need to worry,"

said Colonel Judson. "But it's going to cost him money.

Bowie an' his friends are just trying to raise the ante. You

know I can read 'em like a book. . . . After all, I been

around this town for fifteen years."

"It's humiliating and absurd that legitimate business

should have to stoop to such methods," said J. W.

"Sure, J. W., you took the words right out of my

mouth. . . . If you want my opinion, what we need is a

strong man in this country to send all these politicians

packing. . . . Don't think I don't know 'em. . . . But

this little dinnerparty has been very valuable. You are a

new element in the situation. . . . A valuable air of dig-

nity, you know. . . . Well, goodnight."

J. W. was already standing with his hand outstretched,

his face white as paper. "Well, I'll be running along," said

Colonel Judson. "You can assure your client that that bill

will never pass. . . . Take a good night's rest, Mr.

Moorehouse. . . . Goodnight, Captain Savage. . . ."

Colonel Judson patted both J. W. and Dick affectionately

on the shoulder with his two hands in the same gesture.

Chewing his cigar he eased out of the door leaving a broad

smile behind him and a puff of rank blue smoke.

Dick turned to J. W. who had sunk down in a red plush

chair. "Are you sure you're feeling all right, J. W.?""It's

just a little indigestion," J. W. said in a weak voice, his

face twisted with pain, gripping the arms of the chair with

both hands. "Well, I guess we'd better all turn in," said

Dick. "But, J. W., how about getting a doctor in to take a

look at you in the morning?" "We'll see, goodnight," said

J. W., talking with difficulty with his eyes closed.

Dick had just got to sleep when a knocking on his door

woke him with a start. He went to the door in his bare

feet. It was Morton, J. W.'s elderly cockney valet. "Beg

pardon, sir, for waking you, sir," he said. "I'm worried

-508-

about Mr. Moorehouse, sir. Dr. Gleason's with him. . . .

I'm afraid it's a heart attack. He's in pain something awful,

sir." Dick put on his purple silk bathrobe and his slippers

and ran into the drawingroom of the suite where he met

the doctor. "This is Mr. Savage, sir," said the valet. The

doctor was a greyhaired man with a grey mustache and a

portentous manner. He looked Dick fiercely in the eye as

he spoke: "Mr. Moorehouse must be absolutely quiet for

some days. It's a very light angina pectoris . . . not seri-

ous this time but a thorough rest for a few months is in-

dicated. He ought to have a thorough physical examination

. . . talk him into it in the morning. I believe you are Mr.

Moorehouse's business partner, aren't you, Mr. Savage?"

Dick blushed. "I'm one of Mr. Moorehouse's collabora-

tors.""Take as much off his shoulders as you can." Dick

nodded. He went back to his room and lay on his bed the

rest of the night without being able to sleep.

In the morning when Dick went in to see him J. W.

was sitting up in bed propped up with pillows. His face

was a rumpled white and he had violet shadows under his

eyes. "Dick, I certainly gave myself a scare." J. W.'s voice

was weak and shaking, it made Dick feel almost tearful

to hear it. "Well, what about the rest of us?""Well, Dick,

I'm afraid I'm going to have to dump E. R. Bingham and

a number of other matters on your shoulders. . . . And

I've been thinking that perhaps I ought to change the

whole capital structure of the firm. What would you think

of Moorehouse, Griscolm and Savage?""I think it would

be a mistake to change the name, J. W. After all J. Ward

Moorehouse is a national institution."

J. W.'s voice quavered up a little stronger. He kept

having to clear his throat. "I guess you're right, Dick,"

he said. "I'd like to hold on long enough to give my boys

a start in life."

"What do you want to bet you wear a silk hat at my

funeral, J. W.? In the first place it may have been an

-509-

attack of acute indigestion just as you thought. We can't

go on merely one doctor's opinion. What would you think

of a little trip to the Mayo clinic? All you need's a little

overhauling, valves ground, carburetor adjusted, that sort

of thing. . . . By the way, J. W., we wouldn't want Mr.

Bingham to discover that a mere fifteenthousandayear man

was handling his sacred proprietary medicines, would we?"

J. W. laughed weakly. "Well, we'll see about that. . . .

I think you'd better go on down to New York this morn-

ing and take charge of the office. Miss Williams and I will

hold the fort here. . . . She's sour as a pickle but a treas-

ure, I tell you."

"Hadn't I better stick around until we've had a special-

ist look you over?"

"Dr. Gleason filled me up with dope of some kind so

that I'm pretty comfortable. I've wired my sister Hazel,

she teaches school over in Wilmington, she's the only one

of the family I've seen much of since the old people died.

. . . She'll be over this afternoon. It's her Christmas vaca-

tion."

"Did Morton get you the opening quotations?"

"Skyrocketing. . . . Never saw anything like it. . . .

But do you know, Dick, I'm going to sell out and lay on

my oars for a while. . . . It's funny how an experience

like this takes the heart out of you."

"You and Paul Warburg," said Dick.

"Maybe it's old age," said J. W. and closed his eyes for

a minute. His face seemed to be collapsing into a mass of

grey and violet wrinkles as Dick looked.

"Well, take it easy, J. W.," said Dick and tiptoed out of

the room.

He caught the eleveno'clock train and got to the office

in time to straighten things out. He told everybody that

J. W. had a light touch of grippe and would be in bed for

a few days. There was so much work piled up that he gave

Miss Hilles his secretary a dollar for her supper and asked

-510-

her to come back at eight. For himself he had some sand-

wiches and a carton of coffee sent up from a delicatessen.

It was midnight before he got through. In the empty

halls of the dim building he met two rusty old women

coming with pails and scrubbingbrushes to clean the office.

The night elevatorman was old and pastyfaced. Snow had

fallen and turned to slush and gave Lexington Avenue a

black gutted look like a street in an abandoned village. A

raw wind whipped his face and ears as he turned uptown.

He thought of the apartment on Fiftysixth Street full of

his mother's furniture, the gilt chairs in the front room, all

the dreary,objects he'd known as a small boy, the Stag at

Bay and the engravings of the Forum Romanorum in his

room, the birdseyemaple beds; he could see it all sharply

as if he was there as he turned into the wind. Bad enough

when his mother was there, but when she was in St. Augus-

tine, frightful. "God damn it, it's time I was making

enough money to reorganize my life," he said to himself.

He Jumped into the first taxi he came to and went to

"63." It was warm and cozy in "63." As she helped him

off with his coat and muffler the platinumhaired checkgirl

carried on an elaborate kidding that had been going on all

winter about how he was going to take her to Miami and

make her fortune at the races at Hialeah. Then he stood a

second peering through the doorway into the low room

full of wellgroomed heads tables glasses cigarettesmoke

spiraling in front of the pink lights. He caught sight of Pat

Doolittle's black bang. There she was sitting in the alcove

with Reggie and Jo. The Italian waiter ran up rubbing his

hands. "Good evening, Mr. Savage, we've been missing

you.""I've been in Washington." "Cold down there?"

"Oh, kind of medium," said Dick and slipped into the red-

leather settee opposite Pat. "Well, look who we have with

us," she said. "I thought you were busy poisoning the

American public under the dome of the Capitol."

-511-

"Wouldn't be so bad if we poisoned some of those west-

ern legislators," said Dick.

Reggie held out his hand. "Well, put it there, Alec

Borgia. . . . I reckon you're on the bourbon if you've

been mingling with the conscript fathers."

"Sure, I'll drink bourbon . . . kids, I'm tired . . . I'm

going to eat something. I didn't have any supper. I just

left the office."

Reggie looked pretty tight; so did Pat. Jo was evi-

dently sober and sore. I must fix this up, thought Dick and

put his arm round Pat's waist. "Say, did you get my

'gram?""Laughed myself sick over it," said Pat. "Gosh,

Dick, it's nice to have you back among the drinking

classes."

"Say, Dick," said Reggie, "is there anything in the

rumor that old doughface toppled over?"

"Mr. Moorehouse had a little attack of acute indiges-

tion . . . he was better when I left," said Dick in a voice

that sounded a little too solemn in his ears.

"Not drinking gets 'em in the end," said Reggie. The

girls laughed. Dick put down three bourbons in rapid suc-

cession but he wasn't getting any lift from them. He just

felt hungry and frazzled. He had his head twisted around

trying to flag the waiter to find out what the devil had hap-

pened to his filetmignon when he heard Reggie drawling,

"After all J. Ward Moorehouse isn't a man . . . it's a

name. . . . You can't feel sorry when a name gets sick."

Dick felt a rush of anger flush his head: "He's one of

the sixty most important men in this country," he said.

"After all, Reggie, you're taking his money. . . ."

"Good God," cried Reggie. "The man on the high

horse."

Pat turned to Dick, laughing. "They seem to be getting

mighty holy down there in Washington."

"No, you know I like to kid as well as anybody. . . .

But when a man like J. W. who's perhaps done more than

-512-

any one living man, whether you like what he does or not,

to form the public mind in this country, is taken ill, I think

sophomore wisecracks are in damn bad taste."

Reggie was drunk. He was talking in phony southern

dialect. "Wha, brudder, Ah didn't know as you was Mista

Moahouse in pussen. Ah thunked you was juss a lowdown

wageslave like the rest of us pickaninnies."

Dick wanted to shut up but he couldn't. "Whether you

like it or not the molding of the public mind is one of the

most important things that goes on in this country. If it

wasn't for that American business would be in a pretty

pickle. . . . Now we may like the way American business

does things or we may not like it, but it's a historical fact

like the Himalaya Mountains and no amount of kidding's

going to change it. It's only through publicrelations work

that business is protected from wildeyed cranks and dema-

gogues who are always ready to throw a monkeywrench

into the industrial machine."

"Hear, hear," cried Pat.

"Well, you'll be the first to holler when they cut the

income from your old man's firstmortgage bonds," said

Dick snappishly.

"Senator," intoned

Reggie, strengthened by another old-

fashioned, "allow me to congrat'late you. . . ma soul 'n

body, senator, 'low me to congrat'late you. . . upon your

vallable services to this great commonwealth that stretches

from the great Atlantical ocean to the great and glorious

Pacifical."

"Shut up, Reggie," said Jo. "Let him eat his steak in

peace."

"Well, you certainly made the eagle scream, Dick,"

said Pat, "but seriously, I guess you're right."

"We've got to be realists," said Dick.

"I believe," said Pat Doolittle, throwing back her head

and laughing, "that he's come across with that raise."

Dick couldn't help grinning and nodding. He felt bet-

-513-

ter since he'd eaten. He ordered another round of drinks

and began to talk about going up to Harlem to dance at

Small's Paradise. He said he couldn't go to bed, he was too

tired, he had to have some relaxation. Pat Doolittle said

she loved it in Harlem but that she hadn't brought any

money. "My party," said Dick. "I've got plenty of cash

on me."

