Americans All Part 15

Brand Whitlock, lawyer, politician, author and amba.s.sador, was born in Urbana, Ohio, March 4, 1869. His father, Rev. Elias D. Whitlock, was a minister of power and a man of strong convictions. Brand was educated partly in the public schools, partly by private teaching. He never went to college, but this did not mean that his education stopped; he kept on studying, and to such good purpose that in 1916 Brown University gave him the degree of Doctor of Laws. Like many other writers, he received his early training in newspaper work. At eighteen he became a reporter on a Toledo paper, and three years later was reporter and political correspondent for the Chicago _Herald_. While in Chicago he was a member of the old Whitechapel Club, a group of newspaper men which included F.

P. Dunne, the creator of _Mr. Dooley_; Alfred Henry Lewis, author of _Wolfville_; and George Ade, whose _Fables in Slang_ were widely popular a few years ago.

He was strongly drawn to the law, and in 1893 went to Springfield, Illinois, and entered a law office as a student. He was admitted to the bar, and shortly after went to Toledo, Ohio, to practice. In eight years he had established himself as a successful lawyer, and something more.

He was recognized as a man of high executive ability, and as being absolutely "square." Such men are none too common, and Toledo decided that it needed him in the mayor's chair. Without a political machine, without a platform, and without a party, he was elected mayor in 1905, reelected in 1907, again in 1909, again in 1911--and could probably have had the office for life if he had been willing to accept it. In the meantime he had written several successful novels; he wanted more time for writing, and when in 1913 he was offered the post of United States Minister to Belgium, he accepted, thinking that he would find in this position an opportunity to observe life from a new angle, and leisure for literary work. In August 1914 he was on his vacation, and had begun work on a new novel. In his own words:

I had the ma.n.u.script of my novel before me.... It was somehow just beginning to take form, beginning to show some signs of life; at times some characters in it gave evidence of being human and alive; they were beginning to act now and then spontaneously, beginning to say and to do things after the manner of human beings; the long vista before me, the months of laborious drudging toil and pain, the long agony of effort necessary to write any book, even a poor one, was beginning to appear less weary, less futile; there was the first faint glow of the joy of creative effort.

and then suddenly the telephone bell rang, and announced that the Archduke of Austria had been a.s.sa.s.sinated at Sarajevo.

The rest of the story belongs to history. How he went back to Brussels; how when the city seemed doomed, and all the government officials left, he stayed on; how when the city was preparing to resist by force, he went to Burgomaster Max and convinced him that it was useless, and so saved the city from the fate of Louvain; how he took charge of the relief work, how the King of Belgium thanked him for his services to the country; how the city of Brussels in grat.i.tude gave him a picture by Van Dyck, a priceless thing, which he accepted--not for himself but for his home city of Toledo; how after the war, he went back, not as Minister but as Amba.s.sador,--all these are among the proud memories of America's part in the World War.

Brand Whitlock is so much more than an author that it is with an effort that we turn to consider his literary work. His first book, _The Thirteenth District_, published in 1902, was a novel of American politics; it contains a capital description of a convention, and shows the strategy of political leaders as seen by a keen observer. In _Her Infinite Variety_ he dealt with the suffrage movement as it was in 1904, with determined women seeking the ballot, and equally determined women working just as hard to keep it away from them. _The Happy Average_ was a story of an every-day American couple: they were not rich, nor famous, nor divorced,--yet the author thinks their story is typical of most American lives. _The Turn of the Balance_ is a novel that grew out of his legal experiences: it deals with the underworld of crime, and often in a depressing way. It reflects the author's belief that the present organization of society, and our methods of administering justice, are the cause of much of the misery in the world.

Following these novels came two volumes of short stories, _The Gold Brick_ and _The Fall Guy_: both deal with various aspects of American life of to-day. In 1914 he published an autobiography under the t.i.tle _Forty Years of It_. This is interesting as a picture of political life of the period in Ohio. His latest book, _Memories of Belgium under the German Occupation_, tells the story of four eventful years. In all that trying time, each night, no matter how weary he was, he forced himself to set down the events of the day. From these records he wrote a book that by virtue of its first-hand information and its literary art ranks among the most important of the books called forth by the Great War.

