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.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 44878
   :PG.Title: A Man's World
   :PG.Released: 2014-02-11
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Albert Edwards
   :DC.Title: A Man's World
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1912
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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A MAN'S WORLD
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      A MAN'S WORLD

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      BY

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      ALBERT EDWARDS

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      New York
      THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
      1912

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      *All rights reserved*

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      COPYRIGHT, 1912
      BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

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      Set up and electrotyped.  Published July, 1912.
      Reprinted October, November, 1912

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      PRESS OF T. MOREY & SON
      GREENFIELD, MASS., U.S.A.

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.. _`BOOK I`:

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   A MAN'S WORLD

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   BOOK I

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   I

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All books should have a preface, to tell what they are
about and why they were written.

This one is about myself—Arnold Whitman.

I have sought in vain for a title which would be truly
descriptive of the subject and form of my book.  It is
not a "Journal" nor a "Diary" for these words signify
a daily noting down of events.  Neither "Memoirs"
nor "Recollections" meet the case, for much which I
have written might better be called "Meditations."  It
certainly is not a "Novel," for that term implies a
traditional "literary form," a beginning, development
and end.  I am quite sure that my beginning goes back
to the primordial day when dead matter first organized
itself—or was organized—into a living cell.  And
whether or not I will ever "end" is an open question.
There is no "unity" in the form of my narrative except
the frame of mind which led me to write it, which has
held me to task till now.

It is the story of how I, born at the close of The Great
War, lived and of the things—common-place and
unusual—which happened to me, how they felt at the
time and how I feel about them now.

"Autobiography" is the term which most truly
describes what I have tried to do.  But that word is
associated with the idea of great men.  The fact that I
am not "great" has been my main incentive in
writing.  We have text books a plenty on how to become
Emperor, at least they tell how a man named Napoleon
did it.  There are endless volumes to which you may
refer if you wish to become President of these United
States—or rival the career of Captain Kidd.  But such
ambitions are rare among boys over eighteen.

Even before that age I began to wish for a book like
the one I have tried to write.  I wanted to know how
ordinary people lived.  It was no help in those days
to read how this Cæsar or that came and saw and
conquered.  I shared the ambitions of the boys about me.
To be sure there were day-dreaming moments when we
planned to explore Central Africa or found dynasties.
But this was pure make-believe.  We knew that not
one man in thousands wins fame.  For each moment
we dreamed of greatness there were days on end
when we looked out questioningly on the real world.
We got no answers from our teachers.  Most of the boys
who were in school with me are today running a store,
practicing law or medicine.  They were prepared for it
by reading Plutarch in class and Nick Carter on the sly.

As a youth I wanted of course to gain a comfortable
living.  I wanted mildly to win some measure of
distinction, but all this was subordinate to a more definite
desire to be a man, and not to be ashamed.  A book
about the ordinary life I was to enter, would have been
a God-send to me.

This then is to be the story of my life as it appears
to me now, and how, in the face of the things which
happened to me, I tried to be decent.

I have only two apologies to offer.  All the rest of my
writing has been scientific—on the subject of
criminology.  I am unpracticed in narration.  And I have been
enough in courts to realize the difference between
"evidence" and "truth."  At best I can only give
"evidence."  Others who knew me would tell of my
life differently, perhaps more truly.  But it will be as
near truth as I can make it.

And now to my story.

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   II

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My earliest distinct memory is of an undeserved
flogging.  But from this grew my conception of Justice.
It was, I think, my first abstract idea.

My parents died long before I can remember and I
was brought up in the home of the Rev. Josiah Drake,
a Cumberland Presbyterian minister of the Tennessee
Mountains.  He was my uncle, but I always called
him "the Father."  He was the big fact of my childhood
and my memory holds a more vivid picture of him
than of any person I have known since.

He was very tall, but stooped heavily.  If he had
shaved he would have resembled Lincoln, and this, I
suppose, is why he wore so long and full a beard.  For
he was a Southerner and hated the Northern leader
with all the bitterness of the defeated.  And yet he was
a Christian.  I have never known one who served his
God more earnestly, more devotedly.  He was a scholar
of the old type.  He knew his Latin and Greek and
Hebrew.  And as those were rare accomplishments
among the mountain clergy of Tennessee it gave him a
great prestige.  In all but name he was the Bishop of
the country-side.  His faith was that of Pym and Knox
and Jonathan Edwards, a militant Puritan, fearless
before the world, abject in humility before his God.

Of his wife, my aunt Martha, I have scarcely a
memory.  When I was very young she must have been
important to me, but as I grew to boyhood she faded
into indistinct haziness.  I recall most clearly how she
looked at church, not so much her face as her clothes.
In all those years she must have had some new ones,
but if so, they were always of the same stuff and
pattern as the old.  Sharpest of all I remember the ridges
the bones of her corset made in the back of her dress
as she leaned forward, resting her forehead on the pew
in front of us, during the "long prayer."  There was
always a flush on her face when it was over.  I think
her clothing cramped her somehow.

I have also a picture of her heated, flurried look
over the kitchen stove when she was engaged in the
annual ordeal of "putting up" preserves.  Even when
making apple-butter she maintained a certain formality.
The one time when she would lapse from her dignity
was when one of the negroes would rush into the
kitchen with the news that a buggy was turning into
our yard.  The sudden scurry, the dash into her
bedroom, the speed with which the hot faced woman of
the kitchen would transform herself into a composed
minister's wife in black silk, was the chief wonder of
my childhood.  It was very rarely that the guests
reached the parlor before her.

All of her children had died in infancy except Oliver.
As the Father's religion frowned on earthly love, she
idealized him in secret.  I think she tried to do her
Christian duty towards me, but it was decidedly
perfunctory.  She was very busy with the big house to
keep in order, endless church work and the burden of
preserving the appearances her husband's position
demanded.

There was a large lawn before the house down to a
picket fence.  Mowing the grass and whitewashing
that fence were the bitterest chores of my childhood.
The main street of the village was so little used for
traffic that once or twice every summer it was necessary
to cut down the tall grass and weeds.  Next to our
house was the church, it was an unattractive box.
I remember that once in a long while it was painted,
but the spire was never completed above the belfry.
There was a straggling line of houses on each side of
the street and two stores.  Beyond the Episcopal
Church, the road turned sharply to the right and slipped
precipitously down into the valley.  Far below us was
the county seat.  About five hundred people lived
there, and the place boasted of six stores and a railroad
station.

That was its greatest charm to my schoolmates.
From any of the fields, on the hill-side beyond the
village, we could look down and watch the two daily
trains as they made a wide sweep up into this
forgotten country.  There was one lad whom I remember
with envy.  His father was carter for our community
and sometimes he took his son down with him.  They
slept in the great covered wagon in the square before
the county court house, and came back the next day.
The boy's name was Stonewall Jackson Clarke.  He
lorded it over the rest of us because he had seen a
locomotive at close quarters.  And he used to tell us
that the court house was bigger than our two churches
"with Blake's store on top."

I think that as a boy I knew the names of one or
two stations on each side of the county seat.  But it
never occurred to me that the trains down there could
take you to the cities and countries I studied about
in my geography.  Beyond the valley were Missionary
Ridge and Lookout Mountain.  But none of the boys
I played with realized that the world beyond the
mountains was anything like the country we could see.
It would have surprised us if the teacher had pointed
out to us on the school map the spot where our village
stood.  The land over which Cinderella's Prince ruled
was just as real to us as New York State or the countries
of Europe, the names of whose capitals we learned
by rote.

My cousin Oliver I disliked.  As a youngster I did
not know why.  But now I can see that he had a craven
streak in him, a taint of sneakiness, an inability to be
bravely sincere.  It was through him that I got my
lesson in justice.

He was then about sixteen and I eight.  His hobby at
the time was carpentry and, as I was supposed to dull
his tools if I touched them, I was forbidden to play
in the part of the barn where he had his bench.  He
was going to make an overnight visit to some friends
in a neighboring township and at breakfast—he was
to start about noon—he asked the Father to reiterate
the prohibition.  A few hours later I found Oliver
smoking a corn-silk cigarette behind the barn.  He
begged me not "to tell on him."  Nothing had been
further from my mind.  As a bribe for my silence he
said I might play with his tools.  The spirit of his offer
angered me—but I accepted it.

After he had left the Father found me at his bench.

"Ollie said I could," I explained.

"At breakfast," the Father replied, "he distinctly
said you could not."

But I stuck to it.  The Father had every reason to
believe I was lying.  It was not in Oliver's nature to
be kind to me without reason.  And I could not, in
honor, explain the reason.  The Father was not the
kind to spoil his children by sparing the rod, and there
was no crime in his code more heinous than falsehood.
He tried to flog me into a confession.

There was nothing very tragic to me in being whipped.
All the boys I knew were punished so.  I had never
given the matter any thought.  As I would not admit
that I had lied, this was the worst beating I ever
received.  He stopped at last from lack of breath and
sent me to bed.

"Oliver will be back to-morrow," he said.  "It is
no use persisting in your lie.  You will be found out.
And if you have not confessed...."  The threat was
left open.

I remember tossing about in bed and wishing that I
had lied and taken a whipping for disobedience.  It
would not have been so bad and would have been over
at once.  The next morning I sat sullenly in my room
waiting for Oliver's return, wondering if he would tell
the truth.  I was not at all confident.  Towards noon,
the blackboard turned in at the gate, one of the negroes
took the horse and I heard the Father call Oliver into
his study.

Then suddenly a door slammed and I heard the
Father's step on the stair.  He was running.  He burst
into my room and before I knew what was happening,
he had picked me up in his arms.  And, wonder of
wonders, he was crying.  I had never before seen a
grown man cry.  He was asking me, I could not
understand what he meant, but he was asking me to
forgive him.  Then I heard the Mother's voice at the
door.

"What is the matter, Josiah?"

"Oh, Martha.  It's horrible!  I caned the lad for a
lie and he was telling the Truth!  Oh, my son, my son,
forgive me."

At first all I realized was that I was not to be whipped
any more.  But all day long the Father kept me close
to him and gradually from his talk I began vaguely
to understand that there was such a thing as justice.
I had always supposed that punishments were a matter
of the parents' good pleasure.  That it had any relation
to cause and effect, that sometimes a father might be
right and sometimes wrong in beating a child, had
never occurred to me.

It is interesting how such things take form in a
child's mind.  The Father bought me a set of tools
like Oliver's as a peace offering, and of course I was
much more interested in them than in any abstract
conception of justice.  Yet in some gradual,
subconscious way, the idea arranged itself in my mind.
I began to judge everything by it.  I suppose it marked
the end of babyhood, the first faint beginning of
manhood.



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   III

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It Is not surprising that, in that austere home, my
first fundamental idea should have been of justice
rather than of love.

There may have been a time when the affection
between the Father and Mother had an outward showing.
I would like to think that they had tasted gayer,
honey-mooning days.  I doubt it.  They were helpmates
rather than lovers.  The Mother was well named
Martha, busy with much serving.  Her work had
dovetailed into his.  It would be juster to say her
work was his.  Their all-absorbing business was the
winning of souls to Christ, and anything of only human
interest seemed to them of the earth, earthy.  I never
saw anything like a quarrel between them, nor any
passage of affection—except that the Father kissed her
when going on a journey or returning.

It is hard for me to understand such people.  Everything
which has given me solace in life, all the pleasures
of literature and art, all the real as well as the written
poems, they had rigorously cut off.

Oliver and I kissed the Mother when we went to bed.
I never remember kissing the Father.  Yet he loved
me.  Sometimes I think he loved me more than his
own son.  I doubt if I was often separated from his
thoughts, ever from his prayers.

But all I knew as a boy about the affections, which
expresses itself openly, was from Mary Button, my
Sunday school teacher.  She was brimming over with
the joy of living and in every way the opposite of the
austerity I knew at home.  She was altogether
wonderful to me.  When the Mother was away at Synodical
meetings, Mary used often to come for a whole day to
keep the house in order.  It was strange and typical
to hear her sing rollicking college songs at our parlor
organ—a wheezy contraption which seemed entirely
dedicated to Moody and Sankey.

All through my childhood Mary passed as a celestial
dream, a princess from some beautiful land of laughter
and kisses.

When I was about nine, and she I suppose near
nineteen, Prof. Everett, who had been with her brother
in college, began to visit the village.  I disliked him at
once with an instinctive jealousy.  He has since won a
large renown as a geologist, and was no doubt an
estimable man, but if I should meet him now, after all
these years, I am sure the old grudge would come to
life and make me hate him.  After a few months he
married her and took her away to a nearby college
town.

About a year later, when the ache of her absence
was beginning to heal, and, boy-like, I was in danger of
forgetting her, a photograph came of her and the baby.
It was such a loving picture!  She looked so radiantly
happy!  It was set up on the mantel-piece in the parlor,
and seemed to illuminate that sombre room.  I
remember exactly how it leaned up against the bronze
clock, between the plaster busts of Milton and Homer.
In those days I supposed one had to be blind to be a
poet.  The picture kept her memory alive for me.

Some months later Mary wrote that her husband
was going away to attend a convention and she asked
that I might come to bear her company for the week.

The excitement of that first sortie out into the
world is the most vivid thing which comes to me from
my childhood.  The Father drove me down the
mountain-side to the county seat and so at last I saw a train
at close quarters.  Even when I had watched them
through the Father's campaign glasses I had not
realized how large they were.  He gave me in charge of
the conductor, a man with an armless sleeve and
drooping moustaches, who had been a corporal in his
regiment.

There was a rattle and jerk—we had no air-brakes
on the Tennessee trains in those days—and the railroad
station and the Father slipped out of sight.  Such
an amazing number of things went by the car window!
I counted all the fields to the next station.  There were
thirty-seven.  The conductor told me I was not to get off
till the eighteenth stop.  I started in valiantly to count
them all, but my attention was distracted by the fact
that things near the track went by so much faster
than things far away.  In "physics A" at college I
learned an explanation of this phenomena which seemed
all right on paper but even today it is entirely
inadequate when I am in a train and actually watching the
earth revolve about distant points in either horizon.
Trying to find a reason for it on that first railroad trip
put me to sleep.  At last the conductor woke me up
and handed me over to Mary.

I can recall only vaguely the details of that delectable
week, the strangeness of the entire experience is
what sticks in my memory.  There was the baby, so
soft and round and contented.  There was the German
nurse, the first white servant I had ever seen.  And
there were the armchairs in the living-room, curved and
comfortable and very different from the chairs in the
parlor at home.  After supper, instead of sending me
off to bed, Mary read to me before the open fire, read
me the wonderful stories of King Arthur.  When at
last I was sleepy, she came with me to my room.  It
embarrassed me to undress before her, but it was very
sweet to have her tuck me in and kiss me "goodnight."

Mary "spoiled" me, to use the Father's expression,
systematically, she let me eat between meals and
gorged me with sweets.  One night it made me sick.
I have forgotten whether "dough-nuts" or "pop-overs"
were to blame.  When the doctor had gone
away, laughing—for it was not serious—Mary took me
into her own bed.  I would gladly have suffered ten
times the pain for the warm comfort of her arms about me.

It was during this visit that all the side of life we
call Art began to appeal to me.  The King Arthur
legends were my introduction to literature, Malory
and Tennyson's "Idylls" were the first written stories
or poems I ever enjoyed.  And I think my first
impression of Beauty, was the sight of Mary nursing the baby.
I am sure she did not realize with what wondering eyes
I watched her.  I was only a little shaver and she could
not have guessed what a novel sight it was for me.  At
home, everything human, which could not be
suppressed, was studiously hidden.  I think some of the
old Madonnas in which the Mother is suckling the
Child would have seemed blasphemous to the Father.
Art has always seemed to me at its highest when
occupied with some such simple human thing.



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   IV

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I had two playmates in those days, Margaret and
Albert Jennings.  Their father had been on "Stonewall"
Jackson's staff.  "Al" was my own age, but seemed
older and Margot was a year younger.  Until I went
away to school we were almost inseparable.  Only in
affairs of the church were we apart, for they were
Episcopalians.

Our biggest common interest was a "Chicken
Company."  We had built an elaborate run in the back
yard of the parsonage and sometimes had as many as
thirty hens.  This enterprise led us into the great sin of
our childhood—stealing.

Why I stole I cannot explain.  I never pretended to
justify it.  We would sell a dozen eggs to my household
and then take as many out of the pantry as were
necessary to complete a dozen for Mrs. Jennings.  We did
this off and on for four or five years.  When the hens
laid freely we did not have to.  But if there were not
eggs to satisfy the demands of the two families,
we stole.  I think we blamed it on the chickens.  Al
and I were always full of great projects for improving
the stock or the run and so needed money.  There was
little danger of discovery, because housekeeping was a
very unexact science in our southern homes.  And just
because the chickens refused to lay as they should,
seemed a very trivial reason for sacrificing our plans.
But we did not like to do it.  We always searched the
nests two or three times in the hope of finding the eggs
we needed.

Al was a queer chap.  I remember one time we were
two eggs short.

"We'll have to steal them from your mother," I said.

"You may be a thief," he retorted angrily, as we
started after the spoils.  "But I intend to pay it back.
It's just a loan."

There was a weak subterfuge to the effect that Margot
knew nothing of our dishonesty.  The three of us had
decided upon this in open council, to protect her in
case we were caught.  If there were to be any whippings,
it was for the masculine members of the firm to take
them.  But Margot knew, just as well as we did, how
many eggs were laid and how far our sales exceeded
that number.  But the candy she bought did not
seem to trouble her conscience any more than it did her
digestion.  I have met no end of older women, in
perfectly good church standing, who are no more
squeamish about how their men folk gain their income.

There was another very feminine trait about
Margot.  We divided our profits equally, in three parts.
Al and I always put most of our share back into the
business.  Margot spent hers on candy.  Al used to
object to this arrangement sometimes, but I always
stood up for her.

This was because I expected to marry her.  I do not
remember when it was first suggested, but it was an
accepted thing between us.  Col. Jennings used laughingly
to encourage us in it.  I spoke of it once at home,
but the Father shook his head and said it would grieve
him if I married outside of our denomination.  The
Baptists were his special aversion, but next to them
he objected to Episcopalians, whom he felt to be tainted
with popery.

This led to a quarrel with Margot.  I told her flatly
that I would not marry her, unless she became a Presbyterian.
She was a little snob and, as the most considerable
people of the county belonged to her church, she
preferred to give me up rather than slip down in the
social scale.  For several days we did not speak to each
other.  I refused to let any misguided Episcopalians
in my yard.  As the chicken run was in my domain, Al,
who was smaller than I, became an apostate.  But
Margot held out stubbornly, until her mother
intervened and told us, with great good sense, that we were
much too young to know the difference between one
sect and another, that we had best suspend hostilities
until we knew what we were fighting about.  So peace
was restored.

This calf-love of mine was strangely cold.  Some of
the boys and girls in school used to "spoon."  But
"holding hands" and so forth seemed utterly inane
to me.  I do not know what Margot felt about it, but
I no more thought of kissing her than her brother.
The best thing about her was that she also loved King
Arthur.  Mary had given me a copy of Malory.  Up
in our hay-loft, Margot and I used to take turns
reading it aloud and acting it.  Only once in a long while
could we persuade Al to join us in these childish
dramatics.  I was generally Launcelot.  Sometimes she
would be Elaine, but I think she loved best to be the
Queen.

At fourteen I discovered Froissart's Chronicles in
the Father's library.  It had a forbidding cover and I
might never have unearthed it, if he had not set me to
work dusting his books in punishment for some minor
delinquency.  On the bottom shelf there were three
big lexicons, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.  Next to them
was the great family Bible.  Then came Cruden's
Concordance, a geography of Palestine, "The Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire," Motley's "Dutch
Republic"—and Froissart!  As I was dusting it
gloomily, it slipped from my hands and fell open to an old
engraving of the Murder of Richard II.  There were
twenty-four plates in that volume.  Never did boy
enter into such a paradise.

I can only guess what the Father would have thought
of my filling my mind with such lore.  I took no chances
in the matter.  With great pains, I arranged the books
so that the absence of Froissart would not be noticed.
Until I went East to school at sixteen, it reposed in
the bottom of the bran bin in the loft, and when
at last I went, I gave it to Margot as my choicest
treasure.

When I saw her ten years ago, she showed me the old
book.  The sight of it threw us both under constraint,
bringing back those old days when we had planned to
marry.  The funeral of a dream always seem sadder
to me than the death of a person.

Permanent camp meetings, the things which grew
into the Chautauqua movement, were just beginning
their popularity.  One had been started a few score
miles from our village and the year I went away to
school, the Father had been made director.  We left
home early in the summer, and I was to go East
without coming back.

On the eve of my departure, I went to see Margot.
It was my first formal call and, in my new long trousers,
I was much embarrassed.  For an hour or so we sat
stiffly, repeating every ten minutes a promise to write
to each other.  I remember we figured out that it
would take me ten years to finish the Theological
Seminary and be ready to marry her.  It was ordained
that I was to study for the ministry.  No other career
had ever been suggested to me.

The constraint wore off when I asked her for a
photograph to take with me to school.  From some instinct
of coquetry she pretended not to want me to have one.
Boys at school, she said, had their walls covered with
pictures of girls, she would not think of letting hers be
put up with a hundred others.  When I solemnly promised
not to have any picture but hers, she said she had
no good one.  There was one on the mantel, and I
grabbed it in spite of her protest.

She was a bit of a tomboy and a hoydenish scuffle
followed.  In the scramble my hand fell accidentally
on her breast.  It sent a dazzling thrill through me.
The vision came to me of Mary nursing the baby and
the beauty of her white breast.  The idea connected
itself with Margot, struggling in my arms.  I knew
nothing of the mystery of life.  I cannot tell what I
felt—it was very vague—but I knew some new thing
had come to me.

Margot noticed the change.  I suppose I stopped
the struggle with her.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

"Nothing."

But I went off and sat down apart.

"What's the matter?" she insisted, coming over and
standing in front of me.  "Did I hurt you?"

"No," I said.  "But we mustn't wrestle like that.
We aren't children any more."

She threw up her head and began to make fun
of me and my new long trousers.  But I interrupted
her.

"Margot!  Margot!  Don't you understand?"

I took hold of her hands and pulled her down beside
me and kissed her.  It was the first time.  I am sure
she did not understand what I meant—I was not clear
about it myself.  But she fell suddenly silent.  And while
I sat there with my arm about her, I saw a vision of
Mary's home and the warm joy of it.  Margot and I
would have a home like that; not like the Father's.

I was under the spell of some dizzying emotion which
none of our grown up words will fit.  The emotion, I
suppose, comes but once, and is too fleeting to have
won a place in adult dictionaries.  It was painful and
awesome, but as I walked home I was very happy.



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   V

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Of course I never questioned the Father's religious
dogmas.  I did not even know that they might be
questioned.  But two things troubled me persistently.

I had been taught that our Saviour was the Prince
of Peace, that His chief commandment was the law of
love.  But when adults got together there was always
talk of the war.  I do not think there was any elder
or deacon in our church who had not served.  How
often I listened to stories of the wave of murder and
rapine that had swept through our mountains only
a few years before!

I remember especially the placing of a battle monument
just outside our village and the horde of strangers
who came from various parts of the state for the
ceremony.  The heroes were five men in gray uniforms,
all who were left of the company which had stood there
and had been shot to pieces.  One was an old man,
three were middle aged, and one was so young that he
could not have been more than sixteen on the day of the
fight.  The man who had been their captain stayed
at the parsonage.  After supper the principal men of
the village gathered in our parlor.  I stood by the
Father's chair and listened wide-eyed as, in his cracked
voice, the Captain told us all the details of that
slaughter.  I remember that in the excitement of his
story-telling the old soldier became profane, and the Father
did not rebuke him.

Somehow I could not feel any romance in modern
warfare, there seemed no similarity between these men
and the chivalric heroes of The Round Table.  Perhaps
if Launcelot had been a real person, there in the
parsonage parlor, and had told me face to face and vividly
how he had slain the false knight Gawaine, had made
me see the smear of blood on his sword blade, the cloven
headed corpse of his enemy, that also they might have
seemed abhorrent.

As a little boy I could not understand how a follower
of Jesus could be a soldier.  I did not know that grown
men were also asking the same question.  Years
afterwards I remember coming across Rossetti's biting
sonnet—"Vox ecclesiæ, vox Christi"—

   |      "O'er weapons blessed for carnage, to fierce youth
   |  From evil age, the word has hissed along:—
   |  Ye are the Lord's: go forth, destroy, be strong:
   |  Christ's Church absolves ye from Christ's law of ruth."

I do not know what the Father would have thought of
those words, for, like some of the Roundhead leaders
of Cromwell's time, he had been Chaplain as well as
Captain of his company.  If the war had broken out
again, as the "Irreconcilables" believed it surely would,
and if Oliver had refused to enlist on the ground that
he was studying for Christ's ministry, I think the
Father would have cursed him.

The other thing which worried me was a "gospel
hymn," which we sang almost every Sunday.  It had a
swinging tune, but the words were horrible.

   |  There is a fountain filled with blood,
   |    Drawn from Emanuel's veins;
   |  And sinners plunged beneath that flood
   |    Lose all their guilty stains.

Such a gory means of salvation seemed much more
frightful to my childish imagination than the most
sulphurous hell.

These things I was told I would understand when I
grew up.  This was the answer to so many questions,
that I got out of the habit of asking them.  I believed
that the Father was very wise and was willing to take
his word for everything.

At eleven he persuaded me "to make a profession of
faith" and join the church.  It is only within these
latter, mellower years that I can look back on this
incident without bitterness.  It was so utterly unfair.
The only thing I was made to understand was that I
was taking very serious and irrevocable vows.  This
was impressed on me in every way.  I was given a
brand new outfit of clothes.  I had never had new
underwear and new shoes simultaneously with a new suit
and hat before.  Such things catch a child's imagination.
I had to stand up before the whole congregation
and reply to un-understandable questions with answers
I had learned by rote.  Then for the first time I was
given a share of the communion bread and wine.  The
solemnity of the occasion was emphasized.  But there
was no effort—at least no successful one—to make me
understand what it was all about.  When I became old
enough to begin to think of such things, I found that
I had already sworn to believe the same things as long
as I lived.  Try as hard as I can to remember the many
kindnesses of my adoptive parents, realizing, as I surely
do, how earnestly and prayerfully they strove to do the
best for me, this folly remains my sharpest recollection
of them.  It was horribly unfair to a youngster who
took his word seriously.

But I never had what is called a "religious experience"
until that summer in camp meeting when I was
sixteen.

In after years, I have learned that the older and
richer sects have developed more elaborate and artistic
stage-settings for their mysteries.  I cannot nowadays
attend a service of the Paulist Fathers, or at Saint
Mary the Virgin's without feeling the intoxication of
the heavy incense and the wonderful beauty of the
music.  But for a boy, and for the simple mountain
folk who gathered there, that camp was sufficiently
impressive.

It stood on the edge of a mirror lake, under the
shadow of Lookout Mountain, in one of the most
beautiful corners of Tennessee.  Stately pines crowded
close about the clearing and beyond the lake the hill
dropped away, leaving a sweeping view out across the
valley.  Man seemed a very small creature beneath
those giant trees, in the face of the great distances
to the range of mountains beyond the valley.  There
was nothing about the camp to recall one's daily life.
The thousand and one things which insistently distract
one's attention from religion had been excluded.

Every care had been taken to make the camp
contrast with, and win people from, "The Springs,"—a
fashionable and worldly resort nearby.  There was no
card playing nor dancing, as such things were supposed
to offend the Deity.  The stage to the railroad station
did not run on Sunday.

After breakfast every day the great family—a hundred
people or more—gathered by the lake-side and the
Father led in prayer.  During the morning there were
study courses, most of which were Bible classes.  I
only remember two which were secular.  One was on
Literature and the King James Version was taken as a
model of English prose.  No mention was made of the
fact that much of the original had been poetry.  There
was also a course on "Science."  A professor of Exigesis
from a neighboring Theological Seminary delivered a
venomous polemic against Darwin.  The "Nebular
Hypothesis" was demolished with many convincing
gestures.

My little love affair with Margot had put me in a
state of exaltation.  Other things conspired to make me
especially susceptible to religious suggestion.  Oliver
was back from his second year in the seminary.  My
dislike for him was forgotten.  He seemed very eloquent to
me in the young people's meetings, which he conducted.

Mary was there with her three children and had
taken for the summer the cottage at one end of the
semi-circle overlooking the lake.  Her husband,
Prof. Everett, had been away for several months on the
geological expedition to Alaska, which was, I believe,
the foundation of the eminence he now holds in that
science.  Mary also had been caught up in the religious
fervor of the place.  To me she seemed wonderfully
spiritualized and beautiful beyond words.  Oliver and
I used often to walk home with her after the evening
meetings and, sitting out on her porch over the water,
talk of religion.

Sundays were continuous revival meetings.  Famous
fishers-of-souls came every week.  All methods from
the most spiritual to the coarsest were used to wean
us from our sins.  It was "Salvation" Milton, who
landed me.

He was the star attraction of the summer's program.
He stayed in the camp two weeks, fourteen days of
tense emotion, bordering on hysteria.  To many people
"Salvation" Milton has seemed a very Apostle.  His
message has come to them as holy words from the
oracle of the Most High.  To such it may, I fear, seem
blasphemous for me—a criminologist—to write of him
as a specimen of pathology.  But I have met many
who were very like him in our criminal courts.

I have no doubt of his sincerity—up to the limit
of his poor distorted brain.  He had moments of
exaltation when he thought that he talked face to face
with God.  He believed intensely in his mission.  He
had lesser moments, which he regretted as bitterly
as did his friends who, like the sons of Noah, covered
him with a sheet that his drunken nakedness might
not be seen by men.  He was pitifully unbalanced.
But I think that if he had been given the strength of
will to choose, he would have always been the ardent
servant of God we saw in him at the camp meeting.

He was a master of his craft.  By meditation and
fasting and prayer he could whip himself into an
emotional state when passionate eloquence flowed
from his lips with almost irresistible conviction.  He
was also adept at the less venerable tricks of his trade.

It was his custom in the afternoon about four to
walk apart in the woods and spend an hour or more on
his knees.  Once he took me with him.  I remember
the awe of sitting there on the pine needles, in the
silence of the forest and watching him "wrestle with
the Spirit."  I tried to pray also, but I could not keep
my mind on it so long.  Suddenly he began to speak,
asking Christ's intercession on my behalf.  And walking
home, he talked to me about my soul.  For the first
time I was "overtaken by a conviction of sin."  That
night he preached on the Wages of Sin.

I will never forget the horror of fear which held me
through that service.  Milton was in the habit of
dealing with and overcoming men of mature mind.  Such
a lad as I was putty in his hands.  When, out of the
shivering terror of it, came the loud-shouted promise
of salvation, immunity from all he had made me feel
my just deserts, I stumbled abjectly up the aisle and
took my place among the "Seekers."  I must say he
had comfort ready for us.  I remember he put his arm
over my shoulder and told me not to tremble, not to
be afraid.  God was mighty to save.  Long before the
world was made He had builded a mansion for me in
the skies.  He would wash away all my sins in the blood
of the Lamb.  Milton had scared me into a willingness
to wade through an ocean filled with blood if safety
lay beyond.

The next morning brought me peace.  I suppose my
overstrained nerves had come to the limit of endurance.
I thought it was the promised "peace which passeth
all understanding."  I was sure of my salvation.
Several weeks of spiritual exaltation followed.  I read the
Bible passionately, sometimes alone, more often with
Oliver or Mary, for it was the fashion to worship in
common.  Whenever the opportunity offered in the
meetings, I made "public testimony."

But I would have found it hard to define my faith.
I had been badly frightened and had recovered.  This,
I thought, came from God.  I had only a crude idea
of the Deity.  In general, I thought of Him as very
like the Father, with white hair and a great beard.
I thought of Him as intimately interested in all I did
and thought, jotting it all down in the tablets of
judgment—a bookkeeper who never slumbered.  I was
not at all clear on the Trinity.  These mountain
Presbyterians were Old Testament Christians.  The Christ
had a minor role in their Passion Play.  They talked
a good deal of the Holy Ghost, but God, the Father,
the King of Kings, the jealous Jehovah of Israel was
their principal deity.  We were supposed to love Him,
but in reality we all feared Him.  However, I was very
proud in the conviction that I was one of His elect.

Advancing years bring me a desire for a more subtle
judgment on things than the crude verdict of "right"
or "wrong."  I look back on my religious training,
try to restrain the tears and sneers and think of it
calmly.  I doubt if any children are irreligious.  Some
adults claim to be, but I think it means that they are
thoughtless—or woefully discouraged.  We live in
the midst of mystery.  We are born from it and when
we die we enter it again.  Anyone who thinks must have
some attitude towards the Un-understandable—must
have a religion.  And loving parents inevitably will
try to help their children to a clean and sweet emotional
relation towards the unknown.  Evidently it is not an
easy undertaking.  For the adults who surrounded me
in my childhood, in spite of their earnest efforts, in
spite of their prayers for guidance, instead of developing
my religious life, distorted it horribly.  They were
sincerely anxious to lead me towards Heaven.  I do
not think it is putting it too strongly to say they were
hounding me down the road which is paved with good
intentions.

I can think of no more important task, than the
development of a sane and healthy "course of religious
education for children."  The one supplied in our
Sunday schools seems to me very far below the mark.  It
is a work which will require not only piety, but a deep
knowledge of pedagogics.

Certainly the new and better regime will discourage
precocious "professions of faith."  I do not think it
will insist that we are born in sin and born sinful.  Above
all it will take care not to make religion appear ugly
or fearsome to childish imagination.  Even the most
orthodox Calvinists will learn—let us hope—to
reserve "the fountain filled with blood" and the fires of
Hell for adults.  The Sunday school of the future will
be held out in the fields, among the flowers, and the
wonder of the child before this marvelous universe of
ours will be cherished and led into devotion—into
natural gratitude for the gift of the earth and the
fulness thereof.  Surely this is wiser than keeping the
children indoors to learn the catechism.  I can think
of nothing which seems to me less of a religious
ceremony than those occasions, when Bibles are given to
all the Sunday school scholars who can recite the
entire catechism.  What have youngsters to do with such
finespun metaphysics?  Oh! the barren hours I wasted
trying to get straight the differences between
"Justification," "Sanctification," and "Adoption"—or was it
"Redemption."  One would suppose that Jesus had
said "Suffer the little children, who know the
catechism, to come unto me."

But, of course, at sixteen, I had no such ideas as
these.  I knew of no religious life except such as I
saw about me.  I had been carefully taught to believe
that a retentive memory and a glib tongue were
pleasing to the Most High.  I was very contemptuous
towards the children of my age who were less proficient.



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   VI

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In the midst of this peace a bolt fell which ended
my religious life.  Its lurid flame momentarily illumined
the great world beyond my knowing.  And the visioning
of things for which I was unprepared was too much
for me.  I may not be scientifically correct, but it has
always seemed to me that what I saw that July night
stunned the section of my brain which has to do with
"Acts of faith."  Never since have I been able to
believe, religiously, in anything.

It was a Sunday.  At the vesper service, all of us
seated on the grass at the edge of the lake, the Father
had preached about our bodies being the temples of
God.  As usual, Oliver led the young people's meeting
after supper.  These more intimate gatherings meant
more to me than the larger assemblies.  Our text was
"Blessed are the pure in heart."  I remember clearly
how Oliver looked, tall and stalwart and wonderful
in his young manhood.  He has a great metropolitan
church now and he has won his way by oratory.  The
eloquence on which he was to build his career had
already begun to show itself.

Mary sang.  I have also a sharp picture of her.  She
wore a light lawn dress, which the brilliant moon-light
turned almost white.  Her years seemed to have
fallen from her and she looked as she had done on her
wedding night.  In her rich, mellow contralto she sang the
saddest of all church music: "He was despised."

Something delayed me after the service and when I
looked about for Oliver and Mary they were gone.  I
went to her house but the maid said they had not come.
The mystery of religious fervor and the glory of the
night kept me from waiting on the verandah, called me
out to wander down by the water's edge.  But I wearied
quickly of walking and, coming back towards the house,
lay down on the grass under a great tree.  The full moon
splashed the country round with sketches of ghostly
white and dense black shadows.

Two ideas were struggling in my mind.  There was an
insistent longing that Margot might be with me to share
this wonder of religious experience.  Conflicting with
this desire, compelled, I suppose, by the evening's
texts, was a strong push towards extreme asceticism.
I was impatient for Oliver's return.  I wanted to ask
him why our church had abandoned monasticism.

How long I pondered over this I do not know.  Perhaps
I fell asleep, but at last I heard them coming back
through the woods.  There was something in Oliver's
voice, which checked my impulse to jump up and
greet them.  It was something hot and hurried,
something fierce and ominous.  But as they came out into
a patch of moonlight, although they fell suddenly
silent, I knew they were not quarreling.  Mary cautioned
him with a gesture and went into the house.  Through
the open windows I heard her tell the negro maid that
she might go home.  I heard her say "Good night"
and lock the back door.  The girl hummed a lullaby
as she walked away.  All the while Oliver sat on the
steps.

I do not know what held me silent, crouching there
in the shadow.  I had no idea of what was to come.
But the paralyzing hand of premonition was laid upon
me.  I knew some evil was approaching, and I could
not have spoken or moved.

"Oliver," she said, in a voice I did not know, as she
came out on the porch, "you must go away.  It is
wrong.  Dreadfully wrong."

But he jumped up and threw his arms about her.

"It's sin, Oliver," she said, "you're a minister."

"I'm a man," he said, fiercely.

Then they went into the house.  It was not till
years afterwards, when I read Ebber's book—"Homo
Sum" that I realized, in the story of that priest
struggling with his manhood, what the moment must have
meant to Oliver.

I tiptoed across the grass to the shade of the house.
A blind had been hurriedly pulled down—too hurriedly.
A thin ribbon of light streamed out below it.

I could not now write down what I saw through that
window, if I tried.  But in the frame of mind of those
days, with my ignorance of life, it meant the utter
desecration of all holiness.  Oliver and Mary had stood
on my highest pedestal, a god and goddess.  I saw them
in the dust.  No.  It seemed the veriest mire.

I turned away at last to drown myself.  It was near
the water's edge that they picked me up unconscious
some hours later.  The doctors called it brain fever.
Almost a month passed before I became rational again.
I was amazed to find that in my delirium I had not
babbled of what I had seen.  Neither Oliver nor Mary
suspected their part in my sickness.  More revolting
to me than what they had done was the hypocrisy
with which they hid it.

Above all things I dreaded any kind of an explanation
and I developed an hypocrisy as gross as theirs.  I
smothered my repugnance to Mary's kisses and pretended
to like to have Oliver read the Bible to me.  And
when I was able to get about again, I attended meetings
as before.  There was black hatred in my heart and the
communion bread nauseated me.  What was left of the
summer was only a longing for the day when I should
leave for school.  Nothing mattered except to escape
from these associations.

I am not sure what caused it—the weeks of religious
hysteria which accompanied my conversion, what I saw
through the crack below the window curtain, or the
fever—but some time between the coming of "Salvation"
Milton and my recovery, that little speck of gray
matter, that minute ganglia of nerve-cells, with which we
*believe*, ceased to function.





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.. _`BOOK II`:

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   BOOK II

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   I

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Early in September Oliver took me East to school.
It was not one of our widely advertised educational
institutions.  The Father had chosen it, I think,
because it was called a Presbyterial Academy and the
name assured its orthodoxy.

I remember standing on the railroad platform, after
Oliver had made all the arrangements with the principal,
waiting for the train to come which was to carry him
out of my sight.  How long the minutes lasted!  It is a
distressing thing for a boy of sixteen to hate anyone
the way I hated my cousin.  I was glad that he was not
really my brother.

It is strange how life changes our standards.  Now,
when I think back over those days, I am profoundly
sorry for him.  It was, I think, his one love.  It could
have brought him very little joy for it must have
seemed to him as heinous a sin as it did to me.

Five years later he married.  I am sure he has been
scrupulously faithful to his wife.  She is a woman to be
respected and her ambition has been a great stimulus
to his upclimbing.  But I doubt if he has really loved
her as he must have loved Mary to break, as he did,
all his morality for her.  To him love must have
seemed a thing of tragedy.  But boyhood is stern.
I had no pity for him.

His going lifted a great weight from me.  As I walked
back alone to the school, I wanted to shout.  I was
beginning a new life—my own.  I had no very clear
idea of what I was going to do with this new freedom
of mine.  I can only recall one plank in my platform—I
was going to fight.

The one time I can remember fighting at home, I
had been thrashed by the boy, caned by the school
teacher and whipped by the Father, when he noticed
my black eye.  Fighting was strictly forbidden.  After
this triple beating I fell into the habit of being bullied.
As even the smallest boy in our village knew I was
afraid to defend myself, I was the victim of endless
tyrannies.  The first use I wanted to make of my new
freedom was to change this.  I resolved to resent the
first encroachment.

It came that very day from one of the boys in the
fourth class.  I remember that his name was Blake.
Just before supper we had it out on the tennis-court.
It was hardly fair to him.  He fought without much
enthusiasm.  It was to him part of the routine of keeping
the new boys in order.  To me it was the Great
Emancipation.  I threw into it all the bitterness of all the
humiliations and indignities of my childhood.  The
ceremonial of "seconds" and "rounds" and "referee"
was new to me.  At home the boys just jumped at
each other and punched and bit, and pulled hair and
kicked until one said he had enough.  As soon as they
gave the word to begin, I shut my eyes and hammered
away.  We battered each other for several rounds and
then Blake was pronounced victor on account of some
technicality.

They told me, pityingly, that I did not know how to
fight.  But all I had wanted was to demonstrate that
I was not afraid.  I had won that.  It was the only
fight I had in school.  Even the bullies did not care to
try conclusions with me, and I had no desire to force
trouble.  I had won a respect in the little community
which I had never enjoyed before.

In a way it was a small matter, but it was portentous
for me.  It was the first time I had done the forbidden
thing and found it good.  The Father had been wrong
in prohibiting self-defense.  It was an entering wedge
to realize that his wisdom had been at fault here.  In
time his whole elaborate structure of morals fell to the
ground.

The school was a religious one, of course.  But the
teachers, with eminent good sense, realized that other
things were more important for growing boys than
professions of faith.  It seemed that, after my illness,
my mind woke up in sections.  The part which was to
ponder over Mary and Oliver, which was to think out
my relation to God, for a long time lay dormant.  I
puttered along at my Latin and Greek and Algebra,
played football and skated and, with the warm weather,
went in for baseball.

In the spring a shadow came over me—the idea of
returning home.  The more I thought of another
summer in the camp, the more fearsome it seemed.  At
last I went to the doctor.

He was the first, as he was one of the most important,
of the many people whose kindness and influence
have illumined my life.  He was physical director of
the school and also had a small practice in the village.
There were rumors that he drank and he never came to
church.  If there had been another doctor available,
he would not have been employed by the school.

I never knew a man of more variable moods.  Some
days on the football field he would throw himself into
the sport with amazing vim for an adult, would laugh
and joke and call us by our first names.  Again he
would sit on the bench by the side-line scowling fiercely,
taking no interest in us, muttering incoherently to
himself.  One day another boy and I were far "out of
bounds" looking for chestnuts.  We saw him coming
through the trees and hid under some brush-wood.
He had a gun under one arm, but was making too much
noise for a hunter.  He gesticulated wildly with his
free arm and swore appallingly.  We were paralyzed
with fear.  I do not think either of us told anyone about
it.  For in spite of his queer ways, all the boys, who were
not sneaky nor boastful, liked him immensely.

One Saturday afternoon I found courage to go to
his office.  There were several farmers ahead of me.
I had a long wait, and when at last my turn came I was
mightily frightened.

"If I go home this summer," I blurted out, "I'll be
sick again."

Oliver had told him about my illness.  At first he
laughed at me, but I insisted so doggedly that he began
to take me seriously.  He tried to make me tell him my
troubles but I could not.  Then he examined me
carefully, tapping my knee for reflexes and doing other
incomprehensible things which are now commonplace
psychological tests.  But for a country doctor in those
days they were very progressive.

"Why are you so excited?" he asked suddenly,
"Are you afraid I'll hurt you?"

"No," I said, "I'm afraid I'll have to go home."

"You're a rum chap."

He sat down and wrote to the Father.  I do not know
what argument he used, but it was successful.  A
letter came in due course giving me permission to
accept an invitation to pass the summer with one of my
schoolmates.

It was a wonderful vacation for me—my first taste
of the sea.  The boy's family had a cottage on the south
shore of Long Island.  The father who was a lawyer
went often to the city.  But the week ends he spent
with us were treats.  He played with us!  He really
enjoyed teaching me to swim and sail.  I remember my
pride when he would trust me with the main-sheet
or the tiller.  The mother also loved sailing.  That she
should enjoy playing with us was even a greater
surprise to me than that my friend's father should.
Whatever their winter religion was, they had none in
the summer—unless being happy is a religion.  I
gathered some new ideals from that family for the home
which Margot and I were to build.

In the spring-term of my second and last year in the
school, we were given a course on the "Evidences of
Christianity."  It was a formal affair, administered by
an old Congregationalist preacher from the village,
whom we called "Holy Sam."  He owed the nickname
to his habit of pronouncing "psalm" to rhyme with
"jam."  He always opened the Sunday Vesper service
by saying: "We will begin our worship with a
holy sam."  I think he took no more interest in the
course than most of the boys did.  It was assumed that
we were all Christians and it was his rather thankless
task to give us "reasonable grounds" for what we
already believed.

It had the opposite effect on me.  The book we used
for a text was principally directed against atheists.
I had never heard of an atheist before, it was a great
idea to me that there were people who did not believe
in God.  I had not doubted His existence.  I had hated
Him.  The faith and love I had given Mary and Oliver
had turned to disgust and loathing.  Their existence
I could not doubt, and God was only the least of this
trinity.

It would be an immense relief if I could get rid of
my belief in God.  The necessity of hate would be lifted
from me.  And so—with my eighteen-year-old intellect—I
began to reason about Deity.

The pendulum of philosophy has swung a long way
since I was a youth in school.  To-day we are more
interested in the subjective processes of devotion—what
Tolstoi called the kingdom of God within us—than in
definitions of an external, objective concept.  The fine
spun scholastic distinctions of the old denominational
theologies are losing their interest.  Almost all of us
would with reverence agree with Rossetti:

   |  To God at best, to Chance at worst,
   |  Give thanks for good things last as first.
   |  But windstrown blossom is that good
   |  Whose apple is not gratitude.
   |  Even if no prayer uplift thy face
   |  Let the sweet right to render grace
   |  As thy soul's cherished child be nurs'd.

The Father's generation held that a belief in God, as
defined by the Westminster confession was more
important than any amount of rendering grace.  I thought
I was at war with God.  Of course I was only fighting
against the Father's formal definition.
Our text book, in replying to them, quoted the
arguments of Thomas Paine.  The logic employed against
him was weak and unconvincing.  It was wholly based
on the Bible.  This was manifestly begging the question
for if God was a myth, the scriptures were fiction.
Nowadays, the tirades of Paine hold for me no more
than historic interest.  The final appeal in matters of
religion is not to pure reason.  The sanction for "faith"
escapes the formalism of logic.  But at eighteen the
"Appeal to Reason" seemed unanswerable to me.

I began to lose sleep.  As the spring advanced, I
found my room too small for my thoughts and I fell
into the habit of slipping down the fire-escape and
walking through the night.  There was an old mill-race
near the school and I used to pace up and down the
dyke for hours.  Just as with egg-stealing something
pushed me into this and I worried very little about what
would happen if I were found out.

After many nights of meditation I put my conclusions
down on paper.  I have kept the soiled and wrinkled
sheet, written over in a scragly boyish hand, ever
since.  First of all there were the two propositions
"There is a God," "There is no God."  If there is a
God, He might be either a personal Jehovah, such as
the Father believed in, or an impersonal Deity like
that of the theists.  These were all the possibilities
I could think of.  And in regard to these propositions,
I wrote the following:

"I cannot find any proof of a personal God.  It
would take strong evidence to make me believe in such
a cruel being.  How could an all-powerful God, who
cared, leave His children in ignorance?  There are many
grown-up men who think they know what the Bible
means.  They have burned each other at the
stake—Catholics and Protestants—they would kill each other
still, if there were not laws against it.  A personal God
would not let his followers fight about his meaning.
He would speak clearly.  If he could and did not, he
would be a scoundrel.  I would hate such a God.  But
there are no good arguments for a personal God.

"An impersonal God would be no better than no
God.  He would not care about men.  Such a God
could not give us any law.  Every person would have
to find out for himself what was right.

"If there is no God, it is the same as if there was an
impersonal God.

"Therefore man has no divine rule about what is
good and bad.  He must find out for himself.  This
experiment must be the aim of life—to find out what is
good.  I think that the best way to live would be so
that the biggest number of people would be glad you
did live."

Such was my credo at eighteen.  It has changed very
little.  I do not believe—in many things.  My philosophy
is still negative.  And life seems to me now, as it
did then, an experiment in ethics.

My midnight walks by the mill-race were brought to
an abrupt end.  My speculations were interrupted by
the doctor's heavy hand falling on my shoulder.

"What are you doing out of bed at this hour?
Smoking?"

I was utterly confused, seeing no outlet but disgrace.
My very fright saved me.  I could not collect
my wits to lie.

"Thinking about God," I said.

The doctor let out a long whistle and sat down
beside me.

"Was that what gave you brain fever?"

"Yes."

"Well—tell me about it."

No good thing which has come to me since can
compare with what the doctor did for me that night.  For
the first time in my life an adult talked with me
seriously, let me talk.  Grown-ups had talked to and at me
without end.  I had been told what I ought to believe.
He was the first to ask me what I believed.  It was
perhaps the great love for him, which sprang up in my
heart that night, which has made me in later life
especially interested in such as he.

I began at the beginning, and when I got to "Salvation"
Milton, he interrupted me.

"We're smashing rules so badly to-night, we might
as well do more.  I'm going to smoke.  Want a cigar?"

I did not smoke in those days.  But the offer of
that cigar, his treating me like an adult and equal, gave
me a new pride in life, gave me courage to go through
with my story, to tell about Oliver and Mary, to tell
him of my credo.  He sat there smoking silently and
heard me through.

"What do you think?" I asked at last, "Do you believe
in God?"

"I don't know.  I never happened to meet him in
any laboratory.  It sounds to me like a fairy story."

"Then you're an atheist," I said eagerly.

"No.  A skeptic."  And he explained the difference.

"How do you know what's good and what's bad?"

"I don't know," he replied.  "I only know that some
things are comfortable and some aren't.  It is uncomfortable
to have people think you are a liar, especially
so when you happen to be telling the truth.  It is
uncomfortable to be caught stealing.  But I know some
thieves who are uncaught and who seem quite comfortable.
Above all it's uncomfortable to know you are
a failure."

His voice trailed off wearily.  It was several minutes
before he began again.

"I couldn't tell you what's right and what's wrong—even
if I knew.  You don't believe in God, why should
you believe in me?  If you don't believe the Bible
you mustn't believe any book.  No—that's not what I
mean.  A lot of the Bible is true.  Some of it we don't
believe, you and I.  So with the other books—part
true, part false.  Don't trust all of any book or any
man."

"How can I know which part to believe?"

"You'd be the wisest man in all the world, my boy,
if you knew that," he laughed.

Then after a long silence, he spoke in a cold hard
voice.

"Listen to me.  I'm not a good man to trust.  I'm a
failure."

He told me the pitiful story of his life, told it in
an even, impersonal tone as though it were the history
of someone else.  He had studied in Germany, had come
back to New York, a brilliant surgeon, the head of a
large hospital.

"I was close to the top.  There wasn't a man anywhere
near my age above me.  Then the smash.  It was
a woman.  You can't tell what's right and wrong in
these things.  Don't blame that cousin of yours or the
girl.  If anybody ought to know it's a doctor.  I didn't.
It's the hardest problem there is in ethics.  The
theological seminaries don't help.  It's stupid just to tell
men to keep away from it—sooner or later they don't.
And nobody can tell them what's right.  You wouldn't
understand my case if I told you about it.  It finished
me.  I began to drink.  Watch out for the drink.  That's
sure to be uncomfortable.  I was a drunkard—on the
bottom.  At last I heard about her again.  She was
coming down fast—towards the bottom.  Well, I knew what
the bottom was like—and I did not want her to know."