They went up with a flask of whiskey in each of the

girls' handbags and in Dick's and Reggie's back pockets.

Reggie and Pat sang The Fireship in the taxi. Dick drank

a good deal in the taxi to catch up with the others. Going

down the steps to Small's was like going underwater into

a warm thicklygrown pool. The air was dense with musky

smells of mulatto powder and perfume and lipstick and

dresses and throbbed like flesh with the smoothlybalanced

chugging of the band. Dick and Pat danced right away,

holding each other very close. Their dancing seemed

smooth as cream. Dick found her lips under his and kissed

them. She kissed back. When the music stopped they were

reeling a little. They walked back to their table with

drunken dignity. When the band started again Dick danced

with Jo. He kissed her too. She pushed him off a little.

"Dick, you oughtn't to." "Reggie won't mind. It's all in

the family. . . ." They were dancing next to Reggie and

Pat hemmed in by a swaying blur of couples. Dick dropped

Jo's hand and put his hand on Reggie's shoulder. " Reggie,

you don't mind if I kiss your future wife for you just

once.""Go as far as you like, senator," said Reggie. His

voice was thick. Pat was having trouble keeping him on his

feet. Jo gave Dick a waspish look and kept her face turned

away for the rest of the dance. As soon as they got back to

the table she told Reggie that it was after two and she'd

have to go home, she for one had to work in the morning.

When they were alone and Dick was just starting to

make love to Pat she turned to him and said, "Oh, Dick,

do take me some place low. . . nobody'll ever take me

-514-

any place really low.""I should think this would be quite

low enough for a juniorleaguer," he said. "But this is more

respectable than Broadway, and I'm not a juniorleaguer

I'm the new woman." Dick burst out laughing. They

both laughed and had a drink on it and felt fond of each

other again and Dick suddenly asked her why couldn't

they be together always. "I think you're mean. This isn't

any place to propose to a girl. Imagine remembering all

your life that you'd got engaged in Harlem. . . . I want

to see life." "All right, young lady, we'll go. . . but

don't blame me if it's too rough for you." "I'm not a

sissy," said Pat angrily. "I know it wasn't the stork."

Dick paid and they finished up one of the pints. Outside

it was snowing. Streets and stoops and pavements were

white, innocent, quiet, glittering under the streetlights

with freshfallen snow. Dick asked the whiteeyed black

doorman about a dump he'd heard of and the doorman

gave the taximan the address. Dick began to feel good.

"Gosh, Pat, isn't this lovely," he kept crying. "Those kids

can't take it. Takes us grownups to take it. . . . Say, Reg-

gie's getting too fresh, do you know it?" Pat held his hand

tight. Her cheeks were flushed and her face had a taut

look. "Isn't it exciting?" she said. The taxi stopped in front

of an unpainted basement door with one electriclightbulb

haloed with snowflakes above it.

they had a hard time getting in. There were no white

people there at all. It was a furnaceroom set around with

plain kitchen tables and chairs. The steampipes overhead,

were hung with colored paper streamers. A big brown

woman in a pink dress, big eyes rolling loose in their dark

sockets and twitching lips, led them to a table. She seemed

to take a shine to Pat. "Come right on in, darlin'," she

said. "Where's you been all my life?"

Their whiskey was gone so they drank gin. Things got

to whirling round in Dick's head. He couldn't get off the

subject of how sore he was at that little squirt Reggie.

-515-

Here Dick had been nursing him along in the office for a

year and now he goes smartaleck on him. The little twirp.

The only music was a piano where a slimwaisted black

man was tickling the ivories. Dick and Pat danced and

danced and he whirled her around until the sealskin

browns and the highyallers cheered and clapped. Then

Dick slipped and dropped her. She went spinning into a

table where some girls were sitting. Dark heads went back,

pink rubber lips stretched, mouths opened. Gold teeth and

ivories let out a roar.

Pat was dancing with a pale pretty mulatto girl in a

yellow dress. Dick was dancing with a softhanded brown

boy in a tightfitting suit the color of his skin. The boy was

whispering in Dick's ear that his name was Gloria Swan-

son. Dick suddenly broke away from him and went over

to Pat and pulled her away from the girl. Then he ordered

drinks all around that changed sullen looks into smiles

again. He had trouble getting Pat into her coat. The fat

woman was very helpful. "Sure, honey," she said, "you

don't want to go on drinkin' tonight, spoil your lovely

looks." Dick hugged her and gave her a tendollar bill.

In the taxi Pat had hysterics and punched and bit at him

when he held her tight to try to keep her from opening

the door and jumping out into the snow. "You spoil every-

thing. . . . You can't think of anybody except yourself,"

she yelled. "You'll never go through with anything.""But,

Pat, honestly," he was whining, "I thought it was time to

draw. the line." By the time the taxi drew up in front of

the big square apartmenthouse on Park Avenue where she

lived she was sobbing quietly on his shoulder. He took her

into the elevator and kissed her for a long time in the up-

stairs hall before he'd let her put the key in the lock of

her door. They stood there tottering clinging to each other

rubbing up against each other through their clothes until

Dick heard the swish of the rising elevator and opened her

door for her and pushed her in.

-516-

When he got outside the door he found the taxi waiting

for him. He'd forgotten to pay the driver. He couldn't

stand to go home. He didn't feel drunk, he felt immensely

venturesome and cool and innocently excited. Patricia

Doolittle he hated more than anybody in the world. "The

bitch," he kept saying aloud. He wondered how it would

be to go back to the dump and see what happened and

there he was being kissed by the fat woman who wiggled

her breasts as she hugged him and called him her own

lovin' chile, with a bottle of gin in his hand pouring drinks

for everybody and dancing cheek to cheek with Gloria

Swanson who was humming in his ear: Do I get it now

. . . or must I he. . . esitate.

It was morning. Dick was shouting the party couldn't

break up, they must all come to breakfast with him. Every-

body was gone and he was getting into a taxicab with

Gloria and a strapping black buck he said was his girl-

friend Florence. He had a terrible time getting his key in

the lock. He tripped and fell towards the paleblue light

seeping through his mother's lace curtains in the windows.

Something very soft tapped him across the back of the

head.

He woke up undressed in his own bed. It was broad

daylight. The phone was ringing. He let it ring. He sat

up. He felt lightheaded but not sick. He put his hand to

his ear and it came away all bloody. It must have been a

stocking full of sand that hit him. He got to his feet. He

felt tottery but he could walk. His head began to ache like

thunder. He reached for the place on the table he usually

left his watch. No watch. His clothes were neatly hung on

a chair. He found the wallet in its usual place, but the roll

of bills was gone. He sat down on the edge of the bed. Of

all the damn fools. Never never never take a risk like that

again. Now they knew his name his address his phone-

number. Blackmail, oh, Christ. How would it be when

Mother came home from Florida to find her son earning

-517-

twentyfive thousand a year, junior partner of J. Ward

Moorehouse being blackmailed by two nigger whores,

male prostitutes receivifig males? Christ. And Pat Doo-

little and the Bingham girls. It would ruin his life. For a

second he thought of going into the kitchenette and turn-

ing on the gas.

He pulled himself together and took a bath. Then he

dressed carefully and put on his hat and coat and went out.

It was only nine o'clock. He saw the time in a jeweler's

window on Lexington. There was a mirror in the same win-

dow. He looked at his face. Didn't look so bad, would look

worse later, but he needed a shave and had to do some-

thing about the clotted blood on his ear.

He didn't have any money but he had his checkbook.

He walked to a Turkish bath near the Grand Central. The

attendants kidded him about what a fight he'd been in. He

began to get over his scare a little and to talk big about

what he'd done to the other guy. They took his check all

right and he even was able to buy a drink to have before his

breakfast. When he got to the office his head was still split-

ting but he felt in fair shape. He had to keep his hands

in his pockets so that Miss Hilles shouldn't see how they

shook. Thank God he didn't have to sign any letters till

afternoon.

Ed Griscolm came in and sat on his desk and talked

about J. W.'s condition and the Bingham account and Dick

was sweet as sugar to him. Ed Griscolm talked big about

an offer he'd had from Halsey, but Dick said of course he

couldn't advise him but that as for him the one place in

the country he wanted to be was right here, especially now

as there were bigger things in sight than there had ever

been before, he and J. W. had had a long talk going down

on the train. "I guess you're' right," said Ed. "I guess it

was sour grapes a little." Dick got to his feet. "Honestly,

Ed, old man, you mustn't think for a minute J. W. doesn't

appreciate your work. He even let drop something about

-518-

a raise." "Well, it was nice of you to put in a word for me,

old man," said Ed and they shook hands warmly.

As Ed was leaving the office he turned and said, "Say,

Dick, I wish you'd give that youngster Talbot a talking

to. . . . I know he's a friend of yours so I don't like to

do it, but Jesus Christ, he's gone and called up again say-

ing he's in bed with the grippe. That's the third time this

month."

Dick wrinkled up his brows. "I don't know what to do

about him, Ed. He's a nice kid all right but if he won't

knuckle down to serious work. . . I guess we'll have to

let him go. We certainly can't let drinking acquaintance

stand in the way of the efficiency of the office. These kids

all drink too much anyway."

After Ed had gone Dick found on his desk a big laven-

der envelope marked Personal. A whiff of strong perfume

came out when he opened it. It was an invitation from

Myra Bingham to come to the housewarming of her studio

on Central Park South. He was still reading it when Miss

Hilles' voice came out of the interoffice phone. "There's

Mr. Henry B. Furness of the Furness Corporation says he

must speak to Mr. Moorehouse at once." "Put him on my

phone, Miss Hilles. I'll talk to him. . . and, by the way,

put a social engagement on my engagement pad. . .

January fifteenth at five o'clock. . . reception Miss Myra

Bingham, 36 Central Park South."

NEWSREEL LXVIII

WALL STREET STUNNED

This is not Thirty-eight but it's old Ninety-seven

You must put her in Center on time

-519-

MARKET SURE TO RECOVER FROM SLUMP

Decline in Contracts

POLICE TURN MACHINE GUNS ON COLORADO MINE STRIKERS

KILL 5 WOUND 40

sympathizers appeared on the scene just as thousands of

office workers were pouring out of the buildings at the lunch

hour. As they raised their placard high and started an indefinite

march from one side to the other, they were jeered and hooted

not only by the office workers but also by workmen on a build-

ing under construction

NEW METHODS OF SELLING SEEN

Rescue Crews Try To Upend Ill-fated Craft While

Waiting For Pontoons

We looked 'round an' said to his black greasy fireman

Jus' shovel in a little more coal

And when we cross that White Oak Mountain

You can watch your Ninety-seven roll

I find your column interesting and need advice. I have

saved four thousand dollars which I want to invest for a better

income. Do you think I might buy stocks?

