Tramping on Life Part 54

Oftener and oftener magnificently written articles by him began to appear in his remarkable little magazine, _The Dawn_. And the Ingersoll of Dollar Watch fame crowded out the Ingersoll of brave agnosticism ...

and when he wrote now of artists and writers, it was their thrifty habits, their business traits, that he lauded.

"A great man can be practical and businesslike, in fact the greatest of them always are," he defended. "There was Voltaire, the successful watchmaker at Ferney ... and there was Shakespeare, who, after his success in London, returned to Avon and practically bought up the whole town ... he even ran a butcher shop there, you know."

"The people expect startling things ... and, as the winds of genius blow where they list--when they refuse to blow in the direction required, divine is the art of buncombe," he jested.

I suppose this applied to his musician-prodigy, a girl of eight, who worked, in the afternoons, in the bindery. And when a visiting party swept through that department, it was part of her job to rise as if under the impulse of inspiration, leave her work, and go to a nearby piano and play ... the implication being that the piano was placed there for the use of the workers when melody surged within them....

But she was the only one who played. And she never played except when she was tipped the wink. And it was only one thing--a something of Rubenstein's ... which she had practised and practised and practised to perfection; and _that_ rendered, with haughty head like a little sibyl, she would go back to her work-bench. And if urged to play more, she would answer, lifting her great, velvet eyes in a dreamy gaze, "no, no more to-day. The inspiration has gone." And, awed, the visitors would depart.

Back of the bindery stood the blacksmith shop, where MacKittrick, the historian-blacksmith, plied the bellows and smote the anvil.

MacKittrick took a liking to me. For one day we began talking about ancient history, and he perceived that I had a little knowledge of it, and a feeling for the colour and motion of its long-ago life.

"I want you to come and work for me," he urged, "my work is mostly pretty," he apologised, with blacksmith st.u.r.diness, "--not making horseshoes, but cutting out delicate things, ornamental iron work for aesthetic purposes, and all that ... all you'll have to do will be to swing the hammer gently, while I direct the blows and cut put the dainty filigree the "Master" sells to folk, afterward, as art."

"Well, isn't it art?" I asked.

"I suppose it is. But I like the strong work of blacksmithing best. You see, I was born to be a great historian. But destiny has made me a blacksmith," he continued irrelevantly ... "do come out and work for me.

I'm hungry for an intelligent helper who can talk history with me while we work."

My transfer was effected. And I was immediately glad of it. "Mac," as we called him, was a fine, solid man ... and he did know history. He knew it as a lover knows his mistress. He was right. He should have been a great historical writer--great historian he _was_!

For two glorious months I was with him. And during those two months, I learned more about the touch and texture of the historic life of man than three times as many years in college could have taught me.

"Mac" talked of Caesar as if only yesterday he had shaken hands with him in the Forum ... and he was shocked over his murder as if it had happened right after....

"Ah, that was a bad day for Rome and the future of the world, when those mad fellows struck him down there like a pig!" he cried.

And Mary, Queen of Scots, was "a sweet, soft body of a white thing that should have been content with being in love, and never tried to rule!"

"Can you cook?" asked Spalton of me one day, just as Barton had done at "Perfection City."

"No," I replied honestly, thinking back to that experience.

"Fine!" was the unexpected rejoinder, "I'm going to send you put to the camp to cook for my lumber-jacks for a few weeks."

"But I said I couldn't cook."

"You know how to turn an egg in the pan? you know enough not to let ham and bacon burn?... you know water won't scorch, no matter how long it stands over the fire?...

"You'll make an excellent cook for lumber-jacks ... so long as it's something to eat that's stuck under their noses, they don't give a d.a.m.n!... they're always hungry enough to eat anything ... and can digest anything....

"Get ready! I'm sending you out on one of the waggons by noon."

Perched on the high seat of the waggon by the side of the driver! The latter was bundled up to the chin ... wore a fur cap that came down over the ears ... was felt-booted against the cold ... wore heavy gloves.

It was so cold that the breath of the horses went straight up into the air like thick, white wool. As we rode by, the pa.s.sing farmers that were driving into town almost fell off their seats, startled, and staring at me. For there I perched ... coatless and hatless ... sockless feet in sandals ... my shirt flung open, a la Byron, at the neck.

It is true that the mind can do anything. I _thought_ myself into being composed and comfortable. I did not mind, truly I did not mind it.

The driver had protested, but only once, laconically:

"Whar's y'r coat an' hat?"

"I never wear any," I explained, beginning a propagandistic harangue on the non-essentiality of clothes....

He cut in with the final p.r.o.nouncement:

"d.a.m.n fool, you'll git pneumony."

Then he fell into obdurate, contemptuous silence.

The snow was deep about our living shanty and cook-shack in one, but hard-frozen enough to bear a man's weight without snow-shoes. Over the crust had fallen a powdery, white, new snow, about four inches deep.

Every morning, after the "boys" had eaten their breakfast and left for the woods, I went through my exercises, stripped, out in the open ... a half hour of it, finished by a roll in the snow, that set me tingling all over.

One morning I made up my mind to startle the "boys" by running, mother-naked, in a circle, whooping, about them, where they were sawing up fallen trees and felling others.

It was a half mile to where they worked.

For more bizarre effect, I clapped on a straw hat which I found in the rafters--a relic of the preceding summer....

"Gosh a'mighty, what's this a-comin!"...

Everybody stopped working. Two neighbour farmers, who had come over for a bit of gossip, stooped, their hands on their knees, bowed with astonishment, as if they had beheld an apparition.

One of the "boys" told me the two held silence for a long time--till I was entirely out of sight again, and after.

Then one exclaimed, "air they any more luny fellers like thet, back at them Artwork shops?"

The incident gave birth to the legend of a crazy man under Spalton's care, whose chief insanity was running naked through snowdrifts.

Spalton had three sons. Roderick was the eldest: named after his father.

Level-headed and businesslike, he followed his father's vagaries because he saw the commercial possibilities in them ... though he did so more as a practical man with a sense of humour than as a man who was on the make. Spalton, who knew men thoroughly and quickly appraised their individual natures, had installed Roderick in the managing end of things,--there with the aid of an older head--one Alfoxden, of whom Spalton made too much of a boast, telling everyone he had rescued him from a life of crime; Alfoxden, when younger, forged a check and had served his term for it. Coming out into the world again, no one would trust him because of that one mistake, Spalton, at this juncture, took him in and gave him a new chance--but--as I said unkindly, in my mind, and publicly, he made capital of his generous action.