He smoked his cigar furiously for a moment before
he went on.  He had crawled out and sobered up.  This
school work and the village practice gave him enough
to keep her in a private hospital.  She had consumption.

"And sometime—before very long," he ended, "she
will die and—well—I can go back to Forgetting-Land."

Of course I did not understand half what it meant.
How I racked my heart for some word of comfort!
I wanted to ask him to stay in the school and help other
boys as he was helping me.  But I could not find phrases.
At last his cigar burned out and he snapped the stub
into the mill-race.  There was a sharp hiss, which
sounded like a protest, before it sank under the water.
He jumped up.

"You ought to be in bed.  A youngster needs sleep.
Don't worry your head about God.  It's more important
for you to make the baseball team.  Run along."

I had only gone a few steps when he called me back.

"You know—if you should tell anyone, I might lose
my position.  I don't care for myself—but be careful
on her account.  Goodnight."

He turned away before I could protest.  His calling
me back is the one cloud on my memory of him.  His
secret was safe.

For the rest of the school year I gave my undivided
attention to baseball.  The doctor was uniformly
gruff to me.  We did not have another talk.

Two weeks before the school closed he disappeared.
I knew that she had died, he would not have deserted
his post while her need lasted.  On Commencement
Day, John, the apple-man, handed me a letter from
him.  I tore it up carefully after reading it, as he
asked—threw the fragments out of the window of the train
which was carrying me homeward.  There was much
to help me to clear thinking in that letter, but the most
important part was advice about how to act towards
the Father.  "Don't tell him your doubts now.  It
would only distress him.  Wait till you're grown up
before you quarrel with him."



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   II

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Nothing of moment happened in the weeks I spent in
camp meeting that summer.  Luckily Mary was not
there and Oliver, having finished the Seminary, was
passing some months in Europe.  I bore in mind the
Doctor's advice, avoided all arguments and mechanically
observed the forms of that religious community.
No one suspected my godlessness, but I suspected
everyone of hypocrisy.  It was a barren time of deceit.

Even my correspondence with Margot gave me no
pleasure.  I could not write to her about my doubts,
but I wanted very much to talk them over with her.
While I could not put down on paper what was uppermost
in my heart, I found it very hard to fill letters
with less important things.  Whenever I have been
less than frank, I have always found it dolefully
unsatisfactory.

I imagine that most thoughtful boys of my generation
were horribly alone.  It is getting more the custom
nowadays for adults to be friends with children.  The
Doctor at school was the only man in whom I had ever
confided.  And in my loneliness I looked forward
eagerly to long talks with Margot.  I supposed that
love meant understanding.

The serious sickness of the Mother took us home
before the summer was ended.  I had not been especially
unhappy there during my childhood, but now that I
had seen other pleasanter homes, my own seemed
cruelly cheerless.  Its gloom was intensified because
the Mother was dying.  I had had no special love for
her but the thing was made harder for me by my lack
of sympathy with their religious conventions.  It was
imperative that they should not question God's will.
The Mother did not want to die.  The Father was, I
am sure, broken-hearted at the thought of losing her.
They kept up a brave attitude—to me it seemed a
hollow pretense—that God was being very good to them,
that he was releasing her from the bondage of life,
calling her to joy unspeakable.  However much she
was attached to things known—the Father, her absent
son, the graves of her other children, the homely things
of the parsonage, the few pieces of inherited silver,
the familiar chairs—it was incumbent on her to
appear glad to go out into the unknown.

It was my first encounter with death.  How strange
it is that the greatest of all commonplaces should
always surprise us!  What twist in our brains is it,
that makes us try so desperately to ignore death?
The doctors of philosophy juggle words over their
*Erkenntnis Theorie*—trying to discover the confines
of human knowledge, trying to decide for us what
things are knowable and what we may not know—but
above all their prattle, the fact of death stands out
as one thing we all do know.  Whether our temperaments
incline us to reverence pure reason or to accept
empirical knowledge, we know, beyond cavil, that
we must surely die.  Yet what an amazing amount
of mental energy we expend in trying to forget it.
The result?  We are all surprised and unnerved when
this commonplace occurs.

Christianity claims to have conquered death.  For
the elect, the Father taught, it is a joyous awakening.
The people of the church scrupulously went through
the forms which their creed imposed.  Who can tell
the reality of their thoughts?  There is some validity
in the theory of psychology which says that if you strike
a man, you become angry; that if you laugh, it makes
you glad.  I would not now deny that they got some
comfort from their attitude.  But at the time, tossing about
in my stormy sea of doubts, it seemed to me that they
were all afraid.  Just as well disciplined troops will
wheel and mark time and ground arms, go through all
the familiar manoeuvres of the parade ground, while
the shells of the enemy sweep their ranks with cold
fear, so it seemed to me that these soldiers of Christ
were performing rites for which they had lost all heart
in an effort to convince themselves that they were not
afraid.

A great tenderness and pity came to me for the
Mother.  As I have said there had been little affection
between us.  All her love had gone out to Oliver.  Yet
in those last days, when she was so helpless, it seemed
to comfort her if I sat by her bed-side and stroked her
hand.  Some mystic sympathy sprang up between us
and she felt no need of pretense before me.  I sat there
and watched sorrow on her face, hopeless grief, yes,
and sometimes rebellion and fear.  But with brave
loyalty she hid it all when the Father came into the
room, dried her tears and talked of the joy that was
set before her.

There was also a sorrow of my own.  Disillusionment
had come to me from Margot.  Why I had expected
that she would sympathize with and understand
my doubts, I do not know.  It was a wild enough
dream.

The first night at home I went to see her.  The
family crowded about with many questions.  Al was
attending a southern military academy and there were
endless comparisons to be made between his school
and mine.  But at last Margot and I got free of them
and off by ourselves in an arbor.  She seemed older
than I, the maturity which had come to her in these
two years startled me.  But I blurted out my troubles
without preface.

"Margot," I said, "Do you believe everything in the
Bible?"

I suppose she was expecting some word of love.
Two years before, when I had left her, I had kissed
her.  And now——

"Of course," she said, in surprise.

If she had doubted one jot or tittle of it, I might
have been content.  Her unthinking acceptation of it all
angered me.

"I don't," I growled.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean what I say.  I don't believe in the Bible."

I remember so well how she looked—there in the
arbor, where she had led me—her eyes wide with
surprise and fear.  I thought she looked stupid.

"I don't believe in God," I went on.

I expected her to take this announcement quietly.
But two years before I had never heard of men who
doubted the existence of God, except, of course, the
benighted heathen.  Margot's hair is almost white now,
but I suppose that in all her life, I am the only person
she has heard question the teachings of the church.

Now I realize the extent of my folly in expecting
that she would understand.  The two years I had been
away had changed everything for me, even the
meaning of the words I used.  I had been out in a wider
world than hers, had begun to meet the minds of men
who thought.  In that little mountain village, a second
rate, rather mushy-brained rector had been her
intellectual guide.  It was insane for me to think she
would sympathize with me.  And yet, because I loved
her, I did.  I was only eighteen.

How the fright grew in her eyes as I went on
declaiming my unbeliefs!

"It's wicked—what you are saying."

"It's true.  Is truth wicked?"

"I won't listen to you any more."

She got up.  Suddenly I realized that I was losing her.

"Margot," I pleaded, "you mustn't go.  We're
going to get married.  I've got to tell you what I
think."

"I'll never marry a man who doesn't believe in God."

We were both very heroic.  There was no older,
wiser person there to laugh at us.  So we stood and
glared at each other.  She waited some minutes for
me to recant.  I could not.  Then two tears started
down her cheeks.  I wanted desperately to say
something, but there were tears in my eyes also and no
words would come.  She turned and walked away.
I could not believe it.  I do not know how long I waited
for her to come back.  At last I went home.

Sullen, bitter days followed.  I suppose she hoped,
as I did, that some way would be found to restore peace.
But neither of us knew how.

If I might have my way, I would first of all arrange
life so that boys should escape such crises.  Sooner
or later, I suppose, every human being comes to a
point where to compromise means utter damnation.
But if I could remould this "sorry scheme of things,"
I would see that this portentous moment did not come
till maturity.  A Frenchman has said that after thirty
we all become cynics.  It is a vicious saying, but holds
a tiny grain of truth.  As we get older we become
indifferent, cynical, in regard to phrases.  The tragedy
of youth is that it rarely sees beyond words.  And of
all futilities, it seems to me that quarrels over the terms
with which we strive to express our mysticism—our
religion, if you will—are the most futile.  At eighteen
I let a tangle of words crash into, smash, my love.
Youth is cruel—above all to itself.

The mother's funeral seemed to me strangely unreal.
It was hard to find the expected tears, and the
black mourning clothes were abhorrent.  I felt that I
was imprisoned in some foul dungeon and was stifling
for lack of air.

Release came with time for me to start to College.
There was a lump in my throat as I climbed into the
buckboard, beside the negro boy who was to drive me
down to the county seat for the midnight train.
The Father reached up and shook my hand and hoped
that the Lord would have me in His keeping and then
we turned out through the gate into the main street.
I saw the Father standing alone in the doorway and I
knew he was praying for me.  I felt that I would never
come back.  I was sorry for the Father in the big
empty house, but I had no personal regret, except
Margot.  The memory of the former leave-taking,
how with her I had found the first realization of love,
the first vague sensing of the mystic forces of life,
came back to me sharply.  All through the two years
she had been a constant point in my thinking.  I had
not mooned about her sentimentally, more often than
not, in the rush of work or play, I had not thought of
her at all.  But the vision of her had always been there,
back in the holy of holies of my brain, a thing which
was not to change nor fade.

The Episcopal Church was lit up, as we drove by I
could hear some laughter.  I knew they were decorating
it for a wedding.  Margot would be there, for she was
one of the bride's maids.  As soon as we were out of
the village I told the negro boy I had forgotten
something and jumping out, I walked back into the woods
and circled round to the side of the church.  I put a
board up under a window and looked in.  There were
other people there, but I saw only Margot.  She was
sitting apart from the laughter, weaving a wreath of
ground-pine for the lectern.  Her face was very sad.
Of course she knew I was going away, everyone knows
such things in a little village.  But she held her head
high.  If I had called her out onto the steps, she would
have asked me once more to recant.  I knew it was
irrevocable.  The fates had made us too proud.

I slipped down from my perch and made my way back
to the buckboard.  There was a wild west wind
blowing, it howled and shrieked through the pines and I
caught some of its fierce exultation.  The summer
had been bitter beyond words.  The full life before me
called, the life without need of hypocrisy.

When at last I was on the train, and felt the jar as
it started, I walked forward into the smoking car.  As a
symbol of my new liberty, as reverently as if it had been
a sacrament to the Goddess of Reason, I lit a cigarette.
The tears were very close to my eyes as I sat there and
smoked.  But the pride of martyrdom held them back.
Was I not giving up even Margot for the Cause of Truth?



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   III

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The College was set on a hill top, overlooking a
broad fair valley.  There was none of the rugged
grandeur of our Tennessee Mountains, it was a softer
landscape than my home country offered.  But the greatest
difference lay in the close packed, well tilled fields.
Here and there were patches of woods, but no forest.
It was an agricultural country.

If I should set out to construct a heaven, I would
build it on the lines of that old campus.  Whenever
nowadays I am utterly tired and long for rest, the
vision comes to me of those ivy grown buildings and
the rows of scrawny poplars.  It is my symbol for
light-hearted joy and contentment.  The doleful shadow of
my home did not reach so far, and I was more carefree
there than I have ever been elsewhere.

I joined heartily in the student life, played a fair
game of football and excelled in the new game of
tennis.  There is a period at the end of adolescence when
if ever, you feel an exuberance of animal well-being,
when it is a pride to be able to lift a heavier weight than
your neighbor, when it is a joy to feel your muscles
ache with fatigue, when your whole being is opening
up to a new sensation for which you know no name.
I remember glorious tramps in the deep winter snow,
as I look back on them I know that the thrilling zest,
which then seemed to me intimately connected with
the muscles of my thighs and back, was the dawning
realization of the sheer beauty of the world.  I spent
this period at college.  I suppose that is why I love the
place.

From the first only one subject of study interested
me.  It was not on the freshman year's curriculum.
By some twist of fate "Anglo-Saxon" appealed to me
vividly.  I suppose it was an outgrowth from my
boyish fondness for Malory's "Morte d'Arthur."  In the
library I found many books in the crabbed Old English
of the earliest chronicles.  They still seem to me the
most fascinating which have ever been written.  I
deciphered some of them with ease.  Before I could
get the meat out of the others I had to master a
grammar of Anglo-Saxon.  All my spare moments were spent
among the shelves.  My classroom work was poorly
done.  But among the books I came into close contact
with Professor Meer, the librarian and head of the
English Literature Department.  His specialty was
Chaucer, but my interest ran back to an even earlier
date.  He was my second adult friend and many an
evening I spent in his home.  But our talk was always
of literature rather than of life, of the very early
days, when there were no traditions nor conventions
and each writer was also a discoverer.

A phase of life which had never before troubled me
began to occupy considerable of my thought.  My
attention was drawn to the women question by the talk
of the football men.  There were two very distinct
groups among the athletes; the Y.M.C.A. men and
the others.  It was inevitable that I should feel hostile
to the former.  They used the phrases, spoke the
language of the Camp Meeting.  With great pain and
travail I had fought my way free from all that.  Many
of them were perhaps estimable fellows, I do not know.
I did not get well acquainted with any of them.  But
I was surprised to find myself often ill at ease with the
others.  Their talk was full of vague hints which I
seldom understood.  They had come to college very
much more sophisticated than I.  In the quest for
manly wisdom, I read a book on sex-matters, which I
found in my fraternity house.

It taught me very little.  I have seen dozens of such
books since and I cannot understand the spirit in which
they are written.  In the effort to be clean spirited and
scientific the authors have fallen over backwards and
have told their readers almost nothing at all.  It was
like a book which described the mechanism of a
printing press without one word about its use or place in
life.  A printing press is a very lifeless thing unless one
has some comprehension that not so much in itself
but in its vast utility it is the most wonderful thing
which man has made.  The book which fell into my
hands, described in detail, in cold blooded and rather
revolting phraseology, the physiology of sex, but it
gave no hint of its psychologic or social significance,
it did not even remotely suggest that sooner or later
everyone who read it would have to deal with sex as a
problem of personal ethics.  It was a poor manual for
one just entering manhood.

I had never been told anything about sex.  I judged
from the witticisms of the gymnasium that the others
had discussed these matters a great deal in their
preparatory schools.  And with the added knowledge of
later years, I am persuaded that my school had been
unusually clean spirited.  I never heard the boys talking
of such things, and if any of them were getting into
bad habits, they did it privately.

These college men boasted.  Of course I hid my
ignorance with shame.  As the football season wore on
the talk became more explicit.  Some of the team,
after the Thanksgiving Day game, with our rival
college, which ended the season, were "going into town
to raise hell."  The Y.M.C.A. men expected to
"come right home."  A week or so before the last game,
Bainbridge, our captain and a senior, showed some of
us a letter which a girl in town had written him.  The
other fellows who saw the letter thought it hilariously
funny.  To me it seemed strange and curious.  A woman,
who could have written it was something entirely
foreign to my experience.

Thanksgiving night—we had won the game—all of
us, but the Y.M.C.A. men, went into town for a
dinner and celebration.  I happened to be the only man
from my fraternity on the football team, and, when the
dinner broke up, I found myself alone.  My head was
swimming a bit and I remember walking down the main
street, trying to recall whether or not I had decided to
launch out on this woman adventure.  I was sure I
had not expected to be left to my own resources.  I
was making my way towards the station to catch a
train back to college, when I fell in with some of the
fellows.  They annexed me at once.  Down the street
we went, roaring out the Battle Cry of Freedom.  They
had an objective but every barroom we passed distracted
their attention.  It was the first time I had ever
approached the frontier of sobriety—that night I went
far over the line.  Out of the muddle of it all, I
remember being persuaded to climb some dark stairs
and being suddenly sobered by the sight of a roomful
of women.  I may have been so befuddled that I am
doing them an injustice, but no women ever seemed to
me so nauseatingly ugly.  Despite the protest of my
friends, I bolted.

It is not a pleasant experience to relate, but it kept
me from what might easily have been worse.  I had
missed the last train.  Not wanting to spend the night
in a hotel, nor to meet my fellows on the morning train,
I walked the ten miles out to college.  Somehow the
sight of those abhorrent women had driven all the
fumes of alcohol from my brain.  In the cold, crisp
night, under the low hanging lights of heaven, I felt
myself more clear minded than usual.  As sharply as
the stars shone overhead, I realized that I had no
business with such debauch.  It was not that I took any
resolution, only I understood beyond question that such
things had no attraction to me.

It is something I do not understand.  The Father had
taught me that many things were sinful.  But I do not
think there was anything in my training to lead me to
feel that drunkenness and debauch were any worse
than card-playing.  Yet I learned to play poker with a
light heart.  It was the same with theatre going and
dancing.  He had very much oftener warned me
against these things than against drunkenness.  The
best explanation I can find, although it does not
entirely satisfy me, is that vulgar debauch shocked some
æsthetic, rather than moral instinct.  It was not the
thought of sin which had driven me to run away from
those women, but their appalling ugliness.

Towards the end of the spring term, the long-delayed
quarrel with the Father came to a head.  I forget the
exact cause of the smash-up, perhaps it was
smoking.  I am sure it commenced over some such lesser
thing.  But once the breach was open there was no
chance of patching it up.  In the half dozen letters
which passed between us, I professed my heresies with
voluminous underlinings.  I had only one idea, to
finish forever with pretense and hypocrisy.

I was foolish—and cruel.  I did not appreciate
the Father's love for me, nor realize his limitations.
He was sure he was right.  His whole intellectual
system was based on an abiding faith.  From the
viewpoint of the new Pragmatic philosophy, he had tested
his "truth" by a long life and had found it good.
Perhaps in his earlier days he had encountered skepticism,
but since early manhood, since he had taken up his
pastorate, all his association had been with people who
were mentally his inferiors.  He was more than a
"parson," he was the wise-man, not only of our little
village, but of the country side.  All through the
mountains his word carried conclusive weight.  Inevitably
he had become cock-sure and dogmatic.  It was humanly
impossible for him to argue with a youth like me.

In my narrow, bitter youth, I could not see this.  I
might have granted his sincerity, if he had granted
mine.  But for him to assume that I loved vice because
I doubted certain dogma, looked to me like cant.  But
the men he knew, who were not "professing Christians,"
were drunkards or worse.  He really believed that
Robert Ingersoll was a man of unspeakable depravity.
He could not conceive of a man leading an upright life
without the aid of Christ.  Peace between us was
impossible.  His ultimatum was an effort to starve me
into repentance.  "My income," he wrote, "comes from
believers who contribute their mites for the carrying
on of the work of Christ.  It would be a sin to allow
you to squander it on riotous living."

So my college course came to an end.



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   IV

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In one regard the fairies who attended my christening
were marvelously kind to me.  They gave me the
gift of friends.  It is the thing above all others which
makes me reverent, makes me wish for a god to thank.
There is no equity in the matter.  I am convinced
that it is what the Father would have called "an act of
grace."  Always, in every crisis, whenever the need
has arisen, a friend has stepped beside me to help me
through.

So it was when the Father cut off my allowance.
Utterly ignorant of the life outside, I was not so
frightened by my sudden pennilessness as I should
have been, as I would be to-day.  Work was found for
me.  My friend, Prof. Meers discovered that he needed
an assistant to help him on a bibliography which he
was preparing.  He offered me a modest salary—enough
to live comfortably.  So I stayed on in the college town,
living in the fraternity house.

The library work interested me more than my study
had done.  Even the routine detail of it was not bad
and I had much time to spend on the Old English
which fascinated me.  I was not ambitious and would
have been content to spend my life in that peaceful,
pleasant town.  But Prof. Meers had other plans for
me.  Back of my indolent interest in old books, he
was optimistic enough to see a promise of great scholarship.
He was better as a critic of literature than as a
judge of men.  He continually made plans for me.
I paid scant attention to them until almost a year had
passed and we were beginning to see the end of the work
he could offer me.  I began to speculate with more
interest about what I would do next.

Without telling me about it, Prof. Meers wrote to
the head of a New York Library, whom he knew and
secured a position for me.  When he received the news
he came to me with a more definite plan than I would
ever have been able to work out for myself.  He knew
that a certain publishing house wanted to bring out
a text book edition of "Ralph Roister Doister."  He
had given them my name and I was to prepare the
manuscript during my free hours.  This he told me
would not bring me much money, but some reputation
and would make it easier for him to find other openings
for me, where I could develop my taste for Old English.
I caught some of his enthusiasm and set out for my new
work with high hopes.

Of my first weeks in the city there is little memory
left except of a disheartening search for a place to live.
After much tramping about I took a forlorn hall
bedroom in a not over peaceful family.  The quest for an
eating place was equally unsatisfactory.

In the library I was put to uninteresting work in
the Juvenile Department.  But there, handling books
in words of one syllable, I found a new and disturbing
outlook on life.  There was more jealousy than
friendship among my fellow employees.  The chances of
advancement were few, the competition keen—and new
to me.  I did not understand the hostility, which
underlies the struggle for a living.  Once I remember
I found a carefully compiled sheet of figures, which
I had prepared for my monthly report, torn to bits in
my waste paper basket.  Another time some advice,
which I afterwards discovered to have been intentionally
misleading, sent me off on a wild goose chase,
wasted half a day and brought me a reprimand from the
chief.  Such things were incomprehensible to me at
first.  It took some time to realize that the people about
me were afraid of me, afraid that I might win favor
and be advanced over their heads.  I resented their
attitude, but gradually, by a word dropped here and
there, I learned how a dollar a week more or less was a
very vital matter to most of them.  One girl in my
department had a mother to support and was trying
desperately to keep a brother in school.  There was a
man whose wife was sick, the doctor's and druggist's
bills were a constant terror to him.  Very likely if I
had been in their place, I would have done the little,
mean things they did.  Life began to wear a new aspect
of sombreness to me.  I could not hope for advancement
without trampling on someone.

By temperament I was utterly unfitted for this
struggle.  My desire for life was so weak that such
shameful, petty hostilities seemed an exorbitant price
to pay for it.  I would much rather not have been born
than struggle in this manner to live.  I began to look
about eagerly for some other employment.  But I
could find none which did not bear the same taint.

However it was there in that library that I
encountered Norman Benson.  He was near ten years
older than I, tall and loose jointed.  His face, very
heavily lined, reminded me of our Tennessee
mountaineers.  But the resemblance went no farther.  He
was a city product, bred in luxury and wealth.  He
was variously described by the people of the library
as "a saint," "a freak," "a philanthropist," "a
crank."  The chief called him "a bore."  He was the idol of
the small boys who ran errands for us and put the books
back on the shelves.  He gave them fat Egyptian
cigarettes out of his silver case, to their immense
delight and to the immense horror of Miss Dilly, who
had the boys in charge.

His hobby, as he soon explained to me, was "a
circulating library that really circulates."  He had a
strange language, a background of Harvard English,
a foreground of picturesque slang—all illumined by
flashes of weird profanity.  Of course I cannot recall
his words, but his manner of speaking I shall never
forget.

"They call this a circulating library," he would
shout.  "Hell!  It never moves an inch.  It's stationary!
Instead of going out around the town, it sits
here and waits for people to come.  And the people
don't come.  Not on your life!  Only a few have the
nerve to face out all this imposing architecture and
red-tape.  If there is anything to discourage readers, they
don't do it because they've been too stupid to think
of it.  If a stranger comes in and asks for a book they
treat him like a crook.  Ask him impertinent questions
about his father's occupation.  Won't let him take a
book unless he can get some tax-payer to promise to
pay for it if he steals it!  What in thunder has that got
to do with it?  Someone wants to read.  They ought
to send up an Hosanna!  They ought to go out like
postmen, and leave a book at each door every morning.
Circulating?  Rot!"

He had given his time and money for a year or two to
bring about this reform.  At first he had met with cold
indifference.  But he stuck to his point.  He had put
up his money as guarantees for any books which might
be lost.  He had persuaded half a dozen or more school
teachers to distribute books among their scholars
and the parents, paying them out of his own pocket
for the extra work.  He had established branches in
several mission churches and in one or two saloons.

"That corpse of a librarian," he explained to me,
"had the fool idea that his job was to preserve books—to
pickle them!  I've been trying to show him that every
book he has on his shelves gathering dust, is money
wasted, that his job is to keep them moving.  The city's
books ought to be in the homes of the tax-payers—not
locked up in a library.  The very idea horrified him
at first.  He was afraid the books would get dirty.
Good Lord!  What's the best end that can come to a
book, I'd like to know?  It ought to fall to pieces from
much reading.  For a book to be eaten by worms is a
sin.  I've been hammering at him, until he's beginning
to see the light.  He don't cry any more if a book has
to be rebound."

Indeed, the "hammering" process had been effective.
That year the chief read a paper at the National
Congress on "Library Extension."  Of course he took all
the credit; boasted how the idea had come from his
library and so forth.  But Benson cared not at all for
that.  His plan had been accepted and he was content.

He interested me immensely.  Why did a man with a
large income spend his time, rushing about trying to
make people read books they did not care enough for
to come after?  I could get no answer from him.  He
would switch away from the question into a panegyric
on reading.  It was a frequent expression of his that
"reading is an invention of the last half century."

"Of course," he would qualify, "the aristocracy has
enjoyed reading much longer.  But the people?  They've
just learned how.  The democratization of books is
the most momentous social event in the history of the
world.  Think of it!  More people read an editorial
in the newspaper within twenty-four hours than could
possibly have read Shakespeare during his entire life.
There are dozens of single books which have had a
larger edition than all the imprints of Elizabethan
literature put together.  Don't you see the immensity
of it?  It means that people all over the world will be
able to think of the same thing at the same time.  It
means a social mind.  Plato lived in his little corner
of the world and his teachings lived by word of mouth
and manuscripts.  Only a few people could read them,
fewer still could afford to buy them.  'Uncle Tom's
Cabin' swept across the country in a couple of years.
Think how long it took Christianity to spread—a
couple of hundred miles a century.  And then think
of the theory of evolution!  It has captured the world
in less than a generation!  That's what books mean.
We're just entering the epoch of human knowledge
as compared to the old learning of individuals.  It's
gigantic!  Wonderful!"

Benson, like many another, took a liking to me.  I
was lonely enough in that library.  And finding no
sympathy elsewhere, I improved every opportunity
to talk with him.

One evening he asked me to come home with him to
dinner.  I accepted gladly, being more than tired of my
pallid little room, and the sloppy restaurant where I
ate.  An evening with this rich young man, seemed
attractive indeed.  To my surprise he led the way to a
downtown Bowery car.  I did not know the city well
and I thought perhaps this dismal street led to some
fairer quarter.  But the further we went the grimmer
became the neighborhood.  It was my first visit to the
slums.

We got off at Stanton Street.  It is so familiar to me
now—with its dingy unloveliness, the squalor of its
tenements, its crowding humanity, and the wonder that
people can laugh in such a place—that it is hard to recall
how it looked that first time.  I think the thing which
impressed me most was the multitude of children.  Clearest
of all I remember stepping over a filthy baby.  It
lay flat on its back, sucking an apple core and stared
up at me with a strange disinterestedness.  It did not
seem to be afraid I would step on it.  I wanted to stop
and set the youngster to one side, out of the way.
But I felt that I would look foolish.  I did not know
where to take hold of it.  And Benson strode on down
the street without noticing it.

A couple of blocks further, we came to a dwelling
house with flower boxes in the windows.  A brass-plate
on the door bore the inscription, "The Children's
House."  So I was introduced to the Social Settlement.
They were novelties in those days.

A tumult of youngsters swarmed about us as we
entered.  A sweet faced young woman was trying to drive
them out, explaining with good natured vexation that
they had over-stayed their time and would not go.
They clambered all over Benson, but somehow he was
more successful than the young woman in persuading
them to go home.  Her name, when Benson introduced
me, gave me a start.  It recalled a fantastic newspaper
story of a millionaire's daughter who had left her
diamonds and yachts to live among the poor.  I had
supposed her some sallow-faced, nun-like creature.  I
found her to be vibrantly alive, not at all a recluse.

The Settlement consisted of a front and rear
tenement.  The court between had been turned into a
pleasant garden.  With the hollyhocks along the walls
and the brilliant beds of geraniums it was a strangely
beautiful place for that crowded district.  The men's
quarters were in the back building.  Benson had two
rooms on the top floor, a small monastic bedroom and a
larger study.  It surprised me more than the courtyard.
It was startling to find the atmosphere of a
college dormitory in the center of the slums.  The books,
the fencing foils, the sofa-pillows in the
window-seat—after my months in a furnished room—made me
homesick for my fraternity house.

Downstairs in the cheery dining room, I met the staff
of "Residents."  The Rev. James Dawn, an Englishman,
was the Head Worker.  He was a graduate of
Oxford and had been associated with Arthur Toynbee
in the first London Settlement.  His wife, also English,
sat at the foot of the table.  Benson introduced me
rapidly to the others.  "Miss Blake—District Nurse,"
"Miss Thompson—Kindergartner," "Long, Instructor
in Sociology in the University," "Dr. Platt—of the
Health Department."  I did not begin to get the labels
straight.

It was a very much better dinner than I could get in
any restaurant, better than the food I had had at
College and school.  But the thing which impressed me
most was the whizz of sharp, intellectual—often
witty—conversation.  The discussion centered on one of the
innumerable municipal problems.  I was ashamed of
my inability to contribute to it.

It was to me a wonderfully attractive group of
people.  They enjoyed all which seemed most desirable
in college life and added to this was a strange
magnetic earnestness, I did not understand.  I saw
them relaxed.  But even in their after-dinner
conversation, over their coffee cups and cigarettes, there
was an undercurrent of seriousness which hinted at
some vital contact with an unknown reality.  I was
like an Eskimo looking at a watch, I could not
comprehend what made the hands go round.  I could see
their actions, but not the stimuli from which they
reacted.  I knew nothing of misery.

That evening set my mind in a whirl.  It was an
utterly new world I had seen.  I had never thought of the
slums except as a distressful place to live.  Stanton
Street was revolting.  I did not want to see it again.
And yet I could not shake myself free from the thought
of it—of it and of the strange group I had met in the
Children's House.  There seemed to be something
fateful about it, something I must look at without
flinching and try to understand.

On the other hand some self-defensive instinct made
me try to forget it.  The distaste for the struggle for
life which had come to me from experiencing the petty
jealousies of the library was turned into a dumb, vague
fear by the sight of the slum.  I turned to "Ralph
Roister Doister"—on which I had made only listless
progress—with a new ardor.  The only escape which I
could see from perplexing problems of life lay in a
career of scholarship.

The Old English which had formerly been an amusement
for me, now seemed a means of salvation.  When
Benson next suggested that I spend the evening with
him, I excused myself on the ground of work.

But very often as I sat at my table, burning the
midnight oil over that century old farce, the vision of that
baby of Stanton Street, sucking the piece of garbage,
came between me and my page.  And I felt some shame
in trying to drive him away.  It was as though a
challenging gauntlet had been thrown at my feet which I
must needs pick up and face out the fight, or commit
some gross surrender.  I tried to escape the issue, with
books.





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.. _`BOOK III`:

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   BOOK III

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   I

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Not long after this visit to the slums, when I had
been in the city a little more than a year, I received a
new offer of employment, through the kindness of
Professor Meer.  The work was to catalogue, and edit
a descriptive bibliography of a large collection of early
English manuscripts and pamphlets.  A rich manufacturer
of tin cans had bought them and intended to
give them to some college library.

It offered just the escape I was looking for.  I wrote
at once, in high spirits, to accept it.  However some
cold water was thrown on my glee by Norman Benson.
He was my one friend in the library and I hastened to
tell him the good news.  But when he read the letter
he was far from enthusiastic.

"Are you going to accept it?" he asked coldly.

"Of course," I replied, surprised at his tone.  "I
hardly hoped for such luck, at least not for many
years.  It's a great chance."

"This really interests me," he said, laying down
the books he was carrying and sitting on my desk.
"What earthly good," he went on, "do you think it's
going to do anyone to have you diddle about with these
old parchments?"

"Why.  It——" I began glibly enough, but I was
not prepared for the question.  And, realizing suddenly
that I had not considered this aspect of the case, I
left my response unfinished.

"I haven't a bit of the scholastic temperament," he
said, after having waited long enough to let me try to
find an answer.  "It's just one of the many things I
don't understand.  I wouldn't deny that any bit of
scholarship, however 'dry-as-dust,' may be of some use.
I don't doubt that a good case of this kind could be
made for the study of medieval literature.  I don't
say it's *absolutely* useless.  But *relatively* it
seems—well—uninteresting to me.  It's in the same class as
astronomy.  You could study the stars till you were
black in the face and you wouldn't find anything wrong
with them, and if you did you couldn't make it right.
Astronomy has been of some practical use to us, at
least it helps us regulate our watches.  But how in the
devil do you expect to wring any usefulness out of
Anglo-Saxon?  Don't you want to be useful?"

His scorn for my specialty ruffled my temper.

"What would you suggest for me to do?
Social-Settlement-ology?" I replied with elaborate irony.

But if he caught the note of anger in my retort, he
was too busy with his own ideas to pay any attention
to it.  He got off the table and paced up and down like
a caged beast, as he always did when he was wrestling
with a problem.  In a moment he came back and sat down.

"You don't answer my question," he said sharply.
"You can stand on your dignity and say I have no
right to ask it.  But that's rot!  I'm serious and I give
you the credit of thinking you are.  Now you propose
to turn your back on the world and go into a sort of
monastery.  This job is just a beginning.  You're
making your choice between men and books, between
human thought that is alive and the kind that's been
preserved like mummies.  Why? I ask.  What is
there in these old books which can compare in interest
to the life about us.  Truth is not only stranger than
fiction, it is more dramatic, more comic, more tragic,
more beautiful.  Even Shelley never wrote a lyric
like some you can see with your own eyes, perhaps feel.
I like to know what makes people do things.  I'd like
to know what makes you accept this offer.  I assume
that you want to be useful to your day and generation.
What utility do you hope to serve in tabulating these old
books, which nobody but a few savants will ever read?"

I was entirely unprepared to answer his question.
And I felt myself sink in his estimation.  Why was I
reaching out for the life of a bookworm with such
eagerness?  I understand now.  I was a coward.  I was still
sore from the wounds of my childish endeavor to
comprehend God.  I was afraid of life.  I was afraid of
the little child sucking the apple core on Stanton Street.
The life about me, of which Benson spoke so
enthusiastically, seemed to me threatening.  It evidently
laid an obligation of warfare on the people who entered
it actively.  I wanted peace.  Books seemed to me a
sort of city of refuge.

My new employer, Mr. Perry, the tin-can man, was a
strange type.  He had grown up in a fruit preserving
industry and at thirty-odd he had invented a method
of crimping the tops onto cans, without the use of solder.
Good luck had given him an honest business partner
and the patent had made a fortune for both of them.
When the first instalment of royalties had come in,
Perry had stopped stirring the kettle of raspberry
preserves and had not done a stroke of work since.
At forty he had built a "mansion" in the city and had
gone in for politics.  He bought his way to a seat in the
State Senate, only to find that it bored him to
extinction.  After several other fads had proved
uninteresting, he had set his heart on a LL.D.  A friend
had advised him to donate a valuable collection of
books to some college.

He had sent a large check to a London dealer and
this heterogeneous mass had been the result.  As his
interest in the matter had been only momentary he
was decidedly penurious about it after the first outlay.
That, I suppose, is why I, instead of a recognized
authority, was chosen for the work.  He had no idea
what the catalogue should be like, and his one
instruction to me, was to make it "something scholarly."

There was in his monstrous mansion an apartment
originally designed for the children's tutor.  But there
had never been any children.  These quarters were
given to me.  There was a private entrance, a
bedroom, bath and study, where my meals were served,
and there was a stairway down to the library.

In the three years I worked for him I did not see
him ten times.  His wife was dead, he lived away a good
deal and, to my great satisfaction, he never invited
me to his bachelor parties—the reverberations of which
sometimes shook me out of sleep.  Once every six
months or so he would bring an expert to look over my
work.  As they found no fault and he could not
understand it, he was convinced that it was scholarly.

It was a period of great content for me.  The rut
into which I fell was deep indeed.  I saw no one.
Almost my only contact with others was by mail.  And
my letters all related to my specialty.  Eight full hours
I worked in the library.  The architect had not expected
Mr. Perry to do much reading and, the windows being
few, the room was gloomy.  I had often to use artificial
light.  At five I went for an hour's walk in the park.
At least this was my theory.  But the least inclemency
was an excuse to take some manuscript up to my room,
to my shaded lamp and open fire.  The daily eight
hours on the catalogue was only a beginning.  As soon
as I had finished my edition of "Ralph Roister-Doister,"
I began a monograph on Anglo-Saxon Roots.  My
ambition was to win a fellowship in an English
University.  By the time my catalogue was finished, I
would have enough money put by for a year or more of
study in Oxford.  My life was mapped out.



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   II

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The darkness came unexpectedly.

Sometimes my eyes had been tired, but I had not
taken it seriously.  One afternoon, as I laid out a
sheet of paper on the desk, the page was suddenly
obscured by a dancing spider-web—a dizzying
contortion of black and white—growing denser and denser.
I clapped my hands over my eyes and felt so sudden a
relief I was afraid to take them away again.

I got up slowly and felt my way with my foot to an
easy chair.  How long I sat there, my hands pressed
hard against my eyes, I do not know.  I had read
somewhere of a man going blind with just such
symptoms.  It was fear unspeakable, fear that made me
laugh.  When one feels that the gods are witty it is a
bad sign.

I was suddenly calm.  It was accepted.  I thought
for a few minutes, my eyes still shut, and then felt my
way to the telephone.

"Central," I said, and I remember that my voice
was calm and commonplace.  "Will you give me the
Eye and Ear Hospital?  I can't look up the number.
I'm blind."

"Sure," came back the answer.  "It must be hard to
be blind."

A clutch came to my throat.  It comes to me now as
I write about it, comes every time I hear people
complaining that modern industry has robbed our life of all
humanity, has turned us into mechanisms.  Such talk
makes me think of the sudden sympathy which came
to me out of the machine.  Whenever I am utterly blue
and discouraged, I go into a telephone booth.

"Hello, Central," I say, "tell me something cheerful.
I'm down on my luck."

It has never failed.  Always some joking sympathy
has come out of the machine and helped me to get right
again.

When the doctor came, he looked a minute at my
desk, at the whole eye-straining mass of faded print
and notes.  He snapped on the electric light.

"I suppose you work a lot in this fiendish glare?"

"I need a strong light," I said.

He grunted in disgust.

"This will hurt," he said, as he made me sit
down near the electric light, "but you've got to
bear it."

He fixed a little mirror on his forehead and flashed
the cruel ray into my eye.  Back somewhere in the
brain it focussed and burned.  The sweat broke out
all over me.

"Now the other eye."

I flinched for a moment, holding my hand before it.

"Come, come," he said gruffly, and I took my hand away.

When the ordeal was over, he tied a black bandage
over my eyes, laid me down on the lounge and lectured
me.  When he stopped for breath, I interrupted.

"What hope is there?"

He hesitated.

"Oh!  Tell me the truth."

"Well—I guess the chances are even—of your
seeing enough for ordinary work.  But they will never
be strong.  You'll have to give up books.  You must
keep your eyes bandaged—complete rest—six weeks—then
we can tell how much damage you've done.  It
is only a guess now."

We talked business.  I had enough money saved for a
private room and good treatment, so he put me into a
cab and told the driver to deliver me at the hospital.

It was an appalling experience, that ride.  Try it
yourself.  Ride through the streets with your eyes
darkened: you will hear a thousand sounds you never
heard before, even familiar sounds will be fearsome.
Every jolt, every stoppage will seem momentous.  I
was glad the doctor did not come with me, glad that
no one saw me so afraid.

At last we stopped and I heard the cabby call.

"Hey! there.  Come out and take this man."

I revolted at my helplessness, pushed the door open
and stumbled as I stepped out.  I would have fallen
heavily, if an orderly had not been there to catch me.

"You must be careful at first, Mister," he said.
"You'll get used to it in time."

That was just what I was afraid of—getting used to
the darkness!

However, his words jogged my pride.  The ways of
the gods seemed funny to me again, and I joked with
him as he led me up some stairs and into a receiving
room.  The house surgeon, to me only a voice, was
nervously cheerful.  He kept saying, "It'll be all right."
"It'll be all right."  He seemed to be dancing about in
all directions.  My ears had not become accustomed to
locating sounds.  I suppose he moved about normally,
but he seemed to talk from a different angle every
time.

"This is Miss Barton," he said at last.  "She is day
nurse in your ward.  She'll make you comfortable."

Mechanically I thrust my hand out into the darkness.
It was met and grasped by something I knew to be a
hand, but it did not feel like any hand I had ever seen.

"I'm glad to meet you," I said.

With some jest about people not usually being glad
to meet nurses, she led me off to the elevator and my
room.

"You've quite a job before you—exploring this
place," she said with real cheer in her voice.  "There are
all sorts of adventures in this *terra incognita*.  Everything
is cushioned so you can't bang your shins, but
watch out for your toes.  At first you'd better stay in
bed for a few days and rest.  Have you all you need in
your valise?"

"I don't know.  A servant packed it."

"Well then.  That's the first bit of exploring to do.
I'll help you."

Her voice also jumped about surprisingly.  There
was something weird in being in a room with an utter
stranger whose existence was only manifested by this
apparently erratic voice and by hands which unsnarled
my shoe laces, handed me my pajamas, and put me to bed.

"I must run off now and attend to Mrs. Stickney,
next door—she is very fussy.  The night nurse, Miss
Wright, comes on pretty soon, at six.  She'll bring you
your supper.  When you wake up in the morning, ring
the bell, here over your head, and I'll bring you
breakfast.  Good night."

It was when she had gone and I alone there in
the strange bed, that I first felt the awful void of the
darkness.  I do not like to think of it now.

It was probably not many minutes, but it seemed
hours on end, before Miss Wright brought me my
supper.  She sat on the edge of my bed and helped me find
the way to my mouth.  She was considerate, and tried
to be cheering.  But I did not like her.  Always her
very efficiency reminded me of my helplessness.  And
her voice seemed too large for a woman.  It gave me the
impression that she was talking to someone several
feet behind me.

They had, I think, mercifully drugged my food, for
I fell asleep at once.  When I woke I had no idea of the
hour.  For some time I lay there in the darkness
wondering about it.  I did not want to wake anybody up.
But at last I decided that I would not be so hungry
before breakfast time.  After much futile fumbling I
found the bell above my bed.  In a few minutes Miss
Barton's voice—even after all these years, I think of it
as the type of sunny cheerfulness—announced that it
was near eleven.  When the breakfast was finished,
with joking cautions against setting the bed on fire,
she filled my pipe and taught my hands the way to the
matchbox.

In the weeks which followed, I lost all track of the
sun's time.  I came to figure my days in relation to her.
During the "nights," when she was off duty, the
darkness was very black.

It would be impossible for me to give in detail the
evolution by which Miss Barton, my nurse, changed
into my friend, Ann.  It began I think when she
discovered how utterly alone I was.  The second day in
the hospital I was given permission to have visitors,
and I sent for my employer's man of law.

"Whom do you want to have come to see you
to-morrow?" Miss Barton asked when he had gone.

I could think of no one.

"Do you want me to write some letters to your
relatives?"

"No.  I haven't any near kin."

"Well.  Haven't you some friends to write to?"

In the three years I had lived at Mr. Perry's I had
severed all social connections.  I had not kept up my
college friendships.  Benson had been so opposed to my
leaving what he called active life that I had lost all
touch with him.  My only relations with people had
been technical, by correspondence.  I did not want to
trouble even Prof. Meer with my purely personal
misfortunes.  This seemed utterly impious to Miss Barton.
What?  I had lived several years in the city and had
no friends?  It was unbelievable!  Unfortunately it
was true.  I could think of no one to ask in to relieve
my loneliness.  And there is no loneliness like the darkness.

The next week was the worst, for the nurses changed
and Miss Wright, who was on day duty, was not
companionable.  However, Miss Barton, taking compassion
on me, used often to sit with me by the hour at night.
How fragmentary was my contact with her!  No one
who has not been deprived of sight can realize how large
a part it plays in the relationships of life.  I could only
hear.  There was always the creak of the rocking chair
beside my bed and her voice, sometimes placid,
sometimes tense, swinging back and forth in the darkness.
It did not seem to have any body to it.  Whenever
her hands touched me, it startled me.

But from her talk I learned something of the person
who owned the voice.  She had been born in a Vermont
village, where no one had ever heard of a professional
woman, but as far back as she could remember, she
had set her heart on medicine.  Her father she had
never known.  Her mother, a fine needlewoman and
embroidery designer had brought up the children.  A
brother was an engineer and the older sister a school
teacher.  But there had not been enough money to
send Ann to medical college.  Nursing was as near as
she had been able to get towards her ambition.  But
what could not be given her she intended to win for
herself.  She had taken this position because the night
duty was very light and every other week she could give
almost the entire day to study.  Her interest had turned
to the new science of bacteriology.  Her vague ambition
to be a doctor had changed to the definite ideal of
research work.

Somehow the voice, so calmly certain when it dealt
of this, gave me an impression of integrity of purpose,
of invincible determination, such as sight has never
given me of anyone.  I did not, any more than she,
know how she was to get her research laboratory.  But
I could not doubt that she would.  She had
unquestioning faith in her destiny.  I find myself emphasizing this
phase of her.  It impressed me most at the time.

But her conversation was by no means limited to her
ambition.  She had read a thousand things besides her
medicine, and spoke of them more frequently.  She was
constantly referring to books, to facts of history and
science, of which I was ignorant.  She talked seriously
of ethics and the deeper things of life.  It woke again
in me all the old questionings and aspirations of
prep. school days—the things I had hidden away from in my
book-filled library.  She was the first person I had met
since the doctor at school who showed me what she
thought of these things.  Benson had talked copiously
about the objective side of life, but he had never
referred to his inner life.  The people I had known wanted
to make this world a prayer meeting, a counting house
or a playground.  Ann was no more interested in such
ideals than I was.

She used a phraseology which was new to me:
"Individualism," "self-expression," "expansion of
personality."  She spoke of life as a crusade against the
tyrannies of prejudice and conventions.  Her viewpoint
was biologic.  All evolutionary progress was based
on variations from the type.  Efforts to sustain or
conserve the type she called "reactionary" and
"invasive."  She insisted on the desirability of "absolute
freedom to vary from the norm."  The authority she
quoted with greatest reverence was Spencer.  This
conversation, much of which I did not understand,
showed me clearly one thing—a soul seeking
passionately for truth.  That she told me was her ideal as
it had been the war-cry of Bakounine.  "*Je suis un
chercheur passionné de la Vérité*."

When any reference was made to my manner of life,
she flared up.  It was—and this was her worst
denunciation—unnatural.

"I believe in individualism, egoism," she said.  "But
not in isolation.  Man is naturally as gregarious as the
ant.  An ant that lived alone would be a non-ant.
You've been a non-man.  It's good your eyes went back
on you—if it teaches you sense.  Intercourse with one's
kind is a necessary food of human life."

And while it was a God-send for me to find someone
to talk to, it must have been also a pleasure for her.  The
stories she told me about the other patients showed
that their relations to nurses were barren enough—when
not actually insulting.  After listening by the hour to
Mrs. Stickney's endless little troubles, it was a relief
for her, I think, to come to my room and talk of the
things which interested her violently.  She gave more
and more time to me.  During the third week, when she
was again on day duty, she read me Lecky's "History
of European Morals."



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   III

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It is hard to write about the next week.  I can no
longer see it as it must have looked in those days.  I
cannot tell the "why" of it.  It was.

There was immense loneliness—and fear.  The few
hundred dollars I had saved for studying in Oxford
would pay the doctor's bill and keep me for some
months.  But what was there beyond, if my eyes did not
come back?  At best the chances were only even.  In
any case the one trade I knew was gone.  A bookworm
with weak eyes is a sorry thing.  Of course I might have
gone home.  But I have never had much respect for
the Prodigal Son.  He must have been a poor spirited
chap.

Well, in my utmost misery, Ann comforted me—as
women have comforted men since the world began.
In some inexplicable way, for some inexplicable causes,
she loved me.

I try to arrange my memories of those days in
orderly sequence.  But it is all a blur.  Day by day my
need grew and day by day she met the need.  The
patients in that hospital did not require much attention,
except in the day.  Most of them slept well.  They
rarely rang for her after midnight.  She gave me more
and more of her time.

The stress between us grew rapidly, but by gradual
steps, almost imperceptibly.  Her hand rested in mine a
trifle longer.  The hand clasp became a caress—then a
kiss.  The kiss lingered....

So the voice took on a body.  Touch came to the aid
of hearing as a means of contact with this dear person
of the darkness.  It is strange in what a fragmentary
way she took shape in my consciousness as something
more than a paid nurse, more close and intimate than
any friend I had known in the light.

In the darkness every other thing seemed strange.
What I discovered by touch to be a table, did not fit
into the old category of "tables."  Even the pipe which
I had smoked since college seemed to have undergone
some fundamental change in its nature.  Ann was the
only thing which seemed natural.  I had had no
intimacy with woman of the light by which I could
judge this experience.  Coming to me as it did, it did not
seem strange—it made subsequent things seem strange.
When at last my eyes were opened, I blushed before
Ann as before a stranger.

It all seemed so inevitable.

"It's late," she said one night, "I must go.  If you
want me, ring."

"Of course I want you."

"But you ought to sleep.  I mean, ring if anything
happens."

"It don't matter whether anything happens or not.  I——"

"Don't ring unless you need me."

The door closed behind her.  I lay there debating
with myself whether or not I needed her.  The bell was
in reach of my hand.  I got out of bed to be further
from temptation.  With awkward trembling hands,
I filled and lit my pipe and sat down by the open
window.  My head ached with loneliness and desolation.
Off somewhere in the night a church bell struck two,
some belated footsteps rang sharp and clear on the
sidewalk below me.  I tried to interest myself in speculating
whither or to whom the person was hurrying.  But my
thoughts swung back to my own loneliness.  In all the
world there was no one who knew of my blindness and
cared except the tin-can merchant who was cursing that
he must have the trouble to find someone to finish my
work.  No.  There was Ann.

Quite suddenly a vision of my childhood came back
to me, of the time I had been sick at Mary Dutton's,
when she had taken me into the warm comfort of her bed.
The vision brought quick resolution.  I rang the bell.
I stood up against the wall and waited—breathless.
The door opened and from the darkness came her voice.

"Do you really want me?"

I do not think I spoke, but I remember reaching out
my hands to her.  My strained ears caught a faint
rustle—then came touch—and my arms were about her.

So I was comforted.



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   IV

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For the night there was rich forgetfulness.  But the
new day called me back from the Elysian Fields to the
cold reality of this ordinary world of ours.

My familiarity with the frank openness of my good
friend Chaucer and the early English writers had
cleansed my mind of much nastiness.  I never had any
feeling of Biblical sin in regard to my sudden passion
for Ann.  It was too entirely sweet and natural to be
anything so wrong.  But conflicting with this early
Renaissance attitude was a modern sense of personal
responsibility.  The implications of the thing troubled
me desperately.

As I sat there in the darkness, thinking it out—with
now and then Miss Wright coming in on the routine
business of the day—I realized for the first time
the difference between love and passion.  There was
no doubt that Ann loved me.  But I did not love her.

She was as far removed from cheap sentimentality as
any woman I have known.  She was strangely unromantic.
There was an impressive definiteness about
everything she did.  I knew from the first that the love
she gave me was for always.  It was to be the big human
factor of her life, but it was not to be mutual.  In my
misery I wanted her comfort, in my loneliness I had
need of her affection.  I had grown greatly fond of
her, dependent on her, but I knew from the first that
she was not to be the center of my life.

