Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty Part 3

I had an amusing experience at the town of Belton. I had given an entertainment at the hotel on the promise of a night's lodging. I slept late. Over my transom came the breakfast-table talk. "That was a hot entertainment that young b.u.m gave us last night," said one man.

"He ought to get to work, the dirty lazy loafer," said another.

The schoolmaster spoke up in an effort not to condescend to his audience: "He is evidently a fraud. I talked to him a long time after the entertainment. The pieces he recited were certainly not his own. I have read some of them somewhere. It is too easy a way to get along, especially when the man is as able to work as this one. Of course in the old days literary men used to be obliged to do such things. But it isn't at all necessary in the Twentieth Century. Real poets are highly paid." Another spoke up: "I don't mind a fake, but he is a rotten reciter, anyhow. If he had said one more I would have just walked right out. You noticed ol' Mis' Smith went home after that piece about the worms." Then came the landlord's voice: "After the show was over I came pretty near not letting him have his room. All I've got to say is he don't get any breakfast."

I dressed, opened the doorway serenely, and strolled past the table, smiling with all the ease of a minister at his own church-social. In my most ornate manner I thanked the landlord and landlady for their extreme kindness. I a.s.sumed that not one of the gentle-folk had intended to have me hear their a.n.a.lysis. 'Twas a grand exit. Yet, in plain language, these people "got my goat." I have struggled with myself all morning, almost on the point of ordering a marked copy of a magazine sent to that smart schoolmaster. "_Evidently a fraud!_"

Indeed!

"Goin' wes' harvesin'?"

"Yes, yes. I think I will harvest when I get to Great Bend."

JUNE 18, 1912. Approaching Emporia. I am sitting in the hot sun by the Santa Fe tracks, after two days of walking those tracks in the rain. I am near a queer little Mexican house built of old railroad ties.

I had had two sticks of candy begged from a grocer for breakfast. I was keeping warm by walking fast. Because of the muddy roads and the sheets of rain coming down it was impossible to leave the tracks. It was almost impossible to make speed since the ballast underfoot was almost all of it big rattling broken stone. I had walked that Santa Fe railroad a day and a half in the drizzle and downpour. It was a little past noon, and my scanty inner fuel was almost used up. I dared not stop a minute now, lest I catch cold. There was no station in sight ahead. When the mists lifted I saw that the tracks went on and on, straight west to the crack of doom, not even a water-tank in sight.

The mists came down, then lifted once more, and, as though I were Childe Roland, I suddenly saw a shack to the right, in dimensions about seven feet each way. It was mostly stove-pipe, and that pipe was pouring out enough smoke to make three of Aladdin's Jinns. I presume some one heard me whistling. The little door opened. Two period heads popped out, "Come in, you slab-sided hobo," they yelled affectionately. "Come in and get dry." And so my heart was made suddenly light after a day and a half of hard whistling.

At the inside end of that busy smoke-stack was a roaring redhot stove about as big as a hat. It had just room enough on top for three steaming coffee cans at a time. There were four white men with their chins on their knees completely occupying the floor of one side of the mansion, and four Mexicans filled the other. Every man was hunched up to take as little room as possible. It appeared that my only chance was to move the tins and sit on the stove. But one Mexican sort of sat on another Mexican and the new white man was accommodated. These fellows were a double-section gang, for the track is double all along here.

I dried out pretty quick. The men began to pa.s.s up the coffee off the stove. It strangled and blistered me, it was so hot. The men were almost to the bottom of the food sections of their buckets and were beginning to throw perfectly good sandwiches and extra pieces of pie through the door. I said that if any man had anything to throw away would he just wait till I stepped outside so I could catch it. They handed me all I could ever imagine a man eating. It rained and rained and rained, and I ate till I could eat no more. One man gave me for dessert the last half of his cup of stewed raisins along with his own spoon. Good raisins they were, too. A Mexican urged upon me some brown paper and cigarette tobacco. I was sorry I did not smoke. The men pa.s.sed up more and more hot coffee.

That coffee made me into a sort of thermos bottle. On the strength of it I walked all afternoon through sheets and cataracts. When dark came I slept in wet clothes in a damp blanket in the hay of a windy livery stable without catching cold.

Now it is morning. The sky is reasonably clear, the weather is reasonably warm, but I am no longer a thermos bottle, no, no. I am sitting on the hottest rock I can find, letting the sun go through my bones. The coffee in me has turned at last to ice and snow. Emporia, the Athens of America, is just ahead. Oh, for a hot bath and a clean shirt!

A mad dog tried to bite me yesterday morning, when I made a feeble attempt to leave the track. When I was once back on the ties, he seemed afraid and would not come closer. His bark was the ghastliest thing I ever heard. As for his bite, he did not get quite through my shoe-heel.

EMPORIA, KANSAS, JUNE 19, 1912. On inquiring at the Emporia General Delivery for mail, I found your letter telling me to call upon your friend Professor Kerr. He took my sudden appearance most kindly, and pardoned my battered attire and the mud to the knees. After a day in his house I am ready to go on, dry and feasted and warm and clean. The professor's help seemed to come in just in time. I was a most weary creature.

Thinking it over this morning, the bathtub appears to be the first outstanding advantage the cultured man has over the half-civilized.