POLICE KILLER FLICKS CIGARETTE AS HE

GOES TREMBLING TO DOOM

PLAY AGENCIES IN RING OF SLAVE GIRL MARTS

Maker of Love Disbarred as Lawyer

Oh the right wing clothesmakers

And the Socialist fakers

They make by the workers. . .

Double cross

They preach Social-ism

But practice Fasc-ism

To keep capitalism

By the boss

-520-

MOSCOW CONGRESS OUSTS OPPOSITION

It's a mighty rough road from Lynchburg to Danville

An' a line on a three mile grade

It was on that grade he lost his average

An' you see what a jump he made

MILL THUGS IN MURDER RAID

here is the most dangerous example of how at the decisive

moment the bourgeois ideology liquidates class solidarity and

turns a friend of the workingclass of yesterday into a most mis-

erable propagandist for imperialism today

RED PICKETS FINED FOR PROTEST HERE

We leave our home in the morning

We kiss our children goodby

OFFICIALS STILL HOPE FOR RESCUE OF MEN

He was goin' downgrade makin' ninety miles an hour

When his whistle broke into a scream

He was found in the wreck with his hand on the throttle

An' was scalded to death with the steam

RADICALS FIGHT WITH CHAIRS AT UNITY MEETING

PATROLMEN PROTECT REDS

U.S. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE URGES CONFIDENCE

REAL VALUES UNHARMED

While we slave for the bosses

Our children scream an' cry

But when we draw our money

Our grocery bills to pay

PRESIDENT SEES PROSPERITY NEAR

Not a cent to spend for clothing

Not a cent to lay away.

-521-

STEAMROLLER IN ACTION AGAINST MILITANTS

MINERS BATTLE SCABS

But we cannot buy for our children

Our wages are too low

Now listen to me you workers

Both you women and men

Let us win for them the victory

I'm sure it ain't no sin

CARILLON PEALS IN SINGING TOWER

the President declared it was impossible to view the in-

creased advantages for the many without smiling at those who

a short time ago expressed so much fear lest our country might

come under the control of a few individuals of great wealth

HAPPY CROWDS THRONG CEREMONY

on a tiny island nestling like a green jewel in the lake that

mirrors the singing tower, the President today participated in

the dedication of a bird sanctuary and its pealing carillon, ful-

filling the dream of an immigrant boy

THE CAMERA EYE (51)

at the head of the valley in the dark of the hills on

the broken floor of a lurchedover cabin a man halfsits

halflies propped up by an old woman two wrinkled girls

that might be young chunks of coal flare in the hearth

flicker in his face white and sagging as dough blacken

the cavedin mouth the taut throat the belly swelled enor-

mous with the wound he got working on the minetipple

the barefoot girl brings him a tincup of water the

-522-

woman wipes sweat off his streaming face with a dirty

denim sleeve the firelight flares in his eyes stretched

big with fever in the women's scared eyes and in the

blanched faces of the foreigners

without help in the valley hemmed by dark strike-

silent hills the man will die (my father died, we know what

it is like to see a man die) the women will lay him out

on the rickety cot the miners will bury him

in the jail it's light too hot the steamheat hisses we

talk through the greenpainted iron bars to a tall white

mustachioed old man some smiling miners in shirtsleeves

a boy faces white from mining have already the tal-

lowy look of jailfaces

foreigners what can we say to the dead? foreign-

ers what can we say to the jailed? the representative

of the political party talks fast through the bars join up

with us and no other union we'll send you tobacco candy

solidarity our lawyers will write briefs speakers will shout

your names at meetings they'll carry your names on card-

board on picketlines the men in jail shrug their shoul-

ders smile thinly our eyes look in their eyes through the

bars what can I say? (in another continent I have

seen the faces looking out through the barred basement

windows behind the ragged sentry's boots I have seen be-

fore day the straggling footsore prisoners herded through

the streets limping between bayonets heard the volley

-523-

I have seen the dead lying out in those distant deeper

valleys) what can we say to the jailed?

in the law's office we stand against the wall the law is

a big man with eyes angry in a big pumpkinface who sits

and stares at us meddling foreigners through the door the

deputies crane with their guns they stand guard at the

mines they blockade the miners' soupkitchens

they've cut off the road up the valley the hiredmen

with guns stand ready to shoot (they have made us foreign-

ers in the land where we were born they are the conquer-

ing army that has filtered into the country unnoticed they

have taken the hilltops by stealth they levy toll they stand

at the minehead they stand at the polls they stand

by when the bailiffs carry the furniture of the family

evicted from the city tenement out on the sidewalk they

are there when the bankers foreclose on a farm they are

ambushed and ready to shoot down the strikers marching

behind the flag up the switchback road to the mine

those that the guns spare they jail)

the law stares across the desk out of angry eyes his

face reddens in splotches like a gobbler's neck with the

strut of the power of submachineguns sawedoffshotguns

teargas and vomitinggas the power that can feed you or

leave you to starve

sits easy at his desk his back is covered he feels strong

behind him he feels the prosecutingattorney the judge an

-524-

owner himself the political boss the minesuperintendent

the board of directors the president of the utility the ma,-

nipulator of the holdingcompany

he lifts his hand towards the telephone

the deputies crowd in the door

we have only words against

POWER SUPERPOWER

In eighteen eighty when Thomas Edison's agent

was hooking up the first telephone in London, he put

an ad in the paper for a secretary and stenographer.

The eager young cockney with sprouting muttonchop

whiskers who answered it

had recently lost his job as officeboy. In his spare

time he had been learning shorthand and bookkeeping

and taking dictation from the editor of the English

Vanity Fair at night and jotting down the speeches in

Parliament for the papers. He came of temperance

smallshopkeeper stock; already he was butting his

bullethead against the harsh structure of caste that

doomed boys of his class to a lifo of alpaca jackets, pen-

manship, subordination. To get a job with an American

firm was to put a foot on the rung of a ladder that led

up into the blue.

He did his best to make himself indispensable;

they let him operate the switchboard for the first half-

hour when the telephone service was opened. Edison

noticed his weekly reports on the electrical situation in

England

and sent for him to be his personal secretary.

-525-

Samuel Insull landed in America on a raw March

day in eightyone. Immediately he was taken out to

Menlo Park, shown about the little group of labora-

tories, saw the strings of electriclightbulbs shining at in-

tervals across the snowy lots, all lit from the world's

first central electric station. Edison put him right to

work and he wasn't through till midnight. Next morn-

ing at six he was on the job; Edison had no use for any

nonsense about hours or vacations. Insull worked from

that time on until he was seventy without a break; no

nonsense about hours or vacations. Electric power

turned the ladder into an elevator.

Young Insull made himself indispensable to Edi-

son and took more and more charge of Edison's busi-

ness deals. He was tireless, ruthless, reliable as the

tides, Edison used to say, and fiercely determined to

rise.

In ninetytwo he induced Edison to send him to

Chicago and put him in as president of the Chicago

Edison Company. Now he was on his own. My engi-

neering, he said once in a speech, when he was suffi-

ciently czar of Chicago to allow himself the luxury of

plain speaking, has been largely concerned with engi-

neering all I could out of the dollar.

He was a stiffly arrogant redfaced man with a

closecropped mustache; he lived on Lake Shore Drive

and was at the office at 7:10 every morning. It took

him fifteen years to merge the five electrical companies

into the Commonwealth Edison Company. Very early

I discovered that the first essential, as in other public.

utility business, was that it should be operated as a

monopoly.

When his power was firm in electricity he captured

gas, spread out into the surrounding townships in

-526-

northern Illinois. When politicians got in his way, he

bought them, when laborleaders got in his way he

bought them. Incredibly his power grew. He was

scornful of bankers, lawyers were his hired men. He

put his own lawyer in as corporation counsel and

through him ran Chicago. When he found to his

amazement that there were men (even a couple of

young lawyers, Richberg and Ickes) in Chicago that

he couldn't buy, he decided he'd better put on a show

for the public;

Big Bill Thompson, the Builder:

punch King George in the nose,

the hunt for the treeclimbing fish,

the Chicago Opera.

It was too easy; the public had money, there was

one of them born every minute, with the founding of

Middlewest Utilities in nineteen twelve Insull began

to use the public's money to spread his empire. His

companies began to have open stockholders' meetings,

to ballyhoo service, the small investor could sit there

all day hearing the bigwigs talk. It's fun to be fooled.

Companyunions hypnotized his employees; everybody

had to buy stock in his companies, employees had to

go out and sell stock, officeboys, linemen, trolley-

conductors. Even Owen D. Young was afraid of him.

My experience is that the greatest aid in the efficiency

of labor is a long line of men waiting at the gate.

War shut up the progressives (no more nonsense

about trustbusting, controlling monopoly, the public

good) and raised Samuel Insull to the peak.

He was head of the Illinois State Council of De-

fense. Now, he said delightedly, I can do anything I

like. With it came the perpetual spotlight, the purple

taste of empire. If anybody didn't like what Samuel

-527-

Insull did he was a traitor. Chicago damn well kept its

mouth shut.

The Insull companies spread and merged put com-

petitors out of business until Samuel Instull and his

stooge brother Martin controlled through the leverage

of holdingcompanies and directorates and blocks of

minority stock

light and power, coalmines and tractioncompanies

in Illinois, Michigan, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Ar-

kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Maine, Kansas, Wiscon-

sin, Virginia, Ohio, North Carolina, Indiana, New

York, New Jersey, Texas, in Canada, in Louisiana, in

Georgia, in Florida and Alabama.

(It has been figured out that one dollar in Middle

West Utilities controlled seventeen hundred and fifty

dollars invested by the public in the subsidiary com-

panies that actually did the work of producing elec-

tricity. With the delicate lever of a voting trust con-

trolling the stock of the two top holdingcompanies he

controlled a twelfth of the power output of America.)

Samuel Insull began to think he owned all that

the way a man owns the roll of bills in his back pocket.

Always he'd been scornful of bankers. He owned

quite a few in Chicago. But the New York bankers

were laying for him; they felt he was a bounder, whis-

pered that this financial structure was unsound. Fin-

gers itched to grasp the lever that so delicately moved

this enormous power over lives,

superpower, Insull liked to call it.

A certain Cyrus S. Eaton of Cleveland, an ex-

Baptistminister, was the David that brought down this

Goliath. Whether it was so or not he made Insull be-

lieve that Wall Street was behind him.

He started buying stock in the three Chicago

-528-

utilities. Insull in a panic for fear he'd lose his control

went into the market to buy against him. Finally the

Reverend Eaton let himself be bought out, shaking

down the old man for a profit of twenty million dol-

lars.

The stockmarket crash.

Paper values were slipping. Insull's companies

were intertwined in a tangle that no bookkeeper has

ever been able to unravel.

The gas hissed out of the torn balloon. Insull

threw away his imperial pride and went on his knees

to the bankers.