Nevertheless my course seemed very clear.  "The
Woman Who Did" had not been written in those days.
The idea, now so commonly expressed in literature,
that sex life outside of marriage might be beautiful
and dignified, was not familiar.  Although I had no
longing for a perpetual mating, no desire to marry her,
my conscience told me very clearly that I ought to.
I did not think that I could, with anything like
decency, do less.

Since Margot had receded, I had not been given to
romantic dreams.  I was not counting on the grand
passion, as a necessary part of life, so there was no
especial self-sacrifice in closing the door on that
possibility by marrying a woman I did not wholly love.
Yet, threatened with blindness without money or a
trade, what had I to offer her?  The more I thought of
these things the more humble I became.  However her
"fair name" seemed more important to me than any
of these considerations.  It was regrettable that I could
not assure her ease and comfort.  It was regrettable
that I could not give her the love which should be
the kernel of marriage, but all this seemed no reason
not to offer her the husk.

When at last Ann came, she laughed at me.  What?
Get married?  Nothing was further from her mind.
She had her own work mapped out for her.  Set up a
home?  Why as soon as she had saved a hundred and
fifty dollars more she was going to Paris to study with
Pasteur.  People might laugh at his germs and cultures
and serums.  Let them laugh!  The future was to
bacteriology.  Marry?  Of course she loved me, but
where did I get those two ideas mixed up?

She gave me a lecture on free love.  It is hard to
write about a theory to which I am so strongly opposed.
Yet Ann's attitude in this matter is an integral part
of my story.

The longer I live the more remarkable it seems to
me, how limited is the field in which any of us does
original thinking.  One of my friends is an exceedingly
able physician.  Within his specialty he has been
startlingly radical.  His cures, however, are so amazing
that his colleagues are accepting his methods.  But
in all other departments of thought he is hopelessly
conservative.  Another acquaintance, a painter, is a
daring innovator in his use of colors, but has unquestioningly
accepted all those beliefs which Max Nordau has
called "The Conventional Lies of our Civilization."  To
one subject we seem to give all our mental energy,
all our powers of original thinking, in other matters
we believe what we are taught.  It was so with Ann.
Her specialty was bacteriology, her ideas on marriage
she had inherited.

Her mother, whom I afterwards came to know and
respect, was a remarkable woman.  Mr. Barton, after a
fairly upright younger life, had deserted her at
thirty-five.  Although neither Ann nor Mrs. Barton, ever
spoke much of him, I learned that he had died, a
hopeless drunkard.  At first the mother had supported the
children by nursing and sewing among the families
of her Vermont neighbors.  And everywhere, once she
had entered the privacy of a household, she found the
same repellent pretense, a carefully preserved outward
show of harmony and affection, an inside reality of
petty quarrels and discord.  Often she found situations
of more abhorrent tragedy, jealousy, hatred and strange
passions, women heartbroken for lack of love, bodily
broken from an excess of child-bearing.  From
considering her own misfortunes a horrible exception, she
came to believe such sorrows were pitifully common.
And everywhere women seemed to be the victims.
However unhappy a man's married life might be, he
found release in his work.  To the woman, home was
everything, if it went wrong, all life was awry.

By chance apparently, but I suppose inevitably, she
had come in contact with some of the leaders of the
early "Woman's Rights Movement."  She corresponded
with them ardently and at length came west to
Cincinnati, having decided that she needed education.
She supported herself and her children by needle-work
and spent half the nights, after they were abed, over
schoolbooks.  She had to begin at the beginning.  By
herself, in her garret, she followed the grammar school
course, crowding the work which takes a child two or
three years, into the half nights of one.  Gradually
she worked her way up to the position of forewoman
in a large embroidery establishment and so was able
to send her children through high school, the older
ones to college.  But her health had given out before
Ann's turn came.

Her interest in the Woman's Movement had brought
her into touch with all sorts of radicals and shortly
after her arrival in Cincinnati she had met Herr Grun,
a German Anarchist refugee.  The friendship had
grown into a beautiful love relationship which had
lasted until his death.

Ann had accepted all the libertarian dogmas of her
foster father.  It seemed very wonderful to me to hear
her speak about her "home."  It was a barren enough
word to me.  But to her it meant a wealth of affection,
a place of sure sympathy.  I listened with sad and
bitter envy to her stories of childhood.  The loving
kindness, the happy harmony which she had known
at home, she had been taught to believe resulted from
the free relationship between her mother and her lover.
Ann had grown up in an atmosphere where free love
was the conventional thing.

Persecution is the surest way of convincing a heretic
that he is right.  I have known a good many Anarchists
and the most striking thing about them is their
community interest.  Whether or not they are seriously
offensive towards society, they are all in a close
defensive alliance against it.  The hostility they meet on
every hand forces them to associate with their own
kind.  Ann had grown up among the children of comrades.

To them love is an entirely personal, individual
matter.  The interference of the Church or State they
regard as impertinent and indecent.  They take this
whole business of sex more seriously, and in some
respects more sanely, than most of us.  Their households,
as far as I have seen them, are very little different, no
better nor worse than the average home.  Their
advantage lies in the fact that most Anarchists are of
kindly nature and that they are seldom cursed with
money grubbing materialism.  But this is a difference
in the people, not in their institutions.

Marriage, for Ann, would have been a repudiation
of her up-bringing and the people she loved, comparable
to that of a daughter of a Baptist minister who became
a Catholic nun or the third wife of a Mormon Elder.
But Protestant women sometimes do marry Mormons
or take the veil.  And Anarchists are no wiser in
bending the twig so it will stay bent than Baptists.  If Ann
had been this type of a woman, she might have kicked
over the traces, and have left her people to marry me,
as carefully reared daughters have done in similar
crises since the world was young.

But she had a very definite theory that love should
not be allowed to interfere with life.  Each of us, she
held, has been given a distinct personality, a special
job to do in the world, and the development of this
personality, the performance of this individual task,
is the great aim of life.  Love should not distract one
from the race to the appointed goal.  Love is an
adornment of life.  She spoke with biting scorn of a man she
knew who "wore too many rings on his fingers."  His
taste was bad, he tried to over-decorate his life and
so missed the reality of life.  The goal she had set
before her was bacteriology and she had not the faintest
doubt that she had chosen it rightly.  This was to be
her life.  If the fates granted her such joys as she
called her love for me, it was something to be thankful
for.  But it must be subservient to—never allowed to
interfere with—her career.

Certainly this is not the ordinary attitude of women
towards love.  But Ann was an exceptional woman,
one of those unaccountable exceptions, which we label
with the vague word "Genius."

A few months ago I picked up an illustrated French
paper and opening it at random came upon a page
containing photographs of half a dozen celebrated
women.  Ann's face was among them.  There was an
article by an eminent psychologist on "Women of
Genius."  His conclusions did not especially interest
me, but I had never before seen so concise a statement
of Ann's accomplishments, the learned societies to
which she belongs, the scientific reviews she helps to
edit, the brochures she has written, the noted discoveries
she had made.  It startled me to see on half a page so
impressive a record of achievement.

It helps me now to a better understanding of the
young woman, who puzzled me sorely twenty odd years
ago.  In those days I saw no special promise of
distinction.  I smile with a wry twist to my mouth when I
recall my presumption in thinking that it was necessary
for her to hide herself under the shadow of my name.
I suppose that if she had consented to marry me, we
would have somehow found a way to gain a livelihood.
In my crippled condition I could not have done
much—I have no knack for money making.  The burden of
supporting the home would have fallen considerably
on her.  Perhaps it would have been "better" for both
of us, if her strange upbringing had not made marriage
distasteful to her.  She and I might possibly have
been "happier" if she had not been filled by the
consuming ambition which drove her to put love in a
lesser place.  Perhaps.  But the race would have been
poorer, would have lost her very real contributions
to the elimination of disease.

I could not argue with her then about these things.
My knowledge was so much less than hers.  But
although it was a relief to find that she would not marry
me, there was still a feeling of deep injustice.  There
seemed a despicable cheat in taking from her so much
more than I could give.  It seemed ultimately unfair
to accept a love I could not wholly return.  But she
brushed aside any efforts to explain.  She ran to her
room, and bringing a copy of the Rubaiyat, preached
me quite a sermon on the quatrain about Omar's
astronomy, how he had revised the calendar, struck off
dead yesterday and the unborn tomorrow.  Love, she
said, was subjective, its joy came from loving, rather
than from being loved.  Then suddenly she became
timorous.  Perhaps she was being "invasive," perhaps
I did not want her to love me....

My scruples went by the board with a rush.  I surely
did want her.  And I was able to convince her of it.



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   V

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Our relations having been for the time determined,
Ann set about to reform me.  She was really horrified
at the isolated life I had been leading.  That I took
little interest in humanity, none at all in public life
and only by chance knew who was mayor of the city,
shocked her.  Every evening, after her other patients
had been settled for the night, she brought me the
papers.  There was no love-making—only one kiss—until
she had read to me for half an hour.  It bored
me to extinction, but she insisted that it was good for
me.  I had to listen, because each evening she examined
me on what she had read the night before.  So I
acquired a certain amount of unrelated information about
millionaire divorces, murders and municipal politics.

Her next step was to make me associate with the
other patients.

"Bored?" she scolded.  "It's a sin to be bored.
They're people—human beings—just as good as you
are.  You're not interested in Mrs. Stickney's husband?
You're not interested in Mr. Blake's business worries?
Those are the two great facts of life.  The woman half
of the world is thinking about men.  The man half is
thinking about business.  They are the two things
which are really most interesting."

She took my reformation so much to heart that I
began to be interested in it myself.  I familiarized
myself with all the symptoms of a husband's dyspepsia.
Mrs. Stickney's eye trouble seemed to have been caused
by a too close application to cook books—in search
for a dish her husband could digest.  From Mr. Blake's
peevish discourse I got a new insight into business and
the big and little dishonesties which go to make it up.
I sometimes wonder if he really was robbed during his
illness as much as he expected to be.  He was
convinced that his chief competitor would buy his trade
secrets from his head book-keeper.  He did not seem
angry at his rival nor at his employee for seizing this
opportunity to cheat him, but at the fates which, by
his sickness, offered them so great a temptation.  He
complained bitterly because no such lucky chances
had ever come to him.

But it was through the newspapers that I gained most.

"Want to hear about a millionaire socialist, who says
that all judges and policemen ought to serve a year in
jail before being eligible for office?"

"It sounds more hopeful than campaign speeches,"
I said submissively.

It was Norman Benson.  I recognized his quaint
way of expressing things, before she came to his name.

"I know him," I laughed.

I had to tell her all about our short acquaintance.

"Why don't you ask him to come up and see you?"

I did not feel that I knew him well enough to bother
him.  I had not seen him nor heard from him for three
years.

The first thing in the morning, without letting me
know, she telephoned him of my plight.  About eleven
o'clock, to my immense surprise, Miss Wright brought
him to my room.

Benson was the busiest man I have ever known.  In
later years when I roomed with him and was his most
intimate friend, I could never keep track of half his
activities.  He was a sort of "consulting engineer"
in advertising.  Big concerns all over the country would
send for him and pay well to have him attract the
attention of the public to some new product.  He could
write the Spotless Town kind of verses while eating
breakfast, and although he did not take art seriously,
he drew some of the most successful advertisements
of his time.  One year he earned about thirty thousand
dollars, above his inherited income of ten thousand.
He did not spend more than five thousand a year on
himself, but he was always hard up.

He was director of half a hundred philanthropies—settlements,
day-nurseries, immigrant homes, children's
societies, and so forth.  His pet hobby was the
"Arbeiter Studenten Verein."  When he did not
entirely support these enterprises, he paid the yearly
deficit.  It was such expenses which pushed him into the
advertising work he detested.

It was a wonder to me how, in spite of these manifold
activities, he found time for the thousand and one
little kindnesses, the varied personal relations he
maintained with all sorts and conditions of men.  Once a
week or so he dined at the University Club, more often
at the settlement, and the other nights he took pot-luck
on the top floor of some tenement with one of his
Arbeiter Studenten.  In the same way he found time to
remember me and bring cheer into the hospital.

That first morning, in speaking of the newspaper
story, I asked him if he was a socialist.

"Hanged if I know," he said.  "I never joined any
socialist organization.  I don't care much for these
soap-box people.  They talk about reconstructing our
industrial institutions, and most of them don't know
how to make change for a dollar.  They talk about
overthrowing Wall Street, and they don't know
railroad-stock from live-stock.  They don't begin to realize
what a big thing it is—nor how unjust and crazy and
top-heavy.  But sometimes I think I must be a socialist.
I can't open my mouth and say anything serious without
everybody calling me a socialist.  I don't know."

The remaining weeks in the hospital gave me a great
fund of things to ponder over.  My mind works
retrospectively.  I have always sympathized with the
cud-chewing habit of the cow.  The impressions of the
hour are never clear-cut with me.  For an experience
to become real, I must mull over it a long time;
gradually it sinks into my consciousness and becomes a vital
possession.

Benson's sort of kindness was absolutely new to me.
No one had ever done things for me as he did.  And as
it surprised me to have him take the trouble to send
me a can of my favorite tobacco, so the affection, the
intimate revelations of love, which Ann gave me, was
a thing undreamed of.  "Come with me, up on to a
high mountain, and I will show you all the wonder of
the world"—such was Ann's gift to me.  Out of the
horror of darkness, from the very bottom of the slough
of despond, she led me up into the white light of the
summit peaks of life.

As I read back over these pages, I find that I have
described Ann as a voice, as a person who thought and
talked of serious things, who seemed principally
absorbed in an ambition, which up to that time had borne
no fruit.  I would like to picture the woman who came
to me in the darkness with a wealth of cheer and
tenderness and love.

Some day I hope our literature and our minds will
be purified so that such things can be dealt with sanely
and sweetly.  But that time has not yet come and I
must be content with the tools at hand.  Ann brought
to me in those desolate days all the wondrous womanly
things—the quaint and gentle jests of love, the
senseless sweet words and names which are caresses, the
sudden gusts of self revelation, the strange and unexpected
restraints—of which I may not write.

I was not lonely any more—not even when Miss
Wright was on duty—there was so much to ponder over.



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   VI

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At last the bandages were taken off.  I recall the
sudden painful glare of the darkened room, the three
doctors in hospital costumes, who were consulting on
different forms of torture.  Especially I remember the
mole on the forehead of the chief, a gray haired,
spectacled man.  It was the first things my eyes, startled
out of their long sleep, fixed upon.  The ordeal dragged
along tragically.  It seemed that they were intentionally
slow.  But the verdict when it came was acquittal.  I
was lucky.  With care I might regain almost normal
vision.  But for months I must not try to read.  Always,
all my life, I must stop at the first hint of fatigue.

So, having adjusted some smoked glasses, they sent
me back to my room, to pack and go out into a new
life.  As I entered the corridor, I saw two nurses at the
other end.  My heart stopped with a jump and I was
suddenly dizzy.  Somehow I had not thought of Ann
in terms of sight.  She had come to me out of the
darkness, revealed herself as a sound and a touch.  I had
no idea how she would look.  They both came towards
me.  I could see very little through my dark glasses.
I could not guess which was which.

"So.  They've taken off the bandages?  I'm very
glad."  It was Miss Wright's strenuous voice.

"I'm glad, too," Ann said.

I tried to see her, but my eyes were full of tears.

"I'll show him his room," Ann said.

When the door was closed on us, she threw her arms
about my neck and cried as I had never seen a woman
cry.

"Oh! beloved," she sobbed.  "I'm so glad.  I was
afraid—afraid you were going to be blind."

She had always been so cheerful, so professional,
about my case—of course it would turn out all right—that
I had not seen it from her point of view.  It was a
revelation to me that her bravery had been a sham.

"Oh.  I was afraid—afraid!"

I tried to comfort her but all the pent-up worry and
fear of weeks had broken out.  And I had not realized
that her love had made my risk a personal tragedy
for her.

When she had quieted a little, I wanted her to stand
away so that I might look at her.  But no—she said—she
did not want me to see her first when her eyes were
swollen with tears.  She clung to me tightly and would
not show me her face.

There was a knock at the door.  I had not lived
long enough to realize the seriousness of a woman's
wet eyes, and, without thought of this, I said, "Come
in."  It was Benson.

"Miss Wright tells me—"

He hesitated.  He was looking at Ann.  I turned too.
She was making a brave effort to appear unconcerned,
but her eyes were red past all hiding.

"Yes," she said, in her professional tone.  "The
news is very good.  Better than we hoped."

"Fine.  I dropped in," Benson said, as though there
was nothing to be embarrassed about, "to see how you
came out and get you to spend the week-end with me
if they let you go.  I've got to visit my uncle and
aunt—stupid old people—hypochondriacs.  But they are
going to Europe next week and I really must see them.
I'll die of boredom if there isn't someone to talk to.
Better come along—the sailing's good.  I've got to run
over to the club for a few minutes.  Can you get your
grip packed in half an hour?  All right.  So long."

Ann was as nearly angry as I have ever seen her.

"At least you might have given me time to dry my eyes."

"I don't believe he noticed anything.  Men never
see things like that," I said.

But Ann laughed at this and so her good temper was
restored.

Her face, now that I saw it, was not at all what I
had expected.  It was serious, meagre, a bit severe.
I had thought of her as blonde, but her hair was a rich,
deep brown.  Of course I am no judge of her looks.
She had brought joy into my darkness.  She could not
but be beautiful for me.

The expression is what counts most.  About her
face, emphasized by her nurse's uniform, was a
definite air of sensibleness, of New England reliability.
Perhaps under other circumstances she would not have
attracted me.  Her face in repose might not have
inspired more than confidence.  But when she put her
hands on my shoulders and looked up into my face,
with the light of love in her eyes, it seemed to me that
a mystic halo of beauty shone about her.  No other
woman has ever looked to me as Ann did.  And yet I
know that most people would call her "plain."

The hardest thing for me to accept about her was
her height.  I had thought her considerably shorter
than Miss Wright.  I had been misled of course by the
relative size of their voices.  Ann was above average
height and Miss Wright hardly five feet.

In the half hour before Benson returned, we had not
discussed anything more concrete than opportunities
to meet outside the hospital.  She was free on alternate
Saturdays from supper time till midnight.  I was rather
afraid that Benson, when we were alone, might ask some
questions or make some joke about her, but he talked
busily of other things.

His uncle and aunt were a lonely old couple.  Their
children were established and they had little left to
interest them except their illnesses, some of which,
Benson said, were real.  It was a beautiful house just
out of Stamford on the Sound—rather dolefully empty
now that the children had gone.  I had never seen such
luxury, such heavy silver, such ubiquitous servants.

They were planning to live in Paris, near a daughter
who had married a Frenchman.  Their arrangements
had been all made.  But at the last moment their
trained nurse had thrown them into confusion by
deciding suddenly that she did not want to leave America.
The aunt told us about it, querulously, at dinner.
Ann's desire came to mind.

"How much free time would the nurse have?" I
asked.  "I know one who is anxious to live in Paris and
study with Pasteur.  She is very capable.  Your nephew
has seen her—Miss Barton—she was at the hospital.
I liked her immensely."

Benson shot a quick glance at me.  It was the only
sign he ever gave of having noticed any intimacy
between us.

"My aunt expects to live permanently in Paris,"
he said.  "She would not want to take any one who was
not willing to stay indefinitely."

"That, I think, would suit Miss Barton exactly."

Benson immediately fell in with my suggestion and
recommended Ann enthusiastically.  I had to answer
a string of questions.  The aunt was one of those
undecided persons who hate to make up their mind, but the
uncle wanted to get started.  We talked about it
continually during the three Sunday meals, and on
Monday morning they went in to see her, with a note of
introduction from me.

Ann, as I had foreseen, was delighted with the
opportunity.  She pleased them, and as soon as she could
find a substitute, an easy matter, as her position was
desirable, the arrangements were made.



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   VII

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Ann and I spent together the day before they sailed.
We had planned an excursion to the sea-side, but it
rained desperately and we found refuge in an hotel.
We were too much interested in each other to care much
about the weather or our surroundings.  Any beauties
of nature which might have distracted our attention
would have seemed an impertinence.

It was a day of never-to-be-forgotten delight.  And
yet it was not without a subtle alloy.  By an
unexpressed agreement, we lived up to Omar's philosophy,
we discussed neither the past nor the future.  I
was afraid to stop and think, for fear it might seem
wrong....

Once she brought a cloud by some expressions of
gratitude for my having, as she put it, given her this
great opportunity to realize her dream of studying with
Pasteur.  And all the while, I knew it was not solely
for her sake that I had picked up this chance, which
the fates had thrown me.  Despite the joy of her love
there was this under-current of incertitude.  I wanted
to get far enough away from it, to judge it.  It is hard
to express what I mean, but I was happier, more
light-hearted, that day, because I knew she was leaving the
next.

But these blurred moments were—only moments.
We were young.  It was the spring of life as it was of
the year.  The spirit of poesy, of the great Lyrics,
was there in that tawdry hotel room....

In the early morning, through the wet glistening
streets we made our way across town towards the
river.  Of course I knew just where we were going,
but somehow the entrance to the dock found me
surprised and unprepared.  For a moment we stood there,
shaking hands as formally as might be.  Suddenly
tears sparkled in her eyes, she reached up and kissed
me.  Then she turned abruptly and walked into the
bare, shadowy building.  She had a firm step, she was
sallying out to meet her destiny.

I watched until she was out of sight.  And then I
surprised myself by a sigh of strange relief.



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   VIII

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Later in the day I lunched with Benson at the
University Club.

"What are your plans now?" he asked as we settled
down to coffee and cigarettes.

"Find a job, I suppose."

"You're in no condition to work nor to look for
work—just out of the hospital."

"But I've got to eat."

"That's a fool superstition!" he exploded.  "You
don't have to work in order to eat.  None of 'the best
people' do.  Half the trouble with the world is that so
many idiots will sweat—just to eat.  If they'd refuse
to work for tripe-stews and demand box seats at the
opera, it would do wonders.  Why people will slave all
their lives long for a chance to die in a tenement is
beyond me.  What kind of work do you want?"

My ideas on that point were vague.

"How much money have you?"

That I had figured out.

"One hundred and eighty-five dollars and ninety-three
cents.  And then my books—perhaps I could
get a hundred more for them."

"Of course if you are sufficiently unscrupulous that's
a good start for a fortune.  Lots of men have done it
on less.  But it's a bore to sit back and watch money
grow.  Did you ever see a hunk of shad-roe—all eggs?
Money's a darn sight more prolific than fish.  Impregnate
a silver dollar with enough cynicism and you
can't keep your expenses up with your income.  Look
how wealth has grown in this country in spite of all
our thievery and waste!  In the Civil War we burned
money—threw millions after millions into the flames—we
never noticed it.  The nation was richer in '65 than
in '60.

"But making money is a fool's ambition.  Just think
how many dubs succeed in earning a living.  Anybody
can do that.  It isn't original.  Look round for
interesting work.  Something that's worth doing aside from
the wages.  Take things easy.  If you begin worrying,
you'll grab the first job that offers and think you're
lucky.  Come down to the settlement—the board's
seven a week.  You can live three months on half
your money.  In that time you'll see a dozen openings.
You'll be able to take your choice instead of snatching
the first job you see."

This conversation was typical of Benson.  He nearly
always started off with some generalized talk, but just
when you began to think he had forgotten you and the
issue, he would end up sharp, with a definite
proposition.  I accepted his advice and moved to the
"Children's House."

So my temporary blindness brought me into contact
with two great facts of life I had hitherto ignored,
women and want—the beauty of sex and the horror of
misery.  And these two things occupied my whole mind.

One by one I picked out my memories of Ann and
pondered them in all their implications.  I tried to
arrange them like beads on a thread, in some ordered
unified design.  Day by day she became a more real
and concise personality.

The effect of my encounter with Ann, I could then
have found no word to describe.  But a very modern
term would explain my meaning to some.  She opened
my spirit to the "over-tones" of life.  Last year I
heard "Pelleas and Melisande."  I sat through the
first half hour unstirred.  There was much sensuous
appeal to the eyes, but the music seemed unsatisfactory.
Suddenly appreciation came.  Suddenly I understood
with a rush what he was meaning to say.  All
the mystic harmony, the unwritten, unwritable wonder
of it swept over me.  And now Debussy seems to me
the greatest of them all.  "The Afternoon of the Faun"
moves me more deeply than any other music.  In fact,
I think, we must invent some newer name than
"music," for this more subtle perfume of sound.

In a similar way Ann showed me the "over-tones"
of life.  Deeper significance, mystic meanings, I found
in many things I had hardly noticed before.  The
sunsets held a richer wealth of colors.  I had known Chaucer
and his predecessors intimately, somewhat less
thoroughly all the world's great poetry.  It had interested
me not only as a study of comparative philology, not
only as a delicate game of prosody—of rhythm and
rhyme and refrain.  It had held for me a deeper charm
than these mechanical elements—fascinating as they
are.  But somehow it all became new to me.  I
discovered in the old familiar lines things, which, alone in
my study, I had never dreamed of.  I began to see in
all poetry—in all art—an effort to express these
"overtones."

On the other hand, my active life was spent in the
appalling misery of the slums—a thing equally new to
me.  In those days the majority of our neighbors were
Irish and German.  Decade after decade the nationality
of Stanton Street has changed.  First the Germans
disappeared, then the Russian and Hungarian Jews
pushed out the Irish, now one hears as much Italian
as Yiddish.  The heart-rending poverty, the degradation
of filth and drunkenness is not a matter of race.
Wave after wave of immigration finds its native
customs and morality insufficient to protect it from the
contagion of the slum.  And so it will be until we have
the wisdom to blot out the crime of congestion and
give our newcomers a decent chance.

I try to force my mind back to its attitude in those
first weeks in the "Children's House" and try to
explain to myself how I became part of "The Settlement
Movement."  I fail.  I think very few of the really
important things in life are susceptible to a logical
explanation.

I have met some people, who from books alone have
been impressed with the injustices of our social
organization, and have left the seclusion of their studies to
throw their lives into the active campaign for justice.
Such mental processes are, I think, rare.  Certainly
it came about differently in my case.

When Benson proposed that I should come to live
in the settlement, I felt no "call" to social service.
I was lonely, out of work, utterly adrift.  The memory
of the evening I had spent with him in the Children's
House and the interesting people I had met was very
pleasant.  I had no suspicions that I was going there
to stay.  It appealed to me as sort of convalescent home,
where I could rest up until I was able to go out and
cope with the ordinary life of the world.

At first the little circle of workers seemed incoherent.
Here were half a dozen highly educated men and women,
most of whom had left pleasant homes, living in the
most abject neighborhood of the city.  Why?  What
good were they doing?  Around us roared the great
fire of poverty.  Here and there they were plucking
out a brand, to be sure.  But the fire was beyond their
control.  They did not even think they could stop it.

I remember one night at dinner we had for guest, a
professor of economics from one of the big universities.
He prided himself on his cold scientific view-point, he
regarded the settlement movement as sentimental,
almost hysterical, and he had the ill-breeding to forget
that what he scoffed at was a desperately serious thing
to his hosts.

"This settlement movement reminds me of a story,"
he said.  "Once upon a time a kind hearted old
gentleman was walking down the street and found a
man—drunk—in the gutter.  He tried vainly to pull the
unfortunate one up on the sidewalk and then losing courage,
he said, 'My poor man, I can't help you, but I'll
get down in the gutter beside you.'"

He laughed heartily, but no one else did.  The story
fell decidedly flat.  It was several minutes before
anyone took up the challenge.  At last, Rev. Mr. Dawn,
the head worker, coughed slightly and replied.  He
had turned quite red and I saw that the joke had stung him.

"That is a very old story," he said, "it was current
in Jerusalem a good many centuries ago.  It was told
with great *eclat* by a scribe and a pharisee who 'passed
by on the other side.'"

"Oh, come, now!" our guest protested.  "That's
hardly a fair comparison.  The Samaritan we are told
really did some good to the poor devil.  And besides
the victim in that case was not a drunkard, but a person
who had 'fallen among thieves.'"

"Thieves?" Benson asked, with a ring of anger in
his voice.  "Do you think there are no thieves but
highway robbers?"—and then apparently realizing the
uselessness of arguing with such a man, he smiled
blandly and in a softer tone went on.  "Besides some
of us are foolish enough to imagine that we also can
do some good.  Let's not discuss that, we'd rather keep
our illusions.  Won't you tell us what you are teaching
your classes about Marx's theory of surplus value?  Of
course I know that phrase is taboo.  But what terms
do you use to describe the proceeds of industrial robbery?"

I could not make up my mind whether the professor
realized that Benson was trying to insult him or whether
he was afraid to tackle the question.  At all events
he turned to Mrs. Dawn and changed the conversation.

This little tilt gave me a great deal to think of.  I
did not like the professor's attitude towards life.  But
after all, what good were these settlement workers doing?
Again and again this question demanded an answer.
Sometimes I went out with Mr. Dawn to help in
burying the dead.  I could see no adequate connection
between his kindly words to the bereaved and the hideous
dragon of tuberculosis which stalked through the
crowded district.  What good did Dawn's ministrations
do?  Sometimes I went out with Miss Bronson, the
kindergartner and listened to her talk to uncomprehending
mothers about their duties to their children.
What could Miss Bronson accomplish by playing a
few hours a day with the youngsters who had to go
to filthy homes?  They were given a wholesome lunch
at the settlement.  But the two other meals a day they
must eat poorly cooked, adulterated food.  Sometimes
I went out with Miss Cole, the nurse, to visit her cases.
It was hard for me to imagine anything more futile
than her single-handed struggle against unsanitary
tenements and unsanitary shops.

I remember especially one visit I made with her.  It
was the crisis for me.  The case was a child-birth.  There
were six other children, all in one unventilated room,
its single window looked out on a dark, choked airshaft,
and the father was a drunkard.  I remember sitting
there, after the doctor had gone, holding the next
youngest baby on my knee, while Miss Cole was
bathing the puny newcomer.

"Can't you make him stop crying for a minute?"
Miss Cole asked nervously.

"No," I said with sudden rage.  "I can't.  I wouldn't
if I could.  Why shouldn't he cry?  Why don't the other
little fools cry!  Do you want them to laugh?"

She stopped working with the baby and offered me
a flask of brandy from her bag.  But brandy was not
what I wanted.  Of course I knew men sank to the very
dregs.  But I had never realized that some are born
there.

When she had done all she could for the mother and
child, Miss Cole put her things back in the bag and we
started home.  It was long after midnight but the
streets were still alive.

"What good does it do?" I demanded vehemently.
"Oh, I know—you and the doctor saved the mother's
life—brought a new one into the world and all that.
But what good does it do?  The child will die—it was
a girl—let's get down on our knees right here and pray
the gods that it may die soon—not grow up to want
and fear—and shame."  Then I laughed.  "No, there's
no use praying.  She'll die all right!  They'll begin
feeding her beer out of a can before she's weaned.
No.  Not that.  I don't believe the mother will be able
to nurse her.  She'll die of skimmed milk.  And if that
don't do the trick there's T.B. and several other things
for her to catch.  Oh, she'll die all right.  And next
year there'll be another.  For God's sake, what's the
use?  What good does it do?"  Abruptly I began to
swear.

"You mustn't talk like that," Miss Cole said in a
strained voice.

"Why shouldn't I curse?" I said fiercely, turning on
her challengingly, trying to think of some greater
blasphemy to hurl at the muddle of life.  But the sight of
her face, livid with weariness, her lips twisting
spasmodically from nervous exhaustion, showed me one
reason not to.  The realization that I had been so brutal
to her shocked me horribly.

"Oh, I beg your pardon," I cried.

She stumbled slightly.  I thought she was going to
faint and I put my arm about her to steady her.  She
was almost old enough to be my mother, but she put
her head on my shoulder and cried like a little child.
We stood there on the sidewalk—in the glare of a noisy,
loathsome saloon—like two frightened children.  I
don't think either of us saw any reason to go anywhere.
But we dried our eyes at last and from mere force of
habit walked blindly back to the children's house.  On
the steps she broke the long silence.

"I know how you feel—everyone's like that at first,
but you'll get used to it.  I can't tell 'why.'  I can't
see that it does much good.  But it's got to be done.
You mustn't think about it.  There are things to do,
today, tomorrow, all the time.  Things that must be
done.  That's how we live.  So many things to do, we
can't think.  It would kill you if you had time to think.
You've got to work—work.

"You'll stay too.  I know.  You won't be able to
go away.  You've been here too long.  You won't
ever know 'why.'  You'll stop asking if it does any good.
And I tell you if you stop to think about it, it will kill
you.  You must work."

She went to her room and I across the deserted
courtyard and up to mine.  But there was no sleep.  It
was that night that I first realized that I also must.
I had seen so much I could never forget.  It was
something from which there was no escape.  No matter how
glorious the open fields, there would always be the
remembered stink of the tenements in my nostrils.
The vision of a sunken cheeked, tuberculosis ridden
pauper would always rise between me and the beauty
of the sunset.  A crowd of hurrying ghosts—the ghosts
of the slaughtered babies—would follow me everywhere,
crying, "Coward," if I ran away.  The slums
had taken me captive.

As I sat there alone with my pipe, the groans of the
district's uneasy sleep in my ears, I realized more
strongly than I can write it now the appalling unity of
life.  I sensed the myriad intricate filaments which bind
us into an indivisible whole.  I saw the bloody rack-rents
of the tenements circulating through all business—tainting
it—going even into the collection plates of
our churches.  I saw the pay drawn by the lyric poet,
trailing back through the editorial bank account to
the pockets of various subscribers who speculated in
the necessities of life, who waxed fat off the hunger of
the multitude.  My own clothes were sweat-shop made.

I could not put out the great fire of injustice.  I
could at least bind up the sores of some of my brothers
who had fallen in—who were less lucky than I.  My
old prep. school ethics came back to me.  "I want to
live so that when I die, the greatest number of people
will be glad I did live."  In a way it did not seem to
matter so much whether I could accomplish any
lasting good.  I must do what I could.  Such effort seemed
to me the only escape from the awful shame of complaisancy.

Wandering in and out of the lives of the people of
our neighborhood, I looked about for a field of activity.
There were so many things to be done.  I sought for
the place where the need was greatest.  It did not take
me long to decide—a conclusion I have not changed—that
the worst evils of our civilization come to a head
in "The Tombs."

The official name for that pile of stone and brick is
"The Criminal Courts Building."  But the people
persist in calling it "The Tombs."  The prison dated from
the middle of the century and a hodge-podge of official
architecture had been added, decade by decade, as the
political bosses needed money.  It housed the district
attorney's office, the "police court," "special
sessions" for misdemeanants, and "general sessions" for
felons.  One could study our whole penal practice in
that building.

I was first led into its grim shadow by a woman who
came to the settlement.  Her son, a boy of sixteen, had
been arrested two months before and had been waiting
trial in an unventilated cell, originally designed for a
single occupant, with two others.  His cell-mates had
changed a dozen times.  I recall that one had been an
old forger, who was waiting an appeal, another was the
keeper of a disorderly house and a third had been a
high church curate, who had embezzled the foreign
mission fund to buy flowers for a chorus girl.  The
lad was patently innocent.  And this was the very
reason he was held so long.  The district attorney was
anxious to make a high record of convictions.  His
term was just expiring and he was not calling to trial
the men he thought innocent, these "technically"
bad cases he was shoving over on his successor.  At
last, with the help of a charitable lawyer, named Maynard,
of whom I will write more later, we forced the case
on the calendar and the boy was promptly acquitted.

In talking over this case with Benson, I found that he
was already interested in the problems of Criminology.
He was one of the trustees of "The Prisoner's Aid
Society."  The interview in the newspaper, which Ann
had read to me at the hospital, had been an effort of
his to draw attention to the subject and to infuse some
life into the society.

"They're a bunch of fossils," he said.  "Think they're
a '*société savante*.'  They read books by foreign
penologists and couldn't tell a crook from a carpet sweeper.
We need somebody to study American crime.  Not a
dilettante—someone who will go into it solid."

I told him I had thought a good deal about it and
was ready to tackle the job if the ways and means could
be arranged.

"I imagine I could get the society to pay you a living
salary.  But they are dead ones.  If you did anything
that wasn't in the books, it would scare them.  I'll
think it over."

About a week later, I received a letter from the recently
elected, not yet installed district attorney asking
me to call on him.  His name was Brace, his letter the
result of Benson's thinking.  I found him a typical
young reform politician.  A man of good family, he
was filled with enthusiasm, and confidently expected
to set several rivers on fire.  There was going to be
absolute, abstract justice under his regime.  Benson
had told him how the actual district attorney was
shoving off the "bad cases" on him and he was
righteously indignant.  He wanted someone whose fidelity
he could trust, who would keep an eye on the prison
side of the Tombs.  He was sure there were many abuses
there to stop, and he was the man to do it.  The only
position he could offer me under the law was that of
special county detective.  The pay would be eighteen
hundred a year.

"It is not exactly a dignified position," he said.
"The county detectives are a low class,—but of course
you won't have to associate with them."

I was more than ready to take the place.  With the
rest of the new administration I was sworn in, and so
entered on my life work.  It was a far cry from my
earlier ambition to be a Fellow at Oxford.





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   BOOK IV

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   I

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"Literary unity" can be secured in an autobiography
only at the expense of all sense of reality.  The simplest
of us is a multiple personality, can be described only
partially from any one point of view.  The text book
on physiology which I studied in school contained three
illustrations.  One of them pictured a human being
as a structure of bones, a skeleton; another showed man
as a system of veins and arteries; the third as a mass of
interwoven muscles.  None of them looked like any
man I have ever seen.  It is the same with most
autobiographies, the writers, in order to center attention
on one phase of their activities, have cut away
everything which would make their stories seem
life-like.

"The Memoirs" of Cassanova give us the picture
of a lover.  But he must have been something more
than a *roué*.  "The Personal Recollections" of General
Grant portray the career of a soldier.  But after all
he was a man first, it was more or less by chance that
he became a victory-machine.  How fragmentary
is the picture of his life, which Benvenuto Cellini gives us!

I might accept these classic models and tell directly
the story of my work in the Tombs.  I might limit my
narrative to that part of myself which was involved
in friendship with Norman Benson.  Or again, I might
strip off everything else, ignore the flesh and bones
and blood vessels, and write of myself as an "emotional
system."  In one of these ways I might more nearly
approach a literary production.  But certainly it would
be at a sacrifice of verisimilitude.  Perhaps some great
writer will come who will unite the artistic form with
an impression of actuality.  But until genius has taught
us the method we must choose between the two ideals.
My choice is for reality rather than art.

And life, as it has appeared to me, is episodal in
form, unified only in the continual climaxes of the
present moment.  It is a string of incidents threaded
on to the uninterrupted breathing of the same person.
The facts of any life are related only *de post facto*, in
that they influence the future course of the individual
to whom they happen.  The farther back we strive
to trace these influences, which have formed us, the
greater complexity we find.  It is not only our bodies
which have "family trees," that show the number of
our ancestors, generation by generation, increasing
with dizzy rapidity.  It is the same with our thoughts
and tastes.  From an immensely diffuse luminosity
the lens of life has focused the concentrated rays of
light which are you and I.

So—in telling of my life, as I see it—my narrative
must break up into fragments.  Unartistic as such a
form may be, it seems to me the only one possible for
autobiography.  Incidents must be given, which,
however unrelated they appear, seem to me to have
been caught by the great lens and to have formed an
integral part of the focal point, which sits here—trying
to describe itself.



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   II

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For some years I have been continually writing on
the subject of criminology.  I could not give, here in
this narrative, a complete picture of the Tombs and its
people, nor show in orderly sequence how one incident
after another forced me into a definite attitude towards
our penal system, without repeating what I have
published elsewhere.  But the atmosphere in which I have
spent my working life has so definitely influenced me,
has been so important a force in my experiment in
ethics, that I must give it some space.  I must try, at
least, to give some illuminating examples of the sort
of thing which did influence me and a brief statement
of the attitude which has resulted from my work, for
without this background the rest of my story would be
meaningless.

At first I found myself the object of universal
hostility.  The Tombs was a feudal domain of Tammany
Hall.  I was regarded as an enemy.

The "spoils system" had given place to the evils of
civil service.  Municipal employees could not be
displaced unless "charges" had been proven against them.
The people of the Tombs did not worry much about
the reform administration.  They regarded it as an
interruption in the even tenor of their ways, which
happily would not last long.  They were used to such
moral spasms on the part of the electorate and knew how
little they were worth.  Some of the "Reform" officials
tried earnestly to clean up their departments.  Their
efforts were defeated by unruly subordinates, men
trained by and loyal to the machine.

The way things went in the Tombs was typical.
Brace had a conference with the new commissioner
of correction and as a result some "Instructions for
the guidance of prison keepers" were pasted up on
the walls.  But district attorneys change with every
election, while the warden—protected by civil
service—goes on forever.  The sale of "dope" to the
prisoners, forbidden by the "instructions" in capital
letters, was not interrupted for a day.  Within a week
the screws had forgotten to make jokes about it.

Having been appointed by the reformer Brace,
I was naturally supposed to be his personal spy.  I
was saved from falling into so fatal a mistake by a queer
old prison missionary called "General Jerry."  He
had lost an arm at Three Oaks, in the hospital at
Andersonville he had found "religion."  And as the Lord
had visited him in prison, he had devoted what was
left of his life to similar work.  I think he had no
income beyond his pension—he was always shabby.  He
had very little learning, but an immense amount of
homely wisdom.  If ever a man has won a right to a
starry crown it was Jerry.  He and the Father—each
in his different way—were the most wholesouled
Christians I have ever encountered.  Such a noble dignity
shone from the eyes of this humble old man that I
felt it ever a privilege to sit at his feet and learn of him.

First of all, from watching him, I found that a man
who was sincere and honest could win the respect of
the Tombs, in spite of such handicaps.  Before long
we became friends, and he gave me much shrewd advice.

"I come here to save souls," he said.  "That's all
I come for.  I don't let nothin' else interest me.  I
ain't no district attorney.  Sure, I see graft.  Can't
help it.  Every year—onct—I talk to each one of the
screws about his soul.  'Big Jim,' I says, 'you ain't
right wid God.  I ain't the only one as seed you take
money from the mother of that dago what was hanged.
I ain't the only one as heard you lie to that Jew woman,
telling her how you'd help her husband out.  I ain't
the only one as knows the hotel you took her to.  God
sees!  God hears!  He knows!  You'd better square
it wid Him!'  That's all I says.  They knows I don't
go round tellin' it.  And they helps me wid my work.
Just yesterday Big Jim comes to me.  'General,' he
says, 'there's a guy up in 431 what's crying.  I guess
you'd better hand him a bit of Gospel.'

"What do you come down here to the Tombs for?
To help out the poor guys what they've got wrong.
Well.  Don't do nothin' else.  The screws all think
you're gum-shoein' for Brace.  'Jerry,' they says to me,
'who's the new guy?  What's he nosin' around here for?'  'Don't
know,' I says.  'Better keep your eye on him—same
as I'm doin',' I says.  'After a while we'll know.'"

I felt their eyes on me all the time.  A couple of
months later I sat down beside Jerry in the courtyard;
he had a Bible on his knees and a cheese sandwich in
his hand.

"I ain't no good sayin' Grace," he explained, "so I
always reads a Psalm when I eat," .... "Say,
young man," he went on, "I got a word to say to you.
The screws ain't got you quite sized up yet—but most
of 'em agrees you ain't nobody's damn fool.  Now I
just want to tell you something.  You take this here
Tombs all together—warden, screws, cops and
lawyers, district attorneys and jedges—you can't never be
friends wid all of 'em.  They's too many what's hatin'
each other.  So you got to pick.  You say you're going
to stay by this job.  Well, you just better figure out
who's goin' to stick wid you.  The jedges stay and the
screws stay.  But the district attorneys don't never
stay more'n two years.  Figure it out.  That's what the
good book means by 'Be ye wise as sarpents.'"

Jerry's advice was good.  I had already "figured
out" that the favor of the judges was more important
for me than that of the district attorney.  I had to
choose whom I would serve, and it was very evident
that it was expedient—if I wished to accomplish
anything—to make friends with the mammon of political
unrighteousness.  The reformers were not only
pitifully weak, few of them commanded confidence.  They
had not been in office six weeks before it was evident
that their reëlection was impossible.  The best of them
were rank amateurs in the business of politics and
government.  Much of their disaster was due no doubt
to well intentioned ignorance.  But very few of them
stuck to the ship when it began to sink.  It would
furnish some sombre amusement to publish the figure
about how many loud-mouthed reformers went into
office again two years later—under the machine banner.

Brace, my chief, as soon as he discovered that the
walls of Tammany would not fall down at the sound
of newspaper trumpets, lost heart.  He had no further
interest except to keep himself in the lime-light.  Just
like all his predecessors, he neglected the routine work
of his office and gave all his attention to sensational
trials which added to his newspaper notoriety.

One of the big scandals of the preceding administration,
which as much as anything else had stirred
public indignation against ring politics, had centered
about a man named Bateson.  He called himself a
"contractor" and got most of the work in grading the
city streets.  There was conclusive evidence to show
that almost all the work he did was along the routes
of the street car lines.  The scandal had been discovered
and worked up by one of the newspapers in a most
exhaustive manner.  The facts were clear.  The
engineer of the street car company would report to his
superiors that such and such a street was too steep
for the profitable operation of their cars.  One of the
directors would call in Bateson.  Bateson would take
up the matter with the mysterious powers on
Fourteenth Street, the aldermen would vote an
appropriation to grade the street; Bateson would get the
contract and after being well paid by the city would get a
tangible expression of appreciation from the street car
company.  The newspapers had already collected the
evidence.  The fraud was patent.  Everyone expected
Brace to call Bateson to trial at once.  And it seemed
inevitable that from the evidence given in this case,
indictments could be drawn against both the "Old
Man" on Fourteenth Street and the bribe giving
directors of the street car company.

Brace began on this case with a great flourish of
trumpets.  But one adjournment after another was
granted by the Tammany judges.  It trailed along for
months.  And when at last it was called, the bottom
had, in some mysterious manner, dropped out of the
prosecution.  Bateson was acquitted.  A few months
later Brace resigned and became counsel for the
notorious traction reorganization.  Some recent magazine
articles have exposed the kind of reform he stood for.

"Politics" has always seemed to me a very sorry
sort of business.  I found plenty of non-partisan misery
to occupy all my time.  Gradually I fitted myself into
the life of the Tombs and became a fixture.  When the
new elections brought Tammany back to power, "civil
service" protected me from the grafters, just as it had
protected them from their enemies.  And so—in that
ill-smelling place—I have passed my life.

To one who is unfamiliar with our juggernaut of
justice it is surprising to find how much work there is
which a person in my position can do, how many
victims can be pulled from under the merciless wheels.
First of all there are the poor, who have no money to
employ an able lawyer, no means to secure the evidence
of their innocence.  Then there are the "greenhorn"
immigrants who do not know the language and laws
of this new country, who do not know enough to notify
their consuls.  Saddest of all—and most easily helped—are
the youngsters.  We did not have a children's
court in those days.  But most of my time, I think, has
gone in trying to ease the lot of the innocent wives and
children of the prisoners.  Whether the man is guilty
or not it is always the family which suffers most.  And
if there had been none of these things, I would have had
my hands more than full with trying to help the men
who were acquitted.  Look over the report of the
criminal court in your county and see what the average
length of imprisonment while *waiting trial* is.  It varies
from place to place.  It is seldom less than three weeks.
And three weeks is a serious matter to the ordinary
mechanic.  About a third of all the people arrested are
acquitted.  They get no compensation for their
footless imprisonment.  Besides the loss of wages, it
generally means a lost job.

Two stories, which have been told elsewhere, are
worth retelling, as examples of the varied work I found
to do.

It was in the summer of my first year in the Tombs
that I got interested in the case of a redhaired Italian
boy named Pietro Sippio.  He was only fourteen years
old and he had been indicted for premeditated murder.

The prosecution fell to the lot of the most brilliant
young lawyer on the district attorney's staff.  The
Sippio family was too poor to employ counsel and Judge
Ryan, before whom the case was tried, had assigned to
the defense a famous criminal lawyer.  The trial
became at once a tourney of wit between these two men.
Little Pietro and his fate was a small matter in the
duel for newspaper advertising.

The principal witness for the state was Mrs. Casey,
the mother of the little boy who had been killed.  She
was a widow, a simple, uneducated Irishwoman, who
earned her living by washing.  She told her story with
every appearance of truthfulness.  During the morning
of the tragic day, she had had a quarrel with Pietro
in the backyard of the tenement, where both families
lived.  Pietro had thrown some dirt on her washing
and she had slapped him.  Instead of crying as she
thought an ordinary boy would have done, he had said
he would "get even" with her.

When she heard the noon whistles blow in the neighboring
factories, she had gone out on the front sidewalk
to get her baby for dinner.  The youngster was sitting
on the curbstone and as she stood in the doorway calling
him, a brick, coming from the roof of the tenement,
struck the baby on the head, killing him instantly.
She rushed out and—she swore very solemnly—looked
up and saw "the little divil's red head, jest as plain as I
sees yer honor."

The counsel for the defense was unable to shake her
testimony in the least.

Other witnesses swore that, on hearing Mrs. Casey's
cry for help, they had rushed up to the roof and had
met Mrs. Sippio coming down through the skylight
with her two younger children, Felicia a girl of eight and
Angelo, who was five.  When they had asked her where
Pietro was she said she had not seen him.  But these
witnesses were Irish and sided with Mrs. Casey.  They
testified that it was easy to pass from one roof to
another.  And it was evidently their theory that Pietro
had escaped in this manner.

A few minutes after the tragedy, Pietro had come
whistling up the street and had walked into the arms
of the police, who were just starting out to search for
him.

In his own defense Pietro testified that after
quarreling with Mrs. Casey he had played about in the
street for some time and then had gone down to the
river with a crowd of boys for a swim.  They had not
left the water until the noon whistles had warned them
of dinner time.  They had all hurried into their clothes
and gone home.  He swore positively that he had not
been on the roof during the morning.  He evidently
did not realize the seriousness of his position and was
rather swaggeringly proud of being the center of so
much attention.

Two or three other boys testified that Pietro had
been swimming with them and had not left the water
until after the whistles blew.  This was an important
point as the baby had been killed a very few minutes
after noon.  But the district attorney, in a brutal,
bullying cross-examination, succeeded in rattling one
of the boys—a youngster of eleven—until he did not
know his right hand from his left.  He broke down
entirely, and sobbingly admitted that perhaps Pietro
had left before the whistles blew.

Mrs. Sippio testified that she had not seen Pietro
after breakfast.  She had gone upon the roof about
half past eleven to beat out some rugs.  She had taken
the two younger children with her.  But Pietro had
not been on the roof.  She was a very timid woman,
so frightened that she forgot most of her scant English.
But she seemed to be telling the truth.

After the testimony was in the counsel for the
defense made an eloquent, if rather bombastic plea.
He turned more often to the desk of the reporters than
to the panel of jurymen.  No one, he said, had given
any testimony which even remotely implicated Pietro,
except the grief-stricken and enraged Mrs. Casey.
He made a peroration on the vengeful traits of the Irish.
He almost wept over the prospect of eternal damnation
which awaited Mrs. Casey's soul on account of her
perjury.  No reasonable man, he concluded, would
condemn a fly on such unreliable testimony.

The prosecutor commenced his summing up by referring
to his position as attorney for the people of the
state of New York.  He said that his able opponent
was technically called "The counsel for the defense,"
but that in reality he himself more truly deserved that
title.  He was engaged not in the defense of an individual
offender, but in that of the whole community of law
abiding citizens.  And in the pursuance of this most
serious function he could not allow his personal pity
for the youthful murderer to deflect him from his
public duty.

He then gave a picturesque and blood curdling
account of the Vendetta and Mafia.  He called the jury's
attention to the well known traditions of vengeance
and murder among the Italians.

