Tramping on Life Part 71

I saw clearly that their revolution was a backward-working one. That the country's business could never again be broken up into a mult.i.tude of small shops and individual compet.i.tors.

Of course, I was at that time a Socialist of the violent, fiery type--with a strong cast toward the anarchism of Emma Goldman.

But it flattered me to be taken, as it were, into the inner councils of such great folk....

"Send us some of your poetry, with the right American ring to it, Johnnie," suggested Miss Martin, "and we will make you the poet of the group."

I think that Ally Merton's clothes on me, and his correct tie, made my good impression, as much as my after-talk around the fireplace, where I spun yarns of my strange life and adventures.

"You made a hit," commented Ally, as he conducted me back to his house, "it's a great opening for you. Follow it up!"

"I will!"

That night I could not sleep. My blood made a tumult through my body.

Before dawn I had written two poems on national themes; didactic verses, each with a moral of democracy tagged to it, and much about the worth of simplicity in it, and the dignity of honest labour.

Yes, I would be their poet. And America's poet....

And visions of a comfortable, bourgeois success took me ... interminable Chautauquas, with rows of women listening to my inspiring verses ...

visits as honoured guest to the homes of great popular leaders like Roosevelt ... dignity and rides in parlour cars, instead of dusty, dirty box cars ... interviews of weight and speeches of consequence ... and the newspapers would drop their undercurrent of levity when I was written about in them, and treat me with consideration.

Finally, I would possess a home like Mackworth's, set back amid shade trees, a house not too large, not too small ... a cook and maid ... a pretty, un.o.btrusive wife devoted to me....

And I would wear white linen collars every day, tie the ends of my tie even ... and each year would see a new book of mine out, published by some bookseller of repute ... and I could afford Red Seal records ...

and have my largest room for a library....

Middle-cla.s.s comfort was upon me ... good plumbing ... electric light ... laundry sent out ... no more washing of my one shirt overnight and hanging it up to dry on the back of a chair, while I slept ... and putting it on, next morning, crinkly and still damp.

I was already seduced, if there hadn't been that something in me which I myself could not control!

It was when I caught Mackworth on the streets of his town and in his newspaper office that I discovered the man himself.

In our country, especially in the Middle West, everybody watches everybody else for the least lapse in the democratic spirit.

Though he was truly democratic at heart, Mackworth laid it on in theatric outward appearance, in true line with the Kansas tradition of a sockless Jerry Simpson, who went without socks, as the adjective implies, and made Congress on that one platform of his sartorial lack ... of William Roscoe Stubbs, who rode into the office of governor partly on the fact that his daughter could make salt-rising bread ... a form of bread-making cultivated by the hardy pioneers of the state, and now no longer necessary.

Mackworth was "in-legged" ... that is, his legs on the insides rubbed together from the crotch to the knees ... and he wore old patches, hanging there actually in strips ... and, I think, had his trouser-seat patched, too ... and though he could have afforded a car, he drove about, he and his family, in a rickety old two-seated rig, deliberately kept, it seemed, in ill-repair ... and it was such an old ex-plow horse that dragged it about!

His fellow townsmen laughed, but they liked it. "Jarv's all right! No nonsense about Jarv, even ef he is one o' them lit'rary fellers!"

To call everybody by the first name--that was the last word in honest, democratic fellowship.

Whether this exterior appearance of Mackworth was sincere or affected in him I never could quite tell. I am almost inclined to believe it was not done for effect,--but out of an a.s.sisian simplicity of heart, as a sign manual of Bourgeois integrity.

If it was an affectation, his personal att.i.tude toward the people with whom he came into contact was not ... in his office everybody loved him, and worked for him with that easy efficiency that comes of good will and respect....

Unostentatiously and affectionately he went about helping people.

"We've got a wonderful town here ... very little vice, except that which always will be in every community because it is inherent in human nature ... we have a fine college of our own ... a fine electric plant ...

everybody's lawn is well-kept ... n.o.body in this town need be out of a job ... for miles around us the land is rich in real wealth of waving corn and wheat....

Kansas will be the centre, the Athens, of our civilisation, one day....

We have a fine Harvey Eating House at our railway station, managed by a hustler ... you must have Ally take you there for dinner before you go back to Laurel."

The idealisation of small comfort ... in a case like Mackworth's, fairly un.o.bjectionable ... but in most cases insufferably stodgy ... the dry-rot of art, literature, life ... leading to a smug conceit that in turn ends in that school of "two hills of corn where one cl.u.s.ter of violets grew before."

No wonder that the _National Magazine_, starting with a splendid flourish of knight-errantry, degenerated into the mere, "let-well-enough-alone" thrift-crier it is.... "'How I Became an Expert Tombstone Salesman' ... 'How I collected Tin Foil After Work-Hours and Added Three Hundred a Year Extra to My Salary as Stenographer.'..."

Rather, far rather, the Rockefeller, that shrewd manipulator of businesses ... with all his parsimony in personal economics ... his diet of bread and milk ... and his giving away of millions to missions and scientific inst.i.tutions....

Rather the big Morgan, who knew the old masters as well as he knew the weaknesses of men ... who hobn.o.bbed, not as a democrat, but as aristocratic as the best of them, with princes, kings, emperors, in his grim, forbidding dignity.

This at least presented bigness and romance!

"Want to meet Uncle Bill?" and Mackworth led me into a close-shut room blue-thick with smoke....

I coughed and choked. A fire extinguisher should have preceded our entry.

There sat--the lumbering trot of his typewriter heard long before he a.s.sumed visible, hazy outline--William Struthers, known to the newspaper world as "Old Uncle Bill," the writer of daily prose-verse squibs on the homely virtues, the exalter of the commonplaces of life, the deifier of the ordinary.

Uncle Bill's head of strong, black hair stood upright like thick wire.

His thick, stubby fingers trotted like cart horses on and on. He stopped and drew up a chair for me.

"Of course I ain't calling my stuff poetry," he began deprecatingly, "but I do a lot of good for folks ... folks read my stuff when they ain't got time to read the real poets."

Instead of flattering him, I gave him, frankly but gently, my opinion of the cornfed school of literature, easing the sting by inferring that he without doubt had bigger things up his sleeve than his so-called prose poems.

What I said struck the right chord.

"Of course a fellow has to make a living first."

(But, in my heart, I thought--it is just as vile for a man to send his wife out as a street-walker, and allege the excuse about having to live, as it is for a poet to prost.i.tute his Muse.)

Nevertheless, Mackworth, Uncle Bill and I stood together, in the sunny street outside, posing for the photographer. And I swelled with inordinate pride. Though I knew I was bigger than both of them put together, yet, in the eyes of the world, these men were big men--and having my photograph taken with them was an indication to me, that I was beginning to come into my own.

Perhaps our picture would be reproduced in some Eastern paper or magazine ... perhaps even in the _Bookman_.