The bankers had him where they wanted him. To

save the face of the tottering czar he was made a re-

ceiver of his own concerns. But the old man couldn't

get out of his head the illusion that the money was all

his. When it was discovered that he was using the

stockholders' funds to pay off his brothers' brokerage

accounts it was too thick even for a federal judge. In-

sull was forced to resign.

He held directorates in eightyfive companies, he

was chairman of sixtyfive, president of eleven: it took

him three hours to sign his resignations.

As a reward for his services to monopoly his com-

panies chipped in on a pension of eighteen thousand a

year. But the public was shouting for criminal prosecu-

tion. When the handouts stopped newspapers and poli-

ticians turned on him. Revolt against the moneymanip-

ulators was in the air. Samuel Insull got the wind up

and ran off to Canada with his wife.

Extradition proceedings. He fled to Paris. When

the authorities began to close in on him there he slipped

away to Italy, took a plane to Tirana, another to Sa-

loniki and then the train to Athens. There the old fox

went to earth. Money talked as sweetly in Athens as it

had in Chicago in the old days.

-529-

The American ambassador tried to extradite him.

Insull hired a chorus of Hellenic lawyers and politicos

and sat drinking coffee in the lobby of the Grande

Bretagne, while they proceeded to tie up the ambas-

sador in a snarl of chicanery as complicated as the book-

keeping of his holdingcompanies. The successors of

Demosthenes were delighted. The ancestral itch in

many a Hellenic palm was temporarily assuaged. Sam-

uel Insull settled down cozily in Athens, was stirred

by the sight of the Parthenon, watched the goats feed-

ing on the Pentelic slopes, visited the Areopagus, ad-

mired marble fragments ascribed to Phidias, talked

with the local bankers about reorganizing the public

utilities of Greece, was said to be promoting Macedo-

nian lignite. He was the toast of the Athenians; Mme.

Kouryoumd jouglou the vivacious wife of a Bagdad

datemerchant devoted herself to his comfort. When

the first effort at extradition failed, the old gentleman

declared in the courtroom, as he struggled out from the

embraces of his four lawyers: Greece is a small but great

country.

The idyll was interrupted when the Roosevelt Ad-

ministration began to put the heat on the Greek foreign

office. Government lawyers in Chicago were accumu-

lating truckloads of evidence and chalking up more and

more drastic indictments.

Finally after many a postponement (he had hired

physicians as well as lawyers, they cried to high heaven

that it would kill him to leave the genial climate of the

Attic plain),

he was ordered to leave Greece as an undesirable

alien to the great indignation of Balkan society and of

Mme. Kouryoumdjouglou.

He hired the Maiotis a small and grubby Greek

freighter and panicked the foreignnews services by

slipping off for an unknown destination.

-530-

It was rumored that the new Odysseus was bound

for Aden, for the islands of the South Seas, that he'd

been invited to Persia. After a few days he turned up

rather seasick in the Bosporus on his way, it was said,

to Rumania where Madame Kouryoumdjouglou had

advised him to put himself under the protection of her

friend la Lupescu.

At the request of the American ambassador the

Turks were delighted to drag him off the Greek

freighter and place him in a not at all comfortable jail.

Again money had been mysteriously wafted from Eng-

land, the healing balm began to flow, lawyers were

hired, interpreters expostulated, doctors made diag-

noses;

but Angora was boss

and Insull was shipped off to Smyrna to be turned

over to the assistant federal districtattorney who had

come all that way to arrest him.

The Turks wouldn't even let Mme. Kouryoumd-

jouglou, on her way back from making arrangements in

Bucharest, go ashore to speak to him. In a scuffle with

the officials on the steamboat the poor lady was pushed

overboard

and with difficulty fished out of the Bosporus.

Once he was cornered the old man let himself

tamely be taken home on the Exilona, started writing

his memoirs, made himself agreeable to his fellow pas-

sengers, was taken off at Sandy Hook and rushed to

Chicago to be arraigned.

In Chicago the government spitefully kept him a

couple of nights in jail; men he'd never known, so the

newspapers said, stepped forward to go on his two

hundredandfiftythousanddollar bail. He was moved to

a hospital that he himself had endowed. Solidarity.

The leading businessmen in Chicago were photographed

visiting him there. Henry Ford paid a call.

-531-

The trial was very beautiful. The prosecution got

bogged in finance technicalities. The judge was not un-

friendly. The Insulls stole the show.

They were folks, they smiled at reporters, they

posed for photographers, they went down to the court-

room by bus. Investors might have been ruined but so,

they allowed it to be known, were the Insulls; the

captain had gone down with the ship.

Old Samuel Insull rambled amiably on the stand,

told his lifestory: from officeboy to powermagnate, his

struggle to make good, his love for his home and the

kiddies. He didn't deny he'd made mistakes; who

hadn't, but they were honest errors. Samuel Insull

wept. Brother Martin wept. The lawyers wept.

With voices choked with emotion headliners of Chicago

business told from the witnessstand how much Insull

had done for business in Chicago. There wasn't a dry

eye in the jury.

Finally driven to the wall by the prosecutingattor-

ney Samuel Insull blurted out that yes, he had made an

error of some ten million dollars in accounting but that

it had been an honest error.

Verdict: Not Guilty.

Smiling through their tears the happy Insulls

went to their towncar amid the cheers of the crowd.

Thousands of ruined investors, at least so the news-

papers said, who had lost their life savings sat crying

over the home editions at the thought of how Mr. Insull

had suffered. The bankers were happy, the bankers

had moved in on the properties.

In an odor of sanctity the deposed monarch of

superpower, the officeboy who made good, enjoys

his declining years spending the pension of twenty-

one thousand a year that the directors of his old com-

panies dutifully restored to him. After fifty years of

work, he said, my job is gone.

-532-

MARY FRENCH

Mary French had to stay late at the office and couldn't

get to the hall until the meeting was almost over. There

were no seats left so she stood in the back. So many people

were standing in front of her that she couldn't see Don,

she could only hear his ringing harsh voice and feel the

tense attention in the silence during his pauses. When a

roar of applause answered his last words and the hall filled

suddenly with voices and the scrape and shuffle of feet she

ran out ahead of the crowd and up the alley to the back

door. Don was just coming out of the black sheetiron door

talking over his shoulder as he came to two of the miners'

delegates. He stopped a second to hold the door open for

them with a long arm. His face had the flushed smile,

there was the shine in his eye he often had after speaking,

the look, Mary used to tell herself, of a man who had just

come from a date with his best girl. It was some time be-

fore Don saw her in the group that gathered round him in

the alley. Without looking at her he swept her along with

the men he was talking to and walked them fast towards

the corner of the street. Eyes looked after them as they

went from the groups of furworkers and garmentworkers

that dotted the pavement in front of the hall. Mary

tingled with the feeling of warm ownership in the looks

of the workers as their eyes followed Don Stevens down

the street.

It wasn't until they were seated in a small lunchroom

under the el that Don turned to Mary and squeezed her

hand. "Tired?" She nodded. "Aren't you, Don?" He

laughed and drawled, "No, I'm not tired. I'm hungry."

" Comrade French, I thought we'd detailed you to see

that Comrade Stevens ate regular," said Rudy Goldfarb

with a flash of teeth out of a dark Italianlooking face.

-533-

"He won't ever eat anything when he's going to speak,"

Mary said.

"I make up for it afterwards," said Don. "Say, Mary,

I hope you have some change. I don't think I've got a cent

on me." Mary nodded, smiling. "Mother came across

again," she whispered.

"Money," broke in Steve Mestrovich. "We got to have

money or else we're licked." "The truck got off today,"

said Mary. "That's why I was so late getting to the meet-

ing." Mestrovich passed the grimed bulk of his hand

across his puttycolored face that had a sharply turnedup

nose peppered with black pores. "If cossack don't git him."

" Eddy Spellman's a smart kid. He gets through like a

shadow. I don't know how he does it."

"You don't know what them clothes means to women

and kids and. . . listen, Miss French, don't hold back

nothin' because too raggedy. Ain't nothin' so ragged like

what our little kids got on their backs."

"Eddy's taking five cases of condensed milk. We'll have

more as soon as he comes back."

"Say, Mary," said Don suddenly, looking up from his

plate of soup, "how about calling up Sylvia? I forgot to

ask how much we collected at the meeting." Young Gold-

farb got to his feet. "I'll call. You look tired, Comrade

French. . . . Anybody got a nickel?"

"Here, I got nickel," said Mestrovich. He threw back

his head and laughed. "Damn funny. . . miner with

nickel. Down our way miner got nickel put in frame send

Meester Carnegie Museum. . . . very rare." He got up

roaring laughter and put on his black longvisored miner's

cap. "Goodnight, comrade, I walk Brooklyn. Reliefcom-

mittee nine o'clock. . . . right, Miss French?" As he

strode out of the lunchroom the heavy tread of his black

boots made the sugarbowls jingle on the tables. "Oh,

Lord," said Mary, with tears suddenly coming to her eyes.

"That was his last nickel."

-534-

Goldfarb came back saying that the collection hadn't

been so good. Sixtynine dollars and some pledges. "Christ-

mas time coming on. . . you know. Everybody's always

broke at Christmas." "Henderson made a lousy speech,"

grumbled Don. "He's more of a socialfascist every day."

Mary sat there feeling the tiredness in every bone of her

body waiting until Don got ready to go home. She was too

sleepy to follow what they were talking about but every

now and then the words centralcommittee, expulsions, op-

positionists, splitters rasped in her ears. Then Don was

tapping her on the shoulder and she was waking up and

walking beside him through the dark streets.

"It's funny, Don," she was saying, "I always go to sleep

when you talk about party discipline. I guess it's because

I don't want to hear about it.""No use being sentimental

about it," said Don savagely. "But is it sentimental to be

more interested in saving the miners' unions?" she said,

suddenly feeling wide awake again. "Of course that's what

we all believe but we have to follow the party line. A lot

of those boys. . . Goldfarb's one of them. . . Ben

Compton's another. . . think this is a debatingsociety.

If they're not very careful indeed they'll find themselves

out on their ear. . . . You just watch."

Once they'd staggered up the five flights to their dingy

little apartment where Mary had always planned to put

up curtains but had never had time, Don suddenly caved

in with fatigue and threw himself on the couch and fell

asleep without taking off his clothes. Mary tried to rouse

him but gave it up. She unlaced his shoes for him and

threw a blanket over him and got into bed herself and

tried to sleep.

She was staring wide awake, she was counting old pairs

of trousers, torn suits of woolly underwear, old armyshirts

with the sleeves cut off, socks with holes in them that

didn't match. She was seeing the rickety children with

puffy bellies showing through their rags, the scrawny

-535-

women with uncombed hair and hands distorted with

work, the boys with their heads battered and bleeding from

the clubs of the Coal and Iron Police, the photograph of a

miner's body shot through with machinegun bullets. She

got up and took two or three swigs from a bottle of gin

she kept in the medicinecloset in the bathroom. The gin

burned her throat. Coughing she went back to bed and

went off into a hot dreamless sleep.