As for Mrs. Sippio's testimony—despite his high
regard for the sanctity of an oath—he could not find it
in his heart to blame this mother who by perjury was
endangering bar own soul to save her son.  He was
more stern in regard to the evidence of the boys.  Their
only excuse for perjury was their youth.  They were
members of a desperate gang, of which Pietro was the
chief.  They were corrupted by the false standards
of loyalty to their leader, so common among boys of
the street.

The only testimony which deserved the serious
attention of the jury was that of Mrs. Casey—the
estimable woman, who had seen her babe foully murdered
before her eyes.  Her identification of Pietro had been
absolute.

"I am sorry," he ended, "for this boy, who, by so
hideous a crime, has ruined his life at the very outset.
But you and I, gentlemen of the jury, are bound by
oath to consider only the cold facts.  The judge may,
if he thinks it wise, be merciful in imposing sentence.
But your sole function is to discover truth.  Here is a
boy of fiery disposition and revengeful race.  He vowed
vengeance.  Some one must have thrown the brick.  No
one else had the motive.  Either the defendant is
guilty as charged in the indictment or the brick fell
from heaven."

The law explicitly states that a person charged with
crime, must be given the benefit of any "reasonable
doubt."  In the face of the manifestly conflicting
testimony, I think every one in court was surprised when
the jury returned a verdict of "guilty."

I had not then been long enough in the Tombs to
get used to it.  I had not become hardened.  The
tragedy of this case amazed me.  A little boy of fourteen
condemned of deliberate murder!  But the thing which
impressed me most was the way the lawyers in the court
room rushed up to congratulate the prosecutor for
having won so doubtful a case.  It would be revolting
enough to me if any one should congratulate me on
having sent an adult to the gallows.  But this little boy
of fourteen....

I went over the Bridge of Sighs and talked to Pietro
in his cell.  If ever a boy impressed me as telling a
straightforward story he did.  I was convinced that he
had been at the riverside when the Casey baby was
killed.

After lunch I went up to the scene of the tragedy and
my faith in Pietro's innocence was considerably shaken
although not overthrown by my talk with Mrs. Casey.
She was angry, of course, but she did not seem malicious
or vindictive.  As I talked with her in her squalid
basement room, full of steam from the tubs of soiled
clothing, I could not doubt her sincerity.  She really
believed that Pietro had killed her child.  Wiping the
suds from her powerful arms, she led me out on the
sidewalk and showed me the place where the baby had
been sitting and pointed out where she had seen the
devilish red head above the coping.

The idea flashed into my mind that a boy would have
to be surprisingly clever to throw a brick from that
height and hit a baby.  With Mrs. Casey following me,
I went upon the roof.  The chimneys were in a
dilapidated condition and a number of loose brick lay
about.  I was a fairly good ball player at college, but
when I tried to hit a water plug on the curb stone, six
stories below, I over shot at least eight feet.  I asked
Mrs. Casey to try and her brick lit in the middle of the
street.  I called up some of the boys, who were watching
my operations from the street, and offered them a
quarter if they could hit the water plug.  Their attempts
were no better than mine.

A little further along the low coping some bricks
were piled where children had evidently been building
houses with them.  I asked Mrs. Casey to push one of
them over, easily as if by accident.  It fell out a little
way from the wall and crashed down fair on the curbing.

"Mrs. Casey," I said, "I don't think Pietro threw
that brick.  He couldn't have hit the baby if he had
tried.  Somebody pushed it over by accident."

She stood for some seconds looking down over the
wall, shaking her head uncertainly.

"Faith, and I'd think ye were right, sir," she said at
last, "If I hadn't seen his red head, sir, jest as plain as
I sees yours."

And as we went down stairs, she kept repeating "I
sure seen his red head."  She was evidently convinced
of it.

I went to see Mrs. Sippio.  She had moved to another
tenement, because of the hostility of the Irish neighbors.
I found Mr. Sippio at home taking care of his wife, she
was half hysterical from the shame and her grief over
Pietro's fate.  But she told me her story just as simply
and convincingly as had Mrs. Casey.  Pietro had not
been on the roof.  There had been only Felicia and
Angelo.  I was on the point of leaving in discouragement.
Apparently one of the women was lying.  I
could not guess which.  I had gained nothing but a
conviction that the brick could not have been thrown
with an intent to kill.  And that would be a very weak
plea against the verdict of a jury.  Just as I was getting
up, there was a patter of feet in the hall-way.  Mrs. Sippio's
face lit up.  "It is the children," she said.  As
they rushed noisily into the room the whole mystery was
cleared up.  It had not occurred to me—nor to any
one—that there might be two redheaded boys in the same
Italian family.  But Angelo's hair was even more
flaming than Pietro's.

I took him up in my lap and amused him until I had
won his confidence.  And when he was thinking about
other things, I suddenly asked him.

"Angelo, when that brick fell off the roof the other
day, why didn't you tell your mother?"

For a moment he was confused and then began to
whimper.  He had been afraid of being whipped.  I
gave a whoop and reassuring the family, I rushed down
town and caught Judge Ryan, just as he was leaving his
chambers.  He listened to me eagerly, for he was as
tenderhearted a man as I have ever known and he had
been deeply horrified at the idea of having to sentence
such a youngster for premeditated murder.

The attorneys were summoned to the judge's chambers,
and—I guess that the "pathos" writers of the
newspapers were notified.  For the next morning they
attended court in force.  The district attorney made
a touching speech.  He was grandiloquently glad to
announce that new evidence had been discovered which
cleared the defendant from all suspicion.  The judge
set aside the verdict of the jury.  The district attorney
said that Mrs. Casey had so evidently mistaken Angelo
for his older brother that there was no use having a new
trial and Pietro was discharged.  In making a few
remarks on the case, Judge Ryan mentioned my name
and thanked me personally for my part in the matter.
With increasing frequency he began to call on me for
assistance in other cases and in time the other judges
took notice of my existence.  I found my hands more
than full.

Very often I was able in a similar manner to unearth
evidence, which the defendants were too poor and
ignorant or the lawyers too lazy to obtain.

But it was in another class of cases that I proved of
greatest utility to the judges.  A large proportion of
the prisoners plead guilty, without demanding a trial.
If the whole matter is thrashed out before a jury, the
trial judge hears all the evidence and so gets some idea
of the motives of the crime, of the personality and
environment of the accused.  But when a prisoner pleads
guilty, practically no details come out in court and unless
the judge has some special investigation made he must
impose sentence at haphazard.  Ryan, almost always
asked me to look into such cases.  The other judges—with
the exception of O'Neil—did so frequently.  I
would visit the prisoner in his cell and get his story,
listen to what the police had to say, and then make a
personal investigation to settle disputed points.

As time went on Ryan came to rely more and more
on my judgment.  He felt, I think, that I was honest;
that I could not be bribed and that I was more likely
to err on the side of mercy than otherwise.  His easy
going kindliness was satisfied with this and he was
only too glad to let his responsibilities slip on to my
shoulders.  In the last years before he was elevated to
the Supreme Court, he practically let me sentence
most of his men.  Except in the cases where political
influences intervened, my written reports determined
the prisoner's fate.

Of course I had to manage his susceptibilities.  If
I had presumed to suggest definitely what sentence he
should impose he would have taken offense.  He was
very sensitive about his dignity.  But I worked out a
formal phraseology which did not ruffle his pride and
accomplished what I intended.  After stating the facts
of the case I would end up with a sort of code phrase.
If I wanted the judge to give the man another chance
under a suspended sentence, I would say: "Under the
circumstances, I believe that the defendant is deserving
the utmost leniency.  I am convinced that the arrest
and the imprisonment which he has already suffered
have taught him a salutary lesson which he will never
forget."  From that as the circumstances warranted I
could go to the other extreme: "During my investigation
of this case, which has been seriously limited because
of lack of time, I have been able to find very little
in this man's favor."

Every time I had to present such a report as this
I felt defeated.  It meant that the prisoner was an old
offender, hardened to a life of professional crime.  And
that I could see no hope of reformation.  But if I had
not accepted such defeats, when circumstances compelled
them, the judges would very quickly have lost
confidence in my pleas for mercy.

I was valuable to the judges because I relieved them
from worry.  Whenever anyone approached them on
behalf of a prisoner, they shrugged their shoulders and
referred the suppliant to me.  Now-a-days we have a
probation law and such work as I have been describing
is legalized.  But in the early days, when I had no
official sanction I found my position very embarrassing.
Without having been in any way elected to office I was
actually exercising a power which is supposed to be
the gift of the voters.  However—like so many things
in our haphazard government—my position, extra-legal
as it was, grew out of the sheer necessity of the case.
The theory is that our judges shall be jurists.  And a
knowledge of the law does not fit one for the responsibility
of deciding how we shall treat our criminals.  In
the old days when the law frankly punished offenders
it was a simple matter and perhaps not too much to
ask of judges.  But today when we are beginning the
attempt to reform those individuals who endanger
society, the business of imposing sentence requires not
so much a knowledge of law as familiarity with
psychology, medicine and sociology.  Although an expert in
none of these lines, I was accepted as a makeshift.
The law did not provide for the employment of specially
trained men to assist the judges.  I was informally
permitted to entirely neglect the ordinary work of a
county detective and give all my time to the courts.

The danger in such happy-go-lucky arrangements is
that of graft.  I could have doubled or quadrupled my
salary with impunity.  The "shyster" lawyers, who
infest the Tombs tried for several years to buy my
intercession for their clients.  I had to be constantly on my
guard to keep them from fooling me.  And when they
found that they could not reach me in this manner,
they tried industriously to discredit me, to trick
me into some suspicious conditions so they could
intimidate me.  More than once they set women on my trail.

The politicians also tried to use me.  I received a
letter one day from the "Old Man" asking me to
intercede for a friend of his.  I wrote back that I would
investigate carefully.  A couple of days later I sent
another letter containing the prisoner's record, he had
been twice in state prison and many times arrested.
"Under the circumstances," I wrote "I cannot
recommend mercy in this case."

The next day one of the "Old Man's" lieutenants
met me in the corridor and leading me into a corner,
told me I was a fool.  When what he called "reason"
failed to shake me, he became abusive and threatened
to have me "fired."  I took the whole matter to Ryan.
He told me not to worry, that he would talk it over with
the "Old Man."  I do not know what passed between
them.  But after that I had no more trouble from
Fourteenth Street.  Whenever I saw the "Old Man," he
gave me a cordial nod.  Frequently his runners would
hand me one of his cards with a penciled note, "See
what you can do for this friend of mine and oblige."  But
with one or two exceptions the "friend" turned out
to be deserving.  One day he sent word that he would
like to see me personally.  I called on him in Tammany
Hall.  He thanked me for "helping out" one of his
friends and told me that the city, in some of its
departments, or some of his "contracting friends" were always
taking on new hands and that he would try to find a
place for any man I sent him.  This was an immense
help to me in my work and a God-send to many a man
who had lost his job because of a baseless arrest.

So I gradually found a place of usefulness in the life
of the Tombs.

Another typical case happened years later.  I would
not have known how to handle it at first.  The
defendant was a Norwegian named Nora Lund.  She was
about seventeen and the sweetest, most beautiful young
girl I have ever seen in the Tombs.  She was employed
in one of the smartest uptown stores.  It had an
established reputation as a dry goods house.  The founder
had died some years before, a stock company had taken
it over and was developing it into a modern department
store.  Besides the old lines of goods they were carrying
silverware, stationery, furniture and so forth.  Their
patrons were most of the very well to do classes.

Just inside the main entrance was an especial show
case, where a variety of specialties were exhibited.
Nora presided over this display and it was her business
to direct customers to the counters they sought and
answer all manner of questions.  She had been chosen
for this post because of her beauty and her sweet,
lady-like manners.  If you asked her where the ribbons
were for sale, you carried away with you a pleasing
memory of her great blue eyes and her ready smile.

She was paid six dollars a week.  Her father, who had
been a printer, was dead.  Her mother worked in a
candy factory.  A sister of fourteen was trying to learn
bookkeeping at home while she took care of the two
younger children.

Nora's wage, together with the mother's, was enough
to keep them in cleanliness, if not in comfort, and to
put by a trifle every week for the education of the boy
whom the women fondly dreamed of sending to school.
But the mother fell sick.  Gradually the little pile of
savings was swallowed up.  Mrs. Lund needed expensive
medicine.  And six dollars a week is very little for a
family of five, especially when one is sick and another
must always have fresh clean linen collars and cuffs.
At the store they insisted that the girls should always
be "neat and presentable."  The fourteen year old
sister went to work looking after a neighbor's baby,
but she only got two dollars a week and two meals.

When the savings had been exhausted Nora took
her troubles to the superintendent.  She did not want
to seem to be asking for charity, she begged to be given
some harder work so she could earn more.  It was
refused.  That week Wednesday there was nothing in
the house to eat.  The druggist and tradesmen refused
further credit, and the rent was due.  Nora went again
to the superintendent and asked to have her wages
paid in advance or at least the three dollars she had
already earned.  The superintendent was angry at her
importunity.

When Nora left the store that evening she carried
with her a box containing a dozen silver spoons.
Unfortunately she did not know any of the regular and
reliable "receivers of stolen goods," so she had to take
a chance on the first pawnshop she came to.  The man
suspected her, asked her to wait a moment and
telephoned for the police.  He kept her at the counter with
his dickering until the officer came.  Nora did not know
the first thing about lying and broke down at the first
question.

If she had been a man I would have encountered
her sooner, but I very seldom went into the women's
prison.  It is part of the burden of their sex, I suppose,
but the women one generally finds in prison are the
most doleful spectacle on earth.  Having once lost their
self respect they sink to an infinitely lower level than
men do.  With the first enthusiasm of my early days
I used often to dare the horror of that place.  But I
soon recognized my defeat before its hopelessness and
gave it a wide berth.  So I did not hear of Nora when
she first came to the Tombs.  It was two weeks before
her case was called.  It came up before Ryan.  I was
not in court when she was arraigned, but the next
morning I found a note in my box from the judge.

"Please look into the case of Nora Lund, grand
larceny in the second degree.  She plead guilty
yesterday but she does not look like a thief.  I
remanded the case till Wednesday to give you plenty of
time."

Before Wednesday I had the facts I have already
related.  It was pitiful to see Mrs. Lund.  The shame
and disgrace to the family name hurt her much more
than the starvation which threatened the household.
She was really sick, but she came down every morning
to cry with her daughter.  They were in a bad way at
home, as Nora's wage had stopped since her arrest.  I
fixed them up with some food, squared the landlord,
and did what I could to cheer them.  Ryan had already
shown his sympathy and I allowed myself to do, what
I made it a rule never to do.  I practically promised
the mother that Nora would be released.

I prepared my report with extra care.  It was an
unusually good case.  All the goods had been restored.
The firm had lost no money.  I had rarely had an
opportunity to report so strongly my belief that the
offender could be safely discharged.  I recommended the
"utmost leniency" with a light heart.

When the case was called, I handed up my report to
the judge.  He read it rapidly as if he had already made
up his mind to let her go.

"You're sure it's the first offense?" he asked
perfunctorily.

I assured him it was.

"All right," he said, "I guess suspended sentence...."

The clerk stepped up and gave the judge a card.

"Your honor," he said, "a gentleman would like to
speak to you about this case, before you impose
sentence."

The man was called up and introduced himself as the
regular attorney of the complainants.  He was a
member of one of the great down-town law firms.  He had the
assurance of manner of a very successful professional
man.  His clients, he said, had asked him to lay some
information before the court.  In the last few years they
had lost a great many thousand dollars through such
petty theft.  The amount of this loss was steadily
increasing.  Most of the thefts were undiscovered because
the employees protected one another.  They seemed to
have lost all the old fashioned loyalty to the firm.  The
directors' attention had been unpleasantly called to this
very considerable outlet and they had decided to
respectfully call it to the attention of the courts.  If two
or three offenders were severely punished it would have
a salutary effect on the morals of their entire force.

My heart sank.  I knew how the judge would take it.
He was always impressed by people of evident wealth.
I am sure that he thought of God as a multi-millionaire.
He handed my report to the lawyer.  He read it half
through and returned it.  It could not, he said, affect
the attitude of the complainants.  They were not
interested in the family life of Nora Lund, but in the honesty
of employee No. 21,334.  Their view-point was entirely
impersonal.  "Even if my clients wanted to be lenient,
they could not, in justice to the stockholders.  It is
purely a business proposition.  The losses have been
very heavy."

"Are you asking his honor," I said, "to punish this
girl for the thefts of the others you did not catch?"

He ignored my question and went on telling the judge
that unless something was done this sort of thing would
increase until business was impossible.

"Our whole force," he said, "know of this crime and
are watching the result.  If no punishment follows
there is sure to be a big increase of theft.  But if she
is sent to state prison it will greatly reduce this item of
loss."

"Your honor," I broke in, thoroughly angry, "This
is utterly unfair.  He whines because the employees are
not loyal.  How much loyalty do they expect to buy at
six dollars a week?  They figure out just how little they
can pay their people and keep them from the necessity
of stealing.  This time they figured too low, and are
trying to put all the blame on the girl.  If they paid
honest wages they might have some right to come into
court.  But when they let their clerks starve they ought
not to put silver in their charge.  Its...."

"Hold on, officer," Ryan interrupted, "There's a
great deal in their point of view.  Our whole penal
system is built on the deterrent idea.  The state does not
inflict penalties to repay the wrong done it by an act of
crime, but to deter others from committing like crimes.
As long as the complainants take this view of the case
I cannot let her go without some punishment."

"Punishment?" I broke in again.  "I hope we will
never be punished so bitterly.  The shame of her arrest
and imprisonment is already far in excess of her wrong
doing.  The firm did not lose a cent and they want her
sent to state prison."

"I won't send so young a girl to state prison," the
judge said, "But I cannot let her go free.  I'll send her
to one of the religious disciplinary institutions."

I asked for a few days adjournment so I could lay
the matter before the members of the firm personally.

"The delay would be useless," the attorney put in.
"My clients have no personal feelings in the matter.
It is simply a carefully reasoned business policy."

I persisted that I would like to try.  The judge rapped
with his gavel.

"Remanded till tomorrow morning."

As we walked out of the court room, the attorney
condescendingly advised me not to waste much time
on this case.  "Its useless," he said.  But I did not
want to give up without a fight.

When I tried to see the members of the firm, I
found that my opponent had stolen a march on me by
telephoning to warn them of my mission.  Their office
secretaries told me that they were very busy, that they
already knew my business and did not care to go into
the matter with me.

I was acquainted with the city editor of one of the
large morning papers and I had found that the judges
were very susceptible to newspaper criticism.  More
than once a properly placed story would make them
see a case in a new light.  I found a vacant desk in the
reporters' room and wrote up Nora in the most livid
style I could manage—"soulless corporation," "underpaid
slaves" and such phrases.

"It's a good story," the city editor said, "Too bad
there isn't a Socialist paper to run it.  But we can't
touch it.  They're the biggest advertisers we've got.
I'm sorry.  It certainly is a sad case.  I wish you'd
give this to the mother."

He handed me a bank-note.  But I told him to go
to the father of yellow journalism.  It was not money
I wanted.  I stamped out of his office, angry and
discouraged.  But my promise to Mrs. Lund, to get Nora
out, made it impossible for me to give up.  I walked up
the street racking my brains for some scheme.  Suddenly
an inspiration came.  They would not listen to
me.  Perhaps I could make money talk.

My small deposits were in an up-town bank.  It did
not have a large commercial business, but specialized
on private and household accounts.  The cashier was a
fraternity mate of mine.  With a little urging I got from
him a list of depositors who had large accounts at the
store where Nora had worked.  I picked out the names
of the women I knew to be interested in various
charities and borrowed a telephone.

It is hard to be eloquent over a telephone.  The little
black rubber mouth-piece is a discouraging thing to
plead with, but I stuck to it all the afternoon.  As soon
as I got connection with some patron of the store, I
told her about Nora's plight—most of them remembered
her face.  I tried to make them realize how
desperately little six dollars a week is.  I told the story
of her hard struggle to keep the home going, how the
firm had refused to give her a raise and were now trying
to send her to state prison.  I spoke as strongly as
might be about personal responsibility.  The firm paid
low wages so that their patrons might buy silk stockings
at a few cents less per pair.  And low wages had driven
Nora to crime.  I laid it on as heavily as I dared and
asked them to call up the manager and members of
the firm—to get them personally—and protest against
their severity towards Nora.  I urged them to spread
the story among their friends and get as many of them
as possible to threaten to withdraw their trade.

I started this campaign about three in the afternoon
and kept it up till after business hours.  It bore fruit.
Some of the women, I found out afterwards, went
further than I had suggested and called on the wives
of the firm.  I imagine that the men, who had refused
to see me, did not spend a peaceful or pleasant afternoon
and evening.

In the morning, when Nora's case was called, the
attorney made a touching speech about the quality of
mercy and how to err is human, to forgive divine.  He
said that the firm he represented could not find heart
to prosecute this damsel in distress and that if the court
would be merciful and give her another chance they
would take her back in their employment.  Judge Ryan
was surprised, but very glad to discharge her.  However,
I was able to find her a much better place to work.

Her story is a sad commentary on our system of
justice.  The court did not care to offend a group of
wealthy men.  The press did not dare to.  The only
way to get justice for this girl was by appealing to the
highest court—the power of money.

It is always hard for me to write about our method
of dealing with crime in restrained and temperate
language—the whole system is too utterly vicious.  I
had not been many weeks in the Tombs before I was
guilty of contempt of court.

Four of the five judges in general sessions were
machine men.  It was rare that their judgments were
influenced by their political affiliations; in the great
majority of the cases they were free to dispense what
happened to strike them as justice.  It is simpler for the
organization to "fix" things in the police courts where
there are no juries.  But once in a while a man would
come up to us who "had a friend."  The "Old Man"
on Fourteenth Street would send down his orders and
one of these four judges would arrange the matter.  The
impressive thing about it was the cynical frankness.
Everybody knew what was happening.

The fifth judge, O'Neil, was a Scotchman.  He was
said to be—and I believe was—incorruptible.  He had
been swept into office on a former wave of reform, and
had no dealings with the machine.  But he was utterly
unfit to be on the bench.  A few weeks after I was
sworn in, I saw a phase of his character which was
worse than "graft."

A man was brought before him for "assault"—a
simple exchange of fisticuffs.  In general such cases are
treated as a joke.  Two men have a fight—then they
race to the police station.  The one who gets there first
is the complainant, the slower footed one is the
defendant.  Each brings a cloud of witnesses to court to
swear that the other was the aggressor.  It is hopeless
to try to place the blame.  The penal code fixes a
maximum sentence of one year and five hundred dollars
fine, but unless some especial malice has been shown,
the judges generally discharge the prisoner with a
perfunctory lecture or, at most, give them ten days.

This man had an especially good record.  He had
worked satisfactorily for several years in the same place,
his wife and her three small children were entirely
dependent upon his earnings.  O'Neil skimmed over his
recommendations listlessly, until his eye caught a
sentence which told the nature of the man's employment.
He stiffened up with a jerk.

"Are you a janitor?" he thundered.

"Yes, your honor."

"Well, I tell you, sir, janitors must be taught their
place!  There is no more impudent, offensive class of
men in this city.  This morning, sir, there was no heat
in my apartment, and when my wife complained the
janitor was insolent to her!  Insulted her!  My wife!
When I went downstairs he insulted me, sir!  The
janitor insulted me, I say!  He even threatened to
strike me as you have wantonly assaulted this reputable
citizen here, the complainant.  It is time the public
was protected from janitors.  I regret that the law
limits the punishment I can give you.  The court
sentences you, sir, to the maximum.  One year and
five hundred dollars!"

The outburst was so sudden, so evidently a matter of
petty spite, that there was a hush all over the court.

"What's the matter?" his honor snapped.  "Call up
the next case."

Of course this sentence would have been overthrown
in any higher court, but the man had no money.  Such
things did not happen very often, but frequently enough
to keep us ever reminded of their imminent possibility.

I have sixty fat note-books which record my work in
the Tombs.  Almost every item might be quoted here
to show how little by little contempt of court grew in my
mind.  It crystallized not so much because of the
relatively rare cases where innocent men were sent to prison,
as because of the continual commonplace farce of it.

Very early I learned—as the lawyers all knew—that
considerations of abstract justice were foreign to the
Tombs.  Each judge had his foible.  It was more
important to know these than the law.  Judges McIvor
and Bell were Grand Army men.  Bell was always easy
on veterans.  He had a stock speech—"I am sorry
to see a man who has fought for his country in your
distressing condition.  I will be as lenient as the law
allows."  McIvor, if he saw a G.A.R. button on a
man before him would shout, "I am pained and grieved
to see a man so dishonor the old uniform," and would
give him the maximum.

Ryan, the most venal, the most servile machine man
of the five, had a beautiful and intense love for his
mother.  A child of the slum, he had supported his
mother since he was fourteen, had climbed up from the
gutter to the bench.  And filial love, like his own,
outweighed any amount of moral turpitude with him.
When I found a man in the Tombs who seemed to me
innocent, I did not prepare a brief on this aspect of the
case.  I looked up his mother, and persuaded the clerk
to put the case on Ryan's calendar.  If I could get the
old woman rigged up in a black silk dress and a poke
bonnet, if I could arrange for two old-fashioned
love-locks to hang down before her ears, the trick was turned.
All she had to do was to cry a little and say, "He's
been a good son to his old mother, yer honor."

The cases were supposed to be distributed among the
judges in strict rotation.  It was, in fact, a misdemeanor
for the clerk to juggle with the calendar.  But the
largest part of a lawyer's value depended on his ability
to persuade the clerk to put his client before a judge
who would be lenient towards his offense.

O'Neil believed that a lady should be above suspicion.
So when a woman was accused of crime, she was certainly
not a lady, and probably guilty.  It was for the
good of the community to lock her up.  Of course
whenever a lawyer had a woman client his first act
was to "fix" the clerk so that the case would not be
put down before O'Neil.

Yet I would be eminently unfair to the people of the
Tombs, if I spoke only of their evil side.  Of course this
was the side I first saw.  But by the end of a year I had
established myself.  Once they had lost their fear that
I was trying to interfere with their means of livelihood—a
fear shared by the judges as well as the screws—hostility
gave place to tolerance, and in some cases to respect
and a certain measure of friendship.  I began to think
of them, as they did of themselves, as dual personalities.
There was sinister symbolism in the putting on of the
black robes by the judges.  The screws out of uniform,
in off hours, were very different beings from the screws
on duty.

It is a commonplace that machine politicians are
big-hearted.  They listened to any story I could tell
of touching injustice, often went down in their pockets
to help the victim.  I have never met more sentimental
men.  All it needed to start them was a little "heart
interest."  Frequently Big Jim, the gate man, would
raise ten or fifteen dollars from the other screws to help
out one of my men.

Judge Ryan met me one day on the street and invited
me into a saloon.  There began a very real friendship.
Off the bench he was a most expansive man;
he had wonderful power of personal anecdote.  In the
story of his up-struggle from the gutter, his mother
on his shoulders, he was naïve in telling of incidents
which to a man of my training seemed criminal.  He
owed his first opportunity, the start towards his later
advancement, to Tweed.  And he was as loyal to him
as to his mother.  The soul of the slum was in his story.
It was an interpretation of the ethics which grow up
where the struggle for existence is bitter.  An ethics
which is foul with the stink of fetid tenements, wizened
with hunger, distorted with fear.

The attitude of the people of the Tombs to this dual
life of theirs, the insistence with which they kept
separate their professional and personal life, was shown
clearly when a young assistant district attorney broke
the convention.  He brought his wife to court!  He
was a youngster, it was his first big case, he wanted her
to hear his eloquence.  The indignation was general.
I happened to be talking to Big Jim, the gate man,
when one of the screws brought the news.

"What?" Jim exploded.  "Brought his wife down
here?  The son of a ——!  Say.  If my old woman
came within ten blocks of the place—or any of the
kids—I'd knock their blocks off.  Go on.  Yer
kidding me."

When they insisted that it was true, he scratched his
head disgustedly and kept reiterating his belief in the
chap's canine ancestry.  Two hours later, when I was
going out of the Tombs, he stopped me.  It was still
on his mind.

"Say," he said, "what d'ye think of that son of a ——?"



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   III

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It did not take me very long to see that the trouble
with our criminal courts goes deeper than the graft or
ill-temper of the judges.  Day after day the realization
grew upon me that the system itself is wrong at bottom.

A man can do a vicious thing now and then without
complete moral disintegration.  It is constant
repetition of the act which turns him into a vicious man.
Brown may once in a while lose his temper and strike
his wife, and still be, on the whole, an estimable
fellow.  But if he makes a regular habit of blacking her
eye every Saturday night, we would hold him suspect
in all relations.  We would not only question his
fitness to bring up children, we would doubt his veracity,
distrust him in money matters.

The more I have been in court the stronger grows the
conviction that there is something inherently vicious
in passing criminal judgment on our fellow men.  A
Carpenter who lived in Palestine two thousand years
ago thought on this matter as I do.  His doctrine about
throwing stones is explicit.  If he was right in saying
"Judge not," we cannot expect any high morality from
our judges.  The constant repetition of evil inevitably
degrades.

Unless we can expect our judges to be omniscient—and
no one of them is so fatuous as to believe himself
infallible—we are asking them to gamble with justice,
to play dice with men's souls.  We give them the whole
power of the state to enforce their guesses.  The
counters with which they play are human beings—not only
individual offenders, but whole families, innocent
women and children.  Such an occupation—as a steady
job—will necessarily degrade them.  It would change
the Christ Himself....  But he said very definitely
that He would not do it.

However, my work in the Tombs has not made me a
pessimist.  Science has conquered the old custom of
flogging lunatics.  The increase of knowledge must
inevitably do away with our barbaric penal codes,
with cellular confinement and electrocution.  An
enlightened community will realize that the whole
mediæval idea of punishing each other is not only a
sin—according to Christ—but a blunder, a rank economic
extravagance, as useless as it is costly.  We will learn
to protect ourselves from the losses and moral
contagions of crime as we do from infectious diseases.
Our prisons we will discard for hospitals, our judges
will become physicians, our "screws" we will turn into
trained nurses.

The present system is epileptic.  It works out with
unspeakable cruelty to those who are suspected of
crime—and their families—it results in the moral ruin
of those we employ to protect us, and it is a failure.
The amount of money which society expends in its
war against crime is stupendous—and crime increases.
All statistics from every civilized country....

But this personal narrative is not the place for me
to discuss in detail my convictions in regard to
criminology.



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   IV

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The influence of the Tombs on my way of thinking
was slow and cumulative, here a little and there a
little.  I got a more sudden insight into some of the
ways of the world, some of its stupidities and pretenses,
from the peculiar circumstances under which Benson
and I were thrown out of the settlement.  I had been
there almost two years when the crash came.  In this
affair, I was little more than the tail of his kite.  That
is the fact I wish to emphasize.  Benson was I think
beyond any doubt, the most valuable "resident" in
the Children's House.  It was not only that he gave
much money into the general treasury and that he
gave far more to such subsidiary enterprises as his
Arbeiter Studenten Verein, all of which gave added
prestige to the settlement, but also his personality
was a great asset.  Through his professional and social
connections he was continually recruiting new supporters.
And certainly to the people of the neighborhood,
he was the most popular of us all.  And yet to preserve
certain stupid ideas of respectability, Benson was
sacrificed.

The Jewish population—penniless refugees from
Russian massacres—had been growing rapidly in our
district.  They had almost entirely driven out the
Germans and Irish.  And as a result of their intense
poverty, prostitution was becoming frightful.  There
were red lights all about us.  To the thoughtful Jews
this had become the only political issue.  The machine
was cynically frank in its toleration of vice.  Two years
before a man named Root had been elected congressman
on the reform ticket.  It was pretty generally
known that he had used his time in office to make peace
with the machine.  And although he still talked of
reform, he was so friendly with the enemy that they
had nominated a figure-head named O'Brien.  But this
Democratic candidate was only for appearances, we all
knew that Root was to be re-elected and that Tammany
votes were promised him.

Benson shared my hatred of hypocrisy.  We often
talked over this political tangle.

"I'd like to get the evidence against him," Norman
said one night.  "Nothing I'd like better than to shoot
some holes into his double-faced schemes."

I gathered a good deal of information, which if it
was not legal evidence, was certainly convincing.  The
Tombs was a great place for political gossip.  I was
almost the only person there at this time who was not a
Tammany man.  And as in my two years of work I
had taken no interest in politics, I was considered
innocuous.  From scraps of conversation I learned that
there had been a meeting between Root and the Old
Man and some treaty made between them.  I could
guess at the terms.  The organization was to throw
enough votes to elect Root, and he was to keep too busy
in Washington to interfere in local affairs.  But I did
not dare to ask questions, and had no idea when or
where the agreement had been reached.  By the barest
chance I was able to fill in these details:

Coming up the Bowery late one night, I ran into a
crowd who had made a circle around two girls who were
fighting.  Just as I arrived on the scene one of the girls
called out——

"Charley—give me a knife."

Her cadet handed her one with a very ugly looking
blade.  I seldom used my right as county detective
to make arrests.  But as this seemed to threaten serious
bloodshed, I broke up the fight and collared the cadet.
He turned out to be a man of some importance in
politics, a runner for "The Old Man."  Two or three times
he had been arrested, but his pull had always got him off.

He was half drunk and in a great funk over the
serious charge I said I would make against him.  As I was
jerking him along towards the station house, he threatened
me with dire consequences if I ran him in—said
he was a friend of the Old Man.  I pretended not to
believe him, and in his effort to convince me that he
really was protected, he let the cat out of the bag.
He had been the messenger from the "Old Man" to
Root, and had arranged for the meeting between them.
It had taken place on the evening of September third,
in the back room of Billy Bryan's saloon.  He did not
know what had happened at the meeting, the only
person present beside the two principals had been a
"heeler" of Root's, named "Piggy" Breen.  There was
no use in arresting a man with his "pull," so I turned
him loose.

I hurried back to the settlement and telephoned for
Benson at his club.  He brought along Maynard to give
us legal advice.  Maynard was an erratic millionaire.
One-third of the year he played polo, one third he spent
in entering his 75-foot sloop in various club regattas,
and the rest of the time he lived in the city, leading
cotillions at night and maintaining a charity law office
in the day-time.  He was also a trustee of the settlement.
He was wildly indignant over the story of Root's
treachery.

"We can defeat Root, dead easy," Benson said.
"It's a cinch.  Publicity has never been tried in politics"
(as far as I know, Benson invented this term "publicity,"
now so commonly applied to organized advertising)—"it's
a cinch.  In less than twenty-four hours
everybody in the district will know he's a crook."

"What reform man can we get to run in his place?"
Maynard asked.

"Hell!" Benson said.  "We haven't time to nominate
anybody—election is only a week off.  I don't care who's
elected so we put Root out of business."

"Well, but," Maynard protested, "we don't want to
throw the influence of the settlement in favor of
Tammany Hall."

"We don't need to.  There must be some other
candidates—Socialist or Prohibition—just so he isn't
a red-light grafter."

"There isn't any Prohibition ticket," I said.  "The
Socialist candidate is named Lipsky."

"All right," said Benson, "we'll elect Lipsky."

Maynard went up in the air.  Help elect a Socialist!
He did not believe in political assassinations.

"Oh, devil!" Benson snapped.  "Would you rather
see one of these cadet politicians in office than an honest
working man?  I don't know who this man Lipsky is,
like as not a fool who sees visions.  But the Socialists
never nominate crooks.  What we want is an honest man."

Maynard, however, did not believe in community of
wives, felt it necessary to protect the sanctity of the
home—even at the cost of prostitution.  And so he
left us.

I wish I could remember half the things Benson said
about Maynard after he had deserted us.  I have
seldom seen anything more invigorating than Benson
mad.  But he did not let his indignation interfere with
business.  It was far along towards morning, but he
set to work at once.  He wrote to Lipsky promising
to support him, and then began sketching cartoons and
posters.

One was a picture of Root selling a girl in "parlor
clothes" to "The Old Man."  Another read:

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

      "VOTE FOR LIPSKY
            if you have a daughter!
      If you vote Democratic, you
            Vote for the RED LIGHTS!
      If you vote Republican, you
            Vote for the CADETS!
      VOTE THE SOCIALIST TICKET, and you
            VOTE FOR DECENCY!"

.. vspace:: 2

But the best were a series:

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

      "ASK ROOT
            where he was on the evening of September Third?"
      "ASK ROOT
            what business he had with the Old Man?"
      "ASK ROOT
            how much he got?"

.. vspace:: 2

Having mailed the letter to Lipsky and sent off the
copy to the printer, we turned in just at sun-up.

We were awakened a few hours later by the arrival
of a socialist committee.  There was Dowd, a Scotch
carpenter; Kaufmann, a brewery driver, and Lipsky,
the candidate.  He was a Russian Jew, and had been
a professor in the old country.  He could speak very
little English, but he had served a long term of exile
in the Siberian prison mines.

The socialists had no idea of winning the election.
The campaign was for them only a demonstration, a
couple of months when they had larger audiences at
their soap-box meetings.  They were suspicious of us.

That consultation is one of the most ludicrous of my
memories.  Benson, sitting in an arm-chair, in blue
silk pajamas, smoking cigarettes, outlined the plan in
his fervent, profane, pyrotechnic way—much of which
was beyond their comprehension.  Kaufmann had to
translate it into German for Lipsky.  And when we
talked German, Dowd could not understand.

"But," said Herr Lipsky, when the posters had been
translated to him, "there is nothing there about our
principles.  There is no word about surplus value.  It
is not the red lantern we are fighting—but the
Kapitalismus."

"The people," Benson raged—"the people with
votes don't know surplus value from the binominal
theorem.  Perhaps they will vote for their daughters—they
can see them.  But they won't get excited about
their great-great-grandchildren."

There was a squabble among the committee-men.
The Scotchman was too canny to take sides; he wanted
to refer the matter to the local, which was not to meet
until two days before the election.

"Aber," said the brewery man, "Ve need etwas
gongrete."

Lipsky accused him of being a "reformer."

After an hour's wrangle, it was decided that they
could not stop us from attacking Root.  But we were
to hold up the posters asking votes for Lipsky.  He
would not permit his name to be used without the
consent of the local.

As they were going downstairs, I heard Kaufmann
protesting—"Aber, Genossen—ich bin eine echte
revoluzionaire!"

So Benson ran the campaign unaided.  The effect
of his posters was electric.  The next day he brought
out some more:—

.. class:: center

   "ASK THE OLD MAN."

.. vspace:: 1

Of course they both denied.  But as the posters made
no specific allegations, they did not know what to deny.
Their output was conflicting.  During the afternoon,
Benson stirred things up again with a series—

.. class:: center

   "IF ROOT WON'T TELL, ASK 'PIGGY' BREEN."

.. vspace:: 2

Breen was rattled, and said it was all a lie, that the
red light business had not been discussed at the
meeting in Billy Bryan's saloon.  Both Root and the Old
Man had denied the meeting.  So Benson had them
on the run.  The more they explained the worse they
tangled things.  The cadet from whom I had forced
our information, fearing the wrath of The Old Man,
was of course keeping his mouth shut.  We did not give
away on him.  So they could not guess Benson's source
of knowledge, and would have given anything to know
just how much he knew.

The Socialist local nearly broke up over the affair.
A number were absolutely set against accepting aid
from a "Bourgeois philanthropist," like Benson.
Lipsky was in a violently embarrassing position.
Suddenly there was a good chance of his election.  The
people of the district were manifestly excited over the
issue.  They were ready to vote for any one who would
promise effective war against the cadets.  It must have
been a frightful temptation to him.  But he stood fast
for his principles.  He did not want to be elected on
a chance reform issue.  If the people of the neighborhood
stood for Marxian economics, he would be glad to
represent them.  But he would have nothing to do with
demagogy.

On the other hand, a young Jewish lawyer named
Klein was the Socialist candidate for alderman, and he
saw a chance of being elected on the "Down with the red
light" cry.  He was ready to tear the hesitaters to
pieces.  He felt that the social revolution and universal
brotherhood only awaited his installation in office.

At last it was agreed that a mass meeting should be
called in the Palace Lyceum on Grand Street and that
Klein and Benson should speak on the red light issue
and Lipsky on economics.  We brought out the "Vote
the Socialist Ticket" poster.

Benson was at the very top of the advertising
profession, and he certainly threw himself headlong into
this job.

"I've persuaded about fourteen million people to buy
Prince of Wales Aristocratic Suspenders," he said.
"I don't see why I can't persuade a few thousand to
vote right once in their lives."

He certainly did marvels at it.

The night before election, the Palace Lyceum was
packed to the roof.  And this in spite of the organized
efforts of the strong-arm men of the machine.  But the
meeting was a miserable fizzle.  Benson was helpless
between those two speakers.

Klein's discourse consisted in telling what he would
do if elected—among other things, I recall, he was going
to nationalize the railways and abolish war.

Benson was not much of a public speaker.  As far
as I know, it was his one attempt.  But his success at
advertising was based on his knowledge of the people
and how they thought.  They were not interested in
Klein or the nationalization of the railroads.  The one
thing which moved them was the sale of their daughters.
Benson went right to the point, reminded them of it
in a few words, and then told the story of Root's
treachery, piecing together our facts and guesses.  "It is
not legal evidence," he said, "you can take it for what
it is worth.  It's up to you—tomorrow at the voting
booths."

"To hell with Root!" somebody yelled.

"There's only one candidate better than Root,"
Benson shouted back,—"Lipsky!"

When they got through cheering, he gave them the
words of a song he had written to "Marching through
Georgia."  He had trained the Männer Chor of the
Arbeiter Studenten Verein to sing it.  It caught on
like wildfire.  I am sure that if the meeting had broken
up then, and they could have marched out singing that
song, Lipsky would have been elected overwhelmingly.
But Lipsky spoke.

"Der Socialismus ruht auf einer fasten ekonomischen
grundlage...."

For twenty minutes in deadly German sentences he
lectured on the economic interpretation of history.
Then for twenty minutes he analyzed capitalism.  Then
he drank a glass of water and took a fresh start.  He
referred to Klein's speech and pointed out how the
election of one or a hundred officials could not bring
about Socialism; the only hope lay in a patient,
widespread, universal organization of the working class.
Then in detail he discussed the difference between
reform and revolution, how this red light business
was only one by-product of the great injustice of
exploitation by surplus value.

When he had been talking a little over an hour, he
said "Lastly."  He began on a history of the
International Socialist Party from its humble beginning in
Marx' Communist League to its present gigantic
proportions.

On and on he drawled.  Many got up and left—he
did not notice.  Someone in the gallery yelled,

"Cheese it!  Cut it out!  We want Benson!"

He went right on through the tumult, and at last
discouraged the disturbers.  The recent International
Socialist Congress had discussed the following nine
problems: (1) The Agrarian Question, (2) The
Relation of the Political Party to Trade Unions....  It
was hopeless.  The audience melted.  And they did
not sing as they left.

At last he was through.  I remember the sudden
transformation.  The set, dogged expression left his
face, as he looked up from his notes.  His back
straightened, his eyes flashed—a light came to them which
somehow explained how this dry-as-dust professor of
economics had suddenly left his class-room and thrown
his weak gauntlet at the Tsar of all the Russias.  It
was the hope which had sustained him all the weary
years in Arctic Siberia.

"Working-men of all lands—Unite!" he shouted it
out to the almost empty house—his arms wide thrown
in his only gesture—"You have nothing to lose but your
chains!  You have a world to gain!"

There was a brave attempt at a cheer from the few
devoted Socialists who remained.  The exultation left
him as suddenly as it had come, and he sat down, a
tired, worn old man.  Klein rushed at him, with tears
in his eyes.  "You've spoiled it all!" he wailed.  The
old man straightened up once more.

"I did my duty," he said solemnly.

When the returns came in the next night, the
Socialist vote had jumped from 250 to 1800.  Root had
only 1,000.  O'Brien, the machine candidate, won with
2,500.  At the last moment, the Old Man, seeing that
Root was hopelessly beaten, had gone back on his
bargain and sent out word to elect O'Brien.

"The funny thing about the Socialists is," Benson
said to me, "that they are dead right.  Take Lipsky.
He's a dub of a politician, but pretty good as a
philosopher.  Wasn't it old Mark Aurelius who wanted the
world ruled by philosophers—not a bad idea—only it's
impracticable.  They are right to suspect us reformers.
Nine out of ten of the settlement bunch are just like
Maynard—quitters when it comes to the issue.  They'd
like to uplift the working class, but they don't want
to be mistaken for them.  And after all this red light
business is only a symptom.  You and I and Lipsky
can afford to be philosophic about it—we haven't any
daughters.  But the fathers who live in this dirty
district—they ask for bread—not any philosopher's stone.
Any way, we fixed Root, and that is what we set out
to do."

"It cost me a lot of money," he said later.  "And I
did not want to go broke just now.  There is a bunch of
swindlers out in Chicago with a fake shoe polish they
want me to market.  It will ruin a shoe in two months.
They are offering me all kinds of money.  I hate to go
to it—but I guess I'll have to."

He sat down to his desk and began studying his bills
and bank-book.

"How would 'shin-ide' do for a bum shoe-polish?"
he said, looking up suddenly.  "'Shin-ide.  It puts
halos on your shoes.'"

Our sudden burst into politics, at least Benson's—my
small part in it was never known—attracted a good
deal of newspaper notice.  Certainly Root realized
where his troubles started, and he went heartily about
making us uncomfortable.

A couple of mornings after election, the Rev. Mr. Dawn,
the head-worker, came to our room, his hands
full of newspapers and letters—the "corpus delicti."

I wish I could give more space to Dawn.  He was a
thoroughly good man.  And although we judged him
harshly at the time, I think an admirable man.  At
least, I feel that I ought to think so about him, but
some of the old contempt still clings to his memory.

His whole soul was wrapped up in the settlement
movement.  Socialism was repellent to him because it
insisted on the existence of class lines.  He had come to
America from England because the class distinctions—so
closely drawn there—were repugnant to him.  He
hoped in our young Republic to see a development in
the opposite direction.  His hope blinded him.

And in spite of his loudly-professed Democracy, he
was essentially aristocratic in his ideas of social service.
The solution of our manifest ills he expected to find in
the good intentions of the "better bred."  Their loving
kindness was to bring cheer and comfort to the lowly.
His faith in the settlement movement was real and
great, which of course made him very conservative in
the face of any issue which involved its good repute.

"You people seem to have seriously offended Mr. Root,"
he began.

"You don't say so!" Benson replied.  He was shaving.

Dawn could not understand Benson's type of humor.

"I am afraid you have," he said.

Benson cut himself.

"I don't remember having called him anything
worse than a cadet," he said sweetly.

"Oh, I see you are joking."

"No.  I did call him that."

"I'm sorry to hear you say it.  Sorry to have you
verify the report that you used intemperate language.
I have never met Mr. Root.  But he has many friends
among...."

"The best people?" Benson interrupted.

"I was about to say among our supporters.  It is
most regrettable that your ill-advised attack on him
may alienate many of them.  It seems also that you
have dragged the name of the settlement into the mire
of Socialism.  I must confess that I hardly know—that,
in fact, I am at a loss...."

"You needn't worry about it.  Whitman and I will
leave.  All you have to do is to roll your eyes if we are
mentioned, and say—'Yes.  It was most regrettable—but
of course they left the settlement at once!'  Invite
Root to dinner a couple of times.  Walk up and down
Stanton Street with him—arm in arm.  It will blow
over—it will square everything with 'the best people'!"

"I am sorry to hear you speak so bitterly," Dawn
said, "But frankly, I think it wisest that you should
sever your connection with us.  When the welfare of
the whole settlement movement is at stake, I cannot
allow my personal feelings to blind my...."

"Oh, don't apologize.  There is no personal ill-feeling."

And so we left the settlement.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`BOOK V`:

.. class:: center large bold

   BOOK V

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center large bold

   I

.. vspace:: 2

Benson and I set up housekeeping in the top floor of
an old mansion on Eldridge Street.  Once upon a time
it had boasted of a fine lawn before it, and of orchards
and gardens on all sides.  But it had been submerged
in the slums.  You stepped out of the front door onto
the busy sidewalk, and dumb-bell tenements springing
up close about it had robbed it of all its former glory.
Two mansard bedrooms in the front we threw together,
making a large study.  We put in an open fire-place,
built some settees into the walls and before the windows.
There were bookcases all about, some great chairs and
a round table for writing and for meals.  Of the rooms
in the back we arranged two for sleeping, turned one
into a kitchen and a fourth into a commodious bath.
With his usual love for the incongruous, Norman
nicknamed the establishment—"The Teepee."

In my work in the Tombs I had one time been able
to clearly show the innocence of an old Garibaldian, who
was charged with murder.  He felt that he owed his
life to me, and so became my devoted slave.  His name
was Guiseppe and he had fought for Liberty on two
continents.  It was hard to tell which was the more
picturesque, his shaggy mane of white hair or his
language—a goulash of words picked up in many lands.
Within his disappointed, defeated body he still nursed
the ardent flame of idealism.  The spirit of Mazzini's
"Young Italy," the dream of "The Universal Republic"
lived on in spite of all the disillusionment which
old age in poverty and exile had brought him.

In the Franco-Prussian War, while campaigning in
The Vosges, he had cooked for the Great Liberator.
We installed him in the kitchen of the Teepee.  His
especial pride was a pepper and garlic stew which
Garibaldi had praised.  This dish threatened to be the
death of us.  It was the trump he always led when in
doubt.



.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

   II

.. vspace:: 2

During the years I was in the settlement, I received
regularly two letters a month from Ann.  They were
never sentimental.  They dealt with matters of fact.
Norman's uncle and aunt had interested themselves
in her ambition and had allowed her much time to study.
At first her work in Pasteur's laboratory had consisted
in cooking bouillon for the culture of bacteria.  It did
not seem very interesting to me, but it fascinated her.
She even sent me the receipt and detailed instructions
about using it.  After awhile she had been promoted
to a microscope and original research.  She soon
attracted Pasteur's attention and he offered her a position
as his personal assistant.  Her employers were
immensely proud of her success and, securing another
nurse, released her.  She was enthusiastic over this
change.  She could learn more, she wrote, watching the
master than by any amount of original work.

It was part of her character that her letters gave me
no picture of Paris.  She had no interest in inanimate
things, no "geographical sense."  I knew the names
and idiosyncracies of most of the laboratory assistants,
she gave me no idea of Les Invalides, near which she
lived.  There was much about the inner consciousness
of a German girl with whom she roomed, but I did not
know whether the laboratory was in a business or
residential section of the city.  She wrote once of a
trip down the river to St. Cloud, and all she thought
worth recording was the amusingly idiotic conversation
of an American honeymoon couple, who sat in front of
her, and did not suspect that she understood English.

Although she wrote so much about people, the
characters she described never seemed human to me.  She
did not understand the interpretive power of a
background.  Her outlook was extremely individualistic.
Auguste Compte wrote somewhere that there is much
more of the dead past in us than of the present
generation.  I would go further and say that there is much
more of the present generation in us than there is of
ourselves.  If we stripped off the influence of our homes,
of our friends, of the contempore books we read, of our
thousand and one social obligations, there would be
precious little left of us.  Ann carried this stripping
process so far that even Pasteur, for whom she had the
warmest admiration, seemed to me a dead mechanism.

She never referred to our personal relations, never
spoke of returning to America.  And I avoided these
subjects in my answers.  I was afraid of them.

I thought about her frequently and almost always
with passion.  I dreamed about her.  Fixed somewhere
in my brain was a very definite feeling that such
emotions ought not to exist apart from love.  I was not in
love with Ann.  Her letters rarely interested me.  It
was a task to answer them.  Our contacts with life
were utterly different.

I kept to the "forms" of chastity.  There are those
who believe that there is some virtue in preserving
forms.  I have never felt so.  It did not require much
effort to keep to this manner of life.  I was constantly
observing prostitution from the view-point of the
Tombs.  And to anyone who saw these women, as I
did, in their ultimate misery and degradation, they
could excite nothing but pity.  There is no part of the
whole problem of crime so utterly nauseating.  Although
I held myself back from what is called "vice," the state
of my mind in those days was not pleasant,—and I
think it was not healthy.  It was no particular comfort
for me to learn that other men, living, as I was, in
outward purity, were also tormented by erotic dreams.