Quite often the folk with swept houses and decent cooking who have given my poems discriminating attention, who have given me good things to eat, forget, even when they entertain him overnight, that the stranger would like to soak himself thoroughly. Many of the working people seem to keep fairly clean with the washpan as their princ.i.p.al ally. But the tub is indispensable to the mendicant in the end, unless he is walking through a land of crystal waterfalls, like North Georgia.

I am an artificial creature at last, dependent, after all, upon modern plumbing. 'Tis, perhaps, not a dignified theme, but I retired to the professor's bathroom and washed off the entire State of Missouri and the eastern counties of Kansas, and did a deal of laundry work on the sly. This last was not openly confessed to the professor, but he might have guessed, I was so cold on the front porch that night.

I shall not soon lose the memory of this the first day of emergence from the strait paths of St. Francis, this first meeting, since I left Springfield, with a person on whom I had a conventional social claim.

I had forgotten what the delicacy of a cultured welcome would be like.

The professor's table was a marvel to me. I was astonished to discover there were such fine distinctions in food and linen. And for all my troubadour profession, I had almost forgotten there were such distinctions in books. I have hardly seen one magazine since I left you. The world where I have been moving reads nothing but newspapers.

It is confusing to bob from one world to the other, to zig-zag across the social dead-line. I sat in the professor's library a very mixed-up person, feeling I could hardly stay a minute, yet too heavy-footed to stir an inch, and immensely grateful and relaxed.

Sooner or later I am going to step up into the rarefied civilized air once too often and stay there in spite of myself. I shall get a little too fond of the china and old silver, and forget the fields. Books and teacups and high-brow conversations are awfully insinuating things, if you give them time to be. One gets along somehow, and pleasure alternates with pain, and the sum is the joy of life, while one is below. But to quit is like coming up to earth after deep-sea diving in a heavy suit. One scarcely realizes he has been under heavier-than-air pressure, and has been fighting off great forces, till he has taken off his diving helmet, as it were. And yet there is a baffling sense of futility in the restful upper air. I remember it once, long ago, in emerging in Warren, Ohio, and once in emerging in Macon, Georgia:--the feeling that the upper world is all tissue paper, that the only choice a real man can make is to stay below with the great forces of life forever, even though he be a tramp--the feeling that, to be a little civilized, we sacrifice enormous powers and joys. For all I was so tired and so very grateful to the professor, I felt like a bull in a china shop. I should have been out in the fields, eating gra.s.s.

THE KALLYOPE YELL

[_Loudly and rapidly with a leader, College yell fashion_]

I

Proud men Eternally Go about, Slander me, Call me the "Calliope."

Sizz.....

Fizz.....

II

I am the Gutter Dream, Tune-maker, born of steam, Tooting joy, tooting hope.

I am the Kallyope, Car called the Kallyope.

w.i.l.l.y w.i.l.l.y w.i.l.l.y wah HOO!

See the flags: snow-white tent, See the bear and elephant, See the monkey jump the rope, Listen to the Kallyope, Kallyope, Kallyope!

Soul of the rhinoceros And the hippopotamus (Listen to the lion roar!) Jaguar, c.o.c.katoot, Loons, owls, Hoot, Hoot.

Listen to the lion roar, Listen to the lion roar, Listen to the lion R-O-A-R!

Hear the leopard cry for gore, w.i.l.l.y w.i.l.l.y w.i.l.l.y wah HOO!

Hail the b.l.o.o.d.y Indian band, Hail, all hail the popcorn stand, Hail to Barnum's picture there, People's idol everywhere, Whoop, whoop, whoop, WHOOP!

Music of the mob am I, Circus day's tremendous cry:-- I am the Kallyope, Kallyope, Kallyope!

Hoot toot, hoot toot, hoot toot, hoot toot, w.i.l.l.y w.i.l.l.y w.i.l.l.y wah HOO!

Sizz, fizz.....

III

Born of mobs, born of steam, Listen to my golden dream, Listen to my golden dream, Listen to my G-O-L-D-E-N D-R-E-A-M!

Whoop whoop whoop whoop WHOOP!

I will blow the proud folk low, Humanize the dour and slow, I will shake the proud folk down, (Listen to the lion roar!) Popcorn crowds shall rule the town-- w.i.l.l.y w.i.l.l.y w.i.l.l.y wah HOO!

Steam shall work melodiously, Brotherhood increase.

You'll see the world and all it holds For fifty cents apiece.

w.i.l.l.y w.i.l.l.y w.i.l.l.y wah HOO!

Every day a circus day.

_What?_

Well, _almost_ every day.

Nevermore the sweater's den, Nevermore the prison pen.

Gone the war on land and sea That aforetime troubled men.

Nations all in amity, Happy in their plumes arrayed In the long bright street parade.

Bands a-playing every day.

_What?_

Well, _almost_ every day.

I am the Kallyope, Kallyope, Kallyope!

w.i.l.l.y w.i.l.l.y w.i.l.l.y wah HOO!

Hoot, toot, hoot, toot, Whoop whoop whoop whoop, w.i.l.l.y w.i.l.l.y w.i.l.l.y wah HOO!

Sizz, fizz.....

IV

Every soul Resident In the earth's one circus tent!

Every man a trapeze king Then a pleased spectator there.

On the benches! In the ring!

While the neighbors gawk and stare And the cheering rolls along.