Towards morning Don woke her getting into the bed.

He kissed her. "Darling, I've set the alarm for seven.

. . . Be sure to get me up. I've got a very important com-

mitteemeeting. . . . Be sure and do it." He went off to

sleep again right away like a child. She lay beside his big-

boned lanky body, listening to his regular breathing, feel-

ing happy and safe there in the bed with him.

Eddy Spellman got through with his truck again and

distributed his stuff to several striking locals U.M.W. in

the Pittsburgh district, although he had a narrow squeak

when the deputies tried to ambush him near Greensburg.

They'd have nabbed him if a guy he knew who was a

bootlegger hadn't tipped him off. The same bootlegger

helped him out when he skidded into a snowdrift on the

hill going down into Johnstown on the way back. He was

laughing about it as he helped Mary pack up the new ship-

ment. "He wanted to give me some liquor. . . . He's a

good feller, do you know it, Miss Mary?. . . Tough

kinder. . . that racket hardens a feller up. . . but a

prince when you know him. . . .'Hell, no, Ed,' his

name's Eddy too, I says to him when he tries to slip me

a pint, 'I ain't goin' to take a drink until after the revolu-

tion and then I'll be ridin' so high I won't need to.'"

Mary laughed. "I guess we all ought to do that, Eddy.

. . . But I feel so tired and discouraged at night some-

times." "Sure," said Eddy, turning serious. "It gits you

down thinkin' how they got all the guns an' all the money

an' we ain't got nothin'."

-536-

"One thing you're going to have, Comrade Spellman,

is a pair of warm gloves and a good overcoat before you

make the next trip."

His freckled face turned red to the roots of his red hair.

"Honest, Miss Mary, I don't git cold. To tell the truth

the motor heats up so much in that old pile of junk it

keeps me warm in the coldest weather. . . . After the

next trip we got to put a new clutch in her and that'll take

more jack than we kin spare from the milk. . . . I tell

you things are bad up there in the coalfields this winter."

"But those miners have got such wonderful spirit," said

Mary.

"The trouble is, Miss Mary, you kin only keep your

spirit up a certain length of time on an empty stumick."

That evening Don came by to the office to get Mary for

supper. He was very cheerful and his gaunt bony face

had more color in it than usual. "Well, little girl, what

would you think of moving up to Pittsburgh? After the

plenum I may go out to do some organizing in western

Pennsylvania and Ohio. Mestrovich says they need some-

body to pep 'em up a little." Eddy Spellman looked up

from the bale of clothes he was tying up. "Take it from

me, Comrade Stevens, they sure do."

Mary felt a chill go through her. Don must have no-

ticed the pallor spreading over her face. "We won't take

any risks," he added hurriedly. "Those miners take good

care of a feller, don't they, Eddy?""They sure do. . . .

Wherever the locals is strong you'll be safer than you are

right here in New York.""Anyway," said Mary, her

throat tight and dry, "if you've got to go you've got to

go."

"You two go out an' eat," said Eddy. "I'll finish up

I'm bunkin' here anyway. Saves the price of a flop.

. . . You feed Miss Mary up good, Comrade Stevens. We

don't want her gettin' sick. . . . If all the real partymem-

bers worked like she does we'd have. . . hell, we'd have

-537-

the finest kind of a revolution by the spring of the year."

They went out laughing, and walked down to Bleecker

Street and settled happily at a table in an Italian restau-

rant and ordered up the seventyfivecent dinner and a bottle

of wine. "You've got a great admirer in Eddy," Don said,

smiling at her across the table.

A couple of weeks later Mary came home one icy winter

evening to find Don busy packing his grip. She couldn't

help letting out a cry, her nerves were getting harder and

harder to control. "Oh, Don, it's not Pittsburgh yet?" Don

shook his head and went on packing. When he had closed

up his wicker suitcase he came over to her and put his arm

round her shoulder. "I've got to go across to the other side

with. . . you know who. . . essential party business."

"Oh, Don, I?d love to go too. I've never been to Russia

or anywhere." "I'll only be gone a month. We're sailing

at midnight. . . and Mary darling. . . if anybody asks

after me I'm in Pittsburgh, see?" Mary started to cry. "I'll

have to say I don't know where you are. . . I know I

can't ever get away with a lie." "Mary dear, it'll just be a

few days. . . don't be a little silly." Mary smiled

through her tears. "But I am. . . I'm an awful little

silly." He kissed her and patted her gently on the back.

Then he picked up his suitcase and hurried out of the room

with a big checked cap pulled down over his eyes.

Mary walked up and down the narrow room with her

lips twitching, fighting to keep down the hysterical sobs.

To give herself something to do she began to plan how she

could fix up the apartment so that it wouldn't look so

dreary when Don came back. She pulled out the couch and

pushed it across the window like a windowseat. Then she

pulled the table out in front of it and grouped the chairs

round the table. She made up her mind she'd paint the

woodwork white and get turkeyred for the curtains.

Next morning she was in the middle of drinking her

coffee out of a cracked cup without a saucer, feeling bit-

-538-

terly lonely in the empty apartment when the telephone

rang. At first she didn't recognize whose voice it was. She

was confused and kept stammering, "Who is it, please?"

into the receiver. "But, Mary," the voice was saying in an

exasperated tone, "you must know who I am. It's Ben

Compton. . . bee ee enn. . . Ben. I've got to see you

about something. Where could I meet you? Not at your

place." Mary tried to keep her voice from sounding stiff

and chilly. "I've got to be uptown today. I've got to have

lunch with a woman who may give some money to the

miners. It's a horrible waste of time but I can't help it.

She won't give a cent unless I listen to her sad story. How

about meeting me in front of the Public Library at two

thirty?" "Better say inside. . . . It's about zero out today.

I just got up out of bed from the flu."

Mary hardly knew Ben he looked so much older. There

was grey in the hair spilling out untidily from under his

cap. He stooped and peered into her face querulously

through his thick glasses. He didn't shake hands. "Well,

I might as well tell you. . . you'll know it soon enough

if you don't know it already. . . I've been expelled from

the party. . . oppositionist . . . exceptionalism. . . a

lot of nonsense. . . . Well, that doesn't matter, I'm still a

revolutionist . . . I'll continue to work outside of the

party."

"Oh, Ben, I'm so sorry," was all Mary could find to say.

"You know I don't know anything except what I read in

the Daily. It all seems too terrible to me." "Let's go out,

that guard's watching us." Outside Ben began to shiver

from the cold. His wrists stuck out red from his frayed

green overcoat with sleeves much too short for his long

arms. "Oh, where can we go?" Mary kept saying.

Finally they went down into a basement automat and

sat talking in low voices over a cup of coffee. "I didn't

want to go to your place because I didn't want to meet

Stevens. . . . Stevens and me have never been friends,

-539-

you know that. . . . Now he's in with the comintern

crowd. He'll make the centralcommittee when they've

cleaned out all the brains."

"But, Ben, people can have differences of opinion and

still . . ."

"A party of yesmen . . . that'll be great. . . . But,

Mary, I had to see you . . . I feel so lonely suddenly

. . . you know, cut off from everything. . . . You know

if we hadn't been fools we'd have had that baby that time

. . . we'd still love each other. . . . Mary, you were very

lovely to me when I first got out of jail. . . . Say, where's

your friend Ada, the musician who had that fancy apart-

ment?

"Oh, she's as silly as ever running around with

some fool violinist or other."

"I've always liked music. . . . I ought to have kept

you, Mary."

"A lot of water's run under the bridge since then?" said

Mary coldly.

"Are you happy with Stevens? I haven't any right to

ask."

"But, Ben, what's the use of raking all this old stuff up?"

"You see, often a young guy thinks, I'll sacrifice every-

thing, and then when he is cut off all that side of his life,

he's not as good as he was, do you see? For the first time

in my life I have no contact. I thought maybe you could

get me in on reliefwork somehow. The discipline isn't so

strict in the relief organizations."

"I don't think they want any disrupting influences in the

I.L.D.," said Mary.

"So I'm a disrupter to you too. All right, in the

end the workingclass will judge between us."

"Let's not talk about it, Ben."

"I'd like you to put it up to Stevens and ask him to

sound out the proper quarters . . . that's not much to

ask, is it?"

-540-

"But Don's not here at present." Before she could catch

herself she'd blurted it out.

Ben looked her in the eye with a sudden sharp look.

"He hasn't by any chance sailed for Moscow with cer-

tain other comrades?"

"He's gone to Pittsburgh on secret partywork and for

God's sake shut up about it. You just got hold of me to

pump me." She got to her feet, her face flaming. "Well,

goodby, Mr. Compton. . . . You don't happen to be a

stoolpigeon as well as a disrupter, do you?"

Ben Compton's face broke in pieces suddenly the way a

child's face does when it is just going to bawl. He sat

there staring at her, senselessly scraping the spoon round

and round in the empty coffeemug. She was halfway up

the stairs when on an impulse she went back and stood for

a second looking down at his bowed head. "Ben," she said

in a gentler voice, "I shouldn't have said that . . . with-

out proof. . . . I don't believe it." Ben Compton didn't

look up. She went up the stairs again out into the stinging

wind and hurried down Fortysecond Street in the after-

noon crowd and took the subway down to Union Square.

The last day of the year Mary French got a telegram

at the office from Ada Cohn. PLEASE PLEASE COMMUNICATE

YOUR MOTHER IN TOWN AT PLAZA SAILING SOON WANTS TO

SEE YOU DOESNT KNOW ADDRESS WHAT SHALL I TELL HER.

Newyearsday there wasn't much doing at the office. Mary

was the only one who had turned up, so in the middle of

the morning she called up the Plaza and asked for Mrs.

French. No such party staying there. Next she called up

Ada. Ada talked and talked about how Mary's mother had

married again, a Judge Blake, a very prominent man, a

retired federal circuit judge, such an attractive man with

a white vandyke beard and Ada had to see Mary and Mrs.

Blake had been so sweet to her and they'd asked her to

dinner at the Plaza and wanted to know all about Mary

and that she'd had to admit that she never saw her al-

-541-

though she was her best friend and she'd been to a new-

yearseve party and had such a headache she couldn't prac-

tice and she'd invited some lovely people in that afternoon

and wouldn't Mary come, she'd be sure to like them.

Mary almost hung up on her, Ada sounded so silly, but

she said she'd call her back right away after she'd talked

to her mother. It ended by her going home and getting

her best dress on and going uptown to the Plaza to see

Judge and Mrs. Blake. She tried to find some place she

could get her hair curled because she knew' the first thing

her mother would say was that she looked a fright, but

everything was closed on account of its being newyearsday.