Shortly after we moved into the Teepee a letter came
from Ann which was bulkier than usual.  The first
pages were a statement of new plans.  An American
doctor, who had been working with Pasteur, was returning
to establish a bacteriological laboratory in this
country.  He had offered her a good salary to come with
him as his chief assistant.  The laboratory was to be
built in Cromley, a Jersey suburb, thirty minutes from
the city.  As soon as it was ready she was coming.
It would be interesting, responsible work and she could
make a home for her mother who was becoming infirm.

The rest, pages and pages, was a love letter.  Every
night, these years of separation—so she wrote—had
been filled with dreams of me.  As always she put her
work above her love.  Bacteriology was the great fact
of her life.  She held it a treason to reality when, as
so often happens, people lose their sense of
proportion and allow love to usurp the place of graver
things.  But now that her work brought her towards
her love, she looked forward to a fuller life—a life
adorned.

The letter brought a great unrest.  Her passionate
call to me certainly found an echo.  I lost much
sleep—tormented, intoxicated with the images her words called
up.  Years before an immense loneliness had pushed
me into the comfort of her arms.  This was no longer
the case.  My life was full, almost over-full of work and
friends.  But the pull towards her seemed even more
irresistible now than before.

Marriage seemed to me the only worthy solution.
But even more clearly than in the hospital days I knew
I did not want to marry her.  It was, I suppose, above
all because I did not love her.  It was partly because I
liked my bachelor freedom, the coming and going
without reference to anyone.  It was partly my deep
attachment to Norman.  I felt he would not care for Ann.
Anyway it would break up our household in the Teepee.

At last a letter came setting the date of her arrival.
It coincided with a long-standing engagement I had
made to lecture on criminology in a western college.
I had an entirely cowardly sense of relief in the
realization that the meeting and adjustment were postponed.
But I thought of little else.  Returning from my
lectures, on the long ride across half the continent, with
the knowledge that Ann was awaiting me in the city,
that I could postpone things no longer, I won to a
decision.  I would see her at the earliest convenience—it
seemed more straightforward to see her than to
write—and tell her that I did not wish to recommence
our intimacy.  I might not be able to explain why I
wanted to break with her, but I could at least make it
plain that I did.

On my return, I found a letter waiting me in the
Teepee.  It contained her telephone number and a
query as to when I could come out for dinner.  I called
her up at once.  I would come that very day.  The
train out to Cromley seemed perversely slow.  I was
impatient to be through with it, to get back
undisturbed to my work.  It was only a short walk from
the station to her house.  The row of gingerbread
cottages along her street is one of the fixtures of my
memories.

Ann opened the door for me.  She held me out at
arm's length a minute.

"Woof!" she said, "You've grown old."  Then she
gave me a sudden kiss.  "Come.  You must meet
Mother."

In the little parlor, Mrs. Barton greeted me
cordially.  She was a tall, angular New England woman,
dried up in body, but her eyes were still young.  I have
seen many women like her down Cape Cod way.  But
her presence threw me into as much confusion as if
she had been some threatening sort of an ogress.  I
could not fight out this matter with Ann before her
mother.  And some instinct warned me that I must
plunge into my subject at once, if I wished to do it at
all.

"Dinner is ready," Ann said in the midst of my
embarrassment.

"This is my little grandson, William," Mrs. Barton
said of a tow-headed youngster, of three, who caught
hold of her skirt.

Ann picked him up.

"Can't you shake hands like a gentleman, Billy
Boy?" she asked.  "No?  Well, you don't have to."

She swung him into a high chair opposite mine.  I
have never been more embarrassed in my life.  It was
all so different from what I had foreseen.  I suppose I
had expected some heroics.  It was entirely common-place.
It was hard to keep in mind that a big moral
issue was at stake.  Mrs. Barton was evidently taking
my measure.  And "Billy Boy" glared at me across
the table out of his big, inane, blue eyes.

Ann did the talking, telling us of the wonders of
her new laboratory and something of the personality
of her chief.  She looked younger than when she went
away.  She had filled out considerably and her face
had lost the oldish, narrow look which I remembered.
She had that surety of gesture and tone which comes
only to those who have found the work they are fitted
to.  Above all she seemed happy, and contented and
merry.  Each glance I stole at her told me it would be
harder than I had thought to keep my resolution.  It
was impossible to look at "Billy Boy," he would have
stared the Sphinx out of countenance.  So I gave most
of my attention to Mrs. Barton.

When the dinner was over, we moved into the parlor
for coffee.  In a few minutes Mrs. Barton took the
youngster to bed.  The door had hardly closed behind
them when Ann's arms were about me.  There was a
broken flood of words.  I do not remember what she
said.  But somehow it seemed as if I were saying it
myself, so wonderfully her words expressed my own
longings.  A great happiness had fallen upon me.
Perhaps this passion was not right, perhaps it was neither
moral nor wise, but it was overwhelmingly a part of
me.  It would have been utter self-repudiation to deny it.

In the morning I again asked Ann to marry me.  It
was my last ditch.

"Don't," she said, "dearest, don't talk of marriage.
Why?  Why do you want to take our love into a courthouse?
Once for all—let's fight this out and be finished
with it."

It was all very clear to her.  Promises of love were
futile.  She had loved once before, had thought it would
last forever.  She was glad there had been no promises.

"I'm older now—not so likely to change—but why
go to law about it?  Why do you want to marry me?
Isn't it partly because some people—perhaps your own
family—would be shocked at a free love union?  Well,
haven't I a right to think of my people?  My sister,
who's dead, Billy's mother—she didn't think it was
necessary to have a wedding ring and all that.  My
people would be grieved if I got married.  They'd think
I'd conformed—gone back on my principles.  It would
break mother's heart.  It would seem like a repudiation
of her way of living.  And she's the finest mother
anyone ever had.  Even if I didn't believe in free love, I'd
never get married on her account."

Despite what Ann told me I was decidedly embarrassed
to meet her mother at breakfast.  But when we
appeared, Mrs. Barton kissed me.  Her hands on my
shoulders, she searched my face with her eyes.

"Ann loves you very much, my boy," she said.  "Be
good to her."

The breakfast was a far pleasanter meal than the
dinner had been.  Even Billy Boy's stare was not quite
so hostile.

Yet as I rode into town on the early train my scruples
came back.  To be sure I had very little respect for the
"sanctity" of formal marriage.  I had seen too much of
it in the Tombs.  Certainly no amount of legal or
religious ceremony is a guarantee of bliss or even of
common decency.  The minor marriage failures are attended
to in the civil divorce courts.  The domestic difficulties
which are threshed out in the criminal courts show very
clearly that there is no magic in church ritual to
transform a brute into a good husband.  Ten wedding rings
will not change an alcoholic woman into a good mother.
And then I was always witnessing "forced" marriages.
Such was the cheap and easy solution in cases of
seduction and rape in the second degree.  Our law givers
have decreed eighteen as the age of consent.  The
seduction of a girl under that arbitrary age is rape.  Most
of our grandmothers were married earlier.  But the law
is too majestic a thing to consider such details.  It
deals with general principles.  If it has been flouted,
Justice must be done though the heavens fall.  However,
it is an expensive matter to send a man to prison.
So he is offered the alternative of marrying the girl.
Justice gives no heed to the morality nor happiness of
the two young people who have fallen in trouble, cares
not at all for the next generation.  Send the guilty
couple to the altar.  Their sins are forgiven them.  The
conventions have been vindicated.  The juggernaut is
appeased.  No.  I was very little impressed with the
virtue of "legal" marriage.

But I had a strong, if rather indefinite, ideal of a
"true" marriage, a real mating, a close copartnership,
a community of interest and a comradely growth,
sanctified by a mutual passion.  I saw no chance of
this in my relation to Ann.

At the Tombs that day, I tried, and to a large extent
succeeded, in forgetting the problem.  But back in the
Teepee, at dinner with Norman, it seized me again.
Even Guiseppe noticed my preoccupation and walked
about on tiptoe.

"What's eating you?" Norman asked as we drank
our coffee.  "Any way I can lend a hand?"

"A woman," I said.

"That lets me out."  And after a while he muttered
"Hell."

"What do you think," I asked—suddenly resolved
to get an outside opinion—"about one's right to be
intimate with a woman, outside of marriage?"

"I don't think about it at all," he snapped.  "Not
nowadays.  Time was when I didn't think of much
else.  It didn't do me any good.  The times are rotten—out
of joint.  Everything we do is out of joint—inevitably.
Ninety per cent of us want to do what's right
and as it is ninety-nine per cent of us ball things up.  I
don't think much of marriage.  I tried it once—divorced."

This was news to me.

"I don't like to talk about it.  No use now.  It was
a miserable affair.  I tried to be decent—did all I knew
how to make it right.  But I guess the girl suffered more
than I did—which is one of the reasons why I hate God.
Some people tumble into happiness—but it seems luck
to me—pure luck."

I cannot recall that evening's talk in detail.  Norman
was unusually reticent.  It was only by questions that
I could draw him out.

"What do you think about free love?" I asked.

"It's a contradiction in terms.  There's nothing free
about love.  It's tying oneself up in the tightest kind
of a knot.  A man will not only work his fingers off for
the woman he loves—he'll have his hair cut the way
she likes.  A person in love doesn't want to be free.
The hell of it is when the slavery continues after the
love is dead.  Don't try to free love—what's needed is
the emancipation of the loveless."

We were silent for a while, very much distressed
that we could find no solid anchorage.  I was about to
ask some other question when he broke out again on
his own line of thought.

"Abolishing marriage won't do it.  These Anarchists
are naïve.  They want to make things simple—say free
love would simplify the matter.  But all progress—all
evolution—is towards more complex forms.  Our brains
are better than monkey brains because they're more
complex.  This "simple life" talk is rank reaction.  I
don't want to see laws abolished, but brought up to
date.  Civilization means ever increasing complexity
in the forms of life.  And we try to govern it by Roman
law, plus a hodge podge of mediæval common law.  Not
less laws—but modern laws."

For a while his mind played about this idea, then he
ended the discussion abruptly.

"Why put your problem up to me?  As far as solving
the man and woman question goes, my life has been a
miserable failure.  No matter what you do, whether
you quit or go ahead—unless you're lucky as
hell—you'll wish you were a eunuch before you're through."

So I got little help from him in this matter.  I never
really settled it.  More or less it settled itself.  There
were forces at work which were stronger than my
scruples.  Sometimes it seemed horribly wrong to me
and I decided not to go back to Cromley.  But as the
days passed I began to think more and more of Ann.
Sooner or later I telephoned.  I did not surrender
without many struggles.  But gradually she became an
accepted fact in my life and with the years an
increasingly valued fact.  I am not proud of the moral
indecisions, not at all proud of my contentment with
what seemed less than perfect.  But so it was.

Nothing in my life has seemed to me of so uncertain
ethical value.  Of course it was a violation of our
traditional morality, but there are very few who blindly
accept the conventions as always binding.  I cannot
dismiss it offhand as simply right or wrong; my own
judgment in the matter was swung back and forth with
almost the regularity of a pendulum.

At first it seemed to me unfair to take so much more
than I could give.  But after all I think little is gained
by trying to treat love like merchandise, by trying to
measure and weigh it.  Certainly Ann would have been
glad if I had loved her more wholly.  But she regarded
that as a work of fate, which no amount of wishing—by
either of us—could change.  She would have run away
if our intimacy had begun to interfere with her work.
She threw herself into her specialty with a
wholeheartedness I have never seen equalled.  Once I asked
her if she had no desire for children.

"Of course I have," she said, "but sometimes I've
wanted the moon to wear in my hair.  I'd like to live
till I could see the triumph of medicine.  I'd like to be a
pall-bearer at the funeral of the last malignant germ.
I'd like a yacht.  I never went sailing but once—and
it was very wonderful.  But I don't want any of these
things in the same way I want to work."

She was not entirely satisfied.  Who is?  She had
been taught contempt for the cheap respectability we
could have secured for a small fee from a justice of the
peace.  I think she got as much happiness out of our
relationship as most women do from their home lives.
I cannot picture her as getting any added pleasure out of
sewing buttons onto my clothes or darning my hose.
No doubt there were lonely evenings when she wished
the fates had given her a more ordinary life and a
husband who came home regularly.  Although she
never complained, I knew that it hurt her if the rush
of other—to me more important—affairs kept me in
town when she was expecting me.  But she would have
been more unhappy if she had been in love with a man
who interfered in the least in her freedom.  It does not
seem so unfair to me now as it did at first.  We were
neither of us getting all we could dream of.  But no
more was either of us ready to give up the half loaf.

And "half loaf" seems a very inadequate term for my
share.  I find myself trying to "argue" about this—I
am rather vexed by things I cannot call either black
or white.  But so much of it was utterly unarguable.
If we are, as some say, to judge life by the pleasure
it brings us, Ann was beyond question the biggest and
best thing in my life.  I remember one Sunday in the
late fall, we were afoot with the first streak of dawn;
all day long we tramped through the Jersey mountains.
The autumn coloring of the maple groves was
unutterably gorgeous.  Just at sunset, all the western
sky brilliant with red and a hundred shades of hot
orange—even more brilliant than the frost nipped
leaves had been—we reached a little railroad station
and so came back to Cromley and the roaring wood fire
and New England supper Mother Barton had prepared
for us.  I would feel sorry for anyone to whom such
a day would not seem glorious.  But to me, living six
long days a week in the seething slums, in the even
gloomier shadow of the Tombs, such outings were a
renewal of life, a rebirth.

And besides the evident pleasure of these holidays,
Ann brought me a feeling of mental and physical
wellbeing and healthfulness I had never before known.
My grip on life was surer, my vision clearer, my store
of energy was better adjusted, more economically
utilized, because of her.  I believe that a man, who says
he cannot live in celibacy, is lying.  But with equal
emphasis, I believe that the circumstances which make
it wise for a man or woman to live out their lives alone
are extremely rare.  The hours I spent at Cromley
were recreation in the deepest sense of the word.

The rides into town on the early train stick in my
mind as a memory apart from all the rest of my life.
I seemed at those times to be in a higher mood than
usual.  Speeding into the city, to my grim task in the
Tombs, from the sweet solace of her home, I found
inspiration and hope for my daily grind.  There was an
entirely special sensation, experienced at no other
time, when I found myself aboard the ferry, leaning
over the fore-rail, watching the sky-scrapers struggle up
through the morning mist.  Perhaps all of us know some
such exhilarating environment, which makes us exult
in life and work and purpose.  Standing forward on the
upper deck, my lungs full of the sweet salt air of the
harbor, some foolish association always recalls the lines
from the speech of William Tell and makes me want to
shout aloud—"Ye rocks and crags, I am with you
once again."

None of the obvious objections to such an irregular
relationship seem to me to have much weight in the
face of the very real good it brought me.  And yet—I
cannot accept it without qualifications any more than
I can condemn it.  I have come to feel that its
unsatisfactoriness was due to its fragmentary character.
I cannot agree with Ann in her theory of keeping work
and love apart.  A man who divorces his religion from
his business finds both of them suffer.  I think the same
rule holds for our problem.  I did not enter in any
way into Ann's work, nor she into mine.  She gave me
new energy for it, rested me from its weariness, but
never was a part of it.

I think the fact that I can, in writing of my life,
make one section deal with her and another with my
work and very seldom mention both in the same
paragraph, is the severest criticism which can be brought
against our relationship.



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   III

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Benson persuaded an editorial friend to publish as
articles some of the lectures on criminology which I
had delivered out west.  A supreme court justice
attempted to answer my criticisms of the judicial system
and carelessly denied some patent facts.  The
newspapers made a nine days sensation out of our
controversy.  One effect of the discussion was to awaken
the Prisoner's Aid Society to a realization that
something ought to be done.  In order to relieve themselves
of this responsibility they proposed to employ me as
their secretary in the place of an elderly gentleman
who had held that position gratuitously—and sleepily—for
twenty odd years.  The offer did not, at first,
attract me.  My work in the Tombs held all my
interest.  Until Baldwin came along, I did not see any
chance of real service with the society.

He was assistant superintendent of the state industrial
school—a sort of intermediary prison for those
offenders who were too young for state prisons and too
old for the house of refuge.  He had started out as a
"screw" in Sing Sing, had been transferred to the state
hospital for insane criminals and from there to the
industrial school, where he had worked his way up
to the position he then held.  He really seemed to
like the details of institutional management; he knew
convicts and he was filled with a great enthusiasm over
the possibility of reforming youthful offenders.

He saw my name in the papers, as one interested in
criminology and he wrote to me about this enthusiasm
of his.  After several letters had been exchanged he
came to the city so we might talk it over.  We put him
up at the Teepee.  He was getting close to forty-five, but
was the youngest man of that age I have ever known.
Benson and I went over his project in detail.  For
three solid days we talked of nothing else.  Although
my work dealt chiefly with accused persons who were
waiting trial, still I was always being brought face to
face with the horrors of our convict prisons.  The
unspeakable stupidity of treating young boys as we
mistreat old offenders has always seemed to me the
crowning outrage of our civilization.

It is hard to realize today how revolutionary
Baldwin's scheme for a reformatory then sounded.
Only the most feeble and timid experiments in such
matters had been tried.  We were still in those dark ages,
when orphan and destitute children were sent to jail.

The weak point in his proposal—as is the case with
almost every reform—was the expense.  The state paid
about ten cents a day for the maintenance of its
convicts, the per capita for the reformatory would be three
or four times as much.  Baldwin had foreseen this
criticism and had collected endless figures to prove that
it was only an apparent extravagance.  One of the
biggest elements in the cost of crime is the expense of
"habitual offenders."  Baldwin had the life-story of one
man who was serving his twelfth term in state prison
and he had figured out just how much this man's
various crimes and arrests and trials and imprisonments
had cost the community and how much cheaper
it would have been to have spent enough to reform him
while he was young.  It was an impressive document.
By a number of such tables he made a conclusive case.
The greater expense of the reformatory, would be a
real economy if he could save one third of the boys.
He believed that two-thirds could be reformed.  With
the help of a constitutional lawyer he had crystallized
his ideas into a bill, which he hoped to have introduced
into the legislature.

As I have said, Norman and I gave three days close
attention to the project.  Baldwin had had much
practical experience in such matters and had prepared
his case admirably.  The scheme looked feasible to
us—as indeed it has since proved.  We were all
unsophisticated enough to believe that a good plan once
explained to the people would be immediately accepted.

I went before the executive committee of the Prisoner's
Aid Society and offered to accept the secretaryship,
if they would pledge their support to Baldwin's
bill.  They could find no precedent for such a measure
in their books on European penology and I doubt if I
could have swung them into line single-handed.  But
Benson was one of their board of directors and they
relied on him to meet their annual deficit.  He was
able to bring more potent arguments to bear than I.

By this time I had become a sort of established
institution in the Tombs.  With the exception of O'Neil,
I had won the confidence of the judges.  They were,
within certain limits, well-intentioned men and they
did not like to condemn young boys to the contagion
of state prison any more than you or I would.  I got
their signatures to a letter endorsing the reformatory
idea, and through them arranged with the district
attorney for such leaves of absence as I would need.

I find myself with very little enthusiasm for
chronicling this campaign for a reformatory.  It was so
dolefully disheartening, so endlessly irritating—it
dragged on so much longer than we had foreseen.  But
it is important not only to my own story, it influenced
not only my way of thinking; it has also a broader and
more compelling significance.  There was hardly one
of my friends, the people of my generation who were
trying to make this world a more livable place, who were
not at one time or another involved in a similar fight.
One thing we all had experienced in common—the
journey up to Albany to try and cajole our legislators
into doing something, the value and wisdom of which
no sane man could doubt.  A new Acts of the Apostles
might be written about the endless succession of
delegations which gathered in the Grand Central Station,
en route for the capital, fired with enthusiasm for
some reform—a new tenement house law, some decent
regulation of child labor, some protection against the
crying evils of the fraudulent immigrant banks or the
vicious employment agencies and so forth.  It would
take a fat book to even list all the good causes which
have inspired such pilgrimages.  And the ardor with
which the delegations set out for Albany was only
equalled by the black discouragement which, a few
days later, they brought back.

After some trouble we found an assembly man who
consented to introduce our bill.  It was pigeon-holed
at once.  Then we went in for publicity.  I wrote
articles in magazines and newspapers.  Benson and
Baldwin got out and widely circulated a pamphlet.  They
were a strong combination, with the former's knowledge
of advertising and the latter's familiarity with the
subject.  I took the stump.

Everyone, I suppose, who has done similar work,
has made the same discovery.  You cannot win your
point with the ordinary audience by an appeal to reason.
At first I treated my subject seriously—with dismal
effect.  But Norman came to one of my New York city
meetings and cursed me roundly for a fool when it was
over.  I took his advice and went up and down and
across the state telling "heart-interest" stories; yarns
about the white haired mother whose only son was sent
to Sing Sing for some trifling offense and was utterly
corrupted by evil associates; about the orphan boy who
stole a loaf of bread for his starving sister.  How I came
to hate those two!  Once in my dreams I murdered
that "white haired mother" with fierce glee.  But I
could always rely on them to start tears.  If I tried to
give my audiences our constructive ideal, what we
meant by the word "reformatory," I lost my grip on
them.  They demanded thrills.  Well—I gave them
thrills.  It was the only way, but it made me feel like a
mountebank, like a charlatan selling blue pills.

By the end of the year we had worked up enough
popular interest to force a discussion of the bill on the
floor of the legislature.  On the first reading it was
referred to the Senate Committee on State Prisons.  After
several weeks of suspense the committee announced
a date for a public hearing.  I remember that at the
time we thought this meant victory.  At last we were
to have an opportunity to present our case in a serious
manner to serious men.  Baldwin and Benson and I put
in the preceding week preparing our briefs.  On the day
set for the hearing we marshalled our forces in the
lobby of an Albany hotel.  There was Allen, the
president of the Prisoner's Aid Society; Van Kirk, a
vice-president of the State Bar Association and the three of
us.  It was arranged that Baldwin and I should speak
first, he was to deal with the financial side of the
project and I with its broader human phases.  Allen and
Van Kirk were to add the endorsements of the organizations
they represented.  I recall how perfect our case
looked to us, how utterly impossible it seemed to fail
of convincing the committee.

The room in the old state house, where the hearing
was held was a dingy place.  There was the air of a court
about it and the attendants.  What seemed vitally
important to us was dismal routine to them.  When we
arrived the committee was listening to a deputation
of screws from Sing Sing who were asking for a revision
of the rules in regard to vacations.  The sight of the
three committee men cooled my ardor.  The chairman,
Burton, was an upstate lawyer, who affected the
appearance of a farmer to please his constituents.  The
other two, Clark and Reedy, were New Yorkers, one
a Republican the other a Democrat, both fat and
sleepy.  At last the screws finished their plea.  Burton
rapped with his gavel.

"What is the next business?" he asked wearily.

"Hearing in the matter of a bill to establish a
reformatory for juvenile offenders," the clerk drawled.

"Does the Commissioner of State Prisons endorse
this bill?" Clark asked.

"No"—the Commissioner was on his feet at once.
The charter of the Prisoner's Aid Society gave it
authority to inspect the penal institutions of the state,
to audit their accounts and so forth.  It was a thorn
in the flesh of all commissioners and they could
always be counted on to oppose any suggestion of the
society's.

"Well.  What's the use of going into the matter,
then?" Reedy asked.  "It's not our custom to throw
down the Commissioner."

"As it's on the calendar we'll have to listen to it,"
Burton ruled.

"How did it get on the calendar?" Clark growled.

"I was under the impression the Commissioner was
in accord," the clerk apologized.

"Well, I want to know where you got that
impression," Clark insisted with ill temper.

"Not from me," the Commissioner spoke up.

Burton rapped with his gavel.

"Order, gentlemen," he said.  "We are wasting
time.  We will hear anyone who wishes to speak in
favor of the bill."

Baldwin stood up and opened his notes.

"I have an important business matter I would like
to attend to," Reedy said.  "May I be excused?"

"Hold on," Clark protested, "It's my turn to get off
early."

"I can't excuse both of you," Burton snapped.
"This is the last business on the calendar.  It will not
detain us long.  Proceed.  What's your name?  Baldwin?
Proceed."

The two other senators scowled sullenly like children
who were being kept in after school.  Suddenly Reedy
began to grin.  He leaned back in his chair, so that
he could attract Clark's attention behind the shoulders
of the chairman who was writing a letter.  He held out
a coin.  "Odd or even?" he whispered.  It took Clark
a moment to understand, then his scowl relaxed.
"Even" he whispered back.  Reedy looked at the coin
and his face clouded up.

"I have no objection to excusing Senator Clark,"
he said, interrupting Baldwin in the midst of a sentence.

Burton looked up from his letter in surprise.  Clark
chuckled audibly as he left the room.  Reedy slouched
sullenly in his chair.  "Proceed," Burton said and turned
back to his letter.  Baldwin did admirably in the face
of his levity, but no one was listening.  Just as he was
on the point of closing, Burton interrupted him again.

"You have had fifteen minutes.  I will give the
other side ten and adjourn."

Van Kirk tried to argue with him, but Burton
ignored his existence.  "Mr. Commissioner," he said,
and turned once more to his letter.  It was a relief
to me that he cut me off.  I was too furious to have
spoken coherently.  The Commissioner, sure of success,
took the matter flippantly.

"Mr. Chairman, Senators.  The Department of
State Prisons is opposed to this bill on the ground that
it is a visionary piece of nonsense.  The whole talk
of a reformatory was started by this Mr. Baldwin,
an employee of my department, who is discontented
because we have not sufficiently recognized his abilities.
I understand that he wishes to be made superintendent
of the State Industrial School, in which institution
he is now employed in a subordinate position.  He has
secured the support of the undoubtedly sincere, but
visionary theorists of the Prisoner's Aid Society.  As
far as I know there are no other advocates of this bill.
I could not recommend so large an appropriation of
the people's money to satisfy the ambition of
Mr. Baldwin—nor to please the gentlemen of the
Prisoner's Aid Society!"

He had hardly regained his seat when Burton's gavel
fell.

"Adjourned."

Baldwin was one of the steadfast kind who do not
know the meaning of discouragement.  And Benson
was so angry that he threw himself into the fight with
redoubled ardor.  Between them they carried me along.

We started again at the bottom—trying to make
an effective demand reach the legislators from the
voters.  I went again through the state, but stayed
longer in each place, until I had formed a permanent
committee.  That year's work persuaded me that I
could have earned my living as a book-agent or by
buncoing farmers into buying lightning rods.

I remember especially New Lemberg, a sleepy town
on one of the smaller lakes.  I was the guest of the
Episcopalian clergyman and stayed at the rectory.  It
took me three days to land him, and he gave in at last
from sheer boredom.  He had been willing enough to
let me come and speak to his congregation after
morning prayer, and he had called a conference of the
ministers and leading citizens in his parlor on Sunday
afternoon.  But when I asked him to act as chairman
of the county committee he held back.  His life was
full to overflowing already with his parish work, he
was fond of the open country and of books.  His hobby
was translating Horace.  I was asking him to give up
some of this recreation for a cause which had never
come close to him.  I was sorry for him, but I needed
him to give "tone," the fashionable stamp, to the
committee.  On Monday afternoon—I had been harassing
him all morning, he proposed to teach me golf.  A general
discussion of literature carried us as far as the third
hole and he had been happy.  But as he was teeing for
the next drive, I began on him again.  He pulled his
stroke horribly, and sat down in a pet.  I remember
those links as the most beautiful spot in all the state.
There was softly rolling farm lands, woods and fields
in a rich brocade of brown and green, and below us the
lake.  Here and there a fitful breeze turned its surface
a darker blue.

"I'm so busy as it is," the rector pleaded, "I can't
take on this.  Really—you know all my time is taken
up already.  I don't get out like this more than once a
week.  You must—really it's asking too much of
me—I'm getting old."

It was his last spurt of resistance.  I hung on
desperately and in a few minutes he gave in.  He was a
valuable acquisition, no one worked on any of our
committees harder than he.  But somehow I was
ashamed of my conquest.  I am sure he shudders
whenever he thinks of me.  If he should meet me on the
street even now, I would expect him to run away.

After a solid year of this work—I groan still when
I think of it—we had committees in almost every
assembly district.  They called on the various candidates
and secured their promises to support the bill.  We
circulated immense petitions and sent formidable lists
of signatures to the successful candidates.  We had
also stirred the women's clubs to action.  The
newspapers made considerable comment on the "Petition
of the Hundred Thousand Mothers."  When the new
legislature convened, we had the signatures of over
two-thirds of the assemblymen, and a good majority
of the senators to pledges to vote for the reformatory.

Instead they gave their attention to the routine
jobbery of their trade and just before they adjourned
they elected a joint commission, three members from
each house, to consider the matter.

I am quite sure, and having travelled so much through
the state, I was in a position to know, that if we could
have had a referendum, eighty per cent of the votes
would have been for our bill.  Fifteen of the twenty
per cent of hostile votes would have come from the most
ignorant and debased districts of the big cities.  I
doubt if a measure has ever gone before the state
legislature with the more certain sanction of the electorate.
Democracy is a very fine Fourth of July sentiment.
But in those days it had nothing to do with "practical
politics."

The new commission did not begin work for six
months.  As the members received ten dollars a day
for each session, they sat for an hour or two a day for
several weeks.  But at last we had our chance to
present our case in a thorough and serious manner.
The opposition to the bill was based on the testimony
of half a dozen wardens who had been ordered to the
stand by the Department of State Prisons.  They had
nothing to offer but prejudice and ignorance.  Van
Kirk, his fighting spirit stirred by the snub he had
received from the senate committee, acted as our
attorney and did it ably.  Benson took hold of the press
campaign and the newspapers were full of favorable
comments.  I am sure that when they adjourned after
hearing our arguments, every commissioner was
convinced of the wisdom of our project.

But our opponents were better politicians than we.
We let our case rest on the evidence.  Just what wires
the Department of State Prisons pulled during the recess,
I do not know.  But when the commission reconvened,
a sub-committee introduced a substitute bill, which
was accepted without discussion and unanimously
recommended to the legislature.  It was a travesty
on Baldwin's scheme.  The age-limit was raised to
admit men of thirty.  Instead of being for first offenders,
the new bill read for persons "convicted for the first
time of a felony"—which opened the door to a large
class who have become almost hopelessly hardened by
a life of petty crime.  Ordinary cellular confinement was
substituted for the original plan of cottages.  It was
not at all what we had been fighting for.

As soon as I read the new bill, I went before the
Prisoner's Aid Society and begged them to repudiate it,
to stand for the original project or nothing.  But in
the first place they were not sufficiently informed in
the matter to recognize the difference between the two
bills and in the second place the four years of unwonted
activity had overstrained them.  They wanted to rest.
Ever since they have boasted of their enterprise in
getting this mutilated reformatory established.

I would have given it up in disgust except for personal
loyalty for Baldwin.  He felt that the reformatory,
even in its emasculated condition, was an opening wedge
and that as superintendent he might gradually be able
to persuade the legislature to amend the charter back
to his original design.  Certainly he deserved the
position, the institution would not have been established
at all except for his persistent efforts.  Norman and I
went into the fight again to bring pressure to bear on
the governor to appoint Baldwin.  We got no help
from the Prisoner's Aid Society; it had fallen
hopelessly asleep.  A few of our county committees came to
life again and circulated petitions.  My rector at New
Lemberg was the most active.  I think he was afraid
I would visit him again.  But the public was tired of
the issue.  The governor appointed a political friend.

I resigned from the Prisoner's Aid Society and went
back to my work in the Tombs.  I felt that I had wasted
four years.



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   IV

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Early in this campaign for the reformatory our
peaceful life in the Teepee was shaken up by the advent
of Nina.

Norman and I were coming home from the Annual
Ball of The Arbeiter Studenten Verein.  It was near one
o'clock Sunday morning as we turned into the Bowery.
At the corner of Stanton Street a girl flagged us.

"Hello, boys.  Ain't you lonesome?"

An arc-light sputtered and fumed overhead.  I will
never forget its harsh glare on her face.  It was a north
Italian face, wonderfully like a Bellini Madonna.  But
on it was painted a ghastly leer.  Above all she looked
too young.

"Aren't you afraid the Gerry Society will get you?"
Norman asked good naturedly.

There was elemental tragedy in the foul words with
which she answered him.  But with a sudden change of
mood—as unexpected as her appearance, as bewildering
as her blasphemy—she threw her arms about his neck
and kissed him.

The look of horror on Norman's face changed slowly
to another expression.  It was not wholly
incomprehensible.  There was something exotic—something
tantalizing to over-civilized nerves—in her youthful
viciousness.  Baudelaire would have found her a "*fleur
de mal*."  He would have written immortal verses to
her.  Norman was stern with himself in such matters.
He had steeled himself against the usual appeals of
vice.  It was the novelty of the attack that got through
his armor.  He pulled her hands apart, pushed her away
from him and looked at her, his face drawn and rigid.
A south-bound elevated roared past us overhead.  With
a sharp intake of breath he turned to me.

"I've half a mind to take her home."

"It would be a great treat for her," I said, "compared
to how she'll spend the night if you don't.  I
suppose it's you or a drunken sailor."

"Will you come home with me?" he asked with
sudden resolution.

"Sure.  You don't look like a cheap-skate."

So we started on along the Bowery, arm-in-arm.
At first we were all silent.  But intent on the business
of amusing her clients, she suddenly jerked her feet off
the ground, and hanging to our elbows, swung her
soiled little red slippers in the air before us.

"Gee!" she said, when we had recovered our balance,
"You're solemn guys."

"You're in line with the best traditions of philosophy,
kid," Norman admitted.  "There's no virtue in sinning
sadly.  We might as well laugh."

The rest of our progress home was a noisy scramble.
A hideous nightmare to me—out of the vague impressions
of which, I remember most clearly the complaisant
grin of the policeman on the beat; who twirled his stick
as we passed.

Guiseppe was dumb-founded at the addition to our
number.  Norman told him curtly to set a third cover
for our supper.

Once seated at the table Nina—that we discovered
was her name—did not let anything interfere with the
business in hand.  Norman ate little.  I had no
appetite.  So she did duty for all of us.  Norman made a
few remarks about the ball, but always he was watching
her.  I was unresponsive and conversation died.

When Nina had made way with the last edible thing,
the flood gates opened and she began to talk and play.
She had an immense animal vivacity, which kept not
only her tongue, but her whole body in action.  She
was full of a spirit of fun entirely foreign to both of us.
We were rather serious minded, sombre men.  Her love
of horseplay was a novelty.

It is hard to characterize her talk.  Much of it was
utterly unprintable.  There were words, words—words!
But somehow she seemed innocent of it all, wholly
ignorant of any better manner of conversation, any
better form of life.  She grew immensely in my regard
during those few minutes.  I have seldom listened to
more depraved language and yet a sort of intrinsic
virtue—the light of unsulliable youth—shone through.

I left them as soon as might be and went to my room.
I passed Guiseppe in the hall, he was muttering to
himself strange oaths: "*Dios*"—"*Corpo de
Bacco*"—"*Sapristi*"—"*Nom de nom*."  I silently echoed his
multilingual profanity.  My passions had not been stirred
and, looking at it in cold blood, I could only disapprove.
Norman followed me to my room.  Conversation did
not start easily.  But when at last I took my pipe out
of my mouth, he cut me off.

"Oh, don't say it.  What's the use?  I'm saying it
myself.  I wish I had long ears to wave, so I could bray.
There's only one thing to discuss.  These diggings are
as much yours as mine.  I'll take her to a hotel, if you
prefer."

"Here or elsewhere.  What difference does the place
make?" I growled.  "I haven't any geographical
interest in the case."

He thrust his hands deep in his pockets, paced up
and down a minute, then turned with an abrupt
"good-night" and went out.  It was a troubled night for me.
The brutal strength of the sex-pull had never seemed
so malignant before.  That I had begun to see something
lovable in Nina, only made it worse.

I got up early and although it was Sunday and I
had no work at court, I breakfasted in haste, hoping
to get out before they appeared.  But Norman caught
me just as I was leaving.

"Come here," he said, with his fingers on his lips.

He led me on tiptoe down the hall.  Through his
open door I could see her sleeping.  The coil of her
black hair and one white arm showed above the sheet.
There was an ugly, half-healed bruise near the elbow.
The painted leer had been washed from her face.  A
smile came and went—flickered—on her lips, a
wonderful smile of peaceful happiness.

"Am I clean crazy?" Norman whispered fiercely,
"or is she beautiful?"

We tiptoed back to the library.

"Can you keep an eye on her for a while?" he said.
"I had to have Guiseppe throw away her clothes—they
were too dirty.  I must get her some new ones.
It won't take me long."

But he stopped at the door and came back.

"It's the way she smiles in her sleep, Arnold, that
gets me."  He hesitated a moment, trying to find words
to fit his thought.  He, who was usually so glib, had to
search now.  "You know, they say dreams are just a
re-hash of waking experience.  But—well—it isn't the
kind of smile you'd expect from her.  God!  I'd like
to know what she dreams about!  It almost makes me
feel religious.  Reminds me of 'Intimations of
Immortality!'"

Then he gave up trying to say it and rushed out to
buy the clothes.  I laid out my note-books and tried to
work.  Half an hour later she appeared in the doorway,
sleepy-eyed, arrayed in a suit of Norman's pajamas.

"Where's he gone?" she yawned.

"He had to go out for a few minutes."—I did not
tell her why, as I thought he might enjoy surprising her
with the new outfit.  "He'll be back pretty soon.  If you
ring the bell, Guiseppe will bring you some breakfast."

"Where's the bell?" she asked, looking on the table.

"It's on the wall.  Press the button."

"Oh, it's a door be-e-e-l-l."  It ended in a yawn.

"If you wash your face, you may wake up enough to
be hungry."

"Aw!  Go to hell."

She thumbed her nose at me and departed.  She had
evidently entirely forgotten the dream which had
brought the smile to her lips and troubled Norman.
When Guiseppe brought in her breakfast, she came
back and sat down.  She had no greeting for me and I,
thinking of nothing worth saying, went on with my
writing.  When there was nothing more to eat she
began to talk with Guiseppe in rapid Italian.  After a
while he turned to me.

"It's very sad, Mr. Arnold.  She comes from the
same district in Lombardy where I was born."

My nerves were on edge.  I grunted that I did not
see how that made it any sadder.  He was surprised at
my tone, and was, I think, on the point of reminding
me that it was also in the same district that the Great
Liberator had been born.  But he thought better of it
and went off to the kitchen in a huff.

Nina wandered about the room, examining the bric-a-brac
with what seemed to me a stupid interest.  Her
inspection finished, she helped herself to a cigarette
and sat down cross-legged on the divan.  Out of the
corner of my eye, I could see that she was minutely
studying her pajamas.  She would gently stroke the
soft fabric, where it was drawn tight across the knee.
The tassels on the belt string held her attention for
several minutes.

"Say," she broke out suddenly.  "The old man says
he burned up my clothes.  Is it a lie?"

"No.  They are burnt.  Your friend thought they
were too dirty to wear."

"What sort of a game is this?" she demanded, after
blowing out a cloud of smoke.  "This here suit of clothes
is all right—it's real silk, I guess.  But—say—I don't
like parlor clothes.  See?  I won't stand for...."

I interrupted her, seeing at once what was in her
mind.  "Parlor clothes" are an old device—it was
doubtless invented by some pander of ancient Nineveh.
The proprietors of "disorderly houses" often keep their
girls in bondage by withholding all decent clothes.
The "parlor" costume, is one in which no woman
would dare to go on the street.  They are more
effective means of guarding slaves than chains.  I tried
to reassure Nina, telling her why Norman had gone out.

"Honest?" she asked.  "He'll let me go?  I'd raise
hell—sooner than be in a house.  It's the sidewalk for
mine—every time.  He'd better not try any fancy
games on me.  I sure would raise hell!"

"You wait and see," I said.  "He's on the square."

I began writing again, she lit another cigarette and
smoked awhile in silence.  But presently she came over
and sat on the table.

"Say.  He'll give me some money, besides the
clothes, won't he?"

"You'll have to arrange that with him."

"I've got to have two dollars, by ten o'clock."

"Wouldn't you rather have some good clothes than
two dollars?"

"No.  Real money."

I leaned back in my chair and looked her over.  At
last I ventured what was in my mind.

"I suppose women's clothes wouldn't suit your man.
But wouldn't some red neckties please him as well as
money?"

"Say"—her eyes narrowed threateningly—"You're
a wise guy, ain't you?  Think you know it all?"

"Well," I said, "I know some."

I turned back the flap of my coat and showed her the
badge of a county detective.  She whistled with
surprise, but did not seem dismayed.  In fact she became
suddenly friendly.  Everything about her recent
experiences, the bath, Norman's attitude towards her,
the meals, the rooms, had been strange and confusing.
But a policeman!  That came within the circle of
familiar.  She knew dozens of them.

"Gee!  I never would have thought you was a cop.
Plain clothes man?"

I nodded assent and then asked her.

"Who are you hustling for?"

For a moment she seemed to consider the advisability
of answering.  But what was the use of trying
to hide things from a "cop"?  What I did not know, I
could easily find out.  Her cadet's *nom-de-guerre* was
"Blackie."  She spoke of him without enthusiasm,
without marked revulsion—much as we speak of the
unavoidable discomforts of life, such as the bad air
in the subway, or the tipping system.  With a few
questions, I got her story—quite a different one from
what she had told Norman.

Ever since they had come to America, her mother
had been scraping out a bare living for herself and her
daughter by means of a small fruit business, and by
letting rooms behind the store to boarders.  One of
these men had seduced Nina under promise of taking
her to the marionette show.  This had happened—"Oh,
a very long time ago"—at too remote a date to be
definitely remembered.  She spoke of this man with
foul-worded bitterness.  It was not on account of the
evil he had done her, but because he had not taken her
to the show.  "Men always cheat us," she said.  "It
don't matter how foxy you are, they beat you to
it."  She had not burdened her memory with any precise
record of her childish amours.  They had been without
pleasure—for an ice-cream cone, a few pennies, a chance
to go to a show.  She was a devotee of Bowery drama.
"From Rags to Riches" was her favorite.  "That,"
she said, "was something grand!"

The first person who had come anywhere near making
love to her was this cadet "Blackie."  She had left her
mother, without any regret, to live with him.  That also
had been "something grand"—at first.  As near as
she could remember, it was about a month before he
drove her out on the street to "hustle" for him.  Was
he good to her, I asked.  She shrugged her shoulders.
Was he not a man?  Then she showed her first
enthusiasm.  He had a great "pull," he was a friend of the
"Old Man on Fourteenth Street."  She gave "Blackie"
this sincere tribute, the cops never troubled her.  But
he did have a temper.  "It sure is hell, when he's
mad."  She rolled up the sleeve of her pajamas and showed me
the bruise on her arm.  It had been a kick.  What for?
She had forgotten.

Then Benson came in, his arms full of bundles.  I
don't suppose he had spent more than fifteen dollars—things
are cheap in that neighborhood.  But it was an
imposing assortment.  I could not have bought so
complete a trousseau without minute written instructions.

Nina forgot her troubles in an instant, they never
troubled her long.  She pulled the bundles to pieces
and scattered the garments everywhere.  Guiseppe
came in on some errand, but one glimpse of those
feminine frivolities, strewn about our formerly sedate
bachelor chairs finished him.  With a wild Garibaldian
oath, he rushed back to his kitchen.

It was not in Nina's nature to allow anything to
intervene between her and her immediate desire.  The
things once seen, had to be tried on.

"Come, come," Norman protested.  "You'd better
do your dressing in the other room."

Nina seemed surprised at his scruples, but,
gathering up the garments, followed him docilely down the
hall.  Shrieks of glee came through the open door, beat
against my ears—distressingly.  I seemed to hear the
bones of some ghastly *danse maccabre*, rattling behind
her mirth.  But as if to drive away my gloom, she soon
dashed into the room, fully booted and spurred.  She
was very pretty.  And how she laughed!  She seemed a
sort of care-free and very young bacchante—the
daughter of some goddess of gayety.  She jumped
on the table and, imitating a music hall artiste, danced
a mild mixture of fandango and cancan.  And as she
danced, she sang—a ribald, barroom song.  But the
words meant nothing to her, she was just seeking an
outlet for her high feelings, expressing her childish
joy in her new possessions.

Our neighboring church bell began to strike the hour.
Nina brought down the foot which was in the air and,
in a strained attitude, listened.

"Gee!" she said, jumping down to the floor.  "It's
ten o'clock."

For a moment she stood irresolute, and then her face
hardening, she walked up to Norman.

"Gim'me two dollars."

The sudden demand hit him like a blow.

"Won't you stay to lunch with us?" he asked lamely.

"No.  I've got to go—now!  I want two dollars."

Such bargaining is unbearable to me, I fled to my
room.  In a few minutes, Norman came to my door.

"What can I do about this, Arnold?"

"Oh pay her her wages, and let her go," I said,
"what else is there to do?"

"My God," he swore and stamped into my room.
His face was white, his lip was bleeding a little where he
had bitten it.  "Somehow I can't!  What rotten
creatures we all are!  Of course I've known all about
this—but we have to touch it—to realize it....  Why did
I ever let her come into my life?  I can't send her
back to it.  She's such a kid.  And—Good God!—those
damned, drunken Bowery sailors!"

"Look here, Norman, you're only making matters
worse for her.  She'll get a beating if she don't have the
money to give her cadet.  He's...."

"Cadet?" Norman interrupted me, as though he
had never heard the word before.  He threw himself
down on my bed.  I had never seen him so moved.

"Isn't there any way out of it?" he groaned.

I hate to plead absolute despair, but I could see no
way out.  So I tried to talk reasonably.

"Don't take it so hard.  She's bred to it.  It isn't
half as bad to her as you think.  It's all she knows.  She
doesn't despise this cur of a cadet, she hustles for—the
way we do.  He's her man—the pivot of her existence."  And
I told him what she had said about Blackie.  "He
doesn't beat her as often as he might.  She feels rather
fortunate, because he's not worse.  There isn't any way
out.  They call it the most ancient profession.  Her
hard times haven't begun yet,—she's young.  She's
living on the fat of the only land she ever knew.  It
isn't exactly a bed of roses—but she's never known a
softer one."

"You're a sophist!" he cried, jumping up.  "Lies.
Damn lies!  She has known something better.  My
God—you should see her smile when she's asleep!
I can't stop prostitution, but I can keep her out of the
worst of it.  She's too young for these Bowery dens.
I won't let her go back to that damn pimp."

"Go slow," I said.  "What have you got to offer in
exchange—for this cadet?  I tell you, he's the big
factor of her life.  Are you willing to take the time and
trouble to fill his place?  Money won't do it.  She can't
count above fifty.  How are you going to amuse her?
She's used to excitement, to street life, the buzz of the
Bowery.  You're going to offer her a gilded cage, an
upholstered cell.  It won't work.  And suppose you do
succeed in giving her a taste for a finer life—what
then?  After you get through, she'll only find the old life
harder.  What's to become of her when you're tired?"

"You're the devil's advocate," he said vehemently.

"Perhaps.  But are you a God?  It would take all
of a pretty lively God's time to help—to really
help—the lady."

"We'll see what a man can do," he said and stamped
out, back to the library.  In a few minutes he called me.

"It's beyond me," he said.  "It looks like fright.
She seems to like me and the place.  I think she'd
stay, if she wasn't afraid of her old gang.  See if you can
reassure her."

"Nina," I asked, "are you in love with Blackie?"

She did not seem to be sure what the term meant.

"He ain't so bad."

"Well, if he were dead," I tried again, "would you
stay here with Mr. Benson?"

"Sure," she said.  "Sure!"

"You're afraid of Blackie?"

She nodded.

"Well.  Cheer up.  He can't hurt you here."

"He'd have me pinched," she insisted, doggedly.
"He's got a pull with the cops.  He'd sure have me
sent to the Island, if I tried to shake him."

"Look here,"—again I flashed my badge—"It's
gold.  That means I'm the same as a captain.  I've got
ten times more pull than Blackie.  If he gets gay, I'll
lock him up.  I'll plant a gun in his pocket and send
him up the river for concealed weapons.  You don't
need to be afraid of him."

"Gee," she said, "I'd like to stay.  But he'd sure
get me.  He's a bad one."

"He'll be a dead one," I said.  "If he starts anything
with a friend of mine."

I talked a few minutes more, but not till I showed
her a pair of hand-cuffs, which I kept in my room by
way of a curiosity, did she really believe she was safe
and begin to smile again.

Having established the family, I made an excuse to
go out.  I came back late at night and found Benson
sitting alone in front of the fire.

"She's asleep," he said.

"Must have had a lot of excitement," I replied, "to
be sleepy at this hour."

Having spent all the day outdoors, tramping in the
open air, my brain had cleared a little.  The thing had
lost its distorted proportions, had fallen into focus.
I could not understand how the affair had seemed so
momentous to me.  Such things, I knew very well,
were happening on all sides, all the time.  I was sorry
for Norman.  He would take it seriously and that, I
felt, meant days of stress and sadness.  My work in
the Tombs had made me realize more certainly than
he could the immense chances against his helping the
girl.  How many futile efforts I had made at first
to lend a hand to some of these unfortunate women!
I had given it up in defeat.  For her, even if the powers
of darkness pulled her back at last, it would mean at
least a little oasis of comfort and consideration in the
barren desert life the gods had mapped out for her.

"There's one thing, I must say for my soul's good,"
Norman said.  "It's a hard business, this analyzing
of our motives.  I'm sure I do want to save her, if I
can, from being a public prostitute.  But it's equally
true I want her for myself.  I certainly despise this
cadet, Blackie—but it's also true that I'm suddenly
become just ordinarily, humanly jealous of him.  I
don't want to pretend that I'm wholly occupied in
trying to be God-like."

"Well—I suppose I'm a cynic," I said.  "But I don't
expect any wonderful reformation—in either of you.
Only don't be unfair to her—don't expect too much of
her."

And so Nina became an accepted member of our
household.



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   V

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Norman certainly set earnestly about the work of
filling the place in Nina's life previously held by Blackie.

A few nights later I joined them in the middle of
the performance at Koster and Bials.  Nina looked
away from the stage only long enough to say "Hello."  She
was vibrant with excitement.  Norman and I sat
back in the box much more interested in her than in the
commonplaces of the stage.  We were both rather ill
at ease in so senseless and light-minded a place.

"This experience," he said and I thought I caught
a tone of apology in his voice, "is bringing me a closer
understanding of the life of the poor.  Of course they'd
resent my saying that Nina helped me to understand
them.  The poor are the worst of all snobs.  We
'reformers' believe in the working-class a lot more than
they do in themselves.  It's hard to get at them—we
only meet the kind who know how to talk and most of
them are mute.  The chaps in my Studenten Verein
long for education.  They envy us who had it forced
on us—and, of course, pose before us.  You can't really
get to people who envy you.

"But Nina never studied—barely reads—don't want
to.  This sort of thing is her *summum bonum*.  I haven't
found anything that makes her happier than for me
to put on evening clothes and take her to a flashy
up-town restaurant.  And she can't help talking.  She has
no self-consciousness—no pose.  What she says is
reality.  It's the wisdom of the tenements she babbles
out—the venerable philosophy of the poor.  I'm
learning a lot from her."

"You needn't apologize to me," I said.

"I wasn't apologizing," he retorted.  "Why should I?"

"I said you needn't."

"But you meant that I ought to—not to you, but
to somebody.  To whom?  To God?  To Mrs. Grundy?
No—why should I apologize?"—He threw his arm back
so that his hand lay on my shoulder, it was the nearest
our great love for each other ever came to the expression
of a caress—"I know you don't approve, Arnold.
But after all whom am I harming?  You and I have
been leading a pretty glum sort of a life...."

"You have," I interrupted.  "I'm in no position to
chuck any self-righteous stones."

"Oh," he said.  "That's what you meant when you
said I need not apologize to you."