THE TRAVELING SALESMAN

_The traveling salesman is a characteristic American type. We laugh at his stories, or we criticise him for his "nerve," but we do not always make allowance for the fact that his life is not an easy one, and that his occupation develops "nerve" just as an athlete's work develops muscle. The best presentation of the traveling salesman in fiction is found in the stories of Edna Ferber. And the fact that her "salesman" is a woman only adds to the interest of the stories. When ex-President Roosevelt read Miss Ferber's book, he wrote her an enthusiastic letter telling her how much he admired Emma McChesney. We meet her in the first words of this story_.

HIS MOTHER'S SON

BY

EDNA FERBER

"Full?" repeated Emma McChesney (and if it weren't for the compositor there'd be an exclamation point after that question mark).

"Sorry, Mrs. McChesney," said the clerk, and he actually looked it, "but there's absolutely nothing stirring. We're full up. The Benevolent Brotherhood of Bisons is holding its regular annual state convention here. We're putting up cots in the hall."

Emma McChesney's keen blue eyes glanced up from their inspection of the little bunch of mail which had just been handed her. "Well, pick out a hall with a southern exposure and set up a cot or so for me," she said, agreeably, "because I've come to stay. After selling Featherloom Petticoats on the road for ten years I don't see myself trailing up and down this town looking for a place to lay my head. I've learned this one large, immovable truth, and that is, that a hotel clerk is a hotel clerk. It makes no difference whether he is stuck back of a marble pillar and hidden by a gold vase full of thirty-six-inch American Beauty roses at the Knickerbocker, or setting the late fall fashions for men in Galesburg, Illinois."

By one small degree was the perfect poise of the peerless personage behind the register jarred. But by only one. He was a hotel night clerk.

"It won't do you any good to get sore, Mrs. McChesney," he began, suavely. "Now a man would----"

"But I'm not a man," interrupted Emma McChesney. "I'm only doing a man's work and earning a man's salary and demanding to be treated with as much consideration as you'd show a man."

The personage busied himself mightily with a pen, and a blotter, and sundry papers, as is the manner of personages when annoyed. "I'd like to accommodate you; I'd like to do it."

"Cheer up," said Emma McChesney, "you're going to. I don't mind a little discomfort. Though I want to mention in pa.s.sing that if there are any lady Bisons present you needn't bank on doubling me up with them. I've had one experience of that kind. It was in Albia, Iowa. I'd sleep in the kitchen range before I'd go through another."

Up went the erstwhile falling poise. "You're badly mistaken, madam. I'm a member of this order myself, and a finer lot of fellows it has never been my pleasure to know."

"Yes, I know," drawled Emma McChesney. "Do you know, the thing that gets me is the inconsistency of it. Along come a lot of b.o.o.bs who never use a hotel the year around except to loaf in the lobby, and wear out the leather chairs, and use up the matches and toothpicks and get the baseball returns, and immediately you turn away a traveling man who uses a three-dollar-a-day room, with a sample room downstairs for his stuff, who tips every porter and bell-boy in the place, asks for no favors, and who, if you give him a halfway decent cup of coffee for breakfast, will fall in love with the place and boom it all over the country. Half of your Benevolent Bisons are here on the European plan, with a view to patronizing the free-lunch counters or being asked to take dinner at the home of some local Bison whose wife has been cooking up on pies, and chicken salad and veal roast for the last week."

Emma McChesney leaned over the desk a little, and lowered her voice to the tone of confidence. "Now, I'm not in the habit of making a nuisance of myself like this. I don't get so chatty as a rule, and I know that I could jump over to Monmouth and get first-cla.s.s accommodations there.

But just this once I've a good reason for wanting to make you and myself a little miserable. Y'see, my son is traveling with me this trip."

"Son!" echoed the clerk, staring.