Judge and Mrs. Blake were getting ready to have lunch

in a big private drawingroom on the corner looking out

over the humped snowy hills of the park bristly with bare

branches and interwoven with fastmoving shining streams

of traffic. Mary's mother didn't look as if she'd aged a day,

she was dressed in darkgreen and really looked stunning

with a little white ruffle round her neck sitting there so at

her ease, with rings on her fingers that sparkled in the

grey winter light that came in through the big windows.

The judge had a soft caressing voice. He talked elab-

orately about the prodigal daughter and the fatted calf

until her mother broke in to say that they were going

to Europe on a spree; they'd both of them made big kill-

ings on the stockexchange on the same day and they felt

they owed themselves a little rest and relaxation. And she

went on about how worried she'd been because all her let-

ters had been returned from Mary's last address and that

she'd written Ada again and again and Ada had always

said Mary was in Pittsburgh or Fall River or some hor-

rible place doing social work and that she felt it was about

time she gave up doing everything for the poor and un-

fortunate and devoted a little attention to her own kith and

kin.

"I hear you are a very dreadful young lady, Mary, my

-542-

dear," said the judge, blandly, ladling some cream of every

soup into her plate. "I hope you didn't bring any bombs

with you." They both seemed to think that that was a

splendid joke and laughed and laughed. "But to be seri-

ous," went on the judge, "I know that social inequality is

a very dreadful thing and a blot on the fair name of

American democracy. But as we get older, my dear, we

learn to live and let live, that we have to take the bad

with the good a little."

" Mary dear, why don't you go abroad with Ada Cohn

and have a nice rest? . . . I'll find the money for the

trip. I know it'll do you good. . . . You know I've never

approved of your friendship with Ada Cohn. Out home

we are probably a little oldfashioned about those things.

Here she seems to be accepted everywhere. In fact she

seems to know all the prominent musical people. Of course

how good a musician she is herself I'm not in a position to

judge."

"Hilda dear," said the judge, " Ada Cohn has a heart

of gold. I find her a very sweet little girl. Her father was

a very distinguished lawyer. You know we decided we'd

lay aside our prejudices a little . . . didn't we, dear?"

"The judge is reforming me," laughed Mary's mother

coyly.

Mary was so nervous she felt she was going to scream.

The heavy buttery food, the suave attentions of the waiter

and the fatherly geniality of the judge made her almost

gag. "Look, Mother," she said,"if you really have a little

money to spare you might let me have something for our

milkfund. After all miners' children aren't guilty of any-

thing."

"My dear, I've already made substantial contributions

to the Red Cross. . . . After all, we've had a miners'

strike out in Colorado on our hands much worse than in

Pennsylvania. . . . I've always felt, Mary dear, that if

you were interested in labor conditions the place for you

-543-

was home in Colorado Springs. If you must study that

sort of thing there was never any need to come East for it."

"Even the I.W.W. has reared its ugly head again," said

the judge.

"I don't happen to approve of the tactics of the

I.W.W.," said Mary stiffly.

"I should hope not," said her mother.

"But, Mother, don't you think you could let me have a

couple of hundred dollars?"

"To spend on these dreadful agitators, they may not be

I Won't Works but they're just as bad."

"I'll'promise that every cent goes into milk for the

babies."

"But that's just handing the miners over to these miser-

able Russian agitators. Naturally if they can give milk to

the children it makes them popular, puts them in a position

where they can mislead these poor miserable foreigners

worse than ever." The judge leaned forward across the

table and put his blueveined hand in its white starched

cuff on Mary's mother's hand. "It's not that we lack sym-

pathy with the plight of the miners' women and children,

or that we don't understand the dreadful conditions of the

whole mining industry . . . we know altogether too much

about that, don't we, Hilda? But . . . "

Mary suddenly found that she'd folded her napkin and

gotten trembling to her feet. "I don't see any reason for

further prolonging this interview, that must be painful to

you, Mother, as it is to me. . . . "

"Perhaps I can arbitrate," said the judge, smiling, get-

ting to his feet with his napkin in his hand.

Mary felt a desperate tight feeling like a metal ring

round her head. "I've got to go, Mother . . . I don't

feel very well today. Have a nice trip. . . . I don't want

to argue." Before they could stop her she was off down

the hall and on her way down in the elevator.

Mary felt so upset she had to talk to somebody so she

-544-

went to a telephone booth and called up Ada. Ada's voice

was full of sobs, she said something dreadful had hap-

pened and that she'd called off her party and that Mary

must come up to see her immediately. Even before Ada

opened the door of the apartment on Madison Avenue

Mary got a whiff of the Forêt Vierge perfume Ada had

taken to using when she first came to New York. Ada

opened the door wearing a green and pink flowered silk

wrapper with all sorts of little tassels hanging from it. She

fell on Mary's neck. Her eyes were red and she sniffed as

she talked. "Why, what's the matter, Ada?" asked Mary

coolly. "Darling, I've just had the most dreadful row

with Hjalmar. We have parted forever. . . . Of course I

had to call off the party because I was giving it for him."

"Who's Hjalmar?"

"He's somebody very beautiful . . . and very hateful.

. . . But let's talk about you, Mary darling . . . I do

hope you've made it up with your mother and Judge

Blake."

"I just walked out. . . . What's the use of arguing?

They're on one side of the barricades and I'm on the

other."

Ada strode up and down the room. "Oh, I hate talk like

that. . . . It makes me feel awful. . . . At least you'll

have a drink. . . . I've got to drink, I've been too nervous

to practice all day."

Mary stayed all afternoon at Ada's drinking ginrickeys

and eating the sandwiches and little cakes that had been

laid out in the kitchenette for the party and talking about

old times and Ada's unhappy loveaffair. Ada made Mary

read all his letters and Mary said he was a damn fool and

good riddance. Then Ada cried and Mary told her she

ought to be ashamed of herself, she didn't know what real

misery was. Ada was very meek about it and went to her

desk and wrote out a check in a shaky hand for a hundred

dollars for the miners' milkfund. Ada had some supper

-545-

sent up for them from the uptown Longchamps and de-

clared she'd spent the happiest afternoon in years. She

made Mary promise to come to her concert in the small

hall at the Aeolian the following week. When Mary was

going Ada made her take a couple of dollars for a taxi.

They were both reeling a little in the hall waiting for the

elevator. "We've just gotten to be a pair of old topers,"

said Ada gaily. It was a good thing Mary had decided to

take a taxi because she found it hard to stand on her feet.

That winter the situation of the miners in the Pittsburgh

district got worse and worse. Evictions began. Families

with little children were living in tents and in broken-

down unheated tarpaper barracks. Mary lived in a feeling

of nightmare, writing letters, mimeographing appeals,

making speeches at meetings of clothing and fur workers,

canvassing wealthy liberals. The money that came in was

never enough. She took no salary for her work so she had

to get Ada to lend her money to pay her rent. She was

thin and haggard and coughed all the time. Too many

cigarettes, she'd explain. Eddy Spellman and Rudy Gold-

farb worried about her. She could see they'd decided she

wasn't eating enough because she was all the time finding

on the corner of her desk a paper bag of sandwiches or a

carton of coffee that one of them had brought in. Once

Eddy brought her a big package of smearcase that his

mother had made up home near Scranton. She couldn't eat

it; she felt guilty every time she saw it sprouting green

mold in the icebox that had no ice in it because she'd given

up cooking now that Don was away.

One evening Rudy came into the office with smiles all

over his face. Eddy was leaning over packing the old

clothes into bales as usual for his next trip. Rudy gave him

a light kick in the seat of the pants. "Hay you, Trotzky-

ite," said Eddy, jumping at him and pulling out his neck-

tie. "Smile when you say that," said Rudy, pummeling

him. They were all laughing. Mary felt like an oldmaid

-546-

schoolteacher watching the boy//s roughhousing in front of

her desk. "Meeting comes to order," she said. "They tried

to hang it on me but they couldn't," said Rudy, panting,

straightening his necktie and his mussed hair. "But what I

was going to say, Comrade French, was that I thought

you might like to know that a certain comrade is getting

in on the Aquitania tomorrow . . . tourist class." "Rudy,

are you sure?" "Saw the cable."

Mary got to the dock too early and had to wait two

hours. She tried to read the afternoon papers but her eyes

wouldn't follow the print. It was too hot in the reception-

room and too cold outside. She fidgeted around miserably

until at last she saw the enormous black sheetiron wall

sliding with its rows of lighted portholes past the openings

in the wharfbuilding. Her hands and feet were icy. Her

whole body ached to feel his arms around her, for the

rasp of his deep voice in her ears. All the time a vague

worry flitted in the back of her head because she hadn't

had a letter from him while he'd been away.

Suddenly there he was coming down the gangplank

alone, with the old wicker suitcase in his hand. He had on

a new belted German raincoat but the same checked cap.

She was face to face with him. He gave her a little hug

but he didn't kiss her. There was something odd in his

voice. "Hello, Mary . . . I didn't expect to find you

here. . . . I don't want to be noticed, you know." His

voice had a low furtive sound in her ears. He was ner-

vously changing his suitcase from one hand to the other.

"See you in a few days . . . I'm going to be pretty busy."

She turned without a word and ran down the wharf. She

hurried breathless along the crosstown street to the Ninth

Avenue el. When she opened her door the new turkeyred

curtains were like a blow from a whip in her face.

She couldn't go back to the office. She couldn't bear the

thought of facing the boys and the people she knew, the

people who had known them together. She called up and

-547-

said she had a bad case of grippe and would have to stay

in bed a couple of days. She stayed all day in the blank

misery of the narrow rooms. Towards evening she dozed

off to sleep on the couch. She woke up with a start thinking

she heard a step in the hall outside. It wasn't Don, the

steps went on up the next flight. After that she didn't

sleep any more.

The next morning the phone woke her just when she

settled herself in bed to drowse a little. It was Sylvia

Goldsteinsaying she was sorry Mary had the grippe and

asking if there was anything she could do. Oh, no, she was

fine, she was just going to stay in bed all day, Mary

answered in a dead voice. "Well, I suppose you knew all

the time about Comrade Stevens and Comrade Lichfield

. . . you two were always so close . . . they were mar-

ried in Moscow . . . she's an English comrade . . . she

spoke at the big meeting at the Bronx Casino last night

. . . she's got a great shock of red hair . . . stunning but

some of the girls think it's dyed. Lots of the comrades

didn't know you and Comrade Stevens had broken up

. . . isn't it sad things like that have to happen in the

movement?" "Oh, that was a long time ago. . . .

Goodby, Sylvia," said Mary harshly and hung up. She

called up a bootlegger she knew and told him to send her

up a bottle of gin.