"I suppose so."

"Well, to whom then?  Tell me," he went on when I did
not reply at once.  "I'm really glad to have the opinion
of a disinterested onlooker.  It always helps.  Tell me."

"Good God," I replied to his challenge, "I'm no
oracle—no omniscient voice of conscience.  But it
looks to me as though apologies were coming to Nina."

"Nina?" he said in surprise.

"Yes.  Don't you see what's happening?  She's
falling in love with you.  The real thing.  She never
saw anybody like you before.  You're like the shining
white hero of the Bowery melodrama, who rescues the
distressed heroine at the last minute—and *marries her*.
Of course you and I know that the young millionaires
with tenor voices don't marry the distressed damsels.
But remember the kind of dope her mind is filled with.
The wedding march always starts up, just before the
curtain goes down."

The slap-stick comedians had finished their turn, the
lights flared up and for the first time I noticed Nina's
resplendent gown.  It was really a beautiful dress.  If
her hair had been done up with a little more skill and
if Norman had not set all his authority against an
excess of powder and paint she would have looked
quite like an uptown lady, of the Holland Houses or
Rector's, like those who go up Fifth Avenue to a ball
or like those who turn over to Broadway and strut
about in the theater lobbies to attract the attention
of some gentleman from out of town.

I complimented her on her appearance and, she,
pleased as a child, told me how they had bought the
dress that afternoon at a second-hand place on Sixth
Avenue.  The most glorious experience of her life,
before she had met Norman, was a short acquaintance
with the woman who played the "lady villain" at
"Miner's."  They had had rooms in the same house for
a while.  And this tragedienne had confided to Nina
where she bought her second-hand clothes.  Norman
in a dinner jacket and Nina in a shirtwaist had attracted
a good deal of attention, so he had decided that she
must have a more suitable outfit for evening wear.
She had led the way.  And she told me with great
animation—and frequent profanity—of the long and
complicated dickering which had preceded the final
purchase.  The shop woman had asked $27.50 and
Nina had stuck out for $17.50.  At one stage of the
wrangle the woman had led Nina aside and called her a
little fool.

"'He's rich,' she says to me.  'He'll pay.  Don't
you know enough to stick him.  I'll knock off fifty
cents, you say all right.  He'll pay it.  And tomorrow
you come round and I'll give you three dollars.'  Now
wot do you think of that?  Say.  Do you know wot I
did?"

I could not guess.

"I spit at her.  I said 'You ....'" (Among the
other epithets were "cross-eyed" and "hook-nosed.")

"Well—how much did you pay at last?" I asked.

"I think," said Norman, "she could have got it for
the seventeen...."

"Sure, I could," Nina interrupted.  "But he was in
a hurry and gave the ... thief twenty.  It...."

The lights went down, the curtain up and a woman,
whom I would not have trusted to be kind to her own
children, brought on a troupe of pitiable dogs.  Nina
turned back to watch the stage.

"So you think," Norman reverted to the former
subject, "that I ought to marry her?"

"Of course not."

"If you have any reasons why I shouldn't that are
not pure snobbishness, I'd like to hear them."

"Good God," I said.  "You're not seriously thinking
of that, are you?"

"Hardly.  But the idea has occurred to me.  Why
are you so frightened by it?"

It is strange what illogical creatures we are!  Up
to that moment I had been sorry for Nina.  Every day
I liked her more.  And I saw with a sore heart the
wondering, dazed admiration grow within her for her
new master.  Love is one of the most primeval passions
of the race.  It is likely to be stronger—grander or
more devastating—with primitive people than with
those of us who have been civilized away from the
parent type.  I knew that Nina was falling in love
with Norman in a way no woman of our class ever
could.  He had taken her into a fairy land and she
could not, I felt, help expecting the fairy denouement.

But the hint of the possibility of his really acting
the part of the fairy prince, switched me about entirely.
Nina became a negligible quantity.  I worried only
for him.  It is needless to repeat the arguments against
such a marriage which flooded me.  They will occur to
anyone.  But to oppose it—I knew Norman too well—to
try that.

"Perhaps that would be the best solution of the
matter—for her."

"And for me?" he insisted.

"Well.  You're in a better position than I to decide
that."

He laughed and leaned forward and pinched her ear.
Suddenly she forgot the stage and getting up—reckless
of all observers,—came back and kissed him.

"Nina," I asked, "if I pinched your ear, would you
kiss me?"

"No," she said, convincingly.  "I'd slap your face."

"There's only one thing I know about this, Arnold,"
he said when she had returned to her seat.  "It's bringing
me to life again.  I don't think I had really laughed
for months.  I'd forgotten there was such a thing as
amusement in the world.  I never was very strong on
play.  Of one thing I'm sure.  It's giving me a new
insight—a new point of view—into lots of things.  Only
God knows how it will turn out."



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   VI

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I can only guess how it would have turned out, if
Nina had not fallen among thieves.  The most insoluble
mystery of life is the way in which the very highest
human values sometimes spring out of the coarsest,
most brutal wrongs.

Although to Nina, I had spoken of Blackie in a
flippant tone, I knew that he might cause trouble.  I had
spoken seriously about it to Norman, advising him to
avoid as much as possible, and especially after dark,
those parts of town, where Blackie's gang was likely
to be encountered.  And together we had impressed
on Nina and Guiseppe that she was never to go out
alone.  But as nothing was heard from him for some
time, we all began to worry less.

Nina had been with us about three weeks when the
storm broke.  I came home from my work about five
one afternoon—and found bedlam.  Guiseppe's head
was wrapped in a bloody bandage, Nina was sobbing
wildly on the divan.

It took some minutes before I could get a connected
explanation from them.  After lunch they had gone
out to pay the butcher's bill.  Nina, having come from
"his district" had won Giuseppe's heart and he allowed
her the pleasure of playing at housewife.  It pleased
her especially to pay the bills, so she was carrying the
money—about thirty dollars.  At the corner of Second
Avenue and First Street, they had been surrounded
by Blackie's gang.  Guiseppe had fought like a true
Garibaldian until his head had been laid open with a
knife and he had been thrown to the ground by the
young toughs.  As quickly as they had come, they ran
away.  When he picked himself up, Nina was nowhere
to be seen.  He had asked the aid of a policeman, but
had been laughed at.  Then he had come to the Teepee,
not finding either Benson or me, he had bound up his
head, and rallying some Garibaldian comrades, had
set out on a search.  This about three o'clock.  A little
after four they had found her sobbing desperately
behind an ash can in an alley-way.  He had had some
trouble in persuading her to come back.  She was
afraid of Blackie's wrath—but more afraid that Norman
would be angry on account of the money.

Her story came out brokenly between spells of crying.
At the first attack, Blackie and another cadet
had hustled her around the corner and up some stairs
to a rented room.  There they took away the money and
beat her at leisure.  The three who had manhandled
Guiseppe came in shortly and kicked her about some
more.  There was nothing unusual in this—it is the
well-established custom, by which the cadets keep their girls
in slavery.  I doubt if a day ever passes in this great
metropolis of ours when the same scene is not enacted.
They would probably have beaten her worse, if the
windfall of money had not tempted them out to other
pleasures.  One after another the five men swore,
emphasizing their words with blows, that if she ever threw
down Blackie again, they would kill her.  Their parting
advice to her was that if she had not earned five dollars
by ten o'clock next morning, she could expect a fresh
beating.

Such stories had come to my knowledge before, they
are the commonplaces of the police courts.  But as
Norman had said the first morning, such things must
happen to someone near us, before we realize them.  I
took the handcuffs out of my desk, put fresh cartridges
in my revolver.  I had never set out after a man before
in a like frame of mind....

When I think back to that evening's work, the Tombs
and our convict prisons and all the bitter horror of our
penal system, is no longer inexplicable.  It is only
crystallized anger.  The electric chair is only a formal
symbol of collective hate.  I am not at all proud of
that man-hunt.  A friend of mine had been hurt.  "A
friend of mine"—how many of man's and nature's
laws have been broken with that preface!  The political
bosses look after their "friends."  More corrupt
legislation has been passed because of "friendship" than
for bribes.  Well.  A friend of mine had been touched.
Everything by which I like to recognize myself as a
civilized man dropped away.  Suddenly I became an
ally of the thing I was fighting against.  As I rushed
downstairs, with handcuffs in one pocket and a revolver
in the other and murder in my heart, I was just adding
my contribution to the maintenance of the system which
seems to me—when not angry—the most despicable
element in our civilization.

I left word for Benson to stay in when he came home,
so that I could reach him by telephone.  I had no
definite plan when I left the Teepee—only somehow I
was going to "get" Blackie.  It was about an hour
before I was able to locate him.  The first fury of my
anger had passed, it had had time to become cold and
to harden.

Pinning my badge on the outside of my coat, I kicked
open the door of the "Tim O'Healy Social and Civic
Club," and covered the crowd of twenty young toughs
who were in the room.

"Hands up," I ordered.  They obeyed sullenly.

"I want Blackie," I said, "and no funny work from
the rest of you."

For a moment they were irresolute.

"Say.  You're making a damn fool of yourself," one
of them protested, "Blackie's president of this
club—he's right next to the Old Man.  You'll get broke
sure."

"Shut up.  The Old Man sent me," I lied.  "Blackie's
been getting too fly."

"Hell!" another piped up.  "I seen the Old Man
shake hands wid him an hour ago."

"Cut it out, kid," I replied.  "You talk too much.
How long's the Old Man been in the habit of warning
guys he's going to light on?"

My lie worked—and saved bloodshed.  It was the
old tragedy of Cardinal Wolsey acted over again.  None
of the gang was really afraid of my revolver.  One
rush would have finished me.  But they were all afraid
of the Old Man's ire.  They drew away from Blackie.

"It's a lie," he growled.  "Me and the Old Man's
friends."

"You can talk that over with him in the morning.
Come on."

He grew suddenly pale, half believing my story.  He
was such an ill-visaged, rat-eyed scoundrel, I regretted
that they had not made a rush—at least I could have
stopped his career.  Single handed now, he submitted
sullenly.

"Wot's the charge?" he asked, holding out his hands
for the irons.

"Murder in the first."

From the way he wilted, I think he must have had a
murder on his conscience.

"Now," I said to the gang, "I don't need any help
from you.  You'd better go right on with your game.
You can call on him later on in the station house and
bail him out—if you want to get in wrong with the Old
Man."

But instead of taking him to the nearby station house,
I rushed him down town to the Tombs.  The sergeant
at the desk did not know him, so I entered him under a
false name.  A search revealed quite an arsenal on his
person, a short barreled revolver, a knife and some
brass-knuckles.  I plastered him with all the charges I
could think of—disorderly conduct, concealed weapons,
robbery in the first degree, felonious assault.  Nina
might be too frightened to testify to the robbery, but
Guiseppe would swear to the assault.

As soon as I had him in a cell, I telephoned to
Norman that all was going well and rushed uptown to the
home of the district attorney.  The fates were playing
into my hands, for at that time—as is usual between
elections—there was civil war within the organization.
The district attorney was a machine man, but was one
of the leaders of the rebellious faction.  He heard my
story with great glee, a serious criminal charge against
one of the Old Man's lieutenants was fine gist for his
mill.  He promised to push the case and put it on
before O'Neil, whom the Old Man could not reach.

Then I went to the "Old Man."  I have already
written of my encounters with him.  In general I had
established friendly relations with the machine
politicians.  Some of them, especially the judges, liked me
personally.  Ryan's friendship for me was, I think,
real.  But of what was back of the Old Man's easy
going familiarity, I was less certain.  I could not
count on his friendship.  But he was sure to find out
what I had done.  And there was nothing to be gained
by letting some one else tell him.

That night I found him in the back room of his
brother-in-law's saloon.  He looked up at me, his eyes,
usually cordial, decidedly hostile.

"Say, young man, haven't you been getting pretty gay?"

"I sure have," I admitted.  "And I've come round
to tell you what I did and why I did it."  I gave him
the story from beginning to end, even my talk with the
district attorney.

"Well," he said, when I was through, "you've played
it pretty slick—so far.  But how are you going to keep
that gang from shooting you up, when they find out
what you put over on them?"

"It'll be a poor friend of Blackie," I said, "who
takes a shot at me.  I've got too many friends on the
bench.  And the district attorney would sure hand
him a dirty deal."

He nodded assent.  According to his lights the Old
Man fought fairly.  He had no mean personal
animosity.  He handed me a cigar.  I smoked it silently
while he was thinking things out.

I had put a knife into a vulnerable spot—had
thrown the apple of discord where it was most likely
to cause trouble.  Tammany Hall is a latter-day
feudalism.  Ability to protect one's vassals is the
keynote of the organization.  The "ward heeler" is a
petty count, the "district leaders" are the great
dukes.  And the kingship of this realm is not hereditary—it
is not even a life-tenure.  I do not think it has ever
happened, certainly not in my time, that a boss has
held his position till death.  And there have been very
few voluntary abdications.

The Old Man was facing a determined rebellion.
Not to be able to save Blackie would be a great blow
to his prestige.  Many a district leadership has been
lost on a lesser issue.  He knew he could get no help
from the district attorney's office, without patching
up a humiliating peace.  I could see only one outlet
for him—to repudiate Blackie.  He could easily have
found some excuse for backing up my lie.  I am sure
this thought was in his mind, written all over with the
word "discretion."  But in expecting him to take this
easy way out, I misjudged him.  He loved a fight.
These factional struggles were what made life interesting
within the organization and attractive to men of his
type.  He had never been defeated.  He did not like to
lie down before me, who in his eyes was not even a
regular warrior—just a sort of banditti.

"I've sent a man down to bail him out," he said
abruptly.  "I guess there is going to be a fight.  You'll
get my answer in the morning.  Good night."

I found Norman in a Berserker fury.  He was inclined
to quarrel with me for not having shot Blackie
on sight.  A doctor had sewed up the gash in Guiseppe's
head.  Beyond some angry black and blue blotches,
Nina had sustained no injuries.  As soon as she had
been reassured about the lost money, she had recovered
her spirits.

The Old Man's answer would have caught us
unawares—as he intended it should—if it had not been
for a fortunate enmity of mine.  I suppose there were
many people in the Tombs who disliked me, but no one
hated me so cordially as Steger, the agent of the society
for the Protection of Childhood.  Our feud was of long
standing.  He was an insignificant little man, to whom
no one ever paid any attention.  He was employed by
the society to push the charges against everyone
accused of violating the laws for the protection of
childhood and to urge the heaviest penalties against all who
were found guilty.  My business was to persuade the
court to temper justice with mercy.  Inevitably we
came into conflict.  He would urge the judge to
impose the maximum sentence, and I would plead for
leniency.  My personal standing was better than his
and I invariably won out in these frequent tilts.  His
rancor against me had always made me smile.  I met
him as I entered the court house.

"Seems to be a nice sort of fellow—that room-mate
of yours," he sneered.

"What's up?"

"You'll know quick enough.  Take my advice and
disappear.  It will be hard for you to disprove complicity."

It was enough to give me the tip.  Within five
minutes I had the whole story from one of my fellow
"county detectives," who had seen the warrant.  Blackie
and the Old Man had got Nina's mother to make an
affidavit that her daughter was only seventeen years
old.  Steger had joyfully sworn out a warrant against
Benson, charging him with rape in the second
degree—states prison, ten years.

In the language of the Tombs, they "had the goods
on him."  There is no getting away from this charge
if the girl is under eighteen.  The question of whether
or not she has "led a previously chaste life," has no
bearing in rape cases.

It did not take me long to reach a telephone.  Benson
had left the Teepee.  As the detective was on the
way with the warrant, I told Guiseppe to take Nina
at once to the Café Boulevard—not to wait a minute!
I luckily caught Norman at the club, just as he was
calling for his mail.  The fact that I was "compounding
a felony," did not occur to me till hours afterwards.

I reached the café and transferred Guiseppe and Nina
to a private room, before Norman arrived.  He was
certainly in a belligerent frame of mind when he did
come.  He had brought his family lawyer with him,
a pompous old man, with gray mutton-chop whiskers
and a tendency towards apoplexy.  His dignity was
sadly ruffled by having been drawn into a vulgar
criminal case.

Norman and I went with him into another room for a
council of war.  He was of course ready, he told us, to
act as his client directed, but he felt it his duty to point
out that he was an older man than we, with some
knowledge of worldly affairs.  He hoped that I with
my familiarity with the criminal courts might point
out some more satisfactory solution than the marriage
which his client in a nobly Quixotic spirit was
contemplating.  We must allow an older and more experienced
man to say that marriage was a serious—if not actually
a sacerdotal affair.  It was a gamble under the best
circumstances.  And in this case, socially so inexpedient,
financially so disproportionate, and personally—well—so
unprecedented it would be....  He hemmed and
hawed, ruffled his scanty hair and patted his
paunch—in short could not I offer a suggestion.

"Go ahead and talk," Norman growled.  "Get it out
of your system."

"They could skip to Canada, temporarily," I said.
"If we drop the case against Blackie, they'll squash
this warrant."

The lawyer nodded approval.

"Are you all through?" Norman asked.  "Well,
then, listen to me.  I'm not going to skip.  I'm not going
to let up on that scoundrel.  I'm not going to 'quit'!
Not for a minute!  I'd be on my way to the City Hall
marriage bureau already, if old law-books here didn't
say I needed the consent of Nina's mother.  If you want
to be helpful—produce a mother-in-law.  Buy the old
lady, kidnap her, club her—anything—but produce her
in a consenting frame of mind.  If you don't want to
help—run along.  I'll turn the trick myself.  It's a
cinch.  We'll give ourselves up and be married in the
Tombs."

The lawyer tried to say something, but Norman was
looking at me.

"All right," I said.  "I'll fix that.  Don't take any
chances by going out of this private room.  As soon as I
snare the old lady, I'll telephone.  It may be a long hunt,
but sit tight."

It was not a long hunt.  The Old Man, never dreaming
that a rich young man like Benson would cut the
Gordian knot by marrying a prostitute, had not taken
the precaution of hiding the mother.  I found her
dozing in front of her fruit store.  She had not heard of
Nina for several months, until the night before when
they had made her sign the affidavit about her age.
She would have consented to Nina's murder for fifty
dollars, the marriage was arranged for ten.

When she had made her mark on a legal paper drawn
up by the lawyer, we sent Guiseppe home to prepare
lunch and entertain the police.  He was not to tell them
anything, except that we would be back soon.  Norman
and Nina, the lawyer and I, rode down to the City
Hall in a closed carriage.  It rather startled me, the
speed with which they tied the knot.  Back at the Teepee
we found a detective and a policeman.  There was a
tableau.

"Good day, gentlemen," Norman said.  "Allow me
to present you to Mrs. Benson."

He handed the certificate to the detective.

"Now," he said, when the man had read it, "get
out.  And look here—you policeman.  Tell your
captain that my wife has been brutally attacked in his
precinct.  It's up to him to protect her.  Tell him that
if I have to commit murder, it will be his fault."

Half an hour later, while we were eating, the telephone
rang.  It was the Old Man.

"Hello," he said.  "Give them my congratulations.
Say.  You beat me to it in great shape.  Too bad you
ain't in politics.  I'd like to have you on my staff.
And say—Blackie has gone on a railroad journey for his
health.  Now you fellows ain't going to be nasty are
you and make me pay that five thousand dollars bail?
The club's got a new president.  He's just been round
to see me, says the boys are sorer than hell over the
job you put up on them.  I told him to keep the lid on.
I says to him, 'Those two young gentlemen are my
friends.'  You are, ain't you?"

"Well," I said, "when I've got what I want, I quit
fighting.  Forgotten all about that case.  The only
thing which might remind me of it, would be the sight
of Blackie's face."

"Fine," he replied.  "That's cleaned up.  And
say—they're taking on some more men in the
dock department to-morrow—room for any of your
friends.  And—don't forget to give my best wishes
to the bride—and groom.  I like a fellow that's a real
sport."

An hour later a messenger boy arrived with a great
bunch of white roses for the bride.  On the card, the
Old Man had scrawled: "Good luck."  So peace was
reëstablished.



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   VII

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The morning after the wedding, Norman found me in
the library reading what the newspapers had to say
about it.  "Eccentric Millionaire Weds Street
Walker."  "Prominent Socialist Leader, to avoid state prison,
married a little girl he had seduced."  When my friend,
the protector of children, found that we had beaten the
warrant, he had taken this way of venting his spleen.

"I'm glad," Norman said, as he glanced at the
headlines, "that Nina doesn't read newspapers.  These
might bother her."

But he made me read them aloud as he drank his
coffee.  And all the while his look of amused
contentment deepened.

"God!  That sounds good," he commented.  "I
never knew just how to do it.  I've spent many a
sleepless night trying to think out some effective way of
telling the 'best people' to go to hell—some way of
spitting in the eyes of the smug citizens—so they
wouldn't think it was a joke.  Every time I get
mad—really open up—and tell the gang what I think of them
how the stench of their hypocrisies offends my nostrils,
it adds to my reputation as a wit.  I guess this will fix
them!  You know that thing of Heine's...."

He jumped up and pulled the "Memoirs" from the
shelf and read me the passage where Heine tells of his
boyish encounter with "Red Safchen," the hangman's
little daughter.  Although the good people of the
village where he went to school tolerated the office of
public executioner, they would have no dealing with
the officer.  His family was mercilessly ostracised.
Heinrich took pity on the daughter and once in a sudden
exaltation he kissed her.  In these words he ends his
account: "I kissed her not only because of my tender
feeling for her, but in scorn of society and all its dark
prejudices."

"That's it," Norman said gleefully.  "I've always
wished I could find a hangman's daughter and kiss her
somewhere in public—show the empty-headed, full-bellied
gang how I despise them.  Nina's done it for me."

Nina had taken a very passive part in all these
proceedings.  She had done what she was told to do, said
what she was told to say, without question.  How
passive a part it had been none of us realized at the
time.  But that afternoon when I came back from
the Tombs, I found her in earnest conversation with
Guiseppe.

"Say," she said, after he had gone, "I want to talk
to you."

But she found it hard to begin.

"What is it?" I encouraged her.

"The old man, Guiseppe, is a fool," she blurted out.
"Says your friend married me."

"Well.  That isn't foolish.  He did marry you."

"Aw hell!  Don't lie to me.  Fine men like him don't
marry girls they pick up in the street."

"Not very often," I admitted.  "But Benson certainly
married you."

She sighed profoundly, as though there was no hope
of getting the truth in a world of men.

"You must think I'm easy," she persisted.  "He
won't never marry me.  Of course it don't matter how
poor you are.  Sometimes rich men from uptown marry
factory girls, like in 'From Rags to Riches'—but not
girls like me.  Not girls that have been bad."

I tried to translate into the lingo of the Bowery the
old proposition that it is never too late to mend.  And
then I asked her, "Didn't you go to the City Hall
with him?"

"Don't I know?  Haven't I seen people get married?"
she retorted half in discouragement, half in anger.
"Don't I know you have to have a white dress and a
priest?  Wot's the game?"

I did my best to explain that in America, we have
civil marriages which are just as binding as the ones in
a church.  But all I could get from her was a reluctant
admission that there might be two varieties of
marriage—a half way kind at the City Hall and a truly kind
with a priest.  She insisted that it was a sin to have
children without a white dress and a ring.

When Norman came in, I took him to my room and,
closing the door, told him about it.  He rolled around
on the bed and kicked his heels in the air.

"Think of it!" he howled.  "Me—done up in orange
blossoms!  Me—going to a priest!  Arnold, get out your
white gloves—polish your silk hat—you'll have to see
me through with this."

He dashed out to order Nina's dress.  But he said
nothing to her about it, pledged me to secrecy.  It
was a complete surprise to her when it came.

I have never seen anything in all my life so
wonderful as her face, when she opened the package—the
gradual melting away of doubt, the gradual awakening
of certainty—and then the way she walked over to
Norman, her eyes so wide with joy, and threw herself
sobbing into his arms.  I had to go to my room to hide
my tears.

In a few minutes, Norman came in—his voice was
also stiff and husky.

"What in hell do you think is the latest?" he asked.
"She's gone off with Guiseppe—to confessional!  Says
it would be a sin to get married without it.  My God!
My God!"

I was the "best man" and Guiseppe gave her away
in the crypt of the Jesuit Church.  We came home
and dressed—all four of us—and went up to Delmonico's
to dinner.

We made something of a sensation as we threaded
our way between the tables to our place.  Guiseppe,
in evening clothes, with all his campaign medals, looked
like the veriest nobleman.  Nina was wonderful.
Usually she was gay beyond words when taken to a
restaurant, but this evening she was very solemn and a
little pale.  Of course a number of people recognized
Norman and gossip started in vigorously.  But of this
Nina was unconscious.  Her solemnity went deeper
than that.  When the cocktails were brought, she
refused hers.

"Why not?" Norman asked.

A little blush started in her cheeks, fought its way to
her temples and down her throat.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

"I'm married now," she stammered.  "Good women
don't drink cocktails."

We both glanced about and saw that if Nina's statement
had been audible, it would have caused a protest:

"Why—there's Mrs. Blythe over there," Norman
said.  "She built a church.  She's drinking a
cocktail—she's awfully good."

"No, she ain't," Nina insisted doggedly.  "She's
painted herself.  She's a sporting girl."

Norman looked very solemn.  It was several seconds
before he spoke.

"All right, little wife.  I'll never ask you to drink
any more cocktails."

The problem of what to do with Nina's mother
troubled us somewhat for a time, but it solved itself
with rather dizzying simplicity.  She told Norman
that with five hundred dollars for capital she could buy
a larger fruit store and live in comfort.  He investigated
the matter carefully and, as it seemed to him a sound
business proposition, he gave her the money.  That
was the last we saw of her.  The gossips of the neighborhood
said that one of her boarders, attracted by this
magnificent dowry, had married her and that they
had returned to Italy.  I could not discover the man's
name.  And we never heard of her again.

It was a joyous thing to watch Nina in the weeks and
months that followed her marriage.  Always I had a
sort of impatience with Norman.  It did not seem to
me that he realized what was going on within her, how
her soul under the strains and stresses of her new
surroundings, was being shaped to beauty.

There was much discussion in the scientific circles
of those days over the relative force of heredity and
environment in the formation of character.  Most of
the pundits were inclined to the belief that the
congenital element, the abilities and tendencies with which
we are born, is the greatest part of us.  Watching Nina,
kept me from this error.  It may be that she was
unusually plastic, peculiarly adaptable.  But the change
was amazing.  It was not only that she left off swearing,
learned to handle a fork as we did, came to wash her
face without being urged.  It went much deeper than
this.

I thought that Norman was giving small account of
the change.  I did not realize I was unjust to him for a
good many months.  But one day I went to the station
to see him off on a western trip.  Just before the train
started, he laid hold of my arm.

"We—Nina is expecting a baby."

He swung aboard the train and waved his hand to
me.  The news meant that he was not afraid of Nina's
heredity.  That he had not told me until there was no
chance of discussing it, gave me a sudden pang of
jealousy.  Without my noticing it, a new element had
come into my friend's life, which was too holy for him
to talk over with me.  It made me feel very lonely for
awhile.

In the months which were left to her time, Nina went
about the Teepee—singing.  The wonder grew in her
eyes, as did also the certainty of her high calling.  To
me—an outsider—there was something uncomfortable
in the sight of their happiness those last weeks before
the baby came.  I felt like a trespasser, a profaner of
some high mystery.  But Norman begged me not to leave.





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.. _`BOOK VI`:

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   BOOK VI

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   I

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Of course Ann was immensely interested in Nina's
adventure.  From the first she was sure it would turn
out well.  Ignoring the shell, as she always did, the
kernel of the matter did not seem at all strange to her.
She went much further than the Professor in "Sartor
Resartus," who thought of people without clothes.
She stripped them of their vocations as well.  For her
there existed no such categories as "street car conductors,"
"actresses," "bank presidents," "seamstresses."  She
saw only men and women.  The way they earned
their living was as unimportant to her as the *mode* of
their garments.  It was not what people did, but the
way they did it, which mattered.  A man, who had
chosen cooking as a career and cooked passionately,
threw all his energy into soups and *soufflés* ranked
higher with her than a listless, perfunctory poet.  The
doing heartily of any job whatsoever would sanctify
it in her eyes.  Of course she knew that working at the
match trade or with white lead poisons a person, that
some of the "dusty trades" ruin the lungs.  But it
would have been hard to get her to admit that pleasant,
stimulating work might make a person more moral or
that a vile job can damn a man.  Nina's success in
her new rôle, seemed to Ann, to depend entirely upon
the intensity with which she entered it.  It mattered
not at all whether she had been previously a street
walker or a queen.  This point of view—utterly different
from mine—I found very common among the people I
met at Cromley.

Sooner or later I made the acquaintance of most of
the leading anarchists of this country and many from
abroad.  They were sure of a welcome from the Bartons,
sure of a meal and of any bed or sofa in the house which
chanced to be vacant.  They were an interesting and
in many ways an attractive group.  Like Ann, they
were little interested in the outward accidents of a
person's life, but very intense in regard to a rather
indefinite inner life.  They were, of course, vehemently
opposed to the police.  But I was accepted without
question.  I remember old Herr Most said, one time,
his long gaunt forefinger tapping my badge.

"It's not that which makes a policeman.  It's not
the symbol we're fighting but the habit of mind."

The anarchists are beginning to take the place in
our fiction which was formerly held by the gypsy.  Half
a dozen novels of the last few years have had such types
as their heroes.  It is hard to resist the romantic charm
of a person who is utterly unattached.  The vagabond
who, in a land of conventional dwelling houses, sleeps
out under the stars, casts a spell over us.  These
anarchists are intellectual nomads.  In order that they
may be free to wander according to their fancy in the
realm of thought, to stroll at will in the pleasant valleys
of poesy, to climb at times up onto the great white
peaks of dreams, that in the winter days they may
trek south to meet their friend, the sun, they have
foresworn the clumsier impedimenta of our traditional ideas.
As the Beduoin and the tramp despise the "Cit" who
is kept at home by his business engagements, by the
cares of his family and of his lands and goods, so these
anarchists look down on us who are held stationary in
the world of thought.

I remember a young Russian exile, who spoke
English so faultlessly, after the manner of Macaulay's
Essays, that it seemed queer, saying that he was "a
cynic of the material."  It struck me as a wonderfully
apt phrase to distinguish their way of thinking from
the more usual.  Of all the "kitchenside of life,"—the
meals we eat, the clothes we wear, the beds we sleep
in, bankbooks, and property deeds, of vested rights and
established institutions, of the applause and approbation
of the mob—which most of us consider important,
they were cynical.  I, for instance, must admit to a
certain unreasoning respect for clean linen.  It is hard
for me, even in the face of ocular demonstration, to
separate it from clean straight thinking.  But this
group which gathered at Mrs. Barton's was certainly
indifferent in the matter.  Ann's bacteriological
training had made her a fervent apostle of cleanliness.
"Germs," she would say, "are only filth."  But as
often as not, some of the guests were evidently unafraid
of microbes.  Some of the dirtiest of them were the
cleanest, straightest thinkers.

I have never met any other group of people who so
sympathetically understood how I felt about life.
In one way or another they had come to see life as I
did—as I believe anyone, having the energy to avoid
hardening, would see it, if they worked long in the
Tombs.  Try it yourself.  Go into the Tombs—there
is one in every town—if you have any love of justice
and rectitude in your being you will come out in violent
revolt against the smug complacency of our social
machine.  You will find anarchists pleasant people to
talk with.

But when they tried to convert me, I was cold.  I
could go with them all the way in their criticism of and
contempt for things as they are.  Much of what they
said and wrote seemed to me platitudes—I had seen
it also keenly myself.  I knew the things of which
our civilization can boast, its universities, and culture,
its music and painting, the triumphs of its sciences, its
marvelous subjugation of nature, its telegraphs and
transcontinental trains, and all this seemed very small
return for the frightful price we pay.  For years I had
been living in the slums.  I knew the debit side of the
ledger also—the tuberculosis laden tenements, the
sweat-shops, the children who never grow up, the
poverty, the crime.  The time they spent in trying to
convince me that society was bankrupt, was wasted.
And the dream of communism they offered in its place
was enticing.  I do not see how anyone can object to
the ideals of anarchism, unless they are of the turn
of mind which enjoys the kind of arrangements we now
have—where one can steal and murder and still be
respectable.  Of course a scamp would have a pretty bad
time in a communist society.  But the means by which
they hoped to realize their dream—well—that was a
different affair.

It is possible to believe in all the miracles of Jesus—from
his birth to his resurrection—but it takes "faith."  It
is possible to believe that, if by some miracle we were
all made free we would be very much better than we
are.  The anarchists hold that our vices come from
our manifold slavery.  That is their creed.  But it
also takes "faith."  I have not been able to believe
anything in that way, since I was sixteen.

But I was quite ready to agree with them that much
work such as mine was pitifully futile.



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   II

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There were two incidents in my work which grew to
great proportions in my mind.  They happened close
together, when I had been about seven years in the
Tombs.

Walking one day along a corridor of the prison, past
the cells, my attention was caught by an old man.  He
sat on a low stool, close to the grated door, his face
pressed against the bars.  On it was written appalling,
abject despair.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

He glared at me sullenly.  It was some time before
he replied.

"They've got me wrong," he said.

The date on the door of his cell gave the history of
the case.  His name was Jerry Barnes.  Arrested three
weeks ago, without bail, he had pled guilty the day
before to burglary in the third degree, and was awaiting
sentence before Justice Ryan.

"What did you plead guilty for?" I asked, "if they
had you wrong?"

"Wot's the use?  You won't believe me."

With a little urging his story came in a rush.  He
was an old-timer, had done three bits in state prison,
but coming out four years before he had decided to
"square it."  He wanted to die "on the outside."  He
had no trade, but had wrung out a meagre living, stuffing
straw into mattresses.  In the rush season he earned
much as a dollar a day.  Sometimes only twenty
cents.  And sometimes there was no work at all.  He
slept in a ten-cent lodging house, ate ten cent meals—forty
cents a day, plus twenty cents a week for tobacco.
What was left went into the Bowery Savings Bank.
He wanted to have enough so he would not be buried
in the Potters' Field.  It had been a barren life.  But
the fear of prison—the fear which only an old-timer,
who wants to die outside, knows—had held him to it.

Coming home from work one night he had stopped
to watch a fire.  As the crowd broke up he saw on the
sidewalk several bags of tobacco and some boxes of
cigarettes.  He picked them up and almost immediately
was grabbed by two detectives.

While the crowd had been watching the fire, someone
had broken into a tobacco store and looted it.  The
detectives led Jerry to Central Office, identified him
by the Bertillon records, and charged him with burglary
in the second degree, for which the maximum sentence
is ten years.

Jerry said that he knew nothing of the burglary.
When he had been brought into court the district
attorney had told him that if he would consent to plead
guilty of burglary in the third degree, for which the
maximum is only five years, he would intercede with
the judge and ask for a light sentence.

Jerry had been hopeless of proving his innocence in
the face of his previous record and the fact that some
of the proceeds of the burglary had been found on his
person.  He had no friends.  He did not believe that
a poor man had any chance in court.  So he had pled
guilty in the hopes of a short sentence.

His story rang true, but I took great pains to verify it.

The police believed that Jerry was one of three or
four who committed the burglary.  One hundred dollars
in money and twice as much stock had been taken.
They had no evidence against Jerry except the packages
of tobacco found in his pockets, and his record.

Mr. Kaufman, his employer, spoke highly of him.
Jerry had been a regular applicant for work, and a
preferred employee.  If there was any work at all it was
given to him.  And sometimes in slack seasons, he had
been employed out of charity.  Kaufman said he would
be glad to come to court and testify to Jerry's regular
habits during the last three years.  The lodging house
keeper was also willing to appear on his behalf.  Jerry
had earned a definite reputation for quietness and
sobriety.  He had kept very much to himself and
certainly had not been associating with professional
criminals.

I took the whole story to Judge Ryan.  He always
placed great reliance on my judgment in such matters,
and I was convinced of Jerry's innocence.  Ryan said
he would allow him to withdraw his plea of guilty and
stand trial.  I had a harder time persuading Jerry to
do so.  He was inclined to take his medicine—let well
enough alone.  He might live through a couple of years
in prison and die outside, but he was afraid to take a
chance on a long term.  But finally I argued him into
doing it.

When at last the case came up for trial, Ryan was
off on his vacation, and it was set down before O'Neil,
with whom I had less than no influence.  Mr. Kaufman
had been called out of town by the death of his
father.  No one appeared to speak for Jerry except
the lodging house keeper, who made a poor showing,
being mightily frightened under the cross-examination.
The district attorney produced a handful of Rogues'
Gallery photographs of Jerry.  The police expanded
their memory to the point of swearing that they had
seen Jerry in the rifled premises.  The jury convicted
him without leaving the room, of burglary in the second
degree.  And the judge gave him eight years....

I sneaked out of the court room and locked myself
in my office.  It is not a pleasant thing to think about or
write down even now....  I am sure he was innocent.
If I had not meddled—he had not asked me to—he
would have gotten off light.  And eight years was the
same as "life" for him.

The next two days when duty took me into the prison,
I kept as far as might be from Jerry's cell.  What
could I say to him?

But on the afternoon of the second day, I met him
by accident face to face.  He was one of a line of ten
men, old and young, chained together—just starting
up the river.  He jumped at me so hard, it threw the
entire line off their feet.  His slow, desperate curses
as they led them out to the prison-van still haunt me,
sometimes, at night.

Now that Jerry is dead—he died during the fourth
year—I, more than ever before, wish I could believe
in a life beyond death.  I cannot imagine another life
in which we would not understand and forgive the
wrongs done us in this.  And I cannot think of
anything I would rather have than Jerry's forgiveness.

About the same time, I had taken up the work of
supervising the men "on parole" from the reformatory.
It was very hard to find satisfactory employment for
these boys.  I wrote an article which was translated
and printed in one of the Yiddish dailies.  I described
the reformatory, told of the conditions on which the
inmates were paroled and the civic duty of encouraging
them to make good.  And I appealed to the Jews
to help me find work for the sons of their race.  Many
offers of employment came as a result of this article.

One day a fine old Russian Jew, named Lipinsky,
came to my office on this business.  He was a fur
merchant on Second Avenue.  He and his son, about
nineteen, worked together, and he could use an assistant
who would accept apprentice wages and live in the
family.  I liked the old man; he was a sturdy type,
had worked up through endless hardships and reverses
to the point where he was beginning to make a
surplus and win respect in his trade.  He was ambitious
for his son, on whom all his hopes centered.

It seemed to me an unusually fine opening, the home
conditions I felt sure would be good, and the first
Jewish boy who came down—his name was Levine—I sent
to Lipinsky.  I called two or three times and
everything seemed to be going well.  But after about three
months the crash came.  Levine and young Lipinsky
were arrested in the act of burglary in a large fur
warehouse.  They had several hundred dollars' worth of
choice ermine skins in their bags.  Young Lipinsky
went to pieces under the "third degree" and
confessed everything.  They had been at it for more than a
month.  It had been a strong combination—his knowledge
of furs and Levine's skill with the "jimmy."  In
an apartment on Fifteenth Street, where they had been
keeping two girls, the police recovered large quantities
of expensive furs.

Levine got seven years in state prison, and young
Lipinsky, because he had turned state's evidence and
because of my influence, got off with a sentence to the
reformatory.

Old Lipinsky was utterly ruined.  His rivals accused
him of complicity.  The detectives raided his store.
They found nothing, but it was enough to ruin his
credit.  He peddles shoe-strings now on Hester Street.

But greater than this material loss was the blow to
his heart—his hope in his only son shattered.  He
knocks at the door to my office now and then to ask
news of his boy.  It is sad news I have to tell him.  His
son is now doing his second term in state prison, a
confirmed crook.

Old Lipinsky does not curse me as Jerry did—he
relies on me to pay his rent and coal bills.  He weeps.

I tried to look at these discouraging incidents, with
reason.  I tried to tell myself that my intentions had been
good, and that intentions counted more than results.
I tried to recall the very many families to whom I had
brought a blessing.  It is not a matter to boast of—nor
to be modest about.  The work I had chosen gave me
daily opportunity to bring help to those in awful need.
But try as I would to preserve what seemed to my reason
proper proportions, the curses of Jerry, the wailing of
old Lipinsky, drowned out all else.  It obsessed me.

Looking back over those years it is hard for me to
decide whether Norman was the determining element
in my thinking, or whether from different angles, by
different processes of mind, we reached the same
conclusions.  Certain it is that many times a conversation
with him would precipitate fluid-vague feelings of
mine into the definite crystals of intellectual
convictions.  A talk on this subject—of intentions and
results—stands out as clear in my mind as any memory
I have of him.

It started, I believe, by some jovial effort of his
to lift me out of my profound discouragement.  We
had lit our pipes, Guiseppe was clearing the supper
litter from the table.  Nina was dividing her attention
between a pile of to-be-darned stockings in her lap and
Marie, who was safe in her cradle and needed no
attention at all.  Nina was a constant factor in all our
arguments in those days.  She was always silent.  Much
of our talk must have been far above her comprehension,
but she would sit on the divan, her feet tucked
up under her, and listen for hours on end.  Her presence
in some subtle way contributed to our discussions.
The ancient Egyptians brought a skeleton to their
feasts to remind them of death.  Nina was to us a
symbol of life—a silent chorus of actuality.  Some
word or look of mine that night showed Norman how
desperately serious was my discouragement, and he
dropped his flippant tone.

"After all intentions don't justify anything.  We
must demand results.  But what results?  When I see
a chap, whose efforts I know to be good, get discouraged,
I'm sure he's looking for the wrong kind of results.
Of course, our unseen, unintentional influence is much
greater than the influence we consciously exert.  Some
little of it we know about, the greater part we ignore.
You're worried because some of your well-intentioned
efforts have gone wrong, because our fight for a
reformatory ended in a fizzle.  These two cases, you
speak of—Jerry and Lipinsky—are on your mind.
There are probably dozens of others, just as bad, which
you don't know about.  Are they the kind of results
on which you have a right to judge your work?  I
think not.

"The one real result of human activity is knowledge.
Zola makes a character in 'Travail' say that science
is the only true revolutionist.  And if science is
something more than dead laboratory data, if it's live
workable human knowledge, a real aid to straight thinking,
he is right.

"That must be the test of your activity—the judging
result.  What does it matter to the race that Jerry
is beating his head against the walls of Sing Sing?  In
all the black history of the race, in all the long
up-struggle, which rubbed off most of our hair, what does
a little added injustice signify?  Nothing.  Unless—and
this is the great chance—unless you can make the race
realize the stupidity of such injustice.  If you could
make Jerry's tragedy bite into us like Uncle
Tom's—well—then you and he would have earned the right to
wrap the draperies of your couch about you and all
that.

"It's the same with good results.  They are insignificant!
In terms of the race, they matter as little as the
half hundred slaves Mrs. Stowe helped to escape via
the underground railroad.  Take Tony—this wreck
you've dragged into dry-dock and repaired.  It's
important to him that you came along at the right time.
But what does it matter to all the other immigrant
craft that are trying to find safe anchorage on this side
of the world?  There's a new Tony launched every
minute.

"Seven years you've been in the Tombs—had your
nose in the cesspool.  What have you learned—not
just subjective acquisition of information, but what has
it taught you for the race?  Sooner or later, you'll
begin to teach.  You can't help it.  It's too big for
you—it will force an outlet.

"Prisons are a stupidity.  Why do we cling to them?
Natural viciousness?  Innate cruelty?  You don't
believe that.  It's ignorance!  Dense black ignorance!
Sodden ways of thinking.  You've seen, you know.
Well—that's footless—unless you can make the rest
of us see and know.  One man can't add much to this
great racial mind.  But if you can do the little, the very
little, that Beccaria did, that John Howard and Charles
Reade did—one lightning gleam—these little results
you are worrying about now will sink into insignificance.

"You won't solve the problem of crime.  That's too
much to expect.  What you teach about reform—reforms
of judicial procedure, reforms of police and
prisons—won't interest me much.  I know these things
seem big to you, but it will be mostly out of date before
it's off the press.  What I will look for is some help
in understanding the problem.  That will be your
contribution—the judging result of your living.
Perhaps some youngster, one of the generation to come,
will read your book and go into the Tombs, see it for
himself and in two years understand all it has taken you
ten years to learn.  That's human progress!

"We must saturate ourselves with the idea of evolution.
Think of ourselves, our little lives, as tiny
steps in that profound procession.  Knowledge is the
progressive element in life, just as nerve cells are the
only progressive tissue in our bodies.  We won't develop
any more legs as we evolve through the ages ahead of
us—the change will be in our brains."

The conversation rambled off into some by-paths
which I forget.  But it was this same night, I think,
that he struck the main road of his philosophy, mapped
out before me his idea of the country the race has yet
to explore.

"The impediment to progress," he said, "is our fool
idea of finality.  It's funny how humanity has always
been looking for an absolute, final court of appeal.
The king can do no wrong.  The pope is infallible.
God is omniscient!  Now we have the age of reason.
The old gods have been driven from Olympus.  And
in place of Jehovah and Zeus our college professors
have made a god of truth, the absolute, the final!
Sooner or later we've got to learn that progress—growth
of any kind—is in exact antithesis to this idea of finality.

"A large part of the scientific world and, I suppose,
ninety-nine per cent of what is called "the enlightened
public," believe that Darwinism is the last work in
natural science.  There are a thousand question marks
strewn about the theory of natural selection.  Only
those biologists, who have sense enough not to accept
the finality of anything, are trying to answer these
questions.

"Socialism is a spectacular example.  What did Karl
Marx do?  He stumbled along through the life which
was given him, doing kind things and mean things
by the way, all of which is, or ought to be, forgotten.
The real thing he did—his contribution—was to keep
his eyes open, to look at life without blinders.  In the
long process of thinking, this is the most important,
the fundamental thing.  And what he saw he pondered
over, sweated over, prayed atheistical prayers over—and
then he spoke out fearlessly.  The people about him
were hypnotized by the wonderfully growing industrialism
of the day.  It was going to solve all the ills
of the race.  No one had any responsibility any more.
*Laissez faire*!  Virtue and happiness and the next
generation were automatic.  The praise of the machine
became an enthusiasm, a gospel.  Marx had looked at it
harder than the rest, had seen through its surface a
glitter.  And like Cassandra he shouted out his
forebodings, careless of whether the world listened or not.
'It's a sham,' he said, 'this industrialism of yours is
fundamentally immoral.  It bears within itself death
germs.  They are already at work.  This thing in which
you put your trust is already putrid.'  I don't know
anything more amazing in the history of the human
mind than Marx prophecies.  Wrong in some details of
course.  He didn't claim any divine inspiration.  But
those three volumes in German are stupendous.  And
the secret of it is that he turned his penetrating eyes
on the life about him.  He looked!

"But the socialists of today—are they following
his example?  No.  Marx did not believe in finalities;
they make a finality of him.  He sought new knowledge.
They are defending what is already old, and like
everything old, some of it is wrong now.  Marx was a
revolutionist—one of the greatest.  The Marxists are
conservatives.  Think of it.  Not an American socialist
has tried to analyze Wall Street!  Instead of
scrutinizing the life about them, they spend their time
arguing over his agrarian theory.  No country in the
world offers such glaring examples of industrial
injustice as these United States and the books they
circulate are translations from German.  Some day they'll
wake up—then I'll join them.

"The trouble comes from thinking there are finalities
in life—ultimate truths.  We've got to get it into our
heads that truth itself evolves.

"It's coming to me stronger and stronger that the
point of attack ought to be on our ideals of education.
My God!  You quit college at the end of your freshman
year and wasted exactly three years less than I did.
I feel so sure that this is the real issue that I'm losing
interest in everything else.

"A system of education which wakes up the human
mind instead of putting it to sleep!  Education which
begins where it ought to!  At the beginning! the
process of seeing, of looking at life with our own
eyes—instead of through some professor's spectacles.
If we could only teach the trick of original observation!

"The trouble isn't so much that we think incorrectly.
We don't see straight.  I remember our professor used
to tell us that logic is a coffee-mill.  If we put coffee in at
the top it will come out at the bottom in a more usable
form.  But if we put in dirt—it stays dirt, no matter
how fine we grind it.  And then he switched off to train
our coffee-mills—a lot of rigamarole about syllogisms,
the thirteen fallacious ones—perhaps it was fourteen.
But not a single word about how to distinguish dirt
from coffee.  It's the original assumptions that need
questioning.  I don't believe Darwin was a better
logician than Saint Augustine.  But he went out into
the world and looked.  He used observed facts for his
coffee-mill.  Saint Augustine ground up a lot of
incoherent beliefs and dirty assumptions.  Anyone can
learn the laws of logic in a three months college course,
or in as many weeks from a text-book.  But I don't
know of any place where they even try to teach original
observation.

"Education, everybody says, is the bulwark of
democracy.  And we Americans really want democracy
in a way the most radical European never dreamed of.
Yet we are content with our schools!  Nobody really
worries about improving them.  We assume that our
system is the best in the world, perfect.  Final!  Damn
finality!  I'm not sure that our system isn't the worst.
We consistently kill all originality.  The minute the kids
strike school the process begins.  'This, my child,
is what you must believe,' you say.  'This block,' the
kindergarten teacher says 'is red.'  Of course what she
should say is, 'What color is this block?'  The college
professor says to his senior seminar, 'Goethe is the
greatest German poet; if you prefer Heine, you are a
barbarian.  Milton's epics are the pride of English
letters; if you prefer L'Allegro, you show your lack of
culture.  Shelley was undoubtedly a great poet, but,
I regret to say, an incendiary.  Of course you must
read The Ode to the West Wind and the Clouds, but I
warn you against the Revolt of Islam.'  From grammar
school to university it is all this business of predigested
tablets.

"Just look at the effect this sort of business has
had on our politics!  We Americans are dead.  New
ideas, discussion of fundamental political principles are
fomenting everywhere but here.  A Paris cab-driver
thinks more about the theory of government than our
congressman.  We Americans sit back—our feet on the
table—puff out our chests and say 'complete and
absolute liberty for all time was decreed by the fathers
in 1789.'  How many men do you know who ever
seriously questioned that proposition?  How many Americans
really believe that it takes 'eternal vigilance' to be
free?  No.  Our Constitution is the most glorious
document penned by man.  It's final—it's stagnant and
stinking!

"If we don't revolutionize our education, we'll rot
or give up democracy.  It's a clear choice.  A national
Tammany Hall and dizzy Roman decadence or Neo-aristocracy
with restricted suffrage and hare-brained
experiments in human stock breeding.  If we don't
learn to educate in a truer way, if we don't manage to
kill this folly of finality, it's a choice between
physiological decay and eugenics.

"I'm getting out of everything else—can't see
anything but education.  No more personal charity, no
more checks to shoddy philanthropies.  All the money
I can lay my hands on goes into a trust fund to finance
an educational insurrection.  It's the only revolution
I'm interested in.

"I tried to write about it.  But—hell—people
won't take me seriously.  I knew somebody would
giggle if I talked, so I ground out an article.  I found a
man in the club laughing over it—said it was
'clever.'  Well—I've put what I think about it in my will.
Perhaps they won't laugh when they read that."

As I said I am not sure whether Norman gave me my
ideas, or whether he voiced conclusions which were
forming already in my mind.  At least I owe him their
concrete shape.

My work in the Tombs took on a new visage.  I
began to think of it as something to communicate.  I
went about it with the feeling of a showman or a guide.
There was always someone at my shoulder, to whom I
tried to explain the essentials back of the details.  The
routine which had begun to be mechanical was
revivified.  I began thinking out my book.  What I wanted
to do was to draw a picture of the complex phenomena
of crime and to contrast with it the dead and formal
simplicity of our Penal Code, to show its hopeless
inadequacy.  I began work on a section devoted to
"Theft."  From my notes and my daily experience,
I tried to show the kind of people who steal, the motives
which drive them to it, the means they develop towards
their end, petty sneak thieves, swindle promoters,
bank robbers, pickpockets, fraudulent beggars,
defaulting cashiers.  The reality of theft is an infinitely
more tangled thing than one would suppose from
reading the meagre paragraphs in our statutes which deal
with "Larceny."  The book grew slowly.  I felt no
hurry.  Now and then I published sections in the
magazines—"Stories of Real Criminals."



