Tramping on Life Part 47

Day by day I took care of my body, gaining in weight, filling out the hollows in my face, till I had grown into a presentable young man. For the first time in my life I knew the meaning of perfect health. Every atom of my blood tingled with natural happiness as I have felt it in later days, under the stimulation of good wine.

No coffee, no tea, no beefsteak, no alcohol....

On that summer's ideal living I built the foundation of the health and strength, that, long after, I finally acquired as a permanent possession.

Stephen Barton and I had many interesting talks together. With the cultural background of Europe he might have been a Rousseau or a Phalanisterian. As it was, he ran a "natural life" magazine which, though crude, benefited hundreds of people. What though it showed pictures of stupid men and women revealing, in poses rivalling the contortionist, their physical development acquired through his methods.

We would collect many people about us, to serve as a nucleus from which the future society of men and women would expand ... we would all live together as nearly naked as possible, because that was, after all, the only pure thing ... as Art showed, in its painting and sculpture. We would make our livings by the manufacture of all sorts of exercising apparatus and health-foods....

And so the world would be leavened with the new idea ... and men and women and little children would wander forth from the great, unclean, insanitary cities and live in cl.u.s.ters of pretty cottages ... naked, in good weather,--in bad, clothed for warmth and comfort, but not for shame. And the human body would become holy.

Meanwhile the petty, local fight had started which was to disrupt this hope of Barton's, and thwart its fulfillment forever.

The town of Andersonville became jealous of the town of Cottswold because the latter handled most of the mail of our city and thereby had achieved the position of third or fourth cla.s.s postoffice--I don't know exactly which.

The struggle commenced when the two lone policemen of Andersonville began to arrest us--men and women--when we walked into their town for provisions, clad in our bathing suits ... later on, we were forbidden to run for exercise, in our bathing suits, on the fine, macadamised road that pa.s.sed not far from our dwellings ... it shocked the motorists.

Yet people came from far and near, just to be shocked. That seems to be the chief, most delightful, and only lawfully indulged emotion of the Puritan.

Barton summoned us to a meeting, one night, and we held a long palaver over the situation. We decided to become more cautious, in spite of a few hotheads who advised defiance to the hilt....

And the beautiful girl that possessed such fine b.r.e.a.s.t.s could no longer row about on our little lake, naked to the waist. And we were requested to go far in among the trees for our nude sun-baths.

The more radical of us moved entirely into the woods, despite the sand flies....

Then the affair simmered down to quietness--till the New York _World_ and the New York _Journal_ sent out their reporters.... After that, what with the lurid and insinuating stories printed, the state authorities began to look into the matter--and found no harm in us.

But the Andersonville officials were out for blood. Cottswold was growing too fast for their injured civic pride and vanity.

"Can't you divide your mail between the two towns, and make them both third or fourth cla.s.s or whatever-it-is postoffice towns?" I asked Barton, after he had given me the simple explanation of the whole affair.

"No--for if I took anything away from Cottswold and added it to Andersonville, then the Cottswold authorities would become my adversaries, too ... the only thing I can do," he added, "is what I meant to do all along,--as soon as our 'city' has grown important enough--have 'Perfection City' made a postoffice."

"And then make enemies of both towns at once?"

He threw up his hands in despair and walked away.

Having quit work with the gang that was laying out the streets of the future city through the pines, I was entirely out of the few dollars my several weeks' work had enabled me to save ... though but little was needed to exist by, in that community of simple livers ... my procuring my tent free had rendered me quite independent....

One afternoon Barton met me on the dam-head.

"Come on in swimming with me ... I have something to talk with you about," he said.

We swam around and talked, as nonchalantly as two other men would have done, sitting in their club.

"How would you like to work for me again?"

"What is it you want me to work at?"

"I need a cook for my nature restaurant ... can you cook?"

I thought. I knew his present cook, MacGregor, the Scot, and I didn't want to do him out of a job. Besides, I didn't know how to cook.

The first objection Barton read in my face.

"MacGregor is quitting ... I'm not firing him."

"All right ... I'll take the job."

Our conference over, we had climbed out to the top of the dam, slid over, and were now standing beneath. The water galloped down in a snowy cataract of foam, as we topped off our swim with the heavy "shower-bath"

that was like a ma.s.sage in its pummelling.

MacGregor good-naturedly stayed an extra week, saying he'd show me the run of things. Secretly he tried to teach me how to cook....

As the cooking was not all of the "nature" order, but involved preparing food for a horde of people we called "outsiders" who were employed in Barton's publishing plant, I would have to prepare meat and bake bread and make tea and coffee....

Barton confessed to me that a food-compromise was distasteful to him.

But he could not coerce. While lecturing about the country it was often, even with him, "eat beefsteaks or starve!"

MacGregor was a professional Scotchman, just as there are professional Irishmen, Englishmen and professional Southern Gentlemen ... every Scotchman is a professional Scotchman ... but there is always something pleasant and poetic about his being so ... it is not as it is with the others--whose "professionalism" generally bears an unpleasant reek.

MacGregor had sandy, scanty hair, a tiny white shadow of a moustache, kindly, weak eyes, a forehead prematurely wrinkled with minute, horizontal lines. Burns ... of course ... he knew and quoted every line to me. And _Sentimental Tommy_ and _Tommy and Grizel_.

In a week I was left in full possession of the nature restaurant.

Barton had been rendered slightly paring and mean, in matters of money,--by smooth individuals who came to him, glowing with words of what they could effect for him, in this or that project--individuals who soon decamped, leaving Barton the poorer, except in experience.

In return he had to retrench. But the retrenchments fell in the place where the penny, not the dollar, lay.

He practised economy on me. He gave me only ten dollars a week, board and room free, as cook; and also I was to wait on the diners, as well as prepare the meals.

Nevertheless the fault for having two jobs at once thrust on me, rested partly with me: when he asked me if I was able to do both, I fell into a foolish, boasting mood and said "yes."

MacGregor figured out my menu for me a week ahead, the day he left: "Anyhow, you'll only last a week," he joked.

The night before the first breakfast I lay awake all night, worrying ...

hadn't I better just sneak away with daylight?... no, I must return to Mt. Hebron in the fall. Though all I wanted to return for was to show the school, that, in spite of my spindly legs, I could win my "H" in track athletics.