The next afternoon there was a light rap on the door

and when Mary opened it a crack there was Ada wreathed

in silver fox and breathing out a great gust of Forêt

Vierge. "Oh, Mary darling, I knew something was the

matter. . . . You know sometimes I'm quite psychic. And

when you didn't come to my concert, first I was mad but

then I said to myself I know the poor darling's sick. So I

just went right down to your office. There was the hand-

somest boy there and I just made him tell me where you

lived. He said you were sick with the grippe and so I came

-548-

right over. My dear, why aren't you in bed? You look a

sight."

"I'm all right," mumbled Mary numbly, pushing the

stringy hair off her face. "I been . . . making plans . . .

about how we can handle this relief situation better."

"Well, you're just coming up right away to my spare

bedroom and let me pet you up a little. . . . I don't be-

lieve it's grippe, I think it's overwork. . . . If you're not

careful you'll be having a nervous breakdown." "Maybe

sumpen like that." Mary couldn't articulate her words.

She didn't seem to have any will of her own any more;

she did everything Ada told her. When she was settled in

Ada's clean lavendersmelling spare bed they sent out for

some barbital and it put her to sleep. Mary stayed there

several days eating the meals Ada's maid brought her,

drinking all the drinks Ada would give her, listening to

the continual scrape of violin practice that came from the

other room all morning. But at night she couldn't sleep

without filling herself up with dope. She didn't seem to

have any will left. It would take her a half an hour to

decide to get up to go to the toilet.

After she'd been at Ada's a week she began to feel she

ought to go home. She began to be impatient of Ada's sly

references to unhappy loveaffairs and broken hearts and

the beauty of abnegation and would snap Ada's head off

whenever she started it. "That's fine," Ada would say.

"You are getting your meanness back." For some time Ada

had been bringing up the subject of somebody she knew

who'd been crazy about Mary for years and who was dying

to see her again. Finally Mary gave in and said she would

go to a cocktail party at Eveline Johnson's where Ada said

she knew he'd be. "And Eveline gives the most wonderful

parties. I don't know how she does it because she never has

any money, but all the most interesting people in New

York will be there. They always are. Radicals too, you

know. Eveline can't live without her little group of reds."

-549-

Mary wore one of Ada's dresses that didn't fit her very

well and went out in the morning to have her hair curled

at Saks's where Ada always had hers curled. They had

some cocktails at Ada's place before they went. At the last

minute Mary said she wouldn't go because she'd finally

got it out of Ada that it was George Barrow who was going

to be at the party. Ada made Mary drink another cocktail

and a reckless feeling came over her and she said all right,

let's get a move on.

There was a smiling colored maid in a fancy lace cap

and apron at the door of the house who took them down

the hall to a bedroom full of coats and furs where they

were to take off their wraps. As Ada was doing her face at

the dressingtable Mary whispered in her ear, "Just think

what our reliefcommittee could do with the money that

woman wastes on senseless entertaining." "But she's a

darling," Ada whispered back excitedly. "Honestly, you'll

like her." The door had opened behind their backs letting

in a racketing gust of voices, laughs, tinkle of glasses, a

whiff of perfume and toast and cigarettesmoke and gin.

"Oh, Ada," came a ringing voice. "Eveline darling, how

lovely you look. . . . This is Mary French, you know I

said I'd bring her. . . . She's my oldest friend." Mary

found herself shaking hands with a tall slender woman in

a pearlgrey dress. Her face was very white and her lips

were very red and her long large eyes were exaggerated

with mascara. "So nice of you to come," Eveline Johnson

said and sat down suddenly among the furs and wraps on

the bed. "It sounds like a lovely party," cried Ada.

"I hate parties. I don't know why I give them," said

Eveline Johnson. "Well, I guess I've got to go back to the

menagerie. . . . Oh, Ada, I'm so tired."

Mary found herself studying the harsh desperate lines

under the makeup round Mrs. Johnson's mouth and the

strained tenseness of the cords of her neck. Their silly life

tells on them, she was saying to herself.

-550-

"What about the play?" Ada was asking. "I was so ex-

cited when I heard about it."

"Oh, that's ancient history now," said Eveline Johnson

sharply. "I'm working on a plan to bring over the ballet

. . . turn it into something American. . . . I'll tell you

about it some time."

"Oh, Eveline, did the screenstar come?" asked Ada,

giggling.

"Oh, yes, they always come." Eveline Johnson sighed.

"She's beautiful. . . . You must meet her."Î

"Of course anybody in the world would come to your

parties, Eveline."

"I don't know why they should . . . they seem just too

boring to me." Eveline Johnson was ushering them

through some sliding doors into a highceilinged room

dusky from shaded lights and cigarettesmoke where they

were swallowed up in a jam of welldressed people talking

and making faces and tossing their heads over cocktail

glasses. There seemed no place to stand so Mary sat down

at the end of a couch beside a little marbletopped table.

The other people on the couch were jabbering away among

themselves and paid no attention to her. Ada and the

hostess had disappeared behind a wall of men's suits and

afternoongowns.

Mary had had time to smoke an entire cigarette before

Ada came back followed by George Barrow, whose thin

face looked flushed and whose adamsapple stuck out fur-

ther than ever over his collar. He had a cocktail in each

hand. "Well well well, little Mary French, after all these

years," he was saying with a kind of forced jollity. "If

youkriew the trouble we'd had getting these through the

crush."

"Hello, George," said Mary casually. She took the cock-

tail he handed her and drank it off. After the other drinks

she'd had it made her head spin. Somehow George and

Ada managed to squeeze themselves in on the couch on

-551-

either side of Mary. "I want to hear all about the coal-

strike," George was saying, knitting his brows. "Too bad

the insurgent locals had to choose a moment when a strike

played right into the operators' hands." Mary got angry.

"That's just the sort of remark I'd expect from a man of

your sort. If we waited for a favorable moment there

wouldn't be any strikes. . . . There never is any favor-

able moment for the workers."

"What sort of a man is a man of my sort?" said George

Barrow with fake humility, so Mary thought. "That's

what I often ask myself.""Oh, I don't want to argue . . .

I'm sick and tired of arguing. . . . Get me another cock-

tail, George."

He got up obediently and started threading his way

across the room. "Now, Mary, don't row with poor

George. . . . He's so sweet. . . . Do you know, Margo

Dowling really is here . . . and her husband and Rodney

Cathcart . . . they're always together. They're on their

way to the Riviera," Ada talked into her ear in a loud

stage whisper. "I'm sick of seeing movie actors on the

screen," said Mary, "I don't want to see them in real life."

Ada had slipped away. George was back with two more

cocktails and a plate of cold salmon and cucumbers. She

wouldn't eat anything. "Don't you think you'd better, with

all the drinks?" She shook her head. "Well, I'll eat it

myself. . . . You know, Mary," he went on, "I often

wonder these days if I wouldn't have been a happier man

if I'd just stayed all my life an expressagent in South

Chicago and married some nice workinggirl and had a

flock of kids. . . . I'd be a wealthier and a happier man

today if I'd gone into business even." "Well, you don't

look so badly off," said Mary. "You know it hurts me to

be attacked as a laborfaker by you reds. . . . I may be-

lieve in compromise but I've gained some very substantial

dollarsandcents victories. . . . What you communists

won't see is that there are sometimes two sides to a case."

-552-

"I'm not a partymember," said Mary.

"I know. . . . but you work with them. . . . Why

should you think you know better what's good for the

miners than their own tried and true leaders?" "If the

miners ever had a chance to vote in their unions you'd

find out how much they trust your sellout crowd."

George Barrow shook his head. "Mary, Mary . . . just

the same headstrong warmhearted girl."

"Rubbish, I haven't any feelings at all any more. I've

seen how it works in the field. . . . It doesn't take a good

heart to know which end of a riotgun's pointed at you."

" Mary, I'm a very unhappy man."

"Get me another cocktail, George."

Mary had time to smoke two cigarettes before George

came back. The nodding jabbering faces, the dresses, the

gestures with hands floated in a smoky haze before her

eyes. The crowd was beginning to thin a little when

George came back all flushed and smiling. "Well, I had

the pleasure of exchanging a few words with Miss Dowl-

ing, she was most charming. . . . But do you know what

Red Haines tells me? I wonder if it's true. . . . It seems

she's through; it seems that she's no good for talkingpic-

tures . . . voice sounds like the croaking of an old crow

over the loudspeaker," he giggled a little drunkenly.

"There she is now, she's just leaving."

A hush had fallen over the room. Through the dizzy

swirl of cigarettesmoke Mary saw a small woman with

blue eyelids and features regular as those of a porcelain

doll under a mass of paleblond hair turn for a second to

smile at somebody before she went out through the sliding

doors. She had on a yellow dress and a lot of big sapphires.

A tall bronzefaced actor and a bowlegged sallowfaced little

man followed her out, and Eveline Johnson talking and

talking in her breathless hectic way swept after them.

Mary was looking at it all through a humming haze like

seeing a play from way up in a smoky balcony. Ada came

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and stood in front of her rolling her eyes and opening her

mouth wide when she talked. "Oh, isn't it a wonderful

party. . . . I met her. She had the loveliest manners . . .

I don't know why, I expected her to be kinda tough.

They say she came from the gutter."

"Not at all," said George. "Her people were Spaniards

of noble birth who lived in Cuba."

"Ada, I want to go home," said Mary.

"Just a minute. . . . I haven't had a chance to talk to

dear Eveline. . . . She looks awfully tired and nervous

today, poor dear." A lilypale young man brushed past

them laughing over his shoulder at an older woman cov-

ered with silver lamé who followed him, her scrawny neck,

wattled under the powder, thrust out and her hooknose

quivering and eyes bulging over illconcealed pouches.

"Ada, I want to go home."

"I thought you and I and George might have dinner

together." Mary was seeing blurred faces getting big as

they came towards her, changing shape as they went past,

fading into the gloom like fish opening and closing their

mouths in an aquarium.

"How about it? Miss Cohn, have you seen Charles Ed-

ward Holden around? He's usually quite a feature of Eve-

line's parties." Mary hated George Barrow's doggy pop-

eyed look when he talked. "Now there's a sound intel-

ligent fellow for you. I can talk to him all night."

Ada narrowed her eyes as she leaned over and whis-

pered shrilly in George Barrow's ear. "He's engaged to

be married to somebody else. Eveline's cut up about it.

She's just living on her nerve."

"George, if we've got to stay" Mary said, "get me

another cocktail."

A broadfaced woman in spangles with very red cheeks

who was sitting on the couch beside Mary leaned across

and said in a stage whisper, "Isn't it dreadful? . . . You

know I think it's most ungrateful of Holdy after all Eve-

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line's done for him . . . in a social way . . . since she

took him up . . . now he's accepted everywhere. I know

the girl . . . a little bitch if there ever was one. . . . not

even wealthy."