"Thanks. That's what they all do. After a while I'll begin to believe that there must be something hauntingly beautiful and girlish about me or every one wouldn't petrify when I announce that I've a six-foot son attached to my ap.r.o.n-strings. He looks twenty-one, but he's seventeen.

He thinks the world's rotten because he can't grow one of those fuzzy little mustaches that the men are cultivating to match their hats. He's down at the depot now, straightening out our baggage. Now I want to say this before he gets here. He's been out with me just four days. Those four days have been a revelation, an eye-opener, and a series of rude jolts. He used to think that his mother's job consisted of traveling in Pullmans, eating delicate viands turned out by the hotel chefs, and strewing Featherloom Petticoats along the path. I gave him plenty of money, and he got into the habit of looking lightly upon anything more trifling than a five-dollar bill. He's changing his mind by great leaps.

I'm prepared to spend the night in the coal cellar if you'll just fix him up--not too comfortably. It'll be a great lesson for him. There he is now. Just coming in. Fuzzy coat and hat and English stick. Hist! As they say on the stage."

The boy crossed the crowded lobby. There was a little worried, annoyed frown between his eyes. He laid a protecting hand on his mother's arm.

Emma McChesney was conscious of a little thrill of pride as she realized that he did not have to look up to meet her gaze.

"Look here, Mother, they tell me there's some sort of a convention here, and the town's packed. That's what all those banners and things were for. I hope they've got something decent for us here. I came up with a man who said he didn't think there was a hole left to sleep in."

"You don't say!" exclaimed Emma McChesney, and turned to the clerk.

"This is my son, Jock McChesney--Mr. Sims. Is this true?"

"Glad to know you, sir," said Mr. Sims. "Why, yes, I'm afraid we are pretty well filled up, but seeing it's you maybe we can do something for you."

He ruminated, tapping his teeth with a penholder, and eying the pair before him with a maddening blankness of gaze. Finally:

"I'll do my best, but you can't expect much. I guess I can squeeze another cot into eight-seven for the young man. There's--let's see now--who's in eighty-seven? Well, there's two Bisons in the double bed, and one in the single, and Fat Ed Meyers in the cot and----"

Emma McChesney stiffened into acute attention. "Meyers?" she interrupted. "Do you mean Ed Meyers of the Strauss Sans-silk Skirt Company?"

"That's so. You two are in the same line, aren't you? He's a great little piano player, Ed is. Ever hear him play?"

"When did he get in?"

"Oh, he just came in fifteen minutes ago on the Ashland division. He's in at supper."

"Oh," said Emma McChesney. The two letters breathed relief.

But relief had no place in the voice, or on the countenance of Jock McChesney. He bristled with belligerence. "This cattle-car style of sleeping don't make a hit. I haven't had a decent night's rest for three nights. I never could sleep on a sleeper. Can't you fix us up better than that?"

"Best I can do."

"But where's mother going? I see you advertise 'three large and commodious steam-heated sample rooms in connection.' I suppose mother's due to sleep on one of the tables there."

"Jock," Emma McChesney reproved him, "Mr. Sims is doing us a great favor. There isn't another hotel in town that would----"

"You're right, there isn't," agreed Mr. Sims. "I guess the young man is new to this traveling game. As I said, I'd like to accommodate you, but-- Let's see now. Tell you what I'll do. If I can get the housekeeper to go over and sleep in the maids' quarters just for to-night, you can use her room. There you are! Of course, it's over the kitchen, and there may be some little noise early in the morning----"

Emma McChesney raised a protesting hand. "Don't mention it. Just lead me thither. I'm so tired I could sleep in an excursion special that was switching at Pittsburgh. Jock, me child, we're in luck. That's twice in the same place. The first time was when we were inspired to eat our supper on the diner instead of waiting until we reached here to take the leftovers from the Bisons' grazing. I hope that housekeeper hasn't a picture of her departed husband dangling life-size on the wall at the foot of the bed. But they always have. Good-night, son. Don't let the Bisons bite you. I'll be up at seven."