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   III

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It was when I was getting close to thirty-five that
I first saw the name: Suzanne Trevier Martin—attorney
and counsellor at law.  We had heard rumors
of women lawyers from the civil courts.  But I think
she was the first to invade the Tombs.  It was Tim
Leery, the doorman, of Part I, who called my attention
to her.

"Say," he greeted me one morning about noon,
"There's a fee-male lawyer here today—looking for
you.  And say—she's a peach!"

I do not know why I thought he was joking.  I
suppose I shared the comic paper idea that most
professional women were pop-eyed and short-haired.
Anyhow it was a definite surprise when I caught sight
of her.  Leery was pointing me out to her.

Yes.  I am sure surprise was the chiefest element
in the impression she made on me.  Everything about
her was different from what I expected of women.  She
was the most matter-of-fact looking person I have ever
seen—and the most beautiful.  I cannot describe her
way of dressing, all that sticks in my mind is the crisp,
white collar she wore.  Somehow one's attention centered
on that clean, orderly bit of linen.  There was no
suggestion of aping man-fashion about her, nor were
there any frivolous tweedledees nor tweedledums.  It
was all as straightforward as that collar.

She had a mass of Titian red hair.  A complexion
so delicate that the sun had freckled it already in early
spring.  The lines of her face were altogether beautiful.
Her mouth was firm and immobile.  Her shifts of mood
showed only in her eyes.  They were always changing
color, from deep tones of brown to a glowing chestnut
almost as red as her hair.  The way her head balanced
on her neck, made me want to cheer.  It seemed a
victory for the race, that she—one of us—could carry her
head so fearlessly.

"Here is an introduction," she said.

It was a letter from a young lawyer.  The junior
member of his firm, he was sometimes sent into the
Tombs to defend the servants of their rich clients.
I had often given him pointers on the practice of our
courts, which differs materially from that of the civil
courts.  He asked the same courtesies for his friend,
Miss Martin.

I felt with some embarrassment the amused stares of
the crowded corridors.

"This isn't a very convenient place to talk," I said.
"Let's go round to Philippe's and lunch."

As we walked downstairs, I sized her up as about
twenty-five.  I noted that the grace of her neck
extended down her spine.  I have never seen a straighter
back.  There was something definitely boyish in the
way she walked, in her stride and the swing of her
shoulders.  This impression of boyishness was always
coming and interfering with realization that she was a
beautiful woman.

We found a quiet table at Philippe's and she explained
her case.  She was counsel for the Button-Hole
Makers' Union.  They were on strike and one of the
girls had been arrested on the charge of assaulting a
private policeman.  The question at issue invoked the
legality of picketing.  If the girl had been within her
rights in standing where she did, the watchman, who
tried to drive her away, was guilty of assault.  It was a
case to fight out in the higher courts.  The unions
demanded a definite decision.  Miss Martin wanted to
have her client convicted, and still have grounds to
take it up on appeal.  It was simple and I had given
her the necessary points before we had finished our
coffee.

The very first sight of her in the Tombs had stirred
me, as the first sight of no other woman had ever done.
It was not so much a desire for personal possession as a
vague feeling that the man to whom she gave her love
would be happy above other men.  In the back of my
brain, as I sat talking to her, was a continual questioning.
She had said she was a socialist.  I saw that she
had the fearless, open attitude to life, which is the
hallmark of the revolutionists.  I wondered if she had a
lover.  Was the friend, who had given her the introduction,
the lucky man?  What were her theories in such
matters?

But if she made a more direct sensuous appeal to me
than other women, to an even greater degree she seemed
to ignore the possibility of such ideas being in my mind.
I have never known even an ugly woman who was less
coquettish.  She was strangely aloof.  She made the
purely business side of our meeting dominate, did not
seem to realize there might be a personal aspect.  The
way in which she made it quite impossible for me to
suggest paying for her lunch was typical.  She shook
hands with me firmly, frankly, as a boy would with a
man who had given him some slight help, and strode
up the street to her office.  I was surprised.

In and out of the Tombs, she walked for the next few
weeks.  Judge Ryan, before whom she tried her case,
and who believed that all women should marry and keep
indoors as soon after eighteen as a man would have them,
was mightily exercised over her invasion.

"Damn her soul, Whitman," he said, "she isn't a
woman—she's just brain and voice.  She sits there
before the court opens and looks like a woman—good-looking
woman at that—then she gets up on her hind
legs and talks.  Hell!  I forget she is a woman—forget
she wears skirts.  And, so help me God, there aren't
a dozen men in the building who know as much law
as she does.  She's got the goods.  That's the devil of
it.  You can't snub her.  You can't treat her the way she
deserves.  You want to call her unwomanly and she
won't let you remember she's a woman."

She had made Ryan, facing her from the bench, feel
the same aloofness, she had impressed on me across
the table at Philippe's.  But if the judge found it
impossible to snub her, it was just as impossible, I found,
to be friendly with her.  We had frequent encounters
in the corridors.  I frankly sought them, and she did so
as frankly—when she wanted some information.  Away
from her, I thought of her as a desirable woman.  Face
to face, she forced me to consider her as a serious
minded socialist.

Aside from the details of her case, we had only one
talk.  The second day she was at court she
cross-questioned me on my politics.  I had none.  "Why
not?" she demanded.  She had all the narrow-minded
prejudice which most socialists have towards the mere
reformer, the believer in palliatives, the spreaders on of
salve.  Did I not realize the futility of such work as
mine?  I was more keenly aware of it than she.  Well,
why did not I go to the root of the matter?  Why not
attack the basic causes?  I was not sure what they were.
She was.  Although she had not been in the Tombs as
many days as I had years, she knew all about it.  The
whole problem of crime sprang from economic
maladjustment.  Socialism would cure it.  It was all so
beautifully simple!  I have unspeakable admiration
for such faith.  It is the most wonderful thing in the
world.  But all I can do is to envy it.  I cannot
believe.

Her aloofness increased noticeably after she had
sounded the depth of my unbelief.  When the case was
finished, she sought me out to thank me for the very
real service I had rendered.  Despite my intentions
in the matter, her hand slipped out of mine quicker
than I wished.  I hoped to see her again.  She was
uncertain how soon, if ever, her work would bring her back
to the Tombs.  I suggested that I might call on her.
She seemed really surprised.

"Why," she exclaimed; "thank you.  But you know
I'm very busy.  I have five or six regular engagements a
week—committees and all that.  And this strike takes
what time is left.  I am too busy for the social game.
I'm sorry.  But we'll run into each other again some
time.  Goodbye.  No end obliged."

It was the snub direct.  Her friendship was only for
those who saw the light.  She had no time for outsiders,
for "mere reformers."

She filled more of my mind after she was gone than
in the few days of our intercourse.  For the first time
in my life romance laid hold on my imaginings.  I am
not sure whether it was real love or simply wounded
*amour propre*.  But I dreamed of all sorts of extravagant
ways of winning her esteem and love—generally
at the cost of my life.  I was not nearly unhappy enough
to want to die, but I got a keen, if somewhat lugubrious
delight in picturing her kneeling at my bedside,
realizing at last the mistake she had made in snubbing
me—repenting it always through a barren, loveless life.

The memory I held of her was altogether admirable—the
straight line of her back, the glorious poise of her
head, the rich brown of eyes, her frank and boyish
manner.  But pride held me back from seeking her out.
I knew a snub would be the result.

Once, a month or so later, I passed a street corner
crowd, under a socialist banner.  She was just getting
up to speak.  I walked a block out of my way for fear
she would see me and think I was trying to renew our
acquaintance.  But I also was busy.  Too busy to
waste time over a phantom, gradually she sank back
into a vaguer and vaguer might-have-been.  A year
later I ran across her name in the paper in connection
with some strike.  For a day or two her memory flared
up again.  That sentimental spasm I thought was the
last of her.  I was deep in proof-reading.



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   IV

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That my book brought recognition from professional
penologists was a surprise to me.  I had written it
with the intent of interesting laymen.  But a German
psychological journal gave it a long review.  It was
quickly translated into French and Italian.  I was made
contributing editor of "La revue penologique."  Last
of all the American Prison Society took notice of me
and chose me as a delegate to the International
Congress at Rome.

Europe never attracted me, and I doubt if I would
have gone, except for the urgings of Norman and Ann.
I was sea-sick for five days, and bored beyond words
the rest of the way over.  It rained so hard the day I
spent in Naples that I got no good view of Vesuvius.

Arrived in Rome, I found that they had put down my
name for the first day's program, and I spent the time,
till the congress opened, in my room writing up my
paper.  I had chosen for my subject: "The Need of a
New Terminology in the Study of Crime."  More and
more this reform seems imperative to me.  The effort
to express the modern attitude towards crime in the
old phraseology is like putting new wine in old skins.
Just as we no longer say that a man is "possessed of the
devil," but use such newer words as "paranoia,"
"paresis" and so forth, we must give up such terms as
"burglary in the second degree."  It is a remnant
of mediæval scholasticism and means nothing today.
It is a dead concept of an act and gives no account of the
live human being who is supposed to have committed
it.  "Murder," the code implies, "is always murder,
just as oxygen is always oxygen."  But while one atom
of oxygen is exactly like every other, no two murderers
are at all alike.  Crime is infinitely complex.
"Larceny"—a fixed and formal term—cannot describe
the intricate reactions from the varied stimuli of
environment, which lead a particular bunch of nerve
cells to steal.  We must turn our back on the abstract
words of the ancient law books and develop a vocabulary
which expresses actualities.

That first day of the congress, seemed to me the very
apotheosis of absurd futility.  Half a hundred delegates
from all corners of the world assembled in one of the
court rooms of the palace of justice.  We were supposed
to be serious, practical men, come together to devise
means of improving the methods of combating crime.
We sat for an hour and a half through tiresome,
bombastic exchanges of international greetings.  The
election of a chairman, of honorary presidents and
vice-presidents, of a real secretary and a host of honorary
secretaries took up the rest of the morning.  A nation's
parliament could have organized in less time and we
had only come together to exchange ideas, we had no
power.

When we convened after lunch, I was called on.
There were three delegates from England, one from
Canada and another from the United States.  The rest
had only a long-distance knowledge of English.  I have
rarely felt more uncomfortably foolish than I did,
reading my paper to that uncomprehending audience.

The first two to discuss my thesis were Germans.
Neither had completely understood my argument,
they attacked me with acrimony.  The third speaker
was an Italian, who shook his fist at me.  I have not
the faintest idea what he was talking about.  Then
one of the English delegation, a bishop, got up and said
that it was well to have a note of humanism in our
discussion, after all criminals were—or at least had
been—men like us.  As Archbishop Somebody had said
on seeing a prisoner led out to execution—"There,
but for the grace of God, go I."

Then a Frenchman, with carefully groomed beard
and equally carefully groomed cynicism, said I was a
sentimentalist.  He told us that he was a "positivist."  He
referred frequently to Auguste Compte—a philosopher
whom I had up till that moment always regarded
very highly.  My mawkishness he felt was a
most regrettable incident in a scientific assembly.
Criminology unless it could be reduced to an exact
science like mineralogy or mathematics was no science
at all.  He ended up by telling us that he was glad to
report that the sentimental objections to corporal
punishment were rapidly dying out in France and that
there was every prospect of the cat-o'-nine-tails being
reintroduced into their prisons in the near future.  What
that had to do with my subject I could not see.

How to reply to such critics?  It was not only the
difficulty of language.  Somehow I was oppressed with
loneliness.  I was a barbarian, an outlandish person
among them.  In their thoughts they were "officials,"
they were "pillars of society"—what Norman scornfully
called "the best people."  It was a stupid mistake
which had brought me before them.  They knew
nothing about crime, except a jumble of words.  They never
would.

And so—being weary of soul—I said, that as far
as I had understood, they were all against me except
the gentleman from England.  I wanted as far as
possible to repudiate his attitude.  I protested against
the blasphemy of his archbishop.  I was no churchman,
but I could not find heart to blame the Deity
for our outrageous human injustice.  I was sorry that
he believed in a God so immoral as to exercise special
acts of grace to keep him and me out of prison.  I felt
that a better motto for prison reform would be—"There
but for pure luck, go we."

This was taken as a witty sally by everyone but the
English delegates who understood what I said and we
adjourned to a state reception at the Quirinal; there was
a dinner afterwards given by the Italian prison society.
The congress reconvened the next day at two in the
afternoon.  The subject was "Prison Ventilation."  I
sneaked out and found my way to The Forum.  There
I encountered a congenial soul—a youthful guide who
had learned to speak English in New York.  We sat
down on a piece of ancient Rome and he told me about
his adventures in the new world.

"Ever arrested?" I asked.

"Twict."

"In the Tombs?"

"Sure," he said with a broad grin.  "Fer a fight."

I engaged him for the rest of my stay in Rome.  He
led me to a little restaurant near-by and after supper we
sat in the very top gallery of the Coliseum and talked
about Mulberry Square.  So I missed the dinner
tendered us by the municipality.

The next day the great Lombroso was to discuss head
measurements.  Antonio and I visited the Vatican.
He was an anti-clericalist and the indecent stories he
told me about the dead popes, as he showed me their
tombs in Saint Peter's were much more vivid than the
sing-song guide book phrases he used in commenting
on the wonder and the beauty of the place.  He took me
to supper with his family in a tenement district of
Rome.  So the "sights" I saw were not so much the
pictures and the ruins as the souls of the down-trodden
peasant folk bitter against church and state.  I lost a
chance—undoubtedly—to increase my meagre store
of "culture," but I do not regret it.

My fellow delegate from America was shocked at my
desertion of the congress.  He thought I was in a pet
over the reception given my paper and said it was
not decent to stay away.  So I went the next day
and listened to a discussion on the advisability of
introducing drugs into prison diet to reduce unpleasant
nervous disorders among the inmates.  Everyone
seemed in favor of the proposition, the only opposition
came from a realization of the expense involved.  The
chairman expressed the hope that some drug might yet
be discovered which would be effective, and at the
same time cheap.

When the congress was finished the delegates were
taken as guests of the government to visit a model
prison, recently opened in North Italy.  Our inspection
consisted of a hurried stroll through the cell-blocks
and a banquet in the warden's palatial apartments.
We drank several toasts to members of the royal
family and then, someone proposed a bumper to the
International Prison Congress.  I noticed by chance that
the bottle, from which a convict waiter filled my glass,
was labelled, "*Lacrimae Christi*."

"Tears of Christ!" I said to my next neighbor.  "It
would be more fitting to drink this toast of the water
in which Pilate washed his hands."

My neighbor was a Frenchman with a loud laugh—so
the thoughtless jibe had to be repeated.  The English
delegate seized the opportunity to return my accusation
of blasphemy.  There was considerable angry comment.
It was a regrettable incident, as it did no good.

The Hungarian government had also invited us to
visit some of their blue-ribbon prisons.  But in the
railroad station at Milan, where we were waiting to
take train for Trieste and Budapest, I heard the *Chef
de Gare* call the Paris express.  It came over me with a
rush.  I could get home a week earlier.  Why waste
more time with these barren old gentlemen?  I bolted,
had just time to rescue my baggage.

Arrived in Paris in the early morning, I drove at
once to Cook's and reserved passage on the first boat
home.  As I was turning away from the steamship desk,
I had to walk past the window where mail is distributed.
I do not think I was consciously looking at the crowd
of men and women who were waiting for letters, in
fact I remember quite well that I was losing my temper
over an effort to put a too large envelope into my pocket,
but suddenly I saw Suzanne Martin's back.  It was
impossible to mistake it, or the glorious pile of hair
above her slender neck.

I walked on, intending to hurry away.  But I stopped
at the door.  I picked up one of those highly colored
tourist pamphlets—I think it was an advertisement of a
"Tour to Versailles in motor cars"—and over the top
of it I watched Suzanne gradually approach the window,
get her handful of letters, and sit down in one of
the easy chairs to read them.

At last she finished with them and started towards
the door.  I wished that I had not waited, but was
ashamed to let her see me run away.  I became deeply
interested in the little book.  She would have to walk
right past me but if she did not care to recognize
well—-she should not know that I had seen her.



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   V

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"Why—hello—Mr. Whitman."

It was not till I heard her voice that I realized how
much it mattered to me, whether she spoke or not.
Somehow or other we got out of the door onto the
Avenue de l'Opera.

"Which way are you going?" she asked.

"Nowhere in particular.  May I walk along with you?"

So here I was in Paris walking beside Suzanne.  I
suppose it had been a beautiful day before—it was
early June, but it had suddenly become resplendent.
The day had begun to laugh.  I found out that she was
intending to spend several weeks in Paris, so I lied and
said I also was there for a month.  With selfish glee I
learned that Suzanne was lonely.  She was evidently
glad to have some one to talk to.  Afraid that if I did
not keep busy some other way, I might shout, I launched
into a whimsical account of the prison congress.  This
carried us as far as a bench in the garden of the
Tuileries.  And there some chance word showed her that
this was my first visit to Paris, that I had arrived hardly
an hour before we met.

"Oh!" she said, jumping up, "Then, the very first
thing you must do, is to climb the tower of Notre
Dame.  That's the place to get your first look at Paris."

"*Allons donc*," I cried.  I would have said the same
if she had suggested the morgue.

I remember that, as we rode along, Suzanne pointed
out various places of interest, but I doubt if my eyes
went further afield than the gracious hand with which
she pointed.  Then suddenly we turned a corner and
came out into the place before the cathedral.  The
charm of youth beside me was broken for a moment
by the wonder of antiquity.  How alive the old building
seems with the spirits of the long dead men who
built it!  They say that Milan Cathedral is also Gothic.
But my fellow delegate must have stood in my way.
I had not seen it as for the first time I saw Notre Dame.

"You can look at the façade afterwards," Suzanne
said—her voice breaking the spell.  "The important
thing is to get the view from the top first."

The twisting, worn stairs of the North Tower was
one of the treasures of my memory.  A strange
impression—the thick masonry, our twinkling little
tapers in the darkness, stray wisps of Hugo's romance
and of even older stories, the beads of moisture on the
stones, the chill dank breath of very-long-ago and
dominating it all, Suzanne's two tiny and very modern tan
shoes and little glimpses of her stockings.  I remember
the sudden glare of the first balcony.  I caught a quick
view down the river and wanted to stop.  But Suzanne,
who was "personally conducting" this tour, said we
could climb higher.  So we entered the darkness again
and came at last to the top.

I could not tell you how Paris looks from the tower
of Notre Dame.  I only remember how Suzanne looked.
The stiff climb had shortened her breath and heightened
her color.  The breeze caught a stray wisp of her hair
and played delightful tricks with it.  And how her eyes
glowed with enthusiasm.

"This is my favorite spot on earth," she said.  "It's
the very center of civilization.  From here you can see
the birthplace of almost every idea which has benefited
the race, the battle-fields where every human victory
was won.  See!  Over there on the Mont Ste. Genevieve
is where Abelard shattered mediævalism and commenced
the reformation.  And over there in the Latin Quarter
is the oldest faculty of medicine in the world.  It was
in one of those houses on the hillside that men dared
for the first time to study anatomy with a knife.  And
there—further to the west—is where Voltaire lived.
Nearby is the house of Diderot, where the encyclopedists
met to free the human mind.  And here—on the
other side of the river—is the Palais Royal.  See the
green clump of trees.  Under one of them Camille
Desmoulins jumped upon a chair and made the speech
which overthrew the Bastille.  And there—see the
gold statue of victory above the housetops—that's all
there is left of the grim old fortress.  And so it goes.
All the history of man's emancipation spread out before
you in brick and mortar."

How lifeless it sounds now, as I write down the
ghosts of her words which haunt my memory!  But
how wonderfully alive they sounded that dazzling
summer morning—Paris spread out at our feet—we two
alone on the top of the world!  Even then her words
might have seemed dead things, if they had not been
illumined by her vibrant beauty, by the glorious faith
and enthusiasm within her.  All this history was vitally
alive to her.  So had passed the first acts in the great
drama of progress.  And she saw the last act—the final
consummation of universal brotherhood—as something
near indeed, compared to the long centuries since
Abelard had rung up the curtain.  We are always
attracted by what we lack and her faith threw new chains
about me.

A swarm of German tourists broke in upon us, and to
escape them we went down to lunch.  At this second
meal with her she told me something of her life.  She had
been bred to the faith.  Her mother, a Frenchwoman,
had married an American.  Suzanne had been born in
New York.  But her three uncles had been involved
in the Communard revolt of 1871.  One had died on
the barricade.  The other two had been sent to New
Caledonia.  The younger, living through the horrors
of that Penal Colony, had escaped to America and had
brought the shattered remnant of his life to his sister's
home.  He had been the mentor of Suzanne's childhood.

Six months before I encountered her in Paris, she
had fallen sick from overwork, and had come to
relatives in Southern Prance to regain her strength.
Recovered now, she was spending the last month of her
vacation sight-seeing in Paris.  She asked me where
I was stopping, which reminded me that I had not yet
secured a place to sleep.  I blamed it on her for having
taken me off to the cathedral when I should have been
looking up a hotel.

"Why waste money on a hotel?" she asked.  "If
you're going to be here several weeks a *pension* is lots
cheaper."

She told me of the place where she was staying over
on the Left Bank.  There were vacant rooms.  I dashed
away to cancel my sailing, to collect my baggage and,
before I had time to realize my good fortune, I was
installed under the same roof with her.  My memory
of the next few days is a jumble of Suzanne in the Musée
Carnavelet, Suzanne in the Luxembourg, Suzanne in
the Place de la Concorde, pointing out where they
had guillotined the king, Suzanne under the dome
of Les Invalides, denouncing Napoleon and all his ways.

Coming back from Versailles one evening, I asked
her if she ever thought of living permanently in France.

"No," she said emphatically.  "I love France, but I
don't like the French.  The men don't know how to
treat a woman seriously.  They always talk love."

"I envy them the *sang froid* with which they express
their feelings."

Suzanne's eyes shot fire.  Displaying all her storm
signals, she flared out into a denunciation of such
flippancy.  This business of telling a woman at first sight
that she made your head swim, disgusted her.  This
continual harping on sex, seemed nasty.  "Why can't
men and women have decent, straightforward friendships?"
she demanded.  She liked men, liked their
point of view, liked their talk and comradeship.  But
Frenchmen could not think seriously if a woman was in
sight.  Friendship was impossible with them.

"It's pretty uncertain with any men, isn't it?" I asked.

"Well.  Anyhow American men are better.  I've had
some delightful men friends at home."

"And did the friendships last?" I insisted.

"Well, no."  She was wonderfully honest with
herself.  "Why is it?  It wasn't my fault."

"Probably nobody's fault," I said.  "Just the grim
old law of nature.  You don't blame the sun for rising.
You can't blame a man for....."

"Oh, don't you begin it," she interrupted.  "I give
you fair warning."

We sat glum on opposite seats until the train reached
Paris.

"Oh, bother!" she said, as we got out.  "What's
the use of moping?  Let's be friends.  Just good friends."

She held out her hand so enticingly I could not help
grasping it.

"Honest Injun," she said.  "No cheating?  Cross
your heart to die."

So I was committed to a platonic relation which
even at the first I knew to be unstable.

The next morning, as though to prove the firmer
basis of our friendship, she told me that she was
expecting two comrades, a Mr. and Mrs. Long, who were
then in Germany, to arrive in Paris in a few days.  They
were planning a tramp through Normandy—to take in
the cathedrals.  Would I join them?  We spent the
afternoon over a road map of North-western France,
plotting an itinerary.

And then, two days before we expected to start,
came a telegram from the Longs.  They were called
home suddenly, were sailing direct from Hamburg.

"Let's go, anyhow," I said.  "We can put up the
brother and sister game.  These French don't know
whether American brothers and sisters ought to look
alike or not.  Anyhow, what does it matter what
anybody thinks?"

Well.  We had bought our rucksacs.  The trip was
planned.  All its promises of pleasures and adventures
had taken hold on both of us.  She hesitated.  I
became eloquent.  After a few minutes she broke
out—evidently not having listened to me.

"Would you keep your word?—Yes—I believe you
would.  I'll go if you promise me to—well—not to get
sentimental—really treat me like a sister."

"Isn't there any time limit on the promise?  Am I to
bind myself to a fraternal regard till death us do part?
I don't approve of such vows."

"You're either stupid or trying to be funny," she
snapped.  "You propose that we go alone on a tramping
trip.  You could make it miserably uncomfortable—spoil
it all.  I won't start unless you promise not to.
That's simple."

"Well," I said.  "Give and take.  I'll promise not to
get sentimental, if you'll promise not to talk socialism.
Agreed?  We'll draw up a contract—a treaty of peace."

And in spite of her laughing protests that I was a
fool, I drew it up in form.  Suzanne, Party of the First
Part, Arnold, Party of the Second Part, do hereby
agree, covenant, and pledge themselves not to talk
sentiment nor sociology during the hereinafter to be
described trip....

So it was ordained.  We started the next morning—by
train to St. Germain-en-Laye.



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   VI

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One of my treasures is a worn road map of Northwestern
France.  Starting from Paris, a line traces our
intended course, down the Seine to Rouen, across
country to Calais.  It is a clear line.  I had a ruler
to work with, and the map was laid out on the marble
top of a table in the little Café de la Rotonde.  Also
starting from Paris is another line, which shows the
path we did follow.  It is less dearly drawn, traced
for the most part on a book balanced on my knee.
Stars mark the places where we stopped, at night.
From St. Germain-en-Laye, we doubled back to
St. Denis, then a tangent off to Amiens, a new angle to
Rheims.  It stops abruptly at Moret-sur-Loing.

I can command no literary form to do justice to that
Odyssey—it led me unto those high mountains from
which one can see the wondrous land of love.

What did we do?  I remember hours on end when we
trudged along with scarcely a word.  I remember
running a race with her through the forest of Saint
Germain.  I remember a noontime under the great
elm in the Jardin of a village café.  There was
delectable omelette and *Madame la patronne* chattered
amiably about her children and chickens and the
iniquitous new tax on cider.  I remember the wonder
of those century old windows at Rheims and Suzanne's
talk of the Pucelle.  I remember trying to teach her to
throw stones and her vexation when I laughingly told
her she could never learn to do it like a man.  And here
and there along our route, I remember little corners
of the Elysian Fields where we rested awhile and talked.
Suzanne had found me unappreciative of Browning.
Often by the wayside she would take a little volume
of his verse out of her rucksac and make me listen.
The first poem to charm me was "Cleon."  It led us
far afield into a discussion of the meaning of life and
Suzanne—to make more clear Browning's preference
for the man who lives over the man who writes about
life—read "The Last Ride Together."  Her voice
faltered once—she realized I think how near it came
to the forbidden subject—but she thought better to
read on.  After that I belonged to Browning.

Those verses seemed written to express our outing.
Whether she looked beyond our walk or not I do not
know.  I did not.  What would happen when our
pilgrimage was over I did not ask.  The present was too
dizzyingly joyful to question the future.

At last we came to Moret on the border of the great
forest of Fontainebleau.  It had been our intention to
push on and sleep at Barbizon, but we had loitered by
the way, and at the little Hotel de la Palette, they told
us the road was too long for an afternoon's comfort.
So there we stopped, to stroll away some hours in the
forest and get an early start in the morning.

They gave us two garret rooms, for the hotel was
crowded with art students and the better part was
filled.  I recall how the bare walls were covered with
sketches and caricatures.  There was a particularly
bizarre sunset painted on the door between our rooms.

Lunch finished, we started for the forest.  We came
presently to a hill-top, with an outlook over the ocean of
tree-tops, the gray donjon keep of Moret to the north.
Suzanne as was her custom, threw herself face down in
the long grass.  I seem to hold no sharper memory of
her than in this pose.  I sat beside her, admiring.
Suddenly she looked up.

"Tomorrow night Barbizon," she said, "the next
day Paris and our jaunt is over."

She looked off down a long vista between the trees.
I do not know what she saw there.  But no matter
which way I looked, I saw a cloud of tiny bits of paper,
fluttering into a waste-paper basket.

"And then," I said, "a certain iniquitous treaty of
peace will be torn into shreds."

My pipe had burned out before she spoke again.
Her words when they did come were utterly foreign
to my dreaming.

"Why did you write that kind of a book?"

There was earnest condemnation in her voice.  To
gain time, I asked.

"You don't like it?"

"Of course not.  It's insincere."

I filled my pipe before I took up the challenge.

"You'll have to make your bill of indictment more
detailed.  What's insincere about it?"

"You know as well as I do."

Never in any of our talks did she give me so vivid an
impression of earnestness.  With a sudden twist she sat
up and faced me.

"It's cynical.  There are two parts to the book—exposition
and conclusions.  The conclusions are pitiable.
You suggest a program of reforms in the judicial and
penal system.  And they are petty—if they were all
accepted, it wouldn't solve the problem of crime.  You
imply one of two things, either that these reforms would
solve the problem, which they wouldn't, or that the
problem is insoluble, which it isn't."

"Count one," I said.  "Pleading deferred."

"And then—this is worse—you know there is no
more chance of these reforms being granted under our
present system, than of arithmetic being reformed to
make two and two five."

"Count two.  Not guilty."

"No jury would acquit you on it.  But there's a third
count—perhaps the worst of all.  The book is horribly
superficial.  Hidden away in your preface you mention
the fact that the worst crimes against society are not
mentioned in the code.  You gently hint that some
Wall Street transactions are larcenous, even if they are
not illegal.  All hidden in your preface!"

"That's entirely unfair," I protested.  "You are
quarreling with me over a definition.  My book deals
with the phenomena of the criminal courts.  I have no
business with what you or the newspapers call crime.
If I wanted my work to be scientific I had to get a sharp
definition.  And I said that crime consists of acts
forbidden by the legislature.  I pointed out that it is
an arbitrary conception, which is always changing.
Some things—like kissing your wife on the Sabbath
day—are no longer criminal and some things—like
these Wall Street transactions—probably will be crimes
tomorrow.  Your third count is not against me but
against the 'Scientific Method.'"

"Tommyrot!" she retorted.  "You try to evade a big
human truth by a scientific pretext.  You know that
ninety per cent of the criminal law, just as ninety-nine
per cent of the civil law, is an effort to make
people recognize property relations which are basically
unjust.  If our economic relations were right it would
eliminate ninety per cent of crime.  And
justice—socialism—would do more, it would result in healthier,
nobler personalities and wipe out the other ten per cent.
There's the crux of the problem of crime and you dodge it.

"You have a chapter on prostitution.  It's splendid,
the best I've seen—where you describe present
conditions.  But the conclusions are—well—sickening.
Do you really think that taking the poor women's
finger prints will help?  Of course you don't!  It's all
wrapped up in the great injustice which underlies all
life.  You come right up to the point—you say that most
prostitution comes because the daughters of the poor
have no other alternative but the sweatshop—and then
you shut your mouth like a fool or a coward.

"Your book might have been wonderful—a big contribution.
Oh, why didn't you?  It's only half-hearted—insincere!"

I cannot recall my defense.  I tried to make her see
how we came at the problem from the opposite poles,
how her point of departure was an ideal social
organization, while I started from the world as it is, how she
spoke in terms of the absolute, and I thought only of
relative values, how she saw an abiding truth back of life
and I believed in an all-pervading change.  We fought
it out bitterly—with ungloved words—all the
afternoon.  Neither convinced the other, but I think I
persuaded her of my sincerity, almost persuaded her
that "narrow" was not the best word to express my
outlook—that "different" was juster.  The sun was
down in the tree-tops when at last she brought the
argument to a close.

"We'll never agree.  Our points of view are miles
apart."

"But that," I said, "need make no difference, so
long as we are honest to each other—and to ourselves."

"I'm not sure about that," she said.  "I must think
it out."

She stretched out on the grass again and began to
poke a straw into an ant-hole.  I sat back and smoked
and blessed the gods who had moulded so perfect a back.
Then she looked at her watch and jumped up.

"Do you realize, Suzanne, that you have violated
the treaty?  You've talked sociology and socialism.
Now—I'm free..."

"Oh!  Please don't!" she interrupted.  "Not now.
We must hurry to dinner."

I got up laughing and we walked in silence, between
the great trees, in the falling dusk, back to the Hotel
de la Palette.  The joviality of that troupe of young
artists forced us to talk of trivial things.  After supper
we stood for a moment in the doorway.  Behind us was
noisy gayety, before us the full moon illumined the gray
walls of the citadel, shone enticingly on a quiet reach
of the river.

"Come," I said.  "Let's go down to the bridge—the
water will be gorgeous in this light."

For a moment she hung back reluctantly; then suddenly
consented.  But in the village, she wasted much
time looking for the house where Napoleon had slept
in hiding on his return from Elba.  When we came at
last to the bridge she clambered up on the parapet.
I leaned against it beside her.  The light on the river
was gorgeous.  Although there was no wind for us to
feel, the great clouds overhead were driven about like
rudderless ships in a tempest.  For a moment the moon
would be hidden, leaving us in utter darkness, the next
it would break out, its glory bringing to life all the
details of the picturesque old houses by the riverside.
Suzanne made one or two barren attempts at conversation.
At last I plunged into the real business of the moment.

"Of course," I began, "if you really wish it, I will
postpone this till we get to Paris."

There was a perceptible tightening of her muscles—a
bracing.  But she did not speak.

If I was eloquent that night, persuasive, it was
because I did not plead for myself, but for love.  It is
sometimes said that love is egoistic, subjective, to me
it seems the most objective thing in the world.  It
is—at its grandest—I think, a complete surrender to the
ultimate bigness of life.  Without love we have nothing
to fight for except our little personalities, no better
occupation than to magnify our individuality.  Love
shows us bigger things.  At least it was this I tried to
tell Suzanne.  She had looked on love as a disturbing
element in life.  I tried to show it to her as the goal,
the apotheosis of life.

It seems to me, as I look back on it now, that I was
hardly thinking of Suzanne—not at all of my desire
for her.  I was talking to something further away than
she, perhaps to the moon.  I was trying desperately
to formulate a faith—to give voice to a belief.

And then she laid her hand on mine—and I forgot
the moon.  I saw only the glory of her face, different
from what I had ever seen it.  It was paler than usual
and dreamy.  It seemed surprisingly near to me.  When
I kissed her, she did not turn away.

Suddenly it rained.

Much of my life has hinged on just such stupid,
ludicrous chances.  It poured—soaking and cold.  It
was a serious matter for us.  We were traveling light,
with nothing but our rucksacs nearer than Paris,
no outer clothes except those we wore.  Although we
ran all the way we were drenched to the skin before
we reached the hotel.  The rain stopped as abruptly
as it had commenced.  We were too breathless to talk
as we clambered up the stairs to our garret rooms.

After a hard rub, dry underclothes and pajamas, I
wrapped myself in a blanket and lit my pipe.  Through
the thin partition I could hear Suzanne giving directions
to the bonne to dry her clothes by the kitchen fire.  Then
her bed creaked.  From the café downstairs came sounds
of riotous mirth.  Our talk had been so inconclusive.

"Suzanne," I said, knocking on the door between our
rooms.  "May I come in?  Please.  It's awfully important."

There was no answer and I opened the door.  The
moon, having escaped from the clouds, shone in through
the mansard window, full on her bed, painting her hair
a richer red than usual.  I must have been a weird sight,
with that blanket wrapped about my shoulders.  But
she did not smile.  I can find no word to name her
expression, unless wonder will do.  There was a suggestion
of the amazed face of a sleepwalker.  Instinctively I
knew that she would not repulse me.  That moment
she was mine for the taking.  But I did not desire what a
man can "take" from a woman.  I wanted her to give.

I sat on the foot of the bed and tried to talk her
into the mood I hungered for.  It was not self-restraint
on my part.  I was not conscious of passion.  What I
wanted seemed finer and grander.  If she had reached
out her hand to me, all my pent up desires would have
exploded.  If she had tried to send me away, it might
have inflamed me.  If she had spoken—I do not
remember a word.  She lay there as one in a dream.  There
was a strange, dazed look in her eyes, perhaps it was
awed expectancy.  I did not read it so.

Hoping to wake her, I kissed her hands and her forehead.
The great coil of her hair moved in my hands like
a thing alive.  Its fragrance dizzied me.  Fearful of
intoxication, I went apart for a moment by the window,
looked out at the sinking moon, until my head was clear
again.  I came back and knelt by her bed.

"Suzanne.  What I want is not a thing for the night,
not a thing of moonlight and shadows.  What I want
must be done by day in the great open air—at high
noon—for all time and whatever comes after.  To-morrow
in the blaze of the sun...."

I could not say what was in my heart.  The last rays
of the moon touched the profile of her face so glowingly
that suddenly I wanted to pray.

"Oh, Suzanne, I wish that we believed in a God—we
two.  So I could pray his blessing on you—on us."

Then I kissed her on the lips and went away.

The hours I spent in my window that night were I
suppose the nearest I ever got to Heaven.  It seemed
that at last my torturing doubts were over, that I had
read in the Divine Revelation, that the way, the truth
and the light had been made plain to me.  For the
second time in my life I had the assurance of salvation.

Just as the rim of the sun came up over the eastern
hills, I heard her get out of bed, heard the sound of her
bare feet coming towards the door.  I jumped down
from my seat in the window.  My dream was fulfilled—she
was coming to me in the dawn.

The door opened barely an inch.  Her voice seemed
like that of a stranger.

"Arnold.  Please go down in the kitchen and get my
clothes."

I was ready to open my veins for her and she asked
me to walk downstairs and bring her a skirt and blouse
and shoes.

"Don't stand there like an idiot," the strange voice
said.  "I want my clothes."

Well—somehow I found the clothes and brought
them back.  She took them in hastily through the door,
closed it in my face—locked it.  I think the grating
of the bolt in the lock was the thing I first realized
clearly.  She was afraid I would force myself on her.
We were utter strangers, she did not know me at all.

Once in a strike riot I saw a man hit between the
eyes with a brick.  It must have knocked him senseless
at once, but he finished the sentence he was shouting,
stooped down to pick up a stone, stopped as though
he had thought of something, sat down on the curb
in a daze—it must have been a full half minute before
he groaned and slumped over inert.

After Suzanne drove the bolt of her door through the
dream, I got dressed and sat down dumbly to wait.
I heard her moving about her room, heard her putting
on her shoes—I remember thinking that as they had
been wet, they must be stiff this morning—then she
unlocked and opened the door.

"Arnold," she said in that constrained voice I did
not know.  "I've got to go away—I want to be alone.
There's a train for Paris in a few minutes."

I suppose I made some movement as if to follow her.

"No.  Don't you come.  I've got to think things out
by myself.  I've got to"—the strained tone in her voice
was desperate, almost hysterical—"Let me go alone.
I'll write to you—Cook's.  I'm...."

She turned without a word of good-bye and I heard
her footsteps on the stairs of the still quiet house.  And
presently, perhaps fifteen minutes, perhaps half an hour,
I heard the whistle of a train.



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   VII

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After a while I "came to."  I went into her room and
looked about it.  In her haste to be gone she had
forgotten her rucksac, it lay there in plain sight on the
tumbled bed.  I went downstairs and drank some coffee
and paid the bill.  I remember a foolish desire to cry
when I realized that I must pay for both of us.  In all
the trip she had scrupulously insisted in attending to
her share.  With only our two bags for company I went
up to Paris.  She had taken her baggage from the
pension an hour before I arrived, she had left no
address.  I spent most of my time in the garden of the
Tuileries, going every hour or so to Cook's in quest
of the letter she had promised.  There were times
when I hoped she would come back, when it seemed
impossible that I should not find her again, sometimes
I despaired.  But mostly it was just a dull, stunned
pain, which was neither hope nor despair.  After three
days the letter came.  It was postmarked Le Havre.


"Dear friend Arnold,

"It has taken me longer than I had thought to be
sure of myself.  I cannot marry you.  It has never
been hard for me to say this before.  It is hard now.
I know how much it will hurt you.  And I care more
than I ever did before.  More, I think, than I ever will
care again.  For I can imagine no finer way of being
loved than your way.

"If it were not for the pain it has cost you—I would
be glad of the chance which threw us together in Paris.
The days which followed were the most joyous I have
ever known—almost the only ones.  I have not found
life a happy business.  Surely you won't, I doubt if
anyone does, realize how sad the world seems to me.
But somehow, out of the overwhelming misery about
us, you helped me to escape awhile, helped me to
snatch some of 'the rarely coming spirit of delight.'  They
were perfect—those never-to-be-forgotten days
on the open road.

"I can't—even after all this thinking, and I have
thought of nothing else—understand clearly, what
happened at Moret.  When you began to talk love to
me—well—it was the first time in my life, I did not
want to run away.  We all have our woman's dream
hidden somewhere within us.  I don't remember what
you said to me there on the bridge but suddenly my
dream came big.  Love seemed something I had
always been waiting for.  I kept asking myself 'can this
at last be love'—and because I did not want to run
away I thought it was.

"When you came to my room I was drunk with the
dream.  That you did not take advantage of my
bewilderment—well—that's what I meant when I said
I could think of no finer love than what you have given
me.  I could not have reproached you if you had.  God
knows what it would have meant.  It might have turned
the balance, I might have loved you—in a way.  But
it would not have been *you*, and it would not have
been what you wanted.

"When you went away, I began to recall your
words—I had scarcely heard them—and then I
realized what you wanted.  It seemed very beautiful to
me and—will you believe it—I wanted to give it to
you, be it for you.  But as the hours slipped by the
fear grew that I could not, grew to certainty.  And I
was afraid that if I stayed, I would cheat you.  And
so, in fear, I ran away.

"I know I must have seemed very cruel to you that
morning.  And I am writing all this in the hope that
you will understand that I was harsh because I was
afraid, it was the cruelty of weakness.  I wanted to
put my arms about you and cry.  You will see that it
was better that I did not.  For now—with a cool
head—it is very clear to me, not only that I could not
be to you what you wish, but that at bottom I do not
want to.  I do not love you.

"I would like to make this sound less brutal, but
it is true.  It's not only in regard to socialism that our
view-points are miles apart, but also in this matter of
love.

"The porter is calling the 'bus for my steamer.  I
must stop or miss the tender.  It is just as well.  If I
have not shown you in these few pages what I feel,
I could not in twice as many."


I was not man enough to take my medicine quietly.
The letter jerked me out of my lethargy, threw me
into a rage, the worst mood of my life.  I cursed
Suzanne, cursed love, cursed Europe.  I engaged passage
on the first boat home.  I took along Suzanne's rucksac
with the intention of having its contents laundered
and returning it to her with a flippant, insulting note.
I occupied most of the time till the boat sailed, on its
composition.  On board I drank hoggishly, gambled
recklessly—and as such things often go—won heavily.

But the last night out, anchored off quarantine, the
fury and the folly left me.  After all I had been making
an amazing tempest in a teapot.  What did it matter
whether my love affair went straight or crooked?  I
felt so much the spoiled child, that I was ashamed to
look up at the eternal, patient stars.  After the vague
open spaces of the sea, the crowded harbor, the distant
glow and hum of the great city, seemed real indeed.
A flare of rockets shot up from Coney Island, dazzled
a moment and went out.  I laughed.  The lower lights
along the shore were not so brilliant—but abiding.

I leaned over the rail and strained my eyes towards
the city.  And it seemed as if life came to me through
the night as a thing which one might hold in the hand
and study.

The Tombs and all its people, corrupt judges and
upright criminals.  In a few days I would drop back into
the rut among them.  What had become of Sammy
Swartz?  A pick-pocket of parts, he had, when I left,
been virtuously scrubbing floors in an office
building—a deadly grind, compared to the dash and
adventure of his old life.  What held him to it?  Was
it only fear of prison or some vague reaching out for
rectitude?  Was he still "on the square" or had he
gone back to the "graft?"

The Teepee, Norman, Nina and little Marie.  What
were they doing?  Probably wondering when I would
return—planning some fête.  My questionings shot
back to the old home in Tennessee.  The Father and
Margot—what were they doing, what had been done to
them?  And Ann?  I would have to hurt her in the
morning, with my news.  Life had driven a wedge in
between us.

And Suzanne?  She was somewhere in the city.  I
pictured her in council with her comrades in some
grimy committee room, some tenement parlor—the
light of the glorious vision in their eyes—planning the
great reconstruction, plotting the coronation of justice.
She had turned her back on the love I offered that some
greater love might be made manifest.  It seemed to
me wrong.  But right or wrong, I loved her better that
night than ever before.  It was as though a comet had
become a fixed star.

And I was sorry for her—while admiring.  Like all
the rest of us, she was caught in the vast spider web of
life, beating her wings to pieces in the divine effort to
reach the light.  All the people I could think of seemed
in the same plight—admirable and pitiable.  Is not
this immense, spawning, struggling family of ours
as much alike in the uncertainty of life as in the
certainty of death?

Once ashore, I called up Ann on the telephone.  Her
laboratory had been moved into the city, and so we
could arrange to lunch together.  I was glad of the
public restaurant, I would have found it harder to
tell her about Suzanne, if we had been alone.  When
once Ann understood, she made it as easy for me as
possible.

"And so," she said at last as we reached the entrance
to her laboratory, "you won't be coming out to Cromley?"

"I would be a decidedly glum guest, I'm afraid,"

She stood for a moment on the step, her brows
puckered.

"Well," she said, "If you really want her—go after
her.  Hit her on the head and drag her to your cave.
Oh, I know.  I'm too matter of fact and all that.  But
it's the way to get her—beat her a little."

"I had my chance to do that," I said, "and couldn't.
Perhaps you're right—but I love her a bit too much.  I
shan't go after her."

Ann sniffed.

"If I was a man, I'd go after what I wanted."  Then
her eyes softened.  "But I'm only a woman.  All I
can do is to tell you—you're always welcome at Cromley."

She turned and ran up the steps to her laboratory.

In this conversation I realized the basic difference
between Ann's point of view and mine, more clearly
than before.  Her philosophy taught her to be, if not
satisfied, at least content, with half things.  If she
could not get just what she wanted, nor all of it, she
tried to be happy with what was available.  Doubtless
she found life better worth living than I did.  But
such an attitude towards Suzanne would have seemed
to me a desecration.  Perhaps if I had sought her out,
argued with her, tried to dominate her will—tried
figuratively to "beat her a little"—I might have
persuaded her to marry me.  Perhaps.  But what I might
have won in this way, would not only have been less
than what I wanted, but something quite different.

It had taken no "persuading" to make me love
Suzanne.  I had seen numberless women, had met, I
suppose, several thousands.  Many I had known longer
than Suzanne.  But she stood out from the rest, not
as "another" woman, not as a more beautiful, or
cleverer or more earnest woman—although she was all
these—but as something quite different—my woman.
If she did not recognize me, in the same sudden,
unarguable way as her man, there was nothing I could do
about it.  She did not.

The wise man of Israel said that the way of a man
with a maid is past all finding out.  It would be truer
to say that the ways of men with maidens are too varied
and numerous for any classifying.  My way was perhaps
insane.  Very likely I was asking of life more than
is granted to mortals.  But that is small comfort.

Perhaps Suzanne did love me and had, in running
away, obeyed some age-old, ineradicable instinct of her
sex.  It is possible that she mourned because I did not
play the venerable game of pursuit.  Perhaps if I had
taken advantage of the hour when she was wholly mine,
it might have "turned the balance."  I might have
entered into the glory.  I do not understand the forces
of life which rule our mating.  But one thing I know—I
was not in love with any Suzanne who could have been
"persuaded."

I sat for some time on a bench in Union Square,
thinking this out, after I left Ann.  I had a strange
reluctance to plunge back into the old life.  I remember
watching with envy two tramps who sat in contemplative
silence on a bench opposite me.  I was tempted
to wander away, out of the world of responsibilities,
out into that strange land where nothing matters.
There are two sorts of wanderlust; the one which
pushes the feet and the one which pushes the spirit.
But at last I shook this cowardly lassitude from me and
walked downtown to the Teepee.

Nina threw her arms about my neck.  Norman
pounded me on the back, the little lassie Marie kissed
me shyly, and Guiseppe hobbled in from the kitchen
to complete the welcome.  While they were still
storming me with questions, Norman went back to his work.
He had a large sheet of drawing paper thumbtacked
to the table and was sketching an advertisement for a
new brand of pickles.  When the rest of them disappeared
to kill the fatted calf, he put a hand on my
shoulder and looked me over carefully.

"Been on the rocks?" he said.

I had not realized that it showed.  I nodded assent.

He laid on a dash of crimson alongside some glaring
green.

"Isn't it fierce?" he said.  "They wouldn't hang this
sort of thing in the Louvre but it's what makes the
public buy."  He squinted at it ruefully—"This love
business is beyond me.  Who would think that I could
stumble on Nina where I did?  You know that song of
Euripides.

   |  'This Cyprian
   |  Is a thousand, thousand things
   |  She brings more joy than any God,
   |  She brings
   |  More woe.  Oh may it be
   |  An hour of mercy when
   |  She looks at me.'

I'd given the whole matter up in disgust—and it was
solved for me.—Say.  I need to work in a little raw blue
here.  Green pickles, red pepper, blue—oh yes—a blue
label on the bottle.  Sweet! isn't it?

"You know sometimes I think we are all wrong
trying to join brains.  You wouldn't call Nina exactly
my intellectual equal, but I don't know any chap
married to a college graduate who's got anything on
me.  I'll put up Marie against any highbrow offspring."

He pulled out the tacks and set his sketch up on the
mantel-piece and walked across the room to get the
effect.  He jerked his head, gestured with his hand and
his lips moved as though he were arguing with it.  He
pinned it down again and began putting in the lettering.

"Of course," he took up the thread of his thoughts,
"there are people who say that it isn't marriage at all,
that I've just legalized my mistress.  But I've seen a
lot of people striving, breaking their necks, for
something they'd call finer, more spiritual—and getting
nothing at all.  I know I'm happier than most.  I'm
satisfied with *my* luck.  That's the point.  I can't
call it anything but luck—By the way.  There's a pile
of letters for you."

And so I dipped back in the rut.  In the Tombs I
sought out new duties, tried to lose myself—forget the
mess I had made of things—in work.  Nina and
Norman stood beside me in those days with fine sweet
loyalty.  They asked no questions, but seemed to
know what was wrong.  Always I felt myself in the
midst of a conspiracy of cheer.  It was during these
dreary months that I first began to like children.
Marie's prattle, after the gloom and weariness of the
Tombs, was bright indeed.

I know nothing more beautiful than the sight of a
little child's soul gradually taking shape.  The memory
of my own lonely, loveless childhood has given me, I
suppose, a special insight into the problems of the
youngsters.  The fact that I succeeded in gaining this
little girl's love and confidence has compensated me
for many things which I have missed.



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   VIII

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Shortly after my return from Europe, I came into
communication again with my family.  First it was a
letter from the Father.  He regretted that so many
years had passed without hearing from me.  Knowing
him as I did, I recognized in this a real apology for
having tried to starve me into obedience.  He had read
my book with great pleasure and had been especially
proud to learn that I had been chosen to represent our
nation abroad.  Then there was a little news of the
village—a list of those who had died and been born and
married.  Oliver, he wrote, had recently been called to
a pastorate in New York City.  He gave me his address
so that I might call.  And he ended with the hope that I
had conquered the doubts which had troubled my youth
and won to the joy of religious peace.

It was a hard letter to answer.  I had no more of the
bitterness I once felt towards him.  I wanted very
much to give him news which would cheer him.  And
yet I knew that the one question which seemed really
important to him—in regard to my religious beliefs—I
could not answer frankly without giving him pain.
I did the best I could to evade it.

About Oliver I was less certain.  I had never liked
him.  I did not want to revive the connection.  But I
knew that it would please the Father to have me.  I
resolved to call, but having no enthusiasm for it, other
engagements seemed more important, I kept postponing it.

