Twelve Men Part 35

He fairly caressed the mechanism with his hand, and went off into a most careful a.n.a.lysis of its qualities.

"I could build that engine," he exclaimed at last, enthusiastically, "if I were down in the Baldwin Company's place. I could make her break the record."

"I haven't the slightest doubt in the world," I answered.

This engine was a source of great expense to him, as well as the chief point in a fine scheme. He had made bra.s.s rails for it--sufficient to extend about the four sides of the studio--something like seventy feet.

He had made most handsome pa.s.senger-cars with full equipment of brakes, vestibules, Pintsch gas, and so on, and had painted on their sides "The Great Pullman Line." One day, when we were quite friendly, he brought from his home all the rails, in a carpet-bag, and gave an exhibition of his engine's speed, attaching the cars and getting up sufficient steam to cause the engine to race about the room at a rate which was actually exciting. He had an arrangement by which it would pick up water and stop automatically. It was on this occasion that he confided what he called his great biograph scheme, the then forerunner of the latter day moving pictures. It was all so new then, almost a rumor, like that of the flying machine before it was invented.

"I propose to let the people see the photographic representation of an actual wreck--engine, cars, people, all tumbled down together after a collision, and no imitation, either--the actual thing."

"How do you propose to do it?" I asked.

"Well, that's the thing," he said, banteringly. "Now, how do you suppose I'd do it?"

"Hire a railroad to have a wreck and kill a few people," I suggested.

"Well, I've got a better thing than that. A railroad couldn't plan anything more real than mine will be."

I was intensely curious because of the novelty of the thing at that time. The "Biograph" was in its infancy.

"This is it," he exclaimed suddenly. "You see how realistic this engine is, don't you?"

I acknowledged that I did.

"Well," he confided, "I'm building another just like it. It's costing me three hundred dollars, and the pa.s.senger-cars will cost as much more.

Now, I'm going to fix up some scenery on my roof--a gorge, a line of woods, a river, and a bridge. I'm going to make the water tumble over big rocks just above the bridge and run underneath it. Then I'm going to lay this track around these rocks, through the woods, across the bridge and off into the woods again.

"I'm going to put on the two trains and time them so they'll meet on the bridge. Just when they come into view where they can see each other, a post on the side of the track will strike the cabs in such a way as to throw the firemen out on the steps just as if they were going to jump.

When the engines take the bridge they'll explode caps that will set fire to oil and powder under the cars and burn them up."

"Then what?" I asked.

"Well, I've got it planned automatically so that you will see people jumping out of the cars and tumbling down on the rocks, the flames springing up and taking to the cars, and all that. Don't you believe it?" he added, as I smiled at the idea. "Look here," and he produced a model of one of the occupants of the cars. He labored for an hour to show all the intricate details, until I was compelled to admit the practicability and novelty of the idea. Then he explained that instantaneous photography, as it was then called, was to be applied at such close range that the picture would appear life size. The actuality of the occurrence would do the rest.

Skepticism still lingered with me for a time, but when I saw the second train growing, the figures and apparatus gradually being modeled, and the correspondence and conferences going on between the artist and several companies which wished to gain control of the result, I was perfectly sure that his idea would some day be realized.

As I have said, when I first met S---- he had not realized any of his dreams. It was just at that moment that the tide was about to turn. He surprised me by the a.s.surance, born of his wonderful virility, with which he went about all things.

"I've got an order from the _Ladies' Home Journal_," he said to me one day. "They came to me."

"Good," I said. "What is it?"

"Somebody's writing up the terminal facilities of New York."

He had before him an Academy board, on which was sketched, in wash, a midnight express striking out across the Jersey meadows with sparks blazing from the smoke stacks and dim lights burning in the sleepers. It was a vivid thing, strong with all the strength of an engine, and rich in the go and enthusiasm which adhere to such mechanisms.

"I want to make a good thing of this," he said. "It may do me some good."

A little later he received his first order from Harper's. He could not disguise that he was pleased, much as he tried to carry it off with an air. It was just before the Spanish war broke out, and the sketches he was to do related to the navy.

He labored at this order with the most tireless enthusiasm. Marine construction was his delight anyhow, and he spent hours and days making studies about the great vessels, getting not only the atmosphere but the mechanical detail. When he made the pictures they represented all that he felt.

"You know those drawings?" he said the day after he delivered them.

"Yes."

"I set a good stiff price on them and demanded my drawings back when they were through."

"Did you get them?"

"Yep. It will give them more respect for what I'm trying to do," he said.

Not long after he ill.u.s.trated one of Kipling's stories.

He was in high feather at this, but grim and repressed withal. One could see by the nervous movements of his wiry body that he was delighted over it.

At this time Kipling came to his studio. It was by special arrangement, but S---- received him as if he were--well, as artists usually receive authors. They talked over the galley proofs, and the author went away.

"It's coming my way now," he said, when he could no longer conceal his feelings. "I want to do something good on this."

Through all this rise from obscurity to recognition he lived close to his friends--a crowd of them, apparently, always in his studio jesting, boxing, fencing--and interested himself in the mechanics I have described. His drawing, his engine-building, his literary studies and recreations were all mixed, jumbled, plunging him pell-mell, as it were, on to distinction. In the first six months of his studio life he had learned to fence, and often dropped his brush to put on the mask and a.s.sume the foils with one of his companions.

As our friendship increased I found how many were the man's accomplishments and how wide his range of sympathies. He was an expert bicyclist, as well as a trick rider, and used a camera in a way to make an amateur envious. He could sing, having a fine tenor voice, which I heard the very day I learned that he could sing. It so happened that it was my turn to buy the theater tickets, and I invited him to come with me that especial evening.

"Can't do it," he replied.

"All right," I said.

"I'm part of an entertainment tonight, or I would," he added apologetically.

"What do you do?" I inquired.

"Sing."

"Get out!" I said.

"So be it," he answered. "Come up this evening."

To this I finally agreed, and was surprised to observe the ease with which he rendered his solo. He had an exquisitely clear and powerful voice and received a long round of applause, which he refused to acknowledge by singing again.

The influence of success is easily observable in a man of so volatile a nature. It seems to me that I could have told by his manner, day by day, the inwash of the separate ripples of the inrolling tide of success. He was all alive, full of plans, and the tale of his coming conquests was told in his eye. Sometime in the second year of our acquaintance I called at his studio in response to a card which he had stuck under my office door. It was his habit to draw an outline head of himself, something almost bordering upon a caricature, writing underneath it "I called," together with any word he might have to say. This day he was in his usual good spirits, and rallied me upon having an office which was only a blind. He had a roundabout way of getting me to talk about his personal affairs with him, and I soon saw that he had something very interesting, to himself, to communicate. At last he said,--

"I'm going to Europe next summer."

"Is that so?" I replied. "For pleasure?"

"Well, partly."