"Shush," said Ada. "Here's Eveline now. . . . Well)

Eveline dear, the captains and the kings depart. Soon

there'll be nothing but us smallfry left."

"She didn't seem awful bright to me," said Eveline,

dropping into a chair beside them. "Let me get you a

drink, Eveline dear," said Ada. Eveline shook her head.

"What you need, Eveline, my dear," said the broadfaced

woman, leaning across the couch again, ". . . is a good

trip abroad. New York's impossible after January . . . I

shan't attempt to stay. . . . It would just mean a nervous

breakdown if I did."

"I thought maybe I might go to Morocco sometime if

I could scrape up the cash," said Eveline.

"Try Tunis, my dear. Tunis is divine."

After she'd drunk the cocktail Barrow brought Mary sat

there seeing faces, hearing voices in a blank hateful haze.

It took all her attention not to teeter on the edge of the

couch. "I really must go." She had hold of George's arm

crossing the room. She could walk very well but she

couldn't talk very well. In the bedroom Ada was helping

her on with her coat. Eveline Johnson was there with her

big hazel eyes and her teasing singsong voice. "Oh, Ada,

it was sweet of you to come. I'm afraid it was just too

boring. . . . Oh, Miss French, I so wanted to talk to you

about the miners . . . I never get a chance to talk about

things I'm really interested in any more. Do you know,

Ada, I don't think I'll ever do this again. . . . It's just

too boring." She put her long hand to her temple and

rubbed the fingers slowly across her forehead. "Oh, Ada,

I hope they go home soon. . . . I've got such a head-

ache."

"Oughtn't you to take something for it?"

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"I will. I've got a wonderful painkiller. Ask me up next

time you play Bach, Ada . . . I'd like that. You know it

does seem too silly to spend your life filling up rooms with

illassorted people who really hate each other." Eveline

Johnson followed them all the way down the hall to the

front door as if she didn't want to let them go. She stood

in her thin dress in the gust of cold wind that came from

the open door while George went to the corner to get a

cab. "Eveline, go back in, you'll catch your death," said

Ada. "Well, goodby . . . you were darlings to come." As

the door closed slowly behind her Mary watched Eveline

Johnson's narrow shoulders. She was shivering as she

walked back down the hall.

Mary reeled, suddenly feeling drunk in the cold air and

Ada put her arm round her to steady her. "Oh, Mary,"

Ada said in her ear, "I wish everybody wasn't so un-

happy."

"It's the waste," Mary cried out savagely, suddenly able

to articulate. Ada and George Barrow were helping her

into the cab. "The food they waste and the money they

waste while our people starve in tarpaper barracks.""The

contradictions of capitalism," said George Barrow with a

knowing leer. "How about a bite to eat?"

"Take me home first. No, not to Ada's," Mary almost

yelled. "I'm sick of this parasite life. I'm going back to the

office tomorrow. . . . I've got to call up tonight to see if

they got in all right with that load of condensed

milk. . . ." She picked up Ada's hand, suddenly feeling

like old times again, and squeezed it. "Ada, you've been

sweet, honestly you've saved my life."

"Ada's the perfect cure for hysterical people like us,"

said George Barrow. The taxi had stopped beside the row

of garbagecans in front of the house where Mary lived.

"No, I can walk up alone," she said harshly and angrily

again. "It's just that being tiredout a drink makes me feel

funny. Goodnight. I'll get my bag at your place tomor-

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row." Ada and Barrow went off in the taxicab with their

heads together chatting and laughing. They've forgotten

me already, thought Mary as she made her way up the

stairs. She made the stairs all right but had some trouble

getting the key in the lock. When the door finally would

open she went straight to the couch in the front room and

lay down and fell heavily asleep.

In the morning she felt more rested than she had in

years. She got up early and ate a big breakfast with bacon

and eggs at Childs on the way to the office. Rudy Gold-

farb was already there, sitting at her desk.

He got up and stared at her without speaking for a

moment. His eyes were red and bloodshot and his usually

sleek black hair was all over his forehead. "What's the

matter, Rudy?"

"Comrade French, they got Eddy."

"You mean they arrested him."

"Arrested him nothing, they shot him."

"They killed him." Mary felt a wave of nausea rising

in her. The room started to spin around. She clenched her

fists and the room fell into place again. Rudy was telling

her how some miners had found the truck wrecked in a

ditch. At first they thought that it had been an accident

but when they picked up Eddy Spellman he had a bullet-

hole through his temple.

"We've got to have a protest meeting . . . do they

know about it over at the Party?"

"Sure, they're trying to get Madison Square Garden.

But, Comrade French, he was one hell of a swell kid."

Mary was shaking all over. The phone rang. Rudy an-

swered it. "Comrade French, they want you over there

right away. They want you to be secretary of the com-

mittee for the protest meeting." Mary let herself drop into

the chair at her desk for a moment and began noting down

the names of organizations to be notified. Suddenly she

looked up and looked Rudy straight in the eye. "Do you

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know what we've got to do . . . we've got to move the

reliefcommittee to Pittsburgh. I knew all along we ought

to have been in Pittsburgh."

"Risky business."

"We ought to have been in Pittsburgh all along," Mary

said firmly and quietly.

The phone rang again.

"It's somebody for you, Comrade French."

As soon as the receiver touched Mary's ear there was

Ada talking and talking. At first Mary couldn't make out

what it was about. "But, Mary darling, haven't you read

the papers?""No, I said I hadn't. You mean about Eddy

Spellman?""No, darling, it's too awful, you remember

we were just there yesterday for a cocktail party . . . you

must remember, Eveline Johnson, it's so awful. I've sent

out and got all the papers. Of course the tabloids all say

it's suicide.""Ada, I don't understand.""But, Mary, I'm

trying to tell you . . . I'm so upset I can't talk . . . she

was such a lovely woman, so talented, an artist really.

. . . Well, when the maid got there this morning she

found her dead in her bed and we were just there twelve

hours before. It gives me the horrors. Some of the papers

say it was an overdose of a sleeping medicine. She couldn't

have meant to do it. If we'd only known we might have

been able to do something, you know she said she had a

headache. Don't you think you could come up, I can't stay

here alone I feel so terrible.""Ada, I can't. . . . Some-

thing very serious has happened in Pennsylvania. I have

a great deal of work to do organizing a protest. Goodby,

Ada." Mary hung up, frowning.

"Say, Rudy, if Ada Cohn calls up again tell her I'm out

of the office. . . . I have too much to do to spend my

time taking care of hysterical women a day like this." She

put on her hat, collected her papers, and hurried over to

the meeting of the committee.

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VAG

The young man waits at the edge of the concrete,

with one hand he grips a rubbed suitcase of phony

leather, the other hand almost making a fist, thumb up

that moves in ever so slight an arc when a car

slithers past, a truck roars clatters; the wind of cars

passing ruffles his hair, slaps grit in his face.

Head swims, hunger has twisted the belly tight,

he has skinned a heel through the torn sock, feet

ache in the broken shoes, under the threadbare suit care-

fully brushed off with the hand, the torn drawers have

a crummy feel, the feel of having slept in your clothes;

in the nostrils lingers the staleness of discouraged car-

casses crowded into a transient camp, the carbolic stench

of the jail, on the taut cheeks the shamed flush from the

boring eyes of cops and deputies, railroadbulls (they eat

three squares a day, they are buttoned into wellmade

clothes, they have wives to sleep with, kids to play with

after supper, they work for the big men who buy their

way, they stick their chests out with the sureness of

power behind their backs). Git the hell out, scram.

Know what's good for you, you'll make yourself scarce.

Gittin' tough, eh? Think you kin take it, eh?

The punch in the jaw, the slam on the head with

the nightstick, the wrist grabbed and twisted behind

the back, the big knee brought up sharp into the crotch,

the walk out of town with sore feet to stand and

wait at the edge of the hissing speeding string of cars

where the reek of ether and lead and gas melts into the

silent grassy smell of the earth.

Eyes black with want seek out the eyes of the

drivers, a hitch, a hundred miles down the road.

Overhead in the blue a plane drones. Eyes follow

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the silver Douglas that flashes once in the sun and

bores its smooth way out of sight into the blue.

(The transcontinental passengers sit pretty, big

highlypaid jobs, who are saluted

men with bankaccounts, highlypaid jobs, who are saluted

by doormen; telephonegirls say goodmorning to them.

Last night after a fine dinner, drinks with friends, they

left Newark. Roar of climbing motors slanting up into

the inky haze. Lights drop away. An hour staring

along a silvery wing at a big lonesome moon hurrying

west through curdling scum. Beacons flash in a line

across Ohio.

At Cleveland the plane drops banking in a smooth

spiral, the string of lights along the lake swings in a

circle. Climbing roar of the motors again; slumped in

the soft seat drowsing through the flat moonlight night.

Chi. A glimpse of the dipper. Another spiral

swoop from cool into hot air thick with dust and the

reek of burnt prairies.

Beyond the Mississippi dawn creeps up behind

through the murk over the great plains. Puddles of

mist go white in the Iowa hills, farms, fences, silos,

steel glint from a river. The blinking eyes of the bea-

cons reddening into day. Watercourses vein the eroded

hills.

Omaha. Great cumulus clouds, from coppery

churning to creamy to silvery white, trail brown skirts of

rain over the hot plains. Red and yellow badlands,

tiny horned shapes of cattle.

Cheyenne. The cool high air smells of sweetgrass.

The tightbaled clouds to westward burst and scat-

ter in tatters over the strawcolored hills. Indigo moun-

tains jut rimrock. The plane breasts a huge crumbling

cloudbank and toboggans over bumpy air across green

and crimson slopes into the sunny dazzle of Salt Lake.

The transcontinental passenger thinks contracts,

profits, vacationtrips, mighty continent between Atlantic

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and Pacific, power, wires humming dollars, cities

jammed, hills empty, the indiantrail leading into the

wagonroad, the macadamed pike, the concrete skyway;

trains, planes: history the billiondollar speedup,

and in the bumpy air over the desert ranges to-

wards Las Vegas

sickens and vomits into the carton container the

steak and mushrooms he ate in New York. No matter,

silver in the pocket, greenbacks in the wallet, drafts,

certified checks, plenty restaurants in L. A.)

The young man waits on the side of the road; the

plane has gone; thumb moves in a small arc when a

car tears hissing past. Eyes seek the driver's eyes. A

hundred miles down the road. Head swims, belly

tightens, wants crawl over his skin like ants:

went to school, books said opportunity, ads prom-

ised speed, own your home, shine bigger than your

neighbor, the radiocrooner whispered girls, ghosts of

platinum girls coaxed from the screen, millions in win-

nings were chalked up on the boards in the offices, pay-

checks were for hands willing to work, the cleared desk

of an executive with three telephones on it;

waits with swimming head, needs knot the belly,

idle hands numb, beside the speeding traffic.

A hundred miles down the road.

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