But coming home to the Teepee one winter afternoon
about five, I found that he had forestalled me by calling
first.  As I opened the door, I heard Nina's voice and
then one that was strange—but I knew at once it was a
clergyman's voice.  They had not lit a lamp yet and
the library was illumined only by the open fire.
Norman was sitting on the divan playing with Marie's
pig-tail—it was a habit with him, just as some men
play with their watch charm.  Nina had on her
company manners and was doing the entertaining.  The
clergyman rose as I entered.  He was tall and broad,
on the verge of rotundity.  He wore a clerical vest
and collar and the fire light sparkled on a large gold
cross which hung from his watch chain.

"Here he is," Nina said as I came in.

"I—am—very—glad—to—see—you—again—Arnold."

I did not realize who it was, until Norman spoke up.

"It's your cousin, Dr. Drake."

"Oh.  Hello, Oliver," I said, shaking hands.

I realized at once that this had not been an entirely
fitting way to respond to his dignified, almost pompous
greeting.  I find it hard not to portray Oliver in
caricature.  He was so utterly foreign to the life I was
leading, so different from the people I knew that inevitably
he looked outlandish—at times comical.  I have
always regretted that Browning did not write another
poem, the reverse of "Bishop Blougram's Apology,"
giving us the free thinker's account of that interview.

At first Oliver seemed to me appallingly affected.
But as I got to see more of him I changed the adjective
to "adapted."  Just as a practicing physician must
develop certain mannerisms so had Oliver adapted
himself to his *metier*.  His voice was most impressive.
It was his working capital and he guarded it with
infinite care.  He was as much afraid of a sore throat
as an opera singer.  He belonged to that sub-variety
of his species which is called "liberal."  He had
accepted the theory of evolution end higher criticism.
He prided himself on being abreast of his time.  He
strove—successfully—to give the impression of a
broad-minded, cultured gentleman.

I think he enjoyed the flattery of success and he had
the brains to win it.  His wife, whom I met later was, I
think, dominated by "social" ambitions.  She also had
brains.  They were a strong team.  Their progress had
been a steady upward curve.  From a small town to a
small city, then from a mission chapel in Indianapolis
to its biggest church, from there to Chicago and at last
to a fashionable charge in New York.  And when you
saw Oliver this progress seemed inevitable.

Spirituality?  I do not think he had need of any.
It would have been an impediment to his progress.
It was very hard to remember that he was the son of
Josiah Drake.

"How long is it," he said in his suave, modulated
voice, "since we saw each other.  Not since I left you
at your prep. school—at least fifteen years."

"More," I said, "twenty."  I could think of nothing
to say.  His presence was rather oppressive.  But
it was part of his profession never to be awkward.

"Well.  Now that we are in the same city, I trust we
will see each other more frequently.  You were in
Europe when we arrived.  I wasn't quite sure whether
you were back yet or not.  But I came in on the
chance—I got your address from your publishers"—he made
a congratulatory bow—"to see if we could have you
for dinner next Friday.  It's been a great pleasure
to meet Mr. and Mrs. Benson, I envy you such
friendship...."

"Nina," Norman interrupted, "has been chanting
your praises for the last half hour."

"Ah.  You cannot dodge your responsibilities that
way, Mr. Benson," Oliver remarked, with rather heavy
playfulness.  "You have been a most effective chorus.
Of course, Arnold,"—he turned to me—"your friends
will always be welcomed at our house.  I would be
very glad, and I am sure Mrs. Drake would be also,
if you could bring them with you on Friday night."

Norman bounced off the divan, as if someone had
exploded a bomb under him.

"Oh, no," he said.  "We're very much obliged to
you.  But Nina and I never go out in society,"—as
Oliver looked a bit taken aback, Norman went on to
explain.  "You see our marriage was—well—picturesque.
I've forgotten the date, but you can find the
details in the files of any of our newspapers.
Fortunately, my wife has no social ambitions, so we don't
have to risk embarrassing people who are kind enough
to invite us."

Oliver had regained his poise.

"Being a stranger to the city," he said, "I am of
course ignorant of the matter to which you refer
but"—he gracefully took Nina's hand—"I am quite
sure that Mrs. Benson would honor any society.
However if it would expose you to any embarrassment, I
cannot, of course, insist."

Nina's attitude to Oliver after he was gone was
amusing.  She had evidently been impressed with his
grandeur.  But when Norman jokingly accused her of
having fallen in love with him, she shuddered.

"No," she said with real but ludicrous solemnity—"I
wouldn't like to be his wife."

Marie, who had had to undergo the ordeal of sitting
on his knee, remarked that he did not know how to play.

But in spite of the dislike she had taken to him
Nina made me tell in detail everything about the dinner
party.  It had, I am sure, been a great success from
Mrs. Drake's point of view.  There had been two Wall
Street millionaires at the table, a great lawyer, a
congressman and an ambassador.  Because French came to
me easily I had to entertain the latter's wife.  The food
and the wine had been exquisite.  Socially a
success, but humanly a barren affair.

I made my duty call on Mrs. Drake and would never
have gone near them again, if it had not been for a
letter I received from Oliver about a month later.  He
asked me to come for lunch to talk over a scheme he
was working out for penal reform.  It interested me
immensely to see him and his wife working together.
He began with a sonorous peroration.  The reason the
church was losing influence was that it did not take
sufficient interest in social problems.  He was
developing this idea at some length when Mrs. Drake coughed.

"The idea is familiar," she said.

"Yes, my dear."

Coming, as he did, to the direction of one of New
York's most influential churches, a congregation which
included many people of great wealth, many people
of great influence in the world of business and
politics....  Mrs. Blake coughed.

"I'm sure Cousin Arnold knows about the church."

"Yes, my dear.  I was about to say...."

He was about to say that he felt it his duty to try
to utilize this great force in the cause of human
betterment.  In a few minutes Mrs. Drake coughed again
and said, "Naturally."  He had given a good deal of
consideration, prayerful consideration, to the subject:
personally he was opposed to the church going into
politics.  He spoke of several well-known clergymen
who had gone into the fight against Tammany Hall,
he doubted their wisdom.  Of course if one could be
sure that all their congregation were republicans....
The lunch was finished at this point and we went into
the sumptuous library.  Mrs. Drake took the subject
out of his hand.

"You see, Cousin Arnold," she said, "we think that
the role of the church should be conciliating.  It is our
object to attract people—all people to the church—not
to alienate anyone.  And the church cannot mix in any
of the issues which are vexed—which have partisans
on each side—without offending and driving people
away.  It is evident that the church must interest
itself in social questions, must show that it is a power
to overcome this horrible unrest.  But it is very
hard to find a social problem which is consistent
with the conciliatory rôle which the church must preserve.

"When Oliver and I read your book, we both had the
same inspiration.  Here is just the very problem.  What
you wrote about the prisons is awful.  And no one
can object to the church taking a definite attitude on
this question.  The Master, himself has instructed
us to visit those who are in prison."

"Exactly," Oliver put in.

But she did not give him time to go on.  She rapidly
laid before me their plan.  Oliver was to call together a
group of a dozen fellow clergymen, the most
influential—I presume she meant the most fashionable—in
each denomination.  I was to speak to them and help
him to get them interested.  They would organize a
committee, they would give out interviews to the
newspapers, preach sermons on the subject, get some good
bills introduced into the legislature—and make a great
splash!

I sat back and listened to it with grim amusement.
This was to be Oliver's debut in New York.  In vulgar
phrase it was a "press agent campaign."  Oliver—the
progressive, the fighting clergyman—was to get
columns of free advertising.  There would surely be a
great mass meeting in one of the theaters and Oliver
would get his chance to cast the spell of his oratory
over fashionable New York.  It was an admirable
scheme.  No attack on Tammany Hall, was not one
of his deacons a director in the street car company?
Did not the real owner of the gas company rent the
most expensive pew in the church and did not
complaisant Tammany Hall arrange to have the gas
company's ashes removed by the city's street cleaning
department?  No support to the campaign for decent
tenements, some of the congregation were landlords.
And of course no playing with the dangerous subject
of labor unions.

"J. H. Creet doesn't belong to your church, does he?"
I asked.

"No," Mrs. Drake replied.  "Why?"

"Well, he has a fat contract for manufacturing cloth
for prison uniforms."

"J. H. Creet?" Oliver said, making a note.  "A
queer name.  I never heard of it."

Their interest in the matter was evident, but where
did I come in?  Well—after all—publicity is a great
thing.  It must be the basis of every reform.  I had very
little faith in any real good coming from such a campaign,
but at least it would call people's attention to the
issue.  It was not to be despised.  So I fell in with the
scheme.

Several outsiders have complimented me on the
newspaper noise we made, supposing that I was the motive
power of it.  The praise belongs to Oliver—and his
wife.  It was remarkable the skill with which they
handled it.  It was amusing to watch the suave
manoeuvres by which Oliver always secured the top line.
For a month he worked hard, put in hours of real study.
His great speech in Daly's was masterful.  And then
things fizzled out.  None of the bills got past a second
reading.

At one of the last conferences I had with Oliver, he
asked me why I did not go to Tennessee and visit the
Father.

"Why don't you have him come on here for a vacation?"
I asked.  "He hasn't been in New York since
before the war."

Oliver shrugged his shoulders.

"I make a point of going out to see him every two
years—but he'd be out of place here.  The world has
moved a lot since his day.  He would not understand.
He's the type of the old school.  Progress is heresy.
Why I'm sure he'd be shocked at my wearing a collar
like this.  He'd accuse me of papacy.  I always put
on mufti when I visit him."

It was the patronizing superiority of his tone that
angered me.  I realized suddenly how lonely the Father
must be.  I had always thought of him as quite happy
in having a son who had followed in his footsteps.  I
am not sure but that with all my outspoken heresy,
I was more of a true son to him than Oliver.  I resolved
to go out to Tennessee at my first opportunity.

I am half sorry I went.  It was an unsuccessful visit.
The barren little mountain village had changed not at
all in the years I had been away.  There were a few
more battle monuments on the hillside and the people
still talked of little beside the war.  The big parsonage
beside the barn-like church was just as I had left it.
The Father's wants were looked after by the numerous
progeny of Barnabas, the negro body servant who had
followed him through the war.

I had been thrown out for my Godlessness and had
been expected to go to the dogs.  It was something of
an affront to the traditions that I had not.  To have
written a book was a matter of fame in that little
village.  I found that the Father with childlike pride had
boasted far and wide of my having been chosen as
delegate to the prison congress at Rome.  It was not
to be accounted for that instead of coming back as
the prodigal I should return as a "distinguished
son."  The minor prophets of the place were disappointed
in me.

Even the Father was bewildered.  He came down to
the gateway to meet me—a fine old figure, leaning on
his ebony cane, his undimmed eyes shining from under
his shaggy white eyebrows.  He put his arm over my
shoulder as we walked back to the house, as though he
was glad of someone to lean upon.  And all through
supper he talked to me about my father and mother.
He told me again how my father had died bravely
at the head of a dare-devil sortie out of Nashville.
And he told me with great charm about the time when
they had been children.  We sat out on the porch for a
while and he went on with his reminiscencing.  Then
suddenly he stopped.

"Oh," he said, "how I ramble.  You will be
wanting to go and call on Margot."

It was like visiting the ghosts.  Margot had aged
more than any of my generation.  We were still under
forty but her hair was quite gray.  Her face had lost
its beauty—pinched out by her narrow, empty life.
And yet as she stood on the porch to greet me, as I
came up the walk to her house, there was much of the
old charm about her.  There are few women like her
nowadays.  I knew many in my childhood—the real
heroes of the great war.  The women who in the
bitter days of reconstruction, bound up the wounds of
defeat, bore almost all the burdens and laid the
foundations of the new South.  They were gracious women,
in spite of their arrogant pride in their breed.  They
knew how to suffer and smile.

We sat side by side on the porch—leagues and leagues
apart.  I found it strangely hard to talk with her.
She told, in her quiet colorless voice, all her news.  Her
mother had died several years before.  Al was married
and established in Memphis and so forth.  Just as the
supply of news ran out, a rooster awoke from some bad
dream and crowed sleepily.

"Margot," I said, "do you still steal eggs?"

"O Arnold," she laughed, "haven't you forgotten
that?  I have—almost.  A long time ago I paid mother
back and I saved fifteen dollars out of my allowance
and sent it to the Presbyterian church."

I had always considered myself a fairly honest man,
but it had never occurred to me to make restitution
for these childish thefts.

"It was awful," she went on, "why did we do it?"

"Margot," I said, "haven't you ever committed a
worse sin than that?"

She fell suddenly serious.  It was several minutes
before she replied.

"Yes, Arnold, I've been discontented and rebellious."

I looked out at the village street, at the uninteresting
houses, at the glare of the "general store" where liquor
was sold and where doubtless Col. Jennings, illumined
by the moonshine whiskey of our mountains, was
recounting to a bored audience of loafers some details
of one of Stonewall Jackson's charges.  It was
needless to ask what it was that made her discontented,
against what she had been rebellious.  And the deadly
torpor of that village life seemed to settle about me
like a cloud of suffocating smoke.  There sat beside
me this fine spirited woman—useless.  Her glorious
potentiality of motherhood unused.  Defrauded of her
birth-right—wasted!  I had an impulse to jump up and
shake my fist at it all.  I wanted to tell her that her
greatest sin had been not to revolt more efficiently.
But that would have been cruel now that her hair was
so gray.

"Do you know who has helped me most?" she asked.
"Your uncle.  He is a saint, Arnold.  We are great
friends now.  He came here one time when father was
sick.  He has been a wonderful comfort to me.  Sometimes
I go and call on him.  He's very lonely.  And he's
such a gallant old gentleman.  When I see him drive
by in his buckboard I always wave to him and as soon
as he's out of sight I go over to the house and scold the
niggers.  They would never do any work if somebody
did not fuss them.  And you know it makes me more
contented to watch him.  I say to myself that if such a
wonderful man, so wise and learned can find plenty
to do to serve the Master in this little village there
must be quite enough for just a woman like me.  There's
a heap of comfort in that thought.  But sometimes I
read some story or think about you all out in the big
world and it seems very small here—and lonely."

There was nothing I could think to say, so again we
were silent.

"Arnold," she said suddenly.  "Do you ever read
King Arthur stories any more?"

"Whenever I get five minutes," I replied.  "The
people I live with have a little girl—Marie.  I'm
teaching them to her."

"I'm so glad—and Froissart?"

She went into the house and brought out the old
soiled volume.  We looked through it together and then
she said that perhaps I would want to take it East for
Marie.  But I had a feeling that she wished to keep it.
So I said Marie was too young for Froissart yet.  Once
more we fell silent.  I remember the open book on her
thin knees, her thin aristocratic hand between the
pages, the profile of her face.  Lamp-light shone out
through the window upon her and she looked almost
beautiful again.

I am never sure of what is in a woman's heart.  But
I could not explain the constraint upon us except that
perhaps she had always been waiting for my homecoming,
still nourishing in her heart our childish love—still
hoping.  But there was nothing to hope.  It was
not in her power to conceive what I was.  I was battered
and scarred by fights she had never imagined,
disillusioned of dreams she had never dreamed.  I had
left the village years ago—irrevocably.  She would
have been utterly lost in my world.  At last, rather
mournfully, I said "good night."

The next day the Father was on the porch when I
came down.  He greeted me with a sort of wistful
expectancy in his eyes.  And my cordial "good morning"
did not seem to satisfy him.  I did not understand
until at breakfast.

"My son," he said, "I have often wished—it would
have made me very happy—if you had married Margot."  So
he at least had hoped that this would be the
result of my home-coming.

"She's a rare girl," he said, "a fine spirit.  A good
wife is a great help to a man in leading an upright life.
A pillar of strength."

"The fates have denied me that help," I said.  And
I did not realize till too late the pagan form I had given
my words.

But the match had been lighted.  The Father did not
believe that any good could come to a man except from
the religion of Christ.  Try as hard as I might I could
not prevent the conversation from taking that turn.
If he had loved me less we might have been better
friends.  But the only thing which mattered to him
was the salvation of souls.  And in proportion to his
love for me he must needs seek my conversion.  On
the one point where we could not agree, his very
affection made him insistent.

We both tried very hard to be sweet tempered about
it.  But I was in a difficult position.  If I did not try
to answer his arguments he thought I was convinced
but unwilling to admit it.  If I argued, it angered him.
He would lose his temper and then be very apologetic
about it.  For an hour or so we would talk pleasantly
of other things.  Then inevitably the conversation
would swing back to the subject he cared most about.
After supper he at last brought things to a pass from
which there was but one escape.

"My son," he said, "the day after to-morrow is the
first Sunday in the month—Communion Sunday.
You are still a member of my church, you have never
asked to be relieved of the solemn responsibilities you
took when you united with us.  Will you join the rest
of the members at the communion table?"

"I'm sorry, Father," I said, my heart suddenly
hardening at the memory of the way I had been pushed
into church membership.  "I'll have to leave to-morrow
night.  I must be back at work early next week."

I had expected to stay longer.  But for me to have
gone to church and refused communion, would have
been almost an insult to him.  To have pretended to a
faith I did not have, seemed to me a worse sort of a lie
than the one I used.  And so—having been home but
two nights—I returned to the city and work.



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   IX

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Except for my vacations, I have missed very few
working days in the Tombs since.  And as the months
have slipped along I have added steadily to my writings
on criminology.  To some it might seem a dreary life.
It has not been so.  There have been compensations.

The chief one has been the pleasant home in the
Teepee.  It would be easy to fill pages about it.  But
those who have been part of a loving family will know
what I mean without my writing it.  And it is past
my power to paint it for those who have not shared it.

I recall especially the Christmas Eve when Marie
was nine years old.  Norman was at work at the table.
Marie sat on my knee telling me some wonderful story.
Nina came in from the kitchen where she and Guiseppe
were concocting the morrow's feast.  She sat down on
the arm of my chair and said she had a secret to whisper
in my ear.  Norman looked up from his work and
smiled.

"It's the one thing which has troubled her," he said.
"Not having done her duty by the birth-rate but once."

The startled wonder came back again to Nina's eyes
in those days.  Even little Marie felt the "presence"
among us and was awed.

But the fates had one more blow reserved for me.
The year was just turning into spring when it fell.  One
morning at the Tombs, a court attendant called me
to the telephone.  It was Nina.  Norman, she said
in a frightened voice, was very sick.  He had complained
the day before of a cold and had gone to bed in the
afternoon.  I had not seen him that morning.  When I
reached the Teepee, he was delirious, in a high fever.
We had no regular doctor, so I called up Ann on the
telephone.

"It looks to me like pneumonia," I told her.  "Can
you send us a good doctor and a nurse?"

Within half an hour Ann had come herself with one
of the city's most famous doctors.

Nina would not leave the bed-side.  I waited for
news in the library.  It reminded me of the time, years
before, when I had waited for a verdict on my eyes.
I do not suppose that there are many friendships as
ours had been.  It is hard to believe that such
relationships can be anything but permanent.  It seemed
impossible that I could lose Norman.  But Ann made
no pretense of hope.  There was almost no chance she
said.  She telephoned out to her mother that she would
be kept in town, and went back to the sickroom.

All the afternoon and all night long they fought it
out.  Sometimes when the suspense was too great I
would go to the door.  Nina sat with staring eyes at
the head of the bed.  Ann and the doctor were busy
with ice-presses.  At night-fall I gave Marie her supper
and put her to bed in my room.  She had become
suddenly frightened and I sat beside her a long time,
comforting her with stories of the Round Table, until
at last she fell asleep.

Norman slept a little, but most of the time, tossed
about deliriously—calling out to someone who was not
there.  "Oh Louise!" he would moan, "How can you
believe that about me?  I'm not spotless—but that
isn't true.  Don't think that of me.  It's too cruel."  But
he got no comfort.  The woman of his delirium
was obdurate.

The dawn was just breaking when Ann came and
told me he was conscious.  It was the end.  Nina was
kneeling beside him weeping silently.  He smiled at
me and tried to hold out his hand, but he was too weak.

"It's as though they had let me come back to say
'goodbye,'" he whispered.  "Be good to them,
Arnold—to Nina and Marie and the one that's coming.
She's a good girl...."  A look of wonder came into
his eyes, with his last strength he stroked her hair.

"It's funny.  I thought she was—just a toy—but
she's got a soul, Arnold.  Don't forget that, old man.
Promise me"—I gripped his hand—"Oh yes.  I know
you'll be good to her.  I know—that's all right.  Poor
little girl.  I wish she wouldn't cry so.—I'd like to
kiss her once more"—Ann lifted her up so that he might
kiss her.  "There!  There!  Little one.  You mustn't
cry.  It's not so bad as all that.  Arnold'll take care of
you.  Good luck—all of you.  Don't be afraid....
I'm...."

It was a queer funeral.  Some of his relatives, who
had cut him since his marriage, came.  It was on a
Sunday so the Studenten Verein could turn out.
Mrs. O'Hara, whose coal he had bought for seven years,
came with her eight children.  So did our washerwoman,
Frau Zimmer, with her epileptic son.  Guiseppe
rode in the front carriage with Nina, Marie and I, and
cried more than any of us.  The Studenten Männer
Chor sang a dirge.  In the motley crowd I saw a man
in the costume of an Episcopalian clergyman.  As
they were dispersing, he came up to me.

"I am unknown to you, sir," he said, "I want to tell
you that I believe in immortality—and that I am sure
your friend is sitting on the right-hand of our Heavenly
Father.  I hope to be worthy to meet him again.  He
was so good that I am surprised that he escaped
crucifixion.  I am only one of many whom he pulled out of
hell.  I can not...."

He burst into tears and disappeared into the crowd.
Somehow, out of all the tributes to Norman which
poured in on me in those days, the incoherent words
of this unknown clergyman touched me most.  What
his story was, how Norman had helped him, I have no idea.

When we got back to the Teepee, we found Ann
there, she had put things in order for us.  She took Nina
to bed and gave her something to make her sleep.  Then
she joined me in the library.  She picked up her hat
to go away, but I detained her.  And so we sat together
through the afternoon.  As I remember we talked very
little—except for some directions she gave me about
Nina's health.  At twilight Guiseppe came in with
Marie, whom he had taken for a walk in the park.  We
all had supper together.  Ann helped me put Marie
to bed and then she went away.

It was very comforting, having just lost one friend,
to refind another.  There has been no ripple of estrangement
between us since.  Our love relation has been the
anchor—the steadfast thing—of my later life.

Norman's will left a comfortable annuity to Nina and
the children, the rest went into his educational
endowment.  I am a trustee of both sums.  I think they have
both been administered as he would have wished.

The baby was a boy.  Nina told me that long before
its father died, they had arranged, if it was a boy, to
name it after me.  I would have preferred to have
called it Norman.  One evening, as I was writing in the
library, I glanced up from my paper.  Nina was
nursing the youngster, there were tears on her cheeks.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"Oh!  I wish he could have lived to see the man-child.
Sometimes I was afraid he might grow tired
of me.  But he would have loved his son—always.  I
wish he could have seen him."

But I wish that Norman could have lived to see Nina.
I had always a feeling that he did not entirely
appreciate her.  She has developed greatly since his
death.  Not long afterwards I began to notice long
and serious Italian conversations between her and
Guiseppe.  And I asked him one day, jokingly, what
they found to talk about so earnestly.

"I am teaching her, Mister Arnold, how to be a lady.
Now that their father, who was a gentleman, is dead,
it is necessary that the mother of the children should be
a lady."

Guiseppe is too much of a Republican and Nina too
little of a snob for these words to have anything but
the noblest meanings.

"It is difficult for a simple man like me," he went
on.  "But have I not been a soldier of liberty on two
continents?  I have seen many fine ladies and I tell
her about them.  And also I have read books."

Nina as well has taken to reading.  Painfully she
has recalled the lessons of her brief school days.  Of
course I have helped her all I could.  She has taken the
responsibilities of motherhood in a way she would
scarcely have done if Norman had lived.

It was perhaps a year after his death, that I came
home one evening and found Nina in a great flurry.
On tiptoe, her finger on her lips, she led me into the
library and closed the door.

"Oh! my friend," she said, "you will not be angry?
There's a woman in my room.  Such a sad old woman.
She is very drunk.  I found her downstairs—in the
hallway.  There were boys teasing her.  At first I was
frightened and ran upstairs.  Then I remembered how
he would never leave anyone so.  I brought her up to
my room.  You will not be angry?"

She has turned the Teepee into an informal sort of
a rescue mission.  I never know whom I will find in my
favorite chair.  Sometimes they have delirium tremens
and shriek all night.  At first I was worried about the
effect on the children.  But Nina and Ann said it
would do them no harm.  I cannot see that it has.
One thing about it has impressed me immensely.
It has often happened in my work that I have brought
home a boy or a man from the Tombs and let them
sleep on the divan till some better place was found for
them.  Not infrequently these guests have departed
without formalities, taking as mementoes any silver
spoons they found at hand.  Not one of Nina's
women have stolen anything.  It passes my understanding.

Nina has a great admiration for Ann, but does not
understand her at all.  She cannot conceive of the
reasons why Ann refuses to get married.  It is a thing
to philosophize about, the attitude of these two women
towards matrimony.  They are both good women,
yet to one marriage seems a degradation and serfdom,
to the other marriage meant escape from the mire,
emancipation from the most abysmal slavery the world
has ever known.  Watching them has helped me
understand many of life's endless paradoxes.

The only new thing which has come into my life since
Norman's death has been the children.  I am legal
guardian for Nina's two.  And several years ago, when
Billy—Ann's nephew—grew to high school age, she
turned him over to me, fearing that all-woman
household might not be the best place for a growing boy.
So he came to the Teepee, going to school in the city,
spending only his week-ends at Cromley.

My work in the Tombs goes on as ever.  A new prison
has been built, with cleaner corridors, roomier cells,
sanitary plumbing and so forth.  But the old tragedy
goes on just the same.  My title has been changed from
county detective to probation officer, and I have been
given some assistants.  Certainly there has been
improvement.  The rougher edges of justice have been
worn off.  But the bandage is still over the eyes of the
goddess.  The names of the judges have changed, but
the inherent viciousness of their situation is unaltered.
There is now, just as when I started, ten times as much
work as I can do to even alleviate the manifold cruelties
of the place.  It is still—in spite of the new
building—called the Tombs.

And Suzanne?  If anyone should ask me what has
become of her, I would have to reply by a question—"Which
Suzanne?"  I have seen very little of the one
who came back to America.  Once or twice I have
encountered her in public meetings.  Three years after I
came back from Europe, I received her wedding cards—an
architect named Stone.  I knew him slightly.  He
seems to be very much in love with his wife.  One comes
across their names in the papers quite frequently.  They
are active socialists.  But Mrs. Stone is a strange and
rather unreal personality to me.

But there is the other Suzanne, her of the slim,
boyish form, who tried to learn to throw stones like a
man and was vexed when I laughed at her, the Suzanne
who loved the poppies, the Suzanne of our earnest
discussions, the Suzanne who was a prophetess, the
enthusiastic apostle of the new faith, who like Deborah
of old, sang songs of the great awakening to come,
and the Suzanne of Moret—whom I loved.  She still
lives.  I cannot see that the passing years have in any
way dimmed the vision.  Mrs. Stone is getting
matronly, her hair is losing its luster.  Suzanne is still
straight and slender.  There are moments when she
comes to me out of the mystery of dreams and, sitting
on the floor, rests her head—her fearless head—on my
knees.  I run my fingers through her amazing hair and
try to capture the fitful light of the fire, which glows
there, now so golden, now so red....  And as the
dream is sweet, so is the awakening bitter.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`BOOK VII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   BOOK VII

.. vspace:: 2

I come now to the last section of my book.  There
can be no doubt that it must be about the children.

As I get older, in spite of my best intentions, the
work in the Tombs grows mechanical.  Each new
prisoner has of course his individual peculiarities, but
I find myself frequently saying: "It's like a case I had
back in 1900."  And it is the same with my writing.
It is mostly a re-statement—I hope a continually
better and more forceful statement—of conclusions
I have held for many years.

The light of these later yeans has been my vicarious
parentage—these three young adventurers who call
me, "Daddy."  I suppose I look at them with an
indulgent eye, magnifying their virtues, ignoring their
limitations.  But they seem very wonderful to me.
Thinking of them, watching them, make me sympathize
with Moses on Nebo's lonely mountain.  Through
them I catch glimpses of a fairer land than I have
known, which I win never enter.

On his eighteenth birthday, Billy asked me why I was
not a socialist.  I knew he was leaning that way.  He
is an artist.  Ann wanted him to go to college, but he
broke away to the classes at Cooper Union.  Now at
twenty-four he is bringing home prizes and gold medals
which he pretends to despise.  Many of his artist chums
are socialists.  I tried to get him into an argument
on the subject, but, as is his way, he would not argue.
He would only ask me questions.  What did I think
about this?  What did I think about that?

About a week later at breakfast; he handed me a
little red card, which was his certificate of membership
in the party.

"You can't join till you're eighteen," he said.  "You
see, Daddy, I don't think a chap can ever paint
anything, do anything worth while in art, unless he
believes in something besides himself—something bigger.
I don't know anything bigger than this faith in the
people."

He had a pretty bad time of it the next Sunday at
Cromley.  His grandmother is such a seasoned warrior
for anarchism, that she has as little tolerance for
socialists as our "best people" would have for her.
Ann was neutral, for she holds that what one believes
matters not half so much as the way one believes it.
And I would do nothing to dampen the youngster's
ardor.  It is amazing to me.  He has the faith to look
at our state legislature and believe in democracy, to
look at the Tombs and believe in justice.

In fact I have sometimes thought of joining his
party.  I would like to enter as closely into his life as
possible.  But all this talk of revolution repulses me.
It is the impatience of youth.  The world does not
move fast enough for them—they forget that it moves
at all.  But it has spun a long, long way even in my
life.

I recall our fight for a reformatory.  It ended in
fiasco.  But it was only the beginning of a movement.
Baldwin was a man who held on.  Before long he had
persuaded a western state to try his scheme.  To-day
there are more than thirty of our states with
reformatories for boys.  The later ones, better than Baldwin's
dream.  And then this probation system.  It is the
biggest blow ever dealt to the old idea of the Tombs.
Of course it is having growing pains.  The special
advocates of the system are distressed because of the
hundreds of probation officers only a few are efficient.
Give it time.

And of broader import is the awakening of democracy
in the land.  It will take a generation or more
before historians can properly adjudge this movement.
To-day we see only sporadic demonstrations of it,
speeches here and there, in favor of referendum and
so forth.  The real issue often veiled by the personalities
of candidates.  The noise is only the effervescence of
a great idea, a great aspiration, which is taking form
in the mind of the nation.

The country is ten times as thoughtful about social
problems as it was when my generation began.  Recently
the legislature made an appropriation to give me a new
assistant in the Tombs.  I wrote to several colleges
and a dozen men applied for the job.  I could take my
pick.  Twelve men out of one year's college crop!  I
was a pioneer.

And young Fletcher, the man I chose, asked me the
other day, what I thought of Devine's book, "The
Causes of Misery."  He is beginning work on the basis
of that book.  And Devine speaks of "The Abolition
of Poverty" as if it was a commonplace.  No one dared
to dream that poverty could be abolished when I was
a young man.  We thought it was an indivisible part
of civilization.  I remember when I first heard Jacob
Riis talk of abolishing the slums!  I thought he was a
dreamer.  The tenement house department reports
that a million new homes have been built in the
city—under the new law—with no dark rooms.  And the
abolition of tuberculosis!  Why I can remember a
cholera epidemic!  These young socialists do not
realize what we have done.

Last summer I took Nina and Marie and young
Arnold, he is ten now, down on the Maine coast to an
island where Billy and some of his artist friends have
a camp.  As I mingled with this colony of ardent young
people, in spite of the sympathy, which real friendship
with Billy has given me for them, I felt like a stranger.
I am sure they think I am an old fogey.  My mind
kept jumping back to my own youth, comparing them
with what I had been at their age.  In so many ways
they were better men than I was, better equipped for life.

I remember especially one conversation with Billy.
He had just finished a canvas as the twilight was falling.
I think it is the finest thing he has done yet.  There
is a stretch of surf in the foreground and beyond the
islands rise higher and higher to the peak of Mount
Desert.  I cannot describe it beyond these barren
details.  Somehow he has accentuated the rising upward
lines, by some magic of his color he has infused the thing
with immense emotion.

"What are you going to call it?" I asked as he was
putting up his tubes.

"It hasn't any name," he said.  "It's just a feeling
I get sometimes—up here with the sea and the
mountains."  He pondered it a moment, seeking words.  He
is not a ready talker.  "I think it's one of the psalms,"
he said at last, "you know the one that begins: 'I
will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence
cometh my help.'  It's sort of religious—being all by one's
self and looking up."

"What is your religion, Billy?" I asked.

He sat silent, stopped arranging his brushes and
looked off at the last of the sunlight on the summit of
the mountain.

"Have you got one?" I persisted.

"Oh, yes," he said quickly.  "Yes—at least sometimes
it comes to me.  There are days on end when it
doesn't come—barren days.  And then again it comes
very strong.  I haven't any name for it.  I think the
trouble with most religions is that people try to define
them.  It doesn't seem to fit into words."

Again he was busy with his kit.  But when everything
was ready, instead of starting home, he sat down again.

"It's funny," he said, "I'm quite sure you can't
talk about religion satisfactorily.  But we all want to.
And as soon as you try to put it into words some of it
escapes—the best part of it.  I think that's why
painting appeals to me.  You can say things with colors
you can't with words.

"You remember those reproductions, I showed you,
of Felicien Rops, the Belgium etcher.  You didn't
like them.  I don't either.  He's wonderfully clever—My
God!  I wish I could draw like that man—but I
don't think it's art.  I don't think he ever looked
upward—lifted up his eyes to the hills.  I guess my
religion is just that indescribable something which changes
craftsmanship into art.  I want to draw well, I want my
color to be right, I want technique—all I can get of it.
But even if I was perfect in all these, I would have to
lift up my eyes unto the hills for help before I could
do the real thing—the thing I want to do."

"And when you lift up your eyes, Billy," I asked,
"who is it that gives you help?"

He spoke rather reluctantly after a moment's pause.

"That's the trouble with talking religion.  You get
mixed up between the figurative and the literal.  Does
it really matter Who—or Where?  I don't think of any
person up there in the afterglow on the mountain top.
There doesn't have to be any hills even.  Sometimes
I get 'help' in my studio—with nothing to look up to
but the white-washed lights and the rafters.

"We all need 'help' and when we get it—we've 'got
religion.'  It's all so vague that we have to use symbols.
One person has associated 'help' with high mass and
choir boys and tawdry images.  Another gets his
connection by listening to a village quartet murder
'Nearer my God to Thee.'  When Nelson was over
illustrating that book on Egypt he learned the
Mohammedan 'Call to Prayer.'  It's a weird sing-song
thing.  There are millions of people who, when they
hear that, get the feeling that they need 'help' and chase
round to the Mosque.  I haven't found anything more
suggestive than those words of King David.

"Sometimes my pictures are rotten and I sign them
'William Barton.'  Once in a long while I paint one
that is better,—better than my brush tricks, better
than my technique, better than just me—and I always
put a little star after my name.  It means 'this picture
was painted by William Barton and God.'  That's my
religion."

"It's all summed up in that old Jewish song—'I will
lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh
my help.'  Do you know it?"

Yes.  I knew it.  I sat in the Father's study, all
one fine afternoon, when the other boys were playing
ball, and learned that song by rote, in punishment for
upsetting his inkwell.  It seems very wonderful to me
that the Bible should seem a thing of beauty to a
youngster.  It was at best an unpleasant piece of drudgery
for me—more often a form of chastisement.  What
stirs the deepest emotions in Billy's heart, only
reminds me of a blot of ink on the Father's desk and the
shouts of the boys out in the street whom I might not
join.

I had been suspecting for some time that although
Billy and Marie both call me "Daddy," they were
coming to realize that they are not brother and sister.
My suspicions were confirmed the other day by Nina.
She asked me solemnly what I thought of Billy.  And
when I declared that he was the straightest, cleanest,
finest youngster I knew, she said.

"Perhaps.  But he is not as fine as Norman was."

I said that God had apparently mislaid the mold
in which He had cast Norman.

"I wish that Marie could have as good a husband as
I did—she's a better girl."

Nina has immense respect for her daughter.  And
Marie deserves it.  A habit of philosophizing forces
me to realize that the greatest part of the world has
failed to appreciate, has in fact utterly ignored the
existence of, this marvelous foster daughter of mine.
There are, doubtless, many parents who even if they
had had the good fortune to know Marie would stubbornly
prefer their own daughters.  But if I were twenty
years younger, I would certainly enter the race against
Billy.  She gets her looks from her mother—pure
Lombard—but she has inherited Norman's irreverent,
incisive vision and his tricks of speech.  She decided
to follow her father's chief interest and now, at
nineteen, is attending a kindergarten normal school.

But the thing, for which I give Marie my highest
reverence is her attitude to her mother.  She knows the
truth.  I found that they had talked this over before
Norman died.  It was his wish that she should not be
told by strangers.  And so nothing was hidden from
her, no questions were evaded and she grew into the
knowledge of her mother's story, with as little shock
as she learned the multiplication table.  It is very
sweet to watch them together, this quiet, sad eyed old
woman, who can write with difficulty and this
superbly modern girl, who has had every advantage of
education.  Marie has sense enough to know that very,
very few people have been blest with finer mothers.

A few nights after this talk with Nina, I found Marie
alone in the library reading a red paper covered book
by Earl Krautsky—"The Road to Power."  Across
the corner, in his big, boyish handwriting, was scrawled,
"William Barton."

"Marionette," I said, thinking of what her mother
had said, "Do you believe in free love?"

"Not for a minute," she snapped, "it's just another
of your man tricks to get the better of your superiors."

Marie is a suffragette.  But her jibe at me did not
satisfy her.  The thing was evidently on her mind.  She
came over and sat on the arm of my chair.

"Don't laugh at me, Daddy.  It's so serious.  I
think it's all wrapped up in the big woman question.
How can there be any real freedom except among equals?
In the bottom of my heart I think it is a beautiful ideal.
If I were in love with a man, I'd just want to be with
him.  It seems a little degrading to take a justice of the
peace into one's confidence in so private a matter.  I
would feel ashamed to tell a stranger I was going to
love my sweetheart.  And in a sense I like the idea of
freedom.  It would be horrible to have my husband kiss
me because it was the law; because he'd promised
to—if he didn't really want to.

"But that's only a private personal view of it.  It
doesn't seem to me the important thing, what the
politicians call 'the main issue.'  This trying to be
individually free, this fussing over individual rights,
seems sort of early Victorian...."

"What," I interrupted, "you wouldn't call Ann—one
of the first women to win distinction in a profession—you
wouldn't call her Early Victorian?"

"Well.  I don't mean Ann.  She's an exception.  No,
she isn't either.  I mean her, too.  Nowadays we think
of things socially.  It doesn't matter so much whether
I'm free, whether I get justice, it's the others—the
race—we must work for.  Ann's wonderful.  You know
how much I love her.  But she don't look at things the
way we do.

"We must think not only of the few women, here and
there, the giants like Ann, who are strong enough
to stand alone, but of all the women—and the children.
That's just the point.  We're trying to learn how not to
stand alone—how to stand together.  We've got to
ignore our own preferences and rights and learn to
fight for woman's rights.

"Doesn't most of the prostitution come from the
free love of weak girls?  Even when the cadets go after
them just to make money, isn't it love on the girl's
part?  What they think is love?  We must fight and
fight and fight to make women realize that they mustn't
love just for themselves.  That it isn't right towards
the race for them to love blindly—that it's a sin, a social
sin, for us to love until we're sure of ourselves, sure
of the man, sure for the children.  It's a sin for a woman
to sacrifice herself to a man just because she loves
him—a sin even to take risks.

"Somehow, until we've won freedom and equality
and independence, we've got to insist on guarantees.
I don't see how we can get them except through laws,
through old-fashioned marriages.  We women who are
stronger, and better educated and able to support
ourselves and children, we must always think of the
others who are less fortunate.  And as long as you men
take advantage of any of our sisters, we won't listen
to your free love talk.  So there!"

"Daddy," she said after she had rested her cheek
against mine for a while.  "I'll tell you a secret.  Ssh!
Don't you ever breathe it!  Do you know whom we
suffragists have to fight?  It's women!  If it was only
you men, we'd have won long ago.  It isn't the men who
enslave us.  It's tradition and habit.  Long training
had made us selfish—divided—weak.

"Just take the worst case.  It's mother's story all
over again—all the time.  She tried to get away.  Half
a dozen men, instinctively, acted together, for their
common interest—and were strong.  They didn't
reason it out.  Blackie did not have to say to them,
you help me beat my girl, and I'll help you beat yours
and so we'll keep them all scared.  It's a long inherited
tradition with men to act together like that, second
nature—almost an instinct.  But when a cadet beats a
girl, do the other girls rush together like that and fight
for their common interest?  No.  Each one for herself
sneaks off and tries to placate her man.  It's just the
same with 'respectable' people.  If a woman tries to
be free, the men are all against her with their
legislatures and courts and all that.  Do the other women
stand together to help her?  Oh, no.  They cut her.
Just like the prostitutes, they try to ingratiate
themselves with their husbands by spitting at the one who
tried to be free.

"If we women were only civilized enough really to
co-operate, to stick together, shoulder to shoulder—oh,
we'd put you men in your place quick enough.
Individualism, trying to stand alone, is the worst enemy
women can have to-day.  We've got to learn how to use
our united strength.

"And we are learning—too.  Remember that big
shirtwaist strike?  It was wonderful the way the girls
stuck together.  I don't believe that any time before
in the history of this old world women have stood by
each other like that—with such loyalty.  A lot of your
stupid men-papers, had editorials wondering why
up-town society women took so much interest in the strike.
Why, even the rich suffragists have sense enough to
know that solidarity is ten times more important than
the vote.  If you men only give us a long, hard fight
for it, make us throw stones and slap policemen and
go to jail and all that, we'll learn this lesson of standing
together and then we'll know how to use the franchise
when we get it.  Oh!  The time is coming, Daddy.
Watch out."

"I'm not frightened."  I said, "If I was as near to
thirty as I am to fifty, I guess I would be an enthusiastic
suffragetter.  Anything you wanted would look good
to me.  Do you think I would have had any chance if
I had encountered you when I was young enough to
be your lover?"

"I wonder what you were like, Daddy, twenty years
ago—just when I WAS beginning.  Oh, I guess I would
have liked you.  But even if I did, I would have sent
a lawyer to you with a long contract, specifying my
various and sundry privileges and your corresponding
duties.  Then I would have led you down to the City
Hall and made you sign each and every article with a
big oath.  How would you have liked that?"

"I'd have submitted joyfully."

Her arm tightened about my neck.

"And do you know what I would have done then,
Daddy?" she asked after a moment's silence.  "I
guess—just as soon as we were alone—I'd have torn
up that contract into little pieces.  And I'd have said,
'Oh, My Lord and Master, be humble to me in public,
for the sake of all my poor sisters who are afraid—but
here in private, please, trample on me some.  And
oh! if you love me—make me darn your socks.'

"Oh Daddy, that's the heart-break of it all"—there
was a catch in her voice—"That's what's hard.  We
know that we must fight for our freedom and equality—for
the other women's sake.  And all the while—if we
are in love—what our heart cries out for is a ruler.  We
want to serve."

I think when I get a chance I will tell Billy to show
his muscle now and then.

So this is where I am today.  My experiment in
ethics?  It has failed.  I can no more surely distinguish
right from wrong today, than when I was a boy in
school.

My best efforts landed Jerry—innocent—in prison.
The one time when I violated every rule I had laid
down for my guidance in the Tombs, when I lied
profusely, played dirty politics, compounded a felony,
and went on a man-hunt, with hate in my heart, I
disposed of the pimp Blackie, freed Nina, gave happiness
to Norman.  Marie is the result.

Certainly one of the best things in my life has been
Ann's love.  It came to me without any striving on my
part, it has been in no way a reward for effort or
aspiration.  Step by step it has seemed to me wrong.  I do
not believe in free love.  I cannot justify it any more
than I could stealing eggs when I was a boy.  It was
something I wanted and which I took.  Yet I am quite
sure it has been good.

On the other hand, the time when I strove hardest
to reach a higher plane, when I was most anxious to
be upright and honorable, those days I spent in France
with Suzanne, resulted in the most bitter pain, the most
dismal failure of my life.  This is not a little thing to
me, even after all these years.  The days come when I
must open my trunk, take out her rucksac and the
map—the only mementos I have of her—they are
days of anguish.  Why should it not have been?  My
life seems bitter and of small worth when I think of
what it might have been with her.

I am as much at a loss today in regard to moral
values as I ever was.  I have little hope left of
succeeding in my experiment.  This is the sad thing.  The
good fight has been a long one.  From the continued
campaigning, I am prematurely spent.  Under fifty,
I am prematurely old.  The *élan* of youth is gone.

At the Hotel des Invalides in Paris they tell the
story of a war-scarred crippled veteran of the Napoleonic
wars.  His breast was covered with service medals.
At one of the annual inspections a young commander
complimented on his many decorations.  "My General,"
the old soldier replied, "I can no longer carry a
musket, it would have been better to have died gloriously
at Austerlitz."

I am far from the sad pass of this decrepit veteran,
yet his story touches me nearly.  The best days have
flown.  I have lived intensely.  Into each combat
whether the insignificant skirmish of my daily work,
or the more decisive battles—I have thrown myself
with spendthrift energy.  I do not regret this attitude
towards life.  I am glad I met its problems face to
face—with passionate endeavor.  But the price must be
paid.  Nowadays I have little ardor left.  The youthful
questing spirit is gone—and I have not found the Holy
Grail.

Perhaps these young people are right.  I may have
started wrong—in trying to find the truth for myself
alone.  Perhaps there are no individualistic ethics.
They may find the answer expressed in social terms.
Perhaps.  But I have no energy left to begin the
experiment again.

But once more I must repeat, I do not regret my
manner of life.  We are offered but two choices; to accept
things as they are or to strive passionately for new and
better forms.  Defeat is not shameful.  But supine
complaisance surely is.

Out of the lives of all my generation a little
increment of wisdom has come to the race.  Neither the
renaissance, nor the reformation seem to me as
fundamental changes as we have wrought.  We have made
the nation suddenly conscious of itself.  We have not
cured its ills, but at least we have made great strides
in diagnosis.  And my experiment—in its tiny, coral-insect
way—has been an integral part in this increment
of wisdom.

I am more optimistic today than ever before.  And
if I wish to live on—as I surely do—it is to watch these
youngsters in their struggle for the better form.  How
much better equipped they are than we were, how much
clearer they see!

I think of myself as I left college—so afraid of life
that I was glad to find shelter among old books.  I
recall how strange seemed that first dinner in the
Children's House with Norman.  And then I think of Billy.
Why!  The knowledge of life those pioneer settlement
workers were just beginning to discover are conversational
commonplaces among Billy's friends.  The abolition
of poverty!

The vision comes to me of Margot, delicate, fragile,
ignorant—too ignorant to be afraid.  All the wisdom
of the ages—past and future—seemed to her to be
bound up in the King James version.  I compare her
with Marie.  She is as strong as a peasant girl.  I have
given up playing tennis with her, she beats me too
easily.  And the certain, fearless way she looks out at
life takes my breath, leaves me panting just as her
dashing net play does.  She speaks of Ann as early
Victorian, she would I fear place Margot as Elizabethan.

Most wonderful of all, these youngsters have never
had to fight with God, never had to tear themselves
to pieces escaping from the deadly formalism and
tyranny of Church Dogma.  They never had to call
themselves Atheists.

And then I think of how Billy and Marie are facing
this biggest problem of all—this business of love.  They
will have their squalls no doubt and run into shoal
water perhaps.  But they are not blindfolded as I was,
as Norman was—as all my generation was.  Pure luck
was all that could save us.  They are steering—not
drifting.

Yes.  My story is ended.  The old troupe has been
crowded off the stage.  There would be little interest
in writing of the work left me—brushing the wigs of
the leading man, packing the star's trunk,—pushing
the swan for Lohengrin, currying the horses of the
Walkyrie—it will all be behind the scene.

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..

   |  And how I envy them their faith!
   |  Ave—Juventas—morituri salutamus!

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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

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   The following pages contain advertisements of a few
   of the Macmillan novels.

.. vspace:: 3

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   The Friar of Wittenberg

.. vspace:: 1

BY WILLIAM STEARNS DAVIS, author of "A Friend of
Cæsar," "God Wills it."

In the character of Martin Luther, William Stearns Davis has found
admirable material around which to build an historical novel of more
than ordinary importance.  He has succeeded above all else in making
the picturesque figure live, imparting to the stirring episodes in which he
played a part so much of reality that the reader is enabled to visualize
as never before the conditions leading to the religious revolt of which
the Friar of Wittenberg was so powerful a leader.

"In the tale the stirring episodes in which Luther played a part are
invested with so much reality that one may clearly visualize the
conditions leading to the religious revolt of which the Friar of Wittenberg
was so powerful a leader."—*North American, Philadelphia, Pa*.

"The story includes scenes and events so compelling and thrilling as to
give to this master story-teller a great opportunity to use a mighty
event in human progress as the splendid foundation for a great
novel."—*Salt Lake Tribune*.

"Verily it is a remarkable book."—*Philadelphia Public Ledger*.

"No stronger picture has ever been painted than this of the German
people who welcomed Luther's appeal to all that was best in
them."—*San Francisco Chronicle*.

"'The Friar of Wittenberg' is written with power and earnest intention,
and should prove a deep delight to those who wish even for their
summer reading, something of a certain dignity and worth."—*N.Y. World*.

.. vspace:: 3

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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 3

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   MR. JAMES LANE ALLEN'S NOVELS

.. vspace:: 2

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The Choir Invisible

.. class:: noindent large bold

The Reign Of Law — A Tale of the Kentucky Hempfields

.. class:: noindent large bold

The Mettle of the Pasture

.. class:: noindent large bold

Summer in Arcady — A Tale of Nature

.. vspace:: 3

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MR. JAMES LANE ALLEN'S SHORTER STORIES

.. vspace:: 2

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The Blue Grass Region of Kentucky

.. class:: noindent large bold

Flute and Violin and other Kentucky Tales and Romances

.. class:: noindent large bold

A Kentucky Cardinal

.. class:: noindent large bold

Aftermath — A Sequel to "A Kentucky Cardinal"

.. class:: noindent large bold

A Kentucky Cardinal and Aftermath

.. class:: noindent large bold

Two Gentlemen of Kentucky

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent large bold

MR. JAMES LANE ALLEN'S

.. class:: noindent large bold

The Doctor's Christmas Eve

.. vspace:: 3

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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 3

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   *New Fiction*

.. vspace:: 2

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The Man in the Shadow

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By RICHARD WASHBURN CHILD, author of "Jim Hands."

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent large bold

John Temple: Merchant Adventurer, Convict
and Conquistador

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By RALPH DURAND.  Illustrated by WILLIAM SEWELL.

.. vspace:: 1

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Puppets

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By GEORGE FORBES.

.. vspace:: 1

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The Touchstone of Fortune

.. class:: noindent

By CHARLES MAJOR, author of "Dorothy Vernon of Haddon
Hall," etc,

.. vspace:: 3

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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 3

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   MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL'S NOVELS

.. vspace:: 1

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The Celebrity An Episode

.. class:: noindent large bold

Richard Carvel

.. class:: noindent large bold

The Crossing

.. class:: noindent large bold

The Crisis

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Coniston

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Mr. Crewe's Career

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A Modern Chronicle

.. vspace:: 3

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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 3

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   *New Fiction*

.. vspace:: 2

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Julia France and Her Times

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By GERTRUDE ATHERTON, author of "Tower of Ivory,"
"The Conqueror," etc.

.. vspace:: 1

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Joseph in Jeopardy

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By FRANK DANBY.

.. vspace:: 1

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White Ashes

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By KENNEDY-NOBLE.

.. vspace:: 1

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The Goodly Fellowship

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By RACHEL CAPEN SCHAUFFLER.

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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

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ANOTHER BOOK BY ALBERT EDWARDS

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Panama The Canal, the Country and the People

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   PUBLISHED BY
   THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
   Publishers — 64-66 Fifth Avenue — New York

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